(HHDL in Santa Clara, CA, 24 Feb 2014)
From Elizabeth Drescher’s essay at Religion Dispatches:
In this light, the soft-spoken challenge of “universal
compassion” His Holiness throws down, which “involves gradually expanding one’s circle of concern until it finally embraces the whole of humanity,” is a pedagogical one: How do we learn to move beyond the commodification of education, of wisdom teachers like the Dalai Lama, of compassion itself? Does the Dalai Lama as mega-brand, as rock star, as spiritual presence, reinforce such commercial constructions or invite their dismantling?
To read the article: http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/culture/7633/his_holiness__inc__the_dalai_lama_as_a_spiritual_mega_brand
leslee hare 
Ultimately this seems to me a typical piece of paint-by-numbers self-erasing journalese.
Thank you for my first laugh out loud of the morning, Ben!
You know, I agree! I found the whole thing quite ironic… The style and structure of the article as well as the subject matter. It’s a huge dilemma to me, similar to that of the Ukrainian video.
On the one hand I’ve sat nearly front and center to listen to HHDL in Atlanta, and on another, the group with which I used to be a nun has recently protested him in NYC… I look at the various sides and squirm.
How, in our current culture, do we present material (that could be very helpful) in a way that’s not likely to become quickly diluted and misinterpreted? How do we focus on the message and not the style and/or spin?
Poetry? ;)