[Buddha-l] modern buddhist teachers

[Dan Lusthaus]

Richard Hayes wrote:

> I have heard the Dalai Lama say that if the Tibetan people ever again
> have their own government somewhere, it will be a democratically
> elected government with a constitution that provides for a guarantee
> that some seats in the parliament be reserved for women. On that same
> occasion I also heard him say that the institution of the dalai lama
> is a thing of the past and that it makes no sense for a dalai (or any
> other) lama to be a political head of state. He also said that the
> study of abhidharma is likely to keep Tibetans in the dark ages and
> that a knowledge of classical Indian Buddhist philosophy is far less
> likely to help people than a knowledge of modern science. He also says
> he thinks it is far more important for Tibetans to learn English than
> to learn classical Tibetan. All this may have been said to please all
> the aging hippies in his Canadian audience, but it certainly sounded
> as if he actually meant it.

And then:

>People who know the Dalai Lama fairly well
> report that they are convinced he means these things.

I humbly suggest that the sentence immediately above be changed to past
tense: "... he meant those things." Richard is showing us he has a wonderful
memory, since it has been decades since HHDL said most of those things, and
he has backtracked or softened his position on all those, starting with the
notion that Dalai lamas are obsolete, a soon-to-be-extinct species. He no
longer says he will be the last, and for obvious, politico-sociological
reasons. Similarly, his modernized notions of a democratic Tibetan govt.
when and if Tibetans regain their country is the sort of modernist updating
that will likely be obsolete by the time it has a chance to be
implemented -- if ever.

As for the idea that "people" [an abstract samanya] are more important than
"countries" [another abstract samanya], sounds good until one realizes that
"people" must live somewhere, and that somewhere is always a "country."
Nations foster and suppress certain cultural strivings; without a Tibetan
country there will eventually be no more Tibetan people, except as an even
more abstract and vague samanya.

HHDL has valiantly tried to navigate a middle way between violent advocacy
of an independent Tibet and full capitulation to PRC control. Let history,
rather than this list, decide how successful, well considered, or misguided
his efforts have been.

Dan Lusthaus

P.S. As for Richard's list of dire concerns more pressing than Michael
Jackson, with Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan on the list, does this mean
that Richard now subscribes to the Bush notion of an axis of evil (if not
the prajnapti, at least the reality)?