. 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama Richard Nilsen The 72-year-old Dalai Lama is one of the world's leading religious figures, the spiritual head of the Tibetan Buddhist religion and political leader of the great Lost Cause of a Tibet now gobbled up by China. Rick Ray is a producer of cable-TV documentaries. There is a bit of a disparity in their levels of spiritual attainment. Ray's film 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama is mildly informative, for those who know little about his subject: It takes us on a Discovery Channel-level tour of the lama's biography and political situation. But the film never rises above the spiritual or intellectual level of a TV news anchor. It is a dispiriting film to watch, if you have any real interest in the subject. Ray displays his sloppiness with several oddly obvious misstatements of fact: a two-dimensional mandala is described as three-dimensional, for instance, even as we see the object on camera and can make our own judgment as to how many dimensions are being displayed. The filmmaker requested an interview with the religious leader and was granted an audience of 45 minutes and an allowed 10 questions. Unfortunately, although Ray talks about fretting greatly over coming up with good questions, those he finally arrives at are woefully underinformed and shallow. And given those 45 minutes and the need to make a film at least twice that long for theatrical release, there is quite a bit of padding added. And although the Dalai Lama often waxes deep and eloquent elsewhere and for other interviewers about religious matters, he apparently sized up his interviewer with acumen and responded with the short-form, easy-to-assimilate answers that he figured his interlocutor would be able to comprehend: "Tibet and Buddhism for Dummies," as it were. So we hear a good bit about the political situation in Tibet but very little about the overriding world view that places the history in a more cosmic context. The Dalai Lama has simplified his answers for this simpler interviewer. If you have only a tangential interest in the subject, this film will provide you with the short-form version of the history of Tibet and the former lamasery at Lhasa, the Chinese invasion, the current "temporary" residence at Dharamsala, India, and something of the jolly nature of the monk. .