“Give us a kiss”: Cultural misreading and its uses and abuses in social media outrage and political attack

His Holiness the Dalai Lama wearing a traditional Himachali cap and shawl offered to him by the Chairman of M3M at the start of their meeting in the courtyard of the Main Tibetan Temple in Dharamsala, HP, India on February 28, 2023. Photo by Tenzin Choejor

Oh, dear lord, not again. How many more of these old folks are gonna slobber on me? Here she comes…one of Grandaddy’s sisters-in-law? Some ancient cousin? What did mom say? Oh, crap, here goes…

“C’mon, give us a kiss! Oh, my! Look how little Nicky’s grown!” <plants sloppy kiss; pats me on the head….ugh….>

I can’t remember whose funeral this was, but I was still in the single digits. Old enough, though, to take umbrage at the old folks and their patting me on the head and bestowing dribble pecks (on the mouth! Ew!) I mostly took umbrage at being mistaken for my older brother (by 12 frikkin’ years!) who some of these oldsters hadn’t seen since he was my age (obviously).

Of course, I did put up with this sort of thing because it was expected of you as a little kid in Texas in the sixties (and seventies, and for decades later, I bet…); it was a form of affection from them and good manners from you as a kid to endure it. Was it really so bad? Nah. If it was someone like my grandmother or Aunt Cille, it was fine. For one thing, they didn’t get me mixed up with my brother and for another, they were dear, loving people. Heck, even my grandfather would plant a peck on a cheek now and again.

I’m willing to surmise that every kid in the world has had to endure the indignity of being slobbered on by an elderly person at some point or another. Also, kids aren’t stupid. We know genuine affection when we encounter it. As we get older, many of us turn into big softies when an infant or little kid shows up on the scene. Not me. I’m a dark pit of ennui, angst, and anomie. I am also fibbing. As an old friend once wrote me when his nephew was born, “what is it about infants and little kids that turn adults into braying cretins?”

Well, probably it’s a matter of the genuine good and purity of the child meeting and evoking in the adult what is genuinely good and pure in them. Or like recognizing like. When I was older, I realized that the seniors around me were totally capable of being big children once they didn’t have to put on adult faces around their peers.

Throughout my time on this planet, I’ve been fortunate enough to see familial love play out across cultures in unique ways from Asia to Latin America. Each of our members of our vast human family have different ways of relating to kids and some have at least one variation on “give us a kiss.”

The Tibetan variation on this is ལྕེ་ལ་ཟ་་/che-la-sa/“eat my tongue.” I’d remarked to a friend of mine in Dharamsala a decade ago that I was disappointed that only one old amala greeted me with sticking her tongue out at me. She told me it was mostly the old people who did do that but saved it for family mostly. Sticking your tongue out at a foreigner was dicey ground for that generation and besides, she just had to opine, maybe she wasn’t really greeting you, buddy. Yeah, but I stuck my tongue out at her, too! My pal shook her head and we spoke no more of it. 

Later at a family gathering, one of the old folks was teasing a little kid and sure as shit, stuck his tongue out at the kid who - swear to god - kind of opened his mouth and bit it? Okay. I’m all for cultural differences and learning things, but I was genuinely taken about and bemused, particularly since the grandpa (great uncle? I never did figure out who was who) and the kid were laughing all through this. My friend noticed my reaction and said that was an old custom that she thought grew out of the tongue showing. “Che la sa” or even “Ngay che la sa” (eat my tongue)? When she asked if we had anything like that, my first thought, was very much “yeah, give us a kiss.” 

Kids are smart, as I said. They know when an adult is being creepy, often better than when adults are supposed to. The young man whose experience is now being used as part of a weird of a smear campaign on His Holiness the Dalai Lama doesn’t impress me as either a coward or a fool. Indeed, given the work that his mother does, and given that, bless her heart, she too has been roped into this nonsense, I suspect he’s one of the smarter kids around.

That said, an edited (heavily) clip/outtake from a ceremony in Dharamsala of His Holiness bestowing a blessing on the M3M Foundation has been circulating on social media with what I would assume is the intent to either generate buzz (at one end of the spectrum to generate clicks, foment outrage, and perhaps take down someone whose life work has been to work for all mankind) or frankly, as a political means to weaken the position of the Dalai Lama as a political figure and damage the Tibetan cause. 

