A few areas for possible upcoming posts...or perhaps short takes...

I'll be on travel much of this week, but I wanted to sketch out a few ideas that might make interesting posts for the future:

• "Rights" - do they exist?  I'm remind of this by reading a post on Kos about the sexual agenda of the Religious Right. A passage appears there to the effect of "Maybe you don't believe in common descent or evolution. Even though I think that's a foolish belief, you are entitled to it, but common descent is nonetheless true."  While for the purposes of everyday social engagement and politesse it's useful to treat people with the respect the presumption of rights would entail, and while for legal purposes it's crucial, especially at present to act with the presumption of certain rights and powers arranged, the construction of such rights, to me, appears at odds with how the world is experienced.
• The Dalai Lama appeared on a Michael Palin travel documentary show.  (See here.) To be honest, the reactions of the Dalai Lama when he sat down with Palin were interesting to say the least. Two things stood out: Firstly, the Dalai Lama seemed to laugh a bit too much - I frankly couldn't figure out why, because the laughter seemed in some spots either forced or not exactly matching the tenor of the conversation.  But the other thing that stood out was a point where Palin noted that he was bound for Tibet after visiting Dharmsala.  It was strikingly clear that the Dalai Lama, like any of us, still deals with attachments.   The only other thing that stood out here - alluded to by Palin - was the degree to which the Dalai Lama/Tibet in exile thing is an enterprise.  The tragic implication is that people have quite a bit invested in this "in between" condition of Tibet/China/Dharmsala.  
• On doing things that are difficult: I have been meaning to address this.
• Interesting times: I'm living in them. Hopefully some mistakes will be profitable.

Update on the Karmapa Situation

I mentioned about the situation here. Early reports had said (can't find them now!) that the Indian police had cleared the Karmapa of wrongdoing, but like any government with a policy agency, they're still hanging on to this like a pit bull.

And so I'm led to believe the Karmapa is innocent here, just from the behavior I've read about from the government in question here.

The Asia Times Perspective on the Karmapa: Very Complicated Stuff Here

I generally don't read the Asia Times as much as I used to do.  This Hong Kong based media outlet publishes analysis that is, unique sometimes, to say the least.  Nobody I think can say that this stuff is American or Taiwanese PRC "propaganda," that's for sure.

So its recent article on the Karmapa makes for some interesting reading. If the article has any credibility there may be more to this inter-sect rivalry, and, according to them, some basis for suspecting PRC involvement in these things. 

The Kagyu sect - also known as the Black Hat sect by virtue of the magical headgear woven of goddess hair worn by the Karmapa on ceremonial occasions - disputes the presumption of the Dalai Lama to speak on its behalf. Kagyu adherents point out that the Karmapa holds precedence as a reincarnation over the Dalai Lama since the Karmapa reincarnation was initiated over 100 years before the first Dalai Lama was enthroned. The seat of the Karmapa was the Tsurpha monastery inside the present-day PRC; the 16th Karmapa fled to Sikkim with the Kagyu sect's most important regalia and treasures, and established an imposing new seat called Rumtek a few miles outside the Sikkimese capital of Gangtok.

This institutional friction was exacerbated in the 1960s when the Dalai Lama's decidedly un-Buddhist brother, Gyalo Thondup - who was the US Central Intelligence Agency liaison for the secret war against the Chinese occupation of Tibet - spearheaded the creation of a "united front" that would centralize the control of the fractious emigre community and sects under the control of the government in exile in Dharmsala. The other sects were apparently loathe to bow to Gelugpa control and formed their own political organization, the "Fourteen Settlements" group under the leadership of Gungthang Tsultrim.

In 1977, Gungthang was assassinated. His assassin allegedly told police that he had been paid $35,000 to commit the crime by the government-in-exile, and further alleged that he had been promised a bounty of double that amount to kill the current Karmapa. [1]

Efforts to centralize control of the emigre community collapsed, leaving a residue of bad feeling between Gelugpa and Kagyu leaders.

The situation was complicated by a split within the Kagyu sect itself upon the death of the 16th Karmapa in 1981.The conflict boils down to the rivalry between two Rinpoche in the Kagyu order, Tai Situ Rinpoche and Shamar Rinpoche ("Rinpoche" is an honorific typically applied to reincarnated lamas).

They have battled for decades over control of Rumtek and its ecclesiastical and worldly treasures (which are now in legal limbo; Indian courts have awarded control to a trust established by Shamar Rinpoche, but the local government has not taking the politically traumatic step of evicting the partisans of Tai Situ Rinpoche, who actually occupy the facility).

They also continue to battle over the very identity of the 17th Karmapa.

Tai Situ Rinpoche claimed to have found a secret note from the 16th Karmapa that directed him to the boy subsequently acknowledged by the Dalai Lama and enthroned in 1992 as Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa.

Shamar Rinpoche had none of that, asserting that a dream led him to a different Karmapa, one Trinley Thaye Dorje, whom he quietly brought to India from the PRC and enthroned in 1994.

Adherents of Shamar Rinpoche consider Ogyen Trinley Dorje's acknowledgement by the Dalai Lama as a piece of low, Gelugpa skullduggery. An America student of Shamar Rinpoche, Erik Curren, wrote a book on the Karmapa controversy titled "Buddha's Not Smiling". Talking to Asia Times, Mr Curren characterized the elevation of Ogyen Trinley Dorje as a virtual coup d'etat against the Kagyu sect by the Dalai Lama, with the intention of elevating an easily-manipulated son of nomads to the position of Karmapa.

And not only that...

The most useful accusation against Ogyen Trinley Dorje - one that attracted the close and hostile attention of the Indian security apparatus-is that his patron, Tai Situ Rinpoche, is colluding with the PRC to extend Chinese influence into India's Himalayan border regions...

A 1998 suit filed by a follower of Shamar Rinpoche further accused Tai Situ Rinpoche-and the Dalai Lama and his brother-of scheming to seize Rumtek, destabilize Sikkim, and hand it over to the Chinese. [3]

Certainly, beyond pleasant Buddhist platitudes concerning universal brotherhood, Tai Situ Rinpoche has made no secret of his efforts to re-establish his position inside Tibet with the help of the Chinese government.

He has rebuilt his traditional seat, Palpung Monastery, in western Sichuan province. His lavish website offers gorgeous views of the monastery and states that 300 students and 50 monks reside there.

For its part, the Chinese government appears to encourage the establishment of Tibetan organizations overseas that are affiliated with partisans of Tai Situ Rinpoche and promote Ogyen Trinley Dorje as the Karmapa.

In India, Tai Situ Rinpoche's reception has been less friendly. The Indian government banned him from entry into India from 1994 to1998 (he travels under a Bhutanese passport). His travel to the Himalayan border regions is restricted to Himachal Pradesh, where the Tibetan government in exile is located, and where his main facility inside India, Palpung Sherabling, is located. He cannot travel to the Northeast, Jammu/Kashmir, or Sikkim, where Rumtek is located. [4]

If you sit back and think about all of this for a few moments,  the existence of these charges and counter charges should not be surprising.  It comes from mixing religion and politics.  It arises also (read more in the article) that there are local geopolitical ramifications between a rapprochement of the Tibetan Buddhist community inside and outside Tibet/China that go beyond Tibet/China; namely, into India itself.

I've not written much about this thing except to say something like, "I really don't know what's going on but you have to expect countries to expect things of people living within them, and there are laws to follow." To which I'd add: And you can't expect the countries to not act like geopolitical entities, especially when they're big geopolitical entities who appear to each other to be in a zero sum game.  And, to the Western Buddhist blogosphere: Don't presume automatically anything about anything here.  To non-partisan parties here it is strange that the moment some outside agency raises some critique of these folks, it's always "Those Bad Non-Tibetans!" kind of response.  This is especially true given that China and India have been historical enemies forever.   That's why I maintain that judgment by those who aren't intimately familiar with the situation (and I for one am not) is premature to say the least.

