Conversations For Transformation: Essays Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

Conversations For Transformation

Essays By Laurence Platt

Inspired By The Ideas Of Werner Erhard

And More

GoFundMe

Does The Dalai Lama Complain?

Cowboy Cottage, East Napa, California, USA

September 24, 2025

This essay, Does The Dalai Lama Complain?, is the companion piece to Do Artists Retire?.

I am indebted to Paige Rose PhD who contributed material for this conversation.

She's one of my favorite people. She was talking about the way the world is going - that is to say, about the way the world is occurring for her. The details of our discussion aren't really important, suffice to say they were the by now standard stock for most news outlets. What she was saying was accurate: we can improve, there's enough to go around etc yet we're stuck in an "us vs them" mentality, and have yet to realize that an "us and them" mentality works better. Without another way for her to hold the occurring world, whatever she said sounded like a complaint - a thinly veiled complaint, a well-intentioned complaint, but a complaint nonetheless. While I agreed with almost all of her assessments, I wondered if there was a more powerful way to relate to them.

Photograph courtesy The Werner Erhard Foundation

First and Second Church, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Friday October 19, 1979

Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso aka HH the Dalai Lama, with Werner

And there is a more powerful way to relate to them. That's what I saw after looking at the way we deploy complaint. Complaint as criticism, complaint as wanting things to improve, complaint as becoming frustrated that things aren't better (for want of a better word) are all well and good. But the trouble with complaint deployed in those ways, is that it comes at a cost. If the projected end-game is to have things improve and be better, they should improve and be better without taking more of a toll on our aliveness than they already do.

The toll complaint takes on our aliveness is that whatever we complain about, defines (etches into the rock) an area of life that's incomplete. It re-enforces something not being "the way it's s'posed to be". What occurred for me is it's OK to complain as in offering constructive suggestions against a background of it's (already) OK the way it is. Without a background of it's (already) OK the way it is, complaint generates no new freedoms. Against a background of it's (already) OK the way it is, complaint brings out that which can be empowered.

"So ..." I asked her, "Does the Dalai Lama complain?". "What do you mean?" she asked after a moment, taken aback. Now look: he's the Dalai Lama, yes? And the way we hold the Dalai Lama is he's in a high place where he doesn't complain. But not only may that be untrue, it may actually be an insult to him. Human beings complain. It's somehow not allowing him to be human if you disallow him complaining. What's more likely is he generates a context of it's (already) OK the way it is, for what he may complain about, and that renders him able to powerfully make a difference with what he may complain about.

What it comes down to is: complaining without a context of it's (already) OK the way it is, not only takes a huge toll on our aliveness, but it also renders whatever we're complaining about hard to listen. Anyone can complain. It's easy to be a Monday morning critic. It's complaining against a background of it's (already) OK the way it is, which recontextualizes (I love that word) complaint. Then it's the context that makes a difference, not the complaint itself.

"So ..." I asked her again "Does the Dalai Lama complain?". I assert that yes, he does - vociferously. But unlike what you and I do from time to time when we complain, he does so while generating a context of it's (already) OK the way it is, and that's what makes the difference (arguably it's the only thing that ever has). After another long pause, she said "That's truly wild: the idea that it's (already) OK the way it is, even as I'm complaining about it.". That's what I love about her: she's willing to take on a new idea which on the surface of things doesn't appear reasonable, whose only proof comes from sitting with it in your lap like a hot brick. That's how the Dalai Lama complains: against a background of it's (already) OK the way it is. It's what demonstrates the brick.

Communication Promise

E-Mail | Home

Permission