The ramifications of Karmapa’s shocking special message

Posted on March 9, 2018 in Articles, Features, Guest Writers · 15,728 Views · 129 Comments

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By: Ashok Rao

There exists today four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, one of which is the Kagyu school. One of the main sub-sects of the Kagyu school is the Karma Kagyu lineage headed by a leader referred to as the Karmapa. Each year, this lineage celebrates the Kagyu Monlam Chenmo (Great Prayer Festival), a tradition established by His Holiness the 7^th Karmapa Chodrak Gyatso to bring together members of the Karma Kagyu lineage to pray for the benefit of all sentient beings. After the Tibetans entered into exile in India, the tradition was revived in 1983 by His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche and His Eminence Bokar Rinpoche. Since then it has once again been used to promote peace and harmony.

Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, who was recognized by Tai Situpa Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government

This year, attendees at the Kagyu Monlam Festival received a special broadcast from one of the two Karmapa candidates, Ogyen Trinley Dorje. In what was billed a “special message”, he openly expressed his frustration, the reasons for his frustration and, in his own words, his ‘depression’. He criticized the behavior of the Karma Kagyu high lamas, spoke of his disappointment at having been controlled for more than 18 years of his life, and subtly blamed the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA; Tibetan leadership in Dharamsala) for interfering in the lineage, bringing about the division and issues they face today.

The message was a very brave move for such a prominent figure, as there is no freedom of speech within the Tibetan settlements. Those who criticize the CTA usually find themselves on the receiving end of violent repercussions. It therefore speaks volumes that the Karmapa’s special message was recorded in the United States, away from the domineering control of the CTA in India. And so instead of broadcasting a straightforward Dharma teaching to millions of Karma Kagyu devotees worldwide, Ogyen Trinley chose to use the platform to criticize the CTA. It is an act that reflects the gravity of his situation and its impact on the survival of the lineage. Many of the points Ogyen Trinley spoke about struck at the heart of political issues facing Tibetan Buddhism today:

He did not receive a proper spiritual education. Having left Tibet at an early age, Ogyen Trinley thought his training in India would be comprehensive and complete. But many factors were not in his favor: the lineage was in tatters following the CTA’s interference, Karma Kagyu lamas were scattered around India and the world, and his movements were tightly controlled by the CTA. As a result, he did not have much opportunity to learn and thus he feels that he is deceiving the public. He feels he is not qualified to teach and to handle what is required of him.
He was forced to be involved in politics, something he was ill-prepared to deal with. Ogyen Trinley said that historically, the Karmapas are purely spiritual leaders who are not politically involved. And even in this, he was forced to disregard his lineage’s traditions. Ill-equipped to deal with political life, he ended up making many errors which have plagued him for more than 18 years. There is only one group who could have forced him to do this – the Tibetan leadership. Thus, in saying he was ill-prepared to meet with various leaders and officials, he implied that it was the CTA who failed to provide him with the training and guidance necessary to be successful.
So not only did he fail to receive a complete spiritual education, but he was also not given the tools to succeed in a secular environment. Ogyen Trinley reiterated the Buddhist teachings that politics derive only short-term benefits, whereas spiritual pursuits are for longer, more meaningful results. He made multiple references to his wish to engage in spiritual practice, and mentioned that in his youth and desperation, he had even contemplated studying within the Gelug system, thus portraying his genuine non-sectarian nature. It is no surprise that Ogyen Trinley would have thought of this – not only is the Gelug system known for its rigorous structure of study, but the previous 16^th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, was known to have been extremely close to Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche. Both lamas are considered to be of the same mindstream, as Trijang Rinpoche’s incarnation lineage includes the 8^th Karmapa Mikyo Dorje. In watching his speech, one cannot help but think of Ogyen Trinley as a sincere Dharma practitioner who was forced into a political role to be exploited by the CTA to challenge the Chinese leadership, with no regard for his spiritual responsibilities and gains.
He has been controlled for most of his life and implied that his managers and staff failed him. The fact Ogyen Trinley failed to receive a proper education is not only the CTA’s responsibility, but also his managers’ whom he implies have controlled him his entire life. As a child, offerings made to him were opened and inspected by his attendants, and then he never saw them again. Those who sought audience with him even learned to sneak monetary offerings under his cushion when no one was looking. His attendants were similarly untrained in politics and as a result, he received bad advice.
To this day, he does not even have a monastery of his own. It is extremely unusual for someone of his position, touted to be the head of the Karma Kagyu lineage, to be living at the Gelug tantric monastery of Gyuto. He is not allowed to set foot in Rumtek Monastery, the seat of the Karmapas in India, since the issue of the two Karmapas came to blows in 2000. At that time, the Indian Border Police were forced to intervene and bar both Karmapa candidates from entering Rumtek, fearing further security issues. Although it was the CTA who caused this two Karmapa issue by interfering in the recognition process, they failed to do anything to improve upon the division, for example by creating a monastery for Ogyen Trinley to preside over. The logical conclusion is that they wish for him to remain under their control; being at Gyuto and without his own monastery, Ogyen Trinley cannot grow a powerbase of his own which allows them to keep him under their thumb. This, coupled with his lack of a formal education, suggests he is being exploited by the CTA to be a pawn, rather than the head of a rich religious tradition or even just a practitioner of the Buddha’s teachings.
There is no end in sight to the Karma Kagyu split. In his speech Ogyen Trinley made a lengthy reference to the deep split in the lineage. After the passing of the 16^th Karmapa, two candidates for his reincarnation were identified – one, Trinley Thaye Dorje, was recognized by His Eminence Shamar Rinpoche, who traditionally holds the authority to make such a recognition. On the other hand, Ogyen Trinley Dorje himself was recognized as the other Karmapa candidate by the Kagyu lama Tai Situpa Rinpoche, a choice backed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The dual recognition of a Karmapa candidate tore the lineage in half and since then, this rift has never healed although Ogyen Trinley sought to meet the Shamarpa in the past to work on the divide. While nothing fruitful came of the meeting, Ogyen Trinley spoke of his respect and admiration for the line of Shamarpas, stating that they should not be removed from the supplication prayers to the lineage lamas, as some have argued, no doubt under the influence of the CTA, whom the Shamarpa bravely defied. Interesting point to note: Ogyen Trinley was also selected by the Chinese government in Tibet as the Karmapa. The Dalai Lama accepts China’s choice of Karmapa but it is strange that the Dalai Lama will not accept China’s choice of Panchen Rinpoche.

Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje (left) was identified by His Eminence Shamar Rinpoche according to age-old tradition. He and his consort Rinchen Yangzom have recently announced that they are expecting their first child.

The CTA has a trend of splitting lineages and keeping them divided. The message from Ogyen Trinley is clear – the CTA intentionally interfered in the Karma Kagyu’s religious affairs and after splitting the lineage, did not lift a single finger to mend the rift or even mediate between both parties. But why would they? They created the issue in the first place, dividing large groups of people in order to weaken and conquer them. Likewise, the CTA instigated the unjust and illegal ban against Dorje Shugden practitioners, splitting the Gelug lineage in half as well. It is clear the CTA does not care about spiritual practice or its preservation; the only thing that matters is political dominance over the Tibetan people and they have achieved this by attacking what is at the very heart of Tibetan culture – its religion.
His speaking out may encourage other dually-recognized lamas to speak out. The CTA are well known for recognizing lamas whose incarnations have already been recognized by the spiritual leaders of their own traditions. In addition to the Karmapas, the CTA have also recognized a second incarnation of His Holiness the Panchen Lama, His Eminence Domo Geshe Rinpoche and His Eminence Kundeling Rinpoche. Identifying a reincarnation of their own is a ploy by the CTA to retain their power through spiritual manipulation; since that particular individual received recognition from the CTA, when they grow older, the CTA assumes they will be somehow beholden to the Tibetan leadership and therefore obligated to enforce their diktats. But we know that Ogyen Trinley, as one of two Karmapa candidates, has refused to speak negatively against Dorje Shugden and in his Kagyu Monlam video, said that he dislikes politics and does not wish to be involved. So given Ogyen Trinley’s candid and open refusal to be manipulated by the CTA, his actions may perhaps encourage other dually-recognized lamas or those forced into political positions to speak up about their treatment at the hands of the unscrupulous CTA.

Ogyen Trinley reiterated that he is a normal person. Contrary to common perception of the Karmapa’s nature and his role, he states on numerous occasions in his video that he is an ordinary person. He paints himself as someone who has to work at his spiritual progress, who may have somehow fallen behind in his knowledge due to being poorly educated. This is in contrast with the CTA’s portrayal of him as a superhuman, all-knowing enlightened being, and a direct counter of their stance regarding his spiritual attainments. In fact, he has mentioned twice that he feels very depressed, which is strange for a person whose life’s work is to teach others to be happy yet he himself is depressed.
Hence doubt is cast over the Dalai Lama’s recognition of him as the rightful Karmapa candidate. Ogyen Trinley reiterated so frequently that he is just an ordinary person that one might be led to think he is casting doubt on his recognition as the Karmapa, and even implying that the Dalai Lama may have been wrong to recognize him. The implications of this would be disastrous for the CTA, as each and every reincarnation they have recognized will then be opened to being questioned. If the CTA can be wrong on such significant decisions related to the key leaders of many spiritual lineages, how many other mistakes have they made throughout the years that have been unaccounted for? If the Dalai Lama can be wrong on something as important as the rightful Karmapa, how many other errors have been made? Are the Dalai Lama and the CTA wrong about imposing the ban on Dorje Shugden too? The Tibetan leadership would be exposed as the fake and inefficient leadership that they really are, relying on spiritual and religious traditions to maintain their oppressive control over the Tibetans rather than any genuine political prowess.
Most listeners come away with the conclusion that Ogyen Trinley is planning to abdicate. What would happen if he abdicated? It could lead to the destruction of the Karma Kagyu lineage, where the Kagyus under Ogyen Trinley would fade out of existence. It might also lead to its reunification under one Karmapa candidate, Trinley Thaye Dorje, who was recognized according to tradition by the Shamarpa.
For a Karmapa candidate to so explicitly state that he is depressed is unprecedented. What many are asking is, how can the emanation of a being meant to be the cause and happiness of others be unhappy himself? How can he teach others to overcome their depression and gain happiness, when he himself is so unhappy? The only two possible conclusions that can be arrived at are, he is not the real reincarnation of the Karmapa or he is manifesting disappointment at the treatment he has suffered at the hands of the CTA. Neither conclusion is particularly pleasant for the CTA – in the first scenario, they made an error in identifying the Karmapa, thereby causing 18 years of division in the Karma Kagyu sect, for ultimately no reason other than self-gain, and political control and manipulation. In the second scenario, they have treated him so badly that he feels the need to speak out against them.
Either way, it is clear that the CTA are losing control. Their abuse of Ogyen Trinley for more than 18 years has finally come to a head. Controlled by them for their own twisted agendas, Ogyen Trinley is now revealing the truth behind the CTA’s duplicitous nature. What is most significant is that he is the purported head of a lineage who has received the CTA’s stamp of approval, and who is now speaking up against them. This will not be the only battle that the CTA has to contend with. Many other sectors of Tibetan society are speaking up, for example Thupten Choephel of Sera Jey Monastery who is threatening self-immolation if the CTA does not stop their abuse and exploitation of the Tibetan people. Political trends have also shifted – in India, for example, the government now clearly favors a friendship with China over supporting the Tibetans in exile. The CTA are losing their grip over all areas of Tibetan life, from politics to religion.

When will it end?

The CTA’s machinations within the Karma Kagyu lineage have led to a huge rift within the tradition. They engineered the split of the lineage with their recognition of a second Karmapa candidate, whose life they have controlled and whose spiritual education they have neglected. Foreseeing potential problems with the Shamarpa’s reincarnation, Ogyen Trinley himself warns against two Shamarpas being recognized. This is a very real possibility as the CTA, who have battled with many successive Shamarpa incarnations, will be tempted to recognize their own candidate in order to control him too. However, should they recognize their own Shamarpa, Ogyen Trinley warns that the Karma Kagyu school will be further split and the CTA will have directly caused the irreversible destruction of the unity of the lineage.

Coupled with the other divisive policies that the CTA enforces such as the ban on Dorje Shugden practice, the CTA are single-handedly causing the destruction of Tibetan Buddhism as a whole. Ogyen Trinley Dorje, as one of two Karmapa candidates knows this from his own personal experience, and his views are clear evidence of this.

Ogyen Trinley’s speech indicate that he is a true spiritual practitioner, disinterested in the manipulative politics of the CTA but passionate about the genuine teachings of the Buddha – peace, harmony and the cohesion of spiritual traditions. Unfortunately, and much to his disappointment, he has not received any of this whilst under the control of the CTA. The Tibetan leadership should take his message as a real wake-up call to heal the rifts that they have caused to the fabric of Tibetan life, not only within the Karma Kagyu tradition but also with Dorje Shugden practitioners. If they really care about the survival of the Tibetan culture and tradition as they so often claim, they had better start making amends, lest their actions lead to the complete destruction of Tibetan life in the future.

Special Message from the Karmapa – English

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Special Message from the Karmapa – Tibetan

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Special Message from the Karmapa – Chinese

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Transcript: Special Message from the Karmapa

Today is the last day of the 35th Kagyu Monlam Chenmo. And so, just as I have requested of him, this year His Eminence Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche has gone to unfathomable efforts to come and preside over the Kagyu Monlam. My original plan was that Rinpoche only needed to attend a few of the most important events and did not need to come to everything but Rinpoche has, whenever he has been able, come to preside over the sessions whenever he could without missing a single day. This is extremely kind of him, so on the behalf of all the monastics and the lay people who had attended the Monlam, I would like to express my deepest thanks to Rinpoche.

Likewise, Kyabje Mingyur Rinpoche showed us the kindness of giving meditation instructions during the pre-Monlam teachings. And then, since then during the time of the Kagyu Monlam, Rinpoche has also put in a lot of effort to come to many different events, both large and small. So, I would like to ask, and once again thank Rinpoche on behalf of everyone.
This year even though I was not there, everyone in the Monlam organising committee has taken on the responsibilities for their individual teams and co-operated, working together, just the same as they would if I were there. The results of their work has produced are no different than how they would have been, were I there, so I would like to take this opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to Lama Choedak, foremost amongst the Monlam workers and all the other workers as well. Thank you very much.

