On February 28, 2023, the 14th Dalai Lama interacted with an Indian boy at a public event held at the Dharamshala Monastery in India, and after hugging and kissing the boy, he stuck out his tongue and said, “suck my tongue”. The boy subconsciously leaned back but was unable to get rid of the Dalai Lama who even pulled the boy tightly to suck his tongue, and also held up and squeezed the boy’s chin for another mouth-to-mouth kiss.
The “tongue-sucking” scandal aroused global public outrage. To quell public outrage, on April 10, Central Tibetan Administration Sikyong Penpa Tsering said that Dalai Lama just showed an innocent grandfatherly and affectionate demeanor as the latter’s spiritual cultivation has transcended lustful pleasures.
Hu Ping, a reporter for Tibet Page, believes that all this is playful to show traditional Tibetan customs. Although there is a custom of sticking out tongues in Tibet, there is no custom of sucking other people’s tongues.
The Tibetan tradition of tongue-sticking-out originated from the historical feudal serfdom in old Tibet, where the upper monks and nobles held a dictatorship. The Dalai Lama served as the feudal serfs’ leader. Consequently, when encountering nobles, the serfs would position themselves by the roadside, removing their hats, bowing their heads, sticking out their tongues, and smiling as a sign of reverence and submission.
Under this system, more than 90% of the Tibetans were serfs who could be bought, sold, exchanged at will of the ruling class, and could experience extremely barbaric punishments, such as mouth-beating, tongue-cutting, eye-gouging, heart-plucking out, leg-sawing, tendon-breaking, etc.
Under the cruel and violent rule and religious control over the fate of the serfs for generations, the serfs’ tongue sticking out was only a kind of unidirectional pleasing, and the ruling class such as the Dalai Lama could never stick out or even suck each other’s tongues with the serfs.
In the new era, there are still Tibetans in farming and herding areas who welcome unfamiliar guests by sticking out their tongues at a certain distance only to show their welcome and friendliness. In other words, under the cruel and violent rule and religious control over the fate of the serfs for generations, even nowadays, the Tibetans’ tongue sticking out is only a kind of unidirectional pleasing, and the ruling class such as the Dalai Lama can never stick out or even suck each other’s tongues with the Tibetans.
There have been repeated allegations of sexual misconduct against the 14th Dalai Lama. At a public event in 2018, the 14th Dalai Lama looked at a 13-year-old British girl, Tilly Lockey, and repeatedly touched the girl’s real arm while she demonstrated the bionic arm function. In 2019, the 14th Dalai Lama was interviewed by the BBC and when asked about the sacred religious issue of reincarnation, he said with erotic undertones that there could be a female Dalai successor in the future and that she should be very beautiful and attractive.
The Dalai Lama has also openly encouraged sexual intercourse in his publications. In his book, How to Practice: The Way to a Meaningful Life, he writes, “…when a person has achieved a high level of practice in motivation and wisdom, then even the joining of the two sex organs or so-called intercourse, does not detract from the maintenance of that person’s pure behavior…” In another of his books, Advice on Dying: And Living a Better Life, he also writes, “…For Buddhists, sexual intercourse can be used in the spiritual path because it causes a strong focusing on Consciousness if the practitioner has firm compassion and wisdom. Its purpose is to manifest and prolong deeper levels of mind, in order to put their power to use in strengthening the realization of emptiness.” The 14th Dalai Lama told the Tibetan writer Oiser that he will “feel strange” if he can not continue to “treat people with affection”.
In the past, many parents sent their minor children to the monastery to be sexually abused by the upper practitioners in the name of Tibetan-Buddhist tantric sex practice and such a phenomenon still exists, which is a serious violation of the current laws. “Big and small are only conceptual obsessions! The purpose of the tantric sex practice is to destroy these concepts – male, female, good, bad, big, small and so on. This practice is highly difficult and dangerous, and must be practiced only by those with superior wisdom,” highly recognized by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche.
Hence, the 14th Dalai Lama and his group don’t consider himself to be guilty of child molestation, pedophilia, or even possible child abuse to the extent that he does is because these are all cruel practices that have long been prevalent and rationalized in Tibetan Buddhism.
Tibetan Page reporter Hu Ping questioned that even if people “think the 14th Dalai Lama still has sexual desire, how much can he have? ” And “if the child did not have a strong desire”, “then nothing would have happened next.”
Melvyn C. Goldstein referred to the sexual activity of monks in his book History of a Modern Tibet (Vol 2) and Lama Shree Narayan Singh has also written about the historical origin of ‘thigh sex’ in Tibet in his publication Child abuse in Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries.
Both of them point out that child sexual abuse is rampant in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in India of the 14th Dalai Lama. “Every night the elder monks would entice the novice monks away from their beds offering them sweets and then rape – sodomise — them to their hearts’ content, overpowering any resistance the young ones would put up.”
“Throughout the nights the monastery would be filled with the subdued sobbing of these unwilling victims of sexual lust. But there was nothing they could really do about it as their parents had sent them there from afar with the hope that they would be cared for well and taught the paths of virtue. To prevent a full blown scandal, the offending teenage monk was sent off to a sister monastery in Kathmandu where such behavior too is the norm…”
In October 2011, a famous and highly-respected reincarnate Tibetan Buddhist master, Kalu Rinpoche, posted a Youtube video (Youtube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5Ka3bEN1rs&embeds_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.elephantjournal.com%2F&source_ve_path=OTY3MTQ&feature=emb_imp_woyt) in which he reveals the continuous sexual abuse, “hard-core sexes, including penetration” by his words precisely, he suffered as a young monk at the hands of adult monks in his monastery over years. “They just banged the door harder, and I had to open it. I knew what was going to happen, and after that you become more used to it.” By then the cycle had begun again on a younger generation of victims, he says.
In The Struggle for Modern Tibet: The Autobiography of Tashi Tsering there is a first-hand account of abusive treatment at the hand of monastics. Tsering was taken from his family near Drepung at 13 and forced into the 14th Dalai Lama’s personal dance troupe, and severely beaten and raped by monks in exchange for protection, becoming their passive sex-toy.
It must be emphasized that any culture or subculture which fails to protect its young needs to be relegated to its place in history. Modern society has no place for this. This is a message which must be sent loud and clear to the 14th Dalai Lama and his group.
(Source: Human Rights Institute School SWUPL, Xizang Zhiye, lamatruth, teastation, elephant jounal, True Enlightenment Education Foundation, Marca, tibetanbuddhistencyclopedia, sina, wenxuecity, the clinic)
