friendofthetruth
New Statesman
ENACTING THE PERSECUTION
At least a thousand monks have been expelled from their monasteries –Ganden and Sera. Such forced schism is huge and constitutes the ultimate religious transgression: to divide the Sangha. But the lay people suffer too, defenseless in the midst of fanaticized communities. After the Winter 2008 events, the campaign of forced signatures and oaths is being extended to non-monks in the remotest parts of the world where you can find Tibetans, pervading the whole of the monastic and lay communities, from Southern India to Darjeeling, from Sikkim to Queens, New York.
In a restaurant that I know well, in Jackson Heights, NY, they posted the photos of the monks who are asking for religious freedom as if they were wanted criminals. The hate language included, of course, the accusation of receiving money from the Chinese. Those poor monks, working 12 hours chopping vegetables or being bus boys in restaurants or doing construction work … They were among the first exiled when the persecution started in 1996, now they don’t have any other place to hide. If this is happening in New York, people should try to imagine what is going on in India and Tibet, where even the kids of practitioners are victims: when they are not expelled from schools, they are being purposely isolated and not talked to, as if they were pariahs.
Accustomed to his leadership, disoriented by exile, most Tibetans have chosen to stick to their Dalai Lama, ignore his failures and accuse others for the loss of their country. So under the Dalai Lama’s instigation, the Dorje Shugden practitioners have become the scapegoat at whom anybody can throw a stone.
The suffering in the fractured Tibetan community and the destroyed Buddhist Sangha is difficult to describe completely because it’s all pervading. Some days ago I was walking the streets of Sunnyside, New York, with a friend, a young Tibetan monk from India. All of a sudden a young lay Tibetan caught up with us and said hello to the monk and they started talking, half in Tibetan half in English. Tibetans usually ask all kinds of questions, and the obvious one this time was where each of them came from. My friend mentioned a name that I didn’t understand, and the other Tibetan said "oh, yeah, in the settlement I come from, we also have that monastery". After a little while this young guy reached his destination and said good bye. Then I asked the monk: "I never heard of your monastery having a branch in Southern India, what were you talking about?" And he answered, "Well, I didn’t tell him the true name; my monastery is well known for being faithful to Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche and the Protector, so if I had said its true name to him, he would have felt so much hatred." I wish other people could have seen the monk’s face. He remained calm, but a subtle compassion mixed with sadness pervaded his features, an expression that said something like 'such waste, such misfortune'. It was obvious that he was protecting the mind of the other person with his innocent lie. But nothing could protect him from the situation.
A couple from India were also visiting the United States at the beginning of the summer. They told us about some small misfortunes that they had encountered since people discovered that they were the relatives of a famous Gelugpa Lama's reincarnation –friends who stopped visiting them or calling them on the phone. These people, though, are professionals holding doctorates and have jobs and activities that have nothing to do with Tibetan issues. Most Tibetans do not have such a good situation. They entirely depend on their own Tibetan community; if they are ostracized they become like the living dead, they don’t find friends nor support anywhere.
Some friends of mine are sending money to help an old monk that takes care of a small Buddhist shrine somewhere in India. This monk lives alone. The last time they sent money they didn’t have any answer from him. Some days ago they finally were able to talk to him on the phone. He said that he had received something from the bank, but he didn’t know what it was, because the Tibetan friend that usually helped him with these matters had stopped helping and even visiting him. The local Tibetan Association, following the rules of the Dalai Lama, had had a signature campaign, and the friend of the monk had to swear and sign against the Dorje Shugden practitioners, so he could not go back to help him because the old monk had not forsaken his devotion to the Protector. Now I wonder: how many old monks have been abandoned by their own people because of the actions of the Dalai Lama? And worst of all: how many were forced to forsake their religious faith in order not to be abandoned by their people?
I have only told some of the stories I personally know. But the pain out there is incalculable. People are denied travel documents because of their faith. Monks coming from Tibet to India looking for higher Buddhist education are forbidden to reach a monastery if they do not sign giving up their faith in the Protector. Children have been expelled from schools in India because their parents are Dorje Shugden followers. Some of these kids end up being sent to Nepal for them to be able to receive an education. In the Tibetan settlements the practitioners can see their photos nailed to trees or street posts denouncing them as Chinese spies, because they have the courage of not giving up the practices that their Lamas gave them or that they traditionally received from their families. The monks followers of their faith have been denied access to their monastery’s kitchens and food provisions –even though the funds for the monk’s food came, in a specific case, directly from the donation of a renowned Lama who until his recent demise never ceased being a Protector’s practitioner– they are forbidden to enter the Tibetan stores in the neighboring settlements and forced to go far away to shop for basic daily needs in Indian stores. If another Tibetan sees them he crosses the street. In one of the big monasteries a gigantic wall was built in order that they will not be seen by others. They have been called unclean by the Tibetan Government –that only follows orders from the Dalai Lama. Other names and insults are not worth mentioning.
