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Just as well that Buddhists do not go in for fatwas, or the public relations staff at La Sainte Union College and theology lecturer Danny Sullivan would be making hurried preparations for Rushdie-style seclusion.

His account in LSU Today of attending a three-day retreat with the Dalai Lama concludes by sounding more like a day out with Boris Yeltsin: "A unique character . . . who having found his own authentic spiritual path, was lubricated enough to leave others to find theirs." Bad news for those taken with the concept of a plastered lama is that the word should have been "liberated".