The Dali Lama enthusiastically got the vaccine: more proof Eastern philosophy and meditation are ill-equipped for the modern world. Spirituality is blind without thought. Of course Western intellectuals have mostly failed to understand the nature of recent events as well. Thought is impotent without spiritual practice. It not only cannot act on its critiques, it fails to connect with the creative well behind the fount of thought that would make its critiques a powerful and accurate vision of the reasons behind things.
A majority of Theosophists, Anthroposophists, and other true thinkers of the spiritual counterculture know this. And while there is no guarantee of success with any method or philosophy, and many indeed break out of the limits of inadequate methods—or confused lines of thinking—it is those that understand the importance of transforming the spirit of thought that are humanity’s only hope for a non-dystopian future.
I do not mean to go full on Christian eschatology here and suggest this is the “mark of the beast”. But it is a turning point in humanity’s future and any true spiritual leader would realize this and be an example. The Dali Lama is doing his best I am sure. He probably thinks this is the best thing for humanity. But his knowledge of how the world works is very limited by an out of date and mostly monastic philosophy. When his traditional life was disrupted by the Chinese he had to learn about the modern world from outside sources, like the US government and CIA. In his more general education about the modern world, he has been very taken in by various versions of scientism, and has shown little understanding of the important contributions of western philosophy that would enable him to take a more critical stance to the rising technocracy that he seems completely blind to.
This shouldn’t be read as a damning of the value of Buddhism or even a judging of its absolute value, but rather an evaluation of how it functions in the modern world. In our times Buddhism has become mostly antithetical to thought. Tibetan Buddhism though, especially does have a rich philosophical history, and as I mentioned above, Theosophy, which is the source for much of contemporary esoteric culture and spiritual thought, does derive from Tibetan sources, specifically the books of Kiu-Te (rGyud-sde), part of the Buddhist tantras.
In Steiner’s version of Theosophy, later called Anthroposophy, he claims that the secret teachings evolved as they came to the west, and while he always gives Buddhism its props, there are things that the West added to the ancient teachings as humanity and culture have evolved since the time of the Buddha, or the earlier avatars like Krishna or Zarathrusta.In Steiner’s terms, the West has been developing the “mind soul” and now the “consciousness soul”, which you don’t find much of in the East, except for these secret tantras. But whether your style is spiritual or secular, it doesn’t matter. One should be able to see what is at stake if you are developing the higher spiritual capacities of the mind. Many people are just intuitive enough or even uneducated/insufficiently brainwashed enough to have sensed what is going on right now and are not being taken in by the propaganda.
In any case, I know people may have to get the vaccine. I do not judge people for their personal decisions. But we all should know the paradigm that is being set up here and you don’t have to have great spiritual wisdom to see it. In fact my point is that so much spiritual wisdom fails when it can’t actually navigate the illusions of the world. Tibetan Buddhism, even in the books written with the Dali Lama still contain the greater ideal of not only enlightenment but cosmic knowledge that make a difference in the world by seeing the relative values within the illusion of the world. But the actual development of greater wisdom that doesn’t negate but integrates all lines of thought–called the “Tantric Distinction” in a book by that name I really like, written with the help of the Dali Lama–necessitates an intuitive thinking that with the Dali Lama is mostly undeveloped under a thick blanket of stale tradition and modern technocratic dogma.
