The Dalai Lama’s Other Controversies: Trump’s Lack of Moral Principles, Unattractive Women, Migrants and Marijuana

The video went around the world, and quickly earned the rejection of a significant part of the population. Its protagonist: the 14th Dalai Lama. It’s no minor accusation in the religious world, which is why outrage erupted after the 87-year-old on his shoulders kissed a child on the mouth after asking for a hug, which is quickly gone viral. But the record didn’t stop there. Gyalwa Rinpoche, as is known to Tibetan people, asked the miner to suck on his tongue, even pulling it out and bringing it closer to the boy who, obviously uncomfortable, walked away.

Given the general repudiation of what happened, the Dalai Lama’s office had to issue a statement on Monday, April 10, trying to clarify what happened. “His Holiness would like to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends around the world, for any pain his words may have caused. His Holiness often jokes around with the people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and on camera. Regret this incident”, excused the entourage of the religious leader. But, as history shows, this is not the first time they have had to make such statements.

The man is the main spiritual leader of the Gelug or “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism which has reigned since 1940, when he was enthroned, when he was not yet five years old. A decade later, in 1950, he took office after the People’s Republic of China occupied Tibet, says his official biography.

The year was 2015, and the religious authority was consulted by a British station about his successor and the possibility that he was a woman. Question to which he answered by specifying that, in this case, it would have to be “very, very attractive”, since, otherwise, it would not be “very useful”.

Years have passed and his opinion does not seem to have changed. In 2019, during another interview with the BBC, they asked him about this opportunity and a possible female reincarnation. Her retort was that if she wasn’t attractive, “people, I think, would rather not see her…that face” and that she should invest “in makeup,” she laughed. , according to the BBC. . Faced with these remarks, they asked him if this could be considered an objectification as opposed to the intrinsic value of a person, to which he replied that “we are human beings. I think appearance is also important,” recalled La Nación.

The press release published on this occasion is similar to the one his office had to withdraw on Monday. “His Holiness meant no offense” and “deeply regrets that people were hurt by what he said and sincerely apologizes,” they wrote.

“The Dalai Lama has a keen sense of the contradictions between the globalized and materialistic world he encounters on his travels and the complex and esoteric ideas about reincarnation that are central to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. However, sometimes off-the-cuff comments, which may be funny in one cultural context, lose their grace when translated into another.

Nor has it been free from political controversy. During the same interview with the BBC in 2019, and while former US President Donald Trump was still in power, the religious leader said that the tycoon “lacks moral principles”, criticizing his position as ‘”America first”. and assuring me that I was wrong”.

According to the simple, self-described Buddhist monk, the United States should “take global responsibility”, describing its then leader as a man with “a little complicated” emotions. For the Dalai Lama, the former president “says one day something, and the next day he says something else, but I think (there is a) lack of moral principles”, recalled India Today.

Also on foreign policy, that same year he was in the eye of the storm for declaring that “Europe belongs to the Europeans”, referring to the problem of migration, the same media reported. His words came during a conference in Malmö, Sweden, where he also said migrants should return to their home countries. “Welcome them, help them, educate them…but ultimately they have to develop their own country,” he said.

“You have to be practical. It is impossible for everyone to come”, he added according to La Nación, before asking himself: “But so many (migrants) that Europe becomes a Muslim country? Impossible. Or in an African? Also not possible. Keep Europe for the Europeans,” he concluded.

Regarding Indo-Pakistani relations, he said in 2018 that they would have stuck together if Mahatma Gandhi’s wish to see Muhammad Ali Jinnah as Indian Prime Minister came true, India Today reported. The statement was made during a lecture in front of students from the Sankhalim Goa Institute of Management, for which he had to apologize once again after political controversy was installed for his actions.

Marijuana use and abortion were also issues raised by clerics. About the first, the Dalai Lama defended its medicinal use, but not recreational. “Marijuana has medicinal properties; there is research supporting these properties. In those cases, you have to use them,” he said in 2013, ten years ago. “But just taking marijuana to get a little crazy in your own mind is really something that’s not advised,” La Nación reported.

Regarding abortion, the 87-year-old said it was an “act of killing”, but nuanced in the different cases. “You have to see the situation in particular, examine it well and, in some cases, it is allowed if it is going to be born with very few opportunities and with many deformities” or when “the birth of the baby involves death of the mother”, he argued according to the same medium.