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.
More >>
Nov 1st
04 Novelist Tries to Wrestle with the Karmapa Controversy in Non-Fiction
Format: IKKBO Says that She Should Have Stuck To Fiction.
More >>
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.
More >>
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
More >>
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.
More >>
Unraveling
the Karmapa Controversy
A Dispute over the Identity of a High Tibetan Buddhist Lama.
The First
Lama to Reincarnate in Tibet
All Buddhists believe in reincarnation or rebirth after death. However, the
tradition of high lamas taking intentional rebirth again and again as tulkus,
or reincarnate masters who return to help their students reach enlightenment
is unique to Tibetan Buddhism. The first line of lamas to reincarnate was the
Gyalwa Karmapas (or “Victorious Men of Enlightened Activity”),
originating in the 12th century. After the Karmapas began the practice of conscious
reincarnation, many other high lamas, including the Dalai Lamas 300 years later,
began to follow this tradition.
A Controversy
Over Succession
Rebirths are supposed to be chosen by a variety of spiritual tests. However,
sometimes politics gets involved, and disagreements over tulku candidates are
common. After the death of the 16th Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (1923-1981),
such a dispute arose. Today, there are two candidates for the Karmapa’s
throne, and a controversy has developed that has split the Karma Kagyu, the
most widespread of the four autonomous lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. Worldwide,
the Karma Kagyu has more than 2 million followers at more than 1,000 Dharma
centers. Here, we summarize this complex issue and give background to introduce
its main actors and points of contention. Here, we summarize this complex issue
and give background to introduce its main actors and points of contention.
Two Candidates
In 1992, Tai Situ, the third-ranking lama in the traditional Karma Kagyu hierarchy,
put forward a nomad boy from rural Tibet, Orgyen Trinley. The People’s
Republic of China also recognized Orgyen Trinley and actively supported
him before his much publicized escape from Tibet in 2000. Further, the
Dalai Lama, in a step contrary to Tibetan Buddhist tradition, also validated
Orgyen Trinley as the 17th Karmapa. Meantime, a higher lama than Situ,
the second-ranking Karma Kagyu leader Shamar Rinpoche, also known as the
Shamarpa, enthroned his own candidate, Thaye Dorje, in 1994 in New Delhi,
after he had left Tibet. The Karmapa Charitable Trust, set up by the late
16th Karmapa to administer his assets after his death, gave its support
to Thaye Dorje.
How Karmapas
are Chosen
Ever since the second Karmapa, Karma Pakshi (1204-1283) was recognized by a
close disciple of the first Karmapa Dusum Khyenpa (1110-1193), Karmapa reincarnations
have been found by lamas authorized by their predecessors. Dreams and visions,
oracles and divinations, and mysterious signs and close observations are all
used to identify reborn Karmapas. In early times, various close disciples performed
the recognition. Once the Shamarpas started to appear in the 13th century,
these lamas generally took this role except for a period from 1792 until 1963
when other high lamas in the Karma Kagyu took this role. The 16th Karmapa often
said that he and Shamarpa were inseparable in body, speech and mind. The current
14th Shamar Rinpoche claims the sole right to recognize the current Karmapa.
Traditionally, Karmapas have recognized Shamarpas and vice versa.
The Case
for Orgyen Trinley
In 1992, eleven years after the death of the 16th Karmapa, Situ Rinpoche produced
a letter that led him to find and identify Orgyen Trinley as the Karmapa. Situ
claimed that this letter was written by the 16th Karmapa before his death.
Shamar Rinpoche and his followers challenged the letter as a forgery. As someone
who enjoyed long and intimate ties to the 16th Karmapa unlike Situ Rinpoche,
Shamar Rinpoche contends that the handwriting and style in the letter differ
from those of the 16th Karmapa. Further, Shamar claims that the letter appears
to be written by Situ Rinpoche himself. Situ refuses to make the prediction
letter available for forensic testing, saying that this would violate the sanctity
of a “holy object,” an attitude that runs counter to the traditional
show-me skepticism of Tibetan Buddhism.
The Case
for Thaye Dorje
In 1986, five years after the late Karmapa’s death, a prominent Sakya
lama alerted Shamar Rinpoche to a child from Lhasa who called himself Karmapa.
Shamar began investigations, sending emissaries to observe the boy and conducting
meditations and divinations himself. He kept his activities secret, even after
Situ announced his discovery of Orgyen Trinley in 1992. Based on the Lhasa
boy’s behavior, announcing himself as Karmapa and showing recognition
of important lamas close to the previous Karmapa; on Shamar’s reading
of his own dreams and visions; and on instructions from the 16th Karmapa revealed
by a highly regarded devotee of the late Karmapa, Shamar became convinced that
the boy was the true reincarnation. On January 27, 1994 Shamar Rinpoche announced
that he had located Karmapa’s reincarnation, Thaye Dorje. Situ Rinpoche
and his followers have never explained their opposition to Thaye Dorje except
to insist on the authenticity of their own candidate alone.
The Dalai
Lama’s Role
The Dalai Lama does not have historic or religious authority to approve Karmapa
reincarnations, or head lamas for any school of Tibetan Buddhism besides his
own Gelugpa lineage. This point may be confusing to non-Tibetans because, as
head of the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Dalai Lama has a claim on the
political loyalty of many Tibetans. Yet, his political role does not give the
Dalai Lama spiritual authority to validate the head lamas of Buddhist schools
outside his own. The four Buddhist schools of Tibet have always had separate
administrations and have chosen their own head lamas, much as Protestants and
Catholics choose their own leaders. So, just as the Pope has no role in choosing
the Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, so the Dalai Lama is not authorized
to recognize the Karmapa, who is the leader of the Karma Kagyu school. Only
the administration of the late 16th Karmapa is authorized to validate its own
chief lama’s reincarnation.
Adjudication
of the Right to Control Rumtek Monastery
During the religious controversy over the legitimate reincarnation of the Karmapa,
a ten-year legal battle arose over control of his monastic seat in Rumtek,
after the monastery’s administration and many monks fled the monastery
in 1992 when followers of Situ Rinpoche attacked it and them. Three levels
of Indian courts have ruled that control of this monastery in the northeastern
Indian state of Sikkim belongs to the Karmapa Charitable Trust that was established
by the 16th Karmapa with Shamar Rinpoche one of the prime trustees. In 2002,
the District Court in Gangtok, Sikkim first issued this ruling, and the High
Court of Sikkim affirmed it on appeal in 2003. On July 5, 2004 the Indian Supreme
Court in New Delhi affirmed the lower courts’ decisions.
Additional
Resources
Details of the court cases and scanned images of the official court verdicts
can be found here. Our affiliated
website on the Karmapa Controversy has information substantiating the statements
in this fact sheet and detailed analyses of often erroneous claims made in
the two most recent books published on the Karmapa controversy—Lea Terhune’s
The Politics of Reincarnation (Wisdom, 2004) and Mick Brown’s The Dance
of 17 Lives (Bloomsbury, 2004).