CTA, your lack of credibility is burying the Tibetan Cause.

[vajratruth]

Here is an except taken from the official website of the CTA. In particular it states the official view of the Department of Religion and Culture. At first, I was immensely happy to read the statement thinking that perhaps finally a shift has come to the CTA. But then again, time has come to show the CTA as being hollow in sincerity and bankrupt in good intentions:

Kalon’s Message

Like any other civilization, the Tibetan people have also evolved with a unique culture, language and spiritual traditions. Our civilization dates back thousands of years and while the origin of our first king is documented being in 127 BC, our indigenous Bon religion’s scriptures mention having many more Kings before the renowned King of Tibetan Nyatri Tsenpo.

The most magnificent part of our history has been the development of a script and grammar by Thomi Sambota and the advent of Buddhism by eminent scholars such as Khenchen Shiwa-Tso, Guru Padmasambava, and Jowo Je Palden Atisha. It’s through the foresight, commitments and arduous efforts of the three great Dharma Kings – Songtsen Gampo, Trisong Deutsen and Tri Ralpa Chen – that we now possess voluminous valuable treasures of spiritual learning and a national culture imbued with a unique way of living highly influenced by the teachings of the Buddha.

The Department of Religion and Culture work entails the preservation and promotion of our rich religious and cultural heritage.

And in my capacity as Kalon, I shall wholeheartedly put forth every effort in accomplishing these goals.

With a focus on improving contacts with affiliated monastic institutions which are the backbone of preservation and promotion.

Bringing greater unity and understanding amongst our religious schools.

Plan & coordinate seminars and workshops for the future generations.

Develop and initiate contact with the other worldly religions, and, last but not the least, work on bringing greater international concern towards our culture, which is facing increased genocide and repression in our own land.

May the Buddha Dharma spread far and wide across this world and our Spiritual Leaders live a Long Life for the benefit of Dharma and sentient beings!

With best wishes,
Pema Chonjor
Chorig Kalon 
http://tibet.net/religion/announcement/kalons-message/

A quick search reveals that Pema Chonjor  is still the present Minister for Religion and Culture. It has been a year since that official statement was made and yet Dorje Shugden practitioners are still facing oppression.

How can the CTA hope to have any credibility and win international support when its corporeal actions and that of its individual members fly in the face of their official policies?  How can Tibet hope to have a support of the world powers based on humanitarian reasons when its own CTA is the biggest perpetrator of human rights against its own people.

[dsiluvu]

If you thought that was funny... take a look at their Constitution - hilarious!

Constitution

Charter of the Tibetans in ExileThe Charter of the Tibetans in Exile is the supreme law governing the functions of the CTA. It was drafted by the Constitution Redrafting Committee and referred to the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile for approval. The parliament, in turn, adopted the Charter on 14 June 1991.

Based on the spirit of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Charter guarantees to all Tibetans equality before the law and enjoyment of rights and freedom without discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, race, language and social origin. It provides for a clear separation of power among the three organs of the administration: judiciary, legislature and executive.

Before the Charter came into being, the Central Tibetan Administration functioned roughly along the lines of the draft democratic constitution for future Tibet, promulgated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama on 10 March 1963.

Over the years, the charter was amended on a regular basis. This year, after the devolvement of political leadership by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Charter was yet again amended accordingly to distribute the powers within the three bodies 1.e Executive, Legislative and Judiciary.

So I guess whatever they claim or say is just for show but up until now there has been no improvements or good news reported on Shugdenpas receiving same treatment, schooling and aid as normal Tibetans in Exile. If this is how they treat their people then why should they expect China to treat Tibetans any different? At least over there they are being given some kind of "religious freedom".

[Vajraprotector]

CTA can publish whatever idealistic objectives and missions, the fact is the ban is still on 

I'd rather read more about non-Tibetans like Shibayan Raha who fights for Tibet than CTA. At least it's more inspiring. He's not Tibetan and he was arrested in 2007 for attempting to self-immolate. He said, “As long as somebody out there is being oppressed, you cannot be free yourself”. Hear that CTA? Pun intended.


Shibayan Raha started out as a kid who was disillusioned with the monotony of life around him. He finally found his calling when he went to Darjeeling in 2003. He saw flags and posters all around, rallying for a Free Tibet. “Something just struck my mind”, Shibayan says.
 
In 2006, he went to Dharamsala (Himachal Pradesh), the home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan-Government-in-exile. Soon after that` he joined Students for Free Tibet (SFT) as a volunteer.
 
