His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together, Doubleday, 2010

Reviewed by Rabbi Alon Goshen-Gottstein, The Elijah Interfaith Institute

 

The Dalai Lama is, after the Pope, the world’s best known world religious leader. While himself a leader of only one school of Buddhism and head of a state in exile, his reach has become global. In many ways, the present book accounts for this. In this book, recording the Dalai Lama’s journey into other religions and the theories he has developed as a consequence of this journey, the Dalai Lama emerges as a global religious leader, setting an example and offering a path and a theory that is meant for all of humanity’s religious practitioners. The book is much more important than its apparent message, that religions must learn to coexist peacefully, as recently summarized in an op-ed by the Dalai Lama in the New York Times (May 25,2010). What makes it important is the first person testimony offered throughout, amounting to a precedent that invites leaders and practitioners of other religions to follow the path set by the Dalai Lama.

Early on the reader is exposed to a striking statement, concerning the Dalai Lama’s own self understanding of his task as a religious leader. The Dalai Lama sums up the mandate of his leadership under three points - a) the promotion of basic human values, especially compassion; b) the promotion of interreligious understanding and harmony, and c) the pursuit of a happy and satisfactory solution to the sad crisis of Tibet and its people (p. x). One notes that the traditional and inherited task of the Dalai Lama is listed third, while other, more universal, concerns, undertaken by him voluntarily, figure first. No less interesting is the fact that in all this the Dalai Lama does not even define himself as a religious leader, responsible for the propagation of teachings of the Vajrayana school of Buddhism. A close reading of the book confirms the sense that the Dalai Lama identifies himself more as religious person, thinker, practitioner and monk than as a religious leader, even though he does not shun his official leadership role. But rather than define his role as religious leader in traditional terms, he has redefined it, to include broader teachings, aimed at all of humanity.

The redefinition of the Dalai Lama’s role as a religious leader and indeed the story line of this book flow directly from the situation of exile and the breaking beyond traditional boundaries, the comfort zone that is provided by the safe ground of the classical religious establishment. Being in exile forces on the Dalai Lama an encounter with other religions. This encounter provides the opportunity for a lifelong process of learning, of which the present work is the result. The book thus offers us one way of providing meaning to the Dalai Lama’s personal (as distinct from collective) exile. Exile has allowed him to redefine his role as a religious leader, and by means of encounter with other religions to develop a teaching that is global in reach.

The book records various meetings the Dalai Lama has held with members of other world religions since 1956, and especially since his exile in 1959. Even though the Dalai Lama takes time to introduce the reader to the basic concepts of each of the religions, the heart of the book are his personal encounters with practitioners, representatives and leaders of the different traditions. These are numerous, and at times read like a who’s who list in the field of religion over the past half century. Much can be learned from a close reading of how the Dalai Lama describes his various encounters. The first lesson is never clearly stated in the book, but emerges from it time and again. It is a lesson concerning friendship and personal relations. The Dalai Lama does not meet ideas, institutions or even leaders. He meets people with whom he forms friendships, who impress and inspire him, and who provide him with the living testimonies of the power of faith in their lives, the power in light of which his recognitions and theories are formulated. Interreligious friendship is thus the foundation of the Dalai Lama’s journey.

An examination of the tone used in relation to various personalities is revealing. The Dalai Lama is always appreciative of his various meetings, and is always in a position to learn something meaningful from the representative of another religion. However, some people touch his heart, and those seem to provide the true foundation for his reflections. Not surprisingly, the people that touch him most are the practitioners whose spirituality is deep, and whose lives and teachings offer testimony to the depth of the power of spirit in their lives. Again, not surprisingly, the figures that seem to touch him in the deepest way are those that have an openness to the spirit that extends beyond the boundaries of their own religion. The people whom the Dalai Lama is most deeply impressed by are, in fact, mirror images of himself, within other traditions. Thus, Thomas Merton is the first and formative relationship, that defines what the Dalai Lama finds most significant in relations with practitioners of other religions. Several noted Christian contemplatives, who have been active in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue are similarly singled out. Among dozens of Jewish thinkers with whom the Dalai Lama has met, only one stands out in this book. It is Rabbi Zalman Schacter, who, it would seem, is in many ways a spiritual brother to the Dalai Lama, a practitioner with broad intellectual interest, keen spiritual senses and an existential openness to other religious traditions. The Dalai Lama acknowledges that his deepest friendships have been with Christians (p. 75). While he considers this to be a consequence of his early encounters with Merton, it may be that Christianity produces more men and women of faith, who like the Dalai Lama, seek to deepen their own faith experience through an engagement of other faiths. If we thus take Merton as a type, rather than a person, then the Dalai Lama is correct in assessing the importance and singularity of this type of relationship for his own spiritual quest.

