{"id":426,"date":"2005-11-06T17:01:13","date_gmt":"2005-11-07T01:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/?p=426"},"modified":"2005-11-07T11:36:09","modified_gmt":"2005-11-07T19:36:09","slug":"hello-dalai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/11\/06\/hello-dalai","title":{"rendered":"Hello, Dalai!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I got to hear the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dalai_Lama\">Dalai Lama<\/a> speak at Stanford on Friday. I was actually a few minutes late because I was walking up from a non-standard direction and so I was trapped on the other end of his motorcade and the accompanying security detail. At one point I was about 15 feet from&nbsp;him.<\/p>\n<p>A few thoughts in no particular order:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A student asked me why in world I would want to hear the Dalai Lama speak since he\u2019s a leader of a rival religion. And then I read an article describing how some scientists are having the same reaction to the Dalai Lama\u2019s scheduled appearance at a neuroscience convention: <i>This merger of serious neuroscience with a particular religion is a practical joke because the very recognition of the Dalai Lama relies on the belief in reincarnation,\u201d said Yi Rao, a neurology professor at Northwestern University. (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/news\/2005\/07\/28\/dalai\">source<\/a>)<\/i>. I always find it funny when I see a scientist getting all fundamentalist. This is the flaw in that criticism: <strong><em>to say someone is wrong about one thing is not to say that they are wrong about all things<\/em><\/strong>. Of course I think the Dalai Lama teaches a lot of absurd ideas. That doesn\u2019t mean none of his ideas are good ones. Plus, I figured I\u2019d probably get a sermon illustration or two out of the mix. I was right, too\u2013check out the next bullet point.<\/li>\n<li>The talk was about nonviolence, and the Dalai Lama is a well-known pacifist and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, so I was fairly shocked when I heard him say that the jury was still out on whether or not the Iraq war was justified. I am not taking this out of context at all\u2013this was in direct response to a question whether or not war was ever moral. I don\u2019t think the audience knew what to do with that at all. I was laughing pretty loudly on the inside.<\/li>\n<li>He has a wonderful lack of decorum. In the midst of one question he took off his shoes, rubbed his feet, and tucked his legs underneath him.<\/li>\n<li>He contradicted himself quite a few times, but it could have been a byproduct of not being fluent in English. He was talking about some subtle things and he may have used a few words imprecisely.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>update 11\/7\/2005: the Stanford Daily just released <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stanforddaily.com\/tempo?page=content&amp;repository=0001_article&amp;id=18478\">an article about his visit<\/a> echoing many of my points above (including the Iraq war&nbsp;thing).<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got to hear the Dalai Lama speak at Stanford on Friday. I was actually a few minutes late because I was walking up from a non-standard direction and so I was trapped on the other end of his motorcade and the accompanying security detail. At one point I was about 15 feet from&nbsp;him. A \u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/11\/06\/hello-dalai\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \u201cHello, Dalai!\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stanfordministry-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-6S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}