Yesterday I was in Nottingham with my friend Kwansuree to attend a public session of teachings from the Dalai Lama. The theme was ‘Bringing Meaning to Our Lives’. His Holiness is in the UK to hold a series of meetings with political and spiritual leaders, and to bring a simple message of hope and the achievement happiness through compassion and understanding for all human beings. For these public teachings he warned the audience that if our motivation to attend was because of wanting to witness the cult of the Dalai Lama, or to receive his wisdom and solutions to our problems, then we were certain to be disappointed, ‘I am just a simple monk’, he told us at the start. That said, there is no doubt that many of the 10,000 or so in the audience, myself included, came because of the tremendous warmth and charm of the 14th Dalai Lama that adds considerable substance to his simple message.