When The Guardian first broke the story of the Dalai Lama’s personal emissary’s involvement in corruption as well as other salacious activities, few were surprised. They also knew that thanks to the Dalai Lama’s involvement in the matter, it was just a matter of time before someone would issue a statement defending the Dalai Lama. And so, as you can see here, many well-known Buddhists have started to speak up to protect the Dalai Lama.
Tenzin Dhonden and Sara Bronfman
Regardless of whatever is said in defence of the Dalai Lama, there is no escaping that the behavior of Lama Dhonden and the Tibet Fund are inexcusable, especially since the Tibet Fund has collected tens of millions of dollars from unsuspecting donors. In order to achieve their goals, it has been reported that the Tibet Fund used bullying and fear-based tactics, and threatened to make sure people did not get an audience with the Dalai Lama unless the donors complied with their demands.
However, keen observers of the Tibetan community know that this type of hooligan behavior is not unique to the Tibet Fund. It is actually a method that the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA; Tibetan leadership based in Dharamsala, North India) uses with everyone in order to fulfill their goals. What has been reported by The Guardian is therefore not a recent phenomenon or an isolated incident; it is just that the West are only now just seeing a little bit of the CTA’s behavior and how they usually operate.
There are two ways of looking at this, one is the secular and one is the spiritual.
Tenzin Dhonden is accused of corruption and extorting money from generous sponsors. Picture here is Tenzin Dhonden and Sara Bronfman’s mother, Georgia Bronfman.
SECULAR PERSPECTIVE: The Dalai Lama is a Buddhist monk, a teacher of compassion and liberation. On the practical side, he needs money to carry on his ministry and he is the sole breadwinner for his Tibetan government and their various departments that need money and funding. That is understandable and clear.
However there are a great deal of sycophants surrounding him and this does not extend only into fundraising. It extends into all other aspects of the Tibetan government, and it extends into their unscrupulous methods to enforce and implement the edicts of the Dalai Lama.
So therefore what we are seeing here with Tenzin Dhonden’s corruption and bullying is not an isolated case, but something that is endemic and widespread amongst the Tibetan government in exile and their cronies around the world. The Tibetan leadership are well known to bully, threaten, command and order. To distance the Dalai Lama from this would be erroneous – while their methods may be polar opposites to the jovial, compassionate Dalai Lama and what he preaches, the Dalai Lama still has to take some responsibility that the people around him do not listen to his teachings and act in a way that splatters mud on his robes.
After all, the Dalai Lama receives huge financial and monetary benefits from this organization, so you cannot simply say that he is exonerated from all responsibility just because his cronies did not follow or listen to his teachings. If it is the case that the Dalai Lama teaches one thing and his people do another, then it is something the Dalai Lama needs to bear responsibility for. The Dalai Lama has to strongly address the fact that the Tibetan leadership does this to everyone, to every department and for every subject matter, whether it is the Karmapa issue, the Shugden issue, the Jonangpa issue, the Rangzen issue, the Penpa Tsering and Sikyong issue, and so on.
Lama Tenzin Dhonden, pictured here at a party with a friend, is alleged to have had sexual relations with a wealthy heiress.
SPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE: His Holiness the Dalai Lama is said to be psychic and an emanation of the Buddha of Compassion, in fact, the 14th reincarnation of this high level being. He is able to do divinations to divine the future, and has psychic dreams. In his Tibetan talks, he often quotes from his psychic dreams, premonitions and divinations into the future. An example of this is his recognition of the tulkus of Tibet. This is something he often does with the Tibetans. He even mentioned to a group of abbots he has dreams which indicate he will live till he is 113 years. The Dalai Lama stopped his practice around 1978, which means he practiced for about 43 years.
The Dalai Lama can psychically tell you which person is the reincarnation of which great monk and based on his psychic abilities, he will enthrone them and grant them all of their previous life estates. This can sometimes amount into the tens of millions, thanks to lifetimes upon lifetimes of accumulated wealth and offerings. The Dalai Lama has done this for countless reincarnations, such as Trijang Rinpoche, Domo Geshe Rinpoche, Ling Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Karmapa and many more. His Holiness the Panchen Lama was recognized by dice divination, dough ball divination, dream divination and consulting Nechung according to the Dalai Lama, to name but one of the more prominent examples. The Dalai Lama did all these divinations to find and recognize the Panchen Lama. Only the Dalai Lama is authorized to recognize the Panchen Lama, his exiled government likes to assert to the world. How many people do you know can look at you and accurately tell you who you were in your previous life? The Dalai Lama can, so it is said, therefore does this not make him a powerful psychic?
And since the Dalai Lama is psychic, why did the Dalai Lama not have any dreams, premonitions or indications in those 40+ years that Dorje Shugden is bad?
So if the Dalai Lama can psychically determine who is the reincarnation of whom, why can he not determine which crony is going to cheat him and make him look bad? Hence, from a spiritual perspective, to have someone work so close to the Dalai Lama and represent him in North America, who then turns out to be a serial womanizer, unveiled money-grabber and a consummate bully, does not reflect well on the Dalai Lama and his so-called spiritual prowess. After all, he is able to do divinations (dice or Tibetan: mo) to divine the future and he can see which one young child is the reincarnation of which deceased high lama.
So which one is it – does the Dalai Lama have psychic powers to recognize reincarnated tulkus but he does not know who around him is going to do good or bad? Or is the Dalai Lama an ordinary monk who does not have psychic powers or extraordinary abilities (as he himself claims in the monasteries), yet he can still go on recognizing the reincarnation of tulkus as if he has psychic powers?
Which one is it? This is something the Tibetan leadership needs to confirm and make clear.
Original Article
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/29/tenzin-dhonden-dalai-lama-corruption-celebrity-investigation. Click to enlarge.
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