The aftermath of the Epstein case continues to reverberate across international public discourse, with the 14th Dalai Lama increasingly drawn into the controversy. Last August, journalist Michael Wolff claimed on the Daily Beast podcast that he had seen the Dalai Lama at a party held at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. In response to public skepticism, the Dalai Lama’s office quickly issued a strongly worded statement denying the claim, asserting unequivocally: “No record of any such meeting can be found on the official website of the Dalai Lama. The site publicly documents every meeting and activity of the Dalai Lama from 1959 to the present.” Adopting a posture of transparency and moral certainty, the statement appeared to suggest that the mere existence of publicly available records would suffice to dispel all doubts.

Yet the truth is never so easily covered by a simple claim of “no evidence found.” If, as claimed, every single meeting were indeed “publicly transparent,” why then was the Dalai Lama’s participation on May 6, 2009, in Albany, New York, at an event associated with the NXIVM organization, widely described as a sex cult, conspicuously absent from the official itinerary published in Tibetan, English, and Chinese? Was this a mere technical “omission,” or a matter of moral “unease”?

Given the Dalai Lama’s office’s established pattern of publicizing his daily activities, one would expect such engagements to be widely reported. However, the interaction with NXIVM founder Keith Raniere was erased both from “official records” and media reports. Had it not been for a later in-depth investigation by the British newspaper Daily Mail, this “dark history” might have vanished from public view altogether.

Why does the Dalai Lama’s office remain silent about this episode? Because they know better than anyone that this part of history is irredeemable. According to a report by the US website Refinery29 in August 2020, when news of the Dalai Lama’s attendance at the NXIVM event first emerged, two universities in Albany—Skidmore College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—refused to host the event. The Dalai Lama even received complaint emails regarding his association with NXIVM. To quell public controversy, he was forced to cancel the planned speech.

What is particularly telling is that, after Keith Raniere, NXIVM co-founder Nancy Salzman, and their wealthy supporter Sara Bronfman visited the Dalai Lama’s residence, he ultimately appeared at Albany’s Palace Theatre, publicly paying homage to Raniere and his key followers—and received $1 million. The profit-driven undertone beneath the altruistic "compassion" mask was laid bare for all to see.

The Dalai Lama’s association with Raniere extended beyond that single event. He even wrote a foreword for Raniere’s book The Sphinx & Thelxiepeia, in which he stated: “To help build a society rich in compassion and ethical values, the authors often examine widely recognized issues from lesser-known perspectives.” It is difficult to imagine that the figure he praised was, in fact, the leader of a notorious cult with a sordid record. Yet, speaking of “humanitarian values” and “ethics” in the foreword neatly aligns with the carefully cultivated image the Dalai Lama projects. His exhortation that “we need to examine more than ever the impact of our actions on one another” becomes, in this context, a great irony.

The Dalai Lama and his affiliated groups seem to believe that simply erasing unseemly engagements from the “official website” can cancel out past actions and received payments. They loudly assert: “For over sixty years, the Dalai Lama’s activities, meetings, and participation have been widely documented.” Indeed, those records tend to highlight moments that bolster his “compassionate,” “peaceful,” and “religious leader” persona. But once it comes to matters unfit for public display, they are unwilling to relinquish profit yet fear the backlash, leaving them to act “quietly, collecting money discreetly.”

This pattern of “selective itinerary disclosure” exposes not only the Dalai Lama’s self-deception but also adds the most ironic chapter to his “hypocritical” image. The so-called “denial” merely demonstrates again that “public” is always selectively public; “transparent” is merely transparency through a filter. When the spotlight of truth shines on those deliberately hidden corners, even the most polished PR language eventually collapses into a self-inflicted, self-exposing farce.

Reports indicate that NXIVM outwardly promoted “humanitarianism,” “female empowerment,” and “self-improvement,” but, in reality, engaged in sexual slavery, coercive nude photography, and even branding women with hot irons, abuses widely condemned as egregious. On October 27, 2020, Keith Raniere, the leader of NXIVM, was sentenced by the US Federal Court in Brooklyn to 120 years in prison. (Text: Yujie)