A Chance to Be Heard: An Invitation to Current & Former Rigpa US Students

The Moral Authority of the Dalai Lama
In the controversy over Sogyal Rinpoche, the Dalai Lama’s voice has been constantly invoked during the past six months as the senior and most authoritative source of guidance.
Indeed, it is almost a given these days that the Dalai Lama has the highest authority in matters of morality and ethics, and of course he is widely known as a man of peace who always promotes non-violence. His influence in the Buddhist world is even greater and in Vajrayana Buddhism it is enormous. Indeed he is regularly referred to as “spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists.” In some countries, like India for example, ordinary people often know nothing about Buddhism aside from its association with the Dalai Lama.
At the same time, His Holiness has advised and insisted time and again that we must carefully scrutinize and analyse our teachers. So perhaps this is the time also to scrutinize and analyse the advisor himself – both his past and his present.
The past – spiritual history
Hardly anyone knows of the Dalai Lama’s own spiritual history and it remains carefully concealed for good reason. Thus, some may be interested to know that the Dalai Lama has four spiritual masters from the Gelugpa tradition.
The first of these, Reting Rinpoche, is the one who actually found the present Dalai Lama after the death of the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama’s second guru, Tagdrag Rinpoche, ordered the assassination of his first guru, Reting Rinpoche in 1947. Even though the Dalai Lama was only about 12 years old at the time, he could – by his own admission – have intervened but did not. In his autobiography, he writes:
“[L]ooking back, I sometimes wonder whether in this case I might not have been able to do something. Had I intervened in some way, it is possible that the destruction of Reting monastery, one of the oldest and most beautiful in Tibet, might have been prevented.”
In the attack on Reting Rinpoche’s monastery, about 80 monks were killed. And although the Dalai Lama writes that Reting Rinpoche “died in prison”, it is accepted that he was poisoned on Tagdrag Rinpoche’s orders.
Bestowing the Hayagriva empowerment at Sera-Jey Monastery in Karnataka in December 2017, the Dalai Lama said: “I received the empowerments for this collection from Tagdrag Rinpoche when I was boy.” What he doesn’t say is that he could have stopped this same guru from murdering his first guru who had actually made him the Dalai Lama.
Nor does the Dalai Lama admit that all four of his gurus were students of Phabongkhapa, who used his political power to destroy Nyingma and Kagyu monasteries, to ban hosts of non-Gelug commentaries like those of the great Sakyapa scholar Gorampa, to order Guru Rinpoche statues to be thrown into the river, and to imprison Tibetans just for chanting the Vajra Guru mantra. Phabhongkhapa even asked the Chinese to wage war against all the other Tibetan Buddhist schools that flourished in eastern Tibet.
These are not exaggerations. In fact, this is just a small glimpse of what any unbiased student of Tibetan history can verify and of what can be found in Phabhongkhapa’s own collected works. Please refer to the older edition of those texts, as important details may be omitted from newer editions published since 1959, in the interests of political correctness to conform to the Dalai Lama’s non-sectarian policies.
And the past haunts the present
It was the Dalai Lama’s third guru, Trijang Rinpoche, who gave the teachings of Dorje Shugden, the protector practice that the Dalai Lama has vigorously condemned. The Dalai Lama went so far as to ban Dorje Shugden practitioners from his teachings, and so intimidated Tibetans that they stopped patronizing stores and restaurants of Dorje Shugden practitioners who quickly lost their jobs and livelihoods.
No wonder many Tibetans are quietly laughing as naïve westerners righteously quote the Dalai Lama’s recent remarks that one does not have to obey one’s Vajrayana master. Those Tibetans know the Dalai Lama is trying to justify his own actions in disobeying his own Vajrayana master. It is even more ironic that the Dalai Lama enforced his anti-Shugden edicts with the same argument now being used to cover up Sogyal Rinpoche’s misdeeds — namely that his life will be shortened if people disobey him.
What westerners don’t realize in their naiveté is the impossible bind into which the Dalai Lama’s clever phrasing put true Vajrayana practitioners who know one has to obey one’s guru wholeheartedly. On the one hand, others who also received Dorje Shugden teachings from the Dalai Lama’s third guru, Trijang Rinpoche, know the Dalai Lama is not above the Buddha and has no authority to change the most basic Vajrayana command. On the other hand, the reality of Tibetan society is that one’s life is finished once outcast by the Dalai Lama.
Typical is the tragic experience of the present Trijang Rinpoche Tulku, now 35 years old, dogged by threats, fearing bloodshed, and forced into exile and to cut off all ties with loyal disciples because he can neither disobey the Dalai Lama nor implement the Dalai Lama’s ban on Dorje Shugden.
The purpose of writing this now is definitely not to create discord but the opposite. The truth matters and if we excise it from the history books as is already happening, we will be condemned to repeat the grievous faults of the past. These truths have to come out into the open while the Dalai Lama is still alive, so that people start to question the mortal danger of mixing religion and politics that has proved so deadly, destructive and bewildering in the Dalai Lama’s own lifetime.
In the absence of such questioning, the confusion continues unabated to this day compromising and undermining the integrity of both due political process and of the true Buddhist teachings to say nothing of personal probity. Let’s look at the present evidence.
Of politics, money and character today
It’s said that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In the world of Tibetan Buddhist politics, there is no question of the Dalai Lama’s supreme and unquestioned authority. And so it is only fair to assess the nature and character of his influence in that political world.
In 2011, headlines around the world proclaimed: “Dalai Lama Cedes Power”, “Dalai Lama Gives up Political Role”, “Dalai Lama Retires from Political Life.” While westerners readily swallowed and never questioned the news, Tibetans know well it simply isn’t true and never happened in practice. In fact, all major decisions are still made by the Dalai Lama.
