Former teacher at Boulder's Shambhala accused of sexually as

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Peter Benenson: Founder of Amnesty International [Obituary]
by Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Independent.co.uk
Monday 28 February 2005 01:00

Peter Solomon (Peter Benenson), barrister and human-rights campaigner: born London 31 July 1921; married first Margaret Anderson (two daughters; marriage dissolved 1972), second 1973 Susan Booth (one son, one daughter); died Oxford 25 February 2005.

Peter Benenson founded Amnesty (later Amnesty International) in 1961 and thereby became the creator of a human-rights movement which now counts more than a million members in 150 countries. His warmth and generosity of spirit gained him friends round the globe. His modesty was such that decades later many, even at Amnesty, did not realise he was the founder of the organisation.

The Benensons were a Russian Jewish family and Peter Benenson's maternal grandfather, Grigori Benenson, earned a fortune in Tsarist times from banking and oil.

-- GRIGORI BENENSON, NOTED FINANCIER; Former Owner of Building at 165 Broadway Succumbs to Stroke in London WON FORTUNE IN BAKU OIL Founder of English-Russian Bank in St. Petersburg--Had Developed Gold Properties (Obituary), by New York Times, April 6, 1939

Grigori Benenson, international financier, former owner of the Benenson Building at 165 Broadway, died yesterday in a London nursing home of a stroke of apoplexy, according to word received here by his attorney, Abraham Tulin. He was 79 years old...

The best-documented example of Wall Street intervention in revolution is the operation of a New York syndicate in the Chinese revolution of 1912, which was led by Sun Yat-sen. Although the final gains of the syndicate remain unclear, the intention and role of the New York financing group are fully documented down to amounts of money, information on affiliated Chinese secret societies, and shipping lists of armaments to be purchased. The New York bankers syndicate for the Sun Yat-sen revolution included Charles B. Hill, an attorney with the law firm of Hunt, Hill & Betts. In 1912 the firm was located at 165 Broadway, New York, but in 1917 it moved to 120 Broadway (see chapter eight for the significance of this address). Charles B. Hill was director of several Westinghouse subsidiaries, including Bryant Electric, Perkins Electric Switch, and Westinghouse Lamp — all affiliated with Westinghouse Electric whose New York office was also located at 120 Broadway. Charles R. Crane, organizer of Westinghouse subsidiaries in Russia, had a known role in the first and second phases of the Bolshevik Revolution (see page 26).

The work of the 1910 Hill syndicate in China is recorded in the Laurence Boothe Papers at the Hoover Institution.5 These papers contain over 110 related items, including letters of Sun Yat-sen to and from his American backers. In return for financial support, Sun Yat-sen promised the Hill syndicate railroad, banking, and commercial concessions in the new revolutionary China.

-- Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, by Antony C. Sutton

The family left Russia at the time of the Revolution. In London Grigori's daughter Flora met and married Harold Solomon, a member of a City stockbroking family who had risen to Brigadier-General in the First World War. Their only child, Peter Solomon, was born in London in 1921.

Flora Solomon, OBE (28 September 1895 – 18 July 1984) was born Flora Benenson in Pinsk, Imperial Russia, in 1895. She was known as an influential Zionist. She was the first woman hired to improve working conditions at Marks & Spencer in London. She was the mother of Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International.

Solomon was born in Pinsk, in what is now Belarus. She was a daughter of the Jewish Russian gold tycoon Grigori Benenson, related to the Rothschild family. She was married to Harold Solomon, a member of a London stockbroking family and a career soldier who was a brigadier-general in the First World War. She had one child, Peter Benenson, who would become the founder of Amnesty International.

She was widowed in 1931 and raised Peter on her own.

In the 1930s, prior to World War II, she helped find homes for refugee children who fled to London from continental Europe.[4] During World War II she organised food distribution for the British government and was awarded the OBE for her work, which had a profound impact on later government policy in the UK in relation to health care and the welfare state...

She founded Blackmore Press, a British printing house. Her life was described in her autobiography A Woman's Way, written in collaboration with Barnet Litvinoff and published in 1984 by Simon & Schuster. The work was also titled Baku to Baker Street: The Memoirs of Flora Solomon...

Kim Philby

Solomon was a long-time friend of British intelligence officer Kim Philby. She introduced him to his second wife Aileen. Whilst working in Spain as The Times correspondent on Franco's side of the Civil War, Philby proposed that she become a Soviet agent. His friend from Cambridge Guy Burgess was simultaneously trying to recruit her into MI6. But the Soviet resident in Paris, Ozolin-Haskin (code-name Pierre) rejected this as a provocation. Had both moves succeeded she would have become a double agent.

In 1962 when Philby was the correspondent of the London Observer in Beirut, she objected to the anti-Israeli tone of his articles. She related the details of the contact to Victor Rothschild, who had worked for MI5 during the Second World War. In August 1962, during a reception at the Weizmann Institute, Solomon told Rothschild that she thought that Tomás Harris and Kim Philby were Soviet spies. She then went on to tell Rothschild that she suspected that Philby and his friend, Tomás Harris, had been Soviet agents since the 1930s. "Those two were so close as to give me an intuitive feeling that Harris was more than a friend."

Solomon became friends with Kim Philby and his new wife, Litzi Friedmann. According to Philby: "Flora was an old family friend. I had known her since I was a boy. My father used to take me to see her. I met her several times when I was in the period of my fascist front. Sometimes I'd catch Flora looking at me with a wry look as if to say that she knew exactly what I was up to. She was hard left herself once, you know." In 1937 Philby told Solomon that he was secretly working for Comintern and asked her to join him. "Solomon says she declined the invitation not because of her Russian capitalist background but because she was too busy saving the persecuted Jews of Europe."..

Flora Solomon got to know Aileen Furse, a store detective in the Marble Arch branch of Marks and Spencer. Solomon later recalled: "Aileen belonged to that class, now out of fashion, called county. She was typically English, slim and attractive, fiercely patriotic, but awkward in her gestures and unsure of herself in company." (6) Solomon introduced Aileen to Philby at her home on 3rd September 1939....

On 12th December 1957, Aileen Philby was discovered dead in the bedroom of her house in Crowborough. Her friends believed she had killed herself, with drink and pills. However, her psychiatrist suspected, that she "might have been murdered" by Kim Philby because she knew too much. "The coroner ruled she had died from heart failure, myocardial degeneration, tuberculosis, and a respiratory infection having contracted influenza. Her alcoholism undoubtedly accelerated her death."

Flora Solomon also suspected Philby of having something to do with Aileen's death. She also disapproved of what she considered were Philby's pro-Arab articles in the Observer. It has been argued that "her love for Israel proved greater than her old socialist loyalties." In August 1962, during a reception at the Weizmann Institute, she told Victor Rothschild, who had worked with MI6 during the Second World War and enjoyed close connections with Mossard, the Israeli intelligence service: "How is it that The Observer uses a man like Kim? Don't the know he's a Communist?" She then went on to tell Rothschild that she suspected that Philby and his friend, Tomas Harris, had been Soviet agents since the 1930s. "Those two were so close as to give me an intuitive feeling that Harris was more than a friend."

Rothschild arranged for Solomon to be interviewed by Arthur Martin. Another MI5 agent, Peter Wright, was also involved and later wrote about it in his book, Spycatcher (1987): "I monitored the interview back at Leconfield House on the seventh floor. Flora Solomon was a strange, rather untrustworthy woman, who never told the truth about her relations with people like Philby in the 1930s, although she clearly had a grudge against him. With much persuasion, she told Arthur a version of the truth. She said she had known Philby very well before the war. She had been fond of him, and when he was working in Spain as a journalist with The Times he had taken her out for lunch on one of his trips back to London. During the meal he told her he was doing a very dangerous job for peace - he wanted help. Would she help him in the task? He was working for the Comintern and the Russians. It would be a great thing if she would join the cause. She refused to join the cause, but told him that he could always come to her if he was desperate. Arthur held back from quizzing her. This was her story, and it mattered little to us whether she had, in reality, as we suspected, taken more than the passive role she described during the 1930s."

Wright reports that Flora Solomon was very scared. She pointed out that she told Victor Rothschild about Tomas Harris about her suspicions that Philby's friend, was a Soviet spy. He had recently died in a mysterious car accident in Spain. "I will never give public evidence. There is too much risk. You see what has happened to Thomas since I spoke to Victor... It will leak, I know it will leak, and then what will my family do?" Although Solomon never provided any hard evidence against Harris, who was also a close friend of Guy Burgess, he had already been under suspicion that he was a Soviet spy. "Solomon could not have known it was Harris who had been instrumental in rescuing Philby from operational oblivion in SOE... Just how Harris himself managed to jump to MI5 has never been accounted for. Burgess, who was responsible for obtaining Harris's semi-official MI6 status, had no direct office contact with Liddell."

-- Flora Solomon, by Spartacus Educational

A Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn had already told the CIA about Philby's work for the KGB up to 1949. Nicholas Elliott, a former MI6 colleague of Philby's in Beirut confronted him. Prompted by Elliott's accusations, Philby confirmed the charges of espionage and described his intelligence activities on behalf of the Soviets. However, when Elliott asked him to sign a written statement, he hesitated and requested a delay in the interrogation. A week later he boarded a Soviet freighter the Dolmatova bound for Odessa, en route to Moscow, never to return.

Before Harris was interviewed by MI5 he was killed in a motor accident at Lluchmayor, Majorca. Some people have suggested that Tomás Harris was murdered. Chapman Pincher, the author of Their Trade is Treachery (1981), agrees that it is possible that Harris had been eliminated by the KGB: "The police could find nothing wrong with the car, which hit a tree, but Harris's wife, who survived the crash, could not explain why the vehicle had gone into a sudden slide. It is considered possible, albeit remotely, that the KGB might have wanted to silence Harris before he could talk to the British security authorities, as he was an expansive personality, when in the mood, and was outside British jurisdiction. The information, about which MI5 wanted to question him and would be approaching him in Majorca, could have leaked to the KGB from its source inside MI5." Pincher goes onto argue that the source was probably Roger Hollis, the director-general of MI5.

-- Flora Solomon, by Wikipedia

Despite the family riches, his was not a happy childhood. In 1920 Harold was attached to the staff of Sir Herbert Samuel, High Commissioner in Palestine, and they went to live in Jerusalem, an entrancing development for the passionately Zionist and untiringly party-mad Flora.

The Jewish Legion (1917–1921) is an unofficial name used to refer to five battalions of Jewish volunteers, the 38th to 42nd (Service) Battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, raised in the British Army to fight against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War....

Members of Jewish Legion

Edwin Herbert Samuel, 2nd Viscount Samuel; CMG son of Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel.

-- Jewish Legion, by Wikipedia

At Christmas 1923 Harold Solomon, whom Peter adored, suffered a serious riding accident outside Jerusalem and was confined to a wheelchair. The family returned to London, where the marriage collapsed. Flora in 1927 became the mistress of the former Russian leader Alexander Kerensky. In her autobiography, Baku to Baker Street (written with Barnet Litvinoff, 1984), littered with the names of the prominent from Eleanor Roosevelt to Chaim Weizmann, she confessed to being an unsatisfactory mother; indeed she was to cause Peter much anguish throughout her life.

Harold died in Switzerland, the day before Peter's ninth birthday. The boy was inconsolable: Flora wrote of her son's relationship with his father, "He had been the limbs the man on the first floor never possessed, and I believe he prayed daily for the miracle to make his father whole."

Certainly the young W.H. Auden, who had been engaged as a tutor for him, was little comfort. In the family's house in Hornton Street, Kensington, Auden was continuing his relationship with a male lover. Flora packed the young boy off to boarding school.

Despite all, his innate idealism soon emerged. At Eton the 15-year-old King's Scholar organised support for the Spanish republican government as it fought the military uprising and he himself "adopted" a Spanish baby, undertaking to pay for its upkeep. Arthur Koestler was a particular inspiration to the young man. He and his school friends also raised the large sum of £4,000 to bring two young German Jewish teenagers to school in Britain in 1939. He went to meet them at Dover. At Eton he had became a Roman Catholic, as two of Flora's sisters had already done.

When Grigori died in March 1939 his grandson acceded to his wish that he adopt his name. He therefore went briefly to Balliol College, Oxford, and later into military service under the name of Peter Solomon-Benenson. To his chagrin he was rejected for the Royal Navy because of his Russian connection but joined the Army, where he met and married Margaret Anderson, a mathematician. He was sent to the Ultra code-breaking unit at Bletchley Park and the couple later settled on the surname of Benenson. He and Margaret had two daughters and he proved to be a much better parent and grandparent than his mother had been.

Awaiting the demobilisation which eventually came in 1947 Benenson studied law, preparing himself for a career as a barrister. He joined the Labour Party and the Society of Labour Lawyers. Without success, he tried three times to win a seat in the Commons despite the help given by such as Clement Attlee, Roy Jenkins and Anthony Wedgwood Benn.

In the early 1950s he went to Spain for the Trades Union Congress as its observer at trials of trade unionists and was shocked by Generalissimo Franco's courts and prisons. He went to Cyprus, in the years before the island's independence, and aided Greek Cypriot lawyers whose clients had fallen foul of the British. He got together an all-party mission to Hungary in the throes of the 1956 uprising and ensuing trials, and to South Africa where a major "treason trial" was due to take place. The relative success of these two schemes led to his establishing and initially helping to finance Justice, the British section of the International Commission of Jurists.

The genesis of the movement which was to be Benenson's principal legacy to the world came when, reading a newspaper on the London Underground, he learnt of two students in Antonio Salazar's Portugal who committed the imprudence of toasting liberty in a café in Lisbon. Arrested and tried, they were sentenced to seven years' imprisonment. His first impulse - and he was always an impulsive person - was to alight at Trafalgar Square and protest at the Portuguese embassy. He thought better of it and went to sit in St Martin-in-the-Fields, where the seed of an idea for worldwide human-rights movement germinated.

He discussed the idea with his friend and fellow lawyer Louis Blom-Cooper (now Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC), who suggested they visit David Astor, the editor of The Observer. Within a few weeks, on 28 May 1961, the newspaper carried a long article, "The Forgotten Prisoners", which suggested a worldwide "Appeal for Amnesty 1961" to governments to let their political prisoners go, or at least, give them a fair trial.

As the Cold War was coming to a crescendo Benenson highlighted the fate of a wide variety of captives, from the Angolan anti-colonialist poet and resistance leader Agostinho Neto and the Greek Communist Toni Ambatielos and Archbishop Josef Beran of Prague and Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty of Budapest, both imprisoned by Communist dictatorships, and Ashton Jones, a campaigner for rights for blacks in Louisiana.

The article, reproduced worldwide, had an immediate effect. A number of us, including Blom-Cooper, Eric Baker, a leading Quaker, Peter Archer and Peggy Crane were conscripted on to a committee to guide what was to be no more than a 12-month campaign. Groups of volunteers, working out of Benenson's chambers in Mitre Court in the Temple, struggled to organise sympathisers in many countries in "threes", groups who would adopt a political prisoner, or "prisoner of conscience" in the West, the East and the developing worlds who was imprisoned on a political charge but who did not espouse violence. Diana Redhouse, a British artist, invented a symbol for the new organisation, the enduring figure of a candle surrounded by barbed wire.

Amnesty, soon to be known as Amnesty International, was established in a dozen countries within a year. As it increased rapidly in influence and geographical reach, its carefully researched findings created bitter animosity for it among the governments of many countries, not least the British. It also put to the test the commitment of the staff (most of whom for years were volunteers) to rigorous honesty with the facts for the sake of Amnesty's reputation, even when these proved uncomfortable to the powerful; and to great discretion with the use of information often gathered and transmitted by informants in danger of their lives.

At the same time, as Jonathan Power, a historian of Amnesty, wrote,

There was little in the way of organisation or administration - budgets were so small that they were often worked out on the back of a cigarette packet in a pub. Everything hinged on Benenson's personality.

Even his best friends, those who loved his selflessness, modesty and devotion to humanity, felt his spark of genius rendered his judgements at times precarious. His financial independence also relieved him of the restraints less wealthy people felt.

The strains of working for Amnesty were a potential source of paranoia, even for the most equanimous member of staff. There was, for instance, dissent over support for Nelson Mandela, who had been sentenced by the apartheid regime in South Africa to life imprisonment on sabotage charges. Many felt this meant he could not be seen as a prisoner of conscience and a poll of Amnesty members confirmed their desire that a commitment to non-violence should be a sine qua non for anyone to be adopted as a prisoner of conscience. Nevertheless ways were found of supporting Mandela.

Major crises shook the organisation. In 1966 Benenson suspected that the British government, in collusion with Robert Swann, the Catholic Old Etonian and a former diplomat whom Benenson himself had chosen as general secretary, had suppressed a report on British atrocities in Aden. Peter Calvocoressi, an academic lawyer, produced a report which found the suspicions of Swann baseless. The same year there were further frictions when US claims came that Sean MacBride, the former Irish foreign minister, winner of the Nobel and Lenin peace prizes and Amnesty's first chairman, had been involved with a Central Intelligence Agency funding operation.

For her part the Guardian journalist Polly Toynbee, then 19, who had served as secretary on an Amnesty mission to Nigeria and the Rhodesias, said there was evidence that Benenson himself had accepted British government funds. He riposted that the money was for political prisoners and their families and not for Amnesty. By then the tensions in the organisation were virtually unbearable. An emergency meeting of the executive was held in Elsinore, which Benenson refused to attend but which resulted in severe criticism of him and his resignation.

After a period of mental exhaustion he retired to land he had bought near Aylesbury. There he attempted the farmer's life, taking great pains but achieving little success except with his lawns. In the 1980s his relations with the organisation he had started were restored under the encouragement of the Swedish secretary-general Thomas Hammarberg and Richard Reoch.

Recognizing the urgent need for Al to build and grow in the Third World, and in response to a proposal by the Indian Section, the International Executive Committee appointed Richard Reoch, who had been a member of the secretariat staff, to work as a regional field secretary in South Asia on an experimental basis. He took up his appointment in February 1974 and is based in New Delhi.

-- Amnesty International Annual Report 1973-74

Benenson never tired of his commitment to human rights, in latter years taking up to cause of Mordechai Vanunu, kidnapped from Rome and illegally imprisoned in Israel for revealing details of Israel's nuclear weapons.

Attractive to women and imbued with a strong sexual drive, Benenson was divorced from Margaret in 1972 and the following year he married Susan Booth, who worked at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and with whom he had a son and daughter. Some years later they separated, though did not divorce; they became reconciled when he was in his sixties.

In his later years Peter Benenson lived out of the public gaze, at Nuneham Courtenay outside Oxford. He rejected successive governments' offers of a knighthood, as he did offers of honorary degrees. Long after he left Amnesty his extraordinary personality suffused it.

Injured in a serious motor accident and suffering from coeliac disease, he was constantly visited by Margaret, Susan, his children and grandchildren and numerous friends.

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Richard Reoch
by sourcewatch.org
Accessed: 12/14/20

Amnesty International

One of the principal agencies coordinating the activities of Socialist-Jesuit-KGB efforts is Amnesty International (AI), the London-centered "human rights" agency. In the past week alone, AI has intervened in West Germany to demand the easing of prison conditions for the jailed Baader-Meinhof terrorists; has made similar demands on behalf of the M-19 terrorist gang in Colombia; and has sent former U.S. Attorney General and Khomeini backer Ramsey Clark to Northern Ireland on behalf of a jailed IRA member there.

Amnesty International is closely associated with another transnational "support organization," the International Law Association. The ILA is run to an important extent out of Montreal, Canada offices of Major Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. During the 1960s, Bloomfield was exposed in both the French and American press as one of the leading conspirators in over 30 assassination attempts against French President Charles de Gaulle and for the successful 1963 assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. His commercial front organization, Permindex, was a central component of the "International Assassination Bureau" originally created by the British Special Operations Executive during 1938. It is that network of Venetian and London-linked professional assassins that maintains to this day the professional "hit" capability. Unlike the 1963 period of bloody "executive action," or even the 1968 street insurrections, today's "International Assassination Bureau" hit-men have an exhaustive international network of terrorist cells, umbrella protest groups, and liberation movements into which they can be plugged.

-- EIR Executive Intelligence Review, May 5, 1981

Amnesty International pleads innocent

EIR has received a letter, datelined London, May 29, from Richard Reoch, Head of Press and Publications for Amnesty International, which reads in part: "You state (EIR. May 5, 1981) that 'one of the principal agencies coordinating the activities of Socialist-Jesuit-KGB efforts is Amnesty International.' ...

"Amnesty International does not coordinate the activities of the socialists, the Jesuits, or the KGB, [and] does not undertake joint actions with other organizations and has no links with governments or their agencies.

"Allegations of this sort have been made by individuals and agencies at both ends of the political spectrum. Earlier this year the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya accused Amnesty International of being 'completely maintained by Western Intelligence Services.'

"Amnesty International did not send Ramsey Clark to Northern Ireland, as the article incorrectly suggested. Its concern for prison conditions in the Federal Republic of Germany and allegations of torture in Colombia do not imply support for the political objectives of those imprisoned.

"Our concern is for universal implementation of the United Nations' injunction against torture and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. A fuller picture of the work of Amnesty International would mention its efforts for the defense of human rights in more than 100 countries this year alone .... "

EIR editors reply: We did not mean to imply that Amnesty International is a leading arm of the one-world effort -- merely one of its feet.

-- EIR Executive Intelligence Review, June 16, 1981

Recognizing the urgent need for Al to build and grow in the Third World, and in response to a proposal by the Indian Section, the International Executive Committee appointed Richard Reoch, who had been a member of the secretariat staff, to work as a regional field secretary in South Asia on an experimental basis. He took up his appointment in February 1974 and is based in New Delhi.

-- Amnesty International Annual Report 1973-74

Chögyam’s relocation to Halifax, Nova Scotia, along with key followers over a period of a few years, brought an unusual energy to the small, historic city and largely rural province. There were no doubt many motives for this move, including an awareness that the American government was becoming increasingly wary of Eastern cultic movements such as those associated with Sri Rajneesh or Sun Myung Moon, both in trouble with the law. Chögyam’s wife Diana had equestrian contacts in Nova Scotia, and he had made a reconnaissance of the province as early as 1977 and taken a retreat in Mill Village in 1979. As one of Chögyam’s early supporters who came with him in the first cohort has remarked, ‘Chögyam liked the basic goodness of Nova Scotia, where there was a feeling of humanity without a whole lot of speed’. This is the more likely explanation for the decision to remove the Vajradhatu headquarters and the residence of the spiritual leader from the United States to cool, calm, collected Nova Scotia. To escape any cultic suggestion, Chögyam called his organization the Karma Dzong Buddhist Church of Halifax. The new community was largely comprised of young professionals of Caucasian extraction, who brought with them entrepreneurial skills and a commitment to stay the course in what was otherwise seen to be an economic backwater in an underprivileged part of Canada. They made a major contribution to Halifax in every way, perhaps above all introducing a Westernized form of an exotic branch of Buddhism to a community which had seventy Christian churches and two synagogues, but no established mosques, Hindu temples or Buddhist centres. Further, these new citizens contributed substantially to Nova Scotia’s economic and cultural life. Diverse initiatives ranging from high-end provisioners and restauranteurs to bookshops and environmentally sensitive property development have had a positive impact much beyond a community small in number.

The phenomenon of Chögyam’s Tantric Tibetan Buddhism in Nova Scotia is made complex by the polarity of religious activity it appeared to endorse, suggesting as it does that the dark aspects of the human psyche are important to enlist in order to see the whole of the human condition and overcome its limitations. On the one hand, there was the ambivalent ‘crazy wisdom’ of the guru himself, a hard drinking, chain smoking, often intoxicated and promiscuous spiritual leader whose every action, no matter how outrageous, was seen by his devotees to be somehow acceptable – a Tantric lesson deliberately engaging shock designed to help his followers to see beyond the mundane. In her careful research of this period, which involved many interviews with Vajradhatu practitioners, Lynn Eldershaw cites one such incident:

Many other people were getting really pissed. After he was fully two hours late he comes in drunk and staggers on to the stage and then he sits down and gives this ten minute talk. Then he stops and says, ‘Okay, I’ll take questions now.’ All the questions were about why he made them wait so long. He went along with that for ten minutes and then said, ‘Well, it’s good for you to wait for me.’ Then he walks off . . . People waited two hours for this ten minute talk and an abusive ten minute question period by this drunken Tibetan.

-- (Eldershaw 1994: 56)

Yet clearly this did not deter the faithful, who saw in this kind of performance a valuable teaching of some kind, no matter how bizarre. Another long-time student of Chögyam’s reflected on her relationship with the guru in more empathetic terms:

My main connection with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche is the mind connection of his enormous power and generosity, and [his] ability to open his mind so wide and articulate, so elegantly, that anybody who wanted to tune into his mind could do so. So, I feasted on him. I quenched my thirst and satisfied my hunger and feasted on his wisdom, and his brilliance, and his beauty, and his craziness, and his flare and his outrageousness. His outrageousness most of all.

-- (Eldershaw 1994: 67)

Chögyam’s lifestyle was certainly curious for a spiritual leader from any faith, and likely contributed to his demise in 1987. The regent Ösel Tendzin in turn died of AIDS just three years later. Although this caused not insignificant turmoil within the Buddhist community, remarkably it passed without much commentary by the fairly straightlaced non-Buddhist Halifax public. For example, the Anglican diocesan bishop of the time, knowing that I had met Chögyam twice, asked me if I would kindly explain just what kind of Buddhism was being expressed at Karma Dzong. But there was no hint of righteous opprobrium from this or any other Christian denomination. The Buddhist community seemed to take note of its possible predicament and image, careful new leadership came forward under its Board of Directors, and the organization quickly regained its focus with no suggestion that its headquarters (now known as Shambala International) should leave Halifax for another, more cosmopolitan or central location. His Holiness Dilgokhyentse Rinpoche, a Nyingma prelate and former teacher of both Chögyam and his son, the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, advised the latter to then take on the spiritual direction of Shambala and move to Halifax from Britain accordingly. Although a President (Richard Reoch) and considerable administrative staff are responsible for this complex organization (with 160 centres worldwide), its fundamental spiritual focus is nonetheless emphasized in Mipham’s leadership role. Unlike his father Chögyam, Mipham has returned to wearing robes, though, like his father, he is not known to be celibate.

-- Buddhism in Canada, edited by Bruce Matthews

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Biographical Information

"Richard Reoch’s international human rights work includes senior management of the international public information program of Amnesty International, international consultations involving organizations working on peace and justice issues in Ireland (north and south), and acting as an advisor to the Indo-British Project on the Prevention of Torture. In the 1980s, he was asked by Sting to help organize the Rainforest Foundation, and is one of its longest-serving trustees.

The trustee acts as the legal owner of trust assets, and is responsible for handling any of the assets held in trust, tax filings for the trust, and distributing the assets according to the terms of the trust. Both roles involve duties that are legally required.

-- Executor & Trustee Guidelines, by fidelity.com

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10:19 AM · Nov 19, 2020

The Project: USAID Funded Improving Livelihoods and Land Use in the Democratic Republic of Congo through Community Forests

The adoption of the Community Forests Decree in 2014 and its main bylaw in 2016 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is arguably the most significant legal reform related to tropical forests and forest peoples’ rights in recent years. This framework could impact as many as 40 million forest-dependent people and with tens of millions of hectares potentially available to develop pro-poor, community models of forest management.

Since its creation, RFUK has been continuously advocating and supporting the development of community-based forest management in the Congo Basin – something that is now widely recognised as being key to achieving delivering strong conservation and development outcomes. Under a DFID (now FCDO) funded project (2016-2019), RFUK headed a consortium of Congolese and international NGOs that played a central role in laying the foundations for community forestry in DRC. The project facilitated the development and adoption of the National Strategy for Community Forestry; consolidated the Multi-stakeholder Roundtable for Community Forestry as a deliberative policy making body; accompanied nine communities to apply for their community forest concessions; trained and built capacities among civil society and government officials at all levels; and produced an ground-breaking body of resources, studies and tools to inform best practice in DRC and beyond.

USAID and other donors are now supporting RFUK and our consortium partners to build on these efforts to trigger a new phase of development of community forestry in DRC. The project, which will run from September 2020 to September 2025, has the central objective to consolidate community forests as a viable forest use model that enhances livelihoods while protecting forests. To this end, the project will pursue four main strands of work:

• Promoting land use planning, sustainable management and income generating activities in pilot community forests in Equateur, North Kivu and Maniema provinces;
• Tackling deforestation and protecting biodiversity in target sites;
• Advocating for the continued improvement of the legal framework and promoting transparency and good practice;
• Building capacities in government and local civil society.

Activities will be implemented in the field by a consortium of Congolese NGOs based in Kinshasa, Goma, Mbandaka and Kindu...

Responsibilities

The DRC Chief of Party (COP) will be based in Kinshasa and will have the overall responsibility of coordinating project activities on the ground, liaising with partners on a daily basis and leading on policy aspects of the project whilst being the main point of contact for the donor, the USAID CARPE office in Kinshasa.

The post-holder will work closely with the London based project team, led by the RFUK CF Project Coordinator and the Project Finance and Admin Officer. S/he will also have a close working relationship with RFUK’s Programmes Finance, Admin and MEL Coordinator, Tech team, Policy team and additional staff and consultants in the Programmes Team...

1. Project management

• Oversee the implementation of the project on the ground in line with strategy, agreed budgets, logframe, work plans and procedures in coordination with the DRC CF Project Coordinator.
• Manage the relationship with USAID (CARPE team, based in Kinshasa) under the donor’s principle of “substantial involvement”, maintaining regular communications with the donor and keeping them regularly informed and involved in the execution of the project. ...

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Detail / Essential / Desirable

Knowledge and Experience / Master’s Degree in law, anthropology or international development or a related
subject or equivalent professional experience. / Experience managing USAID projects.

-- Job Description: Chief of Party: DRC Community Forests, by Rainforest Foundation UK: Securing Lands, Sustaining Lives

Currently, he chairs the International Working Group on Sri Lanka, a consortium of senior diplomats and officials of major agencies supporting the peace negotiations in Sri Lanka.

The support to the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights continued within the Common Humanitarian Action Plan, CHAP, and enabled the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to expand from one advisor to an advisory team linked to the UN’s country office. This constituted an important step towards an increased presence and a strengthened human rights perspective within the UN as well as several ministries. OHCHR was also instrumental in facilitating number of high profile visit during the year including the High Commissioner for Human Rights and a number of special rapporteurs and special representatives to the UN Secretary General. The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and International Working Group on Sri Lanka (IWG) were supported for their work of strengthen international lobbying and advocacy in relation to the deteriorating human rights and rule of law situation. This included facilitation and networking of local, regional and international human rights organisations for strengthened local human rights monitoring as well as joint action mainly in relation to the UN’s Human Rights Council. However, IWG couldn’t implement its planned activities focusing on building negotiation capacity of parties due to suspended peace negotiation.

-- Sri Lanka: Sida Country Report 2007, by Embassy of Sweden, Colombo, May 2008

On May 6, the International Working Group on Sri Lanka, a coalition of aid agencies and human rights organizations, called on the international community to avert an impending humanitarian crisis in Sri Lanka. In mid-May, government and NGO delegates from thirty countries attending an Asia-Pacific conference on child soldiers appealed for a global ban on child soldiers. The delegates' "Kathmandu Declaration" noted that a growing number of children were being used in armed conflicts, particularly where insurgent groups were active, and said that Sri Lanka was among the worst offenders in the region.

-- Sri Lanka, by Human Rights Watch World Report 2001

Seeking Transitional Justice, Reform, and Reconciliation in Post-War Sri Lanka: The International Working Group on Sri Lanka Ltd.

$40,000

To support post-war transitional justice, reform, and reconciliation. The organization will coordinate a series of capacity building training workshops, roundtable discussion to formulate advocacy strategies, and consultation meetings with elected representatives, policy advisors, and bureaucrats in conjunction with Sri Lankan civil society activists to mobilize domestic and international support for meaningful transitional justice efforts.

-- National Endowment for Democracy Grants: Sri Lanka 2018

Seeking Transitional Justice, Reform, and Reconciliation in Post-War Sri Lanka: The International Working Group on Sri Lanka Ltd.

$40,000

To support post-war transitional justice, reform, and reconciliation. The organization will coordinate a series of capacity building, strategy, and advocacy related activities in conjunction with Sri Lankan civil society activists to mobilize domestic and international support for meaningful transitional justice efforts. The organization will convene at least two coordinating sessions for civil society organizations around important events, including Human Rights Council sessions and elections.

-- National Endowment for Democracy Grants: Sri Lanka 2019

Mr. Reoch is the President of the Shambhala Mandala -- a global network of meditation centers." [1]

"For many years he was the global media chief of Amnesty International, speaking for human rights to the media worldwide. His particular field has been campaigning against torture: he is the author of the official field manual on torture prevention used by the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe...

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world's largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization. Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, promotion of human rights, freedom of the press, and fair elections. It employs around 3,460 people, mostly in its field operations but also in its secretariat in Vienna, Austria, and its institutions. It has its origins in the 1975 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) held in Helsinki, Finland.

The OSCE is concerned with early warning, conflict prevention, crisis management, and post-conflict rehabilitation. Its 57 participating countries are located in Europe, northern and central Asia, and North America. The participating states cover much of the land area of the Northern Hemisphere. It was created during the Cold War era as an East–West forum.

-- Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, by Wikipedia

In 2002, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, appointed him President of Shambhala, a global community dedicated to the practice of creating enlightened society." [2]

• Director, Center for Living Peace
• Advisory Board, Chögyam Trungpa Legacy Project

References

1. Board, Center for Living Peace, accessed November 28, 2011.
2. Who we are, Chögyam Trungpa Legacy Project, accessed November 28, 2011.

**************************

Richard Reoch
by praguecollege.cz
Accessed: 12/14/20



Richard Reoch has spent most of his working life in the service of international public affairs organizations. He has been particularly engaged in human rights, conflict resolution and environmental protection.

Born in Toronto, Canada, in 1948 he studied literature and aesthetics at Trinity College, University of Toronto. He then travelled to London, England, to begin working at the headquarters of the human rights organization, Amnesty International. For much of his 23 years there, he was the global media chief, speaking to the press and appearing on TV and radio worldwide.

In the 1990s he was asked by the musician Sting to help establish the Rainforest Foundation. He remains one of its longest-serving trustees.

Miles Axe Copeland III (born May 2, 1944) is an American music and entertainment executive and former manager of The Police. Copeland later managed Sting's musical and acting career. In 1979, Copeland founded the I.R.S. Records label, producing R.E.M., The Bangles, Berlin, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, The Alarm, The Go-Go's, and others.

Background

Copeland was born in London, England, to Miles Axe Copeland, Jr., a CIA officer from Birmingham, Alabama, United States, and Lorraine Adie, a Scot who worked in British intelligence. The family lived throughout the Middle East, in particular Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon. At an early age, Copeland and his brothers were fluent in Arabic.

Copeland attended Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1962. He graduated with a degree in history and political science. From 1966 to 1969, Copeland attended the American University of Beirut, earning a degree in economics. This was also where he promoted his first concert. After college, he moved to London, met two progressive rock musicians at a club, and helped them form Wishbone Ash.

BTM and Illegal Records

In 1974, Copeland founded the management agency and record label BTM (British Talent Management) and signed a number of progressive rock acts such as Squeeze, Renaissance and Curved Air. In the summer of 1975, he organized a multi-band tour of European music festivals, named Star-Trucking, which featured several BTM bands as well as Soft Machine, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Lou Reed. However, Reed's failure to appear at any of the shows and other logistical issues resulted in significant losses for Star-Trucking, and ultimately to the failure of BTM. In 1976, BTM closed down.

BTM's end coincided with the beginning of the UK's Punk/New Wave movement and led Copeland to co-found Illegal Records, Deptford Fun City Records, New Bristol Records, and to sign the Cortinas, Chelsea, and the Models to Step Forward Records in 1977.

The Police

In 1978, Copeland became manager of his brother Stewart's band, The Police. Copeland shepherded the group to become one of the biggest bands of the 1980s, peaking with a concert for 70,000 people at Shea Stadium and the number one single for 1983, "Every Breath You Take".


Surveillance was never so sexy!

He continued to manage Sting through seven solo albums. Copeland was not, however, included in the reunion era of The Police, leading to a 2007 interview in which Copeland lamented that money was the issue.

I.R.S. Records

The success of The Police and the novel methods used to popularize them enabled Copeland to found I.R.S. Records through a deal with A&M Records. Copeland's I.R.S. label had hits with the Buzzcocks, R.E.M., The Cramps, Fine Young Cannibals, The Bangles and many others, including a number one album with his label's group The Go-Go's.

Copeland International Arts

Copeland owns and operates CIA (Copeland International Arts), which includes the Bellydance Superstars, Celtic Crossroads, Otros Aires, Zohar, and Beats Antique. Much of the CIA catalog initially included Middle Eastern, world music, Irish, tango, flamenco, and Polynesian styles. The label later signed mainstream artists.

