From: "joycelang"
From: LeePenn@a...
The following story - about the public opposition of the Dalai Lama to Christian evangelism - is scheduled to appear in a forthcoming issue of The Christian Challenge, a traditionalist Anglican magazine. I encourage you to re-distribute the story as widely as possible -- as long as you do not change the story, and as long as you credit me as the author and The Christian Challenge as the publisher.
To verify that you get a complete version of the story: it ends with a list of 9 sources. If you receive an incomplete version, e-mail me and I will send you an ASCII file of the entire story. ----
DALAI LAMA RAPS "PROSELYTISM"
Report/Analysis By Lee Penn
The Christian Challenge (Washington, DC)
February 16, 2001
The Dalai Lama, exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism, has joined India's Hindu nationalist leaders in condemning "proselytism" by Christians and Muslims.
On January 25, at the Kumbh Mela Hindu festival, held once every 12 years by the Ganges River, the Dalai Lama said, "Whether Hindu or Muslim or Christian, whoever tries to convert, it's wrong, not good...I always believe it's safer and better and reasonable to keep one's own tradition or belief."
The statement is likely to reinforce tensions in a region that has seen increasing violence against and persecution of Christians. It is also noteworthy in that it comes from a supporter of California Episcopal Bishop William Swing's United Religions Initiative (URI).
The Dalai Lama's statement followed a call by the World Hindu Council's general secretary, Ashok Singhal, for "Buddhism, Hinduism and other non-aggressive religions...to unite to douse Islam...an aggressive religion." (The World Hindu Council believes that India should be a Hindu nation, and is affiliated with the India prime minister's political party. In January 1999, Council leaders asked the Indian president for a "complete ban on religious conversions.")
According to The Associated Press, the Dalai Lama and others signed a statement saying: "We oppose conversions by any religious tradition using various methods of enticement." India's Hindu radicals are outraged by conversions to Christianity among tribal peoples and untouchables, and define "enticement" very broadly--including Christian provision of education, health care, and social services for their members.
In recent years, Hindu nationalists have attacked many Christians, laymen and clergy alike, in pogroms throughout India.
Despite their opposition to Christian evangelism, modern-day Buddhist and Hindu gurus proselytize aggressively in the West, and Buddhism itself spread from India into China, Japan, and Southeast Asia by means of proselytism and--in the case of Tibet's conversion--royal banishment of adherents of the prior animist religions.
The Dalai Lama's public opposition to religious evangelism is shared by Bishop Swing and other leaders of the URI interfaith movement. In his book, The Coming United Religions, Swing implicitly equates "proselytizing" with religious persecution and murder. He wrote: "In order for a United Religions to come about and for religions to pursue peace among each other, there will have to be a godly cease-fire, a temporary truce where the absolute exclusive claims of each will be honored but an agreed-upon neutrality will be exercised in terms of proselytizing, condemning, murdering, or dominating. These will not be tolerated in the United Religions zone."
URI board members agree that religious evangelism is an evil-- presumably making an exception for their own proselytizing on behalf of religious syncretism. At an April 1997 URI forum at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, Sri Ravi Peruman, who has been on the URI board of directors since 1997, said that religions have "invaded and crusaded," "subverted and converted." Peruman said that there should be a universal Declaration of Rights not to be converted to another religion, according to Pacific Church News. In this, he agrees with his Indian co-religionists.
The Dalai Lama has also publicly supported Theosophy, a movement founded in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky that combines Buddhism, Hinduism, and Western occultism. He wrote a laudatory foreword for Spiritual Politics: Changing the World From the Inside Out, describing the book as "a new approach for creating a happier, more peaceful world."
Yet the authors of Spiritual Politics, Davidson and McLaughlin, say that war (not peace) can be a source of positive social change: "If peace is maintained at any price in order to continue vast injustices and materialistic, wasteful life-styles, then spiritual death may be the result. Physical death is only of the body, the form nature, which according to the Ageless Wisdom will be reborn again in another form," they say. "We must be cautious about a stubborn idealism that loves the ideal of peace more than it loves humanity's evolution. We can become so enamored of peace that it leads to inertia, stagnation, and above all else, an attachment to material comfort. Peace and war are not true opposites; peace and change are."
Davidson and McLaughlin dedicate Spiritual Politics, to "DK"-- Djwhal Khul, a Theosophical spirit being--and say that the teachings of Theosophist Alice Bailey and the Lucis Trust "provided much of the inspiration" for the book.
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Permission to distribute the foregoing electronically is granted, provided that there are no changes in the headings or text. Permission to reprint the article is granted provided that it is identified as originating with:
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Sources:
1. Neelesh Misra, "Dalai Lama Participates in Festival," Associated Press, January 25, 2001
2. Neelesh Misra, "Dalai Lama arrives at Hindu festival at Ganges River," Associated Press, January 25, 2001
3. Bishop William Swing, The Coming United Religions, United Religions Initiative and CoNexus Press, 1998, pp. 31, 33
4. Dennis Delman, "Grace Cathedral Satellite Conference," Pacific Church News , June/July 1997, p. 27
5. Catholic World News, "India Hindu Group Wants Ban On Religious Conversion," January 25, 1999, http://www.cwnews.com/news/getstory.cfm?recnum=9441; the version now on the Net is an excerpt
6. URI Update, Issue 8, Fall 2000 (list of Interim Global Council members, p. 14)
7. Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics: Changing the World from the Inside Out, Ballantine Books, New York, 1994, foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, pp. xiii-xiv; dedication, p. v; p. 16; p. 51
8. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, Oxford University Press, 1969, p. 188
9. Wulf Metz, "The Buddhist Lands," in Eerdmans' Handbook to the World Religions, Grand Rapids, p. 228