The Dalai Lama: Defender of Islam

Pico Iyer writes in today's Financial Times on what the Dalai Lama has told him over the decades he has known him and covered him as a jounalist:

...it is astonishing how little most of us know about a man who has become one of the most easily recognised figures on the planet... the words of the Buddha, he says, should be thrown out if they are shown by new research to be faulty or incomplete. Nor do many people realise that the head of Tibetan Buddhism has delivered an extended series of lectures on the Gospels; or that he calls himself a defender of Islam and sometimes a ”half-Marxist”, admiring Marxism’s ideas of equality, if not the kind of dogmatism that has so ruthlessly assaulted his own country.

...the Dalai Lama [is a] a realist and a pragmatist, determined to incorporate into his culture all the modern and technological wisdom it [lacks], while also sustaining the core of Tibetan traditions. The costumes and rituals of Tibetan culture are often no longer relevant, he [says]; but ideas of compassion and of universal responsibility are as appropriate outside Tibet as they ever were within it. “Exile”, the word that for most of us means disruption and severance from the past, he [reads] as ”opportunity”, a chance to liberate his people for the future.

...He is that rare Buddhist who offers foreigners practical guidance while also telling them to study within their own traditions, where there’s less chance of misconception (seizing upon Buddhism before they have fully understood it, or gauged certain important cultural differences).

Regarding the struggle for Tibet:

...Oppressed minorities across the People’s Republic have decided to take advantage of the world’s focus on China in the months leading up to the August Olympics in Beijing and are broadcasting their suffering to the world. The Dalai Lama, in response, tells his people to speak out, but not to lash out; to ask for basic freedoms such as freedom of thought and speech but not to demonise the Chinese; and to forswear violence. It will only, he says, bring more violence down on a people who have suffered too much already.

And yet, more Tibetans in exile are saying more frequently that they cannot wait any longer...[but] the one exiled Tibetan who really understands China’s leadership is, in fact, the Dalai Lama, who has been dealing with it for 59 years, who has spent time in Beijing and who even has an elder brother who speaks fluent Chinese, lives in Hong Kong and was married to a Chinese woman.

... in the long term, he argues, dialogue and forgiveness are the only way: any resolution that solves the Tibetan question without taking in Chinese individuals is no solution at all. Tibet, he reiterated last November, has much to gain economically from remaining part of the People’s Republic – and the world has everything to gain from keeping up contact with its largest nation.

...He asks people not to free Tibet, but simply to “save it”.

And here is my favorite quote:

He has always placed his faith in individuals, Chinese and otherwise. He does not expect the Chinese leadership to come to its senses overnight, but has said for years that regular Chinese people, officially denied religion for more than half a century, may, one by one, notice how much they have in common with Tibet, and how they still have a rich spiritual tradition within their borders – in Tibet.