Likewise, the monks and nuns from the various monasteries, despite the fact that the weather has been very hot, they have been very exemplary and praiseworthy in all respect during this Monlam in terms of the motivation, conduct and everything else, even in the heat. So, I would like to also say thank you very much to all of you as well.

Likewise, the faithful people who come from foreign countries, this year there have been many changes in the Monlam dates. This has caused you difficulties financially and once you arrive here, the weather has been hot and caused you even more difficulties but all of you participating makes the Kagyu Monlam into an international event. I think it shows that no matter where in the world we are from, our wishes are in unison, our wishes for world peace are in unison. Our wishes that all sentients be happy are in unison and so I would like to thank you all deeply.

Likewise, the place where we hold the Monlam is the sacred site of Bodhgaya, the noble land of India. The government of India, the federal government as well as the state government of Bihar and the local administration have all provided a great deal of assistance. Likewise, the administration of the Maha Devi temple has also continually supported us not only in the past but also in the present, so I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation and thanks to all of them.

Till today, at first, I didn’t think I needed to say too much. But now I would like to take this opportunity to say a few things and I think that maybe it will bring a little bit of benefit. So, the main thing to talk about is that many people have been asking when the next Kagyu Monlam, the 36th would be held. They are also asking for the time to be fixed and not changed. Quite a few people had said this and generally from our point, we have gone through a lot of effort to have a definite schedule that didn’t change but sometimes there are events with other Lamas, other great Lamas and Monlams from other lineages that are being held at the same time and when they conflict with each other then it is not very easy for us or for them. And for that reason, we have had to postpone or change our dates for such reasons several times. Even though we have not wanted to reschedule there have been situations where we have no choice but to do so. But we are doing everything we can to avoid having to change our dates in the future. In the next few days, we will have meetings to decide on a fixed time for the Monlam. We will have free discussions about the schedule in the meetings and do our best to make a decision as soon as we can. And once we have decided, we will announce it immediately over the internet so that everyone can make advance preparation to come to the next Monlam. So, try our hardest, we will try our hardest to inform you as soon as we can.

This year I really didn’t have the opportunity to attend the Monlam in person. However, as I have already said, the Monlam has been excellent and well-organised, no different from that if I were there. And when I think about it, I was recognised as the Karmapa at the age of 7. And then at the age of 14, I was separated from Tibet and come to the noble land of India. Thinking about how it was when I went from being a little boy who didn’t really understand what a Karmapa is to being brought and put on the Karmapa’s throne and gradually having to take the responsibilities that it entails, from my perspective, the Karmapa has the history of over 900 years and there have been 16 incarnations. To have qualities and abundance realisations such as they did and activities such as theirs, I don’t even have the confidence that I can even hope for such. And I don’t, for myself, really believe that it would ever happen. But because I have received the blessings of the Karmapa to some degree, I have done my best. I have done my best but I am an ordinary person. So, no matter how much hard I try, there are many other situations where that is not enough, where it is beyond me.

Many people think to themselves that being the Karmapa, you know is like some incredible thing but for me, that hasn’t happened, even if I am the Karmapa. The situation is still that really need to try hard. Gyelwa Kunsapa said, “Even the rebirth, reincarnation of a Lama or a Tulku, should spend 12 years of purification, practicing meditation to purify their remaining obstacles. It is necessary to practise meditation and accomplishment and retreats”. So, even if one is a Tulku or a reincarnation of a great Lama, you have to put in such efforts. For me, I don’t have any reasons or any basis to say that I am the reincarnation of any great Lama and since I am an ordinary person, I have to put in incredible effort even more than other people. But no matter how much effort I make, it is never enough, it is never ok. It never really reaches a level where it is sufficient. And for one side, this is people have such high limitless hopes in me. On my own part, I do my absolute best to try to live up to them. And I do this with as much as I can with the pure motivation.

When I was little, a lot of people came to give me advice. They’d say, “You have to be really careful. There are many people who have said to me Karmapa, so you have to be your best”. So many people said this but for my own part, I never had the motivation that I should compete with everyone else said to be Karmapa and therefore be careful.

For my own point, I have had a pure motivation. Whatever I am, directing my best efforts no matter what. When I was, even when I was studying at Tibet, in terms of my education, my tutors, my teachers and my tutors, the way they paid respect and so forth, were not the greatest and once I arrived in India, one reason I came to India was to study and to receive the Dharma lineages, that is why I came.

So once I arrived, it should have been better than it had been in Tibet, but in terms of my education, there were many gaps. From one perspective, the fault was my own for being too lazy. And also, I am pretty smart and since I am pretty smart, no matter what I study I immediately get a little bored and think, “I get it”. Then I immediately feel disinterested. In addition to that, the Lamas and Khenpos whom I study with, we invited the best Lamas and Khenpos amongst our Kagyus but the best Lamas and Khenpos have their own monasteries, their own Dharma centres that they have to maintain and take care off, they have activities. Hence, they could not spend all their time with me. So, for these reasons, sometimes I would have all these classes and sometimes I would not and this happened frequently.

In the past, I had the thought that if I went to a Gelugpa monastery, matriculated so to speak and followed the curriculum, I would have become a good scholar. But later when I thought about it, if I had gone to a Gelugpa monastery and gone through the studies, on the one side, there would have been nothing wrong with it. But on the other instance, I have the title Karmapa. If the Karmapa were to go to a Gelugpa monastery to study, people would say that and in the future, someone with the head of the overall, the title of the overall, head of the Kagyu were to do this, it’s like would be a bit of a problem that happened historically.

So, I‘ve had many different discussions with Gelugpa geshes but I’ve never matriculated in a Gelug monastery. So, this is one issue. My own studies have not all been that high quality or good. Mainly what I know has come from me taking interest and putting the effort into it. I never had any properly organized, thorough, education. So, that’s one issue.

So, another issue is that, when I was recognized as Karmapa when I was 7, so I was just a little boy. From the time I was little, I grew up in Tsurphu Monastery. And when I was little, all the people around me were adults. So I had to do whatever they told me to. And I couldn’t say what I needed to do.

At first, of course, I didn’t know what I needed to do. And in addition to that, other than listen to them, I never had any freedom to say what I should do or should not do. Actually, when I was little, I did have a lot of hard times. For example, in terms of power, it’s the changtso had all the power. And when people would come to give me gifts, they first of all had to take to the changtso, the changtso would take them out and open all the gifts first. And those people were suspicious that there might be a bomb or poison or something like that. So, they would take them out to check to see, they take the gifts out to make sure that there is no bomb or poison. And once the gifts had been taken away, they were never brought back, almost all of them.

Also people would come to give me money to say it was for me to give my parents. Those who knew my situation would give me money surreptitiously. At that time, there was a lot of people around right? So without knowing, they quickly slipped it under my cushion, slipped it under my cushion secretly. That’s what it was like. So, that’s what it was like when I was little.

I never really felt that I had any freedom of my own. And then I came to India. See, when I came to India, India is a free country, a democracy. So I’d hoped that when I arrived, I could do whatever I wanted. That was my hope. But when I first got to India, none of us had any knowledge about India. And at that time, the people who advised me, the people… my guides, the people who advised me, even though they definitely had pure motivation, there was none who was able to guide me, who was a hundred percent reliable. They didn’t know how things were done. So I had no one to guide me. So when we first began discussions with the Indian government, there was disharmony and disagreement in the discussion and this probably caused some suspicions. In any case, I’ve spent eighteen years in India. And during this time, I have had continually difficulties and hassles as you all know. They said that I was sent by the Chinese or that I was a Chinese spy.

Many things have happened. But even though many things have happened, I still have done what that I could. The reason why I stayed right up until now is because I feel like I must not give up on the teachings, the Kagyu teachings. Likewise, I thought that to myself that this is for the benefit of Tibet, for the benefit of all sentient beings. Thinking in this way, I stayed. Also from another perspective, when I arrived in India, it was very fortunate. I had the fortune to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama and hear his teachings. I had many opportunities to receive profound Dharma teachings from Chamgon Tai Situ Rinpoche and Goshir Gyaltsab Rinpoche. Likewise, I’ve had the opportunity to receive profound Dharma teachings from Tangur Rinpoche, Bokar Ripoche and Yongzin Thrangu Rinpoche. And I feel all of this has been very, very fortunate. Where I live is Gyuto Monastery and the heart sons they live elsewhere, Situ Rinpoche lives in Sherab Ling, Gyaltsab Rinpoche lives in Sikkim. There’s never been a place for us to spend an extended period of time at the same place. It’s like we’re all been scattered.

When I read the lives of the previous Karmapas, the Karmapas and their heart sons all stayed together. Wherever they went, they went together. Whether it’s by teaching the Dharma, or by taking care of each other. It was like at that time, they all took care of each other but this has never happened with me. And for me, this is something I feel very disappointed about.

Then, to speak bluntly. After the 16th Karmapa passed away, we had a great rift in our Kamtsang lineage. I don’t need to say anything any more about the old situations. But because of this, we have had some disagreements among the ladrangs. Many things have happened since I arrived in India. Some of you know, some don’t. There has been a lot disharmony among the ladrangs and this has also caused me a lot of worries.

On one occasion, I invited Chamgon Tai Situ Rinpoche and Goshri Gyaltsab to come to Delhi, both Rinpoches are quite like the moon and the clouds in the sky. They are not stained by any thoughts but those who are underneath them, their attendants, and I told them to tell their attendants, the people under them that we have had a great disaster in the Kamtsang lineage. Such has never happened before. We’ve had been a huge conflict. We’ve had a terrible violation of samsara, please do what you can to avoid that again. This is what I asked both Rinpoches. And they both promised to do as I asked. Actually, to make such a request is like teaching Avalokiteshvara the Mani mantra, you shouldn’t have to say to that extent but I was too petty, too small minded and asked.

Also thinking that maybe it would be of benefit to the Karma Kaygu teachings, I went to see Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche. And when we arranged a meeting on our side shall we say, there were people who’d said that it would not be okay to make a bad connection. Quite a few people said this. Some who were nearby said this vociferously. But I ignored that and I went to Shamar Rinpoche and when we met, there was no really specific result you could point to.

But now, Rinpoche has passed away, and I do feel a bit of comfort in my mind, that at least I was able to meet Rinpoche and tell him what I thought. So, this gives me a little bit of comfort. In general, we all know how important the Shamar Rinpoche has been in the history of the Karma Kagyu. But in the last few years, in the last couple of decades, so many events have occurred that many people say we should not recite long life prayers for Shamar Rinpoche and that we should remove the Shamar Rinpoches from our lineage supplications.

But I think that that is really not seeing the important points, because Shamar Rinpoche is not just the recent 14th Shamar Miphang Chokyi Lodro, The Shamar Rinpoche is a part of the old lineage of Karma Kamtsang. The lineage from Drakpo Sengge to the present. It is not the name of the single person, it is not a single person.

No matter how much the people say that the actions of the current Shamar Rinpoche were wrong, I think that we must not paint the activities of the entire Shamar lineage black. For this reason, I think that we must have a positive way of thinking about Shamar Rinpoche. I think we need to think about Buddhism in general and the lineage in the future.

Now Shamar Rinpoche has passed away. It is extremely important that there be no problems regarding his reincarnation. We have another situation or we say there’s two different reincarnations. It will harm the Kamtsang in general and in future, the Kamtsang will split into two factions, looking at each other as enemies and that would not be good in any way at all.

From the depths of my heart, I think we can have reconciliation. And I am doing a few things to bring that about. But it’s not something for one person to do. It’s so crucial to remember that both sides need to be open. If we continue to always say bad things about each other and criticize each other. If we continue to do that, I do not think it will turn out well.

Our teachings at the Kamtsang are the same. Our Gurus the same. The colour of our hats is the same. But despite this, if we continue to cling to our own factions, no matter how right we are, we have such bias towards our sides, we will work for ourselves, to win for ourselves to defeat the others. Taking this on would be like a complete mistake. There’ll be nothing good about it. So, we often say there is the Shamar side and there is the Situ side. One side or the other. Actually we aren’t on the Situ Rinpoche side, we aren’t on the Shamar Rinpoche side. We are all on the Karma Kagyu side.

Otherwise, we’re filled with our own afflictions, the three poisons; we engage in partisanship and jealousy and at the same time say… and while we still do that we still… how to say… and if at that point we say I’m on Vajradhara’s side. There’s no benefit to that at all.

So these people say I’m pure, he’s pure, he’s a pure Kagyupa but they’re not pure. But whether one is pure or not comes down to the practice we have in our mindstreams. It does not come down to whose side we are on. I think this is something we all need to keep in mind.

Another thing is that I’m in America. I spent many months abroad, the last six months in America. There are probably a lot of people who explain the reasons why I stayed abroad for such a long time. But independent of anyone else’s explanations, what I’d like to say is that the main reason I am staying abroad is that when I had a medical exam in Germany, they told me that I had a medical problem. So then I had an .?.. (27.38) and for his sake I had to go to America and once I arrived there, I had to follow up on the medical problem they had told me when I was in Germany, and so that is for the reason.

Another matter is that, you know, for many years I’ve never had the opportunity to really rest — to rest both the body and the mind.

Once I get back to India, there’ll be a lot of busy-ness and frenetic-ness so I would not be able to rest. So, I had stayed here to rest.

So, I stayed here because I’m thinking of the long term.

Probably many people have said that I’m staying for my own personal benefit or that I had some insidious plan, but that is not it at all.

In brief, people think that I’m decisive and that whatever I’m doing, they say, “He’s the Karmapa,” so of course they’ll take it as definite the case but for me, it’s not like that.

No matter what decision I make or what action I do, there’s a lot I have to give up.

For my own part, I’ve done everything I could up till now. Everything I’ve done, I have done with a pure motivation. I’ve had a pure motivation but people will make things up. There are many people who make things up out of dislike, and there is nothing to do about that.

But amongst ourselves, there are many people who give incorrect explanations because they either do not know or do not understand what my real intentions are. Especially now that I’m staying in America, even the people I am around here have had a lot of anxiety. Likewise many people all over have had a lot of anxiety. And I have actually myself been quite downcast and depressed. This is because when other people look at what I have tried to do, they take it as a matter of course, but for my own part, I have had to give up a lot. None of it has been easy.

