UPDATE: The Shugden Controversy: A Panel Discussion

Max, regarding your request to “anonymous” for a refutation of “Music Delighting…” I have copied a quote from it below and some analysis from the real “Michael Brown” as opposed to the fake one that has been posting on this thread earlier. You will see that Shugden has a vengeful nature, visiting wrathful punishments on anyone who dares mix teachings from the Gelug school with any other Buddhist teachings, such as Nyingma. This is Incontravertible PROOF that Shugden veneration and propitiation is a deeply divisive, harmful, sectarian practice. So all you people who keep saying there is “no proof” that Shugden practice is harmful are either ignorant of the facts, or liars.

“Trijang Rinpoche’s main thesis is dogyal has the appearance of a mundane protector or worldly spirit but must be an enlightened emanation because it is reincarnated or of the same mental continuum as several realised lamas starting with Mahasiddha Virupa, Sakya Pandita and Buton Rinpoche. Sakyapas would scoff and laugh at this absurd claim. Sapan wasn’t reborn as anyone. He was fully enlightened. The basis of the claim that dogyal was any of the other lamas listed, from Duldzin Dragpa Gyaltsen to Tulku Dragpa Gyaltsen is all apocryphal nonsense that was made up way after the events described. It is important to remember that the very idea that Tulku Dragpa Gyaltsen became dogyal was a view first put about by Dragpa Gyaltsen’s enemies as a way of insulting the legacy of the tulku. Bizarre the way this view has been adopted by his ‘supporters’.”

Quote from Trijang’s “Music Delighting…” book. Page 121
“Whether they were lords of Tibet, great lamas who held the political power of the throne, lamas and tulkus, great or small, with illustrious lines of incarnation, holy beings rich in scriptural and realized qualities, high lords of vast lands and works, those haughty with pride of family lineage, dominion and wealth, any who hypocritically claimed to be followers of Protector Manjusri Tsongkhapa’s Teachings while remaining unsatisfied with Je Lama’s precious Teachings of Sutra and Tantra which, in terms of view, meditation, and action, need not crave more from any other tradition, and, instead, mixed, polluted, or confused them with other modes of view and practice, whether lay or ordained, regardless of status, there have been many who have met with unpleasant wrathful punishments, such as being punished by authorities, litigation and legal disputes, untimely death, and so forth. Such swift, decisive signs appear to direct perception. Here praise is offered to that manifestation as a great wrathful protector who raises the Yellow Hat Teachings to the heights of the heavens.”

Diane Cadman, in answer to your two questions:

1) Yes, I would stand outside an NKT centre and give out leaflets warning people about the cult-like way NKT operates, and that they engage in worship of an entity considered to be a harmful, dangerous, demonic spirit by most Tibetan Buddhists. I’d show them a picture of this entity just in case they didn’t believe me. I’d also show them pictures of an ugly mob of nuns and monks with facial expressions of pure anger and hatred, with their fists punching the air. The person might ask “are they demonstrating against the Chinese occupation of Tibet?” I’d then explain, that “No, they never do that, they couldn’t care less about that and are actually demonstrating AGAINST the Dalai Lama, much to the delight of those same Chinese occupiers”.

Some ex-NKT people already did something like this outside Bodhisattva Centre in Brighton and received a lot of gratitude from people who had no idea what lies behind your schmaltzy smiling faces and glib platitudes.

2) You can hardly compare Shugden’s significance to UK or US culture with his significance to Tibetan culture. In the UK and US whether someone is naive enough or not to become a “Dorje Shugden Practitioner” would be irrelevant to the British or American government. That you even attempt to draw such a comparison, just shows how naive and ill-informed you really are about the significance of Shugden veneration to the issue of the Tibetan struggle against their Chinese oppressors, and to the issue of Shugden practice as an historically divisive, highly sectarian practice in Tibetan Buddhism.

