I certainly pray for the long life of Kundeling Rinpoche! May all Kundeling Rinpoche's activities and works grow!
WB, thank you for posting the article link. You are right! It is such a great article and Rinpoche certainly answered every question very logically, clearly and even with great wit. His humour is most definitely noted in the way he answered the first question.
I was very tempted to re-post the whole article here but let me just share the lines I truly enjoyed because Rinpoche points out an important fact that I hope the people in TGIE will take into heart.
Question 1: According to information received, the Dalai Lama faces a threat to his life, in or around Dharamsala, from the Al Qaeda (or its affiliations?), the L.E.T. and Dorje Shugden, possibly with the support of the P.R.C. What is your opinion about this?
Answer: (Are you referring to the P.R.O.C., because the above suggests the participation of Taiwan). Judging by the tone of such incredible insinuations, the source of this fantastic theory must surely be located back to the associates of the Dalai Lama, with his own propaganda and phobias spurring them on. Even after his unwarranted remarks about Islam, the current Pope, Benedict XVI, does not figure on the hit list of any of the Islamic extremist organisations. Why, and on what grounds, should the Dalai Lama suddenly become a target for Islamic fundamentalists? A marriage of interests could exist between the Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, to unite in destroying what they may perceive as a common enemy. But on what grounds would anyone have the nerve to make such claims about Dorje Shugden followers and their alliance with such criminal elements?
It appears to me that – even amongst hawks and ‘China-bashers’ in Indian Ministries – the oft-repeated claims about a ‘China threat’ have yet to be formulated into such an imagined threat consisting of he most sensational combining of the lousiest elements of all evil-doers known, to appease their ‘Divine Guest’! To my simple logistics, the rationale is drawn from statements by the Dalai Lama himself during his December 2004 visit to the Hunsur Gurupura Settlement of Mysore District, South Karnataka. The Tibetan Head publicly declared that highly placed Indian Officials had forewarned him of a threat to his life, not from assumed quarters but from Shugden followers!
In the month of December 2006, Delhi’s India T.V. Exclusive, watched by millions of Indians, broadcast an outrageous claim that eight Tibetan Shugden followers were being sent across the border by Chinese authorities to assassinate the Dalai Lama during the latter’s Kalachakra engagements in Amravati, Andra Pradesh. In May of this year itself, reports circulated in Indian and International Media, that the Indian Police in Delhi had requested the help of Interpol to pursue two supposedly Shugden assassins of the late Rev. Lobsang Gyatso, the murdered Principal of the Buddhist School of Dialectics in Dharamsala and a close confidante of the Dalai Lama. The claim was that the Chinese had sent across these assassins and provided them with a safe haven within the Tibet Autonomous Region.
Let me therefore begin by answering these ‘cock and bull stories’ – to give them a label befitting their contents. In my previous interactions with members within Indian Intelligence Agencies, when I had put forward the Dalai Lama’s claims that the Indians cautioned him on the Shugden threat, all I received were lukewarm denials of any Indian show of ‘camaraderie’ with the Tibetan God King. There has always been, and still is, a tendency on the part of Government Agencies, to portray an image of neutrality and a concern simply for maintaining Law and Order in the land; the Dalai Lama is a celebrity and an honoured guest, besides a V.V.I.P. in this country; any threat to a holy V.V.I.P. would be exceedingly embarrassing to the host Indian nation. It could be useful, as regards the ‘sanctity’ of guests, to remind ourselves that Indian tradition makes no special ‘proviso’ for V.V.I.P. guests as all guests are considered ‘divine’!
Some people in the higher echelons need a crash course on the lifestyle and exploits of the Tibetan Avatar in India. Recounting them here would be a waste of time but, to mention one point, the hue and cry about the murder of the Dalai Lama’s confidante Ven. Lobsang Gyatso is making out as if this is the first criminal event to take place within the Tibetan diaspora. On the contrary, it is only one amongst many killings, some reported to have been engineered by important members of the Dalai Lama’s family and Ministers. After the 1962 Sino-Indian conflict, the policy of various ruling parties in Delhi was to turn a blind eye to Tibetan refugee activities, not interfering in the ‘internal’ activities of Tibetans and their leaders. On this premise, the Dalai Lama was able to establish a fully-fledged Government and a Constitution within Indian territory – a feudal theocracy within a democracy! – with all dissident voices stifled.
Conspiracies, intrigues, activities; both covert and overt – all necessarily anti-Chinese – have since then been engineered from upon Indian soil. Recently, there have been deaths and damage to the lives and property of Shugden adherents in Tibet itself. Thousands of Tibetan patriots had sacrificed their lives in confrontation with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army until the 1970s, in the belief that the Dalai Lama stood for a ‘Free Tibet’. He mesmerised them into believing that there was no better goal than this. In India and all over the world, the Dalai Lama incites hatred against Shugden adherents for no fault of theirs. As a result, Shugden followers have been made the pariahs amongst mainstream Tibetan society. There is an apartheid against them, besides sanctions and preposterous accusations – without any credible evidence whatsoever to substantiate the claims.
The point is this: if the Chinese had suddenly decided to have the Tibetan Head assassinated, they would have to involve enormous Chinese expertise. But what benefit would an ‘Operation Assassination Dalai Lama’ have and to whom would it bring profit? Such an adventurous initiative would only play into the hands of the Dalai Lama’s Camp. His Hollywood friends would immediately capitalise on the action-thriller theme, portraying him as prospective martyr and showing the Chinese up as demons once again. It is ludicrous to imagine that the Chinese would like to see him dead. That the Chinese are waiting patiently for his natural death would sound more feasible.
For reasons as simple as these, the elite amongst Shugden followers would not waste their time daydreaming about plots to assassinate him. Shugden followers have always strongly opposed all signs of intolerance towards diversities and all extremist actions. They opposed the Taliban for their reckless destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan in 2001. They opposed the war on Iraq. There are fanatical elements in both the Dalai Lama and the Shugden Camps, but it is not the Shugden followers who are in charge of the Tibetan scenario or who are in any position of strength. On the contrary, they constitute a minority and have been made the scapegoats for everything that goes wrong within Tibetan society. Those people who believe that Beijing authorities are arming and funding Shugden stalwarts so that they create pandemonium on Indian soil should cease their fantasising and instead try to come up with some undisputed credible evidence. This doesn’t happen.
