How the Dalai Lama Got Nominated for His First Grammy

At the 2026 Grammy Awards, one of the world’s best known spiritual leaders will compete against Milli Vanilli’s Fab Morvan, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, ceremony host Trevor Noah, and actress Kathy Garver. They’ve all been nominated in the category of Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording. Meditations: The Reflections Of His Holiness The Dalai Lama is the entry from the world’s foremost Tibetan Buddhist, an album of innovative collaborations with Hindustani classical influences. Atop the music are collages of his remarks on themes like mindfulness, harmony, and health, captured over the course of his 75-year career as the 14th Dalai Lama.

“Within my lifetime in the Taktser area, winter on this mountain, annually more snow, then year by year, less and less,” the Dalai Lama says on the track “Water,” citing the town in eastern Tibet where he was born with the name Lhamo Thondup. He spends that track talking about the need to preserve the precious natural resource of water. Elsewhere, on “Peace,” the Dalai Lama says, “A compassionate mind is very happy. Usually people consider compassion [a] religious subject. No, compassion is for our own survival.”

That track also features vocals from Rufus Wainwright, one of several musicians who appear on the project; other songs feature Maggie Rogers and Andra Day. “The guests were extremely intentional,” says the album’s Grammy-winning, Atlanta-based producer, Kabir Sehgal. “We were researching pop stars who have some kind of overlap with religious philosophy. Maggie Rogers had studied at Harvard Divinity School, a Master of Religion and Public Life. I reached out over Instagram: ‘Would you like to be part of this?’ She responded very quickly and that took on its own life.”

Sehgal says that while the musical throughlines for this project were largely Indian, they sought to incorporate global influences that mirrored the Dalai Lama’s universal messages. “His Holiness has lived a very remarkable life, almost a full century at this point,” the producer tells Rolling Stone over Zoom. “We wanted to take his wisdom, which is all about love, compassion, peace, and kindness — it’s all evergreen, but we need to hear it more now than ever — and set that to music.”

Sehgal estimates that he listened to more than 100 hours of speeches and conversations to compose the album’s 10 tracks, for which Indian classical musician Ayaan Ali Bangash played the sarod, a string instrument played with the fingernails. Bangash is a seventh-generation sarod player, under his father, Maestro Amjad Ali Khan, and alongside his elder brother, Amaan Ali Bangash. Amaan is also featured throughout. Their family has repeatedly performed for the Dalai Lama over the past 25 years. “We were extremely humbled by the warmth, affection, and love we got from the office of His Holiness,” Bangash says. “They were very much involved at every step, and the project had the blessings of His Holiness at every given step, including the time of release and everything that’s happening around the project.”

Sehgal, too, has a long family history with the Dalai Lama. “My grandfather worked in tourism and hospitality in the state of Punjab in India. And so, when His Holiness was exiled to India, my grandfather would greet him,” he says. “Then, decades later, His Holiness would come to Emory University. So, as a boy I got to meet His Holiness several times, because my parents would greet him in Atlanta. And Emory University is the only Western university that His Holiness has a relationship with, that he’s a visiting professor in. There’s a lot of stories in the Atlanta ecosystem about how he’s affected their lives in a positive way. In fact, last night I was somewhere and they were like, ‘I helped drive his entourage and His Holiness gave me a pashmina.”

Though Sehgal and Bangash have yet to experience the album with the Dalai Lama in person, they hope to. “I think that’s in motion,” says Sehgal. “He’s 90, so there’s things we have to navigate as to his schedule and everything.” Similarly, Sehgal believes it’s unlikely that His Holiness will attend the L.A. awards ceremony on Feb. 1.

“By God’s grace, he’s at the peak of his powers even doing his discourses today,” Bangash says. “Though he doesn’t travel much, I just feel that it’s such a blessing to just be a part of his message of oneness, tolerance, compassion. And as artists, what more can we do? Honestly, these are terms which can sound very cliché at so many levels, but at cosmic levels these are very powerful things.”

Though Rolling Stone initially had some fun with the unorthodoxy of the Dalai Lama’s Grammy nomination, and his motley crew of competitors in the category, Meditation comes at a serious turning point. It was released in August 2025, less than two months after His Holiness turned 90 years old and confirmed, after years of uncertainty, that there will be another Dalai Lama after his death. The matter of his succession is contentious, as much of his existence has been. “The intention has been around for a while,” Bangash says of the album, which had been years in the making. “It just all fell in place around his 90th birthday.”

It’s been nearly 40 years since the Dalai Lama won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to further understanding between Tibet and China, which took control of his homeland in 1951. Today, the Central Tibetan Administration says there are 140,000 refugees from their country, including the Dalai Lama, who was exiled to India. While China has asserted its wish to play a role in determining the next Dalai Lama, he said last summer that a trust of monks under his office will decide alone.

Sehgal says Tibetans around the world have received their album enthusiastically. “That community has been encouraged by what’s happened, because he’s an elder statesman of the world, a humanitarian,” he says. “Anytime you get validation like this for a community that’s been overlooked, it’s very gratifying to see.” On the Meditation track “Harmony,” the Dalai Lama’s refugee status informs his philosophy on nations: “‘My country, their county,’ that, with strong feeling, is outdated,” he says. “We are the same and we have to live together on this planet.” It’s a message that’s especially resonant in this moment, when Donald Trump’s administration has kidnapped a world leader, threatened to annex a neighboring country, banned visitors from at least 75 more, and created hysteria around citizenship and immigration.

When the Dalai Lama’s office found out about this Grammy nomination, they were thrilled. “Their first response was like, ‘More people will find out about his message,’” says Sehgal, who has a solo album of his own, Stars and Static, out this spring. “There’s probably people who may not be familiar with him, a younger generation. So, in some ways I think it’s already served a purpose of people discovering who he is and why he’s important, and his lifelong work of being a refugee and having to come to terms with being the other and standing up for your culture.”

The producer also points to a movement running counter to the chaos in the world: a group of nearly two dozen Vietnamese Buddhists on a 2,300-mile Walk for Peace from Texas to Washington D.C. “It’s a different form of Buddhism,” Sehgal says. “But it’s all unified under this idea that life is suffering, but you have to work to overcome that and detach from your fear, detach from your desire. How do you overcome that? It’s by being kind to people. So with these monks walking, how can that not bring a smile to your face?”

Similarly, he adds, “We hope when people check out the record, you get immersed in this world of just harmony and love. Yeah, it’s basic, but it’s also beautiful.”