A look at the other side

[honeydakini]

I've been looking at some of the Dorje Shugden / Dalai Lama videos on YouTube on reading the comments with interest... also checking in on very tibetan forums like phayul where the opinions for Dalai Lama and against Dorje Shugden are very, very strong.

I guess it is easy to just get very frustrated with them and even angry, for the accusations they make against DS practitioners - they say things like all DS practitioners are all from China/ being supported by China / wish to harm the Dalai Lama / are cultists / are receiving money from China to defame the dalai lama and threaten Tibetan independence.

Sometimes, it's just so plain ridiculous that it becomes easier to just ignore them and move on to another video!

However, I have been trying to understand where they are coming and what kind of angst or suffering they may be going through themselves... and therefore, how we might be able to lend support or more understanding to them, and open up more channels of dialogue, respect and harmony.

From what I have gathered, these people - usually Tibetan – really are in a lot of angst about having lost their country and having to face the growing likelihood that they will never get it back.

They do have a lot of faith in the dalai lama and do very much believe what he says and teaches. Remember that this is a culture that is brought up to have a lot of very deeply embedded and natural faith and belief in the lamas, and are not brought up to really question them in the way we do. When the dalai says that DS practice threatens the Tibetan cause and his life, they REALLY DO BELIEVE IT. It is perhaps just quite a simple equation for them where they are probably thinking, “Our lama has already told us this is harmful for our people and his life – so why are people still practicing it?”. It is simplistic perhaps, but this is their truth, their reality. It could be as “simple” for them as it is for us who think “but our lamas have given us this sacred practice, how can I just abandon this commitment?”

These people do seem to find China a very, very huge threat to them (as can be seen by many of their comments on youtube videos). I have met Tibetans who grew up in Tibet with a lot of discrimination and mistreatment by the Chinese, and this painful past is still very raw for them, for sure. That is a reality for them and I think it is not that they are trying to just accuse accuse accuse without grounds, but they maybe just don’t want this side of what Tibetans have experienced to be watered down and forgotten about.

The DS issues becomes very much mixed in with all this as, to them, it is about whether they can get their country back or not, be able to live in their own country without discrimination or not. Perhaps for them, it is about having experienced discrimination and the deep suffering of losing their country/people and seeing DS practice (according to what DL has explained) as something that prolongs and perpetuates this suffering, of themselves having to live in someone else’s country, and of their fellow people who continue experiencing discrimination within their “own” country of Tibet. It could be as “simple” as them looking upon DS practitioners and thinking, “Dalai lama has already said that this practice affects us being able to get back our country. We have suffered so much already so why are you allowing it to continue?”

Taking these points into account, and remembering that for these people, this is their truth and their reality (no matter how illogical / unaligned to Dharma logic and teachings it may seem), how can we work with or even begin to talk to them in a way that would foster more understanding and peace? Dalai Lama and TGIE will maintain a very strong stance, but on the level of practitioner-to-practitioner or even just human-to-human, how can we begin to approach them with more kindness and empathy to build respect and understanding?

[a friend]

This is to dear Honeydakini:

Tibetans perfectly know who the Dorje Shugden people were: our highest and holy Lamas.
Tibetans perfectly know that the Dorje Shugden people were the ones who helped the most when the painful exile took place.
They, the Dorje Shugden people, organized the refugees' camps.
They provided them with everything they could gather for the Tibetan's needs.
They organized the monasteries.
They created the schools for Tibetan children.
They wrote the books for the Tibetan children’s education.
They created Tibet Center.
They went to the West and started the Dharma Centers.
They were in the West long before the Dalai Lama ever set foot there, and prepared the way for him to come over and become a celebrity.
The first activity of the Dalai Lama in the West was in Switzerland where Geshe Rabten, a great Master and great Dorje Shugden practitioner had established a Center. It’s today’s Gonsar Rinpoche’s and Rabten Tulku’s Center, victims of the unceasing slander of the Dalai Lama.

All of this and much much much more was done by the Dorje Shugden practitioners, our great and holy Lamas,  and of course Tibetans know it.
They perfectly know this:  the extreme lack of gratitude of the Dalai Lama towards the Dorje Shugden people, our great and holy Lamas.

So it’s not like they believed the Dalai Lama when he said that the cause of Tibet or the life of the Dalai Lama was threatened by the practice of those who sustained him and helped him and established him in India and in the West. How on earth could they believe such nonsense? Of course they didn’t.

They were coerced into inimity against us by the Dalai Lama and his accomplices. They were impotent victims of the TGIE, entirely enslaved to the Dalai Lama’s whims and to his political and economic power.

