The Edgelord Lama
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche shitposts his way through #metoo
To understand how a worldly and sophisticated 60 year-old Bhutan-born Buddhist lama starts shitposting about #metoo, we need some background and nuance. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche isn’t your typical 4chan troll. He’s on a mission to defend a global spiritual industry that’s crumbling under the weight of its abuse revelations. Somehow, he believes that cloaking the presumption of ancient spiritual superiority in victim-blaming jokes and memes is a good strategy.
So here we go:
In July of 2017, eight close students of Sogyal Lakar, famous for his ghostwritten bestseller The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, published an open letter.
They accused their seemingly impish guru of defrauding the devout followers of his neo-Buddhist church, Rigpa International, to support a “sybaritic” lifestyle of hypocrisy and sadism. They accused him physically and sexually assaulting them and others, and screaming abuse whenever his constant stream of luxuries slowed down —expensive takeout, masseuses at all hours, television binges, extravagant cigars.
