14th Dalai Lama 90th birthday

[anatta]

Why the Dalai Lama Continues to be a Counselor to Us All

At 90, the Dalai Lama is still one of the world's most powerful spiritual leaders, writes Pico Iyer. Here’s why.

time.com

Regularly noting that “my religion is kindness” and frequently reiterating that if scientific findings contradict Buddhist teachings, science must trump Buddhism, he’s become the rare spiritual teacher who can speak across every border in our ever more divided world.
Here is a Buddhist leader who delivers talks on the Gospels to a group of Christians, tears misting his eyes as he describes some of Jesus’s parables. Here, too, is a champion of “secular ethics” who calls himself a “defender of Islam,” consults rabbis on how to sustain a culture in exile, and regularly refers to himself as a student of India, the predominantly Hindu country where he has lived for 66 years.

For Buddhists, he is a formidable scholar who draws on ancient texts to show that people’s interdependent destinies make environmental awareness and global consciousness a necessity. For Tibetans, he has become one of the three defining Dalai Lamas of their history. But for the rest of us, he’s been an open-hearted incarnation of conscience who puts his faith in “common sense, common experience, and scientific findings.” A natural democrat, he renounced all temporal power in 2011, though his people often wish he’d make all their decisions for them. He has also often stated that he may be the last Dalai Lama—though not the last spiritual leader of the Tibetans—since, on his death, Beijing will surely choose a boy who’s a Party member and present him as a successor.

It’s a curious paradox in his life that he has set up Tibetan monasteries and communities in India and across the world, even as Tibet itself is ever more eroded by foreign settlers and murderous policies. He has inspired confidence in many countries, even as his own people, in their suffering, are driven to self-immolation and calls for armed resistance.

The day after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, in 1989, I barged in on him with questions on behalf of this very magazine. Though Tibetans across the globe were celebrating the victory, the Dalai Lama was, as ever, more measured and far-sighted. He really wondered if he’d done enough, he told me, but all he could do was give all of himself, day after day, in the knowledge that in the long run—as his peers and teachers, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King knew—the moral universe bends towards justice. Ninety years from now—and in centuries to come—he will be remembered as one of our first global spiritual leaders, and one of the most enduring.

 

[Allan]

The Dalai Llama who asked a boy to suck his tongue. That Dalai Llama?

 

[anatta]

no sooner had a tsunami, in March 2011, swept 18,500 souls to their deaths in Japan than the Dalai Lama, in his home in northern India, expressed his determination to make a “pilgrimage” to offer what he could to the devastated area. Before the year was out, I was accompanying him to Ishinomaki, a fishing village almost entirely leveled by the disaster. I’d met him first as a teenager and had already been speaking regularly with him for 37 years, as well as published a book on his work and his vision.



The minute his car came to a halt amidst the debris, the Tibetan leader strode out and offered blessings to the hundreds lined up along the road, together with words of encouragement. He held heads against his heart, trying to soothe tears. Then, in a nearby temple that had somehow survived the cataclysm, he recalled his own sudden flight from Tibet in 1959. No life is without loss, he observed—but renewal is an hourly possibility.

 

[AliHajiSheik]

The Dalai Llama who asked a boy to suck his tongue. That Dalai Llama?

Llama? What's next, the Majestic Møøse?

 

[Allan]

no sooner had a tsunami, in March 2011, swept 18,500 souls to their deaths in Japan than the Dalai Lama, in his home in northern India, expressed his determination to make a “pilgrimage” to offer what he could to the devastated area. Before the year was out, I was accompanying him to Ishinomaki, a fishing village almost entirely leveled by the disaster. I’d met him first as a teenager and had already been speaking regularly with him for 37 years, as well as published a book on his work and his vision.



The minute his car came to a halt amidst the debris, the Tibetan leader strode out and offered blessings to the hundreds lined up along the road, together with words of encouragement. He held heads against his heart, trying to soothe tears. Then, in a nearby temple that had somehow survived the cataclysm, he recalled his own sudden flight from Tibet in 1959. No life is without loss, he observed—but renewal is an hourly possibility.

Nothing to say about him asking a boy to suck his tongue? That's ok with you?

 

[ataraxia]

Why the Dalai Lama Continues to be a Counselor to Us All

At 90, the Dalai Lama is still one of the world's most powerful spiritual leaders, writes Pico Iyer. Here’s why.

time.com

Regularly noting that “my religion is kindness” and frequently reiterating that if scientific findings contradict Buddhist teachings, science must trump Buddhism, he’s become the rare spiritual teacher who can speak across every border in our ever more divided world.
Here is a Buddhist leader who delivers talks on the Gospels to a group of Christians, tears misting his eyes as he describes some of Jesus’s parables. Here, too, is a champion of “secular ethics” who calls himself a “defender of Islam,” consults rabbis on how to sustain a culture in exile, and regularly refers to himself as a student of India, the predominantly Hindu country where he has lived for 66 years.

For Buddhists, he is a formidable scholar who draws on ancient texts to show that people’s interdependent destinies make environmental awareness and global consciousness a necessity. For Tibetans, he has become one of the three defining Dalai Lamas of their history. But for the rest of us, he’s been an open-hearted incarnation of conscience who puts his faith in “common sense, common experience, and scientific findings.” A natural democrat, he renounced all temporal power in 2011, though his people often wish he’d make all their decisions for them. He has also often stated that he may be the last Dalai Lama—though not the last spiritual leader of the Tibetans—since, on his death, Beijing will surely choose a boy who’s a Party member and present him as a successor.

It’s a curious paradox in his life that he has set up Tibetan monasteries and communities in India and across the world, even as Tibet itself is ever more eroded by foreign settlers and murderous policies. He has inspired confidence in many countries, even as his own people, in their suffering, are driven to self-immolation and calls for armed resistance.

The day after he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, in 1989, I barged in on him with questions on behalf of this very magazine. Though Tibetans across the globe were celebrating the victory, the Dalai Lama was, as ever, more measured and far-sighted. He really wondered if he’d done enough, he told me, but all he could do was give all of himself, day after day, in the knowledge that in the long run—as his peers and teachers, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King knew—the moral universe bends towards justice. Ninety years from now—and in centuries to come—he will be remembered as one of our first global spiritual leaders, and one of the most enduring.

Wait, you are BUDDHIST? You like the Dalai Lama supporting science over religion? Crying over oppressed and hurt people? And you support Trump, with all his calls of isolationism, vilifying poor people, calling countries struggling with poverty "$hithole" countries, instituting Muslim travel bans, all his shameless bald-faced lying about political opponents, telling us there's no telling what the "second amendment people" might do if he doesn't win elections, and then lying to instigate violent crowds against the government?

Do you ever experience any cognitive dissonance there?

 

[Rumpelstil]

happy birthday!