The lessor of two evils is still evil
by LA Monk, Source: http://www.mahabodhi.net/showtime_video.htm, July 13, 2007
"There's ignorance and then there's Hollywood celebrities, like when Shirley Mclean, Sharon Stone, and Steven Seagal attend the same event, it's bound to be a stunning display of gullibility", states Penn Jillette of the world famous team of magicians better known as Penn & Teller.
In their cable television series which airs on the Showtime network, Penn & Teller expose the Dalai Lama's reasons for freeing Tibet, as well as the Tibetan political agenda, where substantial amounts of money were received from the United States government for covert operations against the communist regime of China.
Although the CIA funding has stopped, the Dalai Lama continues to seek financial assistance from Hollywood shills like Richard Gere and Steven Seagal, an actor who's filmography is at all times violent in nature.
With the offbeat comical timing that the magicians are reknowned for, the espisode which appeared on Showtime also includes an interview with Michael Parenti, a political writer and author who makes it quite clear from the beginning that the Dalai Lama is not simply a humble spiritual man with a robe, a bowl, and prayer beads (video clip provided here: http://www.mahabodhi.net/showtime_video.htm).
Although many supporters of the Dalai Lama consider Michael Parenti to an avowed communist and supporter of the Red Chinese, a label which often gets throw at anyone who criticizes the Tibetan tradition, the espisode offers rarely seen film clips of old Tibet and exposes a society that was terribly unequal and brutal, where a priviledged priest class lived in luxury and oppulance, while the greater majority lived in utter missery.
Tibet was never the Shangri-La that so many of us often yearn for, but as Penn states, "Tibet was Shangri-La, that's if you were the Dalai Lama".
Michael Nenonen of The Republic News of Vancouver, British Columbia, summed it up best in his article entitled "A Different Tibetan Buddhism", that while spiritual enlightenment is a worthy quest, it is also a journey that is beset by cul-de-sacs and perils... where the greatest danger lies in our own hopes and the blindness they can produce, and that instead of delivering psychological liberation, the inner mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism may only offer the shackles of Buddhocratic folly.
