I dug this story out of the Guest book, page 15 I think...
Pelsang's answers following;
Is there any religion without being accompanied by any sort of controversies in history of human kind. Name it, Christianity, Islam, Hindu and even Buddhism, all are directly or indirectly linked to one or another controversy, even much bigger than shugden controversy. Your story about the persecution of non-gelugpa Buddhists in eastern Tibet by shugden worshippers is not a valid reason because how can you be sure about that it is true. It is just based on Nyingma lamas or jamyang khentse's saying? Most of the Tibetan high lama lives comfortably in their well protected house that they are seldom correct in real happening among general people. Whatever their attendant told then, they simply believe. It seems that their clairvoyance doesn't work in these things( i believe because of our karma). Anyway high lamas saying about these happenings are not reliable. Anyway i heard different version of your story from somebody from chamdo region( eastern tibet) about what really happened at that time. It is nothing to do with Togden rinpoche or shugden but i will not go in detail here. Even if your story had been true, we should differentiate between those who misuse religion and the religion itself. Whatever so called shugden followers does in the name of shugden cannot be attributable to shugden or his main philosophy. Here i am defending shugden and his philosophy.
I tell you one real story witnessed by my friends many years ago. HH Zong Rinpoche was invited to Orrisa( south India) to do a special ritual. At that time in Orrisa, Tibetan camp, many people were dying without any obvious reasons; as a result, many lamas and specially those from nyingma did rituals to ward off negative energy, but none of them was sucessful and then Zong rimnpoche was invited as he was very famous as powerful tantric master. Zong rinpoche's ritual was very effective and showed many signs described in text. During that time Zong also gave some small teachings and empowerment. He even visited Nyingma monastery of great Dranag rinpoche(highly realised master), where he gave teaching on Guru padmasambawa's life story, so moving and inspiring that even nyingma lama Dranag commented that " even we nyingmapa weren't aware of such". This great dranag rinpoche later offered his younger son to HH zong rinpoche as disciple. This young son studied under zong and now he is geshe lharampa. This clearly shows that how authentic lama from gelug side and nyingma side can keep such a healthy relationship? But then what had happened thereafter, few nyingma persons out of jealousy started to spread a rumor that zong was against nyingma ,destroying Guru padmasambhawa's staues and nyingma text and started to collect signature from nyingma followers to condemn zong. They hurled same accusation like in your story to my most precious, ever compassionate and truthful lama, zong rinpoche. I saw from my own eyes that zong rinpoche kept statue of guru rinpoche in his personal altar. As their approach one old lady for signature, she was said to have told them that Zong rinpoche had instead advised her to recite mantra of guru rinpoche and pray to him, hence cannot sign. Then these fanatics send petition signed by several people to Exile Tibetan government. Government sent one envoy( then member of parliament) named kunsang choemphel to investigate the matters. Kunsang chomphel and then local representative( like mayor) Lobsang nyima did thorough investigation. Their investigation found HH zong rinpoche with no faults and all accusation were baseless and unfounded. They gave zong clean chit. When these two men asked those people who signed the petition about their reason, most of them told that we just signed it because we were told to do so, that is the only reasons. Infact main culprit were one low profile nyingma lama, others were just ignorant and following him blindly.This happening is ,unlike your story, well documented proved by government appointed reliable third party. Despite the investigation, after many years( zong passed away in 1984) in 2002, Dalai lama just repeated what had been proved to be wrong by his own goverment several years ago, may be his memory is poor.
Phagphongka and Trijang did highly praised and with reasoning established the fact that Lama tsongkhapa's interpretation of buddha's both sutra and tantra are perfect, immaculate devoid of even a subtle mistakes. Then they further emphasized that tsongkhapa's tradition should be upheld purely without mixing with others. What wrong in this? If this amount to sectarianism, then i think all religion are sectarian because very religion says that their way is the best and prefer to not to mix. Religion is supposed to be the way to ultimate goal and who wouldn't chose the best for him or her when it is about way to ultimate goal.
In christian, jesus is the only way to salvation. According to madhayamika, chittamatrin(mind only) school's way cannot even lead to liberation much less buddha hood. Is madhayamika a sectarian? I never read and heard any such things from Phagpongka, trijang and zong that we shouldn't respect nyingma or kagyu and say bad things about them. In fact my most immaculate teacher zong rinpoche repeatedly told us to respect and generate pure vision with respect to nyingma teaching and their teachers but he remind us that this doesn't mean that one should practice other tradition. We, Buddhist respect Christianity but doesn't practice Christianity. We rae not politician or playing games with religions, if one is really serious in practicing dharma in order to get buddha hood then, practice one of the four traditions whichever you like, not all by mixing. Because mixing has greater long term harm then benefits.
Every great religion advocates the practice of their tradition purely.