Personal life

Another of Copeland's brothers, Ian Copeland, was a booking agent who described much of the New Wave adventures of Miles, Stewart and himself in his book Wild Thing.[9]

-- Miles Copeland III, by Wikipedia

Stewart Copeland on New Podcast ‘My Dad the Spy,’ How He’s Spending His Lockdown: In his Audible series, the former Police drummer sets out to uncover the truth about his CIA-agent father
by Angie Martoccio
Rolling Stone
October 20, 2020

He is also the chairperson of the International Working Group on Sri Lanka, a consortium of senior diplomats and officials of major agencies supporting the search for a durable peace in Sri Lanka.

His work has taken him to more than 40 countries. He has given public presentations and addresses to community organizations and professional bodies that include: the Foreign Press Association (London), the Press Club of India, the Foreign Correspondents' Clubs of Hong Kong and Japan, the Bar Associations of Karachi, Hyderabad and Kathmandu, the United Nations Association of Great Britain, the United Kingdom Assistant Prison Governors' Association, and the Senior Command Course for Senior Police Officers in the United Kingdom.

He has led international consultations on peace and justice issues in Ireland (north and south), and been an adviser to the Indo-British Project on the Prevention of Torture on behalf of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.

He is the editor of Human Rights: the new consensus, the report from the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights, and of the official field manual, Preventing Torture, of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. In 2002, he was appointed President of Shambhala, worldwide contemplative community devoted to creating enlightened society.

*****************************

About Richard Reoch
by richardreoch.info
Accessed: 12/14/20


Richard Reoch broadcasting in Santiago, Chile, at a community radio station in La Victoria, one of the shantytowns famous for their resistance to General Pinochet.

Richard Reoch has devoted his life to defending human rights, working for peace and protecting the environment.

Born in Toronto, Canada, he was raised in a Buddhist family, eventually serving as the President of Shambhala, one of the largest Buddhist organizations in the world, from 2002 to 2015. He joined the International Secretariat of Amnesty International (1971-1993), becoming its global media chief (1980 – 1993). He then served as a trustee of The Rainforest Foundation (1996 – 2015).

He continued his work for human rights and peace, engaging with organizations in Northern Ireland (1994 – 2009) and Sri Lanka (1995 – present). He is now a global advocate of cross-cultural communication and inter-faith understanding, speaking out on the rising tide of hatred and violence.

In parallel with his life in public advocacy, he studied the Chinese classical arts of Tai Chi Chuan and Zhan Zhuang Chi Kung for 30 years with Master Lam Kam Chuen, trained as a practitioner of the Shiatsu system of energetic healing, and is the author of Dying Well: A Holistic Guide for the Dying and their Carers.

Early Life

Richard Reoch was born in Toronto, Canada, on 23 August 1948. He is the only son of Flora Jean Gay and Robert Campbell Reoch. His mother, a Canadian by birth, was the conference secretary of the 1932 founding convention of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, founded in Calgary as a political coalition of progressive, socialist and labour groups calling for economic reform to help Canadians affected by the Great Depression. It became the first socialist political party with elected representatives in the Canadian Parliament. In 1935 she married Robert Reoch, a food chemist, who had emigrated to Canada from Blairgowrie, Scotland, in 1917.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, they withdrew from the Scottish Presbyterian Church in Toronto to which they belonged on pacifist grounds. This led to a 15-year search for a new spiritual community. In 1954 they joined the Toronto Buddhist Church, a chapter of the Jodo Shinshu Pure Land sect of Japanese Buddhism, part of the Buddhist Churches of America. As a result, their son Richard, then aged 6, became one of the earliest non-Oriental westerners of his generation to become a Buddhist.

His primary and secondary education took place in Toronto at Crescent School and University of Toronto Schools where he received the Nesbitt Gold Medal. He received a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from Trinity College, University of Toronto, in 1970. From 1970 to 1971, he was Program Director, Open Windows Community Program, a government-funded initiative to help inner city youth.

In 1971, he moved to London, UK, to join the International Secretariat of Amnesty International.

***

Buddhist study, practice and leadership

The presence of Buddhism in North America in the early 1950s was largely the result of Asian immigration, although there was growing interest in Zen Buddhism among the so-called “Beat Generation.” For the first six years that Reoch and his parents attended the Toronto Buddhist Church they were the only non-Japanese there. They first took part in its Sunday services in 1954 after meeting its spiritual director the Rev. Takashi Tsuji.


The most famous statue of Amida Buddha is in Kamakura, Japan. He is said to be the embodiment of enlightenment, compassion and wisdom, renowned for his 48 limitless vows to liberate all beings from suffering. In the Pure Land tradition, practitioners vow to “follow his example and labour earnestly for the welfare of all humanity.”

The central practice of the Jodo Shinshu sect is reciting the “nembutsu”, calling on the name of Amida Buddha, the Buddha of Compassion. Few books on Buddhism were available in those years in local bookshops; the family ordered what they could from overseas, many from the Buddhist Publication Society, Kandy, Sri Lanka. After the death of his father in 1966 and prior to leaving Toronto for London, Reoch and his mother attended Soto Zen meditation courses at the Rochester Zen Centre, USA, and York University, Canada.

During his years of work for Amnesty International in Asia, he continued his private Buddhist practice without belonging to any organization. His work brought him into contact with the Tibetan community in exile and, while in India, he secured intervention by His Holiness the Dalai Lama on behalf of Buddhist monks imprisoned in the Republic of Viet Nam (South Viet Nam).

Shambhala

After 23 years of working for Amnesty International, he entered the training offered by the Shambhala community started in the West by Tibetan meditation master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In 1994, Reoch received the Buddhist name Tashi Changchup, Auspicious Enlightenment, from the son and heir of Chögyam Trungpa: The Sakyong, Jamgön Mipham Rinpoche – revered as the rebirth of Mipham the Great, said to be a living embodiment of Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom.


Among the many short films he made for the Shambhala community, this multilingual presentation, “Countless points of light”, shows the global reach of the Shambhala teachings. It includes an illumination of the Shambhala emblem, The Great Eastern Sun, created from hundreds of lighted candles.

After attending a three-month Shambhala seminary in 1996, he received transmission into the practice of Vajrayana Buddhism, and was appointed Director and Chair of the Council of the London Shambhala Meditation Centre. From 1999 to 2001, he directed the planning of the Consecration of The Great Stupa of Dharmakaya at Shambhala Mountain Center in the Colorado Rockies, USA – an international gathering of 1,500 people at 6,000 feet in the mountains.


Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche with President Reoch in Tibet. The fabled Mount Magyal Pomra is in the distance directly behind them.

A year later, Reoch was appointed by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche to the position of President of the worldwide Shambhala organization, a position he held from 2002 until 2015, travelling worldwide to many of its more than 200 centres and groups, teaching and leading retreats. He now serves as the Personal Envoy of the Sakyong of Shambhala.

During his period as President of Shambhala, he toured with Buddhist Nun Ani Pema Chödrön, co-leading events on the theme “Practicing Peace in Times of War” and taught widely on the life and legacy of the Indian Emperor Ashoka, famed for renouncing war.

Compassionate Abiding Practice

As part of the “Practicing Peace in Times of War” tour, Ani Pema Chödrön introduced participants to the practice of Compassionate Abiding. It is a profound method of working with intense emotion, based on the classical text, The Way of the Bodhisattva, by the great master Shantideva.

Reoch was later asked by Shambhala Mountain Center to offer this practice as a filmed guided meditation for its Awake in the World online program.

The film includes an explanation of the practice and its application as well as a real-time session for live practice.



In May 2015, he was among a group of some 200 Buddhist leaders, from all different schools, who were invited to the White House in Washington DC for a meeting with key staff in the Obama administration. Delegates signed the Buddhist Declaration on Climate Change and later, a statement following the massacre at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

A Buddhist Brawl



Mindful Politics – A Buddhist Guide to Making the World a Better Place was published by Shambhala Publications in 2006. The editor, Melvin McLeod, wrote: “Around the world, long-standing wars are driven by the terrible cycle of revenge, of wrongs committed in response to previous wrongs. Elsewhere, conflict and alienation are fueled by fear, insecurity, jealousy, hatred and greed. And everywhere, people are divided from their fellow human beings by the fundamental dualistic split between self and other, the split that Buddhism says is the root of all our suffering.” The publication includes the following article, “A Buddhist Brawl”, by Richard Reoch.

Not so long ago a brawl broke out in a Buddhist shrine room. A close friend of mine was involved. The retreat leader was injured and needed treatment. It all happened in a very lovely retreat centre near where I live.

They were having a weekend devoted to non-violence, and had invited a guest facilitator to lead the retreat. He wasn’t a Buddhist, but knew about group dynamics.

On the second day, the retreat leader proposed a role play. Two of the participants would be “kidnapped” by a terrorist group. The rest would have to negotiate for their freedom.

The retreat leader was to play the terrorist with whom they would negotiate. He opened a pack of cigarettes, took out a match and lit up.

“Excuse me,” said one of the participants, “there’s no smoking in the shrine room.”

The leader paid no attention. He smoked on in silence.

“Please put out the cigarette. We don’t smoke in the shrine room.”

“I don’t give a damn about your smoking rules,” said the terrorist coldly. “Do you want to talk about smoking, or do you want your friends back?”

“We won’t negotiate with you until you respect our shrine room,” said someone who was emerging as a leader for their side.

“OK,” said the terrorist, “I’ll stop.” He stood up slowly, sauntered over to the shrine, took a last puff and stubbed out his cigarette in the lap of the buddha.

Gasps filled the room. This was no longer play acting. People rushed up to see if the buddha rupa had been damaged.

“What do you think you’re doing?” someone shouted. “That’s a buddha!”

“I don’t give a damn. It’s not my buddha. This is not my shrine room. I’ve stopped smoking. Do you want to talk about your friends or shall I leave?”

People were irate. Events were overtaking them. No one wanted to talk about the hostages; they were obsessed with the assault on the buddha.

One person went up to the retreat leader and talked to him straight from the heart. “We invited you here to lead this weekend. We know this isn’t your community or your tradition. But this is our sacred space. All we ask is that you honour that.”

“Would you like to see how much I respect your space?” he replied. He walked over to the corner and pissed on the floor.

The whole room lunged forward. The first person to reach him knocked him to the ground. The rest joined in, shouting, beating and kicking him as he curled up on the floor to protect himself from the blows.

Eventually he managed to drag himself out of the shrine room, told the two “hostages” to rejoin their fellow practitioners and abandoned the weekend.

Friends, this is the way these events were told to me. In these dark and turbulent times, I often find it helpful to remember them.

**********************

Richard Reoch guest speaker of St. Johnsbury Rotary Club
by caledonianrecord.com
Jul 25, 2012 Updated Jul 21, 2016



SHAMBHALA PRESIDENT ADDRESSES ROTARIANS -- Richard Reoch, president of Shambhala, was guest speaker during St. Johnsbury Rotary Club's weekly meeting July 16. Born in Toronto in 1948, he became a Buddhist at age six, when his family joined the Toronto Buddhist Church, a Japanese Pure Land community devoted to the Buddha of compassion. At age 23, he moved to London, England to work at the headquarters of Amnesty International, the human rights organization. After starting at Amnesty as a volunteer in 1971, Richard worked as a research assistant on Amnesty's first report on the global epidemic of torture. He was posted to South and East Asia as the organization's first field secretary. Appointed in 1978 to head Amnesty's global media operations, Richard became part of the organization's senior management. For 13 years he played a leading role in developing the multicultural policies needed by this diverse, democratic movement working in 60 languages with supporters in 150 countries. He spoke to Rotarians about his various experiences in Southeast Asia and Africa with Amnesty.

[admin]

International Commission of Jurists
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 12/15/20

Not to be confused with the International Court of Justice.


International Commission of Jurists
Abbreviation: ICJ
Formation: 1952
Type: NGO with Consultative Status
Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland
Official language: English, French, Spanish
Acting President: Robert Goldman (since 2017)
Secretary-General: Saman Zia-Zarifi
Staff: 60
Website: http://www.icj.org

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) is an international human rights non-governmental organization. It is a standing group of 60 eminent jurists—including senior judges, attorneys and academics—who work to develop national and international human rights standards through the law. Commissioners are known for their experience, knowledge and fundamental commitment to human rights. The composition of the Commission aims to reflect the geographical diversity of the world and its many legal systems.

The Commission is supported by an International Secretariat based in Geneva, Switzerland, and staffed by lawyers drawn from a wide range of jurisdictions and legal traditions. The Secretariat and the Commission undertake advocacy and policy work aimed at strengthening the role of lawyers and judges in protecting and promoting human rights and the rule of law.

In addition, the ICJ has national sections and affiliates in over 70 countries. Given the legal focus of the ICJ's work, membership of these sections is predominantly drawn from the legal profession.

In April 2013, the ICJ was presented with the Light of Truth Award by the Dalai Lama and the International Campaign for Tibet. The award is presented to organisations who have made outstanding contributions to the Tibetan cause.[1]

The current ICJ President is Professor Robert Goldman. Former Presidents include Sir Nigel Rodley (2012-2017), a former member of the UN Human Rights Committee, Professor Pedro Nikken (2011-2012) and Mary Robinson (2008-2011), the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and President of Ireland.

Current activities

The ICJ is active in promoting human rights and the rule of law, whether at the international level (e.g. the UN), regionally (e.g. the EU and Council of Europe), or domestically through the activities of its national sections (e.g. JUSTICE in the UK).

The ICJ's International Law and Protection Programme works to promote the application of international law to violations of a civil, political, social or economic nature.[2] The focus is on the international obligations of states to respect, protect, and fulfill human rights through the Rule of Law, to protect victims of human rights violations, and to hold states and non-state actors accountable for these violations and abuses. Today, the specific areas of work include:

• Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (CIJL);
• Economic, social and cultural rights;
• Business and Human Rights;
• Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity;
• Women’s Human Rights;
• United Nations Human Rights Mechanisms; and
• Global Security and the Rule of Law.

The ICJ also operates regional programmes of work in Africa, Asia Pacific, Central America, Europe, and the Middle East and North Africa.[3] These focus on promoting and supporting the independence of the judiciary, the Rule of Law and human rights issues specific to their regional contexts. To support this work, the ICJ has regional offices in Thailand, South Africa, and Guatemala, and country office in Nepal and North Africa.

History

Born at the ideological frontline of a divided post-war Berlin, the ICJ was established following the 1952 ‘International Congress of Jurists’ in West Berlin . The Congress was organized by the ‘Investigating Committee of Free Jurists (ICJF)’, a group of German jurists committed to investigating human rights abuses carried out in the Soviet Zone of post-war Germany.

During the Congress, delegates decided to make provisions to expand the work of the ICJF to investigate human rights violations in other regions of the world. A five-member ‘Standing Committee of the Congress’ was appointed for this purpose and, in 1953, the Standing Committee created the “International Commission of Jurists (ICJ)” as a permanent organisation dedicated to the defence of human rights through the rule of law.

One of the key areas of concern for the 106 Congress delegates was the case of Dr. Walter Linse, a West German lawyer and the Acting President of the ICJF. Two weeks prior to the start of the Congress, on 8 July 1952, in an apparent attempt to intimidate participants, Dr. Linse was abducted by East German intelligence agents and delivered to the KGB. Despite international condemnation of the abduction, Dr. Linse was executed in Moscow for “espionage” in 1953.

The ICJ was initially partially funded by the Central Intelligence Agency through the American Fund for Free Jurists, but the CIA's role was not known to most of the ICJ's members.[4] American founders like Allen Dulles and John J. McCloy conceived it as a counter to the International Association of Democratic Lawyers controlled by the Soviet Union.[5] Ex-CIA officer Philip Agee considered that the ICJ was "set up and controlled by the CIA for propaganda operations."[6] The CIA funding became public in 1967, but the organization survived the revelations after a period of reform under Secretary General Sean MacBride, and through Ford Foundation funding.[4][5] MacBride himself was involved in CIA funding, according to information the US government reported.[7]

-- The Ford Foundation and the CIA, by James Petras

From 1970 to 1990, Niall MacDermot was Secretary-General, succeeding Sean MacBride.[8] MacDermot moved the ICJ away from its association with the CIA, to the forefront of the international human rights movement.[9]

In 1978, the ICJ established the Centre for the Independence of Judges and Lawyers (CIJL). It was instrumental in the formulation and adoption of the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary and the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers and its mandate is to work for their implementation.

In 1980, the ICJ received the European Human Rights Prize by Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

In 1986, the ICJ gathered a group of distinguished experts in international law to consider the nature and scope of the obligations of States parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The meeting witnessed the birth of the Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which continue to guide international law in the area of economic, social and cultural rights.

In the 1990s, a number of important international developments took place as a result of initiatives by the ICJ. These included the UN Declaration on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance and the recommendation by the Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna to work on the setting up of an International Criminal Court. This was the direct result of an international conference on impunity, organised by the ICJ under the auspices of the United Nations in 1992, which adopted an appeal asking the Vienna conference to "set up an international penal tribunal…in order to finally break the cycle of impunity". In November 2006 the ICJ held an international meeting in Yogyakarta for LGBT rights and published The Yogyakarta Principles in March 2007.

The ICJ also initiated the drafting of the set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity and the Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for Victims of Violations of International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, both under examination at the UN Human Rights Commission and also received the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights in 1993.

National Sections

As at 2015 there are 21 autonomous[10] National Sections of the ICJ.[11] They are:

• Australia: Australian Section of the ICJ
• Austria: Österreichische Juristen-Kommission
• Canada: ICJ Canada
• Chile: Comision Chilena de Derechos Humanos
• Denmark: Danish Section of the ICJ
• Ecuador: Asociación Ecuatoriana de Juristas
• Germany: Deutsche Sektion der Internationalen Juristen-Kommission E.V.
• Hong Kong: Justice Hong Kong
• India: Karnataka State Commission of Jurists
• Italy: Jura Hominis
• Kenya: ICJ Kenya
• Nepal: Nepalese Section of the ICJ
• Netherlands: Nederlands Juristen Comité voor de Mensenrechten (NJCM)
• Norway: ICJ Norway
• Poland: Polish Section of the ICJ
• Slovenia: Slovenian Section of the ICJ
• Sweden: Svenska Avdelningen av Internationella Juristkommissionen
• Switzerland: Swiss section of the ICJ
• United Kingdom: JUSTICE
• United States: American Association for the ICJ

Congresses of the ICJ

Every few years, the ICJ convenes a World Congress, where jurists from around the world work together to address a pressing human rights issue and agree normative principles and objectives in a public Declaration. These Declarations have frequently been used by inter-governmental bodies, including the United Nations, as well as bar associations, lawyers, academic centres and other human rights NGOs around the world. For example, the ICJ was responsible for the Declaration of Delhi on the rule of law in 1959, which set out the ICJ's conception of the Rule of Law as being dynamic.[12]

The ICJ's most recent Declaration, agreed at the ICJ's 17th World Congress in December 2012, related to Access to Justice and Right to a Remedy in International Human Rights Systems.[13] The full list of ICJ Congresses is as follows:[14]

2012 – Geneva, Switzerland – Access to Justice and Right to a Remedy in International Human Rights Systems
2008 – Geneva, Switzerland – Upholding the Rule of Law and the Role of Judges & Lawyers in times of crisis
2004 – Berlin, Germany – Upholding Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Combating Terrorism
2001 – Geneva, Switzerland
1998 – Cape Town, South Africa
1995 – Bangalore, India – Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Role of Lawyers
1992 – Cartigny, Switzerland
1989 – Caracas, Venezuela – The Independence of Judges and Lawyers
1985 – Nairobi, Kenya – Human and Peoples’ Rights in Africa
1981 – The Hague, Netherlands – Development and the Rule of Law
1977 – Vienna, Austria – Human Rights in an Undemocratic World
1971 – Aspen, USA – Justice and the Individual: The Rule of Law under Current Pressures
1966 – Geneva, Switzerland – The ICJ’s Mandate, Policies and Activities
1962 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Executive Action and the Rule of Law
1959 – New Delhi, India – The Rule of Law in a Free Society
1955 – Athens, Greece – The Rule of Law
1952 – Berlin, Germany – The International Congress of Jurists

See also

• Vivian Bose
• Rule of law
• World Assembly of Youth
• Congress for Cultural Freedom
• International Confederation of Free Trade Unions
• International Federation of Journalists
• JUSTICE

References

1. "ICT Light of Truth Award ceremony brings together eminent individuals with historic connection to Tibet". International Campaign for Tibet. 15 April 2013. Archived from the original on 12 May 2013. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
2. "Themes" at icj.org Accessed 17 September 2017
3. "Regions" at icj.org Accessed 17 September 2017
4. Richard Pierre Claude (August 1, 1994). "The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights. (Book review)". Human Rights Quarterly. Retrieved 2009-10-10.
5. Yves Dezalay, Bryant G. Garth (2002). The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-14426-7.
6. Philip Agee, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, Allen Lane, 1975, p 611.
7. "Peter Benenson". The Independent. 2005-02-28. Retrieved 2020-10-24.
8. Tam Dalyell (27 February 1996). "OBITUARY: Niall MacDermot". The Independent.
9. Iain Guest, Behind the disappearances: Argentina's dirty war against human rights and the United Nations, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8122-1313-0, ISBN 978-0-8122-1313-3 p 111.
10. International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), NGO Monitor
11. "ICJ National Sections". International Commission of Jurists. Retrieved 4 August 2015.
12. Wikisource:Declaration of Delhi
13. "ICJ adopts Declaration on Access to Justice and Right to a Remedy", 12 December 2012, at icj.orgAccessed 17 September 2017
14. "Congresses" at icj.org Accessed 17 September 2017

Further reading

• William Korey (2001). NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a Curious Grapevine. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0-312-23886-X.
• Howard Tolley (1994). The International Commission of Jurists: Global Advocates for Human Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-3254-2.

External links

• Official site

[admin]

Rainforest Foundation Fund
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 12/15/20

This article may rely excessively on sources too closely associated with the subject, potentially preventing the article from being verifiable and neutral. Please help improve it by replacing them with more appropriate citations to reliable, independent, third-party sources. (July 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Rainforest Foundation US
@RainforestUS
Join us today!!

RFUS's Peru Director
@tomrfus
will be discussing how #indigenous peoples detect illegal #deforestation and protect the #rainforest using technology.

This virtual conference is organized by USAID Peru.
Pencil Register here: https://bit.ly/3pInJpo

#ProtectAmazonia



10:19 AM · Nov 19, 2020

The Project: USAID Funded Improving Livelihoods and Land Use in the Democratic Republic of Congo through Community Forests

The adoption of the Community Forests Decree in 2014 and its main bylaw in 2016 in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is arguably the most significant legal reform related to tropical forests and forest peoples’ rights in recent years. This framework could impact as many as 40 million forest-dependent people and with tens of millions of hectares potentially available to develop pro-poor, community models of forest management.

Since its creation, RFUK has been continuously advocating and supporting the development of community-based forest management in the Congo Basin – something that is now widely recognised as being key to achieving delivering strong conservation and development outcomes. Under a DFID (now FCDO) funded project (2016-2019), RFUK headed a consortium of Congolese and international NGOs that played a central role in laying the foundations for community forestry in DRC. The project facilitated the development and adoption of the National Strategy for Community Forestry; consolidated the Multi-stakeholder Roundtable for Community Forestry as a deliberative policy making body; accompanied nine communities to apply for their community forest concessions; trained and built capacities among civil society and government officials at all levels; and produced an ground-breaking body of resources, studies and tools to inform best practice in DRC and beyond.

USAID and other donors are now supporting RFUK and our consortium partners to build on these efforts to trigger a new phase of development of community forestry in DRC. The project, which will run from September 2020 to September 2025, has the central objective to consolidate community forests as a viable forest use model that enhances livelihoods while protecting forests. To this end, the project will pursue four main strands of work:

• Promoting land use planning, sustainable management and income generating activities in pilot community forests in Equateur, North Kivu and Maniema provinces;
• Tackling deforestation and protecting biodiversity in target sites;
• Advocating for the continued improvement of the legal framework and promoting transparency and good practice;
• Building capacities in government and local civil society.

Activities will be implemented in the field by a consortium of Congolese NGOs based in Kinshasa, Goma, Mbandaka and Kindu...

Responsibilities

The DRC Chief of Party (COP) will be based in Kinshasa and will have the overall responsibility of coordinating project activities on the ground, liaising with partners on a daily basis and leading on policy aspects of the project whilst being the main point of contact for the donor, the USAID CARPE office in Kinshasa.

The post-holder will work closely with the London based project team, led by the RFUK CF Project Coordinator and the Project Finance and Admin Officer. S/he will also have a close working relationship with RFUK’s Programmes Finance, Admin and MEL Coordinator, Tech team, Policy team and additional staff and consultants in the Programmes Team...

1. Project management

• Oversee the implementation of the project on the ground in line with strategy, agreed budgets, logframe, work plans and procedures in coordination with the DRC CF Project Coordinator.
• Manage the relationship with USAID (CARPE team, based in Kinshasa) under the donor’s principle of “substantial involvement”, maintaining regular communications with the donor and keeping them regularly informed and involved in the execution of the project. ...

PERSON SPECIFICATION

Detail / Essential / Desirable

Knowledge and Experience / Master’s Degree in law, anthropology or international development or a related
subject or equivalent professional experience. / Experience managing USAID projects.

-- Job Description: Chief of Party: DRC Community Forests, by Rainforest Foundation UK: Securing Lands, Sustaining Lives

Miles Axe Copeland III (born May 2, 1944) is an American music and entertainment executive and former manager of The Police. Copeland later managed Sting's musical and acting career. In 1979, Copeland founded the I.R.S. Records label, producing R.E.M., The Bangles, Berlin, The Cramps, Dead Kennedys, The Alarm, The Go-Go's, and others.

Background

Copeland was born in London, England, to Miles Axe Copeland, Jr., a CIA officer from Birmingham, Alabama, United States, and Lorraine Adie, a Scot who worked in British intelligence. The family lived throughout the Middle East, in particular Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon. At an early age, Copeland and his brothers were fluent in Arabic.

Copeland attended Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1962. He graduated with a degree in history and political science. From 1966 to 1969, Copeland attended the American University of Beirut, earning a degree in economics. This was also where he promoted his first concert. After college, he moved to London, met two progressive rock musicians at a club, and helped them form Wishbone Ash.

BTM and Illegal Records

In 1974, Copeland founded the management agency and record label BTM (British Talent Management) and signed a number of progressive rock acts such as Squeeze, Renaissance and Curved Air. In the summer of 1975, he organized a multi-band tour of European music festivals, named Star-Trucking, which featured several BTM bands as well as Soft Machine, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Lou Reed. However, Reed's failure to appear at any of the shows and other logistical issues resulted in significant losses for Star-Trucking, and ultimately to the failure of BTM. In 1976, BTM closed down.

BTM's end coincided with the beginning of the UK's Punk/New Wave movement and led Copeland to co-found Illegal Records, Deptford Fun City Records, New Bristol Records, and to sign the Cortinas, Chelsea, and the Models to Step Forward Records in 1977.

The Police

In 1978, Copeland became manager of his brother Stewart's band, The Police. Copeland shepherded the group to become one of the biggest bands of the 1980s, peaking with a concert for 70,000 people at Shea Stadium and the number one single for 1983, "Every Breath You Take".


Surveillance was never so sexy!

He continued to manage Sting through seven solo albums. Copeland was not, however, included in the reunion era of The Police, leading to a 2007 interview in which Copeland lamented that money was the issue.

I.R.S. Records

The success of The Police and the novel methods used to popularize them enabled Copeland to found I.R.S. Records through a deal with A&M Records. Copeland's I.R.S. label had hits with the Buzzcocks, R.E.M., The Cramps, Fine Young Cannibals, The Bangles and many others, including a number one album with his label's group The Go-Go's.

Copeland International Arts

Copeland owns and operates CIA (Copeland International Arts), which includes the Bellydance Superstars, Celtic Crossroads, Otros Aires, Zohar, and Beats Antique. Much of the CIA catalog initially included Middle Eastern, world music, Irish, tango, flamenco, and Polynesian styles. The label later signed mainstream artists.

Personal life

Another of Copeland's brothers, Ian Copeland, was a booking agent who described much of the New Wave adventures of Miles, Stewart and himself in his book Wild Thing.[9]

-- Miles Copeland III, by Wikipedia

Stewart Copeland on New Podcast ‘My Dad the Spy,’ How He’s Spending His Lockdown: In his Audible series, the former Police drummer sets out to uncover the truth about his CIA-agent father
by Angie Martoccio
Rolling Stone
October 20, 2020

Rainforest Foundation
Founded: 1987
Type: Non-governmental organization
Focus: Environmentalism
Location: New York City, United States
Area served: Global
Method: Grant-making, Lobbying, research
Key people: Sting, Trudie Styler, Franca Sciuto, Li Lu
Revenue: $ 1,234,981 (2006)
Employees: 155
Website: rainforestfund.org

The Rainforest Foundation Fund is a charitable foundation founded in 1987 and dedicated to drawing attention to rainforests and defending the rights of indigenous peoples living there.[1]

The fund and its three sister organizations (Rainforest Foundation UK, Rainforest Foundation US, and Rainforest Foundation Norway) support indigenous rainforest peoples to assert and defend their rights, to define and promote sustainable development in their communities, and to challenge the activities and practices of governments or other entities which damage their environment and lands. The programs and projects are developed in partnership with local communities and representative indigenous NGOs.

History


The Chief Raoni and Sting in 1989, in Paris.

The Rainforest Foundation Fund was first founded in 1989 as the Rainforest Foundation International, by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, Sting and his wife Trudie Styler after an indigenous leader, Raoni, of the Kayapo people of Brazil made a personal request to them to help his community protect their lands and culture. Since then, the Rainforest Foundation Fund, working together with its sister organizations, has funded projects that have protected a total of 28 million acres of forest in 20 different rainforest countries around the globe.[2]

Around 1990, Danny Paradise introduced him to yoga, and he began practising Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga series, though he now practises Tantra and Jivamukti Yoga as well. He wrote a foreword to Yoga Beyond Belief, written by Ganga White in 2007. In 2008, he was reported to practise Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation technique.

-- Sting (musician), by Wikipedia

In 1989, Styler and Sting started the Rainforest Foundation Fund, an organisation devoted to protecting rainforests and their indigenous peoples, and since 1991 she has produced regular Rock for the Rainforest benefits at Carnegie Hall. As a UNICEF [United Nations International Emergency Fund] Ambassador, Styler has also raised millions for their projects around the globe.

-- Trudie Styler, by Wikipedia

Essentially, Goodwill Ambassadors are marketing personnel who volunteer to contribute to the brand recognition of UNICEF. However, just because they are not formal ambassadors does not mean that Goodwill Ambassadors do not do good work.

A UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador is commonly a celebrity with a global audience and name recognition. UNICEF officials have chosen celebrities such as Millie Bobby Brown to represent them. Millie Bobby Brown is currently the youngest UNICEF Ambassador and plans on using her position to bring attention to children’s rights. Specifically, Brown wants to focus on lack of education, lack of safe places to play and learn, violence against children, and the effects of bullying.

Previous to Brown, celebrities such as Audrey Hepburn have served for UNICEF. During her service, Hepburn visited Ethiopia after years of civil strife and drought caused a severe famine. Hepburn visited the United Nations emergency sites and went back to The United States of America and Europe to talk to the media about what was happening in Ethiopia in search for continued support of the United Nations’ efforts in Ethiopia. Later in her service as a UNICEF ambassador, Hepburn testified before the United States Congress on behalf of UNICEF and worked on the World Summit for Children.

-- Who are UNICEF Ambassadors?, by American Model United Nations

Trudie Styler, film producer, environmentalist, humanitarian and actor, is a long-standing supporter of Unicef.

She was appointed Ambassador in July 2004. The following year, in November 2005, Trudie received the highest accolade bestowed on a Unicef Ambassador – the Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award – for her commitment to Unicef.

In 2005, Trudie visited Sri Lanka to witness emergency education being provided by Unicef and the following year Jemima Goldsmith and Trudie visited projects supporting Unicef’s Build it Back Better campaign in Pakistan after the earthquake in 2005.

Through fundraising events Trudie has helped to raise millions for Unicef’s work. You can also help us reach more children around the world to keep them safe and help them grow up happy and healthy.

Following a Unicef trip to Ecuador in 2009, Trudie has been committed to supporting water projects with Unicef and the Rainforest Fund to deliver clean water to communities living in the highly polluted areas of the Ecuador rainforest.

On 20 October 2011 Trudie Styler and Sting were presented with the Children’s Champion Award in Boston. This award was presented to them by Unicef to honour the exceptional commitment they have shown to improving children’s lives across the world.

Trudie continues to be an advocate for Unicef.

-- Trudie Styler: UNICEF UK Ambassador, by unicef.org

Philosophy

The mission of the Rainforest Foundation Fund is: "to protect and support indigenous people and traditional forest populations in their efforts to protect their environment and fulfill their right to a secure, healthy and ecologically sound environment." The Fund believes that environmental degradation necessarily violates human rights to life, health and culture.

The international community widely accepts that indigenous peoples are holders of a specific set of rights and are also the victims of historically unique forms of discrimination, and it enshrined this idea in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007.

The Rainforest Fund claims that its work is motivated by its recognition of a substantial disconnect between such declarations made by the governments of the world in an international forum, and the actions that those governments undertake in their own countries.

They mention as an illustration the controversy surrounding the Belo Monte Dam in Brazil: "While at the United Nations discussions are underway on the crucial issue of climate change, and governments are finally realizing that they have to change their pattern of development, in the Brazilian Amazon plans are well advanced to build environmentally destructive mega-dams along the Xingu River, the last of the great Amazon rivers in a good state of conservation." .[3][4][5][6]

Method

The Rainforest Foundation Fund usually covers only about 80% of a project's total budget, leaving its grantee responsible for finding the remaining 20%, to avoid over-dependency on just one funding source. The fund grants money on a three-year basis, but will extend funding up to five years in certain circumstances. Grant-recipient's projects are evaluated annually.

The Rainforest Foundation Fund works with an extremely small staff, with only a chairperson (Franca Sciuto) and a part-time financial director/treasurer (Li Lu). The chairperson serves as a volunteer, and handles all project screening, interim assessments and post-project evaluations. Final decisions on projects and fund disbursement are made by the Rainforest Foundation Fund board.[7]

Rather than administrating large projects itself, the Fund believes that the primary beneficiaries, the indigenous peoples, should also be the primary administrators of the projects. The sister organizations in the US, UK and Norway work directly with indigenous organizations to ensure they are equipped with the administrative structures, technology and trained leadership needed to carry out their projects.

Current work

The Rainforest Fund supports projects that defend indigenous people's rights to their lands and to live in a healthy environment.

The Fund assists rainforest indigenous communities by helping them achieve official demarcation of their territories and then ensuring they are able to effectively defend their communities from violations of their rights including illegal logging, mining, other land invasions, and social disenfranchisement/denial of their rights as citizens.

Many of their projects work to uphold the right of indigenous peoples to grant or to withhold. Then their free, prior and informed consent to projects that will affect their land, resources and livelihoods, and to ensure that indigenous communities are given full information and have a voice in project negotiations and the policy design process.

It also makes grants to programs that assist communities in designing sustainable development strategies, and in strengthening their representative organizations.

Their grants support public awareness programs, technological training, community development, organizational capacity building, sustainable resource management, legal defense, and local, national, and international policy and advocacy.

2011 Supported Projects:[8]

AFRICA:

• Central African Republic
• Cameroon
• Democratic Republic of the Congo
--Working across the three countries of the Congo Basin, this project focuses on the development of REDD policies designed to mitigate climate change. It works to ensure indigenous peoples have a voice in those policies, share in benefits, and have their land rights respected. The project also involves participatory mapping, advocacy surrounding national parks and community forestry, and advocacy for the full implementation of the ILO Convention 169.

