LETTING DAYLIGHT INTO MAGIC

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DORJE SHUGDEN

Stephen Batchelor

Praise to you, violent god of the The so-called Drakpa Gyaltsen* pretends to Yellow Hat teachings, Who reduces to be a sublime being. But since this interfering particles of dust Great beings, high spirit and creature of distorted prayers is officials, and ordinary people Who pollute harming everything, both and and corrupt the Gelugpa doctrine. sentient beings, do not support, protect or give him shelter, but grind him to dust. - From “Praise to Dorje Shugden”, quoted by Zemey (1927-1996) - The Fifth Dalai (1617-1682) *The DrakpaGyaltsen was the Fifth ’s rival. Dorje Shugden is considered to be his reincarnation, resurrected to oppose the involvement of Gelugpa monks with teachings.

“A WRATHFUL DEITY”, announced the London Dalai Lama’s UK visit.” The article described Independent with barely concealed irony on demonstrations on the streets of London, where February 17, 1997,”is the main suspect for three hundreds of British Buddhists “chanted anti-Dalai murders in Dharamsala, the Himalayan ‘capital’ of Lama slogans and carried placards saying “Your Tibet’s government-in-exile.” Two weeks earlier, smiles charm, your actions harm.” The Nobel Lobsang Gyatso, the principal of the Institute laureate was accused by an organization called the of Buddhist Dialectics, and two students had been Shugden Suporters Community of being “a ruthless stabbed to death. Despite exhaustive investigations dictator” and “an oppressor of religious freedom.” by the Indian police, the case is still unresolved. Although arrest warrants for two suspects have These tragic and bewildering events have brought been issued, the police believe the killers have to the attention of the world a long-standing arcane gone underground in either Nepal or Tibet. Interpol feud within the Tibetan Buddhist community that has been called in to help find them. And although centers around the protector god Dorje Shugden. Shugden supporters have vigorously criticized the While feeding the West’s seemingly insatiable media for affiliating them with the murders, the very fascination with all things Tibetan, the murders and wide-spread assumptions themselves reflect both demonstrations have expose a dark and troubling the historical and emotional nature of the dispute. underside of a tradition often seen as a beacon of wisdom and compassion in a spiritually confused On July 6, 1996, another British newspaper, the world. Even if it turns out that the killings were, in Guardian, carried a front-page story under the fact, part of a Chinese campaign to intensify discord heading, “Smear campaign sparks safety fears over in the Tibetan community in exile, this still means that Beijing has been able to exploit a bitter dispute

