Landmark Dogen Symposium this summer at Upaya Zen Center

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Santa Fe, New Mexico -- This July at Upaya Zen Center, a team of renowned Buddhist teachers and scholars will lead a three-day exploration and celebration of the works of Eihei Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen.

During the Dogen Symposium, July 12 – 15, acclaimed artist and translator Kazuaki Tanahashi explores being a “clumsy student” of a great master through his passion for poetry, practice, and painting.

Taigen Dan Leighton, who has co-translated many Dogen fascicles with Tanahashi, offers his insights into the work of a teacher he has spent much of his life studying. Writer Natalie Goldberg invites us to sit, write, and walk in the spirit of Dogen. Poet and Zen teacher Peter Levitt touches the heart of practice through Zen Master Dogen's life and work.

Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara, abbot of the Village Zendo in New York City, will share her love for Dogen’s works. Sensei Irene Kyojo Bakker, founder of ZenSpirit in the Netherlands, helps to lead practices. Shohaku Okumura Roshi, founder of the Sanshin Zen Community and world-renowned Dogen translator, will join the weekend as well.

Dogen (1200-1253), also known as Dogen Kigen or Dogen Zenji, was a Japanese Buddhist monk who may be best known for his collected written works, Shobogenzo, considered to be a masterpiece of the world's religious literature. His teachings and style of writing, characterized by paradox and subtlety, has been beloved by generations of Soto Zen students. One of the most famous passages from Dogen’s writing comes from Genjokoan:
“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”
If you go

WHAT: Dogen Symposium

WHEN: July 12 – 15, 2012
WHERE: Upaya Zen Center, 1404 Cerro Gordo Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

COST: $320 (plus lodging). CEUs for counselors, therapists and social workers are available.

INFO: http://www.upaya.org/programs/event.php?id=770

Tel: 505-986-8518 x12;

Email: registrar@upaya.org

ABOUT UPAYA

Upaya Zen Center is one of the most respected Buddhist centers in the world in the area of socially engaged Buddhism. Founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in 1990, Upaya is a place for new and seasoned practitioners to explore how the contemplative life forms a basis for social action and service.

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Kalu Rinpoche's YouTube confessional sending shockwaves through the Buddhist world

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Young Kalu Rinpoche's traumatic revelations highlight the dissonance between Tibetan tradition and 21st-century life

London, UK -- He is 21, a handsome, charismatic Tibetan who describes being a lama as his job. He is passionately keen on music, he raps, break-dances and parties in capital cities around the globe.

<< Snapshot of Kalu Rinpoche's YouTube confession. Watch the video at the bottom of this page

Kalu Rinpoche chronicles his moods, his existential angst, his activities and philosophical insights on Facebook – and he recently broke the most profoundly entrenched Tibetan Buddhist taboo with a confessional video that received more than 23,000 hits on YouTube.

It is hardly surprising that Kalu is agonising over what the future holds for him. As a baby, he was recognised as the reincarnation of the deeply revered previous Kalu, who was one of two lamas largely responsible for the worldwide explosion of interest in Tibetan Buddhism during the late 1970s and throughout the 80s.

Old Kalu was seen as a bodhisattva – a person who has attained a level of realisation similar to that of the historical Buddha. He spent 13 years in solitary retreat as a hermit yogi in eastern Tibet, before escaping to India following the Chinese invasion. Kalu had his headquarters in the Himalayan foothills, but he spent the rest of his life travelling the world, setting up meditation centres, teaching and attending to the needs of many thousands of followers.

Old Kalu died in 1989 after establishing a formidable reputation. He was an impossible act to follow, leaving his successor with responsibility for over 70 centres across four continents, together with a duty of care for the spiritual wellbeing of the people involved in them. Young Kalu's father, Gyaltsen, was old Kalu's personal assistant. In his confessional video, young Kalu says the traumatic events he experienced during his teenage years started after his father died when he was nine.

He relates how he was moved to a different monastery and at the age of 12 was sexually abused by older monks. He goes on to reveal that when he refused to obey instructions, his tutor tried to kill him.

"It was all about money, power and control," he says.

Kalu did the traditional three-year retreat from the age of 15, but after that his training came to an abrupt end. "I went crazy," he says. "I became a drug addict and an alcoholic."