ASIA:
• Papua New Guinea
--'Land is Life Reform' – A project which supports the legal cases at the national level that are working to stop all new logging operations in the country.[9]
• Malaysia
--In partnership with the Orang Asli communities, this projects works to connect the indigenous people's with conservation networks in the broader civil society, to promote women's empowerment, and to provide capacity-building to organizational leaders as they advocate for indigenous rights.[10]

AMERICAS:
• Belize
--Working with the Mayan community and their NGO the Maya Leaders Alliance to obtain official recognition of nearly 500,000 acres of traditional lands and then to carry out the demarcation qualification process.
• Bolivia
--Supporting a project administered by the NGO Comunidad Viva to guarantee clean water access for the Ayoreo Community of Puesto Paz.
• Brazil
--Working with the Tiriyo, Kaxuyana, and Wayapi indigenous groups of northeastern Brazil to build the capacity of their representative organization, Apitikatxi, and to ensure that public policy respect the indigenous peoples' rights to maintain their cultures and traditions.[11]
--Supporting the Surui indigenous peoples in implementing a strategy for protecting their lands, the Surui Reserve, from illegal logging, thereby protecting the highly biodiverse Amazonian rainforest found on those lands. Also working with them to ensure proper implementation of their community's participation in a REDD program.
• Ecuador
--Supporting a project to assist the Orellana and Sucumbia indigenous peoples whose communities and environments are being negatively affected by oil exploitation – the project works to expose environmental abuse and defend indigenous rights to land, health, livelihood, and clean environment.
--The Fund is working in partnership with UNICEF Ecuador to work to provide clean water to the communities affected by the oil industries' activities in and around their lands, which have caused serious water pollution.[12]
--The Change Chevron Project, monitored by the Rainforest Action Network, works to put public and political pressure on Chevron to rectify the environmental damage its activities in the Ecuadorian Rainforest have caused.[13]
• Guyana
--Working with the national NGO the Amerindian Peoples Association to ensure that Guyanese indigenous communities are well-educated on climate change and REDD programs and that they have a respected and significant degree of participation in the design and implementation of those programs.
• Panama
--Working with the representative NGO of the Kuna people, FPCI, as well as the national indigenous NGO, COONAPIP, to build organizational capacity and ensure that Panama's indigenous peoples participate in the design of, have their rights respected by, and are appropriate beneficiaries of various national climate change and REDD programs.
--Working with the Wounaan people to achieve official land titles for over 470,000 acres of land belonging to 12 different communities and to assist them in defending their land and resources from outside threats.[14]
• Peru
--Supporting the Ashaninka communities in their effort to halt the construction of the Pakitzapango Dam which would affect their ancestral land over which they have official ownership. In spite of this, the government did not consult with the communities or receive their consent for the project.
--Working with the Kandozi and Sharpa indigenous peoples of Datem del Marañón in the Peruvian Amazon to ensure that their right to health care is respected and fulfilled by the State, particularly that the government work to address a Hepatitis B epidemic in their communities.
--The Rainforest Fund also recently undertook a special emergency project to provide support for the legal defense of the indigenous leaders facing charges from by the government due to the 2009 incident in Bagua, wherein police attacked the crowd after 55 days of nonviolent demonstrations supporting of indigenous rights, leaving 34 people dead. 109 cases were filed against 362 Peruvian indigenous leaders.[15]

Criticisms

In January 1990 the fund's first campaign came under fire by the French edition of 'Rolling Stone' magazine in an article that mentioned the failings of Dutilleux's previous work in the rainforest and criticized the organization for holding lavish fundraising banquets.[16]

The 'Rolling Stone' article was used as the basis for a documentary by Granada Television's 'World in Action' program. The show, called 'Sting and the Indians', was re-broadcast in the United States on the A&E cable network hosted by Bill Kurtis.[17]

The primary claim of both was that the project in Brazil was misrepresenting the facts to donors, as some of the Kayapo's traditional land was already "protected" within the Xingu National Park. In fact, the Xingu Park is actually a large indigenous-controlled area, the first in Brazil, so it is an indigenous territory, not a national "park". Moreover, the Fund's initial project supported demarcation of the Mengkragnoti Area, which is right next to/contiguous with the Xingu Park, and did not demarcate the park itself.

In 2002, 2003, and 2004 the US branch of the organization was given zero stars out of four by Charity Navigator, primarily because only 43-60% of funds during those years were spent on programs on the ground.[18] For example, in 2008 the US Foundation had total revenues of $1.27 Million of which only $404,000 went to 'Project Payments' according to the Foundation's very own 2008 IRS tax filings.[19]

However, since 2008, the Rainforest Foundation US has received four stars out of four, with an efficiency score of 38.93 out of 40.[20]

See also

• Deforestation
• Indigenous peoples
• Related charities such as the Prince's Rainforests Project, Save the Amazon Rainforest Organisation and the Rainforest Action Network
• United Nations Environment Programme
• Yayasan Merah Putih
• Environmental problems caused by deforestation
• Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation
• Self-determination
• Traditional Ecological Knowledge
• Sustainable development
• Indigenous land rights
• Global warming
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas
• Amazon Rainforest
• Deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest
• Deforestation in Brazil
• Conservation movement
• Environmental movement

Footnotes

1. "Sting Issues Statement On Amazon Fires: "This Is Criminal Negligence On A Global Scale"". Stereogum. 2019-08-27. Retrieved 2020-07-09.
2. The Rainforest Foundation US "About Us Archived 2011-10-30 at the Wayback Machine"
3. Sarah Anne Hughes. "Brazil approves Belo Monte dam, despite fierce opposition, James Cameron Speaks Out" The Washington Post. 01 June 2011.
4. "Amazon Watch's 'Stop the Belo Monte Dam' Campaign Archived 2011-11-12 at the Wayback Machine"
5. Karen Hoffmann. "Belo Monte dam marks a troubling new era in Brazil's attitude to its rainforest" The Ecologist. 16 August 2001.
6. Reuters. "Brazil approves Belo Monte hydroelectric dam" guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 June 2011
7. Rainforest Foundation Fund 2006/2008 Report ""Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-04-12. Retrieved 2011-11-14."
8. Rainforest Foundation Fund Website "[1] Archived 2011-12-05 at the Wayback Machine"
9. The Conversation "Dodgy logging: are Papua New Guinea’s forests going the way of Indonesia’s?" 2 November 2011.
10. Center for Orang Asli Concerns "[2]"
11. NEWSLETTER OF THE INTERNATIONAL RANGER FEDERATION "The Thin Green Line Archived 2012-04-03 at the Wayback Machine" October–December 2005.
12. UNCIEF News "UNICEF National Ambassador Trudie Styler brings clean water project to Ecuador" 15 June 2009.
13. "Change Chevron Project Page Archived 2012-04-05 at the Library of Congress Web Archives"
14. nativefuture.org "Wounaan Take Land Rights Claims to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights" October 28, 2008.
15. Gregor MacLennan. "Bagua Anniversary: One Year After Violent Clashes in Peru, Situation for Indigenous Rights Little Improved Archived 2011-08-22 at the Wayback Machine" Commondreams.org. June 10, 2010.
16. Chris Campion. "Walking on the moon: the untold story of the Police and the rise of new wave rock." John Wiley and Sons, 2009. pp 237- 240 "[3]
17. Elaine Dewar. "Cloak of green." James Lorimer & Company, 1995. pp. 421 "[4]"
18. Ed Pilkington. May 7, 2008. "Sting charity criticized as he marks 20 years in rainforest activism." The Guardian.
19. http://www.box.net/shared/static/u38uok769j.pdf[permanent dead link]
20. "Charity Navigator - Rating for Rainforest Foundation US". Charity Navigator

External links

• Rainforest Foundation Fund
• Rainforest Foundation US
• Rainforest Foundation UK
• Rainforest Foundation Norway

****************************

Jean-Pierre Dutilleux
by Wikipedia
Accessed: 12/15/20



Jean-Pierre Dutilleux (born 13 October 1949) is a Belgian author, activist, film director,[1] actor and editor of films.

Career

During his 40-year career, Jean-Pierre Dutilleux has made thirty films, including a dozen in Amazonia, taken thousands of photographs and published six books.

Jean-Pierre Dutilleux rose to international prominence with his academy Award-nominated documentary, Raoni, an investigation of the complex issues surrounding the survival of the remaining indigenous natives of the Amazon Rainforest and indeed, of the Rainforest itself.

Shot on location and named after the forceful and savvy chief at its center, the film was narrated by Marlon Brando. The New York Times praised Raoni as a "sobering, sympathetic and technically expert documentary". With the fame accorded him by the film, both in Brazil and abroad, Raoni, the man, has become the prime spokesperson for all of Brazil's surviving native tribes.

A native of Belgium, Dutilleux earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and Literature from Saint Hadelin College in Liege, and later studied law, languages and economics at the University of Louvain. During his college years, Dutilleux traveled throughout North and South America, awakening passion and developing respect for the native tribes. In 1972, he served as assistant to Costa-Gavras on the production "State of Siege" in Chile. Two years later, at the age of 23, Dutilleux completed his first film, a study of natives of the Amazon.

In the years since, he has filmed and photographed over 50 tribes worldwide, produced a dozen films in the Amazon, sailed around the world, and documented countless unique adventures. Additionally, his work as a photojournalist has appeared in 100-plus magazines in dozens of countries.

On one of his visits to the Amazon, Dutilleux was joined by noted rock musician Sting, who was able to experience firsthand the indigenous tribes of the fast disappearing jungle. Together they authored articles exposing the fate of the native Amazonians which, fortified by Dutilleux's powerful photos, propelled the rainforest issues into the global spotlight. Encouraged by response to the stories, the pair created The Rainforest Foundation to support the Indians' fight for survival, launching an international campaign with a television spot starring Sting and produced and directed by Dutilleux. Accompanied by Chief Raoni, they embarked on a world tour and, in only 60 days, established local foundations in 12 countries, raising awareness and funds to protect the rainforest. In six recently published books, Dutilleux recounts these adventures and shares his remarkable photographs. The publicity and campaigning has to date secured the future of more than 25 million hectares of rainforest, not only in South America.

Controversies

Controversies regularly mark the career of Jean-Pierre Dutilleux since the release of his documentary film Raoni (1978).

As early as July 22, 1981, the Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo[2] stated that the FUNAI (National Indian Foundation, Indian affairs agency in Brazil) is behind the creation of a precedent-setting law, as a result of the problems encountered with the movie Raoni. The article, which explains that Raoni was the first commercial film in Brazil with the participation of Indians, claims that he "did not respect the agreement signed with FUNAI to transfer 10% of the profits to the Indians Txucarramae, of the Xingu River region." The article details the new criteria put in place by the FUNAI: "the Indians who will take part in the shootings will have to be paid and notified to the Union of the Artists of Rio de Janeiro and the FUNAI." According to Dutilleux, the allegations in this article are contradicted by a letter dated May 7, 1990 from Raoni's nephew Megaron Txuccaramae, who makes it clear that the Indians have received royalties from the Raoni film: "With this letter, we want to thank Jean-Pierre Dutilleux for his support to the Indians over the years. Since 1973, when we knew him, he is a great friend of the Indians. When he did the movie Raoni, in 1976, he was the first filmmaker to give the Indians royalties that we received directly from the Embrafilm distributor after he opened our first bank account." This letter, which was read to Raoni and approved by him in the presence of the counselor of the Belgian Embassy in Brasilia, was published in the book L'Indien blanc.

In January 1990, a few months after having traveled the world with chief Raoni and Sting, Jean-Pierre Dutilleux was profiled in an investigation by the French edition of Rolling Stone[3] magazine. The author, Mark Zeller, said that Dutilleux, close to bankruptcy before his meeting with Sting, enriched himself during their charitable actions. According to Dutilleux, Mark Zeller's allegations are contradicted by Megaron Txuccaramae's letter of May 7, 1990, in which he indicates that Jean-Pierre Dutilleux was not paid for his charitable actions.

On April 2, 1990, Britain's ITV Network broadcast an episode of the investigative TV programme World in Action, "Sting and the Indians",[4] in which Jean-Pierre Dutilleux was denounced by Sting about the book Jungle Stories (published by JC Lattès), which they wrote and promoted together during their charity tour. Sting said he has lobbied Dutilleux without success to return his generous advance on royalty rights to the Rainforest Foundation, created to help Brazilian indigenous peoples protect the Amazon rainforest. World in Action explained that Dutilleux kept the money and left the Rainforest Foundation after the episode. A note from the administrators of the Rainforest Foundation of April 2, 1990,[5] made public by the Association forêt Vierge in March 2017, states that if he has never received a cent from the Rainforest Foundation, "Jean-Pierre Dutilleux has received a lump sum for the repurchase of his photographs for the book Jungle Stories, in compensation of the costs of 16 years of travel, lodging, photographic expenses, repayments with rights holders, etc. He indicated his intention that all other royalties be returned to the Rainforest Foundation." In the same investigation, Dutilleux is accused by photographer Alexis de Vilar, co-founder with him of the charity Tribal Life Fund, of being at the origin of the disappearance of the receipts of a gala organized at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on March 28, 1979 to support the Raoni movie.

On September 21, 1991, Belgian newspaper Le Soir released an article entitled "The Director of FUNAI denounces the Raoni-Dutilleux campaign",[6] while Dutilleux had just launched a major fund-raising campaign from Belgium which he claimed with the consent of FUNAI. Sydney Possuelo, President-in-Office of FUNAI, declared: "Mr. Dutilleux is not and has never been authorized to raise funds on behalf of FUNAI, the Coordination of the Isolated Indians, or myself." On October 7, 1991, Brazilian daily newspaper Folha de S. Paulo took over the affair in its title "A Belgian exploits Indians in the Amazon and tries a $ 5 million scam",[7] saying that "the president of Funai, Sydney Possuelo, ended the scam, which promised individual donors and companies "rescue diplomas" of the Amazon." The article exposed that Jean-Pierre Dutilleux mentioned the embassy of Belgium as support for his fundraising campaign and concluded on this point: "the Embassy asserts that its name was misquoted."

On October 9, 2000, Época (Brazilian magazine) dedicated an article to Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, whom she nicknamed "the Belgian sorcerer".[8] The subtitle set the tone: "Who is Jean-Pierre Dutilleux, filmmaker who in three decades has earned fame and money by exploiting the image of Raoni and other Indians of Brazil". For example, it is claimed that Dutilleux illegally sold photos of indigenous on the internet. Less than three weeks later, the daily Gazeta do povo claimed that Jean-Pierre Dutilleux was banned by FUNAI from entering a reserve and specified that an investigation was opened against him "for sale of photos without payment of author rights".[9] The mentioned judicial procedure also emanated from a request for investigation from chief Raoni on the "fundraising carried out by Mr. Jean-Pierre Dutilleux outside Brazil, through abuse of the use of the name and the image of chief Raoni", especially with the French government.[10]

In 2012, it was said in the Brazilian documentary film Belo Monte Announcement of a War (Belo Monte, Anúncio de uma Guerra),[11] directed by André d'Elia, that the Association Forêt Vierge of Jean-Pierre Dutilleux held "hostage" chief Raoni and his two companions indigenous peoples, while they had come to campaign in Europe in September 2011 against the Belo Monte dam, to the construction of which French companies are associated.[12] In a sequence, Raoni confirms that Jean-Pierre Dutilleux "did not allow anyone to approach me" and shows a petition against Belo Monte[13] which Dutilleux and his team, he says, have tried to prevent the shed. It is also alleged that the same team would have tried to exchange the silence of Chief Raoni on the misdeeds of the Belo Monte project against a promise that the borders of a territory of his people are traced.

On August 12, 2016, kayapo leaders Raoni Metuktire and Megaron Txucarramae announced through a press release published on the official website and Facebook page of the Instituto Raoni[14] that they definitively cut any relationship with Jean-Pierre Dutilleux after several failures: "We recognize what Jean-Pierre Dutilleux has sometimes been able to bring to the level of the disclosure of our fight, but we have never appreciated his lack of respect, his opportunism and the way he exploited our image and the name of Cacique Raoni, to the point of damaging his reputation and jeopardizing his credibility". Jean-Pierre Dutilleux responded to these accusations via a video posted on YouTube[15] and on the website of the Association Forêt Vierge.[16]

On August 7, 2018, French NGO Planète Amazone accused Jean-Pierre Dutilleux in a statement[17] of having deliberately acted, "in Brazil and France", to destroy the confidence of his partners, saying that he "did not hesitate to use the name of an incumbent head of state in an attempt to obtain statements of denunciation from indigenous leaders against Planète Amazone, claiming that it was this head of state himself who demanded, prior to offer his support." Online correspondence refers to Albert II, Prince of Monaco as the mentioned head of state.[18]

In one of his films dedicated to the Toulambi tribe of Papua New Guinea, Dutilleux believes his film footage includes this tribe's first encounter with modern white men, and poses the possibility this may be the last time in history this can occur. A video of this film has been extensively posted in the internet, prompting much discussion and questions about this claim.[19] According to an article in the peer-reviewed Journal of Pacific History, the colonial archives indicate that the territory of the Toulambis had been visited by at least six patrols between 1929 and 1972. In itself that is very few and Dutilleux may be quite correct as certainly seems to be so when viewing the film.[20]

Dutilleux has worked intensively with thirty jungle tribes some of whom have only minimal contact with the outside world. He is working on a big-screen movie drama about an Amazonian tribe, which may include combining aspects of several tribes he knows, to tell a typical history of Amazonian tribes.

Filmography

• Raoni 1 award[21]

Books

Books published by Dutilleux:[22]

• Raoni, My Last Journey (2019)
• On the Trail of Lost Peoples (2015)
• Tribes: First World peoples (2013)
• Raoni: Memoirs of an Indian Chief (2010)
• Raoni and the First World (2000)
• The White Indian : 20 years of Amazonian Spell (1994)
• Raoni, an Indian Around the World in 60 days (1990)
• Jungle Stories, with Sting (1989)

References

1. "Movie Reviews". The New York Times. 12 July 2019. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
2. article from the Brazilian daily Folha de S. Paulo, July 22, 1981
3. "Rolling Stone article- original text". http://www.rainforestfoundation.com. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
4. "Rainforest Foundation Historical Society". http://www.rainforestfoundation.com. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
5. Note from the Rainforest Foundation of April 2, 1990, published on the website of the Association Forêt Vierge
6. article published by Belgian daily newspaper Le soir, on September 21, 1991, available on the newspaper's website
7. "Edição Digital - Folha de S.Paulo - Pg 8". Edição Digital - Folha de S.Paulo (in Portuguese). Retrieved 14 July2019.
8. "Notícias - NOTÍCIAS - O pajé belga do Rio Xingu". revistaepoca.globo.com. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
9. article from Brazilian newspaper Gazeta do povo available on the site of the Brazilian NGO ISA
10. copy of a judicial act of the MPF (Federal Public Ministry), available on the site amazonia-leaks.org
11. full-length film with English subtitles on the Vimeo channel of producer Cinedelia
12. "Alstom et GDF Suez, au cœur de Belo Monte et du développement hydroélectrique de l'Amazonie". Observatoire des multinationales (in French). Retrieved 14 July 2019.
13. "Demande de soutien international du Chef Raoni contre le projet Belo Monte". raoni.com. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
14. "Instituto Raoni - IR". http://www.facebook.com. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
15. Jean-Pierre Dutilleux (16 March 2018), Réponses aux accusations portées contre moi, retrieved 14 July 2019
16. "Sauvegarde des forêts tropicales et des peuples autochtones - Association Forêt Vierge". http://www.foretvierge.org. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
17. statement from French NGO Planète Amazone on their official page
18. "Amazonia Leaks - 6c – Un chef d'Etat en exercice utilisé pour une fraude atteignant des défenseurs de la forêt amazonienne". amazonialeaks.org. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
19. @truth. "Footage: Uncontacted tribe meets outsiders and sees modern technology for the first time? The debate goes on..." http://www.minds.com. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
20. Lemonnier, Pierre (2004). "The Hunt for Authenticity: Stone Age Stories Out of Context". Journal of Pacific History. 39(1): 79–98. doi:10.1080/00223340410001684868.
21. "Jean-Pierre Dutilleux - Filmography". http://www.jpdutilleux.org. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
22. Jean Pierre Dutilleux Published Books

External links

• Official website

[admin]

The Gathering of the Gurus: Spiritual Capital and the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership
by David Fancy
Department of Dramatic Arts at Brock University
journals.lib.unb.ca

-- Corporate Zen in Postwar Japan, Chapter Eleven [Excerpt] from "Zen at War", by Brian Daizen Victoria

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.
-- Edward Thurlow (Lord Chancellor of Britain from 1778 to 1792)

We are taught that corporations have a soul, which is the most terrifying news in the world.
-- Gilles Deleuze, in 1990

This brief inquiry begins with a riddle in the form of a double question: what does Tibetan Tantric dance have to do with selling property in Halifax County, Nova Scotia; and why, we might also ask, does such a question fit within the context of a collection of papers on theatre in Atlantic Canada? The following pages are intended as the beginnings of an answer.

In a recent study entitled Perform or Else: from Discipline to Performance, Jon McKenzie explores the emergence of "performance" as an "onto-historic formation of power and knowledge" (194) that operates across a broad range of academic disciplines and other sites of knowledge production: From congressional attacks on performance artists to high performance managers to the performativity of everyday speech, performance so permeates US society that it evokes that mysterious circle of mist which Nietzsche said envelops any living thing and without which life becomes ‘withered, hard, and barren.’ ‘Every people,’ the philosopher wrote, ‘even every man, who wants to become ripe needs such an enveloping madness, such a protective and veiling cloud.’ (3)

McKenzie’s provocative re-mobilization of a spiritually evocative phrase such as "mysterious circle of mist" can be understood to wryly foreground the quasi-ontological import of the newly-pervasive term "performance." This invocation can also serve to index another, perhaps less wry, and, if less pervasive, increasingly common use of spiritually loaded terminology within the broader performance matrix. Terms such as "spirit," "soul," and "God" have recently found increased currency in a specific institutional context with heavy investments in the enveloping madness gestured towards by McKenzie: the corporation. This structure/ institution, analogous to others such as "the public" or " the nation" in their complex and irreducible possibilities of definition and association, operates in the social imaginary at a level that Charles Taylor has articulated as being between the embodied knowledge of habitus and explicit doctrine (42). Indeed, as a site of intersection for a host of performative manifestations—from the performance of achievement of organizational goals to the technological performance fueling the expansion of such institutions—the corporation in post-industrial societies is an integral component of what Herbert Marcuse described in 1955 as a society organized around the "performance principle," an "historical reality principle founded on economic alienation and repressive desublimation" (qtd. in McKenzie 3).

In an ongoing effort to apply a discursive salve to the corporation’s sharp effects on workers, managers, investors, and the various environments in which it operates, over the past twenty-five years management theorists have increasingly pursued an ontologizing drive of their own, namely that of constructing the corporation as an organism, complete with not only body, but also soul or spirit (Novak; Sandelands). This actuality is in close accordance with Gilles Deleuze’s argument that capitalism has metasta-sized away from reproducing societies of discipline. No longer is contemporary capitalist production to be largely characterized by carceral factory spaces and fixed financial referents in the form of "minted money that locks gold as a numerical standard" (Deleuze). Rather we in the economic North find ourselves living in societies tending towards control characterized by sophisticated methods of "ultrarapid forms of free-floating control" that transform the ever-undulating corporation into "a spirit, a gas," that operates in a matrix of "free floating rates of exchange, modulated according to a rate established by a set of standard currencies" (Deleuze).

In a recent article entitled "Irreconcilable Foes? The Discourse of Spirituality and the Discourse of Organizational Science," Margaret Benefiel notes that dozens of books, articles and websites encouraging the integration of spirituality into the workplace have appeared in North America in the past ten years. The claims of the authors, she notes, "range from stating that spirituality in business will increase profits and improve morale to explaining that spirituality ensures stability and security in a changing economy" (383). It only follows that the individual human beings working within the corporate environment should also be "spiritualized," further ushering notions of the corporate divine into the social imaginary, accelerating allegiance to the corporate metaphysical, as well as allowing various projects of control to be pursued to their fullest possible logical extent.

These integrations of spirituality with management index one of the foremost uses of the term "performance" in contemporary culture: notably, the extensive range of activities that McKenzie captures with the expression "Performance Management" (McKenzie 6). He explains that "[a]s part of their administrative practice, thousands upon thousands of organizations administer ‘performance reviews,’ formal evaluations of the work performed by their employees" (5-6) that are in evidence in "economic processes that are increasingly service-based, globally oriented, and electronically wired"(6). McKenzie juxtaposes this contemporary phenomenon with the more archaic Scientific Management or "Taylorism," the dominant organizational and managerial mode from the early twentieth century onwards, a mode which was geared towards a "manufacturing based, nationally oriented, and highly industrialized economy" that "produced highly centralized bureaucracies whose rigid top-down management styles were— and still are—perceived by workers and managers alike as controlling, conformist and monolithic" (6).

It is important to note that McKenzie’s theorizing helps us negotiate a significant methodological pitfall haunting performance studies. Despite (or perhaps as a result of) the increasing cultural valence of the term "performance" marking a potentially epistemic shift in the broader culture, the term itself risks becoming obfuscatory in its application as a result of its very ubiquity. This is even more evidently the case when different modes of "performance," such as a mix of "performance management" and what might be called "traditional" performance, occur in the context of a single "performance event." Understanding the way in which "performance" is conceptualized also helps us tease apart the way in which different modes of performance can operate together in the workplace. Indeed, such terminological conflations can contribute to rather potent interpellations of worker subjectivity that can be understood to be all the more powerful as a result of the often specific attention paid to embodiment in "cultural" performance that can help entrain degrees of Deleuzian-style affective control.

A particularly thorough and vanguard manifestation of this process of spiritualization of workers, the workplace, and its vessel, the corporation, using various discourses of performance to generate effects, can be witnessed in the activities of the Buddhist-oriented Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program, held in Halifax, Nova Scotia every summer since 2001. The Institute for Authentic Leadership’s manufacture of spiritual control capital is, as we shall see, exquisitely emblematic of contemporary spiritual trends as a result of its ardent importation and deployment of exotic cultural capital from Buddhist spiritual practice into a Western setting. Although there exist schools of economic theorization which draw on Buddhist ethics to articulate programs of sustainable development and ethical uses of the earth’s resources geared toward increased human flourishing (Daniels), most management-oriented writing drawing on Buddhist sources emphasizes inter- and intrapersonal management of ‘self’ that aims to increase productivity by smoothing out potentially conflictual relationships between management and workers, between workers and other workers, and among workers, their organizations, and their clients (Gould; Harder, Robertson and Woodward; Hubbard; Ottaway). An examination of one of the specific psychophysical cultural performance strategies used at the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program—strategies freighted with exoticized "Eastern" significance—can go some way to understanding the controlling dynamics operating in the production of the spiritually docile corporate subjects called for in much of the new body of spiritually-inflected management publications. Indeed, as these practices set about to manufacture specific psycho-spiritual corporealities, some of their underlying techniques are surprisingly familiar to the field of theatre studies from which performance studies has historically drawn a portion of its methodological inspiration. The generation of such subjectivities, it will be suggested, is of pivotal significance to what could be understood to be a reverse transubstantiation of spirit into capital, and the generation and maintenance of a mystified libertarian and vertically integrated economic discourse at the heart of the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program.

The organization’s current activities are perhaps best understood in the context of their historical emergence. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the charismatic Tibetan-born founder of North America’s first accredited Buddhist university in Boulder Colorado, as well as founder of the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership parent organization, Shambhala International, first visited Nova Scotia in 1977. According to close friend and collaborator, poet Allen Ginsberg, Trungpa felt "some kind of affection for the Scots, there was some kind of karmic or ethnic connection that drew him" to Nova Scotia (Pederson 41). Inspired by the feel of a geographical location where one could experience, as Trungpa described it, "the cold, wet slap of the wind in your face"(Foot,"Halifax’s") on a fairly regular basis, he encouraged his American followers to leave the Rockies and move East. To Halifax. Richard John, a former member of the Colorado Shambhala community and director in 2003 of the Halifax Shambhala Centre—one of 70 such centres internationally— explained recently that Trungpa "was looking for a place that had more connection with the land [than Boulder had], a place…that wasn’t completely overwhelmed with materialistic values" (Foot, "An Unlikely"). According to another follower, Trungpa "also talked about the quality of the people in Atlantic Canada […]. He thought they were unusually good and decent people. And he was right" (Foot, "An Unlikely").

Trungpa would appear to have been particularly well-positioned to discern such qualities as he was recognized, before his death in 1987, within the Tibetan kagyu line of Buddhism as being the eleventh Trungpa tulku or enlightened being who voluntarily returns to human form in order to teach others the path out of suffering (Kimber). Indeed, Melvin Mcleod, former CBC Newsworld producer and current editor of Shambhala’s main publication, Shambhala Sun, describes the Oxford educated Trungpa as having especially appreciated, in somewhat reverse concert of Gaugin’s depiction of the Polynesians, Halifax’s and Nova Scotia’s "almost peasant ideal" (Scrivener G3).

In the intervening decades since Trungpa’s first epiphanic visit to Canada’s own unwitting Shangri La, the Shambhala organization, named after a mythological Himalayan kingdom, has become a rather visible and perhaps even occasionally eminent presence in Nova Scotian culture, education and business. The 450 American Buddhist immigrants and approximately 200 Nova Scotian-born followers have created Shambhala elementary and middle schools in Halifax, Shambhala Centres in St. Margaret’s Bay, Annapolis Royal, and a full-fledged monastery called Gampo Abbey in Pleasant Bay, Cape Breton. In addition to these spiritual centres, a major locus of dissemination is the aforementioned Shambhala Sun, which, at a circulation of 70,000 copies per issue in the United States, is the Canadian magazine with the most significant presence south of the border. The publication has in recent years featured first-person testimonials and articles from Beat poet Philip Walen, actor Richard Gere, Vanity Fair photographer Annie Liebowitz, and artist Alex Coleville, as well as a contribution from This Hour Has 22 Minutes star and Shambhala practitioner Cathy Jones about the challenges of establishing the first Shambhala workshop in Newfoundland. Following a disastrous five-year episode during which Trungpa’s hand-picked successor, known simply as the Regent, knowingly and fatally infected followers with the HIV virus (Kimber), composer Philip Glass and fiddler Ashley McIsaac played at the inauguration of the subsequent leader, Trungpa’s son, the Earth Protector.

The list of contributors to the magazine, as well as the presence of well-known figures at various Shambhala events (former Nova Scotia Premier John Savage and several major business leaders attended Earth Protector’s installation), suggests a rather integrated network of relationships between financial capital, artistic practice, politics, and spirituality within the organization and its activities. This dense matrix of associations speaks perhaps of the spirit of integration and accommodation of difference pursued by the movement’s founder. In a time before the crystallization of the Shambhala organization, Trungpa had been the founder and generative force behind the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics launched in Colorado in 1974, an irregular gathering of artists which featured the participation of Ginsberg, Meredith Monk, and William Borroughs among others. Addressing the question of Trungpa’s integration into North American culture, Ginsberg noted, He was able to tune into the nature of things and present them in a very simple way. He was a master of spoken language and that of course aided [his integration] a great deal as well as, I think [the fact that he also] absorbed high culture at Oxford, philosophy, and religion and hippie culture and beat culture and grunge culture and punk culture. But Trungpa took on the whole gamut of Americans—whether upper middle class, three-piece suit types or wild acid-heads—and he was able to talk to them. ("Nirvana in Nova Scotia")

A fan of live performance, but dismayed by what he perceived to be a lack of ability in North American actors, Trungpa also introduced remedial Tantric movement practices to members of the Open Theatre, Joseph Chaikin and, it is alleged, English director Peter Brook. Despite the countercultural cachet of his collaborators, Trungpa explained that in order to make a spiritual impact in North American society Shambhala followers must "cut off [their] long hair, put on neckties and re-enter the mainstream of American institutions and attempt to exert a wholesome influence from within." ("Nirvana in Nova Scotia")

It is perhaps important to note at this juncture that convincing scholarship on cultural consumerism in late capitalism suggests that the religious "global popular" is particularly difficult to historicize as a result of "the fragmentary and transcommunal nature of cosmopolitan religious thematics and dispositions" (Aravamudan 28). Given this challenge, certain rather gratuitous investigative strategies can become available to the commentator. Harvesting ironies resulting from the confluence of potentially superficial versions of Eastern religious practice, on one hand, and some of the more visibly hedonistic behaviors associated with an individualism run amok, on the other, can be as easy as shooting semiotized ducks in a barrel of discourse. Indeed, the risks of perpetuating Orientalist tropes of the "authoritarian, world-negating, [and] brainwashing" spiritual leader are significant in a scholarly climate where, as observers have noted, there exists an institutional prejudice against the "particularly evanescent and socially disruptive forms of group affiliation" that can arise from such encounters. It is clear from the literature surrounding the Shambhala movement that Trungpa’s followers—and many others who came into contact with him—knew him to be an engaging, genuine, and profoundly caring individual. More relevant to the discussion at hand, however, than Trungpa’s personal qualities is an examination of what has flowed from his organization on the level of the integration of spirituality, performance, and capital.

In a CBC television episode of Man Alive aired in 1995 entitled "Nirvana in Nova Scotia," David Swick, author of a history of the Nova Scotian Shambhala community, explained, speaking of Halifax, that "the best cafe in town is Buddhist-owned, the best bakery, a couple of the best restaurants." This somewhat surprisingly worldly pursuit of matters pecuniary at the heart of what St. Mary’s University (Halifax) professor and Shambhala practitioner Julia Sagebien describes as "a giant detox centre for materialism" (Aravamudan 26) has taken a significant leap over the past years with the founding of the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership, in 2001. This now annual gathering devoted to productively fusing spiritual and management practices counted 360 participants during its inaugural summer session at Halifax’s King’s College. The week, at a cost of $5000 per participant (how can we forget self-help guru Deepak Chopra’s assertion that "poverty is a reflection of an impoverished soul"? [qtd. in Aravamudan 39]), featured keynote addresses from top North American management specialists such as Dr. Margaret Wheatley, author of the bestselling Leadership and the New Science: Discerning Order in a Chaotic World, and David Isaacs, coconvener of the MIT’s Organizational Learning Centre’s Strategic Dialogue on Large Scale Systems Change. Most sessions featured Buddhist-inflected topics, such as a presentation by New York University’s Art Kleiner based on work he developed for Royal Dutch Shell to help corporations deal with the inevitabilities of change in a world of indeterminacy and flux and how managers can best identify and plan for "various possible futures" (Szostak). Numerous events featured both speakers and participants sitting on meditation cushions in gymnasia and other venues converted into meditation halls by the event’s organizers.

In addition to guided meditation and visualizations on such topics as organizational change and the successful negotiation of ethical conundrums arising from downsizing, those attending the inaugural Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program in 2001 engaged in "intense physical postures, sensory awareness exercises, and other practices involving movement, and design" ("Mudra: The Active Principle") initially transmitted by Trungpa and gathered under the heading of "Mudra Space Awareness." According to the instructor for the sessions, Dr. Craig Warren Smith, Mudra Space Awareness, which aimed at challenging his students "to extend the principles of meditation into ordinary everyday situations" (Shambhala International), had been developed by Trungpa between 1972 and 1976 and involved elements of Tibetan monastic dance and aspects of the contemporary Western theatre experiments of Grotowski, Brook, and Chaikin, as well as meditation-in-action. Concerning the development of Mudra Space Awareness, Smith, who had been part of a Berkeley-based Mudra group in the 1970s, notes that, Apart from an historic theatre workshop held in Colorado in 1972 and other informal gatherings held afterward, [Trungpa] never presented his teachings on Mudra in public settings. Very little was recorded. He gave out exercises to small practice groups in Boulder, Berkeley and New York City. They met as often as three times per week and occasionally held public performances. After being invited periodically to observe practice sessions, [Trungpa] offered comments and responded to questions. This commentary, over time, resulted in a body of work that only much later seemed to constitute a coherent set of teachings. (Smith)

Smith notes elsewhere that the Mudra work was "radical and raw," "briefly our community’s left wing" ("Rethinking Mudra"), and that "when it was introduced, those of us who loved Mudra Space Awareness couldn’t have told you why. Presented without a logical framework, it blew apart our concepts, stopped our minds, and left us… just there" ("Rethinking Mudra"). Smith, a former Visiting Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a meditation teacher, and entrepreneur who describes his career-long focus to be "enlightened self-interest" (Smith, Personal Interview) explains that, at their root, [t]he space awareness exercises can give us direct experience into seeing, hearing, touching, tasting. They convey a vocabulary for speaking about the peculiar interplay of forms and space that takes place in each of the sense fields. This knowledge is the first step towards developing a new sensibility. The exercises show us how to release the sense fields rather than hold them in a tight and mean-spirited grip. (Shambhala International)

The exercises, also offered by Smith as "First Person Science" training ("First Person"), are geared towards increased sensory awareness, include guided sitting meditation, "intensifications," group work, and poses. The intensifications involve,[…] drawing upon your own imagination to conceive of space crowding in around your body and your body mounting opposition. The body tenses all muscles. Psychologically as well as physically, one develops total engagement until there is seamless, nonfluctuating experience of total solidity, thus ‘intensification’. Generally, this experience is worked up from the feet through to the head. (Smith) Such a renegotiation of one’s relationship to full sensory experience, with periods of relaxation often following the intensification ("Rethinking Mudra"), can then, Smith asserts, result in increased freedom and creativity: Those who are skillful in improvisation or dance say their actions are merely dictated by the structure of their experience. Space awareness shows us that the same is true for ordinary experience. Spontaneity is not wildness. It is taking responsibility for what is already there. It means making gestures that reflect the up-to-date sensory content of each moment. (Smith)

Physical stances, group interaction, and accompanying side-coaching are intended to provoke strong psycho-physiological responses in the form of intense and or difficult emotions. These feelings must be then attended to and accepted with the objective of generating what could be most accurately described in shorthand Buddhist parlance as an attitude of non-attachment to unproductive reactive emotional responses. Analogous to aspects of the via negativa work that Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski developed to allow acting trainees to witness and experience the physical and psycho-physiological manifestations of psychic and physical blocks in their own and their colleagues’ bodies, the Mudra Space Awareness exercises taught at the first Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program were designed to allow participants to come to terms with potentially restrictive ways of identifying themselves, and one another. The intensifications, relaxations, and ensuing unblocking demand "that practitioners rouse the totality of their body/mind/emotions and then make a wrenching leap into boundless space" ("Rethinking Mudra"). Smith is quick to note that, By appearance, Mudra is not remarkable: a series of experiential exercises, performed in a sequence. [. . .] These are similar to any number of body-work methods, sensory awareness programs, or theatre training techniques that you see advertised on the telephone pole flyers of university towns everywhere. No big deal. ("Rethinking Mudra")Ultimately, the experience of Mudra, according to Smith, revolves around it being "a secular method for investigating the nondual nature of mind" ("Rethinking Mudra"), and this is the key to the efficacy of the integrated movement approach: What is a big deal is that Trungpa found a way of presenting reinforcing the idea of a separate self. That’s quite a feat because, as we know from [his] teachings, the logic that ego uses to confirm its own selfhood runs deep, not only in our thoughts, but also in the way our senses function. Beyond that, ego also shapes a distorted idea of the body, as if it were a nesting ground for something called me. ("Rethinking Mudra")

This "authentic" perception of nonduality is discussed by event organizers and participants in the Mudra training. In his opening address to the second annual Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program, Micheal Chender explained that "this training works with areas of being and knowing and community that are essential and that are often ignored" in management training, and he asserted that "it is impossible to integrate our vision and our own manifestation without actually working with the principles of authenticity on the level of perception and body" (Shambhala Institute). Following the first day of Mudra exercises at Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program, John Roy, resident of Falmouth, Nova Scotia and, in 2001, CEO of Summit Real Estate Trust, a group that managed over one billion dollars in assets at the time, explained that, "I am impressed by the whole communication I see here. You come to a diverse group of three hundred people who are total strangers and you became very aware of how many biases and prejudices you have based on totally visual cues. If you are open and receptive, you see those biases melt and disappear" (Shambhala Institute). This disappearance of bias, based on a recognition of "who people ‘really’ are, and what is really" (Shambhala Institute) occurring in the room and in the participant’s body, is intended to permit perception of, and appreciation for, the present moment. This dehistoricizing immediatism is alleged to allow for people’s authentic values to surface, for authentic relationships between participants to emerge and to create the space for the "authentic integrity and value" of one’s business work to emerge (Shambhala Institute).

