Question:

One of the reasons most quoted in support of the Dalai Lama’s ban on Dorje Shugden is the 1997 murder of the principal of the Buddhist School of Dialectics, Geshe Lobsang Gyatso, along with two of his students. No one has been arrested to date, yet this incident was seized upon by the CTA as the opportunity to defame and criminalize Dorje Shugden practitioners. Is there any substance to the CTA’s allegations?

Answer:

The Answer is extracted from the article: “How the Dalai Lama is destroying a religion, lie by lie” which was written in response to false statements made by Robert Thurman in an article posted in the Huffington Post.

Lies In Robert’s Thurman’s Huffington Post Article

Thurman Lie #1: Dorje Shugden was behind the murder of Geshe Lobsang Gyatso and his associates

The incident that Thurman referred to was the grisly triple murder of Geshe Lobsang Gyatso and two of his assistants on a February night in 1997, in Dharamsala. The Geshe was known to be a harsh critic of anything that did not agree with the Dalai Lama, and made a lot of enemies over the years as the Geshe’s assistant would concede in 2005. The Geshe was however, loyal to the Dalai Lama and his demise did serve the Dalai Lama clique as it provided an excuse for the Dharamsala establishment to reinforce a political gambit it had launched the year before.

Immediately, the murder was pinned on Shugden worshippers without any evidence. The only ‘evidence’ was purportedly a letter from the Secretary of the Dorje Shugden Society in Dharamsala to Geshe Lobsang Gyatso sent a few months prior to the incident, supposedly threatening to kill the Geshe. In a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and sway sentiments against the Shugden community, the letter written in Tibetan was waved by a minister of the Tibetan government in exile (now known as the Central Tibetan Administration, CTA) before the public, claiming it to be the smoking gun that linked the murders to Shugden worshippers.

It was only on closer inspection and when the letter was translated that it became clear the so-called death threat was no more than a firm letter by the Shugden society challenging Geshe Lobsang Gyatso, who had been a fierce critic of Dorje Shugden, to a discussion on the merits and reasons of the religious ban which in fact lacked any theological basis. Helmut Gassner, an established Western Buddhist monk and scholar who had been an interpreter for the Dalai Lama for 17 years said of the incriminating letter:

I could not resist stopping the video [of the government minister waving the letter] to copy the Tibetan text and translate it. It contained no death threat at all, simply an impertinent letter containing a challenge to debate the issue so as to settle the difference. By now I was convinced that something foul was going on. Otherwise, why would Tashi Wangdu [the Tibetan minister] go to such lengths as to show a fake death threat on TV?
- Helmut Gassner
Source: http://www.dorjeshugden.com/articles/HelmutGassner01.pdf

Nevertheless, the false evidence was enough for the CTA to push for the arrest of various leaders of the Shugden religious community in Delhi and illegally imprison them. Despite interrogations by the Indian authorities lasting weeks, not a shred of evidence was produced. Finally, an Indian court in Dharamsala formally quashed all accusations that linked the Dorje Shugden Society to the murders, on the grounds that there was no evidence to support such accusations.

Of all the ‘clear proof’ that circles around the Dalai Lama and CTA claimed they had, they were never presented when called upon. Instead, malicious gossip circulated saying that the murderers had escaped into Tibet where they were being sheltered by the Chinese government, the sworn enemies of the Tibetan people.

The Dorje Shugden Society chronicled their harrowing accounts after being falsely accused by the CTA for the crime, which began with an army of forty Indian police, instigated by the CTA, descending upon five targeted leaders of the Dorje Shugden Society, arresting them in the dark of the night of February 9, 1997 (four days after the triple murder) without any court order, as they were celebrating Tibetan New Year. This episode and a number of other suspicious incidences around that time foretold that a serious campaign was underway to terminate an age-old Buddhist practice that has been at the heart of the Gelugpa tradition.

Thurman and the Dalai Lama go a long way back

Robert Thurman, who has long claimed to be a close friend of the Dalai Lama (despite being the first Western Buddhist monk to disrobe), made an outrageous statement to Newsweek in April 1997 saying,

I think there’s no doubt that Shugden was behind the killings

It has to be asked, on what basis was Thurman making his claim when events that were being played out evidenced the opposite to be the case? And why did Thurman further lay blame on an entire community of innocent monks and laypeople who worshipped Dorje Shugden, if not to seize the moment for some opportunistic sycophancy?

Assuming that the murderers of the Geshe and his associates were Shugden worshippers, Thurman’s statement tarnishing a specific religion is equivalent to saying that Jesus Christ is behind the killings committed by criminals who happen to be of the Christian faith. Thurman did not mean to imply that the murderers may be Shugden practitioners, he said “Shugden was behind the killings”, the precise strand of venom that the Dalai Lama clique needed the world community to swallow.

