Dalai Lama Apologizes for 'Attractive' Female Successor Remarks: He 'Genuinely Meant No Offense'

Photo: Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty

Vaidyanathan asked him if he understood why that upset women around the world, to which he doubled down on the attractive remark.

“That is one time,” he said with a laugh. “If female Dalai Lama comes, then she should be more attractive.”

“If female Dalai Lama” — here, he scrunched up his face, seemingly as if to portray someone unattractive — “that people, I think prefer, not see her, that face.”

“A lot of women would say that’s objectifying women,” Vaidyanathan responded. “And it’s about who you are inside, isn’t it?”

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“Yes, I think both,” he said.

His office’s statement on Tuesday continued to reiterate that the Dalai Lama has traditionally stressed “the need for people to connect with each other on a deeper human level, rather than getting caught up in preconceptions based on superficial appearances,” according to CNN.

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The Dalai Lama has “a keen sense of the contradictions between the materialistic, globalized world he encounters on his travels and the complex, more esoteric ideas about reincarnation that are at the heart of Tibetan Buddhist tradition,” his office’s statement went on to explain, saying that the joke was lost in “translation.”

“However, it sometimes happens that off the cuff remarks, which might be amusing in one cultural context, lose their humor in translation when brought into another,” the statement continued.

source: people.com