The Dalai Lama, as John Oliver explained on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, is a “sort of cross between a pope and president—or popesident, if you will. (But you shouldn’t, so please don’t.)” The current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the political and spiritual leader of Tibet and is devoted to preserving Buddhist culture in the region, so he’s a busy guy. But he still found time to sit down with Oliver to discuss everything from his relationship with China to why he might be the last Dalai Lama ever.
Oliver dedicated his main segment of the show to the current state of Tibet, where Buddhists have faced persecution by the Chinese government for decades. The region’s fight for independence was a pet cause of celebrities in the 1990s, but the situation has since faded from the public’s attention, despite Freedom House scoring Tibet lower for political rights and civil liberties than nearly every country in the world, with only Syria performing worse. On top of everything else, the current Dalai Lama is now 81, and people are beginning to get concerned about his reincarnation plans, because the next Panchen Lama, the figure responsible for identifying the next dalai lama, was taken into Chinese custody as a child and hasn’t been seen since. Even more troubling, the government has offered up its own alternative panchen lama, one who could pick a Dalai Lama who is loyal to the Communist Party.
What does the current Dalai Lama think of all this? As Oliver noted, there’s really only one person who knows what’s going on in the spiritual leader’s head, and that’s the man himself. So Oliver hopped on a plane to India, where the 14th Dalai Lama lives in exile, to pick his brain on self-immolation, the practice of setting oneself on fire that some Tibetans have used to protest the Chinese government, to why his response to widespread alcoholism in Mongolia was to recommend “horse milk” (probably kumis, which is fermented) as a substitute.