One more fact is noteworthy with reference to the Dalai Lama’s relationships. The most significant relationships have not been with global religious leaders, but with spiritual practitioners, in whom he has found a kindred spirit. His meeting with one of the Chief Rabbis of Israel teaches him an important lesson, but the fact that he does not record the name of his interlocutor suggests that we have here a meeting of ideas, not of people (p. 94). He applauds the contemporary efforts on behalf of the environment of Patriarch Bartholomew (p. 170), and mentions several Archbishops of Canterbury by name (p. 62). Even Pope John Paul II, whom he describes as having treated him with the kindness of a father, and whose efforts at convening religious leaders are noted (p. 61) seems to be more of a teacher than a friend. Always respectful and always in the posture of a humble student ready to learn about another religious tradition from its teachers and leaders, the Dalai Lama seems most at home with monks and contemplatives, men (mostly) for whom the practice of the spiritual life, rather than governance of a large religious body, are primary. In this he seems to betray his own self understanding, monk and practitioner first, religious leader only by extension.

Because the Dalai Lama’s journey is so closely bound up with personal relations, it focuses primarily on those religions with whose practitioners he has cultivated relationships. Relationships are developed with practitioners of Hinduism (including Jainism and Sikhism), Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The latter, as the Dalai Lama admits, is the one with which he has had the least opportunity to interact. In other words, his friends do not come from Islam. He knows of Islam from the native Tibetan Muslim community, from books, and recently from visits to Jordan and Malaysia. But it is clear that his engagement with Islam lacks the same basis of personal depth and engagement that characterizes his relations with other religions (p. 79). His speaking out on behalf of Islam as a non violent religion (p. 88) is consequently all the more meaningful, as it is a principled assessment, and not one colored by personal relationships. Curiously absent from his itinerary are encounters with other Buddhist leaders and practitioners. The Dalai Lama stands for Buddhism, and we learn next to nothing of his voyage in relation to other forms of Buddhism and encounters with their leaders. The only encounter of note is with the Patriarch of Thai Buddhism, to whom the Dalai Lama suggests a redefinition of the role of the monk, to include social responsibility, under the impact of his encounter with Christian monasticism. The effort meets with traditional resistance, while the Dalai Lama affirms his understanding that the role of monks and nuns should be redefined (p. 64). Other religions are mentioned in passing. These include Confucianism, Native American religion and Bahai (portrayed, mistakenly in my view, as syncretistic, p. 33). It is clear that the Dalai Lama’s spirit and openness extend to all religions. He is willing to participate in their ceremonies or in common ceremonies and to draw from their teachings. However, no matter how open the spirit, the actual journey recorded does not extend to all religions, even if its lessons are broadly applicable. In highlighting some religions rather than others the Dalai Lama gives us further testimony to the foundational principle of his journey: A true encounter with other religions is made possible through personal friendships and the meeting of heart, mind and spirit they produce.

Friendship is the first lesson to emerge from the Dalai Lama’s process. The second lesson concerns the dynamics of encounter and the process of how one understands other religions. A religion is never encountered in reality in the same way that it is featured in a text book on religions. While the Dalai Lama does digress at times into such text book presentations, these are the least significant parts of his work. We can all consult the standard reference works that provide the classical descriptions of the religions, independently of the Dalai Lama. What makes the book interesting is how the Dalai Lama himself encounters, reads and interprets a religion. His own readings are strikingly original, and born of his personal encounter and process. With reference to Christianity, Judaism and Islam (curiously: not Hinduism), we are offered a view of those religions as understood and interpreted by the Dalai Lama, and those readings are noteworthy. When the Dalai Lama encounters Christianity he sees the supreme act of sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, taking on himself the suffering of others, in a way similar to the Dalai Lama’s own daily practice (p. 57). He also notes another great symbol of compassion, the image of Mary holding the baby Jesus, pointing to how motherhood provides the ground for compassion (p. 58). Similarly, when he reflects on the meaning of what it is for Judaism to be a chosen people, taking his cue from the (non-Jewish) scholar of religion Huston Smith, he reads it in terms of the suffering servant of Isaiah 53, leading him to see in Judaism “an ideal community of selfless bodhisattvas working for the good of all beings” (p. 105). His reading of Islam is even more principled: As Islam is a religion of absolute submission to God, and as God is understood as compassionate and merciful, true Islam must be understood as “absolute submission to the ideal of universal compassion” (p. 79). Based on this reading, he launches a defense of Islam as a violent religion, proclaiming the violence committed in the horrific crimes of 9/11 as “the deeds of a handful of mischievous muslins”, that are not representative of true Islam (p. 88).

