Four quotes frame my unbridled, aimless, and whimsical rambling of the day. One belongs to my good friend Ayla. She has many positive qualities; I would be remiss not to say that she is of generous heart, keen wit, and a muffin-thumping baker par excellence. I also cherish her insight deeply. Her appraisal of my visage post-moustache was most appreciated. But more to the point, she asked a very thoughtful question of me the other day.
Quote 1: “Why does anyone care?”
The answer?
Quote 2: “The Jedi are extinct, their fire has gone out of the universe. You, my friend, are all that's left of their religion.”
As quotable lines out of the Star Wars movie hexalogy go, that was not the most memorable pick of the litter. But “No, I am your father!” and “Let the wookiee win,” and “I got a bad feeling about this,” would have made for inappropriate responses given that the subject matter was one Tenzin Gyatso, formerly of Tibet, the highest tulku of the Gelugpa School. You know him better as the fourteenth Dalai Lama. He visited our school on October 10th, 2012.
Now, there are all sorts of wonderful reasons to care about the presence of the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning former-leader-in-exile of a subjugated nation, who is recognized by a few million people as the reincarnation-of-the-deity-and-buddha (these are two separate statuses) of compassion. In fact, I think I just listed a few of them. But to me, while these qualities are integral to my interest, they are not the whole of it. What I possess is a morbid curiosity. To me, Tenzin Gyatso represents the death of religion.
His somewhat meandering, but always insightful speech was pleasant to say the least; he had multiple standing ovations, one lasting well over a minute. His words also hinted at another story behind the obvious. In both the speech and the brief question-and-answer session afterwards, the Dalai Lama did not espouse particularly Buddhist principles. And to the Star Wars geek undergrads behind me, he wasn’t talking like a Jedi, no matter how much he talked about anger and fear, or sounded like Yoda when he laughed. (I loved his laugh - completely - it was full of life.) Tenzin Gyatso was talking like a ... secular humanist.
He spoke of human compassion - and he spoke of how it gave the compassionate person a healthier life. A healthier life that did not involve escaping the cycle of rebirth, or the eightfold path; no, he talked about biology. When the question was posed to the Dalai Lama as to how he thought that non-Buddhists could apply Buddhist teachings, he explicitly rejected the entire notion of the question. “Respect your original religion,” he urged. “That is none of your business. It is Buddhist business.” In the matter of belief, he emphasized that he encouraged his own followers to question and analyze his teachings. He did not want anyone taking what he said on faith.
This is not news to anyone who’s been watching His Holiness for the last few years, or indeed, for most of his life. While even the Vatican has long acknowledged evolution, the 14th Dalai Lama’s unusual respect for science is a constant element in his biographies. And he already made a splash last month with his Facebook status, where he proclaimed, “...the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.” That itself was a sequel to his book from a little while back, which had the twin bombshells, "While we can live without tea, we can't live without water. Likewise, we are born free of religion, but we are not born free of the need for compassion," and “When it comes to obtaining certain, direct results, it is clear that prayer cannot match the achievements of, for instance, modern science.”
Setting aside the issue of whether or not they are true, I can think of no religion that is really compatible with every other religion. Gods and other supernatural elements found their way into Buddhism a long time ago. Half the major religions, based off of the Abrahamic tradition, believe in the end of creation and an eschatological heavenly afterlife for the good; the other half, born out of India, believe in unending creation, with individuals seeking to remove themselves from that cycle. They can never see eye-for-an-eye when standing in their full stature. Their proclamations of ultimate truths must be bounded by points on which they can all agree. These boundaries protect smaller faiths, via the separation of church and state; but at the same time, these boundaries restrict the growth of all faiths. And in the end, anything that isn’t growing is dying.
The Dalai Lama, I think, realizes that truth. The Dalai Lama is the ultimate separation of a church from its state. Beloved by the nations of the world, yet bereft of his own nation, the Dalai Lama does not get the protection of a bubble. He must see the world for what it is, and what he beholds is the end.
He has formally removed the office of the Dalai Lama from any political power, and moved the exiled government to democracy. You might think that strange, given the belief that the 15th Dalai Lama would just be Tenzin Gyatso in a new form. Surely he’d lead it just as effectively as he did before? But what happens if his next reincarnation is a wrathful bodhisattva? The conceit - unique to Tibetan Buddhism - allows for their lamas to engage in vice and corruption, because evil is part of the same void from which good is drawn. An interesting idea, but do you think the Tibetans-in-exile would enjoy the same support from the international community if their next representative was a violent, power-mad drunkard? Probably not.
Previously, the Dalai Lama has proclaimed that he might not reincarnate at all - or if he does, he may not do so within Chinese-controlled Tibet. Combine this with his exhortations that those who follow him do so with analysis rather than faith, and it becomes quite plausible that he is motivated out of concern for the controlling power of misused religion. These are not the actions of a man who believes that his faith, or even his movement, will last.
The uncertain future of the Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism is shared by other religions. More Americans than ever before profess a much weaker role for religion in their daily lives, and in our age group, there is a dramatic upward shift in the number of atheists and agnostics. The American Evangelical movement has reacted turbulently to this news, flailing desperately in an attempt to regain power. They realize that America’s long-standing de facto rule by Christians - which was never supported de jure - is in critical danger.
Quote 3: “Mene, Mene, Tekel, u-Parsin.”
I am not saying that we shall witness the ultimate end of religions. I don’t think that anyone will in any lifetime. While we are witnessing a slow starvation of faith, death - as religion, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Gandalf the White have all been quick to remind us - is often not the end of a thing, but the beginning of the thing’s new form. After Nebuchadnezzar's kingdom fell, the land remained, and new kingdoms formed, bearing the same lands and people in new configurations.
Quote 4, “I am a Jedi, like my father before me,” certainly did put the lie to Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin.
Tenzin Gyatso’s current form is now 77-years-old. When that form passes, a lot of very interesting things are going to happen.