The main role of Shugden is in exalting Gelug teachings and protecting/promoting Gelug political hegemony above all other Tibetan Buddhist schools. Tibetan Buddhist systems other than “pure” Gelug are considered to be “mistakes among mistakes, faulty, dangerous and misleading” (Pabongka). Furthermore, Trijang himself even makes this veiled threat to anyone who dares follow teachings other than Gelug: Those who “mixed, polluted, or confused (Gelug teachings) with other modes of view and practice…have met with unpleasant wrathful punishments, such as being punished by authorities, litigation and legal disputes, untimely death, and so forth.” Hey, maybe this is where Kelsang Gyatso gets his inspiration for his numerous threats of legal action against his critics! Not something the Dalai Lama has ever done, mind.

Furthermore, it seems to me to be beyond a coincidence that when Shugden practice was at its height, after the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama when Pabongkapa had free rein to promote Shugden far and wide (breaking his promise to the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to abandon the practice) – this was a time that co-incided with the demise of Tibet into the hands of China. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama died in 1933. Pabongkhapa’s successful drive to promote Shugden in Gelug Tibetan Buddhism lasted way after his death in 1941, until the Fourteenth Dalai Lama began to make a stand against it properly in the 1990s.

This time of Shugden’s ascendancy matches the darkest days for the Tibetan peoples, which continues to this day, latterly not least because now Shugden practice has been taken up in the West and is popular in China. With this information, coupled with the fact that Shugden lamas hobnob happily with Chinese government officials and Shugden practice is actively supported by the Chinese in Tibet and China, it really does not take a lot of brains to work out that Shugden practice works towards the signed, sealed delivery of Tibet into China’s hands forever.

So, you see, Diane Cadman, if you bothered to analyse this controversy with any depth of thought, there is far more to it than the NKT/ISC would have the world believe. I think considering all these facts it is really none of your business to condemn the Dalai Lama for taking the action he has against Shugden practice, in the interests of Tibetan unity and freedom.

Similar things do go in the UK. There was controversy here recently when a School Trust was being infiltrated by a group of fundamentalist muslims and action had to be taken by the authorities to wrest control of the School Trust from the fundamentalists. The Dalai Lama’s view of Shugden is perhaps somewhat similar: Shugden is an embodiment of sectarian fundamentalism that works against Tibetan freedom. So, like the UK government, it is the Dalai Lama’s responsibility to ensure that these sort of people are not in positions of social or governmental power. This is not “discrimination” – it is protection.

I will post this analysis on Talk about Shugden Facebook page too because, no doubt for you, it will, at best, be “in one ear, out the other”, (if you bother to read it all). You will just dismiss it quickly and continue with your exaggerated, ill-informed, nonsensical rubbish about “discrimination”, “terrible suffering” of “millions” of Shugden practitioners and announcing that there is “no proof” that Shugden practice is harmful.

Diane Cadman

Did you bother to actually read any of the reply I gave you? You might at least have the courtesy to acknowledge it. But, as predicted, you didn’t bother, and if you did – it was “in one ear and out the other”.

You clearly don’t read what I write, apart from a cursory glance at it. Otherwise you could not possibly make the preposterous comparison between me (and other like-minded folk) and evangelical Baptist Christians. Really, your attempts at debate are very childish and immature. You remind me of Sarah Palin in your appearance, in your sad lack of intellectual ability and in your total dearth of education on subjects you consider yourself qualified to pass judgements upon. You are a fanatic. One look at your book “Likes” on Facebook says it all: all we find are books by Kelsang Gyatso. It is you and your evangelical NKT/Shugden mob who are the Buddhist answer to the Westboro Baptists that you sneer at. Not me, I’m nobody’s acolyte and not a member of any church or cult, unlike you.

Just how precisely do you know your friend was not admitted, point-blank, just because she is a Shugden practitioner? Show me the proof please. Otherwise we will have to assume this is just another baseless claim and false allegation – like most of what you people vomit up all over the internet, while you spew your vile hatred of the Dalai Lama to his face, to the press and on the internet, for and to the whole world to deride you. Not a good look, sorry to say.