THE UNHOLY CRUSADE EXPORTED TO THE REST OF THE WORLD
There is another angle to this already sad story. The Dalai Lama has been exporting his unholy crusade to the rest of the world. It’s painful to see how Western Buddhists belonging to Dharma Centers fanaticized in favor of the Tibetan leader are following the Dalai Lama's lead, slandering the practitioners of the Ganden tradition just because they try to keep intact the teachings and transmissions of their Gurus.
Just think how would you like it that your students or your family receive emails or phone calls stating that you are a demon worshipper, or a bad person who opposes the kind Dalai Lama.
I find it shocking that Western Buddhists would give up our best values of the "other" Enlightenment, the one which gave us our sense of human rights, by which we were able to end slavery and so many awful things that humans did to humans up until not so long ago. In our Western world, we have really made progress in this area, and I've been thinking that it’s a shame and a pity that Westerners would so easily accompany the Dalai Lama in the discrimination, slandering and persecution of others because of their religious beliefs. This is a very serious matter.
If I were a politician, a political leader, an educator, I would be very worried. The basic principles that our founding fathers defended, the Dalai Lama is transgressing, and there are people perfectly aware of this that are defending him. Says TIME magazine, commenting on the aggression that the Dorje Shugden practitioners suffered in the streets of New York from the Dalai Lama’s followers: "Most scholars e-mailed for this story were hesitant to line up behind the Shugdenpas, partly … because many are themselves deeply invested in the Dalai Lama, and partly because of the whiff of fundamentalism and recklessness that clings to the sect." And TIME forgets to mention that "fundamentalism" (recklessness is a new one) is the main accusation that the Dalai Lama invented to justify his religious persecution.
If scholars adopt as their own the arguments used by the Dalai Lama, what recourse is left to the victims? And those scholars, discussing at length a mystical figure like Dorje Shugden, as if it belonged to their field, did they ever realize that it does not matter the nature of the deity, it does not matter if their supporters are fundamentalists or not (and they are not) … nobody has the right to do to them what the Dalai Lama is doing? How come they, the intelligent ones, the knowledgeable ones, the ones who should know better, find justifications for the abuse, the segregation? I would very much like that people interested not only in human rights but in the educational side of human rights were able to investigate this matter and react. This poison is so malignant ... it might be almost impossible to find an antidote if things are left as they are right now.
Friendoftruth
28 August 2008 at 12:48
NOT A BAN? THEN WHY NOT SOLVE THIS MISUNDERSTANDING HIMSELF?
But the Dalai Lama is saying that there never was a ban against Dorje Shugden, only his good advice against an evil spirit or against spirit worshipping. This is a startling, nakedly untrue statement.
On the other hand, it could be answered to him, and it has been answered, that if such tremendous misunderstanding had taken place, his compassionate obvious action should be to publicly state that there is no such ban against Dorje Shugden and that the Dorje Shugden practitioners are as worthy of respect as any other Buddhist practitioner, and he should also publicly demand that they be restored to their original dignity, both as religious people and as Tibetan citizens. But he does not want to do this, such an easy way to stop such immense suffering.
I apologize to whoever follows his teachings, I apologize for him, for his using the holy words of Lord Buddha and at the same time doing the opposite of what these words teach. Do not believe the Dalai Lama, but please do not doubt of the supreme goodness of the holy Dharma.
MOTIVATIONS
What I said at the beginning about how sad it is for a Buddhist to have to expose the Dalai Lama is not rethorical. It took me years to start writing. I’ve seen a close friend literally die because of this issue, a few years after the ban on the Protector. I chose to stop my thoughts after that, because I feared to follow her. Our hearts were broken and we were not Tibetans, I don’t want to imagine the pain of Tibetans. Still today there is a tremendous sadness, because of course we love him. The Dalai Lama is for us like a beloved uncle or elder brother gone crazy. One cannot stop loving him.
But one has to stop what he is doing because it’s wrong.
Then there are the millions of our fellow human brothers and sisters, most of them non-Buddhists, that might only have him as the model of what goodness is. To destroy the god of their innocent Pantheon is just awful, it breaks the heart of a decent person, not to mention what it does to someone who has adopted the Mahayana ideal.
