Book description
Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a
friend of his father's) for the last three decades-a continuing
exploration of his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this
insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes of the Dalai
Lama's position: though he has brought the ideas of Tibet to world
attention, Tibet itself is being remade as a Chinese province; though
he was born in one of the most remote, least developed places on
earth, he has become a champion of globalism and technology. He is a
religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by
religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet
can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who stresses
his everyday humanity.
Moving from Dharamsala, India-the seat of the Tibetan
government-in-exile-to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West where the
Dalai Lama's pragmatism, rigour, and scholarship are sometimes lost on
an audience yearning for mystical visions,
The Open Road
illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas, and the daily
challenges of a global icon. â  A thoughtful and beautifully
written portrait ...[Pico Iyer does an] exemplary job of explaining the
complex spiritual and political history that underpins the extraordinary
institution that is the Dalai Lama, and illuminating the extraordinary
man who presently occupies it.'
Pico Iyer is the author
of six works of nonfiction and two novels. He has covered the Tibetan
question for Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York
Review of Books, and many other publications for more than
twenty years. He has been traveling in and around Tibetan communities
and the Himalayas for more than thirty years.