Kalu's exposure on the internet of the dark underbelly of Tibetan monastic life is unprecedented in modern times. People who knew his predecessor say that he was sometimes critical in private, but the rule in lama land is that you never air your grievances to the outside world. Above all, you never cause loss of face by criticising a fellow lama in public.

The shock that reverberated across the Tibetan Buddhist community following these revelations is still making waves. In his Facebook posts, young Kalu seems undecided about what to do next. He is no longer a monk and appears to have moved on from drug and alcohol excess, but there is no teaching schedule for 2012 on his website.

The respected British lama Jampa Thaye sympathises with Kalu: "Ideally, a young incarnate lama should be given time to mature – intellectually and in contemplation," he says. "But all too often they are thrust into teaching tours in order to raise funds for their monasteries or in Kalu's case, the organisation he inherited from his predecessor." Lama Jampa points out that Kalu does not benefit from "the protective cocoon of a monastery" and also has to cope with the unrestrained adoration of his western devotees: "No wonder he's floundering. Sadly, I think his suffering will continue for some time. In my view the best thing he could do is try to live an ordinary life."

According to his recent public utterances, Kalu has this idea in mind. Instead of urging his followers into the study and long retreats essential to serious Tibetan Buddhist practice, he asks them to be kind to each other and to take care of the poor and the needy. He often talks about love and insists that he is just an ordinary person doing his best to lead a good life.

Young Kalu demonstrated his moral fibre shortly after he first arrived in France to check out the meditation centres set up by old Kalu. He discovered that one of them had been taken over by a group of corrupt Bhutanese monks, who were breaking their vows and wallowing in self-indulgence. Most of the French Buddhists who had supported the centre for many years had fled in disgust and the place was no longer functional. Horrified and distressed, Kalu ordered the monks to leave. They refused to acknowledge his authority and were only persuaded to return to Bhutan after Kalu enlisted backup from Tai Situ Rinpoche, the senior lama of his lineage.

At the age of 21, Kalu has been traumatised by an attempt on his life, sexual abuse and a massive load of expectations and responsibilities. He is a deracinated Tibetan, born in exile – and also a high-profile guru with a worldwide following.

The intensity of his experiences so far highlights the cultural dissonance between Tibetan tradition and the challenges of 21st-century life in the developed world. Kalu is probably seen as a loose canon by older lamas, but he gets away with it because of his status. In one sense he is a victim, but perhaps he will turn out to be a pioneer. Or a bit of both.

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Pulitzer Foundation Uses Buddhist Art To Bring Enlightenment To Ex-Cons In St. Louis

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St. Louis, Missouri (USA) -- The Buddha said, "I teach one thing and one thing only: suffering and the end of suffering." The end of suffering is something that Keith Freeman -- a former drug dealer, convict, alcoholic and crack addict -- has been after for decades.

And after taking part in an intense, five-month program at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts that connected former prisoners and homeless veterans with ancient Buddhist artwork, Freeman thinks he may have taken a step closer to enlightenment.

The group is hosting 15 performances in the Pulitzer's galleries featuring rookie actors speaking scripts culled from their own group sessions as they wrestled with Buddhist truths and their own demons.

Growing up, Freeman's father was absent and his mother was often sick, so he raised his four younger brothers and sisters. But by the time he was 15, he had quit school, fallen in with the wrong crowd and was stealing from freight trains. By 17, he was locked up in the state penitentiary for a year. Before he was 30, he returned to prison, this time for selling drugs.

Freeman spent the next two decades in what he now can identify as a state of trishna, or craving for sense pleasures. Trishna is one of Buddhism's Noble Truths, and the source of all suffering, the source of self-annihilation.

"It was a battle between living and wanting," Freeman said. "I fought that battle for a long time."

Last year, he entered an outpatient drug program at the St. Patrick Center, a homeless service center in St. Louis. Last fall, caseworkers chose Freeman and 16 others who had auditioned for the Pulitzer's "Staging Reflections of the Buddha" program.

The original pool of actors was chosen for their willingness to open themselves up to something new, and to experience the vulnerability that comes with acting, said Emily Piro, who coordinated the "Staging" project for St. Patrick.

Emily Pulitzer, founder and director of the Pulitzer Foundation, said the project was conceived to "build bridges between audiences and art, and between parts of the community."

