Incidentally, pointing out that the Dalai Lama cult has its drawbacks is quite consistent with opposing religious indoctrination in general (especially the kind that costs lives). Its also consistent with acknowledging that the DL says many nice things and seems a very genial fellow. It’s a stance that certainly doesn’t make me a Chinese spy or whatever. If the pope, Pat Robertson, Ayatollah Khamanei or Louis Farrakhan were getting teenagers to burn themselves, they’d have very little support around here I suspect. Even if they did add that the deaths were “very sad”.

Obviously this is terrible and should not be happening but I hate it when words are thrown around by people under technicality who know fully well how they’ll be interpreted by their readers.

Don’t worry though, I’m sure the United States will roundly condemn the PRC any day now.

These threads inevitably have someone come forward with “there must be a better way, these people are fools, what a waste of life” etc. As if they have an option. 

Tibet needs the attention, compassion, and Action from the rest of the world.

But anyway it is really very sad, very very sad.

Millie Fink: the quote itself is direct evidence (“from the Buddhist view point, from the religious view point, it is positive”). I think we can safely infer that the monks are following the DL’s example, and for whatever its worth, the chinese authorities have arrested monks for encouraging the behaviour.

Your dismissal of desperate tactics in a struggle about which you admittedly know nothing, tactics chosen by people you dismiss as “stupid” without, again, knowing anything about their struggle — that dismissal of yours is making me sick.

If you’re so proud of being “collegiate,” how about doing some research before spouting off in such an ironically idiotic manner?

I don’t know much about the Tibetan situation because, quite frankly, I couldn’t care less.

So you don’t care about their fate, but you are willing to criticize their tactics. How distasteful.