Inside Out
The Dalai Lama Interviewed by Spalding Gray
In 1991, Tricycle asked Spalding Gray (1941–2004) to interview the Dalai Lama, who had recently received the Nobel Peace Prize. The interview laid the groundwork for Tricycle's unorthodox approach to Buddhism in the West. The issue featured a Herb Ritz portrait of the Dalai Lama on its cover, and we haven't run another portrait of a well-known figure since.
TENZIN GYATSO, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and the 1989 Nobel Peace Laureate. Born to a peasant family in 1935, in the northeastern province of Amdo, His Holiness was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and a manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. In 1959, he escaped the Chinese invasion of Tibet and lives now in Dharamsala, India.
The Dalai Lama completed 18 years of monastic study with a final examination by 30 scholars of logic in the morning, by 15 scholars on the subject of the Middle Path in the afternoon, and in the evening, by 35 scholars of the canon of monastic discipline and the study of metaphysics. His Holiness the Dalai Lama then passed the exacting oral examination with honors and soon completed the Geshe Lharampa—or the highest level of scholarly achievement in Buddhist philosophy.
SPALDING GRAY, born in Rhode Island in 1941, calls himself a writer and performer who has been “circling my meditation cushion for almost twenty years.” His best known performance is the stage and film version of his monologue, "Swimming to Cambodia."
Gray’s interest in transcendental philosophy began with his early exposure to Christian Science. (“My mother the Christian Scientist was extremely radical and my father wasn’t. My inner dialectic is the pull between my father, the rather pragmatic doubter, and my mother. My mother killed herself and my father, the materialist, survived.”)
AROUND THE TIME that the Dalai Lama prematurely assumed full political and spiritual leadership of Tibet in the face of the communist Chinese invasion, Spalding Gray was banished to boarding school being branded a “juvenile delinquent” with “very bad, anti-social behavior.”
The paths of the revered Buddhist leader and the avant-garde performer crossed in a hotel suite at the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn in Santa Barbara, California, on April 8, 1991. The Disney-like resort, sprawled over half a mile of ocean-front property is the namesake of Frontierland’s own “Davy, Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.”
With assistance from translator Thubten ]inpa, and the Dalai Lama’s private secretary, Tenzin Geyche, His Holiness and Gray began by comparing the Dalai Lama’s own marathon U.S. visit that stretched from Boston to the West coast and Spalding’s cross-country tour of his stage performance of Monster in a Box, following its successful run at New York’s Lincoln Center.
Phototgraphs by Gaetano Kazuo Maida.
Spalding Gray: We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. And I don’t have the centering habits you do. I have a tendency to want to drink the alcohol, which, as you said in an earlier interview, is the other way of coping with despair and confusion. I have a feeling that you have other methods for adjusting. Just what are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?
The Dalai Lama: I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new. Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change. Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up.
Spalding Gray: But you have to be looking at your clock all the time.
The Dalai Lama: That’s right (laughs).
Spalding Gray: Do you dream?
The Dalai Lama: Yes. A few days ago, for three nights in succession, I had some very clear dreams. One night in my dream I met my teacher from when I was a young boy. He was seventy-five years old then. And in my dream he was wearing a Western suit. It was something unexpected (long laugh). As usual, he was very kind. Another night my mother was in my dream with my elder brother, my younger brother, and myself, three of us there in Dharamsala where I live now. I was in my room and my mother was there. In my mind, my mother already prepared one momo (a Tibetan dumpling). So then I felt, “Oh, my mother will give us those momos made in Amdo style, which are especially delicious.” Amdo is the province where I was born. So you see, this is a very happy dream.
Spalding Gray: Do you ever try to make your own dreams or control them?
The Dalai Lama: No, that I can’t do. Actually you see, occasionally I experience an awareness that I am dreaming in the dream itself, like a lucid dream.
Spalding Gray: Do you try to create that?
The Dalai Lama: No, not deliberately. But sometimes I have these experiences of lucid dreaming where I have the mindfulness that it is a dream state. Sometimes it depends on the physical posture that you adopt.
Spalding Gray: In sleep?
The Dalai Lama: Actually there are some methods for experiencing lucid dreaming. You should not be in a deep sleep. Not quite awake, not deep asleep. Then there is the possibility of having a clear dream. Also it is related to what you eat. As a Buddhist monk, I usually have no solid meal after lunch, no dinner. So that is also a benefit.
Spalding Gray: When I passed your room last night, I saw six empty ice-cream sundae dishes outside your door.
Translator (after much laughter): It was members of the entourage.
Spalding Gray: Did you do a meditation this morning?
The Dalai Lama: As usual, from around 4 A.M. until 8.
Spalding Gray: Where did you do it, in this room?
The Dalai Lama: First I take a bath, then I sit on that bed (in the other room) cross-legged.
Spalding Gray: And when you go into the meditation, is it similar every morning?
The Dalai Lama: Similar, yes.
Spalding Gray: And can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like?
The Dalai Lama: (sigh, laugh) MMMM. If you make categories-the first portion is the recitation of a mantrum. There are certain mantras aimed at consecrating your speech, so that all your speech throughout the day will be positive. These recitations should be made before speaking. I observe silence until they are finished and if anyone approaches me, I always communicate in sign language. Then I try to develop a certain motivation—shaping my own mind. I try to develop the motivation, or determination, that as a Buddhist monk, until my Buddhahood, until I reach Buddhahood, my life, my lives including future lives, should be correct, and spent according to that basic goal. And that all my activities should be beneficial to others and should not harm others.
Spalding Gray: How long does that take?
The Dalai Lama: Some ten, fifteen minutes. And then I do a deeper meditation where I mentally review the entire stages of the path of Buddhist practice. And then I do some practices aimed at accumulating merits, like prostrations, making offerings to the Buddhas, reflecting on the qualities of the Buddha.
