Is 'A Great Deception' a Political Book?

Some critics of the Western Shugden Society have claimed that its agenda is a political one and that the new book, 'A Great Deception' is a political book.

So, is this the case? The answer is, quite simply, 'no'. The reason is that the stated aims of the book are spiritual:

• To liberate millions of innocent practitioners of the Buddhist Deity Dorje Shugden and their families from suffering

• To restore peace and harmony between Shugden and non-Shugden practitioners

• To re-establish the common spiritual activities of Shugden and non-Shugden practitioners

• To free Buddhism from political pollution
  

The book functions spiritually like a Dharma Protector, protecting not only Dorje Shugden practitioners from slander, ostracism and persecution by exposing the Dalai Lama's lies and 'setting the record straight' but also protecting the Gelugpa tradition whose reputation has suffered greatly through the Dalai Lama's arrogant statement that all his Teachers and Lineage Gurus were 'wrong'.

Indirectly the book protects ALL schools of Tibetan Buddhism. By exposing the Dalai Lama's plan to create a new school of Buddhism by merging all the schools together, with him as the head, it will avert the destruction of Tibetan Buddhism. If the Dalai Lama were to succeed with his plan, it would destroy the precious and unique enlightenment-giving qualities of each tradition but the Dalai Lama doesn't care about Buddhism - this is his plan to consolidate and protect his personal power over the Tibetan people and to ensure a position as a religious leader if he should ever return to a Tibet that is governed as an autonomous region within China.

In a review of Buddha’s Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today, by Erik D. Curren, Lama Karma Wangchuk wrote:

Curren’s account of the United Party initiative will be shocking to many readers. The United Party was a plan run by the Dalai Lama’s brother Gyalo Thondup to unite all Tibetans, regardless of their region or religious affiliation, into a coherent group able to stand together against the Chinese. The most controversial part of the plan was a scheme to combine the four Buddhist schools and the Bon religion—governed separately for more than five hundred years back in Tibet —under a single administration led by the Dalai Lama. “When word of the United Party’s religious reform got out in 1964, the exiled government was unprepared for the angry opposition that leaders of the religious schools expressed. To them, this unification plan appeared as a thinly disguised scheme for the exile government to confiscate the monasteries that dozens of lamas had begun to re-establish in exile with funds they had raised themselves.”

Although the Dalai Lama's plan failed when he tried to do this in the early 1960's, thanks mainly to opposition by the 16^th Karmapa and the Thirteen Tibetan settlements, he never gave up on his plan. His banning of Dorje Shugden is part of this plan. This ban has two main purposes - to divert attention from his failure to obtain any good results for the Tibetan people in terms of Tibetan independence or even autonomy within China, and to weaken the Gelugpa tradition so that he can merge all four schools of Tibetan Buddhism together and guarantee himself religious power as head of this new school. Since his intentions are completely self-serving and worldly, it can be seen that he is not a valid spiritual leader or spiritual guide. The faults of mixing religion and politics are there for all to see.

The purpose of 'A Great Deception' is similar to that of 'Buddha's not Smiling' – an attempt to uncover corruption at the heart of Tibetan Buddhism, that heart being the Dalai Lama's 'lama policy' of mixing politics and religion. Just as 'Buddha's not Smiling' is an expose of the Karmapa controversy, so 'A Great Deception' is an expose of the Dorje Shugden controversy.

One reason why 'A Great Deception' might be mistaken for a political book is that, in order to highlight the hypocrisy and deception of the Dalai Lama, it investigates his political actions, subsequent failures and the devastating effect that these religiopolitical actions are having on Buddhist practitioners and society at large. As the book states, the only person who can put an end to this is the Dalai Lama himself:

In Tibetan society, anyone who has views and intentions that are different from those of the Dalai Lama is immediately accused of not being Tibetan; they are criticised, threatened and ostracised. This happened in the past and is happening to Dorje Shugden practitioners today. From this alone we can see that Lama Policy continues to have a devastating effect on society. This problem cannot be solved unless the lama himself changes his own attitude. (p18)

The hope of publishing a book such as 'A Great Deception' is that it will bring pressure to bear on the Dalai Lama to change his disastrous policy. Sadly, being self-serving, this will only happen if his reputation and power are affected. Until now, he has arrogantly refused to discuss the Dorje Shugden issue with concerned practitioners.

We can see that all the problems of division and disharmony in the Buddhist community these days, whether due to the Dorje Shugden issue or the Karmapa issue, are due to the power and ambitions of one person: the Fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet and it is he and he alone who can solve these problems. Let us hope that as public awareness of 'Lama Policy' grows the Dalai Lama will be forced to abandon it in favour of a separation between 'church and state' in Tibetan society. Only this will remove the political pollution in Tibetan Buddhism and enable it to function as a pure path to liberation and enlightenment for all living beings.

Six important questions for the Dalai Lama or his supporters to answer

I found this comment on the new blog that officially goes with New Kadampa Truth ~ Fighting the Smears. If you have answers to these questions, please send your comments in and we will post them. This particularly applies to Tenzin Peljor!

Background

From Ron Cook: Below was an email sent to Tenzin Paljor, the most vehement critic of Shugden practitioners and of the NKT. He will not post it. He will not answer these questions nor other important ones. He is very selective about what he chooses to respond to. These are some of the most important questions concerning the Dalai Lama and yet they remain completely ignored. If you (Tenzin Paljor) are so confident in your beliefs, why are you afraid to answer these questions?

