Whether the story is true is not important. On this side of the Himalayas, it's the mythic version of the Dalai Lama that matters. On his great ascent to the Western pantheon of celebrity, the spiritual and political leader of Tibet has had to scrap a few personal quirks to transform himself into a more compact, digestible idea. It's a transformation familiar to anyone who has risen from the ranks of nuanced nobody to iconic somebody in America -- a formality. Some might balk at the distortions wrought by fame, yet they don't have a country to save. And who knows, renouncing one's former self is probably good exercise for a practicing Buddhist.

Most of us have settled on a few facts about the Dalai Lama: The most prominent and powerful lama of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, he attends to matters of state, culture and spirituality. (He's the head of the Gelug school, and lamas of the other three schools look to him as both a secular and a religious leader.) He does so from his government in exile, having lived in Dharamsala, India -- "Little Lhasa" -- since China invaded Tibet more than 40 years ago. He does so advocating world peace and compassion, despite his experience with oppression, a commitment that earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989. He does so while living as "a simple Buddhist monk -- no more, no less."

We know this much, and we can picture his maroon robes, his trademark eyeglasses. Still, some mystery persists, even under the bright searchlights of fame: Why is the Dalai Lama laughing? What's so funny? Is it us?

Back up to 1937. A 2-year-old named Lhamo Dhondrub in the small, northeastern Tibetan village of Taktser sits across a table from four intent out-of-towners. Choose a "mala" (rosary), the men say, offering two. The boy chooses correctly. Choose a pair of eyeglasses, they say; choose a staff. Every item he chooses belonged to the previous Dalai Lama. The boy's earlobes are big and his eyes long -- more good signs. Finally the visitors peel back his clothes and find eight marks, each in the right place. The men look at one another. Their two-year-long search has ended: The child is the next incarnation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteshvara. He is unquestionably the 14th Dalai Lama.

The boy was brought to Lhasa, Tibet's capital, placed in the care of tutors, and over the years he was prepared for the day he would come of age and assume control of Tibet. There was no doubt that the right child had been selected -- the Dalai Lama was bright, compassionate, good-humored and wise. And then in 1950, the choice suddenly mattered more than ever. Eighty thousand soldiers of the People's Liberation Army crossed the eastern border of Tibet, and China demanded that Tibet "return to the motherland." At 15, three years ahead of schedule, the Dalai Lama assumed full control of his country.

Before Mao Tse-tung, Tibet had maintained varying degrees of autonomy, despite China's regular efforts to control and influence its strategic neighbor. For years, the Dalai Lama tried to establish good relations with Communist China. He proposed various types of allegiance between the two nations, but Mao rejected any plan that didn't acknowledge China's total, unalloyed sovereignty over Tibet.

Tensions came to a head in '59, and the Dalai Lama, along with close to 100,000 other Tibetans, fled to India. The conflict, of course, extended beyond borders into ideology. "Mao wanted to change the world through struggle and revolution," Sinologist and dean of UC-Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism Orville Schell has noted. "Tibetan Buddhists accepted the world as they found it."

More than 30 years later, the one known to Tibetans as Yeshe Norbu, or "the wish-fulfilling jewel," is engaged in a daily struggle to reverse, or at least stall, China's annihilation of his homeland. And he is also poking strangers' bellies before collapsing in giggles. Why is the Dalai Lama laughing?

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