Letting Daylight into Magic The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden Stephen Batcherlor Tricycle : The Buddhist Review, Spring 1998 edition that the Dalai Lama and his initiation in a chapel of his palace at supporters such as the late Gen . One of the Lobsang Gyatso remain powerless handed him a ritual dagger to resolve. and at that very (1357-1419), depicted To understand the complex origins moment the in an 18th century Mongolian brass of this dispute, it is necessary not Dalai Lama statue, founded the Gelugpa order. only to trace an outline of Tibetan had the history since the seventeenth feeling of being spied on through a century, but also to grasp some of window by monks of his own the doctrinal and philosophical Gelugpa order. He reflected that if issues that have divided the the Gelugpa monks criticized him population since Buddhism was for receiving teachings from the established in Tibet in the eighth Nyingma lamas, he would stab them century. with the dagger. He rushed out to confront them, but they already On the twenty-eighth day of the seemed subdued. At that point, he seventh lunar month of 1642, the woke up. Fifth Dalai Lama dreamed that two lamas of another sect –the Nyingma- gave him an EARLIER THAT SAME YEAR, the twenty-six-year- Nyingmapas (“Ancients”) had been instrumental in old Dalai Lama had been conferred with supreme introducing Buddhism to Tibet at the time of those authority over all Tibet by the Mongol Gushri Khan, early kings and in first defining the buddhocratic thus inaugurating the dynasty of the Dalai Lamas. nature of the state. Throughout his life the Fifth This step was achieved whenthe armies of the Dalai Lama maintained a strong allegiance to the Mongol Khan defeated the king of Tsang, the Nyingma school and a mystical rapport with its backer of the Dalai Lama’s chief rival for power in founder, , who appeared to him in Tibet, the (a senior lama of the dreams and visions. order). While their military victory ended years of civil conflict in Tibet and unified the country under THE FIFTH DALAI LAMA’S assumption of this long the Gelugpa order, it also exposed tensions among and complex historical identity would not have sat the Gelugpas themselves – already hinted at in the easily with the ambitions of a Gelugpa hierarchy Dalai Lama’s dream of three months later. intent on creating a buddhocratic state founded explicitly on the teachings of Tsongkhapa. It seems The Gelugpa tradition had been founded more than that this conflict led to the death of the Fifth Dalai two hundred years earlier by the remarkable monk, Lama’s rival Drakpa Gyaltsen, shortly after the Dalai scholar, and yogin Tsongkhapa, who drew from all Lama’s return from a state visit to China Tibetan Buddhist traditions of his time to create a (suggesting the possibility of a palace revolt during compelling new synthesis of doctrine, ethics, his prolonged absence). Thereafter, Dorje Shugden philosophy, and practice. The first Dalai Lama was was recognized by those Gelugpas who opposed a leading disciple of Tsongkhapa, and as the the Dalai Lama’s involvement with the Nyingma influence of the Gelugpas grew steadily over the school as the reincarnation of Drakpa Gyaltsen, next two centuries, the Dalai Lamas emerged as who had assumed the form of a wrathful protector of important spiritual figures within the school. When the purity of Tsongkhapa’s teachings. They also the fifth in the line became head of the Tibetan regarded him as an emanation of the state, the institution of the Dalai Lama suddenly Manjushri. assumed unprecedented political power. After the death of the Fifth Dalai Lama in 1682, the Although the Fifth Dalai Lama was a Gelugpa controversy between these factions of the Gelugpa monk, as head of state he carried not only the school slips into the shadows, and we hear only mantle of Tsongkhapa’s reformed Buddhist order occasional references to Dorje Shugden for the next but also that of a thousand years of Tibetan history. two hundred years. The Sixth Dalai Lama was This would have been particularly poignant for him, unsuited to public office and was arrested and killed since he was born into a family whose ancestral by the Mongols. After the Seventh Dalai Lama was home overlooked the tombs of the early Tibetan returned to Lhasa in 1720 by the Manchus, the kings in the Chonggye Valley and who were still government of Tibet passed into the hands of a associated with the Nyingma tradition. The regency composed initially of powerful aristocrats

