I'm not certain what to make of the recent discovery of bundles of cash in the Karmapa Lama's monastery. On the one hand, there's been rumors for ages about him being a Chinese plant. On the other, dubious accounting practices and a general air of venality are very usual among the Tibetan monastic community, both in China and outside. I was once helping run a Buddhist environmental conference in Mongolia, where the first priority of the Tibetan lamas (Chinese-aligned) was to go to the market and buy up as many endangered species' parts "for men's health" as possible. And there's certainly a ton of money flowing into Dharamsala from various sources. So it might just be regular old corruption rather than espionage.
The Dalai himself is genuinely saintly, albeit that some of his proclamations get notably tinted for different audiences (such as his position on homosexuality, which is forgiveable given the frequency of abuse of young monks in Tibet). But his court's full of chancers (both Western and Tibetan), and the Tibetan exile community is even more fractured and bitter than most exile communities.
Quite apart from the nationalist disputes (reconcile with China? fight to the death?), Tibetan Buddhism's not particularly united. The Dorje Shugden controversy has been running for ages, for starters, and incarnation disputes are common - there's a whole bundle of minor reincarnees, and a lot of dubious "wills" get discovered related to where the next incarnation will be found/who should look after the money in the meantime.
There was a Taiwanese buddhist priest who used to borrow the fax machine in our office to fax blessings to his followers at £250 a pop. Quick bit of calligraphy and he'd stand there for hours pushing the same bit of paper through over and over again...
Posted by: jamie | January 31, 2011 at 04:07 PM
Obligatory Gibbon quote:-
'I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me ten thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." I forget the consequence of his vow of chastity.'
Posted by: Richard J | January 31, 2011 at 04:13 PM
I'm afraid the Dalai Lama is not saintly: he instigated armed resistance against the Chinese, was paid by the CIA as well as persecuting practitioners of Dorje Shugden, as you mentioned.
Learn the truth about the Dalai Lama:
http://www.westernshugdensociety.org/dalai-lama/
Posted by: Wisdom Moon | January 31, 2011 at 07:25 PM
"he instigated armed resistance against the Chinese"
I thought you guys approved of that kind of thing.
Posted by: jamie | January 31, 2011 at 08:19 PM
Quick bit of calligraphy and he'd stand there for hours pushing the same bit of paper through over and over again
All rather Marxist. Tibetan Buddhists have known about automation for centuries - prayer wheels and prayer flags let you call down blessings with little or no effort. But it's only when you have automation plus labour that you can turn a profit at the same time.
Posted by: Phil | January 31, 2011 at 09:51 PM
'I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me ten thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." I forget the consequence of his vow of chastity.'
I can't do the precise quote, but in one of Derek Birley's books there's a line from a Thirties amateur cricketer who was asked whether he had considered turning professional and replied that he couldn't afford the loss of income* that this would bring about.
[* i.e. from cricket]
Posted by: ejh | February 06, 2011 at 04:20 PM