The goal, she said, was to teach the participants "how to articulate ideas, and how to trust."

Most of the participants are clients of the St. Patrick Center, but a few are veterans of St. Louis-based Prison Performing Arts. Another nonprofit group helps the actors with resumes and other job skills.

The Pulitzer Foundation's current exhibit, "Reflections of the Buddha" includes 22 Buddhist pieces from Afghanistan, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan and Tibet.

In the Pulitzer's galleries and classrooms, the actors meditated and wrote haiku. A series of game-playing and improv exercises fostered teamwork and communication skills.

The improv sessions led to the scripts the actors are performing for the public, as staffers sat nearby, furiously typing the actors' thoughts on laptops.

For many of the Christian and Muslim actors, the experience was their first exposure to 2,500-year-old Buddhist philosophies. Along the way, social workers tracked the sessions and met with the group separately to connect the dots between the art and the actors' lives.

The notes created during the improv games were then woven into scripts, which were reviewed for accuracy and given to the actors to memorize.

During the performances, the actors and audience move from one piece of artwork to the next -- a dynamic that Emily Pulitzer likens to a Passion play. As they lead an audience around the galleries, the actors will recite lines originally spoken by their colleagues in the improv sessions as they contemplated the pieces.

The performance "forces those who come ... to see the art from someone else's perspective," said Kristina Van Dyke, director of the Pulitzer Foundation. It's a "perspective they might not have heard before, and it forces them to see" former prisoners and homeless veterans in a different light.

Allen Wilson, 48, who lives in St. Louis and is a client at St. Patrick Center, said he wasn't sure what to think of the program at first.

"But as I came to understand what it was about, I've learned a lot about myself, the character in myself," Wilson said. "It gives you peace of mind when you can go to a different level and get a better awareness of yourself."

Christopher Fan, an intern with the "Staging" program from Washington University and a practicing Buddhist, said the actors had soaked up difficult Buddhist ideas. "In 12 weeks, they've gained more insight than I have in my 21 years as a Zen Buddhist," Fan said.

For Freeman, being exposed to Buddhism challenged him to worry less about the future. "It's about knowing not to give power to your burdens," he said. "When you do, it takes away from your soul."

Instead, he said, he's going to concentrate on his writing. He's got three screenplays already planned out in his head, and the combination of Buddhist philosophy and acting had taught him something about how he'd like to conduct the rest of his life.

"Put on my game face, stay in character and look forward," he said. "Backwards is not an option."

-------
Tim Townsend writes for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis.

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Rival Tibetan lamas compete for recognition

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New Delhi, India -- Thaye Dorje was only 18 months old when, according to his biographers, he began telling people he was the reincarnation of one of Tibetan Buddhism's most influential leaders, the Karmapa Lama.

<< Tibetan leader Thaye Dorje gestures during an interview in New Delhi. Dorje was only 18 months old when, according to his biographers, he began telling people he was the reincarnation of one of Tibetan Buddhism's most influential leaders, the Karmapa Lama.
Photograph by: Getty Images , Agence France-Presse

Now 28, and embarking on a global religious teaching tour, he is one of two young men at the centre of a murky, divisive and seemingly intractable dispute over the Karmapa title.

Other major players in the long-running row include Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, China's communist government, India's Supreme Court and a remote monastery that holds relics and treasures valued at up to $1.5 billion.

Among those relics is the "Black Crown" of the Karmapas - said to be made from the hair of female deities and a symbol of the Karmapa's status as head of the Karma Kagyu lineage, one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

But since the death of the 16th Karmapa Lama in 1981, the crown has been locked away, coveted but unworn, in the vaults of Rumtek Monastery in the northeast Indian state of Sikkim, bordering Tibet.

A long and hotly disputed search for the 16th Karmapa's reincarnation split the Karma Kagyu school behind two candidates, Thaye Dorje and Urgyen Trinley, 26 - each enthroned by their respective factions as the 17th Karmapa.

The two rivals both now live in India. Thaye Dorje fled Tibet with his family in 1994, while Urgyen Trinley escaped in 2000.

"We've never even met," Thaye Dorje told AFP in an interview in New Delhi ahead of his four-month, 12-country tour.

"I've thought for a long time that it could be done - that the two of us could just sit down. I really wonder why it hasn't happened," he said.