In the same breath, Thurman went further to say, “It would not be unfair to call Shugdens the Taliban of Tibetan Buddhism,” no doubt as a means to portray Shugden Buddhists as a brutal and dangerous ‘tribe’ at a time when America watched the Taliban regime nervously as it gained power and edged closer to Pakistan, a country on America’s watch list. The damage inflicted on the reputation of Dorje Shugden and his followers was considerable as Thurman was regarded as an American expert on Tibetan Buddhism. (Time Magazine honoured Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, describing him as a “larger than life scholar-activist destined to convey the Dharma, the precious teachings of Siddhartha, from Asia to America.”).

The American, and indeed the English-speaking world public, took what Thurman said to be accurate as there was little rebuttal from the accused Shugden community in Dharamsala. Being mainly monks and exiled people, Shugden practitioners were ill equipped to defend against the enormity of the propaganda attacks on a world scale, even as they faced physical challenges and threats from the CTA within their own exile community. Nearly all media in the western world blindly took the official version of the Shugden story from the CTA and propagated news that incriminated Shugden worshippers in the murders.

The Dalai Lama clique had scored an important victory with the help of Robert Thurman. The Dalai Lama knew that it was totally undemocratic to ban a religion and suppress a community of people based on their religion, especially when he was seeking support from the West against China, accusing the latter of precisely the atrocity he and his government were committing. Therefore the West had to be manipulated into assent for the vicious suppression the Dalai Lama was inflicting on his own people.

Over the months that followed, Dorje Shugden was forcibly outlawed as, for the first time in modern history, a ‘democratic’ nation legislated the stoppage of a religious practice and systematically marginalised its believers, even to the point of refusing them the right to vote. Shugden monks were expelled from the monasteries – the only homes they had, having renounced all worldly pursuits, and lay worshippers went into hiding from their own government and community. In Dharamsala, clear posters forbidding people of Shugden faith to enter shops, government offices and even public hospitals could be seen. All this time, the world was celebrating the Dalai Lama as a man of peace, preaching compassion, love and tolerance around the globe.

In the Huffington Post article, Thurman stated that the Shugden ‘cult continued its campaign at the behest of… the People’s Republic of China’ another lie designed to tag the Shugden community as agents of the Tibetan people’s enemy, China. It is baseless accusations such as these that split the Tibetan community as a whole in a manner that China could not have achieved, in their effort to stymie the Tibetan Cause. Of course, China leveraged on this chasm that the Dalai Lama and Thurman have presented to them.

Read the full article: http://www.dorjeshugden.com/all-articles/the-controversy/how-the-dalai-lama-is-destroying-a-religion-lie-by-lie/

Once a month, a joyful procession of Tibetan refugees – many of them disfigured by frostbite suffered while escaping their homeland over the Himalayas – files into the Dalai Lama’s exile palace at the Indian hill station of Dharamsala. For these visitors, His Holiness is an emanation of the Compassionate Buddha, and his blessing is their reward for having survived the icy Himalayan crossing.

During one audience this summer, a brawny young Tibetan showed a curious lack of enthusiasm about meeting the Dalai Lama. The youth’s attention was focused instead on security in the palace and the layout of the buildings inside. This Tibetan, named Chomphel, was a Chinese spy, Indian police say. His mission may have been to scope out security flaws for a possible attack on the Tibetan religious leader.

As the faithful were busily spinning prayer wheels, Chomphel was seen mapping out the open temple courtyard where the Dalai Lama often conducts ceremonies. The visitor timed the routine of monks who fill the altar butter lamps and sweep the temple, and he watched the movements of Indian police and soldiers around the town. Eventually, Indian undercover agents spotted him sketching details of the army garrison. He was trailed and then last week arrested. Inside a false bottom of his suitcase were maps and other documents relating to the Dalai Lama’s security.

Under questioning, Chomphel allegedly confessed that he was a member of a Chinese army intelligence unit. He’s no ordinary refugee, says police superintendent Kashmir Chand Sadyal. He’s very knowledgeable and quite an expert in several things, including cartography.

Tibetan security officials disclosed that during interrogation, Chomphel said that his superiors had sent him to India to gather intelligence for a further action against the Dalai Lama involving 10 to 15 Chinese agents later this year. Many of his drawings centered on the temple outside the Dalai Lama’s residence, leading some Tibetan security officials in Dharamsala to believe that the Chinese might have intended to blow up the house during one of the spiritual leader’s gatherings. Next month, film star Richard Gere and other Tibetan Buddhism devotees are expected to attend a Dalai Lama teaching session at this same temple.

