Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words:
The Dalai Lama is not the leader of Buddhism:
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This is my take, 1) as a survivor of pedophilia myself, 2) as someone intimately familiar with Tibetan Buddhism, 3) as a former anthropologist who has studied Tibet extensively (though not via fieldwork), and 4) as someone who has thoughts on building consent culture. C/P from my facebook:
There is a difference between cultural sensitivity and absolute cultural relativism. The former asks you to take context/society/history/culture into account in looking at a situation before leaping to conclusions and making a judgement. The latter says you can’t make judgments at all. Too often people think when you are doing the former, you condone the latter. And it is frustrating. Especially when we are talking about assessing unethical behaviour from someone from a marginalised group. No one says you should let it pass. Just that maybe not everything is at as it seems and at least take a second look.
I find this especially important because there is a tendency to condemn someone from a marginalised group much quicker than say a cis straight white man. When you are talking about someone from a culture radically different than your own, maybe have a little humility to at least gather some more information. Doing this does not mean they are above criticisms. And the fact I am doing this doesn’t mean I am saying they are above criticisms.
And yes, I am talking about the Dalai Lama. And what I gather listening to Tibetans on the subject, is that his behaviour was not out of line relative to how elders (both men and women) treat and interact with children and that what he said in broken English would come across very differently in Tibetan (as in this is a phrase elders use to tease children). Also sticking out tongues and touching heads is a common Tibetan greeting.
My conclusion is that what he did from a Tibetan POV was no different from Auntie Joe non-consensually giving you a hug when you were a kid. In my opinion of how society needs to change, perhaps this isn’t the best way to behave towards children. We need to start teaching children the right to bodily autonomy, both their own and that of others. So yeah, the behaviour is still sus. But to call it pedophilia, is just bull headed and wrong and reeks of the judging western gaze on the “orient.”
Plus as an actual survivor of pedophilia, I find it extra dangerous to trivialise that word so much. Isn’t it bad enough the right is trivialising that word by using it to discuss gays, drag queens, and trans people? We now have to use it on another marginalised group on a highly edited clip of a short video taken completely out of context? It’s gross. I assure you that one time a parent hugged me when I didn’t want to does not carry the same weight as being sexually abused. And we are not going to teach society to change their behaviours towards children by all willy nilly calling all acts of unwanted non-sexual affection towards children, “pedophilia.”
That said, the Tibetan religious institutions are fraught with abuse scandals. I do think perhaps we need to rethink our relationship of touch with children and to really really value children’s bodily autonomy. And i don’t consider the Dalai Lama above critique. If a victim came forth and accused him of pedophilia or rape, I would absolutely revise my opinion immediately. I left that institution because I lost faith due to abuse scandals. But it’s also not my place to tell Tibetan elders to stop acting like auntie Joe. Let Tibetans deal with that. Let us focus on auntie Joe—who may be a super loving well intentioned lady, but needs our help to learn that we need to rethink our relationship to consent culture with children. Just because it is cultural, doesn’t make it good.
The last 2 days has been extremely triggering as a survivor. Please be kind if you disagree.
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@Ulriquinho When I saw the size of your post I was going to skip it until I saw your list of credentials.
Tibetans I have talked to through the Internet about this scandal have confirmed that they do stick their tongue out as a greeting. At least the ones I talked to emphatically said they do not kiss children on the mouth and they do not ask children to suck their tongues. The little boy involved was Indian.
I don’t agree with you that the term pedophilia is being trivialized. The Dalai Lama kissed a little boy on the mouth and asked him to suck his tongue. How intimate does non-consensual behavior have to be before you call it molestation, abuse, or pedophilia.
I also disagree with your point about the scandal being worse due to the Dalai Lama’s ethnicity. Sadly, I see headlines in the news all of the time about white men and women, some POC molesting children. The Dalai Lama has an immense amount of global power. I don’t think you can play the marginalized for him.
To be clear, I am just making points about what you wrote and I am appreciative to see someone with your background commenting on the situation. I mean zero disrespect.
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@Jhana4 So there was one Tibetan specifically I saw mentioned the “suck the tongue” as a Tibetan phrase. My theory prior to seeing that, was that it is also possible that “st” is not a combination of sounds found in (central) Tibetan language. So he could easily be trying to say something along the lines of, “stick your tongue out like this.” Remember that his command of English is in fact quite poor. I am totally willing to say that my Tibetan source on the sucking could have been bogus (especially I can’t simply verify credentials on the internet).
In regards to global power. He is still a refugee and the leading representative of his refugee community. His people are an ethnic minority in his country of origin which is now a settler colonial state and a minority in India. He is essentially an indigenous voice.
