Hidden Dragon Behind The CTA

The 12th Tai Situpa, one of four regents of the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism

By: Shashi Kei

Since the exodus of the Tibetans from their homeland in 1959, China has always been thought of by all Tibetans as the archenemy. In the 1980s, the Dalai Lama travelled the globe extensively and, at every opportunity, lobbied strongly for Tibet’s self rule. There was no doubt that China was seen by Buddhists and Tibet sympathizers as a dark and sinister power bent on destroying religion and replacing spiritual doctrines with Marxist tenets.

As all this was going on, there is a divergent story of another monk who also fled Tibet around the same time as the Dalai Lama. This monk went against the anti-China tide and started making overtures towards China as early as 1984. He is one of the four regents of the Karma Kagyu sect, the 12th Tai Situpa. In China’s Tibet, Tai Situpa was somehow able to gain entry into a significant number of monasteries of all traditions, where he gave teachings and empowerments to hundreds of thousands of people. In 1985, he was even allowed to enter the region of Kham, previously off-limits to Tibetan lamas. This was the first of such ventures by a Tibetan high lama and he became, for a time, regarded as the protector of Buddhism in his occupied country. While attempts by the Dalai Lama and his exiled government to engage with China failed, Tai Situpa’s China expedition was enormously successful.

It is even said that Tai Situpa met with the Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and presented him a blueprint for the development of a new Tibet under China. How could Tai Situpa have accomplished all this at a time when proposal after proposal by the Dalai Lama’s delegation, led by His Holiness’s brother, failed to impress the Chinese?

In 1991, Tai Situpa returned to Tibet. He was even permitted by the Chinese Government to ordain monks and nuns, and transmit a series of empowerments to an audience of approximately 65 high lamas, 5,000 ordained Sanghas from 92 monasteries, and countless laymen: quite a feat given that around the same time, the Tibetans were fully at loggerheads with the Chinese government.

India’s Concerns

Tai Situpa’s success in China and political maneuverings did not escape Indian attention. The Indian government, via a number of secret memos, started to believe that Tai Situpa was in collusion with the Chinese Government to gain strategic footholds along the Himalayan border. Looking at the expanding string of Tibetan Buddhist monasteries headed by pro-Chinese lamas along the Himalayan belt (from Ladakh to Arunachal Pradesh), it is easy to understand the Indian government’s concerns. Since this time, they have long been keeping a close eye on Tai Situpa.

The 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley (left) and Tai Situpa Rinpoche

In a secret memo dated 1997 to the Indian cabinet, India’s Chief Secretary in Sikkim, K Sreedhar Rao, laid out a number of concerns, about Tai Situpa’s activities [Source: http://www.american-buddha.com/cult.buddhanosmiling.9.htm] The first major area of concern was that after Tai Situpa identified the child Ogyen Trinley as the 17th Karmapa, he took him to Tsurphu Monastery, in Tibet, China, where he was enthroned with the support of the Chinese government. This newly enthroned Karmapa even received a grand and public reception in Lhasa, Tibet. This same child was then brought to the Dalai Lama for his endorsement. Indeed, Ogyen Trinley Dorje is the first and only major Tibetan religious figure acknowledged by both the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama. Overnight, Tai Situpa set a precedent for China to claim authority in the recognition of Tibetan Buddhist high lamas, something that the Dalai Lama and Tibetans had been very much against.

Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India, has long been a point of contention among the Karma Kagyus

The Indian Government’s increasing suspicions of Tai Situpa grew to a point that he was eventually banned from entering India from 1994 to1998 for his alleged pro-China and anti-India activities. Even after this ban was lifted, Tai Situpa’s movements inside India were restricted to the Himachal Pradesh state and he was specifically prohibited from travelling to the Northeast, Jammu/Kashmir or Sikkim, where Rumtek Monastery (the seat of the Karma Kagyu lineage outside Tibet) is located. Accusations grew to the extent that Tai Situpa was even alleged to have been party to illegal trafficking rings that smuggled products of endangered animals.

India’s concerns were borne out of the fact that Tai Situpa had achieved the impossible with the Chinese Government. Questions were raised about whether Tai Situpa, in consideration of Chinese support to build his power base, had offered himself as a Chinese agent to train Ogyen Trinley. It was also said that Tai Situpa orchestrated Ogyen Trinley’s ‘escape’ from Tibet as a way to plant an influential agent within India to infiltrate the exiled Tibetan community there. It was suggested that his purpose was to first win over the Tibetans before delivering the exiled Tibetan community to the Chinese, offering along with it, the politically contentious Sikkim, whose merger with India the Chinese has thus far refused to acknowledge.

