Cover Correction

Many thanks to Charles Donelan and the Independent for highlighting the webcast of the Dalai Lama interview with Pico Iyer. Of all the supplementary background material included, I found the comments at the end provided by the Dalai Lama himself to be the most apt and illuminating in regard to the larger long-term cultural impacts that Tibetan Buddhism could have on the West.

However, it appears that some clarification is needed. The photograph on the printed cover (the same photo that appears under “A Lifelong Friendship” in the online version) is not Pico Iyer and Tenzin Gyatso meeting in 1986. It is Pico’s father, Professor Raghavan Iyer, meeting the 14th Dalai Lama in 1984.

As part of that historic 1984 visit, at the invitation of Professor Iyer, the Dalai Lama also gave an instructive lecture on October 27 at the Santa Barbara United Lodge of Theosophists (Crosbie Hall, 326 West Sola), highlighting the profound philosophical and spiritual continuities between the deepest strains of Tibetan Buddhist thought and Theosophical wisdom.

Editor’s Note: Thank you, Kirk Gradin, and we stand corrected. The cover image is of Pico Iyer’s father, Raghavan Iyer, with the Dalai Lama. It was taken in 1984, not 1986, by John Powers.