Duncan Campbell, host of Living Dialogues, and Robert Thurman engage in a stimulating and informative dialogue on ‘Why The Dalai Lama Matters’ to all of us. Each of them weave together many different perspectives: spiritual, historical, cultural, political and ecological, from both East and West, pertinent to the current world-affecting drama that China is engaged in with the Tibetan people and environmental destruction imitative of our own Western history.

The Dalai Lama is seen as an inspirational model, with a profound and pragmatic understanding of the nature of the planet, the hopes and conflicts of humanity, the crises we are all in, and as a great practitioner of the “art of dialogue” required for our planetary evolution. The dialogue includes references from past Olympics and a point by point summary of Robert’s five-part plan for the political and ecological reconciliation of China and Tibet.

Visit Living Dialogues to listen to the full audio of this dialogue.

In the New York Times article entitled An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama (August 6, 2008), Nicholas Kristof states, “One signal is this: For the first time, the Dalai Lama is willing to state that he can accept the socialist system in Tibet under Communist Party rule. This is something that Beijing has always demanded, and, after long discussion, the Dalai Lama has agreed to do so.” He quotes the Dalai Lama, “The main thing is to preserve our culture, to preserve the character of Tibet,” the Dalai Lama told me. “That is what is most important, not politics.”

This report is highly distorted. I am shocked by the sloppy and confused nature of the reporting and the interpretation from a journalist whose work I often admire. As some have observed, when China is involved, good people become unaware of the influence of the “anaconda in the chandelier.”

In response, Mr. Jin Canrong (China Daily (People’s Republic of China) August 21, 2008) in an article entitled “An Illusive Olive Branch from the Dalai Lama,” blasted the article from China’s side anyway. The state propaganda publication professed outrage that the Dalai Lama was “trying to negotiate through a journalist.” I am certainly disappointed by Mr. Kristof’s “illusive” article, and would like to clarify the underlying confusions.

First, the Chinese invaded Tibet in stages, 1949-1951, dividing it as they went into 12 parts, one Tibet Autonomous Region (which they now call “Tibet,” in the telling phrase “China’s Tibet”), and eleven “Tibet Autonomous Prefectures,” which they annexed during the 50’s and incorporated in other Chinese provinces. Actual Tibet (which the Dalai Lama calls “Tibet” as do all historical scholars) is defined by the 13,500 foot altitude line, which includes all six million Tibetans, living on the roof of the world. The Chinese annexed the Tibet Autonomous Region when the Dalai Lama fled in 1959, during an uprising occasioned by the Chinese intention to take him forcibly to Beijing and the Tibetan people’s fear of harm being done to him. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has totally controlled all Tibetans: the two thirds who live in the “Prefectures” and the one third who lives in the “Region.” It has destroyed over a million Tibetan lives, over six thousand Buddhist monasteries, taken billions of dollars of trees, desertified 35% of the high altitude grassland, raised the temperature of the glaciers several times faster than global warming has done and so damaged the headwaters of all of Asia’s major rivers, oppressed the Tibetan people by a highly armed military occupation and intensive colonization, and viciously attacked the Tibetan Buddhist language and culture to the point of committing cultural genocide. This is why the Tibetan people stood up in protest in March. In turn, this gave the CCP the excuse to intensify their brutal suppression, which persists and has now increased in Tibet. The CCP also persistently insults the Dalai Lama personally with extremist, cultural-revolution-style rhetoric.

In the midst of this deplorable situation, the Dalai Lama consistently calls for dialogue and reconciliation with the CCP. For over twenty years he has offered his “Middle Way Approach.” This plan insists on a nonviolent solution that gives the Tibetan people freedom under the genuine autonomy promised to ethnic minorities in the Chinese constitution. It gives the Chinese government legitimate sovereignty over the entirety of Tibet, something more secure than the de facto sovereignty they currently maintain through military occupation.

In light of the present situation, let us look again at Mr. Kristof’s interview with the Dalai Lama.