I have never spent time with His Holiness (and not for lack of being able to), but I know way too many people who have. I’ve met and gotten to know members of his security detail, relatives, and long term disciples (not clods like me who have taken teachings from him in vast public settings, but people who have actually studied directly under him) and if their observations weren’t enough to persuade me that His Holiness is, if not an emanation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion Chenrezig, he is certainly one of the most genuinely loving and caring humans on the planet from his body of work as an activist and a leader in human rights. 

I want to pause for a moment and take stock of how we got here.

On the one hand, we live in times when child abuse at the hands of religious figures has been called out repeatedly. Indeed, child sexual assault and abuse ranks among the worst crimes humans can commit. According to World Health Organization report from November of 2022, “Globally, it is estimated that up to 1 billion children, aged 2-17 years, have experienced physical, sexual, or emotional violence or neglect in the past year.” (1) It would be accurate to call child abuse an epidemic.

It is understandable that there would be reactions to a beloved world figure sticking his tongue out a child and seemingly making him “eat the tongue.” However, that’s not the case. It simply isn’t, and anyone who’s done any leg work on this, has quickly found a number of flaws in the presentation. And yes, I know: His Holiness said “suck my tongue.” Seriously? That’s the hill people are going to die on; I agree that after all this time, his English is still not up to par, but I could see mistaking one verb for another - you don’t want to know the faux pas I’ve made in, well, take your pick of languages (Master of None, Malapropist in All.)

I will link to a researcher who’s already done a far more thorough job than I on presenting the full video, plus a follow up video of interviews with the boy and his mother, as well as calling out the fake accounts that have been employed to circulate the ten second outtake and foment outrage. I recommend watching both in full. In fact, unless you like my writing, I won’t take offense if you decide to close out now and go watch. Heck, I can recommend that, too!

Part one is here: https://youtu.be/bT0qey5Ts78

Part two is here: https://youtu.be/P38uylAkhHU

I’ll continue with my observations here, wrap up, and send you on your way.

My main concern when the story first broke a few days ago was that His Holiness had really stepped his foot into it. He’s 87 years old and doesn’t always read the room well. There have been times when he’s said things that were cringey but obviously the result of naïveté or quite frankly, cultural differences that, well, don’t map to modern times. I saw the edited clip and my bullshit meter went off.

Was it offensive? Maybe, but it was more weird than anything else and not just for the content but for the lack of context that any student of media would have recognized right off the bat. As more folks came out with the complete VOA segment, it became clear that this was a remarkable occasion and frankly, worth reading about to get a fuller understanding of the context: https://tibetoffice.org/media-press/featured-news/his-holiness-the-dalai-lama-addresses-visitors-from-m3m-foundatio.

It is also worth watching the follow-up interviews with the woman (who I believe is Dr. Panal Kanodia, an M3M trustee) and her son. They both recognized what a life-changing encounter this was. In a wholly positive sense. Additionally, it appears that she actually sent an apology to His Holiness for the furor that has since arisen.

And “since arisen” is key here. This is where I’m going into looking into motives. The event took place in early March. It’s been not quite a week since the (non-) story broke. Okay, to be sure, it has now become a story but one that may be backfiring on the perpetrators, whoever they may be. Anonymity is the surest haven of the coward.

Do I think the PRC were behind this? Believe it or not, no. Perhaps sympathizers? Perhaps people who just simply don’t like His Holiness? Perhaps disaffected Tibetan Buddhists? Shugden practitioners? The outrage that has been fomented seems to have come from a less idealistic corner of darkness. I suspect it’s a matter of a tabloid mentality or perhaps even a writer of tabloid news deciding that they could take down a target easily. One of the biggest targets of humanitarian goodwill. Why? Because the ugliness in the heart of someone who would do this sees only ugliness in others. We think there always has to be a profit motive, but here no one has claimed responsibility, and no one outlet has profited from this except those who run the edited clip on YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere. 

The point is that while any number of outlets and individuals are profiting off the back of this malignancy, we don’t know who actually created it. 

The CCP wouldn’t, of course, take responsibility and I could very well be wrong not ascribing its origin to Beijing. The reason I’m reluctant to is because most of the disinformation and infrastructure attacks on the CTA (the seat of the Tibetan Government in Exile), the Tibetan cause in general, His Holiness the Dalai Lama specifically, and other groups associated with protesting China’s illegal occupation and continued oppression of Tibet, are all too sophisticated. There is a simple elegance to the dissemination of this crappy little doctored clip that really boggles me. And that’s where my argument falls apart: suppose some young politburo member had a flash of inspiration and said, “hey! Guys! I got it!” 

