Dalai Lama is NOT the Buddhist Pope

TMI - Allegations of sex abuse by Buddhist teachers 'nothing new' to Dalai Lama (extracts):

People who commit sexual abuse 'don't care about the Buddha's teaching,' says the Dalai Lama

EPA pic, September 16, 2018

The Dalai Lama said yesterday that he has known about sexual abuse by Buddhist teachers since the 1990s and that such allegations are “nothing new”.

The Tibetan spiritual leader, revered by millions of Buddhists around the world, made the admission during a four-day visit to the Netherlands, where he met on Friday with victims of sexual abuse allegedly committed by Buddhist teachers.

What His Holiness said, that 'People who commit sexual abuse don't care about the Buddha's teaching,' is correct. However, that's not what I am blogging in this post.

Many in the West  mistake the Dalai Lama as the 'Pope' of the Buddhist Church, equating him to His Holiness the Pope of the Catholic Church. That is incorrect.

In using the word 'Church' I am not necessarily referring to the Christian Church but rather a 'religious organisation' (of any religion, eg. Christian, Buddhist, Hinduism, Islamic, etc).

Like Christianity and Islam, Buddhism has two major denominations.

Where Christianity comprises the Catholic Church (including the Orthodox Churches, Coptic, Greek, Russian, Serbian etc, under the RC for the purpose of this post) and Protestant Church (including Methodist, Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, etc), and Islam has the Sunni and Shia denominations, Buddhism has two schools, namely, Mahayana mainly practised in China, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Bhutan, Eastern parts of Russia whilst Theravada is found mainly in Sri Lanka, and SE Asia.

Mahayana school monks

Uniquely, Malaysian and Singaporean Buddhists hail from the two schools and mostly of mixed schools. It proves we and Ah Bengs like rojak, wakakaka.

World demographics of Buddhists show that Mahayana has 360 million followers, while Theravada has 150 million believers; and Vajrayana is the smallest group with 18.2 million adherents.

Theravada school monks 

Actually, Vajrayana Buddhism is a small sub-group under the bigger Mahayana school, somewhat but not quite alike the Jesuits under the Catholic Church and the Shafi'i under Islam.

Vajrayana school monks with their unique 'lama' hats

the Dalai Lama belongs to the Gelugpa or "Yellow Hat" school of Tibetan Buddhism (Vajrayana)

Anyway, it is a body of teachings attributed to Indian adepts, and sometimes may be viewed as a separate branch or as mentioned, an aspect of Mahayana Buddhism. It is practised mainly in Tibet and the Himalayan region, Mongolia and Kalmykia Russia. The Dalai Lama is the recognised head of the Vajrayana Buddhism.

Though the Dalai Lama is highly respected in the Buddhist World, he is only the religious head of about 18.2 million people who follow the Vajrayana Buddhism, and not as the West believes, by the entire 530 million of Buddhists world-wide.

There is not much he can do with naughty Buddhist monks of, say, Thailand or Myanmar, where the people and monks of both countries practise Theravada Buddhism.

some monks in Myanmar

abusing Buddhist teachings by getting involved in politics and hatred

And neither can he do much with wayward monks in Taiwan or South Korea or Japan - these countries follow the Mahayana School (but not including the Vajrayana sub-group's teachings).