Here I was thinking that the Dalai Lama was a pretty good guy. But there is evidence, as documented below, that the Dalai Lama sold out the people of Tibet to Mao's CCP. When in the West, the Dalai Lama was funded by the CIA, and given specific training in propaganda (information warfare). But even without that the history of the Lamas was one of oppression of the ordinary people, not some sort of spiritual support: “From a purely secular point of view, this doctrine must be seen as one of the most ingenious and pernicious forms of social control ever devised. To the ordinary Tibetan, the acceptance of this doctrine precluded the possibility of ever changing his or her fate in this life. If one were born a slave, so the doctrine of karma taught, it was not the fault of the slaveholder but rather the slaves themselves for having committed some misdeeds in a previous life. In turn, the slaveholder was simply being rewarded for good deeds in a previous life. For the slave to attempt to break the chains that bound him, or her, would be tantamount to a self-condemnation to a rebirth into a life worse than the one already being suffered. This is certainly not the stuff of which revolutions are made.”
That puts Buddhism in a light much different from what I once thought. So, the pessimistic view of human nature, as one tainted by original sin, proves correct once more.