His Holiness the Dalai Lama Video Response
We at Buddhist Peace Fellowship want to acknowledge the video that has recently been circulated of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a young boy student in India.
Over the past month, staff and board have been having deepening dialogue around all that this particular media moment brings up for us. The themes center around our commitment to supporting heritage Buddhists; the pain of seeing the media vilify a trusted spiritual leader for a politically oppressed people; the pain of witnessing imagery that reflects and evokes the experiences of sexual assault survivors inside and outside of spiritual communities; the age of disinformation and the difficulty of discernment amidst political maneuvering; and whose voice matters most during such viral global moments.
Each of us at BPF come from different traditions, lineages, and cultural heritages. As many streams converging into one larger body, we do not seek to be an authoritative voice on one right view on this issue. Neither do we claim to be able to represent or bring to light all possible viewpoints on this. However, as an organization dedicated to peace, who supports heritage Buddhists and social justice, we perceive that there is harm being done on many levels in this situation.
We hold with loving awareness the complexity that surrounds this moment in history. The dissemination of the video comes at a heated political moment and cannot be removed from the political context of Tibet’s continued occupation by China, including most recently a disagreement related to the next reincarnation of the 10th Khalkha, Jetsun Dhampa Rinpoche, of Mongolia. Buddhist Peace Fellowship supports heritage Buddhists of all lineages and are aware of how this media coverage, its timing and sensationalism are an attempt to discredit a deeply trusted spiritual leader.
The intersections of culture, political agenda, power, and media remind us that there are complex dynamics involved in the dissemination of this video of the Dalai Lama. It is clear that rigorous discernment is critical at this time. We encourage you to listen directly to members of the Tibetan community–many of whom have been generously sharing their knowledge and experiences on this issue–to gain deeper culturally-specific understanding, and to look further beyond sensationalized soundbites and cleverly edited videos to understand the meaning of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s teachings and interactions with his students.
We also hold with tenderness how the heavily edited video being circulated and the commentary surrounding it are intended to be activating, and how it can retraumatize and trigger individuals who have experienced physical trespass–whether as children or adults–from trusted authority figures, mentors, or teachers. Abuses of power do happen and continue to happen. We urge all folks who are reading this to become aware of this and to sincerely develop pathways to addressing instances of abuse within your own sanghas if and when they arise. In 1998 BPF published Safe Harbor: Guidelines, Process, and Resources for Ethics and Conduct in Buddhist Communities. We hope this resource may be a starting point for reflection, planning, and wise action.
Survivors, we see you. We send this message with metta, and hold the intention in our practice of liberation for all beings, autonomy and self-governance for all beings, and the eradication of interpersonal and political violence in all its forms. When violence does occur, the wisest path we can take to transform the suffering is through accountability and changed behavior.
We invite you, dear ones, to explore with genuine care and curiosity the complicated circumstances that we are living in, and to perhaps get curious about the causes and conditions of your own life including culture, nationality, gender, lineage, and lived experience that shape your perceptions of what’s happening on a global scale. We ask you to use this opportunity to turn toward each other in dialogue and to meet this moment with compassion, leaving no one out.