On 23rd November 2006, Chinese president Hu Jintao came to Mumbai for the India-China Economic, Trade and Investment Cooperation Summit. Outside the Taj Hotel Shibayan unfolded the Tibet flag which read “China Get Out of Tibet and Aksai Chin”. He was arrested on various charges and the case is still on. However, this did nothing to dampen his passion.
 
On 9th April 2007, he was arrested along with another activist Migmar Tsering while trying to storm the Chinese Embassy in Delhi. They were protesting for the release of the Panchen Lama who comes second in the Tibetan religious hierarchy after the Dalai Lama. He has been kidnapped by the Chinese government at the age of six, a few days after he was recognised as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama. This activity sparked off a chain of events leading to his arrest. He landed up in Tihar jail where he went on a complete hunger strike. After three days without any food or water, the jail authorities forcibly hospitalised him citing the excuse of tuberculosis. After five days, he was finally released.
 
When you question him about all this, he replies in a cheerful voice. Shibayan has no regrets about having gone to jail. “You get to meet all kinds of people there. It is an experience in itself.” At times, such unflagging optimism can bewilder, to say the least. All his harrowing experiences have not done anything to diminish his passion for Tibet. He has earned the respect of thousands of Tibetans and other people for not letting go.
 
“There are 7 million Chinese as compared to the 6 million Tibetans in Tibet today”. Thousands of Tibetans are being jailed, beaten up and tortured every day in Chinese prisons. “I have met Tibetan political prisoners who have been in prison for over three decades. Today, they are free and have smiles on their faces, in spite of what they went through.” He speaks of a woman who had been imprisoned for over thirty years. When she was released, her daughter could nor recognise her. People are tortured for participating in non-violent peace protests in the country. One scrap of information relating to the Dalai Lama can land them in jail. No one is spared, not even the monks who have to face the worst of it sometimes.
 
“There is an AIDS epidemic in Tibet now. All the good things are reserved for the Chinese, including the top jobs.”
 
This should sound familiar to Indians who know their own history.
 
Does Shibayan think that his contribution will bring freedom to Tibet?
 
“It is a long road. I might not get to see a free Tibet in my lifetime, but I hope I can do my bit towards it”, he smiles.

[WisdomBeing]

Everything about Dorje Shugden is highly inconsistent with regard to both the Dalai Lama and the CTA. This is amply illustrated in the vastly empty rhetoric of the constitution and Kalon’s message.

Either the CTA has no b*lls to stand up to the Dalai Lama or they are too stupid to do so. With Mr Harvard Lobsang Sangay as the reigning Kalon Tripa, I refuse to believe the latter.

Find some goolies, Lobsang Sangay. Stand up for your people who are suffering everyday. How can you possibly sleep at night, knowing that there is a group of helpless Tibetan Dorje Shugden practitioners who are ostracized and in pain? They are YOUR people, Mr Lobsang Sangay.  When will you step forward to do something for them?

[shugdenprotect]

As leaders, our word is of great importance. The consistent inability to honor our words with our action is extremely dangerous as it directly and rapidly destroys our credibility in the public eye. The loss of trust will start as outside people start assessing and criticizing. If no effort is made to correct the situation, there will be loss of trust and, with time and undesirable results manifesting, little can be done to undo the damage. This naturally happen in the secular world when it comes to people who do not keep to their commitments. And I believe it happens because of karma, not simply because we eat in a dog eat dog world.

Therefore, if the CTA continues to get caught red handed with evidence that they do not walk their talk, they will loose their position quickly in the world and the eye of their own people. Thus, whatever they claim will have no weight, including the ban on DS.

In addition to realizing the dangers of being not credible, we must learn from this example to BE CREDIBLE. It has been said, besides learning what to be, it is also important to learn what NOT to be.

[Big Uncle]

You know... Yes, the CTA is bad because they carry out the Dorje Shugden ban to the extreme and is responsible for much of the hardship and segregation in the Tibetan world. It just too bad that they are so adamant at pushing this ban when a lot more could be done for more pressing issues within Tibetan society.

However, what if the CTA would to turn around the ban. I bet no one has ever thought of that. You know I mean not just dissolving the ban but turning the whole Tibetan society into one that propitiates Dorje Shugden. Now, wouldn't that be something! Imagine, CTA issues and official statement to retract the ban and then they invite Dorje Shugden monasteries like Shar Gaden and Serpom to merge back into their respective parent monasteries. Then, representatives of the CTA offer a huge Torgya pujas in the main monasteries to repair samaya and request Dorje Shugden to take trance and offer apologies directly and request further pujas and perhaps a prophecy for the Tibetan cause. 

