memes

i thought that when the average westerner considers buddhism, they either think about orange-clad beggar monks in southeast asia, or wise old monks in east asia, or wacky-yet-serious zen masters. tibetan buddhism was always the weird branch of the tree wasn't it?

when westerners decide to "go buddhist" they often choose some weird westernized atheist sterilized version, or some local zen temple in california or whatever. but this reminds me of 1: Richard Gere (an 80-year-old man with a 30-something wife and a kid in primary school) who was just at the Dalai Lama's birthday ceremony and 2: there's some norwegian or danish Lama who's apparently big in the west and uses his Great Wisdom to be racist and islamophobic