His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the spiritual leader of Tibet, the winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, and a source of inspiration to Buddhists and non-Buddhists worldwide. At present his remarkable life story is available in a surprising format: a graphic novel.

Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet , is the product of a collaboration among 5 artists and three writers, i of whom is Robert A. F. Thurman, Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Organized religion at Columbia Academy and president of the Tibet House U.S. , a nonprofit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization that he cofounded in 1987.

Thurman, a longtime friend of the Dalai Lama'south, sat downwardly with Tricycle contributing editor Dan Zigmond at Tibet Firm in July to discuss Human of Peace . They spoke together in the cultural center'southward library while staff and volunteers prepared to celebrate the Dalai Lama's birthday afterward that evening.

How did this volume come nigh?
 William Meyers, who initiated the projection, had a long and checkered life. Since I knew him, he was working equally a book designer and a typesetter at Columbia Press. His outset wife was given three months to live or something like that. Somehow she met the Dalai Lama—I guess he picked her out of a crowd to have a chat with him, and she told him her story. He invited her to come to Dharamsala to consult his physician, maybe to extend her life a niggling fleck. He didn't promise any big affair. But she went there, and actually, she lived 3 more years.

During those iii years, under the treatment of that [Tibetan] physician and out of gratitude to His Holiness, she started collecting thoughts and reading biographies and memoirs of members of His Holiness's family to try to make a comic volume for children. It was pretty much like Tin-Tin in Tibet .

Then she died, and William remarried afterwards some years. At some point, maybe 15 years ago, we met. He was effectually Tibet House and came to my classes and things, and he brought up to me that this was a project he felt his commencement married woman had commissioned him to finish on her deathbed.

I immediately thought it was a smashing project and started consulting for him. Then I scraped together a little money. William and I moved it forward very slowly, and we got a good friend, a Tibetan thangka artist to showtime making some pages. But it was way as well slow, working with volunteers. So finally someone gave united states of america a nice grant a couple of years agone, and we were able to hire the Legend Business firm Studio of the graphic creative person Steve Buccellato. And he got a team of four other artists, and they went to town.

Nosotros managed to save enough out of that grant to exist able to pay for the showtime press—information technology was an expensive volume to produce because of the color and then on. Nosotros were supposed to cease for His Holiness's 80th birthday, simply nosotros were a year late.

illustration from man of peace
From Man of Peace

What exercise you think is unique about this graphic novel? His story has been told many times earlier.
The escape from Tibet had been told, although there are a lot of details in there that people don't know, also. And His Holiness himself has told the story, just he would never show himself as a hero. He tells it as he sees it from his ain point of view: "Oh well, I talked to so-and-and then, who was similar that. I did this, and so that happened." But he never paints himself as doing something heroic, or brave, or speaking truth to ability, or whatever it is. He would not portray himself like that, and we do. Nosotros uniquely show how he is this era's "homo of peace."

He might also exist reticent about his vision almost Tibet. At Harvard, I did a Goggle box interview with him and asked him what Tibet'southward function in the modernistic globe would be, how he saw its economic system, for instance. He kept maxim, "I don't know, I don't desire to talk nigh it," I estimate because he didn't desire people to remember that he was sitting scheming what to practise with the country or something like that. Those were the early days, 1981, long before the Nobel Peace Prize. Information technology was merely his third trip to the US.

And then he said, "Switzerland of Asia. We have all this peachy medicine." His Holiness loves the medicine tradition, and he takes Tibetan medicine himself regularly equally a preventative measure. So he said, "We accept all these great mineral springs, we have beautiful landscape, clean air, there's hiking, and and then on. Then at the end nosotros show his vision of  the medicine land, which he himself wouldn't accept written about. I've never seen him make another public statement about that.

What is the most essential piece of his thinking that yous wanted to get across?
 This thought that this man has been going around the globe trying to stop a genocide, nonviolently. It'south basically like America in the 1890s. There's nothing specifically Chinese near it—it's a typical imperialist, colonialist thing. They're not the arch evil of all fourth dimension. Americans, Russians, French, Brits—everybody'south had their nasty imperialist genocides. But it is a genocide, and people don't actually realize that. To tell His Holiness' story truthfully, one must evidence how the suffering of his people is in his mind all the time. And yet he's still peaceful. He has both a principle and practical reason for that. And then, we want readers to really get a sense of that.