Then, the CTA should sponsor lots of Dorje Shugden literature and to open a huge Dorje Shugden temple in the main Tibetan settlements except in Dharamsala where the Dalai Lama lives. Also, it would be nice if the CTA officially request Dorje Shugden to be the main Dharma Protector of CTA. That would be so neat but I have not thought of how they would break the news to the Dalai Lama though. Its really just nice to imagine but I guess what's more important is to have the ban on Dorje Shugden lifted soon.

[Ensapa]

To be honest, CTA has done a lot and a lot of negative actions and activities even before the ban. Some of them including banning very high and beneficial lamas from reincarnating and sacking their ladrangs for nothing more than samsaric purposes. They have also defied the Dalai Lama many times over the centuries, especially with the instructions of the great 5th and the great 13th, whereby the great 5th did not want to have the war but his changtso insisted and did it anyway. The 13th Dalai Lama wanted to reform Tibet and implement many modern facilities and told the people to prepare for war and arm themselves, but nobody listened to him at all. If that is not broken samaya, what is? Even in modern times, the tibetan government  They have also caused a lot of harm in the minds of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide in this era too, by imposing the ban and spreading lies on the history of Tibetan Buddhism, covering up their own wrongdoings by erasing their history books (but they cannot erase everything, people will still find out in the end), spreading damaging ideologies that they should draw teachings from every tradition and confuse them with more distorted information about Tibet's history. And not to mention forcing monks to break their vows by swearing that they do not practice Dorje Shugden, and harming the people who practice Dorje Shugden and last but not least, splitting the sangha and causing the great divide that is Serpom and Shar Ganden.

Logically, can something or people like that can ever have the great merits to receive Dorje Shugden as their protector? Or that they need to wait until some karma is purified before they can accept Dorje Shugden? Them not being able to practice Dorje Shugden and the downgrading of TGIE into CTA is just a result of their negative karma which causes them and prevents them from being able to practice the Dharma protector. Perhaps the ban reflects this? But instead of purifying their karma, the CTA just creates more and more negative circumstances for themselves. At this rate, it would not be long before CTA is downgraded further into nothing more than an association or a society of Tibetans dedicated to preserving the cultural identity of the Tibetans. It's not easy to purify the negative karma of over 4 centuries of accumulated negativity, especially if CTA does not realize as a result of too much whitewashing of their own history to the point they are unable to learn from it and repeat their same mistakes repeatedly, unlike normal countries. The more they continue with the ban and not restore Reting Rinpoche's status along with all the lamas that they have banned in the past, the further away they will be from the cause of Tibet.

CTA is more or less a lost cause. It is predicted that Tibet will return to the Dalai Lama because CTA will be dissolved by then and nobody will be provoking China to hate the Dalai Lama anymore. Hehe. It cannot be that a government who has done so much harm to the people and to Buddhism can survive and rule again. If they can, then the Dharma protectors do not exist and neither does karma. It is also said in many prophecies that Dorje Shugden will replace Nechung as the main protector of the Tibetans, but until CTA cleans up their act, they will not be getting the most powerful Dharma protector in the world on their side. It is really up to them to wake up and make amends before things get worse for them. whats next for CTA after this...hmmm....Tibetan cultural society from central tibetan administration? hehehe.

[kris]

Dsiluvu, I wonder where did you get the constitution... After reading your post, I am really interested to find out the original constitution of CTA, so I went to their website, and found the link here:

http://tibet.net/about-cta/constitution/

The interesting thing is that, when you click on the PDF file, it says "File not found" Hmm.... Are they purposely hiding the constitution? Or they are really practicing "religious non-freedom"??

[michaela]

Dear Dr. Lobsang Sangay

If you want to be taken seriously or to achieve anything in your term, you should lead CTA to act in accordance with CTA Constitutions.  You may not have the courage to challenge HHDL about the ban, but the least you can do is not to discriminate your own people based on their faith.

The faith based discrimination that is currently being enforced among the subject of Tibetan government in exile is achaic in nature.  You, as Harvard graduate, should know this better than your colleagues.

You have to understand that our effort to spread the truth about our protector and to highlight the faith based discrimination that have been going on among Tibetans in exile will continue and increase.  This will undermine whatever effort that you make to paint CTA as a credible and respectable government body.

