(PHOTO An infant receives polio vaccine from the Dalai Lama)

(September 6, 2012) Questioning The Dalai Lama: Who Would The Buddha Vaccinate?

Why Did the Dalai Lama Abandon Buddhism for Vaccines?

In the photograph above, taken on Jan. 10th, 2010, you will observe the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, administering bivalent oral polio vaccine (bOPV) to an infant at the Mahabodhi Temple Complex in the Indian state of Bihar, Buddhism's holiest site – the very place where Guatama Buddha is believed to have attained enlightenment approximately 2500 years earlier.

During this globally televised and deeply symbolic event, the Dali Lama vaccinated not one but two infants, ostensibly as an expression of compassion, as well as to lend his visible support for India's National Immunization Day, and for the larger Global Polio Eradication Initiative, whose duplicities and failures we have covered elsewhere.

The 14th Dalai Lama, mind you, is not only the exiled political leader of Tibet, but is believed by his devotees to be the living and breathing manifestation of the bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara – and as a bodhisattva, an expression of enlightenment.