"Does Lama Zopa’s closeness with H.H. the Dalai Lama validate FPMT Centres and members to be some kind of spiritual police?"

By Bhikku Yeshe Sangye -- a senior FPMT monk and close disciple of FPMT Founder Lama Yeshe -- who speaks up after 20 years about his grave concern over the FPMT's discrimination toward Dorje Shugden practitioners. Here are a few extracts from his long letter.

“We of FPMT, especially the people who joined after Lama Yeshe’s passing, should think of the future from a wide scope. Our founding father was a sound Dorje Shugden practitioner, and his legacy was passed to Lama Zopa, who was invested as a Tulku by Dorje Shugden. Our lineage lamas all practiced Dorje Shugden as their principal protector. We must not criticize this protector in any way.”

"Many, many, many of the older Lama Yeshe students have gone underground with their practices of Dorje Shugden. Some like me do not really go to the centers here in the USA anymore. They will not abandon their practice of Dorje Shugden because of their great devotion to Lama Yeshe and are somewhat flabbergasted at the direction that some new FPMT centers’ are going with their arrogant witch hunts. What is important to remember is JUST BECAUSE YOU ATTEND THE DALAI LAMA’S TEACHINGS, OR HAVE TAKEN PHOTOS WITH HH DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY VALIDATE YOU AS A SPIRITUAL POLICEMAN AND GO ON WITCH-HUNTS. We must practice the essence of what HH teaches as did Lama Yeshe, which are tolerance, compassion, forgiveness and not ever slandering any lama, dharma, lineage or practice. As the karmic retributions will fall onto us. We should never mislead new FPMT students toward this line of thought. We are destroying our organization slowly if we do so."

"We shouldn’t practice or not practice what the current political situation pressures us to or not to. We should do what our lama says. So during Lama's life Dorje Shugden is good and now Lama is dead, so Dorje Shugden is bad??? Wouldn’t that infer that lama was wrong, had bad degenerate practices, lacking in wisdom, had no refuge, had no attainments and wasted his life praying to a spirit?? So if lama gave us Heruka initiation and practice, then it had no blessings because lama's refuge degenerated due to his practice of Dorje Shugden?? Since Dorje Shugden is a spirit and Lama kept up his ‘sogtae’ (Dorje Shugden’s initiation) or life entrustment practices his whole life, then all of the other practices lama did was degenerated and ineffective when passed to us.

So any practices Lama Zopa received from Lama Yeshe and passes it to others would logically be degenerate also??? Wouldn’t it?

The implications are quite big if we choose to believe that way....So that would mean many of the practices that Lama Zopa does now and gives others that are directly from Lama Yeshe are degenerated because Lama Yeshe was degenerated?? Of course not. Very dangerous line of thought. Very ruinous direction we are heading toward. I watched Lama Zopa get brow-beaten into ‘giving’ up his Dorje Shugden practices."

Please go to the Dorje Shugden website for the full letter. Yeshe Sangye has been brave in speaking up, seeing as the FPMT now even disallows Dorje Shugden practitioners from attending teachings at their Centers. May Yeshe Sangye's pure spiritual wishes for the FPMT come true, and religious harmony and freedom be restored in the East and the West.

Part Four: Disputing Pico Iyer's version of events regarding the Dalai Lama and Dorje Shugden

Part Four of setting the record straight on Pico Iyer's book, Open Road, The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.

Religious Harmony?

Page 138.....
On and on the passionate tirade went, like nothing so much as a prosecuting lawyer’s final summation. Some people began to look at their watches. Always he was working for harmony between the schools for Tibetan Buddhism the Dalai Lama said. Yet a Shugden teacher had said that if a Gelug practitioner follows a Nyimgma teaching, he will be killed by the Shugden deity. What did this have to do with the clear philosophy laid out by Lord Buddha? And if you looked at the Nalanda teaching, the great work of the Indian philosophers Shantideva and Nagarjuna, which he was explicating now, what did that have to do with propitiating deities?

The Dalai Lama is lying again. In what way is he working for harmony between the schools of Tibetan Buddhism when he has split the Kagyu tradition because of his interfering in the traditional choice of Karmarpa and split the Gelugpa tradition over the Dorje Shugden issue? It seems that whenever the Dalai Lama takes an interest in something, it is disharmony, not harmony, that follows.

He created disharmony between Nyingmas and Gelugpas within the Tibetan diaspora, and between the NKT and other Buddhist groups in the West, by demonizing Dorje Shugden practitioners and dismissing them as a cult. The story of monks being expelled from their monasteries and the segregation wall at Ganden is now well documented.

Now even the FPMT, a supposedly Western Buddhist organization that should know better, has banned Dorje Shugden practitioners from receiving teachings from Lama Zopa. This is blatant discrimination and a horrible mix of religion and politics. How can this new “Restriction”, as they call it, possibly lead to harmony between schools of Buddhism?

