Western Buddhism has been mugged by capitalism
Why does Buddhism get a free pass among religion’s cultured despisers?
With the notable exception of the great Christopher Hitchens, who dished
it out to all, most of the Western media hold Buddhism generally, and
the Dalai Lama in particular, in a curious kind of uncritical respect
that the Enlightenment was supposed to have freed us from. Or as
Hitchens called it: “The widely and lazily held belief that ‘oriental’
religion is different from other faiths: less dogmatic, more
contemplative, more… transcendental.”
So, when the Dalai Lama invites a young child to suck his tongue,
defenders leap in to insist that this is just an unusual cultural
practice that has become lost in translation. Westerners have a very
different understanding of the erogenous: sticking out one’s tongue has
a totally different meaning in Tibet than it does for us. It’s all a
misunderstanding. And his holiness has a rather quirky sense of honour.
He was “misguided” rather than “sleazy”, as one columnist in The Times
put it. Hm...
https://unherd.com/2023/04/the-dalai-lamas-greatest-failure/