The Dakinis and Their "Spiritualized Feminism," by Christine
Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2019 1:02 am
Part 1 of 3
The Dakinis and Their "Spiritualized Feminism," [EXCERPT from Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism]
by Christine A. Chandler, M.A., C.A.G.S.
© 2017 Christine A. Chandler, M.A., C.A.G.S.
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
EIGHTEEN: THE DAKINIS AND THEIR "SPIRITUALIZED FEMINISM"
Dzogchen, Sex and Power
The first half of the nineties were very busy years, for all the Tibetan lamas, because of so many fires they had to put out and so many leaks they had to plug. First, it was the news of Trungpa's Regent, passing on his known AIDS to his students, one of whom was now dead in his early twenties. Another dharma brat casualty of Trungpa's group.
This news hit The New York Times, between January and February of 1989 and August of 1990. Still, the general public wasn't paying as much attention as it should have to this scandal, because soon the Dalai Lama was all over the news, having just coincidentally' received his Nobel Prize in 1989.
Then it was Sogyal Rinpoche's court case, a claim filed against him in 1994, [491] for sexual and physical abuse; copying Trungpa's out-of-control, sexual addictions and illegal behaviors in the West with his own female harem.
Shortly thereafter, it was another Tibetan lama, Kalu Rinpoche, making the Buddhist news when his sexual consort, June Campbell, bravely published her book, Skydancer -- later published as Traveller in Space in 1996 -- that exposed the truth about Tibetan "Buddhist" Tantra, the Tibetan lamas, and their institutionalized sexual activities with young female consorts for their 'higher' practices. [492]
The Dalai Lama's canonization by the mainstream media was taking care of the outside perception of Tibetan Buddhism. All the same, it was clear that a coordinated, long-term, internal damage control campaign and preventive maintenance plan had to be developed inside these western sanghas, who were starting to see cracks in the gilded patina covering the Tibetan lamas; cracks that were starting to reveal the truth about these 'compassionate' tulkus. So, it was clear that all of us, their early western Tibetan 'Buddhists,' had to be more heavily indoctrinated; this time with Tantra wrapped up and tied up with a 'Dzogchen' bow. The Dzogchen teachings would reinforce and solidify the three Tantric rules: 'all is an illusion'; 'all gurus are perfect'; and 'keeping their secrets' is not just a command, but vital to your spiritual lives and of great 'benefit' for the world. This Regent scandal also gave the whitewashers practice; when they had to ramp up another coordinated campaign for the public in 2011 and, again, in 2017, after Lama Sogyal's very public exposures for abuse.
These scandals and subsequent whitewash surrounding the deaths of Trungpa's Regent493 and his student; Sogyal Rinpoche's hefty lawsuit for sexual and physical abuse in 1994; and Kalu Rinpoche's secrets being revealed by June Campbell, around the same time, would give the Tibetan lamas and their helpmates practice for the continued scandals of Sogyal Rinpoche, in 2011 with a public documentary about his harem abuse; and again in July of 2017, when eight of his lay students, nuns and monks, exposed his egregious abuses, hoping to keep it a secret inside their Rigpa communities, but somehow it leaked.
Leaked information to the press was always disastrous for the lamas494 because if anyone cared to look, and connect the dots, the Tibetan lamas' secrets were forming a glaring and obvious neon-lit pattern of institutional abuse. It was a good thing the lamas had so many enabling surrogate western devotees, celebrity academics, psychologists and nuns, and wealthy benefactors and their media outlets on their side; like the Huffington Post and later The New York Times. All of Hollywood glitterati were also watching the lamas' backs.
New Shangri-la indoctrination, released for the public, during this scandalous period of the 1990s, helped with damage control.
Films, such as Seven Years in Tibet, or Little Buddha, where Lama Sogyal was even featured as a main character lama, would take care of the public's perception.495 Hollywood would always protect someone like Lama Sogyal, thanks to his friends, Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama. The external damage control machine was in full swing, during this period, and in retrospect it was massive. Martin Scorcese joined in the fan-club with his film, Kundun. 496
As part of the lamas' internal damage control crusade, during this first half of the nineties, an old lama named Phuntsok497 from Communist China-ruled Tibet, prefaced with the usual hyperbole of "coming from a powerful and unbroken lineage of great wisdom beings," was scheduled in America to teach Tantra, now billed as 'Dzogchen.'
Lama Phuntsok arrived, unexpectedly, in 1993, to teach his first weekend in Boston, and he seemed very focused on the many Trungpa students in the audience, who had been encouraged by the Vajradhatu grapevine to not miss this "amazing teacher."
So, there I was, at the same place I had first learned Shambhala mindfulness meditation, nearly a decade past and where I heard the Regent confess to having AIDS to the community, a few years before. Now, at least one of his young male victims was dead, along with him. I had driven down from Vermont for this Dzogchen retreat, one of my free indoctrination weekends as part of my perks for taking care of Trungpa's son.
Lama Phuntsok had come with his own small group of western devotees, that he had somehow managed to collect, long-distance, from China, and he was billed as being the usual stream of "incarnations" of great lamas, now manifesting in his body; the same tulku "divine stream of energy" of ancient lamas from the past, who was sitting on this throne in front of us, with an audience in various stages of cult indoctrination: soaked, saturated and pickled. I was somewhere between soaked and saturated, but not yet pickled.
We had also been well-marinated in Tibetan tulku victimology teachings. We didn't know these Kagyu lamas had been rebuilding their centers in China, with the CPC governmental approval, since 1984.498 However, I remember feeling very surprised, after hearing for almost a decade the Tibetan lamas' narrative: that China was repressing their teachings, torturing the lamas still in Tibet, and preventing them from leaving Tibet, etc. So, the fact that this Lama Phuntsok could so easily get a visa to come to the United States, from China, to teach at this Shambhala-Vajradhatu center in Boston, seemed more than a little strange, to say the least.
Since most of the high tulkus had 'escaped,' leaving the lower monks and their own people behind to deal with Mao's revolution, like they always left their 'inconveniences' for everyone else to deal with, this seemed very odd. Both, because he was being touted as one of the highest of lama incarnations, and because one had to think: "why would China let him come to the States?" Was it because he was now on-board with the false narrative that Communist China and the Dalai Lama were bitter enemies, fostered around the world by the mainstream media, so we would let more of these lamas, now colluding with the Motherland, into our western hearts and our pocketbooks? To undermine our western values and democracy from the inside out with their chaotic Tantra?
Our new, "blessed" occupation with our guru's son, T, kept us too busy to pay attention to the visible and wide-spread defections that were occurring in Trungpa's sangha because of what had been exposed to the nation, about the colluding behavior of Vajradhatu's administration, who had so recently enabled the Regent's behavior to spread AIDS to his students. This inner circle of complicity was now our "employer," whom we had to deal with, all the time; not only for our meager pauper paychecks, but when things went wrong, which was often, in the physically neglected house of our late, great God King, Trungpa, where we were now living with T.499 We didn't know how much trouble this community was in, because of possible further whistle-blowing by Trungpa's students; the thing that all the Tibetan Tantric lamas and their western coteries so feared. It would be catastrophic to all four sects of Tantric Buddhism, if any of Trungpa's students started to really wake-up and blow the conch-shell on the Tibetan lamas' 'crazy wisdom' house of cards.
Knowing little, at this time, about who and what these Kagyu lamas were really up to, with their collusion with China's world hegemonic ambitions, and their institutionalized sexual and other exploitations of their students, my new husband and I didn't yet have privy to the inner workings of this Karma Kagyu group of lamas. Not yet. But we were about to be exposed to the back-stage as well as the elaborate front-stage, as the curtain was lifted and we now had front-row seats.
Lama Phuntsok, who was in front of us now on his own stage, coming all the way from China to keep us stuck in a dream, didn't know a stitch of English. He had a tape recording of his teachings in Tibetan, with an earplug in his ear, apparently to remind him of what he was going say to this audience of strange westerners, sitting alert and at attention. His tape recorder would go off in speaker mode, when he accidently jerked the earphone out of his device, and we could hear some Tibetan voice, perhaps his or another, along with his own Tibetan voice in real time, overlapping with the voice of his western translator sitting beside Phuntsok, and telling us what Phuntsok had said. It was like a three-way echo-chamber, in more ways than one.
The lamas and their translators always taught the same three things by default: adoration of themselves as god kings on thrones; the "specialness" of their teachings; and how lucky we were to have met them. This was always what was taught; by the translators, or through the translated texts and commentaries we read later. Western translators, with Masters and PhDs in religious philosophy and/or languages from some prestigious university, were always a show in themselves; treating these lamas as great beings of esoteric wisdom and knowledge, while simultaneously translating the lamas' hagiographic and fairy-tale biographies to spoon-feed us the fantasy world of Tibetan Lamaism. We didn't yet know you could be neck deep in a cult, and still appear to be educated and sane.
