Just when you thought the Tibetan leadership couldn’t afford another scandal, one erupts involving the Tibetan people’s highest official and most visible figure, the Dalai Lama himself.
On 24th January 2018, the Daily Mail ran a story with a blistering headline, “Dalai Lama was paid $1 MILLION to endorse women-branding ‘sex cult’ after secret deal between Buddhist’s celibate U.S. emissary and his Seagram billionaire ‘lover’”. While some Dalai Lama fans may discredit the Daily Mail as a gossip-mongering tabloid, the story itself is an extension of The Guardian’s news about the dubious activities of Tenzin Dhonden, the Dalai Lama’s personal emissary in America, involving sex and money.
In addition, the Daily Mail was not reporting on a new story but rather, it ran a detailed narrative about the Dalai Lama’s involvement with Keith Raniere, the founder of the NXVIM cult who is today on the run from the law. The event itself took place in Albany in 2009 when the Dalai Lama graced a NXVIM event and endorsed Keith Raniere.
What should disturb the Tibetan leadership is this – the Daily Mail report confirms that the eyes of the global media are now trained on the Tibetan leadership and, unlike previously, seem to be unwilling to let old delinquencies slide. This translates into more trouble for the Dalai Lama and his exile government, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) who finds itself increasingly under scrutiny as it is hit with one scandal after another.
Apart from the Tenzin Dhonden blow to the credibility of the Dalai Lama, the CTA’s trustworthiness has also been called into question recently when sacked ex-Dalai Lama representative to New York, Penpa Tsering who is also a political rival to the incumbent CTA Prime Minister, Dr Lobsang Sangay, exposed that a sum of $1.5 million from the International Campaign for Tibet may have been misappropriated under Sangay’s directive.
Whether inadvertent or not, the Dalai Lama contributes to the Tibetan leadership’s notoriety. The Nobel Laureate being named in the NXVIM scandal with the inference that he endorsed Keith Raniere in exchange for money is reminiscent of his endorsement of Aum Shinrikyo’s cult leader, Shoko Asahara, for a reported sum of $1.5 million in donations. Asahara, whom the Dalai Lama regarded as a close friend, would go on to carry out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin gas attack, where 13 people perished and up to 6000 were hurt.
The office of the Dalai Lama has since refuted the claim that the Dalai Lama’s appearance at the NXVIM event was the result of a sum of money changing hands. But, regardless of whether the Dalai Lama’s endorsement was made in exchange for financial gain or not, the simple fact is that the Dalai Lama did legitimize Keith Raniere, even writing an extensive foreword for Raniere’s book, The Sphinx & Thelxiepeia. This calls into question the spiritual leader’s judgement and his advisors’ competence in vetting who the Dalai Lama associates with.
Ironically, the Dalai Lama is said to be a living Buddha, complete with omniscience, omnipresence and perfect clairvoyance. That is why he is worshipped and his instructions obeyed without question. It is therefore strange that such clairvoyance failed to detect the Mephistophelian schemes of the Keith Raineres and Shoko Asaharas, whereas it is supposed to have worked when the spiritual leader proclaimed in his divine wisdom that the 400-year-old enlightened Dharma Protector Dorje Shugden was evil and contemptible. Clearly, it is highly probable that the Dalai Lama made a mistake in the case of Dorje Shugden, as he did in the cases of Raineres and Asahara.
A Sinking Ship
Whilst it is common knowledge that the CTA reeks of corruption scandals, the politicians at the CTA could not have picked a worse time for their shenanigans to be discovered and aired publicly. In the past few years itself, the CTA has lost its erstwhile firm footing on the international stage as country after country snubs a Dalai Lama whose popularity seems to be waning fast. The casualty is of course the ordinary Tibetan’s dream to return to his homeland, a dream that the Tibetans have hung on to for over half a century, a dream that is going up in smoke as CTA politicians fight over rights to have first bites over a very lucrative trough overflowing with donations from well wishers – almost 60 years worth of government grants, public donations and unknown sums in the form of private donations, not to mention gifts and inheritances, to be exact.
Questions are looming – why does the Dalai Lama allow this and how can he not know of such rife corruption and impropriety amongst his government’s top officials? Is the Dalai Lama a part of a secret scheme or is he really out of touch with what is going on around him and in the world? Comments abound with some saying that the Dalai Lama should not have to bear the blame for the malfeasance of some of his officials and the negligence of the rest of his people. Others ask, why should the Dalai Lama be absolved from any blame when it is well known that nothing happens except with his express permission? Yet others ask, why should the Dalai Lama not take the rap for the mistakes of his advisors and assistants seeing that he takes all the credit when they perform well? And, seeing that the Dalai Lama has been glorified for every suffering his people have endured, should he not also take the blame for their wrongdoings?
Amidst these myriad questions, one has been answered resoundingly and that is the question of whether the Dalai Lama’s government is up to the task of managing a Tibet with a population of 6 million, if by some chance they regain control of their homeland. These scandals suggest that the Tibetan leadership cannot. Not when the top men in the Dalai Lama’s coterie are falling over themselves managing a mere 150,000 Tibetans in diaspora.
Questions will continue to be asked as investigators and journalists smell blood. They sense that what they have seen so far is only the tip of the iceberg. 60 years in exile, with zero accountability and unknown amounts of money moving under the ambiguous preface of “Tibetan Freedom” seems to be the formula for a lot of things to go wrong.
EXCLUSIVE: Dalai Lama was paid $1 MILLION to endorse women-branding ‘sex cult’ after secret deal between Buddhist’s celibate U.S. emissary and his Seagram billionaire ‘lover’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5230067/Dalai-Lamas-1-MILLION-women-branding-sex-cult.html. Click to enlarge.
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