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by Christopher Hitchens
July 13, 1998
FAR FROM HIS
HOLIER-THAN-ALL IMAGE, THE DALAI LAMA SUPPORTS SUCH QUESTIONABLE CAUSES AS
INDIA'S NUCLEAR TESTING, SEX WITH PROSTITUTES AND ACCEPTING DONATIONS FROM
A JAPANESE TERRORIST CULT.
The Dalai Lama has
come out in support of the thermonuclear tests recently conducted by the
Indian state, and has done so in the very language of the chauvinist
parties who now control that state's affairs. The "developed" countries,
he says, must realize that India is a major contender and should not
concern themselves with its internal affairs. This is a perfectly
realpolitik statement, so crass and banal and opportunist that it would
not deserve any comment if it came from another source.
"Think different,"
says the ungrammatical Apple Computer advertisement that features the
serene visage of His Holiness. Among the untested assumptions of this
billboard campaign is the widely and lazily held belief that "Oriental"
religion is different from other faiths: less dogmatic, more
contemplative, more ... transcendental. This blissful, thoughtless
exceptionalism has been conveyed to the West through a succession of
mediums and narratives, ranging from the pulp novel "Lost Horizon," by
James Hilton (creator of Mr. Chips as well as Shangri-La), to the memoir
"Seven Years in Tibet," by SS veteran Heinrich Harrer, prettified for the
screen by Brad Pitt. China's foul conduct in an occupied land, combined
with a Hollywood cult that almost exceeds the power of Scientology, has
fused with weightless Maharishi and Bhagwan-type babble to create an image
of an idealized Tibet and of a saintly god-king. So perhaps the Apple
injunction to think differently is worth heeding.
The greatest triumph
that modern PR can offer is the transcendent success of having your words
and actions judged by your reputation, rather than the other way about.
The "spiritual leader" of Tibet has enjoyed this unassailable status for
some time now, becoming a byword and synonym for saintly and ethereal
values. Why this doesn't put people on their guard I'll never know. But
here are some other facts about the serene leader that, dwarfed as they
are by his endorsement of nuclear weapons, are still worth knowing and
still generally unknown.
Shoko Asahara,
leader of the Supreme Truth cult in Japan and spreader of sarin nerve gas
on the Tokyo subway, donated 45 million rupees, or about 170 million yen
(about $1.2 million), to the Dalai Lama and was rewarded for his efforts
by several high-level meetings with the divine one.
Steven Seagal, the
robotic and moronic "actor" who gave us "Hard to Kill" and "Under Siege,"
has been proclaimed a reincarnated lama and a sacred vessel or "tulku" of
Tibetan Buddhism. This decision, ratified by Penor Rinpoche, supreme head
of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism, was initially received with
incredulity by Richard Gere, who had hitherto believed himself to be the
superstar most favored. "If someone's a tulku, that's great," he was
quoted as saying. "But no one knows if that's true." How insightful, if
only accidentally. At a subsequent Los Angeles appearance by the Dalai
Lama, Seagal was seated in the front row and Gere two rows back, thus
giving the latter's humility and submissiveness a day at the races.
Suggestions that Seagal's fortune helped elevate him to the Himalayan
status of tulku are not completely discounted even by some adepts and
initiates.
Supporters of the
Dorge Shugden deity -- a "Dharma protector" and an ancient object of
worship and propitiation in Tibet -- have been threatened with violence
and ostracism and even death following the Dalai Lama's abrupt prohibition
of this once-venerated godhead. A Swiss television documentary graphically
intercuts footage of His Holiness, denying all knowledge of menace and
intimidation, with scenes of his followers' enthusiastically promulgating
"Wanted" posters and other paraphernalia of excommunication and
persecution.
While he denies
being a Buddhist "Pope," the Dalai Lama is never happier than when
brooding in a celibate manner on the sex lives of people he has never met.
"Sexual misconduct for men and women consists of oral and anal sex," he
has repeatedly said in promoting his book on these matters. "Using one's
hand, that is sexual misconduct." But, as ever with religious
stipulations, there is a nutty escape clause. "To have sexual relations
with a prostitute paid by you and not by a third person does not
constitute improper behavior." Not all of this can have been said just to
placate Richard Gere, or to attract the royalties from "Pretty Woman."
I have talked to a
few Dorge Shugden adherents, who seem sincere enough and who certainly
seem frightened enough, but I can't go along with their insistence on the
"irony" of all this. Buddhism can be as hysterical and sanguinary as any
other system that relies on faith and tribe. Lon Nol's Cambodian army was
Buddhist at least in name. Solomon Bandaranaike, first elected leader of
independent Sri Lanka, was assassinated by a Buddhist militant. It was
Buddhist-led pogroms against the Tamils that opened the long and
disastrous communal war that ruins Sri Lanka to this day. The gorgeously
named SLORC, the military fascism that runs Burma, does so nominally as a
Buddhist junta. I have even heard it whispered that in old Tibet, that
pristine and contemplative land, the lamas were the allies of feudalism
and unsmilingly inflicted medieval punishments such as blinding and
flogging unto death.
Yet the entire
Western mass media is uncritically at the service of a mere mortal who, at
the very least, proclaims the utter nonsense of reincarnation and who
affirms the sinister if not indeed crazy belief that death is but a stage
in a grand cycle of what appears to be futility and subjection. What need,
then, to worry about nuclear weaponry, or sectarian frenzy, or the sale of
indulgences to men of the stamp of Steven Seagal? "Harmony" will doubtless
kick in. During his visit to Beijing, our sentimental Baptist hypocrite of
a president turned to his dictator host, recommended that he meet with the
Dalai Lama and assured him that the two of them would get on well. That
might easily turn out to be the case. Both are very much creatures of the
material world.
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