The Dalai Lama’s Controversial Stand

The following account is extracted from preliminary drafts of Schettini’s memoir, The Novice.

The Dalai Lama remains the temporal leader of Tibetans in exile, but is no longer their undisputed spiritual guide. The exile community is split over his decree regarding the propitiation of the powerful god Dorje Shugden, commonly known as Dolgyal. Practices invoking this deity were widespread among previous generations ‘especially by the Dalai Lama’s own teacher Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche’ but following the demise of the old generation, he questioned Dolgyal’s loyalty to the Tibetan cause and led a concerted effort to discredit him. On 21 March, 1996, he stated publicly, ‘It has become fairly clear that Dolgyal is a spirit of the dark forces.’

The most visible outcome of his proclamation has been to divide the formerly united Tibetan cause, and his actions have baffled many of his followers and admirers.

BACKGROUND: EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS

Shortly before the Tibetan new year in the spring of 1997, the director of the Dialectics School in Dharamsala was found stabbed to death along with his two young translators. Without delay the local Tibetan newspaper pointed the accusing finger at the Dorje Shugden Society in Delhi, characterizing it as a sect of bloodthirsty terrorists. Some Tibetans sprang to the Dalai Lama’s defense while others dashed to the opposing camp. Over time, few have managed to remain neutral. Monks have been expelled from their monasteries and riots have broken out in the streets of the Tibetan refugee communities in south India. Some of the opposing monks are influential, and are consolidating their power by setting up large organizations, some of them international, some with considerable resources.

The dismay among the western followers of Tibetan buddhism can’t be understated. Many stand aghast, unable to fit the Dalai Lama’s plainly uncompromising stand into their image of the peace-loving Nobel laureate. Increasingly, and presumably out of loyalty to their teachers, many now see fit to take sides. The schism has become a fait accompli of historical proportions.

The scandals of Britain’s Royal family go back for centuries, but each new one is reported as if it were an indelible blot on an unsullied, centuries-old reputation. So too have intrigue, murder and schism recurred in the Tibetan landscape. Lungshar, who tried to establish a constitutional monarchy in Tibet after the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was charged as a Bolshevist conspirator and his eyes were gouged out. Decades earlier, the regent Demo Rinpoche and his friend Nyagtul were accused of invoking black magic against the Thirteenth Dalai Lama. The first died in a prison cell while Nyagtul’s chest was torn open and he was tied to a post to die in public. To this day, it’s thought that his spirit sometimes hijacks the body of Tibet’s state oracle in order to undermine the Dalai Lama’s office.

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that people are surprised. As threatening as it might seem to their faith, this is an opportunity for western Buddhists to understand the distinction between the inner experience of Buddhist practice and the worldly concerns of monastic religion and statehood. Some have suggested, not unreasonably, that this is a Chinese attempt to destabilize Tibetan efforts to return to Tibet. What is extraordinary is the almost complete absence of objective commentary or evidence, save the bodies of the three unfortunate monks and the physical and emotional scars of hundreds of others. The only thing that’s clear is that everything is particularly, suspiciously and almost systematically unclear. Based on little more than personal loyalties, pronouncements fly like red-hot shrapnel. The Buddhist cornerstone of open-minded enquiry is lost in the rubble. Perhaps it’s time for the sometimes esoteric but more often superstitious practices of tantra to become truly secret once again and for the general Buddhist public to concentrate on the core practices of mindfulness, insight and kindness.