Following the arrest of Chomphel and a suspected Tibetan accomplice, the Chinese Foreign Ministry denied any involvement in a plot to kill the Tibetan leader. Spokesman Zhu Bangzao added that Beijing was willing to negotiate with the Dalai Lama once he stopped activities aimed at splitting the motherland. Nevertheless, Indian officials believe China closely monitors the exiled Tibetans and frequently tries to stir up trouble between Dharamsala’s Indians and Tibetan refugees.

Says a senior police officer: The Chinese are sending many spies across to Dharamsala. Some exiles also maintain that China, in its battle against the Tibetans’ god-king, sometimes mixes Marxism with a touch of black magic. They accuse Beijing of recruiting the followers of a wrathful Tibetan spirit known as Dorje Shugden.

This deity has tens of thousands of Tibetan worshippers – plus a contingent of Western Buddhist fans. Described as having four fangs sharp like the ice of a glacier, three blood-red eyes and hair like flaming serpents, Dorje Shugden has become a supernatural enemy of the Dalai Lama. His fashion sense attests to his ugly mood: Dorje Shugden sports a necklace of 50 severed heads.

Repeatedly over the past decade, the Dalai Lama has warned that Dorje Shugden poses a threat to both Tibet’s struggle to regain independence from China and his own personal safety. What more could the Chinese want in a new, otherworldly friend?

Editor’s note: Dorje Shugden does NOT have severed heads in his iconography. Regarding Dorje Shugden as a threat to Tibet’s independence, HH the Dalai Lama has said for decades that he is NOT seeking Tibetan independence but only autonomy. How can Dorje Shugden be a threat to that then? HH the Dalai Lama has also said that Dorje Shugden threatens his life. HH the Dalai Lama is in his mid 70s which is a very respectable age! Dorje Shugden is also not “new” since he manifested around 350 years ago!

This combat between the Dalai Lama and the snarling deity has already crossed out of the realm of sorcery and into reality – with gruesome consequences. A respected Tibetan dialectics professor who publicly opposed Dorje Shugden worship was ritually slaughtered in February of last year along with two students. The academic, Lobsang Gyatso, 70, had been one of the Dalai Lama’s closest allies in the struggle with the deity.

Indian detectives discovered that the six suspected Tibetan assassins made several telephone calls to the Dorje Shugden Society headquarters in New Delhi en route to the slayings. Says former police superintendent Rajeev Kumar, who investigated the case: The link is clearly established between the murderers and the Dorje Shugden cult.

The killings were religiously motivated. The assassins fled through Nepal back to Tibet and have since vanished. Their border crossing was allegedly unhampered by Chinese authorities, even though returning Tibetans are often subjected to arrest and interrogation.

Editor’s note: There has been no concrete proof of the link between Dorje Shugden practitioners and the regretful murder. Even if the murder was perpetuated by Dorje Shugden practitioners, it does not mean that all Dorje Shugden practitioners are murderers, like not all Muslims are terrorists. This is a gross generalization and imputed wrong view.

Tibetan exiles and Indian investigators suspect Beijing is manipulating the feud between Shugden supporters and the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile. Across Tibet, the Chinese are giving funds to rebuild Shugden shrines and temples destroyed during the Cultural Revolution.

Sonam Topgyal, a Dalai Lama cabinet minister, claims that government workers who professed to be devotees of the wrathful god were given special cash bonuses for the Tibetan New Year. The Chinese press gleefully prints accusations by Shugden supporters that the Dalai Lama is imposing religious dictatorship on his people. Indian authorities are investigating the possibility of a link between the two alleged Chinese spies and Shugden devotees. But according to Geshe Cheme Tsering, general secretary of the Dorje Shugden Society in New Delhi, “This is just police speculation. We don’t come into the picture at all.”

Still, those in charge of the Tibetan spiritual leader’s security are taking threats against his life seriously. Last January, police began receiving reports that the Dalai Lama might be in danger from disgruntled Shugden-ites. They urged him to cancel a trip to Tibetan refugee communities in southern India – a center of Shugden support – but he refused. “For us, the threat perception is very serious, and we’ve got to maintain round-the-clock surveillance,” says an official.

Besides the Dalai Lama’s personal security force of Tibetans, a contingent of 100 policemen now guards the Tibetan leader’s residence at Dharamsala. Some Indian officials doubt that the Chinese would want to kill off the Dalai Lama, especially so soon after U.S. President Bill Clinton, on his recent trip to Beijing, championed the exile leader.

A better strategy, say Indian experts on China, would be to wait for the Dalai Lama, who is now 63, simply to die. Then there would be nobody to defy Beijing’s rule in Tibet. But the Chinese may not have the patience to wait for him to pass away naturally. A secret 1994 Chinese government report, leaked to human rights groups, admonished that to kill a snake you must crush his head.

Source: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2054287,00.html