I'm sure I'll never get to meet the Dalai Lama, but I continue to be fascinated by stories of people who have. Rick Ray made a movie about the experience ("10 Questions With The Dalai Lama") which looks like it could be neat. Through a bizarre set of serendipitous occurrences he was granted an audience with His Holiness. He was given 90 days and told to prepare 10 questions, and that he would have at most 1 hour with him. The Dalai Lama, apparently, has a habit of cutting interviews short if he feels that the questions are "insincere." (Comments like that bother me, because they make him sound like he's not a nice guy.) Luckily for Rick the interview goes quite well, over an hour as a matter of fact. His description of how the room changes with the Dalai Lama enters it is quite enjoyable. You can see, from his explanation, that someone would indeed have to be pretty insincere to deserve a snubbing from the man.
Ray's movie is a tiny little independent thing so I don't expect it to come from the local cinema anytime soon. I'll have to keep an eye out for it on DVD. Update: Thanks very much the anonymous commenter who provided the URL of the movie, which contains a trailer. Looks interesting, although I fear that the questions are the same questions that are always asked ("Does tolerance work? Will there be peace in the Middle East?") As I read more news stories coming out of Australia that are pro-China, I am wondering about some of the historical comments. Was there really torture and slavery used in Tibet until China showed up? Does the Dalai Lama get a paycheck from our CIA to fund attacks on China? On the one hand I would like to laugh those things off, but it would be nice to get answers to the questions from both sides.