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I don't see why. Most world religions have some virtue aspect that is roughly equivalent to kindness and harmlessness. Also, as I said in the beginning of this thread, the Dalai Lama himself describes compassion as a "secular principle." No need for religion to appreciate compassion. If the...

So it seems. Here's the Tibetan Altar blog description of the Long Beach event: During the empowerment, he paused proceedings to explain, "If you are not Buddhist, for example if you are Christian, you don't have to use Buddhist visualizations. You can visualize the object of your faith, and...

I would take a page number as an answer for my question about William James. As for the Buddhist vow, how much typing would it take to address the specifics about where it came from (the author name and approximate date of the vow)? I suggest we start at the top: What does Buddhism say about...

Very astute but also somewhat ironic in light of your tendency to "flick away" points of view that are not to your liking.

You are debating the generality of the position, and that's fine, but the issue of generality does not really contradict the position, nor does it disprove it. More than likely, if it's a well-established ritual, it will be almost identical whenever it is enacted . Practically speaking, if the...

Hi Kim, This is what I am looking for: Who is the author of the prayer? What was the original source? When was the prayer first written? I think if we stick to facts, we can get somewhere.

It seems you have changed the story. In the OP you state that participants were encouraged to modify "the interior visualizations" associated with the Buddhist vow. That is objectively true. But in light of your emphasis on the personal meaning of ritual and your mention of the fact that people...

Even though Communion was the at the core of the Catholic mass, no one ever explained what it is to commune with G-d. I've been snooping around in the anthropology of religion and I have not found much on mystical side of ritual. Even descriptions of shamanic rituals suggest that rituals are...

I've been suggesting that in order to understand a ritual, it helps a lot to understand the experience of persons who use the ritual in its original form in their religious practice. Apparently you don't agree with me on this - for reasons I don't quite understand. I don't see how encouraging...

It's true: Buddhistically-oriented Westerners who extol the virtues of increasing social solidarity among religious groups on Interfaith discussion forums spend most of their waking hours in sadistic fantasies, breathlessly imagining the joys of showing off their expertise as a...

God was characterized as immutable in order to justify a provisional concept of His perfection. It is nonsense to let a simplistic notion of divinity dictate our understanding of G-d's possibilities. To maintain this position in the face of what we know about an evolving universe bespeaks an...

I was talking about systematic persecution and denominational conflict with the authority of a key official behind it. In ideological form or in the form of actual persecution? Denying them what? I'm talking about now. Recall that I've been talking about this from the standpoint of a naive...

I like the analogy, but it does not cover the initiation procedure Kim was talking about. We have no idea whether a Buddhist empowerment -- i.e. the Amitabha Buddha initiation -- has an equivalent in all faith traditions. So it seems that you are arguing for a unity of religions based on either...

The issue is doubling the standard on orthodoxy. Again, this was a Buddhist ritual event in the sense that the proceedings were conducted by a Buddhist ecclesiastic, the Dalai Lama. He gave nonBuddhists leeway to modify the ritual - i.e., "alter the visualizations and vows to be something that...

The Buddha also discouraged his followers to stay out of politics.:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

If you accept the idea of lineage as the basis for a Lama's authority (see Post #44), the Dalai Lama's current conflict with Shugden practitioners would appear to be something like this: An ecclesiastical official with questionable authority is dictating to other Buddhist what they should and...

I'm aware of historical instances of this. But with regard to the Dalai lama we are talking about present-day conflicts relating to heresy charges or imputations. Offhand, apart from Protestants being defined as heretics, I can't think of any other recent times instances that the Pope (1)...

Is there active persecution and an ongoing effort attempt to ostracize some group? For your interest, here's a Dorje Shugden petition to the Dalai Lama from this web page: Western Shugden Society: Petition to the Dalai Lama It looks like there's a lot of support To the Dalai Lama of Tibet...

Opportunities for me to do all the legwork abound, but thanks anyway. Btw, I just checked and find nothing on the wiki page for the Dalai Lama. If you would , please update that page at your earliest convenience with details on the conflict with Dorjee Shugden Buddhists, which seems to fit...

Thanks for letting me do all the explaining here, Snoopy. For the record, the Dalai Lama's lineage includes New Kadampa Tradition. By renouncing it, he has in effect renounced his own lineage. This undercuts his authority because in Buddhism a lama's authority is dependent on the lama's lineage.