And even though it has been easy and when I ignore that and keep pushing ahead, if those around me do not believe in me then there’s no reason for me to pretend and keep going. So for that reason, I have been depressed.

But when you think about it from the perspective of the future, from the time of the first Karmapa, Düsum Khyenpa, to the present, the Gyalwa Karmapa has been a Lama who has engaged only in Dharma activities, not one who has been involved in politics.

And now we’re at a critical time for the Snow Land of Tibet — we have come to a point where it is important to put effort into both Dharma and politics. So for this reason we definitely need a political leader or a political guide. But for me, I don’t know how to give any political direction. I don’t know how to do this but since I have the title of Karmapa, it would not be appropriate.

Likewise, in terms of the dharma, the way I think to myself is that one does politics to accomplish short-term aims and benefit. Now, political people, they’re always changing. And also, politics means dividing into factions and then dividing into groups then trying to find profit and benefit.

But Dharma, Dharma means not divide into factions but instead bring benefit to all sentient beings who are as limitless as space. Its duration is that people don’t change posts immediately. Dharma is for protecting ourselves in this and in future lifetimes and for guiding ourselves in this until thereafter.

So the way Dharma and politics work is completely different. Since I have the responsibility of being a religious leader, I can only contend in the direction of the Dharma. When I was in Tibet, I was worried that I would have to get involved in politics. Once I arrived in India, I’ve always thought that if it came to me having to do political activities, I would not have the skills to do it, I wouldn’t know how to do it and I have no wish to do so. This is another important point for people to take into consideration.

In brief, from my own perspective, I don’t have such qualities of abundant realisations as the previous Karmapas had. If I, even though I lack those, were to continue to pretend, to deceive people, I feel I will be accumulating severely negative karma.

I have no feeling of delight, no thought of ‘I’ll get rich’ or have power or that many people like me, I don’t have any such… feel like there’s nothing I have to feel such pride or confidence in. So sometimes I think there’s no point. There’s no point to continue deceiving others.

Sometimes I think it would be better to just live as an ordinary person, an ordinary Dharma practitioner. I sometimes think that and especially recently I felt this strongly.

This is because I have worked hard for many years but I can’t work hard all by myself. A single pillar can’t hold up a single building, can it? Everyone needs to work hard and help out. We say that everyone has to have people to take care of them. If you’re taking money you need somebody to take care of you.

Without any support for yourself, there’s no benefit to teaching and helping sentient beings all by yourself. We, Buddhists, believe in karmic cause and effect. We believe in the view of inter-dependence. Inter-dependence means that in all situations, no matter what they may be, occur because of multiple causes (and) conditions. There’s nothing that can be accomplished with a single cause or a single condition. This is something that everyone needs to take into consideration.

In brief, our Kagyu lineage in general, and in particular the Karma Kamtsang, it’s like we’re a big family. It’s like a big family and in this family, the Gyalwa Karmapa is like the father of the family. But the father can’t take all the responsibility alone. The support of all the family members is needed.

Likewise, if you think about the history of the Kagyu lineage, and in particular the Karma Kamtsang, there have been many losses. For example, when the Mongol Gushen invaded, their armies razed many Karma Kamtsang monasteries and many lineages of practices and explanations were lost. Such terrible events have occurred and later after 1959, there was the Cultural Revolution.

So now we have an opportunity for the teachers to revive and flourish so I’d like to ask everyone, to ask everyone to take this opportunity as your own and to make efforts.

Sometimes people don’t seem to understand how I think. They seem unable to understand my perspective. It’s quite possible that this will happen. But what i think the most important thing is, I’m not saying that I can see far into the future or that I know how to think about the long term; but as much as I can, I try to take a long term view as I work.

It’s possible that some people cannot take such a long view but their leader, so called. If you’re going to be a leader. Once you believe in their leader, even though you may not understand all their plans and decisions, it is important to believe in them and support them.

But I’m not saying you must support me. I’m not asking for you to understand me. I’m not asking you to understand me.
Instead I’m saying this is a general thing, no matter who the leader may be in the future. People need to keep this in mind.
So I leave it here today. I have spoken about several different issues and if I’ve made any mistakes or if I’ve said anything inappropriate, I beg your pardon.

So now whatever merit has been gathered during this Kagyu Monlam Chenmo, please dedicate for His Eminence Goshir Gyaltsap Rinpoche to live long and for his wishes to be accomplished spontaneously, to be able to soon set foot in Tibet and turn the vast and profound wheel of Dharma.

Likewise, for the masters of all lineages to live long, for the Sangha of the ten directions to be harmonious and have pure discipline and so forth as described in the great aspirations which is next. So please, everyone make such aspirations and dedications.

Video: Dalai lama made mistake said Shamar Rinpoche

Shamar Rinpoche is the most senior Karma Kagyu lama after the Karmapa himself. For centuries, they would recognize each other’s reincarnations. Shamar Rinpoche would always recognize the new Karmapa and conversely, the senior Karmapa would recognize the new Shamarpa. This has gone on for many incarnations. If Shamarpa was not available , then perhaps one of the junior regents would be consulted. The current Karmapa being recognized by Tai Situpa Rinpoche and endorsed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama is out of tradition and incorrect. Shamar Rinpoche makes this point very clear in the video below. Without consulting Shamar Rinpoche, Tai Situpa snuck into Tibet and, together with the Chinese government, recognized Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the Karmapa incarnation. Shamar Rinpoche did not agree. Shamar Rinpoche has his own candidate according to the written prophecies of the previous Karmapa and Shamar Rinpoche’s own divinations. Shamar Rinpoche objected to the candidate Ogyen Trinley Dorje as he is recognized by the Chinese and further, it is not understood why Tai Situpa would supposedly join forces with the Chinese government to recognize the Karmapa. Shamar Rinpoche has requested His Holiness the Dalai Lama to withdraw his endorsement of Ogyen Trinley as Karmapa, but the Dalai Lama has said he cannot do so. This has created tremendous rifts, fighting, violence, name-hurling and legal issues within the Karma Kagyu sect. This was all created by the Tibetan leadership who interfered with the recognition of the Karmapa which they have no authority to do. Maybe it’s a sign of the incorrect way the whole procedure was done that resulted in Ogyen Trinley Dorje feeling unsure of himself as the Karmapa and complaining he is not qualified to fill the Karmapa’s shoes.

Shamar Rinpoche has recently passed away and Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje is wary of which faction will recognize the new Shamarpa. If the Dalai Lama faction recognizes one Shamarpa and the other Karmapa Trinley Thaye Dorje recognizes another Shamarpa, it would further divide the Karma Kagyu school and perhaps break it entirely.

Watch Shamar Rinpoche express clearly, with his trademark directness, his feelings on this whole matter that divided the Karma Kagyu school, now still unresolved, in half.

Or watch on server | download video (right click & save file)

Robert Thurman’s Letter to the Shamarpa

If His Holiness the 14^th Dalai Lama has no rights, jurisdiction or traditional involvement in the recognition of any Karmapa in the whole of Karma Kagyu history, why would a self-proclaimed scholar of Je Tsongkhapa such as Robert Thurman have an inkling of what is correct and incorrect? Why does Robert Thurman think he can interfere in the traditions of the Karma Kagyu sect and even have the audacity to write to Shamar Rinpoche and the Kagyus? Why does Robert Thurman have to interfere in places where he does not belong and knows nothing about just because he claims to be the Dalai Lama’s good friend?

Click to enlarge (Source: http://www.tilogaard.dk/english/html/answer_to_robert_thurman.html)

His Eminence Shamarpa’s Open Letter to Robert Thurman

An excellent well-written logical and tradition-based letter to Thurman by Shamar Rinpoche. Shamar Rinpoche’s letter scatters any and all doubts away with his clarity and directness. One should take the time to read Shamar Rinpoche’s response.

Click to enlarge (Source: http://www.tilogaard.dk/english/html/answer_to_robert_thurman.html)

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129 total comments on this postSubmit yours

Tsering Drolhma

July 8, 2018

UNRULY TIBETANS FIGHTING AT DALAI LAMA BIRTHDAY PARTY AGAIN

July 2018-NYC- Tibetans fighting at some birthday celebratory event for His Holiness the Dalai Lama. They set up a throne in the back, place Dalai Lama’s picture, and they fight, push, shout, scream at each other right in front of the throne of Dalai Lama and it’s filmed. That is the level of the Tibetans overall. Tibetans are not gentle, Buddhist, peace-loving, tolerant people as they portray to the world. They are rough, rude, hateful, vengeful, violent, regionalistic, narrow minded and will create trouble wherever they go. Very feudal. They always resort to vulgar words and violence. There are some moderate Tibetans, but on the whole they are very violent people who do not practice Buddhism. The average Tibetan know nothing of Buddhism and do not practice. Buddhism is just a meal ticket for them to get to another country. Their support of Dalai Lama is blind and only to be politically correct and they never practice what he teaches. Disgraceful to see a group of violent Tibetans fighting at a Dalai Lama birthday event. Shameful.☹

Tibetans are not welcomed wherever they go. Bhutanese kicked them out. Nepal hates Tibetans. India has no more use for the ‘refugee’ Tibetans and their temples made of gold. After 60 years they cannot get their own country back. What a bunch of losers and useless government people they have.

http://video.dorjeshugden.com/comment-videos/comment-1531033672.mp4

Tsering Drolhma

July 15, 2018

The letter:

It is about the incident that happened at His Holiness’s birthday celebration in NYC recently July 6, 2018. Some members of Tibetan woman association approached to Parliamentarian Tenpa Yarphel during the ceremony and complained that his comments regarding Nechung was disrespect to the protector and His Holiness. They also said him that he made many Tibetan people sad with his comments. And told him not to do that again in the future. Then Dhondup Tseten stood up and shamelessly touched those women. That incident almost made the ceremony stopped. To keep maintaining the relationship between Tibetan Woman Association and Tibetan Parliament Representative, TWA are asking for an apology letter from Dhondup Tseten for touching their members.

(It is so sad that in the fake democracy of the Tibetan leadership in Dharamsala you cannot say anything against a leader or criticize. Too bad)

Carolle McAquire

July 11, 2018

Dalai Lama for debate, discussion to reconcile opposing viewpoints

The Dalai Lama always says we should have honest face to face discussion so misunderstandings are resolved especially on religious issues. Why does the Dalai Lama refuse to meet the Dorje Shugden followers who number in the hundreds of thousands to resolve the Dorje Shugden issue. Many letters have been submitted to request audience since 1996 and he and his office does not reply. Dalai Lama’s spirit of open debate and resolutions is not across the board. Too bad. Carolle McAquire
http://www.uniindia.com/dalai-lama-for-debate-discussion-to-reconcile-opposing-viewpoints/states/news/1285325.html

Bonnie Fider

July 12, 2018

WHY DOES RICHARD GERE AND DALAI LAMA SUPPORT SOGYAL THE DISGUSTING ABUSER?

As long as you are friends with the Dalai Lama, your actions are excusable, no matter how horrendous they may be. Even something as heinous as sexual abuse of over 60 women can be overlooked when the perpetrator is friends with the Dalai Lama namely Sogyal Rinpoche. Why rush to join the chorus of Hollywood voices condemning Harvey Weinstein’s criminality, but remain silent against Sogyal’s exploitation and abuse of women? Richard Gere was vocal in condemning against all the abuses and attacks against women by Harvey Weinstein. But silent on Sogyal Rinpoche. BBC has a full length documentary on Sogyal’s abuses as you can view here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWhIivvmMnk. Yet Richard Gere can take photos with the disgusting and abusive Sogyal. Is it because one group of women are worth protecting and the other are not? If it is not for that reason, then it can only be because Sogyal is the Dalai Lama’s friend. The Dalai Lama’s condemnation against Sogyal is very light and it’s disappointing. I guess since Dalai Lama supported Sogyal so much, he can’t be seen as wrong in doing so. Politics is sad.

Sherab Wangmo

July 12, 2018

TENMA VERY ANGRY WITH SIKYONG LOBSANG SANGYE AND PENPA TSERING

Tenma deity takes trance of her oracle in Nechung Monastery in Dharamsala, North India. The deity is highly displeased and angry at Sikyong Lobsang Sangye and Penpa Tsering. She is scolding them by waving her arms at them and throwing rice at them. You can see Penpa Tsering shielding himself. These two has always been corrupt and extremely self-serving. Naturally the oracles of the Dalai Lama take trance and are very angry.

http://video.dorjeshugden.com/comment-videos/comment-1531344206.mp4

Suresh Ratna

July 13, 2018

SUMAA has been consistent in their efforts to evict Tibetans from Arunachal Pradesh as the Tibetans are known to exploit benefits given to locals. The Central Tibetan Administration, especially their so-called ‘president’ Lobsang Sangay, made the situation worse by rubbing salt in the wound, making a statement that Chief Minister Pema Khandu is an ardent follower of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and a lifelong friend of the Tibetan people. This was right after Khandu announced the adoption of the Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy in Arunachal Pradesh.

Tibetan refugees create a lot of problems for the locals no matter where they are, especially in Arunachal Pradesh. They take the locals’ land and resources without giving anything in return, making the locals furious to the extent that they are now demanding a written undertaking from the Tibetan refugees not to claim Indian citizenship and STC/PRC in Arunachal Pradesh. It is time to impeach Sangay for a better leader to guide and take care of the Tibetans in India before the wrath of locals evict Tibetans from the state or even the country for good.