The deference these translators showed towards these lamas was a big part of the Tibetan lama theatre for our benefit. They would model being enthralled by everything the lama said in Tibetan, including their humor, even though it always translated like jokes for three-year-olds. But we all laughed away, ha, ha, together. Their non-verbal communications, their radiant looks and smug chuckles, their 'ohs and ahs' -- cues that what we were about to hear was brilliant, witty and profound -- kept us enthralled. But none of us really knew what these lamas had actually said. Since we had just been programmed by the translator to believe what was coming was going to be brilliant and wise, whatever the lama said. It was always going to be heard, by us, as profound.500
It always boiled down to the same thing, anyway; Tantra summed up in a nutshell: 'the guru is perfect, all is an illusion, there is no right or wrong and keep the secrets or you'll go to hell'; taught in eighty-four thousand ways to make us believe it.
We assumed, after Trungpa, that all these old lamas were as smart as he had been, and he could be very witty, and had been a very quick study in the English language and western ways; even though he hadn't been that long at Oxford, on his Spaulding scholarship. But he was rare. Another way they all rode in on his coattails was the way we assumed all these Tibetan lamas were as smart as Trungpa. But how would we really know?
This Nyingmapa tulku and omniscient Terton, Lama Phuntsok, straight from China-Tibet, was advertised as an "enlightened" lama but needed both a western translator and a tape-recorded Tibetan prompt, to teach. We had never seen anything like it before. But we buried this red-flag in the dungpile of our delusions about these lamas.
Given what we now know, over twenty years later, concerning Communist China's collusion with the Kagyu Lamas, in hindsight these "oddities" concerning Phuntsok should have been consciously-perceived warnings. But, not with us; not then. If noticed, they were filed away amid the usual cult chatter at breaks, about how "brilliant and amazing were Lama Phuntsok's teachings." There was never room for debate about any of these lamas and their teachings. The groupspeak and groupthink saw to that. Even when their translators couldn't make them sound erudite and wise.
Few of these lamas bothered to really learn English, or any other western language. They weren't planning to "assimilate" to any of the countries they were colonizing; even when they got their U.S. citizenship. They were a world and a country of their own: Tibet 1230 A.D. and they planned to stay fixed in that world and hoped to bring all of us into it.
Lama Phuntsok seemed very wild and uncouth, even slovenly, which was unusual for these lamas, as he sat cross-legged on his throne, with his tight-fisted arms, out rigid and straight in front of him, knuckles on the ground and leaning forward, in what was called the "lion pose." There were lots of contortions of his body to impress us that day; lots of periodic fixed gazing "profoundly" into space. These were supposed to be the Dzogchen poses of various animals, such as a lion in this case, reflecting 'states of mind.' It seemed like a bizarre act to me. He strung his mala around his ear when he needed to fiddle with his recorder, which happened a lot. He looked like a con artist to me but, like the good little devotee I had become, I immediately "cut that thought" and stored it away, along with the dozen others that were now starting to accumulate in the recesses of my still, sane mind.
I never really believed that I didn't have already "pure vision." I knew I was seeing the naked truth in front of my face. I just flinched away.
Lama Phuntsok was one of the dozens of lamas we had met, or were going to meet, in our future. It was already starting to get boring; all these amazing, enlightened Tibetan lamas and their cookie-cutter teachings we had access to, for free, because of our circumstances taking care of Trungpa's son. Although I wouldn't admit it, these lamas were all starting to sound the same and quite dull to me. This old lama from Tibet was different, however, being straight from the old country; unskilled in the strategic charms the lamas had learned for western audiences.
Phuntsok, we were told, was the incarnation of every great lama of the past, which was always the case for any new lamas who needed the boost, and this one seemed incoherent and all over the place. But, one thing was for sure, he was teaching us the real Kalachakra prophecy and its inner and secret teachings; how Trungpa's Shambhala legacy was embedded within it. It was not the Camelot Kingdom terma of Trungpa, nor the Shangri-la paradise of Saint Dalai Lama, filled with peace, love, and harmony, that we had come to believe.
This Kalachakra prophecy, the real one, we had never heard about before. Not in this direct and non-evasive way.
The Dalai Lama had finished giving his fourth, U.S. Kalachakra Wheel of Time empowerment in 1991, in New York City, to crowds of unsuspecting thousands, with the usual pitch that it was about bringing peace throughout the world.501 This Kalachakra prophecy, the real one, straight from this Lama Phuntsok's mouth, straight from Tibet, wasn't talking peace. He was talking about a third world war, the idea of which he seemed to relish, when Tantric Lord Chakravartins, as Rigden Kings, like Trungpa, would come to rule the world.
Lama Phuntsok told us we were the "special" Trungpa students of the "Shambhala Kingdom" and that Trungpa was a lama, who was not just a great bodhisattva, but a great military leader, connected to Gesar of Ling; an emanation of Rigden Kings who would come to rule the earth, in the near future. We were the future army of Shambhala warriors. Nothing new here; the usual teaching by Trungpa and his early students, but told were simply symbolic. We, as his students in this life, and part of his military branch, his kasung, were going to be reborn in the pure land of Shambhala. Yes, that was the same, but then Phuntsok continued: 'when you will come back to fight as Shambhala warriors, some of you as generals, in this great Wheel of Time war between heretics and Shambhala.'
When this war ended, he told us, it would usher in the Age of Maitreya, the Adi-Buddha world of Shambhala and its enlightened society, after this future great apocalyptic war, predicted by these lamas and their ancient prophesies, had destroyed the enemies of their 'dharma.' It was starting to sound like being reborn as kamikaze in a great, epic bloody battle. Not something you would wish for, for any of your next lives, as Lama Phuntsok was describing it. I just flinched, and filed it away.
What remained clear, however, was this great coming war was very real to this old lama from Tibet, and not symbolic at all; not an internal fight, or struggle within us, to tame our own demons -- our egoistic propensities, -- as we had been taught.
It was the first red flag, waving madly before my eyes, about why these lamas are building all their centers and temples, around the world. I realized, that they really believe they will rise up, at the end of this apocalypse they are all predicting; as the new Lord Chakravartins, the Rigden God Kings, ruling over the earth.
Lama Phuntsok, unskilled in donning a 'peaceful' mask for western consumption, had just told us that Tibetan Buddhism is an apocalyptic cult, that believes it will be the world religion in the not too distant future; once it has conquered the other heretic religions. The lamas had been telling us the same thing; but always making sure it was seen as just a metaphor; in a twilight language; about the war inside us, caused by that bug-a-boo: ego. Lama Phuntsok, straight from Tibet, and therefore straight from the thirteenth century, was telling us the truth about his Tibetan Buddhism; this religion of peace.
In a few short years, in Digby, Nova Scotia, at my last graduate Shambhala retreat -- Trungpa's Kalapa Assembly -- I would learn that Trungpa's ambitions to rule the world were as real for him as it was for Lama Phuntsok, transmitting the prophecy of Shambhala before me, now. Clearly, all these lamas believed and wished for the same thing.
But, that wasn't all Phuntsok was revealing. This old lama was also telling us the sexual iconography, and the twilight language of their Tibetan 'Buddhism,' were not metaphoric or symbolic, either: about the merging of emptiness and wisdom in iconographic form. He revealed that, unless all of us in the room were engaged in these medieval, couple-bliss practices of the "highest Tantra," as he rambled on about "the white and red drops of bodhicitta," i.e. semen and menstrual blood transformed into ethereal spiritual essence, we could never hope to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime. Of course, he was talking to the men in the audience. The women were in female bodies, and therefore could never be enlightened in this lifetime, according to this old Tibetan lama's teachings.
Lama Phuntsok did not know that this was a "mixed" Trungpa audience, or that these were still "secret teachings" some of us had not yet received; those who hadn't yet been marinated, enough. He figured we were all Trungpa's "crazy wisdom students" in that audience: delusion-initiated Shambhala warriors, believing we were going to conquer the world by helping the lamas convert everyone to Tantric Buddhism and its sexual and amoral practices. The earliest and 'advanced' students of Trungpa, his western teachers and surrogates, knew differently. They all loved Lama Phuntsok and his teachings. They all knew this is what all these lamas believed and were really transmitting in the West. They had no problem with it.
Even though Lama Phuntsok had just, unequivocally, stated the true nature of Tibetan Buddhism and revealed both of its secrets: its belief and wish for an apocalyptic war between the religions, after which the Tibetan lamas would emerge as the victors ruling the world; and that Trungpa's sexually addictive behaviors were not just "crazy wisdom" aberrations, but were the institutionalized teachings and practices of the lamas' Tantric "Buddhism," I just flinched and filed it away.
