by saxitoxin on Mon Apr 10, 2023 6:13 pm
I took a series of four meditation classes at a Kadampa Monastery in the U.S. for $28.
The Kadampa master was Kelsang Gyatso who is an avowed opponent of the Dalai cult. The source of the dispute was pretty mundane, the Dalai Lama outlawed worship of the Dorje Shugden deity but the Kadampa believe worship of Dorje Shugden is all-important. (Dorje Shugden is a three-eyed, fanged deity who has lightning bolts spontaneously shooting out of his body and who lives on an island of skulls surrouunded by a lake of blood. So I can imagine, for PR purposes, why the Dalai would want to sweep him under the rug as it's not exactly the Brad Pitt Seven Years in Tibet sort-of Tibetan Buddhism that he's worked hard to project.)
Anyway, despite how this is a relatively ho-hum religious dispute, the Dalai's surrogates now claim the Kadampa are conspiring with the Chinese to suppress democracy in Tibet or whatever (ofc, Tibet has never been a democracy, even under the Dalai). Once that happened, my "CIA asset" meter went to about an 11. (Diana Johnstone was first to write about the Dalai being a CIA asset meant to reel-in doe-eyed, low-IQ progressives, IIRC)
