The Dalai Lama: Scientist (2019)

Many years ago, a little boy was born in Tibet, and he was chosen to become the 14th Dalai Lama. But the little boy had a secret, locked inside his heart. In the new film, "The Dalai Lama Scientist", the Dalai Lama tells this unknown story about his lifelong journey into the world of science and technology, and how the world has changed as a result.

With extensive, rare, never before seen footage, "The Dalai Lama Scientist" tells the very human story of the Dalai Lama that no one knows. The film covers his early days of discovery we see him as a little boy, dismantling small mechanical toys and then trying to put them back together again; as a young boy, repairing an old movie projector and learning about the difference between AC and DC; as a teenager, using his telescope to make discoveries about the moon; and as a young man, in deep discussion with engineers and electricians at hydroelectric plants in Peking. China invaded Tibet in 1950, and in 1959 the Dalai Lama left Tibet in a daring escape. As he says in the film, "At the age of 16, I lost my freedom. At the age of 24, I lost my own country". Yet he manages to create one of the most successful refugee communities in the world. And he soon has the opportunity to meet two great physicists, David Bohm and Carl von Weizsäcker, who become his own teachers of science. He then meets Chilean neuroscientist Francisco Varela, and a whole new world of science and technology opens up to him. From Cosmology to Quantum Physics, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Molecular Biology, Epigenetics, and the Nature of Consciousness itself, the film tells the story of the life changing dialogues that began in earnest in 1987; about the start of collaborative research and publication; and about the significant changes in the direction of research and enquiry in many fields of science as the Dalai Lama touches the lives of these leading scientists, in fundamental and often surprising ways.