So it has been the Tibetan’s choice and it is their responsibility to have yielded to the Dalai Lama’s power. I probably would have done the same, not having mostly anywhere else to go. They chose the Dalai Lama’s capricious and unholy decision against the one who was our highest Lama at the time, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche. Not because they believed what the Dalai Lama was saying but out of coertion. They were coerced by the abuse of power of the Dalai Lama and they were coerced by the fact that Tibetans in India were not under the direct responsibility of the Indian government but under the direct power of the Dalai Lama and his TGIE.

So dearest Honeydakini, your explanation does not stand the test of reality. You please go to the Charitable Society’s website and read carefully every step that they describe. It’s quite succint but amply enough to understand. History is not on the side of the explanation you give, I’m sorry to say.

[Ensapa]

This is to dear Honeydakini:

Tibetans perfectly know who the Dorje Shugden people were: our highest and holy Lamas.
Tibetans perfectly know that the Dorje Shugden people were the ones who helped the most when the painful exile took place.
They, the Dorje Shugden people, organized the refugees' camps.
They provided them with everything they could gather for the Tibetan's needs.
They organized the monasteries.
They created the schools for Tibetan children.
They wrote the books for the Tibetan children’s education.
They created Tibet Center.
They went to the West and started the Dharma Centers.
They were in the West long before the Dalai Lama ever set foot there, and prepared the way for him to come over and become a celebrity.
The first activity of the Dalai Lama in the West was in Switzerland where Geshe Rabten, a great Master and great Dorje Shugden practitioner had established a Center. It’s today’s Gonsar Rinpoche’s and Rabten Tulku’s Center, victims of the unceasing slander of the Dalai Lama.

All of this and much much much more was done by the Dorje Shugden practitioners, our great and holy Lamas,  and of course Tibetans know it.
They perfectly know this:  the extreme lack of gratitude of the Dalai Lama towards the Dorje Shugden people, our great and holy Lamas.

So it’s not like they believed the Dalai Lama when he said that the cause of Tibet or the life of the Dalai Lama was threatened by the practice of those who sustained him and helped him and established him in India and in the West. How on earth could they believe such nonsense? Of course they didn’t.

They were coerced into inimity against us by the Dalai Lama and his accomplices. They were impotent victims of the TGIE, entirely enslaved to the Dalai Lama’s whims and to his political and economic power.

So it has been the Tibetan’s choice and it is their responsibility to have yielded to the Dalai Lama’s power. I probably would have done the same, not having mostly anywhere else to go. They chose the Dalai Lama’s capricious and unholy decision against the one who was our highest Lama at the time, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche. Not because they believed what the Dalai Lama was saying but out of coertion. They were coerced by the abuse of power of the Dalai Lama and they were coerced by the fact that Tibetans in India were not under the direct responsibility of the Indian government but under the direct power of the Dalai Lama and his TGIE.

So dearest Honeydakini, your explanation does not stand the test of reality. You please go to the Charitable Society’s website and read carefully every step that they describe. It’s quite succint but amply enough to understand. History is not on the side of the explanation you give, I’m sorry to say.

I see the contributions that Dorje Shugden practitioners have given to the CTA and Dharamsala, but I really need to disagree with your hardline anti Dalai Lama stance as if we take that route, we will end up being the polar opposite of the Dalai Lama's camp and we will end up no different than them. Why would we want to be our enemy? I find that very weird and counter productive. Besides, denying the contributions of the Dalai Lama to Tibetan Buddhism would be something that everyone else sees as being fanatical and it would just prove the CTA right that Dorje Shugden practitioners is a cult. We need to prove them wrong if we are to lift the ban instead of attacking the Dalai Lama, we should attack the fabricated facts and expose them to what they really are. By demonizing the Dalai Lama, we're just destroying our own credibility as Buddhists in the first place and it makes us no different than the very party that we want to talk about. Being neutral is the way to go and it secures and cements our credibility in our facts, statements and stance. I'm sorry, but I do not wish to support Dorje Shugden practitioners that appear fanatical in this manner as it just destroys the positive image of Dorje Shugden practitioners we of this forum are trying to build.

As for honeydakini's approach, I find that this is the correct way. How else do we know how to counter them if we do not understand them? The Tibetans are very insecure because they do not have a country to call their own. They do not have an identity that they can hang on to now and they feel very threatened and very insignificant, hence the urge to take back tibet. For their country, their identity and sense of belonging, they are wiling to do anything to get it back. when the Dalai Lama declared Dorje Shugden to be counterproductive to the independence of Tibet, needless to say their desperation drove them to extremes on this subject, into what we know today. We should assure them that Dorje Shugden is anything but that and has in fact, assisted the Dalai Lama and CTA many times in the past. Its going to be a long road, but it is possible.