Speaking yesterday in Dharamsala, India, on the 50th anniversary of Tibet’s foiled uprising against Chinese rule, the Dalai Lama warned that Tibetan culture faces extinction and that authoritarian rule has made life in the Himalayan nation “hell on earth.”

It’s one of the boldest announcements that the Peace prize winning leader has yet uttered against the government that claims its policies are designed to do just the opposite – create a post-faith, materialist heaven on earth.

More on the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism

Whatthe Dalai Lama had to say on March 10
China mocks the Dalai Lama’s “gibbering”
A primer on Tibetan Buddhism
Blogger Precious Metal asks if the next Dalai Lama could be female
Smackdown: Barbie vs. the Dalai Lama

Percy Fawcett (and Brad Pitt): Explorers of the world, explorers of the soul

Not all transformational experience comes exclusively from within.

Explorers and travelers have often found wisdom outside their own traditions.

It happened to Heinrich Harrer, author of Seven Years in Tibet, and to Richard F. Burton, who brought back the Kama Sutra.

Now, a new book explores the life and psyche of explorer Percy Fawcett who, while an officer on Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) at the turn of the last century, became entranced with Buddhist tradition and took the Pansil.

His experience on Ceylon remained with him, and he became an ardent explorer of the inner world as well as the outer. He perished searching the Amazon for the Lost City of Z sometime after 1925. If we rated books we’d give this one four chakras. Brad Pitt, who starred in Seven Years in Tibet, is slated to play Fawcett in an upcoming film.

Dr. Phil sued over product placement

Dr. and Mrs. Phil have been named in a $4 million lawsuit by the Miracle Hydrate skin products company. The suit, filed in L.A. County Superior Court, alleges that Mrs. Phil promised the company that she had enough juice to get Miracle Hydrate’s products featured on the “The Dr. Phil Show.”

The company claims that it spent $650,000 prepping for the enhanced sales they expected from the product placement. Well, if nothing else, Dr. Phil does have good skin.

(Dali Lama image courtesy Elton Melo via Flicker, CC 2.0)

Beliefnet Founder’s Founding Faith

Talking about his new book, Founding Faith: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty, on National Public Radio last week, Beliefnet co-founder, Steve Waldman, debunks the twin myths that the Founding Fathers were either a pack of howling evangelicals or a group of proto-new age spiritualists. The Fathers’ intent, he says, was actually to promote faith by separating religion from government.

Dr. Phil, tear down this billboard!

Residents of West Los Angeles, irked over the size of a huge, 60 by 100-foot Dr. Phil billboard on National Blvd., complained to the city. The ad was removed less than a week after being put up. The San Jose Mercury News article did not specify if the ad included Dr. Phil’s entire body or just his head.

Top 10 Indian gurus named

TwoCircles.net, a website for Muslims living in India, reports that the Indian Express newspaper has rated the Muslim leader, Zakir Naik, as the No. 3 guru in India. Swami Baba Ramdev came in as No. 1 and Art of Living Foundation founder, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, came in as No. 2. We couldn’t find the news on the Indian Express website, however, so we have no way of knowing if their methodology was anything like Priceline‘s.

Slumdog Millionaire wins, India celebrates

Speaking of India, Bollywood took Hollywood by storm at the Oscars and though reaction was mixed among India’s literati, average Indians seem to have gone wild in celebration. There certainly was no dissent at the awards ceremony itself when it seemed all India rushed the stage to claim the statuette. Congrats to the country that gave us the Buddha.

Mike Myer’s Love Guru earns “Razzies”

Maybe you caught Mike Myer‘s clowning about his old guru, Deepak Chopra — who admitted hating Myer’s awful opus, The Love Guru — at the Academy Awards. Well, the BBC reports, Myers has earned a hat trick of not-so-coveted “Golden Raspberry” awards for that film — worst picture, worst actor and worst screenplay. Time to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and clear out your chakras, Mike.

The bad Buddhist

The phrase “Buddhist anti-Semite” seems the ultimate oxymoron. Maybe that’s a happy pitfall of dualistic thinking. According to James Palmer‘s new book, The Bloody White Baron, the Russian aristocrat, Baron Maximilian von Ungern-Sternberg, was just that: a devout Buddhist who urged the extermination of Jews in East Asia in the 1920s. And you thought today’s world was as bizarre as it gets.

