Category: Buddhism

Scientists and religious practitioners can learn a lot from each other and should work together to find a productive balance between spirituality and secular research, the Dalai Lama said Sunday.

The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader’s comments came at a news conference kicking off his three-day visit to Emory University in Atlanta. During his visit, he plans to teach, lecture and receive an update on the development of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative.

The Dalai Lama is a presidential distinguished professor at Emory — the only university appointment he has accepted.

The Dalai Lama said he has long been interested in scientific knowledge — particularly in the areas of cosmology, neurobiology, physics and psychology, which he says are mentioned in Buddhist texts.

At the end of a cold Himalayan December in 1999, a 14-year old monk made a phenomenal escape from a monastery in Tibet where his every move was patrolled by the Chinese. Fleeing by car, on foot and by horseback, he crossed some of Nepal’s most forbidding terrain and found his way to India, where he settled at the feet of the Dalai Lama, seeking teaching.

Since then, he has been under virtual house arrest by the Indian government, circumscribed in his movements, and now banned from travel to the West, where he has a large following—and to the seat of his Tibetan sect in Sikkim, a once-independent Tibetan Buddhist kingdom that India undermined and incorporated in 1975. The reason for India’s denial of the monk’s freedom of movement seems plain. In a word: it’s China.

Young and strong, he already has a wide audience among Tibetans as a protégé of the Dalai Lama and could, however unwittingly, inspire Tibetan youth to revive their dreams of stronger resistance to the Chinese, a course the Dalai Lama has told them repeatedly would be suicidal. More important, the Karmapa is rapidly becoming a fresh new face for Tibetan Buddhism internationally.

For the time being, India, which preaches religious freedom and a special relationship with Buddhism, seems to be doing Beijing’s will at keeping the Karmapa out of global view.

A rare white elephant has been captured in the jungles of northwestern Myanmar, a mostly Buddhist country where the animals are considered good omens, state media reported Tuesday.