What the Dalai Lama has done in all these cases is to offer a reading of other traditions, a constructive act of interpretation, by means of which he seeks to establish the meaning of that religion. The readings of other traditions grow out of his own experiences as a Buddhist. Consequently, he finds in other religions what he considers to be the highest values in his own worldview - compassion. In the encounter with other traditions he thus sees in them what he holds dearest, and his own experience serves as a key to reading and interpreting other religions. What the Dalai Lama offers for our consideration are the hermeneutics of interreligious understanding. Despite the prevalence of text book presentations of any given religion, the attempt to present a religion, to define its essence and to portray what it is really about, is never a simple task. Within each tradition there are multiple presentations, or using the language of internal discourse - theologies. Each theology is an attempt to present the religion, making fundamental choices concerning what is really important about a given religion and how it should be portrayed. The Dalai Lama’s reflections challenge us to consider what kind of constructive theology can be undertaken through the encounter with another faith tradition. One may argue that the outsider will corrupt the understanding of the religion, by offering a perspective that is foreign to the religion. But one may equally argue that it is precisely the outsider who is able to offer a fresh composite reading of the religion, in light of the categories that govern his or her own native religious understanding. What the Dalai Lama has done for us is to present us with a series of readings of other religions that are based on his own Buddhist training and values, highlighting the values of compassion, sacrifice and altruism. In so doing he has in fact launched a new theological modality, of interreligious hermeneutics or even of interreligious theology. How it will be received by insiders and how such practices may be refined is a subject that requires further attention. Suffice it to note here that the Dalai Lama has set an important example, in a way that holds both promise and challenge for theologians of all religions.

The lessons offered by the Dalai Lama on how to engage other religions are more fundamental than the specific readings of what he finds most meaningful in other religions. The approach he brings to the encounter with other religions is so strikingly different than what characterizes that of so many practitioners of religion, that it must be spelled out. We might take issue with his dismissal of Islamic extremism as acts committed by the rowdy few. The problems may be more endemic to Islam and constitute a greater challenge to its theology, education and identity than the Dalai Lama is willing to admit. But his view of Islam is an example of a broader phenomenon that one encounters throughout the book - the positive appreciation of another religion and the attempt to find what is best in it and how it best serves its practitioners. Not once does the Dalai Lama criticize another religion. Not once does he argue with it. His gaze is entirely positive. Rather than ask whether the teachings of a religion are true, the Dalai Lama seeks to identify the benefits that the teaching and practices have in the lives of believers. A declared non theist, the Dalai Lama appreciates time and again the value of faith in God, not in theological terms, but in terms of the benefits of such faith for the believers. I was struck by this personally during an interfaith meeting with him, held in Jerusalem in 1999. When the moderator asked everyone to open the day with a brief statement of how they were feeling, I replied with the classical Jewish answer: God be praised. The enthusiastic echo from the Dalai Lama to my serious/humorous response would have led one to think he is the greatest believer in God. The depth of religious empathy as practiced by the Dalai Lama cuts across the most basic theological divides. He is able to empathize with theists, non theists, and even secular people. His empathetic approach, true to the philosophical tendencies of recent decades, highlights the effects of religious beliefs on the lives of people, rather than worrying whether individual beliefs are true in and of themselves. Rather than asking if a religious belief is true, his appreciative inquiry seeks to establish how a given faith works in the lives of believers and what benefits it brings to them. For a believing theist, such as I am according to his classification, this can be disturbing. God is appreciated not in and of God’s self, but in terms of the ethical consequences of belief in God. Thus, union with God and closeness to Him are valued not as the goal supreme, but as the means to obedience and living a moral life (p. 67). My own reaction to this move is twofold. On the one hand, it challenges us to consider the real value of faith and beliefs in people’s lives, beyond the inherent truth claims of any faith. This is a much needed lesson that we must all learn. The perspective of the outsider is particularly helpful in making us state,  and even redefine, the importance of the things we hold most sacred. On the other hand, for someone who seeks union with God, the Dalai Lama’s reading may turn out to be reductionist. But we must recall that it has been cultivated within a framework in which the Dalai Lama can affirm how deeply moved he was by the sight of a Christian praying with tears rolling down his cheeks and by how theistic belief can stir someone to such depths (p. 70). In other words, what makes the Dalai Lama’s perspective more than reductionist is the fact that it grows from a profound appreciation that the Dalai Lama describes as deeply moving. Being moved by another religion is a sign of genuine openness. The Dalai Lama’s grow on the grounds of the experiential openness to the religious reality of the other.