The importance accorded to the experience of nonduality has specific roots. According to Lee Worley, former Open Theatre member and current professor of Theatre at the Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado, the Mudra practice, and its earlier manifestation, Mudra Space Awareness, ultimately derive from Tibetan theatre and Vajrayana Tantric dance practiced at the Surmang monastery where Trungpa was chief abbot before his flight to the West as part of the Tibetan diaspora following the invasion by the Chinese army in 1959 (Ahmed; Attisani; Pearlman; Worley). Buddhist scholar Peter Harvey explains, the aim of the Tantric Vajrayana adept [is] to become conscious of the identity between Vajra-sattva [the undualized fusion of voidness and compassion, or Nirvana][…] and his [or her] ‘own’ empty ‘nature,’ so as to ‘become’ such a ‘being’. To do this [is] to gain enlightenment, or siddhi, ‘success.’ (135) The means of accession to this state involves extensive and varied bodily practices including dance, meditation, and rights of purification. Attention is first paid to creating the ground for an identificatory fusion with an archetypal figure in the form of a deity representing one of the family of human emotions. Through the recognition of the contingency of that apparition, and by extension the contingency of all phenomena, the experience of Nirvana may be achieved. Performance specialist Syed Jamil Ahmed, who has studied Tantric techniques in Kathmandu, asserts that without the underlying practices, the techniques may be "exquisite, exotic, and whatever else that you may wish to add," but the absence of extensive preparatory psychophysical training will not permit one "the freedom to attempt to probe into experiencing […] nonduality"(178).

In a bid to avoid any prelapsarian elevation of the "original" Tibetan Tantric work, it is important to remember that, despite the attempts to accede to non-dual states, the family of Vajrayana Tantric techniques being practiced in Asia were and still are in cases themselves embedded in a hierarchical and gendered social context very frequently organized around regimes of exclusion based, ironically perhaps, on dualist categorizations with very material implications (i.e. no women practitioners, secret elite mystery cults, etc.) (178). In other words, Nirvana is not necessarily in Tibet either. Nonetheless, taken in the context of the complexity and commitment necessary to engage with the Vajrayana practices as they continue to be performed in, for example, Kathmandu, assertions from Authentic Leadership attendees of having reached a state of nonduality after a momentary engagement with a westernized form of the practice, begin, if they had not already, to sound like Tantric snake oil.

It is no surprise, considering both current and historical hegemonic efforts dedicated to naturalizing capitalist activity by appeals to metaphorical relationships between the corporation and the human body, as well as between the corporation and other "natural" systems, that bestselling management consultant Peter Senge has been involved with the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program. Senge’s presence at the Authentic Leadership Institute can be understood to be an integral part of the discursive arrangements produced and maintained at the 2001 gathering and serve as a useful frame within which to contextualize the efficacy of the Mudra Space Awareness work. Senge’s bestselling writing and highly sought-after consulting (The Journal of Business has named Senge as one of the 24 most influential management theorists of the twentieth century) is marked by what could generously be called a mock sophisticated—and even almost camp—spiritualized discourse of organismic organization related to the corporation. In a 2001 interview reprinted on the Shambhala Sun website, Senge pays homage to "ancient" notions that any organization of human beings "are living phenomena in a very real sense and they were appreciated in that spirit for a very long time" (McLeod). He juxtaposes this "ancient wisdom" with a more modern culprit: "Western Science," which has reduced us, sadly, to conceiving of corporations as "machines." The rest of his argument follows a predictable path, contributing to the mystification of the mechanisms of capital by calling, amongst other things, for a return to a conception of the corporation characterized by the seemingly and unproblematically trans-historical notion of what he calls the "institutional body" (McLeod). He erases any critical differentiations to be made between corporations and other organizations by suggesting that "schools and non-profit organizations" are also at fault: "There’s no one set of culprits. It’s all institutions." Of course, change for the better, he specifies, putting the sophist back into theosophistry, "must be both personal and institutional" (McLeod). This clearly is where the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program can contribute to his and others’ emerging corporate cosmology: by helping individuals accede to, and ecstatically fuse with, that ultimate reality, Senge’s implicit belief in the corporation’s voluptuous and manifold astral body.

In discussion with the very genial instructor Craig Smith, it would seem that he is unaware of the extent of the risk of hegemonic recuperation of using the Mudra practice in a corporate-oriented setting. Smith is a long-time meditation practitioner and instructor; he encourages the use of Mudra practice for the contemporary warrior wishing to "face discord directly and ‘create enlightened society,’" and also asserts that "Mudra exercises rip us from our dharmic comfort zones and give us the zest we need to take on the forces of materialism that are leading us rapidly into a dark age" ("Rethinking Mudra"). He believes that bringing the work directly to the corporate leaders is an important part of his project and, as a contemporary warrior, sets his form of cultural performance as a challenge against the high performance managers he works with. "You can always fail," he explained; "I worked with Bill Gates for a while and I didn’t get where I needed to with him" (Smith, Personal Interview), although current work with a Scandinavian communications giant on issues around spiritual computing are apparently looking promising. When asked to discuss the contradictions of big karma for big profits, Smith explained that participants of the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program were not entirely prepared to engage with the deeper aspects of the Mudra Space Awareness work that allow one to "develop an appetite and lust for changing over-bearing economic systems from within" by allowing an individual to "develop the skills to go beyond the fear of upsetting the apple cart." As a serious and committed practitioner, it would seem that Smith takes failures upon his own shoulders, rather than accepting that overbearing discursive determinants are working against the success of his unique and far-sighted challenge.

Whatever the intentions of the leaders, participants, and organizers of the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program, the Mudra Space Awareness cultural performance work undertaken there in 2001 was discursively approved by the naturalized tradition of "‘magpie’ raids on Eastern religious bodily practices," part of the "frantic assemblage of fragments of Wisdom from Eastern religious traditions in our culture [that] so often serves a wholly unquestioned narcissistic quest for gratification and pleasure, or a more insidious and pervasive ‘denial of death’" (Coakley 2). Practiced in this context, in such a small amount over a short period of time, the Mudra work provides a locus of authentification of the body’s responses to difficult circumstances. Without the opportunity to ripen in a practitioner over an extended period of time, it creates a pseudo-sacred environment which serves to both release and contain affective states, a psycho-spiritual technology for the outing and subsequent re-internalization, sublimation, and ultimate repression of difficulties arising from the fusion of the bodily imaginary with the myth of the ethereal corporate supra-organism.

Satire emerges as a familiar, if unscholarly response: "Having a hard time firing your staff? Feeling guilty about outsourcing to those underpaid workers overseas? Hey, feel it really intensely, then just let it go." This generation and simultaneous subjection of spiritual activity can also lead—as we have seen in performance scholarship around the release and subjection of energies associated with "blackness" in minstrelsy (See Lott)—to an excess of that which is to be contained escaping from the embodied and discursive containment to which hegemonic operations would have it relegated. Indeed, it is entirely possible that the very awareness tools used in the Mudra Space Awareness work could permit workshop participants to recognize the socio-historically contingent nature of the apparently "universal" character of the organizational frameworks and entities being communed with. Smith himself explains that "currently, the culture of meditation tends to privilege people who put their heads in the sand and gravitate towards gentler kinder systems," although "certain other people, a more rare kind, who develop a relationship with meditation find themselves turned off from an environment that clearly promotes materialism" (Smith, Personal Interview). If the types of activity evidenced at the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program—ones which conflate and recuperate cultural performance and the performance of spirituality into the discourse of performance management—continue to gain in popularity, let us hope that many participants will avail themselves of the latter karmic escape hatch. For those whose reigning hegemonized assumptions are simply amplified and consolidated by the Mudra practice and other similar work, the quality of potential trajectories would appear to be rather evident.

Unlike the current globally significant practice gathered under the rubric of "socially engaged Buddhism "first articulated in 1963 by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (Queen, Prebish, and Keon 2), in which affective and ideological resistance to various hegemonic formations can be channeled into direct compassion-inaction activity, the opportunist Authentic Leadership work acts to suppress, with a patois spiritual laminate, the contradictions of late capitalism back into those bodies most likely to endure them: those of the wealthy. Their moneyed souls are thereby released into engagement with a new product: a Gnostic experience of a morally sanctioned corporate transcendentalism. They return from their trances armed with evasive strategies with which to fortify their illiberal convictions about an acolyte’s entitlement to wealth ("it’s not about the profit," explains CEO John Roy, "it’s about the connections" [Shambhala Institute]) and seemingly oracular insight into the unpredictability of the corporate divine: "The organism," says Margaret Wheatley of the ethereal corporation, "chooses whether to notice something, then it chooses whether or not to be disturbed. If the organism chooses to be disturbed, it still retains the fundamental freedom to decide how it will respond. Obedience is not a natural life process"(McLeod).

Let us next take the purely Gnostic teaching of Paul in his first Letter to the Colossians.

Giving thanks to the Father who fits us for a share in the Inheritance of the Holy in the Light; who preserved us from the Power of Darkness, and translated us into the Kingdom of the Son of his Love, in Whom we have our Redemption, the Remission of Sins, Who is the Image of God, the Invisible, the First-born of every Foundation. For in Him are founded all things, in the Heavens and on Earth, visible and invisible, whether Thrones or Dominions, Rulerships or Powers. All things were founded through Him and for Him. And He is before all, and in Him all things unite (lit., stand together). And He is the Head of the Body of the Assembly; Who is the Beginning; the First-born from the Dead, that He might be in all things Himself supreme. For it seemed good that all the Fulness should dwell in Him.

The spirit and terminology of the whole passage is entirely Gnostic, and can only be understood by a student of Gnosticism. The identity of every Soul with the Over-Soul has been, is, and will be a fundamental doctrine of the Gnosis. The glorified Initiate, the Christ, is the man, who, perfected by the sufferings and consequent experience of many births, finally becomes at one with the Father, the World-Soul, from which he came forth, and at last arises from the Dead; he, indeed, is the first-born, the perfected, self-conscious Mind, or Man, containing in himself the whole Divine creation or Pleroma, for he is one with the Hierarchies of Spiritual Beings who gave him birth, and instead of being the Microcosm, as when among the Dead, has become the Macrocosm or the World-Soul itself. Through the power of this spiritual union do we win our Redemption from the bonds of matter, and thus attain the Remission of Sins, which, according to the wise Gnostics, was in the hand of the last and supreme Mystery- alone, our own Higher Self, that which is at the same time our Judge and Saviour, sending forth the Sons of its Love, all Rays of the great Ocean of Compassion, into the Darkness of Matter, that Matter may become self-conscious and so perfected. In plainer words, these Rays are each the Higher Ego in every child of the Man (Anthropos), proceeding from their Divine Source, Buddhi, itself that Ocean of Love and Compassion which is the Veil of the Innominable and Incognizable Atma.

-- The World-Soul, Lucifer, 5/15/1892

These fundamentally laissez faire principles would appear to further the emancipation of all bodies from their earthly states—a perversely paradoxical emancipation considering the embodied nature of the Mudra Space Awareness training discussed above—and lubricate the would-be inexorable rise of quasi-mystical corporate superstructures connected by luminous rhizomatic digital information networks. In the words of the authors of "Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age," "The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics and the politics of nations, wealth—in the form of physical resources—has been losing value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things" (Progress and Freedom Foundation).

Bobby was a cowboy, and ice was the nature of his game, ice from ICE, Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics. The matrix is an abstract representation of the relationships between data systems. Legitimate programmers jack into their employers' sector of the matrix and find themselves surrounded by bright geometries representing the corporate data.

Towers and fields of it ranged in the colorless non-space of the simulation matrix, the electronic consensus-hallucination that facilitates the handling and exchange of massive quantities of data. Legitimate programmers never see the walls of ice they work behind, the walls of shadow that screen their operations from others, from industrial-espionage artists and hustlers like Bobby Quine.

Bobby was a cowboy. Bobby was a cracksman, a burglar, casing mankind's extended electronic nervous system, rustling data and credit in the crowded matrix, monochrome nonspace where the only stars are dense concentrations of information, and high above it all burn corporate galaxies and the cold spiral arms of military systems...

Ice walls flick away like supersonic butterflies made of shade. Beyond them, the matrix's illusion of infinite space. It's like watching a tape of a prefab building going up; only the tape's reversed and run at high speed, and these walls are torn wings.

Trying to remind myself that this place and the gulfs beyond are only representations, that we aren't "in" Chrome's computer, but interfaced with it, while the matrix simulator in Bobby's loft generates this illusion . . . The core data begin to emerge, exposed, vulnerable.... This is the far side of ice, the view of the matrix I've never seen before, the view that fifteen million legitimate console operators see daily and take for granted.

The core data tower around us like vertical freight trains, color-coded for access. Bright primaries, impossibly bright in that transparent void, linked by countless horizontals in nursery blues and pinks.

But ice still shadows something at the center of it all: the heart of all Chrome's expensive darkness, the very heart...

[L]ines of neon woven like an Art Deco prayer rug...

The neon prayer rug on the screen shivered and woke as an animation program cut in, ice lines weaving with hypnotic frequency, a living mandala. Bobby kept punching, and the movement slowed; the pattern resolved itself, grew slightly less complex, became an alternation between two distant configurations. A first-class piece of work, and I hadn't thought he was still that good...

Too many stories in the Gentleman Loser; black ice is a part of the mythology. Ice that kills. Illegal, but then aren't we all? Some kind of neural-feedback weapon, and you connect with it only once. Like some hideous Word that eats the mind from the inside out. Like an epileptic spasm that goes on and on until there's nothing left at all...

And we're diving for the floor of Chrome's shadowcastle.

Trying to brace myself for the sudden stopping of breath, a sickness and final slackening of the nerves. Fear of that cold Word waiting, down there in the dark....

At the heart of darkness, the still center, the glitch systems shred the dark with whirlwinds of light, translucent razors spinning away from us; we hang in the center of a silent slow-motion explosion, ice fragments falling away forever, and Bobby's voice comes in across light-years of electronic void illusion "Burn the bitch down. I can't hold the thing back."

-- Burning Chrome, by William Gibson

What are the implications, we might ask, of such an assertion and, by association, the implications of the activities of the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Summer Program? What are the implications for the bodies of the exploited ever so far down the karmic chain of corporate being? What does Tibetan Tantric dance have to do with selling property in Halifax county?

My short answer to all three riddles: Everything.

_______________

Works Cited

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Coakley, Sarah, ed. Religion and the Body. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Daniels, Peter L. "Buddhist economics and the environment: material flow analysis and the moderation of society’s metabolism." International Journal of Social Economics 30.1-2 (2003): 8-33.

Deleuze, Gilles. "Post-Script for Societies of Control." October 59 (Winter 1992): 3-7. <http://www.n5m.org/n5m2/media/texts/deleuze.htm> Last accessed 10 April 2004.

"First Person Science Workshop. "Advertisement for workshop. Mudra Institute. <http://www.mudrainstitute.org/mi/firstperson-nyc.html>. Last accessed 1 June 2006.

Foot, Richard. "Halifax’s Tough Weather Attractive for Buddhists." Times-Colonist [Victoria] 22 December 2003: B4.

—. "An Unlikely Spiritual Epicentre." Ottawa Citizen 22 December 2003: A3.

Gould, Stephen J. "The Buddhist Perspective on Business Ethics: Experiential Exercises for Exploration and Practice." Journal of Business Ethics 14.1 (1995): 63-70.

Harder, Joseph, Peter J. Robertson, and Hayden Woodward. "The Spirit of the New Workplace: Breathing Life into Organization." Organizational Development Journal 22.2 (2004): 79-103.

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Hubbard, Barbara Marx. "Conscious Evolution: The Next Stage of Human Development." Systems Research and Behavioural Science 20.4 (2003): 359-70.

Kimber, Stephen "The Long Journey Here." Daily News [Halifax] 3 January 1995: 4.

Lott, Eric. Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.

McKenzie, Jon. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. New York and London: Routledge, 2001.

McLeod, Melvin. Interview. "Peter Senge and Margaret Wheatley on Changing How We Work Together." Shambhala Sun. January 2001. <http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2382&Itemid=244>. Last accessed 17 February 2004.

"Mudra: The Active Principle of Meditation". Sustainable Resources 2003 Pre-conference Flyer: Mudra Workshop. <http://www.sustainablere-sources.org/sr2003/pdf/preconf_mudra.pdf>. Last accessed 1 June 2006.

"Nirvana in Nova Scotia." Man Alive. Dir. David Cherniack, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 2 February 1995.

Novak, Micheal. Towards a Theology of the Corporation. Washington: American Institute for Public Policy Research, 1981.

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Pearlman, Ellen. Tibetan Sacred Dance. Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2002

Pedersen, Andy. "Still Howling." Daily News [Halifax] 19 May 1995: 41.

Progress and Freedom Foundation. "Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age." <http://www.pff.org/issues-pubs/futureinsights/fi1.2magnacarta.html>. Last accessed 20 February 2004

Queen, Christopher, Charles Prebish, and Damien Keown, eds. Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism. London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003.

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—. Personal Interview. 6 June 2006.

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Part 1 of 4

‘Not The Tibetan Way’: The Dalai Lama’s Realpolitik Concerning Abusive Teachers
by Stuart Lachs & Rob Hogendoorn
4/18/21
https://openbuddhism.org/not-the-tibeta ... -teachers/

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-- The Shadow of the Dalai Lama: Sexuality, Magic and Politics, by Victor and Victoria Trimondi, translated by Mark Penny
-- The Other Side of Eden: Life With John Steinbeck, by John Steinbeck IV & Nancy Steinbeck
-- The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant, by John Riley Perks
-- Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chogyam Trungpa, by Diana J. Mukpo with Carolyn Rose Gimian
-- Buddha's Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today, by Erik D. Curren
-- Moving Against the Stream: The Birth of a new Buddhist Movement, by Sangharakshita [Dennis Lingwood]
-- Oracles and Demons of Tibet: The Cult and Iconography of the Tibetan Protective Deities, by Rene De Nebesky-Wojkowitz
-- Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition, by Judith Snodgrass
-- Red Shambhala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia, by Andrei Znamenski
-- Report to the Community on the Wickwire Holm Claims Investigation Into Allegations of Sexual Misconduct, by Shambhala Interim Board: Veronika Bauer, Mark Blumenfeld, Martina Bouey, John Cobb, Jen Crow, Sara Lewis, Susan Ryan, Paulina Varas
-- Sex Contract, by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
-- The Absent Oxonian -- Musings on Trungpa’s Faux Academic Credentials & Why So Few Cared to Inquire, by Charles Carreon
-- The Buddha From Brooklyn, by Martha Sherrill
-- The Great Naropa Poetry Wars, With a Copious Collection of German Documents Assembled by the Author, by Tom Clark
-- “Buddha-gate:” Scandal and cover-up at Naropa revealed, by Robert Woods
-- Behind the Veil of Boulder Buddhism: Ed Sanders, The Party, by Ed Sanders
-- Spiritual Obedience: The transcendental game of follow the leader, by Peter Marin
-- The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing and the Western Creation of Sacred Landscape, by Peter Bishop
-- Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism, by June Campbell
-- Twilight of the Tulkus, by Charles Carreon
-- Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer
-- The Buddhism of Tibet, or Lamaism With Its Mystic Cults, Symbolism and Mythology, and in its Relation to Indian Buddhism, by Laurence Austine Waddell, M.B., F.L.S., F.R.G.S.
-- The Buddhist Catechism, by Henry S. Olcott
-- The Golden Bough: A study of magic and religion, by Sir James George Frazer
-- The Gospel of Buddha, Compiled From Ancient Records, by Paul Carus
-- The Jung Cult: Origins of a Charismatic Movement, by Richard Noll
-- The Kingdom of Agarttha [Agartha] [Agarthi]: A Journey Into the Hollow Earth, by Marquis Alexandre Saint-Yves D'Alveydre
-- The Life of Buddha as Legend and History, by Edward J. Thomas
-- The Spalding Trust and the Union for the Study of the Great Religions: H.N. Spalding's Pioneering Vision, by Edward Hulmes
-- Three Years in Tibet, by Shramana Ekai Kawaguchi
-- UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, by Julian Huxley
-- "Democratic Imperialism": Tibet, China, and the National Endowment for Democracy, by Michael Barker
-- Tibet, the ‘great game’ and the CIA, by Richard M. Bennett
-- Grant Funding for the Tibetan Exile Community Thanks to USAID, by Tenzin Samten
-- Journal of the Buddhist Text Society of India, Volume 4, edited by Sarat Chandra Das, C.I.E.
-- Tibet Society: Our Story, by tibetsociety.com
-- Tibetan Friendship Group, by http://www.tibet.org
-- Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth, by Michael Parenti
-- Among the Tibetans, by Isabella L. Bird
-- Tibet and the British Raj, 1904-47: The Influence of the Indian Political Department Officers, by Alexander McKay
-- The CIA's Secret War in Tibet, by Kenneth Conboy and James Morrison

[Note by Nancy Steinbeck: ‘Not The Tibetan Way’: The Dalai Lama’s Realpolitik Concerning Abusive Teachers

This excellent article by Rob Hogendoorn and Stuart Lachs exposes the shadow side of the Dalai Lama. In it, they quote excerpts from my memoir, The Other Side of Eden.

‘It is not the Tibetan way to confront errant behavior on the part of the lamas. We prefer to let them learn about their mistakes on their own,’ the Dalai Lama told John Steinbeck IV and his wife Nancy. The year was 1989, and the American Nobel laureate’s journalist son and his wife pressed the Tibetan leader to introduce a system of checks and balances, to counteract the prevalent abuse of power by lamas in the West. Theirs was a wasted effort, as it turns out. This becomes clear in John and Nancy Steinbeck’s memoir The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck (2001).

During the preceding years, the American couple had witnessed up close, the destructive behavior of their own Buddhist guru, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoché. John Steinbeck IV first met Trungpa in 1971, and Nancy Steinbeck first met him in 1975. While Trungpa’s alcoholism was open and well known, his use of cocaine, the sleeping pill Seconal, and at least on one occasion, LSD was kept hidden from the majority of his followers. His incessant substance abuse and predatory promiscuity, including with minors, wreaked havoc in his Vajradhatu community in Boulder, Colorado, but also set an example for the abuse that took place at his other centers across the western world.]



Is the Dalai Lama personally accountable for his enabling behavior towards the abusive Tibetan Buddhist lamas and violent spiritual teachers he is being warned about? Does he take ownership of ignoring the plight of victims and survivors who follow his advice and “out” abusive teachers at great personal risk? How does the Dalai Lama judge the Tibetan lamas and other spiritual leaders he continues to endorse after they have been exposed? Cui bono: to whom (or what) is it a benefit? To answer these and other questions, this article examines the Dalai Lama’s conduct towards four abusive and even criminal spiritual leaders that he endorsed in the past 50 years. To bring the imperatives and motives that governed the Dalai Lama’s discharge of his temporal and spiritual duties during that era into focus, we take his own view of his institution—that of the Dalai Lama lineage—into account. Evidently, the Dalai Lama’s religious realpolitik concerning these four abusive, criminal leaders won the day—to the detriment of people he could have placed out of harm’s way by expressing his disapproval in public, and in time. By letting the victims and survivors do the hard things while he focusses on the continuity of Tibetan institutions, including his own, the Dalai Lama’s conduct matches that of his religious peers—other media-savvy, power-wielding priests.

This long-read makes use of numeric endnotes that open on hover and take you to the endnote at the bottom of the page on click. Clicking the blue thumbnail at the end of the listed endnotes takes you back to where it was inserted into the text. The captioned images will enlarge in a new tab on click

This article is a joint effort of Stuart Lachs (b. 1940) and Rob Hogendoorn (b. 1964), both of who have been involved as practitioners of Buddhism for many years. Stuart has been a practitioner of Zen and Ch’an Buddhism beginning in 1967. Rob has been a practitioner of the Geluk sect of Tibetan Buddhism since the early 1990s. Both of us have spent much time at Buddhist centers and monasteries. Stuart in Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, as well a number of centers in the USA. Rob in Europe and India. We both continue to practice today. Having practiced for many years, each in our respective traditions, we have witnessed problems that arose within our respective groups. Commonly these problems are not visible to the casual observer or even, for one reason or another, to a long-time practitioner. Yet, these problems strike us as man-made and integral to all religious endeavor.

Integral: necessary to make a whole complete; essential or fundamental.
"games are an integral part of the school's curriculum"

And so, besides being practitioners, we have also looked at Tibetan Buddhism and Zen/Ch’an respectively with a critical eye, especially so as they are practiced in the west. We have brought in disciplines, such as sociology, history, and religion from outside of Buddhism to help understand what we were seeing and experiencing as insiders, that is, active practitioners in our respective traditions.

We both have over the years written critically about our respective traditions. An easy search on the internet will turn up most of our work. In doing so, we think you will see how involved we are in Buddhism. We also have felt the wrath of people who do not take lightly having their practice of Buddhism and Buddhist leaders being looked at closely and questioned. In a sense, we are now looking, simultaneously, as both insiders and outsiders, at the 14th Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism. Over our years of friendship and collaboration, we have seen certain similar features between Tibetan Buddhism and Zen/Ch’an Buddhism. This may not be as surprising as one may think, as these are traditions that place much importance on wisdom, hierarchy, and enlightened leaders. These leaders, whether titled Lama, Rinpoche, Tulku, Roshi, Guru, or Master, are supposedly beyond the understanding and, importantly, the critical view of ordinary folk—that is, you and us. We beg to differ, and this article demonstrates why.

Introduction

In this article, we examine the 14th Dalai Lama dealings with abusive and criminal teachers in the 1970s through 2010s. First, we will explain why it is appropriate to view the Dalai Lama as an ordinary priest, going about his duties in the ways ordinary priests do.1 We will then describe the Dalai Lama’s relations with four abusive teachers—Buddhist and non-Buddhist—he was being warned about, and the enabling effect his conduct has. Finally, we will discuss some consistent patterns that emerge from our close examination of the Dalai Lama’s behavior, as well as the dysfunction of ordinary feedback mechanisms that could have him change his ways.

We will take the Dalai Lama at his word and see how his word matches his actions. And in doing so, we will return him to the world he shares with the rest of us. But first, to value the Dalai Lama’s self-defined mission properly, let us briefly consider the political, this-worldly nature of the office he holds.

Political Innovation

The ancient practice of formally instating reincarnated lamas, commonly called trülkus, was a political innovation native to Tibet that developed between the 11th and 14th centuries.2 Its worldly utility was aptly summed up thus: ‘The tulku model provided a political counterpoint to the power of the nobility, a rallying point during times of national turmoil, and a means of succession among celibate monastics.’3 Tibetans took to the idea en masse: Through the ages, many hundreds major and minor trülku lineages, some say thousands, became firmly intrenched.4 Quite literally, these trülku lineages took on a life of their own. While traditional screening of trülkus has lapsed since the 1960s, their numbers have increased so much that Tibetan exiles now talk of a ‘trülku boom’ in a deprecating way.5

The Taiwan Connection

Soon after leaving Rumtek, Situ found that his ambition would take him far. Outside of the stuffy atmosphere of the Karmapa's cloister, Situ made friends easily. In the days when Tibetan lamas were still considered exotic by outsiders, Situ connected on a human level with spiritual seekers from both East and West. Former Rumtek Abbot Thrangu became Situ's mentor after the two left the Karmapa's monastery. Thrangu introduced his protege to people such as Taiwanese minister Chen Lu An who would provide valuable support to Situ to achieve his vision for his own palatial monastery and later, for the Karma Kagyu.

During the 1980s, Thrangu made several visits to Taiwan, a Buddhist stronghold where interest in Tibetan teachers was growing as rapidly as this Asian Tiger's booming export economy. It was well known among Tibetan lamas that the best fund-raising was to be had in the overseas Chinese communities of East and Southeast Asia and North America.

"In 1984, Thrangu Rinpoche came up with an idea to get money in Taiwan," said Jigme Rinpoche, Shamar's brother, a lama in his own right and the director of two large monasteries in France since the mid-seventies. Like Shamar, Jigme lived at Rumtek in the sixties and seventies. Now in his late fifties, the soft-spoken, baby-faced Jigme exudes an air of motherly care that seems ill-suited to controversy; Yet, he has been the most outspoken of Shamar's supporters in criticizing Thrangu's role.

"Thrangu Rinpoche chose a monk, he was called Tendar," Jigme said. "He left Rumtek with Thrangu Rinpoche in 1975 and followed him to his retreat place Namo Buddha in Kathmandu. Thrangu Rinpoche had the idea to present this Tendar as a high lama."

With specific instructions from Thrangu, the new "Tendar Tulku Rinpoche" went to Taipei with the credentials of a spiritual master, in order to teach and raise funds for Thrangu's work in Nepal and elsewhere. Jigme told me that "Thrangu Rinpoche asked his own monks in Taiwan, who knew that Tendar was merely an ordinary monk, to keep his secret and pretend that Tendar was a high lama." The monks in Taiwan went along with Tendar's masquerade until the following year when Tendar himself, apparently fearful of discovery, backed out of the scheme, but not before raising enough money to demonstrate the potential of this approach to his boss Thrangu Rinpoche.

Thrangu later elaborated on this strategy and reportedly went on to promote dozens of undistinguished lamas to rinpoches. "These lamas owed their new status and loyalty to Thrangu Rinpoche personally," Jigme explained. "Later, Situ Rinpoche followed his lead, recognizing more than two hundred tulkus in just four months during 1991, as we learned from our contacts in Tibet."

In 1988, while traveling in Taiwan, Thrangu met with Chen Lu An. "Mr. Chen approached Thrangu Rinpoche with a plan to raise millions of dollars for the Karma Kagyu in Taiwan," explained Jigme Rinpoche. In exchange for a percentage of donations, a kind of sales commission that would go to his own Guomindang party, Chen offered to conduct a large-scale fund-raising campaign. Chen asked Thrangu to convey his proposal to the four high lamas of the Karma Kagyu: Shamar, Situ, Jamgon, and Gyaltsab Rinpoches.

Together, according to Jigme -- who said the Rumtek administration received reports from a dozen loyal monks in Taiwan who heard about this plan from their devotees and other Tibetans on the island -- Thrangu and Chen worked out the details of a plan to raise as much as one hundred million dollars by finding a Karmapa and then touring him around Taiwan.

Beforehand, they would create interest with a publicity campaign announcing the imminent arrival of a "Living Buddha" and promising that whoever had the chance to see the Karmapa and offer him donations would be enlightened in one lifetime. On his arrival, the tulku would perform the Black Crown ceremony at dozens of Tibetan Buddhist centers and other venues on the island.

"With such a plan," Jigme said, "according to our monks on Taiwan, Mr. Chen assured Thrangu Rinpoche that he would be able to get between fifty and a hundred people to donate one million dollars each, along with hundreds of others who would give smaller amounts."

According to Jigme's sources, Thrangu asked Chen to keep the plan to himself. He promised Chen he would personally inform the Karma Kagyu rinpoches of their plan and Chen's offer to carry it out. However, when Thrangu returned to India, he did not share the plan with Shamar, Jamgon, or Gyaltsab, but only with Tai Situ. Situ was reportedly excited by the plan. "Soon after," Jigme explained, "Thrangu Rinpoche took Situ Rinpoche on a secret trip to Taiwan to meet with Mr. Chen."

"Together, the three worked out the details of a fund-raising tour for their future Karmapa. The plan was worked out at least four years before they announced Ogyen Trinley. Situ Rinpoche and Thrangu Rinpoche wanted to bring Gyaltsab Rinpoche into their plans, but they didn't think they could trust Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche." In any event, they were apparently certain that Shamar would not agree to participate and would spoil the plan, probably exposing it as he had exposed an earlier idea of Thrangu's, to take over the Karmapa's Kaolung Temple in Bhutan.

By 1973, the dozens of monks that Thrangu had brought into exile in 1959 still lingered at a refugee camp in northern India, in uncomfortable conditions. Thrangu had long sought his own cloister in which to house them. He set his eye on one of the Karmapa's monasteries in Bhutan for this purpose. Originally a gift of the grandmother of the current king, the Kaolung Temple was located within the campus of a large secondary school in eastern Bhutan.

Abbot Thrangu must have known that the sixteenth Karmapa would not willingly grant him control of the temple. But Thrangu apparently thought that if he offered his monks as "caretakers," that he could quietly place more and more monks there, eventually making control of the temple a fait accompli. Thrangu shared the whole scheme with Shamar, asking for his help. Thrangu must have thought that he could trust his former student. But he was wrong in this. Shamar immediately shared his former teacher's plan with with Topga, who had no choice but to inform the sixteenth Karmapa, thus earning Thrangu a rebuke from the sixteenth Karmapa.

"Soon afterwards, the abbot resigned his duties at Rumtek," Jigme said. "Ever since that, Thrangu Rinpoche behaved coldly towards Shamar Rinpoche. Therefore, according to our monks in Taiwan, Thrangu told Mr. Chen that under no circumstances should Shamar Rinpoche hear of their dealings."

Khenpo Chodrak and other lamas who managed Rumtek before Situ and Gyaltsab took over the monastery in 1993 have confirmed that they received similar information from monks in Taiwan at the time. Of course, even if Chen and Thrangu were planning to tour the Karmapa around Taiwan as a fund-raiser, we cannot know what they would have done with the donations. It is possible that they would have subsidized expanded Buddhist missionary work. It is also possible, as Jigme has suggested, that the money would have been used to build support for Situ and his allies among local politicians in Sikkim and elsewhere.

***

By mid-morning, a total crowd of more than a thousand of Tai Situ's supporters had assembled in the monastery's courtyard. A tense standoff began outside the main temple. The Rumtek monks responsible for the shrine room locked the entrance and refused to hand over the keys. Situ and Gyaltsab led a crowd to the temple, and sat down in front of the locked doors. They held incense and chanted Karmapa chenno (Karmapa hear me), the mantra of the Karmapas. Their followers clamored for action from behind them.

The Rumtek monks began to lose control over the situation. Soon, officers sent by the Sikkim chief of police began to intervene on the side of the aggressors. "This was crossing the line between church and state, which broke India's constitution," Shamar said. "We can only guess that Mr. Bhandari must have had a very strong incentive to take such a risk." Bhandari knew that New Delhi could have taken strong measures against him for breaching the constitutional wall between church and state, up to dissolving his government and putting him in prison. As it turned out, after the Rumtek takeover, the central government did initiate an investigation into Bhandari's role to determine if his Sikkim administration had unlawfully interfered in religious affairs.

