What if our Gurus asked us to propitiate a deity and after many years he suddenly announce "upon deeper inspection" I confirm that the deity that I recommended to you is in fact a world being ie a spirit. Sorry. Lets stop. If that really happens then, i personally will think the Guru is testing me. He will never be wrong is the first place.
Then I found out that my Guru's previous incarnation also practiced the same deity that he now says is a spirit. Well, that confirms my suspicion; that he is testing us.
This sums up the topic....in my opinion. What a drama!
But unfortunately, many of the Dalai Lama's students lack the knowledge, experience and stability to actually see what is really going on, that it cannot be that the Dalai Lama has been practicing Dorje Shugden for so many years and suddenly Dorje Shugden is bad because in any way logically that does not make sense in any way. But perhaps, due to lack of stability and knowledge about Tibetan Buddhism, these people think that all of the Dalai Lama's words should be followed literally, and we can also see that the ban has unearthed a lot of people who are unstable and flippant in the Dharma practice. So maybe, perhaps, HHDL wanted to separate the stable from the unstable?
Separate the stable from the unstable?
I never thought of that actually... Another facet of the skillful means of His Holiness.
The stable will practice with intelligence and devotion, and the unstable will practice with devotion... So both do collect merits?
After all, the students that blindly gave up on the practice of Dorje Shugden fulfilled 4 things that should bring about merits;
(A) they follow an instruction from their Guru, without analsyis, without intelligence, without looking broader, but they still follow.
(B) they participate to make Dorje Shugden closer to the many that are "against" the Dalai Lama.
(C) they make Dorje Shugden parctitioners stronger both inside and outside the Tibetan community, because it forces these practitionners to be more educated about their practice, to be more certain about it, to be more faithful.
(D) they particpate to make Dorje Shugden famous in many places.
So do they collect merits on the above ground, or do they loose?
I am not sure of the reply, but I would be inclined to think that they do collect some merit, as a result of the highly skillful means of The Dalai Lama, by the power of his instructions.
Though, I would add that those that went overboard and did more than what was asked may cetainly not collect merits. I mean the Dalai lama did not ask for discrimation, nor did He ask to close access to hospitals for DS parctitioners, He did not even ban them from attending some of his talks... These are actions done by zealous people assuming too much, not clarifying anything.