Update: This post:”Is the Dalai Lama a ‘religious dictator’?” on Challenging China-bashing provides a lot more details and references on this issue.
Dalai Lama spoke at Colgate University today. The topic was the “art of happiness”. Indoors there might have been a couple happy hours, the reality outside however was quite the opposite. Once again, Mr. Lama was accused of lying, by a group of angry people numbered around 500. This time, however, only around 50 where pro-China protesters, and the rest of them, mostly westerners, were there demanding the religious freedom from this man, supposedly the very master of the subject.
Those are the members of the Western Shugden Society. Dorje Shugden is one of the many gods in the traditional Tibetan Buddhism. I can give you a longer story on this one when I get a chance to, but the short version is that Mr. Lama suddenly, in the 1990’s, probably out of a dream as usual, believed that Dorje Shugden was an evil god, which was “harmful” to both the Tibet independence movement and his own heath. In fact, it’s claimed that the god is pro-China. The practice of worshiping Dorje Shugden was thereafter banned by the Tibetan government in exile. Whoever refuse to abandon the god are hashly suppressed. Specially if they are Tibetans, their lives can be pretty miserable. I posted a video link on this subject made by some westerners on YouTube and you are all encouraged to watch it. At this very same time Mr. Lama is selling “peaceful” hours around the world, he is being sued in India for religious suppression. We are more than interested to watch how this case develops in such an ironical world.



If you google this event, on most websites, if the protesters ever mentioned, the number would be over 100. If you read Chinese forums however, it’s 500. So, who is to believe? Simple. Let’s see, on 4/13, there was a big crowd of pro-China protesters in front of Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Just by personal witness and the official counting released by the organizers, the number is easily above 10,000, probably approaching, 20,000. But if you read CBC and the kind, you find it was 3000. So, there’s quite a consistency here.