I don't have an axe to grind in this  at all, except to say that I've really liked Western followers of the Karmapa I've met in the Portland area.   I hope they all work it out.  And I'm sure that there are those who will respond that all I'm doing is regurgitating PRC propaganda or some such hoo-hah.  But stuff happens behind closed doors.

Wikileaks: Putting some context to the Dalai Lama and the 2008 unrest in Lhasa, Tibet, China

Here's a few things to read:

•  On March 21, 2008, the NY Times reported that Chinese security forces had admitted they shot four protesters in what Chinese media described as unrest initiated by ethnic violence against Han Chinese.
• On March 29, 2008, the NY Times reported that there were planned anti-China/pro-Tibet Independence protests planned to shadow the Olympic torch relay.
• On March 31, 2008 the NY Times reported that China claimed that they had a confession from someone claiming the Dalai Lama incited the riots.  Of course, I don't place much credence in anyone's  confessions in these kinds of circumstances - they are inherently under duress.
• April 11, 2008:

The Dalai Lama said Thursday that he supported Beijing’s hosting of the Summer Olympics, but he insisted that pro-Tibet demonstrators had the right to voice their opinions during the international torch relay as long as they refrained from violence.  

During a brief stopover in Japan on his way to the United States, the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, told reporters no one should try to silence demonstrators who are protesting Chinese rule in Tibet. But he struck a conciliatory tone toward Beijing, apparently distancing himself from calls in the West for a boycott of the Olympic opening ceremony.

“We are not anti-Chinese,” he said at a news conference at Tokyo’s main international airport in Narita. “Right from the beginning, we supported the Olympic Games.” Speaking of pro-Tibetan protesters, he said nobody “has the right to tell them to shut up.”

He faulted Beijing for suppressing antigovernment unrest in Tibet last month, saying its use of violence was “an outdated method” that did not solve the underlying problems. That unrest, the most severe in the region in two decades, and the resulting Chinese crackdown have touched off sympathy protests around the world, with demonstrators demanding greater freedom in Tibet. 

•  Also on April 11, as we now know:

The Dalai Lama related an earlier conversation with a Chinese scholar that convinced him the "positive scenario" he outlined on March 28 -- where the PRC agrees to dialogue and permits a degree of Tibetan autonomy -- was a possibility. The Dalai Lama described this unnamed scholar as interpreting the regular use of the Dalai Lama's name by Chinese leaders and references to 'the Dalai clique' as signs they were prepared to engage with him. If PRC leaders ignored the Dalai Lama and focused instead on the Tibetan Youth Congress and Tibet-based leaders of the uprising, that would indicate the PRC planned to bypass him, according to this scholar... Immediately prior to meeting with PolCouns, the Dalai Lama met with XXXXXXXXXXXX. The Dalai Lama said XXXXXXXXXXXX had been in touch with Chinese interlocutors who convinced XXXXXXXXXXXX that a deal could be made: if the Dalai Lama supported peaceful transit of the Olympic torch through Tibet, then the PRC would simultaneously release Tibetans who had been detained since March 10. Comment: XXXXXXXXXXXX... While Indian observers believe that pressure on the PRC to engage with the Dalai Lama is growing, his candid comment that "Tibet is a dying nation" indicates increasing desperation as a result of his ability to affect events in his homeland.

So what we can say is:

• There isn't any credible evidence that the Dalai Lama knew, or orchestrated events in regard to the riots in Lhasa.
• However,  his admission of a lack of control of what is going on in Tibet implies as well that at least part of the Chinese version of events: violence against Han Chinese in Lhasa could well be true.
• The Dalai Lama's failure to speak in regard to any violence against Han Chinese in this incident  - or even to acknowledge that this might be a possibility! clearly is something his fans in the United States ought to consider.  Instead,  representatives of the Dalai Lama's organization immediately claimed they were "baseless" allegations.
• Also his relative insouciance towards anti-China protests after the riots in Lhasa didn't seem to do his cause any good, and he seemed to have an indication that it wouldn't.

Eido Shimano, Shugden, Dalai Lama, and Western Buddhist blogosphere...hopefully my final words for a while

 I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but it ties together some of the threads I'd been talking about on other posts and elsewhere in the Buddhist blogosphere. For very good posts on Eido Shimano, by the way, see the posts here and here. (And thanks to Barry Briggs for the kind words.)  Please also note that I mean nothing untoward in regards to other people and blogs mentioned below; rather I am only trying to make sure we all get it right. As a sign in one of the offices in another department in my company say, "It's not about being right, it's about getting it right."

I've thought more on the issues related to the above topics in the title of this post, and what exactly has been bugging me about the Buddhist blogosphere. Like everything like these things, there was a confluence of events I'm trying to tie together in my mind; to resolve some cognitive dissonances, as it were.   I did find it rather odd that the NY Times contacted Danny Fisher for their article on Eido Shimano.  While he's got a graduate degree in Buddhism and what-not, he wasn't exactly connected to the principals in any way that I know. But good for him; I wouldn't have commented  at all if I had been contacted, as I would not have felt it appropriate to do so; I myself am quite removed from the relevant events.  That Danny Fisher supports the Dalai Lama of course is well-known but even he, I would have hoped, would be a bit more circumspect in quoting severely right-wing News Corporation's Wall-Street Journal op-ed page. Then there's the blogginess of Barbara's Buddhism blog, which, unfortunately, doesn't go into enough depth for my taste sometimes, and too, has a pro-Dalai Lama, anti-China bias.   And Tricycle, for the longest time, has been a big cheerleader of the Dalai Lama as well, but has also been more circumspect as well. And of course the corporate media is famous for making the Dalai Lama branded as avuncular. 

And there's the obvious, easy to find  information on the internet that the Dalai Lama is not all he's cracked-up to be.

How to make sense of all of it.  I mean, how many ways can you say that much of the hero-worship of the Dalai Lama is the result of a marketing campaign, and that the actual history is darker than is portrayed? Why is the US Rinzai hierarchy (rightly, as they admit) criticized for being lax about Eido Shimano's issues but the Dalai Lama invariably gets a free pass, even when it's plain as day that this man is  not the champion of Truth, Justice and the American Way of the media campaign? And I wanted to know more about the Dorje Shugden issue as well.

Well I did a bit of internet surfing, etc. Here's what I've found/learned/concluded:

• Stephen Batchelor did a good job way back in '98 dissecting the whole Dorje Shugden controversy from the Buddhist religious point of view.  

• In that article was an oblique reference  to Ch'an in Tibet:

They see Dzogchen as a return to the Hindu ideas that Buddhists resisted in India, and a residue of the Ch’an (Zen) doctrine of Hva-shang Mahayana, proscribed at the time of the early kings. 

•  So, thanks to a quick trip around the internets, I can now figure out the situation behind this post from Barbara O'Brien in July:

China is not having this. "The Dalai Lama must have forgotten that the Tibetan Buddhism was strongly influenced by the Chinese Zen Buddhism throughout its entire process of development," says an anonymous writer at ChinaTibetOnline, a Chinese government website.  "The equal-sized statue of Sakyamuni housed in the Jokhang Temple was originally introduced by the famous Princess Wencheng in China's Tang Dynasty."

My understanding is that the Tibetans are the inheritors of Buddhist traditions from India and latter-day Gandhara that died -- sometimes violently -- by the 13th century. Nalanda itself was sacked and burned about 1200. Most of the early patriarchs of Tibetan Buddhism were Indian, not Chinese, and their teachings traveled directly to Tibet without going through China...

