Injustice is real! Suffering is real! God is real!

The Dalai Lama has been an admirable symbol of courage around the world and continues to trouble the Chinese Communist regime with his steadfast presence and his hold on his people and their aspirations. His inability or unwillingness to integrate injustice and suffering with his worldview, however, limits him. It is interesting to contrast him with his friend Desmond Tutu. Both of them have famous laughs. As has been noted by several observers, however, the Dalai Lama often uses his laugh to deflect attention from unpleasant subjects. He and Tutu are friends, but Tutu never laughs in that way. His laugh is an eschatological sign of God’s triumph over evil. He has felt the intensity of the struggle in his bones in a way that does not appear either in the demeanor or in the writings of the Dalai Lama. For him, suffering is the way to compassion, which is the way to happiness and the cessation of suffering. His teaching often sounds as if suffering and compassion were not connected to actual suffering human beings at all, but are stages along the way to personal happiness and even “achieving one’s goals.” Dalai Lama, with Howard C. Cutler, The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 128-30, 228, 310, and various other passages throughout.—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 124 n. 40