“His holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way,” announces an apology from the office of the Dalai Lama, sounding for all the world like one of those statements issued in the first wave of #MeToo, as various older men made pained and absurd reference to “unwanted hugs” (Pixar’s John Lasseter) or a belief that they had been “pursuing shared feelings” (talkshow host Charlie Rose). Students of these mea-not-really-culpas were left with the impression that the victims’ misunderstanding was the real tragedy here, unless you counted the very belated losses of various glittering careers, which were obviously also desperately sad.
The specific “people” to which this current Dalai Lama apology refers are, in fact, one person – more accurately one young boy, who was invited to “suck my tongue” by the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, on stage at a temple in India. The event took place in February, but has only just gone viral, meaning an apology has only now been deemed necessary by his holiness, or rather by his holiness’s office.
It is fair to say that the interaction with this distinctly unsettled child has not been taken by many people in the spirit in which the Dalai Lama’s office retrospectively insists it was meant, despite that insistence being accompanied by the classic non-apology apology gesture towards any hurt “his words may have caused”. In the interests of clarifying things for those pen-pushers/chime-tinklers in his holiness’s office, it’s not the words quite so much as the spectacle of an 87-year-old man sitting expectantly with his tongue out as a child squirms in front of him.
When is a seemly retirement age for a Dalai Lama, other than what we might broadly categorise as “before this sort of thing starts happening in public”? The Dalai Lama retired as leader of Tibet’s government in exile in 2011 – one year after he did the iPhone advert which promised that Apple’s latest model was “the most trusted phone ever” – but he retains his position as the foremost spiritual leader of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism.
The process of identifying his successor has been inching forward for some time, though the Dalai Lama has mentioned dreams in which he sees himself living to 113. A few years ago, he twice stated that any female successor of his would have be attractive or she would be “not much use”. You don’t see that particular quote of his bandied around as Instagram #inspo, though it did at least provide another occasion
