By Ti-Anna Wang, daughter of Dr. Wang Bingzhang

 Last week, after communicating with the Dalai Lama’s staff in New York, Times and I were invited to have a private audience with His Holiness. Because of his busy schedule during his stay in Boston and New York, we were asked to travel to Santa Barbara, CA to meet him. So we both flew, from DC and Durham, and met up in LA where we rented a car and drove along the Pacific Coast to Santa Barbara to the only hostel in the quaint town.

The night before our meeting, we fretted about how to best make use of our time with the Dalai Lama. We walked along the wharf under dim lamplights. The gentle sound of the waves was punctuated by the distant barks of sea lions. In this calm, we pondered the nature of our meeting. The impetus of our audience with the Dalai Lama was our father’s imprisonment, but we were not meeting a political figure who had influence with the Chinese government. We decided the best questions would focus on the spiritual dimension of our dilemma. Supposedly, the Dalai Lama had some measure of insight into spirituality.

The next day, we arrived at the hotel before our appointment time. It was a Four Seasons, overlooking the Pacific. The landscape and location, as it had the previous night, contributed to calming our nerves and instilling some serenity.

There were many people milling about the lobby, many with katas, the traditional white scarves presented as gifts in Tibetan culture. The scarves are supposed to symbolize the pure intentions of the gifting person. We were met by Mr. Kunga Tashi, the Dalai Lama’s Chinese Liaison Officer, a serious, yet soft-spoken and sympathetic man. Perhaps sensing our nervousness, or perhaps because everybody is always nervous when first meeting His Holiness, Mr. Tashi told us to relate to the Dalai Lama as an equal. He asked us about our father’s health and his current condition while leading us through the hotel garden to a hotel room. There were so many people the anteroom they had prepared was full.

We sat and waited in this stranger’s hotel room, a typical scene with luggage on the floor and daily sundries adorning the night-tables, bathroom, etc. There were books on Buddhist theology, which with the VIP airport luggage sign dangling from one suitcase. Besides that, the setting was relatively mundane.

We were left alone to wait, and to calm our nerves, we decided to just sit in silence and meditate, reflect, or pray, for a good and fulfilling meeting. Both of us also needed to go to the bathroom, but we didn’t want to be caught with our pants literally down when the time to meet the Dalai Lama came. Plus, there was a pair of underwear hanging on the towel rack. Suddenly, we were joined by two Americans with shaved heads who were also meeting His Holiness. We learned that they lived in a Buddhist retreat in Northern California, and had met the Dalai Lama several times before. Soon, a Tibetan man came in to talk to the two Americans. He was the Dalai Lama’s official English translator/interpreter. We eventually discovered he lived in Montreal and was an adjunct professor of Buddhist Theology at McGill! We chatted about our fondness of Montreal, skiing, choosing private schools for his daughters, before Mr. Tashi abruptly came in and told us to follow him.

We were hurriedly led up a staircase and down a hallway with a few dozen people crowding in front of a certain door. There was a palpable enthusiasm in the air. Before we even had a chance to look around, the door opened, and we were introduced to the Dalai Lama. Within seconds of shaking our hands, and before we had said more than our names, he hugged both of us warmly and held us in his embrace for several seconds. We sat down on couches in an intimately arranged semi-circle, as if we were old friends catching up over an afternoon coffee. He crossed his legs, leaving his plastic flip-flops on the floor. We told him that my father and mother had met him around 20 years ago, and he seemed to remember. We gave him a calligraphy scroll our father had painted, with a poem by Li Bai about looking back towards home when one was on a long journey.

We had decided to make one question about political advocacy. Noting that he had had tremendous success in achieving international support for Tibetan autonomy, we asked him how to appeal to a population who had no personal stake in events that happened thousands of miles away. The Dalai Lama commented on the unfortunate lack of unity among activists in the Chinese democracy, movement, a condition that led to infighting and inefficacy. He emphasized the common interests of Tibetan activists, other minority-group movements in China, and the Chinese democracy movement.

Sensing that he had misinterpreted our position, we emphasized that we were merely the children of a man who was wrongfully imprisoned, and we were not democracy activists per se. We explained that our goal was simply to win our father’s freedom. We wanted to emphasize the personal nature of our visit, and our next question tried to address that.

We then asked how best to comfort to our father. Noting his deteriorating mental health, depression and anxiety, we wanted to know how we should emotionally and spiritually support him.

His Holiness first noted that our father’s suffering is corporeal. His spirit and the strength of his character is not only free but still respected by people all over the world, including the Dalai Lama himself. He said our father should be nourished by and take comfort in that knowledge. He also suggested that religious convictions were powerful tools to deal with physical suffering, especially since they give meaning to suffering. He said, for example, that the Buddhist idea of karma helped people avoid feelings of despair even when they suffered greatly because it taught that there was nothing random or arbitrary about the suffering. Not only is suffering cosmic justice, but it is also redemption.

On a more practical level, His Holiness suggested that dad performs physical exercises. (The Dalai Lama himself, as we found out later, rides exercise bikes every morning after meditating.) He also recommended meditation as a remedy for anxiety and depression. Similarly, he encouraged that dad practices focused breathing techniques and then proceeded to demonstrate this for us. He noted that while it may still be years before my father’s freedom, if he takes care of himself, he will be able to persevere and that practicing the exercises would help him in finding peace of mind. He also jokingly added that even if we had to wait 10 years before his release, he would still be younger than His Holiness.

We then asked how to reconcile the Chinese government’s treatment of our father with our desire to possibly live and work in China in the future.

To this his immediately pointed out the difference between serving the party and serving the people. Serving the party, he joked, by returning to China and becoming a member of the CPP, would probably be serious betrayal, and would warrant a good scolding by our father. However, working for the good of the people was perfectly consistent with furthering the ideals of democracy and justice. He went on to explain how the most powerful and necessary type of change must come from within, referencing the events in (I don’t remember) . Outside forces, such as international pressure, has limited effect. Lasting change must come from the people. (Please add a bit, Times)

He ended our conversation by telling us, encouragingly, that there is only so much that we can do in our efforts to free out father and that there is no point in worrying because worry will not change his situation. We too, have to accept reality. He then gave us another hug/blessing and proceeded to giving katas in return. As he placed the blessed scarf around Times’ neck, he pulled on his sideburns and asked “What is this?!? What is this?!?”, laughing wholeheartedly at his facial hair, commenting on how it made him look like a Muslim. He also gave us each another kata to pass on to our father and mother. Hand in hand with the beaming Dalai Lama we posed for a picture. His parting words to us were that we are young and full of potential, so we should remain hopeful. With that, he thanked us for our visit and sent us on our way.

Mr. Tashi then led us back to room where we waited previously. He reminded us of the Buddhist/Tibetan saying that the Dalai Lama was trying to teach us: When there is something we can do, we should do it. If there is nothing we can do, we should accept it and not worry. He offered us his services and told not to be shy about contacting him if we needed anything.

And that brought us the end of our adventure. As other have noted before, the Dalai Lama is an incredibly intuitive man whose mere presence provides great comfort and assurance to all those who seek his guidance. The Dalai Lama’s genuine embodiment of his teachings on human values such as compassion, forgiveness and tolerance gives great moral authority to his deceptively simple messages. This meeting will no doubt be one of the most memorably experiences of our lives.