"December 8, 1999. The Dalai Lama says that religious leaders should stop relying on prayer and meditation to bring about world peace. They should do something instead. "Change," he says, "only takes place through action, not through meditation and prayer." I wonder how they took the news in Damascus, where President Hafez al-Assad has all of Muslim Syria praying for rain even though he knows words are not enough for some things.
The Dalai Lama also says that the new millennium is "nothing special."
His remarks were made before some 7,000 delegates from 70 countries at the Parliament of the World's Religions held in Capetown, South Africa. "We need to ask, 'How can I make a contribution (to world peace)?', not 'How can I further my own religion?'" he said.
While on a tour promoting his new book in the U.S. recently, he was asked what Buddhists would do if science discovered that something they'd been teaching were proved false. He said that if the scientists were right, the Buddhists would change their teaching."
The Dalai Lama, or rather this Dalai Lama, most certainly earn my respect.
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The Dalai Lama's statement follows quite directly from the Buddhist scriptures.
ReplyDeleteBuddha himself said that his scriptures should not automatically be taken to be true. Buddha said that everyone who reads the scriptures should test the truth of the scriptures against their own personal experience.
As I had previously mentioned in one of my comments on your blog, doubt is good. Blind faith is silly. Faith that has gone through the testing process of active doubt is true faith.
Yeah, hopefully theists would remember that they were once curious too when they were young.
ReplyDeleteAnd i think people who hadn't been in their religion all their life, should realise that it is curiosity (curiosity can generate doubt) that led them to their religion in the first place.
I have several books about the Dalai Lama (I also have many books about other religions). Anyway, thought you might be interested in the following things which the DL said. These are taken from the writer's interviews with DL.
ReplyDelete"Buddha made it clear that his disciples should not accept his words out of respect or faith. Rather they should carry out experiments and investigations about his words and teachings. He believed that if you are convinced through your own experience and your own experiments, and if you find truth there, then you should accept the teachings. This is the scientific approach and it is also the Buddhist approach."
Elsewhere in the same interview, DL refers to his meetings with scientists in the fields of psychology, cosmology, neurobiology and quantum physics. It's too much to type, so I'll do just a little:
"The Buddhist meaning of shunyata is absence of the independent existence of the objective world. The thing does exist but not by itself, as its existence is due to other factors. When scientists were explaining the quantum theory, they were reluctant to use the word reality. For many, reality means some independent reality of nature, but of course there is no such thing. Everything is dependent on other factors. Here we see a similarity between scientific findings and the Buddhist approach as also in the theory of impermanence or momentary change. On the atomic and subatomic levels, things are always changing ... Scientists show more and more interest in the Buddhist explanation of matter, atoms, reincarnation and other like phenomea. We derive benefit from their research and findings and the Buddhist explanation gives them a different perspective through which to investigate. That is my experience."