I'm pretty sure it's a gross overstatement to say that Chinese Zen (Chan) influenced Tibetan Buddhism through "its entire process of development." There's supposed to be some connection between Zen and the Nyingma Tibetan school, but I'm not sure what that connection is, or how deep it goes.

First of all, if you read Batchelor's article itself you can begin to understand the similarity to Ch'an if not the influence, in Nyigma teaching:  

The Nyingma teaching of Dzogchen regards awareness (Tib., rig pa) as the innate self-cognizant foundation of both samsara and nirvana. Rig pa is the intrinsic, uncontrived nature of mind, which a Dzogchen master is capable of directly pointing out to his students. For the Nyingmapa, Dzogchen represents the very apogee of what the Buddha taught, whereas Tsongkhapa’s view of emptiness as just a negation of inherent existence, implying no transcendent reality, verges on nihilism.

Now my understanding of this issue is that emptiness is itself empty, and the term "inherent existence" is sort of an oxymoron, as existence (based on my reading of existentialism, I admit, so it might fuzz things up a bit here) is the reference to the condition or act of being, where as to have something inhere to it is for that something to be part of its essence.  And having no essence (which is my take on emptiness, and from my readings of Suzuki and others seems to be common) means that voidness has no essence of voidness either,  which puts a stopping plug into the issue of the charges of contradictions nihilism (both for Buddhism and existentialism, since that means that the old saw about "how can you know you know nothing" and similar logical games is defeated by saying that we don't even say that you can't know anything).

But, as usual, I'm afraid I've digressed. Point is, the functions of Mind in the Nyingma teaching have analogs in Ch'an/Zen, these finer philosophical points aside (which, to my way of thinking, are on a set of measure zero - in other words, negligible -  in terms of efficacy compared to what one needs to do on a day to day basis anyway).

Now back to Batchelor's article and Ch'an in Tibet: Google Hva-shang and this is the first link. 

During this period of Tibetan history [ in the 8th century], Buddhism, which had come to Tibet a century earlier, was degenerating. Tibet had become fertile ground for differing schools of thought. Because of this, King Trisong Detsen arranged a debate in Samye to decide which of these tenets should take root in Tibet. The King invited Kamalashila to represent the Indian Buddhist school while Hva Shang Mahayana represented the Chinese Ch'an school. It is said that when Kamalashila and Hva Shang Mahayana first met in Samye, Kamalashila twirled his rosary around his finger inferring the question, "What is the source of the circling in samsara?" and when Hva Shang saw that, he covered his head, indicating that "ignorance is the source of suffering." Kamalashila then felt that Hva Shang Mahayana was someone who understood.

The debate in Samye became known as the Great Debate at Samye. The rules directed that the winning side would be sanctioned by the King while the losing side would have to leave the country. Kamalashila and the Indian Buddhist School won the debate and the Ch'an Buddhists were no longer allowed to spread their teachings in Tibet. However, although Hva Shang had to leave Tibet, even up to today, in order to remember his good qualities, Tibetan monks wear a blue cord attached to their upper garment.

Also, after Hva Shang lost the debate he left immediately leaving one of his shoes behind. Tibetans believe that this was a sign that aspects of his tenets would remain in Tibet.

I mean, folks, that was the first link from Google. Here's the second link, from Wikipedia:

The teachings of Moheyan and other Chan masters were unified with the Kham Dzogchen lineages {this may or may not be congruent with the Kahma (Tibetan: bka' ma) lineages} through the Kunkhyen (Tibetan for "omniscient"), Rongzom Chokyi Zangpo.^[13]

• Tricycle again mentioned the Dorje Shugden issue in 2008  here on its blog. One of the commenters there said something that is one of my main points here (I added the hyperlink.)

There is enormous bias in the Buddhist community towards the Dalai Lama such that it becomes an obstacle to objectively investigating his actions in India. I agree that these blogs are filled with positive (and political) stories about the Dalai Lama but no one wants to investigate the shadow side of the Dalai Lama’s leadership. I can understand this. No small child wants to find out that Santa Claus doesn’t exist - it’s a massive disappointment, a blow to the magical world they believed existed in their imagination But it’s time to grow up now. It’s time to objectively examine the Dalai Lama’s actions of ostracism and oppression in his own community and report the truth for the good of Buddhism, even if it’s disappointing to discover that the champion of tolerance and religious freedom is a political and religious dictator who is harming the lineage of his own Root Guru. The France 24 investigation revealed this clearly but it’s not enough - someone in the Buddhist community needs to blow the whistle on these activities that are destroying Buddhism. Tricycle needs to be honest here and investigate. You might think that this is an ‘arcane sectarian’ dispute but you aren’t seeing dependent relationship and what this is going to lead to in the future. It’s no good burying your head in the sand until Tsongkhapa’s tradition has been destroyed. Simply have the courage to report what you see.

• And that all brings me to my main point: Given the recent issue of scandal in my lineage (which those in a position to do so in our lineage have acknowledged, and which I have written about), it is obviously not simply sauce for the goose but simply good practice to examine our biases all over the place.  Too often much of what is written about in the Buddhist blogosphere, especially the media friendly "popular" blogs - ones written by bloggers that the corporate media go to for "Buddhist blogger" quotes is, to put it baldly, shallow and   sometimes  factually  incorrect.  And less often, corrected.
• In addition,  too often these bloggers have biases, especially when it comes to the Dalai Lama.  Somebody might accuse me of having pro-Chinese biases (heck, some have, OK?), and yeah, full disclosure: my wife and her family and their families are all Chinese.   But having written that, I've also seen a China that is rarely portrayed in any media, and generally it's tolerant of religion as long as it's not used to subvert the power of the state, which is pretty much what most folks in America would want with the exception of a few extremist Christians.  And people that don't acknowledge that when it comes to these issues are themselves guilty of a prejudice against China.  I don't like many things that government does and I don't parrot their lines, but I also try not to quote from right wing flacks; they too have their agenda, it's naive to the point of neglectful to not be aware of it.
• And, while I'm on the subject, there is a  5 word phrase missing in all of the Dalai Lama's wonderful declarations of human rights and democracy and such: separation of religion and state.  The Dalai Lama could fix that right now, and he hasn't.   If we have learned one thing it is that religious ideology is poisonous to the governance of a state when a religious hierarchy is the state.  Ah, well maybe that needs to be better taught.
• And the issue of separation of religion and state  is important for the same reason that the ZSS board tripped up with Eido Shimano: conflict of interest.  For a variety of reasons, in several formats, in my professional life I have had to deal with what they call "anti-trust" training. OK, I bet Danny Fisher never had to do that, so maybe it's this post is just my whole déformation professionnelle! Central to all the avoidance of anti-trust legal actions is the avoidance of even the appearance of a conflict of interest.  (You do not ever want to go be a target of an anti-trust investigation.  Ever.)  There was a conflict of interest in the fact that the Board of the ZSS was spiritually dependent on,  the guy they were supposed to be overseeing  (as well as having him and his wife on the board itself).  To put it simply, the members of the board needed to get something (i.e., spiritual guidance) from the person they were supposed to be independently overseeing.  For that reason truly independent oversight could not be achieved. Likewise, the Roman Catholic Church has the same issue with the Pope, and look at all the Peace Love and Understanding the assertion of the political and religious supremacy of the Papacy has brought all these years.  And therefore ditto with the Dalai Lama: an imaginary government of Tibet or the one in exile, for that matter cannot maintain the appearance of maintenance of execution of law without fear or favor as well as justice, if  the head of state can be believed to hold the spiritual fate of the government in his hands. It's a conflict of interest, and it's inherently unethical because it can lead to exactly the kinds of abuses we have seen from the history of Tibet.  In any American corporation if there were analogous conditions there would be a poop-storm of litigation following wrongful acts from this arrangement. (Yes,  it's also conflicts for the royalty in the UK and Sweden and Japan.  But nobody takes their religions as seriously, to be frank about it, and this is a Buddhist blog, you know. Oh, and Iran. Iran.)
• I would encourage anyone to do their own background on anything.  Don't believe anything I write; ask your own questions.

