Published by: World Tibet Network News Sunday, December 7th, 1997

The following report by Peter Unwin appeared in Student Direct, Greater Manchester's Official Student Newspaper on 24th November,1997.

Two groups claiming to be Buddhists, who are in fact the subject of sinister allegations and viewed with caution and suspicion by many in the Buddhist world, are actively recruiting on the campuses of Manchester and Salford Universities, as well as across campuses nationwide.

One of these, the New Kadampa tradition (NKT), whose Manchester base is the Vairochana Centre in Fallowfield, were last year behind an aggressive campaign to discredit the Dalai Lama of Tibet after he had stated that one of their central practices was not Buddhist at all, but rather involved the worship of "a spirit of the dark forces".

Senior figures within the other group, the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), have been linked with a sex and suicide scandal which left at least 30 men psychologically damaged and one man dead. The FWBO have strong links with Manchester University Union's Meditation and Western Buddhism society, which gives as it's contact address the FWBO-run Manchester Buddhist Centre.

The teachings of the FWOB's founder, Sangharakshita, are overtly hostile to the nuclear family and heterosexuality, markedly misogynistic, and claim that one should "publicly insult" God because blasphemy is "healthy" and "necessary to the moral and spiritual development of the individual".

Buddhist experts have confirmed that such teachings are not locatable anywhere within the orthodox Buddhist tradition.

This week, the director of the Cult Information Centre (CIC), Ian Haworth, told Student Direct that both the FWBO and the NKT were well known to the CIC and that they, "have been, and continue to be, very concerned about the activities of both organisations".

Both the NKT and the FWBO are accused of aggressive recruitment, contradicting the normal Buddhist etiquette of responding to invitation. As a consequence they have become Britain's richest and fastest growing Buddhist organisations.

One expert explained: "One of the main reasons for the success of these organisations would appear to be that many of the people who are drawn to them have no understanding whatsoever of what real Buddhism is, nor do they have any understanding of the nature of the organisations with which they are becoming involved.

"New recruits have no context within which to question the nature of what they are becoming involved in, and an environment is created wherein it is possible to pass of personal opinions and cult practices as if they were actual Buddhist teachings."

A leading Buddhist teacher commented: "In the West perhaps people could distinguish between Catholicism and the Moonies but they can't distinguish between types of Buddhism." Both commentators asked not to be named for fear of reprisals.

When contacted by Student Direct, the Western Buddhist Order in Manchester accepted that there was, "some substance to the allegations," however they insisted that the FWBO was now cleaning up its act. Spokesperson Guna Ketu said: "The problems of the past are being rectified, and in terms of Manchester, I don't think we are guilty of any of the allegations. People should come and look for themselves." Leaders of the Union's Meditation and Western Buddhism society were unavailable for comment.

At the centre of the controversy surrounding the NKT lies the worship of the deity Dorje Shugden. In the eyes of the Dalai Lama and the overwhelming majority of Tibetans, Shugden is a minor worldly deity capable of granting his followers great material wealth in the short term but equally capable of inflicting terrible misfortune, even death, in the long term. For several years now the Dalai Lama has spoken of the harmful effect Shugden worship is having on the Tibetan cause as well as his own personal health; the previous Dalai Lama even went so far as to ban the worship of the deity outright. During a recent visit to Britain the Dalai Lama stated that those who propitate Shugden are "not Buddhists".

Kelsang Gyatso, founder of the NKT, on the other hand tells his supporters that the deity is a Buddha and has instituted propitiation of it as one of the central practices of his 'tradition'. In response to the Dalai Lama's pronouncements, members of the NKT last year set up the Shugden Supporters Community (SSC).

In July 96 an SSC spokesman told the Independent that the practice of Dorje Shugden was similar to the veneration of St. Francis in the Christian tradition and that four-million Tibetans worshipped the deity. Press releases distributed world-wide by the SSC claimed that the Dalai Lama was a "ruthless dictator" and an "oppressor of religious freedom" who was engaged in "persecuting his own people" and not really struggling for Tibetan freedom at all. In the run-up to this country last year, the SSC organised anti Dalai Lama street protests and sent out draft letters to NKT teachers for distribution amongst their students, requesting that the Home Secretary revoke his visa; some of the more fanatical followers of the cult of Shugden even went so far as to demand that the Dalai Lama prove that he actually is the Dalai Lama.

Shugden himself however is not the compassionate figure he is portrayed as by the NKT. In one rite he is described as "living in a palace in a lake of boiling blood, wearing a necklace of skulls and human body parts, in a terrible stench of human flesh: and is asked to "Crush enemies to dust". Not quite the home life of St. Francis of Assisi. The figure of four million worshippers is grass exaggeration, experts estimating the figure to actually be around 100,000 or less than 2% of the Tibetan population, a large proportion of whom abandoned propitiation of the deity after the Dalai Lamas pronouncements. As for his being a "ruthless dictator" and an "oppressor of freedom" unconcerned by the plight of the Tibetan people, it is a note that in 1989, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and has been extremely successful in raising the profile of the cause of a free Tibet, a country which has been occupied by the Chinese since the early 1950's.

Accompanying SSC press releases was a four-page letter from an apparently independent human rights organisation, the Freedom Foundation, which appeared to give credence to their claims. The UK head office of this "organisation for religious freedom" was in Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, at the home of Ruth and Ron Lister. Mr. And Mrs. Lister described themselves to a reporter from the independent newspaper as "concerned Buddhists" and denied any involvement with the NKT. However, when the reporter used their telephone, he found that the first number on their speed dial was Kelsang Gyatso's direct personal line; it later transpired that Mr. and Mrs. Lister were editors of Kelsang Gyatso's first book and were amongst his wealthiest sponsors. This practice of setting up apparently reputable and independent bodies in order to give credence to critical accusations gained popularity during Russia's Stalinist purrges.

The story took an even more sinister turn on 4th February of this year, when three members of the Dalai Lama's entourage who had been his staunch supporters on the issue of Dorje Shugden were brutally slain, repeatedly stabbed and then cut up in a manner resembling a ritual exorcism, only a few hundred metres from the Dalai Lama's official residence in Dharamsala, Northern India. A bag which, it was later established, had been grabbed by one of the victims from his assailants, contained anti Dalai Lama propaganda and documents citing the use of bloodshed to silence those who opposed worship of the deity. Having formally questioned a number of Shugden followers, police identified one of the assailants as a 25-year old Tibetan, Tenzin Chogyam. Chogyam, it was said, was notoriously for his involvement in violence against those opposed the cult.

Kelsang Gyatso has stated that his followers had nothing to do with the grisly murders in Dharamsala but one thing is sure; the NKT's slick promotion of the cult of Dorje Shugden here in the West, amongst thousands who have no knowledge of the actual situation within the Tibetan Buddhist community, no knowledge of the fact that Shugden followers have been described by experts as "the Taliban of Tibetan Buddhism", can bring nothing but harm to the Tibetan cause. The Office of Tibet, the official voice of the Dalai Lama in Britain, this week told Student Direct that they had clear documentary evidence of a Chinese government policy to undermine the Dalai Lama's authority by causing dissent within the Tibetan religious community. The activities of the NKT, the SSC and the Freedom Foundation, intentionally or otherwise, amount at the end of the day, to limit more than doing the Chinese government's dirty work for them.