Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and the 1989 Nobel Peace Laureate. Born to a peasant family in 1935, in the northeastern province of Amdo, His Holiness was recognised at the age of two as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama.

Spalding Gray calls himself a writer and performer who has been “circling my meditation cushion for almost twenty years.” The paths of the revered Buddhist leader and the avant-garde performer crossed in a hotel suite in Santa Barbara, California. Here are excerpts of that interview with Dalai Lama.

We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. What are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?

I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new.

Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change.

Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up. — Beliefnet.com