Thursday, October 18, 2007
Hello Dalai!
You're lookin' swell, Dalai. You're still glowin', you're still crowin', you're still going strong.
OK, killed that gag.
It was nice to see the Dalai Lama honoured with the Congressional Gold Medal. The guy works hard and, for all his faults, he is a really great ambassador for Buddhism to the western world.
"For all his faults?" Oops, did I say that out loud?
Yeah, I'm sure it won't surprise long-time readers to learn that I'm such a cantankerous bastard that I even have mixed feelings about the Dalai Lama. But he's winning me over, and his statements yesterday helped.
You see, I'm a bit suspicious of Tibetan Buddhism in general. Buddhism is supposed to be a practical, sensible religion that avoids mysticism, superstition, meaningless ritual and religious vanity of all sorts. Yet Tibetan Buddhism is all those things, in spades.
Let's translate the situation into something closer to home for Westerners. Imagine that the Catholic Pope was also the King of Italy. Next, imagine that he was no longer selected on his merits through election by the College of Cardinals. Instead, when a Pope died, the cardinals would sit around for years waiting for a sign from God to tell them who the next Pope/King would be. Imagine that a cardinal had a dream that the next Pope was a small boy living on a farm in southern Italy, so all the cardinals piled into a bus and drove around southern Italy looking for the right farm. Then, when they found him, they would take the kid from his home, force him to take the job, refuse to allow him any personal life and spend the next ten years brainwashing him with Catholic dogma.
What a freakshow that would be, eh?
And then there's all those titles. Cripes, those Tibetans love their titles. 'His eminence' this, 'His holiness' that, and everyone and his dog from Tibet seems to like to use the (often self-proclaimed) title Rinpoche, meaning "Precious one." Guys, didn't you get the memo about being humble and suppressing all expressions of personal ego?
Then there's the whole Free Tibet business. Although I'm totally in favour of bashing the Chinese government, it seems to me that nationalism and Buddhism shouldn't mix. Nationalism, after all, is attachment. Who cares who rules what piece of land? Who cares if some monk-king is sitting in his castle or not? What matters is that the people of Tibet live in a Buddhist way.
To his credit, this is what the Dalai Lama is now saying and it was the focus of his speech yesterday. He is now talking about Tibet as being a semi-autonomous part of China. He has shifted his focus to fighting for the religious and personal freedoms of everyone in China, and that is a good and important fight to take on.
And don't get me wrong. The Dalai Lama is a good guy, no doubt. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn't selected as the Pope of Buddhism. He was chosen to be the secular head of government for a little theocratic country. Yet he has willingly taken on the job of fostering the religion world-wide, and that deserves much praise.
Speaking of deserving praise, George Bush, idiot that he is, deserves credit for his public support of the Dalai Lama. It might be the one truly, purely good thing the guy has done. It saddens me to think that Richard Gere, all the Hollywood Democrats and all the young hippies wearing Free Tibet t-shirts will nonetheless try to find a hateful perspective to the whole event. Quel dommage.
posted by Mentok @ 12:24 p.m.,
6 Comments:
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At 8:33 a.m.,
said...
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the other day there was a headline/blurb on yahoo's front page about the dalai lama. i read it at a glance and thought it said "dalai lama brushes off children." i was aghast! how very unlike him, i thought. then i re-read it and what it actually said was "brushes off criticism." oops, never mind!
i think you're quite right that there needs to be a separation of buddhism and tibetan national interests. we've all seen how messy that can get.
but shouldn't we all get the title of "precious one"? in the sense that all of us are precious just because we're alive? i don't know all that much about buddhism, obviously, but i always thought they revered all life, hence the precious bit. -
At 10:40 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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mjrc - yes, indeed, we should all get the title "precious one". Some Buddhist poets have urged that we all view each other as "Buddhas-to-be".
But the monks and teachers who tend to use the title Rinpoche in my view are using it as a tool of pride, to boast about the high quality of their spiritual teaching, and that's not very Buddhist in my view. The quality of their teaching should speak for itself without puffery. -
At 10:44 a.m.,
Rick said...
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I agree that GW's implicit support of the DL by attending the ceremony the other day and by meeting with him at the private White Hacienda the day before is a good thing. BUT, did you hear what GW said about it at a recent press conference? He basically said he liked supporting Congress and medal winners. Like this was his hobby or something. He continues to amaze me.
And I couldn't help but think of the Looney Tunes dancing & singing frog while reading "Hello, Dalai". Thanks for that... -
At 11:49 a.m.,
Mentok said...
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wankel - you see, you're going out of your way to find a negative spin on the event.
"Implicit support"? I thought his expressions on the subject were much more explicit that we've seen from other world leaders. Clinton, Blair, former Cdn. Liberal PMs Chretien and Martin, all went through elaborate song and dance to avoid explicit public meetings or expressions of support.
The tendency to weasel on this topic knows no partisan boundaries. -
At 1:07 p.m.,
said...
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"the tendency to weasel" is a great phrase!
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At 11:54 a.m.,
cchang said...
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I'm sure someone has brought this up already, but I found it odd to award the Dali Llama with a physical gold metal. Just seems, I dunno, counter intuitive to me. I sit around imagining what he'd do with that metal. He definitely deserves it, that's for sure, but I think I would have given to a charitable cause in his honor or something.
Or, maybe I'm over simplifying things.far
