by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush
from Huffington Post

In the final days of 2011 we pause to reflect on the year that has past — the good, the bad and the ugly. Here are the HuffPost Religion Top Stories of 2011.

The Muslim Spring
It started with a simple vegetable seller in Tunisia who, humiliated by the police and autocracy, set himself on fire at the end of 2010. One year later, the seemingly eternal regimes of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have fallen to popular uprisings and several others, including Syria, appear to be teetering. Once called the Arab Spring, Islam is increasingly being recognized as the fuel that fed the fire of these revolutions — a fire that that may both warm and burn in 2012.

The Dalai Lama Steps Down
The Dalai Lama made history when he relieved himself from his responsibility as political head of the Tibetan people to concentrate solely on his role as spiritual leader; ending one of the most enduring, if benevolent, theocracies in the world. Lobsang Sangay, the Harvard-trained legal scholar, is the the new Tibetan Prime Minister in a time when frustrations with Chinese policy is leading to a fiery form of radical protests by nuns and monks.

Mormons in Politics
The potential success of the Romney presidential campaign has fed a frenzy of discussion of what it means that a Mormon is in politics. The fact that Romney is not the only Mormon candidate (Huntsman) and that the Senate Majority Leader (Reid) is also Mormon doesn’t seem to stop the endless punditry and speculation. Will religious suspicion on the part of evangelicals in the primary and secularists in the general election doom this Mormon moment?

The Muslims Are Coming, The Muslims Are Coming
Fear of the “Muslim menace,” fueled by cynical politicians and well funded think tanks, has led to anti-sharia laws proposed and passed in states around the country. The fact that these states hadno pending pro-sharia laws is apparently beside the point. Creating bulwarks instead of bridges, the anti-sharia (read Muslim) movements seem to ebb and flow according to the political tides (think Park 51 in 2010). Get ready for a flood in 2012.

The End of the World
In order to give people time to repent, people with May 21 Judgment Day signs started popping up well before the announced date of the end of the world. The “prophet” of this apocalypse was Harold Camping, an elderly man with a drawling voice heard most prominently on his Family Radio empire. People left jobs, families prepared to be raptured and as the clock ticked down, the entire world held its collective unbelieving breath. And then time went on, and oddly a little disappointed, so did we.

Presbyterians Acknowledge Gays and Lesbians Can Be Ministers
Ho hum, gays can be ministers, too. Yet, for the Presbyterian Church, one of America’s most famously and proudly plodding religious traditions, to change its laws to allow openly gay men and women in same-sex relationships to be ordained as clergy was a major step forward for LGBT rights and for the Church as a whole.

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by Leo D. Lefebure

When I was a graduate student at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in the 1980s, there were intense discussions of religious pluralism and theological understandings of religious diversity. My doctoral dissertation focused on the importance of the biblical wisdom tradition for contemporary Christian theology, concluding with suggestions that this trajectory could be a fruitful starting point for inter-religious reflection.

During this period, a couple that I knew moved from Casper, Wyoming, to Bangkok and invited me to visit them. This led to my first trip to East and Southeast Asia. I visited Kyoto, Bangkok, Myanmar/Burma, and Bali, and was deeply moved by the beauty of the Buddhist and Hindu art in these sites. I also stayed in the Buddhist monastery of Wat Rempoeng near Chiang Mai, Thailand, where I was introduced to the practice of Theravada Buddhist meditation.

Shortly thereafter, I came to know the noted Japanese Zen Buddhist philosopher, Masao Abe, who was then a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He agreed to be the mentor to me for a post-doctoral research project funded by the Association of Theological Schools of the United States and Canada, which allowed me to go to Kyoto, where Abe introduced me to a circle of Japanese scholars, both Buddhist and Christian. These encounters led to my book, The Buddha and the Christ (Orbis Books 1993). My most recent book, The Path of Wisdom: A Christian Commentary on the Dhammapada (Peeters and Eerdmans 2011), continues this trajectory of reflection, responding to the wisdom sayings of Shakyamuni Buddha in light of both biblical and later Christian wisdom traditions. I continue to appreciate the deep wisdom of the Buddhist tradition and find it enriching on many levels.

In 1987, as I was beginning to teach at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary near Chicago, I was invited to participate in a retreat of Catholic priests and rabbis at the University’s Center for Development in Ministry, where we not only talked to one another but also prayed together. This began my decades-long engagement in Jewish-Christian dialogue, which continues today. In the spring of 2009, I participated in a very moving Jewish-Christian study trip to Poland, co-sponsored by Georgetown University and the Polish Foreign Ministry, exploring various aspects of Jewish-Polish relations past and present.