Whoever it came from, I don’t think they understand very well what His Holiness means to the Tibetan people right off the bat. This is a miscalculation that China continues to make; the government of the People’s Republic of China simply doesn’t recognize or understand that the Dalai Lama isn’t just “part of the culture”, the Dalai Lama has been part of every Tibetan’s DNA since - historically - the Great Fifth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century. While there are seriously complex issues surrounding said history, Ngawang Gyatso is credited with ending civil wars that ravaged Tibet, unifying the country, and actually raising Tibet’s profile as an international player in trade and diplomacy. 

Some may say that I’m neglecting the first four, but I think any student of Tibet’s cultural history knows just how remarkable the Great Fifth was. He was also extremely charismatic and well-loved (apparently, even by his enemies; seriously! Maybe “love” is overselling it…well-respected?). In any case, he quickly became a folk hero and his successor, the Sixth was practically a folk hero from the get-go; a poet, an artist, and one who deeply did not want to be “Dalai Lama”. Between these two, the Tibetan people solidified their identity as the children of Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig, of whom the Dalai Lama is considered an emanation. If you are going to tie your cultural identity to an ideal, it doesn’t get much ideal than that.

Nevertheless, it cannot easily be explained just how deep reverence goes in any single Tibetan’s heart for the Dalai Lama. Tenzin Gyatso, the current incarnation, is possibly the most loved of all. Driven into exile with hundreds of thousands fleeing oppression and very often, death, he has remained a beacon of hope for Tibetans inside Tibet, as well as a refuge and haven for those in diaspora. The harshest, hardest, and most cynical Tibetans I know typically have a photo of His Holiness’s picture somewhere on their person. 

We are not talking about your average national leader or politician; for Tibetans, he is who they are and in turn, he is Tibet itself. I don’t believe we have a corollary. Abraham Lincoln might come close, but given how much division and racism informs our electorate, I wouldn’t go so far. I don’t think there are any other such relationships between a leader of a country (and even though he no longer hold political office, HHDL is very much the spiritual leader of Tibet). Maybe the King of Thailand? That’s as close as I can think of. Anyway, the point is that this clip is only going to galvanize the Tibetans to rally to His Holiness’s defense.

As for the rest of the world and people who are and will continue to respond to the clip? Hopefully, most are already taking it for what it is, though I suspect many are chucking His Holiness into the heap with all the other religious predators and “groomers”. The majority of people don’t do the due diligence required to get to the bottom of an issue as it is, let alone work hard enough to determine if someone they admired really has fallen from grace or if this there is something larger at work. 

My suggestion is that for those who aren’t so heavily invested, do some of that due diligence. This particularly essay is written from my perspective only and it could be that on examination of materials, you may draw another conclusion. For those who have an axe to grind with Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Lama as a man or institution, or any number of similar elements, I still ask that you decide for yourself if what you’ve seen is worth the outrage and the emotionally discontent. As someone who does have issues with points of doctrine and even dispensation of dogma with Tibetan Buddhism and as someone who doesn’t particularly think that power being vested in any one figure is a good thing, I can’t really take the clip seriously in itself. As a political tool, it very much should be taken seriously. 

On that last note, some might question why. Simply this: denigrating the Dalai Lama is by extension an attack on Tibet and Tibetans; Tibet continues to suffer under China’s oppression and Tibetans are marginalized in their own country. If His Holiness had committed a heinous act and it was caught on video, no context would prove exonerating and I wouldn’t be writing this. I suspect that if the original impetus was merely to see if someone - some anonymous coward - could bring him down or if it was some “genius” in the CCP, the result is the same. Stirring up the hornets nest of a marginalized people in diaspora is not very bright. Tibetans are not alone; many voices and many allies are present and easily accounted for.

In some ways, this goes beyond even the targeting of His Holiness. There is something about this that speaks to a darker side of human weakness. Fear, perhaps. Anger, certainly. I think that given those weaknesses, it is helpful to bear in mind that these are not fixed and definitive. These negativities are impermanent, just as this moment is. As Buddha pointed out millennia ago, these are not the self, either. That said, we can choose how we meet the moment.

I propose meeting the moment with what I’ve found and what I know and what I’ve experienced. May you do the same. 

Notes

1. World Health Organization. “Violence against children”. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-children. 29 November 2022.