It is completely superstitious to say that if a Gelugpa practitioner follows a Nyingma teaching that Dorje Shugden will harm them! He's not some jealous guardian but a Buddha who helps all living beings. How can a Buddha harm others? The present problem in Tibetan society with Dorje Shugden has been created by the Dalai Lama who believed the infamous Yellow Book written by Zemey Rinpoche. This book -- written 50 years ago by just one Dorje Shugden practitioner and denounced by many others -- was simply a collection of superstitious Tibetan folk tales; but the supposedly rational Dalai Lama believed these and began systematically destroying Dorje Shugden practice. If he had not, there would be no problems of disharmony.

The Dalai Lama seems to believe whatever he reads, whether it's the early pronouncements of the 5th Dalai Lama that Dorje Shugden is a harmful spirit (the 5th Dalai Lama later changed his mind) or the contents of the Yellow Book. It's a great shame that he doesn't believe his ownSpiritual Guide's book, Music Delighting the Ocean of Protectors, in which Trijang Rinpoche gives clear, logical reasons why Dorje Shugden is a Buddha. If he believed this book, there would be no problems!

Finally, on the note of the Buddhist philosophers, what does the great work of Shantideva and Nagarjuna have to do with propitiating spirits like Nechung, which the Dalai Lama does whenever he needs guidance on a political decision?

The fifth and final part of this book review coming soon.

Click here for Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

Posted courtesy of Lineageholder.

Segregation and ostracism of Dorje Shugden practitioners in India and the West

Update from the Dorje Shugden Devotees Society in India:

Sera-Jay monastery is situated in the Tibetan settlement at Bylakupee, five hours by bus from Banglore City, Karnataka State, India . Until this year, it was a monastery that was used by Shugden and non-Shugden practitioners alike. Since the introduction of the ban on Shugden practice made by the Dalai Lama, such harmony has been destroyed and great division and discrimination now exists in the monastery. The posters in these three pictures announce:

"Shugden followers are not allowed."

Picture 1: Sidharta Guest House, which is run by Sera-Jay School.


Picture 2: Visual Section run by Sera-Jay monastery.


Picture 3: Guest House of Sera-Jay monastery.


The posters have been here for the past few months. Taking photographic evidence was not possible before now because of the vigilance in these places.

These three posters show clearly the naked and open discrimination and abuses against Shugden practitioners. It is time for the world to know the terrible apartheid being conducted by monks against monks. We have the spiritual and social responsibility to raise this awareness and to help free these suffering monks from being outcast.

Untouchability

As these three posters show, we are witnessing the creation of a new class of untouchability in India. This is something prohibited by the Indian constitution.

ARTICLE 17 of The Constitution of India
"ABOLITION OF UNTOUCHABILITY - "Untouchability" is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising of "Untouchability" shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law."

(Ed: Worth noting that the monastery is only there because the Indian government gave it permission to be there, and it is still on ground belonging to the Indian government.)

Latest discrimination by the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT)

Dorje Shugden practitioners are now completely outcast from the FPMT in the West as well, even though the Founder of the FPMT, Lama Yeshe, practiced Dorje Shugden until his death, as did many of the lineage masters mentioned on their teachers page. Lama Yeshe’s senior disciples relying upon Dorje Shugden have already either had to go underground or give up their life commitment to Lama Yeshe in order to stay as a teacher or ordained person in the FPMT. Now they have to do this merely to attend teachings. This is a sickening echo to the Jim Crow “separate but equal” laws segregating blacks and whites in the American south, except that Shugden practitioners are now officially not just separate but unequal.

From the FPMT website: "Restriction: FPMT has recently issued a new policy regarding the Shugden practice in accordance with the wishes of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Lama Zopa Rinpoche has expressed the wish "not to have a guru-disciple relationship with anyone who is practicing Shugden."

This is a clear policy of discrimination against other Buddhists. It is extraordinary that it has been enacted, let alone advertised on their website, in this 21st Century.

Since Lama Zopa is still the nominal head of the FPMT, this means that Tibetan politics has now irreversibly permeated the FPMT. It means that not even Lama Zopa's precious teachers, Trijang Rinpoche (or his reincarnation) or Lama Yeshe, would be allowed to attend Lama Zopa's teachings.

FPMT members have long accused the Dorje Shugden practitioners in the New Kadampa Tradition (NKT) of being a sectarian cult. The irony is that the NKT is an open and tolerant organization that has never turned anyone away from a teaching due to their religious beliefs. That this religious belief is the 400-year old practice passed down through generations of fully accomplished Buddhist masters, including half the lineage Gurus of the FPMT, is beyond comprehension.

Meanwhile, it is unclear whether or not Lama Osel (the reincarnation of Lama Yeshe) would countenance this latest extraordinary development. He has kept his distance from the FPMT for the last few years. The de facto head of the FPMT is now the Dalai Lama.