The monk also understands that the fall will not have any major impact on Buddhism.
Published on 4/13/2023 7:23 am Reproduction/Social Networks BNews Writing
The spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was caught in a row this week after he was seen kissing a child on the lips and asking the boy if he wanted to suck his tongue. Due to the scenes, the video quickly went viral on social media and caused divided opinions. So did the monk Daniel Calmanowitz, 69 years old.
The professor and instructor of Buddhist practice and philosophy at the Dharma da Paz Center and director of the Lama Gangchen Foundation for the Culture of Peace in São Paulo ruled out any kind of space for eroticism in the monastic environment, but stressed that his practice makes it impossible juggling with the Dalai Lama.
“Who am I to judge? One of the central points of my Buddhist practice is not to point fingers. We tend to deal objectively with subjective realities. Of course, we try to get rid of ratings as much as possible. I saw it, but I will not judge the Dalai Lama,” Calmanowitz said in an interview with the newspaper O Globo.
The video shows 87yearold Tenzin Gyatso at a hearing in Dharamsala, northern India, in February. In return for the video, Tibet’s greatest leader, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, apologized to the family and child “for any pain his words may have caused”.
Still, according to the monk, cultural differences would be an explanation for the video.
“There is no eroticism in the monastery. The jokes are not erotic. And at that time he had several monks around him. The context was unfortunate, it was wrong. I had never seen this explicitly (from the request), but there is a custom, for example, to raise one’s hand over one’s head and stick one’s tongue out when greeting. There’s an old story about a king who was like the devil, he had horns and a forked tongue. To say that they are not like this king, Tibetans greet each other like this and prove that they have no horns and that the tongue is not like that of the devil,” he explained.
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