On Fri, 6 Jun 2008 18:19:57 -0400, "Jeffrey Hamilton"
wrote:

Never having heard of this *Western Shugden Society* before, I did a little
googling.

It appears this outfit is sponsered by the Peoples Republic of China.
Merely a tactic to try and tarnish the DL.


I expect your google turned up this story too?
===========================================

A quiet, middle-class café in Westminster, in the political heart of
London, is the last place you would expect to hear someone badmouthing
the Dalai Lama. When that someone is a Buddhist nun, dressed in
trademark maroon robes and with shorn hair, it seems even more
peculiar. 'The Dalai Lama is a hypocrite and an oppressor', says
Kelsang Pema over a glass of water with ice (what else?), as she
fishes from her rucksack 'stacks of evidence' to show me why the Dalai
Lama 'cannot be trusted'. A well-to-do blonde-haired woman in a power
suit shoots us strange looks from the adjacent table. Slating the
Dalai Lama, especially on a crisp, sunny Monday morning as he is due
to arrive in Britain for an official visit, is not the done thing in
polite circles in London.
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.p.../article/5170/

Kelsang Pema - birth name: Helen Gradwell, born and brought up in
Carlisle, England - is a leading member of the Western Shugden
Society, a group of Buddhists who worship the 'wisdom deity' Dorje
Shugden. Buddhists, especially in Tibet, have been saying the Dorje
Shugden prayer for more than 350 years. Pema tells me 'the prayer
becomes your life, your breath'. Buddhists call on Dorje Shugden to
'help us develop pure qualities', she says, 'including love,
compassion and patience'. There's only one problem: the Dalai Lama,
head of the Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India and
considered by many Buddhists to be a figurehead of their faith,
effectively outlawed the worship of Dorje Shugden in 1996 and
overnight transformed Shugden-following Buddhists into heretics and
untouchables.
In March 1996, the Dalai Lama decreed that the worship of Dorje
Shugden was 'evil'. In what is believed to have been part of an
internal power struggle in his fiefdom-in-exile in Dharamsala,
northern India, the Dalai Lama ordered all worshippers of Dorje
Shugden to leave his temple on 21 March 1996. A week later, on 30
March 1996, the Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies (the parliament
in exile) passed a resolution banning the worship of Dorje Shugden by
Tibetan government employees, and the Private Office of His Holiness
the Dalai Lama issued a formal decree for everyone to stop practising
the Dorje Shugden prayer. The New Internationalist reported that the
Lama's office wrote to every monastery in northern India and Tibet
demanding that they 'ensure total implementation of this decree by
each and everyone… If there is anyone who continues to worship [Dorje
Shugden], make a list of their names, house name, birth place… Keep
the original and send us a copy of the list.' (1)
'After the Dalai Lama's decree, anyone who continued to follow Dorje
Shugden got it in the neck', Pema says. By 1998, two years after the
Dalai Lama described Dorje Shugden as 'evil' and instructed
monasteries to collect the names of those disobedient Buddhists who
continued worshipping it, an Indian human rights lawyer, PK Dey, had
collected 300 statements from Tibetans in exile in India who had been
either threatened or attacked for failing to comply with the Dalai
Lama's orders. 'Those worshipping Shugden are experiencing tremendous
harassment', said Dey. 'This is not in any particular part of the
country but everywhere there are Tibetans.' (2) In December 1996, one
72-year-old woman, Sonam Bhuti, whose family had worshipped Dorje
Shugden for generations, reported to the Office of the Notary in Delhi
(a civil law institution) that Tibetan officials had ransacked her and
others' homes, 'forcibly taking out the idols and paintings [of Dorje
Shugden]' and 'burning' and 'breaking' them (3).
The Dalai Lama's officials sought to expel Dorje Shugden worshippers
from positions of power and responsibility in both northern India and
Tibet. On 18 April 1996, the Tibetan Department of Health wrote to
doctors and threatened to sack any who continued worshipping the
deity: 'In case there is anyone who doesn't abide by the addresses of
His Holiness to give up Shugden worship… such persons should submit
their resignation.' (4) On 19 May 1998, the Tibetan Department of
Religion and Culture advised welfare and settlement officers of the
conditions under which Tibetan monks and nuns could leave Tibet or
northern India to travel to other parts of the world. Condition no.3
required 'attestation from their monastery that neither the host [nor
the] invitee is a devotee of Dhogyal [a derogatory name for Dorje
Shugden]' (5). In 1998, the New Internationalist reported that there
was little point in Dorje Shugden worshippers protesting against their
maltreatment - one group of worshippers was told by Tibetan officials
that 'concepts like democracy and freedom of religion are empty when
it comes to the wellbeing of the Dalai Lama' (6).
Into the 2000s, the Dalai Lama has continued to harry the remaining
Shugden followers. The German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung reported
recently that 'in Tibet, many practise Shugden only "discreetly",
since their practice has been rejected by the Dalai Lama… as evil'
(7). In January this year, the Dalia Lama held a referendum among
Tibetan monks to decide whether it is acceptable to worship Dorje
Shugden. Yet Pema says it wasn't a referendum 'in any democratic
sense'. Instead, monks had to choose a red stick or a yellow stick
from a basket, publicly and in front of their superiors; they picked
the yellow stick if they opposed the worship of Dorje Shugden and the
red stick if they supported the right of people to worship the deity.
Perhaps not surprisingly, given the Dalai Lama's decrees against the
worship of Dorje Shugden and the public, archaic nature of the
referendum, the yellow sticks won (8). 'In Britain and America, the
Dalai Lama is a religious hero. But for many he is a religious
dictator', says Pema.
Some denounce the Dorje Shugden followers as mouthpieces for China.
Pema denies it. 'Anyone who criticises the Dalai Lama is written off
as a Chinese puppet', she says. 'It's just another way of shutting
down debate. People in the West look upon Tibet as this ideal place,
but Tibetans find it hard to have serious debates or to stand up to
the Dalai Lama. It's almost medieval.' Others have made a similar
point about the way the Dalai Lama's unquestionable status as high
representative of the Tibetan people and all things Buddhist stifles
the development of Tibetan public life. In her book The Tibetan
Independent Movement: Political, Religious and Gandhian Perspectives,
Jane Ardley argued that in terms of the development of internal
political life in Tibet and Dharamsala, '[It] is apparent that it is
the Dalai Lama's role as ultimate spiritual authority that is holding
back the political process of democratisation. The assumption that he
occupies the correct moral ground from a spiritual perspective means
that any challenge to his political authority may be interpreted as
anti-religious.' (9)