You must have heard of the term Affirmative Actions in the US where to compensate previous race based discrimination, some states provided special treatment to let non whites to get access to education and jobs.  You can implement the same thing among your subjects to make up for faith based discrimination that have been going on for more than a decade to gain the trust and love of your people and respect from International community.  That is by making extra effort to promote the truth about DS and to respectfully request HHDL to remove the ban because of the negative implications it has brought to the welfare of Tibetans in exile.  By doing this, you will clear up so much misunderstandings.

You are in the position to make a difference and have the constitution to back it up.  Now, you have the chance to right the previous wrong.

[dsiluvu]

To be honest, CTA has done a lot and a lot of negative actions and activities even before the ban. Some of them including banning very high and beneficial lamas from reincarnating and sacking their ladrangs for nothing more than samsaric purposes. They have also defied the Dalai Lama many times over the centuries, especially with the instructions of the great 5th and the great 13th, whereby the great 5th did not want to have the war but his changtso insisted and did it anyway. The 13th Dalai Lama wanted to reform Tibet and implement many modern facilities and told the people to prepare for war and arm themselves, but nobody listened to him at all. If that is not broken samaya, what is? Even in modern times, the tibetan government  They have also caused a lot of harm in the minds of Tibetan Buddhists worldwide in this era too, by imposing the ban and spreading lies on the history of Tibetan Buddhism, covering up their own wrongdoings by erasing their history books (but they cannot erase everything, people will still find out in the end), spreading damaging ideologies that they should draw teachings from every tradition and confuse them with more distorted information about Tibet's history. And not to mention forcing monks to break their vows by swearing that they do not practice Dorje Shugden, and harming the people who practice Dorje Shugden and last but not least, splitting the sangha and causing the great divide that is Serpom and Shar Ganden.

Surely the karma for doing all the above will come back a bite them in the back. Just like their karma for losing Tibet to China ripened. The cause resembles the results you get. So what will be the results from creating so much suffering and discrimination and separation within your own people and community??? What do you think it might be Dr. Lobsang Sangay?

In Dharma we learn all about karma and how it is like the shadow of our body and that it will come back one way or another. So does CTA and anti-Shugden puppets think they can escape karma for doing all these negativities? I mean Dorje Shugden is a Buddha or not, we put that aside and think about the reactions since the Ban started.. I think it is quite easy to figure that the results that CTA wants does not telly with the actions created one bit. So chances are whatever you are trying to do to speak with China, is going to fall on death ears unless you do the opposite of your negativities.
 

[Ensapa]

Surely the karma for doing all the above will come back a bite them in the back. Just like their karma for losing Tibet to China ripened. The cause resembles the results you get. So what will be the results from creating so much suffering and discrimination and separation within your own people and community??? What do you think it might be Dr. Lobsang Sangay?

In Dharma we learn all about karma and how it is like the shadow of our body and that it will come back one way or another. So does CTA and anti-Shugden puppets think they can escape karma for doing all these negativities? I mean Dorje Shugden is a Buddha or not, we put that aside and think about the reactions since the Ban started.. I think it is quite easy to figure that the results that CTA wants does not telly with the actions created one bit. So chances are whatever you are trying to do to speak with China, is going to fall on death ears unless you do the opposite of your negativities.

I dont think so that CTA will ever learn their lesson. First of all, enforcing the ban as a religious edict and enforcing the ban on the secular level is very different. CTA is doing both which is wrong because a government is supposed to protect the rights of the people irregardless of their religious beliefs. For example, ireland is a Christian country but they do not prosecute Buddhists or pagans in the country or deny them from medical care or from buying daily provisions. What is wrong, is just plain wrong no matter what justifications they want to make on it. In fact, i dont think they are even aware that it is negative karma, all they care about is making Dalai Lama happy the wrong way by being overzealous as opposed to practicing his teachings.

Actually, even on the net and even till today, there are stories of how those anti Shugden crusaders reap the results of their own negative karma. Centers that are too focused on discriminating against Dorje Shugden and his practitioners do not grow as a result of them not focusing on the Dharma (not because of punishment), and people who work hard to defame Dorje Shugden, also turn out to be very flippant practitioners themselves, and who thinks that Dharma practice is ratting out what they perceive to be cults and fake masters as opposed to doing their sadhanas and study, and who eventually end up in a situation where they are to be pitied due to the force of their negative karma. CTA is reaping theirs by their downgrading. It will only go down for them from here, unfortunately.