More on the Dorje Shugden Controversy and the Dalai Lama

This is a good source, evidently, for the Dorje Shugden point of view.

Apparently, the thing started to unravel in 1996. If your irony meter doesn't go off reading the following, then have it checked:

9 April 1996
The Tibetan Freedom Movement bans the worship of Dorje Shugden by its members.

And here's a blog devoted to the issue of Dorje Shugden and the ongoing actions by the Dalai Lama against them.

Now, I have no stake in the issue of whose practice is "more Buddhist," whether it's the Dorje Shugden folk or the Dalai Lama folk.  But what I do have a stake in is the uncritical attitude in the Western Buddhist blogosphere toward the Dalai Lama given the history, which often takes the form of China-bashing. And if we mean religious freedom, dammit, let's mean it: as long as no one is in danger of harming themselves or others, religious beliefs and practices should be allowed.

Of course the Chinese government is not unaware of this, and to me, it all seems like a case of pots calling the kettles black.

And here's something you don't see much in the Buddhist Blogosphere...

I admit I haven't been following this at all, but it is clear that this isn't just pro-Chinese propaganda.

Regarding recent scandals in Western Buddhism, I think some folks haven't received an appropriate amount of attention, and I am still amazed by the reluctance to have any criticism of the Dalai Lama in the Western Buddhist blogosphere.

The notes on the Youtube site say it comes from January 5th, 1998, but if you look around evidently this is still a very big thing in the Tibetan community.

As I've said this is a continuing controversy:




I realize I'm writing on an event over 2 years old, but to take a fresh look at this, especially in light of recent scandals, look at Barbara's Buddhism blog post on the subject from around that time.

I can't tell you how much I don't want to get mixed up in the Dalai Lama-Shugden controversy. Unfortunately, hundreds of Dalai Lama supporters and Shugden devotees clashed in the streets of Manhattan yesterday afternoon and had to be separated by police. I can't very well ignore that. So here goes...


At a time when the majority of monks from Lhasa's three largest monasteries are in prison or detention camps, and possibly being tortured, it shouldn't be hard to understand why some Tibetan Buddhists might be infuriated by the Shugden protesters, as His Holiness's Radio City audience was. The Shugden cult is undermining the fragile coherence of the Tibetan diaspora and the future of Tibetan Buddhism itself. And for what?

If you ask the Shugden culties, as I keep doing, why they don't just break with institutional Tibetan Buddhism and go their own way, you get no answer. Truly, if the point were worship of Shugden, there is absolutely nothing stopping NKT and the rest from setting up a new sect and doing whatever they like. Then they can worship Mickey Mouse phones for all I care.

There are, like most of these things, a political backstory, which neither Barbara nor I for that matter, have the knowledge to explore.

But notice Barbara's language here: implicit within is the cult-like certainty that the Dalai Lama can do no wrong. I mean, yeah, right, people have been getting death threats for opposing the Dalai Lama, why should they be complaining?

Now I really am off to Germany

I leave you with this link to a story on the Dalai Lama by Michael Parenti.

If you haven't read it you owe yourself to do so.  One might think after reading it  that if Robert Thurman entered a room in which Michael Parenti was present that Thurman would disintegrate. On history and politics, Parenti's at least as educationally pedigreed as Thurman...

OK, here's a snippet:

What happened to Tibet after the Chinese Communists moved into the country in 1951? The treaty of that year provided for ostensible self-governance under the Dalai Lama’s rule but gave China military control and exclusive right to conduct foreign relations. The Chinese were also granted a direct role in internal administration “to promote social reforms.” Among the earliest changes they wrought was to reduce usurious interest rates, and build a few hospitals and roads. At first, they moved slowly, relying mostly on persuasion in an attempt to effect reconstruction. No aristocratic or monastic property was confiscated, and feudal lords continued to reign over their hereditarily bound peasants. “Contrary to popular belief in the West,” claims one observer, the Chinese “took care to show respect for Tibetan culture and religion.”²⁵
Over the centuries the Tibetan lords and lamas had seen Chinese come and go, and had enjoyed good relations with Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and his reactionary Kuomintang rule in China.²⁶ The approval of the Kuomintang government was needed to validate the choice of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama. When the current 14th Dalai Lama was first installed in Lhasa, it was with an armed escort of Chinese troops and an attending Chinese minister, in accordance with centuries-old tradition. What upset the Tibetan lords and lamas in the early 1950s was that these latest Chinese were Communists. It would be only a matter of time, they feared, before the Communists started imposing their collectivist egalitarian schemes upon Tibet.
The issue was joined in 1956-57, when armed Tibetan bands ambushed convoys of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. The uprising received extensive assistance from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), including military training, support camps in Nepal, and numerous airlifts.²⁷ Meanwhile in the United States, the American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA-financed front, energetically publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in that organization. The Dalai Lama's second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA as early as 1951. He later upgraded it into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet.²⁸
Many Tibetan commandos and agents whom the CIA dropped into the country were chiefs of aristocratic clans or the sons of chiefs. Ninety percent of them were never heard from again, according to a report from the CIA itself, meaning they were most likely captured and killed.²⁹ “Many lamas and lay members of the elite and much of the Tibetan army joined the uprising, but in the main the populace did not, assuring its failure,” writes Hugh Deane.³⁰ In their book on Tibet, Ginsburg and Mathos reach a similar conclusion: “As far as can be ascertained, the great bulk of the common people of Lhasa and of the adjoining countryside failed to join in the fighting against the Chinese both when it first began and as it progressed.”³¹ Eventually the resistance crumbled.

Whatever wrongs and new oppressions introduced by the Chinese after 1959, they did abolish slavery and the Tibetan serfdom system of unpaid labor. They eliminated the many crushing taxes, started work projects, and greatly reduced unemployment and beggary. They established secular schools, thereby breaking the educational monopoly of the monasteries. And they constructed running water and electrical systems in Lhasa.³² 

Read the article; Parenti is no apologist for China by any means (and neither am I).  But given just this history, (and Parenti really doesn't go into the geographical, military, or other issues of China and Tibet here) it becomes quite easy to see why the average Chinese or even Tibetan might be a bit suspicious of claims that many people in Tibet want the Dalai Lama back as political head there.

They remember all the nasty stuff, I'd suspect.

Somebody on another blog had mentioned there are people that hold the Dalai Lama to a different standard than other people. Look, I think anyone involved with perpetrating institutions that produce effects even remotely like those produced by Roberto d'Aubuisson or Efrain Rios-Montt shouldn't be allowed near the governmental levers of power, OK?

Doesn't matter if they have impish smiles and say nice things to Buddhists.

The Dalai Lama on Violence and Dog Whistling

I think the man is out of touch when he starts to opine about what Japanese youth should do in light of Japan's economic stagnation, although more English skills being learned by Japanese can never hurt.

But in today's Guardian there's another article about the Dalai Lama, and a message from him in support of the UK's Armed Forces Day.

I have always admired those who are prepared to act in the defense of others for their courage and determination. In fact, it may surprise you to know that I think that monks and soldiers, sailors and airmen have more in common than at first meets the eye. Strict discipline is important to us all, we all wear a uniform and we rely on the companionship and support of our comrades.

Although the public may think that physical strength is what is most important, I believe that what makes a good soldier, sailor or airman, just as what makes a good monk, is inner strength. And inner strength depends on having a firm positive motivation. The difference lies in whether ultimately you want to ensure others’ well being or whether you want only wish to do them harm.

