Buddhist News Network – Archive: “The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual and temporal leader in exile and the man believed by Buddhists to be the 14th incarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, does not see himself as a miracle worker. ‘I’m a skeptic,’ he said at his recent sold-out appearance at Boston’s FleetCenter. ‘If someone truly has healing power, I’d like to call about my knees.’” 
There are two points with which I take issue: this article goes on to explain how the Dalai Lama doesn’t “speak truth to power” like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Noam Chomsky, or Howard Zinn. For example,
“And, as Norman Solomon suggests, not speaking out in fact amounts to taking a political position. He adds: “Let the great spiritual teachers basking in acclaim today learn how to emulate Martin Luther King Jr., who in 1967 explicitly condemned ‘racism,’ ‘militarism,’ and ‘economic exploitation’ while also having the moral fortitude to denounce the Vietnam War.”
This is true if His Holiness is in the same situation as these individuals. Right now, HHDL and the Tibetan people do not have official citizenship in any country. This is a very important fact when comparing him to other people. They are not Indian citizens, which means that HHDL has to be careful what he says in public, or he and his people may be asked to leave. All the other people this author is comparing him to were citizens of the country they were critisizing, which allows them more latitiude. Not that they didn’t suffer, not that they aren’t challenged in many ways, but they don’t have the burden of an entire culture suffering for their actions. Many black people suffered because of the struggle against racisim – and they still do – some even in direct response to Martin Luther King Jr.; yet, blacks were not shipped out of the country because of what MLKJr. did. That is an important difference.
The author points out that he couldn’t get a response to his piece because:
“The Dalai Lama had time to answer only six questions from the sizable audience at his Cambridge press conference, though many more people had questions to ask. And the official line was that he would give no private interviews during his tour–though, it turned out, this was not strictly the case. Repeated attempts to get a response to this article from His Holiness through his New York media representative were met with a “too busy” response. Yet the New York Times reported that the Tibetan leader somehow found time for a photo op with pop star Ricky Martin. Makes you wonder.”
I would say that if you read the biography of the 14 Dalai Lamas by Glenn H. Mullin, you would find that His Holiness’ staff have often shielded him from important information because of their own prejudices. This is highly probable.
Overall, the author makes some important points for those that worship HHDL beyond what is helpful to themselves.
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