Over at the website The Worst Horse, I just learned that the Dalai Lama will be on the Larry King show on Monday.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama will be on Larry King Live this coming Monday night. The LKL site says he will talk “about China, human rights and Haiti in his only interview after his controversial meeting with President Obama.”
This, just days after Thich Nhat Hanh was interviewed on Oprah.
You may be waiting for the hard hitting analysis on pop culture, television, and the fluffy nature of TV programming these days. I could certainly do that. I haven't owned a TV since 2003, and almost never consider anything on TV worth dropping whatever I am doing to watch when I am in places with a TV. However, I think it's just fine that these two powerful teachers and peacemakers are doing these shows. In fact, it might help make a dent in the flawed perceptions that arrived, or were enhanced, during the whole Fox News, Brit Hume kerfuffle.
Meanwhile, Tiger Woods appeared in public for the first time in several weeks and had the following to say:
“I have a lot of work to do, and I intend to dedicate myself to doing it. Part of following this path, for me, is Buddhism, which my mother taught me at a young age. People probably don’t realize it, but I was raised a Buddhist, and I actively practiced my faith from childhood until I drifted away from it in recent years. Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint."
Interesting that Woods chose to use the word "faith" to describe Buddhism. I wonder if he deliberately used the term out of hope that it might bridge him with Americans of monotheistic traditions, especially Christians. Or maybe the devotional aspect of practice was most prominent in his childhood home, and thus Buddhism does really feel like a faith to him. In any event, it's easy to see how fame and fortune could sway someone like Tiger away from his spiritual path. Any of us could have been like him, and in our own ways, are exactly like him. Maybe his easy to understand statement about craving and the search for security will awaken others to question the ways they've investing in fleeting things, hoping for a happiness that will never come.
1 comment:
Like you, I think it's just fine that Thich Nhat Hanh is sitting with Oprah and His Holiness is visiting with Larry King again.
I appreciated Tiger's statement about what he had been taught in Buddhism, and how he had strayed from it.
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