There are crowds, on this April morning, in the gardens of the Dalai Lama. More than three hundred people, all of whom came very early to undergo the Covid test and the body search which will allow them to access the holy of holies. It’s a weekday, though. An ordinary Friday in Dharamsala, an Indian city where the Tibetan spiritual leader has been established since 1960, but absolutely unique for those who have passed through these doors after a long journey. Because they come from afar, these rare Westerners, these Indians of different faiths and especially these Tibetans, the most numerous, who will soon be received in public audience by Tenzin Gyatso.
Women wear a long skirt, adorned with a striped apron when they are married. men, a chuba, traditional double-breasted coat, or a checkered tunic and white cuffs, for those from Bhutan. Sitting two by two on a long, narrow felt carpet – so long that its end is lost at the bend in a sloping path – they are barely moving when an Indian police guard, looking helpless, passes with a old Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder. They await, in silence, the arrival of the “Precious Protector”.
This silence has something bewitching about it. Nothing disturbs him, apart from the muffled sound of horns, beyond the enclosure. Even the irruption of the old man, whose osteoarthritis of the knees obliges him to circulate in a sort of glazed “dalaimobile”, does not break him. On the contrary, it becomes more enveloping, almost compact. While some kneel in his direction, their foreheads resting on the ground, others lie flat on their stomachs on the tarred ground.
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Then, the Tibetans advance towards the armchair where sat His Holiness, bare arms emerging from a carmine and saffron monk’s robe. They approach in small groups and huddle around him, like children at their father’s feet. We hear, here and there, the cascading laughter of one who addresses his followers without the slightest solemnity. He collects himself, his hands joined, in front of the photo of a patient or asks very simple questions, often amused. “What did you do to your nose?” », he asks a little boy whose face has scratches. The children leave with chocolate bars, the adults with a portrait of the Buddha and a red cord, blessed by His Holiness.
The intimacy of these scenes, so similar to family reunions, gives an idea of the attachment of the Tibetans for the Dalai Lama. In a West that has become secular, this feeling made of respect, veneration, recognition, but also of an extreme tenderness, is not easy to understand. Within the Tibetan world, on the other hand, it constitutes the cement of the community, not to say its matrix. The spiritual leader, meanwhile, is very attached to these meetings, according to his entourage. He also multiplied them when he stopped leaving India, at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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