For decades, Tenzin Gyatso, 76, the 14th Dalai Lama – a lineage believed by followers to be the reincarnation of an ancient Buddhist leader who epitomized compassion ”“ has vigorously focused on the connections between the investigative traditions of science and Buddhism as a way to better understand and advance what both disciplines might offer the world.
Specifically, he encourages serious scientific investigative reviews of the power of compassion and its broad potential to address the world’s fundamental problems – a theme at the core of his teachings and a cornerstone of his immense popularity.
I had tea with him in 1977 and ever since have found this very great man fascinating. How unfortunate that Christianity has no great leaders who measure up to him.
What’s interesting is that the Dalai Lama’s teachings on sexuality are quite similar to Christianity’s but Buddhism gets the “cool and tolerant” moniker and Christianity is labeled medieval and intolerant. Perhaps a lot of it is about the messengers, not the message. Buddhism doesn’t have a fringe element that is mean-spirited and “in-your-face.”
Gunga lagunga!
It has been my experience, at the age of 60, that the attraction Buddhism has been having for many Westerners raised as either Christians or Jews is its emphasis – especially as expounded by the current Dalai Lama – on compassion/love as a general practice of living or way of doing, rather than the Western tendencies to emphasize systems of theology/ethics one should agree with or lists of creedal affirmations one should believe.