I hardly think the said educational establishment in the US would have told your friend that they are rejecting her because she is a Shugden practioner. Usually rejections from institutions/companies do not include any detailed explanation for why the person is rejected. If the Shugden issue was anything to do with her rejection it was probably because, like you and all NKT people, you regard Kelsang Gyatso to be the sole “upholder” of the “pure” lineage of Je Tsongkapa and aren’t interested in any other Buddhist teachings. After all, Kelsang Gyatso advises you all, on pain of being kicked out of his centres, not to read or study any other books on Buddhism than his own, nor to take teachings from any other teacher than him – lest you become “confused”, does he not?

Now, please address the manifold points I have made to you in previous post(s). You don’t/won’t because you cannot. – all you can manage is to ignore the points with sweeping statements and unsubstantiated claims which have no basis in fact.

Diane, please, go and get some psychiatric help. You are clearly mentally unwell and need help to recover from your Transpersonal Identity Disorder. I feel so sorry for you.
Please read this article – it might help you understand what has happened to you.
http://www.psychosynthesispaloalto.com/pdfs/religious.fanaticism.pdf

Take care dear friend, with love and compassion

Linda

Hi ds,

I remember also seeing the registration form [for this specific DL event] which also had a ‘check box’ stating you did not practice Dorje Shugden.

I’m guessing the DL is trying to bring his discrimination to the West, as well?

DS, There is another point worth considering re this request that Dolgyal Shugden practitioners do not attend HHDL’s teachings: I bet there was no such request made before 1996 when the NKT began its hate campaign against the Dalai Lama. The NKT/ISC/WSS “protests” have ruined it for the non-fanatical Shugden practitioners, for sure. This sort of outcome was precisely the reason that the Shugden lamas asked Kelsang Gyatso not to make such a hateful issue about it. In the SOAS talk Dr Martin Mills said that the monastery he lived in for a year or so, expressly asked that westerners not make a fuss about Dolgyal because it would be better for practioners like them if they did not – they knew it would cause them trouble and clearly they were right. But Kelsang Gyatso and his followers chose to selfishly carry on with their hate campaign anyway. This, and the hostility towards the Shugdenpas in India, is the result of their own selfishness.

Dear Linda and Anonymous,

As I said before, I am not a Shugden practitioner or anything to do with NKT.
But please believe me, I experienced Dalai Lama’s ban in India. And Tibetans who follow Shugden were ostracized, beaten, segregated…etc.
I am worried about Tibetans in India. Of course, Dalai Lama and CTA’s ban will seriously effect on Tibetans worldwide as well.
For westerners, It won’t. But again, NKT and Western Shugden practitioners are fighting for Tibetans who practice Shugden.

Please try to understand here.
Thanks

Dear Anonymouse,
I am talking about Tibetan victims in India, not NKT or anything else.
Dalai Lama and CTA’s ban lead to suffering of many many Tibetans in India.
If you don’t believe me, please check the Video on Youtube.

“Check the videos on Youtube” – I have seen many of these and they are full of falsities and fabrications. They are NOT evidence. They are CLAIMS and PROPAGANDA. I saw one where someone was claiming they were under attack by a mob of Dalai Lama
supporters. What a bad joke that was. No sign or sound of anyone attacking them. Just a traffic jam. This sort of thing is then served up as “evidence”. How ridiculous!

Anonymous “Not a Shugden worshipper ”, Ha ha ha – me, a Tibetan? Well that says a lot about your powers of perception and analysis if you can manage to make that ludicrously incorrect deduction from my writing. That is funny.

If you don’t want to take those mountains of supposed “evidence” to the Dalai Lama himself or the CTA, why not the Indian police, hmmm? The police was my first suggestion to you. Or are you going to come up with some other bovine excrement excuse for why that’s no use to you either? Ha ha ha. No use to you for the only reason that every single one of your claims has no real substance as “human rights abuses” or “persecution”and the farce of this “protest” movement is a great big storm in a teacup, a huge mountain created out of a tiny molehill by Kelsang Gyatso and his KelsangBots, because of his viciously spiteful personal vendetta against the Dalai Lama.

