I'd spent thirty years visiting the Dalai Lama, and twenty years as a journalist going to difficult places, war zones and revolutions from North Korea to Haiti and Beirut to Sri Lanka, and the question came up: What does this man have to offer to this world which seems so torn up and so attached to conflict?
Pico IyerMore than any religious figure that I can think of, Dalai Lama goes out of his way to attend interfaith conferences; religious harmony is one of his urgent priorities in life.
Pico IyerWe can better see what we don't have. The other man's grass is always greener and now we can actually go and visit his grass much more and feel the absence of green in our own lives.
Pico IyerFor if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you canโt quite speak the language, and you donโt know where youโre going, and youโre pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where youโre left puzzling over who you are and whom youโve fallen in love with.
Pico IyerDalai Lama has made new opportunities for women that they never had in Tibet, introduced science into the monks' curriculum and had Tibetan students in exile take their classes in English after the age of ten so that they will know more about the outside world. But one of the great things he's done is to bring all the Tibetan groups together in exile, as perhaps they couldn't have been when they weren't in exile and they weren't under such pressure.
Pico Iyer