Dalai Lama's Ban on Worship of Buddhist Deity Shugden Has Social and Political Implications

Jesse Morales
17 April 2009
12:30 am

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2008/09/200893014344405483.html

Tibetan Buddhists (in Tibet and around the world) are dealing with the reverberations of a recent statement made by the Dalai Lama banning the worship of a Buddhist deity named Shugden. The Dalai Lama stated that though he worshipped this god in the past, he has realized it to be a mistake and no longer does so.

Shugden is associated with the returned spirit of a certain Buddhist monk who lived contemporaneously with the fifth Dalai Lama. He is revered as a protector against evil spirits, but the Dalai Lama warns that Shugden may incite his worshippers to evil behavior.

Most Tibetan Buddhists follow the injunction of the Dalai Lama, but some do not; those who do not are often maltreated. In many Buddhist monasteries across Tibet, monks who refuse to cease worship of Shugden are being ousted from their posts. Even the average practitioner who still identifies himself or herself as a worshipper of Shugden is kept out of daily commerce and social activity by the larger community.

Much of the prejudice against Shugden worshippers is the association some have insinuated they have with the People's Republic of China. Those supporters of the Tibetan Government-In-Exile are opposed to any Tibetan who supports the PRC, and Shugden supporters are purportedly linked to the PRC, so some are saying that supporters of the Tibetan Government ought to be opposed to the Shugden worshippers.

Shugden worshippers themselves say that they have nothing to do with China, and are only following their usual religious customs. They are suing the Dalai Lama on the grounds that he has inhibited their religious and social freedoms by his ban.


I think this is a strange and unaccountable move for the Dalai Lama to make. Certainly there is some religious reason for his ban, but I was unable to ascertain it from watching the movie and reading the article. There are also political conditions underlying and intertwining with the Shugden issue that I am unaware of, and would be interested to research further. What seems to me most interesting, though, is the way religious and political are made to overlap in this situation by mere labeling. If Shugden worshippers are labeled to be supporters of the PRC, then a good number of people perceive them as such and act accordingly. Why? In part, perhaps, because (as one woman in the video says) people take the word of the Dalai Lama to be the truth and act accordingly. This follows a pattern of behavior similar to very religious communities the world over: once a source of truth is identified, and behavior is altered to fit its message, cohesive community is formed. The problems, then, are two: 1) is the identified source of truth reliable?; 2) will the behavior required by the source of truth bring persons of the truth-cohesed group into conflict with persons of other beliefs?