Bayonets to Rumtek - 3
This story begins with a violent attack on a Buddhist monastery. It is a scene that could have been replayed hundreds of times in Tibet after the Chinese took full control in 1959. Government officials, soldiers, and police enter the cloister. The officials demand the keys to the main temple, with its huge Buddha statue, a thousand smaller statues, and images of saints and sages painted by the great masters of centuries past. A mob of hundreds of angry local people shouts at the monks. Women beat the monks and try to pull off their red and yellow robes. Police and local bullies herd the monks into the monastery kitchen. There, the bullies and police line the monks up and force them to hold large knives. The police shoot photographs to create a bogus criminal file for each monk.
At gunpoint, officers order the monks to perform prostrations in front of a photograph of a boy-lama. The lama was approved by the government and was supposed to be the reincarnation of a famous lama who died a decade earlier. The leaders of the crowd continue to occupy the monastery. They give the monks three days to sign a statement saying that the boy-lama is their true leader. Afterwards, those who do not sign are thrown out by bullies. The monks have no time to collect their things and find themselves out in the woods with no other possessions than their torn and bloody robes. Some villagers curse and harass them. Others, at great risk to themselves, feed and shelter the hungry, tired monks.
Yes, the scene described above could have happened in occupied Tibet. But in this case, it did not. Shockingly, this drama took place in a free country, India, the very haven to which nearly a hundred thousand Tibetans had fled for safety in 1959.
Nothing in this scene makes sense. The monastery was not in Tibet; it was located in the tiny state of Sikkim nestled among the high peaks and valleys of the eastern Himalayas in India. The government officials who entered the monastery were not Communist cadres. from Lhasa or Beijing; they were appointees of the democratically elected state government of Sikkim. The angry mob was not seeking revenge for centuries of supposed class oppression; its members were dozens of local Buddhist families whose devotion had led them to the monastery for a religious ceremony. The police and soldiers were not crack troops of the People's Liberation Army brought in from faraway areas in China; they were young men from the local community, and many of them were Buddhists.
Perhaps most confusingly -- because this monastery was not in China -- the boy-lama in the photograph was indeed approved by the Communist Chinese government, like so many figurehead lamas in occupied Tibet since 1959. But unlike these lamas, the boy was also approved by the local state government, in India. India is a secular nation, whose constitution guarantees freedom to all religions while prohibiting government interference in spiritual matters. Yet, the local state government had most decidedly interfered at the monastery. The leader of this government was a Hindu. But many of his officials were Buddhists.
Finally, the biggest enigma of all. The boy-lama was also approved by the Dalai Lama.
What Did the Dalai Lama Know?
The monastery is called Rumtek. It was attacked in August 1993 by supporters of the boy in the photograph. And, to the Dalai Lamas to the Chinese government and the state government of Sikkim, the boy was one of the highest lamas of Tibetan Buddhism. To his supporters, he was the Karmapa. His name was Ogyen Trinley Dorje.
Normally, the Dalai Lama and the Chinese government agree on very little. But in the case of this boy, they both agreed that not only should he be the head of Rumtek monastery; as the Karmapa, the boy would also lead the particular sect of Tibetan Buddhism -- the largest one worldwide, with two million or more devotees -- which had its headquarters at Rumtek monastery.
To most Tibetans, whether living inside China or in exile, the Dalai Lama embodies their aspirations for national identity. For centuries back in Tibet, the Dalai Lamas were known as the spiritual leaders of Tibet. After the current Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 and even more so after he won the Nobel Peace Prize thirty years later, the exiled high lama has become known worldwide as the moral and spiritual leader of all Tibetans.
So, if the Dalai Lama had recognized the boy, why did it require Sikkimese soldiers and police, and a mob of angry local devotees, to try to make the monks at Rumtek accept the boy in the photograph as the Karmapa? Even then, most of the monks would rather fight than switch, at least figuratively speaking. Clearly, the word of the Dalai Laman when backed up with armed force, was not enough to legitimize the boy-lama for the monks of the Karmapa at Rumtek.
The monks insisted that they were loyal to the Dalai Lama. They also said that they had nothing against the boy in the photograph. But they objected, respectfully, that the boy was not recognized as Karmapa by traditional means, and that the Dalai Lama had no right to choose their leader. The monks claimed that the Tibetan exile leader had overstepped his authority in trying to choose a leader for their group. Neither his political role nor his position as a lama in his own Gelug tradition entitled him to choose the Karmapa, who is the leader of a different tradition, known as the Karma Kagyu.
In history, the Karmapas originated nearly three centuries before the Dalai Lamas. The monks said that their own lamas have always chosen the Karmapa without help from the Dalai Lama and the government he led in Tibet until 1959, and in exile ever since. It was thus for eight centuries in Tibet and the monks did not see why things should be any different in exile.