Self-styled student group in Indian border state calls for Tibetan refugees to be moved to ‘demarcated camps’
[Wednesday, July 11, 2018 18:45]
By Tenzin Dharpo
DHARAMSHALA, July 11: Self-styled group “The Students’ United Movement of All Arunachal” (SUMAA) has reportedly submitted a memorandum to the West Kameng deputy commissioner on Monday, demanding an immediate rollback of the Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy, 2014 within three days against threat of retaliatory action.
The students group has also called for Tibetan refugees to be moved to demarcated camps and revoke trading licences obtained by Tibetan refugees. A written undertaking from the Central Tibetan Administration not to claim Indian citizenship and STC/PRC in Arunachal Pradesh for Tibetans, has also been demanded.
Last year, the same group initiated the “Anti Tibetan Refugee Movement” calling for ousting of Tibetan refugees from the state. Spokesperson of the group has alleged that with the implementation of the TRP 2014, benefits such as MGNREGA, PDS, Indira Awas Yojana, and National Rural Health Mission provided by the Centre for “our people will be snatched away” by the Tibetan refugees.
The group in October 2017 also released a list of all the shops owned by Tibetans with their names in the Capital Complex area threatening that the Tibetans will be targeted individually and “forcefully evicted”.
The Tibetan Rehabilitation Policy assures welfare to Tibetan refugees in India on matters concerning land lease, extending central and state government benefits, relevant papers/trade license/permit for economic activity and legal permit to pursue any professional career such as nursing, teaching, Chartered Accountancy, medicine, engineering etc, depending upon the qualification.
Till date, Karnataka government has been the only state to begin implementation of the policy. In Dec 2016, the Tibetan refugee settlement of Mundgod became the first settlement to be handed over the land lease agreement by Karnataka State.
Arunachal Pradesh has the fourth largest number of Tibetans in India, with four settlements in Tezu, Miao, Tuting, and Tenzingang. However, the number of Tibetan refugees has dwindled to just 7500 with Canada accepting 1000 Tibetan refugees in 2016 and many youths venturing to bigger Indian cities for livelihood. In India, the total number of Tibetan refugees is close to 90,000, according to a 2009 CTA census.
http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=40615

Christie Donald

July 14, 2018

Hollywood is one of the most influential groups of people who have promoted the mysticism of Buddhist Tantra to the world. Together with the media, they have packaged Tibetan Buddhism and Tibetan lamas into a fantasy Utopia, filled with God-like beings who are able to lead people along the quick path to enlightenment.

This propaganda has been widely exploited by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) to garner support, especially financial aid, for the so-called Tibetan Cause and the Tibetan struggle against Chinese rule. Little does the West, including Richard Gere and the so-called Buddhist Professor Robert Thurman, know that efforts from China to improve the infrastructure and standard of living for the Tibetans in China have created opportunities for Tibetans to grow and be successful. This is something that is rarely seen in exile under the governance of the CTA.

This false image that has been promoted for the past 60 years or so is now slowly fading away as more and more victims come forward, exposing the sexual abuse they have suffered under the hands of Tibetan lamas like Sogyal Rinpoche. The root of the problem is clear, people are greedy and lazy while wanting quick success and attention. Since they get these from the Tibetan lamas like Sogyal, they are willing to accept the exploitation. This is further driven by fear that they would no longer be seen as the privileged ones in the inner circle if they do not clutch at their lamas and be seen showing tremendous devotion to their gurus. With only a superficial knowledge of Buddhism, this cult-like group of Hollywood stars and American politicians like Richard Gere continue to generate respect and love for their skewed version of the “Dharma”, while real Buddhist masters are relegated to the side lines.

This Sexual Abuser Hollywood Doesn’t Want You To See
Feb 28, 2018 | Posted by Christine A. Chandler
Why is the mainstream media ignoring this Elephant in the Room?
Is it because, once they peel the curtain back on this little sexually abusive, predator Lama, Lama Sogyal Rinpoche, best friend of the Dalai Lama and his major benefactor, helping to spread Mindfulness throughout the West, the whole edifice of deception, corruption, cover-ups of institutional sexual abuse, and Shangri-la pretenses will be exposed?
Never mind that these Tibetan lamas have fooled a large part of the Western psychology profession, most all of journalism, and certain parts of academia as well as CEO’s of major corporations. Those who also want to jump on the billion-dollar Mindfulness bandwagon; the first cult technique these Tibetan lamas used to get us to think as a herd.
Perhaps it is also because the news media coverage, for the last twenty-five years, of Saint Dalai Lama, keeper of slaves and life-time serfs less than sixty years ago, is one of the icons of the Hollywood jet-set, certain politicians like Nancy Pelosi, Congressman Tim Ryan, academics, like Uma’s dad- Robert Thurman, and such Hollywood stars, as Richard Gere, Harrison Ford, Scarlett Johansson, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Sharon Stone, the list goes on and on, who will now be seen, not just as enablers of Weinstein, but also of the Tantric cult of Tibetan Lamaism and its Tantra that has infused Hollywood with its amorality and sexual abuse for the last four decades, given it permission for their long history of accepting this behavior as ‘normal.’
It was not so long ago, that Trungpa fooled our sixties generation, with the help of rock and roll stars, and Allen Ginsberg, modern poet extraordinaire of the Howl, and member of NAMBLA. Ginsberg also controlled the narrative of how these Tibetan Lamas were to be seen by the public, for the next forty-plus years.
Marxists have been in collusion with the lamas, as well, for a very long time. As have certain institutions on the right, of the C-Street variety. The Dalai Lama boldly sends messages of being a friend to democracy to every President since his “escape” from China. But declares himself a Marxist in India.
Australian CEOs in the article link above are now questioning the wisdom of having Lama Sogyal of Rigpa, the Dalai Lama’s best friend all these years, who has been their icon for mindfulness meditation at the workplace. They are not willing to cover-up for his sexual abuse and demeaning and degrading of women, his keeping a harem, just as Chogyam Trungpa did but it was ignored, and his Tantra was allowed to spread. Thanks to Hollywood giving him a featured role in Little Buddha with Keanu Reeves.
Isn’t it time we peeled the whole onion back to see part of what’s at the core of this sexual abuse and confusion about right and wrong?
Nancy Pelosi goes to the Dalai Lama for advice, and gets crazier every year; Tim Ryan, groomed to take her place, writes a book about Tantric Mindfulness for a Mindless nation and called: Mindfulness Nation .
Ryan hangs out with Lama Sogyal’s friend, Lama Tsoknyi who is Sogyal’s strongest supporter and pal.
Tim Ryan and Lama Tsoknyi, speak together about Global Warming. Tsoknyi surely helped Ryan write his book and Tim Ryan helps Lama Tsoknyi pretend he is a ‘scientific lama’ who also can bless books to make them understandable and can infuse statues with living mojo inside his cult groups of western followers around the world, and now in Asia, fooling the Han and Chan Buddhists that he is teaching what the Buddha taught when it is Tantra and its institutionalized sexual abuse and Lamaist corruptions.
The occult, crazy-making Tantra of Tibetan Lamas has been infusing Hollywood, Journalism, Academia, Psychology, Third-wave Feminism, and the Entertainment Industry and Left-Wing Politics, for the last forty years. Recently, we have been seeing its results implode as the sexual abuses of celebrities and journalists, politicians makes explosive media news.
Chogyam Trungpa, the Tantric Lama darling of the sixties Drugs, Rock and Roll crowd was the first Tibetan Lama to illegally keep a harem of sexual consorts on American soil. His Regent gave his students AIDS, with unprotected sex, but was never criminally charged. Instead he was allowed to brainwash his students into believing this was ‘openness’ and freedom, on the way to the realization of a non-duality mind. They have reinvented his ‘lineage’ along the coast of Maine, to turn that State back into Massachusetts.
“Democracy was a failed experiment” said Trungpa’s mouthpiece, Ginsberg, who believed a totalitarian dictatorship of Tribal warlords would be so much better.
Time to unpeel the whole onion and get to the core of what has been making the West crazy, immoral and stupid: the civilization jihad that comes with a smiling face and a Lamaist peaceful facade.
https://extibetanbuddhist.com/this-sexual-abuser-hollywood-doesnt-want-you-to-see/

Tsewang

July 26, 2018

Tai Situpa’s Karmapa candidate’s escape to USA and continued stay in USA is a huge embarrassment to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan government in exile. The Karmapa said he is very sad with his situation in his recent video (youtu.be/AdI4DMRFkm4?hid).

The flight of a monk
P Stobdan
Intelligence concerns over Karmapa’s refuge in the US and the fear he may never return
AS the Dalai Lama turned 83 this year, the main plot-line of Tibet is noticeably shifting to the 17th Karmapa — Ogyen Trinley Dorje — who suddenly disappeared from the radar screens of Indian intelligence in May 2017. Amidst rumours, the Karmapa was finally traced in Europe and later in the US where he has been staying on the pretext of poor health. He is staying in New Jersey’s Wharton State Forest area, on a 150-acre farm estate gifted to him by a Chinese/Taiwanese couple.
Recent media reports suggest that he may not return to India where he spent his last 18 years. Earlier, he promised to return by June 2018, but the dateline is already over. Sources say there are signs of tension among intelligence circles after his disappearance.
The Karmapa also made a daring escape from Tibet in 1999, which had caused huge embarrassment to the Chinese government. The jostling for control over the 17th Karmapa has heightened among the Chinese government, Dalai Lama’s administration and the Indian establishment after his flight.
His sudden arrival in 2000 had raised many eyebrows in India. Many believed his escape was facilitated by the Chinese. Indian media was quick to label him as a Chinese spy. Others believed it was ostensibly masterminded by none other than Dharamsala itself. In 2001, the Karmapa feared the Chinese may use him for political purpose to separate Tibetans from the Dalai Lama and promised not to return to Tibet until the Dalai Lama returned. In India, he was confined to the Gyuto Tantric monastery near Dharamsala under the surveillance of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) and Indian intelligence agencies. The government had imposed travel restrictions on him, banning him from visiting the Rumtek monastery built by his predecessor.
In 2011, he was implicated in a controversy over the illegal recovery of a large stash of cash, including Chinese currency, fuelling suspicion whether he was a monk or a Chinese plant. And yet, considering his importance, the Tibetans in exile propped up the Karmapa’s stature to make him the next powerhouse to play a pivotal role in the post-Dalai Lama scenario.
Clearly, the Karmapa’s escape has caused embarrassment to the CTA, especially the Dalai Lama, for he has been vehemently defending the Karmapa’s authenticity and credentials. It is an embarrassment for the government as well, because the decision to revoke travel restrictions on him by the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS) in 2000 was taken only recently — possibly in spite of intelligence agencies cautioning against it.
Not surprisingly, both New Delhi and Dharamsala tried their best to get him back. They sent a number of special emissaries to convince him to return.
As regards what may have triggered the escape, the Karmapa made some stunning revelation in a message through video telecast from the US in March, wherein he said his childhood was manipulated by others; he was denied proper education both in Tibet and India; he virtually lived a prisoner’s life in the Gyuto monastery. He claimed that his own Karmapa sect was torn into rival factions and internal strife. In addition, pressures were brought to bear on him to play a political role against his wish. He confessed to his inability to meet the obligation of the Karmapa title as he never had any high “qualities and realisations” of being the 17th Karmapa, and hence, he desired to “give up” and live an “ordinary life”.
The fact that he had to webcast on his “troubled life” from the US set the alarm bells ringing. Initially, the Karmapa cited his concurrent medical problem as reason for his prolonged stay and denied any “insidious plans”.
The Karmapa’s escape and confession comes at a critical juncture, on the heels of Xi Jinping becoming the lifetime President; the declining interest on the Tibetan issue in the Western world, as well as in India; and the ageing of the Dalai Lama.
The Karmapa shared his feelings with humility and honesty. Yet, he wasn’t clear about what he intended to do in the future except for subtle hints. First, he fears he may not get a fair deal if he returns to India in terms of movement. Second, he will have to confront stiff competition from a rival Karmapa. Third, sources say he was disappointed over multiple hindrances to get suitable land for his Tsurphu headquarters in India. In fact, this, besides the ban on Rumtek, may have been the key sticking point. In a belated attempt to woo him back, the top security panel — CCS — in March this year allowed him to visit Sikkim, except the Rumtek monastery. Sources say he was finally offered a plot in Dwarka, New Delhi, at the cost of Rs 22 crore an acre.
Against all these odds, the Karmapa might be weighing the option of seeking asylum in the US, so he could travel freely to China and elsewhere.
Anyhow, he would rather play the waiting game from outside where he has a larger audience with a huge network of followers. Possibly, he may be trying to buy land in the US to set up the Karmapa seat in exile.
To be sure, his escape provides propaganda fodder to China — look, what India does to Tibetan lamas!
If the rumours are to be believed, the Karmapa may also opt for returning to Tsurphu monastery. Last year he talked about his desire to visit Tibet to meet his parents.
All in all, there is little possibility of Karmapa returning to India. The assumption that high Tibetan lamas offer a degree of strategic depth to India in the Tibetan plateau vis-à-vis China is misplaced. On the contrary, the Chinese may already be acquiring a reverse strategic depth in India.
The argument that various sects of Tibetan Buddhism and their lamas of Kagyu, Geyluk, Sakya, Nyingma, etc., control the Indian Himalayan borderland is only a myth. Sectarian affiliations across India’s borderland with Tibet have nothing to do their historical and political loyalties towards India. As such, any undue keenness for India to seek high-stake bidding for the Tibetan lamas will remain an exercise in futility.
A former envoy and expert on Trans-Himalayan affairs
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/the-flight-of-a-monk/625891.html

Dalai Lama wants Tibet to be part of China

August 7, 2018

Dalai Lama says returning to China is better for Tibetans-What do rangzen (Tibet Independence fighters) people fighting for Tibet’s freedom do now??? Have we wasted our time?

Suddenly the Dalai Lama keeps insisting he wants to be a part of China. How about all the tens of millions of dollars in money and so much time and resource poured into the Free Tibet movement for 57 years in exile. Is that all wasted? Is that all down the drain? How can the Dalai Lama turn around on us like that?

If Dalai Lama returns to Tibet/China, then he is telling the world China is good for Tibetans and we Tibetans want to be a part of China. Is that correct? So Dalai Lama is telling the world that Tibet is a part of China? After so many years of saying we want independence and our country was eaten and now Dalai Lama is sending what message to the world?

How will India feel after hosting the Dalai Lama for so many years? – This one minute video shows the Dalai Lama August 2018 saying he feels Tibet should be a part of China! -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xLKINuIrtE

Dalai Lama wants Tibet to be part of China

August 8, 2018

Dalai Lama says returning to China is better for Tibetans-What do rangzen (Tibet Independence fighters) people fighting for Tibet’s freedom do now??? Have we wasted our time?

