meme

My twitter stream is full of Dalai Lama quotes. They’re really quite lovely and you’d have to be a bit nutty to not like him and what he stands for. Peace, enlightenment, kindness…. the Dalai Lama is like the happiest man in the world. Except the whole celibacy thing, that’s got to leave him a little cranky and frustrated.

Here’s what I don’t understand. There are endless quotes all over the internet from him. I don’t see anyone quoting the Pope. Why isn’t Pinterest littered with stuff like this?

Let’s face it, this new Pope is quotable and if you stay away from the whole killing of Jews thing… or the molesting of children he’s got some witticisms that should not be missed.

Instead I see the Dalai Lama everywhere and the Dalai Lama fascinates me because he (and it is always a he) is picked in infancy to be a leader. He is raised by monks and has a lifetime devoted to Buddhism.

Quotes like this confuse me.

The Dalai Lama has never paid a mortgage, a health insurance premium or filled a prescription with a small amount of money that he scraped together from his crappy job slinging beer all night after spending the whole day in mind numbing classes getting a college degree in something that will later prove to be totally irrelevant to life but qualify him to get a higher paying job than the poor kids who never went to college. I understand the ideal of ridding ourselves of anxiety but I’ve met many a slacker and their lack of anxiety may have done wonderful things for their blood pressure but I’m not sure I’d want to marry one or even spend much time with one. Slackers make pretty mediocre parents too.

But again the only great rabbinical quote that I could find was from Rabbi Joshua Loth Leibman.

Maybe there’s a bit of tsuris in my DNA but I’m thinking that rabbinical quotes could go over well? I mean we did get the whole of the United States eating bagels, maybe we can get them to accept their tension and embrace overachieving a bit? It would please their mothers.