As for how minorities are treated… look at the metoo movement. Women are much less likely to be believed. But if a man accuses a gay man of sexual assault, people immediately and happily cancel him. This is also true across racial lines, when it is a person of colour being accused.
Edit: sorry if I am editing my replies lot. My adhd and current emotional state makes it quite difficult to get my words coming out the way I would like them too. Also I want to add thank you for your sensitivity in your reply.
No he’s not
He’s a member of a religious aristocracy which did not want to give up their status and castles on the top of the hill.
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Now, as far as psychological aspects of it, the difference of attitudes toward this unpleasant event may be explained also by lack of personal involvement, almost for anyone here Dalajlama isn’t any authority, nobody considers him to be his teacher …
Of course we can’t exclude our high spiritual development and detachment as the reason of our objectivity, but knowing the human nature I will not be so optimistic…
I wasn’t able to get my own responses onto the screen at all, so I really want to thank you for sharing as you have.
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You are not entirely wrong and you are not entirely correct. I have no love for the Tibetan theocracy. I think the Tulku system has been one of the worst things to have happened to Tibetan Buddhism and wish to see it abolished. Kidnapping little children from parents and raising them in an all male institution while they tell them that women are an inferior rebirth and en-nobling their family members has made the entire thing way too fraught and way too political in a bad way.
But looking at the DL’s biography specifically, this is a bit unfair to him. He is a refugee. Has he managed to rebuild the palace in exile, yes. But he has devoted his life to his people. That counts for something. There are plenty to be critical of with him: he has not done enough for bhikshuni ordination, he has looked away with the abuse scandals when he shouldn’t have, and he has said some dumb shit in regards to the lgbtq. I know enough of how f*** up the whole institution is. I can go back into Tibetan Mongolian relations to talk about how it was always f***ed up.
But he has also done more to change the system than anyone ever has before him. Nuns can now become geshes for the first time in Tibetan history. He has kept his people and culture alive in exile. He has helped improve the living standards of his people in exile (unfortunately, yes, some of that with the money from abusers like Sogyal Rinpoche where he looked away), he stepped down from his position as secular head of state (also a first in Tibetan history). And many of his people in exile (not all by any means) do look to him as their global representative. So yeah, he is an indigenous voice… and an aristocrat. Those are not mutually exclusive things.
Also, as a side note, if there is anything I know coming from anthropologists who work on/in Tibet, is that it is extremely difficult to get any kind of objectivity on Tibet. So much is mediated by the CCP, this orientalist mythical notion of shangrila, a refugee community that have to cater to western fantasies to stay globally relevant and are also desperately holding on preserving something of their identity and culture. It is very difficult to ever make heads or tails of anything from all of this.
Even your own take, is biased in a CCP direction without even knowing it. The whole idea of pre-modern Tibet as having serfs and slaves is a CCP take (which can be traced back to a Chinese anthropologist who studied in the UK and learned the Eurocentric idea of stages of civilization and imputed that back onto ethnic minorities in China. From there this determined Maoist China’s policy in ethnic minorities). There were no serfs in medieval Tibet. It was theocratic and you can totally criticize it on its own terms. But I just want to show you how difficult it is to untangle Tibet from all of the different ways people like to project their own ideals, politics, and fantasies onto.
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Is sucking the tongue of the person sticking it out really a Tibetan cultural tradition? or just sticking out your tongue? is there any valid reference on this that i can figure out?
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@Sumit above shared an image going around which claims that “eat my tongue” is a cheeky reply in Tibetan appropriate to this situation, but which was lost in translation. I know little about Amdo so I don’t know if this is accurate or not… Do we have any Tibetan experts on this forum?
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However innocent and playful the intention may have been, there was an absence of awareness in relation to the boy’s position. He’d only asked for a hug and not being Tibetan himself, likely wouldn’t have been familiar with the custom.
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I just wanted to acknowledge there has been a lot of grief felt by many in relation to this. I certainly have experienced a lot of grief this week. I thank other people on this thread for trying to explain the cultural aspects – I initially had not understood the full significance of the cultural mores that may have mediated the Dalai Lamas interactions. I also thank Ulriiquinho for sharing your lived expertise as a victim-survivor as well as your experiences with Tibetan culture, I have learned a lot from your posts.
The one last contribution I would like to make to this thread is the concept of consent. I understand that many people have found it to be valuable and important to consider all the reasons why the Dalai Lama may have acted the way he did – yet it is unlikely we will ever know what his true intentions were. Beyond considering and debating the Dalai Lama’s intentions, I want to ask this group is it useful to consider consent here?
