Analyzing The Dalai Lama's Ethic Of Compassion

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Our society is stuck in a labyrinth of animosity, barbarism and coldness. When given wings the ticket out of the island of selfishness it’s okay to be eager to stretch your wings and fly away however one must not become so detached from reality that your wings melt or bogged down with cynicism that you sink under the waves of discouragement. While the Dalai Lama’s essay, Ethic of Compassion is full of wonderful insights in his eagerness to move the masses off their islands of “crete” towards compassion he inadvertently teaches the practice of wing melting, aka universal compassion/Great Compassion. Which is an impossible and dangerous ideal to live by. The Dalai Lama does not say the everyone must attain Nying je chenmo not live an ethical life rather Great Compassion is an ideal one should inspire one to greater compassion. The problem with trying to develop an unlimited and unbiased is that no one can! Simply because to be human is to be limited. An athlete or musician practices techniques until ability can be developed no further. Likewise everyone has a capacity for compassion which directly affects our…show more content…
This is shown most clearly in the example of the scientist abandoning his research because of the potential to cause suffering. The suffering of the family of the scientist is minimized in light of the possibility of suffering of the masses. This simplistic worldview ignores the complexity of the real world, for example, another scientist could continue his work and the masses would not benefit from one person stopping his part in the project. At the same time there might be a silver lining to the research that would benefit humanity greatly. It’s undeniable that the Manhattan project greatly accelerated the development of a cleaner source of energy that could one day be made safe enough the replace the current carbon emitting energy sources that threaten our

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