of the project emerged, I was alternately terrified at the responsibility of such an undertaking and immensely happy for the opportunity to spend so much time with the Dalai Lama.

     During our initial meetings, I first experienced the Dalai Lama's underlying Buddhist beliefs that give structure to his knowledge of Tibetan history. Buddhism, along with ancient Indian concepts that came with it to Tibet, such as reincarnation, has shaped how the Dalai Lama sees Tibetan history. Some, like the Dalai Lama's belief in reincarnation, were predictable; others, such as miracles or visions that non-Tibetans would call mythology, are spiritual events in Tibetan history that the Dalai Lama kept returning to and clearly felt were historically important. The Dalai Lama was quick to call some but not all of these events myth.

     For example, he described an event that took place around 1920, in which a respected Buddhist teacher, Serkhong Rinpoche, was among a group of six people who had an audience with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The teacher had spent five hours a day, or more, meditating, over many years. For Tibetans he had "purified his mind." Five of the six who met the Dalai Lama that day had a normal meeting with him. The sixth man, Serkhong Rinpoche, though in the same room at the same time, did not see the Thirteenth as an ordinary man at all. He saw the Buddhist Bodhisattva Chenrizi instead; rather than conversing with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, he heard Chenrizi give secret teachings on a meditation practice. This happened while everyone else—men who had not purified their minds—saw just a man with a mustache dressed in red robes talking about affairs of state. Which event took place?

     "There can be two visions of the same thing," the Dalai Lama said, "one of people who have a pure insight developed through spiritual practice and one that is purely conventional. In these special cases—and these events are rare, but important—both are true, both are reality. So there are two viewpoints, one common and one uncommon. The uncommon viewpoint is not considered history, because historians cannot record these things. But we cannot say that all such things are just the imagination of the Buddhist faithful. They can also be true."

     Two people looking at the same event might see two entirely different things because of who they are, what they have experienced in life, what