For certain, Tai Situpa could not have accomplished all that he has without the support of the Chinese Government. The likelihood of Tai Situpa being a Chinese spy has always been in the minds of the Indian leadership and it is therefore not a surprise that they maintain such a close watch and react so strongly towards the regent’s activities.

CTA: Supporting the Enemy

What has truly been a surprise is the reaction from the Tibetan government in exile, now known as the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), towards Tai Situpa and his pro-Chinese meanderings. For decades, the CTA has accused China of espionage and developed a great paranoia about Chinese agents infiltrating the Tibetan community to disrupt the Tibetan cause. Such was the CTA’s obsession with potential Chinese infiltration that anyone even remotely connected to China would be branded a Chinese spy, a traitor and the worst enemy of Tibet. This is a label which rings the death knell for the person, forever debarring him from peaceful coexistence within Tibetan society.

A young Ogyen Trinley with China’s Jiang Zemin: why is it acceptable for the Karmapa to associate with China’s leaders but other lamas are branded traitors for doing the same?

And yet, in spite of his many open associations with the Chinese, Tai Situpa and the Karmapa candidate he put forward both continue to receive very strong support and endorsement from the CTA. In fact, the CTA actively promotes their activities and teachings, such that many have even speculated that this Karmapa might succeed the Dalai Lama as Tibetan Buddhism’s next spiritual head.

It was not that the CTA had no choice in the Karmapa matter. They did. To begin with, the recognition of the Karmapa, as the spiritual head of the Karma Kagyu school, has never traditionally or legally come under the purview of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government. It has always been the right and responsibility of the Karma Kagyu regents to find the incarnation of their spiritual leader and enthrone him. To add to the controversy, there were two candidates for the position of the 17th Karmapa – Ogyen Trinley who was found by Tai Situpa and Thaye Dorje who was recognized by Sharmapa Rinpoche, another of the Karma Kagyu regents. For the Dalai Lama and CTA to have endorsed one over the other caused tremendous confusion and upheaval among a significantly large number of Tibetan Buddhists. (More information of the Karmapa controversy can be read here.)

If the CTA had any genuine concern for the Tibetan community and the potential threat of Chinese agents subverting its cause, that fear went into a complete lapse when they supported the Chinese-recognized Karmapa Ogyen Trinley. If indeed Tai Situpa was an accomplice of Tibet’s enemy, China, the CTA had become his most potent ally.

The ‘other’ Karmapa Thaye Dorje has never been formally acknowledged by the Dalai Lama or CTA

One of the oldest (and some say wealthiest) Tibetan Buddhist sect, is now in the hands of a Karmapa who was enthroned by Chinese officials at Tsurphu Monastery inside China’s Tibet, and also under the tutelage of a Chinese sympathizer, Tai Situpa. The Chinese government may have enthroned Ogyen Trinley as the 17th Karmapa but this recognition alone would not have mattered much to the Tibetans who only take their cues from their own Tibetan leaders. However, in this case, CTA freely provided the Chinese-backed Karmapa with their total trust and approval. The CTA has, as it were, handed themselves over to China on a brocaded platter. It is a wonder that no one has accused the CTA of betraying its own people.

CTA: An Illogical Contradiction

Then, in 1996, for reasons that have never been made clear, the Dalai Lama issued a decree to ban the practice of the enlightened Buddhist deity Dorje Shugden. Of course, this ban was wholly enforced and furthered by the CTA. One of the reasons given for the ban, which observers have found not only to be primitive but also ludicrous, was that Dorje Shugden was a Chinese spirit and accordingly deemed to be harmful to the fight for Tibet’s independence. This is notwithstanding the fact that Dorje Shugden has been practiced for over 350 years – a long time before Tibet fell into Chinese hands. The ex-Prime Minister of the Tibetan government in exile, Professor Samdhong Rinpoche even publicly stated on international news that: “The Shugden and the Chinese are obviously allies”. In that way, the CTA leveraged on the fears of the Tibetan people and forced Shugden practitioners into hiding.

