well it was put together at the end of the 1700s, by the kind of guys rich enough to take a summer off to go argue with their peers over the details. The whole thing was designed take democratic input without actually having to be beholden to public sentiment. They were pretty open about that fact, it’s all over their correspondences and publications.

Obviously all these years latter it’s not quite the same beast they bred, but it still has the same basic shape and function.

Nothing wrong with meditating on a stone all your life, but where does a monk’s meal come from? Who grows the food? Who weaves the cloth? If it were all just charity, that would be one thing…

Before China, Tibet was a feudal society, with the monastery at the top of the hierarchy. They wielded power; religious, political, and physical. The punishment for disobeying a monk was to have your hands cut off. And this wasn’t just some ancient state of affairs, it was happening in the 20th century.