“For the first time, the Dalai Lama is willing to state that he can accept the socialist system in Tibet under Communist Party rule.” This statement is factually erroneous. The Communist Party has ruled for just short of 60 years. The Dalai Lama cannot accept their aim for cultural genocide, if not actual genocide. Through his “Middle Way Approach,” he could persuade his people to accept genuine autonomy under Chinese rule, rather than seek independence. The Dalai Lama is accepting that ultimate authority would rest with the government of China, the current Chinese Communist Party. His acceptance of “Communist Party Rule” is nothing new.

“This is something that Beijing has always demanded, and, after long discussion, the Dalai Lama has agreed to do so.” Beijing has not demanded any such acceptance of the Dalai Lama. The misleading implication here is that the Dalai Lama’s statement makes any difference to the CCP leadership. They have repeatedly stated that they do not recognize the Dalai Lama as representative of Tibet or the Tibetan people. They are not negotiating the future of Tibet with him. They have no problem about Tibet. They only want to discuss the Dalai Lama’s own personal future – Will be he repentant for all his crimes of separatism against the Motherland? Will he admit that Tibet has always and forever been an inalienable part of China? Will he stop “inciting” the Tibetans, so “happy” under Chinese rule, who protest Chinese occupation and resist “patriotic re-education?”

I would like to have the transcript of the “long discussion” Kristof mentions. He must have pressed the Dalai Lama very hard for the Dalai Lama to give up his reasonable position that Tibetans will not be happy until they are ruled locally by themselves and not by communist party bosses stationed in Tibet. Under the “one country two systems” in Hong Kong, local government is conducted by Hong Kong’s own people, in a partially democratic manner. However, all their decisions are controlled by Beijing, so they are ultimately under “Communist Party Rule.” Even with a democratic local government in Tibet, Tibet would be under ultimate “Communist Party rule.” The Dalai Lama has accepted this as realistic for over twenty years. Immediate communist party rule is too destructive to Tibetan culture, as proven by sixty years of experience. What Kristof is trumpeting as a “major new concession” is probably only that finally, the Dalai Lama agreed under pressure, to “consider” such a possibility. After all, the Dalai Lama has long called for dialogue without preconditions, so anything can be “considered.”

The Dalai Lama has always said that he personally cannot decide the fate of Tibet, anyway. Anything negotiated between his Government in Exile representatives and the Chinese, would have to be approved in a plebiscite by the Tibetan people themselves. So Kristof’s proclamation of a breakthrough is confused.

Finally, if Jin Carong responds to Kristof’s article by saying, “Talking through an American journalist’s mouth reduces the creditability of his message, and makes people wonder if the Dalai really desired to solve the problems or is it another PR smoking campaign on behalf of the West,” Kristof has only succeeded in continuing the Communist party’s fervor in maligning the Dalai Lama even when they say they are open to dialogue with him.

Listen to the Phillips report (MP3)

As the author or translator of 18 books on Buddhism and as co-founder of Tibet House in New York, Robert Thurman has helped bring Tibetan wisdom and philosophy solidly into the American cultural mainstream. VOA’s Adam Phillips profiles the Tibetan scholar from New York.

Even as a boy, Robert Thurman had a strong philosophical bent. Born in New York City in 1941, he says he was equally dissatisfied with traditional religion and Western philosophy, which he found too dry for his highly emotional nature. But when Thurman discovered Buddhist philosophy as a teenager, he felt it offered a middle path between bloodless secularism and blind faith.

“While Buddhism has a religious aspect, its central drive is towards wisdom… and that really inspired me, that reason and emotion could be brought together [and] harmonized,” says Thurman. He adds that Buddhism is an ancient academic and philosophical discipline that embraces many sciences “but the key science is psychology. Because the key to the good life is how your mind is regulated.”

Attends Harvard
Thurman went on to study at Harvard University, where he says his knowledge of Buddhism remained mostly theoretical, while he lived the life of a carefree undergraduate. But that changed shortly after he turned 20, and lost his left eye in an accident. “And that was like a visceral experience of impermanence – and woke me up [to the fact] that I have to live what my ideals are.”

In 1961, during his senior year at Harvard, Thurman took what he jokingly referred to as an “infinite leave of absence,” and traveled to India for a year, to deepen his scholarship and meditation practice. After returning to the U.S., he learned to speak Tibetan fluently, and to read and translate classic Buddhist texts.