Shamar's supporters have claimed that Bhandari probably received a payment as high as one million dollars from Situ and Gyaltsab, to send state police and security forces into Rumtek in response to an incident that the two rinpoches would provoke. The money came, allegedly, from Situ's Taiwanese supporter, former government official Chen Lu An. But the only evidence for this payment, aside from hearsay. is inferential: Shamar's followers theorize that for Bhandari to openly defy India's constitution by invading a religious center, and thus risk punishment from New Delhi, the chief minister must have been well rewarded. However, both newspaper reports and government investigators have documented that Chen Lu An delivered a payment of $1.5 million to Bhandari a few weeks after the Rumtek takeover.

According to Indian journalist Anil Maheshwari, Chen visited India between November 28 and December 4, 1993 to attend a meeting organized by Karma Topden. As we have seen Topden was a leader of Situ's Joint Action Committee in Sikkim and the father of the would-be Gyathon Tulku, rejected by the Rumtek administration in the eighties. Situ Rinpoche was also present at this meeting, and Shamar's supporters claim that this meeting was connected to Bhandari receiving a second payment from Chen for the chief minister's role in the takeover of Rumtek four months earlier, in August. The Indian government launched an investigation, and in January 1994, the Ministry of External Affairs in New Delhi banned Chen from re-entering India.

***

In November 1999, Thaye Dorje accepted an invitation to make a tour of Southeast Asia. This would be his first trip abroad. He met with thousands of devotees at dharma centers in Singapore and Malaysia. But he almost did not make it into Taiwan, according to Ngedon Tenzin. Earlier, we encountered him as the senior monk-official at Rumtek who had his monk's robe wrapped around his neck by angry local supporters of Situ when he and Gyaltsab took over the Karmapa's cloister in August 1993. Since 2004, as we have seen, Ngedon has served as the general secretary of Thaye Dorje's labrang, the post held by Topga Rinpoche until his death from cancer in 1997.

"Our staff obtained a Taiwanese visa for Gyalwa Karmapa Thaye Dorje weeks before he was supposed to enter Taiwan. We used the diplomatic passport issued to him by the Bhutanese government," Ngedon said. "But the day before he was due to fly into Taipei airport, officials in the Foreign Ministry tried to stop His Holiness Karmapa from coming in because of a technicality."

Immigration officials noticed that his passport said that Thaye Dorje was born in Tibet. As a result of its strained relations with Beijing, the Taiwanese government required travelers born in China to obtain a special permit to enter the island nation. Only the timely intervention of one of Thaye Dorje's supporters in Taipei saved the trip. This devotee used his influence in the Foreign Ministry to convince the manager of the relevant office to remain open after normal closing time at five o'clock to process an emergency permit for Thaye Dorje. The tulku was able to obtain clearance and fly into Taipei the next day.

Ngedon suspects that Chen Lu An, who by this time was a former government official but one who still enjoyed influence in the tight-knit administration of the island nation, tried to block Thaye Dorje's entry into Taiwan. "Through our devotees in Taiwan" we heard that Mr. Chen had already lined up perhaps fifty people willing to pay one million dollars each to carry the box for the Black Crown and hand it to Ogyen Trinley during the Black Crown ceremony," Ngedon said.

Here we might recall that Jigme Rinpoche accused former Rumtek Abbot Thrangu of planning with Chen to tour the next Karmapa around the island to raise funds, as we saw in chapter 8. Now, it appeared that Chen had started to put a similar plan into action with Tai Situ.

According to Ngedon, Chen had even more Taiwanese pledged to pay five hundred thousand dollars each to hand Ogyen Trinley the so-called Body, Speech, and Mind Objects during the ceremony -- a stupa or sacred pagoda, a statue of the Buddha, and a text of Buddhist scriptures. "Mr. Chen had made commitments to Karma Kagyu lamas in Taiwan, as well as monasteries around the world, from Kathmandu to New York, to distribute these funds. If His Holiness Thaye Dorje came to Taiwan, Mr. Chen's plan would be spoiled. We heard that he was practically sleeping in front of the Foreign Ministry office to stop Karmapa Thaye Dorje from getting into Taiwan."

-- Buddha's Not Smiling: Uncovering Corruption at the Heart of Tibetan Buddhism Today, by Erik D. Curren

As a matter of course, formally instated trülkus attracted their own dedicated following and prosperous patrons. Amassing rights of property and considerable wealth of their own, aside from whatever religious function serve, effectively turns their offices into religious corporations. And so, the orderly passage of power, assets and other property, as well as followers and sponsors, from one deceased trülku to the next became a priority.6 With each consecutive incumbent, the self-perpetuating power and symbolical capital of these lineages grew. Fourteen generations later, many find it impossibly hard to imagine Tibetan Buddhism without them.7


Martin Brauen: ‘The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History’ (2005)

To invest the executive powers of the head of state in one such lineage, that of the Dalai Lamas, is a further political enhancement of the original trülku idea.8 This custom began in the 17th century and, once again, was motivated by the worldly needs of the day.9 In 1642, the 5th Dalai Lama was bestowed with this title by the Mongol leader Güshi Khan. He and his Mongol patron thereby established joint temporal and religious rule of Central Tibet—at least in theory. As Georges Dreyfus summarizes: ‘Instead of insisting on continuous control of the monastic order by political authorities, in Tibet monastic groups have tended to take over the instruments of political domination. The institution of incarnated lama manifests this unique Tibetan solution.’10

Savvy Political Operator

Most Dalai Lamas, however, turned out to be ineffectual leaders, whose precarious authority was curbed by powerful or even devious patrons, ministers, and regents. Only three incumbent Dalai Lamas capitalized on the politics of their day to actively lead the Tibetan nation. They are called ‘the Great Fifth,’ the Great Thirteenth,’ and ‘the Great Fourteenth,’ respectively. It is with good reason that these three great leaders are seen as savvy political operators.

Given the political nature of the institutions he embodies—that of a trülku and Dalai Lama—it is hardly surprising that the present Dalai Lama does not believe that they are integral to Buddhism. Rather, he sees these institutions as the products of their time—to be changed or abolished at will. Indeed, in the 1960s through 2010s the Dalai Lama consistently argued that the widespread instating of trülkus has outlived its purpose. He did so on the basis of decidedly this-worldly considerations.11

The Dalai Lama relinquished his political authority and abdicated the throne as Tibetan head of state in 2011. At that time, he transferred the political leadership of the Tibetan exiles to the Harvard-educated Tibetan lawyer Lobsang Sangay, who is called Sikyong or President.12 Even so, the Dalai Lama continued to call his own office a ‘man-made institution’ that could cease any time.13 Indeed, he called the Dalai Lama institution ‘backward.’14 In 2017, he stated that ‘lama institutions’ that create ‘lama politics’ must end, because they reflect badly on Buddhist monastics.15

A year later, the Dalai Lama reiterated that ‘the system of recognizing incarnations of previous spiritual masters is a Tibetan cultural tradition. It is not a practice taught by the Buddha. In the 1960s I discussed limiting the number of tulkus, but one adviser told me that would be difficult because it is the Tibetan’s custom. Nowadays being recognized as a rinpoche has become a position of social status, not one of religious import, and this is not healthy.’16 News reports made clear that he actually said that the ‘lama institution’ has ‘feudal’ origins and must end.17

The Last Dalai Lama?

Throughout the 14th Dalai Lama’s reign, he kept Tibetans dangling with the possibility that he might be ‘The Last Dalai Lama’—effectively a form of political blackmail. He frequently hinted—and sometimes threatened—that his lineage will end with him. Already in 1975, he told a BBC-reporter that he believed that he might be the last incumbent.18 In 1976, the Dalai Lama denounced the perceived materialism and factionalism of Tibetan exiles in so many words, and refused to accept their ritual long-life offering—tantamount to a threat of abandoning the Tibetan people to their fate.19 In 2014, once again, the Dalai Lama told BBC Newsnight that he might be the last to hold the title.20 Two years later, people close to him discussed the Dalai Lama’s succession in the documentary The Last Dalai Lama?21

Apparently, though, the historical origins of the Dalai Lama institution are of less concern to the religious heads of all Tibetan traditions, for their recent resolutions attempt to preordain the matter: ‘The present status of the Tibetan people being extremely critical, all Tibetans genuinely wish for the continuation of the Institution and Reincarnation of the Dalai Lama in the future. We therefore strongly supplicate to His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama for the same.’22 With this, the religious heads effectively short-circuit the decision-making process. And so, although the Dalai Lama himself argued that his office is ‘feudal’ or ‘backward,’ becoming the 15th Dalai Lama seems to be his predestined end. Here, David Graeber’s dictum ‘one should never underestimate the power of institutions to try to preserve themselves,’ comes to mind.23

‘Will He Poison The Baby Dalai Lama?’

Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1935) is perhaps the best-known Tibetan in the world. He is better known as the Dalai Lama, to be precise, the 14th holder of the title of Dalai Lama.24 That Tenzin Gyatso lived long enough to assume the powers of the 14th Dalai Lama was not a foregone conclusion even after he was recognized as such. Since 1805, just one out of five Dalai Lamas had reached adulthood. The others—that is, the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th—died mysteriously of “stomach trouble.” It is not unlikely they were poisoned.25


‘Picture of the week: The King-Regent of Tibet’ (‘Life Magazine,’ 1940)

Absent the Chinese occupation in 1950, following precedent, a regent would have ruled Tibet until at least the 14th Dalai Lama’s 18th birthday. In 1940, Life magazine had a full-page photo of the regent of the day with the caption: “The King-Regent of Tibet: will he poison the baby Dalai Lama?” Instead, the regent himself was murdered a few years later, while he was imprisoned inside the young Dalai Lama’s Potala Palace in the Tibetan capital Lhasa. Gyello Döndrup, one of the elder brothers of the Dalai Lama, alleges that their father suffered a similar fate.26

Despite the clear political and power-broking aspects connected to the position of Dalai Lama, its 14th office holder has become the world’s leading symbol of peace, compassion, timeless wisdom, human kindness, and non-violence. He is viewed by Tibetans as the physical manifestation of Avalokiteśvara, the Bodhisattva of compassion, while many others in addition to Tibetans, believe he is a living saint. 27

He is commonly referred to as His Holiness even by clearly secular commentators.28 Though the Dalai Lama won the Noble Peace Prize in 1989, among other international awards, he usually describes himself as a ‘simple monk.’29 Yet truth be told, the Dalai Lama’s real-time exercise of priestly authority in important cases, does call into question his saintly image. This is what this article will show.

A Not So Simple Monk


President George W. Bush with his painting of the Dalai Lama (Mickey Lemle, The Last Dalai Lama, 2016)

In addition to being a simple monk, the Dalai Lama is a consummate scholar, a charismatic rhetorician, an uncommonly effective orator, a shrewd priest, and an experienced politician. He surely ranks first among the longest-ruling religious leaders: The Dalai Lama saw no less than eight Roman-Catholic Popes reside on the Apostolic Throne of St. Peter in Rome. Having assumed full religious and political power in 1950, his reign is longer than that of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was the first American president to send him a gift—an exclusive Patek Philippe watch.30

"She is examining one of the gifts, a chronographic watch which tells the time of day, the day of week, month of year, and moon phases." -- Inside Tibet, by Office of Strategic Services

-- Coocoola [Kukula] of Sikkim: Lacham Kusho, That's Going with the Gods, by Simon Schreyer

The Dalai Lama was alive during the inauguration of 15 US presidents. He has met the Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and erstwhile Vice-President Joe Biden in private. In 2007, he received the Congressional Gold Medal from George W. Bush during a ceremony at Capitol Hill—the first time an American President met the Dalai Lama in public.31


The 14th Dalai Lama & Chairman Mao of the Chinese Communist Party (1954)

As a young man, the Dalai Lama traveled through China between July 1954 and June 1955, repeatedly meeting Chairman Mao of the Chinese Communist Party and the first prime minister, Zhou Enlai. From November 1956 until March 1957, he sojourned in India, to attend the 2,500th birth anniversary of the historical Buddha. He met prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and other dignitaries there and, once again, Zhou Enlai.32 These tours thrust him into the limelight of modern media, so that by now the Dalai Lama has at least 65 years of political negotiating, public speaking, and media experience under his belt.33

Towards the close of 1956, Delhi hosted a major international Buddhist gathering that was Freda's introduction to the Tibetan schools of Buddhism, which are in the Mahayana tradition as distinct from the Theravada school which is predominant in Burma. This Buddha Jayanti was to celebrate the 2,500th anniversary of the Buddha's life. The Indian government wanted Tibet's Buddhist leaders to attend, particularly the Dalai Lama, who was that rare combination of temporal ruler and spiritual leader of his people. The Chinese authorities initially said no but at the last minute relented. Jawaharlal Nehru was at Delhi airport to welcome the twenty-one year old Dalai Lama on his first visit to India; the young Tibetan leader had at this stage not made up his mind whether he would return to his Chinese-occupied homeland or lead a Tibetan independence movement in exile. Freda played a role in welcoming the Tibetan delegation to the Indian capital. 'The radiance and good humour of the Dalai Lama was something we shall never forget,' she told Olive Chandler. 'I also got a chance of shepherding the official tour of the International delegates to India's Buddhist shrines and made many new friends.'18 A snatch of newsreel footage shows Freda Bedi at the side of the Dalai Lama at Ashoka Vihar, the Buddhist centre outside Delhi where the Bedi family had camped out a few years earlier. Both Kabir and Guli were also there, the latter peering out nervously between a heavily garlanded Dalai Lama and her sari-clad mother.19 Freda also received the Dalai Lama's blessing.

-- Excerpt from Chapter 12: Buddha and Baba, from The Lives of Freda: The Political, Spiritual and Personal Journeys of Freda Bedi, by Andrew Whitehead

William Myers et al., ‘Man Of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet’ (2016)

The imputed benevolence of his title precedes him since the days before he was born. This lends a certain lustre to the Dalai Lama’s presence that even professional skeptics find hard to resist.34 Indeed, Tibet House US had the temerity to turn him into a comic character in a graphic novel, to wit a caricature of his normal self—and of Tibet and the Tibetans too.35

-- Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet (Tibetan Art and Culture) Hardcover – Illustrated, December 13, 2016, by William Meyers (Author), Robert A.F. Thurman (Author), Michael G. Burbank (Author)

So, to bring us down to earth, perhaps with a bump, let us briefly look at his involvement with the notorious Nxivm-cult.36 This serves as a first-pass overview of a typical real-life situation in the Dalai Lama’s day-to-day interactions with other teachers and priests.

-- Sara Bronfman’s Lover, Lama Tenzin, suspended by Dalai Lama over corruption claims, by Frank Parlato
-- Dalai Lama Secretary denies $1 million paid to speak for Raniere; Yet Dalai Lama Trust founded 10 days after Albany speech with $2 million in donations, by Frank Parlato
-- Revealed: Dalai Lama’s ‘personal emissary’ suspended over corruption claims: Tibetan monk who is gatekeeper to the Dalai Lama in the US strongly denies allegations he demanded improper payments, by Katherine Ellison in San Francisco and Rory Carroll in Los Angeles

‘An Elephant’s Nose’

On April 5th, 2009, the Dalai Lama canceled his scheduled appearance during a conference of the World Ethical Foundations at the 17,500 seat Times Union Center in Albany, NY.37 According to his host Clare Bronfman, along with her sister Sara, heiresses to the Seagram fortune, ‘His Holiness spent an entire year vetting us out. I believe him to be an incredibly well-educated man of deep critical thought who considers his participation in anything he does very deeply.’38 The problem the Dalai Lama faced was that the World Ethical Foundations Consortium was connected to Nxivm, a litigious self-help group. Nxivm was headed by Keith Raniere (b. 1960), a controversial leader with a questionable history having been investigated by 25 state attorney generals and others for operating a pyramid marketing scheme.39 In spite of the prestige of the Dalai Lama’s presence, Skidmore College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, which is Raniere’s alma mater, refused to be part of the conference.40


The 14th Dalai Lama, Keith Raniere, Nancy Salzman, and Sara Bronfman (Dharamsala, 2009)

The Dalai Lama backed out not long before the event after hearing warnings by the above-mentioned universities and local newspapers, not to be associated with Raniere and Nxivm. A columnist of the Daily Gazette of Albany, NY actually called the Dalai Lama’s cancellation a ‘no-brainer.’41 However, shortly thereafter Keith Raniere, along with his followers Nancy Salzman, Sara Bronfman, and Mark Vicente—who came along to document the encounter—traveled to Dharamshala, India to meet with the Dalai Lama and address his concerns: numerous pending lawsuits and being labeled a cult leader. The Dalai Lama asked for evidence to counter the allegations, though he had already invited Raniere and his followers for a meeting the very next morning.42


Keith Raniere & the 14th Dalai Lama (Palace Theater, Albany, May 6, 2009)

For whatever reasons, literally overnight, the Dalai Lama persuaded himself that allegations that Raniere was in charge of a cult named Nxivm were unfounded and revoked his cancellation.43 The conference was rescheduled, and the Dalai Lama appeared with Raniere, Salzman, and the Bronfman sisters at a smaller venue, the 3,000 seat Palace Theater in Albany on May 6, 2009.44 The Dalai Lama also wrote the foreword to The Sphinx and Thelxiepeia (2009), which was co-authored by Raniere.45

In response to a question from the audience during his public talk in the Palace Theater, in the context of explaining his attending the meeting after first canceling, the Dalai Lama addressed the media: ‘I’m always telling the media people, [that they] should have a long nose, as long as—[applause], wait, wait, wait—as long as an elephant’s nose and smell in the front and behind. That’s very important.’ He added that they should dig deep into issues and to be open and impartial: ‘Whether [it’s] a politician, or the mayor [laughing, who was sitting on the stage], or religious people, the bishops [a Bishop was sitting next to him], or myself, [they] must sort of watch and make clear, inform the public, provided it must be very honest, unbiased, objective, that’s important!’46

A Reasonable Priest

As we said, in this paper we intend to take the Dalai Lama at his word, that is, to look at some of his words and actions as a tried and tested religious leader, with long noses, to smell in the front and behind, to inform the public in an honest and objective way. We will assess his personal responsibility and accountability by viewing the Dalai Lama as a media-savvy, power-wielding religious authority, whose doings exhibit the same measure of logical consistency and transparency as that of a reasonable priest.47


The 14th Dalai Lama, ‘Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World’ (2011)

In recent years, the Dalai Lama has championed secular ethics outside religious belief. Surely, his secular values repudiate sexual abuse and criminal forms of violence under the guise of religion or spirituality.48 Also, in the documentary The Great 14th, the Dalai Lama says he has three principal commitments: secular ethics, religious harmony, and the cause of Tibet. 49 Underlining both the temporal nature of his own office and the primacy of the rule of law, the Dalai Lama confirmed that lamas who break the law—he himself included—should be prosecuted.50 It stands to reason to do as he does, so we will assess the Dalai Lama’s discharge of his duties during his reign as the Tibetan head of state, in particular his public endorsement of abusive teachers, from a temporal, secular perspective.

We will look into the Dalai Lama’s involvement with two famous Tibetan lamas, both part of orthodox Tibetan Buddhist lineages who, however, lived and taught for most of their lives in the West: Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoché and Sogyal Lakar, formerly known as Sogyal Rinpoché.51 We also examine the Dalai Lama’s dealings with two self-proclaimed non-Tibetan teachers: the Japanese Shōkō Asahara, who was put to death for releasing sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system which killed 13 people and injured thousands more, and the aforementioned Keith Raniere, who in 2020 in a trial in New York City received a 120-year prison sentence for a long list of crimes.52

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

‘It is not the Tibetan way to confront errant behavior on the part of the lamas. We prefer to let them learn about their mistakes on their own,’ the Dalai Lama told John Steinbeck IV and his wife Nancy. The year was 1989, and the American Nobel laureate’s journalist son and his wife pressed the Tibetan leader to introduce a system of checks and balances, to counteract the prevalent abuse of power by lamas in the West. Theirs was a wasted effort, as it turns out. This becomes clear in John and Nancy Steinbeck’s memoir The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck (2001).53

During the preceding years, the American couple had witnessed up close, the destructive behavior of their own Buddhist guru, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoché.54 John Steinbeck IV first met Trungpa in 1971, and Nancy Steinbeck first met him in 1975. While Trungpa’s alcoholism was open and well known, his use of cocaine, the sleeping pill Seconal, and at least on one occasion, LSD was kept hidden from the majority of his followers. His incessant substance abuse and predatory promiscuity, including with minors, wreaked havoc in his Vajradhatu community in Boulder, Colorado, but also set an example for the abuse that took place at his other centers across the western world.55


Gesar Mukpo, ‘Tulku’ (Festival Media, 2011)

Trungpa’s offspring was not spared. In 1963, four years after escaping from Tibet, Trungpa moved to the United Kingdom. He left his one-year-old son and the child’s mother, a Tibetan nun, behind in a refugee camp in India, where the boy spent his formative years.56 Trungpa abandoned the boy again in 1970, shortly after he had summoned him to the UK. Three years later when the boy arrived in the United States, Trungpa sent him to boarding school.57

Trungpa abandoned his second son at the age of four—that is, the first child he had with Diana, his seventeen-year-old British wife. Nicknamed Taggie, he is autistic and epileptic. Taggie was left in the care of an untrained group of American devotees and later, under the ‘curative’ regime of hard-handed Tibetan monastics in Sikkim, India. Trungpa’s third son, likewise, was repeatedly abandoned to ad hoc caregivers, burning through seventeen schools in different countries.58 Arguably, even though the three boys, like the Dalai Lama himself, were declared trülkus of high Tibetan teachers, Trungpa, with this style of parenting, repeatedly exposed himself to charges of endangerment and criminal neglect of a child.59

Not even animals were safe with Trungpa. Former devotees gave testimony ‘about his strangely superstitious hatred and abuse of cats, evidently because they weren’t sufficiently grief-stricken at the death of Shakyamuni Buddha.’60 Trungpa’s former “head butler” wrote about the mistreatment of a dog:

One night after supper Rinpoche said, “Get Myson and bring him in here.” I dragged the shaking dog into the kitchen and following Rinpoche’s instructions I sat him on the floor and covered his eyes with a blindfold. I set up stands with lighted candles by either side of his head. Myson couldn’t move his head without being burned. Rinpoche rook a potato and hit Myson on the head with it. When the dog moved, the fur on his ear would catch on fire. I put out the flames. Now and then Rinpoche would scrape his chair across the tiled floor and whack him again on the head with a potato. “Sir,” I began hesitantly, trying to stop him. “Shut up,” snapped Rinpoche, “and hand me another potato.” I started to empathize with the dog. In fact, I became the dog. I was blindfolded and was banged on the head with a spud and if I turned my head my ears would burn and there was the squealing sound of the chair on the floor. Pissing in my pants I was that dog not being able to move, feeling terrified and at the same time excited. Finally, the scraping chair and the potato throwing stopped and we released the shaking dog, who ran upstairs to Max’s empty room. “That’s how you train students,” Rinpoche calmly stated to me.’ “Jesus,” I thought, “that’s pretty barbaric.” Rinpoche had me change the telephone number so that Max [the owner of the dog] could not call us before he came back. He arrived, bags in hand, concerned that he had not been able to reach us. Before he could say much else Myson rushed in and jumped all over him in exuberant delight. Rinpoche deliberately scraped the kitchen chair across the tiled floor. The terrified dog shot out of the house and fled across the field. Max was shocked and pointedly asked, “Rinpoche, what did you do to my dog?” “I don’t see any dog,” he replied, looking at me.61

Trungpa’s Successor

Though Trungpa certainly had hundreds if not more disciples, he designated only one successor, Thomas Rich, who was named Ösel Tendzin by Trungpa and titled Vajra Regent. Like his teacher Trungpa, the Regent was highly promiscuous. Unfortunately, he was HIV-positive which he kept secret aside from two members of the Board of Trustees, thereby risked transmitting HIV to the followers—male and female—that he forced himself on. In fact, one twenty-year-old, the son of a follower, contracted AIDS from the Regent and died. The Regent also engaged in unprotected sex with male street prostitutes.62


Dyan Zaslowsky, ‘Buddhists in U.S. Agonize on AIDS Issue’ (New York Times, February 21, 1989)

According to the Regent, Trungpa had discussed being HIV-positive with him before his death. The Regent added that he came away from that conversation with Trungpa feeling he could ‘change the karma.’ ‘”Thinking that I had some extraordinary means of protection,” Tendzin reportedly told a stunned community meeting organized in Berkeley, California in mid-December, “I went ahead with my business as if something would take care of it for me.”‘63

In spite of Trungpa’s and his self-chosen Regent, Ösel Tendzin’s years of alcohol, drug, and sexual abuse, Kalu Rinpoché, a widely sought-after meditation master of the Kagyü school, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoché, hierarch of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism and a recognized master, scholar, and poet, as well as other leading Tibetan lamas continued to endorse Trungpa and his regent Ösel Tendzin—right until their protégés’ untimely deaths due to alcoholism and HIV/AIDS respectively.64 The Dalai Lama followed suit with his endorsements.

There is an irony here, in that Trungpa, his Regent as well as the Tibetan priests who endorsed them as intercessors and advocates, supposedly are all wise and even enlightened teachers. Yet, they seemed unaware of common human limitations: addictions to alcohol, drugs, sex, money, and power. It also appears that upholding the good name of the Tibetan Buddhist institution and the reputations of its prominent teachers was more important to the leading priests, including the Dalai Lama, than protecting the unsuspecting public.

Stripped Naked By Force


Cover of ‘The Party’ (1977)

John Steinbeck IV became Trungpa’s follower in the early 1970s.65 As one of Trungpa’s early followers, John Steinbeck IV was acquainted with the all-American coterie of poets and authors that occasionally held court at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, a department of the nascent Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado.66 One well-known member of this group was the poet W.S. Merwin.67 In 1975, at a drunken Halloween bash taking place during a three month-long Buddhist ‘seminary’ program for advanced students, Merwin and his poet girlfriend Dana Naone were physically assaulted and stripped naked by force—by order of Chögyam Trungpa.68


Cover of the ‘Boulder Monthly’ (March, 1979)

The Merwin-scandal was investigated and made public in the spring of 1979, right before the Dalai Lama’s historic first visit to the United States of America.69 That summer, the authoritative magazine Tibetan Review, which was co-funded by the Dalai Lama’s exiled administration in Dharamsala, copied the article ‘”Buddha-Gate” Scandal and cover-up at Naropa revealed’ in the Berkeley Barb.70 But perhaps more importantly, the July issue also contained a disconcerting letter by Karl Springer, Trungpa’s head of external affairs. Springer’s letter was distributed at the end of 1978 and alleged a power grab and murder plot against the 16th Karmapa by the Dalai Lama’s principal supporters.71


Cover of ‘Berkeley Barb’ (March 29-April 11, 1979)

It’s inconceivable that Springer would have begun this campaign without Trungpa’s consent, for the rhetoric was outright incendiary. The 16th Karmapa was the head of the Kagyü sect to which Trungpa belonged, while the 14th Dalai Lama is the most prominent member of the Geluk sect.72 Predictably, a vocal polemic about Tibetan inter-sectarian strife ensued. In effect, the brouhaha instigated by Springer created a diversion that held the attention of Tibetan Review’s readers all through the summer of 1979—meanwhile, Trungpa’s alcohol-fueled, violent, and licentious conduct directed towards his western followers was left undiscussed.

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Part 2 of 4

Looking For Patrons

The Dalai Lama responded to the drunken bash and violence that took place at the three-months-long Vajrayana ‘seminary’ in 1975 by canceling a planned visit to Vajradhatu, Trungpa’s center in Boulder during his tour of the United States. He thus evaded reporters’ probing questions about the cultish “Buddha-gate” scandal and the alleged murder-plot against the Karmapa.73


Cover of ‘Tibetan Review’ (July 1979)

After all, this was his first ever visit to America and the stakes were high.74 When president Richard Nixon wooed Chairman Mao in the early 1970s, he ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to stop bankrolling the Dalai Lama and Tibetan guerilla forces as part of the normalization process as demanded by China.75 Consecutive US administrations repeatedly denied the Dalai Lama a visa. And so, by 1979 he was anxious to gain a foothold in US politics and look for needed new patrons of Tibet.

Moreover, at this time the fear of religious cult leaders was fresh in people’s minds. The murder-suicides in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978 where 918 people died mostly from cyanide-laced kool-aid, was only a year past.76 If asked outright about the violence and drinking that occurred at the Vajrayana retreat, the Dalai Lama could hardly avoid the unequivocal repudiation of Trungpa’s addictions, baseless assassination allegations, and violence, without forfeiting American benefactors’ hoped-for support of the Tibetan cause. A public rejection by the Dalai Lama could have caused collateral damage too: his high-profile comments on a religiously inspired, violent bacchanal in the nude might well have jeopardized Naropa Institute’s long sought-after academic accreditation and public funding.77

Evidently, the Dalai Lama was unwilling to disavow Trungpa and his community. The reasons for this are legion. He and Trungpa had at least one guru in common: Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoché. This alone would have led the Dalai Lama to exercise restraint.78 But he and Trungpa had personal ties as well, going back to the first years of exile.79 Also, Trungpa’s network of Buddhist centers across the United States, among the first of their kind, could act as one of the ‘operating bases’ for the Dalai Lama’s future visits.


The Dalai Lama and Chögyam Trungpa (Dharmadhatu, New York, 1979) [photo: Jan Andersson]

And so, the Dalai Lama bypassed Boulder, the mainstay of Trungpa’s activities at the time, altogether. Instead, he held several private meetings with Trungpa, Ösel Tendzin, and their board of directors in their Dharmadhatu center in New York City. Moreover, Trungpa’s pseudo-military militia Dorje Kasung provided the Dalai Lama with motorcades and a security detail.80 In 1981, after the fuss over Trungpa’s misconduct had died down, the Dalai Lama made up for lost time and spent a week with him and his Vajradhatu community in Boulder, which was considered to be ‘a great blessing’ by Trungpa and his followers.81

Left Out In The Cold


Cover of ‘The Other Side Of Eden: Life With John Steinbeck’ (2001)

When John and Nancy Steinbeck called upon the Dalai Lama for assistance in 1989, he had been well aware of and had tolerated the abusive behavior of Chögyam Trungpa and his successor, the Vajra Regent, for ten years or more. In response to the Steinbecks’ request, he confined himself to a generic warning to westerners against religious conversion and cautioned them to ‘examine the teacher with utmost scrutiny. There are many charlatans.’ After John Steinbeck IV reminded the Dalai Lama of what he already knew, he told him about Trungpa’s alcoholism and sexual abuse, and that Ösel Tendzin transmitted HIV/AIDS to a young male follower. The Dalai Lama said:

I would say that if you are going to follow a teacher, you must examine his behavior very carefully. In your case, with Trungpa Rinpoche, you had a lama who was drinking alcohol. We say, in our tradition, that a lama is never supposed to drink. Now, occasionally there have been some teachers who drink alcohol and claim to turn it into elixir. If I were considering following a teacher who drinks alcohol and claims to turn it into elixir, or excrement to gold, I would insist on seeing this happen. If I saw it happen, I may follow this teacher. Unless I see that happen, I would never follow him. The student has to take the responsibility of examining the behavior of the teacher very carefully, over a long period. You cannot be hasty about these things.82

The Dalai Lama’s posture, of course, projects a rather dubious distribution of responsibility and accountability between the unimpeachable Trungpa and his supposedly less than thoughtful followers. Interjecting the hypothetical that he himself—the Dalai Lama, of all people—might become Trungpa’s follower one day, in effect, he dismissed the victims and survivors as having been ‘hasty’ and irresponsible in choosing their guru. The Steinbecks’ plea that the Dalai Lama might take the lead in establishing a mere modicum of oversight fell on deaf ears, witness his response to their call to action in 1989:

“I am a believer in nonsectarianism. I try to provide as much motivation as I can. I have no interest in promoting myself. There are no Dalai Lama centers, no Dalai Lama monastery. Wherever I can contribute, I am willing.” To our dismay, he continued, “It is not the Tibetan way to confront errant behavior on the part of the lamas. We prefer to let them learn about their mistakes on their own.83

After their conversation, the couple clearly felt left out in the cold with no support that the Dalai Lama’s moral authority could have imparted. The Steinbecks were hardly gullible teenagers at this time. Both John and Nancy had spent years with Trungpa’s group, so were very aware of the abuse taking place. John was drafted into the Army in 1965 and served in Vietnam. Along with the famous actor Errol Flynn’s son Sean, he founded Liberation News Service, an independent news service reporting from Vietnam, where John had returned after release from the Army. He broke Seymour Hersh’s Mai Lai Massacre story and testified to the US Senate on drug use among soldiers in Vietnam. Nancy by this time was working in a “silk sheet” alcohol rehab clinic.

‘How Is Their Cover-up Any Different?’

By no stretch of the imagination would the Steinbecks be viewed as naive at this time, which was 1989. Yet we see them taking to heart the Dalai Lama’s often repeated words espousing tolerance, respect, kindness, and compassion. So surely, they believed, if he, the most prominent and respected Tibetan Buddhist only knew what was transpiring with Tibetan Buddhism in America, that he, the Dalai Lama would step in and offer some oversight to set it on a straight course. Unfortunately, that was not to be. Their disappointment with the Dalai Lama and their wake-up light shining on the Dalai Lama and other leading priests in Tibetan Buddhism is evident in the Steinbecks’ biting words:

“How is their cover-up any different from the decades of secrecy in the Catholic Church regarding their priests’ sexual abuse of choirboys?” I countered. John and I continued to be disappointed as the Dalai Lama and other lineage heads maintained their silence and offered no consequences to renegade lamas. By deliberately ignoring the situation, in what appears to be a fearful political ploy, these titular deities, these so-called God Kings are adding to the confusion instead of delineating clear moral guidelines. Their concern about the truth leaking out, which might drain their monastic coffers, flies in the face of all the teachings and vows they give concerning “right action.” Will it be a matter of time before they follow suit with the Catholics in offering apologies?’84

In 1993, at the Western Buddhist Teachers Conference held in his residence in India, the Dalai Lama, the central figure of the conference, told Western Buddhist teachers the following about Trungpa:

I’ve heard both sides. I once brought this up with my late guru Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoché, and Khyentse Rinpoché said: “It is true that some of the things he had done are outrageous and difficult to understand. But at the same time, he was someone who seemed to have a certain degree of realization.” That’s all that Khyentse Rinpoché said. One of the things that I noticed, is that the structure of his organization seemed to have been modeled on Japanese organizations. One of the sad things that I noticed about this particular organization is that I met some people who are from the organization who seemed to be living in constant fear and anxiety. I don’t know why. Why do such things happen? This is a Buddhist organization. They should not create any sort of fear in the organization. But an individual expressed to me that while they were in that organization, they felt some kind of fear. Why, I don’t know. What was it? I don’t know. I think that’s sad.85

Evidently, the reassuring words of his guru Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoché kept the Dalai Lama from looking deeper into the harm that he was warned about early on, or the reason for the fear and anxiety some students were living with. Perhaps he was insinuating that the problem was that Trungpa’s organization was modeled on Japanese—not Tibetan—organizations. Yet, his professed concern did not keep the Dalai Lama from frequenting Trungpa’s centers in the 1980s through 2000s. In fact, at least until 1993, he entrusted Trungpa’s American followers with the task of keeping him safe.

Before the US government began assigning the Secret Service to protect the Dalai Lama on his visits, members of Trungpa’s ‘militia’ Dorje Kasung served as his chauffeurs and security detail. The Dorje Kasung or Dharma Protectors, a group within Shambhala, was formed in 1977 by Trungpa with uniforms and style modeled on the British military. They are trained to protect the space where the teachings are given. So, instead of distancing himself, the Dalai Lama chose to be dependent on Trungpa for security and a certain amount of mobility when visiting the USA.86

Shoko Asahara’s Doomsday Cult


The 14th Dala Lama and Shōkō Asahara (Promotional material of Aum Shinrikyō)

Little did the Steinbecks know that at that time, the Dalai Lama did not just ignore the problems they mentioned with regard to Trungpa and his organization. He ignored serious misgivings about his years-long involvement with the infamous Japanese guru Shōkō Asahara as well. Asahara was the founder and leader of Aum Shinrikyō, a Japanese doomsday cult group. At the height of its powers, Aum claimed to have some 10,000 Japanese members, 1,100 of whom lived in communes.

