The Dalai Lama recently said:

Just as you cannot say that one medicine is best and other medicines are not so good, so you cannot say that this religion is best and others are of not much use.

This generosity of spirit is of course refreshing to hear in our troubled times. The Dalai Lama has of course said this or something like it many times before. In the old days this idea that wisdom was parceled out equally among cultures was referred to as “perennial philosophy.” (Thanissaro Bhikkhu spoke briefly on this topic last night at the New York Insight Center.)

Kate Saunders at the Huffington Post wrote about Obama’s gift to the Dalai Lama on the occasion of HH’s visit to the WH last month: a bound edition of the young leader’s letters to Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S Truman in the 1940s and 50s. (They must make rather poignant reading more than fifty years later.) But Saunders rightly points out this thoughtful gift was overshadowed by the same-old, same-old coverage of China’s chest-beating and sword-rattling whenever a head of state glad-hands the DL.

Thank you for subscribing to Tricycle! As a nonprofit, to keep Buddhist teachings and practices widely available.