Letting Daylight into Magic The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden Stephen Batcherlor Tricycle : The Buddhist Review, Spring 1998 edition The dispute over Dorje Shugden reflects a struggle between two opposing visions of how best to lead sentient beings to enlightenment and maintain the integrit y of the Tibetan state. It is neit her an exclusively religious nor a fundamentally politically dispute. It is both. and then, for 113 years, of senior Gelugpa lamas. India in1959, possibly – according to some lamas- on the advice of the Shugden oracle. Of the six Dalai Lamas who lived during this period of regency, the last four died before the age of In 1973, a senior Gelugpa lama called Zemey twenty-one, thus failing to assume leadership of Rinpoche published an account of DorjeShugden Tibet for more than a year or so. that he had received orally from his teacher (and the Dalai Lama’s tutor) Trijang Rinpoche. This text The Thirteenth Dalai Lama came to power at the recounts in detail the various calamities that have age of nineteen in1895. Having survived an befallen monks and laypeople of the Gelugpa assassination attempt (his former regent had tradition who have practiced Nyingma teachings. concealed deadly mantras in the Dalai Lama’s Those mentioned include the last three Panchen boots), he found himself charged with the daunting Lamas, senior officials of the Thirteenth Dalai task of leading Tibet into a rapidly changing world. Lama’s government, Reting Rinpoche, and even He proved an able leader who sought to introduce a Pabongka himself. In each case, the illness, torture modest program of reform, only to be thwarted by or death incurred is claimed to be the result of aristocrats and senior lamas. He was also a keen having displease Dorje Shugden. The publication of practitioner of Nyingma teachings. He had several this material was condemned by the Dalai Lama, teachers from the Nyingma school, practiced with who was then engaged in Nyingma practices them in the Potala Palace, and wrote commentaries himself under the guidance of the late Dilgo to the Nyingma texts by his predecessor, the Fifth Khyentse Rinpoche. But the Dalai Lama’s views Dalai Lama. about Dorje Shugden began to shift and led to his first statements discouraging the practice in 1976. The Thirteenth Dalai lama’s openness to the Each time a Dalai Lama has come to hold effective Nyingma was in marked contrast to that of political office, a controversy has erupted around Pabongka Rinpoche, the most influential Gelugpa Dorje Shugden. A similar pattern has repeated itself lama of the time, whose authority rivaled that of the during the rules of the Fifth, Thirteenth, and Dalai Lama. Pabongka inherited the practice of Fourteenth Dalai Lamas. This conflict has inevitably Dorje shugden from his mother’s family, and as a been articulated in the vivid, yet (to outsiders) young man also received transmissions from bewildering language and imagery of Tibetan Nyingma lamas. After a serious illness he became culture. It reflects a struggle between two opposing convinced that the disease was a sign from visions of how best to lead sentient beings to Shugden to stop practicing Nyingma teachings, enlightenment, preserve the Buddha’s teaching, which he did. Although he promoted the practice of and maintains the integrity of the Tibetan state. Shugden, he was ordered by the Thirteenth Dalai Representatives of both sides have included wise, Lama to stop invoking the deity on the grounds that moral, and saintly men who have led exemplary it was destroying Buddhism. Pabongka then Buddhist lives. Some, such as Dilgo Khyentse promised “in the core of my heart” never to Rinpoche and Trijang Rinpoche, admired and propitiate Shugden again. He evidently changed his respected each other. As in the case with mind, though, and subsequently passed the everything to do with Tibet, the line between religion practice on to his disciples. The present Dalai and politics is blurred. The dispute over Dorje Lama, born in 1935, was introduced to the practice Shugden is neither an exclusively religious nor a of Dorje Shugden by his junior tutor, Trijang fundamentally political one. It is both. Rinpoche, a leading disciple of Pabongka. This was a time of great political turmoil in Tibet. The WHO ARE THESE INVISBLE BEINGS that appear reliability of the state oracle at had been to Tibetan lamas in dreams and visions, speak thrown into doubt, and some believed that the through oracles, predict the future, inspire awe and government should switch its allegiance to the terror, bless those who worship them and incur oracle representing Dorje Shugden. The regent, misfortune on those who don’t. The Tibetan term for Reting Rinpoche, was forced to resign, only to such beings is lha. Lha means “deity” or “god”. Such return to launch an unsuccessful coup in 1947. The gods are both Indian and Tibetan in origin and Chinese Communists arrived in Lhasa in 1952. The constitute a pantheon as complex and arcane as Dalai Lama, his tutors, and 100,000 Tibetans fled to that of ancient Greece and Rome. Yet with the