— Michael Mattis

Betting against Obama fatigue

By now it’s clear that former President Elect Barack Obama‘s image can sell just about anything, from puppy sweaters to phony commemorative coins. But he can also sell your cause — any cause — as discovered by Care2.com. On its “Yes You Can Challenge” petitions page — where you can create and circulate your own petition electronically — the site boasts a picture and an inspiring quote from the new prez. Piggy-backing an inspiring brand to inspire people is a natural strategy for self-help sites — as long as the brand lasts. Some were already claiming “Obama fatigue” before last year’s election.

That’s general Chopra to you

It just never stops with everything-guru, Deepak Chopra. If he’s not warning us about “diabolical science,” he’s on about Bush. Now, the author of The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and Manifesting Good Luck has decided that, when you’re at war, being the nation’s foremost doctor of alt-med is not enough. In his lastest syndicated column, Chopra, along with co-writer, former U.S. Army Ranger Ken Robinson, laid out his strategy for winning the so-called War on Terror:

Any solely military solution to terrorism is doomed to fail . . . The jihadist movement is endemic in the extremist sects of Islam. It exists from neighborhood to neighborhood, dinner table to dinner table, across a vast swath of the globe . . . and once an idea seeps into people’s brains, bombs and mortar attacks won’t defeat it.

The good doctor certainly practices what he preaches when it comes to recycling, even with his writing. This prescription sounds eerily like a concurring second, or even third, opinion.

Will that dog hunt?

Following last week’s allegations in the National Enquirer that Dr. Phil was verbally abusive to female subordinates (using such un-PC terms as “stupid bitch”), the pop culture site, Radar, notes that Dr. Phil’s ratings are down and appear to be headed for the crapper, “especially [among] women age 18 to 49,” noted the site. Ratings for the Dr. Phil show have fallen 27% compared to last season, and the show has lost one third of women in the 18-49 demo.”

Harried Haggard, gay, straight, or just human?

On her Living Sexuality blog, clinical sexologist, Becky Knight, picks apart fallen Christian evangelical Ted Haggard‘s recent Oprah interview. Haggard, you will recall, was defrocked in 2006 for ripping speed rails with the male prostitute he had solicited. During the interview, Haggard disclosed that during therapy, he discovered that he was not in fact, a homosexual per se, but rather heterosexual with “homosexual attachments,” though evidently not the kind that can be purchased on the Internet. He also said that he didn’t want to be pigeon-holed into either a ‘homosexual’ or a ‘heterosexual’ category, although it seems that everyone (on both sides of the debate) is trying to do just that.” Knight goes on to say, “What was missing from the conversation was the awareness that sexual orientation exists on a spectrum.” Here at Soul’s Code, it did not occur to us that the idea that sexuality, like spirituality, exists on a spectrum should be news to anyone.

Prop 8′s toxic faith

While Ted Haggard ponders his sexuality, some spiritually minded Californians are pondering Prop 8, which writes a ban on same-sex marriage into the state’s constitution (and the sort of thing evangelicals like Haggard used to preach). Writing on Examiner.com, veteran spiritual counselor, Tosha Silver, asks, “how we went from California, the land of forward-thinking, progressive values, to California, the land that voted against gay marriage?”

She goes on to say, “Prop 8 is a good index of the difference between genuine spirituality and its toxic mimic, conservative religion.  Heart-centered spirituality sees us all as spirit, consciousness, love. From a larger metaphysical perspective a soul may incarnate countless times, returning to earth again and again  in a variety of genders, races, nationalities. What matters is  the love, forgiveness, and acceptance…” Amen, sister.

—Michael Mattis

Meet four (online) horseman of the apocalypse:

Nassim Taleb is a former hedge-fund manager and critic of globalization who is a kind of  ‘anti-Thomas Friedman.’ He is getting a reported $4-million advance for his next book

Dimitry Orlov: Years before the financial crisis, the Russian software engineer made a sailboat his home — and survival strategy. On Club Orlov, he blogs about the notions that made his 2008 book , Reinventing Collapse: The Soviet Example and American Prospects, an underground hit.

James Kunstler: is a back-to-the-lander who lives in Saratoga Springs, NY; author of the book, “The Geography of Nowhere“; and weekly blogger on the Clusterfuck Nation.

Gold-bug Jim Sinclair will bet any takers $1 million that gold hits $1,650 per oz. by 2011.

