Chinese Money
A Possible Counter Strategy
The accusation of someone being on a Chinese payroll is very clever, because it is practically impossible for anyone to prove innocence against it. It is precisely because of these kind of accusations that in the West there is the legal concept of everyone being "innocent until proven guilty". But this is not a legal battle, and there is no due process - this is a fight for the hearts and souls, and the method is apparently mud-slinging. So how to cover from the mud?
It is totally impossible to prove that we, the Shugden practitioners, do not receive money from China. Even if the bank accounts and monetary transactions of all and everyone would be made public, the Mud Slinger would just say that "what about the Swiss bank accounts and the off-shore accounts, what about the hidden money?" This is a very clever method of destroying the credibility of your targets. Communist societies had the concept of "an enemy of the People", or "an enemy of the State", which, once you got "the title", was impossible to shrug off. Concepts like "an enemy to the Tibetan Cause" function similarly. If someone is accused of being a collaborator with the Chinese, then that's it! You lost the game already.
That's why there is no point in starting to argue or prove that we do not receive money fom the Chinese. It simply does not work that way.
The best approach is to simply align ourselves as closely as possible to the HHDL's position on the Tibet Issue! When mud is thrown, how to cover from the mud? By standing beside the thrower!
So if a reporter asks about the allegiations against WSS et.al. receiving money from the China, answers of the following type might be the best strategy:
The Light Hearted
Ooooh, I so wish it would be true that the Chinese Communist Government had finally started to support religious organizations, instead of destroying them, but sadly this is not the case. I don't know why His Holiness thinks otherwise. Maybe His Holiness needs to choose his advisors more thoroughly, since it really should be common knowledge that just about all Buddhists in the West, and especially us Western Shugden practitioners whose religious tradition comes from Tibet, support fully His Holiness in his efforts to gain a cultural and religious autonomy fot Tibet within the China. So to think that we, members of Western Shugden Society, would oppose His Holiness in this issue, if of course non-sense, because just as His Holiness himself, we are neither for the independence of Tibet, nor are we collaborators to the Communists who have been destroying our own religion, but we stand with His Holiness exactly in the middle, hoping and asking for the religious freedom for all Tibetans. But not only inside Tibet, but also outside. That is the whole point of these demonstrations. Religious freedoms must apply also outside Tibet. To demand for the rights to practice Buddhism freely inside Tibet, while denying those very same freedoms outside Tibet, is just hypocrisy.
The Lightly Feisty
Now that is the most curious statement, but I can assure you that we, the Western Shugden practitioners, do not receive any financial support from either the CIA nor the China. It is hard to understand why His Holiness or his advisors feel that way, but maybe it is because as His Holiness had himself received salary from CIA for decades, he now feels that all who he see as opposing his political efforts for Tibet might then in similar vein receive money from the opposing camp, the Chinese. But of course, this is just non-sense, since we support fully His Holiness in his efforts to gain cultural and religious autonomy for Tibet. On this issue, the Tibetan Issue, we totally agree and support His Holiness. These demonstrations are not against the efforts and policy of His Holiness concerning the full cultural and religious freedoms INSIDE Tibet, but against the religious oppression OUTSIDE Tibet, and in this case, it sadly seems that His Holiness is in cohorts with the Chinese in suppressing the religious freedoms, which are, after all, an UN ratified universal human right.
So anyway, I do think that in using this kind of strategy, we might be able to stunt the baseless accusations of us being some kind of Chinese proxy opposing the HHDL in the Tibetan Cause. Also, since the anti-DS camp is divided on the Tibet Issue, using this kind of rhetorics puts us in the same boat as HHDL, thereby making it more difficult for the Pro-Independence anti-DS faction to badmouth us - for after all, we simply support HHDL. And as you can see, the hypocrisy-argument fits nicely, since we only want the same for everybody, instead of just blaming the Chinese for their suppression. And yet, we clearly are not Chinese stooges.
If someone finds this "strategy of close placement" worthwhile to try, or those two rhetoric examples useful, please use freely. You have my blessings.
Harri,
City of Devas (Bangkok)
PS: And please do note, that in the above examples, I did not put the blame squarely on the Caliph, but lightly suggested that the Grand Vizier Iznogoud is no good! ;D (Those of you who are cartoonally challenged and do not know who Iznogoud is, look google. :D )