Dalai Lama apologizes for asking boy to ‘suck my tongue’ at temple

The Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhists’ foremost spiritual leader, apologized Monday after a video of him kissing a boy and asking the child to “suck my tongue” drew widespread condemnation.

The footage from an event at the Dalai Lama’s temple in northern India shows him inviting the boy up to the stage and asking for a kiss on the cheek. “Then, I think right here also,” the spiritual leader adds, touching his lip. He grasps the child’s chin and pulls him close to kiss him on the lips as adults chuckle.

The boy pulls away, and the Dalai Lama tugs him back so their foreheads touch. “And suck my tongue,” the leader adds, sticking out his tongue and leaning forward. He and the boy touch foreheads for a few seconds before the Dalai Lama thanks him.

The office of the Dalai Lama said Monday that the boy had asked the spiritual leader for a hug at the Feb. 28 event at the Dalai Lama’s temple. The Dalai Lama, 87-year-old Tenzin Gyatso, “wishes to apologize” to the boy, his family and others around the world “for the hurt his words may have caused,” his office said.

“His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras,” the office said in a statement. “He regrets the incident.”

The event in the hillside city of Dharamsala was a meeting with students and others associated with the M3M Foundation, the philanthropic arm of an Indian real estate company. The foundation said afterward that the Dalai Lama had blessed more than 120 students that day.

Representatives of the M3M Foundation on Monday did not immediately return a request for comment on the video.

Followers of the “Yellow Hat” school of Tibetan Buddhism believe the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the 13 Dalai Lamas who came before him. He has led a government in exile in India since 1959, when he fled Tibet during an uprising against Chinese occupation of the region.

The Dalai Lama has attracted other controversies, including in 2019 when he told the BBC that “If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive.” In 2018, he said that “Europe belongs to the Europeans” and not to refugees from other continents.