That the Dalai Lama indeed seeks to highlight the best in other traditions further expressed in the book’s constant return to the theme of mystical experience as possible common ground between the religions. In part this is a consequence of the many sessions of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in which he has participated, particularly those arranged by practitioners with a contemplative focus. But the point seems to go deeper. When engaging Judaism he actively seeks out the wisdom of the Kabbalah and Judaism’s mystical experience. While he has no Muslim partner to engage in the process, he does turn to Rumi as the prime example of Muslim mystical experience (p. 91). While the book’s official thesis is that compassion is the common ground between religions, which they all seek to cultivate, there is a second thesis that emerges from it, though it is never clearly stated. The second thesis is that the mystics of different religions share significant common ground. Because the thesis is never developed as fully as the compassion thesis, it is hard to know how far the Dalai Lama’s thoughts on this matter extend. Throughout, he seeks to offer a balance between recognizing differences between the religions and offering parallels. It would seem that he recognizes both similarity and difference within the mystical and contemplative practices of the religions. It seems that it is more important for him to point to this domain as a significant aspect of the religions than to develop an articulate theory of the relations between the religions in this domain. His interest in the questions of mysticism once again point to what is most important for him in the spiritual life and in his own self identity, the identity of a Buddhist monk who cultivates a powerful interior life based on the resources of his tradition.

So far we have traced the Dalai Lama’s interreligious itinerary as moving from the level of personal encounter to engaging the theology and understanding of other religions, offering his own particular readings of the religions he encounters. But the Dalai Lama does more than that. The sum total of his encounters and recognitions amounts to a theory  and the latter part of the book is devoted to broader theoretical considerations that emerge from his lifelong journey with other religions. Two main theses emerge here, alongside practical programs that I shall not discuss. The first concerns compassion. The Dalai Lama goes beyond offering readings of specific religions or key moments and concepts within them as expressions of compassion. He develops a theory according to which the cultivation of compassion - therein included love, altruism etc. - is the common purpose of all religions. Compassion is thus the common ground of all religions, that seek to take the individual beyond his ego centered self, and to transform him or her in fundamental ways. Here the Dalai Lama makes a major contribution to earlier reflection. Various scholars, notably Hans Kung, have pointed to the golden rule as a common moral teaching, that is shared by all religions - do, or do not do, to others as they would, or would not, do unto you. The Dalai Lama recognizes this commonality, but sees it as the first stage in spiritual formation. The golden rule is still self-based, using the self as the criterion of morality. By contrast, our religions seek to take us beyond ourselves, and to develop a self transcendence that would allow us to cultivate universal compassion, that extends beyond the interests of the self, culminating in the love of the enemy (Chapter 7). Here we have a wonderful example of how his own training and systematic understanding allows him to recognize broader processes of spiritual formation in all religions. Without in any way being triumphalist or disrespectful to other traditions, he posits the stages of personal evolution as known to him from his own tradition or from his own synthesis of experience, as a yardstick for understanding traditions and contextualizing their moral teachings and teachings on compassion. His discussion of the stages of compassion and spiritual transformation as universals that apply to all religions is a major contribution to the comparative study of religion and certainly advance our understanding significantly beyond common perceptions that are limited to fundamental common moral teachings.

