Monks vs. Monks

He whom the gods would humble they first make the center of a global advertising campaign. Beyond Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela, few humans have recently come closer to sainthood-by-acclaim than the Dalai Lama. Revered as a Buddha of compassion by his followers, Tibet's political and religious leader garnered not only a 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts on behalf of his Chinese-occupied homeland but also (as the Apple Computer ads strove to exploit) the vague undifferentiated goodwill of a cynical and overcaffeinated world still auditioning sources of truth, calm and peace.

All the more jarring, then, that upon arriving in...