Sunday, February 22, 2004

Emanance, Emenence

The main thing about the Shrine Auditorium is that it’s big.  Sure, it’s also a hallucinogeic apparation of moorish excess, a festival for the eyes, gold and crimson and azure sabres and crescents and stars everywhere you turn - but the main thing is, it’s huge.  It sits by itself in a typically sunbaked so-cal parking lagoon, rising like Mt. St. Michele from its brackish bed, an urban Ayer’s Rock, a surreal extrusion on a lifeless LA landscape… this, then, is the Shrine in situ. 

I last went there to see his Excellency the Dalai Lama give a talk in the late ‘80s.  The phrase “excellency” is sometimes bandied about with thoughtless abandon, but it was not until this encounter that I truly learned what it meant.  I was in a long line of ticketholders waiting to be let in on a hot summer evening.  It was a friendly and peaceful crowd in a good mood.  But even so, the on-line experience was draining and we were a bit bored and tired as we waited.  My part of the line had snaked all the way to the sidewalk and I could anticipate quite a wait before setting my kharmicaly-tuned bewtocks into my creaky old velour theater seat under that outlandish ceiling frieze.  So we stood there, tiny people in a long line dwarfed by the alabaster bulk of an impassive facade looming up from behind us.  I felt small and dull and very plain.  And I waited. 

The crowd behind me started buzzing.  Something was happening.  Heads turned to the street, where a black limo was approaching the gate to the lot.  Traffic slowed and we all gazed on the limo like it was an ice cream truck, perhaps about to dole out a little spiritual refreshment to us on that parched evening.

The back passenger window of the limo dropped and a beaming little face poked out of it.  The Dalai Lama, in orange and red robes and a smile from ear to ear, waved cheerfully at us.  He seemed to be bouncing on his seat, or maybe it was just the way he was bowing his head.  I couldn’t tell what it was, but he sure had something bouncy going on.  What’s more, I felt an actual emanence of joy and peace from him.  At this time I would have considered myself sympathetic, philosophically and certainly polticially, with him, but I didn’t consider him to be a particular personal icon.  I was there because I knew others who were going and I figured it would be cool.  Dude - the Shrine.  Plus, it was cheap.  But as I stood there in line and took in his magnanimous, all-encompassing smile from out the window of his limo, I understood what he was about a little bit better.  Excellence.  Eminence.  Grace. 

The limo drove on.  Behind it was a small white rental coupe, four doors but built for two.  In it rode about seven enrobed abbots or monks or physical trainers or whoever the Dalai Lama has in his retinue, trailing him at a respectful distance.  As they passed us in line, they too began waving, waving and nodding madly, all of them, rocking the overloaded little car with their saffron-gowned enthusiasm, and it was just like the clowns in the tiny car at the circus, and everybody laughed, including the abbots, or whoever they were. 

Once I got inside the Dalai Lama gave a good talk, as I recall, but the details have faded a good bit in the intervening lifetime.  But that drive-by he gave us - that stuck with me.  That guy really knows how to wave.