In an interview with author Jonathan Mirsky for the Spectator, the Tibetan spiritual leader was asked for his opinion as George Osborne’s controversial tour of the country continued. But Lama said that it was true.
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Instead, it focused on his appeal to Europe not to shut the door on refugees fleeing the Middle East.
The comment, read from this light, is then a joke criticizing the existing state of inequality that women face rather than a sexist remark.
“You’d think that as someone who’s all about learning and enlightenment he’d have figured a few things out”, one commenter wrote.
Because of the critical influence of His Holiness on Buddhism in the west and human rights around the world, a Tibetan (note: intersectional) feminist critique is imperative to clarify and contextualize his remarks.
Given his comments about women, not everyone agrees.
A common ailment is that of men who spot a pretty woman and then can’t function, speak or think.
In an interview he gave to American journalist Claudia Dreifus in 1993, his response to a question about his weakness was blunt. I’ve mentioned our mindfulness programme at Transylvania College and invited him to visit us in Cluj-Napoca and come to Romania. I am extremely tall, but it does not mean anything about my abilities. If a family is happy, they have more energy to make a community happy, and then a nation happy. Some of it is curiosity: If you use this, what is the feeling?
The Nobel Peace Laureate is not ill, but was going to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for a yearly health check-up, his secretary Tenzin Taklha said in an email.
The course, titled Exploring What Matters, has been created by the organisation Action for Happiness and is largely based on the concept of mindfulness – a therapeutic technique based on the Buddhist practice of being aware of one’s thoughts and feelings in an intentional, non-judgemental way. “Now I’m trying to be the change that I want to see”. When Italian newspaper Illinois Messaggero asked him if he’d ever appoint a female leader of a Vatican department, the pope answered in the “take my wife-please!” tradition: “Well, pastors often wind up under the authority of their housekeeper!”
Others have found a trace of irony in his words.
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. However, if you watch the full video, you will notice he says something else that’s not received attention online, about how he attributes his success to good looks too.