“It was like meeting a superior civilization, a civilization that did not believe that human nature was inherently violent,” he says.

“[It seemed to me that Americans] were like far away barbarians with our tanks and our aircraft carriers and our nuclear weapons.”

Befriends Dalai Lama
Back in India in 1964, Thurman befriended the young Dalai Lama, who ordained him the next year as a monk in the Tibetan tradition; it was the first time any American had been so honored. But finding himself unsuited to the monastic life, he renounced his vows two years later.

Thurman returned once more to the U.S., married, and went back to Harvard. In 1972, he was awarded a PhD in philosophy, based on his dissertation on the esoteric Buddhist doctrine of “sunyata,” or emptiness.

The decade of the 70s was a fertile era in America’s spiritual life, when meditation and other Eastern spiritual practices were beginning to enter the cultural mainstream. But Thurman detected an anti-intellectual strain among American Buddhists, who felt that meditation meant merely “unlearning.”

Thurman opines that from the Indo-Tibetan perspective, that is a serious mistake. “The ‘unlearning’ involves using your critical intellect. You need to debate and develop a way of being deeply critical about your own dogmatic ideas. So you haveto learn!”

Teaching others about Buddhism
Thurman has devoted his life to helping others learn about Tibetan Buddhism, both as a professor at Columbia University, and as an author and translator of nearly 20 books, including national bestsellers such as Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Real Happiness.Other works have made previously arcane Buddhist subjects, such as the philosophy of conscious dying and sacred Tibetan architecture, accessible to mainstream Americans.

In 1987, with his friends the Dalai Lama and actor Richard Gere, Thurman co-founded Tibet House in New York, a non-profit group dedicated to presenting the spiritual and cultural riches of Tibet to the world.

But Thurman says he does not wish to “convert” anyone to Buddhism. In this, he says he is following the Dalai Lama’s example. “He really has been a leader in… telling Christians and everyone else ‘praise the glories of your religions to the skies’ and say ‘it’s best for you,’ but don’t try to impose it on others.’ That’s the best way in the pluralistic world!”

At nearly 70, Robert Thurman refuses to slow down. His projects include the continuing translation of a massive collection of Buddhist scientific texts, the creation of a center for Tibetan medicine, and the promotion of his current book Why the Dalai Lama Matters, which explains the Dalai Lama’s proposal for peace between Tibetans and the Chinese.

I am excited to begin my HuffPost blogging in the wake of Mother’s Day, and a few days after hosting H. H. the Dalai Lama in New York. His Holiness, in radiant health and spirits, powerfully manifested his unwavering message of “world peace through inner peace.” To all of us enrapt as ever, he taught us the quintessence of compassion. The next day he attended a packed benefit luncheon for Tibet House, US at the famous “power lunch” restaurant, The Four Seasons. (Alex von Bidder welcomed the guests to what he called “the ultimate power lunch,” which I annotated by reminding everyone that the ultimate “power” is that of compassion.) His Holiness spoke from the heart and eloquently appealed to the hearts of all present to save the extremely precious and highly endangered Buddhist culture of beloved Tibet. We all left fully aglow, and inspired to do something for Tibet and for the world.

In these times, the doubt often arises as to whether the world is going to make it – at least the stressed out human beings. While there are so many wise and kind and beautiful people everywhere, it seems as if most of the leaders in actual power are charging ahead in flamboyantly self-destructive paths. Exceptional, of course, is the wonderful Barack Obama and perhaps the glorious Angela Merkel. And interestingly, both seem to like the Dalai Lama! Hmmmm. There must be some others at the top of the various heaps of humanity we call nations, but definitely not enough to really turn the Spaceship Earth onto the radically new course it needs to pass the unthinkable crisis we are facing.

Spaceship Earth is overheating, its seas are rising. It is overpopulated; its resources are dwindling. Its earth and water and air is poisoned. Its wild animals are perishing at an alarming rate, and its domesticated animals are being tormented and turned into toxic foodstuffs. And the humans, who are causing all this, are mainly in denial about their own responsibility, blaming various enemies instead, and so the majority of their machinery, money, and ingenuity is wasted in warfare and preparation for more, and for local, domestic, and internal violence.

