Lol, no. I just mentioned it to point out that even the other Tibetan schools don't really have much to do with the Dalai Lama. His picture isn't hung up anywhere.

I used to think that if I ever wanted to leave everything behind, I'd go be a monk somewhere. But then I started falling asleep during lectures because they were being live translated from Tibetan into English and it's hard to concentrate when someone is speaking a language you don't know but you have to listen to them respectfully like you have a clue what it is they're saying.

The biggest lesson I learned was the value of community and I sort of understood why people congregate to churches and things. Everyone around me had the same baseline assumptions of what they should be doing to better themselves and to support each other, so it felt really significant to progress along that path together. These were people that traveled from all over the world to come to this spot to learn from authentic teachers, so they were also much more genuine than the meditation bros you'll find many places in the West. I hope to find that same community of socialists irl when I am in a position to do so.

If it were possible, I'd fly every Western Buddhist somewhere like that so they can experience the culture shock between their perception of commodified versions of Buddhism presented here and how much logic and philosophy is actually involved. It isn't just good vibes and sitting on a meditation cushion. There's mountains of texts written about epistemology, ethics, logic, etc. And it's not static, there's been many advancements in thought over the last decade. Such as how we now know that both Mahayana and 'Theravadin' (they weren't called that back then) Buddhists existed in the same monasteries in the past and no longer think that Mahayana was a later development, but competing schools of thought that developed in conversation with each other.

There's not really too many 'secret teachings' or anything. Even the things that are supposed to be 'secret' are really just things you're supposed to be trained by a teacher on first so that you do them properly. It's not a gatekeeping thing, but a "hey maybe you shouldn't meditate in front of corpses to contemplate death without first appropriately contextualizing this action and mentally preparing yourself so that you don't develop mental health issues" thing.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, that time also turned me vegan. The monastery only served vegan food. Meat has been big in Tibetan culture for a long time, but even long-dead masters had problems with it and monasteries forbidding meat is becoming more and more widespread. There's lots of texts about animal rights and their place in Buddhist ethics as well.

and asking the American how many native americans spoke an indigenous language

And this is why libs invented 'that's just whataboutism'

There's also just the fact that Tibet diplomatically rejoined with China right after the end of the Civil War and only decided to split a decade later, after much work had been done to improve conditions for the serfs and this lead to an outraged aristocratic class trying to breakaway to maintain power. It's very roughly like calling the US expansionist for invading the Confederacy.

r/thedeprogram seems like the mirror universe version of r/chapotraphouse. Instead of the sub being more based than the showrunners, they're less based.

He was born in 1935 and became Dalai Lama in 1940.

He would love it if he could tho, as do most of the lama class in exile

What? Serfdom was abolished in 1959 and he was born in 1935, and became Dalai Lama in 1940.

The whole Samurai caste is romanticized, especially outside of Japan. They were the ruthless, opportunistic enforcers of the hierarchy, not honorable warrior-scholars. Bushido is what led Japan down the path of imperialism and resulted in WWII.

Even when you fight Nobunaga in media you're usually doing it as the stooge of some other warlord

Yesssssss, that's the guy! He did so much monstrous stuff but he's usually depicted in a goofy manner!

outlawing Christianity and killing all Western missionaries (though that last one doesn’t sound too bad)

Most of work here was done later by Tokugawas: Ieyasu, Hidetada and Iemitsu, but despite brutality it was a W (most of said brutality happened really during Iemitsu reign). Hideyoshi observed in real time how christianity served as softener for colonialism and it's clear he wanted to avoid it, though preferably keeping trade with Europeans. Interesting fact is that christianity was pretty thin in Japan as in case of both Sekigahara campaign and later sieges of Osaka, overwhelming most of Japanese christians supported Hideyoshi's heir Hideyori.