Lama Phuntsok didn't say anything about these teachings being just for the "highest and most advanced practitioners" -- the very few -- like the Dalai Lama had been spinning out to the West, every time the sexual abuses of his Tibetan lamas leaked out. Quite the contrary. Phuntsok was telling us there was no possibility of enlightenment and progress on this path, without this medieval belief in alchemy and the transformation of biological fluids into ethereal enlightened experiences through androcentric sex; and acting upon it. Preferably with these lamas, if you were a young, nubile female. This old lama tulku was also probably throwing a wide net, hoping to get lucky himself. No wonder he seemed all excited that day, when transmitting his teachings. He had no idea how westerners might have thought about all this. But, he had certainly learned how gullible and naive westerners were; particularly the more educated ones in that audience.
While the Dalai Lama was feigning surprise at the sexual skullduggery of his tulkus and other lamas, at a meeting in Dharmasala,502 here was Lama Phuntsok, that very same year, spilling the beans in Boston, about the institutionalized reason for the sexual obsessions of Tibetan Tantric Lamas; about their needing sexual consorts all the time; about the spiritual magic of their own semen, their flowing siddhis; moving backwards through their chakras and channels and up to the top of their Shaktied heads; about their obsessions about ruling the world; as Lord Chakravartins of a Shambhala Kingdom, in the near future. What he had revealed was that these were occult, medieval, Tantric practitioners, these old lamas, who were all about sex and power, pretending to be Buddhists, to fool everyone into their ONE MIND world view, that was nothing that the Buddha ever taught, and I intuitively knew it, right then and there. But again, I just flinched, and filed it away.
The Dalai Lama and his enablers -- including all those Western Tibetan and Zen teachers, now metamorphosed into western gurus, themselves -- had been telling the crowd of naive Buddhist students, monks and nuns in Dharmasala, India, to "confront teachers," if they knew of anything wrong that these spiritual leaders were doing, to sexually exploit or take advantage of their students.
"Be a town crier" that hypocrite the Dalai Lama said. Even though the Dalai Lama, the other lamas, the western Tibetan Tantric teachers, and all the Vajrayana students, monks and nuns, to a one, knew that no student, involved in these Tantric teachings, with its guru-worship and vows to keep the lamas' secrets, was ever going to confront anything these Tibetan lamas did. They were already programmed to never have even a bad thought about their gurus, 'greater than kings'; let alone speak against them, out loud, for fear of falling into Rudra hell.
The western Tantric gurus in the Dharmasala audience back in India, in 1993 -- the same year Phuntsok was revealing their secrets in Boston -- also knew that these sexual couplings and weird ideas about women were the essence of their Tantric Buddhism. After all, many of these male western teachers were all teaching Tantra, themselves, and enjoying its benefits and advantages in their own western sanghas.
That weekend in Boston, Lama Phuntsok was very taken with us Trungpa students in his audience and he seemed to be directing his teachings on the Shambhala myth's literal meaning, and the truth about its institutional sexual practices, specifically to us as a group.
He certainly must have thought the Trungpa students he faced in the audience were the most far-gone; those with the most fanatic appearances in the crowd: Trungpa's vajra guard, his Shambhala warriors; those who could sit still, for hours at a time, and barely move; back straight, eyes forward, relaxed breathing; all of us like a military force of meditators, which we were. He kept mentioning how "disciplined" we all seemed, compared to his own manic and distracted-appearing bunch; his own little sangha who coordinated this event and who clearly hadn't been soaked in years of mindfulness meditation. Probably he made them go straight into prostrations; what all these other lamas from Tibet had always done. His western students had that wild, manic, ngondro presence.
He was particularly thrilled about our formal Shambhala training with Trungpa, so we would could come back to fight in the great Kalachakra War, he said.503 His whole talk was an Ode to Trungpa, whom he saw as a great military leader, a Chakravartin ruler of Shambhala warriors and a Rigden God King.
The western celebrity lamas had not yet created their "feminist" mask to fool Western women into believing there could be gender equality, when the very basis of the Tantric Vajrayana teachings of Tibetan Buddhism is about exploiting, controlling, and conquering all female energy, to absorb it and make it their own, in order to become an androgynous Lord Chakravartin.504
So, I didn't yet know that the more promiscuous tulkus of Tantra get their followers to give up their wives, their partners, even their adolescent children, becoming the lamas' sexual partners for their "advanced" practices and/or to join their harems. Nor did I know that these special practices were based on the belief that these Tantric masters could turn material body fluids into an immortal elixir. Lama Phuntsok had now 'enlightened' us. What is striking, is how I just flinched and filed all of it away; buried it, as though it had nothing to do with my pristine 'Buddhist' practice. I was already filtering what I heard.
Western Tibetan Buddhist groups, with different lamas, may experience the sexual abuse inside their own sanghas to varying degrees, or not. The sexual abuse may be focused on the young males but, more often and traditionally it is about using females as sexual objects for their practices. It also depends on how promiscuous is their head lama, and his own sexual orientation. But, all these Tantric Tibetan Buddhist lamas -- there are no non-Tantric lamas in Tibetan Buddhism -- are taught to accept this sexual Tantric view with females and teach it to their inner circle. This is the view of all Tibetan Buddhism: guru-worship of the lamas, who exhort their followers to obey them in all things, including their sexually addictive commands and their delusional ideas about their "enlightenment," with a female consort. It is not just 'crazy wisdom' lamas.
If other lamas were having sexual relations with their students, like the late Kalu Rinpoche,505 or the lama, Dzigar Kongtrul, they were secretive about it. Trungpa's Vajradhatu-Shambhala group and Sogyal's Rigpa group were the worst, in both their exploitation and in flaunting it; serial sexual relationships with hundreds of women (or men in the case of the Regent); dozens that I knew of personally, in Vajradhatu. So many women, I had gotten to know over the years who told me, proudly, that they had had sexual relations with Trungpa. They seemed the most delusional of cult members; some now in their fifties and sixties, believing that they were sixteen-year-old Vajrayoginis and maintaining their first delusions: that Tantric Lamaism was a gender-free, equal-opportunity Buddhism that respected women equally with men and that their Tantric practices were the fountain of youth. They thought these lamas meant it when they talked about being "feminists" and promoting gender-equality.
A lama, like Sogyal, bragging he wanted to become just like Trungpa, as the most extreme in sexual addictions, right up there with Trungpa and his Regent, was rare. Nevertheless, many other celebrity lamas had mistresses and serial relationships with their students; they were just sneakier about it, keeping it within a much smaller, inner circle of students; all kept on a very tight rope.
One lama, I got to know fairly well, when I was close to done with the whole thing, was always trying to get me to hook him up with women I knew, although I always refused. It was as though he felt compelled to do this -- driven in fact -- even though he seemed happily married, and his heart didn't seem in it. It was like an obligation with these tulkus, to be constantly seeking out female, serial partners; or to be appearing to do so, in his case.506 Trungpa had never warned his many consorts not to brag, like these other lamas were always doing among their inner circles. Trungpa's consorts had all been proud of it among their vajra brothers and sisters who, in turn, seemed proud of their group's outre sexual "openness." But, the other Tibetan lamas did not want anyone to know what they were up to, except among their inner circles, where the sexual abuse and serial consorting was occurring among their most programmed, of students; those kept close to the lamas and impossible to hide.507 Those lamas only let those in close whom they thought would keep their secrets.
Keeping Secrets
The lamas' biggest fear was of the possibility that western members of Tibetan Buddhism, who knew their secrets, started speaking out.508 If Trungpa's sexual consorts kept bragging, for example, like they were doing in the late Trungpa's group, in this era of at least lip service to a more active women's rights movement against sexual abuse, it would be a disaster for these lamas. Particularly, after this nationwide scandal aftermath with the Regent, that was bringing up all of Trungpa's sexual abuses, again.
So, it was during this same time -- the re-fortification of the lamas' continued internal damage control campaign, in the early 1990's -- that still another popular lama came to teach at Dorje Dzong, Trungpa's "impenetrable fort" in Boulder, Colorado. This was in 1992, soon after the Regent scandal, when Lama Gyatrul Rinpoche,509 good friend of the Dalai Lama and of Lama Sogyal, the alleged sexual predator of hundreds of western women, and harem-keeper like Trungpa, gave a "commentary" teaching on "Emptiness and Illusion"; the new Dzogchen hook of the lamas to keep old Trungpa students even more stupefied, silenced, and fooled, while believing that these Dzogchen teachings were different; quickly leading to clarity and wisdom. They were, in fact, the apex of Tantric occult teachings from the Bon-influenced Nyingmapa stream, that would keep us more deeply in the lamas' thrall.