Deepak and Oprah, you’re no Niebuhr or Neuhaus

In a Washington Post Op-Ed, former Bush 43 speechwriter Michael Gerson says the absence of a Reinhold Niebuhr or Richard John Neuhaus has created a leadership vacuum in American faith: “Today, this cultural role seems to be filled by some mix of Oprah Winfrey and Deepak Chopra — which is to say, it is not filled at all.”

The National Enquirer suggests that Dr. Phil needs to go to management rehab:

“He’s verbally abusive. He’s called me ‘a stupid bitch,’ ” one former female employeed claimed. “It was constant.”

Another female employee recalled that when McGraw couldn’t get the copier to work, he’d bellow: “Could somebody get some goddamn ovaries in here to fix this thing?!”

“When the cameras roll, he appears to be a thoughtful TV personality who genuinely cares about his guests. But nothing could be futher from the the ruth,” a source from his show told The Enquirer. “The minute the cameras are off, he immediately leaves the stage and gives a cold shoulder to the people he just pretended to help.”

Are you clinging to your mate out of financial fears?

SOUL'S CODE — According to social science studies, couples who are financlally-distressed in their relationships today, will stick together tomorrow.

Stick it out, rather than walk out is a distinctly anti-Me Generation response to survival fears and unmet wants — the opposite of the Baby Boomer ideology of self-gratification and self-indulgence.

So if both your savings and your relationship are in crisis, how can you tell if the latter is worth saving? We offer a checklist, courtesy of the noted couples counselor and author, David Richo. Richo's way is the Buddhist 'middle way' between poles of excessive self-concern and Depression-era self-sacrifice. A triple-threat, as they say in Hollywood, Richo is a one-time Catholic priest, who earned a Phd. in psychology — and then went Buddhist. A Jungian psycho-therapist, Richo is also the author of 13 books, including his breakthrough, How to Be an Adult in Relationships.

He may be the world's most insightful observer of how relationships work, or don't. And whether you should stay, or go. Here is a schema we made up to show the difference between a realized teacher like Richo and mass-media schlock-jocks like Dr. Phil:

DR. PHIL: I am here to help you fix the story of what happened to you, bolster your personality (ego), and push you to get what you want.

DAVID RICHO: Entrenchment in ego is the biggest obstacle to intimacy. I am here to help you become more conscious of your conditioning, and how it is keeping you stuck in repetitive patterns.

OPRAH/DR. PHIL: Have some self-respect, get some spine, and kick him to the curb . . . (just like Oprah did to that one, who wrote A Million Little Pieces).

DAVID RICHO: If the purpose of relationships is to show us where our (inner) work lies, there's actually no blame to spread around. You'd say, 'Thank you for showing me what my work is.'

OPRAH/DR. PHIL: What are the things you want in a man to be happy? Tell us (translation: my ratings/audience) your (ego's) needs.

DAVID RICHO: If you rush into a relationship because of attraction and chemistry, it's probably best to run the other way unless you can say: "Oh, here is a chance to do my work, and the other person agrees that they'll do theirs." But if you think of the relationship simply as, 'we're going to satisfy each other,' the unconscious will present it's "bill".

So what things does Richo recommend we ask ourselves to discern whether a relationship is worth working on, or leaving? The therapist has distilled the following five "

A's" from his Buddhist devotion, scholarly research and clinical observation. How many of these five "A's" does your relationships have?

1. Attention
2. Acceptance
3. Appreciation
4. Affection
5. Allowing

And two more, for good measure:

Agreement (as in, a relationship isn't a high-concept thing; it's essentially the sum of a series of kept agreements)

Authentic presence (as in Martin Buber's "I am thou")

If your relationship has enough of Richo's A's, he prescribes three basic steps for working out any issue — whether it's about depressed stocks, a failing career, or a depressed soul.

• Address the problem. Name it. Articulate an issue in the relationship, without blame: "I am unhappy with how much you drink."

• Articulate how it makes you feel, and relate it to something in your past. Report the feelings that go with the problem (processing). Acknowledge how the feeling is fueled by your past. How do you know if it's connected? If you're experiencing it intensely, and taking it seriously, it's connected.

• Make an agreement with your intimate partner about how to change it.

This is the essence of how to be an adult in a relationship, a loaded term at first glance. But Richo's definition of an adult isn't judgemental. In fact, it's invitingly inclusive: An adult is simply someone who has expanded his or her potential for fulfillment.

NEXT: What Does "For Richer, For Poorer" Mean During a Recession?