Naturally, there are some times when we need to take what on the surface appears to be harsh or tough action, but if our motivation is good our action is actually non-violent in nature. On the other hand if we use sweet words and gestures to deceive, exploit and take advantage of others, our conduct may appear agreeable, while we are actually engaged in quite unacceptable violence.  

 Mark Vernon in the Guardian writes:

The Dalai Lama has sent a message of support for Armed Forces Day, which is next Saturday. In it, he writes of his admiration for the military. That is perhaps not so surprising. As he explains, there are many parallels between being a monk and being a soldier – the need for discipline, companionship, and inner strength.
But his support will take some of his western admirers by surprise, not least when it comes to his thoughts on non-violence...

What the present Dalai Lama argues, in his message of support, is that violence and non-violence are not always what they seem. "Sweet words" can be violent, he explains, when they intend harm. Conversely, "harsh and tough action" can be non-violent when it aims at the wellbeing of others. In short, violence – "harsh and tough action" – can be attitudinally non-violent. So what should we make of that?

"What would not be a traditional Buddhist way of talking is to imply that violence is in fact non-violence, given the right motivation", explains Paul Williams, professor of Indian and Tibetan philosophy, University of Bristol. "This is certainly an interesting but perhaps extremely dangerous sentiment."...
 
But before rushing to too fast a conclusion, another factor must be borne in mind. The Dalai Lama quite routinely says different things to different audiences, an approach that is valued in Buddhism and is known as "skilful means". It is not a kind of duplicity. Rather, it aims to have the right word for the right time and context. The difficulty is that when his words ripple out across the internet, as they do, they are also ripped out of their original context. Skilfully interpreting the Dalai Lama then becomes very hard.

For example, when speaking in the west, he has drawn much from Gandhi's broadly Jain understanding of non-violence, "ahimsa". "Man lives freely by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him", Gandhi wrote in All Men Are Brothers – effectively precluding killing. But such an approach would be odd amongst Tibetans, and the Dalai Lama would hardly be likely to advocate it amongst his fellows.


In fact, it is possible to get some sense of this greater sophistication by considering his life story. This is man who has lived with the reality of state violence from his youth, and who receives reports of it almost daily, now that he is old. He has previously argued that violence in Tibet is wrong, not on principled but pragmatic grounds, as it would have no chance of succeeding.

 When Mark Vernon writes about the Dalai Lama that "when speaking in the west, he has drawn much from Gandhi's broadly Jain understanding of non-violence,"  that's something we in America call dog whistling.  He's speaking to a select group of people, telling them what they want to hear.  Yet he's still the guy who, with a change of clothes and a change of culture would be in a mold somewhat like  a significantly less virulent form of Jefferson Davis, with differences of serfdom compared to  slavery, and with Han Chinese as the marginalized ethnic group. And yes, the Chinese Communist Party stands in for the Radical Republicans.   Once again, I have to say sorry folks, I'm an American and I don't like racism in any guise.

It's a recurring point on my blog that Americans who are "fans" of Tibetan Buddhism have heavily idealized beliefs about the Dalai Lama.  (I would not include all practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism as "fans" by any means - I think they're more sophisticated than that.)

Now I agree with the Dalai Lama's sentiments about the military;  but I also have to give a wag of the finger to him as he, himself, is one of the biggest culprits for presenting "teachings" as bromides that are "truisms trite enough to appear on a T-shirt."  But let's face it folks: the guy with the Twitter aphorisms who dog-whistles non-violence to the West is also not willing to take steps that would be real measures for reconciliation with China.   Don't believe me? He acts as  the titular head of a government in exile.   And here's one aspect Chinese position.  And here's the most recent Chinese position.   Remember, China has for hundreds of years been recognized as the supreme governmental authority in Tibet, and Chinese heads of state have given authorization to various Tibetan Buddhist leaders, with authorizations as intermingled religious and political roles.  While I know many in the West wish to analogize this to India, or Vietnam, the reality is different.

Now truth be known, given where he is, he probably has to deal with the inherent conflicts between his role as Buddhist leader and his role as political leader, but I think he is really not being skillful in his execution of his political role as Buddhist.  And I wish he were.

Let's not place anyone on pedestals, and let's not place on pedestals our attachments to idealizations of people that don't exist and never did exist.

Politics, Buddhism, American Buddhism, and China - Tibet Policy: Barbara's Buddhism Blog Shows What Not to Do

Barbara of the About.com Buddhism Blog posted another anti-China screed yesterday.  There's really nothing else to accurately call it, in my view.  Now as I said on a previous post, it's not too surprising that there are Buddhists whose international and politics differ.  What we should try to avoid though is conflating political issues with Buddhist issues, that is, assuming a particular political question, viewed a certain way is a Buddhist question, and I think Barbara has crossed the line.  Before I  go to the tape, let me point out a few things that should be axiomatically obvious to any non-Tibetan lineage Buddhist:

• The Dalai Lama, as a manifestation of the Boddhisattva of compassion, is specifically a Tibetan Buddhist school designation and in no way encumbers anyone else to recognize that beyond that which is such in anyone else.  
• Mutatis mutandis for the Panchen Lama and Amitabha.
• The offices of the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama are political offices if they are considered as operating within the realm of Chinese/Tibetan domestic and international politics.  Strictly speaking those offices as political offices per se do not encumber any Buddhist to recognize anything.

I've been very critical of the Dalai Lama, and the conflation of attempts at international support of a political position with Buddhism  for a variety of reasons, not the least because many people speaking on this issue are utterly ignorant or dismissive of the history, geography, and geopolitics  involved.  China has asserted political control over Tibet for hundreds of years; Tibet is seen as crucial strategically to China's stability and ability to defend itself, and it's simply not useful if one is truly interested in peace to be dismissive or vituperative in response to these issues.

Now let's go to the tape...

The Panchen Lama is the second highest lama in Tibetan Buddhism. The faux Panchen Lama is Gyaltsen Norbu, son of a Tibetan Communist Party official, who was appointed to the position by Beijing in 1995 a few weeks after the legitimate tulku, Gendu Choekyi Nyima, and his family disappeared. Both boys were six years old at the time.

As I mentioned here, can't we at least recognize that the "find the kid who's the incarnation of the dead lama" game is one of those practices we can do without?  But this paragraph illustrates my point: a) we Zen Buddhists are in no position to judge who is a legitimate tulku and who is not; only those who choose to become adherents to said tulku do, and b) the office of the Panchen Lama is also a political position, and it is not accurate in the least to say that since China appointed that official (albeit in an atavistic way that is similar to what's been done before)  that he is somehow "false."

Gyaltsen Norbu lives in Beijing, and his visit to Tibet is a rare event. Xinhua tells us the pretender led a prayer service in Jokhang Temple in Lhasa  and was greeted by lamas bearing incense and silk scarves.

Beijing can be reasonably certain that no monk of Jokhang would disrupt the ceremonies, since most of the monks were removed for "re-education" during the summer of 2008. Once the Beijing Olympics were over, monks who did not have families in Lhasa were not allowed to return but were sent to their home provinces. The few hundred monks remaining in Lhasa's monasteries -- which are vast complexes that housed thousands of monks in the past -- are approved by government.

 Not just Xinhau's reported on the Chinese-chosen Panchen Lama's activities, but also the BBC (scroll to bottom of post), and The Economist (see my blog entry here; the link is behind a subscription wall, and yes, I do subscribe).  Both posts contradict Barbara's "See? Everyone hates that nasty faux Panchen Lama!" narrative. Big time.

Towards the end of the post Barbara quotes an article from The Asia Sentinel;  this article too conflates the religious and political.  Most other news sources, recognize there is a political aspect to this, even if they do conflate them.   Barbara ends her post with a quote from that article comparing the fate of the Dalai Lama-chosen Panchen Lama to Pu Yi:

"Presumably much as the famed last Emperor Pu Yi ended up working as a gardener in the Beijing Botanical Gardens," the Asia Sentinel says. However, the government remains extremely vague about Gendu Choekyi Nyima, and I still think it is unlikely the boy and his family are still alive.