Lama Gyatrul gave his Dzogchen retreat to a large group of Trungpa students in Boulder that year, because it was essential that everyone was reprogrammed, fully, in the "illusionary nature" of reality; in order reinforce the secrecy about the sexual abuse. It was also to heighten the idea, in the minds of the women who had been sexually exploited or would be, and the men who were cuckold in that audience, as well as the Regent's victims, to believe that their spiritual path and that of the well-being of the whole world depended on their keeping silent about it; seeing it as a great honor that made them special and lucky, but inferior, of course, to the lamas; these great bodhisattvas, greater than kings. Their usual double bind messages.
It would be disastrous to the plans of these Machiavellian tulkus if Trungpa's students ever woke up. They had seen the worst of the truth of the sexual abuse in Tibetan Buddhism and had, so far, been thoroughly programmed to accept it. But, they were not hiding it enough from the uninitiated in their own groups, as they should.
So, the "big guns" of Dzogchen, the mother lode of meditation and the "no-right-no-wrong" view of Tantra -- another Trojan horse of the lamas -- was wheeled out, for further assault on our reason and good sense. If they could pound the idea into our already brainwashed heads that the "world was empty" of any reality, and, most importantly, that "there was no right and wrong in an empty illusion," then when we saw these lamas behaving badly, we would continue to believe what we saw was a distortion of a sacred reality that we couldn't yet see. This way, these sacred priests could carry on, without fear of exposure. Reinforcing the idea that everything was an illusion, also meant there was no history in an illusion, since nothing really happens. All the scandals of the recent past could be buried, even those that caused death, and the future egregious behaviors of the lamas could continue; sexual behaviors that were the essence of their 'Buddhism,' wrapped in a chimera, a mirage, as it must be, to continue, unassailed, with this one neat trick of Dzogchen, and Lama Gyatrul's 'code of silence' admonishments; telling us we were "saving the world" by keeping the lamas' secrets.
Lama Gyatrul taught that Dzogchen was the very highest of esoteric teachings and that the community of Trungpa, who was receiving it, "was ready" for these Ati-Ievel teachings; the highest Vajrayana teachings that Trungpa had been teaching all along in his 'secular' Shambhala path. Now the "time was ripe" because it was the worst of the dark ages (that the Tibetan Tantric lamas were helping create) wherein only the highest teachings could help. It was a heavy preamble for the final indoctrination to make sure our commitment to our gurus and keeping their secrets stayed intact.
Lama Gyatrul, just like Lama Phuntsok, spent a lot of time expounding on Trungpa's status during his section on Shambhala and its connections to Dzogchen. But, the most important teaching, embedded in these few days of his retreat -- the real reason he was here -- was that Lama Gyatrul was praying that all the sleazy behaviors of these Tibetan lamas, that we had already encountered or would encounter, would always be reframed as the "great blessings of great bodhisattvas, greater than kings." He was here to also remind the males in the audience, about how fortunate they were or would be, to give up their wives, their daughters, their sisters, and girlfriends to great bodhisattvas, like Trungpa and Lama Gyatrul, and all the other 'greater than king' lamas who were groping their students.
There was no mention of how lucky were the young students of the Regent, or their parents, who had given up their sons to Rich's special relationship and 'sexual blessings' of spreading his AIDS virus in his community; no mention of the great "blessings" that caused the loss of a child and a friend, because the Regent had unprotected sex, or that hundreds of other students of the Regent had been put in harms' way. No warning about how disastrous it had been, to keep this guru's' secrets; putting the whole community at risk when the inner circle, many of whom were in that shrineroom in Boulder that day, went along with the Regent's secret, and even pimped for him to find new sexual recruits.
On the contrary, this Lama Gyatrul, another great bodhisattva, greater than a king, and close friend of the Dalai Lama and the sexual predator, Lama Sogyal, was telling everyone in the room to keep more secrets.
Lama Gyatrul wasn't an exception. All the high lamas, of every Tibetan Buddhist sect, never criticized what happened with the Regent, then or now. They had honored him after his death, when the whole nation knew what he had done. Thrangu Rinpoche, their old wily tutor, had even helped build and consecrate the Regent's stupa in Ojai, California where, with his gaggle of wealthy benefactors around him, the Regent went to die. Dead by August of 1990, he left a massive scandal for the lamas and their inner circles to clean up. But, first on the agenda, was to keep Trungpa's westerner students double-binded and confused; forever keeping their secrets. Which was why Lama Gyatrul was in Boulder, in 1992, to make sure that happened. It was what all of them were always doing: making sure their medieval views about women and sex remained a secret in the public's eye and keeping us, their devotees, enthralled and under their thumbs.
The highest Tibetan tulku and teacher of all these celebrity tulkus, and one of Trungpa's revered teachers, the late Lama Dilgo Khyentse had, not so long ago, offered his suggestion to the Vajradhatu community during this scandal with the Regent, that "the Regent should be pouring menstrual blood over himself." The delusional inner circle of Trungpa's Vajradhatu distributed a letter to the larger sangha, with this advice by Lama Dilgo Khyentse, about the menstrual blood antidote, and we were all so far gone in seeing Dilgo Khyentse as the ultimate 'living Buddha' and celestial saint, that we may have cringed, but repressed this "negative thought," about the incarnation of the great Padmasambhava, Dilgo Khyentse: the highest Nyingmapa lama, who had taught all these other Tibetan high lamas their occult teachings; had consecrated Trungpa's Shambhala for westerners; and who is still revered as a Saint by all western Buddhists of the Kagyu and Nyingmapa and every Buddhist sect. The highest of Lord Chakravartins.
Tibetan Tantric lamas, all of them, including the Dalai Lama, are not operating from the same beliefs, ethics and values that we are, as westerners. Their minds still abide in the middle-ages. They only care that their medieval Tantra is spread and their atavistic, misogynistic and androcentric secrets are kept and they stay on those thrones.
So, during this retreat, Lama Gyatrul specifically called out the harem of Trungpa -- his sagyum -- in front of the whole group, to expand on why he was there. Gyatrul admonishes the sexual harem of the now dead Trungpa and all of the women in the audience who had slept with Trungpa, as though they were living in the thirteenth century of Lama Tsongkhapa's playbook when Lama Gyatrul says:
The Dakinis and Their "Spiritualized Feminism," [EXCERPT from Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism]
by Christine A. Chandler, M.A., C.A.G.S.
© 2017 Christine A. Chandler, M.A., C.A.G.S.
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EIGHTEEN: THE DAKINIS AND THEIR "SPIRITUALIZED FEMINISM"
"The purpose of the secret sagyum was, in the context of the monastic establishment, to provide for male practitioners the opportunities for sexual activity, without disruption of the structure of the system ... These actions were only achieved, however, with the collusion of the women involved.
-- JUNE CAMPBELL, TRAVELLER IN SPACE. [490]
Dzogchen, Sex and Power
The first half of the nineties were very busy years, for all the Tibetan lamas, because of so many fires they had to put out and so many leaks they had to plug. First, it was the news of Trungpa's Regent, passing on his known AIDS to his students, one of whom was now dead in his early twenties. Another dharma brat casualty of Trungpa's group.
This news hit The New York Times, between January and February of 1989 and August of 1990. Still, the general public wasn't paying as much attention as it should have to this scandal, because soon the Dalai Lama was all over the news, having just coincidentally' received his Nobel Prize in 1989.
Then it was Sogyal Rinpoche's court case, a claim filed against him in 1994, [491] for sexual and physical abuse; copying Trungpa's out-of-control, sexual addictions and illegal behaviors in the West with his own female harem.
Shortly thereafter, it was another Tibetan lama, Kalu Rinpoche, making the Buddhist news when his sexual consort, June Campbell, bravely published her book, Skydancer -- later published as Traveller in Space in 1996 -- that exposed the truth about Tibetan "Buddhist" Tantra, the Tibetan lamas, and their institutionalized sexual activities with young female consorts for their 'higher' practices. [492]
The Dalai Lama's canonization by the mainstream media was taking care of the outside perception of Tibetan Buddhism. All the same, it was clear that a coordinated, long-term, internal damage control campaign and preventive maintenance plan had to be developed inside these western sanghas, who were starting to see cracks in the gilded patina covering the Tibetan lamas; cracks that were starting to reveal the truth about these 'compassionate' tulkus. So, it was clear that all of us, their early western Tibetan 'Buddhists,' had to be more heavily indoctrinated; this time with Tantra wrapped up and tied up with a 'Dzogchen' bow. The Dzogchen teachings would reinforce and solidify the three Tantric rules: 'all is an illusion'; 'all gurus are perfect'; and 'keeping their secrets' is not just a command, but vital to your spiritual lives and of great 'benefit' for the world. This Regent scandal also gave the whitewashers practice; when they had to ramp up another coordinated campaign for the public in 2011 and, again, in 2017, after Lama Sogyal's very public exposures for abuse.