In the 1990s, I was invited to join the Midwest Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims, where I contributed to the drafting of a booklet on Revelation in Catholic and Muslim Perspectives. I was teaching at Fordham University in New York City on September 11, 2001. Afterward, I was involved in discussions of religion and violence at a number of venues, including Siena College near Albany, NY, the Islamic Center of Passaic County, New Jersey and in the Mid-Atlantic Dialogue of Catholics and Muslims in Queens.

I became involved with the work of CPWR when I went to a theology meeting at DePaul University and happened to come upon a group of colleagues who were on the CPWR research committee helping to plan the 1993 Parliament in Chicago. They invited me to attend their next meeting and join the research committee. I also covered the 1993 Parliament for The Christian Century. Later, when I was teaching at Fordham University, I participated in the Consultation on Interfaith Education’s planning for their symposium at the 2004 Parliament in Barcelona, where I offered reflections on the Dalai Lama’s contribution to interfaith education.

The most powerful defining moment of the interreligious movement for me was the 1996 Gethsemani Encounter at Gethsemani Abbey, Kentucky, which included the Dalai Lama, Maha Ghosananda (the Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism), and many other Buddhist and Catholic monastic leaders. The context of a Catholic Trappist monastery with its rhythms of silence, meditation, and prayer, provided a welcoming atmosphere for the week-long monastic inter-religious reflection. The spirit of Thomas Merton hovered around us as we continued his practice of inter-religious friendship. As an advisor to Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, I enjoyed many moving exchanges with Buddhist and Catholic monastics. Other powerful experiences have come on Buddhist-Christian retreats that draw upon the resources of both traditions.

Given the often problematic role of religion in the world’s conflicts past and present, I believe my involvement in inter-religious reflection is important in building bridges and shaping a healthy community of the world’s religions. I find much hope and encouragement in the wonderful women and men whom I have met in inter-religious encounters.

From Huffington Post

Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from “Beyond Religion” by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Reproduced by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

I am an old man now. I was born in 1935 in a small village in northeastern Tibet. For reasons beyond my control, I have lived most of my adult life as a stateless refugee in India, which has been my second home for over 50 years. I often joke that I am India’s longest-staying guest. In common with other people of my age, I have witnessed many of the dramatic events that have shaped the world we live in. Since the late 1960s, I have also traveled a great deal, and have had the honor to meet people from many different backgrounds: not just presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens, and leaders from all the world’s great religious traditions, but also a great number of ordinary people from all walks of life.

Looking back over the past decades, I find many reasons to rejoice. Through advances in medical science, deadly diseases have been eradicated. Millions of people have been lifted from poverty and have gained access to modern education and health care. We have a universal declaration of human rights, and awareness of the importance of such rights has grown tremendously. As a result, the ideals of freedom and democracy have spread around the world, and there is increasing recognition of the oneness of humanity. There is also growing awareness of the importance of a healthy environment. In very many ways, the last half-century or so has been one of progress and positive change.

At the same time, despite tremendous advances in so many fields, there is still great suffering, and humanity continues to face enormous difficulties and problems. While in the more affluent parts of the world people enjoy lifestyles of high consumption, there remain countless millions whose basic needs are not met. With the end of the Cold War, the threat of global nuclear destruction has receded, but many continue to endure the sufferings and tragedy of armed conflict. In many areas, too, people are having to deal with environmental problems and, with these, threats to their livelihood and worse. At the same time, many others are struggling to get by in the face of inequality, corruption and injustice.

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by Eboo Patel from Huffington Post

What’s the Dalai Lama’s secret? He’s got over two million Twitter followers, people buy his books in droves, his speeches sell out stadiums. In a highly cynical age, he’s held the public’s attention for over two decades with some pretty elementary ideas: the essence of human nature is to be happy, human beings are happiest when they help others attain happiness, all major religions nurture the most basic ingredient of happiness, namely compassion, but you don’t have to be religious to be compassionate, you just have to live up to the basic goodness of your human nature.

Like Socrates saying “I know that I know nothing”, it’s not just the simplicity of the message that attracts people, it’s the remarkable journey of the man who is articulating it. The story of his escape from Tibet into India, his successful establishment of a government in exile, his continual advocacy for peaceful negotiations with his Chinese occupiers even while the culture and lives of his people are crushed day after day — these things are well known, and more than enough to command admiration and attention.

