Dalai Lama’s ‘Suck My Tongue’ Controversy Reveals Centuries-Old Christian Distortion of Tibetan Buddhism
In February 2023, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, appeared in Dharamshala, India at an…
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On the Ethics of the Tibetan Self-Immolations
As I write this piece, 119 Tibetans have set themselves on fire, choosing to end their lives to further the cause of the Tibetan people. Tupten Ngödrup, a former monk and the first Tibetan to immolate, took his own life in India in 1998. The next such act would not take place until 2009…
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Did the Dalai Lama Just Call for an End to Religion?
The Dalai Lama recommends a radical new approach: a religionless religion, stripped of myth, superstition, and narrow dogmatism, and focused on the practical work of transforming human behavior.
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Religion No Longer Adequate For The Dalai Lama
What’s he aiming at?
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The Fire Next Time: Tibetan Protests Spread
A report from India in the wake of new protests. “The emotions are much stronger—the sense of concern, the sense of anxiety, the urgency,” an activist says. “You have your fellow beings torturing themselves… So when this is happening in Tibet, of course people here feel very intense and strongly. But what we can do is very limited.”
Read MoreMoses on Facebook, Christian Pro Soccer, Televangelist Breakfast Cereal, Child Preachers
A roundup of the week’s religion headlines.
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“My Prayer Flies Like a Word on a Wing”: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another, Part 5
In this fifth installment of Mark Dery’s cultural critique-cum-“nonfiction novella” about a born-again teen’s transcendent encounter with Ziggy Stardust in the 1970s, our hero Accepts Bowie as His Personal Savior. Delving deep into Bowie’s religious cosmology, we encounter Tibetan Buddhism, Nietzchean existentialism, Crowleyite magick, dimestore occultism, Kabbalistic mysticism, and — mirabile dictu! — Christianity.
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Why are Nuns and Monks in the Streets? (Parts I & II)
The strongest Tibetan response to China since 1959 and the media is only getting part of the story…
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