So naturally we fear the end is nigh. People ask me all the time, “Can we make it? Do you think it’s possible?” I feel the same way emotionally, but intellectually I am certain we will make it and the human drama on this planet will continue for many millennia, getting better and better.

Why? Because of Mother’s Day, because the real Day of the Mothers is coming. Listen to Julia Ward Howe, a Mother who was a staunch activist against slavery and a pioneer of feminism. She came up with the vision of the international Mother’s Day, and wrote the original Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Just listen!

“Arise then…women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
“We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
“From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace…
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.”

(Thanks to Jonathan Klate for sending this text of the proclamation.)

Now where is this great “general congress of women?” It is to be “without limit of nationality,” that is to say: global. Such a congress of women must arise and demand an end to war, an end to men’s stubborn “staying the course” in inane campaigns of violence. Julia Ward Howe already outlined their mission, 139 years ago. How bad does it have to get for them to stand up and accomplish it?

Twelve years ago, the Dalai Lama was at a Tibet House US “Peacemaking” conference in San Francisco, and was encouraging the 1500 or so “youth at risk” present that we needed them to turn the world around, their energy was crucial. The youth were inspired and the thousands in the audience felt a wave of hope ripple through. At that moment, the notable author and psychotherapist, Jean Shinoda Bolen piped up from the panel on stage, “Your Holiness, there is another crucial source of energy we may also find of great assistance.” “What might that be?” was the response. The smiling answer, “Menopausal zest!” brought the house thunderously down, and His Holiness was enormously impressed. Well, then, Mothers of the World, it is high time!

When the students and workers at Tiananmen Square held off the communist party bosses for months in 1989, it was because the troops sent in refused to run over the grandmothers out in the square protecting their grandchildren. When Yeltsin had to withdraw in the first Chechen war, it was because the grandmothers en masse went down to the front and took their grandsons out of the line. The grandmother house of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy held veto power over the decisions of the chiefs of the tribes. When the Mother’s really recognize that they better leave what’s “left of home,” their power is undeniable. It is daunting. It is dangerous. But there must come a point where it is more dangerous not to arise and demand peace, demanding it peacefully. May the day soon be upon us! May all men stand together with the Mothers! Now is the time for all women to come to the aid of the planet!

Robert Thurman is the author of Inner Revolution, Infinite Life, Jewel Tree of Tibet, and Why the Dalai Lama Matters.

Robert Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University, said that while the Dalai Lama had managed to perform both a political and religious role, it was his belief that the Tibetan people would benefit from more secular education and taking more personal responsibility. “He thinks that democracy is the best way for this. He has dealt with Chinese autocracy for more than 60 years and he has seen what that has done,” he said. Full article.

Does the Dalai Lama manage his presence in the media or is he simply a “simple Buddhist monk and reincarnation of a bodhisattva?

See Robert A. F. Thurman, Professor, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Columbia University, and President, Tibet House US, answer these questions in a discussion on Religion, Media and Culture: The Dalai Lama held May 5, 2009 at the Paley Center on Media with Laurie Goodstein, National Religion Correspondent, The New York Times and Steven Waldman, President and Editor-in-Chief, Beliefnet, moderated by Ibrahim Abdil-Mu’id Ramey, Director of Human Rights Division, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. This program is presented in conjunction with the The Temple of Understanding, a New York–based organization dedicated to promoting cross cultural and inter-religious tolerance and understanding.

Listen to audio of conversation on Science, Ethics and Religion with Bob Thurman and Danny Hillis.

Preeminent figures in the fields of religion and technology Dr. Robert Thurman and Dr. Danny Hillis engage in a thought-provoking conversation on scientific progress and its impact on society. Robert Thurman has cultivated a worldwide awareness of Tibet through his academic and popular writing, translation of important Buddhist texts, and commitment to finding a peaceful resolution to the China-Tibet conflict. Danny Hillis is a respected figure in the technology community. He is an inventor, scientist, author, and engineer. He holds more than eighty U.S. patents and is the designer of the 10,000-year mechanical clock. This program was presented in commemoration of the bicentennial, in February 2009, of Charles Darwin.