But what is astounding about the Dalai Lama is how much more he is than the spiritual, symbolic and political (although he’s stepping down from that role) leader of the Tibetan people. For those of us who believe religion is a source of inspiration and a bridge of cooperation, at a time when people presenting religion as a bomb of destruction are ruling the airwaves, the Dalai Lama is our single most powerful example. It is this part of his mission — Dalai Lama as interfaith leader, which is also the subject of his most recent book, “Towards a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions Can Come Together” — that has brought him to Chicago for a set of presentations sponsored by the Theosophical Society.

Like much of what the Dalai Lama does, the book and his presentations have been deceptively simple. He states clearly that inter-religious cooperation has to be one of the central priorities for our world, and says that it is one of his three core missions in life, along with promoting the basic human values of compassion and happiness, and finding a solution to the crisis of Tibet…

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Roman Catholics decorate star and crescent of Islam for Dalai Lama's visit

The Dalai Lama’s message of compassion long has transcended Tibetan Buddhism and enchanted people of all faiths — and no faith.

It’s an ethos that blends spirituality with humanism and logic, common ground on which most religious traditions tend to agree.

This weekend, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th dalai lama and spiritual leader of troubled Tibet, will bring tidings to Chicago that address religious tensions head on and prescribe what it takes to ease them.

The anticipation of his arrival inspired a dozen religious communities to undertake an unusual artistic endeavor that will provide the backdrop to the Dalai Lama’s appearance Sunday on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Framing the Dalai Lama on stage will be a dozen towering religious icons created by artists of other traditions. Roman Catholics decorated a star and crescent of Islam. Native Americans created the nine-pointed star of the Baha’i faith. An African-American Protestant congregation on the South Side incorporated the design of the 4,000-year-old symbol of Zoroastrianism, a tradition some didn’t know existed before the project.

“It’s an amazing show of support and unity that different people of different faiths actually came together,” said Nina Norris, a member of St. Matthias Catholic Church in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood. “The fact that it’s guided under the Dalai Lama is maybe the only way it could happen.”

Invited by the Theosophical Society in America, the group that hosted the monk’s first visit to the Chicago area in 1981, the Dalai Lama will present a public talk Sunday at the UIC Pavilion.

On Monday morning at downtown’s Harris Theater for Music and Dance, he will join a rabbi, a pastor and a Muslim scholar for a panel discussion titled “Building Bridges: Religious Leaders in Conversation with the Dalai Lama.” The panel will be moderated by Eboo Patel, founder and executive director of the Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core.

Tim Boyd, president of the Theosophical Society in America, which is based in Wheaton, said the Dalai Lama thought for three seconds before he accepted his invitation during a private audience last year. After all, it was his introduction to the Theosophical Society in India 55 years ago that opened his eyes to the plethora of world religions beyond his own, Boyd said.

“It was the first time he had met people who believed there was value in the religions of the world and there was a certain essence they all shared,” Boyd said. “At that time, he was a 21-year-old monk. To him, Buddhism was all that he knew and all that he thought was appropriate. After that meeting, he left there a changed man.”

by Ana Sebescen from CNN

Thousands of well-wishers sang “Happy Birthday” Wednesday to the Dalai Lama, who turned 76 at the beginning of an 11-day visit to the capital on which he will meet with top congressional leaders.

So far, the White House has remained silent on a potential meeting between the Tibetan spiritual leader and President Obama

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has invited the Dalai Lama to the Capitol on Thursday to meet with congressional leaders, his office announced Wednesday. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi will be among those attending.

Obama met with the Dalai Lama in Washington in February 2010, triggering a rebuke from China, which considers the Dalai Lama the leader of a separatist movement.

“I always say, the best gift to me is to practice compassion,” said the Dalai Lama said Wednesday. He urged the crowd to search for happiness within and promote non-violence, compassion and equality around the world.

The term “Dalai Lama” is a Tibetan Buddhist religious title. Under Buddhist teachings, the title is given to those who are the reincarnations of a lineage of religious teachers. The current Dalai Lama is considered the 14th in this line.

Wednesday’s festivities marked the start of the Dalai Lama’s visit, during which he will confer a special blessing and ancient Buddhist teachings.

