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.
"Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace." -Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama
Spoiler alert: those who read to the end will be privy to CIA records released due to a FOIA request which seem to show that the Dalai Lama sold out the people of Tibet to Mao's CCP. After "fleeing" to the West, the Dalai Lama was funded by the CIA, with specific training in propaganda (information warfare). That was then, and this is now.
The Dalai Lama appears to have been jabbed at a time when barely over 1% of India's population had voluntarily received an injection. That proportion quadrupled within a month.
How Do You Identify the Successful Illusionists?
"As they say in poker, 'If you've been in the game 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.'" -Warren Buffett
I bet that most Americans believe themselves relatively capable of picking up on the signs of who is and who isn't part of a cult.
Not only are nearly all of them wrong, but most of them are cult members and don't even know it. That may sound like an extraordinary claim, but if we're not on the same page, I beg a moment of suspension of disbelief. After all, I grew up in one of these cults, recognized it for what it was at an early age, and escaped. I feel like that gives me some kind of advantage or credibility in the conversation.
I'll start small. Okay, not that small. But what's a game with a weak ante, anyhow?
- The cult of Oprah
- The cult of the Dalai Lama
Are you serious? Are you calling Oprah and the Dalai Lama cult leaders?!
Calm down, mysterious voice. I will leave it to each reader to make these calls. And I'll ignore Oprah for now while I lay out some interesting facts that most people might not know about Tibet, the Dalai Lama, and the Lamaist religion.
- Lamaism was invented by a Tibetan king, then imposed by brutal violence for centuries until most of the people (who lived as serf peasants with essentially no rights or property) submitted, were submitted to it, or were murdered for resisting.
- Tibetan monasteries were essentially private castles entirely designed for war, defense, and the taking of chosen poor, including children, for labor and sexual gratification. Militias were tasked with rounding up escaped slaves.
- The Lamas almost never gave food to the poor, or otherwise raised them up. The arrangement was exactly the opposite. Millions of Tibetans raised food and livestock for the lamas and government class. The Tibetan doctrine of "altruism" was apparently taking care of the wealthy master class. Much of the rest was "rules for thee, but not for me." You can even see it on the front page of the Dalai Lama's very professionally produced homepage. I'm certain His Holiness thanked the child for protecting him with that mask, right?
- The Dalai Lama was historically rarely the primary leader of Tibet. The Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism of which the Dalai Lama leads, was one of several schools of Buddhism. The current (14th) Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was named "Head of State" of Tibet several years afterfleeing Chinese forces. This seems to have been suggested by the CIA, which funded both lamaist paramilitary and propaganda operations against China.
- By historical accounts, the version of the Dalai Lama and Tibet Buddhism sold on Western television was a post hocinvention that may have begun as a CIA propaganda operation, then continued as a self-fundraiser for a religious leader who may very well have sold his people out.
- Karma was judged by lamas, which seems to have often been a thin excuse for oppression.
Grunfield writes: “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”
I call it karmauthoritarianism to help people break free of the cognitive dissonance ingrained through decades of mass media indoctrination of belief in the Tibetan Utopia that never existed. If anything, Tibet was a less educated or technologically advanced analog of present day North Korea.
Why so sad?
Why would the U.S. play along?
That's a good question, and I can't give anything close to a complete answer, but we might precede the discussion which questions like,
- Why did the U.S. State Department fund Mao over Chiang Kai-shek?
- Why did the FBI allow a serial child rapist to "serve" two heartbeats from the presidency?
The easiest way to understand the parts of these narratives (the ones that aren't fanciful fabrications) is as "rules for the serfs, pass the Kama Sutra." And judging by the sex scandals covered up and piled up over the years among Lamas brought to the West by the CIA, old habits die hard.
Do you believe all of these accusations?
I haven't review trial evidence, so I'll leave it at that. But I observe patterns, so let's keep going from there…
Understand, none of this is to say that I think that the CCP should be ruling over Tibet. The torture and murder of Tibetan lamas and leadership during the Chinese takeover is an ugly chapter in the history of Mao's China. As with many wars and conquests, there is just no finding the good guys among the named players. Even Wokepedia chooses not to tell a completely one-sided story on the matter.
Western authors' writings on Tibetan history are sometimes controversial. For example, whilst Hugh Richardson, who lived in Lhasa in the 1930s and 1940s, before the takeover by the PRC in 1951, writes in Tibet and Its History that Chinese versions of Tibetan history are contemptible and he considers the Chinese rule brutal and illegal, Israel Epstein, a naturalized Chinese citizen born in Poland who similarly claims the authority of first-hand knowledge, although following the Chinese takeover, supports Chinese rule. There are few academic assessments of the recent history of Tibet. Anthropologist and historian Melvyn Goldstein, who is fluent in Tibetan and has done considerable fieldwork with Tibetans in exile and in Tibet, considers pre-1950 Tibet to have been a feudal theocracy impaired by corrupt and incompetent leaders. It was de facto independent of China from 1911 to 1949, but not recognized as de jure independent of China by any nation, including its protective power Great Britain.
I hope that someday, somehow, the Tibetan survivors find a path toward educated self-governance. In the meantime, I hope that Americans can find their way to recognition of the illusions woven around what seems plainly like a cult illusion with the intention of pressuring the CCP, and very possibly also in baiting Americans into various self-deceptions.”