Investigation suggests Dalai Lama’s omission in corruption and harassment cases

A book published this Wednesday (14) in France denounces the “law of silence” on “serious abuses” within the Tibetan Buddhist religion, including sexual violence, deprivation and financial corruption, as well as blaming the Dalai’s omission and inaction. lama and the French monk Matthieu Ricard, the main translator of the Tibetan leader in the country. The Franco-German television channel Art showed on Tuesday night (13) a documentary dedicated to the theme, which shakes the structures of Buddhism around the world.

In “Buddhism, the law of silence” (Editor JC Lattès), journalists Élodie Emery and Wandrille Lanos investigated some of the Tibetan Buddhist centers that have spread across the West during the last 40 years, where they collected “the testimonies of 32 disciples who suffered abuse , targeting 13 different Buddhist masters” in various western countries, leading to the conclusion that there were “grave abuses” in the practice of certain master teachers or even lamas.

The book denounces cases of children who were taken from their parents and then victims of violence. Or even girls forced to become “dakinis” (sexual partners) of a master.

Some of these incidents had already been reported. This is the case of master Sogyal Rinpoché, who died in 2019, who had founded Rigpa, a network of 130 spiritual centers. Accused by eight former disciples of sexual assault, he received a symbolic punishment from the Dalai Lama in 2017 and was forced to announce his early retirement.

For the authors, who also sign a documentary with the same name (available to European audiences on the Arte channel platform until November 11), it is not “an isolated sectarian drift”, but “a system that corrupts all of Buddhism Tibetan”.

The cause, according to them, is the omission and inaction of the main leaders of Tibetan Buddhism. “Until now, Tibetan spiritual authorities have ignored the voices of victims, repeatedly claiming that the matter is not their responsibility. Attempts from within to address the issue of sexual abuse in communities have been met with coldness or outright hostility,” the journalists write. .

The authors also highlight the “40 years of silence” of the Dalai Lama, who had already been warned in 1993 of the “abusive behavior of the masters” towards the disciples, during a meeting in Dharamsala with European and North American masters.

Omission

Journalists also wonder why Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, the Dalai Lama’s French interpreter and translator, known for his books on personal development, has barely reacted in the past decade.

Interviewed on Wednesday by French radio France Inter, Matthieu Ricard, who asked for his interviews to be removed from the television documentary, said it was “exaggerated” to say he had said nothing.

It is “healthy, as the documentary does, to denounce (the) deviations”, he added. Recognizing that he had achieved a certain notoriety in France because of his books on Buddhism, he admitted, “I talked about it [as denúncias]but probably not loud enough”.

More generally, Ricard said that Buddhism lacked an “institutional structure.” “There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Buddhist centers in the world. There is no central authority. All these centers are completely independent,” he said.