THE DALAI LAMA: ETHICS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM THE MOVIE

hh the dalai lama

 

 

Lazy day, a good nap, a little nip in the air outside, a gentle nip. The netflix movie of the day was the Dalai Lama's ETHICS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM. It is an hour-long talk given at the Albert Hall in London, 1999. He speaks English well. My associations with the Albert Hall is Eric Clapton's band CREAM playing there in a concert video (a guy in the front of the audience obviously on acid, jerking his head up and down so fast he surely had neck problems by the time he was 35), and Bob Dylan playing his transition time there, first half of show acoustic, second half electric. The audience went nuts at the Albert Hall, just like at Newport in USA. It really was an in-yer-face gesture. Now, my associations with the Albert Hall include HH the Dalai Lama. I see him talk, hear him talk, read his writing, and I celebrate within that China overran Tibet and chased out the Dalai Lama and the other lamas, sent them out into the world through the funnel of India. Another example of God working in "strange" ways. Brings to mind a little girl who needed to get away from her mother she was living with and live with her daddy who cared about her. Mommy's new boyfriend beat child such that Protective Services turned her over to daddy immediately upon seeing the bruises. That's what it took to help push her through the transition from one home to another in one day. She's a tough little kid. It must have been time for Tibetan knowledge to go out into the world, like it was time for little girl to grow up loved and cared for.

dalai lama

We need an ethics for the new millennium. The last round of ethics that run from Greeks onward through Western philosophy and religion to now has come to nothing. Ethics is not even something people think about, but for a few scholars. By this time, what we call ethics has become so confused from indifference in the market place where the only ethic amounts to: self first--others last. The Dalai Lama's ethic amounts to others first, self last. A reversal. The Asian view. The balance. The decline and fall of Capitalism will make a big opening for a new understanding of ethics. Enlightenment Individualism in America has devolved into hyper narcissism, self-centered with blinders to keep out all but self. The degression has gone to its most absurd extremities ending itself. This has to be the turn-around time where ethical thinking and living is concerned. Could there be a time for collective humanity that might be called darker? This time we're in is so dark, it has to be the dark before the dawn. That a Tibetan holy man can fill the Albert Hall in this time indicates something having to do with a collective inner need. The audience is white middle class educated, likely university associated, mostly Londoners, liberals. It's in the middle class that revolutions have their beginnings. Might have something to do with why the republicans want to do away with the middle class and education. It's too late to stop it, the revolution to put an end to Capitalism has begun. Occupy and Anonymous are serious beginnings.

dalai lama

 

 

One of the many aspects of the Dalai Lama that appeal to me is his perfectly natural behavior. He talks like anybody talking, except what he says is not spoken by many people. The whole story of Tibetan lamas, every one of them, of which he is one, is in his mind. It is believed by people who have tested it for several centuries, that this Dalai Lama's is the same soul as the first Dalai Lama. His soul is devoted to returning in a new body every time to serve the Tibetan form of Buddhism. This incarnation is his fourteenth, XIV. I look at him knowing the Tibetan Book of the Dead is in his head, the life of Milarepa and the entire wealth of Tibetan wisdom. When I was a kid, I asked the fundamentalist Baptist preacher about wise people living in our time. No. There haven't been any wise people since Bible times. I did not believe it. I did not take him for wise, but figured that it had to be that somebody on this earth is wise. I wanted to find someone wise. There were not any in my world of Kansas fundamentalism and school, as far as I could tell. It became a search in the back of my mind for the rest of my life to find someone out here in the world I would call wise. I found quite a lot of people, both men and women, I thought of as incredibly intelligent with a wide range of penetrating knowledge, a few I'd say just a little bit shy of wisdom.

 

vada

"all babies are yogis" --- baba hari das

 

 

Through my 60s I knew a wise man, a hillbilly farmer and bluegrass banjo picker. I believe I was guided to him for the purpose of having a man of wisdom to pay attention to. I can't help but see that I was sent to him for some spiritual upliftment, to be an acolyte, a follower, to help him in his time of leaving the body. I projected it something like Elisha wanting to be with Elijah when he ascended, and Elijah passing his mantle (spiritual power) to Elisha upon his departure. Jr Maxwell, my hillbilly neighbor and friend, passed his car to me. My Toyota pickup burned up two weeks before he left the body. He said to me about finding a replacement, "Don't get in a hurry." Then his twenty year old Buick Century became mine. The heirs unanimously agreed it is my car. Nobody wanted it (but me). It spluttered, didn't have a great deal of power, but I knew it was out of time and probably hadn't had new plugs and wires since it was new, or not many times since then, broken taillight, broken headlight, headlights going everywhere but the road. I had the cooling system and the fuel injection system flushed. The money the insurance corporation gave me for the truck was the amount I needed to bring the Buick v6 3300 up to perfect running condition. It was like I just switched vehicles one day. It has 150 thousand miles, is 20 years old and does not burn oil. From oil change to oil change, I never have to add oil. I keep it running in perfect condition. After 3.5 years of driving it as "mine," I still think of it as Jr's car and my role is to take care of it.

 

 

 

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