As one example among very many, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA or Tibetan Government in Exile) is supposed to have a democratically elected Sikyong (or President) and Parliament. As executive authority is vested in the President, he theoretically has power to appoint his own Cabinet.
In fact the Dalai Lama has directly intervened to nominate rivals to the present Sikyong to key Cabinet posts and as Speaker of the House. And such intervention is constant.
Western government and private donors who donate millions to fund the CTA, including USAID that in 2016 gave $23 million, should open their eyes and check present myths about the Dalai Lama. Indeed, they should check the Dalai Lama’s own reserves and resources.
Tibetan sources say the Dalai Lama has enormous personal wealth, including huge quantities of gold he brought out from Tibet, all of which could do so much for Tibetan welfare if it were spent. Instead, only the foreign aid is spent. A very rare 2010 investigation by Australian journalist Michael Bachman noted that the CTA does not acknowledge millions received in private donations or reveal their sources.
A key reason the Dalai Lama’s personal wealth is so carefully hushed up is that it might reflect on the supposedly impeccable moral and ethical image of the Dalai Lama so assiduously cultivated in the west. Yet close associates of the Dalai Lama refer to him as stingy and very envious and jealous by nature. Thus the Dalai Lama is known to be jealous of anyone else in the Tibetan Buddhist world who has some sort of fame and respect.
While painfully aware of such stains, these same associates have no choice but diligently to conceal them from the outside world if only to protect their own privileged positions and to ensure the continued flow of foreign donations.
And a disservice to Buddhism itself
Despite the Dalai Lama’s supposedly non-sectarian stance, these same close associates report him to be deeply sectarian – not surprising in light of the volatile mixture of politics and sectarianism in the Dalai Lama’s own history and upbringing.
There is reliable speculation that, contrary to popular beliefs about the 17th Karmapa Trinley Dorje’s “escape” from Tibet, the entire episode was in fact engineered and closely monitored by the Dalai Lama. This Karmapa, after all, had been endorsed by Chinese strongmen Ziang Zemin and Xi Jinping — not for any spiritual reason but for their own political agendas.
But the Dalai Lama knew as well as the Chinese that the Karmapa lineage is much older and more influential than the present Dalai Lama dynasty and he therefore had a direct interest in having Tibet’s most influential man in his own hands, especially as he himself aged. This, say influential Tibetan observers, explains the Karmapa’s years of virtual “house arrest” after arriving in India under the Dalai Lama’s watchful eye. The wisest of these observers still express disbelief that Tai Situ Rinpoche so completely fell into the Dalai Lama’s manoeuvre to bring the Karmapa under his control.
While this view of the Karmapa’s escape has not been definitively proved, other sectarian interventions by the Dalai Lama are more blatant and widely acknowledged among senior Tibetan observers. For example, the Dalai Lama’s controversial 2015 recognition of Trulshik Rinpoche’s reincarnation in Nepal seemed deliberately designed to cause disharmony in the Nyingma lineage.
Even more provocative was the Dalai Lama’s ploy to break the powerful influence of the abbots of Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok’s Larung Gar Serthar monastery by recognizing a reincarnation of Khenpo Jigme Phuntsok, who had specifically instructed his disciples that he would not reincarnate and not to recognize any supposed reincarnation. Yet, such is the influence of the Dalai Lama that Tibetan society cannot oppose his decisions.
Countless other examples abound into the present day, including talk of the Dalai Lama’s unspoken and informal alliance with the extreme Hindu nationalist RSS in refusing to support millions of Indians eager to be Buddhist but who would be out of his own control. It is not difficult for readers to discover and learn this for themselves if they are willing to look.
But perhaps the Dalai Lama’s greatest disservice is to the essence of Buddhist philosophy and practice itself. As he cajoles scientists, secularists and the western media with his “secular ethics”, mind-life dialogues and humanitarian goodwill ambassador, the Dalai Lama is subtly eviscerating and undermining the profound spiritual basis of Buddhism.
The Dalai Lama recently went so far to declare that he longer believes in prayer. “Thousands of years we pray, pray, pray, pray. Nothing happened”, he said. If nothing happens, one wonders why his monasteries and schools under the Central Tibetan Administration are still required to recite the Dalai Lama’s long life prayers.
Some of the Dalai Lama’s increasingly secularist approach seems aimed at persuading sceptical, rationalist westerners who know nothing about Buddhism that it is not a “religion”. He is even supposedly creating a non-religious version of the Buddha’s basic Kangyur teachings. But the Dalai Lama seems neither to understand western culture nor to recognize that he is putting Buddhism in grave danger of losing its very essence and its spiritual heart that are its most profound offering to the world.
Though many knowledgeable Tibetans and Buddhist masters long ago lost their respect for the Dalai Lama, the purpose of this analysis is certainly not to create discord or disharmony. Rather, it is a simple and necessary wake-up call:

Unless westerners and blind Tibetan devotees inform themselves of past and present realities, they will uncritically continue to swallow every remark the Dalai Lama makes about the Sogyal Rinpoche affair as if it is the gospel truth. And unless they ask the basic questions raised here while the Dalai Lama is still alive, serious dangers await both the Tibetan community and the future of Buddhism itself after the Dalai Lama passes.

The Dalai Lama has urged us to analyse, examine and question other teachers and leaders according to the highest standards. He is surely not exempt.

There is an unknown group that has experienced stress, harm, feelings of powerlessness and sadness. They are not rigpa members or have been rigpa members. The sisters, brothers, fathers and mothers who experienced a loved one who was abused or who became spiritual egos in the rigpa. I humbly ask the rigpa sangha to have some practice and recognition for that group. To heal all those unknown ripples.

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