dream: i spend the night with the dalai lama

dreamed on may 25.

i am spending the night with the dalai lama. two other women are there, one older, one younger. we are in a big bedroom in a private home. there's a large bed in the room, neatly made with a white bedspread, but he sleeps on the floor, and so do we.

i like looking at him. he's dressed in his tibetan monk robes of burnt orange and saffron. he sits cross-legged on the floor. he is talking, sometimes in tibetan, sometimes in heavily accented english. i can't understand a lot of what he's saying. his voice and face are very expressive. it's more of a discourse than a conversation. he doesn't ask questions. he's expressing his concerns about tibet and its future.

i am tempted to lie in the bed, but i don't, because it would be very bad manners, for some reason. the older woman gets up and walks around while he talks. the younger one and i sit on the carpeted floor and listen.

message: well, i sure wish i had some words of wisdom to report from this dream! i would have liked to hear some stories from tibetan buddhism rather than politics from him, and yet i realize the dalai lama is a spiritual leader whose practice is visible to all. he's a man of peace at a time when the country he's been exiled from for most of his life has been co-opted and populated by a different culture that wants to repress his culture and religion. difficult position.