Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Some Reflections on the 81 Birthday of the Dalai Lama

Today is the eighty-first birthday of the fourteenth Dalai Lama, the pope-like figure to many of my fellow Buddhists. I have always admired his equanimity and compassionate demeanor while he has lost his country, home, loved ones, and everything while the Chinese station troops in his native Tibet, drain its resources, set up missiles, overwhelm with Chinese immigrants, and impose abortions and sterilizations on its women-in contrast to Westerners living relatively comfortab...le lives fighting each other on-line, and demanding safe spaces and trigger warnings whenever they are presented with views they disagree with when they are college students expected to take part in intellectual discourse, but judge based on a person's number of followers on social media. I think I will forever admire this man as a model to Buddhist practitioners everywhere long after he is gone from this earth, happy that, after that time, he will (according to Tibetan Buddhist belief) be reborn as the next Dalai Lama from a series of reincarnations going back to Tibetan Buddhist saint Chenrizig. Namaste.
Photo from United Nation's for a Free Tibet (UK)'s Facebook page
 

4 comments:

  1. to those who believe in the ways in modern times a budhist is a wise person and being genuine to others just becareful I know first hand they do riddels to solve problems but they do look above to the heavens and even down below in the vatican times some are hard to belive it at times if you are truly admire him just make sure it will be in the heavens especially to a role model

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  2. As do I.

    I like the koans. "If a tree is in the forest and no-one hears it, is it still a tree?".

    The current Dalai Lama is great.

    Liked your pause for comfortab...le.

    Lisa Morguess wrote a good post. And I liked Karen Wesley's post as well. I will tell you more about them soon.

    Kate Goldfield wrote about a man who collects bottles and was trying to go on the Falmouth [Maine] bus. I instantly thought of you and your enviroart, Ben.

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    1. Wow! Thank you, Adelaide. And I will definitely be interested in hearing more about these posts and the man in Maine.

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