Sorry, reformatted.....
I would rather follow HH Trijang Rinpoche's advice rather than my own deluded thinking for to me - HH Trijang Rinpoche is a Buddha.
Some more thoughts (request to the moderators - can we please have a facility for editing posts? :-D thanks)
Buddha said that we should not believe what he says simply because he's called Buddha, instead he encouraged us to use our critical faculties to discern the truth. The anti-Shugden argument is probably much the same - "the Dalai Lama says that Dorje Shugden is a spirit and we should not do the practice. I would rather follow HHDL's advice than my own deluded thinking because HHDL is a Buddha". Blind faith is better than no faith, but it's not reliable.
The Dalai Lama didn't believe Trijang Rinpoche about the nature and function of Dorje Shugden but made his own investigation........Oh! shame he came to the wrong conclusion, but the point remains: we need to think for ourself and have valid reasons for everything we believe.
Trijang Rinpoche's views are deeply persuasive for me, too, but you have to read what he actually says. This is from
Music Delighting the Ocean of Protectors page 125:
There is something I must mention at this point. As stated above, the Great Fifth Dalai Lama and Omniscient Panchen Rinpoche were like Lords of the Teachings. In actuality they are, respectively, Arya Avalokiteswara and Buddha Amitabha emanating in the human form of special holy beings. Yet this Lord of Dharma Protectors exhibited an ability to harm or destroy them, and such events as the Great Fifth, having been able to summon this Dharmapala to be burned with intense samadhi but not accomplish it, also shows that the enlightening activities of these great masters and those of this Dharmapala are each as mutually universal and pervasive as the other. But some who are narrow minded, not understanding this point, consider this Dharmapala to be like an ordinary worldly being and, with supposed faith in the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama, disparage him; or else they indeed admire this great Dharmapala but criticize the Dalai Lama or Panchen Lama. Using either one as a reason not to admire the other and speaking badly about either in any way is the conduct of an ordinary being who, under the influence of attachment and hatred, just tries to help friends and hurt enemies
Trijang Rinpoche is talking about the 5th Dalai Lama, not the Dalai Lama
per se. Did Trijang Rinpoche say "don't lose faith in the Fourteenth Dalai Lama"? As I said before, he also didn't say that we couldn't tell the Fourteenth Dalai Lama that he's wrong and has made a mistake. I keep seeing this quotation on the internet:
HH Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche gave this advice:“Don’t lose faith in His Holiness – don’t lose faith in Dorje Shugden.”
http://dorjeshugden.com/wp/?p=134but can someone give a qualified source for this quotation, or is it just something that someone heard and interpreted in a particular way? We can't rely on hearsay. Some people claim that Trijang Rinpoche abandoned his practice of Dorje Shugden towards the end of his life, or that Je Pabongkhapa and his followers destroyed images of Padmasambhava in Kham, but we can't rely on false rumours. Anybody can claim "so-and-so said this..." but where's the evidence?
There is a saying that for evil to flourish in this world, all that needs to happen is for good people to do nothing. I think blindly accepting the Dalai Lama's position on Dorje Shugden and his actions, somehow believing this is correct and even using scripture to justify not saying anything is a dangerous position to be in.