The Pu Yi reference sort of gives away all the points here.  As anyone who's seen The Last Emperor knows, Pu Yi was not quite a person  one should have shed many tears over; his life was tragic, he was not the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but his life of pampering in no way prepared him for what lay ahead, and he ultimately wound up serving China best as a gardner in the Beijing Botanical Gardens.  Barbara offers no other reason for her belief  about Gendu Choekyi Nyima's demise; that is a statement of prejudice, but then by this point, we are well beyond discussing Buddhist issues, but rather geopolitical issues.

On edit: It is certainly true that there's been horrific violence done in the past few decades; in China  but that does not justify a belief that the Chinese government is currently disappearing innocent people.    Of course examining that belief, questioning it, wasn't the point of that post, and that's why I considered the stated "belief"  of the killing of these people to be prejudicial, in a similar vein as it would be to suppose that the average Mormon wants to install a Mormon theocracy in the United States, and violently defend it, based on the Mountain Meadows Massacre.  Conflating the China of the Cultural Revolution or Tiananmen Square with the China of today is not accurate either, and  Western and Chinese news outlets are reporting events in China, such as going on at Foxconn and Honda that were unthinkable just five years ago.

A bit of back and forth with "New Atheists"

I do regularly visit P.Z. Myers' blog, as anyone who reads my blog regularly knows.  My thinking largely parallels Petteri's thinking on this.  Regarding the New Atheists, and with great thanks to Petteri for thinking about this in the first place, I  part company on with New Atheists on the following:

a)Whether Buddhism is a religion : I say it is.

b) Whether religion is a net negative: I do admit there's an awful lot of evidence against the big monotheistic ones, but for the same reasons I say Buddhism is a religion - it's a set of skills one hones and said skill honing - I'd have to vote in favor of a net positive

c) Whether people are fundamentally rational: I think it's quack science to suggest this; I don't think the neuroscience supports this.  Furthermore, anyone who's pondered their place in existence either has to accept the extreme singularity (and hence the apparent absurdity) of their predicament, or they choose to invent a religious narrative that wishes this away.  I'd include "people are fundamentally rational" in the latter category; though, and Buddhism in the former category. 

d) Whether religion is nothing more or less than a set of (flawed) propositions and behaviors accepted on faith: I would say this is to some extent true in Buddhism at first, but the honing of skills takes a bit of the scientific method as applied to one's self.

Petteri adds this one bit here, by the way:

The world ends at Wittgenstein 7. If something can't be defined or verified, it's as good as non-existent and therefore not worth talking about.

Now I do have to point out that Wittgenstein didn't actually say what Petteri says, but I think he is accurately characterizing much New Atheist thought.  Wittgenstein's "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent" is as much an admission of the existence of the mystical as it is for the phenomenological.  I, myself, lean toward the phenomenological (sort of in this sense).  Whether or not, though there is something beyond in the realm of where one cannot speak, if we cannot speak of it for all intents and purposes, one can neither assert nor deny; the nonexistence of god is ultimately as relevant as its existence.  We Zen Buddhists go one step further (in both Rinzai and Soto traditions); we know there are some things whereof one cannot speak, and they do not necessarily fit into categories of "natural" and "metaphysical."   And furthermore, we seek to observe, express, and embody these things and natural things and all logical combinations thereof in a non-dualistic manner. 

Naturalists, it would seem to me, literally don't play much tennis or swimming, 'cause you can't do those activities and not be doing some kind of non-dualism.  And yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't need a "religion" to do those activities well.  But then again what we're talking about here is various deconstructions of the term "religion," and Southern Baptists have one preferred meaning, New Atheists have another, and this Buddhist ex-Catholic has sort of jury rigged his own, and freely admits your mileage may vary.

Anyway, that was a long but overdue digression.  Yesterday P.Z. Myers finally got around to a blog entry that went over that saccharine op-ed from the Dalai Lama.  I'd mentioned this article here. So anyway, I commented on Myers' blog:

I was wondering when you'd get to the Dalai Lama. Regular readers to my blog know that although I'm a Buddhist, I tend to be very critical of the Dalai Lama.
It tends to get me in trouble with certain other Buddhist bloggers.
I have differences with you folk in that you'd call my religion as I do it a philosophy, whereas I call it a religion because it has elements of the cultivation of skills (which most religions admittedly lack, but which pretty much all philosophies definitely lack).
But the Dalai Lama is problematic, as well as the holder of some quite large conflicts of interest.

Somebody replied, and I noted that it is the skill of using breath and mindfulness (and I could have  added actions, behavior, etc.) that makes Buddhism the religion that it is. Eventually that person wrote:

My objection is more along the lines that your use of the word "religion" strains against the common usage of the term in the English language and (at first blush) smacks of sophistry. It renders the term even more meaningless than it already is, and muddies up the water instead of making it clearer.

Note that the fact that it helps you to be mindful and breathe doesn't make it a religion. The cultivation of skills is, by your own admission, not a necessary condition of religion, and so it cannot possibly make the difference between Buddhism being a philosophy and a religion. That's the other element of my objection (and why I made the comment about logical consistency).

None of this should be read as a criticism of Buddhism in general or your particular flavor; the latter especially seems pretty reasonable to me.

I do think there is much common ground with everyone, and although we might quibble on what's a religion and what's not a religion, we should be able to live with each other, whether fundamentalist or New Atheist.   I think it's amazing how little interaction there is with  Western Buddhists in the blogosphere and other religions in general, or atheists, given the fact that we're a minority, and our practice is in the midst of these other belief/non-belief systems.

And, speaking of the Dalai Lama, I suppose it would be impertinent of me to point out

That in writing this:

And I’ve learned how the Talmud and the Bible repeat the theme of compassion, as in the passage in Leviticus that admonishes, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” 

he's also tacitly endorsing, with his silence some really really nasty stuff.  It's because there's all that love stuff in these texts that they can convince people to do the stoning, killing and other nasty bits in the bible.

But I suppose I'm being naive.

I'm all for religious tolerance and live and let live; don't get me wrong.  But there are differences in religions, and they have different moral and ethical imperatives and objectives.  If we can't be frank about the differences, then are we being sincere when we say we're tolerant? I don't think so.

Some American Buddhists don't like my views on the Dalai Lama...

Sort of predictably, Barbara at the About.com Buddhism blog didn't really like my comments on the Dalai Lama. (And I guess I've been banned from expanding my comments there.)  I'm not surprised, because I've encountered this situation from a number of American Buddhists, both in the blogosphere and out of the blogosphere.  Odd that so few of these folks ever have a talk with Chinese folks living in this country, it seems.   But, for me, "Let's talk about everything."  Barbara at the Buddhism blog says:

Chinese people think the Dalai Lama is a trouble maker because that’s what they’ve been told all their lives. That’s not a sign of intelligence but of misinformation. And if things are so hunky-dory with Tibetan Buddhism in China, how come a majority of the monks of Lhasa were detained for “re-education” in the summer of 2009? How come several monasteries have been raided by authorities, and monks arrested, in the past several months?

And:

The fact remains that the government of China is absolutely insane where the Dalai Lama is concerned. For example, they’re behind the oppression of Thich Nhat Hanh followers in Vietnam, for the simple reason that Thich Nhat Hanh told an Italian interviewer that he thought His Holiness ought to be allowed to return to Tibet. And where is the Panchen Lama, btw? You said the Panchen Lama was discussed “frankly.” Were they so frank they could produce the young man to show he and his family weren’t executed years ago?

