Yes and No to the Dalai Lama
“Don’t go there!” A burst of laughter usually accompanies this playful outburst of warning against engaging a hot conversational topic. The warning popped into my mind, and I smiled, when I read this week’s “On Faith” question:
“The Dalai Lama says ‘All major religious traditions carry basically the same message: That is love, compassion and forgiveness.’ Do you agree?”
Why the warning? Why is it dangerous to deal at all critically with the Dalai Lama’s saying, self, and society (Tibetan monastic Buddhism)? Well, in plain language, because he’s such a nice guy. Harmless, in a world in which religion since 9/11 is increasingly viewed as dangerous. Breezily jocular and smiling in a worried world. Exotically free in a world trammeled by ever more complex and seemingly irresolvable perplexities. A persistent world-stage witness to gentleness in this ungentle world. A Nobel Peace laureate now granted the U.S. Congress’ highest civilian honor. A religious eminence addressed by his followers as “Your Holiness.” A monk with monasticism’s common characteristics whatever the religion of his monastery.
All this adds up to a wraparound untouchability that is itself problematic. Such a sentimental-romantic picture is seductive, and needs the corrective of some realistic observations addressed to this Buddhist missionary to the West. But the multicultural dogma of the equality of religions is so pervasive in America that (as a standard text on the world’s religions concludes) to criticize another’s religion “is declared to show prejudice and the inferiority of the protester’s religion.”
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