[Buddha-l] Re: Re: The Dalai Lama on Self-Loathing (Stuart Lachs)

[Stuart Lachs]

Parenti wrote: Finally, it should be noted that the criticism posed herein 
is not intended as a personal attack on the Dalai Lama. Whatever his past 
associations with the CIA and various reactionaries, he speaks often of 
peace, love, and nonviolence. And he himself really cannot be blamed for the 
abuses of the ancien régime, having been but 15 years old when he fled into 
exile.

Bob Zeuschner pointed out that the Dalai Lama was 23 or 24 when he left 
Tibet, not 15 as Parenti wrote.  Bob is correct as the Dalai Lama was born 
in 1935 and fled in 1959.

The Dalai Lama is a reincarnation of the previous D.L. and so on.  I have 
wondered what, using Gelugpa ideas on reincarnation, is the connection and 
responcibility of one D.L. to the history and actions of earlier D.L.s? The 
question of how much power the D.L. actually had to institute political 
change, was raised earlier.

Margaret Gouin wrote:

"As has already been stated, this is a complex subject and I'm grateful for
the various resources that have been posted. I seem to recall hearing that
the 13th Dalai Lama wished to 'modernise' Tibetan society and increase
contact with the West, but was stopped cold by both the nobles and the
great monasteries, neither of whom could see any reason for changing the
way things were (which benefited them considerably).
There's a lot of talk in the Western press about the Dalai Lama being a
'God-King', but we tend to forget that traditionally the Dalai Lama had
very little political power (with a few exceptions such as the Fifth) as
against the political elites of Tibetan society."

Parenti and others may be confusing religious authority with political power 
in earlier Tibet?

Stuart