After the interview, which had run a little long, His Holiness stepped onto the sunny patio for a breath of fresh air, and Tenzin Geyche urged me and Gerardo to gather up the mountain of tape recorders, notebooks, cameras, and gifts quickly, as His Holiness had another appointment. We were scrambling to gather up everything, charged from the audience, and grinning from ear to ear. In a year of living near His Holiness and attending numerous public audiences, I had long ago observed that wherever he goes, the Dalai Lama inevitably leaves behind a wake of beaming faces, folks of every age, race and creed smiling as tenderly as if they've all just fallen in love.

As I hastily stuffed my recorder cord into my bag, it kept falling out, until I felt someone stuffing it in for me and looked over to see that His Holiness had come back in and was laughingly giving me a hand. As if he, too, had to help clean up so some other great man could carry on with his schedule of important appointments. How very typical of him.