the kicker

Twitter: The Dharma Initiative Edition

February 9, 2009

So here’s an email I wasn’t prepared to receive last night:

Hi, Megan Garber (megangarber).



Dalai Lama (OHHDL) is now following your updates on Twitter.



Check out Dalai Lama’s profile here: http://twitter.com/OHHDL



Best,
Twitter

Yep. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama–the fourteenth incarnation of a long line of Buddhist Masters, and the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists and many others around the world–seems to have joined Twitter. Or, well, his office has (hence the “O” in His Holiness’s acronym-tastic Twitter handle).

It makes sense: not only does his newfound Twit-hood add His Holiness to the list of other religious figures known by that name to have elected to spread the Word via the Web (recall the Vatican’s YouTube channel)…but there’s also something rather meditative–and if you’re me, even mindless–about Twitter. So, hey, namaste.

Update: The OHHDL Twitter feed, per a message from the site, “has been suspended due to strange activity.” Hmm.

Megan Garber is an assistant editor at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University. She was formerly a CJR staff writer.