Information about IKKBO:
Resolution
Kunzig Shamar Rinpoche's message to the IKKC
Statement by the monks community at the IKKC
Open letter to H.H. the Dalai Lama
General information:
Background on
the Karmapa controversy
Prediction
About the Future of the Kagyu Lineage
By Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
Legal documents:
Court Decisions
Buddha's Not Smiling, By Erik D. Curren.
The Day the Last Monastery in Shangri-La Fell -
Buddha's Not Smiling is the anatomy of a crisis. On August 2, 1993, Rumtek monastery
was attacked. Its monks were expelled and the cloister was given to a lama appointed
by the Chinese government. But Rumtek was not in China, and its attackers were
not Communist troops. Rumtek was in India, the refuge for most exiled Tibetans.
And it was Tibetan lamas themselves who led the siege. Evidence shows that the
Chinese Communists directly supported Tibetan lamas and monks who attacked Rumtek
monastery.
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Nov 1st
04 Novelist Tries to Wrestle with the Karmapa Controversy in Non-Fiction
Format: IKKBO Says that She Should Have Stuck To Fiction.
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Oct 21th
04 Shamar Rinpoche Files Defamation Suit against Controversial Karmapa Book
Author Lea Terhune accused in spreading false information solely to harm Tibetan
Buddhist leader and lineage.
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The supreme
court of India decision on Rumtek
[ Original Text ]
SUPREME COURT OF INDIA RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
Petition(s) for Special Leave to Appeal (Civil) No.22903/2003
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Group Loses
Legal Bid to Retain Control over Disputed Monastic Seat of the Karmapas
Indian Supreme Court Rejects Claim of Tsurphu Labrang, Clearing the Way for
the Karmapa Charitable Trust to Regain Control of Rumtek Monastery.
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Buddha's
Not Smiling:
Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today
By Erik D. Curren
348 pages, 32 illustrations
$19.95 Paper
ISBN: 0-9772253-0-5
Visit http://www.alayapress.com
This book is about corruption in Tibetan Buddhism, but not about sex scandals. We have already seen discussions about Buddhist teachers, particularly well known Zen masters and Tibetan lamas, having romantic affairs with their students, especially those from Western countries.1 This is nothing new, and it afflicts Buddhism as it does all other major religions. Here, I do not touch on this topic.
Instead, I explore a type of corruption that I believe is much more insidious, and whose exposure can be of much greater benefit to people seeking to find meaning in their lives through a spiritual path, or just trying to understand the massive phenomenon that Tibetan Buddhism has become in the past thirty years. This book is a history of a dispute among the highest lamas with roots centuries in the past and a present of deep shame. It is a dispute over the identity of a lama called the Karmapa.
I have been a student of Buddhism for a decade. I was inspired by this ancient path’s time-tested methods to escape suffering, and by the example of compassionate living offered by Tibetan lamas. A few years ago, when I first heard how spiritual leaders who stand for love, peace, and nonviolence had behaved in this dispute I was shocked and disillusioned. Were Tibetan lamas just hypocrites and charlatans? If this was so, I would have been ready to give up Buddhism altogether. The only way I could remain was to discover the facts for myself.
So that’s what I set out to do. In the process, I discovered a dark side to some Tibetan lamas. But I also developed a confidence in the basic teachings of a spiritual tradition that was more mature, based on my own investigation, rather than merely on hopeful faith. I believe that this journey did me much good, and helped me grow intellectually and spiritually. I hope the reader will take much the same journey in these pages, and discover some of the same benefit along the way.
For the past three years, I have been a student of one of the main lamas involved in the controversy, Shamar Rinpoche. Thus I cannot claim to be a disinterested outsider. Shamar even suggested that I write this book. Four books have already come out in the last few years sympathetic to the views of his opponents.2 These books raised many questions for me about the purity of Tibetan Buddhism, and I am sure they raised the same questions for many others. So it seemed only fair to investigate Shamar’s claims and give him a chance to tell his story. The following pages try to disentangle the many knots in the web of claims, counterclaims, and outright deceptions that have come to enshroud the topic of the Karmapa today.
Two young men are at the center of our story, and both of them claim to be the Karmapa. The four most recent books on the subject all refer to one of the young men as “the Karmapa” while calling the other by his enthronement name, the equivalent of a personal name. Here, I begin from the premise of an authentic controversy, so I do not presume to know which candidate is the genuine reincarnate. Accordingly, I do not call either candidate “the Karmapa.” Instead, I refer to each young lama by his enthronement name. I hope this will make for a fairer presentation that is also clearer for the reader.
I would like to invite you, the reader, to make your own judgment on the specific issue of this book—the story of the Karmapa. Considering the evidence, whom do you believe and whom do you trust? After that, it may be fruitful to consider how this connects to your attitude about Tibetan Buddhism and spiritual teachers in general. Finally, if you follow a spiritual tradition, or if you know someone who does, then I encourage you to meditate on what it means to follow a spiritual teacher with maturity, as an intelligent person in the modern world. Is it possible to balance faith and logical thinking? Does rationality conflict with faith, or can rationality enrich faith? When should we just believe, and when should we ask questions?
If you can prove any of my claims wrong please contact me directly and I will correct them in future editions.
1 Among its other topics, Jeffrey Paine’s 2004 book Re-Enchantment: Tibetan Buddhism Comes to the West discusses the problems caused by romantic relationships between dharma students in the United States and three teachers in the Tibetan tradition: two Tibetan men (Kalu Rinpoche and Chogyam Trungpa) and one American woman (Catherine Burroughs). The latter is the subject of Martha Sherrill’s 2001 book The Buddha from Brooklyn. In addition, Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center put out by Michael Downing in 2002 tells the story of an American Zen master, Richard Baker Roshi, who ran into problems partially because of liaisons with devotees.
2 Four books were published in 2003 and 2004 on the Karmapa, all taking the side of the Dalai Lama’s candidate Ogyen Trinley. The first of these was Michele Martin’s 2003 biography of the young lama, Music in the Sky: The Life, Art and Teachings of the 17 th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje. In 2004, three books on the Karmapa controversy followed: Karmapa: The Politics of Reincarnation by Lea Terhune, The Dance of 17 Lives: The Incredible True Story of Tibet’s 17 th Karmapa by Mick Brown and Wrestling the Dragon: In Search of the Boy Lama Who Defied China by Gaby Naher. An earlier book, Rogues in Robes published in 1998 by Tomek Lehnert, discussed the controversy from the experience of a follower of Shamar Rinpoche. I will occasionally refer to these books in my discussion.