The Open Road

The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama

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Pico Iyer has been engaged in conversation with the Dalai Lama (a friend of his father’s) for the last many decades-about his message and its effectiveness. Now, in this insightful, impassioned book, Iyer captures the paradoxes the Dalai Lama embodies: he is a religious leader who warns against being needlessly distracted by religion; a Tibetan head of state who suggests that exile from Tibet can be an opportunity; an incarnation of a Tibetan god who champions globalism and technology.

Moving from Dharamsala, India, to Lhasa, Tibet, to venues in the West-where the Dalai Lama’s pragmatism, rigour and scholarship are sometimes lost on an audience yearning for mystical visions-The Open Road illuminates the hidden life, the transforming ideas and the daily challenges of a global icon.