“Rich, poor, believer, non-believer – no difference. We are all the same,” the Dalai Lama said…

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By Sandy Illian Bosch
from The DoingsClaredonHills

Preparations are under way for the Dalai Lama’s July visit to Chicago, and a Burr Ridge organization is part of the plans.

The Zoroastrian Center of Chicago, located at 8615 Meadowbrook Lane in Burr Ridge, is one of 12 places of worship chosen to prepare sculptures to be used during the Dalai Lama’s public talk July 17 at the UIC Pavilion.

The Theosophical Society in America and Jim Lasko of Redmoon Theater have chosen 12 Chicago area religious organizations to design and create an icon of another faith.

The Zoroastrians were busy Sunday creating a cross, not only to represent the Christian faith, but also the parallels between the two religions.

“It signifies our togetherness,” Rohinton Rivetna, spiritual leader of the Zoroastrian Center and Hinsdale resident said. “We want to understand each other.”

Each organization is assigned an artist to help with their sculpture’s design. Jillian Gryzlak of Chicago is helping the Zoroastrians decorate the Christian cross with flowers, splintered wood, wooden ovals painted in varying fleshtones and light.

“I didn’t make any of these decisions,” said Gryzlak. She said the design is a collaboration of ideas that came from talks she initiated with members of the Burr Ridge temple.

Gryzlak said she began work on the cross by meeting with members of the Zoroastrian community.

“We defined belief,” she said, and used those definitions to design the sculpture.

“This was really developed in our time together,” Rivetna said.

Stacked wooden ovals are painted in varying colors of brown, tan and cream — colors representing the many cultures that have used the cross as a symbol of their faith throughout history…

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The Dalai Lama returns to Montreal later this year on September 7, to address the Second Global Conference On World’s Religions after September 11, which will meet at the Palais des Congrès, almost after a decade following the events of 9/11.

Other renowned speakers include Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi, world-famous author Deepak Chopra, Professor Tariq Ramadan, and Professor Robert Thurman. Professor Gregory Baum, recipient of the Order of Canada and Swami Dayananda Saraswati will also participate in the conference.

Under the theme of “Peace Through Religion”, the one-day event will include the unveiling of the latest version of a proposed Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the World’s Religions, which has been on the anvil since 1996 and which is designed as a complement to the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

“The aim of the conference is to bring together the various religions of the world in an ecumenical spirit to address the many issues facing the world today, in the hope that this will help all of us become better human beings”, emphasized the convenor of the event, Arvind Sharma, Birks Professor of Comparative Religion at the Faculty of Religious Studies of McGill University.
Panel discussions with the speakers will seek to generate consensus around two fundamental social and religious issues:

• Should a course on world religions also be taught whenever the confessional study or religion is carried out?

and

• Should violating the sanctity of the scripture of any religion be considered tantamount to violating the sanctity of the scriptures of all religions?

The Conference is co-sponsored by McGill University and Université de Montréal.

Click here for more information

From Tibet.net

DHARAMSALA: Kalon Tripa Prof Samdhong said Thursday Tibetans living inside Tibet should not worry about His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s retirement plan, saying “His Holiness had clearly said he would continue to work for the cause of Tibet”.

Kalon Tripa was speaking to a large gathering of over 1,800 Tibetans who have come from Tibet to receive His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s teachings in Sarnath.

Kalon Tripa said His Holiness the Dalai Lama had spoken about taking complete retirement from the administrative work of the Central Tibetan Administration in exile in March this year. The Tibetans living inside Tibet expressed their deep concerns over his remarks, he added.

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[The following links provide more information about His Holiness the Dalai Lama's retirement.]

Tibet.net

Sify.com

Spero News

From The Huffington Post

Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama, would make the perfect dad. Imagine having to tell the world’s most famous “simple Buddhist monk” that you wrecked the family car. Material items are not important, but you must examine the causes and conditions that gave rise to this accident. Or that you spent all the money in your checking account before the end of the month — again. You will not find happiness through external means. You must look inside to identify the things that lead to happiness. Or that you are devastated by the breakup of your love relationship.Everything is impermanent. This suffering too will pass.

His gentle and often playful manner, his engaging smile and twinkling eyes, his quick wit and simple yet profound remarks inspire a sense of reassurance, acceptance, and peacefulness that the world has come to attribute to this one person, this man.

But what if the next Dalai Lama is a woman? Would she, or even could she, offer the world the same grounding wisdom? Inspire compassion within people of all cultures? Properly navigate Tibet’s troublesome relationship with the Chinese government?

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