The goal of my previous posts on the Dalai Lama (this, that, and the other) was to understand his unique social status in today’s world. I concluded that the DL is in one sense correct when he refers to himself as ordinary man, while in another sense he is not because the global adulation he reaps simultaneously falsifies this assertion. This contradiction brings a tension between creed and deed that one might term hypocritical. I used the ethically fragile issue of the DL’s dietary preferences as one example.
The DL eats meat and, by some reports, he loves it. I pointed out that meat eaters who declare the killing of sentient animals immoral have a problem because they necessarily delegate the killing to others. The Gambini don’t kill, but they have people who get the job done. If a mafia simile seems crass, then what really is the difference, structurally?
As a moral exemplar, the DL has confronted the issue. In his 1990 autobiography (pp. 184-185) we read his account of how he became a carnivore (again). I summarize and quote: He enthusiastically followed a vegetarian regimen in 1966. Few Tibetan dishes are vegetarian, but the cooks experimented with milk and nuts to provide him with protein. He liked these dishes. “I felt really well on them.” Then, “after twenty months I contracted a severe case of jaundice.” Luckily, “eventually the illness, which turned out to be Hepatitis B, cleared up, but not before I had consumed large quantities of Tibetan medicine.” His doctors advised him to cut the grease, milk, and nuts and “to start eating meat again.” So “reluctantly I returned to being non-vegetarian. Today I eat meat except on special occasions required by my spiritual practice.”
Whatever one can conclude from this is unclear. But it is clear what one can NOT conclude. The vegetarian diet did not cause liver disease, and the ingestion of meat did not cure it. If anything, red meat is hard on the liver. Given the DL’s own account, there are no grounds for a myth that he must eat meat or else he would take ill. To say that his doctors advised him to eat meat sounds very much like moral buck-passing, which seems unworthy of a presumed moral exemplar.
A religiously motivated abstention from killing sentient animals, coupled with the facilitation of killing performed by others, reveals a moral double standard. It is on the same page that the DL, without any sign of self-consciousness, provides more evidence for his embarrassingly narrow interpretation of his own moral code. It is worth letting the whole paragraph sink in. Here it is:
“I enjoy watching wildlife even more than gardening. For this purpose, I constructed a bird table just outside my study window. It is surrounded by wired and netting to keep out the larger birds and birds of prey, which tend to scare off their smaller brethren. This is not always sufficient to keep them away, however. Occasionally, I am compelled to take out one of the air guns I acquired shortly after arriving in India, in order to discipline these fat, greedy trespassers. Having spent a great deal of time as a child at the Norbulingka practicing with the Thirteenth’s [Dalai Lama] old air rifle, I am quite a good shot. Of course, I never kill them. My intention is only to inflict a measure of pain in order to teach a lesson.”
This does not fit the image of the DL. Where is the compassion for fellow creatures? Fat, greedy trespassers? Pardonnez moi? He is “compelled” to teach them a lesson. They have it coming. But no, he never kills them. The infliction of pedagogical pain is the aim. And he is such a good shot that he can guarantee pain without risking death or mutilation. Well, then.
The paragraph is as revealing as it is shocking. It’s a veritable assemblage of textbook defenses: arrogance, self-enhancement, blaming of the victim, rationalization. The DL is a very ordinary man indeed.
I am an ordinary man too, and here is my story. When I was about 13, I shot at sparrows with an air gun. My reasoning was exactly like that of his holiness. I considered the sparrows trespassers that were crowding out my good friends, the songbirds. One day, I picked up a small caliber gun to step up the game. No sparrows were around, so I shot at a songbird. I blew it to smithereens. I have not fired a gun since except for paper target practice.
Lama, D. (1990). Freedom in exile. The autobiography of the Dalai Lama. New York: HarperCollins.