Once he drops the desire and the claim, and he becomes an ordinary, simple human being, China has no interest in him. He can live in the Himalayas – he is accustomed to living in the Himalayas.

And I say again: nobody is going to behave in a friendly way with you. What can you offer? China offers a tremendous power. You will not get shelter anywhere in the world.

The world is not so civilized as you think. It cares only for those who have power. To be powerful is to be right, and to be powerless…nobody cares about you, whether you are right or wrong.

This has been a tremendous weight on me. In the first place, Tibet is not China’s internal affair, and Rajiv Gandhi has forgotten those thousands of miles of Himalayan territory. It is not even mentioned.

And what is to be remembered by Dalai Lama especially: don’t get deluded by the so-called talk of democracy, independence, freedom. These things don’t exist; the powerful only talk about them. The whole world is still centuries back, living in the same barbarous mind. Only its houses have become better, the roads are better, technology is better, but the man? – it has never been worse than it is now! Because the primitive, barbarian man, howsoever violent, had no missiles, nuclear weapons, atom bombs.

This is the same barbarian man – with modern clothes, but the mind is as animalistic as you can imagine. And in the hands of these barbarous chimpanzees are nuclear weapons that can destroy this whole earth within ten minutes, with all its living beings. The barbarous man, the chimpanzee, has come to the terminal point where it is going to commit suicide.

I have heard that Ronald Reagan had a great friend, a chimpanzee. He could not find another human being to have a friendship with. The first day of his presidency in America he had gone for a morning walk on the beach with his great friend the chimpanzee.

An old drunkard stumbled around, looking very carefully, and finally he could not resist: he came to these two friends and he said, “President, sir, it does not feel right to have a chimpanzee as your friend.”

As Ronald Reagan was going to say something, that old drunkard said, “You shut up! I am talking to Mr. President.”

That chimpanzee is hidden in so-called politicians. Wherever there is a desire to dominate there is a chimpanzee hidden within.

I want to repeat again: Dalai Lama has not to go anywhere. It is time to drop the outer desire for domination. Go inward, you are getting older but you are not growing up. Go inward to find the kingdom which is not of this world.

Maneesha has brought a few very beautiful anecdotes, sutras, and statements from the history of Zen.