Reply to Dalai Lama asks kid to suck his tongue

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
No apology was ever needed from His Holiness. No apology. No explanation. No statement. 
Because pure unadulterated acts of love, faith, and compassion DO NOT require any apology. 
Because an "oothuk" -- foreheads touching to represent pure love, respect in our culture -- does not require an apology.
Because a kiss or a "po" on the lips given by elders to little children and by young children to elders is common in our culture and another sign of pure, unabashed love -- until of course, you superimpose your own hypersexualised views/culture or negative experiences on everything and view every act of pure love through that lens; in such an instance, even the sight of a grandfather kissing his own grandson will be misconstrued as "child abuse."
Because requesting His Holiness to "blow into the face" of a young child or an adult -- words that would be horribly misconstrued in any another culture -- are in our culture the very reason for hope. Hope for parents with sick children. Peace of mind for so many with a dying parent or loved one as they seek one last audience and "blow" with His Holiness before s/he passes. "Blow on my face" -- words/an act so pure in the Tibetan world are so so so very different in every other world. For the word "blow" or the act of "blow-ing" represents hope and faith and peace and contentment and fulfilment and compassion and kindness... in our culture and to our people. Words/acts that would have never been seen as such to those who have not an ounce of understanding of the Tibetan way of life, nor cared to know or understand. 
And likewise the words "nge che le jip" -- such a common playful refrain by Tibetan elders and so innocent-sounding  in Tibetan but not so when translated into English as "suck my tongue."
So to reiterate -- no apology was ever needed from His Holiness, irrespective of how sordid the minds of those who perceive a culture and a purity that their minds can never ever fathom as possible of existence in this world of tremendous hate and angst and lust and malicious intent.
Instead, the world OWES the Tibetan world and His Holiness, who is the very epicentre of that world, an apology. A deep, heartfelt apology for the unprecedented, unwarranted assault and attack on everything we hold dear. The attacks on His Holiness and the ease with which so-called 'woke' people have jumped to conclusions have been deeply deeply deeply hurtful for me and millions across the world.
But mainly for so many Tibetans like my 77-year-old mother who weeps through the day and has lost sleep for the past few days. Because this viscous, vitriolic, targeted attack on His Holiness has been the worst attack so far that she and so many like her have known in their nearly eight to nine decades-long years of existence. For her, this -- she told me as she called me weeping, unable to sleep past midnight -- has been "the worst attack so far on the Tibetan faith and the Tibetan way of life." And she's right. For this is a blatant attack on everything the Tibetan world holds dear -- our culture, our way of life, our innocence, our humour, our unabashed optimism, our resilience, our naïveté, and our faith.
As a Tibetan mother of three children -- two of whom have special needs -- my deepest fear now is that this incident will so drastically alter our Tibetan world and the Tibetan way of life that tomorrow even if I were to request His Holiness -- once again, as I have done in the past -- to "blow into my daughters' faces", that they will never be so privileged. And my fear is that it won't stop there -- my fear is that tomorrow, so many other Tibetan parents like us will never have that opportunity ever again for their children to receive the blessings from and witness the pure, unabashed acts of compassion and love by any other spiritual leader within the Tibetan Buddhist community ever again. 
All because one day, the world decided to view an incident -- such a pure, unadulterated act of love, compassion and faith in our culture -- through their base-minded lens. 
So again - to emphasize - no apology, no explanation, no statement was ever needed to be issued by His Holiness. Instead, the world owes the Tibetan world and His Holiness an apology now.

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Honestly curious, how do we know this isn't the right lens through which to look at this event? [/quote]

We probably don’t know.

It may be the right way for this woman ( if she exists and is not  a satirical fictional character).

For most of us religious folks in the West, we are trying to hold religious leaders to account for child abuse (not just in Catholic Churches but many other mainstream Christian traditions and Jewish communities). So for many of us, the DL’s behavior is unacceptable and an abuse of religious authority.

I can see why devout Tibetan Buddhists may not be ready to let go of their  perceptions of the DL. Also China commits far greater atrocities against the Tibetans than this.q

However, many religious people in Western countries are in the process of seeking to hold our religious leaders to higher accountability, child protection laws and common decency.

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I see the Tibetan lady as raising a more fundamental issue. There is sexual abuse that I think everyone can agree on and then there may be fringe sexual abuse that hinge on intent and culture comes into play.  If this is indeed (big assumption here) normal Tibetan behavior, then there is no sexual intent behind it, which makes it a very different kind of action, IMO, than if done with sexual intent.  My parents are Chinese immigrants and I remember them telling me stories as a kid of Chinese parents who got in trouble with CPS for doing some traditional Chinese medicine on their kids, like acupuncture or cupping.  I'm not sure how real those stories were but I can see it happening, especially back then.  An American, seeing a kid's back purple and blue from cupping or gua sha would naturally assume physical abuse, but that is not the case if you understand the cultural context.

I would be much more interested in seeing how Tibetans actually react to this episode.  This is assuming Tibetans are capable of objectively judging their spiritual leaders and holding them accountable to the same standards as regular people. 
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