Word: buddhism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...analytical talks and wrestles with doctrinal issues within a philosophy that can be just as divided as anything in Christianity or Islam, but he has decided after analytical research that when he finds himself out in the wider world talking to large audiences of people with no interest in Buddhism, the most practical course is just to offer, as a doctor would, simple, everyday principles that anyone, regardless of religion (or lack of same), might find helpful. Since material wealth cannot help us if we're heartbroken, he often says, and yet those who are strong within can survive even...
...This makes for a novel way of practicing the art of politics-one inspired, you could say, by the prince called the Buddha more than by the one described by Machiavelli. The central principle of Buddhism is the idea of interdependence-the notion that all sentient beings are linked together in a network that was classically known as Indra's Net. Thus, calling Chinese individuals your enemy and Tibetans your friend, the Dalai Lama might suggest, is as crazy as calling your right eye your ally and your left your adversary; you usually need both to function well...
...other essential idea of Buddhism (more accurately called a science of mind than a religion) is that we can change our world by changing how we choose to look at the world. "There is nothing either good or bad," as Hamlet said, "but thinking makes it so." For most of us, for example, exile means disruption and loss. But the Dalai Lama has decided that exile is his reality and therefore should be taken as opportunity. Almost as soon as he left Tibet in 1959, he started to draw up a new democratic constitution for Tibetans, allowing for the possibility...
...Buddha's job-and therefore that of his most prominent contemporary student-was not just to be clear-sighted and compassionate but also to show how compassionate and clear-sighted any one of us can be. In that regard, it hardly matters whether the terms Dalai Lama or Buddhism or even Tibet continue to exist. As it is, thanks to the exodus of Tibetans in the past half-century, Tibetan culture and Buddhism have become part of the global neighborhood. Whereas there were all of two Tibetan Buddhist centers in the West in 1968, there are now more than...
...Perhaps most significant, some of the people most eagerly drawn to Tibetan tradition and Buddhism are, in fact, citizens of China, who have been denied any religious sustenance for more than 50 years. The last time I visited Lhasa, in 2002, I saw more and more Chinese individuals going to the Jokhang Temple at the center of town as pilgrims, seeking out Tibetan lamas for instruction, even trying to learn Tibetan, the same language that is all but banned for Tibetans. When I traveled across Japan with the Dalai Lama last November, I saw dozens of Chinese people clustering around...