The Dalai Lama is following me

I joined Twitter two days ago.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter is about having a relationship with not just 327 friends, for example, but thousands of people you may not know. Ultimately, it’s the perfect tool for professionals to network. So far, I’m following just 29 people.

But the one person I didn’t expect to find chirping online was His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I mean, when did Twittering become a spiritual practice?

But there he was. And so, like thousands of others online and in real life, I followed him.

I didn’t expect much, for sure. I liked the idea I would get my cell phone tweets with inspiring quotes and motivational thoughts. Beyond that, though, I thought I’d leave His Holiness to his work among the higher powers, and I would continue my efforts at getting a job down here.

So I was shocked when I went to check my email and saw, in the subject line, the words: Dalai Lama is now following you on Twitter!

The Dalai Lama? Following me?

Holy cow.

The news prompted me to go to his Web site where I read some of his ‘Messages and Speeches.’ I mean, I just couldn’t figure out why he would care what I had to say.

But it was in ‘Messages and Speeches’ that I figured out why he would follow me, Average Joe-ess, as well as 46,898 others. I got how Twittering can, in fact, be a spiritual practice – or at the very least, a practice in love and tolerance.

“The need for love lies at the very foundation of human existence,” he said in an online message on Religious Harmony. “It results from the profound interdependence we all share with one another. However capable and skillful an individual may be, left alone, he or she will not survive. However vigorous and independent one may feel during the most prosperous periods of life, when one is sick or very young or very old, one must depend on the support of others.”

Now when I saw the Dalai Lama was following me, I thought I knew a little more than he did. I mean really, your Holiness, are you sure you want to be on here? Do you know all the people you’re following?

In the two days I had been on Twitter, I had already blocked two people.

But the Dalai Lama, apparently, didn’t want to. Or more importantly, he didn’t need to.

Why?

Well, I’m not the Dalai Lama but it might have something to do with this idea of in-ter-de-pendence.

In an age when so few people practice what they preach, the Dalai Lama is doing exactly that. On Twitter!

He follows us, just as we follow him, because he has to. To do otherwise would be in complete contradiction to the spirit of love and compassion, and values of interdependence he teaches.

It would seem that a man of such stature, both as a spiritual leader and as a voice of peace, wouldn’t need me or anyone else. And he certainly wouldn’t need Twitter.

But I learned that the first of his three commitments in life is the “promotion of human values” with tolerance and love being two of them.

Why, then, would he not follow me? My success, my happiness, my contentment seem to be as intimately connected to his success as any Queen or president or talk show host.

For some all this online stuff is just too claustrophobic, but for many it’s a break-through in social transformation. Perhaps this is how the Dalai Lama sees it. Perhaps.

And while I remain suspicious of the perennially upbeat and funny tweets, I also know that in real life that same person will have a crappy day. And my hope, one day, is that people get brave enough to tell us how they really feel and even ask for emotional help or guidance: T’ask, instead of Tweet.

I think that would be the real test of our willingness to be interdependent.

Twitter, and Facebook even, are the beginnings of a whole new way of crossing cultures and staying connected. And while we might take our associations lightly, or even frivolously as I do with my FunnyCraigslist tweets, we are all still dipping our toes in the global pool. Eventually - hopefully - we’ll realize how intimately we are connected.

For now, I’m happy to have the Dalai Lama as a “follower.”