These scandals and subsequent whitewash surrounding the deaths of Trungpa's Regent493 and his student; Sogyal Rinpoche's hefty lawsuit for sexual and physical abuse in 1994; and Kalu Rinpoche's secrets being revealed by June Campbell, around the same time, would give the Tibetan lamas and their helpmates practice for the continued scandals of Sogyal Rinpoche, in 2011 with a public documentary about his harem abuse; and again in July of 2017, when eight of his lay students, nuns and monks, exposed his egregious abuses, hoping to keep it a secret inside their Rigpa communities, but somehow it leaked.
Leaked information to the press was always disastrous for the lamas494 because if anyone cared to look, and connect the dots, the Tibetan lamas' secrets were forming a glaring and obvious neon-lit pattern of institutional abuse. It was a good thing the lamas had so many enabling surrogate western devotees, celebrity academics, psychologists and nuns, and wealthy benefactors and their media outlets on their side; like the Huffington Post and later The New York Times. All of Hollywood glitterati were also watching the lamas' backs.
New Shangri-la indoctrination, released for the public, during this scandalous period of the 1990s, helped with damage control.
The Tibetans were scrutinizing the unaccustomed personage of a white woman, and Freda [Bedi] in turn was certainly regarding them. She, like other Westerners, had never come across Tibetans or their culture. Secreted away within their mighty Himalayan fortress, the forbidden country of Tibet had remained a mystery to the rest of the world for centuries. In 1959 that isolationist policy had been rudely crushed, and the Tibetans were thrust out into the world. Their appearance may have been dirty and bedraggled, their bodies broken, and their demeanor utterly disoriented, but Freda was deeply and immediately struck by a certain quality she had not encountered before.
It was Mahayana Buddhism, which is based on love, kindness, and compassion toward all, even your enemies. Over the centuries it had seeped into the very soil of Tibet and the bones of its inhabitants and had now come to their aid in their greatest hour of need. For the Mahayanist, nirvana, the liberation of self from the cycle of endless births and death, was not enough. For how could you stay in the bliss of heaven while countless others were still suffering in ignorance, they argued? The followers of Mahayana instead vowed to relinquish liberation until all beings were freed. And so they hung their prayer flags on mountaintops so that the wind could carry their messages to beings in all ten directions, and they spun their prayer wheels for the benefit of all, and every day they uttered their wish that every living creature be free from sorrow and live in lasting peace and happiness.
While average Tibetans stopped there in their religious activity, the lamas coupled this altruistic intention with profound scholarship and an extraordinary panoply of meditation techniques set down for them to follow in order to achieve their goal of universal enlightenment. The truly dedicated set off to remote mountain caves where they meditated in isolation for years, even decades. As a result Tibet produced an unprecedented number of enlightened beings, almost on a conveyer belt. It was their finest accomplishment, and now their gift to the world.
Freda had not experienced anything like it. In the refugees Freda found no traces of bitterness, resentment, or anger, only a reinforcement of their prayers. This resonated deeply with Freda's own innate compassionate nature and her newly awakened Buddhist path. Every morning and night, the chanting of incredibly soothing and rhythmical prayers of the lamas filled the air.The unbearable blue-black raksha body possessing the nine dances of wrath and rage and the brilliant ferocity of a hundred thousand suns, to the vajra body I give praise. With the terrifying HA HA HUNG PHET, the raging roar like a thousand dragons and the vajra laugh which shakes the three realms, to the speech of the heruka, I give praise....
From the hearts of the hosts of deities of the self-visualization and front visualization, shine rays of razor-sharp mantra light like showers of meteors and forks of wild lightning. These set upon all the dualistic forces of harm and sever their aortas....
From emptiness appear the torma vessel, an enormous red conch skullcup, vast and extensive. Inside are the torma substances, which are obtained from the liberation of the forces of dualistic obstruction: mountains of flesh, oceans of blood, heaps of bones, foaming masses of brains and fat and a complete array, with no omission, of all offerings that are pleasing to the senses and worthy of being samaya substances. In essence, these have the nature of the amrita of the inexhaustible wisdom; inconceivable, they fill the extent of space....
Once again, the great torma instantly becomes the majestic Dorje Zhonnu, with an army of the eight classes of defiant gods and demons. With wrathful, fierce and fearsome forms, they fill the three states of conditioned existence and bring down a rain of disease, weapons and poison, rapacious in their activity to liberate the forces of dualistic obstruction....
Tame the hordes of mara with the force of the Vajra cannibal!
-- The Miraculous Activity Sadhana of Vajrakilaya, the Razor Which Destroys At a Touch, by His Holiness Dudjom Rinpoche, Jigdrel Yeshe Dorje
Each home group had its private shrine, and butter lamps were burned, even if rations had to be sacrificed. Their piety and devotion meant more to them than bread," said Freda. "The Tibetans are honest, brave, and wonderful people. The five thousand lamas we have inherited contain some of the most remarkable, spiritually advanced monks and teachers it has been my privilege to meet."
-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie
Films, such as Seven Years in Tibet, or Little Buddha, where Lama Sogyal was even featured as a main character lama, would take care of the public's perception.495 Hollywood would always protect someone like Lama Sogyal, thanks to his friends, Richard Gere and the Dalai Lama. The external damage control machine was in full swing, during this period, and in retrospect it was massive. Martin Scorcese joined in the fan-club with his film, Kundun. 496
As part of the lamas' internal damage control crusade, during this first half of the nineties, an old lama named Phuntsok497 from Communist China-ruled Tibet, prefaced with the usual hyperbole of "coming from a powerful and unbroken lineage of great wisdom beings," was scheduled in America to teach Tantra, now billed as 'Dzogchen.'
Lama Phuntsok arrived, unexpectedly, in 1993, to teach his first weekend in Boston, and he seemed very focused on the many Trungpa students in the audience, who had been encouraged by the Vajradhatu grapevine to not miss this "amazing teacher."
So, there I was, at the same place I had first learned Shambhala mindfulness meditation, nearly a decade past and where I heard the Regent confess to having AIDS to the community, a few years before. Now, at least one of his young male victims was dead, along with him. I had driven down from Vermont for this Dzogchen retreat, one of my free indoctrination weekends as part of my perks for taking care of Trungpa's son.
Lama Phuntsok had come with his own small group of western devotees, that he had somehow managed to collect, long-distance, from China, and he was billed as being the usual stream of "incarnations" of great lamas, now manifesting in his body; the same tulku "divine stream of energy" of ancient lamas from the past, who was sitting on this throne in front of us, with an audience in various stages of cult indoctrination: soaked, saturated and pickled. I was somewhere between soaked and saturated, but not yet pickled.
We had also been well-marinated in Tibetan tulku victimology teachings. We didn't know these Kagyu lamas had been rebuilding their centers in China, with the CPC governmental approval, since 1984.498 However, I remember feeling very surprised, after hearing for almost a decade the Tibetan lamas' narrative: that China was repressing their teachings, torturing the lamas still in Tibet, and preventing them from leaving Tibet, etc. So, the fact that this Lama Phuntsok could so easily get a visa to come to the United States, from China, to teach at this Shambhala-Vajradhatu center in Boston, seemed more than a little strange, to say the least.
Since most of the high tulkus had 'escaped,' leaving the lower monks and their own people behind to deal with Mao's revolution, like they always left their 'inconveniences' for everyone else to deal with, this seemed very odd. Both, because he was being touted as one of the highest of lama incarnations, and because one had to think: "why would China let him come to the States?" Was it because he was now on-board with the false narrative that Communist China and the Dalai Lama were bitter enemies, fostered around the world by the mainstream media, so we would let more of these lamas, now colluding with the Motherland, into our western hearts and our pocketbooks? To undermine our western values and democracy from the inside out with their chaotic Tantra?
Our new, "blessed" occupation with our guru's son, T, kept us too busy to pay attention to the visible and wide-spread defections that were occurring in Trungpa's sangha because of what had been exposed to the nation, about the colluding behavior of Vajradhatu's administration, who had so recently enabled the Regent's behavior to spread AIDS to his students. This inner circle of complicity was now our "employer," whom we had to deal with, all the time; not only for our meager pauper paychecks, but when things went wrong, which was often, in the physically neglected house of our late, great God King, Trungpa, where we were now living with T.499 We didn't know how much trouble this community was in, because of possible further whistle-blowing by Trungpa's students; the thing that all the Tibetan Tantric lamas and their western coteries so feared. It would be catastrophic to all four sects of Tantric Buddhism, if any of Trungpa's students started to really wake-up and blow the conch-shell on the Tibetan lamas' 'crazy wisdom' house of cards.
Knowing little, at this time, about who and what these Kagyu lamas were really up to, with their collusion with China's world hegemonic ambitions, and their institutionalized sexual and other exploitations of their students, my new husband and I didn't yet have privy to the inner workings of this Karma Kagyu group of lamas. Not yet. But we were about to be exposed to the back-stage as well as the elaborate front-stage, as the curtain was lifted and we now had front-row seats.
