What's the Dalai Lama trying to do?

[Sapius]

Kelly, in light of your “Ultimate Realization”, your dilemma becomes meaningless to begin with. You should be actually satisfied with…

What's the Dalai Lama trying to do?

Nothing that he is not caused to.

So?

[sue hindmarsh]

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Re: The Dalai Lama.

Caused? - Yes.

An example of how not to live your life? - That's for sure.

An egotistical idiot that should never be let loose near young minds? - Damn Right!

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[Sapius]

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Re: The Dalai Lama.

Caused? - Yes.

An example of how not to live your life? - That's for sure.

An egotistical idiot that should never be let loose near young minds? - Damn Right!

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And so are your conclusions caused. So?

[Carl G]

That's right, Sue.

Re: The Dalai Lama.

Caused? - Yes.

An example of how not to live your life? - That's for sure.

As if one has a choice, being that one is caused to do what one does. He and you and I, right?

An egotistical idiot that should never be let loose near young minds? - Damn Right!

Should? Again, when is there a choice in the matter? We are caused to let him loose, and he is caused to be let loose. All are doing the best they can in every moment, right? And in that sense all is perfect. Why are you complaining?

[Shardrol]

(Moved this to Genius forum, under Dalai Lama thread, ok to kill it here)

I was trying to respond to Shardrol (excuse if misspelt!) without much luck on another thread, Buddhism stuff she said got me thinking.
If you're watching, I had some difficulty with the idea of unenlightened Buddhas or Dalai Lama's (again forgive spelling) and diplomatic function. As I understood the Dalai Lama he is supposed to be descended each time from a previous enlightened person, Buddha replacing Buddha essentially.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'descended'. The idea is that each Dalai Lama is the rebirth of the previous one. I'm not arguing that this is the case, by the way, just explaining the concept.

I mean, the first Buddha selects someone to carry the flag as it were, keep his teaching going, and he selects the most capable person available.

Shakyamuni Buddha did not select any one particular person to carry the flag. What he left was methods by which others could come to experience reality without delusion, as he did. If there is any validity to these methods, then anyone who practiced them to completion would become a Buddha.

If at some point along the line some Dalai has no wise follower to choose from, well then that may have been when the tradition to choose a younger person began, a bright child perhaps. Somewhere along the line the wisdom diluted out (in my opinion) and now we have what we have.

I don't think that's how it came about. The Dalai Lamas have always been political rulers as well as spiritual figureheads.There was never a tradition of choosing a wise follower. Rightly or wrongly, the idea was always that the current Dalai Lama would attempt to leave clues as to his next rebirth before he died. The child he designated - or rather hinted at since I don't think it was ever a situation of name, address, phone number, etc identifying the next one - would not have even been born till after the death of the previous Dalai Lama so there would be no concept of choosing a bright child or in fact any currently living being.

But the work is spiritual always,

Not in my opinion. As I mentioned before, since the Tibetan diaspora, I see the function of the Dalai Lama as primarily diplomatic, & as a cultural focus for the Tibetan exiles. But you have to understand that Buddhism for Tibetans is like Christianity for westerners - just the character of the water in which they (usually unconsciously) swim. In every culture the number of people who take spirituality seriously is quite small.

We in the West have a tendency to view the Dalai Lama as being analogous to the Pope, i.e. as the ruler of all Buddhists. Actually Buddhism doesn't work that way. There is no centralized spiritual authority - especially in Vajrayana - but people seem to like that view & for all I know the Dalai Lama himself promotes being viewed in that way.

and the one doing it is supposed to be the most enlightened, wisest person available.

That would be the devotional Tibetan view. But who decides who is the 'wisest' or 'most enlightened'? Whoever was qualified to choose would be wiser & more enlightened than the one they chose. I don't think there is a way to quantify wisdom or enlightenment anyway.
.

[xerox]

...

[Tomas]

dele

[Steven Coyle]

mikiel sucks!

[Tomas]

dele

[Tomas]

.

The Dalai Lama seems to be skating on thin ice these daze. He has almost become a caricature of himself. A mere symbol, a well marketed image. Attached to himself, his status, his philosophy, by spreading the 'word'.

All for the mere price of 300 deluded units of attachment.

.........


RIP: Dalai Lama's pro-independence brother dies in America


-snips-

The Dalai Lama's brother, a Buddhist monk-turned-CIA translator who helped train Tibetan resistance fighters in a guerrilla war against Chinese rule, has died at his U.S. home. He was 86.

Taktser Rinpoche, whose given name was Thupten Jigme Norbu, was recognized at the age of three as the reincarnated abbot of Kumbum monastery -- one of the most important in Tibetan Buddhism -- in Qinghai province.

He went on to serve as a professor of Tibetan studies at Indiana University in the United States, where in 1979 he founded the Tibetan Cultural Centre.

He is survived by his wife Kunyang Norbu and three sons


-Click URL for complete article-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00611.html


.[/quote]
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[Kelly Jones]

There was never a tradition of choosing a wise follower. Rightly or wrongly, the idea was always that the current Dalai Lama would attempt to leave clues as to his next rebirth before he died. The child he designated - or rather hinted at since I don't think it was ever a situation of name, address, phone number, etc identifying the next one - would not have even been born till after the death of the previous Dalai Lama so there would be no concept of choosing a bright child or in fact any currently living being.

It's an extremely foolish concept. Think about the probability that wisdom has been cultivated reliably, if you never have anything to do with the education process of the individual whom you regard as the most reliable and most wise of all candidates, nor can examine them in any way.