The Case of Dorje Shugden
Outsiders are used to thinking of Tibetans as united in solidarity behind the Dalai Lama on all issues, whether spiritual or political. How could they not be? We know the Tibetan leader for his gentle manner and engaging laughter, his patience and goodwill in the face of overwhelming power, and his generosity in spreading Buddhist teachings on nonviolence and compassion around the world.
But some Tibetans in exile have disagreed with the Dalai Lama on religious matters. The most famous example may be the dispute over worship of the tantric protector deity Dorje Shugden. "A Dharma Protector is an emanation of a Buddha or a Bodhisattva whose main functions are to avert the inner and outer obstacles that prevent practitioners from gaining spiritual realizations, and to arrange all the necessary conditions for their practice," say Dorje Shugden devotees. "In Tibet, every monastery had its own Dharma Protector, but the tradition did not begin in Tibet; the Mahayanists of ancient India also relied upon Dharma Protectors to eliminate hindrances and to fulfill their spiritual wishes." [1] As in practices for other dharma protectors, Shugden worship involves various rituals including chanted liturgies, ritual offerings, and visualizations.
And like other wrathful deities or dharma protectors, Shugden is scary, but with a purpose. "His round yellow hat represents the view of Nagarjuna, and the wisdom sword in his right hand teaches us to sever ignorance, the root of samsara, with the sharp blade of Nagarjuna's view... Dorje Shugden rides a snow lion, the symbol of the four fearlessnesses of a Buddha, and has a jewel-spitting mongoose perched on his left arm, symbolizing his power to bestow wealth on those who put their trust in him ... His wrathful expression indicates that he destroys ignorance, the real enemy of all living beings, by blessing them with great wisdom; and also that he destroys the obstacles of pure Dharma practitioners." [2] Nagarjuna was an Indian philosopher of the second or third century A.D. whose views on Buddhism were influential in Tibet.
Since the sixteenth century, monks in the Dalai Lama's own Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism have performed rituals calling on the fearsome figure of Dorje Shugden to protect their spiritual practice and help them in worldly matters. The current Dalai Lama learned these practices from his junior tutor before fleeing Tibet in 1959. But beginning in 1976, the Tibetan exile leader started to discourage his people from supplicating Shugden, saying in part, that such practice would be harmful to the Nyingma order. Historically, Shugden practice was popular among lamas of the Gelug school ("Yellow Hats") who resisted mixing their school's philosophy and practice with those of other Buddhist schools, particularly the original Buddhism of Tibet, the Nyingma, as a traditional prayer to Shugden shows:
Praise to you, violent god of the Yellow Hat teachings, Who reduces to particles of dust Great beings, high officials and ordinary people Who pollute and corrupt the Gelug doctrine. [3]
In exile; the Dalai Lama has said, all Tibetans need to unite in a common front against the Chinese. Shugden practice could be an obstacle to such unity, as it could alienate followers of schools outside the Gelugpa, particularly the Nyingma. Indeed, lamas of other schools often look cautiously on those who also follow Dorje Shugden, fearing that they might be Gelugpachauvinists. Therefore, on March 7, 1996, the Dalai Lama's exile government in India decreed a ban on Shugden practice. Of course, this writ did not carry the force of law, since India guarantees religious freedom in its constitution. But, like a Papal Bull among followers of the Catholic Church, the Dalai Lama's decree carried weight among Buddhist Tibetans, whenever they resided. After the ban, loyalists to the Dalai Lama echoed their leader in denouncing Shugden practice.
Longtime Shugden followers have denied that their tradition discriminates against the Nyingma or other Tibetan religious traditions. They took the ban as a blow to their religious freedom and the prelude to persecution. "I felt the ground slipping under my feet," said Kundeling Rinpoche (Rinpoche is a title of respect for high lamas), a leading Shugden practitioner. when he heard of the ban while traveling in Europe. "What followed was even more shocking -- the persecution of and propaganda against respected masters of the Dorje Shugden spiritual practice." An Indian reporter concluded that the ban had unleashed a backlash among Tibetans in exile. "Not only was Shugden worship forbidden by the Dalai Lama," the reporter wrote, "Shugden followers were subjected to a witch-hunt that has been well documented in the international media. The German television program 'Panorama' and the Swiss '10 Vor 10' have documented the human rights abuses by the Dalai Lama's administration -- the violence and even death threats against the practitioners of this particular Buddhist tradition and their ostracism." [4]
Another prominent Gelugpa lama practicing Dorje Shugden, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, moved to England in 1977 and started his own organization, the New Kadampa Tradition, which developed a significant following among Westerners. In 1996, when the Dalai Lama banned Shugden practice, the New Kadampa broke off from the Dalai Lama's leadership and began to protest against the ban. Since then, on at least one occasion, the group was able to muster a large crowd of Westerners in monk's robes to protest at Heathrow airport when the Dalai Lama flew into London.
