Dalai Lama The Role Of Religion In Modern Society Summary

In “The Role of Religion in Modern Society” The Dalai Lama proposes the idea of “many religions, many truths.” His solution to the divisions that exists between these religions and truths involves the process of understanding other’s faith traditions through dialogue. The ideas he presents for inter-religious harmony is an optimistic world view but it is far from plausible.

There are fundamental barriers to the Dalai Lama’s view of multi-religious unity throughout the world. The most crucial of these are the basic contradictions in the tenants of various faiths. For example, Christianity believes that the Messiah has already come while Judaism believes this has yet to occur. Catholics affirm the authority of a Pope while Protestants

deny this. These are basic elements of these faiths; they are core values and cannot be removed without drastically impacting the nature of the religion. The Dalai Lama’s picture of inter-religious harmony would force the major religions to change their ideas such that they are no longer recognizable to their own followers.
An additional problem with the Dalai Lama’s world view is that it over simplifies the complexity of the necessary “dialogue” process and ignores the centuries of failed dialogues between one or two religions.

To suggest that multiple religions are capable of this transformation ignores the abundance of historical evidence. To take an example from contemporary events, a former Buddhist monk, Ashin Wirathu was “jailed in 2003 for inciting violence against Muslims and was forced to give up being a monk” (Gold). He has continued to be involved with several incidents with anti-Muslim riots, resulting in hundreds of deaths though he claims to be encouraging peaceful relations. Individuals like this and communities that form around their messages are not a modern innovation. There are numerous incidents throughout history of religious conflict which has simply been impossible to resolve through dialogue. Most notably, the relationship between Palestinians and the Jewish people who occupy Israel (both claimed as their homeland). Throughout the present and the antiquity, dialogues between these people have produced little results. Another example in history is the Spanish Inquisition in which dialogue was only an option if one was willing to confess to heresy and accept the consequences that

followed.
The final problem facing the Dalai Lama dream of multi-religious cohesion is that integration of various cultures requires the integration of the underlying frameworks through which they view the world. Many systems of interpretation across cultures are fundamentally incompatible with each other just as their core beliefs are incompatible. It is impossible to integrate a Zoroastrian cultural interpretation of fire as a purifying force with the punitive and destructive association often made by Christian culture. This difficulty of integrating religions was noted by accomplished American author, David Foster Wallace when he gave his Kenyon Commencement Speech in 2005. “The exact same experience can mean two totally different things to two difference people. Given those people’s two different belief templates and two different ways of constructing meaning from experience” (Wallace). This stands in direct contrast with Dalai Lama's claim that sharing experiences is the “most effective way of appreciating others’ teachings" (606).
These problems make the Dalai Lama’s vision of a world featuring religious unity and universally shared cultural experience unrealistic. More than that his vision is potentially a negative one. The clash of cultures and the juxtaposition of ideas engenders the growth of new cultures. A world where all religious truths have achieved unity is one which lacks cultural diversity. Ideological clashes are inevitable, and they are necessary if the global population is to be one of diverse cultures and ideas.