Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 14:01:22 -0800 (PST)
Subject: HAB: Habermas & the Dalai Lama


"A specter is haunting Europe," Karl Marx wrote 150 years ago in "The
Communist Manifesto," "the specter of communism." Influenced by Marx's
claim that religion is "the opiate of the masses," sociologists have
traditionally viewed Buddhism as otherworldly, apolitical, pessimistic,
socially apathetic and ethically inert -- the most powerful of
religious opiates. Robert Thurman's "Inner Revolution" is a Buddhist
manifesto that stands Marx and the sociologists on their heads. A
specter is haunting America, he argues, and it's the friendly ghost of
Tibetan Buddhism. 

As the world modernized, Thurman argues, Tibet modernized too. But
while the West's modernity was "outer," Tibet's modernity was "inner."
It explored inner rather than outer space, championed the spiritual
over the material, sacralized rather than secularized the world, and
put its trust in individuals over bureaucracies. 

Nonviolent and tolerant, it achieved its apogee in the monasteries of
the "psychonauts" of Tibet. Militaristic modernity, Thurman concludes,
has brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Our challenge is
to marry inner and outer modernity -- to create a global society (a
"United Nations of Earth") that is both spiritually and technologically
advanced.

http://www.salon.com/books/sneaks/1998/03/30review.html





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