No one in this article is saying that the Tibetan struggle is wrong, what is being said is that the DL has had some very hypocritical positions over the years. Somehow, that drives people crazy, as if their great leader was insulted.

The Dalai Lama is a human being and a politician just like any other, he shouldn’t be put on a pedestal, that’s all this article is saying yet people are throwing some serious temper tantrums.

I spent time with the Tibetan community in India and never have I seen a man who has done so much for people from such a young age. He has been a political and spiritual leader for people who have suffered the worst forms of abuse.

Coming from a buddhist perspective, his words are always measured to say the least. He is a world leader so there should be no fault in his associating with unscrupulous leaders, especially if he does it to further the plight of his people.

Shame this is the first article I have read on Pulse.

In researching DL’s statements on Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., found different writers/publications emphasised or interpreted the same quote to support whatever POV they ascribed to. There was scant impartial or rigorous analysis from Left, Right, Buddhist, Christian, etc.

Have attempted to convey only that we all need to acknowledge and examine our own particular slant when analysing, and before commenting on others’ world view.

Think we also need to acknowledge that two, very different cultural perspectives are interacting, and a mutual basis of understanding is not a given.

A hopefully simple example : in the West we say,”ignorance is bliss,” while Buddhist tradition states “Ignorance is suffering.” These two contradictory statements are actually somewhat similar, yet the former is an observation about a specific dynamic or event, the latter is a core cultural value. What Eastern peoples hear in the brief phrase rests on millennia of certain philosophies, a ground we, in and of the West, do not share.

There is a well-known Buddhist parable, (also Hindu, Jain and Sufi Islamic) ; this is wiki’s version:

‘ “The Buddha… tells the story of a king who had six blind men gathered together to examine an elephant.

“When the blind men had each felt a part of the elephant, the king went to each of them and said to each: ‘Well, blind men, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant

The six blind men assert the elephant is either like a pot (the blind man who felt the elephants’ head), wicker basket (ear), ploughshare (tusk), plough (trunk), granary (body), pillar (foot), mortar (back), pestle (tail) or brush (tip of the tail).

The men cannot agree with one another and come to blows over the question of what an elephant really is like…

The Buddha ends the story… and compares the six blind men to preachers and scholars who are blind and ignorant and hold to their own views: “Just so are these preachers and scholars holding various views blind and unseeing…. In their ignorance they are by nature quarrelsome, wrangling, and disputatious, each maintaining reality is thus and thus.” ‘

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant

This is despite the fact that many around the world were quite positive about the simple fact that these wars were in fact illegal and propped up on false charges.

In any case its not that people have a serious issue with the Dalai Lama as a person, but rather with how he is used by many in the West to make it seem as though violent resistance to horrible injustices is somehow immoral.

But the attacks ad feminam? How quickly you arrive at that well-known position of last resort.

As earlier written, the reference to chamomile tea was a reiteration of another commentator’s suggestion; I prefer oolong.

And as I am neither a US citizen nor resident… a reasonable, if OBVIOUS conclusion given an earlier mention of involvement in a single American presidential campaign… you may understand why I was startled to read of my “…government’s $3 billion plus annual subsidy” to Israel. Perhaps you can understand why protest against that is neither “practical” use of my time, nor terribly high on the agenda.

It seems we can conclude the following; your assumptions about who you’re communicating with are inaccurate, and you’re dead wrong in stating image equates reality. Maybe worth asking what other aspects of of your analysis is flawed?

No need to respond, unless you really do need to be yet another guy intent on having the last word.