Letting Daylight into Magic The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden Stephen Batcherlor Tricycle : The Buddhist Review, Spring 1998 edition advent of Mahayana and naïve would say they represent Buddhism, there appears an beings independent of the altogether different kind of god. practitioner’s own mind. Yet These are Buddhas and however persuasive this kind of , awakened beings who Jungian interpretation may be, it is have vowed to work ceaselessly not how most Tibetan lamas and in myriad ways for the welfare understand the world they inhabit. of beings. While not mere gods – who for all their powers are just For gods to be empty of inherent another class of unawakened existence does not mean that they sentient being - they assume the cannot be autonomous beings form of gods for the benefit of capable of making choices and others. existing in their own heavenly realms. In this sense they are no TIBETAN BUDDHISTS REGARD different from humans, who are THESE GODS, whether of the likewise empty but perfectly unawakened or wakened variety, as capable of making decisions and conscious, autonomous beings, living their own unique and fallible every bit as real as you or I. The The Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682), lives. The doctrine of emptiness Dalai Lama, who so successfully maintained a strong allegiance to the only teaches us to see ourselves presents Buddhism in the Western Nyingma school. and the world in a way that frees media as rational, pragmatic and compatible with us from the reification and egotism modern psychology and science, appears to believe that generate anguish. To say the world is empty in the power of these gods. In a statement issued in neither affirms nor denies the claims of any English by the Tibetan government in exile in 1996, cosmological theory, be it that of ancient India or he is quoted from a speech to an audience of modern astrophysics. Tibetans as saying: “It has become fairly clear that Dolgyal (i.e. Shugden) is a spirit of the dark forces.” To establish an authentic Buddhist state on the basis of this vision, however, requires ensuring that The Dalai Lama is not speaking here as a modern a correct view of emptiness be upheld by those in religious leader trying to persuade some of his power. Such responsibility would be a necessary superstitious flock to relinquish an outdated outcome of the bodhisattva’s compassionate worldview. He is engaged in an emotive debate resolve. For that reason, the Fifth Dalai Lama’s about whether a particular god is a powerful but government proscribed the teachings of the deluded sentient being or a Buddha who has Jonangpa school, which taught that emptiness assumed the form of a god. Such is the perceived implied a transcendent absolute reality that power of Dorje Shugden that both Gelugpas who inherently exists. Texts of the Jonangpa school invoke him and Nyngmapas who fear him will not were confiscated and its monasteries turned over to even let his name pass their lips. the Gelugpa, to be run by Gelugpa monks. It seems other factions in the Gelugpa order would This atmosphere of secrecy and implicit danger have liked to have taken similar measures against serves to affirm for Tibetan Buddhists their view of the Nyingma school. an invisible polytheistic reality intersecting with the human world. Although this worldview may be One can understand why the Dalai Lamas would unfamiliar, it is not intrinsically stranger than that of tolerate and even embrace Nyingma views in order Christians and other religious believers who to honor the historical heritage of Tibet, to affirm currently lack the exotic prestige Tibetan lamas unity among the diverse communities of the Tibetan have for Westerners. The main difference between nation, even to be true to their own spiritual it and other religious worldviews is that Buddhists, intuitions. But however justified such a position at least in theory, know all these gods to be empty might be in personal or political terms, it should not of any inherent reality. Everything, they would say, obscure the real and potentially divisive is merely an appearance as ephemeral and philosophical and doctrinal differences that exist insubstantial as a dream. Such statements have led between the Nyingma and Gelugpa ideologies. some in the West to assume that the gods of are no more than archetypal The Nyingma teaching of regards symbols: they perform a psychological function in awareness (Tib., rig pa) as the innate self-cognizant the process of spiritual transformation, but only the foundation of both samsara and nirvana. Rig pa is

