He’s 78. He’s a monk. He hails from Tibet. And he’s one of the world’s most revered religious leaders.
Oh, and he’s on Twitter.
And, as of a couple of weeks ago, Instagram, too.
I’m talking, of course, about Tenzin Gyatso—better known by Buddhists as the 14th Dalai Lama. And, like Catholicism’s 77-year-old Pope Francis, the Dalai Lama has embraced social media in the interest of engaging with and seeking to inspire his followers. So much so that he made the Instagram announcement via his Twitter account: “His Holiness the Dalai Lama is now on @Instagram. You can follow the official account at http://instagram.com/dalailama.” (If you’re wondering, the Dalai Lama has 8.5 million Twitter followers and has already racked up nearly 44,000 Instagram followers, too.)
Click through to that Instagram page and you’ll find—what else?—25 pictures (as of this writing) picturing the Buddhist leader with Barak Obama and Larry King, among others. Clearly, even the foreboding Himalayas and centuries of rigorous spiritual asceticism aren’t enough to impede the never-ceasing march of technological progress.
At first glance—and maybe second and third—it might seem odd that two nearly octogenarian religious leaders would so enthusiastically adopt social media. After all, Buddhism is known in part for its teachings about detachment from the world, while Catholicism isn’t exactly renowned for appropriating and assimilating the latest cultural fads.
And yet, both of these spiritual leaders intuitively seem to understand that to connect with many followers (or would-be followers) in the 21st century, opting-out of mass communication social media isn’t really an option. If you’re a cultural influencer of any stripe these days—an entertainer, a politician, an athlete, a spiritual leader—eschewing these channels of communication potentially marginalizes your message.
Still, I can’t help but furrow my brow a bit when I see selfies of the Dalai Lama and Larry King. I can’t help but wonder whether his message (though it’s not one that I embrace as a Christian) is ultimately helped or whether it just gets dumbed down somehow. And while smiling pictures of the Pope or the Dalai Lama might make them seem approachable or “normal,” I also can’t help but wonder if the inherently superficial and (at times) narcissistic nature of social media is genuinely prompting followers to contemplate these men’s messages more deeply—or whether it is just lowering them to run-of-the-mill celebrity status.
All of that to say, social media is messy for people with a message. On one hand, they can’t really afford to ignore it. On the other hand, the depth of teaching they hope to impart really isn’t fit for these kinds of media at all.
To their credit, both leaders have recognized the intrinsic limits and dangers involved in the technology that they’ve adopted. In an interview with The Huffington Post, the Dalai Lama said, “I think technology really increases human ability. It [made] a lot of things much easier. But technology cannot produce compassion.” He also added, “After all, we are the controllers of the technology and if we become slaves of technology, that’s not good.”
Pope Francis has voiced parallel statements about both the promise and peril of these new communication outlets. In January, he said during a weekly radio address:
The Internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity. This is something truly good, a gift from God. … [But] the speed with which information is communicated exceeds our capacity for reflection and judgment, and this does not make for more balanced and proper forms of expression. … We need, for example, to recover a certain sense of deliberateness and calm. This calls for time and the ability to be silent and to listen.
I think there’s a lot of wisdom packed into those statements—wisdom that transcends a 140-character missive or a cute self-portrait. The Internet opens portals for communication that are lightning fast. But the very speed with which we can now communicate may also make it hard to reflect deeply and to cultivate wisdom and compassion in our relationships. Instead, we can so easily become addicted to it. As the Dalai Lama so succinctly put it, “If we become slaves of technology, that’s not good.”
A bit later in his radio address, Pope Francis added, “It is not enough to be passersby on the digital highways, simply ‘connected’; connections need to grow into true encounters. We cannot live apart, closed in on ourselves. We need to love and be loved. We need tenderness.”
Indeed. To the extent that these technologies enable us to connect meaningfully with those we care about the most, they’re a good and fruitful blessing. To the extent that social media in particular and the Internet in general numb our ability to think deeply, however, to reflect quietly and to love others well, they risk becoming a high-tech barrier to living wisely, lovingly and intentionally. When that happens, we do indeed become slaves to technology—serving it instead of being served by it.
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