Dear Tenzin,

Since you have taken it upon yourself or been asked to represent the views of the Dalai Lama, I wish to submit six important questions that hopefully you can provide clear replies to. Since you have gone to great lengths to accommodate the questions of a concerned citizen in Brighton, then in fairness please show the same willingness to address the questions below - they too come from a concerned citizen. If you are as fair and open minded as the people visiting your blogs indicate, demonstrate these qualities by providing the appropriate answers. There is no valid reason not to post these questions and let your readers draw their own conclusions.

Sincerely,
Ron Cook

Six important questions for the Dalai Lama or his supporters to answer

1) If it is appropriate for the Dalai Lama to decide what spiritual practices are appropriate, and seeing clearly that such a decision causes divisiveness, why are the reasons he cites for the ban on Dorje Shugden not being supported by the teachings of Buddha? What Sutras specifically dictate the need for invoking spiritual bans? If the ban is not politically motivated there must be an authentic spiritual basis for this action. The teachings of Buddha address all possible delusions that sentient beings are capable of generating, therefore, please cite the Sutras that necessitate imposing the ban on Dorje Shugden.

2) Why is the Dalai Lama consistently patient, apologetic, and conciliatory toward the Chinese and not Dorje Shugden practitioners? The Dalai Lama has never acknowledged any email, petition, fax, phone call, telegram, or verbal request, nor has he ever granted an audience to anyone wishing to try and solve the Shugden controversy. However, he makes effort to engage the Chinese at virtually every opportunity. Please explain this double standard of engagement.

3) The Dalai Lama says that Dorje Shugden practitioners are free to ignore his ‘advice’ and continue to practice their faith. How is this possible when his government, his siblings, his personal friends, and representatives of Buddhist traditions that he controls, at every opportunity, disparage and attack Dorje Shugden practitioners? What basis is there to believe that Shugden practitioners have freedom? The Dalai Lama has said:

“Everyone who is affiliated with the Tibetan society of the Ganden Phodrang government, should relinquish ties with Dhogyal. This is necessary since it poses danger to the religious and temporal situation of Tibet. As for foreigners, it makes no difference to us if they walk with their feet up and their head down. We have taught Dharma to them, not they to us…

‘Until now you have a very good job on this issue. Hereafter also, continue this
policy in a clever way. We should do it in such a way to ensure that in future generations not even the name of Dhogyal is remembered.”

(From a speech delivered July 14th 1996, in Caux Switzerland)

Since the Dalai Lama has expressed an intention to utterly destroy the practice of Dorje Shugden, please explain the nature and type of freedom such practitioners shall enjoy.

4) Johan Candelin, director of the World Evangelical Fellowship’s (WEF) Religious Liberty Commission, invited the Dalai Lama to meeting in Helsinki on June 20, 1998. One of the topics discussed was the persecution of Christians in Sri Lanka by Buddhists. The Dalai Lama said that any Buddhist who persecutes Christians “misunderstands the true nature of Buddhism.” Persecution is defined in the Random House College Dictionary (def. 3) to mean:

“A program or campaign to exterminate, drive away, or subjugate a people because of their religious or moral beliefs or practices.”

If persecution of Christians is inappropriate and contrary to the true nature of Buddhism, why is the persecution of Shugden practitioners been not only acceptable, but advocated by the Dalai Lama? How can any reasonable person not consider the Dalai Lama’s words and actions to be hypocrisy in the extreme? Please clarify that persecuting Shugden practitioners is not hypocrisy.

5) The Dalai Lama freely admits that previous to his ban he was a practitioner of Dorje Shugden. He also composed a prayer to the deity entitled, Melody of the Unceasing Vajra, which is subtitled: ‘A Propitiation of Mighty Gyalchen Dorje Shugden, Protector of Conqueror Manjushri Tsongkhapa’s Teachings, by the Supreme Victor, the Great 14th Dalai Lama.’ Since the Dalai Lama is considered to be infallible and a fully enlightened being, how can these completely opposite beliefs be reconciled? Should we understand that the Dalai Lama was a faulty being when he practiced this deity in the past? If so, how is it that he can be considered to be faultless now? Enlightened beings cannot become more enlightened with time, nor can their perfect state degenerate. Moreover, such a pure being is omniscient, and would know indubitably that such a reversal of belief would cause tremendous confusion and problems. A flawless being should be able to provide a coherent, logical, and plausible explanation for this contradiction. The Dalai Lama has yet to provide such an explanation. Please explain how the Dalai Lama’s reversal on Dorje Shugden can be considered anything other than the confused and mistaken action of an ordinary being.

6) For nearly four centuries the deity Dorje Shugden has supposedly caused harm to many people. The Fourteenth Dalai Lama claims that since the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Dorje Shugden has caused not only a consistent degeneration of Buddhism, but many other serious problems. If this is true, why is it not possible for any of the reincarnations of the Dalai Lama to subdue this being? It is claimed that each of the Dalai Lamas are successive manifestations of the Buddha of Compassion (Chenrezig). There are many accounts of high Lamas subduing malevolent spirits in Tibet, yet the succession of ten Dalai Lamas cannot accomplish a similar feat. Practitioners of Dorje Shugden claim that he is an enlightened being, and therefore impossible to subdue. Please explain the failure of these ten Dalai Lamas to subdue Dorje Shugden. Please explain the failure of thousands of high Lamas to do the same.

Posted courtesy of Ron Cook.