Letting Daylight into Magic The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden Stephen Batcherlor Tricycle : The Buddhist Review, Spring 1998 edition We are fond of portraying Buddhism as a tolerant, rational, non-dogmatic and open-minded tradition. But how much is this the result of liberal Western(ized) intellectuals seeking to construct an image of Buddhism that simply confirms their own prejudices and desir es? the intrinsic, uncontrived nature of mind, which a in the form of a god. But for Tibetan Buddhists he is Dzogchen master is capable of directly pointing out not just a metaphor. He is a real, living god/Buddha to his students. For the Nyingmapa, Dzogchen whose displeasure can wreak havoc on human represents the very apogee of what the Buddha beings. taught, whereas Tsongkhapa’s view of emptiness as just a negation of inherent existence, implying no AT A CERTAIN POINT in their practice, those who transcendent reality, verges on nihilism. rely on Dorje Shugden will ritually “entrust their lives” (Tib., srog gtad) to him. This is not a step For the Gelugpas, Dzogchen succumbs to the taken lightly. Until 1976, the current Dalai Lama opposite extreme: that of delusively clinging to offered daily prayers to Shugden, but was never something permanent and self-existence as the initiated. On the advice of the Nechung oracle, basis of reality. They see Dzogchen as a return to which decreed Shugden a divisive force in Tibetan the Hindu ideas that Buddhists resisted in India, and unity, he began to warn against the deity’s worship. a residue of the Ch’an (Zen) doctrine of Hva-shang When he requests people to renounce Shugden, Mahayana, proscribed at the time of the early kings. the Dalai Lama challenges a deeply felt loyalty and Moreover, some Kagyu and Nyingma teachers of raises the possibility of frightful retribution. “Nothing the Rime (“impartial”) revival movement in eastern will happen,” he has had to reassure Tibetans. “I will Tibet in the nineteenth century even began to face the challenge ….. No harm will befall you.” promote a synthesis between the forbidden Jonangpa philosophy and the practice of Dzogchen. Although some Gelugpas have heeded his advice, others have not. Those loyal to Dorje Shugden For the followers of Shugden this is not an obscure could well believe that the misfortunes to have metaphysical disagreement, but a life-and-death befallen the institution of the Dalai Lama, even the struggle for truth in which the destiny of all sentient tragedy of Tibet in the twentieth century, arise from beings is at stake. The bodhisattva vow, taken by a failure to heed the advice of their protector, who every Tibetan Buddhist, is a commitment to lead all “reduces to particles of dust great beings, high beings to the end of anguish and the realization of officials, and ordinary people who pollute and . Following Tsongkhapa, the Gelugpas corrupt the Gelugpa doctrine.” For the Dalai Lama maintain that the only way to achieve this is to to denounce Dorje Shugden may confirm for them understand nonconceptually that nothing that he is simply part of the problem. whatsoever inherently exists. Any residue, however subtle, of an attachment to inherent existence works Speaking of the British monarchy more than a against the bodhisattva’s aim and perpetuates the hundred years ago, Walter Bagehot warned of very anguish he or she seeks to dispel. “letting daylight into magic.” This is happening in Tibet today as the media peer into events which MOREOVER, PROTECTORS SUCH AS Dorje formerly only a handful of lamas and their advisors Shugden exert an enormous power over the minds would have been privy to. The obscure wrangling of Tibetan Buddhists – be they erudite lamas, simple and intrigue surrounding the reincarnations of the Bhutanese peasants or educated Westerners. Karmapa and the are disseminated While lamas teach that taking refuge in the Buddha, through newspapers, web sites, television, and dharma, and sangha is the only protection a radio within hours of having taken place, while grisly Buddhist requires, they invariably supplement this murders in Dharamsala promptly lead to Dorje with initiations into practices for a range of protector Shugden’s dissection in the pages of Newsweek. gods. After all, the Land of Snows could be a harsh The Dalai Lama in particular has used the media to and frightening place. Tibetans lived in an great effect, but the fascination he has both drawn awesome, sparsely inhabited landscape with a upon and stimulated now threatens to turn the fierce climate, psychically populated by numerous magic of Tibet into mere spectacle. spirits, demons and gods. The very survival of communities required a powerful sense of family, If we strip away the exotic veneer of this Tibetan tribal and religious loyalty. In a psychoanalytical Buddhist dispute, we are confronted with questions sense, Dorje Shugden could be seen as the that concern the very nature of the dharma and its personification of a specific set of fears and loyalties practice. In the West we are fond of portraying

Letting Daylight into Magic The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden Stephen Batcherlor Tricycle : The Buddhist Review, Spring 1998 edition Buddhism as a tolerant, rational, non-dogmatic and open-minded tradition. But how much is this the result of liberal Western(ized) intellectuals seeking to construct an image of Buddhism that simply confirms their own prejudices and desires?

Historically, Buddhists everywhere have tended not to exhibit the pluralist, postmodern values we might imagine them to possess. All Buddhist traditions make claims to truth, and when those claims have contradicted one another, then passionate, prolonged, even violent disputes have ensued. All the more so is this the case in the polytheistic buddhocracy of Tibet, where a very human dispute between different doctrinal camps has also inevitably been a struggle among the gods. Each side has invoked its own oracles for guidance from them, and been convinced that it was acting out of compassion for the welfare of all beings. Tibetan lamas take their disputes seriously not merely because of short-term political gain. Many of them act out of deep and sincere passion for what they hold to be true. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama Yet history also teaches us that Buddhism ordered his disciples to stop possesses a remarkable capacity to reimagine itself worshiping Dorje Shugden. in response to the challenges posed by new historical and cultural situations. Its protean forms are testimony to the survival of a way of life that has traveled throughout Asia and is now taking its tentative first steps in America and Europe. If it is to survive, it will have to fid a way of preserving the heartfelt, single-minded commitment at its core within multicultural societies that reject the totalizing and potentially repressive demands of any single claim to truth.

STEPHEN BATCHELOR is a contributing editor to Tricycle and the director of the New Sharpham College in Devon, England. His latest book is Buddhism Without Beliefs (Tricylce/Riverhead).

Letting Daylight into Magic The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden Stephen Batcherlor Tricycle : The Buddhist Review, Spring 1998 edition