Others claim that the 'Dorje Shugden clique' is a cult. They do indeed
have cultish qualities, devoting their life and love to an archaic
Buddhist deity. But then many Buddhist and other religious groups
could be described as 'cultish'. The most striking thing about the
Dorje Shugden story is the Western media's lack of interest in it.
Pema has had meetings with British MPs - yet while some 'were
interested', she says 'they knew that criticising the Dalai Lama would
damage their reputations'. She has held press conferences 'but they
are usually poorly attended'. The media do, however, turn up to the
Western Shugden Society's anti-Dalai Lama protests - such as the one
that will take place at the Royal Albert Hall on Thursday this week -
but usually only so they can publish stories about 'mad Buddhists
attacking the Dalai Lama', she says.
The state of denial in the West about some of the Dalai Lama's alleged
power-tripping, or at least the unquestioning attitude towards the
Dalai Lama and everything that he does, highlights the role that he
plays for many Western celebs, commentators and politicians today:
he's a cartoon 'good guy', giggling, pure and righteous, who
apparently should be unconditionally applauded for standing up to the
'Evil Chinese'. All of the Dalai Lama's bad points - his origins in
the stifling medievalism of 1930s Tibet; his archaic practices; his
disregard for 'concepts like democracy and freedom of religion'; his
backing from the CIA in its Cold War with the Chinese - are simply
ignored, as His Holiness is invited to guest-edit French Vogue, attend
charity auctions with Sharon 'Look at My Vagina' Stone, and rub
shoulders with Richard Gere. Pema shows me the Independent on Sunday,
published the day before we met, which has a feature about the Dalai
Lama 'charming the West'. There are around 12 photos showing him
meeting celebrites and other do-gooders. Yet in two of the photos, it
isn't the Dalai Lama at all; it's a different Lama. Maybe these
Tibetans all look the same to British picture editors.
'He's just a photograph and a symbol to many people in the West', says
Pema. 'But the reality is very different.'
Brendan O'Neill is editor of spiked. Visit his website here.