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Thriving tourism is expected to bring $120 million to Tibet this year.

In the lush valley flanked by Tibet's rugged mountains, it's harvest time. A combine rented from a local monastery brings some efficiency to a backbreaking chore. Still, farmer Laba Zhouma makes sure every single ear of grain left behind is picked up.

Roy Dawes, left, and Ben Thompson of the Rose Art Museum prepare a shipment of Tibetan artwoork. (Contributed photo)

With appearances at the FleetCenter and MIT's conference on meditation, the Dalai Lama's Boston-area visit this year has been much different than the last time around.

Whether rich or poor, a scholar or a beggar, everyone desires the same thing -- a happy life, said the Dalai Lama, speaking to a sold-out FleetCenter crowd last night.

Two days after the walkout by the Kalon Tripa and his Kashag, the Assembly today began with a clarification from Deputy Sonam Topgyal. Deputy Sonam Topgyal told the house that he is withdrawing his words since he was requested

The Dalai Lama (R) bends down to watch as technician Choe Dolma (C) explains a machine sequencing canine DNA during his visit to the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research September 13, 2003 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader is participating in a two-day conference on science, spirituality and human biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology while in the Boston area. Photo by Jim Bourg

The Dalai Lama, right, is shown with B. Alan Wallace, president of The Santa Barbara Institute for the Interdisciplinary Study of Consciousness, left, during a conference called "Investigating the Mind: Exchanges between Buddhism and the Biobehavioral Sciences on How the Mind Works," at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Saturday, Sept. 13, 2003, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Lisa Poole)

Can concentration be controlled? Can attention be practiced and perfected? These are questions that are of increasing interest today to scientists, but which Buddhist monks have been exploring for thousands of years.

For centuries, millions of Tibetans have made the arduous pilgrimage to the holy mountain of Kailas, walking 35 miles around its base in a single day to wash away the sins of the world in a symbolic re-enactment of the wheel of life.