The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

By Pico Iyer

Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, $24.00

More than 11 centuries ago, Padmasambhava, known by Tibetans as Guru Rinpoche, made a prediction: "When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the face of the earth, and the Dharma will fetch a good price in the land of the red man." Tibet, a country five times the size of Britain with a population of six million, has seen the harsh realization of this prophecy. In 1959, the Chinese invaded the country, where they tortured and killed monks and nuns; set up "the largest gulag the world has known, able to accommodate 10 million prisoners"; destroyed over 6,000 monasteries; incinerated scriptures that were centuries' old; and forced parents to applaud as their children were shot to death. Fleeing almost certain torture, forced sterilization, and rape, many Tibetans crossed the Himalayas into India, as did the Dalai Lama. There are now more than 300,000 foreign troops stationed in Tibet, and the landscape hosts almost 100 nuclear missiles.

Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, calls himself "a simple Buddhist monk," but as the temporal and spiritual leader-in-exile of the Tibetans, he shoulders the responsibility for dealing with world powers on matters pertaining to the life and death of his people and their culture. He is the administrator of 50 exile communities around the world, and, as head of one of the major schools of Buddhism, must deliver lectures, write books, and direct a global hierarchy. Author Pico Iyer asserts that in spite of the Dalai Lama's enormous responsibilities and the media attention his presence arouses, he lives simply, as befits a lifelong student of the Buddha, who taught that nearly everything is "illusory and passing."

Iyer is known for his coverage of Tibetan issues for American and international publications, including Time magazine, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and the New York Review of Books, and has traveled to and studied Tibetan communities for over 30 years. Iyer has also written five nonfiction works on modern globalism, two novels, and literary essays. In The Open Road, Iyer has given a clear-eyed, honest, and intimate account of the life and thoughts of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, whom he knows as a friend. His account is a compelling true-life adventure story that thoughtfully and powerfully proclaims both the fragility and the strength of the human spirit.