In the video we see the child asking the Dalai Lama for his consent for the hug – “can I hug you – it’s a question?” The child’s question was a wonderful gesture and it showed that even a child can understand the meaning and importance of asking for consent before initiating physical closeness and affection. However, in the interaction, the Dalai Lama did not seek the consent of the child for the kisses or the other gestures – for example he didn’t ask the child “would you like to kiss me here”? or “would you like another hug?” The Dalai Lama also did not appear to respond to the child’s non-verbal gestures which at times indicated a lack of consent such as when the child pulled away and the child’s hesitation when the Dalai Lama showed his tongue.
Regardless of how the Dalai Lama’s actions are interpreted here I think it is important that Buddhists uphold the rights of children and that we support children to make their choices about what they want to consent to and what they don’t want to consent to especially when it comes to behaviours and interactions initiated by adults. I think it’s important that no matter what, we centre the rights and safety of children and listen to what they want and need. This is called body sovereignty and I highly recommend viewing this Ted Talk by Monica Rivera: Body Sovereignty and Kids: How we can cultivate a culture of consent | Monica Rivera | TEDxCSU - YouTube
We must also always remember that children cannot consent to any sexual behaviours at all.
Discussing this incident has been important for me as even the slightest suggestion of child abuse does challenge my faith in Buddhist organisations – although my faith in the Dhamma is unshakeable. I hope my reflection is useful – I am also very open to learning and hearing others’ views - I acknowledge this has been very painful and challenging for many!
With metta and respect
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Does one always ask first “can I hug you”, before hugging?
It depends on the setting. In this instance, the Dalai Lama was up on a stage speaking and the boy was in the audience. He can’t just go up and hug him, so he must ask. Two friends greeting in public don’t have to ask and just go right to a hug.
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Maybe this could be of use, so I thought I might share it.
My former professors at the University of Bern from the Institute of Science of Religion gave some statments about the matter in the national public media of Switzerland.
Here is the link to the articel:
I did translate it with Deepl.com in order not to misrepresent their statements.
“The so-called ‘utug’ is a great show of respect from high lamas,” Kollmar-Paulenz said. “It signals, ‘I’m not aloof, I’m a Dalai Lama you can touch.’”
On the role of the tongue, she explains, “We in Switzerland give the hand. Tibetans stick out their tongues. It’s a traditional greeting ritual.” Tibetologist Jens Schlieter of the University of Bern also points out that, unlike in our country, the tongue has no sexualized connotation in the Tibetan context.
“Jokes that the Dalai Lama makes with his audience are often borderline,” adds the Tibetologist. What is clear to him is, “This event is certainly one that, from our perspective, must be called assaultive.”
Kollmar-Paulenz, a Buddhism expert, also points to the verbal culture of the lamas. Provocations, crude sayings and crude humor would play an important role. “The Dalai Lama does not realize that he is crossing a line here. It is an extremely bad joke,” she says.
But to interpret the gesture as a clearly sexual innuendo, both Kollmar-Paulenz and Schlieter see as a distortion of culturally conditioned facts by the Western gaze.
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Bhante @nisabhobhikkhu thanks so much for sharing this video 
It certainly puts things into perspective when you see the unedited version as opposed to the one that has gone viral.
It’s a great reminder of not judging too quickly and harshly and that there’s always more to be gained when you take into account the whole context and setting which isn’t always revealed.
I think this is true alot of the times when you read a sutta from the EBTs and I always bring to mind what Bhante Sujato says about how everything has a specific setting and context with a lot of the Buddha’s interactions in the suttas.
These settings and contexts need to be in the back of our minds, and we need to read them with a sense of kindness and to have a sense of awe that these teachings have survived for 2600 years and are available today for us to learn from.
I think the same applies when we read or watch something online, that there is almost always a greater context that we may not always be aware of, it’s a wonderful reminder.
I agree whole-heartedly to all the comments that have been made with regards to child safety and looking after the young people and making sure they are safe from any form of sexual abuse, great or small.
I also feel for the Tibetan people, who as we all know have gone through a lot of suffering and anguish and have lost so much as a result of the cultural revolution.
I think overall the big take away for me is that we need to remind ourselves of where our refuge lies.
It needs to be rooted in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha.
Thanks again Bhante
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There is no doubt whatsoever that there was a transgression of the child’s interpersonal boundaries and that there is a stark absence of cross-cultural interpersonal awareness here on the part of the adult.
My honest take is that the adult was imposing his own wishes to be kind, playful etc onto the child and lacked the ability to read and respect the child’s non-verbal gestures and signs which were in fact clearly visible.
Any advisors to the Dalai Lama should ensure as far as is possible, that this doesn’t happen again.
My greatest wish is that the boy is able to share his honest experience with trusted adults who will validate and support him.
May all be safe and well.
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