Dalai Lama And Pluralism

In the recent past, John Hick; a philosophy scholar has contributed much to the theological and philosophical disciplines. John Hick’s pluralism hypothesis has put input into his ranking in addition to his provocative contribution to his discourses of the theology of Christianity in today’s history (Hick).Through his pluralistic hypothesis, he describes and analyses different religious fields of the perspectives of Dalai Lama. Dalai Lama is the 14th head of monk of Tibetan Buddhism (Compson).Traditionally it has been argued that he has had several perspectives on religion as shown by John Hick. John Hick has addressed religious pluralism, religious skepticism in addition to soteriological inclusivism as part of the religious viewpoints as supposed …show more content…
He addresses the importance and advantages of the diversity of religion and at the same time discuss Buddhism. According to John Hick’s Dalai Lama supported religious pluralism across the world and contrary to this he appeared to be against other religions (Hick). I disagree with what John Hick has indicated in his hypothesis that the perspective of Dalai Lama as being of agitation of religious pluralism. This is because Dalai Lama spends much of his time discussing and spreading Buddhism religion instead of supporting religious pluralism as argued in John Hick’s hypothesis. Even in his interviews, Dalai Lama will not only talk about religious diversity but also must include his religion of Buddhism in his talks. In my own opinion, John Hick’s appears to be misleading the readers and his audience concerning Dalai Lama support of religious …show more content…
It is thus difficult for me to understand how the existence of conflicts cannot be a problem within the Buddhist religion as well as between Christianity and Buddhist. Buddhist’s differing school of thought is affiliated to the differences in the beliefs of the Christians; apparent conflicts are limiting all Christian’s faith practices from becoming one major dominant religion. In pinpointing these differences in doctrine, Dalai Lama is stating of impossible converging of religions by distinctions in ideologies. Regarding existing similarities of the major religions of the world as mentioned by the author in module 7, it seems fine for converging as far as co-existence on a side by side level is concerned(Compson). However, the major dissimilarities in the philosophy and belief are very critical in preventing merging of all the religious views of a single theology for all, which contradicts with Hick’s suggestion of convergence. With all these factors put into consideration, I do dispute the suggestion by John Hick that Dalai Lama recognizes the need for religions to co-exist and interact without conflict. In my opinion, his Holiness should have gone a step further give reasons or solutions to the existing differences. Therefore, John Hick was wrong to support Dalai Lama’s