Even a holy man likes to shoot the breeze, and the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, chatted amiably with an American businessman on board a Pan Am flight to Japan. His Holiness was en route to a world Buddhist conference in Tokyo from India, where he has lived since fleeing Tibet and the Communists in 1959. Seated in the "frequent traveler" section (though it is only the fourth time he has left India), he told his companion that he had received a Japanese visa on one condition: stick to religious activities. "What is there to worry about?" wondered the Dalai Lama, 43. "I'm only a simple Buddhist monk. A flower in need of water." He then filled out his landing card--leaving the "occupation" spot blank --and dug into his veal cordon bleu. "Only the most strict Buddhists do not eat meat," he told his astonished companion.

It was bound to happen. Dolly Parton, the cantilevered queen of country music, was stuffed as usual into skintight duds at the twelfth annual Country Music Association Awards at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. Just before the announcement came that Dolly had won the Entertainer of the

Year award, she "just busted the front" of a new dress made for the occasion. Oh, well, shrugged Dolly: "I guess it's like my Daddy said. You shouldn't try to put 50 pounds of mud in a five-pound sack."

Some say there is a Ford in his future, but New York's Governor Hugh Carey is a fast man with a, er, dodge.

When rumors circulated last week that Carey, 59, plans to marry Anne Ford Uzielli, 35, the divorced younger daughter of Henry Ford II, the Governor told reporters: "No way." Nonetheless, Hugh often drops in for dinner at Anne's Park Avenue duplex and once sent her a garnet birthstone (January) inscribed, THE GUV, WITH LUV. But even luv isn't always enough. The Guv is up for reelection in November and, says he, "If I don't win, who'd want me? My prospects are vague, and my future is dubious."

The U.S. presidential selection process, said the close observer, weeds out people who have "normal emotions and normal reactions to situations." Therefore we end up with "single-dimension, single-purpose, carefully bred, genetically selected creatures." The forum was PBS's Dick Cavett Show, the observer was John Ehrlichman, and the creature who prompted his comment was his former boss Richard Nixon. During the Watergate hearings, asked Cavett, did Ehrlichman feel he was being held to the fire by "men more honorable than yourself?" "Well," Ehrlichman replied, "I never had that suspicion about the Senate in general." As for the Watergate committee, which included Herman Talmadge, Edward Gurney, and the late Joseph Montoya, Ehrlichman said, "A lot of them have stumbled or in one way or another have been enmeshed." Added Ehrlichman, with scarcely concealed satisfaction: "It's a little bit like the people who opened King Tut's tomb."

She may not look much like a straight shooter, but Barbara Bach is playing a tough-minded Yugoslav partisan about to help some British soldiers blow up a bridge. The film: Force 10 from Navarone, based on a novel by Alistair MacLean. Says Bach: "I enjoyed being the only woman among all those simpatici men." So simpatica was Bach that the screenwriter built up her role. In fact, Author MacLean, on a visit to the set, showed some surprise that his movie had a female lead.

On the Record

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's assistant for National Security Affairs, after arriving late at a party: "I had to practice my belly dancing. One must be prepared in the age of the ERA. You never know when you might be called on to perform."

Bette Davis, actress (Death on the Nile): "I divide women into two categories. The female and the broad. Me? I'm a broad."

Hanna Gray, the newly installed president of the University of Chicago: "It's too late to be nervous. Now it's time for contemplative resignation."

Andre Watts, pianist, on playing the Liszt Sonata: "It's a moment of stoppage of existence, like blacking out, like I am going around the bend. It is a moment of transcendental passion. A no man's land."

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