How will India feel after hosting the Dalai Lama for so many years? – This one minute video shows the Dalai Lama August 2018 saying he feels Tibet should be a part of China!

http://video.dorjeshugden.com/comment-videos/comment-1533732491.mp4

Yoezer

August 8, 2018

While the government of Nepal has framed a policy to tighten the noose around non-governmental organisations, they have welcomed 30 Chinese NGOs to enter the country. These NGOs will penetrate the country’s social sector at the grassroots level. This is the first time such a large number of Chinese NGOs have entered Nepal at one time. Nepal is increasingly open to Chinese influence, a sign that ties between both countries are strengthening, while India’s influence is being reduced. The time has passed for India’s monopoly to remain uninterrupted in Nepal as opportunities to engage with China are being welcomed.

30 Chinese NGOs all set to work in Nepal
REWATI SAPKOTA
Kathmandu, July 30
At a time when the government has framed a policy to tighten the noose around non-governmental organisations, 30 Chinese NGOs have entered Nepal to penetrate the country’s social sector and the grassroots.
The Social Welfare Council Nepal and China NGO Network for International Exchanges, an umbrella body of Chinese NGOs, have signed a memorandum of understanding to enable Chinese NGOs to work in Nepal. The agreement was signed yesterday between SWCN Member Secretary Dilli Prasad Bhatt and CNIE General Secretary Zhu Rui in the presence of Minister of Women, Children and Senior Citizen Tham Maya Thapa and Chinese Deputy Minister of External Affairs Wang Yajun.
The agreement has paved the way for the first batch of 30 Chinese NGOs to work in Nepal for a period of three years. Their contract will be extended based on the consent of SWCN and CNIE. Representatives of these 30 Chinese NGOs were also present during yesterday’s signing ceremony. They have agreed to work in partnership with local NGOs to implement their programmes and projects.
The Chinese NGOs are eyeing areas such as livelihood, healthcare, education, skill-based training, community development and disaster management. This is the first time such a large number of Chinese NGOs has entered Nepal at one time. The Chinese assistance so far in Nepal has largely been limited to development of infrastructure projects. But the entry of these NGOs indicates China is keen on making its presence felt in Nepal’s social sector and the grassroots, which, till date, have remained domains of the West and countries such as Japan and India.
The MoU signed between SWCN and CNIE states that Chinese NGOs will be mobilised for ‘the benefit of needy Nepalis and to enhance ties between China and Nepal through people-to-people support programmes’.
“The Chinese NGOs will abide by the law of Nepal in its entirety while carrying out development cooperation in Nepal,” says the MoU, adding, “Chinese NGOs will submit programmes to the SWCN to carry out development activities in partnership with Nepali NGOs and SWCN in line with plans and policies of the government of Nepal.”
The MoU was signed at a time when the government has drafted the National Integrity Policy to limit activities of NGOs and INGOs, as some of them were found ‘trying to break communal harmony and proselytising Nepalis’. There were also concerns that high administrative cost of many NGOs and INGOs was preventing money from reaching the real beneficiaries. The policy clearly states that NGOs and INGOs cannot spend more than specified amount under administrative and consultant headings. They will also be barred from working against Nepal’s interests, culture and communal harmony and conducting activities to promote their religious, social or other agenda, adds the policy.
Around 48,000 NGOs are currently registered in Nepal, of which only 1,600 have been receiving funds from INGOs, as per SWCN. The SWCN has directed INGOs and NGOs to spend 60 per cent of the budget to generate tangible results, while the remaining can be used to cover administrative costs and organise training, meetings and seminars.
https://thehimalayantimes.com/nepal/30-chinese-ngos-all-set-to-work-in-nepal/

Jampa Lhundup

August 8, 2018

The Nikkei Asian Review is a highly reputable news platform. They are not tabloid in any sense of the word. What they publish is reputable and thoroughly reliable. They mention clearly in an article published August 7, 2018 that the Dalai Lama has a terminal illness. The Prime Minister of India knowing this is now conciliatory towards China. He understands that the Dalai Lama cannot be used as a pawn in irritating China any further. Negotiations are progressing that after the passing of Dalai Lama, his government in-exile will close. The end.

India uses rumor of Dalai Lama’s ill health to mend China ties
If Tibetan exile flow is stemmed, Beijing might compromise on territorial claim
YUJI KURONUMA, Nikkei staff writer
August 07, 2018 17:02 JST
DHARAMSALA — Rumors are flying around in this northern Indian city, home to the Tibetan government-in-exile, that the 14th Dalai Lama is suffering from terminal cancer.
With Tibetan exiles deeply worried about the 83-year-old religious leader, the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been using the situation to take a more conciliatory approach to China. Modi also seems to be lowering the standing of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Word that the Dalai Lama may be in serious condition has quietly spread. “I have heard that His Holiness is not well,” said Migmar Chodon, a 49-year-old housewife in Dharamsala. “Though I don’t know well about it, I am worried.”
A 27-year-old restaurant employee in the city said, “I have read somewhere that His Holiness is unwell.”
In 1959, Tibetan people rose in revolt in Lhasa, Tibet, which had been occupied by China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army, and the 14th Dalai Lama fled to India. At least 130,000 Tibetans later left their homeland. At present, 85,000 Tibetans live in India, about 8,000 of them in Dharamsala, which hosts the Tibetan government-in-exile and a temple where the 14th Dalai Lama lives.
Rumors about the Dalai Lama suffering from poor health come frequently. The latest one arose in June, when an Indian media company reported that the Dalai Lama was in the “last stage of prostate cancer.” The Dalai Lama’s doctor and the government-in-exile immediately denied the news, and people have tried to remain calm. “I want to believe the words of the doctor,” the restaurant worker said.
The Indian government thinks the terminal cancer report is credible. A government source said “the prostate cancer has spread to his lymph nodes” and that “his life would not be so long” now.
In the past two years, the Dalai Lama has received treatment at a hospital in the U.S. People close to the Dalai Lama worry that word of this was leaked by U.S. authorities. Now the Dalai Lama “will be going to Switzerland for radiotherapy in the month of August,” the source said.
India is using rumors that the Dalai Lama is in poor health to build a more conciliatory relationship with China. In April, during an informal summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan, China, Modi tried to portray the India-China relationship as improved.
During the meeting, “Modi apprised President Xi of the Dalai Lama’s health and the Indian position on Tibet after his death,” a government source said. “This information from Modi took Xi by surprise, and the two discussed the issue for a long time at the Wuhan summit.”
When the leaders met in 2015 and 2016, they informally discussed a proposal for India to stop accepting new Tibetan exiles after the death of the Dalai Lama in return for China withdrawing its territorial claim on some parts of northern India.
For humanitarian, strategic and other reasons, India has been accepting Tibetan exiles for nearly 60 years. Tibet has been something of a buffer zone between the world’s two most populous countries since shortly after India’s independence in 1947. However, China has strengthened its grip on the Tibet Autonomous Region, and in 2017 new exiles numbered 57, a sharp drop from over 2,000 a decade earlier.
With Tibet’s strategic value waning, India has moderated its stance.
At the behest of the Indian government, the Tibetan government-in-exile last year changed the English name for its sikyong from “prime minister” to “president.” Geshe Lhakdor, director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives and for years an interpreter for the 14th Dalai Lama, said the new term denotes the leader of an organization, rather than the leader of a country.
The Indian government is also encouraging Tibetan exiles to acquire Indian citizenship.
A successor to the 14th Dalai Lama will be installed when a person believed to be his reincarnation is found, or will be appointed under a new system, like nomination.
The 15th Dalai Lama will then lead the Tibetan Buddhist world. However, it will be difficult for the successor to take the place of the 14th Dalai Lama, who has international influence as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and is the protector of Tibetan exiles.
The buildings that house the government-in-exile and the temple which is home to the 14th Dalai Lama sit atop a mountain. At the foot of this mountain is the Tibetan Reception Center that Tibetan exiles first visit for registration. It is quiet these days, and very much unoccupied.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-Relations/India-uses-rumor-of-Dalai-Lama-s-ill-health-to-mend-China-ties

Ayana

August 9, 2018

Why doesn’t the United States and its allies end Refugee Status for the useless Tibetans? They have been refugees for 60 years now and don’t tell me they still cannot get their lives back in order?

Tibetans really know how to put on a good show and use people, take their money and do nothing in return.

Trump and Allies Seek End to Refugee Status for Millions of Palestinians
In internal emails, Jared Kushner advocated a “sincere effort to disrupt” the U.N.’s relief agency for Palestinians.
BY COLUM LYNCH, ROBBIE GRAMER | AUGUST 3, 2018, 2:12 PM
Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, has quietly been trying to do away with the U.N. relief agency that has provided food and essential services to millions of Palestinian refugees for decades, according to internal emails obtained by Foreign Policy.
His initiative is part of a broader push by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress to strip these Palestinians of their refugee status in the region and take their issue off the table in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, according to both American and Palestinian officials. At least two bills now making their way through Congress address the issue.
Kushner, whom Trump has charged with solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been reluctant to speak publicly about any aspect of his Middle East diplomacy. A peace plan he’s been working on with other U.S. officials for some 18 months has been one of Washington’s most closely held documents.
But his position on the refugee issue and his animus toward the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is evident in internal emails written by Kushner and others earlier this year.
“It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA,” Kushner wrote about the agency in one of those emails, dated Jan. 11 and addressed to several other senior officials, including Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt.
“This [agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace,” he wrote.
The United States has helped fund UNRWA since it was formed in 1949 to provide relief for Palestinians displaced from their homes following the establishment of the State of Israel and ensuing international war. Previous administrations have viewed the agency as a critical contributor to stability in the region.
But many Israel supporters in the United States today see UNRWA as part of an international infrastructure that has artificially kept the refugee issue alive and kindled hopes among the exiled Palestinians that they might someday return home—a possibility Israel flatly rules out.
Critics of the agency point in particular to its policy of granting refugee status not just to those who fled Mandatory Palestine 70 years ago but to their descendants as well—accounting that puts the refugee population at around 5 million, nearly one-third of whom live in camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza.
By trying to unwind UNRWA, the Trump administration appears ready to reset the terms of the Palestinian refugee issue in Israel’s favor—as it did on another key issue in December, when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
In the same January email, Kushner wrote: “Our goal can’t be to keep things stable and as they are. … Sometimes you have to strategically risk breaking things in order to get there.”
Kushner raised the refugee issue with officials in Jordan during a visit to the region in June, along with Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt. According to Palestinian officials, he pressed the Jordan to strip its more than 2 million registered Palestinians of their refugee status so that UNRWA would no longer need to operate there.
“[Kushner said] the resettlement has to take place in the host countries and these governments can do the job that UNRWA was doing,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
She said the Trump administration wanted rich Arab Gulf states to cover the costs Jordan might incur in the process.
“They want to take a really irresponsible, dangerous decision and the whole region will suffer,” Ashrawi said.
Saeb Erekat, the Palestinians’ chief negotiator, told reporters in June that Kushner’s delegation had said it was ready to stop funding UNRWA altogether and instead direct the money—$300 million annually—to Jordan and other countries that host Palestinian refugees.
“All this is actually aimed at liquidating the issue of the Palestinian refugees,” hesaid.
The White House declined to comment on the record for this story. A senior executive branch official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said U.S. policy regarding the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee program “has been under frequent evaluation and internal discussion. The administration will announce its policy in due course.”
Jordanian officials in New York and Washington did not respond to queries about the initiative.
Kushner and Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, both proposed ending funding for UNRWA back in January. But the State Department, the Pentagon, and the U.S. intelligence community all opposed the idea, fearing in part that it could fuel violence in the region.
The following week, the State Department announced that that United States would cut the first $125 million installment of its annual payment to UNRWA by more than half, to $60 million.
“UNRWA has been threatening us for six months that if they don’t get a check they will close schools. Nothing has happened,” Kushner wrote in the same email.
State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said at the time that the U.S. had no intention of eliminating funding for Palestinian refugees, and that it was taking time to explore ways to reform UNRWA and to convince other countries to help Washington shoulder the financial burden of aiding the Palestinians.
But the following day, Victoria Coates, a senior advisor to Greenblatt, sent an email to the White House’s national security staff indicating that the White House was mulling a way to eliminate the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees.
“UNRWA should come up with a plan to unwind itself and become part of the UNHCR by the time its charter comes up again in 2019,” Coates wrote.
She noted that the proposal was one of a number of “spitball ideas that I’ve had that are also informed by some thoughts I’ve picked up from Jared, Jason and Nikki.”
Other ideas included a suggestion that the U.N. relief agency be asked to operate on a month-to-month budget and devise “a plan to remove all anti-Semitism from educational materials.”
The ideas seemed to track closely with proposals Israel has been making for some time.
“We believe that UNRWA needs to pass from the world as it is an organization that advocates politically against Israel and perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem,” said Elad Strohmayer, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
Strohmayer said that Palestinians are the only population that is able to transfer its refugee status down through generations.
The claim, though long advanced by Israel, is not entirely true.
In an internal report from 2015, the State Department noted that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees “recognizes descendants of refugees as refugees for purposes of their operations.” The report, which was recently declassified, said the descendants of Afghan, Bhutanese, Burmese, Somali, and Tibetan refugees are all recognized by the U.N. as refugees themselves.
Of the roughly 700,000 original Palestinian refugees, only a few tens of thousands are still alive, according to estimates.
The push to deny the status to most Palestinians refugees is also gaining traction in Congress.
Last week, Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado, introduced a bill that would limit the United States to assisting only the original refugees. Most savings in U.N. contributions would be directed to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United States’ principal international development agency. But USAID is currently constrained by the Taylor Force Act, which restricts the provision of humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian Authority until it ends a policy of providing aid to families of fallen terrorists.
“Instead of resettling Palestinian refugees displaced as a result of the Arab-Israeli Conflict of 1948, UNRWA provides aid to those they define as Palestinian refugees until there is a solution they deem acceptable to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Lamborn’s bill states.
“This policy does not help resettle the refugees from 1948 but instead maintains a refugee population in perpetuity.”
A congressional aide familiar with the legislation said its intent isn’t to gut UNRWA funding, but redirect assistance to descendants through USAID.
“The people that are suffering should still get assistance, but through appropriately defined humanitarian channels and aid programs,” the aide said.
Similarly, Sen. James Lankford, (R-Okla.), has drafted legislation that would redirect U.S. funding away from UNRWA and to other local and international agencies.
The bill, which has not yet officially been introduced, would require the U.S. secretary of state certify by 2020 that the United Nations has ended its recognition of Palestinian descendants as refugees.
“The United Nations should provide assistance to the Palestinians in a way that makes clear that the United Nations does not recognize the vast majority of Palestinians currently registered by UNRWA as refugees deserving refugee status,” reads a draft obtained by Foreign Policy.
Previous U.S. administrations have maintained that the vast majority of Palestinian refugees will ultimately have to be absorbed in a new Palestinian state or naturalized in the countries that have hosted them for generations.
But the fate of the refugee issue was expected to be agreed to as part of a comprehensive peace pact that resulted in the establishment of a Palestinian state.
“It’s very clear that the overarching goal here is to eliminate the Palestinian refugees as an issue by defining them out of existence,” said Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.
“This isn’t going to make peace any easier. It’s going to make it harder.”
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/03/trump-palestinians-israel-refugees-unrwaand-allies-seek-end-to-refugee-status-for-millions-of-palestinians-united-nations-relief-and-works-agency-unrwa-israel-palestine-peace-plan-jared-kushner-greenb/

Lhakpa Dhendup

August 10, 2018

What will the all the people around the world and in Tibet do now? Dalai Lama says he is happy that Tibet is a part of China and should remain a part of China. So many Tibetans self-immolated for Tibet to be independent and now Dalai Lama did a 360 degree turn and says he wants to go back to Tibet and China and Tibet should be a part of China. So unbelievable. So many are angry and disappointed.

