6 thing you should know about the anti dalai lama protesters

Few leaders in our time have become as well-known and respected around the world as the Dalai Lama. Through his tireless work to promote social justice, universal responsibility, secular ethics, interfaith harmony, and nonviolent principles, he has made a huge difference in reducing human suffering and, for lack of a better term, increasing the Gross Global Happiness.

During his most recent tour of the United States, a mysterious group of protesters followed the Dalai Lama everywhere he went, from Alabama to Princeton to Boston to New York. This must have been very confusing for a lot of people.

Who are these people rallying? From where do they come? What do they want the Dalai Lama to do for them? Who is getting the most out of their protests?

Here are six quick things you need to know about the people who protest against the Dalai Lama:

1. They think Geluk people are the best.

The protesters are part of a small group of Buddhist extremists who worship a god named Shugden and believe that Geluk is better than all other religions. Tibetan Buddhism has five sects, namely Geluk, Sakya, Nyingma, Kagyu and Jhonang. There is a subgroup within the Geluk school whose members haven’t been able to read the scriptures of other sects or study with lamas from schools other than Geluk because of how they treat the Shugden deity. The Dalai Lama wanted to get rid of this controversial idea of Geluk supremacy, which had caused sectarian tensions among Tibetans for hundreds of years. He did this by telling people not to worship this deity. In line with his reformist and progressive policies, the Dalai Lama, who comes from the Geluk school, has gone out of his way to study with lamas from other sects and has said that all sects should be treated equally. The Geluk supremacists hate the Dalai Lama because he is trying to bring people from different religions together through reforms.

The Dalai Lama is called a “dictator” by these people.

“The worst dictator in the modern world,” the protesters say about the Dalai Lama. This accusation only shows how twisted and wrong their world is. The truth is that the leader of their own group, the New Kadampa Tradition, forbids his followers from reading books written by anyone but himself. The Western Shugden Society (WSS), which is a front for the New Kadampa Tradition and is behind the most recent protests against the Dalai Lama, is the Buddhist equivalent of the Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), which is an independent church known for its extreme beliefs. Read a first-hand account of how the New Kadampa Tradition church scares its members into attacking the Dalai Lama.

3. “The Dalai Lama is a Muslim!”

People at the protests have said that the Dalai Lama is a “Muslim.” First of all, calling someone a “Muslim” is a racist and Islamophobic act that has no place in the world today. In any case, the idea that the most well-known Buddhist in the world is really a Muslim is so ridiculous that it doesn’t deserve a serious answer. They have also said that His Holiness is the “False Dalai Lama.” Who is the real Dalai Lama if that’s the case? Is Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, the leader of the Geluk supremacists who only lets his own books and writings into his centre, the real Dalai Lama? Or do they want Beijing to find the real Dalai Lama and recognise him?

4. The Chinese government backs the most hard-line Geluk people.

In 1997, a well-known Tibetan scholar and two of his students were killed in Dharamsala, India, because they said that worshipping Shugden was not true Buddhism. The killers got away from India and went straight to China, where they were given a safe place to stay. The murders were directly linked to the Shugden group by the Indian police, and Interpol sent a “Red Notice” to China. Beijing saw the Shugden situation as a chance to hurt the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause. It decided to help the Geluk extremists sow discord among Tibetans. This strategy fits right in with China’s “divide and rule” policy, which is to make people fight with each other. Follow the money to China in more stories.

5. They’re not looking in the right place.

Most of these protesters are white men from the United States and Europe who dress up as Tibetan monks and victims. For these wealthy people in the West to say that the Dalai Lama, a homeless refugee with no army and no police force, is trying to stop them from practising their religion freely is not only ridiculous, it is just plain evil. Far more than the Dalai Lama’s reformist policies, this kind of lying hurts the “pure Geluk tradition” that they say they want to protect. These people have nothing to do with any organisation or institution that the Dalai Lama runs, so even if he wanted to, he couldn’t take away their freedom. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, whose mysterious organisation they joined without knowing what they were getting into, is the only one who could really control them and force them to do things, which would take away their religious freedom for good. Read the stories of New Kadampa Tradition members who made it out alive.

6. The goal of the protesters is to hurt the Tibetan cause and help China’s plans.

The language of the New Kadampa Tradition and the language of the Chinese government have a lot in common that is scary. Both of them have said that the Dalai Lama is a CIA agent. Both of them have said he is a Nazi. Both sides say that Tibet was a “feudal serfdom” before 1959. This group wants you to think that the CIA saved the Dalai Lama. They probably also want you to think that China “liberated” the Tibetan people from the Dalai Lama. But the idea that “the Dalai Lama could not have been saved without the CIA” is a lie. It changes history and takes the truth away from the Tibetan warriors who risked their lives to get the Dalai Lama from Lhasa to India. So, the New Kadampa Tradition and the anti-Dalai Lama protesters are no longer just Geluk supremacists; they are also the most useful tools in the Chinese government’s huge master plan to confuse the Tibet issue and discredit the Tibetan struggle for freedom.

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