Practitioners and high lamas who refused to give up the practice were regarded as traitors. The Tibetan government launched aggressive witch-hunts against them and viciously turned the Tibetan people against their own religious teachers, monastic brethren, friends and neighbors. Eminent lamas, such as H.E. Kundeling Rinpoche, H.E. Gonsar Rinpoche and H.E. Gangchen Rinpoche, were ostracized and either expelled from the monasteries or had their monastic endowments seized. Others such as H.H. Trijang Choktrul Rinpoche suffered such frightening death threats and attacks on their lives that they had no choice but to leave their monasteries and migrate to a foreign land.

Kundeling Rinpoche has long been considered a ‘traitor’ to the Tibetans for his associations with the Chinese and his practice of Dorje Shugden

For Kundeling Rinpoche, his ‘crime’ was that of being loyal to his practice of Dorje Shugden and, according to the Tibetan government’s intelligence unit, having visited China a few times. These few visits were enough for this high monk to be branded a Chinese spy. Gangchen Rinpoche was similarly labeled for having made trips to China even though he went purely for religious, non-political reasons, such as to visit his own monastery and give blessings to people of the region. However, even his paying homage to the Chinese-authorized Panchen Lama, which is completely in accord with Buddhist traditions, was seen as anathema.

Against this backdrop of persecution – which the CTA alleged was out of a concern that the Tibetan fight for freedom would be sabotaged by the Chinese – it was thus very surprising that the CTA would endorse Karmapa Ogyen Trinley, backed by the very pro-Chinese Tai Situpa and himself endorsed by China’s authorities. This completely contradicts the CTA’s rejection of the Chinese-enthroned Panchen Lama and their total refusal to accept China’s recognition of reincarnated lamas.

CTA: Destroying Tibetan Unity

The CTA’s involvement in the Karmapa issue is significantly noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, it shows the CTA to be dangerously inconsistent, even insincere, in its policy towards Tibet’s freedom. On one hand, it professes to defend the exiled Tibetans’ right to live as free people in their homeland, going to extremes to weed out Chinese ‘spies’ in their midst. On the other, it gave its endorsement to a Chinese-backed Karmapa who the Indian government suspects to be a Chinese agent. Why the double standards, the double-speak and the flippancy?

Second, it makes a farce of their accusations against Shugden practitioners as Chinese spies. Clearly, the practice of Dorje Shugden has nothing to do with disrupting Tibetan harmony, destroying unity or threatening the cause for Tibet’s freedom. On the contrary, it is the CTA who have caused splits within their own Tibetan community by both enforcing the Dorje Shugden ban and taking sides in the Karmapa controversy.

That Gangchen Rinpoche, Kundeling Rinpoche and other Shugden lamas are traitors for befriending China and Tai Situpa is not, is incongruous with logic, reason and justice. If the CTA does not view Tai Situpa Rinpoche and Ogyen Trinley as traitors and Chinese spies despite the myriad of allegations against them, then what basis or evidence do they have to accuse Shugden practitioners and lamas of being Chinese agents? The CTA has shown itself to be selectively callous and disrespectful of high lamas, and extremely capable of deceiving the people they are supposed to protect and represent.

Third, CTA shows clearly that it does not respect the laws of its host country, India, although she has extended such great generosity towards the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans for over six decades. Three Indian courts of law, including the Supreme Court of India, have ruled in favor of Shamarpa’s candidate, Trinley Thaye Dorje, as being legally entitled to the Rumtek Monastery seat, which thus rightfully bestows upon him the title of the 17th Karmapa. Instead of abiding by the laws of the land in which they reside, the CTA’s recalcitrance sends a message to the Tibetan population that Indian law need not be heeded. It also shows that the CTA is not at all grateful for the help its host has extended to them nor sensitive to India’s apprehension that Sikkim, where Rumtek Monastery is, may fall under Chinese control.

At the end of the day, are the CTA and its leader Dr. Lobsang Sangay (right) selling themselves out?

If the definition of a Chinese spy is one who engages in activities to further China’s aim of undermining the Tibetans’ fight for independence, then the CTA must be the ultimate Chinese spy. They have been the greatest cause for destroying unity among Tibetans through its involvement in the Shugden and Karmapa controversies alone. Anyone who cares to look into the CTA’s serious inconsistencies in the Tibetans’ quest for freedom will clearly see that China does not need to send any spies into the Tibetan exiled community to disturb the solidarity among the people. The CTA is already doing an excellent job at this, which far exceeds China’s wildest dreams.