The Dalai Lama and me

Today was going to be the day they were going to throw it back to me but instead I managed to end up going for a talk by the Dalai Lama. Now obviously it was not a personal meeting, anyone who has seen me would know why, but then it is no less than the Dalai Lama so why would I pass up the opportunity?
For the uninitiated the Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of the Buddhists, one of the religions that has a lot of monks in it and has some pretty soothing music as their hymns. They also preach the usual stuff about truth and being good but with nice terms and they don't ask you to worship any God (at least as far as I know).
The Dalai Lama is an old man who is bald and wears glasses that look like dark glasses. He also cackles like a grandfather, waves to people when they wave to him and laughs at his own jokes which people don't really get. He spoke for two hours and quite expectedly didn't manage to say much. It would be too much to expect anyone to tell everyone how to solve their life's problems in the short span of two hours and he is no different.
And quite admittedly some of the stuff he said was not something unknown to me or many of the people present there. I mean we all know that we should not keep ourselves bottled up, every second woman and study tells us that. He spoke of mantaining inner peace so that you would feel happy in life, but then someone wrote that ages ago in the ancient Vedas. He spoke about tolerance, secularism, AIDS, global warming and everything we read about daily in the newspapers.
So whats so great about this guy? Or what can I say I really learnt from him in two hours of listening to him speak in a tongue as alien to him as his teachings might have been to me? Well that no one knows the answers to my or anyone else's problems. He was asked,"Is secularism dead in India?" and his frank reply,"I don't know! You should know better, you are an Indian!" And he was right. If we can't look into ourselves and know whether we are secular or not, how can we judge society? His answers were not as spiritual as they were practical, he admitted to not knowing answers to anyone's problems and just gave them suggestions. And the best statement for the day? "I once spoke to a religious leader, a friend, and I told him that we need to be less serious so that we make more sense to more people," said the venerable Lama, before cackling happily. I don't know what I expected to see but what was a pleasant surprise was to see an old man, a happy and peaceful old man who could give valuable advice to show you a way and one who knew a few more answers that not many did.

p.s: Though it must be said that the audience of Mumbai was as uncouth as could be. And not the poor who came in their best clothes just to see the Lama but those who came 'dressed down' in their designer ware and sat in the VIP area. They walked off while he was on the stage, they air kissed in the hall before the end and treated it much like they would have a fashion show.
Some may say its Mumbai attitude but its still uncouth and maybe something we could afford to lose.