Posted on 05/28/2002 8:14:51 AM PDT by dead
Curious, even disturbing, is the way so many non-Buddhist Australians blur the lines between respect, reverence and worship in their attitudes toward the Dalai Lama. Critical reflection on the man and his message hardly seems to figure in their estimation of him.
This is not entirely the fault of the Dalai Lama. His visit to Australia last week was not a promotional tour and he is adamant that he is not in the business of seeking converts. Indeed, the Dalai Lama consistently cautions people against switching from their religion to his or believing that they can fully understand even the meditative traditions of Buddhism without a strong background in Buddhist practice and theory.
But you don't have to become a devotee to nonetheless be taken in.
The Dalai Lama seeks to excite the "innate spiritual nature" of people so that they might choose kindness and affection in their relations to others rather than anger, hatred or the temptation to exploit.
Christian church leaders promote the same message, but when they do they tend to be ignored or scorned, whereas the Dalai Lama is regarded as a welcome breath of fresh air.
This is partly because his approach is intuitive rather than discursive, inclusive rather than exclusive, gently encouraging rather than reproachful or overly instructive. With the Dalai Lama one seems to be getting the essence of religious insight without the froth and bubble of dogma and doctrine or the hard and fast rules of moral behaviour.
The trouble is that when religion is leeched in this fashion of too much content, all that is left is platitudes - or worse, banalities.
Take the Dalai Lama's answer to a question put to him at the National Press Club in Canberra on Friday about his views on euthanasia.
Like abortion, he said through an interpreter (thus choosing his words carefully), "these are very complex issues on which it is very difficult to make generalised statements because the individuality of each context would be so different that it is something that needs to be judged - the merits of its decision - based upon context by context".
You would get more enlightenment than this listening to Lisa tackle a moral dilemma in an episode of The Simpsons.
In fact many of the Dalai Lama's comments on international problems and their solutions - the sort of complex issues on which he is prepared to make generalised statements - tend towards the naivety of a primary school pupil at an end-of-year speech night. When children talk about the need for more caring and sharing in the world, adults smile knowingly - which is to say that we, unlike they, appreciate life's complexities. Ironically, when the Dalai Lama says the same thing, we call it wisdom and applaud.
The other part of the Dalai Lama's appeal is his exoticness. He is unusual, as well as untypical, which is interesting in itself but also means he represents something people can dabble in without understanding too much about it and thus having to be fully challenged, engaged or, dare one say, committed.
The Dalai Lama, of course, plays down his distinctiveness and for this he can and should be criticised. He claims to be just another ordinary human being but nothing could be further from the truth.
How many ordinary human beings are believed by millions of people to be the living emanation of the Buddha of compassion? How many have won a Nobel Peace Prize (as the Dalai Lama did in 1989)? How many ordinary human beings are global celebrities with a global network of powerful and influential friends? How many hob-nob it with movie stars or have had Hollywood genuflect before them as the Dalai Lama did when Martin Scorsese made Kundun in 1997 - a film that was virtually an authorised biography of the Tibetan leader?
The Dalai Lama's popularity in the West says much about its need for heroes, its search for meaning, its longing for those things (holiness, integrity) that seem to be missing from many of its institutions. And yet Western culture stands for just about everything a Buddhist is supposed to renounce.
The relationship, in other words, is intriguing and as it develops it may benefit both sides in ways that can't now be imagined. But nobody is going to get too far unless each party is frank with the other and dismissive of mere pap.
Chris McGillion, the Herald's religious affairs columnist, teaches in the school of communication at Charles Sturt University.
Incomprehensible that people here should be as intolerant as the Taliban.
Oh spare me the cliché-laden melodrama!
Nobody around here has advocated blowing up the Dali Lama.
Some people raised some questions they have about Tibetan Buddhist tenets, while others laughed a little at the simplistic statements quoted and the doe-eyed westerners who embrace them as deep thoughts.
You can stop the drama-queen weeping anytime now.
Utter nonsense. The West is responsible for the "excesses" (what a nice weasel word to describe it,) going back to the Bolshevik Revolution? Don't think so! This reminds me of the excuses we have been hearing for decades now that "this is not true Communism" or "they wouldn't do this if the West weren't doing that". Well, since there hasn't been any other form of Communism, we have no choice but to treat it as the real version of communism. And Dalai Lama is really beginning to sound like Chauncey Gardiner.
Sorry, honey, I can read.
Maybe functionally, but not well.
Please justify your statement that the comments on this thread equate with the murderous actions of the Taliban.
People who have no right to attacked a leader of people who struggle against Communism.
You’re referring to the man who said in his own autobiography “the pursuit of Communism has been one of the greatest human experiments of all time.”
Sounds like the communists were just fine by the “still half Marxist” Dali Lama, until they took from him and his.
Perhaps next you'll join a thread joking about Solzhenitzn?
You know any good ones about him?
What exactly is the definition of carelessness? What if with careful intention and planning I decide to get totally bombed with my buddies?
The American Spectator
December, 1997The Secret War Over Tibet
A story of Cold War heroism -- and Kennedy administration cowardice and betrayal.John B. Roberts II
The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, doesn't want his secrets revealed. He has given his blessing to a new Hollywood film, Kundun, enshrining the officially sanctioned and sanitized history of his country's battle for independence against Communist China. And in another Hollywood Tibetan epic, based on the memoirs of German mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, actor Brad Pitt re-enacts a spiritual odyssey with the Dalai Lama in Tibet's remote and mysterious mountain kingdom.
What neither film portrays are facts about the true adventures -- and tragedy -- of Tibetan freedom fighters that have remained secret for decades. But thanks to the willingness of a handful of former diplomats, military special operations personnel, and intelligence officials, the real story of America's secret war in Tibet can now be told.
Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency were unusually helpful in the research for this article, although it reports events that are still classified today. Perhaps they were motivated by the desire to prevent Hollywood's propagation of revisionist histories about what really happened in Tibet. Or perhaps this is one of those rare occasions when the Central Intelligence Agency decides to take some well-deserved credit for one of its successes by revealing tidbits from its secret history.
But don't expect the Clinton administration to declassify the Tibetan operation files anytime soon. The secret archives include a shameful episode involving Clinton's favorite presidency, the Kennedy administration, and Democratic icon John Kenneth Galbraith.
One of the best-kept secrets of the Tibetan War is Ambassador Galbraith's role in the abandonment of an army of Tibetan guerrillas caught in a pitched battle. While special operations Air Force planes stood by to parachute ammunition and supplies to the Tibetan freedom fighters, Galbraith refused to give permission for the CIA to resupply its covert Tibetan army. Cut off and surrounded, between six and eight thousand Tibetans were annihilated by the Chinese in a massacre that has been shrouded in secrecy for more than thirty years.
The parallels to the Cuban Bay of Pigs fiasco are eerie. In both cases the Eisenhower administration originally launched the covert programs to train freedom fighters to resist Communist domination. In both the guerrillas depended on U.S. support for arms and ammunition. In Tibet, as in Cuba, only air support and airdrops of supplies could help trapped men fight their way out of desperate situations. In both cases, when the freedom fighters were at their moment of greatest peril, the Kennedy administration chose to abandon them.
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