Asahara with some of his disciples would go on to masterminding nerve-gas attacks, first in 1994 attacking a building in Matsumoto, 110 miles from Tokyo. In 1995, they attacked the Tokyo subway system during rush hour by having five members on different subway lines simultaneously releasing bags of the deadly sarin nerve-gas. Aum’s large-scale assault with nerve gas killed thirteen people and wounded nearly 6,000. The police quickly figured out that Asahara and Aum were responsible for the attacks. Asahara was captured shortly after, tried and found guilty of murder, and was executed by hanging for his crimes on July 6, 2018, along with six other Aum-members.87


The Dalai Lama’s Written Endorsement of Aum Shinrikyō (May 26, 1989)

Ignoring Aum’s negative press, both in Japan and the Tibetan Review, but even more so, warnings of concerned Tibetans living in Japan and the alarming story of a Japanese victim who travelled to Dharamshala to personally warn one of his aides, the Dalai Lama continued to endorse Asahara for years. His endorsement was influential in Aum achieving the much coveted, tax-friendly recognition as a religious organization. The Dalai Lama received 1.5 million US dollars in donations from Asahara though it is not clear that the money was directly related to Asahara’s recognition as a religious organization. What is 100% clear, however, is that the Dalai Lama’s endorsement did not hurt in attaining religious organization status.88

After Aum’s fatal sarin attack in 1995, reporters accosted the Dalai Lama during his visit to Japan. They also traveled to Dharamshala, to ask Tibetan officials questions about the Dalai Lama’s eye-catching presence in Aum’s promotional literature and videos. Only a year later, the Dalai Lama’s spokesmen disclosed that he accepted a large donation from Aum Shinrikyō. But even then, they covered up an aide’s meeting with an ex-member of Aum Shinrikyō in 1990 and the objections Tibetans living in Japan raised in 1991. As a result, the true extent and financial rewards of the Dalai Lama’s seven meetings with Shōkō Asahara over the years, remained unreported at that time.

-- The Japanese Doomsday Guru Shoko Asahara and the XIV Dalai Lama, by Victor and Victoria Trimondi

Sogyal Lakar

Unchastened by his conversation with John and Nancy Steinbeck concerning serious problems of abuse with Chögyam Trungpa, the Dalai Lama was as ready as before, in spite of knowing of abuse by Sogyal Lakar too, to award his much sought-after endorsement.89 Suffering no consequences from furthering Shōkō Asahara’s mission either, the Dalai Lama went on to help jump-start the sluggish career of Sogyal. In 1992—the very year the Dalai Lama wrote his foreword to Sogyal’s best-selling The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying—he received a ten-page letter detailing his abusive behavior.90 But even before that time, he had already received warnings about this.

On November 2, 1994, a woman identified only as Janice Doe filed a widely published complaint for damages against Sogyal and his organization Rigpa. This civil case was settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. A contemporaneous news report cited the Dalai Lama’s secretary Tenzin Geyche Tethong as saying that Tibetan Buddhist leaders ‘have been aware of these (allegations) for some years now.’91


Western Teachers Conference (Dharamshala, March 1993)

In March 1993, approximately twenty-five western Buddhist teachers travelled to the Dalai Lama’s residence in India to discuss with him for four days ways to go forward in western Buddhism, but also, and perhaps primarily, to discuss sexual scandals seemingly rampant with Buddhist teachers in the West. Sogyal’s behavior, who the Dalai Lama referred to as his friend, was very much on the participants’ minds.92 The meeting has become widely known as the Western Buddhist Teachers Conference, which to this day, the Dalai Lama refers to and quotes from often, specifically in relation to abusive Buddhist teachers who will not change their ways.93 Though there have been subsequent such meetings, it is not a regular yearly affair.


The Network for Western Buddhist Teachers: ‘An Open Letter’ (1993)

The Dalai Lama counseled the western teachers to “out” such abusive teachers who are fixed in their ways. Though he gave much input to the wording of the conference’s closing statement, months later he did not sign his name onto it’s Open Letter to the western Buddhist community at large. This, of course, diminished its impact. Well-known western Buddhist author Stephen Batchelor, like the Steinbecks, was hardly a naive teenager at this time. He worked much with the Dalai Lama formulating the exact wording of the final statement to meet his satisfaction, was left with ‘the slightly unpleasant taste of having been used.’ He later wrote:

The Dalai Lama had succeeded in communicating his concerns and proposing a solution, but by removing his endorsement from the letter, his staff ensured that he did not have to take any responsibility for what it said. Once again, I became aware of how what appeared on the surface to be a shared cause between Tibetans and Westerners could also conceal conflicting agendas.94

Public Perception

History shows that the Dalai Lama is aware of the public perception of himself and the cause of Tibet and is keen to avoid image damage, as is his prerogative. In March 1993, for instance, right after his conference with the western Buddhist teachers ended, the Dalai Lama was quick to send an ‘angry fax’ to director William Sessions of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). That very week, the FBI had been engaged in psychological warfare with the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas.



US Congress, House Committee on Government Reform, ‘The Tragedy at Waco’ (2000)

As part of that FBI operation, its agents in Waco loudly played ‘the sound of rabbits being slaughtered,’ Christmas carols, an Andy Williams album, Nancy Sinatra singing ‘These Boots Are Made for Walking,’ and ‘chants recorded by followers of the Dalai Lama,’ through the night. When the Dalai Lama made known his offense to the FBI playing Tibetans’ chanting, however, Sessions immediately ordered them to stop playing the Tibetan tapes.95

So, evidently, the Dalai Lama chooses his battles. To take credit for Western Buddhist teachers’ public statement without taking responsibility, of course, would be viewed as a deft piece of politicking by many a seasoned priest. In effect, the Dalai Lama’s participation in the 1993 conference confirmed his moral rectitude in the public eye, while not signing the Open Letter reduced the risk of being held accountable for exposing Tibetan lamas—more particular, perhaps, lamas of other sects than his own—to legal battles in the West, to face charges of abuse.96

As a dyed-in-the-wool politician, the Dalai Lama must realize that his association with the teachers he endorses carries evidential weight—as a character witness, that is. This may sound harsh, but when abusive teachers are exposed by victims, survivors, and witnesses in mainstream media or the courts, while the Dalai Lama continues to publicly endorse them, he actually errs on the side of the teacher. Why? When there is a viable alternative: do nothing, keep silent.97

In each of the four cases we’ve looked into, the Dalai Lama chose differently, however. He chose to back people who he was well warned were courting trouble and scandal, but who also transferred to him considerable amounts of money or large exposure, showing him extreme deference that projects to western audiences his image as a revered and sanctified being.

Selective Indignation

Clearly, the Dalai Lama is perfectly capable of putting his foot down—he did cancel his appearance during the Nxivm event, at least at first. He is an assured, effective communicator as well—FBI-director Sessions learned this during the Waco standoff. The Dalai Lama does not shy away from stirring up controversy either—witness his much publicized, imperative stance in the inter- and intra-sectarian dispute over the Tibetan deity Dorje Shukden since the mid 1970s.98 Finally, the Dalai Lama is very particular about his endorsements—withholding his signature from the western teachers’ Open Letter in 1993 attests to that.

While whistle-blowers who denounce unethical, abusive, and even criminal conduct in public, bear the brunt of airing their overt criticism, the Dalai Lama routinely absolves himself from justifying why he continues to endorse the very ‘friends’ he is being warned about. His consecutive dealings with Chögyam Trungpa, Shōkō Asahara, Sogyal Lakar, and Keith Raniere are cases in point: The Dalai Lama did not distance himself from these repeat offenders unless and until his own image was at risk of being tarnished in media reports.99

Unprincipled, transactional conduct and selective indignation by a priestly authority and moral leader—any priestly authority or moral leader—are problematic, of course. But they are hardly surprising: a reasonable, media-savvy, power-wielding priest may be expected to put the perceived interests of his office and the institutions he represents first. That is exactly how all manner of religions turn themselves into ‘religions for abusers’—slanted playing fields from which victims and survivors come off worst.100 Also, with his conduct, the Dalai Lama, like priests in other religions, sets a norm from which the usual harmful results follow. This becomes clear from the response to a reporter’s query by one of his most celebrated followers.

No ‘Morality Police’

The world-famous monk Matthieu Ricard, the Dalai Lama’s main French interpreter, frequently accompanied Sogyal Lakar, while Ricard’s charity was sponsored by Rigpa, which is the name of Sogyal’s organization. Marianne-reporter Élodie Emery questioned Ricard about Sogyal’s downfall in 2017. According to Ricard there is no ‘morality police’ in Buddhism.101 About the Dalai Lama, Ricard said:

Having served him for the last twenty-five years, I can testify that he is strongly allergic to any kind of duplicity and pretense. On the other hand—and once again—it is not his role to act as an international Buddhist policeman. He can only remain as a teacher and as a point of reference, demonstrating by his own example the qualities of any Buddhist practitioner worthy of the name.102

Matthieu Ricard (World Economic Forum, Davos, 2017)

Rejecting a ‘morality police,’ Ricard would have Buddhist teachers’ duty of care devolve to every man for himself, and the Devil take the hindmost. Apparently, he is unaware that ‘demonstrating by his own example the qualities of any Buddhist practitioner worthy of the name’ might obligate the Dalai Lama—as well as himself—to stop endorsing or even retract previous endorsements of abusive Buddhist teachers. Also, Ricard seems to overlook the Dalai Lama’s avowed commitment to human rights and secular ethics.103 By Ricard’s rendering, the Dalai Lama simply bears no responsibility or accountability for his endorsements at all.104

The Dalai Lama, according to many, is viewed as the as the world’s most authoritative Buddhist, and as such is looked at as the prime example of Buddhist morality and of living a selfless upstanding life. To propose that the Dalai Lama bears no responsibility or accountability for his endorsements makes him into an empty and truthless figurehead—a caricature of a holy man. Yet, the Dalai Lama’s avowed commitment to the Charter of the Tibetans-in-Exile and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, both of which he signed onto, demands that his endorsements actually mean something.105 Certainly, many people have this in mind when they see him as a guide to right and compassionate living, and addressed as “His Holiness.”

Religious Realpolitik

More research is needed to establish the facts of the matter in more detail, but even a cursory glance at the history of his tours of the West reveals that the Dalai Lama was feted by numerous spiritual fortune hunters—Tibetan Buddhist or otherwise—of dubious pedigree. From his side, he has welcomed them in his residence on their visits to Dharamshala.106 As a rule, such teachers use the acquired photo opportunities, commendations, forewords, et cetera, to great effect, sprinkling themselves, their communities, their promotional material, and websites lavishly with the Dalai Lama’s stardust, to draw prospective followers in.107 In a word, the Dalai Lama Sells.108


Nina Burleigh, ‘Sex and Death on the Road to Nirvana’ (Rolling Stone, June 2013)

Some people have argued that the Dalai Lama’s religious commitments do not allow him to resist such overtures, but his own conduct belies this.109 In 2006, the American Tibetan Buddhist teacher Geshe Michael Roach, for instance, found out the hard way that the Dalai Lama’s hospitality has its limits. Roach had openly broken his vows of celibacy with one of his students and made claims for his own attainment among other acts that the Dalai Lama disapproved of. The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala dismissed Geshe Roach in no uncertain terms, refusing him a visit.110

It may be hard to determine just what criteria are normative in each particular case but, clearly, the Dalai Lama is not everybody’s friend. And so, each time the Dalai Lama himself, as is his wont, pays no heed to the public or private “outing” of the derailed teachers he endorses, his (in)actions speaks volumes. In effect, the Dalai Lama routinely advises others to do what he himself evades, that is, “out” in the media abusive unchanging teachers. But at the very least, stop endorsing questionable figures whose abuses have been thoroughly exposed.

The significant issue is not why the Dalai Lama acts this way—it might be called the priestly response par excellence. But: how does he get away with it? Surely, most professional observers would give short shrift to other religious and political leaders’ long-standing transactional relations with the likes of Trungpa, Asahara, Lakar, and Raniere, as the Dalai Lama has maintained. At times, it seems as if the Dalai Lama’s persona, as authorized representative of ancient and spiritually pure Tibet, allows him to retain an aura of sanctity that distorts people’s sense of reality. It even blunts the critical faculty of professional skeptics such as journalists and academic scholars.

Why else do so many observers fail to register that the Dalai Lama’s conduct mirrors the religious realpolitik of other priests promoting the interests of their offices and institutions? Why else do they find it so hard to hold him accountable for the actual exercise of his priestly authority—both his acts of commission and omission?

25 Years Later


The 14th Dalai Lama meets victims and survivors in Rotterdam (September 14, 2018) [Photo: Marlies Bosch]

Fast forward to 2018, when the Dalai Lama made a scheduled four-day visit to the Netherlands. This was a time of the growing power of the #metoo-movement that “outs” men or women in power who are sexually abusive to people they had power over. This coupled with a robust letter writing campaign that reached over 1,000 signatures in the first week and the resultant media attention, pushed the Dalai Lama to meet for twenty minutes with four people who had been involved with sexually abusive Tibetan lamas.111

That is correct, it took a robust letter writing and media campaign to get the Dalai Lama on a four-day visit to the Netherlands, to agree to a twenty-minute meeting to hear four first-hand accounts of students who were involved with abusive lamas. Even with that time frame, the first fifteen minutes or so, the Dalai Lama did most of the talking, lecturing these four people as if they came to be counseled by him. Actually, they wanted him to hear their testimonies and their requests, as well as to receive the written accounts, for his eyes only, of twelve people in all. Because they were feeling rushed by his aides, while not being told how much time they were allocated, the four were forced to interrupt the Dalai Lama’s talking, not an easy position, to get him to understand why they were there.

The Dalai Lama did not seem to realize that his doing the talking instead of listening, was another form of abuse. Also, he did not realize when he told the four victims and survivors—three women and one man—to out the abusive teachers who will not change, just how difficult that in fact is, as one of the women bluntly told him. Unfortunately, she did not remind the Dalai Lama that he himself refuses to do just that! But when the Dalai Lama told the four people that they should not put the whole responsibility on his shoulders, she did retort that making individual victims and survivors responsible for outing the abusive teacher amounts to the same. Somehow, the Dalai Lama found it hard to express his sympathy with the man who was frequently beaten by his lama as a child while young girls were being abused. And so, one of the women told him: ‘Can’t you just say that you’re sorry that it happened?’

Unique Meeting

This meeting with the Dalai Lama was unique in that he was forced to stop talking and to listen to what the visitors had to say. It was also unique in that he was told that he did not understand what was involved in following his advice of “outing” abusing teachers. This meeting in the Netherlands was unique in yet another important way, for the first time, in his own words, the Dalai Lama corroborated that he had been familiar with the many allegations against Sogyal’s abuse for twenty-five years.112

A day later, he repeated his remark on Dutch national television to reporter Nicole le Fever of the Dutch Eight O’Clock News.113 And yet, this knowledge did not keep the Dalai Lama from visiting Sogyal Lakar’s centers and events, including the three-day opening of its main temple, Lerab Ling, in 2008 in southern France, where he was clearly the main attraction to Sogyal’s almost uncontrollable delight. It also proves that the Dalai Lama was aware of Sogyal’s long history of abuse while not “outing” him as he advised others to do.


Sogyal Lakar, Carla Bruni & the 14th Dalai Lama (Lerab Ling, France, August 22, 2008)

In spite of this knowledge, the Dalai Lama further authenticated Sogyal’s legitimacy by allowing one of his organizations—the Tenzin Gyatso Institute in Berne, NY—to be named after him.114 To this day, Rigpa claims to have ‘the gracious patronage of His Holiness the Dalai Lama.’115 Sogyal instructed his spokespeople to answer questioning journalists with ‘the Dalai Lama is supporting Sogyal Rinpoché one hundred percent.’116 And who can question their claim after seeing the video of the opening ceremony beginning with the Dalai Lama flying in on a private plane followed by the prominent position he played during the three-day event in 2008?117

Don’t Do What I Do, Do What I Say

Perhaps tellingly, the Dalai Lama declared about Sogyal Lakar: ‘Now recently Sogyal Rinpoche, my very good friend, he [is] disgraced. So, some of his own students now made their criticism public.’118 But he only said so after Sogyal had stepped down. How much pain and suffering could have been avoided if he spoke earlier? After all, he had 25 years to consider his options.

Is the Dalai Lama’s view that Sogyal was ‘disgraced’ by his followers’ disclosure of his abusive behavior—not by his actions? This is a curious conclusion, especially so, since it is the Dalai Lama who counsels followers to expose their own unrepentant abusive teachers. Whatever the Dalai Lama meant with the peculiar sentence structure above, it is clear that he had nothing to do with his ‘friend’s’ disgrace.

Not having confronted Sogyal’s abuse for twenty-five years—victims’ and survivors’ numerous warnings be forgotten— but having endorsed him instead, the Dalai Lama washed his hands of the affair once his ‘very good friend’ was brought into disrepute—just like he did with Chögyam Trungpa, Shōkō Asahara, and Keith Raniere.

It sounds all well and good to say as the Dalai Lama has, ‘It is not the Tibetan way to confront errant behavior on the part of the lamas. We prefer to let them learn about their mistakes on their own.’ This is fine as long as one can blind oneself to the effects on the victims of ‘the lamas’ while they are supposedly learning—decades long—about their mistakes on their own. Unfortunately, as we have seen above, at least a few lamas are exceedingly slow learners when it comes to learning of their own mistakes. Too, with these lamas, both Trungpa and Sogyal in particular, as is common with most people, the longer they get away with questionable behavior, the more entrenched and extreme becomes that behavior.

We have also seen above how the highest-ranking trülkus of the different schools of Tibetan Buddhism from the Dalai Lama down, have refused to admonish, in any way, these slow-learning lamas.119 In fact, the opposite has occurred, they have continued to endorse these very lamas for periods longer than 25 years. This is in spite of the Dalai Lama in 1993 counselling western teachers to “out” abusive Lamas/Dharma teachers/Zen masters who after warnings, will not change their behavior. Apparently the old saying, ‘Don’t do what I do, do what I say’ appears to be the lesson of the Dalai Lama.

False Sense Of Security

Some students of Tibetan Buddhism in the west taking the Dalai Lama’s public words to heart, were perhaps naive—but no less justified—in their expectations of him. Arguably, the Dalai Lama’s meeting with the western Buddhist teachers in 1993, as well as his frequent references to that meeting, provided some casual observers with a false sense of security. But when there were scandals involving Tibetan Buddhist lamas, the Dalai Lama was as quiet as the proverbial church mouse and nowhere to be seen.

The Dalai Lama himself, however, is anything but naive. For decades, his unprincipled dealings with abusive and even criminal teachers were transparent and consistent to the point of being highly predictable. Meanwhile, the organizations founded and led by Trungpa, Asahara, Lakar, and Raniere served as scattered outposts of the Dalai Lama’s realm that provided him with much-coveted connections to political, financial, and religious patrons, favourable media exposure, institutional and practical assistance abroad, and grassroots support for him and his good causes.

Some have discredited the Dalai Lama’s statements as recorded by John and Nancy Steinbeck as inauthentic—‘fake news,’ before the term gained currency. However, there is no reason to doubt their credibility. In fact, the Dalai Lama’s words ‘We prefer to let them learn about their mistakes on their own,’ sound like an eerily accurate description of his actual behavior. The Dalai Lama does prefer this. He acts as if he feels no moral responsibility to the public at large when it comes to associating with abusive lamas. And in doing so, he is the spitting image of a reasonable priest.120 The Dalai Lama accepts no personal accountability for his continued endorsement of abusive friends who sink into disrepute. He distances himself only when they bring discredit upon his office or his activities on behalf of the Tibetan people.

The Dalai Lama’s Flip

The HBO documentary series The Vow was broadcast during the Covid-19 pandemic. It showed the Dalai Lama’s association with Keith Raniere and Nxivm, and importantly, how little “investigating” warnings from reputable sources may mean to him when he is endorsing questionable people. Raniere, Sara Bronfman, Nancy Salzman, and Mark Vincente flew to Dharamshala by private plane, and their meeting with the Dalai Lama resulted in an almost magical over-night change of mind. He went from canceling his appearing with Raniere on stage to agreeing with a stage appearance together—thereby endorsing him while a whistle-blower was being sued.


HBO, ‘The Vow: A Nxivm Story’ (Season 1, 2020)

Even Mark Vincente, at the time a Raniere loyalist and film maker brought along to record the meeting, appears surprised by the Dalai Lama’s overnight flip. According to Vincente, ‘the whole idea about having him come [to the Albany stage appearance] was to basically vindicate Raniere.’ Not surprisingly, Raniere, like Sogyal the year before, could hardly contain himself over receiving this highest stamp of approval, the Dalai Lama’s endorsement, as is clearly shown in the documentary.121

At that time, Clare Bronfman had just filed a criminal complaint with the Saratoga, NY District Attorney against Barbara Bouchey, a former executive board member of Nxivm. Bouchey, who had been the Bronfman sisters’ financial planner, resigned two weeks before the Dalai Lama’s visit, along with eight key female followers. Bouchey was in fact a long-time lover and loyalist of Raniere but resigned when she discovered that she was just one of many Nxivm women who were sexual partners of Raniere.122

Together, this group of women hoped to “wake up” other people in Nxivm and get the government involved, to hold Keith Raniere accountable. In response, civil charges were brought against Bouchey. This was not really surprising, as Clare Bronfman, with almost unlimited financial resources, had a history of pursuing people through the courts that caused trouble for Raniere. ‘Of course, it didn’t do anything,’ Bouchey said, looking back on the failed intervention that immediately preceded the Dalai Lama’s visit.

The footage of his meeting with Raniere in Dharamshala proves that the Dalai Lama was aware that some litigation was ongoing, but also that he wasn’t clear who was suing whom. His questions were less than probing, as were the questions of his advisors. The Dalai Lama satisfied himself with Sara Bronfman’s remark ‘There is no lawsuit;’ Nancy Salzman’s ‘They’re not against him [that is, Keith Raniere], none of them are against him;’ and Keith Raneire’s ‘The things that are said are not only just opinion, but the facts that they use are incorrect: to propagate that we are a cult, we are a cult, we are a cult, with no evidence.’ Clearly, the Dalai Lama did not bother to have his aides check in with Barbara Bouchey or her fellow apostates, or other, easily checkable media reports and long-term records of lawsuits.123 In the words of Mark Vincente, Raniere’s film maker brought along to document the meeting, ‘seemingly out of nowhere,’ the Dalai Lama agreed to appear in the Palace Theater in Albany after all. It seemed like a set piece: was the Dalai Lama agreeing out of nowhere or was it arranged before filming?

Will He Learn?

Evidently, neither the result of his own supposed careful vetting, or Raniere’s widely reported track record, nor his too easy a denial, raised the Dalai Lama’s concern enough to call for at least a pause in his support for Raniere. And so, the Dalai Lama, one of the world’s leading advocates of secular ethics, squandered yet another real opportunity to warn the public at large of a less than ethical teacher by withdrawing his moral support.

Raniere was recently convicted and sentenced to an almost unheard of 120-year sentence, convicted of a long list of crimes: racketeering, sex trafficking, child pornography possession, and others—to what is effectively a life sentence. Clare Bronfman, his loyal supporter and financial backer, received a sentence of 81 months. The Dalai Lama remained in seclusion inside his residence in India at the time and wasn’t traveling abroad, most likely because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hence, he was hardly questioned by media about his connection to Raniere.

Few journalists, if any, had a chance to question the Dalai Lama on his appearance in the documentary, The Vow either, while its wide media coverage in the United States may well have escaped him. Therefore, it remains to be seen what lessons, if any, the Dalai Lama learned “about his mistakes” in being involved with Nxivm. Will he continue to endorse and vindicate the very people he is warned about? Will he continue to ignore the very media exposure of offenders he himself calls for? Will he accept any personal responsibility and accountability at all for his transactional attitude towards persons with questionable histories with the law and society’s ethical standards and the way they reciprocate his endorsement?124

We say transactional because the Dalai Lama or organizations affiliated with him reaped considerable benefits from his association with characters whose history broadcast clear warning signs of trouble ahead: $1.5 million from Asahara, for instance. Then too, ten days after being on the stage with Raniere, $2 million showed up in a new foundation with the Dalai Lama’s name on it. Coincidence, perhaps?125 But the Bronfman sisters were some of the most loyal of Raniere’s followers: they bankrolled him with $100 million for years. Moreover, they stood to receive a vast inheritance. To the Dalai Lama, their mere proximity provided a motive for the cultivation of goodwill between them.126

Symbolic Capital


Mary Finnigan & Rob Hogendoorn, ‘Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche’ (Jorvik Press, 2019)

If any money transpired between the Dalai Lama, his foundations and Trungpa or Sogyal directly is unknown.127 However, both of these lamas had control of large sums of cash which they spent lavishly on themselves. At the very least, they and their organizations afforded the Dalai Lama much exposure to western audiences, covering him in social and political capital—all expenses paid—while presenting him as the supreme representative of Tibetan Buddhism, as a sacred being beyond question.

Once more, the question arises: How does the Dalai Lama get away with acting in so evident a transactional manner when dealing with people with questionable histories, yet still, both he and Tibetan Buddhism of which he is the main representative, are viewed as the epitome of untainted, pure spiritual attainment? Perhaps it has to do with the West, to a large extent creating the myth of Tibetan Buddhism as an untainted religion surviving unspoiled by modern ideas and lifestyles, in isolation from the rest of the world in an imaginary Kingdom of Shangri-La made famous in the movie Lost Horizon in 1937.128

The problem with the western people creating and then naturally buying this myth is just that, it is a myth. The Dalai Lama is, however, the delegated spokesman for Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. Because of his social position he has legitimate access to the language of the institution. His words are not only his—he is also a carrier of the words of the institution and as such, represents the authority of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the authorized spokesperson, the delegated representative whose words and speech concentrates within it the accumulated symbolic capital of the institution—pure, unadulterated Tibetan Buddhism. It has delegated him as its authorized representative, to be an object of guaranteed belief, certified as correct—that is, both right and just.129

The Buck Never Stops

As a ‘simple monk,’ the Dalai Lama upholds this supercharged image while he directly interferes with real life situations in exiled Tibetan Buddhist communities and monasteries throughout Asia, and Tibetan Buddhist communities in the West—via constant endorsements, audiences, teaching tours, residencies, requests, exhortations, and interdictions.130 Moreover, for more than 60 years the Dalai Lama served as the religious and temporal leader of the Tibetan people at the same time, acting as the exiles’ head of state.


The 14th Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela (Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, Amsterdam)

Traditionally, each person who holds the office called Dalai Lama is understood to be an emanation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara—the Bodhisattva known for his compassion for all sentient beings. It is safe to say, then, that any Dalai Lama’s words carry a rather unusual weight. Indeed, the ‘immutability’ and ‘inviolability’ of his public office tend to supersede the responsibility and accountability for the way the Dalai Lama acquits himself of his tasks in real life. To many, both Tibetan Buddhists and not, the Dalai Lama is a ‘sovereign’ it seems, who never gets called on for his words and/or actions, who can do no wrong. The buck never stops with him.

Arguably, by ending his political role in 2011, abdicating the throne as Tibetan head of state—even though everyone, including the Tibetan President Lobsang Sangay, still defers to his political judgement—the Dalai Lama became even less accountable. Previously, the Constitution of Tibet and Charter of Tibetans-in-exile, at least in theory, provided that the Dalai Lama’s executive functions could be taken over by the Council of Regency ‘in the highest interests of the State.’131 Now, he has reverted his position ‘back to its role and responsibility as being the spiritual head.’ In effect, the Dalai Lama alone determines if his ‘constituents’—the Tibetan people, people across the Himalayas, and ‘other Buddhists who are connected to the Dalai Lamas’—still support the continuation of the office he holds.132

However, the Central Tibetan Administration in exile is not a full-blown democracy—nor does it claim to be one. When everyone is responsible for evaluating the Dalai Lama’s discharge of his self-defined mission, most likely no one is. Which of his followers would dare to stand up to a ‘simple monk’ who is the emanation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara and the last beacon of hope of the Tibetan people? It is a highly effective means of control, of course. If the only option to have the Dalai Lama remain in this world is to see him as all-good, this curtails any open and transparent judging of his actions as he claims to call for. But ask yourself: does this benefit or corrupt the Dalai Lama’s office and the Tibetan cause?

Words, Actions, Reputation

No matter what is the Dalai Lama’s personal learning process, some constants in his conduct are clear: ignoring well founded warnings of deep problems with people he is associating with; letting himself be used to legitimate questionable people and activities; quietly accepting large amounts of money; private meetings with controversial people; leaving victims, survivors, and whistleblowers out in the cold, while gaining access and exposure to a wide audience; and being preoccupied with the continuity of his own office.

All this considered, the Dalai Lama’s involvement with Chögyam Trungpa, Shōkō Asahara, Sogyal Lakar, and Keith Raniere, as well their abusive communities, offers a valuable perspective on the way he performs his duties as a religious, moral, and political leader over a long period of time. It also gives us a window into seeing how well the Dalai Lama’s words and actions match or not. If anything, history shows that he is an exceedingly poor judge of character.133

Hopefully, a more down to earth view of the plausible motives and imperatives that have guided the Dalai Lama’s fulfilment of his responsibilities since the 1970s, helps those at risk of being abused recognize his enabling behavior towards abusive teachers before they are harmed. Again, in the Dalai Lama’s own words, ‘they [media people, researchers] should dig deep into issues and to be open and impartial. Whether a politician, or the mayor, or religious people, the bishops, or myself, must sort of watch and make clear, inform the public, provided it must be very honest, unbiased, objective, that’s important!’

Not Too Holy To Fail

Good and bad aspects of being human can operate at different times in the same person. A well-founded critique of the Dalai Lama’s failure to protect the public at large by confronting or condemning his abusive ‘friends,’ does not diminish his numerous achievements. Also, it does not negate his preeminence as a lucid expositor of Tibetan Buddhist ideas. On the other hand, such a critique is not indicative of a reprehensible susceptibility to Chinese propaganda or the silent support of the oppression of the Tibetan people. There is just no good reason to believe that the Dalai Lama is too holy to fail. These are specious arguments, that deny his agency.


George W. Bush, the 14th Dalai Lama and Nancy Pelosi (Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony, October 17, 2007)

The simple fact of the matter is that the Dalai Lama was Tibetans’ absolute ruler for more than 60 years. Since 1991, the Charter of Tibetans-in-exile promulgates that the Central Tibetan Administration must ‘endeavor to improve the purity and efficiency of academic and monastic communities of monks, nuns, and tantric practitioners, and shall encourage them to maintain proper behavior.’ Right after the Dalai Lama went into exile in 1959, his administration made the Universal Declaration of Human Rights a cornerstone of its Constitution. The Charter that is now in force, likewise, mandates the Central Tibetan Administration to adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On top of that, the Dalai Lama urges the necessity of a secular approach to universal ethics.

Such express commitments do not merely bring about entitlements, but obligations as well. After all, Tibetans are not merely subject to human rights abuses, some of the Tibetan lamas the Dalai Lama endorses, commit them. Given his avowed commitment to the Charter of the Tibetans-in-exile, it is a fair question to ask what the Dalai Lama does to ‘improve the purity’ of Tibetan lamas, and ‘encourage them to maintain proper behavior’ when he has the chance. His international stature as a moral leader and champion of secular ethics implies that the Dalai Lama’s dealings with non-Buddhist abusive leaders merit critical scrutiny as well. The untold numbers of victims and survivors in four continents deserve that much. Let us then not judge the Dalai Lama’s words and actions by his reputation, but rather, the other way around.134

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Part 3 of 4

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Notes:

