Monks vs. Monks

By DAVID VAN BIEMA

He whom the gods would humble they first make the center of a global advertising campaign. Beyond Mother Teresa and Nelson Mandela, few humans have recently come closer to sainthood-by-acclaim than the Dalai Lama. Revered as a Buddha of compassion by his followers, Tibet's political and religious leader garnered not only a 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts on behalf of his Chinese-occupied homeland but also (as the Apple Computer ads strove to exploit) the vague undifferentiated goodwill of a cynical and overcaffeinated world still auditioning sources of truth, calm and peace.

All the more jarring, then, that upon arriving in New York City last Thursday to start a 16-day American tour, the icon of enlightened harmony was met by demonstrators. And not just any protesters, but saffron- and maroon-robed Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns hefting a sign that read DALAI LAMA, PLEASE GIVE RELIGIOUS FREEDOM and accusing him of suppressing devotions to a deity known as Dorje Shugden. The pickets thus introduced a startled public to a long-simmering drama featuring charges and countercharges of everything from sacrilege to bullying to murder, most of it allegedly done by holy men. The shocking litany amounts to a regular seminar in what Helen Tworkov, editor of the American Buddhist journal Tricycle, wearily terms "the shadow side of Tibet."

On the face of it Dorje Shugden is not an appealing prisoner of conscience. He is depicted--by friends--as a lightning-breathing terror with three bloodshot eyes, wreathed in the smoke of burning human flesh. In fact, however, as one of a pantheon of "protector deities," he exercises his wrath only in defense of a 350-year-old purist interpretation of the Dalai Lama's own Gelugpa branch of Tibetan Buddhism. For decades the High Lama himself included Shugden in his daily prayers. But in 1976 he began preaching against the god; in 1996 he discouraged Shugdenites' participation in a key initiation, and soon his exile government prohibited Shugden services in state offices and even in government-run monasteries.

Why the Dalai Lama cooled toward Shugden is debated. Some cite the influence of the state oracle, a deity who speaks to Tibetan leaders through a monk in a trance state. Less exotically, the Shugdenites' purism hinders the High Lama's attempts to unify the Tibetan diaspora by reducing differences among its four main Buddhist schools. The Dalai Lama told TIME that he was worried about people's seeking "external help" from a protector spirit while neglecting Buddha's teaching of compassion and wisdom: "Some people worship toward [Shugden] almost equal with the Buddha. That's a disgrace."

Yet His Holiness's means have been questioned. Gelugpas who have traditionally seen Shugden as personal protector may now feel read out of the faith. Addressing charges of shunning, threats and even physical abuse against Shugdenites, American Dalai Lama adviser John Ackerly admits that "there have been cases of harassment," all condemned by the High Lama. The most tragic sign that the dispute has spun out of control was the apparently ritual 1997 stabbing of three high anti-Shugden monks in the exile capital of Dharamsala, India. The killers escaped, but Indian police traced a call they made to a pro-Shugden organization in New Delhi.

Shugden activists denounce the crime and deny opponents' claims that they receive funds from the Chinese government. But the Chinese, happy at any exile strife, are restoring Shugden temples in occupied Tibet. And Lhodi Gyari, the Lama's Washington envoy, correctly warns that the squabble should not obscure the fact that "a culture and people are being destroyed."

American Tibetan-style Buddhists, however, will have to digest the occultism, interschool feuding and occasional violence that have long marked the culture they thought was their model. Donald S. Lopez Jr., a professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies and author of an important new book, Prisoners of ShangriLa: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, says the fracas will help Americans realize they "have a bowdlerized version of Tibetan Buddhism." Editor Tworkov goes further. "This allows us as Westerners to ask, How do we bring this tradition into our society and our lives, and what is best left behind in Tibet or Japan? Every Buddhist culture has elements we'd rather not import. Those of us from non-Buddhist backgrounds did not lay down one set of cultural baggage to pick up another." True, but how much baggage can you jettison without calling off the whole trip?

--Reported by Richard N. Ostling/New York and Tim McGirk/New Delhi

With reporting by Richard N. Ostling/New York and Tim McGirk/New Delhi