Less than a minute
It’s instructive to watch Western yea- and naysayers exchange contorted reasonings, routinely square circles, hound red herrings, and meanwhile determine how many Tulkus fit on the point of a needle, to ward off the sinking feeling that the rampant abuse by the upper echelons of the Tibetan Buddhist world might be systemic, endemic, preprogrammed in their own a-critical reception of Tibetan Buddhism.
Their rhetorical flailing looks like a homegrown ‘Tulku of the Gaps’ perspective, in which the gaps in our current knowledge are taken to be evidence or proof of the proliferation of emanated Buddhas in our midst.
Frantically, they trash about like hooked fish to forestall the inevitable vote of no confidence: there’s no factual basis for Tibetan exceptionalism and ‘special beings’ never existed to begin with. Tibetan scholastics call such phenomena the ‘horns of a rabbit.’
However, ‘special-interests’ do exist, and Tulkus and Lamas are at the top of the heap.
To Western converts I say, and I quote: ‘You still got a body, good legs and fine feet, get your head in the right place and you’re complete … In this world of ups and downs, it’s so nice to know there are Jackalopes around.’
There’s honour in facing your vainglorious credulity and joy in overcoming it.
Originally posted as a long-Tweet on September 12, 2022.
