The Dalai, The Dinosaur, and the Tao
"At the root of the Dalai Lama’s
understanding of the good life is a profoundly illiberal understanding
of humanity. Where the modern liberal project is based on the Lockean
and Hobbesian lie that everything rests on the autonomous individual,
the Tibetan gave us a vision of humanity existing in families and in
community with one another. He told the story of how his illiterate
mother carried him on her back while she toiled in the fields and how he
learned compassion through a deep and nearly constant communion with
her. A good life within the Tao sometimes requires us to carry others
and sometimes to be carried as we attempt to make our way on this
journey. We are never really autonomous and self-sustaining individuals.
The very office of the Dalai Lama teaches just such an understanding as
Buddhist believe he is the reincarnation of a soul who reached its
journey but turned back to commune with those still suffering and
striving.
"Perhaps we should not be surprised that
the teachings of the Dalai Lama are so fully within “the way” that C. S.
Lewis identified. What is surprising is how much the undergirding
vision of the man and his teachings are misunderstood by the
post-moderns who admire him for lessons they don’t quite understand.
For the sake of the Tao itself, let us hope this 14th
incarnation of the Dalai Lama is not the last of his kind. For now, we
Christians of the west should join in his teachings as we are all,
despite our differences, either within the Tao or in the shadow lands
beyond."
Thanks to the Drepung Gomang Institute and the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts for hosting the Dalai Lama and (Traci Simonsen) for inviting me to tag along.
The full essay can be found by going to:
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/the-dalai-the-tao-cs-lewis/#.UZ4WgIJ1Fyg
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