Joe Rogan has questioned whether the Dalai Lama should face jail after a video emerged of the Tibetan spiritual leader kissing a schoolboy on the lips and asking the child to "suck my tongue."
Footage of the February 28 incident, captured in a broadcast by the Tibet arm of the U.S.-government-backed Voice of America, showed the Dalai Lama interacting with about 100 student graduates of India's M3M Foundation at his temple in McLeod Ganj, which is in Dharamshala in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh.
After the young boy asked the Dalai Lama, 87, for a hug, the child was invited to greet the religious leader, who asked for a kiss on the cheek, gave the boy a kiss on the lips and said, "And suck my tongue." The boy appeared to stick out his tongue, but the pair separated after touching foreheads and shared a laugh to applause from the crowd.
"Now, you should look [to] those good human beings who create peace [and] happiness," the Dalai Lama told the boy. "[You] should not follow those human beings who [are] always killing other people." At the end of the two-minute clip, the boy nodded and the pair shared another hug. They then laughed as the Dalai Lama appeared to tickle him.
The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India since 1959 after a failed uprising against China's annexation of Tibet nearly a decade earlier. Beijing considers him a separatist for his decades of philanthropy and his promotion of Tibetan Buddhism, language and culture.
After the footage was shared on social media, the Dalai Lama issued an apology on Monday, expressing "regret" over the incident.
"His Holiness wishes to apologize to the boy and his family, as well as his many friends across the world, for the hurt his words may have caused," the Dalai Lama said through his office. "His Holiness often teases people he meets in an innocent and playful way, even in public and before cameras. He regrets the incident."
Newsweek has reached out via email to the Dalai Lama's office for comment.
On his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, on Wednesday, Rogan asked whether the spiritual leader should face legal consequences. Discussing religion with standup comedian and actor Sam Tallent, he asked: "Did you see the Dalai Lama sucking on that kid's tongue? What the f***? In front of a bunch of people!"
After Rogan and Tallent discussed some controversial comments made by the Dalai Lama in the past, he said: "Don't tell a kid to suck your tongue. Seems like there should be jail time for something like that."
He then read from an unnamed source online: "In Tibet, sticking out one's tongue is known as a traditional greeting stemming from a ninth-century myth about an unpopular king with a black tongue."
The act of showing tongues is to prove you're not the king incarnate, and tongue sucking does not appear to be a part of that tradition, Rogan read from the online source.
Amid suggestions that the timing of the video's unveiling was some part of a "hit campaign" on the Dalai Lama, Rogan said: "Sometimes, it just takes a while for something like that to catch. I mean, if it was Don Lemon, I would say, Yeah, they're trying to get rid of him. But it was the Dalai Lama.
"I don't even mean to pick on Don Lemon. I mean someone who's on television who was some, like, [public figure]," Rogan said.
"How wild to just be kissing a kid in front of everybody," he went on. "Tongue kissing. 'Suck on my tongue.' What are you talking about?"
After noting that the Dalai Lama would not have faced any outrage had he briefly hugged the child, Rogan said that in the footage the schoolboy "snapped back like a cobra, ready to f****** strike. He's like, 'Why are you making me suck your tongue, you old f****** weirdo?'"
The Dalai Lama, who has courted controversy with his remarks in the past, is trying to ensure that his successor is selected according to Tibetan practices, rather than appointment by officials in Beijing. The United States, which recognizes Tibet as part of China, supports noninterference in the reincarnation and succession process for the next dalai lama. Tibet's leader said last month that he would like to live another two decades.
United Nations experts and activists living in exile have accused the Chinese government of seeking to erase the traditional Tibetan language and culture by forcefully assimilating the region's children into a residential school system.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Ryan Smith is a Newsweek Senior Pop Culture and Entertainment Reporter based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on ... Read more
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