Success!

Begging was the key. I went to the office every day, to the point where the desk guy gave me the name of the Dalai Lama's secretary, who never answered his phone, which I then told the secretary (as to why I hadn't contacted him earlier) and dropped Rinchen Khando's name a couple times. "She said to come here at noon," I said, "because he was giving audiences." At first they totally denied he was, but the usually abandoned office was full of people with passports and request forms, so I said, "Look, the fact that there's 4 monks in here is kind of giving it away." And I explained that I was Jewish, and wanted to say a blessing upon seeing a king, which counts for the Dalai Lama, because he (a) was not elected (b) has power over life and death, and (c) is a just ruler. There are only a few people in the world who meet those standards for saying the blessing upon seeing a gentile ruler.

And I sat there, my bright shirt a constant reminder that hey, that girl is still here, and she knows Rinchen Khando or something. I did finally get on the list, but for some reason Marsha is really hard for them to pronounce (I'm generally 'Marshal') so I ended up on the list as, "the Jew." The secretary for the Dalai Lama came up to me after an hour or so and said, "Sorry, are you the Jew? That's all I have on the list. What's your name?" And I knew I was in.

I was sent into his complex, to wait in the guest house with the other people on the list for the day. The first was a Tibetan girl in a wheelchair and with a lot of tubes where there shouldn't be tubes, and her parents. The second was a man in traditional Tibetan dress who couldn't stand up straight and had a monk holding him up by his belt. There was a Swedish family, and some American documentarians who were allowed in earlier to set up their video equipment. ANother half an hour and we were told to walk up the hill to his actual house, and we stood in the hallway as he came out of his private altar room, which I recognized from photos in Time magazine.

Though he seems like a jolly guy, the Tibetans seem to prefer him serious, as he was very business-like. He did speak to the girl and her family for a few minutes, by far the longest audience, and then the man who couldn't stand straight. Then it was my turn, and his attendent introduced me in Tibetan. I didn't know what I would be allowed to bring in, so I had my khata (white scarf that you hand to him and he puts it over your shoulders) and a piece of paper with the prayer transliterated. I stood maybe a foot away at most, and he leaned in closer as I read in Hebrew, then translated in English, and he looked very closely at the card with a sort of smiling bemusement. (The card is what's in my hand in the picture) Then I said the shechiyanu over saying a new prayer, and I thanked him as we posed for the photograph, and somewhere in there he said, "Thank you." I think it was immediately after the prayer but I can't entirely remember. That was all he said to me: "Thank you."

I was so nervous and it was so rushed that I forgot to give him his gift, a Guy Fawkes mask, and left it instead with his office when I returned to pick up the photograph files. They have their own photographer and if you bring a blank CD they'll burn it for you, which is how I got the picture. On the back of the mask I wrote, "To His Holiness, from Anonymous. Knowledge is Power."

I saw the 17th Karmapa as well, by the way, but only when he walked briefly out onto his terrace at the Gyuto Monastery where he is in exile. The Indian government doesn't let him travel much. His general secretary was very nice, and gave me his card, and a book of the Karmapa's teachings, and said maybe we would meet when the Karmapa came to the US again. I gave him the second Guy Fawkes mask to deliver to the Karmapa. Even though I briefly saw the Karmapa, who is 23 and looked sort of annoyed more than anything at the little crowd gathered on the grass outside his door, I don't say a blessing over him, because he has no earthly power. He was never ruler of Tibet as the Dalai Lama was.

The bracha, by the way, is: 'Blessed are You, L-rd our G-d, King of the Universe, who has given of his glory to human beings.'