Have you noticed Apple's print ads for the past year? Each ad features a photo of someone remarkable, the Apple logo, and the legend "Think different." People pictured include Buzz Aldrin, Muhammad Ali, Thomas Edison, Picasso, Martha Graham, Rosa Parks, Einstein and Gandhi. The message is that Apple, unlike some computer standards, unleashes creativity and individuality.

The one that stopped me in my tracks was a handsome picture of Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet, and winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. The ad shows a whimsically smiling Dalai Lama, his hands clasped in traditional greeting.

The Dalai Lama is an interesting choice for the campaign. He comes across as good-humored and non-doctrinaire, the perfect ambassador for a mysterious tradition.

I was privileged to witness the Dalai Lama when he came to Deer Park, Wisconsin (http://www.deerparkcenter.org/bio.html) for a Kalachakra Empowerment ceremony -- the first ever in the West -- in the summer of 1981. I was able to observe him for two days, without actually speaking. He is a man of immense courtesy and, despite the difficulties of a life in exile, separated from the people he is supposed to govern, of obvious joy.

At Deer Park I learned the Tibetan greeting Tashi-deley, meaning, "I honor the greatness within you." Can you imagine paying a stranger a greater compliment, and getting off on a better foot, than that?

The greeting exemplifies why westerners are so charmed by the monk whom Tibetan Buddhists regard as the human embodiment of divine compassion. There is a childlike innocence in the attitude, but also a steely determination to find the beauty and decency in everybody, at whatever cost.

But the idea of the governing head of a world religion, essentially endorsing a commercial product -- is that a good thing? You can't imagine the Pope doing that. Or Apple asking him to.

By coincidence, His Holiness John Paul II was also in the technology news last week. In Rome, he spoke off the cuff about how computers had become a factor in even his life.

"Computers have changed the world quite a bit and certainly my life," the Pope said during a visit to the Luiss University. He may have been referring to the gift of computers he was accepting, to be sent on to African nations. Or he may have been alluding to the Vatican's feature-packed website (http://www.vatican.com).

The reason his comment made Reuters is that the Pope, a/k/a Karol Wojtyla, age 78, has been one of the world's last true Luddites in a position of great power. He still writes most of his speeches by hand in Polish. They are later transcribed by aides. His vow of celibacy appears to include never pressing an Enter key.

And this standoffishness to technology has seemed appropriate. We don't want to see the earthly proxy for Christ hawking Compaq desktop systems in magazine foldouts. (Concede this much: if the Pope did have a computer, it would run Windows, right?)

And that is what bothered me about the Apple ad. When Apple says "Think different," and shows us the Dalai Lama, they are implying that the realm an Apple computer transports you to is in some way analogous to the realm the holy lama inhabits -- a place of contemplation, compassion, centeredness, and tremendous spiritual responsibility.

I would submit that no computer -- Apple, Windows, or Unix workstation -- has ever done that for any human being.

You may think of the Pope and the Dalai Lama as the world's last anticommunists, Wojtyla against the Breshnevites that ran Poland from World War II on, and Gyatso against the Maoist who overran Lhasa in the 1950s and converted the lamaseries into army barracks.

John Paul is old enough to remember Stalin's dismissal of Pius XII's influence in Europe: "How many divisions has the Pope?"

In Poland, communism is dead, and in China it is slowly mutating into something else. But both men remain exiles, each in his own way. And each men have had to make peace with capitalism and its perfect symbol, the computer.

Computers may be useful for the structural tasks of spirituality -- Usenet study groups, online Bibles, e-mail evangelism. But for the core work of knowing God, a PC is just another empty box for people to get lost in.

The Vatican today has thousands of computers -- but none is engaged in the core work of the Church.

An inventor like Edison might make great hay with a PC to spur his inventings. A physicist like Einstein could save himself years of blackboard erasing with a digital whiteboard on which to work out his theorems. An astronaut like Buzz Aldrin, bobbing across the sea of Tranquility, could take comfort in the information umbilicum connecting him to mother earth.

But a great mountain of computers, banked higher than the Himalayan shelf, won't bring you an inch closer to enlightenment, or salvation.

The true greatness, the Dalai Lama would say, is within you. Tashi-deley. And shame on Apple, and shame on us, if we think any different.

If you have a story about finding God with your computer, by all means send it to Michael Finley at mfinley@mfinley.com. Or visit him at http://mfinley.com.

Get your signed copy of The NEW Why Teams Don't Work by Mike & Harvey Robbins from Berrett-Koehler Publishers Just click on the book cover! A fully revised second edition of this award-winning classic by Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley Paperback Winner, Financial Times/Booz Allen & Hamilton Global Business Book Award, Best Management Book - The Americas, 1995 Table of contents and sample chapters of this book... Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. Table of contents and sample chapters of this book... Why Change Doesn't Work: Why Initiatives Go Wrong and How to Try Again and Succeed Harvey Robbins, Michael Finley Hardcover Just click on the book cover to order your signed copy for only $12.95. "This is the first treatise on change we've seen that is actually entertaining. The authors cover human and organizational barriers to change and change theories, and then take a tour of management theory that's guaranteed to upset every reader at one point or another." -- HR ONLINE Table of contents and sample chapters of this book...

Why not bookmark Mike's columns for your weekly enjoyment?

Stimulate the economy, give a poet a dollar.

I enjoyed serving this essay up for you, and I did it for free. But this writer is currently out of work, and a bit of revenue would gladden his heart. If you'd like to contribute to this site, consider dropping a $1 tip in the "Honor Box" here. Just click the CLICK TO PAY image here. Thanks - Mike