Lama Phuntsok, who was in front of us now on his own stage, coming all the way from China to keep us stuck in a dream, didn't know a stitch of English. He had a tape recording of his teachings in Tibetan, with an earplug in his ear, apparently to remind him of what he was going say to this audience of strange westerners, sitting alert and at attention. His tape recorder would go off in speaker mode, when he accidently jerked the earphone out of his device, and we could hear some Tibetan voice, perhaps his or another, along with his own Tibetan voice in real time, overlapping with the voice of his western translator sitting beside Phuntsok, and telling us what Phuntsok had said. It was like a three-way echo-chamber, in more ways than one.
The lamas and their translators always taught the same three things by default: adoration of themselves as god kings on thrones; the "specialness" of their teachings; and how lucky we were to have met them. This was always what was taught; by the translators, or through the translated texts and commentaries we read later. Western translators, with Masters and PhDs in religious philosophy and/or languages from some prestigious university, were always a show in themselves; treating these lamas as great beings of esoteric wisdom and knowledge, while simultaneously translating the lamas' hagiographic and fairy-tale biographies to spoon-feed us the fantasy world of Tibetan Lamaism. We didn't yet know you could be neck deep in a cult, and still appear to be educated and sane.
The deference these translators showed towards these lamas was a big part of the Tibetan lama theatre for our benefit. They would model being enthralled by everything the lama said in Tibetan, including their humor, even though it always translated like jokes for three-year-olds. But we all laughed away, ha, ha, together. Their non-verbal communications, their radiant looks and smug chuckles, their 'ohs and ahs' -- cues that what we were about to hear was brilliant, witty and profound -- kept us enthralled. But none of us really knew what these lamas had actually said. Since we had just been programmed by the translator to believe what was coming was going to be brilliant and wise, whatever the lama said. It was always going to be heard, by us, as profound.500
It always boiled down to the same thing, anyway; Tantra summed up in a nutshell: 'the guru is perfect, all is an illusion, there is no right or wrong and keep the secrets or you'll go to hell'; taught in eighty-four thousand ways to make us believe it.
We assumed, after Trungpa, that all these old lamas were as smart as he had been, and he could be very witty, and had been a very quick study in the English language and western ways; even though he hadn't been that long at Oxford, on his Spaulding scholarship. But he was rare. Another way they all rode in on his coattails was the way we assumed all these Tibetan lamas were as smart as Trungpa. But how would we really know?
This Nyingmapa tulku and omniscient Terton, Lama Phuntsok, straight from China-Tibet, was advertised as an "enlightened" lama but needed both a western translator and a tape-recorded Tibetan prompt, to teach. We had never seen anything like it before. But we buried this red-flag in the dungpile of our delusions about these lamas.
Given what we now know, over twenty years later, concerning Communist China's collusion with the Kagyu Lamas, in hindsight these "oddities" concerning Phuntsok should have been consciously-perceived warnings. But, not with us; not then. If noticed, they were filed away amid the usual cult chatter at breaks, about how "brilliant and amazing were Lama Phuntsok's teachings." There was never room for debate about any of these lamas and their teachings. The groupspeak and groupthink saw to that. Even when their translators couldn't make them sound erudite and wise.
Few of these lamas bothered to really learn English, or any other western language. They weren't planning to "assimilate" to any of the countries they were colonizing; even when they got their U.S. citizenship. They were a world and a country of their own: Tibet 1230 A.D. and they planned to stay fixed in that world and hoped to bring all of us into it.
Lama Phuntsok seemed very wild and uncouth, even slovenly, which was unusual for these lamas, as he sat cross-legged on his throne, with his tight-fisted arms, out rigid and straight in front of him, knuckles on the ground and leaning forward, in what was called the "lion pose." There were lots of contortions of his body to impress us that day; lots of periodic fixed gazing "profoundly" into space. These were supposed to be the Dzogchen poses of various animals, such as a lion in this case, reflecting 'states of mind.' It seemed like a bizarre act to me. He strung his mala around his ear when he needed to fiddle with his recorder, which happened a lot. He looked like a con artist to me but, like the good little devotee I had become, I immediately "cut that thought" and stored it away, along with the dozen others that were now starting to accumulate in the recesses of my still, sane mind.
I never really believed that I didn't have already "pure vision." I knew I was seeing the naked truth in front of my face. I just flinched away.
Lama Phuntsok was one of the dozens of lamas we had met, or were going to meet, in our future. It was already starting to get boring; all these amazing, enlightened Tibetan lamas and their cookie-cutter teachings we had access to, for free, because of our circumstances taking care of Trungpa's son. Although I wouldn't admit it, these lamas were all starting to sound the same and quite dull to me. This old lama from Tibet was different, however, being straight from the old country; unskilled in the strategic charms the lamas had learned for western audiences.
Phuntsok, we were told, was the incarnation of every great lama of the past, which was always the case for any new lamas who needed the boost, and this one seemed incoherent and all over the place. But, one thing was for sure, he was teaching us the real Kalachakra prophecy and its inner and secret teachings; how Trungpa's Shambhala legacy was embedded within it. It was not the Camelot Kingdom terma of Trungpa, nor the Shangri-la paradise of Saint Dalai Lama, filled with peace, love, and harmony, that we had come to believe.
This Kalachakra prophecy, the real one, we had never heard about before. Not in this direct and non-evasive way.
The Dalai Lama had finished giving his fourth, U.S. Kalachakra Wheel of Time empowerment in 1991, in New York City, to crowds of unsuspecting thousands, with the usual pitch that it was about bringing peace throughout the world.501 This Kalachakra prophecy, the real one, straight from this Lama Phuntsok's mouth, straight from Tibet, wasn't talking peace. He was talking about a third world war, the idea of which he seemed to relish, when Tantric Lord Chakravartins, as Rigden Kings, like Trungpa, would come to rule the world.
Lama Phuntsok told us we were the "special" Trungpa students of the "Shambhala Kingdom" and that Trungpa was a lama, who was not just a great bodhisattva, but a great military leader, connected to Gesar of Ling; an emanation of Rigden Kings who would come to rule the earth, in the near future. We were the future army of Shambhala warriors. Nothing new here; the usual teaching by Trungpa and his early students, but told were simply symbolic. We, as his students in this life, and part of his military branch, his kasung, were going to be reborn in the pure land of Shambhala. Yes, that was the same, but then Phuntsok continued: 'when you will come back to fight as Shambhala warriors, some of you as generals, in this great Wheel of Time war between heretics and Shambhala.'
When this war ended, he told us, it would usher in the Age of Maitreya, the Adi-Buddha world of Shambhala and its enlightened society, after this future great apocalyptic war, predicted by these lamas and their ancient prophesies, had destroyed the enemies of their 'dharma.' It was starting to sound like being reborn as kamikaze in a great, epic bloody battle. Not something you would wish for, for any of your next lives, as Lama Phuntsok was describing it. I just flinched, and filed it away.
What remained clear, however, was this great coming war was very real to this old lama from Tibet, and not symbolic at all; not an internal fight, or struggle within us, to tame our own demons -- our egoistic propensities, -- as we had been taught.
It was the first red flag, waving madly before my eyes, about why these lamas are building all their centers and temples, around the world. I realized, that they really believe they will rise up, at the end of this apocalypse they are all predicting; as the new Lord Chakravartins, the Rigden God Kings, ruling over the earth.
Lama Phuntsok, unskilled in donning a 'peaceful' mask for western consumption, had just told us that Tibetan Buddhism is an apocalyptic cult, that believes it will be the world religion in the not too distant future; once it has conquered the other heretic religions. The lamas had been telling us the same thing; but always making sure it was seen as just a metaphor; in a twilight language; about the war inside us, caused by that bug-a-boo: ego. Lama Phuntsok, straight from Tibet, and therefore straight from the thirteenth century, was telling us the truth about his Tibetan Buddhism; this religion of peace.
In a few short years, in Digby, Nova Scotia, at my last graduate Shambhala retreat -- Trungpa's Kalapa Assembly -- I would learn that Trungpa's ambitions to rule the world were as real for him as it was for Lama Phuntsok, transmitting the prophecy of Shambhala before me, now. Clearly, all these lamas believed and wished for the same thing.
But, that wasn't all Phuntsok was revealing. This old lama was also telling us the sexual iconography, and the twilight language of their Tibetan 'Buddhism,' were not metaphoric or symbolic, either: about the merging of emptiness and wisdom in iconographic form. He revealed that, unless all of us in the room were engaged in these medieval, couple-bliss practices of the "highest Tantra," as he rambled on about "the white and red drops of bodhicitta," i.e. semen and menstrual blood transformed into ethereal spiritual essence, we could never hope to achieve enlightenment in this lifetime. Of course, he was talking to the men in the audience. The women were in female bodies, and therefore could never be enlightened in this lifetime, according to this old Tibetan lama's teachings.
