{"id":53818,"date":"2026-06-24T03:06:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T09:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=53818"},"modified":"2026-06-21T22:12:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T04:12:42","slug":"latter-day-saint-book-review-freedom-in-exile-the-autobiography-of-the-dalai-lama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/06\/latter-day-saint-book-review-freedom-in-exile-the-autobiography-of-the-dalai-lama\/","title":{"rendered":"The Chinese Communist Party, The Dalai Lama, The Church, and Live-and-Let-Live"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-53820 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/81e94vVHi1L._SY522_.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"286\" height=\"409\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Latter-day Saint Book Review: Freedom in Exile, The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Dalai Lama is the coolest of the cool for certain progressive type that pines for an authentically spiritual alternative to what they see as the problems of western organized religion. E.g. Peggy Fletcher-Stack\u2019s public Facebook profile picture is of her meeting him (I\u2019m not questioning her Mormonism or saying she\u2019s a crypto-Buddhist, just that he appeals to her sociocultural\/ideological demographic), Richard Gere converted to Tibetan Buddhism, and even Sam Harris was his bodyguard for a short stint and still maintains significant respect for him. And after reading his autobiography I can see why. It\u2019s hard to not like the man. (Which makes the Chinese efforts to make him out to be some sort of wannabee Caesar all the more laughable). While he was born into a role that was handed to him on a platter, his power authentically stems from his Durkheimian religious charisma more than his legalistic position as Dalai Lama (although the latter helps).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He shows a sort of assume-the-best-in-people approach that you rarely see in cynical, modern heads-of-state. Even when he is speaking about the Chinese officials who took over Tibet in the early days, he takes time to point out which ones he thought were sincere and that he thought highly of. He takes the anti-China propaganda against him in stride and good humor, jocularly referring to one case when the Chinese \u201csuggested that I performed certain quite surprising sexual services for Mrs. Gandhi!\u201d [Indira Gandhi, the then-Prime Minister of India]. Still, he doesn\u2019t make the mistake of being both harmless <em>and<\/em> wise as doves; he&#8217;s an adept politician at playing his very limited hand vis-a-vis his homeland and the Chinese.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A few other points.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There\u2019s a CCP pattern towards religious groups\u2013be it Tibetan Buddhism or the Vatican\u2013that does not bode well for us Latter-day Saints. The CCP don\u2019t compromise on having absolute and total control over the leadership of the religions they allow in, whether it\u2019s them insisting on having a veto over Catholic bishop appointments or them kidnapping the Panchi Lama (the spiritual second-in-command of Tibetan Buddhism) as a child and appointing their own (to this day nobody outside of the CCP knows where the true Lama is). I wasn&#8217;t exactly optimistic Eddy on the Church in China before this, but after reading this I despaired on the Church ever reaching a sort of live-and-let-live arrangement in China in the medium term; the CCP doesn\u2019t do live-and-let-live.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In his own words, he is clearly a True Believing Buddhist(\u2122). He consulted the Tibetan oracles, like we would consult our patriarchal blessing, before deciding to flee \u00a0to India and takes very seriously various facets of Tibetan Buddhist cosmology and ritual. (Also, Ross Douthat has pointed out that the Dalai Lama\u2019s sex and gender positions are conveniently ignored by his progressive sympathizers. I didn\u2019t see any of that in the autobiography but I assume there\u2019s something there). So the Dalai Lama shouldn\u2019t be seen as a placeholder for some super vanguard religion of the future where dogma and truth claims don\u2019t matter, only love. The man prays for hours every day, you simply don\u2019t have that kind of behavioral commitment without some underlying religious beliefs. He shows you can have both concrete religious beliefs and love.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u00a0Most of my knowledge about the Tibetan situation before I read this book is, like many of you,\u00a0from <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Seven Years in Tibet<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The scene where the Chinese official stomps on the sand art and snorts that \u201creligion is poison\u201d is somewhat based in truth\u2013except it was Mao himself who said that to the Dalai Lama, but the actual situation was more complicated. The Chinese were respectful of Tibetan religious practices\u2013in the capital\u2013outside they were burning monasteries, forcing monks and nuns to rape each other, and tearing out the tongues of prisoners with meathooks so that they couldn\u2019t yell \u201clong live the Dalai Lama\u201d before they were hanged.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Like the King of Bhutan or King Juan Carlos of Spain, he is one of the few rulers with total control who voluntarily democratized without being at the point of a gun, although he makes fun of himself when he points out that he \u201csomewhat autocratically\u201d insisted, against the wishes of the democratically elected representatives, on a clause in the Tibetan government-in-exile that the Dalai Lama could be deposed with a two-thirds vote in parliament.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Word on the street is that the Dalai Lama is seriously considering not reincarnating\u2013 ending the line of Dalai Lamas. I know it\u2019s none of my business whether His Holiness decides to continue the office, but I hope he does. However, I get the hesitancy. Like the Community of Christ and Wallace B. Smith, there\u2019s a certain gamble that you take when you somebody is born into a role that they may or may not want or buy into. Plus the Chinese government will no doubt be up to some mischief in regards to his successor. The Tibetans are not guaranteed another good Dalai Lama.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; Latter-day Saint Book Review: Freedom in Exile, The Autobiography of the Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama is the coolest of the cool for certain progressive type that pines for an authentically spiritual alternative to what they see as the problems of western organized religion. E.g. Peggy Fletcher-Stack\u2019s public Facebook profile picture is of her meeting him (I\u2019m not questioning her Mormonism or saying she\u2019s a crypto-Buddhist, just that he appeals to her sociocultural\/ideological demographic), Richard Gere converted to Tibetan Buddhism, and even Sam Harris was his bodyguard for a short stint and still maintains significant respect for him. And after reading his autobiography I can see why. It\u2019s hard to not like the man. (Which makes the Chinese efforts to make him out to be some sort of wannabee Caesar all the more laughable). While he was born into a role that was handed to him on a platter, his power authentically stems from his Durkheimian religious charisma more than his legalistic position as Dalai Lama (although the latter helps).\u00a0 He shows a sort of assume-the-best-in-people approach that you rarely see in cynical, modern heads-of-state. Even when he is speaking about the Chinese officials who took over Tibet in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":53820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-comparative-religion"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/81e94vVHi1L._SY522_.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53818","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53818"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53818\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53872,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53818\/revisions\/53872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}