Hi All,
My message isn't specifically addressed to Guru because I also think that everything has been said about this. I just want to summorize the debate.
I think we can group arguments against the MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS point of view in two different perspectives: religious and politic.
RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVE
The fact that we follow a tibetan Buddism lineage must not hide the fact that we are first of all buddists. And we are buddist following the tibetan lineage of Dje Tsongkhapa, which means that we attach as much importance to each aspect of the teachings of the Buddha included in the three vehicules. Dje Tsongkhapa didn't invent this tradition, he gave a new spin to the thousand old indian buddhist tradition. This is why, for us, the survival of the pure teaching of Dje Tsongkhapa is the most important thing in the world, because this teaching contains everything that one needs to attain the Buddha status and to help other sentient beings to attain the same status. And protesting against the Dorje Shugden ban is a way to protect this pure teaching. This has noting to do with being indian or tibetan or whatever.
Doing this, not only do we protect our own pure teaching and the right to transmit it through a healthy lineage having the freedom to do it openly, but we also make clear that others also have the right to practice their lineage without being persecuted or controlled by outsiders. I will probably hurt your feeling Guru but I think that HH the Dalai Lama is an outsider, even for the Gelugpa order, because he is the head of the government, which means that he is a politic symbol first and, then, a gelugpa monk. The religion must not be controled by the politic peoples, as well as the politic must not be controled by the religious peoples (the ugliest things of the tibetan history have been caused by this confusion). There must be no mix between these two activities. This is why I said that HH the Dalai Lama is an outsider because he has been too much involved in politic matters to be seen as a simple monk. We can say the same thing about the Great Fifth and the Great Thirteenth. Some day, historians will probably call the current Dalai Lama the Great Fourtheenth because he has been so much involved in the politic arena.
This doesn't means that he doesn't have the right to pursue religious activities, indeed he did a lot of teaching, initiations and writing, and nobody complains about this. But when he do that, he is a simple lama, which means that people are free to see him as an emanation of the Buddha if they think that he matchs the criteria to be their spiritual master. But because its image is so important because of his political involvement, at the national and international level, peoples see him as more important than the Ganden Tripa for the Gelugpa order or the Karmapa for the Kagyu order. As Guru said himself, peoples know HH the Dalai Lama, but ignore everything about the Tibet. Why? Because the Dalai Lama is a modern icon, whose preeminence came from the fact that he was the political leader of the Tibet, while being a monk. People love strange things, particularly in the decadent periods. This, plus its personnal charisma, I think, have been the source of the westeners fascination about the Dalai Lama. But this recognition doesn't belong to the spirituality but to star system of the modern world, and, most of all, this popularity doesn't give him, de facto, spiritual autority over the four tibetan buddhist schools. The only autority he have over the different schools come from his temporal autority. Of course, he can, as the Dorje Shugden ban shows, crunch anyone of these traditions.
POLITIC PERSPECTIVE
I use the word "politic" in its broader sense and not in the sense of being a member of a party or whatever.
I think that we, as citizens, have the responsability to denounce any wrong doing by any person or organisation having power over other peoples. And not only regarding the governement of our own country, but also about any government or party misbehaving everywhere in the world. This attitude can be subsumed under what HH the Dalai Lama call "Universal Responsability".
Of course, as buddhists we must face a dilemna because, by denoncing the Dalai Lama power abuses, we give a bad image of the Tibetan Buddism. But, there is two reasons for denoncing anyway in spite of this.
First, one of the most serious problem of the modern world, and, consequently, of HH the Dalai Lama career in this world, is the importance given to the image. Not only are we prisonner of a illusion like world, but we are subjugated by a reflection of this illusion. And this idolatry as never been so strong as in our modern society. So we must fight against this tendancy to give to appearances so much importance at the point that we don't intervene when we see something that will have very bad consequences for the well being of many peoples in this live and in the future lives, today and for the future generations.
Second, the longer and the tighter we will hide the wrong doing of HH the Dalai Lama and of the TGIE, the greater the damages will be once the true will be known. As A friend has said, "Among Catholic practitioners the outrage against their Church was not so much about the misconduct of individuals but about the COVER UP. Because the cover up allows for more victims. Whereas the uncovering of the truth helps preventing more attacks, and be able to help the individuals that misbehaved."