1. We use the word ‘priest’ here in its neutral sense, derived from the ecclesiastical Latin presbyter or ‘elder,’ to denote a person who performs religious ceremonies and duties in a non-Christian religion.
2. Turrel Wylie submits that the concept of the trülku fulfilled social, cultural, and political needs that were felt in Tibet around the 14th century. The erstwhile Mongol patrons were riled by the recurring sibling rivalry between scions of the Khön (Wyl. ‘khon) family dynasty from Sakya (Wyl. sa skya) in Tibet. The Khön clan had acted as the Mongol’s regents of Tibet since the days of Kublai Khan (b. 1215 d. 1294), but was marginalized by the 3rd Karmapa Rangjung Dorjé (Wyl. karma pa rang byung rdo rje, b. 1284 d. 1339). According to Wylie, Mongol rulers were attracted to his political profile for three main reasons: First, the transfer of political power from one trülku to the next would eliminate the sibling rivalry inherent in biological lineages; second, trülkus, especially celibate monks committed to frugality, would lack the patrimonial connections with which to foment rebellion; and third, transitioning the charisma from the person to his or her office would institutionalise the rule by priests, irrespective of personal charisma. A few decades later, however, the Mongols were overthrown by the Chinese Ming dynasty, which kept the Karmapa lineage from achieving long-term political supremacy in Tibet. Wylie, Turrell V. (1978). Reincarnation: a political innovation in Tibetan Buddhism. In Louis Ligetti (Ed.), Proceedings of the Csoma de Kőrös Memorial Symposium, Hungary, 24-30 September 1976 (pp. 579-586). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó; Gardner, Alexander. (2011). The Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje: b.1284 – d.1339. Treasury of Lives. Retrieved April 14, 2021. Throughout the endnotes, Tibetan names and words are transliterated according to Turrel Wylie’s (Wyl.) sanctioned orthography, but only on their first appearance. Wylie, Turrel V. (1959). A standard system of Tibetan transcription. Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 22, pp. 261-267. The transliterations were phonetically transcribed with the online Tibetan Phonetics Converter of the Tibetan & Himalayan Library (THLib.), except where widely established renderings of terminology, proper names, and locations exist. At the first mention of well-known names, the proper ThLib. transcription is noted. Tibetan Phonetics Converter of the Tibetan & Himalayan Library. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
3. Hirshberg, Daniel A. et al. (2017). Preface: The Tulku (sprul sku) Institution in Tibetan Buddhism. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 38, pp. i-iii. See also: Dreyfus, Georges. (1995). Law, State, and Political Ideology. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 18 (1), pp. 117-138.
4. Estimates of the number of trülkus in exile in the 1970s through 2010s have mounted from circa 120 to 1,000. Most authors agree that their number rapidly increased in exile. Bomhard, Allan R. (Ed.). (2002). The Tantric Mysticism of Tibet: By John Blofeld (1913—1987): Revised and edited by Allan R. Bomhard. Charleston: Charleston Buddhist Fellowship; Hixon, Lex. (1976). The Moment You See Him. The Laughing Man, 1 (2), pp. 51-54; Aziz, Barbara N. (1976). Reincarnation Reconsidered: Or the Reincarnate Lama as Shaman. In John T. Hitchkock & Rex L. Jones (Eds.), Spirit Possession in the Nepal Himalayas (pp. 343-360). Warminster: Aris and Phillips; Saklani, Girija. (1978). Tibetan Refugees in India: A Sociological Study of an Uprooted Community; Bärlocher, Daniel. (1982). Testimonies of Tibetan Tulkus: A Research among Reincarnate Buddhist Masters in Exile: Volume I: Materials. Ph. Dissertation, Universität Freiburg, Freiburg. pp. 67-68; Michael, Franz. (1982). Rule by Incarnation: Tibetan Buddhism and Its Role in Society and State. Boulder: Westview Press. p. 43; Avedon, John F. (1998). In Exile from the Land of Snows: The Definitive Account of the Dalai Lama and Tibet Since the Chinese Conquest. New York: Harper Perennial. pp. 119; Buswell Jr., Robert E. & Donald S. Lopez Jr. (2014). The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 847; Asshauer, Egbert. (2006). Tulkus—The Mystery of the Living Buddhas: Conversations, Encounters, Backgrounds. Ulm: Fabri Verlag. pp. 43, 156; Asshauer, Egbert. (2010). Das tibetische Tulkusystem: Entwicklung und Bedeutung. Tibet und Buddhismus, (3), pp. 29-33; Levine, Norma. (2018). The Tibetans. In The Spiritual Odyssey of Freda Bedi: England, India, Burma, Sikkim, and Beyond (pp. 133-168). Merigar: Shang Shung Publications.
5. Dagyab Rinpoche has referred to the rapid increase of the number of trülkus in exile as a ‘trülku boom.’ Dagyab Rinpoche. (1992). Religion: Problems in the development of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. Tibetan Review, 27 (10), pp. 15-17. Marco Pallis noted in 1960 that ‘of late years’ some ‘suspicious occurrences’ demonstrated lapses in the traditional screening of formally instated trülkus. Pallis, Marco. (1960). The Way and the Mountain. London: Peter Owen Limited. pp.169-170. The 14th Dalai Lama, likewise, said: ‘”So, in Tibetan history, some lamas [were] really wonderful, but some lamas [are a] disgrace. I think..” [continues in Tibetan]. Translator: “So, this master Chösang Rinpoche, has said that when someone is recognized as a reincarnation of some high lama, of a predecessor, it seemed that there was some wisdom in it, in recognizing the reincarnation. But when this reincarnation actually proves to be a disgrace, then I really feel very sad from the depth of my heart.” Dalai Lama: “So there are cases now, frankly speaking, [in which] the individual lama utilizes the name of reincarnation, but never pays much attention to study and practice. So, these lamas disgrace the Buddhadharma.'” Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2019). Interaction with College Students. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 9, 2021. In 2011, the Dalai Lama critiqued: ‘Today, there are recognized Tulkus in all the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, the Sakya, Geluk, Kagyu and Nyingma, as well as Jonang and Bodong, who serve the Dharma. It is also evident that amongst these Tulkus some are a disgrace. (…) In the recent past, there have been cases of irresponsible managers of wealthy Lama-estates who indulged in improper methods to recognize reincarnations, which have undermined the Dharma, the monastic community and our society.’ Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2011). Reincarnation. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 9, 2021. For critical observations on the formal institution of tulkus by the Dalai Lama’s brother Tenzin Choegyal, see: McGirk, Tim. (2013). Reincarnation in Exile. Believermag.com. Retrieved April 9, 2021; Craig, Mary. (1998). Kundun: A Biograpy of the Family of the Dalai Lama. London: Fount. pp. 161.
6. Anya Bernstein writes: ‘The identification of the successive incarnation of high lamas, an institution that developed in Tibet as early as the eleventh century, ensured the inheritance of leadership and property from one generation to the next at a time when celibate monastic communities replaced noble families—previously the primary patrons of Buddhism—to became centers of Buddhist power and governance. Taking a Weberian view of authority, Turrell Wylie suggested that the institution of reincarnation facilitated the “transition from charisma of person to a charisma of office: a change essential to the establishment of a hierocratic form of government that could survive as an institution regardless of the charisma of any individual.” Focusing on the role of reincarnation in the transfer of property, Melvyn Goldstein demonstrated how features inherent in reincarnation transformed the Tibetan political system itself, resulting in what he called a “circulation of estates,” large blocks of arable land intermittently held by incarnate lamas in power.’ Bernstein, Anya. (2017). Buddhist Body Politics: Life, Death, and Reincarnation in Transnational Eurasis. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 38, pp. 157-182.
7. For present purposes, we take our estimate from the total of 14 Dalai Lamas since the first was born in 1391. Their number sits between 8 consecutive Panchen Lamas and 17 consecutive Karmapas. The Tibetan tradition posits that the 3rd Karmapa was the first major trülku, but modern scholarship calls that assumption into question. Wylie, Turrell. V. (1978). Reincarnation: a political innovation in Tibetan Buddhism. In Louis Ligetti (Ed.), Proceedings of the Csoma de Kőrös Memorial Symposium, Hungary, pp. 24-30 September 1976 (pp. 579-586). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. Dreyfus, Georges. (1995). Law, State, and Political Ideology. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 18 (1), pp. 117-138; Van der Kuijp, Leonard W. J. (2005). The Dalai Lamas and the Origin of Reincarnate Lamas. In Martin. Brauen (Ed.), The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History (pp. 15-31). Chicago: Serindia Publications.
8. Wylie, Turrell. V. (1978). Reincarnation: a political innovation in Tibetan Buddhism. In Louis Ligetti (Ed.), Proceedings of the Csoma de Kőrös Memorial Symposium, Hungary, pp. 24-30 September 1976 (pp. 579-586). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó; Dreyfus, Georges. (1995). Law, State, and Political Ideology. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 18 (1), pp. 117-138; Van der Kuijp, Leonard W. J. (2005). The Dalai Lamas and the Origin of Reincarnate Lamas. In Martin. Brauen (Ed.), The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History (pp. 15-31). Chicago: Serindia Publications.
9. The 3rd Dalai Lama, Sönam Gyatso (b. 1543 d. 1588), was the first to bear that title. The title Dalai Lama (Wyl. ta la’i bla ma, ocean,’ ‘vast,’ or universal lama) was given to him by the Mongol ruler Althan Khan (b. 1507 d. 1582). The first two Dalai Lamas were recognized posthumously, many years after their deaths. Van der Kuijp, Leonard W. J. (2005). The Dalai Lamas and the Origin of Reincarnate Lamas. In Martin Brauen (Ed.), The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History (pp. 15-31). Chicago: Serindia Publications. The 5th Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lopsang Gyatso (b. 1617 d. 1682), unified Tibet in the wake of a civil war. In 1642, the Mongol leader Güshi Khan (b. 1582 d. 1655) enthroned the 5th Dalai Lama as the ruler of Tibet. He thereby established the yön chö (Wyl. yon mchod, ‘patron-spiritual teacher’ or ‘donor-donee’) relation of joint political and religious rule that became the hallmark of the hegemonizing Tibetan political ideology. See the extensive discussions of the lineage of the Dalai Lamas in: Mullin, Glenn H. (2001). The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publications; Brauen, Martin. (Ed.). (2005). The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History. Chicago: Serindia Publications.
10. Dreyfus, Georges. (1995). Law, State, and Political Ideology. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 18 (1), pp. 117-138. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
11. In 1979, for instance, the 14th Dalai Lama said about trülkus and his own office: ‘Buddha in all his teachings has never mentioned any special status, only qualification. (Regarding) the Tulku system there was some connection with the social system of Tibet in the past. And some of this will change. (…) This Tulku system evolved in the Tibetan society, so it will go on its own evolution and changes. Basically it has nothing to do with the teaching. (…) Rebirth is there, reincarnation is there. But not the lineages.’ Bärlocher, Daniel. (1982). Testimonies of Tibetan Tulkus: A Research among Reincarnate Buddhist Masters in Exile: Volume I: Materials. Universität Freiburg, Freiburg. pp. 112-125. In 2011, the Dalai Lama reiterated the same view and said: ‘The one who is qualified as a result of one’s own study and practice is known as Lama. A Tulku, even without such a standard of education, enjoys status in society in the name of the former Lama. And there are many who lack the Lama’s qualification and even bring disgrace. So I used to say since some forty years ago that there needs to be some system to regulate the recognition of Tulku. Otherwise it is not good to have many unqualified ones.’ Author unknown. (2011). Transcript of Video-Conference with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Chinese Activists. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 6, 2021. In 2005, he said: ‘In the early sixties, on one occasion, I think it was during the meeting with heads of religious schools, I [stat]ed some historical facts. It is important to keep the recognition and the lineage of some of these lamas who are historically authentic and based in Tibetan history. (…) But until now, in many cases if one has money—enough money—then one gets tülku recognition from the monastery. This almost is like buying [the position] with money.’ Brauen, Martin. (2005). Introduction and Interview with His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. In Martin Brauen (Ed.), The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History (pp. 6-13). Chicago: Serindia Publications. Evidently, the Dalai Lama’s personal evaluation of the formal instatement of trülkus is contested. Donald Lopez is reported to have found that the religious heads of all Tibetan traditions decided on a ‘moratorium’ on the recognition of trülkus in the early 1960s, ‘which lasted a decade before some unnamed group broke it, ushering in open season on tulku recognition.’ Author unknown. (2013). The Tulku Institution in Tibetan Buddhism: A Symposium at USF, February 15 & 16, 2013. Tsadra.org. Retrieved April 7, 2021. Also, the Dalai Lama’s actions did not always match his view: in response to the so-called ‘trülku boom’ of the 1960s through 2000s he too began conferring formal recognition on numerous young trülkus. See also: Asshauer, Egbert. (2003). Das Tulkusystem: ein Stück tibetische Identität. Tibet und Buddhismus, (67), pp. 25-30; McGirk, Tim. (2013). Reincarnation in Exile. Believermag.com. Retrieved April 9, 2021; Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. (2016). Time for Radical Change in How We Raise Our Tulkus. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
12. A new presidential election will be held in 2021. Singh Dhillon, Gangadeep. (2020). Explained: How Tibetans across the world will elect their parliament-in-exile. Indian Express Retrieved March 10, 2021. In the documentary The Great 14th, the Dalai Lama says about his abdication: ‘This is the right time, now. Now hand it over, all my legitimate political authority. The almost four-century old tradition of the Dalai Lama institution as head of both [the] temporal and spirituality, now that, sooner or later, had to change. The Great 14th Dalai Lama—[laughing] quite popular…—at such moment, to voluntarily end it, I feel very proud. I proudly, happily, ended that.’ Rawcliffe, Rosemary. (2020). The Great 14th. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
13. Author unknown. (2014). Dalai Lama concedes he may be the last. Retrieved April 12, 2021.
14. Mishra, Pankaj. (2015). The Last Dalai Lama? The New York Times. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
15. Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2017). Inauguration of Seminar on ‘Buddhism in Ladakh’. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
16. Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin & Thubten Chodron. (2018). The Foundation of Buddhist Practice (2). Somerville: Wisdom. pp. 92. See also: Author unknown. (2017). Dalai Lama about Sogyal Rinpoche and Rigpa with students from the University of California. Youtube.com. Retrieved April 9, 2021. In 2019, a statement on the Dalai Lama’s own website said: ‘In seeking to balance preserving tradition and modern development, His Holiness suggested that the custom of recognising reincarnate lamas may have had its day. He remarked that no such custom existed in India. There is no reincarnation of the Buddha or Nagarjuna. He wondered what place this institution has in a democratic society.’ Author unknown. (2019). Addressing Students from North Indian Universities. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
17. Jensen, Karen & Matthew Abrahams. (2019). Buddha Buzz Weekly: Dalai Lama Considers End to Reincarnated Political Leaders. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 9, 2021; Mohan, Lalit. (2019, October 2019). Institution of Lama has ‘feudal’ origins. The Tribune. Retrieved April 14, 2021; Author unknown (2019, October 26). Reincarnation feudal, should end now: Dalai Lama amid successor row with China. The Times of India. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
18. Kewley, Vanya. (1975). The Lama King BBC One London. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
19. Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (1976). Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the Seventeenth Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day, 10 March 1976. Retrieved April 12, 2021; Author unknown. (1976). Editorial: The Last Dalai Lama? Tibetan Review, 11 (3), pp. 3-4; Author unknown. (1976). News Report: Dalai Lama Assails Tibetan Complacency. Tibetan Review, 11 (3), pp. 4-5; Dreyfus, Georges B. J. (1998). The Shuk-den Affair: History and Nature of a Quarrel. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 2 (21), pp. 227-270; Mills, Martin A. (2009). Charting the Shugden Interdiction in the Western Himalaya. In J. Bray & E. De Rossi Filibeck (Eds.), Mountains, Monasteries and Mosques: Recent Research on Ladakh and the Western Himalaya: Proceedings of the 13th colloquium of the International Association for Ladakh Studies (pp. 251-270). Pisa: Fabrizio Serra; Nowak, Margaret. (1984). Tibetan Refugees: Youth and the New Generation of Meaning. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. pp. 29-30.
20. Author unknown. (2014). Dalai Lama concedes he may be the last. Retrieved April 12, 2021. See also: Eigendorf, Jörg. (2014). Der Dalai Lama will keinen Nachfolger mehr haben. Welt am Sonntag. Retrieved April 15, 2021; Author unknown (2014, September 9). Tibetans Say ‘Last Dalai Lama’ Report Is Misleading. Voice of America News; Mishra, Pankaj. (2015). The Last Dalai Lama? The New York Times Retrieved April 15, 2021.
21. According to professor emeritus Robert Thurman of Columbia University in New York City, the Dalai Lama said he would not reincarnate to duck out of a situation in which the Chinese Communist Party uses ‘a Dalai Lama puppet person to try to keep the Tibetans distracted from their destruction of the Tibetan culture and environment.’ The Dalai Lama’s interpreter Thupten Jinpa notes that when the Dalai Lama says he is the last, he means that he may be the last one in his lineage to be awarded ‘the formal recognition as the continuation of the institution.’ All the same, the Dalai Lama himself said: ‘If today I die, I think most probably two Dalai Lamas may happen.’ The Harvard-trained lawyer Lobsang Sangay, who succeeded the Dalai Lama as the Tibetan exiles’ head of state, is unequivocal: ‘This Dalai Lama has the final say on the next Dalai Lama, no one else. No power, no money, no Chinese leader can replace this Dalai Lama as far as the next Dalai Lama is concerned. So, the 14th Dalai Lama will decide on the 15th Dalai Lama.’ Lemle, Mickey. (2016). The Last Dalai Lama? New York: Alive Mind. See also: Frayer, Lauren. (2019). Who Will Decide On The Dalai Lama’s Successor — His Supporters Or Beijing? NPR. Retrieved April 12, 2021. In the documentary The Great 14th, the Dalai Lama reiterated that whether there will be a 15th Dalai Lama is up to the majority of the Tibetan people, but that under the present circumstances the institution will remain: ‘So, in order to keep the Dalai Lama institution continuously and more respectful, [it is] better to distance [it] from political power.’ Rawcliffe, Rosemary. (2020). The Great 14th. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
22. Author unknown. (2019). 14th Tibetan Religious Conference affirms the Dalai Lama’s sole authority in his reincarnation, illegitimizes China’s meddling in religious affairs. Central Tibetan Administration. Retrieved April 12, 2021.
23. Graeber, David. (2018). Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 308.
24. The Dalai Lama’s full name is Jétsün Jampel Ngakwang Lozang Yéshé Tendzin Gyatso Sisum Wanggyur Tsungpa Mépé Dépel Zangpo (Wyl. rje btsun jam dpal ngag dbang blo bzang ye shes bstan ‘dzin rgya mtsho srid gsum dbang bsgyur mtshungs pa med pa’i sde dpal bzang po). Jeffrey Hopkins translates it into English as ‘Leader-Holiness-Gentleness-Renown-Speech-Dominion-Mind-Goodness-Primordial-Wisdom-Teaching-Hold-Vastness-Ocean-Being-Triad-Controlling-Unparalleled-Glory-Integrity.’ Gyatso, Tenzin (the fourteenth Dalai Lama). (2006). Kindness, Clarity, and Insight: The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (Revised and updated ed.). Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications. p. 12. The 14th Dalai Lama assumed full religious and political authority in 1950. Shakabpa, Tsepon & Wangchuk Deden. (2010). Necessity of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama to Assume Religious and Political Authority Suddenly (Derek F. Maher, Trans.). In Henk Blezer et al. (Eds.), One Hundred Thousand Moons: An Advanced Political History of Tibet: Volume 2 (pp. 943-994). Leiden: Brill.
25. Author unknown. (1940). Picture of the week: The King-Regent of Tibet: will he poison the baby Dalai Lama? Life, 8 (15), pp. 32-33. Leonard van der Kuijp writes: ‘the 9th through 12th [Dalai Lamas] were also at the mercy of a succession of regents, their political ambitions and interests, and those of their families. None of these Dalai Lamas lived beyond twenty-one and it is likely that their untimely deaths resulted from foul play.’ Van der Kuijp, Leonard W. J. (2005). The Dalai Lamas and the Origin of Reincarnate Lamas. In M. Brauen (Ed.), The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History (pp. 15-31). Chicago: Serindia Publications. See also Norbu, Thubten J. & Colin M. Turnbull. (1968). Tibet. New York: Simon and Schuster. p. 312; Richardson, Hugh E. (1984). Tibet And Its History (Second edition, Revised and Updated ed.). Boulder: Shambhala. p. 59; Mullin, Glenn H. (2001). The Fourteen Dalai Lamas: A Sacred Legacy of Reincarnation. Santa Fe: Clear Light Publications. pp. 343-346. The fourth Dalai Lama, Yönten Gyatso (b. 1589 d. 1616) and sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (b. 1683 d. 1706), died in their mid-twenties. Brauen, Martin. (Ed.). (2005). The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History. Chicago: Serindia Publications. pp. 60-61, 93-101.
26. Gyello Döndrup (Wyl. rgyal lo don ‘grub, b. 1928) is the 14th Dalai Lama’s second oldest brother. Author unknown. (1940). Picture of the week: The King-Regent of Tibet: will he poison the baby Dalai Lama? Life, 8 (15), pp. 32-33; Craig, Mary. (1998). Kundun: A Biograpy of the Family of the Dalai Lama. London: Fount, p. 125. For the struggle of power that preceded the Regent’s untimely death in 1947, see Finnigan, Mary & Rob Hogendoorn. (2019). Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche. Portland: Jorvik Press, pp. 13-15. The 14th Dalai Lama’s accession to the throne in 1950—ahead of time, aged 15—was his government’s response to the conquest of Tibet by the Chinese occupying force in 1950.
27. A bodhisattva is a realised being who renounces nirvana in order to be re-born in the human realm to help other beings to enlightenment.
28. Brown, Andrew. (2012, May 17). Does Buddhism need the supernatural stuff? The Guardian. Tibetans commonly call the Dalai Lama Kündün (Wyl. kun ‘dun, ‘exalted presence’), Gyelwa Rinpoché (Wyl. rgyal ba rin po che, ‘precious conqueror’) or Kyapgön Rinpoche (Wyl. skyabs mgon rin po che, ‘precious protector’).
29. Author unknown. (Date unknown). Brief Biography. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
30. Wind, Eric. (2016). The Dalai Lama’s Patek Philippe, Gifted By FDR Via An OSS Officer Who Was The Grandson Of Leo Tolstoy (Seriously). Hodinkee.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Laird, Thomas. (2006). The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama. New York: Grove Press, p. 294.
31. Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2017). U.S. Congressional Gold Medal Ceremony Acceptance Speech. Dalailama.com.Retrieved April 14, 2021; Bush, George. (2007). Speech by President George Bush. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 14, 2021. President George Bush looked back fondly on his interactions with the Dalai Lama in the documentary The Last Dalai Lama? As a token of his appreciation, he showed the portrait of the Dalai Lama he has painted. Lemle, Mickey. (2016). The Last Dalai Lama? New York: Alive Mind.
32. DD News. (2014). Dalai Lama: The Political and Spiritual Guru of Tibetans. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Wangchuk, Rapker & Tharchin, Choyang. (2014). Visit of His Holiness the XIVth Dalai Lama, Tibet to India (1956-57). YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
33. Author unknown. (no date). Chronology of Events. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Author unknown. (no date). Visit to India – 1956 to 1957. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Author unknown. (Date unknown). Dignitaries Met 1954 – 1989. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. His sojourns in China and India mark the Dalai Lama’s first extended exposure to real time reporting by modern mass media.
34. The Dalai Lama can get testy when his usual bonhomie and readiness to laugh off objections do not produce the usual enchanting, disarming effect and are met with determined questioning instead. For two instances of such interactions, see his interview with Dutch politician Paul Rosenmöller and a townhall meeting with a large group of Dutch graduate students, moderated by reporter Twan Huys: Rosenmöller, Paul. (2009). Dalai Lama. Spraakmakende Zaken. Npostart.nl. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Huys, Twan. (2009). Dalai Lama. Nova College Tour. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
35. Myers, William et al. (2016). Man of Peace: The Illustrated Life Story of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. New York City: Tibet House US.
36. Nxivm is pronounced as nexium.
37. Parry, Marc. (2009, March 13). For Dalai Lama, third choice is charmed. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Ettkin, Brian. (2009, March 18). Details on Dalai Lama’s visit. Time Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Curiously, before he cancelled his visit the Dalai Lama did not list his visit to Albany on the upcoming appearance schedule on his official website. Ettkin, Brian. (2009, March 29). Details light on Dalai Lama visit. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021. The Dalai Lama was scheduled to appear at the University of Albany, The College of Saint Rose, and the Times Union Center. On Sunday April 5th, 2009, Tenzin Dickyi, the special assistant to the Dalai Lama’s representative in the Office of Tibet in New York, and the Dalai Lama’s secretary Tenzin Taklha sent cancellation messages. George R. Hearst III, the publisher of the Times Union and president of the University of Albany Foundation, told Brian Ettkin that Taklha ‘was not excited to cancel. He was really hoping to go forward, but there’s enough stuff out there that (they) don’t need to expose His Holiness to this kind of risk.’ Ettkin, Brian. (2009, April 6). Dalai Lama cancels his visit to Albany. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
38. Mueller, Chris, & Jon Campbell. (2009, March 31). Dalai Lama comes with controversy. Albany Student Press, pp. 1-2. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
39. Orenstein, David. (1997, August 24). Success can quickly turn to ruin. The Times Union.; Orenstein, David. (1997, August 24). Some dip, others dive into selling. The Times Union.; Odato, James M. (2012, February 16). ‘Ample Evidence’ to justify investigation. Times Union. Retrieved April 14, 2021. In 2003, Forbes had already called Nxivm a ‘cult of personality.’ Freedman, Michael. (2003). Cult of Personality. Forbes. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
40. Parry, Marc. (2009, March 13). For Dalai Lama, third choice is charmed. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
41. Weaver, Daniel. T. (2009, March 29). Op-ed column: Dalai Lama’s visit to Albany sponsored by cult-like group. Daily Gazette. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
42. Filmmaker Mark Vicente was a long-time Nxivm-member and Raniere-devotee, and the official photographer of the group who was brought along to document the meeting. Footage of the Dalai Lama’s interactions with Raniere and his entourage was used in the HBO documentary series The Vow, first broadcast in 2020. For a transcript and extensive discussion of the Dalai Lama’s interactions with Keith Raniere and Nxivm, see Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, November 8). The Dalai Lama and Nxivm Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
43. Ibid.
44. See The Vow, season 1, episodes 5 and 6: Author unknown. The Vow: A Nxivm Story. HBO. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Grondahl, Paul. (2009). Dalai Lama offers message of wisdom, optimism in Albany. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
45. The cover of the book makes a special note of the Dalai Lama’s foreword.
46. However, during the press conference that preceded his talk the Dalai Lama himself sidestepped a question about his appearance during an event sponsored by Nxivm. He merely said: ‘I had an invitation, so I accepted.’ Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, November 8). The Dalai Lama and Nxivm Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Grondahl, Paul. (2009, May 7). Dalai Lama offers message of wisdom, optimism in Albany. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Gyatso, Tenzin (the fourteenth Dalai Lama). (2009). H.H. the Dalai Lama: Public Talk in Albany. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Question starts at circa 44.15 mins.
47. Our approach mirrors that of Hogendoorn, Rob M. (2014). Caveat Emptor: The Dalai Lama’s Proviso and the Burden of (Scientific) Proof. Religions, 5 (3), pp. 522-559: ‘In legal matters, personal accountability is judged on a day-to-day basis by a coherent set of standards that is well-nigh impossible to meet by any one individual. This is done by taking recourse to the objectifying legal fiction of “a reasonable person.” Within the context of law, the fiction of a reasonable person presents the objective standard against which individuals’ actual conduct is measured. Whether such a person actually exists does not even enter into the discussion.’ See also: Lachs, Stuart. (2019). Tibetan Buddhism Enters the 21st Century: Trouble in Shangri-la. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
48. Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (1999). Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millenium. London: Little, Brown and Company; Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2011). Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Author unknown. (2014). Discussing Secular Ethics. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 17, 2021; Author unknown. (2020). The Need for Secular Ethics in Modern Education. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
49. Rawcliffe, Rosemary. (2020). The Great 14th. Retrieved April 15, 2021. See also: Author unknown. (2018). Principal Commitments. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
50. Richard, Ursula. (2017). Dalai Lama in Deutschland: Mahnende Worte zum Thema Missbrauch. Buddhismus Aktuell. Retrieved April 8, 2021.
51. The Tibetan honorific Rinpoché (Wyl. rin po che) is commonly translated as ‘precious one.’ The word lama (Wyl. bla ma) is the Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit word guru for spiritual teacher.
52. It is important to note that the Dalai Lama endorsed other Tibetan Buddhist teachers of ill repute as well—by visiting or teaching at their centers; having them act as his hosts or sponsors during visits of their country; welcoming them on stage during public teachings in the West and audiences at his residence in Dharamsala, India; and so forth.
53. Steinbeck IV, John & Nancy Steinbeck. (2001). Chapter 43: Icarus’ Flight. In The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck (Kindle ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books. John Steinbeck IV (b. 1946 d. 1991) was an American war correspondent, essayist, and author, married to Nancy Lenn Steinbeck. He was the second child of the Nobel Prize-winning author John Ernst Steinbeck. It is important to note that the Dalai Lama’s remark in 1989 did not become public until 2001, when The Other Side of Eden came out.
54. Chögyam Trungpa (Wyl. chos rgya drung pa, THLib. Chögya Drungpa) was born in Kham, Tibet in 1939. He died of alcoholism in 1987. Katy Butler wrote about his death: ‘When Trungpa Rinpoche lay dying in 1986 at the age of 47, only an inner circle knew the symptoms of his final illness. Few could bear to acknowledge that their beloved and brilliant teacher was dying of terminal alcoholism, even when he lay incontinent in his bedroom, belly distended and skin discolored, hallucinating and suffering from varicose veins, gastritis and esophageal varices, a swelling of veins in the esophagus caused almost exclusively by cirrhosis of the liver. “Rinpoche was certainly not an ordinary Joe, but he sure died like every alcoholic I’ve ever seen who drank uninterruptedly.” said Victoria Fitch, a member of his household staff with years of experience as a nursing attendant. “The denial was bone-deep.” she continued. “I watched his alcoholic dementia explained as his being in the realm of the dakinis (guardians of the teachings, visualized in female form). When he requested alcohol, no one could bring themselves not to bring it to him, although they tried to water his beer or bring him a little less. In that final time of his life… he could no longer walk independently.’ Butler, Katy. (1990). Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America. The Common boundary, (8), pp. 14-22. See also: Varvaloucas, Emma. (2018). Same Old Story in a New World. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 17, 2021; Remski, Matthew. (2018). Pema Chödrön on Trungpa in 2011: “I Can’t Answer the Relative Questions”. Retrieved April 17, 2021.
55. Vajradhatu and its sister organization Naropa Institute were founded and incorporated in Boulder, Colorado in the United States of America in 1974. Legally distinct, the organizations maintained common officers and boards of directors. John and Nancy Steinbeck specifically note Chögyam Trungpa’s ‘rampant addictions (a $40,000-a-year cocaine habit, along with a penchant for Seconal and gallons of sake).’ Ibid. Leslie Hays was one of the seven sangyum (Wyl. gsang yum, ‘secret consort’) who Trungpa ‘married’ within five months in 1984. She corroborated Trungpa’s alleged cocaine use—code-named ‘tabi’—and sexual relations with minors in several Facebook posts. Hays, Leslie. (2018). Tabi. Facebook. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Hays, Leslie. (2019). Ciel. Facebook. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Andrea Winn, likewise, corroborated Trungpa’s cocaine use: Winn, Andrea M. (2019). How I decided to end my guru relationship with Trungpa Rinpoche. Andreamwinn.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Vajradhatu was renamed Shambhala in February 2000. In 2018, Chögyam Trungpa’s son Sakyong Mipham Rinpoché (b. 1962, see endnote 54) stepped down amidst allegations of sexual abuse that were corroborated by [url=http://survivorbb.rapeutation.com/viewtopic.php?f=174&t=3918Andrea Winn’s Buddhist Project Sunshine[/url]. This project underlines, among other problems, the widespread abuse of children by older men in positions of power in the Shambhala organization. Winn, Andrea M. (2018). Buddhist Project Sunshine. Retrieved April 3, 2021. See also: Newman, Andy. (2018, July 11). The ‘King’ of Shambhala Buddhism Is Undone by Abuse Report. The New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
56. According to the Mulasarvastivadin disciplinary code of conduct for novice and fully ordained monks, sexual intercourse is a ‘defeat’ that can’t be undone. Thereafter, it is impossible to return to the status of monk. See: Author unknown. (2010). Ordination in the Tibetan Buddhist Tradition. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Trungpa, then, lost his monkhood in 1962 by fathering a son with Könchok Päldron, a young Tibetan nun: Ösel Rangdrol Mukpo. However, Trungpa kept up appearances as if he were still a monk until 1970. In January 1970, he married a 16-year-old barrister’s daughter, Diana Judith Mukpo (née Pybus on October 8, 1953). Flintoff, John-Paul. (2012). Did I know you in a past life? The Guardian. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Trungpa and Diana had sex during her very first visit to his room, late October 1969, while he was recuperating from a car accident. She had just turned sixteen. Mukpo, Diana J. & Carolyn R. Gimian. (2006). [url=http://survivorbb.rapeutation.com/viewtopic.php?f=174&t=4059]Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa[/url]. Boston: Shambhala. p. 16.
57. Late 1969, Trungpa summoned Ösel Mukpo to the United Kingdom and left the boy in the harsh—or in Diana Mukpo’s euphemism: ‘archaic’—care of the monks of his center Samye Ling in Dumfriesshire, Scotland. When Trungpa and Diana moved to the United States of America in March 1970, they left Ösel behind in Samye Ling. He joined his father’s household two years later, only to be sent to boarding school in Ojai, California until 1976. Mukpo, Diana J. & Carolyn R. Gimian. (2006). Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala. pp. 45, 87, 95, 116-120. Ösel Mukpo later became known as Mipham Rinpoché, the Sakyong (Wyl. sa skyong, ‘king’) of the Shambhala organization. He stepped down in 2018, in response to allegations of sexual abuse (see endnote 52).
58. After their marriage, Diana soon became pregnant and gave birth to Trungpa’s second son Tendzin Lhawang Tagdrug David Mukpo—nicknamed “Taggie” or “Tagi”— on March 9, 1971. Another son, Gesar Tsewang Arthur Mukpo, was born April 26, 1973. A few weeks later, Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoché determined in a dream that Gesar was the trülku of Sechen Jamgön Kongtrul. During his marriage to Diana, Trungpa routinely had sex with large numbers of young female followers and kept a household of concubines.
59. Eventually, each of the boys was declared to be a trülku—that is, (re)incarnations or emanations of deceased Buddhist masters. In 1979, Trungpa’s son Ösel Rangdrol Mukpo (see endnote 52 and 54) was retroactively recognized as a trülku by Penor Rinpoché (Wyl. contraction of pad+ma nor bu, b. 1932 d. 2009) the head of the Nyingma tradition. Shortly after the birth of Taggie Mukpo, the 16th Karmapa Rangjung Rikpé Dorjé (Wyl. karma pa rang byung rig pa’i rdo rje, b. 1924 d. 1981) sent Trungpa a letter from Sikkim to tell him that he had recognized the boy as a trülku—unseen, that is. The Karmapa later determined that the boy—who is autistic and epileptic—suffered from ‘trülku disease’ because he was not being trained in the traditional way. The Karmapa insisted that he would be cured by his enthronement and monastic education in Rumtek, Sikkim. Taggie was sent to live in a Sikkimese monastery between 1977 and 1987, after which the monastics returned him to the care of Trungpa’s students—uncured, that is. He is now a ward of the State of Vermont.
60. Montgomery, Dan. (2018). Samaya and the World of Shambhala. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
61. Perks, John R. (2004). The Mahāsiddha and His Idiot Servant. Putney: Crazy Heart. pp. 60-61. Leslie Hays recounted a similar story involving a cat. Hays, Leslie. (2018). The cat story. Facebook. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
62. Zaslowsky, Dyan. (1989, February 21). Buddhists in U.S. Agonize on AIDS Issue. The New York Times, p. A14. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Butler, Katy. (1990). Encountering the Shadow in Buddhist America. The Common Boundary, (8), pp. 14-22. Ösel Tendzin (formerly known as Thomas Rich) was born in New Jersey, USA in 1943. He died of HIV/AIDS in 1990.
63. Zaslowsky, Dyan. (1989, February 21). Buddhists in U.S. Agonize on AIDS Issue. The New York Times, p. A14. See also Lachs, Stuart. (2019). Tibetan Buddhism Enters the 21st Century: Trouble in Shangri-la. Openbuddhism.org Retrieved April 3, 2021.
64. For a biography of Kalu Rinpoché (Wyl. kar lu rin po che, b. 1905 d. 1989), see Gardner, Alexander. (2021). Kalu Rinpoche Karma Rangjung Kunkhyab: b.1905 – d.1989. Treasury of Lives. Retrieved April 14, 2021. For a biography of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoché, see: Gardner, Alexander. (2009). Dilgo Khyentse Tashi Peljor: b.1910 – d.1991. Treasury of Lives. Retrieved April 14, 2021. For discussions of their endorsements of Chögyam Trungpa, see: Author unknown. (Date unknown). Kalu Rinpoche’s Instructions to the Sangha of Trungpa Rinpoche—1988. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Author unknown. (Date unknown). Letters of the Current Situation. Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Krupnick, Robert. (Date unknown). Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin Library & Archives: About Us. Retrieved April 3, 2021. According to Alexander Gardner, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoché belatedly ordered Ösel Tendzin to go ‘into retreat, although he refused to surrender control of the organization.’ Gardner, Alexander. (2021). The Eleventh Trungpa, Chogyam Trungpa: b. 1939 d. 1987. Treasury of Lives. Retrieved April 3, 2021. The 16th Karmapa died in 1981, but he never publicly distanced himself from Chögyam Trungpa either.
65. Steinbeck IV, John & Nancy Steinbeck. (2001). Introduction. In The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck (Kindle ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books.

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66. The Steinbecks wrote: ‘The Naropa poetry department, the Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, hosted a weeklong Kerouac Festival that summer [1982]. All the poets from the first summer at Naropa were back and this time, Ginsberg and Corso, Ferlinghetti, William Burroughs, Kesey, and Norman Mailer were hanging out at our house. A video production company was filming them daily in our living room.’ Steinbeck IV, John & Nancy Steinbeck. (2001). The Kerouac Festival. In The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck (Kindle ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books. The most prominent poets in this group were Robert Bly, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, W.S. Merwin, Ed Sanders, Gary Snyder, and Anne Waldman.
67. William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927 d. 2019) was a two-time Poet Laureate. Author unknown. (Date unknown). About W.S. Merwin. Merwinconservancy.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
68. For extensive discussions of what became known as the ‘Merwin Affair’ or the ‘Naropa Poetry Wars,’ see: Investigative Poetry Group. (1977). The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary. Woodstock: Poetry, Crime, & Culture Press. In 1977, John Steinbeck IV was interviewed about the affair by Al Santoli of the Investigative Poetry Group. Steinbeck first met Merwin in the autumn of 1974 at Chögyam Trungpa’s Dharmadhatu center in New York City. Ibid. pp. 17, 18, 20. See also: Clark, Tom. (1980). The Great Naropa Poetry Wars: With a copious collection of germane documents assembled by the author. Santa Barbara: Cadmus Editions; Steinbeck IV, John & Nancy Steinbeck. (2001). Introduction. In The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck (Kindle ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books. After Merwin and Naone had left the 1975 seminary, shortly before it ended, a young boy died in the room they stayed in. Looking back, Trungpa’s wife Diana puts this tragedy in the context of the Merwin affair and the struggle with their own son Taggie’s disabilities: ‘In some way, this incident was tied in for me to what was happening with Taggie. This was such a difficult time in our lives. In a certain sense, Rinpoche was dealing with extreme and seemingly unworkable energy at the seminary, while I was driving into a high wall of insanity (his phrase) in terms of Taggie and our family life. In fact, in a scenario that is unrelated yet strangely in keeping with the dark energies I’ve described, a child died at the very end of the 1975 seminary from complications of asthma while sleeping in the room at the hotel that Merwin and Dana had stayed in. (Although they stayed for the final talk of the seminary, they had left a bit earlier than others.)’ Mukpo, Diana J. & Carolyn R. Gimian. (2006). Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala. pp. 192, 211.
69. Visiting lecturer Ed Sanders and his class at Naropa Institute investigated the matter and completed an in-depth report in September 1977. Copies of this report circulated widely in Boulder until August 1978, when Sanders and his class decided to publish it. A lengthy excerpt appeared in the Boulder Monthly in March 1979. Investigative Poetry Group. (1979). The Party: A chronological perspective on a confrontation at a Buddhist seminary. Boulder Monthly, 1 (5), pp. 24-40. The same issue contained an extensive interview about the scandal with Alan Ginsberg: Clark, Tom. (1979). When the Party’s Over: An interview with Alan Ginsberg. Boulder Monthly, 1 (5), pp. 41-51. That same month, the Boulder Monthly’s editor Tom Clark reported on the affair and its cover-up in the Berkeley Barb under the pseudonym of Robert Woods. Woods, Robert. (1979). “Buddha-Gate” Scandal and cover-up at Naropa revealed. Berkeley Barb, 28 (13), pp. 1, 4. See also: Spaed, Sam. (1979). Buddha-Gate Revisited. Berkeley Barb, pp. 1, 6. In 1980, Clark published a comprehensive history of the events: Clark, Tom. (1980). The Great Naropa Poetry Wars: With a copious collection of germane documents assembled by the author. Santa Barbara: Cadmus Editions. See also: Goldman, Sherman. (1976). Robert Bly on Gurus, Grounding Yourself in the Western Tradition, and Thinking For Yourself: An Interview. East/West Journal, pp. 10-15; Marin, Peter. (1979). Spiritual Obedience: The transcendental game of follow the leader. Harper’s Magazine, pp. 43-58; Reed, Ishmael. (1978). American Poetry: A Buddhist Take-over? Black American Literature Forum, 12 (1), pp. 3-11.
70. See endnote 66. The Dalai Lama visited the USA between September 3 and October 21, 1979.
71. Author unknown. (1979). The Nadir of Sectarian Squabbles. Tibetan Review, 14 (7), pp. 10-14. See also: Author unknown. (Date unknown). The Sixteenth Karmapa: Rangjung Rigpe Dorje. Kagyuoffice.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
72. Chögyam Trungpa was affiliated with both the Kagyü and Nyingma sects of Tibetan Buddhism.
73. Vajradhatu was the name of the umbrella organization of Trungpa from 1973- 1990. The term has a rich meaning in Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism. Bernie Simon writes that Karl Springer later apologized to the Dalai Lama on behalf of Trungpa’s Vajradhatu community: ‘The Dalai Lama asked for an apology and wasn’t satisfied with the half-apology that Karl Springer wrote on behalf of Vajradhatu. So the Dalai Lama cancelled his plans to visit Boulder, a huge embarrassment for Vajradhatu and Karl Springer personally.’ Some years later, Simon says, Springer criticized the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Vajradhatu centre in Washington, D.C. after the Tibetan leader had left. Simon, Bernie. (2003). The Dalai Lama’s Plumber. Carelesshand.nfshost.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. For responses to Springer’s letter by the Dalai Lama’s representative in New York and his secretary in Dharamsala, see Author unknown. (1979). The Nadir of Sectarian Squabbles. Tibetan Review, 14 (7), pp. 10-14.
74. Jeffrey Hopkins, who was the Dalai Lama’s interpreter on this tour, writes that the Tenzin Tethong, erstwhile head of the Office of Tibet in New York, ‘formed a committee to arrange the details of the visit, which focused on the content of the lectures and avoided any media hype.’ Gyatso, Tenzin (the fourteenth Dalai Lama). (2006). Kindness, Clarity, and Insight: The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (Revised and updated ed.). Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications. p. 8.
75. For extensive discussions of Tibetan exiles’ military collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency, see: Mullin, Chris. (1975). Tibetan Conspiracy. Far Eastern Economic Review, 89 (36), pp. 30-34; Mullin, Chris. (1978). The Question of Tibet: Tibet and the I.C.J. China Now, May-June 1978, pp. 12-13; Author unknown. (Date unknown). The Shadow Circus: The Cia in Tibet.

