Why the West Reveres the Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has effectively been turned into a cartoon good guy. In America and western Europe, where backward anti-modern sentiments are widespread amongst self-loathing sections of the educated and the elite, the Dalai Lama has been embraced as a living, breathing representative of unsullied goodness. Despite the fact that he advertises Apple, guest-edits Vogue and drives a Land Rover, he is held up as evidence that living the simple eastern life is preferable to, in the words of Philip Rawson, westerners' "gradually more pointless pursuit of material satisfactions". Just as earlier generations of disillusioned aristocrats fell in love with a fictional version of Tibet (Shangri-La), so contemporary un-progressives idolise a fictional image of the Dalai Lama.

- Brendan O'Neill, 'Down with the Dalai Lama', guardian.co.uk, Thursday May 29 2008

The Noose Tightens

Kosovo's parliament has overwhelmingly endorsed a declaration of independence from Serbia in an historic session.

The declaration, read by Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, said Kosovo would be a democratic country that respected the rights of all ethnic communities.

The US and a number of EU countries are expected to recognise Kosovo on Monday.

- BBC News, Sunday, 17 February 2008, 14:50 GMT

Now a great cloud hangs over all the land; and it is deepening.

Kosovo and Metohija is the historical heartland of Orthodox Serbia. The mediæval Serbian state was centered around Kosovo, and today remains the heart of Serbian Orthodoxy; home to more than 1,300 churches and monasteries.

Yes, that is the full name of that province: Kosovo AND Metohija. The latter was used to denote a territory of the Church in the Middle Ages; Albanians and the Western media tend to simply use "Kosovo", ignoring the word that would imply that Kosovo belongs to the Orthodox Church.

During the last decade, the Christian Serbian population have been driven from their homeland by Albanian terrorism, openly supported by bombers of the defunct Cold War relic, NATO. Today, the criminal overlords of Kosovo declare independence. Today, yet another piece of Christendom is lost to Islam.

For the last five years, Albanian terrorists, the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (UÇK), who have strong ties to al-Qaeda and are now the de facto rulers of Kosovo, have systemically been destroying ancient churches, libraries and monasteries, with the open consent of the occupying NATO forces.

When Saddam Hussein annexed Kuwait, the Western powers insisted that sovereignty, borders determined by international law and the United Nations and must be protected. Now, those same guardians of international law seem to have forgotten their own arguments and are doing everything to ensure that Kosovo becomes independent from Serbia.

The Americans and British are hypocritically supporting this farcical independence because they still believe in "containing" Russia, and this move would supposedly balance Russian influence in the region. Serbia, demonised by the media since the Yugoslav wars of the 90s, is powerless to do anything.

We're going to have yet another Muslim terrorist state.



Say a prayer for Kosovo.

One takes comfort in the words of Elder Barnabas of Gethsemane Skete from more than a century ago:

"Persecutions against the faith will constantly increase. There will be unheard-of grief and darkness, and almost all the churches will be closed; but when it will seem to people that it is impossible to endure any longer, then deliverance will come. There will be a flowering. Churches will even begin to be built. But this will be a flowering before the end."

Saint Buddha

Today's saints (according to the Roman Catholic calendar; the Orthodox mark it on 26 August) is perhaps the most peculiar commemoration in the Church calendar - East or West:

Barlaam and Josaphat are said to have lived in third or fourth century India, where the Gospel was first preached by St Thomas the Apostle. The religion had grown steadily, but was persecuted by, among others, one King Abenner. This king was told by his astrologers that his son Josaphat would become a Christian. King Abenner kept his son locked away from the outside world to prevent this prophecy from coming true, but a Christian hermit named Barlaam preached the Chrsitian religion to the young prince, and he converted. King Abenner later became a Christian and then a hermit. Josaphat became king, but abdicated soon after to live a life of ascetic piety.

Josaphat's tale was wildly popular in the Middle Ages, and versions of it appeared in nearly all European languages, from Armenian to Icelandic. It was the basis of La vida es sueño (Life is a dream), the masterpiece by Spanish Golden Age playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. The legend quite nearly circumnavigated the globe; a version of it came into being in the Tagalog language of the Philippines.

The story, it turns out, is a Christianized retelling of the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. Before his birth a seer predicted he would either be a great king or a holy man. To ensure the former outcome, his father the king shielded the boy from all forms of religious teaching and from witnessing any form of human suffering. Having accidentally witnessed the latter, he left his palace to lead an ascetic life. The Buddha's story traveled in all four directions. As it traveled west, the Sanskrit "Bodhisattva" became "Bodisav" in Persian, "Budhasaf" or "Yudasaf" in Arabic, "Iodasaph" in Georgian, "Ioasaph" in Greek, and "Josaphat" in Latin.

Thus, the Buddha came to be venerated in Christendom. This remarkable origin of this tale need not be cause for embarrassment. It is a testimony to the faith of the Age of Faith, whose children yearned for holiness and recognized it when they saw it, even in a tale from a faraway land. Without access to a fact-checking resource like Wikipedia, it is easy to see how such a cultus could have developed.

Were the Christians of the Middle Ages who asked for St Josaphat's intercessions praying to the Bodhisattva? Were the many parishes named after St Josaphat erected in honor of the Buddha?

MORE at the Western Confucian's interpretation of what this could mean to the Church.

Question

Words of wisdom from St John Climacus, whom we commemorate today, on the married life:

Some people living carelessly in the world put a question to me: "How can we who are married and living amid public cares aspire to the monastic life?" I answered: "Do whatever you may. Speak evil of no one. Tell no lie. Despise no one and carry no hate. Do not separate yourself from the church assemblies. Show compassion to the needy. Do not be a cause of scandal to anyone. Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you. If you do all this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven".

St John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

Never mistake the monastic life for being superior or inferior to the married life.