 Here's several responses to this:

1. RE: the Panchen Lama, no reputable news services has ever reported that the Dalai-Lama chosen one was "executed."

2. They're "behind" the oppression of Thich Nhat Hanh's followers in Vietnam sounds absurd on its face, simply because the Chinese and Vietnamese are historically mortal enemies and the trappings of a Communist government has done exactly nothing to change that historic relationship. If Thich Nhat Hanh said this alone it is more likely that the government of Vietnam would have sent him a birthday cake.

3. The Chinese government does not condone organizing to call into question the premise and legitimacy of its government, but this is simply how all Chinese governments have historically operated.  It is also, fundamentally, how the United States operates in regards to groups such as the FALN, the Black Liberation Army and other groups.

4. The United States still seeks the extradition of revolutionaries/criminals such as Assata Shakur. Leonard Peltier, a more tenuous case, remains in prison after decades.  What the Dalai Lama represents to the Chinese government is more serious than these people, and calling it, as Barbara does,  "old, old, old news, very widely known, hardly secret" is an attempt to minimize what in any other context (like putting the US in the position of China) would be obviously what the Chinese would do.

5. I was having dinner the other night with a Chinese colleague, who pointed out that the Chinese would never give up Tibet because of its strategic importance as a supply line from the west, as it was in World War II.  This, besides the abundant mineral wealth of Tibet is never discussed either by the Dalai Lama nor his supporters.  I'm amazed that folks like Barbara can bandy about terms like "misinformed" and "ignorant" when they are either guilty of those terms or deliberately downplaying the geopolitics here.  But I've seen that before.  Anyone looking at a map and with a rudimentary understanding in geography and geology and current events gets the geopolitics; it stares one in the face.  It's funny that people can be enchanted away from what ought to be plain as the nose on their face.

Dalai Lama's Point Man: Fitting to be in the Fashion & Style Sections

Even I have heard that the Dalai Lama is coming to town, er, New York City.  The NY Times on line (and presumably its paper incarnation too), has a story on one Nicholas Vreeland, grandson of Diana Vreeland, some fashion glitterati woman of the 70s and 80s.  Besides being a scion of glitterati, Vreeland  is also a Tibetan Buddhist monk.


Well, good for him, as one of my son's classmates is wont to say, albeit with a note of sarcasm.

No, seriously, good for him.  I would say being a Buddhist monk of the Tibetan variety is far more useful for society than fashion, except when it comes to procreation, and in that department I will cede the argument to fashion (unless it's a Dharma burger?).   But its clear that from the observation point of the NY Times reporter, fashion and "Buddhism" share much in common  at least in its Dalai Lama as pop star variety.

No detail is too frivolous. Mr. Vreeland stopped in at ABC Carpet and Home recently to choose an armchair for the Dalai Lama to sit in on the stage of Radio City; he likes to sit cross-legged. “I went through the whole collection of sofas and chairs to choose the appropriate chair for His Holiness,” Mr. Vreeland said, adding that the chair will be on loan.

At Radio City Music Hall, the Dalai Lama will speak for the first three days about two Buddhist texts that teach the concept of emptiness and the way to enlightenment. For this, he will sit on his Tibetan throne. On the fourth day, he will hold a public talk about how to lead a life of happiness. (That’s when the chair will be put to use.)

The crowd undoubtedly will veer from robe-sporting Buddhists to Fendi-carrying, Louboutin-wearing devotees, the two groups holding two things in common: a passion for Buddhism and their trim waistlines.

Perhaps what the NY Times reporter takes to be the money Buddhist quote from Vreeland is this:

“People who cause you difficulties, you should think of them as very, very valuable teachers because they provide us with the opportunity to develop patience.”

Now I would say this is incomplete, from a Zen perspective: "People who cause you difficulties" is quite a bit dualistic, and "they provide us with the opportunity to develop patience" sounds like you're hoping to get something for your "suffering."  

I would say you "get" the "opportunity" to be in that place, but the minute you think "get" and "opportunity" you're in a different place entirely.  Maybe Vreeland would agree and say I'm saying the medium, and the medium is the message, and he's just using skillful means. I dunno. I do know if somebody gave me, when I'm getting seriously hassled that I'm getting the "opportunity to develop patience," I'd say that person was availing himself of an opportunity to engage in a form of spiritual materialism (and perhaps I'm doing the same thing with this post).   Rather than pose the whole affair as a cost-benefit relationship, at least with this practitioner at any rate, I think it's more helpful to promote the skill of dealing with such circumstances.

That said, I hope Mr. Vreeland  has a good time with the Dalai Lama and I hope he likes his chair.  And I hope someone holds the DL to actually practice compassion in dealing with people who are non-Tibetan Chinese.

Enlightenment? And, I can have sympathy for the Dalai Lama

In looking at the variety of responses to Barbara O'Brien's question, "What would you ask the Dalai Lama?" I'm struck by the basic, uh, lack of familiarity with Buddhism of some of the responses.

That may or may not be due to the fact that like Deepak Chopra, the Dalai Lama does make for image media...

Anyway...some of the more interesting responses to Barbara's question asking for questions to ask the Dalai Lama...

Why some people reincarnate as homosexuals or transexuals?

Is he a Buddha?

What in his words is enlightenment ?

What the practices we should do if we want to meet and learn more from Dalai Lama in every single life?

It's clear to me that there's people out there that pretty darn near deify this man. There's others that think he's a good man (nothing wrong with that, my remarks about the two-hand clap of himself and the Chinese notwithstanding), but would benefit from more understanding of Buddhism.

That's OK.

I hope though that all those folks who may be hoping, consciously or not, to get a grasp of enlightenment from the Dalai Lama, or who might be a Buddha, or whether or not they're reincarnated, can at least live where they are, finding themselves where they are.  That's the main thing, to paraphrase Dogen, that Soto  and non-Rinzai guy.

I also feel for the Dalai Lama. I think he has to deal with many people confused about the whole situation about their existence here, and they're asking him to give them "the" answer. So he's in kind of a predicament; and it's not an easy one for him. He's got the political situation to deal with, a subset of the Tibetan population (maybe a large one) that is very opposed to the current political system in Tibet, and he's got the Tibetan Buddhist mandate as Avolokitesvara to maintain. They expect him to be the living, talking, joking, avuncular, happy Buddha and a "good" political leader. It's difficult. Especially the latter part, although he needs to improve on this very much, to say the least. But the followers do remind me of this (obligatory Monty Python reference):

Barbara of the Buddhist Blog May Get to Ask the Dalai Lama a Question!

Her post explaining this is here. I've got a host of blog posts about Tibet, which ought to raise enough questions.

My question to her would hinge on this post however:

The man born as Gyancain Norbu was chosen by the Chinese government years ago as an emanation of Amitabha, the so-called Panchen Lama.  Given that there are serious practicing Buddhist clergy in China - any visitor can meet them - and given that the man born as Gyancain Norbu has dedicated his life - literally, as much as you have - to reconciling Tibetan Buddhism with political realities - does HH expect other observers to believe that the Chinese government is trying to "deliberately annihilate Buddhism" as he was recently quoted as saying?  And how can you show compassion for Gyancain Norbu?

I never quite did get an answer to the first question when I e-mailed it in at the Dalai Lama website.

Update:  Looking at the questions posed at Barbara's blog, I'm amazed a bit at the woo-ism that passes for Dalai Lama worship.   It amazes me that the leader of a movement that is nondualist in nature is good at amassing a following of people seeing these things as dualistic.  I understand it though: the Dalai Lama must be, as well as a Buddhist leader a political leader, and for that he cultivates a certain persona. It's just personas aren't people.

I realize that there's heavy emotions around the Panchen Lama, Dalai Lama, etc.

Isn't it the case that it's a bit of a heavy trip to lay on a kid that he's the emanation of a key Bodhisattva? And then, on top of that, to embroil a kid in a tug of war of geopolitics?