Tibetans ready to be part of China: Dalai Lama
Organised by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the event was a part of “Thank You India – 2018″ held by the Tibetan community across India to mark 60 years of its exile in the country.
Indo-Asian News Service
Bengaluru
Tibetans are ready to be a part of China if guaranteed full rights to preserve their culture, the Dalai Lama said on Friday.
“Tibetans are not asking for independence. We are okay with remaining with the People’s Republic of China, provided we have full rights to preserve our culture,” the 83-year-old spiritual leader said at “Thank You Karnataka” event here in the city.
Organised by the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the event was a part of “Thank You India – 2018″ held by the Tibetan community across India to mark 60 years of its exile in the country.
“Several of Chinese citizens practicing Buddhism are keen on Tibetan Buddhism as it is considered scientific,” the Nobel laureate said.
Born in Taktser hamlet in northeastern Tibet, the Dalai Lama was recognized at the age of two as the reincarnation of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso. He fled to India from Tibet after a failed uprising against the Chinese rule in 1959.
China annexed Tibet in 1950, forcing thousands of Tibetans, including monks, to flee the mountain country and settle in India as refugees.
Since then, India has been home to over 100,000 Tibetans majorly settled in Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh among other states.
https://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/india/tibetans-ready-to-be-part-of-china-dalai-lama/293109.html

Dalai Lama should set things right

August 12, 2018

Dear Dalai Lama,

Since you started the cruel ban against the 350 year Dorje Shugden practice, how has it benefit your Tibetan society and Buddhism in the world? Things have become worse and most educated Tibetans can see this. They don’t speak out not because they don’t see your ban as wrong, but you instill fear in them and not respect. It is like fear of a dictator. I am sorry to say so. Everyone is divided. There is no harmony. Before your ban there was more harmony and unity.

By enacting the ban, you split the monasteries, split so many families, split regions in Tibet apart, split your disciples from you, split your own gurus from you, split Tibetan Buddhism apart. You have created so much disharmony.

It is not democratic what you have done to ban a religion within your community. You always talk of tolerance and acceptance and democracy and yet you do not accept and tolerate something different from your beliefs. When people practice Dorje Shugden you ostracize them, ban them from seeing you, ban them from using Tibetan facilities. You know you have done that. There are videos that capture your speech and prove this point. You even had people expelled from monasteries just because they practice Dorje Shugden. Some of the monks you expelled have been in the monastery for over 40 years. Many older monks shed tears because of this.

Many young educated Tibetans lost confidence in you as they saw the damage the Dorje Shugden ban created and they lose hope. Many have become free thinkers. They reject what you have done. So many people in the west left Buddhism because of the confusion you created with this ban against Dorje Shugden which is immoral.

You could of had millions of people who practice Dorje Shugden to support, love and follow you, but you scared them away. They are hurt and very disappointed. They loved you and respected you deeply before the ban. It has been 60 years and you have failed to get Tibet back. Your biggest failure is not getting Tibet back after 57 years in exile. Now you are begging China to allow you to return to Tibet to the disappointment of thousands of people who fought for a free Tibet believing in you. So many self-immolated for a free Tibet and now you want Tibet to be a part of China with no referendum from Tibetans. Just like a dictator, you decide on your own. It was your government and you that lost Tibet in the first place. Your policies and style of doing things do not benefit Tibet and Buddhism. You have been the sole ruler of Tibet your whole life and you still have not gotten our country of Tibet back for us. Our families and us are separated. Yet you create more pain by creating a ban to further divide people. Please have compassion.

No other Buddhist leader has banned or condemned any religion except for you. It looks very bad. You are a Nobel laureate and this is not fitting of a laureate. You should unite people and not separate them by religious differences.

You said Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi did not do right to the Rohingya people in Myanmar due to religious differences, but you are doing the same thing to the Shugden Buddhists within your own society. There is a parallel in this. You separate the Shugden Buddhists from the others in Tibetan society.

You have lost so many people who would have loved and supported you. You have lost so much support around the world. The Shugden Buddhists who love you number in the millions. When you are fast losing support from governments and private people, it will not do you well to lose more.

After you are passed away in the future, the rift you created between the Dorje Shugden and non-Dorje Shugden people will remain for a while and that will be your legacy. Disharmony. You will be remembered for this. Not as a hero but a disharmony creator.

Dorje Shugden will spread and further grow, but you will be no more as you are a human. No one wishes you bad and in fact we hope you have a long and healthy life, but we have lost so much hope and have so much despair because of you. All the hundreds of Dorje Shugden lamas, tulkus and geshes are maturing and there are hundreds of Dorje Shugden monasteries in Tibet who will not give up Dorje Shugden. You have made a mistake. These hundreds of teachers and teachers to be will spread Dorje Shugden further in the future.

The gurus that gave us Dorje Shugden as a spiritual practice and you have called these holy gurus wrong and they are mistaken in giving us Dorje Shugden. How can you insult our gurus whom we respect so much? If they can be wrong, then you can be wrong. Then all gurus can be wrong. So no one needs to listen to any guru? You have created this trend. It is not healthy. Your own gurus practiced Dorje Shugden their whole lives. Your own gurus were exemplary and highly learned.

Dalai Lama you have created so much pain with this ban against so many people due to religion. You are ageing fast. Are you going to do anything about it or stay stubborn, hard and un-moving. You show a smile and preach peace and harmony wherever you go. But will you do the same to your own people? Please rectify the wrong you have done. Please before it is too late. You can create harmony again or you can pass away in the future with this legacy of peace. May you live long and think carefully and admit what was a mistake in having this unethical ban against Dorje Shugden religion.

Ojas

August 14, 2018

Supreme Court of India JUSTICE Mr. MARKANDEY KATJU (RETD) writes that Tibet is much better under the Chinese than it was under the lamas who only wanted to make the populace slaves. It was feudal and it will never return to the backwardness again.

Time has come to acknowledge that Tibet has vastly improved under Chinese rule
JUSTICE MARKANDEY KATJU (RETD) | 12 August, 2018
From a terribly poor state hinged on a feudal system, Tibet has modernised and grows faster than the rest of China
This article has been prompted by Jyoti Malhotra’s article in ThePrint ‘Tibetan government quietly changed its PM’s designation. India won’t be unhappy about it‘.
China’s annexation of Tibet in 1959, ousting the Dalai Lama, had attracted it worldwide criticism. The Dalai Lama fled and was granted asylum in India, where he set up a government-in-exile with its headquarters in Dharamshala.
The Chinese claim Tibet on the grounds that it has been part of the country since the Yuan dynasty of the 13th century, which is disputed by the government-in-exile. But let us leave this that matter aside.
The more important question is whether Chinese rule has benefited Tibet.
The answer is that it undoubtedly has. As the Reuters’ Ben Blanchard writes: “Today Tibet is richer and more developed than it has ever been, its people healthier, more literate, better dressed and fed”.
Although Ben goes on to argue that this development masks “a deep sense of unhappiness among many Tibetans”, I will disagree. How can anyone be unhappy if s/he is healthier, better fed and better clothed?
Under the rule of the Dalai Lamas (Buddhist priests), the people of Tibet were terribly poor, almost entirely illiterate, and lived like feudal serfs.
Today, Tibet presents a totally different picture. The illiteracy rate in Tibet has gone down from 95 per cent in the 1950s to 42 per cent in 2000. It has modern schools, universities, engineering and medical colleges, modern hospitals, freeways, supermarkets, fast food restaurants, mobile stores and apartment buildings. The capital Lhasa is like any other modern city.
While the economic growth in the rest of China has slowed down to about 7 per cent, Tibet has had a 10 per cent growth rate in the last two decades.
Tibet has huge mineral wealth, which was only awaiting Chinese technology to be tapped. Nowadays, it has numerous hydro and solar power plants and industries running with Chinese help.
Tibetan literature is flourishing, contrary to claims that the Chinese want to crush Tibetan culture.
Of course, now the lamas cannot treat their people as slaves.
The so-called ‘government-in-exile’, of which Lobsang Sangay claims to be the President, is a fake organisation, funded by foreign countries. They only want to restore the feudal Tibet, ruled by the reactionary lamas, something which will never happen.
The writer is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India
https://theprint.in/opinion/time-has-come-to-acknowledge-that-tibet-has-vastly-improved-under-chinese-rule/97172/

Vardaniya

August 20, 2018

The cracks in Tibetan society are starting to show, and it is now coming to the attention of local Indians who have all but identified the Tibetan leadership as the source of the divisions. According to this author, disunity amongst the Tibetans is now creating problems for Indian law enforcement agencies, and this disunity may culminate in young Tibetans holding silent grudges against their host country. It is incredible that after six decades of generosity from India, Indians are now facing the very real possibility Tibetans can be ungrateful towards India. The Tibetan leadership totally failed to impart positive values upon their exiled community, like gratitude for those kindest to them and the need to repay these kindnesses with real, tangible results. It’s also very unlikely that the Tibetan leadership will now start to do this, after six decades of failing to do so. Indians need to realise this, and see that there is no benefit for their nation to align themselves with the Tibetan leadership, and there never will be.
Tibetan disunity not in India’s interest
John S. Shilshi
Updated: August 7, 2018, 11:00 AM
India is home to the Dalai Lama and an estimated 120,000 Tibetan refugees. Though this humanitarian gesture on India’s part comes at the cost of risking New Delhi’s relations with China, India has never wavered in ensuring that Tibetans live with dignity and respect. Notified settlements across the country were made available so that they can live as independently as possible and practice Tibetan religion and culture. They are also allowed to establish centres of higher learning in Tibetan Buddhism. As a result, several reputed Buddhist institutes came up in Karnataka, and in the Indian Himalayan belt. In what may be termed as a gesture well reciprocated, and because of the respect and influence His Holiness the Dalai Lama commands, the Tibetan diaspora also lived as a peaceful community, rarely creating problems for India’s law enforcement agencies.
The situation, however, changed from 2000 onwards when unity amongst Tibetans suffered some setback due to developments like the Karmapa succession controversy and the controversy over worshiping of Dorje Shugden. In a unique case of politics getting the better of religion, two senior monks of the Karma kargyue sect of Tibetan Buddhism, Tai Situ Rinpoche and late Shamar Rinpoche, developed serious differences after the demise of Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, the 16th Karmapa, in 1981. This animosity ultimately led to emergence of two 17th Karmapa candidates in the early nineties. While Tai Situ Rinpoche identified and recognised UghyanThinley Dorje, late Shamar Rinpoche anointed Thinley Thaye Dorje as his Karmapa candidate. Enthronement of their respective protégés at the Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, the supreme seat of the Karma Kargue linage, being their primary objective, both started indulging in activities monks normally are expected to, and bitterness spewed against each other.
The bitter rivalry assumed a new dimension when UghyenThinley Dorje suddenly appeared in India in January 2000. The competition became fiercer and hectic political lobbying, never known in the history of Tibetan Buddhism on Indian soil, became common place. Apart from pulling strings at their disposal in Sikkim as well as in the power corridors of New Delhi, these senior monks spat against each other with allegations and counter allegations, widening the gaps between their supporters. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, choosing to favour one of the candidates—a decision many Tibet watchers felt was ill-timed—had also limited possible scope of rapprochement. Hence, the Karma Kargyue followers are now vertically divided, while the camps are dragged into a long drawn legal battle.
Another development that unfortunately split the Tibetans is the controversy over Shugden worshipping, which again is an internal matter of the Gelugpa sect, to which the Dalai Lama belongs. It erupted as a result of the Dalai Lama urging Tibetans to refrain from worshiping Dorje Shugden, a deity believed to be a protector, according to Tibetan legend. Shugden practitioners, who felt offended by the call, describe it as an attack on freedom of religion, a right, which Dalai Lama himself tirelessly fought for. On the other hand, die hard Dalai Lama followers perceived the questioning of the decision as one challenging the wisdom of the Dalai Lama and mounted massive pressure on Dorje Shugden practitioners to relent, with some even demolishing the statues of the deity. The rivalry ultimately led to split in two Gelug monasteries in Karnataka, and Serpom and Shar Garden monasteries in Bylakupe and Mundgod respectively came under the control of Shugden followers. The bitterness associated with the split is exemplified by the fact that till today, members of these monasteries are treated as some sort of outcasts by the others. Thus, for the first time, the Tibetan diaspora in India gave birth to sections opposed to the Dalai Lama, with spillover effects in Tibet and elsewhere.
For India, with a fragile internal security profile, a divided Tibetan population on its soil is not good news. It has several long-term implications. It is common knowledge that China considers Dalai Lama as a secessionist, one plotting to divide their country. The latter’s claim of “all that Tibetans were asking for, was a status of genuine autonomy within the Constitution of the Peoples’ Republic of China”, had fallen into deaf ears. China also considers him as someone who plays to the Indian tune to tickle China. Therefore, at a time when China has successfully shrunk the Dalai Lama’s space internationally, India continuing to extend the usual space for him is viewed as complicity. Sharp reaction from China when he was allowed to visit Arunachal Pradesh in April 2017, is a recent example. Such being the delicate nature of India-China relations on matters and issues concerning Tibetans, India can hardly afford to ignore the division within the diaspora. Past experience of dubious elements from Tibet having succeeded in infiltrating the Central Tibetan Administration, including the security wing, should be a warning.
It is also time India understands the reason behind Tibetans seeking Indian passports, despite an existing arrangement for issue of Identity Certificates, which is passport equivalent. Some had even successfully taken recourse to legal remedy on the issue, and left the government of India red-faced. These changing moods should not be viewed as desires by Tibetans to become Indian citizens. They are triggered by the pathetic state of affairs associated with issuing of Identity Certificates, where delays in most cases are anything between six months to one year. Early streamlining of the process will drastically reduce their desire to hold Indian passport. It will also remove the wrongly perceived notion among some educated Tibetan youth, that the cumbersome process was a ploy by India to confine them in this country. While India should not shy from requesting the Dalai Lama to use his good offices to end all differences within the community in the interest of India’s internal security, it will also be necessary to ensure that young Tibetans do not nurse a silent grudge against the very country they called their second home.
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/opinion/tibetan-disunity-not-indias-interest

Maya

August 24, 2018

Although the Dalai Lama has offered an apology, the Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) still expressed their disappointment over his controversial comment on Nehru, the Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC). Dalai Lama called Nehru self-centred.

