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The Dalai Lama and the World Religions: a False Friend?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Jane Compson
Jane Compson
Affiliation:
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, 36 Tyndall's Park Road, Bristol BS8 IPL
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Abstract

The Dalai Lama is well known for his tolerance of other religious traditions, actively encouraging people to celebrate their own faiths rather than convert to Buddhism. However, far from being a pluralist as this attitude suggests, he believes that ultimate liberation is obtained only through the practice of Buddhist teachings. This apparent contradiction is resolved when one examines some of the teachings that he follows, such as the notions of emptiness (sūnyatā), skilful means (upāya), karma and rebirth. On such examination it becomes apparent that it is precisely through the prioritising of these Buddhist teachings that his tolerance is rendered possible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , June 1996 , pp. 271 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

1 The term ‘pluralism’ is usually associated with the three-fold typology of exclusivism/inclusivism and pluralism introduced by Alan Race in his book Christians and Religious Pluralism (London, 1983). For a clear example of a pluralist approach, see John, Hick'sAn Interpretation of Religion (Macmillan, 1989).Google Scholar

2 ‘Religious Values and a Human Society’, in Kindness, Clarity and Insight (New York, 1984), p. 13.Google Scholar

3 ‘Eight Verses of Training the Mind’, ibid. p. 101.

4 Extract from The Bodhgaya Interviews (1981), from Christianity Through Non-Christian Eyes, ed. Paul J. Griffiths (Orbis, 1990), p. 167.Google Scholar

5 ‘Religious Harmony’, from Kindness, Clarity and Insight, p. 49.Google Scholar

6 ‘Religious Harmony’, from Griffiths, p. 164.

7 ‘Religious Harmony’, from Kindness, Clarity and Insight, p. 49.

8 ‘Religious Values and Human Society’, from Kindness, Clarity and Insight, p. 14.

9 ‘The Bodhgaya Interviews’, from Griffiths, p. 169.

10 ‘Religious Harmony’, in Griffiths, p. 164.

11 See Gavin D'Costa's unpublished ‘The Impossibility of a Pluralist View of Religions’, which contends that any such amnesty is never complete – pluralism always entails prioritizing some truth claims, and in this sense it is logically incoherent.

12 Bodhgaya interview, from Griffiths, p. 169.

13 ‘Some Dimensions of the Recent Work of Raimundo Panikkar: A Buddhist Perspective’, by Paul, Williams in Religious Studies 27, p. 516.Google Scholar

14 Paul, Williams, ‘The Recent Work of Raimundo Panikkar’, from Religious Studies 27, pp. 511–21.Google Scholar

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23 ‘Karma’, from Kindness, Clarity and Insight, p. 26.

24 ‘Eight Verses of Training the Mind’, from Kindness, Clarity and Insight, p. 102.