When the Dalai Lama comes to Vancouver, the city goes wild, for many regard him the personification of positive spirituality, a spiritual hero. If Vancouver has any need, it surely is positive spirituality, what with the dominance of a strongly secular worldview directing the city’s affairs. I interpret the eager popular embrace of this monk as a sign of spiritual thirst in the city due to the barren spirituality of secularism. Whenever he comes, the city goes all agog.
This was not his first visit. He was in town in 2004. I wrote a letter at that time to the editor of a local newspaper, Georgia Straight, which they published. Though with some changes and updates, I reproduce part of that letter here:
The
main message in The Georgia Straight (GS) is about the Dalai Lama’s teaching
of the “warm heart,” a concept that is described
as one of his core convictions. The
concept is part of his central message here in Vancouver.
The Dalia has turned this into a major discussion topic in relationship
to education. Modern education needs to
be rebalanced by joining emphasis on the mind to the warm heart. Students in BC’s highschools, UBC and SFU are
now encouraged to participate in an essay-writing contest on the subject. The idea is so important in his scheme, in
fact, that Buckley, the author of the GS article
ends his story with the prediction that the concept of the warm heart may well
become the monk’s greatest legacy. Something that important is obviously
worthwhile discussing.
Victor
Chan of UBC’s Institute of Asian Research, one of the main organizers of the
Dalai’s visit,
explained what can happen when that warm heart is missing. The most catastrophic example is that of
9/11. It was a case of highly intelligent and highly technical people who did
not have the input from the warm heart.
As a result, they used their knowledge “in a very destructive way.” That insight he apparently learned from his
august visitor.
The
example reminds me of the Biblical story of the fall, the event where the warm
heart was replaced by an egotistic, cold and calculating heart. That distorted
heart, though it did not prevent further developments in technology and art,
now led to putting further developments to egotistic use, in the service
of human beings who now were now mainly concerned with their own reputation and greatness.
In both stories the heart plays a central role in the development of
life and community and it makes all the difference whether that heart is warm,
turned towards God, or whether it steers people and cultures into directions
that produce monsters like concentration camps, 9/11, and other forms of
terrorism.
Here
we have, of course, the reason various religions set up their own educational
systems: to ensure a “warm” heart that leads to compassion and all other
positive components that go into a humane society. The secular public
educational system has eliminated that warm heart. It is more than interesting that public funds
will now apparently be expended to promote the warm heart concept, surely a
deeply religious concept. With secularism now seen as wanting and along with it
public education, it suddenly appears that the myth of separation of religion
and government itself is now beginning to explode. Well, that would be a great
gain from this visit.
It
is peculiar that it takes a foreigner to jump start a conversation on this
subject, when Christians and other religions all around us have been saying
this all along! Thanks, Dalai, for trying
to put our secular society back on track!
Perhaps your presence will help lift some of the fog from our secular
minds. If it takes one from afar like
you to make us listen to what locals have been repeating over and over again,
well, so be it! However, the people of Vancouver
should ask themselves why they plug their ears to a similar message from their
own indigenous institutions. Could it be
a case of undisguised secular prejudice?
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