The Congress said Dalai Lama being a foreigner should shun and refrain from interfering in the internal as well as external affairs of India.

Dalai Lama should abstain from imparting controversial information to students: Arunachal Congress
Dalai Lama should know that a spiritual leader like him is shouldering great expectation: APCC
| DAMIEN LEPCHA | ITANAGAR | August 12, 2018 9:58 pm
disappointment over the recent statement made by Tibetan Spiritual Leader the 14th Dalai Lama in which he called Jawaharlal Nehru, the former Prime Minister of India as “self-centered” and the one responsible for parting India and Pakistan.
“Although Dalai Lama expressed regret over his controversial comment, the APCC is extremely thwarted by it. A Tibetan spiritual leader calling names to an Indian leader who sweated most to keep him and his followers safe from Chinese aggression is simply not acceptable. Today, India is home to lakhs of Tibetan refugees who are living in 37 settlements and 70 scattered communities across different states of India,” APCC vice-president Minkir Lollen said in a statement on Sunday.
“Dalai Lama may have forgotten that India provided a beam of light and hope to Tibetans remaining in Chinese-dominated Tibet and in the neighbouring Chinese provinces politically cut off from the Tibetan heart land. All these happened only because India has great leaders like Gandhi and Nehru who took the responsibility of social burden to shelter thousands of persecuted Tibetans then in 1959,” Lollen added.
Minkir said Dalai Lama should know that a spiritual leader like him is shouldering great expectation, hope and trust of millions on record and the same are watching his contribution towards the mankind.
“In such circumstances, Dalai Lama should abstain from imparting partial and controversial information to the students who are the torch bearer of the nation,” the Congress said.
Further stating that the statement of the spiritual leader could be a politically motivated one and made with an effort to approach Prime Minister Narendra Modi for survival of his continuation in the country, the Congress said Dalai Lama being a foreigner should shun and refrain from interfering in the internal as well as external affairs of India.
https://nenow.in/north-east-news/dalai-lama-should-abstain-from-imparting-controversial-information.html

Thupten Lungrig

September 20, 2018

His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s speeches create headlines nowadays not because they bring wisdom and enlightening thoughts, but rather unpleasant feelings and disapprovals. From the sexist quip in 2015, his gaffe on Nehru, and his recent comment about Europe that caused him to be labelled as White Supremacist, there is now one more to add onto the list. In order to be congenial and consistent with the image of a Nobel Peace Laureate, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been issuing statements, especially about Islam, such as redefining Jihad as an interior struggle.

More and more people are expressing their doubt, with some even directly pointing out the mistakes in the Dalai Lama’s speech. This pattern of speech of strong statements that ends up in denial or apology seems consistent with his advice concerning the practice of Dorje Shugden. With the reasons behind the ban shifted so much over time, perhaps there really was never any validity behind the ban at all.

TWO VERSIONS OF THE DALAI LAMA
Should one be truthful about Islam when making pronouncements about it?
September 20, 2018 Hugh Fitzgerald
There seem to be two Dalai Lamas when it comes to Islam.
The first Dalai Lama, like that other expert on Islam Pope Francis, knows that authentic Islam is opposed to terrorism, that Islam is all about peace, and that any Muslim who engages in violence for that very reason can not be a “genuine Muslim.”
Here he is, for example, in a speech in Strasbourg in September 2016:
“‘Any person who wants to indulge in violence is no longer a genuine Buddhist or genuine Muslim,’ says Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.
He argued that differentiating fundamentalism from Islam itself was a key way to stop violence and strengthen integration.
The Dalai Lama has said there is no such thing as a “Muslim terrorist” as anyone who partakes in violent activities is not a “genuine” Muslim.
Speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in France at the end of last week, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader suggested the phrase was a contradiction in terms and condemned those who commit violent acts in the name of religion.
The Dalai Lama asserted that all religions were united by the values of love, compassion, tolerance and more. He argued that with this common ground the world would be able to build peace.
Where and when have Muslims demonstrated “the values of love, compassion, tolerance…” to non-Muslims?
“Buddhist terrorist. Muslim terrorist. That wording is wrong,” he said. “Any person who wants to indulge in violence is no longer a genuine Buddhist or genuine Muslim, because it is a Muslim teaching that once you are involved in bloodshed, actually you are no longer a genuine practitioner of Islam.”
Where does it say anywhere in the Qur’an or the hadith that “once you are involved in bloodshed, actually you are no longer a genuine practitioner of Islam”? Nowhere. Quite the reverse: throughout the Qur’an, in 109 Jihad verses, Muslims are commanded to engage in bloodshed. In the Hadith, Muhammad, the Perfect Man and Model of Conduct — and therefore to be emulated — takes part in 27 military campaigns, orders the torture and killing of Kinana of Khaybar, directly engages in the decapitation of 600-900 bound prisoners of the Banu Qurayza, and is delighted to receive news of the murders of people who had mocked or opposed him, including Asma bint Marwan, Abu ‘Afak, and Ka’b bin al-Ashraf. Wasn’t this warrior and killer “involved in bloodshed”? And who, if not Muhammad, was a “genuine practitioner of Islam”?
“All major religious traditions carry the same message: a message of love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment, self-discipline – all religious traditions.”
This isn’t true. There is no “message of love” for non-Muslims in Islam. Rather, Muslims are told to make war until all non-Muslims are subdued, and offered only the options of death, conversion to Islam, or enduring the permanent status of dhimmi, with its many onerous conditions. Where is the “love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment,” etc. in any of this? Indeed, Muslims are taught to not even take “Christians and Jews as friends, for they are friends only with each other.” They are taught, too, according to a famous hadith, that they may smile at Infidels, as long as they curse them in their hearts. None of this suggests the “love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance” that the Dalai Lama insists are the essence of Islam’s message.
“He argued that differentiating between fundamentalism and Islam was a key way to stop violence and strengthen integration: ‘On that level, we can build a genuine harmony, on the basis of mutual respect, mutual learning, mutual admiration”.
“Mutual respect, mutual learning, meaning admiration”? Is he unfamiliar with the Qur’anic verse that describes Muslims as the “best of peoples” (3:110) while the non-Muslims are described as “the most vile of creatures” (98:6)? How can Muslims admire those whom they have been told not to take even as friends, how can they admire those they are told are “the most vile of creatures”? It’s not possible.
On what basis does the Dalai Lama make such remarks? It’s amazing to think that at the age of 83, with all the time in the world to have engaged in the study of other religions, he still has managed to avoid learning what Islam is all about. Or is it that he hopes that somehow, by dint of ignoring the essence of Islam, he can somehow affect the attitudes and behavior of Muslims? He is foolish to keep making pronouncements on Islam without having read, and studied, the Qur’an and Hadith. And he is both foolish and wicked if he has indeed read and studied the canonical Islamic texts, and decided that nonetheless he will ignore their content and attempt, using his great and quite undeserved prestige, to convince us that the authentic Islam — the same authentic Islam that Pope Francis refers to — has nothing to do with violence or terrorism.
In September 2014, at a meeting in India, the Dalai Lama made the usual claim of the apologists that Jihad is a Spiritual Struggle:
“Jihad combats inner destructive emotions. Everybody carries jihad in their hearts, including me,” the Dalai Lama said.
This claim that Jihad is an interior struggle comes from a supposed hadith about Muhammad returning from the “Lesser Jihad” of warfare to the “Greater Jihad” of his own spiritual struggle. No one, by the way, has been able to find the source of this supposed hadith.
The Dalai Lama said Indian Muslims can offer lessons on Shia-Sunni harmony as Shias feel safer in India than in Pakistan.
Why would that be? It’s because the Hindu majority, which controls the police and security services, keep violence down between the sects, without favoring either side. In Pakistan, on the other hand, the Sunni majority does nothing to protect the Shi’a from Sunni attacks, such as those carried out by the anti-Shi’a terrorist group Sipah-e-Sahaba. The only “lesson” to be learned has nothing to do with Indian Muslims being somehow different, but rather, with the fact that non-Muslims in India are better able to hold the intra-Muslim violence in check.
As far back as 2008, the Dalai Lama said what lots of Western leaders have been saying about Islam since 2001. He said “it was wrong, it was entirely unfair, to call Islam a violent religion.” But six years later, in September 2014, at a conference of religious leaders he had organized, the Dalai Lama seemed to modify his earlier brisk dismissal of any connection between Islam and violence, when he said that “killing in the name of faith is terrible.” The implication was clear: some people [Muslims] were killing in the name of faith, and while that was “terrible,” it was no longer “entirely unfair” to link some Muslims to such violence. Everyone understood what adherents he must have intended to set straight about their own faith. At least he recognized that some people “claimed” to be acting violently in accordance with the texts and teachings of their religion, even if those people were “wrong.”
Then he showed he was still determined to give Islam a pass, adding in the same speech that “jihad was being misused and the term connotes fighting one’s own impurities.” No, that’s what the apologists maintain. He clearly had been reading too much Karen Armstrong. And still worse was to follow: “Jihad combats inner destructive emotions. Everybody carries jihad in their hearts, including me.” Apparently Muslims over the past 1400 years have everywhere misunderstood the true nature of jihad, which only very tangentially might have to do with fighting the Infidels, failing to understand that it describes an individual’s struggle to be a better person.
Is it possible that the Dalai Lama really does not know by this point, in 2018, how Muslims understand the word “jihad” and how they historically have acted when commanded to wage “jihad,” does not know with what murderous meaning the Qur’an endows that word? Perhaps he really doesn’t know. Or perhaps he thinks that if he (and others) repeat this jihad-as-inner-struggle mantra, that many Muslims will in time convince themselves that that is really what “jihad” is about. But why would they listen to the Dalai Lama and not their own clerics? Other world leaders have described Islam in similarly misleading terms — Barack Obama (“the true peaceful nature of Islam”), Tony Blair (the Islamic State’s ideology is “based in a complete perversion of the proper faith of Islam”), Pope Francis (“Islam is a religion of peace”) – whenever they pontificated about Islam, a faith which they so maddeningly presume to know so much about. Muslim behavior did not change as a result. In the case of Obama, Blair and the Pope, one has the feeling that they really believe the nonsense they are spouting. With the Dalai Lama, who has been exposed to Islam in Asia for more than a half-century, his real beliefs are still not clear.
The prominent Syrian cleric Ramadan al-Buti complained that when Westerners describe Islam as a “religion of peace,” they are not trying to defend Islam, but to trick Muslims into believing it is peaceful, and then – horribile dictu — into giving up the real doctrine of jihad for that ludicrous “inner struggle” business. Of course, Islam is about violence and war, said the truth-telling Ramadan Al-Buti. But why believe a prominent Muslim cleric about Islam, when there are so many non-Muslims, like the loquacious Dalai Lama, ready to tell both us, and Muslims, that the faith is all about peace and tolerance?
At the same gathering, the Dalai Lama insisted that “India is the only country where different religions have been able to co-exist.” This was a bizarre remark, but the Dalai Lama is given to strange remarks. First, could he have forgotten that all over the Western world, people of different confessions have coexisted peacefully? Or is it that he just doesn’t want to say anything in praise of the West, because that would invite comparison with how Muslim states treat non-Muslims (very badly) compared to how the non-Muslim West treats Muslims (very generously)? Second, when he speaks about “coexistence” in India, hasn’t he overlooked the centuries of Muslim conquest and Muslim rule? In all his decades in India — he has lived there since 1959 — didn’t he learn the history of India, the country that gave him refuge, about the mass murder of tens of millions of Hindus, about the virtual disappearance of Buddhism, about the forced conversion of many millions — Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, more? Has he forgotten Mahmoud of Ghazni, and Aurangzeb, and all the other murderous Muslims in India’s history? Does any of that support his claim that India is “the only country where different religions…have been able to co-exist”? Coexistence, of a kind, only became possible in India once the British had deposed the Mughal rulers, and then, since 1947, Hindus dominated — and that domination is what allowed for coexistence.
The Dalai Lama has claimed that Indian Muslims can offer lessons on Shia-Sunni harmony, as Shias feel safer in India than in Pakistan. He’s right – they do feel safer in India. But he’s wrong about the reason. It’s not that Indian Muslims can “offer lessons” on Sunni-Shia harmony to Muslims in Pakistan, which might hold out hope of lessening intra-Islamic hostilities. The sects remain just as ideologically at odds in India as in Pakistan. But the secret of tamping down the intra-Islamic violence is that the Indian government, in which Hindus predominate, can use force to suppress such intra-Islamic violence. It’s not that the Muslims in India are a different, less violent breed than their coreligionists in Pakistan, but that in India, the violence can be better held in check. In Pakistan, the Sunni government does little to reign in anti-Shi’a violence.
The next time the Dalai Lama mentioned Islam was at a gathering of his followers from 27 countries on January 31, 2015. He said that “though terrorism has emerged as a global problem,” it should not be associated with Islam, as “Muslims were neither terrorist nor its sponsorer [sic].” No one had the bad taste to remind him of the nearly 25,000 terrorist attacks (now there have been 33,500) carried out by Muslims since 9/11; no one at the meeting had the nerve to jog his memory with mention of Charlie Hebdo, Hyper Cacher, Bataclan, Magnanville, Nice, London buses and metro stations, Lee Rigby, the Atocha station in Madrid, Theo van Gogh’s murder in Amsterdam, or the attacks at Fort Hood, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Bernardino, Chattanooga, Orlando. No reporter asked him about Muhammad’s claim that “I have been made victorious through terror.”
Like Pope Francis, who now says “equating Islam with violence is wrong” and just this past summer insisted again, astoundingly, that “all religions want peace,” the Dalai Lama is a “spiritual leader” who doesn’t want to call into conceivable question other faiths. All religions are good; no religion, rightly understood, can possibly countenance violence. Repeat ad libitum.
The Dalai Lama offers treacly pieties, insisting that no religion could possibly be responsible for any violence or aggression by its adherents. His worldview cannot accommodate the real Islam, and its violent adherents who make the news every day, so he has chosen to believe in a sanitized, even imaginary, version of the faith.
Yet the Dalai Lama has also shown, very occasionally, signs of justified worry. He has noticed that the migrants flowing into Europe have been a source of great anxiety and disruption, and this past May, in an interview with the Frankfurter Algemeiner Zeitung, he surprised many when he forthrightly said: “Europe, for example Germany, cannot [that is, must not] become an Arab country. Germany is Germany.” And “from a moral point of view too, I think the refugees should only be admitted temporarily. The goal should be that they return and help rebuild their countries.”
This seemed to be a welcome volte-face from the pollyannish pronouncements of the past. Of course, one should notice that he said Germany “cannot become an Arab country,” rather than saying that Germany “cannot become a Muslim country.” It’s as if he still couldn’t bring himself to recognize that it is the faith of Islam, and not the ethnicity of some of its Believers, that makes Muslims permanently hostile to non-Muslims, and unable to integrate into their societies, that is, into Europe. But he certainly appeared to be suggesting that the migrants, almost all of them Muslims, should not be allowed to remain and transform the countries which had so generously admitted them. Rather, those migrants should eventually be sent back to “help rebuild their countries.” It was a welcome display of common sense. He appeared to recognize the danger of letting “Arab” (Muslim) migrants stay, and that a policy of sending them home after they had acquired skills useful in rebuilding their own countries, was morally justified. Some might say — you and I, for example — that it would have been morally justified to send them right back, without that training: the Western world is not some gigantic training center, and it owes the world’s Muslims exactly nothing.
But then, in a visit to Paris in September 2016, the Dalai Lama called for entering into talks – a “dialogue”? – with the Islamic State so as to “end bloodshed in Syria and Iraq,” which showed a complete misunderstanding of the Islamic State. Its fighters are determined to carry on without letup against those it considers — not just Christians and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists, but also Shi’ites and even insufficiently-fanatical Muslims — to be Infidels. Not dialogue, but total destruction, is the only way to deal with the Islamic State. But even that will not end the threat, because the ideology on which ISIS rests cannot be destroyed, which means that new recruits to the cause, and new Islamic States, will keep appearing. The Dalai Lama’s notion of a “dialogue” with ISIS is a fantasy solution, by someone who doesn’t know what else to suggest.
In the same speech, the Dalai Lama also repeated that “religion is never a justification for killing,” when Islam – see the Qur’an, see the Hadith – overflows with justifications for the killing of insubmissive Infidels. And the Muslim killers always justify their killings, being careful to cite chapter and verse, from the Qur’an, or to adduce evidence from the life of Muhammad as recorded in the Hadith, that lend textual support to their every act.
Did the Dalai Lama see the killers of Drummer Rigby holding up their Qur’ans and quoting from it? Did he see the many leaders of the Islamic State, such as Al-Baghdadi, or propagandists for Al Qaeda, like Al-Awlaki, similarly quoting from the Qur’an to justify their attacks? Perhaps he managed to miss it all.
In August 2018, the Dalai Lama appealed to Muslims in India to make efforts to reduce Shia-Sunni conflicts that are prevalent in some other countries and asserted that Islam is a religion of peace. He lamented the bloodshed over denominational differences, which he said should be avoided as Islam teaches compassion and harmony.
The Dalai Lama has recently been speaking out about Sunni-Shi’a clashes, deploring them even as he offers no explanation as to why “peaceful” Muslims seem so often to engage in violence.
Addressing an event in August 2018 at the Goa Institute of Management, the 14th Dalai Lama stressed the need for international brotherhood and harmony.
“Muslims across the globe follow the same Quran and also pray five times a day. However, they are killing each other owing to differences between the sects like Shia and Sunni,” he said.
The Dalai Lama said, “I was in Ladakh. I suggested to Ladakhi Muslims that Indian Muslims should make some efforts to reduce the conflict between Shias and Sunnis.”
He told the audience that a national conference of Muslims would be organised in the coming months, which will be followed by a similar convention at the international level.
He said that modern India has remained by and large peaceful due to over 1000-year-old history of religious harmony.
The Dalai Lama’s claim is bizarre. Modern India did not “remain by and large peaceful” during the last 1000 years. It was the scene of bloody conquests by invading Muslims, who killed many millions, and once they had conquered and subjugated the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist populations, they killed tens of millions more. The Indian historian K. S. Lal has written that 70-80 million non-Muslims in India were killed by Muslim armies. Tens of thousands of Hindu and Buddhist temples were destroyed. How can the Dalai Lama be unaware of this long history? After the Communist Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1959, he fled to India, where he, and tens of thousands of his followers, were given permanent refuge. Has he not, in all the decades he has lived in India, had the slightest interest in studying the history of the country that gave him refuge, and the effect of the Muslim conquests on Hindus and Buddhists? Is he unaware that Buddhism, his own religion, was virtually wiped out in India by the Muslim conquerors? Can he, the spiritual head of one branch of Buddhism, really be unaware of what happened to Buddhism in the land of its birthplace? Wasn’t he interested enough to find out?
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271371/two-versions-dalai-lama-hugh-fitzgerald

