Is the Dalai Lama an Atheist - Dr. Alan Wallace Answers in Podcast Interview

USA (SANEPR.com) February 19, 2009 -- Join Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Tibetan Buddhism expert and author of, Mind in the Balance, Dr. Alan Wallace. During the 40-minute interview, the Dr. Wallace addresses the question of whether the Dalai Lama is an atheist:

“In the framing itself, the question is already skewed. It’s not so obvious to a person who’s totally immersed in Western civilization and has almost no understanding of anything outside of Western civilization. Frankly, so much of this antireligious rhetoric from the likes of Richard Dawkins is just wildly unconsciously and uncritically ethnocentric. Do the Buddhist themselves ask, ‘are we atheists?’ Well, I’ve never seen that question posed. In Buddhism that would be regarded as such a dumb and uninformed question that is not even worthy of a response.”
 
A complete transcript of the interview is available at: http://skeptiko.com/index.php?id=79

Dr. Wallace, a scholar and practitioner of Buddhism since 1970, has taught Buddhist theory and meditation worldwide since 1976. Having devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama, he went on to earn an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford.
 
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