Of the two, Urgyen Trinley is the better known internationally and is recognized as the 17th Karmapa by both the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama.

Recent appearances with the Dalai Lama - notably during a visit to Washington last year - have fuelled speculation that he is being groomed as the Nobel peace laureate's spiritual successor.

Thaye Dorje's take on the feud - he prefers the term "confusion" - surrounding the Karmapa title is couched in a strongly Buddhist perspective.

"We are taught that everything is impermanent, always changing, always in motion, and we must expect there will always be obstacles and challenges.

"This confusion tests one's courage in terms of devotion and in terms of seeing obstacles as an opportunity for turning negative circumstances into positive ones," he said.

But the existence of two rival Karmapas sets a dangerous precedent for the Tibetan movement as a whole, given fears that a similar situation might arise over the Dalai Lama's eventual reincarnation, with China anointing its own successor.

And the dispute also has a distinctly non-spiritual side, tainted by violence and a series of bitterly fought cases - some of them ongoing - in the Indian courts.

In 1993, followers of Urgyen Trinley stormed the Rumtek Monastery and ousted members of the Karmapa Charitable Trust (KCT) - a body set up the 16th Karmapa which had recognized Thaye Dorje as the true reincarnation.

But legal control of the monastery - and the Black Crown - remains in dispute with India's Supreme Court in 2004 having dismissed a petition to challenge the KCT's guardianship.

While voicing "disappointment" that the row had dragged on for so long, Thaye Dorje said it was inevitable that lawyers would become involved.

"The legal route is naturally there ... (the courts) are another tool, another way," he said.

"I really wish that sooner rather than later we can find a solution, because it's completely unnecessary."

Soft-spoken but self-assured, the young lama - whose musical tastes range from Mozart to the Irish singer Enya and who lists Star Wars among his favourite films - was born in Tibet in 1983.

His father was a high lama and his mother descended from Tibetan nobility. According to his official biography, he was just oneand-a-half years old "when he started telling people that he was the Karmapa."

Some observers see his tour of Asian and European countries as an effort to raise his profile and counter the publicity his rival has enjoyed as a result of the Dalai Lama's endorsement.

Thaye Dorje says he has enormous respect for the Dalai Lama as "one of the greatest" Buddhist teachers, but is more circumspect when talking about his spiritual authority.

The Karma Kagyu lineage has always maintained a proud independence from the Dalai Lama's Gelugpa school of Tibetan Buddhism and many of Thaye Dorje's hundreds of thousands of followers argue that the elderly monk has no say in the Karmapa's reincarnation.

"In terms of defining whether the Dalai Lama is the spiritual head of Tibet or not, that answer would go into the political side of things," Thaye Dorje said.

"It would be a political statement, and that's something I've always tried my very best to avoid," he added.

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Buddhist leader visits disgraced scientist Hwang

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Seoul, South Korea -- Ven. Jaseung, leader of the nation’s largest Buddhist order of Jogye, visited stem cell researcher, Hwang Woo-suk on Wednesday to encourage his little known, but ongoing study of dog cloning.

<< Ven. Jaseung (right) head of the Buddhist Jogye Order, talks with Hwang Woo-suk at the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation building in Guro, southern Seoul on Wednesday. (Yonhap News)

It is the first time a Buddhist leader paid an official visit to Hwang since the former Seoul National University professor shunned the media spotlight after it was revealed in 2005 that some data in his trailblazing research on cloning human embryo stem cells had been manipulated.

According to the report, Jaseung visited the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation building in Guro, southern Seoul, around 4 p.m. and chatted with Hwang for an hour. Alongside several other monks, the venerable then watched Hwang work on cloning a dog for about 15 minutes in the centers’ operation room.

“I wanted to encourage Hwang with his studies,” Jaseung was quoted as saying to a local news agency.

Hwang cut open a female dog’s abdomen and held up its uterus and oviduct, pointing out where the ovarian eggs were. He demonstrated the extraction of 10 eggs from the oviduct, and then let the monks look at the eggs through a microscope.

The researchers said the project was to clone a pet dog for an American client, which costs roughly $100,000, according to Yonhap news agency. “It takes about six months to undergo the whole procedure but many people have shown interest in our service, and some are using it,” a researcher said.

Hwang reportedly gave a 2-month-old Tibetan Mastiff born from an original dog and a cloned dog to Jaseung.