Tracy

October 23, 2018

In Gelug, there is the Dorje Shugden ban; in Kagyu, there is the 2 Karmapas issue. Both issues have divided the already small Tibetan community into different fractions. But CTA has no intention to try to resolve the issues at all. They seem to be ok with the division within the Tibetan community.

It is sad that the Karmapa is being used by the CTA as a political tool. The Tibetan leadership always uses religious heads to control the Tibetans. If the Dalai Lama enters into clear light, this Karmapa will become the next lama used by them to control their people.

The Karmapa must be very upset and unhappy with the situation he is in right now, that is why he released this video. I feel he really wants to do spiritual works but he is forced to get involved in politics by the CTA. The CTA doesn’t show respect to the Sangha members. Instead of providing them a good education, they groom a high lama into a political tool for them gain power and control.

Palmo

November 7, 2018

It is all CTA’s fault for creating so much of problems for Ogyen Trinley Dorje. Karmapa is depressed because he is not able to carry out his duty as a spiritual guide and it is very hard for him to spread Dharma in the way that he wanted to. Being a high lama, all they want to do is to benefit other by spreading the holy teachings of Lord Buddha.

However, due to political reasons, CTA has been controlling what Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje can and cannot do. He has no freedom to decide on his own. When a high lama cannot do what he is supposed to do which is spread the dharma he will be discouraged to continue on this life.

CTA is also the main culprit for creating the situation of having 2 Karmapas. It is none of their business for the Karma Kagyu sect to find and recognise their throne holder. However, they decided to interfere and end up splitting the whole Karma Kagyu school into 2 with them recognising their own Karmapa.

This is how CTA controls all sects of Buddhism by divide and conquer. This is very bad.

TSHERING

December 17, 2018

Karmapa Khenno will overcome every obsticles and His Holiness has no desire to get involved into politics hence, they should not impose it onto him. In a wishful thinking if HH Karma could return to Rumtek Monastery but due to the political rift caused by our own people has made this dream impossible. Truly grateful to His Holiness Karmapa for making this very brave announcement about his meeting with His Holiness Karmapa Thaye Dorjee.

Drolma

January 2, 2019

The Karmapa was already very unhappy with how the CTA was controlling him and he was not able to receive the education that he expected. All this while, he has been living in a Gelug monastery, not even a Kagyu monastery. Why does the CTA and the Dalai Lama want to keep Karmapa so close to them?

The CTA must have planned it long ago for Karmapa to take over the Dalai Lama’s position when the Dalai Lama passed away. The CTA does not have the power over the Tibetans, only religious head like the Dalai Lama or Karmapa has the capability to command the people. Since the CTA does not have the Panchen Lama, the next best choice will be the Karmapa.

The Karmapa lineage has never been involved in politics before. It is not surprising that the current Karmapa feels so unhappy living under the control of the CTA and forced to get involved in the political scene. The Karmapa is rebellious in the sense that he ran away from the CTA, he had a meeting with the other Karmapa and he did not go back to India to participate in the conference as promised. This may also be a sign that the CTA is losing its power and will collapse soon.

Anonymous

January 3, 2019

I wonder how did the Dalai Lama feel when the Karmapa announced he has a Dominican passport and will not travel back to India with the IC issued by India. The Dalai Lama and the CTA have spent so much energy and time to groom and try to control the Karmapa, but he still managed to ‘escape’ from them like how he escaped from China.

Will China approach the Karmapa to let him go back to Tibet to spread Dharma? The Karmapa is not a very political person, China might want him to fulfill his role as a spiritual head in China to give pure Dharma in Tibetans which will result in peace and harmony. If that happens, China will have 2 of the most influential Tibetan lamas on their side.

The Karmapa was supposed to be the successor of the Dalai Lama to command the Tibetans and be the next marketing tool for the CTA to make money. Now that he is gone, how is the CTA going to survive? No one in the CTA has the charisma like the Dalai Lama or the Karmapa to command people. The CTA’s position is quite shaky now.

Tracy

June 26, 2019

The Dalai Lama and the CTA were trying to groom the Karmapa as the successor of the Dalai Lama but they failed. The Karmapa was fed up with how selfish and irresponsible the Tibetan leadership is that is why he ran away. He didn’t want to become the puppet. Besides, it has never been his wish to be a secular leader.

Maybe the Dalai Lama also realised that the current model of how the CTA runs the Tibetan community will not work in the long run that is why he chooses not to have a real successor and keep confusing people? Perhaps he does not want the CTA to make use of high lamas for their personal interest anymore.

The CTA claims they are a democratic government but yet they continue to run government like a dictatorship. No one can challenge people in the CTA. For example, Lobsang Sangay didn’t address his money and sex scandal, he just pretends nothing has happened. He continues his role as the president of the Tibetan in the exile community without shame.

Dennis

October 3, 2019

What the17th Karmapa revealed in his message is shocking. Everyone thought he was happy India under the care of the CTA, but he was not. He came to India because many great Buddhist masters of Kagyu lineage were in India, he was very determined to learn the Dharma and then fulfill his duty to preserve and spread the lineage.

Unfortunately, the CTA is only using him as a political puppet. They want to groom him to become the successor of the 14th Dalai Lama. He did not have his own residence, he had to stay in a Gelug monastery.

Finally, he ran away from the CTA, took the citizenship of the Republic of Dominica and never went back to India. I must say he made a very wise choice. At least now he has the freedom to go around the world to give teachings without having to get the approval from the CTA or the Indian government.

Anonymous

October 4, 2019

It is so sad to see how degenerated the CTA has become. Tibetan Buddhism has become a commercial item for them to make money. High lamas are labeled with a price tag. No one in the CTA cares if the lineage is being protected and preserved.

It has been many years since the CTA starting to sell Dharma. For each public talk by the Dalai Lama overseas, the CTA gets money. They know people are after the fame of the high lamas, not beause CTA is somebody.

Now that the Dalai Lama is old, they have to have someone of a similar status to do what the Dalai Lama has been doing. Hence, the grooming of the 17th Karmapa. Unfortunately, the 17th Karmapa does not want to be part of the dirty political game, he ran away for a better life so just so he can teach and preserve the lineage. He has made a right choice!

Pema

October 13, 2019

This is the result when spiritual being control by politic. These two elements cannot be mixed because they are running on a different motivation. I believe Ogyen Trinley is a great lama and telling the truth. Due to the control from CTA it doesn’t serve Ogyen Trinley right and he can’t perform what he has to do to benefit people. This video is a big slap to CTA and an eye-opening to the world on how bad CTA control their people. Obviously there is no democracy, religious freedom and human rights under CTA.

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The ramifications of Karmapa’s shocking special message

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The ramifications of Karmapa’s shocking special message

By: Ashok Rao

When will it end?

Special Message from the Karmapa – English

Special Message from the Karmapa – Tibetan

Special Message from the Karmapa – Chinese

Transcript: Special Message from the Karmapa

Video: Dalai lama made mistake said Shamar Rinpoche

Robert Thurman’s Letter to the Shamarpa

His Eminence Shamarpa’s Open Letter to Robert Thurman

Share this article

Latest from this Category

Kensur Rinpoche Lobsang Phende to Give Chakrasamvara Initiation and Commentary in April 2023

Grand Prayer Festival to celebrate 25 years of the Dorje Shugden Society

Der Dalai Lama Gibt Zu Dass Er Sich In Bezug Auf Dorje Shugden Geirrt Hat

Share this article

Appreciation Letters

Popular Today

News in Pictures

On the Forums

Sign up for our mailing list.

Dorje ShugdenThe Illustrated Story

Good Reads

Must Watch

Our Visitors

Category

Contemplate This

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The Illustrated Story