Unlike the dispute over Dorje Shugden, which has seen news articles examining both sides of the Dalai Lama's ban, few writers outside of India have seriously investigated the dispute over the identity of the current Karmapa. The four books published in 2003 and 2004 on the Karmapa have all supported the boy chosen by the Dalai Lama without questioning the basic assumption of the Tibetan leader's position -- namely, that he has the authority to choose the Karmapa. This has prevented these writers from paying enough attention to the most dramatic events of the controversy, particularly the violent takeover of the Karmapa's Rumtek monastery in 1993.
The Karmapa story can be confusing, and it is difficult to find the facts buried in the mountains of rhetoric built by each side in the controversy. In general, Western journalists tend to rely on one main source for information and analysis about Tibetan Buddhism, the Dalai Laina himself. In the case of the Karmapa controversy, faced with the daunting task of understanding Tibetan religious politics and sectarian rivalries, it is understandable that writers would seek clarity from a trusted source. As a result, many have allowed themselves to be guided by the Dalai Lama's press office on the complex issue.
While this has simplified research for reporters, relying on the Dalai Lama's administration for information about the Karmapa has prevented writers from getting the full story, for one simple reason. In this particular case, the Dalai Lama is not an impartial arbiter of a dispute among two groups of Tibetan lamas. Instead, as in the ban on Dorje Shugden, the Tibetan leader is a party himself to the dispute, since he has given his official support to one of the candidates for the position of seventeenth Karmapa.
The Tibetan leader's word has been sufficient evidence for many writers outside of India to declare the controversy dead. If the Dalai Lama has recognized one boy as the Karmapa, then what need of further discussion? Surely, the lamas who persist in supporting the other boy, known as Trinley Thaye Dorje, must have little merit to their case. Accordingly, hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles published in the West, along with the four recent hooks, have accepted Ogyen Trinley as the Karmapa. Though writers often cite other reasons, their primary rationale for accepting the one candidate over the other is usually that the Dalai Lama has recognized him.
Yet, in India, where most exiled Tibetans live, the controversy continues to rage. Interestingly, the Indian press has accorded credence to both Karmapa candidates. This book will examine press coverage of various events in the Karmapa story to highlight the contrast between Indian and Western reporting. This may encourage us to question the accuracy of the information that we in the West have received about Tibetan Buddhism in general.
To further highlight the difference between opinion in India and in the West on the Karmapa, the Indian government has shown suspicion of the Dalai Lama's candidate Ogyen Trinley, restricting his travels and limiting what his chief supporter in the Karma Kagyu, Tai Situ Rinpoche, can say about the controversy.
Meanwhile, the other Karmapa candidate Thaye Dorje has been able to travel freely in India and abroad. And after lamas involved in the dispute began to bring cases to the Indian court system, particularly in a property rights suit over Rumtek monastery filed by Thaye Dorje's supporters, judges have mostly ruled in favor of Thaye Dorje's party. If anything, opinion in India, both official and unofficial, appears to be running in favor of Thaye Dorje over the Dalai Lama's choice Ogyen Trinley. The important exception is Sikkim, where, as we will see, Rumtek monastery is located and where Ogyen Trinley enjoys significant support among leading families and in the local press.
The Dalai Lama's main rival on the Karmapa issue, Shamar Rinpoche, agrees with the followers of Dorje Shugden that there is a problem of religious freedom among exiled Tibetans. "The Dalai Lama asks that Tibetans have religious freedom in China," Shamar told me, "but unfortunately, His Holiness has not respected the religious freedom of Tibetans in exile to follow the traditions of their own religious lineages." Yet, Shamar has resisted allying himself with the advocates for Dorje Shugden, since he is uncomfortable with their high-profile and often acrimonious protests against the Dalai Lama. "I have always supported His Holiness Dalai Lama in every way, on freedom for Tibet, on spreading Buddhism around the world, and on human rights," Shamar said. "Only on one issue do I disagree with the Dalai Lama: choosing the reincarnation of the Karmapa."
Born in 1952, Shamar is the fourteenth incarnation in a line of tulkus going back to the thirteenth century. The first Shamarpa Drakpa Sengye (1283-1349) was a student of the third Karmapa Rangjung Dorje (1284-1339). For the next ten centuries, the Karmapa and Shamarpa worked as a team, one often recognizing the incarnations of the other. Their partnership was enshrined in parallel titles, based on the color of the identical ceremonial miters each lama wore: The Black Hat Karmapa (Karmapa) and the Red Hat Karmapa (Shamarpa).