Hwang has been in good terms with Buddhists since he is a devoted Buddhist. He won the first “Buddhist Award” in 2004 but after the scandal questioning Hwang’s ethics shook the nation and effectively expelled him from academia, the two have maintained a rather quiet liaison. Buddhist supporters for Hwang have openly demanded the government and society approve the resumption of Hwang’s research.

Hwang has led the foundation since 2006, focusing on developing animal models for Alzheimer’s disease or diabetes research. The center is also working on cloning cows for protein engineering and gnotobiotic pigs for xenotransplantation.

Still, Hwang’s main field, embryonic stem cells for tailored medical treatments, has not won approval from the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

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Religion News: 10 countries with the largest number of Christians

These are some of the key findings of a new report released by the Pew Research Center, called Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population, which provides data on the world's Christian population by region, country and tradition.

• Almost half (48 percent) of all Christians live in the 10 countries with the largest number of Christians. Three of the top 10 are in the Americas (the United States, Brazil and Mexico). Two are in Europe (Russia and Germany); two are in the Asia-Pacific region (the Philippines and China); and three are in sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia), reflecting Christianity's global reach.

• Christians are diverse theologically as well as geographically. About half are Catholic. Protestants, broadly defined, make up 37 percent. Orthodox Christians comprise 12 percent of Christians worldwide. Other Christians, such as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, make up the remaining 1 percent of the global Christian population.

• Taken as a whole, Christians are by far the world's largest religious group. Muslims, the second-largest group, make up a little less than a quarter of the world's population, according to previous studies by the Pew Forum.

• Although Christianity began in the Middle East-North Africa, that region today has both the lowest concentration of Christians (about 4 percent) and the smallest number of Christians (about 13 million) of any major geographic region.

• Although Christians comprise just under a third of the world's people, they form a majority of the population in 158 countries and territories, about two-thirds of all the countries and territories in the world.

• Nigeria now has more than twice as many Protestants (broadly defined to include Anglicans and independent churches) as Germany, the birthplace of the Protestant Reformation.

• About 90 percent of Christians live in countries where Christians are in the majority; only about 10 percent of Christians worldwide live as minorities.

Week in Religion

- Jan. 4, 1915, Democrat Moses Alexander, 62, was sworn in as governor of Idaho. He was the first elected Jewish governor in the U.S.

- Jan. 5, 1531, Pope Clemens VII forbids English King Henry VIII to re-marry.

- Jan. 6, 548, this was the last year the Church in Jerusalem observed the birth of Jesus on this date. (Celebrating Christmas on Dec. 25 began in the late 300s in the Western Church.)

-- William D. Blake, Almanac of the Christian Church

Good Book?

"The Circle Maker: Praying Circles Around Your Biggest Dreams and Greatest Fears" by Mark Batterson

What impossibly big dream is God calling you to draw a prayer circle around? Sharing inspiring stories from his own experiences as a circle maker, Pastor Mark Batterson will help you uncover your heart's deepest desires and God-given dreams and unleash them through the kind of audacious prayer that God delights to answer.

-- Zondervan

Quote of the week

"There is nothing like a calm look into the eternal world to teach us the emptiness of human praise." -- Scottish clergyman Robert Murray McCheyne

The Word

Christian Coalition: A group of political conservatives who generally also represent conservative theological views. It was founded in 1989 by televangelist Pat Robertson and is considered the successor to the Moral Majority, founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell in 1979.

-- religioustolerance.org

Religion Around the World

Religious makeup of 1995 census

Christian: 26.3 percent

Buddhist: 23.2 percent 

Other or unknown: 1.3 percent 

None: 49.3 percent 

- CIA Factbook

GateHouse News Service

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RECLAIMING BUDDHA! by Tenzin Nyinjey

By Tenzin Nyinjey

Like most children, I was a rebel too, more inclined to do things that were opposed to our Buddhist values. My friends and I enjoyed catching fish and crabs in the ponds. We often tracked down birds’ nests and followed Indians hunting wild deer and pigs in the jungles of tribal Orissa.

These huntsmen, bows and strings dangling from their shoulders and their faces smeared with soot, had some sense of fairness and justice—something perhaps folks responsible for the economic crisis in US can learn from. Once they hunted down their prey, they distributed the share equally among themselves, and even to us children who hadn’t made any contribution but simply watched them as mere spectators. Of course, we couldn’t bring our share of meat to homes for fear of our parents’ reprimand. We gave them away to stray dogs.