But one has to stop what he is doing because it’s wrong.
After years of mental silence I came back to the issue. He made me come back. The Dalai Lama. What he did to our Sangha last winter is beyond description. So here is the first motivation for exposing him: we have to protect the persecuted monks. Now we know that the Dalai Lama is true to his own word: he said that he wanted to finish what he had started –the destruction of the faithful Gelugpas, the ones who didn’t abandon their Teachers, the ones guilty of preserving the transmissions that their Lamas gave them, the ones guilty of keeping the sacred bond with their Gurus– and he is doing it, he is destroying them.
Now the schism has taken place and the monks are separated, but even though the land where they live belongs to India, we know that the Dalai Lama is not satisfied, he wants to erase them from the Tibetan world, so as soon as the world forgets a little about the demonstrations, he is going to send again his people to expel them even from their now segregated quarters.
So one has to stop what he is doing because it’s wrong and he is hurting living beings.
FUNDAMENTALISTS?
THE ULTIMATE DORJE SHUGDEN PEOPLE
And then look: here are our Lamas. You probably don’t know who was Pabongka Deche Nyingpo, Trijang Dorjechang, Domo Geshe Rinpoche, Zong Rinpoche, Rabten Rinpoche, Khensur Rinpoche Lobsang Tharchin, and all the others. Their hearts were an ocean of love and compassion, of blissful wisdom. They were friends to all beings, to all religions, to all Buddhists. Now the Press and the Academia are repeating the Dalai Lama’s calumny: that he banned the Protector of their lineage because it promotes a sectarian mind, because our greatest Gelugpa Lamas were sectarian.
And people use the "proofs" that the Dalai Lama has handed them, from obscure historic gossip that obviously he is manipulating. He manipulates events that ocurred under our eyes, as I showed above, what credibility can be lent to his version of history? Why don’t they look into what happened in our present time, where every action of those slandered Lamas, the ultimate Dorje Shugden people, contradicted and still contradict the Dalai Lama? Those Dorje Shugden people were his people, the great Lamas who stayed with him in the very difficult first decades of exile, nurturing him and helping him and helping every exiled Tibetan from every one of the Buddhist schools, without the slightest discrimination, with a love and a sense of profound care that should be shown to the world as the true example of what Buddhism is.
The accusation of fundamentalism against them has been conceived to please Western ears. It’s a childish one, if it were not so tragic. As I said before, in Mahayana Buddhism we believe that the Buddha taught many different Dharmas to suit the minds of different levels of practitioners. Because of this it’s extremely important to keep the lineages of instruction and transmission pure, not to mix them, in order that they can serve their purpose for those who need them. This is not only true for the Gelugpas, but for the other sects as well. The refusal of mixing lineages is a protection of diversity among the variegated Buddhist tenets. Where is the fundamentalism in this position?
Those Lamas defamed by their egregious pupil were true living Buddhas, true embodiments of love and compassion. They were the living proofs of the wrongdoings of the Dalai Lama, and like innocent lambs they mostly never answered, following the Lojong rule that one does not defend oneself but leaves whatever victory to others, in order not to disturb their minds.
Those true Princes of Peace are still with us, although most all of them departed to the Pure Lands. They are with us through their precious, infinitely beneficial teachings. This is what the Dalai Lama wants to destroy: our sacred bond with our Gurus, with the ones who taught us what to keep and what to abandon, the ones who are never going to forsake us, all the beings suffering in samsara, so how could we forsake them? If we follow the Dalai Lama’s advice, we loose our connection to the source of all goodness, our Lamas.
But the Dalai Lama has destroyed their good name, their credibility. He says in the famous video of the Swiss television, talking about his and our Gurus: "Yes, wrong, they are wrong!" A lineage of almost 400 hundred years of enlightened beings that have been venerating the Protector Buddha Dorje Shugden is wrong and he, alone, right? This does not stand to reason.
Are our kind Lamas going to go down in history as evil spirit worshippers? No. The world needs to know the truth.
Of course, our enlightened Gurus don’t have the slightest need for our help. So here is the deepest motivation for exposing the Dalai Lama: all the beings in this world of suffering need our Lamas and sooner or later in the infinite round of lives they are going to encounter their teachings. At least that is what we desire, what we hope for. We cannot allow that the momentary imbalance of an individual, just because he is famous and has an endearing smile, destroys the good name of the lineage, the teachings and the Lamas. Many have abandoned already the noble ones because of his calumnies. That is why this has to cease, for the benefit of all beings.
That is why we have to stop the actions of the Dalai Lama.