Lama Phuntsok did not know that this was a "mixed" Trungpa audience, or that these were still "secret teachings" some of us had not yet received; those who hadn't yet been marinated, enough. He figured we were all Trungpa's "crazy wisdom students" in that audience: delusion-initiated Shambhala warriors, believing we were going to conquer the world by helping the lamas convert everyone to Tantric Buddhism and its sexual and amoral practices. The earliest and 'advanced' students of Trungpa, his western teachers and surrogates, knew differently. They all loved Lama Phuntsok and his teachings. They all knew this is what all these lamas believed and were really transmitting in the West. They had no problem with it.
Even though Lama Phuntsok had just, unequivocally, stated the true nature of Tibetan Buddhism and revealed both of its secrets: its belief and wish for an apocalyptic war between the religions, after which the Tibetan lamas would emerge as the victors ruling the world; and that Trungpa's sexually addictive behaviors were not just "crazy wisdom" aberrations, but were the institutionalized teachings and practices of the lamas' Tantric "Buddhism," I just flinched and filed it away.
Lama Phuntsok didn't say anything about these teachings being just for the "highest and most advanced practitioners" -- the very few -- like the Dalai Lama had been spinning out to the West, every time the sexual abuses of his Tibetan lamas leaked out. Quite the contrary. Phuntsok was telling us there was no possibility of enlightenment and progress on this path, without this medieval belief in alchemy and the transformation of biological fluids into ethereal enlightened experiences through androcentric sex; and acting upon it. Preferably with these lamas, if you were a young, nubile female. This old lama tulku was also probably throwing a wide net, hoping to get lucky himself. No wonder he seemed all excited that day, when transmitting his teachings. He had no idea how westerners might have thought about all this. But, he had certainly learned how gullible and naive westerners were; particularly the more educated ones in that audience.
While the Dalai Lama was feigning surprise at the sexual skullduggery of his tulkus and other lamas, at a meeting in Dharmasala,502 here was Lama Phuntsok, that very same year, spilling the beans in Boston, about the institutionalized reason for the sexual obsessions of Tibetan Tantric Lamas; about their needing sexual consorts all the time; about the spiritual magic of their own semen, their flowing siddhis; moving backwards through their chakras and channels and up to the top of their Shaktied heads; about their obsessions about ruling the world; as Lord Chakravartins of a Shambhala Kingdom, in the near future. What he had revealed was that these were occult, medieval, Tantric practitioners, these old lamas, who were all about sex and power, pretending to be Buddhists, to fool everyone into their ONE MIND world view, that was nothing that the Buddha ever taught, and I intuitively knew it, right then and there. But again, I just flinched, and filed it away.
The Dalai Lama and his enablers -- including all those Western Tibetan and Zen teachers, now metamorphosed into western gurus, themselves -- had been telling the crowd of naive Buddhist students, monks and nuns in Dharmasala, India, to "confront teachers," if they knew of anything wrong that these spiritual leaders were doing, to sexually exploit or take advantage of their students.
"Be a town crier" that hypocrite the Dalai Lama said. Even though the Dalai Lama, the other lamas, the western Tibetan Tantric teachers, and all the Vajrayana students, monks and nuns, to a one, knew that no student, involved in these Tantric teachings, with its guru-worship and vows to keep the lamas' secrets, was ever going to confront anything these Tibetan lamas did. They were already programmed to never have even a bad thought about their gurus, 'greater than kings'; let alone speak against them, out loud, for fear of falling into Rudra hell.
The western Tantric gurus in the Dharmasala audience back in India, in 1993 -- the same year Phuntsok was revealing their secrets in Boston -- also knew that these sexual couplings and weird ideas about women were the essence of their Tantric Buddhism. After all, many of these male western teachers were all teaching Tantra, themselves, and enjoying its benefits and advantages in their own western sanghas.
That weekend in Boston, Lama Phuntsok was very taken with us Trungpa students in his audience and he seemed to be directing his teachings on the Shambhala myth's literal meaning, and the truth about its institutional sexual practices, specifically to us as a group.
He certainly must have thought the Trungpa students he faced in the audience were the most far-gone; those with the most fanatic appearances in the crowd: Trungpa's vajra guard, his Shambhala warriors; those who could sit still, for hours at a time, and barely move; back straight, eyes forward, relaxed breathing; all of us like a military force of meditators, which we were. He kept mentioning how "disciplined" we all seemed, compared to his own manic and distracted-appearing bunch; his own little sangha who coordinated this event and who clearly hadn't been soaked in years of mindfulness meditation. Probably he made them go straight into prostrations; what all these other lamas from Tibet had always done. His western students had that wild, manic, ngondro presence.
He was particularly thrilled about our formal Shambhala training with Trungpa, so we would could come back to fight in the great Kalachakra War, he said.503 His whole talk was an Ode to Trungpa, whom he saw as a great military leader, a Chakravartin ruler of Shambhala warriors and a Rigden God King.
The western celebrity lamas had not yet created their "feminist" mask to fool Western women into believing there could be gender equality, when the very basis of the Tantric Vajrayana teachings of Tibetan Buddhism is about exploiting, controlling, and conquering all female energy, to absorb it and make it their own, in order to become an androgynous Lord Chakravartin.504
Freda [Bedi] was moved. She learned that within Tibetan culture the figure of the mother (any mother) was universally held in the highest regard, even reverence. The mother was the person who brought forth life, nourished that life with her own body, and was prepared to sacrifice her own life for the sake of her child. In short, the mother was the highest example on earth of selfless love. Freda was ready to take on the title.
-- The Revolutionary Life of Freda Bedi, by Vicki Mackenzie
So, I didn't yet know that the more promiscuous tulkus of Tantra get their followers to give up their wives, their partners, even their adolescent children, becoming the lamas' sexual partners for their "advanced" practices and/or to join their harems. Nor did I know that these special practices were based on the belief that these Tantric masters could turn material body fluids into an immortal elixir. Lama Phuntsok had now 'enlightened' us. What is striking, is how I just flinched and filed all of it away; buried it, as though it had nothing to do with my pristine 'Buddhist' practice. I was already filtering what I heard.
Western Tibetan Buddhist groups, with different lamas, may experience the sexual abuse inside their own sanghas to varying degrees, or not. The sexual abuse may be focused on the young males but, more often and traditionally it is about using females as sexual objects for their practices. It also depends on how promiscuous is their head lama, and his own sexual orientation. But, all these Tantric Tibetan Buddhist lamas -- there are no non-Tantric lamas in Tibetan Buddhism -- are taught to accept this sexual Tantric view with females and teach it to their inner circle. This is the view of all Tibetan Buddhism: guru-worship of the lamas, who exhort their followers to obey them in all things, including their sexually addictive commands and their delusional ideas about their "enlightenment," with a female consort. It is not just 'crazy wisdom' lamas.
If other lamas were having sexual relations with their students, like the late Kalu Rinpoche,505 or the lama, Dzigar Kongtrul, they were secretive about it. Trungpa's Vajradhatu-Shambhala group and Sogyal's Rigpa group were the worst, in both their exploitation and in flaunting it; serial sexual relationships with hundreds of women (or men in the case of the Regent); dozens that I knew of personally, in Vajradhatu. So many women, I had gotten to know over the years who told me, proudly, that they had had sexual relations with Trungpa. They seemed the most delusional of cult members; some now in their fifties and sixties, believing that they were sixteen-year-old Vajrayoginis and maintaining their first delusions: that Tantric Lamaism was a gender-free, equal-opportunity Buddhism that respected women equally with men and that their Tantric practices were the fountain of youth. They thought these lamas meant it when they talked about being "feminists" and promoting gender-equality.
A lama, like Sogyal, bragging he wanted to become just like Trungpa, as the most extreme in sexual addictions, right up there with Trungpa and his Regent, was rare. Nevertheless, many other celebrity lamas had mistresses and serial relationships with their students; they were just sneakier about it, keeping it within a much smaller, inner circle of students; all kept on a very tight rope.
One lama, I got to know fairly well, when I was close to done with the whole thing, was always trying to get me to hook him up with women I knew, although I always refused. It was as though he felt compelled to do this -- driven in fact -- even though he seemed happily married, and his heart didn't seem in it. It was like an obligation with these tulkus, to be constantly seeking out female, serial partners; or to be appearing to do so, in his case.506 Trungpa had never warned his many consorts not to brag, like these other lamas were always doing among their inner circles. Trungpa's consorts had all been proud of it among their vajra brothers and sisters who, in turn, seemed proud of their group's outre sexual "openness." But, the other Tibetan lamas did not want anyone to know what they were up to, except among their inner circles, where the sexual abuse and serial consorting was occurring among their most programmed, of students; those kept close to the lamas and impossible to hide.507 Those lamas only let those in close whom they thought would keep their secrets.