The Shadow Circus The CIA in Tibet

Retrieved April 3, 2021; Sonam, Tenzing & Ritu Sarin. (2001). The Shadow Circus. Dharamsala: White Crane Films; Conboy, Kenneth & Morrison, James. (2002). The CIA’s Secret War in Tibet. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas; Dunham, Mikel. (2004). Buddha’s Warriors: The Story of the CIA-backed Tibetan Freedom Fighters, the Chinese Invasion, and the Ultimate Fall of Tibet. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin; McGranahan, Carole. (2006). Tibet’s Cold War: The CIA and the Chushi Gangdrug Resistance, 1956-1974. Journal of Cold War Stories, 8 (3), pp. 102-130; McGranahan, Carole. (2010). Arrested Histories: Tibet, the CIA, and Memories of a Forgotten War. Durham: Duke University Press.
76. In his interview about the Merwin affair in the Boulder Monthly in March 1979, Alan Ginsberg repeatedly references the massacre in Jonestown, Guyana. Clark, Tom. (1979). When the Party’s Over: An interview with Alan Ginsberg. Boulder Monthly, 1 (5), pp. 41-51; Clark, Tom. (1980). The Great Naropa Poetry Wars: With a copious collection of germane documents assembled by the author. Santa Barbara: Cadmus Editions. pp. 52-67.
77. Hunter, Ann. (2008). The Legacy of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at Naropa University: An Overview and Resource Guide. Boulder: Naropa University. p. 8. Daniel Seitz writes: ‘Obtaining regional accreditation was a goal early on: by 1978, Naropa obtained candidacy status with North Central Association of Schools and Colleges (now the Higher Learning Commission), and achieved accreditation in 1985. In 1999, the Naropa Institute changed its name to Naropa University to reflect the expansion of its academic programs.’ Seitz, Daniel. (2009). Integrating Contemplative and Student-Centered Education: A Synergistic Approach to Deep Learning. University of Massachusetts, Boston. pp. 184-185. The Party reports about Naropa Institute’s co-founder Allen Ginsberg: ‘Ginsberg, fearing the loss of a $4000 grant to the Kerouac School from the National Endowment for the Arts, responded by initiating the “Merwin cover-up” (later known as “Buddha-gate”). He contacted both [Robert] Bly and Merwin and asked them to inform the NEA that there was no connections between Trungpa’s alleged misbehavior and Naropa or the Kerouac School.’ The grant application was turned down. Investigative Poetry Group. (1977). The Party: A Chronological Perspective on a Confrontation at a Buddhist Seminary. Woodstock: Poetry, Crime, & Culture Press. p. 26.
78. It seems likely that both Chögyam Trungpa and the 14th Dalai Lama occasionally received the same tantric teachings, initiations or empowerments from Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoché and other tantric teachers. In that event, their relation would have been governed by the tantric prohibition of critiquing a ‘vajra brother’ or their mutual tantric guru.
79. In 1960, the Dalai Lama appointed Chögyam Trungpa as the spiritual advisor to students at the Young Lamas’ Home School in India. While there, Trungpa fathered a child on Könchok Päldron, a young Tibetan nun (see endnote 53). Trungpa kept silent about the pregnancy, and held this office until 1963, when he received a scholarship to study at Oxford University in the UK. Looking back on the events of the day, Trungpa’s widow Diana Mukpo writes: ‘Around this time, Rinpoche received a Spaulding Scholarship to attend Oxford University. This had come through the intercession of Freda Bedi and John Driver, an Englishman who tutored Rinpoche in the English language in India and helped him with his studies later at Oxford. The Tibet Society in the United Kingdom had also helped him to get the scholarship.

What’s the difference between a foreign accent and an exotic one? Chogyam Trungpa knew. He claimed to have an “Oxonian accent,” acquired during his “matriculation” at Oxford College. At least that’s how Diana, the first of Trungpa’s eight wives, put it in her Dragon Thunder memoir, that details her maturation from child bride into den mother of a global cult devoted to the worship of her man, during a breathless two decades that passed in a whirl of booze, ménages-of-however-many, producing children from multiple unions who were uniformly recognized as reincarnated Tibetan saints and tossed to the winds.

Well, not the winds, precisely. Diana’s children, whether sired by Trungpa or Mitchell Levy, Trungpa’s close disciple, were cared for by devotees who treated them like born spiritual athletes –- asking them for spiritual advice, deferring to their presumed wisdom, etc. This did not do them much good, since they were mostly bemused by the unearned respect from clueless Buddhists, and didn’t take to the job of pretending to be founts of Eastern wisdom. Diana certainly taught them little enough, while she sought shelter from domestic chaos by jetsetting from one horsey event to another, buying dressage horses with donor funds as the natural right of ecclesiastical royalty.

As for her much-declared devotion to her husband, Diana greased the skids to Trungpa’s grave, enabling his sordid fate –- death by self-induced coma due to drug abuse and organ failure -- one more rock star sucked dry by the American celebrity-killing machine. Harsh as the assessment seems, evidence for it can be found on every page of Dragon Thunder, that has some of the candor that only the truly dissolute can exhibit. Their goalposts have moved so far, their judgment is faulty –- they can’t quite see when they’re confessing to scandal.

This poor judgment can lead to over-embellishing a cherished myth, as Diana did when she claimed that Trungpa “matriculated” at Oxford College in Dragon Thunder. Because that is a fact subject to verification or disproof, and I have obtained documents that disprove it, and I will share them with the reader. But before I proceed to that reveal, allow me to point out that these documents were not particularly difficult to obtain. It required only a modicum of research, emailing, and persistence in making followup inquiries to obtain them from Oxford College officials. Since virtually all formally published writing about Trungpa is mere hagiographic propaganda, we do not expect fact checking from the Dharma hacks who crank out these obligatory tomes. However, two books on Freda Bedi that pretend to be scholarly works were recently published, and they both repeated the apparent fable that she helped Trungpa get the Spalding sponsorship that "sent him to Oxford." So my question is -– why was I the first to make the enquiry of Oxford?

-- The Absent Oxonian -- Musings on Trungpa’s Faux Academic Credentials & Why So Few Cared to Inquire, by Charles Carreon

To go to England, Rinpoche needed the permission of the Dalai Lama’s government. They would never have allowed him to leave if they had known about his sexual indiscretion, nor do I think it would have gone over very well with the Tibet Society or his English friends in New Delhi. He and Konchok Paldron kept their relationship a secret, and it was a long time before anyone knew that Rinpoche was the father of her child. This caused him a great deal of pain, although I also think that he hadn’t yet entirely faced up to the implications of the direction he was going in his relationships with women. At that time, in spite of the inconsistencies in his behavior, he still seemed to think that he could make life work for himself as a monk.’ In 1971, the Dalai Lama named Trungpa’s second son, Taggie Mukpo (see endnote 55 and 56). Mukpo, Diana J. & Carolyn R. Gimian. (2006). Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala. pp. 72, 132.
80. Chögyam Trungpa’s widow Diana Mukpo writes: ‘In September 1979, His Holiness the Dalai Lama made his first visit to America. Members of the Dorje Kasung [Chögyam Trungpa’s bodyguards] were very involved in the visit. They organized motorcades for His Holiness’s party wherever he traveled in North America, and they worked with local law enforcement officials in major cities to help with crowd control and in general to provide security for His Holiness and his entourage. Trungpa asked Karl Springer to greet His Holiness on Rinpoche’s behalf when the Dalai Lama arrived in New York on September 3. Mr. Springer traveled to many cities with His Holiness to help assure that proper protocol was observed. In early October, when His Holiness returned to New York, Rinpoche, the Regent, and the entire board of directors of Vajradhatu flew to New York to meet with him. Rinpoche felt that it was extremely important for his senior students to meet the Dalai Lama, whom he himself had not seen for more than ten years. His Holiness and Rinpoche had several private meetings during the visit. Rinpoche was so happy that this great spiritual figure and the leader of the Tibetan world finally was setting foot on the American continent. I was unfortunately away for much of this, but I was able to meet and spend time with His Holiness in New York just before his departure from North America. I was arriving from Europe to attend the Kalapa Assembly and spend time with Rinpoche. Although His Holiness was not able to stop in Boulder during his first visit, when he returned in the summer of 1981, he spent about a week with our community, which was a great blessing for everyone. Mukpo, Diana & Carolyn Gimian. (2006). Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala (pp. 320-321). For an extensive discussion of the Dalai Lama’s first visit to the US, see Andersson, Jan. (1980). The Dalai Lama and America. The Tibet Journal, 5 (1/2), pp. 48-63.
81. Mukpo, Diana & Carolyn Gimian. (2006). Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala (pp. 320-321). Tom Clark suggests that Trungpa’s followers bought the March 1979 issue of the Boulder Monthly en masse, to take as many issues out of circulation as they possibly could. Clark, Tom. (1980). The Great Naropa Poetry Wars: With a copious collection of germane documents assembled by the author. Santa Barbara: Cadmus Editions. p. 38. In 1981, the Dalai Lama taught at the Naropa Institute and the University of Colorado in Boulder. Gyatso, Tenzin (the fourteenth Dalai Lama). (2006). Kindness, Clarity, and Insight: The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso (Revised and updated ed.). Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications. p. 207-216.
82. Steinbeck IV, John & Nancy Steinbeck. (2001). Chapter 43: Icarus’ Flight. In The Other Side of Eden: Life with John Steinbeck (Kindle ed.). Amherst: Prometheus Books.
83. Ibid. Once again, note that the Dalai Lama’s remark was made in 1989 and remained unpublished until 2001.
84. Ibid.
85. The entire conversation can be watched online: Author unknown. (1993). The Western Buddhist Teachers Conference with H.H. the Dalai Lama Frome: Meredian Trust.
86. See endnote 77. Mukpo, Diana J. & Carolyn R. Gimian. (2006). Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa. Boston: Shambhala. p. 320; Shepherd, Harvey. (1993, July 3). Dalai Lama had more to say than space allowed. The Gazette, p. H6; Smith, Kidder. (2001). Transmuting Blood and Guts: My Experiences in the Buddhist Military. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
87. Shōkō Asahara’s death sentence was carried out on July 6, 2018—as it happens, the 14th Dalai Lama’s birthday.
88. For a comprehensive reconstruction of the Dalai Lama’s involvement with Shōkō Asahara and the Aum Shinrikyō doomsday cult, see: Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, December 5). Knave or Fool? The Dalai Lama and Shōkō Asahara Affair Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
89. Sogyal Lakar (Wyl. bsod rgyal lwa dkar, b. 1947 d. 2019) was formerly known as Sogyal Rinpoché. For a comprehensive discussion of the life and times of Sogyal Lakar, see: Finnigan, Mary & Rob Hogendoorn. (2019). Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche. Portland: Jorvik Press.
90. Baxter, Karen. (2018). Report to the Boards of Trustees of: Rigpa Fellowship UK, and Rigpa Fellowship US: Outcome of an Investigation into Allegations made against Sogyal Lakar (also known as Sogyal Rinpoche) in a Letter dated 14 July 2017. Retrieved April 3, 2021. p. 39; Sogyal Rinpoche. (2008). The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (Revised and updated ed.). London: Rider.
91. Lattin, Don. (1994). Best-selling Buddhist author accused of sexual abuse. Free Press.
92. An abbreviated version of the conference is available on DVD: Author unknown. (2011). In Conversation with the Dalai Lama: Highlights of the Western Buddhist Teachers Conference London: Gonzo Distribution. The entire conversation can be seen here: Author unknown. (1993). The Western Buddhist Teachers Conference with H.H. the Dalai Lama. Frome: Meredian Trust.
93. See, for instance: Sogyal Truth. (2017). Dalai Lama Speaks About Sogyal Rinpoche. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. For the Dalai Lama’s original address, see Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2017). Inauguration of Seminar on ‘Buddhism in Ladakh.’ YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. See also: Mees, Anna & Bas de Vries. (2018). Dalai lama over misbruik: ik weet het al sinds de jaren 90. NOS. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
94. Batchelor, Stephen. (2010). 16: Gods and Demons. In Confession of a Buddhist Atheist (Kindle Edition ed.). New York: Spiegel & Grau.
95. The Western Buddhist Teachers Conference was held from 13 until 22 March, 1993. Between 1990 and 1992, monks of the Dalai Lama’s personal Namgyal monastery released several CD’s, but it is unclear if these recordings were used in Waco. The Tibetan chants were played first on Sunday night, March 21, 1993. Boyer, Peter. (1995). Waco: The Inside Story. PBS Frontline. Retrieved April 5, 2021 (Tibetan chants start at 33.33 mins.); Author unknown. (Date unknown). Chronology of the Siege. PBS Frontline. Retrieved April 5, 2021. This was widely reported in U.S. media: Bragg, Roy & Laura E. Keeton. (1993, March 23). Loud wake-up call to cult: Recording of Tibetan chants. The Houston Chronicle, p. A1; Schneider, H. (1993, March 23). Tibetan Chants Are Latest Waco Weapon. The Washington Post. See also: Johnston, David. (1993, July 21). Change at the F.B.I.: Final Act for the F.B.I.’s Director Is Painful and Almost Mute. The New York Times, p. A10; Benson, Eric. (2018). The 25-Year Siege. Texas Monthly, p. 90. A report by the House Committee on Government Reform of the United States Congress says: ‘Director Sessions stated he received a letter from the Dalai Lama about the FBI’s playing of Tibetan chants at the compound during the standoff. The Dalai Lama objected to the playing of the religious chants. The Director said that he replied immediately and ordered that the chants be discontinued.’ United States Congress, House Committee on Government Reform. (2000). The tragedy at Waco: new evidence examined: eleventh report. p. 1011. One of the Dalai Lama’s spokesmen declared later: ‘If the motivation is to create harmony, to provide a peaceful means to conclude this whole fiasco, then that would be appropriate. But the use of chants to create the opposite effect, to antagonize, is very unfortunate.’ Pareles, Jon. (1993, March 28). It’s Got a Beat and You Can Surrender to It. The New York Times, p. 2.
96. The Dalai Lama is the most prominent, best-known member of the largely celibate Geluk sect. Chögyam Trungpa was trained in the Kagyü and Nyingma sects, while Sogyal Lakar’s extended family has a Sakya-Nyingma background. The Kagyü, Sakya, and Nyingma sects are largely non-celibate. However, all Tibetan Buddhist sects have their own cases of abuse. The most recent case to attract widespread media attention is that of Dagri Rinpoché of the Geluk sect, who allegedly involved the Dalai Lama’s private office in his case. Littlefair, Sam. (2019). Prominent Tibetan lama accused of molestation by three women. Lion’s Roar. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Abrahams, Matthew. (2019). Nuns Push for Investigation into Molestation Allegations against Teacher Dagri Rinpoche. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 3, 2021; FaithTrust Institute. (2020). Summary Report of Sexual Misconduct Complaints Against Dagri Rinpoche. Retrieved March 25, 2021; DemaioNewton, Emily & Karen Jensen. (2020). Buddha Buzz Weekly: Dagri Rinpoche Permanently Removed as FPMT Teacher. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Meade Sperry, Rod. (2020). Dagri Rinpoche found to have committed sexual misconduct, FPMT states. Lion’s Roar. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Tenzin Dharpo of the Tibetan website Phayul.com wrote about one of the women who alleged the abuse: ‘In her video posted on YouTube, she said that an apology from Dagri Rinpoche during a meeting set up by the private office of the Dalai Lama, prevented her from reporting the case to police.’ Dharpo, Tenzin. (2020). Dagri Rinpoche committed “intentional and inappropriate sexual behaviour”, says FPMT. Phayul.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Dagri Rinpoché was arrested for sexual harassment after a flight from New Delhi to Gagal, India. Allegedly, he groped an Indian woman on board. Indian news sites reported that Dagri Rinpoché told the arresting officers that he worked for the Dalai Lama’s Office in Dharamsala, stating that its address as his residency. For details of the Dagri Rinpoché’s pending criminal case before the Chief Judicial Magistrate, TC Kangra, see the E-Courts Services (CNR number HPKA120015502019). The next hearing date is June 2nd, 2021.
97. This is not an academic issue. In the civil case of 23 ex-adepts’ children against Robert Spatz (also known as ‘Lama Kunzang’) of Ogyen Kunzang Choling (OKC) in Belgium, Spatz maintained that the Dalai Lama’s visit to his center in Brussels, Belgium ‘proved’ that he was a bona fide Tibetan Buddhist teacher in a bona fide Tibetan Buddhist tradition. When Ricardo Mendes, one of those 23 children, met him in Rotterdam in 2018, the Dalai Lama denied knowing Robert Spatz at all, even after he was shown a photograph of himself and Spatz together. For the victims’ and survivors’ reporting on this case, see Author unknown. (Date unknown). #OKCinfo: Exposing OKC/Spatz cult. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
98. For extensive discussions of this matter, see Sparham, Gareth. (1996). Why the Dalai Lama Rejects Shugden. Tibetan Review, 31 (6), pp. 11-13; Dreyfus, Georges B. J. (1998). The Shuk-den Affair: History and Nature of a Quarrel. Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies, 2 (21), pp. 227-270; Batchelor, Stephen. (1998). Letting Daylight into the Magic: The Life and Times of Dorje Shugden. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Spring 1998, pp. 60-66; Von Brück, Michael. (2001). Canonicity and Divine Interference: The Tulkus and the Shugden-Controversy. In Charisma and Canon: Essays on the Religious History of the Indian Subcontinent (pp. 328-349). New Delhi: Oxford University Press; Mills, Martin A. (2003). This turbulent priest: contesting religious rights and the state in the Tibetan Shugden controversy. In Richard A. Wilson & Jon P. Mitchell (Eds.), Human Rights in Global Perspective: Anthropological studies of rights, claims and entitlements (pp. 54-70). London: Routledge; Gardner, Alexander. (2013). Treasury of Lives: Dorje Shugden. Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Chandler, Jeannine. (2015). Invoking the Dharma Protector: Western Involvement in the Dorje Shugden Controversy. In Scott A. Mitchell & Natalie E.F. Quli (Eds.), Buddhism Beyond Borders: New Perspectives on Buddhism in the United States (pp. 75-91). New York: SUNY Press; Repo, Joona. (2015). Phabongkha Dechen Nyingpo: His Collected Works and the Guru-Deity-Protector Triad. Revue d’Etudes Tibétaines, 33, pp. 5-72. The Association of Geluk Masters, The Geluk International Foundation, & The Association for the Preservation of Geluk Monasticism. (2019). Understanding the Case against Shukden: The History of a Contested Tibetan Practice (Gavin Kilty, Trans.). Somerville: Wisdom Publications.
99. For extended discussions of the Dalai Lama’s distancing attempts, see Finnigan, Mary & Rob Hogendoorn. (2019). Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche. Portland: Jorvik Press; Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, November 8). The Dalai Lama and Nxivm Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, December 5). Knave or Fool? The Dalai Lama and Shōkō Asahara Affair Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
100. Ganzevoort, Ruard et al. (Eds.). (2013). Geschonden vertrouwen: Seksueel misbruik in een religieuze context. Tilburg: KSGV. pp. 17-37.
101. Emery, Élodie. (2011). Pas si zen, ces bouddhistes. Marianne, 756, pp. 72-77. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Emery, Élodie. (2017). Violences, abus sexuels. le scandale qui déshonore le bouddhisme. Marianne. pp. 31-32. Retrieved April 3, 2o21. Emery, Élodie. (2017). Scandale chez les bouddhistes: Matthieu Ricard recommande aux disciples plus de vigilance. Marianne. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
102. Ricard, Matthieu. (2017). A point of view. Retrieved March 27, 2021.
103. Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (1999). Ancient Wisdom, Modern World: Ethics for a New Millenium. London: Little, Brown and Company; Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2011). Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
104. Again, this is not an academic issue. In the OKC civil case in Belgium (see endnote 94), Robert Spatz’s lawyer submitted to the court that Spatz and Matthieu Ricard were once ‘contemporaries,’ that is, fellow students of the same Tibetan teacher, Kangyur Rinpoché. And so, their past proximity was construed as a legal argument underlining Spatz’s authenticity as a bona fide Tibetan Buddhist teacher.
105. Since 1991, the Charter of Tibetans-in-exile promulgates that the Central Tibetan Administration must ‘endeavor to improve the purity and efficiency of academic and monastic communities of monks, nuns, and tantric practitioners, and shall encourage them to maintain proper behavior.’ Right after the Dalai Lama went into exile in April 1959, his Central Tibetan Administration translated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights into Tibetan. It was made a cornerstone of its draft Constitution for Tibet. The Charter that is now in force, likewise, mandates the Central Tibetan Administration to adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. See article 4 and 17 of: Author unknown. (1991). Charter of the Tibetans in Exile. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Jan-Ulrich Sobisch and Trine Brox discuss challenges in the linguistic and cultural translation of human rights by Tibetans such as the Dalai Lama, as well as his idiosyncratic use of words like ‘religion,’ ‘politics,’ ‘secularism,’ and ‘democracy.’ Sobisch, Jan-Ulrich & Trine Brox. Translations of Human Rights. Tibetan contexts. In Carmen Meinert & Hans-Bernd Zöllner (Eds.), Buddhist Approaches to Human Rights: Dissonances and Resonances (pp. 159-178). Beyond the universality of human rights, Tibetan Buddhist and other spiritual teachers are subject to the criminal and civil codes of the countries they are in, for instance those of India, European countries, or the USA.
106. For an extensive discussion of the concerns Tibetan exiles have expressed over the required vetting of the many people the Dalai Lama meets, see Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, December 5). Knave or Fool? The Dalai Lama and Shōkō Asahara Affair Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
107. Ricardo Mendes, one of the survivors of Robert Spatz and OKC, told the Dutch news network NOS: ‘By attaching his name and reputation to it, the Dalai Lama legitimized OKC.’ For this reason, he wanted to discuss the matter with the Dalai Lama himself. Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, December 5). Knave or Fool? The Dalai Lama and Shōkō Asahara Affair Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
108. Author unknown. (2019). 1966 Land Rover Series IIA 88. RMSothebys.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
109. The German monk Tenzin Peljor (Michael Jäckel, commonly known by the contraction Tenpel) writes: ‘For the Dalai Lama it is first and foremost a religious exercise to see others as fellow human beings. His view is that one must distinguish between the act and the person: compassion for people but rejection of destructive acts. In addition, his actions are based on an understanding of friendship and gratitude that is very different from Western customs and culture: to whoever helped or helps you, like Heinrich Harrer or Jörg Haider, you are grateful and indebted in principle. Friendship is not terminated when some wrongdoings come to light.’ Our translation from Peljor, Tenzin. (2009). Korrekturen und Reflexionen zum Stern-Artikel über den Dalai Lama. Info-buddhismus.de. Retrieved March 30, 2021.
110. Kaufman, Leslie. (2008). Making Their Own Limits in a Spiritual Partnership. The New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Burleigh, Nina. (2013). Sex and Death on the Road to Nirvana. Rolling Stone. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Schecter, Anna. (2014). My Brief Rendez-vous with the Guru. NBC News. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
111. The Dalai Lama’s meeting with victims and survivors in Rotterdam, the Netherlands came about thanks to a large group of victims and survivors, as well as the numerous signatories of the petition ‘#MeTooGuru: Support the Dalai Lama’s effort to remedy sexual abuse’—helped by the media attention the petition garnered. The petition is still available online. By April 16, 2021, the petition was signed more than 2,600 times. Full disclosure: to shield the victims and survivors from unwanted attention in (social) media, Rob Hogendoorn acted as their liaison and press contact before, during, and after the Dalai Lama’s visit. Mees, Anna & Bas de Vries. (2018). Misbruikslachtoffers willen dalai lama spreken in Nederland. Nos.nl. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Corder, Mike. (2018). Dalai Lama meets alleged victims of abuse by Buddhist gurus. Associated Press. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Author unknown. (2018). Dalai Lama meets alleged abuse victims. Bbc.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Finney, Richard. (2018). Dalai Lama Meets in the Netherlands With Sex Abuse Victims. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Rahim, Zamira. (2018). Dalai Lama says he knew about sexual abuse allegations made against Buddhist teachers. The Independent. Hogendoorn himself reviewed the events in an op-ed published by the Tibetan Review. Hogendoorn, Rob. (2018). The Dalai Lama’s Clarion Call. Tibetan Review. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
112. During their meeting in Rotterdam, the Dalai Lama agreed to the petitioners’ demand that he would ask the Mind & Life Institute to host a meeting on human sexuality, sexual abuse by lay and ordained religious teachers, and sexual trauma. He also agreed to put abuse by lay and ordained Buddhist teachers on the agenda of a gathering of religious leaders and representatives of the major Tibetan schools in Dharamsala in November 2018. After this meeting had been postponed and rescheduled, its single focus became the Dalai Lama’s succession—not sexual abuse. Eckert, Paul. (2017). Tibetan Religious Figures Reject Chinese Role in Dalai Lama Reincarnation. Radio Free Asia. Retrieved April 3, 2021. And so, at the time of writing, the Dalai Lama has yet two deliver on these two promises.
113. Mees, Anna & Bas de Vries. (2018). Dalai lama over misbruik: ik weet het al sinds de jaren 90. Nos.nl. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
114. For the dubious origins and financial history of the Tenzin Gyatso Institute, see Finnigan, Mary & Hogendoorn, Rob. (2019). Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche. Portland: Jorvik Press.
115. Author unknown. (Date unknown). Who Are We? Rigpa.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
116. Mostert, Dirk. (2017). Brandpunt: Misbruik in de boeddhistische gemeenschap Hilversum: KRO-NCRV. The documentary can be seen here with English subtitles: Sogyal Truth. (2017). Sogyal Rinpoche & Rigpa – 2017 Documentary – Subtitled in English. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
117. For a short version of the DVD included in the second issue of Rigpa’s View Magazine, see Lerab Ling. (2013). The Visit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Lerab Ling, August 2008. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. For a previous visit by the Dalai Lama to Lerab Ling in 2000, see Rigpa Videos. (2000). His Holiness the Dalai Lama in Lerab Ling – September 2000. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
118. Sogyal Truth. (2017). Dalai Lama Speaks About Sogyal Rinpoche. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. For the original video, see Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2017). Inauguration of Seminar on ‘Buddhism in Ladakh.’ YouTube.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
119. After Sogyal Lakar settled the civil case filed by Janice Doe in 1994, the Dalai Lama did admonish Sogyal Lakar to settle down and ‘take a lawful wife.’ But he stood by doing nothing when Sogyal resumed his promiscuous and abusive ‘lifestyle’ as before. And he continued to endorse Sogyal and visit his centers. Finnigan, Mary & Rob Hogendoorn. (2019). Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche. Portland: Jorvik Press. pp. 86-87.
120. See endnote 45. The Dalai Lama is very much a political player. He was one of the few world political figures along with UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President George H.W. Bush who sided with General Augusto Pinochet of Chile to help keep him from being extradited from England to Spain to stand trial for crimes against humanity. No doubt, much pressure was put on the Dalai Lama to get him to stand for Pinochet’s defense against extradition. Author unknown. (1999). Forgive Pinochet, says Dalai Lama. CBC News. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
121. For a verbatim transcript of the Dalai Lama’s meeting with Keith Raniere and his entourage in Dharamshala, see Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, November 8). The Dalai Lama and Nxivm Revisited. Openbuddhism.org. Retrieved April 3, 2021. HBO is currently working on a sequel that will cover the trial of Keith Raniere and members of his entourage.
122. Andrews, Suzanna. (2010). The Heiresses and the Cult. Vanity Fair. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Odato, James M. (2010, March 28). Ex-NXIVM official seeks protection. Time Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Odato, James M. & Jennifer Gish. (2012, February 12). In Raniere’s shadows. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
123. In March 2009, most media reports on Nxivm and Keith Raniere were readily available on the website of The Rick A. Ross Institute Institute and their original sites. Ross, Rick A. (2009). NXIVM: formerly known as Executive Success Programs (ESP): founder Keith Raniere: also linked to “Jness” and Nancy Salzman. Retrieved April 3, 2021. On March 29, 2009 Daniel Weaver wrote an Op-ed column stating that the Dalai Lama’s cancellation of the event ought to be a ‘no-brainer.’ Weaver, Daniel T. (2009, March 29). Op-ed column: Dalai Lama’s visit to Albany sponsored by cult-like group. Daily Gazette. Retrieved April 3, 2021. The same day, Brian Ettkin wrote about the vetting process by the Dalai Lama’s representative Tenzin Dhonden: ‘Mutual friends arranged for Sara Bronfman and Tenzin Dhonden to meet on separate occasions in Sun Valley, Idaho, where she requested an audience with the Dalai Lama, Sara and Tenzin Dhonden said. Bronfman told Tenzin Dhonden that the Dalai Lama might find NXIVM’s tools useful. “She was being very honest,” Tenzin Dhonden said, referring to Sara Bronfman’s disclosures to him during their initial meetings about the negative publicity NXIVM has received. Before granting her an audience, Tenzin Dhonden visited NXIVM’s Colonie headquarters for a week in January 2008 as part of a background check. He observed courses and spoke with coaches and participants, he said, and found them to be “very happy, friendly and sharing.” Tenzin Dhonden said neither he nor anyone else representing the Dalai Lama has actually participated in NXIVM courses. The Bronfmans and Tenzin Dhonden said that news reports, along with the cult researchers’ evaluations of NXIVM programs, were sent to the Dalai Lama’s office in India. Tenzin Dhonden said he’d “briefly” read some newspaper and magazine reports on NXIVM. While he was observing NXIVM training in 2008, he said, he did not interview any former participants or NXIVM critics. “I have my own intellectual resource, capacity, to know persons, to feel persons,” Tenzin Dhonden explained. “I can pick up like that, very easily.”’ Ettkin, Brian. (2009, March 29). Details light on Dalai Lama visit. Times Union. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
124. For an extensive discussion of Tibetans’ concerns about the Dalai Lama’s carefree, high-risk dealings with less than thoroughly vetted characters, see Hogendoorn, Rob. (2020, December 5). Knave or Fool? The Dalai Lama and Shōkō Asahara Affair Revisited. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
125. When The Daily Mail wrote that the Dalai Lama was paid $ 1 million to endorse Nxivm in 2009, the Dalai Lama’s Office was quick to publish a clarification: ‘We wish to categorically state that His Holiness the Dalai Lama never takes an honorarium or fee of any sort, nor does he require that any payment be made to charities or organizations, as a condition of his making a personal appearance. Therefore, the reported allegation has no basis. Neither His Holiness the Dalai Lama nor the Dalai Lama Foundation ever received the alleged $1 million in connection with His Holiness’s appearance in Albany.’ Perry, Ryan. (2018). EXCLUSIVE: Dalai Lama was paid $1 MILLION to endorse women-branding ‘sex cult’ after secret deal between Buddhist’s celibate U.S. emissary and his Seagram billionaire ‘lover’. Dailymail.co.uk. Retrieved April 3, 2021.; Author unknown. (2018, January 25). Clarification in Response to the Daily Mail Story of January 24, 2018. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021. Indy Hack and Frank Parlato responded by validating ‘a source who declared that the Bronfmans offered the Dalai Lama one million to speak for NXIVM and that it was her impression that there was never any concern about his or one of his organizations accepting it.’ Hack, Indy & Frank Parlato. (2018). Further questions about the Dalai Lama’s Million Dollar Visit to NXIVM Sex Cult. Frankparlato.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
126. The sisters’ father, Edgar Bronfman Sr. passed away in 2013. Kandell, Jonathan. (2013, December 22). Edgar M. Bronfman, Who Built a Bigger, More Elegant Seagram, Dies at 84. The New York Times. Retrieved April 3, 2021.
127. Sogyal did name his center in Berne, New York, the Tenzin Gyatso Institute, after the 14th Dalai Lama. But Sogyal’s devotees always maintained control of its governance and finances. Finnigan, Mary & Rob Hogendoorn. (2019). Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche. Portland: Jorvik Press. pp. 141-144.
128. •
129. Author unknown. (Date unknown). Lost Horizon (1937) Imdb.com. Retrieved April 16, 2021. The movie is based on the fantasy novel Lost Horizon by the British author James Hilton. Hilton, James. (1933). Lost Horizon. London: Macmillan & Co.
130. The problem with the western people creating and then naturally buying this myth is just that, it is a myth. The Dalai Lama is, however, the delegated spokesman for Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism. Because of his social position he has legitimate access to the language of the institution. His words are not only his—he is also a carrier of the words of the institution and as such, represents the authority of Tibetan Buddhism. He is the authorized spokesperson, the delegated representative whose words and speech concentrates within it the accumulated symbolic capital of the institution—pure, unadulterated Tibetan Buddhism. It has delegated him as its authorized representative, to be an object of guaranteed belief, certified as correct—that is, both right and just.128Bourdieu, Pierre. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power (Edited and Introduced by John Thompson, translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. pp. 107-116. The two chapters ‘Authorized Language: The Social Conditions for the Effectiveness of Ritual Discourse’ (pp. 107-116) and ‘Rites of Institution’ (pp. 117-126) explain well the power of institutions as manifest through their delegated representatives.
131. Many Tibetan Buddhist centers and monasteries in the West reserve a dedicated room for the Dalai Lama’s use only, should he desire to sojourn there at any given time.
132. See Chapter V (‘Of Executive Government’) of the Constitution of Tibet promulgated by the Dalai Lama in 1963, and article 31 of the Charter of Tibetans-in-exile promulgated by The Eleventh Assembly of Tibetan People’s Deputies in 1991. Author unknown. (1963). Constitution of Tibet: Promulgated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama: March 10, 1963; Autor unknown. (1991). Charter of the Tibetans in Exile; Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (1992). Guidelines for future Tibet’s polity and the basic features of its constitution. Tibetan Review, 27 (10), pp. 10-14.
133. See endnote 21 and 22. See also: Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2011). Statement of His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the 52nd Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2011). Message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to the Fourteenth Assembly of the Tibetan People’s Deputies. Dalailama.com. Retrieved April 3, 2021; Gyatso (the fourteenth Dalai Lama), Tenzin. (2011). His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s Remarks on Retirement – March 19th, 2011. Retrieved April 3, 2021. In the documentary The Great 14th, the Dalai Lama says that the Dalai Lama institution should return to the position of the 1st through 4th Dalai Lamas: ‘only spiritual leader, no political power.’ Rawcliffe, Rosemary. (2020). The Great 14th. Retrieved April 15, 2021.
134. The Dalai Lama told Pico Iyer that when he first met Shōkō Asahara, ‘he was genuinely moved by the man’s seeming devotion to the Buddha: Tears would come into the Japanese teacher’s eyes when he spoke of Buddha. But to endorse Asahara, as he did, was, the Dalai Lama quickly says, “a mistake. Due to ignorance! So, this proves” (and he breaks into his full-throated laugh), “I’m not a ‘Living Buddha!'”‘ Iyer, Pico. (2004). Sun After Dark: Flights Into The Foreign. In Making Kindness into Reason (Kindle Edition ed., pp. 51-78). New York: Vintage Departures; Iyer, Pico. (2008). The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 107.
135. Hitchens, Christopher. (1998, July 13th). His Material Highness. Salon. Retrieved April 3, 2021.

About the author: Stuart Lachs & Rob Hogendoorn

Stuart Lachs (b. 1940) is an independent scholar and long-time Ch'an/Zen practitioner. Investigative reporter and academic researcher Rob Hogendoorn (b. 1964) began researching the reception of Buddhism in Western society and culture in the early 1990s. His modus operandi remained the same ever since: independent, inquisitive and provocative.