Book review: 'Beyond Religion' by the Dalai Lama

[rug]

After a lifetime of Buddhist reflection, he suggests that religion is tea to the water of compassion. Tea is nutritious, water essential.

By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times
December 21, 2011

For most of his 76 years, the 14th Dalai Lama has been the spiritual light for followers of Tibetan Buddhism, his every word parsed for guidance to living a better, more fulfilling life. Awarded the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama has been an outspoken advocate for compassion, meditation and religious tolerance.

Now, as he steps down as leader of Tibet, the perpetually smiling monk in saffron and burgundy robes makes in "Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World" what some may regard as a heretical pronouncement: You don't need religion to lead a happy and ethical life.

Amid the clash of global, multicultural societies and religious values today, he argues in his new book that what is more important is "an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally accessible to those with faith and those without; a secular ethics."

A metaphor the Dalai Lama likes to use goes like this: The difference between ethics and religion is like the difference between water and tea. Ethics without religious content is water, a critical requirement for health and survival. Ethics grounded in religion is tea, a nutritious and aromatic blend of water, tea leaves, spices, sugar and, in Tibet, a pinch of salt.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-book-20111221,0,5874091.story

[MarkCharles]

1. Interesting that the OP would cherry-pick the parts of..

the review which scream out "my religious ethics are better than your non-religious ethics", when the intent of the review is to talk about a book that is more about UNIFYING the human experience than pitting one group against another.

Just look at what follows the quote above.

"But however the tea is prepared, the primary ingredient is always water," he says. "While we can live without tea, we can't live without water. Likewise, we are born free of religion, but we are not born free of the need for compassion."

and further on in the review


Some may disagree with the Dalai Lama's perspective, but he does a credible job of arguing why we should "move beyond our limited sense of closeness to this or that group or identity, and instead cultivate a sense of closeness to the entire human family."

[rug]

2. Interesting you use the phrase chery pick when the first four paragraphs are posted.

Cherry picking is sifting through the article to find four paragraphs to feed an agenda while avoiding copyright infringement.

Did you miss this posted excerpt: "an approach to ethics which makes no recourse to religion and can be equally accessible to those with faith and those without; a secular ethics."

I hear no screaming outside of what's going on is inside your head.

[MarkCharles]

3. Cherry Picking, Defined.

"Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position. It is a kind of fallacy of selective attention, the most common example of which is the confirmation bias. Cherry picking may be committed unintentionally."

"This is another name for the Fallacy of Suppressed Evidence."

http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#Cherry-Picking

I would like to advise some posters here that personal insults directed at another poster are against the Terms of Service.

[rug]

4. Now apply it.

You overlooked the excerpt in the post.

And I would like to advise you that accusing a poster of cherry picking is a veiled questiong of the poster's motives.

[Leontius]

8. I believe "cherry picking" is the phrase of the week fo the CM.

[tama]

5. MC,

my initial reaction to your cherry picking posts was: "Veiled sarcasm?!?!?LULZ"
Can't really tell, and that's what's enjoyable.

I refere to your posts also as cherry picking because in my language we have a saying about raisins and bun. You can't pick raisins from a bun without having a bun in the first place. And in verifiable and scientifically testable RL, some people pick the raisins from a bun not to eat them, because they don't like raisins in a bun and like to eat their bun without raisins. On the other hand, there are raisins also in the liver pudding, another classical treat, and nobody in their right mind could imagine picking raisins out of liver pudding and eating liver pudding without raisins it. And lingonberry jam on the side. It's one of those whole deal or no deal things in life, liver pudding.

So this seems to be the truest association chain why your posts were associated with cherry picking - to reveal that they were as incomprehensible as 'picking raisins from liver pudding'.

[GliderGuider]

6. Do I ever love reading your posts.

Now you've got me all curious about liver pudding.

[tama]

11. And lingonberry jam

In gallup among schoolkids, the dish they hated most:



Happy holidays, hope you still believe in Santa!

[laconicsax]

13. Mmm...lingonberries are great.

[GliderGuider]

7. Quoting the first four graphs of a piece in order, in their entirety, is not "cherry-picking".

<Message body self-deleted by poster due to risk of TOS violation.>

[MH1]

9. Sounds good, looking forward to reading it.

It's been awhile since I read anything by the Dalai Lama but in the past I always enjoyed his perspective.

Thanks for posting!

(still looking for that Buddhism group to show up here. )

[rug]

10. I'll be there.

[ellisonz]

12. The Dalai Lama has a certain way with words.

(I'm awaiting the Buddhism group too., in fact, I'm going to go see about getting that done now)