Keeping Secrets
The lamas' biggest fear was of the possibility that western members of Tibetan Buddhism, who knew their secrets, started speaking out.508 If Trungpa's sexual consorts kept bragging, for example, like they were doing in the late Trungpa's group, in this era of at least lip service to a more active women's rights movement against sexual abuse, it would be a disaster for these lamas. Particularly, after this nationwide scandal aftermath with the Regent, that was bringing up all of Trungpa's sexual abuses, again.
So, it was during this same time -- the re-fortification of the lamas' continued internal damage control campaign, in the early 1990's -- that still another popular lama came to teach at Dorje Dzong, Trungpa's "impenetrable fort" in Boulder, Colorado. This was in 1992, soon after the Regent scandal, when Lama Gyatrul Rinpoche,509 good friend of the Dalai Lama and of Lama Sogyal, the alleged sexual predator of hundreds of western women, and harem-keeper like Trungpa, gave a "commentary" teaching on "Emptiness and Illusion"; the new Dzogchen hook of the lamas to keep old Trungpa students even more stupefied, silenced, and fooled, while believing that these Dzogchen teachings were different; quickly leading to clarity and wisdom. They were, in fact, the apex of Tantric occult teachings from the Bon-influenced Nyingmapa stream, that would keep us more deeply in the lamas' thrall.
Lama Gyatrul gave his Dzogchen retreat to a large group of Trungpa students in Boulder that year, because it was essential that everyone was reprogrammed, fully, in the "illusionary nature" of reality; in order reinforce the secrecy about the sexual abuse. It was also to heighten the idea, in the minds of the women who had been sexually exploited or would be, and the men who were cuckold in that audience, as well as the Regent's victims, to believe that their spiritual path and that of the well-being of the whole world depended on their keeping silent about it; seeing it as a great honor that made them special and lucky, but inferior, of course, to the lamas; these great bodhisattvas, greater than kings. Their usual double bind messages.
It would be disastrous to the plans of these Machiavellian tulkus if Trungpa's students ever woke up. They had seen the worst of the truth of the sexual abuse in Tibetan Buddhism and had, so far, been thoroughly programmed to accept it. But, they were not hiding it enough from the uninitiated in their own groups, as they should.
So, the "big guns" of Dzogchen, the mother lode of meditation and the "no-right-no-wrong" view of Tantra -- another Trojan horse of the lamas -- was wheeled out, for further assault on our reason and good sense. If they could pound the idea into our already brainwashed heads that the "world was empty" of any reality, and, most importantly, that "there was no right and wrong in an empty illusion," then when we saw these lamas behaving badly, we would continue to believe what we saw was a distortion of a sacred reality that we couldn't yet see. This way, these sacred priests could carry on, without fear of exposure. Reinforcing the idea that everything was an illusion, also meant there was no history in an illusion, since nothing really happens. All the scandals of the recent past could be buried, even those that caused death, and the future egregious behaviors of the lamas could continue; sexual behaviors that were the essence of their 'Buddhism,' wrapped in a chimera, a mirage, as it must be, to continue, unassailed, with this one neat trick of Dzogchen, and Lama Gyatrul's 'code of silence' admonishments; telling us we were "saving the world" by keeping the lamas' secrets.
Lama Gyatrul taught that Dzogchen was the very highest of esoteric teachings and that the community of Trungpa, who was receiving it, "was ready" for these Ati-Ievel teachings; the highest Vajrayana teachings that Trungpa had been teaching all along in his 'secular' Shambhala path. Now the "time was ripe" because it was the worst of the dark ages (that the Tibetan Tantric lamas were helping create) wherein only the highest teachings could help. It was a heavy preamble for the final indoctrination to make sure our commitment to our gurus and keeping their secrets stayed intact.
Lama Gyatrul, just like Lama Phuntsok, spent a lot of time expounding on Trungpa's status during his section on Shambhala and its connections to Dzogchen. But, the most important teaching, embedded in these few days of his retreat -- the real reason he was here -- was that Lama Gyatrul was praying that all the sleazy behaviors of these Tibetan lamas, that we had already encountered or would encounter, would always be reframed as the "great blessings of great bodhisattvas, greater than kings." He was here to also remind the males in the audience, about how fortunate they were or would be, to give up their wives, their daughters, their sisters, and girlfriends to great bodhisattvas, like Trungpa and Lama Gyatrul, and all the other 'greater than king' lamas who were groping their students.
There was no mention of how lucky were the young students of the Regent, or their parents, who had given up their sons to Rich's special relationship and 'sexual blessings' of spreading his AIDS virus in his community; no mention of the great "blessings" that caused the loss of a child and a friend, because the Regent had unprotected sex, or that hundreds of other students of the Regent had been put in harms' way. No warning about how disastrous it had been, to keep this guru's' secrets; putting the whole community at risk when the inner circle, many of whom were in that shrineroom in Boulder that day, went along with the Regent's secret, and even pimped for him to find new sexual recruits.
On the contrary, this Lama Gyatrul, another great bodhisattva, greater than a king, and close friend of the Dalai Lama and the sexual predator, Lama Sogyal, was telling everyone in the room to keep more secrets.
Lama Gyatrul wasn't an exception. All the high lamas, of every Tibetan Buddhist sect, never criticized what happened with the Regent, then or now. They had honored him after his death, when the whole nation knew what he had done. Thrangu Rinpoche, their old wily tutor, had even helped build and consecrate the Regent's stupa in Ojai, California where, with his gaggle of wealthy benefactors around him, the Regent went to die. Dead by August of 1990, he left a massive scandal for the lamas and their inner circles to clean up. But, first on the agenda, was to keep Trungpa's westerner students double-binded and confused; forever keeping their secrets. Which was why Lama Gyatrul was in Boulder, in 1992, to make sure that happened. It was what all of them were always doing: making sure their medieval views about women and sex remained a secret in the public's eye and keeping us, their devotees, enthralled and under their thumbs.
The highest Tibetan tulku and teacher of all these celebrity tulkus, and one of Trungpa's revered teachers, the late Lama Dilgo Khyentse had, not so long ago, offered his suggestion to the Vajradhatu community during this scandal with the Regent, that "the Regent should be pouring menstrual blood over himself." The delusional inner circle of Trungpa's Vajradhatu distributed a letter to the larger sangha, with this advice by Lama Dilgo Khyentse, about the menstrual blood antidote, and we were all so far gone in seeing Dilgo Khyentse as the ultimate 'living Buddha' and celestial saint, that we may have cringed, but repressed this "negative thought," about the incarnation of the great Padmasambhava, Dilgo Khyentse: the highest Nyingmapa lama, who had taught all these other Tibetan high lamas their occult teachings; had consecrated Trungpa's Shambhala for westerners; and who is still revered as a Saint by all western Buddhists of the Kagyu and Nyingmapa and every Buddhist sect. The highest of Lord Chakravartins.
Tibetan Tantric lamas, all of them, including the Dalai Lama, are not operating from the same beliefs, ethics and values that we are, as westerners. Their minds still abide in the middle-ages. They only care that their medieval Tantra is spread and their atavistic, misogynistic and androcentric secrets are kept and they stay on those thrones.
So, during this retreat, Lama Gyatrul specifically called out the harem of Trungpa -- his sagyum -- in front of the whole group, to expand on why he was there. Gyatrul admonishes the sexual harem of the now dead Trungpa and all of the women in the audience who had slept with Trungpa, as though they were living in the thirteenth century of Lama Tsongkhapa's playbook when Lama Gyatrul says:
So if you are doing the Shambhala training, and if you have faith in the place of Shambhala and in those great enlightened beings who have manifested in this place for our welfare, then the blessings that enter your mind will be very swift, and this will help increase your own understanding of your buddha nature .... Shambhala is not to be mistaken with Shangri-la. Everyone thinks: 'I want to go there.' But that's just made up, that's a movie .... Now this is really not my business, but I want to mention anyway, to some of the women who are the sagyums, or the consorts, of Trungpa Rinpoche, you should be very careful about your attitude. Don't have an ordinary mind about it, thinking in an ordinary sense: 'Oh, he slept with me, so I'm equal to him; this makes me special, because he slept with me.' This is not the way that a sagyum of someone like this should think. It's the sagyum's responsibility to consider that he saw in you a karmic connection that could be cultivated. And consider that it was because of his kindness in recognizing your karma that there was an ability to cultivate that and bring that out. If you have an attitude of him with humility and devotion, then if you follow whatever teachings he gave you, because of the special aspect of your connection with him this can be of tremendous benefit to you. If you cultivate your situation, you can then go ahead and be of tremendous benefit to others. But if you fail to see the level of the connection and think of it as being only ordinary, and elevate your pride and ego, you've really failed in that connection. That would be like sleeping with a king -- but he was not a king, he was a great bodhisattva. There's a difference."510