Word: buddhist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...become a good human being"). No believer in absolute truth-he eagerly seeks out Catholics, neuroscientists, even regular travelers to Tibet who can instruct him-he is also the rare Tibetan who will suggest that old Tibet may have contributed in part to its current predicament, the rare Buddhist to tell foreigners not to take up Buddhism but to study within their own traditions, where their roots are deepest...
...ScientistI have been visiting the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala regularly since 1974 and have been listening to him speak to psychologists, non-Buddhist priests and philosophers-from Harvard to Hiroshima and Zurich to Malibu-since 1979. I'm not a Buddhist myself, only a typically skeptical journalist whose father, a professional philosopher, happened to meet the Dalai Lama in 1960, the year after he went into exile. But having spent time watching wars and revolutions everywhere from Sri Lanka to Beirut, I've grown intrigued by the quietly revolutionary ideas that the Dalai Lama has put into play. China...
...Indeed, his very determination to speak for openness and a long-term vision has sometimes brought him critics on every side. Some conservative Tibetan clerics believe he has been too radical in jettisoning old Tibetan customs, while some Western Buddhists, graduates of the revolutions of the '60s, wish he did not speak out against divorce or sexual license. True to his Buddhist precepts, he has not called for Tibetan independence from China for more than 20 years; he seeks only autonomy, whereby China could control Tibetans' defense and foreign affairs so long as Tibetans have sovereignty over everything else...
...only to fulfill the work of the previous Dalai Lama; therefore, any young child selected by Chinese authorities and declared to be the 15th Dalai Lama, a Beijing puppet, will not be the true "Dalai Lama of Tibetan hearts." As practical and flexible as ever and holding to the Buddhist ideas of impermanence and nonattachment, he told me as far back as 1996, "At a certain stage, the Dalai Lama institution will disappear. But that does not mean that Tibetan Buddhist culture will cease. No!" Most Tibetans, however, cannot abide the thought of a future without their traditional leader...
...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 40 in New York City alone. In Taiwan, there are more than 200. More French people call themselves Buddhist than Protestant...