"The Open Road" is an engaging profile of the Dalai Lama

"The Open Road: The

Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama"

by Pico Iyer

Knopf, 288 pp., $24

Tenzin Gyatso, the current Dalai Lama, directly descends from an ancient lineage of Tibetan Buddhist leaders. He is arguably the world's most famous monk and was, in effect, his country's absolute ruler — until the Chinese takeover of Tibet forced him into exile.

Since 1959, the Dalai Lama has been based in Dharamsala, India, close to the border with his country. Revered by his countrymen in Tibet and in exile, he is the primary entity in the struggle for peace and autonomy in that country — a place very much in the news today.

Unlike his predecessors, the Dalai Lama has been a vigorous and influential figure in bringing Tibet — and Tibetan Buddhism — to foreign cultures. (A charismatic figure, too — his laugh is legendary.) Awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama is regularly mentioned alongside such figures as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. Even now, in his 70s, he continues to travel the world tirelessly. His recent appearances in Seattle were just one stop along this route.

Meanwhile, there's Pico Iyer — born in England of Indian parents, raised and educated in England and California, long a resident of Japan and an incurable traveler. In his distinguished career as a journalist and essayist, Iyer has specialized in exploring the increasingly fluid borderlines between East and West (his first book was called "Video Night in Kathmandu"). He has a particular fascination with globalism and mysticism. And while not a Buddhist himself, he seems familiar with, and certainly is sympathetic to, its chief doctrines. What better person to profile the Dalai Lama?

Iyer's latest book, "The Open Road," begins with a bit of personal history: a meeting in 1959 in Dharamsala between the Dalai Lama and another young man with similar interests: Iyer's father, a professor of philosophy. It then becomes not a conventional biography but an extended profile of the Dalai Lama as man, monk, leader and icon.

The writer follows the Dalai Lama on some of his globe-trotting; sits and talks with him in Dharamsala; interviews family members and colleagues; and cogently explains the complexities, political and spiritual, that his subject deals with daily.

Iyer is his usual brilliant self at evoking a sense of place, such as the community of Tibetan exiles that has grown up in Dharamsala. But some of the most moving moments in "The Open Road" come from its subject, speaking in his simple, measured, sometimes imperfect English.

For example: "[W]e have enough religions. Enough religions, but not enough real human beings ... Don't let us talk too much of religion. Let us talk of what is human." Or his distillation of Buddhism into six words: "Change is part of the world."

The book is not perfect. Despite Iyer's lucid prose, the minutiae of the various branches of Buddhism will go over some readers' heads (it certainly did mine). And "The Open Road" is perhaps too uncritically admiring of its subject, although Iyer does quote at some length an exiled Tibetan who disagrees with his spiritual leader's political stance toward China.

Quibbles aside, "The Open Road" is thoroughly absorbing: a long and steady look, by an unusually perceptive writer, at one of the world's most remarkable figures. Seattleites inspired (or simply made curious) by the Dalai Lama's recent visit here will find it especially noteworthy.