Did you see the Dalai Lama?

We missed out on it, but we heard yesterday that His Holiness The Dalai Lama walked from his house to the temple and that lots and lots of people gathered to see him. Most of the time The Dalai Lama is very busy traveling and teaching in different parts of the world or working out business or in meditation so it’s actually not that often that people can see him even in his current hometown. Thus, any chance people do get, they are very eager to see him, even if it’s just for a moment or two. It just goes to show how highly the Tibetan people hold their spiritual leader and how important he is to their lives.

This is all leading up to a story by the way. Julia and I are trying to learn some of the Tibetan language so we have been practicing. Last night during dinner I asked our host mother if she saw the Dalai Lama that day, “Te-ring kay-rang His Holiness Tong-gi-yin?” I was very proud of myself for figuring out the whole sentence by myself and for remembering the verb “Tong” for “to see.” Our host parents on the other hand did not congratulate me, but instead reacted somewhat in shock, telling me not to use “Tong” but a different word (which i have now forgotten), which is the honorific form of “to see.” In Tibetan there is both a regular version and an honorific version of every verb and noun. However, the little Tibetan phrasebook we have does not include these honorific versions of these words, so I only knew “Tong”. I was really happy just to have remembered that, but for our host parents it seemed offensive to speak of His Holiness in that way. Again, it just shows how much they truly respect and love The Dalai Lama, and it taught me a valuable cultural and linguistic lesson. Needless to say, I think I’ll ask for the honorific version of a word next time I want to say something about The Dalai Lama or any important leader for that matter.