Well, I don't think it matters much what Drayfus or anybody else thinks about the status of our Deity in terms of worldly deity or Buddha.
What matters publicly is that somebody is accusing the Deity of being a demon.
As you know, among types of demons, 3 types are internal, 1 type is external. Among the ones belonging to this type, to be classified as a demon does not have as basis:
1/Neither being or not being a Buddha
2/Neither belonging to this realm or that realm among the six that comprise the whole of samsara (gods, titans or demigods, human beings, animals, pretas, hell beings).
What qualifies any samsaric being as a demon is the intent on harming others.
And this is the serious matter, that the Dalai Lama has accused the Protector of harming his health, his life, and the cause of Tibet. He is pointing to the Protector not as a worldly deity, because worldly deities can be very very helpful and nobody is denying it, he is pointing to him as a demon.
This is what is important and it should be very clear in our minds because from this accusation come all the human rights problems. After all we cannot demand in a Court of Law that our Protector be restored to his position as supramundane Protector, as a Wisdom Buddha, now can we?
But it can be proven that by describing him as a demon in a society that believes in these characters the Dalai Lama has put in the category of “demon worshippers” all the devotees. It can be proven that this has brought many hardships to a minority. It can be proven that he has used all the might of his religious and political authority to segregate, discriminate and turn into pariahs in their own communities the Dorje Shugden devotees, ruining their lives and in several occasions endangering their lives.
Actually it has been proved already.
So if we wish to continue talking to the world about this matter we should be very precise and very clear. The religious aspects of Dorje Shugden do not interest the world. It’s the human and civil rights aspects that might interest a few activists in the world ...
Now, about Mr. Dreyfus.
Oh he is very intelligent.
He tackles many of the issues that the Western Press had discerned into the Dalai Lama’s behaviour.
Mainly the issue of the DL being somebody who reads into floating balls of dough to come to a decision. So Dreyfus depicts the Dalai Lama as a complex, super interesting character that has the modernist aspect, and the traditionalist aspect. Super fascinating again. A star.
“”””“Some of this complexity is revealed by his stance on the controversy surrounding the Dorje Shukden deity.
The Dorje Shukden dispute concerns the propitiation of a protective deity, Shukden, a practice that the Dalai Lama has come to condemn in an increasingly vocal manner.””””””
After that he goes on with his old discourse about Dorje Shugden and Je Pabongka.
What is remarkable is this extraordinary way Dreyfus has of distracting the reader from what really matters –the civil persecution based on religious discrimination—with sophisticated religious and historical intricacies of interpretation about a Deity.
Also remarkable is the way he describes the Dalai Lama’s actions in such a mild manner:
“”””””In recent decades the Dalai Lama has opposed this understanding of the deity in increasingly vigorous ways, going so far as to ban its followers from some of his teachings””””””
This is admirable. He diminishes what the Dalai Lama has done to a ridiculous: “to ban its followers from SOME of his teachings” ... unbelievable!
No doubt he repeats also the calumny against the Dorje Shugden devotees, something that in a country like the United States could cost him a Court case for defamation.
“”””””Only after the Dalai Lama had banned Shukden followers from his teachings, and only after the 1997 murder of three monks in apparent response to this ban, did he begin expressing his views on Shukden more fully to Western audiences.”””””””””
This is so clever. He makes a big discourse about the Dalai Lama talking or not talking about certain matters to Western audiences, and between two commas, almost as a distracted commentary, again he accuses the Dorje Shugden devotees of the assassination of three monks, a calumny invented by the Dalai Lama and his accomplices in the TGIE without a shred of proof and mainly without a shred of even material possibility.
And then Dreyfus goes on with his barely disguised task of furthering the Dalai Lama’s status as a world star.
What to conclude after reading such article? First of all to again supplicate Trinlay Kelsang not to abandon his research. What he is doing has the potential to fight the historical non truths. He seems to be the only one fighting in the historic front.
On the other hand I am inclined to review what WE have done about all of this in the media, in the public arena.
And I´m sorry to say. In the same as that Dreyfus cleverly uses this trick of distracting the public to matters that make people forget about the human rights issue, in exactly the same way but not as cleverly our side has focused the attention of the general public in things other than the human rights issue. This is something that should change.