The second theoretical discussion is the discussion of the problem of exclusivity, in Chapter 9. The Dalai Lama is aware of the fact that for a journey such as his to have broader meaning, one needs to ground the various experiences, dialogues and reflections within a theoretical framework, within which to tackle the problem of religious exclusivism. The task is global peaceful coexistence. The task is urgent because of changed global conditions, that are radically different from those that prevailed at any other point in time. The Dalai Lama’s own transformed conditions are, in a sense, a metaphor for all religions, for all humanity. The challenges posed by the global encounters between religions and their practitioners require adopting an attitude of respect. This attitude is in potential conflict with earlier inherited attitudes. How a religion views other religions is worked out by what is now known as the discipline of theology of religions, and the Dalai Lama’s discussion constitutes an important discussion in theology of religions. At its heart is the attempt to reconcile how one may hold on to faith as something exclusive, maintaining the truth claims of the individual religion, while at the same time espousing an attitude of respect to other religions. Here again the Dalai Lama draws on Buddhist resources, applying a classical distinction of Buddhist hermeneutics to the broader situation. Conflicting teachings of the Buddha are reconciled by recognizing that the Buddha taught according to the needs of a given context and its potential for efficacy (p. 154). Teaching is contextual. This, argues the Dalai Lama, is as true for Buddhism as it is for religion in general. Every religion is suited to the psychological, national and other conditions that are specific to its adherents. Diversity in religion corresponds to the diversity of human character and the need for teaching. There is no panacea, no single way suitable for all. Multiple ways can be upheld because ethical teachings are universal, as already demonstrated in relation to compassion. Doctrines, metaphysics and the view of the afterlife do indeed vary from religion to religion. In relation to these variations, the Dalai Lama counsels that every faith hold with absolute fidelity on to its own unique metaphysical vision. He thereby avoids the pitfall of relativism, that is the source of concern for so many who confront other religions, as notably exemplified in the teachings of Pope Benedikt XVI. Other religions may be respected because they successfully ground admirable ethical systems. We note three elements that are crucial to his view. The first is the primacy of the ethical dimension in appreciating a religion. The second is the appreciation of a religion based on how it impacts the lives of its believers. The third is the respect that is engendered by an unbiased appreciation of how a religion works. The Dalai Lama takes this a step further. He speaks not only of respect but of deep reverence towards other faiths for what they produce. The Dalai Lama has here provided us with both a theory and a personal example. On the theoretical level, his threefold division of religion into ethics, doctrines and cultural specifics, provides a convenient framework for an attempt to reconcile absolute and exclusive faith with respectful acceptance of others. By way of example, he has taken us beyond the kind of respect called for by merely political considerations. In modeling an attitude of deep reverence he has captured the essence of his own journey to other religions. Reverence is the kind of respect afforded from the depth of a spiritual sense of reality, within which another religion can be validated for the positive fruit it bears in the lives of its followers.

The Dalai Lama has taken us with him on a journey, beginning with personal experience and culminating in a broad theory of religious pluralism. The power of this book lies precisely in the relationship between these two poles. His is much more than a well intentioned call for religions to coexist. Almost every religious leader in the world is capable of making the declaration that religions should get along with each other. What makes the Dalai Lama’s case so powerful and credible is that it is grounded in a personal journey at the one end and leads to a broad theory of religion at the other. We can follow the experiences, the readings, the hermeneutical moves, the overall attitude and finally - how the theory has been born. It is this totality of vision that calls us not only to follow its conclusions but to follow the entire course set out by the Dalai Lama. Casual readers of this book may be misled to thinking the Dalai Lama has simply issued a call for coexistence of religions. In fact, he has done much more than that. He has presented a path and offered a model. This model is born of his experience, unique among those of world religious leader. There is not a single other world religious leader who has undertaken such an extensive and thorough journey within world religions, who has approached them with such openness, and who has attempted to integrate his personal experiences into a comprehensive theory of interreligious relations. There is probably no other religious leader who considers interreligious activities as centrally as part of his job description as does the Dalai Lama. And few, if any, have attempted to make the native spiritual understanding of their tradition a foundation for broader understanding and exchanges that could be relevant to all religions. The Dalai Lama offers us a new model of what it means to be a religious leader in today’s world. This is more than a call to follow his conclusions. This is an invitation to other leaders and practitioners to follow a path similar to the one traced by him. By virtue of the path set out in this book the Dalai Lama is recognized as a truly global religious leader, perhaps in ways that are unique to him. But this uniqueness is an invitation for others to follow, making the reach and impact of the teachings of each of our religions part of the shared message that religions have to offer to their followers and to all of humanity.

 

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