However, I loved the Buddhist rituals and ceremonies my parents held in our homes every now and then. For it was on such occasions that I got to enjoy the most delicious of foods. I loved the beautiful tormas made by monks and ngagpas. The sound of drums and conch shells and chanting of monks were sheer melody to my ears. The crows landing on our roofs to feast on tormas and the plume of smoke rising up in the blue sky from burned junipers was a spectacle too.

I remember my mother sending me out every evening to the local monastery to offer holy tea and coins at the altar of gods and goddesses. I always grabbed this errand with sheer delight—it was not out of religious piety however, but having the opportunity to get out of my house and play football with other kids that prompted me to do it.

Bowing and touching my heads in respect to the images of gods lining the altar of the monastery was a grueling experience. The most awe-inspiring moment was when I stood in front of the image of Palden Lhamo, unable to look into her fiery eyes—for some strange reason she was showered with more respect for being the most wrathful and protective of deities!

As I grew up and left my village and moved to Indian cities for higher education, I had to adapt my religious beliefs and practices too. Rarely any Buddhist rituals and ceremonies were held in cities that I could be a part of. Again it was my monk brother who came to my rescue. He presented me two books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama—the Art of Happiness and Ethics of the New Millennium—both of which gave me a new perspective of Buddhism that is more ‘rational’ and ‘modern.’ I was in disbelief that a Tibetan Buddhist leader, who never had ‘modern’ education in his life, could pen New York Times best sellers!

However, the struggle for survival driven by sheer competition was the norm than values such as love and compassion in cities like Delhi. The most sophisticated, intelligent and good-looking were ‘naturally selected,’ while the lesser fortunate ones were left behind in our rush to reach to the top. I witnessed lamas whom we have been taught to worship since childhood hanging around with powers that be, living in posh hotels and driving expensive cars. My spiritual and religious convictions, as a result, began undergoing changes.

I became more and more skeptical, even cynical, tilting towards all kinds of isms—atheism, socialism, communism and anarchism—drifting away from the bearings of my own community life, like a sailor whose boat was trapped amid heavy storm in the ocean, unable to find where the final shore lies! I wondered if, as the Chinese propagandists say, religion was not being used by the powerful to keep down the masses in ignorance and slavery. I wondered if there was a higher and absolute truth governing the laws of our universal world.

I began digging up my country’s history, finding to my utter indignation how religion was used as an instrument to strive for power by ruling elites. I couldn’t reconcile Buddha who gave up his own kingdom and wealth with Tibetan religious personalities sitting on political thrones and ruling the lives of ordinary people. The sectarian violence and infighting that resulted from the system of chosi-sungdrel was a blot on Buddha’s noble teaching and our country’s history—and we still suffer from its legacies.

Indeed, when people most responsible for protecting religion become corrupt, indulging themselves in wine, women and power, the worst result is young folks with highly impressionable minds lose faith in religion itself. I was no exception! I resisted (unconsciously) such corruption in my own unimaginative and uncreative ways, offending the sensibilities of my own people, alienating my parents and family. I stopped visiting monasteries, gave up reciting manis and refused to seek audience of lamas, and even made fun of fellow Tibetans who showed extreme religiosity—not cognizant of the fact that it was religion that actually gave them strength and succor in the face of overwhelming suffering caused by dislocation and dispossession of exiled life.

Historians like Gendun Chophel, Samten Karmay, Dhondup Gyal, Dungkar Lobsang Trinley, accused of being anti-Buddhists, however, taught me that the problem doesn’t lie with religion itself, but with the state that used religion to do its dirty work. These writers introduced me to other religious figures in Tibet’s history practicing religion sincerely without the taint of worldly interests such as material wealth and political power. The lives of Milarepa, Ugenpa, Thangtong Gyalpo and Tsangyong Heruka showed me the true essence of religion—love, compassion, tolerance, and service for others—rather than seeking power in the name of religion!

They helped me regain my faith and reclaim my Buddha!

The author is a political commentator based in Dharamshala.

The views expressed in this piece are that of the author and the publication of the piece on this website does not necessarily reflect their endorsement by the website.

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