The documentaries you mention did not include reference to the BBC documentary “An Unholy Row” I noticed, which certainly did not give much credence to the Shugden camps fallacious arguments. Some of the broadcasters you mentioned were forced to make apologies for their totally biased broadcasts, which they admitted had not been thoroughly investigated. We all know how some low-level journalists like nothing better than sensational scandal-mongering, based on mere rumour and hearsay.

In one of these programmes which you cite as proof of “persecution” about the best they could manage was some monk going into a shop and proudly announcing to the owner he was a Shugden worshipper. If Shugdenpas are really “living in fear”, as you claim, why the heck do they go round announcing proudly to all and sundry that they are Shugdenpas????? That makes no sense at all and shows what a load of fallacious codswallop all your claims really are. The shopkeeper was running a shop which sold religious items and so refused to serve him, as his her right, if she finds the violently sectarian nature of Shugden practice to be morally repugnant to her. Who knows, maybe the man and his wife from the Tibetan settlement in the police photos who had been brutally beaten by Shugdenpas, were relations of hers? Maybe Lobsang Gyatso, who was murdered by Shugdenpas according to the Indian Police, was her teacher? She has a moral right to refuse to associate with people she considers, in her life context, to be unsavoury and dangerous.

Strange how Amesty International, who really do take their investigations seriously and don’t just believe any old rubbish people tell them, found nothing whatsoever for concern in any of your preposterous claims of Human Rights abuses. They actually made a strong point at the end of their report that this whole fabricated human rights issue in the Tibetan exile community was serving only to draw attention AWAY from the REAL human rights abuses being perpetrated by the Chinese against ethnic Tibetans in Tibet.

Furthermore, Tibet was lost mainly because the efforts of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama to modernize and reform Tibet were thwarted at every turn by the conservative (read: Gelug/Shugdenite) lamas and their aristocratic allies. The Gelug lamas were determined to do all they could to retain their political power in oppostion to the democratization attempts of the 13th Dalai Lama, who was opposed to Shugden practice, not least because it was used as a poitical tool for the Gelugs to maintain their grip of power. See : Shakya, Tsering. The Dragon In The Land Of Snows (1999) and Feigon, Lee. Demystifying Tibet: Unlocking the Secrets of the Land of Snows (1996)

So, you see my analysis and views are based on properly investigated research and factual, historical analysis. Whereas yours are based on YouTube propaganda videos, sensationalist poor journalism, “mere averments” and exaggerated, unsubstantiated claims. I said it once and I’ll say it again: if there have been any incidents of violence that you claim, take your evidence to the police authorities.
That you can provide NO PROOF WHATSOEVER from any reputable authority of your claims against the Dalai Lama suggests only this – your claims of Dalai-Lama instigated brutality are false and the attacks of the ISC/NKT against him amount to libel.

With regard to the above discussion about the fact that sensationalist TV shows do not constitute evidence of anything, I just read a very informative article which reveals how these programmes, now broadcast on YouTube, have twisted and distorted the truth in very biased, irresponsible fashion. The author of the article used to be avidly pro-Shugden and anti-Dalai Lama due to the fact that he was fed this sort of disinformation by NKT as factual truth. It was only when he did his own thorough research into the sources and contexts of information presented in the programmes, that he realised how thoroughly he had been deceived by his NKT masters.

http://buddhism-controversy-blog.com/2014/08/24/some-media-and-the-shugden-controversy-how-tv-channels-and-youtube-can-deceive-you/

All the information on this and all dhogyal websites are created by Kundeling lama. Kundeling speaks very good English and has many students in Europe who are fanatically against HH Dalai Lama. Kundeling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0WLTvDlGqE

Kundeling does all the informational mailing to many organizations around the world in the futile attempt to destroy the reputation of the Dalai Lama. Kundeling was ‘recognized’ as a reincarnation by Lama Gangchen in Italy. They all join forces with NKT to defame Dalai Lama using dhogyal. This is all confirmed by monks of Sera Mey Monastery. Beware of these ‘lamas’.