The Shamarpas suffered an unusual setback to their line in the eighteenth century, when in the wake of a war between Tibet and Nepal, the Chinese emperor and the Dalai Lama's government blamed Shamar for the hostilities and imposed a bizarre punishment: an official ban on his future incarnations. This meant that Shamarpas could only reincarnate in secret until the ban expired with the demise of the government of Central Tibet in 1959.
The current Shamar is. the nephew of the sixteenth Karmapa and was raised by the Karma Kagyu leader at Rumtek monastery in the sixties and seventies. He managed Rumtek until 1993, when supporters of Ogyen Trinley took over. Since then, Shamar has led the remaining officials of the sixteenth Karmapa's administration in court battles and publicity campaigns in India to try to regain the monastery.
Unlike Shugden advocates, Shamar has kept a low profile outside of the Himalayas. Though he is one of the highest reincarnate lamas of Tibet, most outsiders who follow Tibetan Buddhism probably would not recognize his name. However, journalists sympathetic to the Dalai Lama do know Shamar, and they have criticized him strongly. Three of the four books published about the Karmapa in 2003 and 2004 discuss the controversy (the other one is a biography of Ogyen Trinley), and all three books criticize Shamar for standing in the way of Ogyen Trinley taking his rightful place as seventeenth Karmapa.
Jeffery Paine, himself an author of a book on Tibetan Buddhism, summed up the perspective of this group of writers in the Washington Post in 2004. Paine noted that Shamar is the lama who all the recent books on the Karmapa portray as "doing the Tibetan cause harm in order to secure the profits from the Karmapa's holdings for himself." [5] This is a strong charge, and Paine said that he hoped it was not true. To see for ourselves, it is necessary to go beyond the books already published on the Karmapa issue. The Karmapa's property was actually held by a legal trust, not by Shamar personally. Indeed, this trust would later sue Tai Situ himself for illegally taking over the Karmapa's property, just the opposite of what the books mentioned by Paine claim.
Why Does Shamar Fight?
Does Shamar deserve this criticism? Has he acted improperly as his critics allege? Or, as he claims, has he defended the integrity of the office of the Karmapa and the purity of the Karma Kagyu lineage as was the duty of the Shamarpa, at risk to his reputation and even to his personal safety? Is he fit to recognize the seventeenth Karmapa? This book will examine his actions as well as his views as a way to understand the Karmapa controversy and corruption in Tibetan Buddhism. Without Shamar to oppose the Dalai Lama's candidate, there would be no Karmapa controversy, so understanding Shamar's motives is crucial. Therefore, we will hear from him many times throughout our investigation.
Here, let us begin with the basic issue of the Karmapa controversy: If the Dalai Lama has chosen the Karmapa already, why does Shamar insist on opposing him?
"I believe that the Karma Kagyu should be able to choose its own spiritual leader in the traditional way," Shamar told me. "Ogyen Trinley was not chosen the way the Karmapa should have been, but through political interference from the Tibetan exile government of the Dalai Lamae government of China, and many others. All the other religious schools of Tibet are able to choose their leaders on their own. Why can't we choose ours? His Holiness Dalai Lama is putting politics before religion in this case.
"Because his devotees in foreign countries are not in the habit of questioning his actions, they support His Holiness Dalai Lama in this case. I call such followers 'package believers.' They follow the Dalai Lama because he is a Buddhist teacher and leader of Tibetans, so that is all they need to know. They just accept the whole package without investigating for themselves whether what His Holiness does is really right in this case. For example, if I had a house, and the Dalai Lama wanted to take it for himself, these package believers among his devotees would say that I am wrong to protect my property or even to complain, and that he is right to take it.
"I understand when Tibetans feel this way; their livelihood may depend on being on good terms with the Tibetan exile administration in India. Maybe they would lose their job if they questioned the Dalai Lama's right to choose the Karmapa. But for people around the world, this is an unhealthy development in Buddhism. If one man is so admired around the world that he can do anything he wants without fair scrutiny, then he is effectively a dictator. There is no oversight. And, if the Karma Kagyu school cannot choose its own leader, does this set a precedent for the other religious schools of Tibet? Will the Dalai Lama choose their leaders too?"
To outsiders, this may seem like strong language for a Tibetan lama to use to describe the man who is perhaps the world's most revered spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. At this point, perhaps it is best to keep an open mind. Later, we will have the chance to place Shamar's criticism in context as we learn how he has acted in the course of the Karmapa dispute.
For now, let us consider Shamar's main premise, as he explains it: "Dharma is about thinking for yourself. It is not about automatically following a teacher in all things, no matter how respected that teacher may be. More than anyone else, Buddhists should respect other people's rights -- their human rights and their religious freedom."