I experience that his plan for peace on earth through nonviolence is the strategy that nosotros all demand. Buddha taught it, and Jesus too, and Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi , and Martin Luther King all put it into effective practice. His Holiness is the one who now carries it on full force. People say, "Oh, that's very impractical, such nonviolence. Expect at how Tibet is. It's never worked. It's hopeless." And I've had a lot of people tell me, "Oh, the Dalai Lama shouldn't say things about politics. He should stay out of those situations. His ideas are simplistic and Pollyanna-ish." Just I don't remember then. I always say, "Well, how are things in the Middle East? Are you happy backside your wall in that location in State of israel? Are the Afghans doing great or what? Is all the violence succeeding? Is it all settled?" I don't think then.

So you appear in the book a couple times.
We've been friends for 53 years. I could announced a lot more than!

The first fourth dimension you're a monk.
 Wanting to be a monk. He made me a monk in 1965, since I wanted to exist one so intensely. Only it was not my karma. I had been living as a monk since 1962, but I wasn't formally ordained till 1965. My first root instructor, who brought me to report with His Holiness, didn't want me to exist a monk. He told the Dalai Lama, "Don't brand him a monk. He'southward very sincere—he wants to exist a monk. Only he's non going to stay a monk." He was older, very wise, and more experienced with the West at that time. And then by mid-1966 I realized he was right, and I resigned.

Afterwards, I was and so poor when I met and fell in love with Nena , just nosotros married anyway and started a family. I began as a graduate student at Harvard in 1967.

During that intervening fourth dimension I was really frightened and worried [about seeing His Holiness] because I was the first Western monk he made. They put this meeting in the book in a semi-humorous manner, [where the Dalai Lama says] "Uh-oh, here comes my monk! Where'due south his robe?" And that was just William Meyers' way of compressing a long story. I didn't want to put that much about myself.

What practise yous remember almost your future at this point?
 I'thousand very optimistic about it. I volition be formally retired from Columbia every bit of 2019. That I'grand happy about considering I can finally travel during fundamental times of the year in Bharat in the northeast, since the nicest time of yr is in fall, weather-wise. And I'll exist able to go to some teachings and things that I've missed. His Holiness is in his sunset years, although he has promised to live by 100. And pledged me to do so also. I don't know if I can, simply I call up he tin can.

Tibet House is even so not officially endowed, which was our chore, and we're supposed to brand sure we finish work on information technology, and so I'm hopeful nosotros'll exist able to exercise that.

And I'chiliad hopeful that within Chinese President Xi Jinping's 2d term, if—knock on wood—all goes well in the next 12 months, nosotros'll have a new Politburo, which oversees the Communist Party, with all of his ain people and none of the hardliners who retrieve if y'all give Tibetans an inch, they'll demand independence and break away and all this nonsense. There's no possibility of them doing that, and they wouldn't even really want to do that if they were treated meliorate.

There definitely is a need for true autonomy where they can accept their Buddhism, though: they tin can invite their friends back and forth to Tibet and gear up teaching institutes around their monasteries or whatever it is. Definitely they want that. And perhaps, hopefully, in the second five-year term, after 2018, when these people are fully installed, then Xi Jinping can starting time trying to [make that happen].

Do you think there'll be a 15th Dalai Lama?
 Oh, sure. No question.

No question?
 I mean, Dalai Lama told me not to talk too much near it the one time we debated it. I argued strongly that His Holiness shouldn't completely resign. He should be a constitutional lama like a king of Norway or Sweden. But he said, "no, I don't want to do that. I don't want to be a prisoner like Lady Di!" She was already dead at that time, but he remembered it. It made an impression on him.

I lost that debate; he refused to even consider it. He said, "no, I really want to get out." So then when I gave upwards, I said, "Well, fine, but don't worry. Your successor will be drafted past the Tibetans anyhow! Just because one elderberry Dalai Lama feels tired of being the head of the land doesn't mean that they're going to let you lot off-duty!" He laughed and told me to drop information technology.

Why did yous want him to remain caput of state?
 My reasoning is because of democracies that you run across become mammonocracies: rule by coin, worship of money. And and then the officials and the parliamentarians are more or less for auction. Somebody should be not for sale in a country. That person should fix an example. And then [people running for office] will have to be more competent to win. That was my statement.

But this thought that he may end the whole lineage with himself. Do yous think that's possible?
 No, no. There'south no question. He has a big prayer: "As long as at that place are living beings suffering, I will remain, volition come back again and again . . ." At that place's no question he comes back. But he has chosen non to hold political office in the future. That's what is meant by "last Dalai Lama." Information technology re-defines his "Dalai Lama" reincarnation as purely spiritual, with no further political responsibleness. That won't finish him from being "Dalai"—an sea of wisdom and pity—and a "Lama," a true teacher who cannot be avoided!

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