Great writeup on the event by attendee Ali Binazir.

The Sputnik Observatory for the Study of Contemporary Culture operates on the philosophy is that ideas are NOT selfish, ideas are NOT viruses. Ideas survive because they fit in with the rest of life. Ideas are energy, and should interconnect and re-connect continuously because by linking ideas together we learn, and new ideas emerge.

Check out short videos of Bob talking about identity habit, embeddedness, inner heart resonance, transmitting intelligence, and spiritual genes, and explore how they are interconnected with other themes and ideas.

1. It is not true that the world always has to be a mess and vale of misery. It can be beautiful and meaningful, and the human life form is a wonderful opportunity to reach the highest fulfillment imaginable.
2. The Buddha’s Noble Truth of Suffering means that life dominated by misknowledge will always be unsatisfactory, but that is not a final destination; it means that we can develop wisdom to eliminate misknowledge and then live free in bliss and share that bliss with others.
3. War and violence are not at all inevitable. When leaders and their people recognize this precious nature of human life in particular and all sentient life in general, they can definitely improve the nature of a society, can live sensibly and in harmony with nature and with one another. Being civilized means being wise, gentle, loving, and happy, and a society that enshrines those qualities is truly a civilization. There are definite examples of societies that have successfully cultivated a higher degree of gentleness, such as those of ancient India, Tibet, Mongolia, and China in certain flourishing periods.
4. The time we now live in is a unique moment when, due to science, technology, and the teachings of all the great religions, human beings could awaken to their true potential in larger numbers than ever before, and we really could realize the ancient dream of peace on earth, goodwill to all beings (not only humans).
5. Tibet is a special land, the highest “roof of the world”, and it is a shining example of what spiritual heights some members of a society can achieve when supported by a people who, in the main, have limited their greed for wealth and abandoned any admiration for violence and militarism. They once were successful militarists, and they became a peaceful people. They prove it can be done.
6. China has both sides in its history; it reached high points of civilization at times, and at other times it switched back into predatory savagery toward its own people and its neighbors. It was frequently violently conquered and then tended to imitate its conquerors. It is now caught up in imitating the Western ideological imperialism of Marxism, the physical imperialism of the Manchu empire, and the economic not-quite-post-colonial colonialist mentality of the not-quite-post-colonial Euro-American empires. It is also in the process of returning to its own soul, a soul of balance and harmony with humanity and nature, as it relearns its own deep ancient civilizational vision.
7. Therefore, it is not impossible that China, the waking giant, will quit its path of conquest empire and not seek to be a violent superpower, but will instead turn its great strength toward healing the overheated planet. It can listen to the Dalai Lama as one of the planet’s clearest voices of reason, peacefulness, and the wise intelligence we need to overcome the crisis we are in. It can free his people and return Tibet to being an environmental sanctuary, the water tower of Asia, the Switzerland of Asia. In turn, the Dalai Lama, now and in future incarnations, and his capable and creative free people can help the Chinese rekindle their spiritual energies and restore their civilized lives of harmony and fulfillment.
8. It is not that this or that leader will do it just now or just then. No one can be sure. But cultivating the vision of the possibility, how easy it would be, how beneficial to all sides it would be, this is one way of keeping hope alive and creating a powerful resonance that will eventually reach the hearts of those empowered to effect such positive change.
9. In our lifetimes, the Soviet Union withdrew from its imperial behavior and liberated Eastern Europe and even the Ukraine without a shot being fired. The South African apartheid regime gave up that vicious and miserable racist life without any further violence. Who can say realistically that China will not see its enlightened self-interest fulfilled in truly freeing Tibet from its cumbersome occupation and impractical and destructive colonization?
10. Therefore, it is our duty and obligation to cultivate hope. We can free our imaginations from being stuck in the expectation of failure. We can free any enemy from expecting that he or she cannot become a friend. We can follow the Dalai Lama and never give up. We live in hope, as the realistic way to live. We live therefore without bitterness, joyfully and happily, while vigorously opposing violence and injustice. It is our duty to strive to live so happily, that even if someone kills us, we will die happy!