I don't think it was a good idea that the Chinese might have continued this process, and do realize that occasionally these guys - funny how they're all guys - resign their positions and such.

But with all the recent scandals in other religions, and the ongoing scandal in the Catholic Church, can't we at least recognize that the "find the kid who's the incarnation of the dead lama" game is one of those practices we can do without?

Robert Thurman gets shrill

And when he starts to defend the faith healing Falun Da Fa, well, that's pitiful.  Just for the record (you can find it in a Wall Street Journal article from a few years back which I read in the paper edition) Falun Da Fa was outed as a dangerous cult by...wait for it...a Chinese Buddhist scholar (with roughly the same position there as Robert Thurman has at Columbia University, except he wasn't a Tibet specialist).  And that scholar was not a member of the Communist party.

The Dalai Lama crosses a line...

The office of the Dalai Lama still has not responded to my e-mail, and that silence, to me at least, is thunderous.  But this week, the Dalai Lama still kept up his verbal attacks on Chinese:

The Dalai Lama blasted Chinese authorities Wednesday, accusing them of trying to "annihilate Buddhism" in Tibet as he commemorated a failed uprising against China's rule over the region.

The Tibetan spiritual leader's angry comments appeared to signal his frustration with fruitless efforts to negotiate a compromise with China. However, he said he would not abandon talks...

In his annual address from exile in India to mark the 51st anniversary of a failed Tibetan uprising against China, the Dalai Lama said Chinese authorities were conducting a campaign of "patriotic re-education" in monasteries in Tibet.

"They are putting the monks and nuns in prison-like conditions, depriving them the opportunity to study and practice in peace," he said, accusing Chinese of working to "deliberately annihilate Buddhism." 

This is clearly false, as I've said before on this blog. I've seen it myself.  I've talked to Chinese Buddhists and Christians.  I've heard the Panchen Lama problem discussed openly in Beijing.  The Dalai Lama may not like the fact that as he ages, his relevance as a political leader is fading, despite what he says, which does seem to be what the government thinks too.  More to the point, he may be angry that his control over religion is being attenuated.

Meanwhile, here's an example  of how badly religion is being "suppressed" in China. Clearly those Tibetans want to be there to view the Panchen Lama.

Now I'm not saying there's quite a bit of bad feelings around Tibet today. But I am saying that there's a bit too much misinformation in the US about this subject, and American Buddhists should be more critical in their ingestion of other people's narratives about this subject. It's far more complicated than you're getting from the Dalai Lama.

Who are the "real" Buddhists? Genpo Roshi? The Chinese - installed Panchen Lama?

We see this question in many guises: is Genpo Roshi's "Big Mind" shtick a "real" Buddhist practice? Are the heterodoxies of Jewish, Chiristian, 12 Step Buddhism "real" Buddhism?

I have said quite a bit on my blog about spiritual hucksterism, and how many folks will try to market what they do as "enlightened" or what-not or "Buddhist" and such to try to siphon a few bucks off those who are seeking to get the wheel unstuck.

I have also said that what I think should be, from a Buddhist perspective, the criterion for whether something comports with the Dharma or not, and remember, I'm just a blogger blogging, no 虛空藏菩薩 (Kokūzō Bosatsu) has visited me recently "in person" and personally imparted this knowledge.

Having said all that, I also have to say we should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. There are certain things at an American Zen Temple near me that I don't endorse, because I think they start from - and can finish in - a state of unresolved duality, that is, they identify a particular Westernized practice based on a perceived "need" and this need is said to lead to all kinds of bad stuff if the need is not addressed. This reminds me of the paradox of self-help books: they only sell to people who think they're screwed up. And if they actually work, well, then you're not screwed up and you don't need self-help books. Whether or not you're actually screwed up is almost irrelevant to the situation, but as long as you think you're screwed up, and you think there's a way a "self-help book" is going to help you buy your way out of your being screwed up, you're part of the market for self-help books. And so it is with a day or weekend's worth of "training" for the "need."

But these folks are still definitely Buddhist, and they can express great compassion and insight underneath some of what can easily be perceived as the psychobabble, and for that reason I support them.

Likewise, I think at heart Genpo Roshi, The Zennist, and a host of others are real Buddhists. It's just some of them should honestly say, as Mel Gibson's character does in the movie Air America, "I never said I was a good Buddhist!" And, by the way, for the record, I never said I was a good Buddhist.

Which brings me then to Tibet. The Economist notes that China's policy of having state-installed Lamas such as the Panchen Lama has led to relative peace in those areas where the Panchen Lama held sway, and darkly notes that there may soon come a time when there are going to be multiple Dalai Lamas (or is it Dalais Lama?)

In Tashilhunpo, pilgrims flock to pay homage at shrines honouring the Panchen Lamas. One of them contains a golden statue of the tenth Panchen Lama, who died in January 1989. The central government donated more than 60 million yuan and 600kg of gold for its construction. The tenth Panchen Lama stayed in China after the Dalai Lama’s flight to India in 1959. He was imprisoned during the 1960s and 70s, only to emerge in the 1980s as China’s chief spokesman on Tibetan Buddhism (even though he was privately critical of China’s stringent controls). Pilgrims appear unfazed by his ambivalent career, crowding forward to offer small banknotes and add yak butter to the flickering lamps in front of his statue.

This and several other Tashilhunpo shrines display three photographs of Panchen Lamas side by side, with the tenth in the middle, his predecessor to the left and the 11th to the right. The young man who now holds the title embodies China’s attempt at control over Tibetan Buddhism. He was appointed in 1995 at the age of six in a ceremony attended by top Chinese officials. China refused to accept the boy recognised by the Dalai Lama as the new incarnation. This alternative, non-state-sanctioned Panchen Lama has not been seen in public since and is believed to be under close watch somewhere in China. His photograph is displayed in some monasteries far from Lhasa, but certainly not at Tashilhunpo. Bianba Tsering, my guide, said all Tibetans accept the official Panchen Lama as the rightful heir.

China’s success, so far at any rate, in keeping Xigatse relatively calm will make it all the more inclined to try the same tactic when the Dalai Lama dies. Tibetan Buddhism could well end up with two Dalai Lamas—one in Tibet, but another living outside China and able to speak out. For the Communist Party it will be a dangerous game.

The idea here is that somehow the China-installed Panchen Lama is a fake; this is how the situation in the West was presented for years.

But the reality in China is different, and The Economist should be aware of that. In the Lama Temple in Beijing (related to the Panchen Lama's sect) I remember the tour guide discussing this issue with the frankness one would expect in the Western media. It's no big secret that the issue of religion has been politicized in China, and sometimes religion has been exploited by foreign powers. This is no secret. And, guess what? Those elements of religions historically associated with foreign exploitation just don't get a free pass from the locals! Who would have thought that?

The Buddhist monks in monasteries in China do not seem to think at all they're anything other than the real deal, and compared to their counterparts in the West, they seem to compare favorably. At the not-quite-poetically named 臨済風禅寺 ("Lin-Chi Style Zen Temple") in Northeast China the monks practice there like they are at other temples; the Temple, like other temples in Japan and Korea is deliberately designed so that just getting from Point A to Point B requires an exercise in mindfulness.

Which is all to say that you can't but help get some of this Buddhist stuff in your blood if you swim around in it long enough; it will permeate you by osmosis.

Now I can't speak for the teachers there compared to here, and I would insist that wherever one is, one should seek out an uncompromising teacher who himself is ethical and "gets it."

So I won't do the "No True Scotsman Fallacy" and say the present Dalai Lama, whoever the Dalai Lamas are next and who approves them, Genpo Roshi, or you are "true" Buddhists or not. I can offer an opinion about whether what one advocates leads to greater wisdom, generosity and compassion, and whether it helps all beings. But I don't do ad hoc essentialist arguments.