I love this. The Philosodude is taking umbrage at the way the progressives like to call everything about John Paul the Great into question, while giving the Dalai Lama a pass on the same issues (abortion, celibacy, obedience).
This means no disrespect to the Dalai Lama – why would I disrespect him? I like him a lot! “I am just a monk,” he says – just as JPII would always say, “I am a priest, first.”
But I’ve said it before and will say it again, it’s a curious and amusing irony that the two men could say the same thing, and the press would ooh and aah over one guy and frown and sniff at the other.
Philosodude says it better than I can:
Well, the AP took a poll, and everybody pretty much agrees the Catholic Church better get with the program in electing their next pope.
[...]
Just a thought experiment for anti-Papists, “recovering” Catholics, progressive thinkers, and AP poll participants. I don’t think many people would presume to tell the Dalai Lama what to think and believe. And when he passes on, I don’t think even Bill Clinton will have the narcissistic temerity to compare himself to the Dalai Lama, and say he leaves a “mixed legacy.”
There is a movie I like called Keeping the Faith. It’s a cute little comedy about two boys one Jewish, one Catholic, who grow up to be a rabbi and a priest. At one point a girl they have grown up with asks the priest about his celibacy, really questions him, and after finally answering her to her satisfaction, he muses, “how come the Buddhists never have to answer this question?”
Indeed.
Great post and a good point that had not crossed my mind before. Does this mean Richard Greer is prolife now?
Thanks for reminding me about that movie also. I was trying to come up with the title the other day when talking to a friend.
Best wishes to you.
The Pope gets the increased critical attention, I suspect, by virtue of his one billion plus member church. The Dalai Lama is just a nice man who is without a country at the moment. The Pope, any Pope, gets plenty of attention, good or bad, because he matters, and has real power.
Then again, westerners are always going to find Buddhists exotic and charming.
The issue is simply one of self hatred and expectations.
The Pope, Christians, etc- well we LOOK alike. They are US. The Dalai Lama is NOT one of us, therefore he gets the pass. Same with Muslims, Hindus, etc.
Liberal ideology is all about a level playing field. The Pope, Church, etc are about higher standards- those to which liberals do not aspire, as they about effort, exertion and standrads that find greatness in worshipping something other than the self.
Muslim honor killings and FGM, for example, are all but ignored. Darfur is forgotten and liberlals are slowly shifting that blame towards us- as if we were comitting the rapes ourselves. The Muslims couldn’t be happier- and that is why they support liberal politics- the very politics they abhor- because they get a free pass. Or so they they want to believe.
Well Jay, I have no doubt that the Anchoress has always found me exotic and charming.
But a few remarks beyond that can be made. His Holiness is certainly a simple monk and a nice man. He posseses what we call “buddha nature” to exactly the same degree as you do or I do. However, he has realized and manifested it, while we have not, and that is the difference between us.
My own lamas tell me that if you think of someone as a buddha, you receive the blessings of a buddha and if you think of someone as a nice man, you receive the blessings of a nice man.
A little reflection on this teaching might make His Holiness’ real relation to the world, and to Buddhists, more intelligible. Regarding him as a Buddha is a means to an end.
Also, Anchoress, if you look closely at the key passage of the article:
‘Among too many Western practitioners, he finds, meditation is divorced from the morality it is meant to support. “The very purpose of meditation,” he insists, “is to discipline the mind and reduce afflictive emotions.”‘
you can see precisely why people with Christian backgrounds so persistently misunderstand Buddhism and Buddhists.
The Newsweek reporter gets the cart before the horse. Meditation is not there to support morality, morality is there to support meditation, because meditation leads to the realization of “buddha nature”. Morality is the means, not the end or the goal.
Western buddhists, particularly those with less experience, have as much difficulty comprehending this as Western non-buddhists. I certainly did.
But when you do finally see this, the discipline of Buddhist vows, from the 5 that lay practicioners can take, to the 200 or 300 odd that monks and nuns take (incuding celibacy)is perfectly understandable.
Those of us who have taken them, are urged to cultivate “skillful means” to develop the long-term capacity of others to undertake such moral discipline.
The generally positive reception people give him results from His Holiness’ skillful means, which other “pro-life” partisans could study with some profit.
For example, the openly asserted assumption, without evidence, that Richard Gere (or anyone else) has any view one way or another about “pro-life” issues, and is a Buddhist hypocrite in consequence, is exactly the sort of “unskillful means” that keeps pro-life arguments from receiving a fair hearing.
Since I was writing the last post while S,C,&A was posting, I’ll add to it that, speaking both as a Buddhist and a liberal, the blanket assertion that liberals to “effort, exertion, and standards” is not very skillful, either.
Nor is my proofreading! Please add “don’t aspire” to comment #5.
The Dalai Lama even got a pass when he called homosexual activity “sexual misconduct.”
When the CDF document from Joseph Card. Ratzinger signed by the Pope last year said “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered” and that same sex unions are “legalization of evil” there was a gigantic media outcry. Again when his book “Memory and Identity” was released there was another outcry when he wrote that same sex unions wer a “new ideology of evil.”
I don’t expect consistency from the MSM other then the consistently attacking the Church.
Joseph, when liberal ideology is manifested in schools buy well evidenced ‘dumbing down,’ when Churches are referred to as ‘racist’ when simply quoting from scripture, IN CHURCH (been to Canada lately?) and when public schools come under attack for discussing the Ten Commandments as forcing religion- well, you what? Find another definition of an aversion to higher standards and we can go from there.
“Liberal ideology” is, frankly, a straw man comforting to those who do not actually read liberal thinking and address it intellectually on its own, quite diverse, terms.
Some liberals are Christian, some liberals are Buddhist, some are Muslims, some have other religions, and some are secular. We come in quite a wide variety, and disagreements exclusively between us are not unknown.
Speaking personally, I have a very extensive blog detailing my actual views as opposed to any cut-and-paste “liberal ideology”, I have made the first five vows of lay Buddhist practice, and I do my own Buddhist practices daily. So I think I, at least, measure up to a reasonably high degree of effort, exertion, and standards in my own religion’s terms.
I suspect that if the Dalai Llama started speaking out forcefully against abortion, homosexual behavior, birth control, celibacy and the ilk then the media would come down on him as a “retrograde” “archaic” figure as well that no one agrees with. Since he mostly doesn’t talk about that he’s viewed as a benign figure. Also considering some of the ignorance about religion among the MSM, I doubt most of them know about what the Dalai Llama really believes.
Though it does bring up another question – I don’t see any female Imams, female Llamas, female Orthodox priests etc. but you never hear that they must “change” and allow women to be ordained. Only the RC Church.
Actually, the American lama of my Dharma Center is a woman. And the Buddhist monastic life in general appeals more to women than men in the West. There are more Western nuns than Western monks. Moreover, there is a slender, but strong and durable, tradition of realized women teachers among the Tibetans.
I would also point out that the ground behind the traditional Buddhist morality is karma, cause, and effect, rather than some inherent notion of “evil”. Bad actions lead absolutely to bad future consequences for the perpetrator, and His Holiness’ statements on the matter reflect this view.
As far as the MSM goes, I would point out that the article the Anchoress quotes, which has His Holiness’ views, was published in Newsweek.