Barbara and the Dalai Lama
I watched with wonder on the little screen when Barbara Walters asked the Dalai Lama, the spititual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, if she could kiss him on the cheek. You see, her television special aired on the topic of heaven, and she’d interviewed a number of spiritual persons, inquiring into their thoughts on their belief in that ethereal place. This one obviously cherished segment of hers, where she ambled along with the Dalai Lama, occurred toward the end of their happy visit. It struck me as a shining example of the state of spiritual dilemma in which persons who strive to succeed in our modern networks become entangled.
A brief clip, narrated over with some monologue by the interviewer had just shown her in ritual, receiving with gratitude a ceremonial scarf of white linen by that great religious leader, the Dalai Lama. She had been tutored, clearly, on the manner of engaging this high monk, for she responded to the ritual offering in the same respectful way as other visitors had been shown to have performed in previous scenes, and the formality which the mannerisms suggested could not be taken as simply familiar, universal, archaic reactions from great unconscious compulsion from worshipfulness toward the God within the master, though they might have been from their simplicity. A bow with prayerful hands, then a handshake - which did seem sincere, if though previously confirmed as allowable given the spirit; such instruction on manners will always outline the variety of permissible ritual expression from which to choose, guided by one’s particular enthusiasm unforseeable for certain in advance of the presentation of a sacred gift. The narrating voice continued over the short scene, and then resolved to the two celebrities, now just a man and a woman walking along the edge of an open courtyard. They’d stopped, with the film crew in advance of them.
“Can I kiss you on the cheek?” asked the journalist.
After his fashion, the man whose soul is Compassion personified graciously smiled and leaned his cheek to her. She pecked it as if it were the pope’s ring, and he recoiled in good laughter, perhaps at the timidity which she expressed; she returned the laugh, though, I think, more unsure, but at ease from the childlike joy it caused in him. In an instant, the view on my screen showed them, moments later, practicing the delicate manner of kiss which, he told her, belonged to the natives of New Zealand. The Dalai Lama and Barbara Walters shared an Eskimo kiss by rubbing noses. They laughed together some more.
In my imagination, Barbara Walters asked me now, whom she took to be the Dalai Lama, “Can I kiss you on the cheek?”
Having myself some shred of compassion, here is how I responded in that spirit, noting to myself that her obvious education in manners made the severe distinction between asking, “Can I,” rather than, “May I,” inferring a question bound in propriety more than in the conferring of a gift of which I am sorely in need, namely the gift of compassion from another, respecting the light though terrifying burden of being Compassion incarnate to so many persons living in the world. She wanted to know whether she could kiss a man whose life was dedicated to his own destiny as personifying an abstraction of Love, in other words, for her, God. Keep in mind, the program had shown moments earlier his statement to her which affirmed the fact that the Dalai Lama is a man.
“Can I kiss you on the cheek?” she asked me.
Compassion compelled my respense to her, saying, “If you cannot kiss me on the cheek, what has that to do with my permission. I live for the spirit of Compassion, not Permission. Whether you can do it is not for me to say. If I offer my cheek, then of course you may.” I offer her my cheek. She hesitates, unsure, but places her kiss on my cheek.
“But for whose benefit,” I went on, “do you grace me with a kiss? Is it so that you can say that you kissed the Dalai Lama? I am sorry, but you have done no such thing, for you have kissed but a man, and a monkish man at that. Have you even just caused me trouble, you should ask yourself, for you must know how it is that a monk must live apart from women. I perceive clearly that you summon no great strength to kiss me, yet I sense that you respect the God which lives in me. Were you to bless the Dalai Lama with a kiss, you must act from great courage to grace a soul of Compassion with compassion of your own. I yearn every moment that another might feel compassion for me, but such a miracle is rare indeed. And is the courage in you to make that gift?
“You wish to place a kiss on Compassion itself, out of compassion, and that for you is outside yourself. You project your compassion upon the one person in whom you are told it resides. You would do better to exalt and kiss that compassion which is in you, which is the God of our soul. You ask, Can I kiss the seat of Compassion in the world? That Compassion is in you, not in the world, and can you kiss it there? For if you could, then you would know how desperately I long for the kiss which derives from that source in you, and not from my permission. You would kiss me instead against my protestations. You would summon great courage, in the faith that God through man would clear your path. You would know with a certainty greater than that which you seek after for the existence of heaven, that you must kiss me, despite my resistance. The compassion within your own breast would compel you, had you the courage to kiss it there, to forsake all of your career and renown, to bless me with what I need most, which is proof that you have conquered yourself, that in an instant you perceive I’m longing for you to unite with the God within you, and sneak that beautiful kiss upon me, for my sake, and not for the sake of your fame upon the relation at some cocktail party of your act of having kissed the Dalai Lama. You would seize me because God calls you to do so out of overriding compassion for me, and grant me God’s blessing through your own free choice to dissolve your ego if but for a moment, give of yourself so that you may hear God in your ear, and to hear the absolute injunction to heal me with your kiss, as proof to me that you hear God’s voice, and follow his imperative command, though you sacrifice your very life. Then shall you become exalted, and gain that which you tell yourself you seek, namely the place of heaven.
“God tells me that you wish for only a timid peck of a kiss on the cheek of a holy man. He tells me to offer you in addition that which he knows is very much like what you want. He tells me that you like to ask permission so I ask you first, “May I show you how people exchange a kiss in New Zealand?”
She assents, and I rub a quick Eskimo kiss on the woman’s timid nose. It makes us laugh. I go on, but not for much longer, “There are students whom I teach, and they know me not for my standing in a strange religion. They are kids from the city in America. We study together, and on occasion, with just some of them, we exchange, without permission, without prearrangement, without explanation, we exchange a spontaneous Eskimo kiss. Yet, we do not laugh in embarrassment, for it is not done for show, but for mutual love which we feel for each other. It is a mode of kiss which we both remotely know of, from television or elsewhere, but we both envision the Eskimo kiss, inexplicably and as foreign to both our cultures, but it appears to us both as an appropriate expression of our mutual love. So do we kiss, and know that we love, but we do not laugh, as true lovers do not laugh on the experience of love. We are in awe of God and the power which Compassion holds over our actions, if only we forget ourselves for a moment, and find a unity in the one God who works at once within us both. I am a spiritual leader in the world, a God-head for millions; she is a teenage mother of three already, brutalized by incest, violence, anger, and fears of death. But, for the moment, one cherished moment in our lives, we are not ourselves, neither are we each other, but we are one in Compassion, and we are one in God. We have the courage to do this, and the strength, and the will to forsake ourselves and gladly. This is the nature of Atonement, if you were wondering. This is having earned the experience of heaven.”
My imagination can no longer anticipate the reactions of my interviewer from this point on, for one cannot with accuracy tell the behavioral response of the ego which insists on projecting God outward upon the world for object to worship; nor the projection of the soul upon the world for to provide an object to love; nor the projection of sin upon the world to provide an object to hate. As we look upon the world from the primacy of the world-making, God-choosing, sin-ignoring self as ego, we deny the truth that the real seat of God, soul, and sin in the world persist in the ocean of unconscious life which is nearly as unknowable as God, and which we must not fear to listen to as the voice of God which informs us concerning what is right to do. Can you kiss the Dalai Lama? If not in your dreams, then never in the world. Amen.