Religious Harmony

Setting the Motivation To differentiate from the non-Buddhists, there is the taking of refuge or safe direction, and to differentiate from the Hinayana path, there is the taking of the Mahayana refuge. We look to the Buddha Shakyamuni as our main example of a source of safe...

There is a long history of Muslims being regarded by the Christian West as the forces of the devil. This began at the end of the eleventh century CE with the Crusades to take the Holy Lands from the Muslims. It continued with the fall of ­­the center of Eastern Orth­odox...

Introduction His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama emphasizes that religious harmony must be based on education, knowing about each other’s traditions. With thorough knowledge, we can acknowledge the common goals we share, while respecting the differences. In fact, from...

General Assertions Buddhism does not assert creation or a creator. The mental continuums of all sentient beings have no beginning. “Sentient beings” are living beings that act with intention and experience happiness or unhappiness as a result. Like souls in Islam, however, the...

What does it mean to understand something is a very important topic because there are so many things that we need to understand. We’re not talking simply about understanding the various points of the Dharma, but this issue is very important in our daily life as well. We need...

The Different Lineages of Mahamudra In general, we could gain a decisive understanding of voidness with respect to any basis characterized by voidness, or having voidness as its nature, such as a vase. There is no difference in the abiding devoid nature itself of a vase or...

The Dalai Lama looks at the major world religions, each having their own specialty. Through close contact in a globalized world, they can learn new things from each other and enrich their own traditions.

The health of a society arises dependently on each of its members developing a healthy mind and sense of ethics. See how the various world religions would tackle a disaster in accord with their own system of ethics.

The Dalai Lama’s emphasis on reaching out to the Muslim world with respect and making correct information about each other’s beliefs widely available are the best roads for Buddhist-Muslim harmony in areas in Asia where the two cultures meet.

The Dalai Lama believes it is wrong to characterize a whole religion as bad because of the actions of a few mischievous people. This is true regarding Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism alike.