Al Jazeera’s People and Power has named ‘The Dalai Lama: The Devil Within’ one of their top two stories of 2008. As a result, Al Jazeera is now featuring it again.
The reporter has added at the end of the updated report:
"The case against the Dalai Lama is still with the courts. We hope to bring you an update later in the year."
As the lawyer for the persecuted Shugden practitioners, Shree Sanjay Jain, explains:
"It is certainly a case of religious discrimination in the sense that if within your sect of religion you say that this particular Deity ought not to be worshipped, and those persons who are willing to worship him you are trying to excommunicate them from the main stream of Buddhism, then it is a discrimination of worst kind."
Al Jazeera adds:
"No matter what the outcome of the court case, in a country where millions of idols are worshipped, attempting to ban the Deity is an uphill battle. One in which many Buddhist monks have lost their faith in the spirit of the Dalai Lama."
There are a great number of videos now available on the subject of the Dalai Lama and Dorje Shugden and someone has kindly collected these altogether for easy reference, with a sentence about them in some cases. They appear on the new Video section on the WisdomBuddhaDorjeShugden website (with which this blog is associated).
They are categorized in terms of who made them – the Western Shugden Society (WSS) and all the individual movie makers, concerned citizens.
We hope this will be a valuable resource for those wishing to see evidence of the persecution taking place, the background to the problem, the nature of the WSS demonstrations, and a great deal of other information and analysis in visual form.
Regarding his ban of the practice of the Wisdom Buddha Dorje Shugden, the Dalai Lama said on 27 March 2006:
"... most of the concerned people have been able to make a proper choice between what to accept and what to reject in this matter, I felt an urge to thank you all for it. This activity which concerns the well being of our faith should not begin and end like the Chinese campaigns, which start suddenly to deal with an urgent current concern and then, after a while, calm down to eventually, sort of, die out. We should be able to carry forward to a successful conclusion the work that we have started in the matter.
Those who practice Dorje Shugden (called here "Dholgyal" in a derogatory fashion) have no recourse, nowhere to turn. Some are publicly named by the Dalai Lama so they can be dealt with:
There are, however, some cases of people pretending not to have heard what they have heard; especially, there are still some cases in which I feel that persons deliberately practice and propagate Dholgyal. With regard to them, all concerned should think with great caution. To mention specific names in Tibet, there are some local monasteries in Chamdo with their principal of Chamdo Monastery. I do feel that there are people there who are still strengthening their efforts to propagate the practice of Dholgyal Shugden. In the Dragyab region too, some such at the branch Dragyab Monastery and in the Markham region also, I feel that there are people who deliberately retain and propagate the practice. Denma Gonsar passed away last year. In the region where he lived too, there are people who continue and propagate the practice of Dholgyal. In the Rawatoe region of Nyethang there are among the monks and nuns coming to Lhasa from Markham, Dragyab, etc., people who propagate the practice. There are monks from the Markham region who have followed their tradition of joining the Ramoche Temple in Lhasa, where they are still propagating the practice of Dholgyal. Whatever is the case, if such people are designedly reciprocating in negative kind the gratitude we owe to the successive Dalai Lamas and are thereby knowingly showing nothing but scorn for the religious and political causes of Tibet and the kindness of the Dalai Lamas, I have no suggestions to offer. If, nevertheless, I am reiterating my emphasis on the issue, it is because we need to hold as objects of compassion people, if any, who do not know about the issue, or who have not heard about it, or who, out of ignorance, have committed a rash mistake, or who have been led astray by others. All those who know about it have a duty to explain and thereby ensure proper conformity regarding what to accept and what to reject. I too take this as very important."
Dalai Lama's stance on non-violence: In 1996, outside a monastery in southern India, a group of pro Dalai Lama supporters (including monks) surrounded hundreds of peaceful monks who had gathered to demonstrate against the Dalai Lama's ban on the mainstream Buddhist practice of Wisdom Buddha Dorje Shugden.
The angry mob of pro Dalai Lama supporters, including many monks, threw stones and bricks at the Dorje Shugden practitioners. 60 of them were hospitalized with serious injuries.
A huge riot erupted in New York City after the Dalai Lama's teachings July 17, 2008 in which an organized mob of the attendees of the Dalai Lama's teaching surrounded the peaceful protesters demonstrating against the Dalai Lama's ban on the mainstream Buddhist practice of the Wisdom Buddha Dorje Shugden.
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