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Sceptic Watcher
@suenam
Thaye Dorje is the patron of Diamond Way. He and Sharmapa do have political power over Nydahl. While their power base is small, they can exist independently from Nydahl - especially Sharmapa has worked on getting followers in Europe. In any case where they strongly disagree with Nydahl, they could threaten to renounce the patronage and effectively end Nydahl's career. As they don't, I suppose they are ok with his overall impact.

@karam-mudra
Google Cache still has some of the discussion:

[webcache.googleusercontent.com]

Translation of the relevant part:

"If concrete evidence for the validity of your accusations
should be available, you are invited to contact me directly
and the DBU will review the 'case' (if there is indeed one) and may draw conclusions from it. At least the DBU will then allow a public discussion of the allegations on the DBU website. "

Mrs. Riepe did not react to this offer. I have researched where and how she raised her accusations on the Internet - they are on a lot of sites. The most specific allegation that I have found is the following (emphasis added by me in uppercase):

"When I saw Nydahl in Poland in 2005 after he had opened my kundalini, he
offered me to his teacher by making the offering-mudra while he was looking at me, crying many tears and counting his teacher's blessings, what he was saying.
Later, AT HOME, I had such STRONG VISIONS # in which I had to have sex with
The young Karmapa! I was crying and saying: I can not do that. The IMAGINATION was so strong! It FELT LIKE to be raped. "

At least in this text by her she does NOT talk about physical acts, but of visions and ideas. Mrs. Riepe's allegations are based out these visions and ideas are from the outside (specifically, by Ole Nydahl and Trinley Thaye Dorje) was induced in a magical way.

My comment on that:

Firstly, IF such a thing should be possible, then at least it is not criminally relevant. Allegiations of sexual abuse or rape without PHYSICAL evidence are [criminally relevant]. Therefore, it is the duty of Board operator to prevent such allegations - partly to protect the person who expresses these allegiations against the potential legal consequences.

Secondly, there are also Buddhists, a lot of people, who do view such a thing as absolutely impossible. A discussion of the allegations in this forum would almost inevitably lead to questioning the mental health of the accusing party. NO internet forum is the right place for this [kind of discussion], including this one.

For these reasons, the discussion of Mrs. Riepe's allegations has been suppressed here. And they will also not be resumed.

Sceptic Watcher your post in my view has breached the rules to this forum.
Vitriolic posts that personally attack people, will not be tolerated and are grounds for banning the author from this message board


You have quoted a statement that DBU has already withdrawn which directly implies that Micala has mental health issues. Providing that Micaela is posting under her real name (and you used her real name in your post) such comments, even if quoted, constitute defamation.
Stigmatising someone as mentally ill doesn’t agree with the rules of this forum at all.


“For these reasons, the discussion of Mrs. Riepe's allegations has been suppressed here. And they will also not be resumed.”
What a Freudian blunder. I suppose you have intended to use the word: “suspended”. But in fact they were indeed suppressed.........

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karam-mudra
Suanam,

I have a totally different view on Nydahl due to my experiences. When he says "all boys loved to chase after girls" he says, that he is working with desire to overcome it and he wants students following that way. When I read Gendun Ringpoche he wrote about that path, it would be only for a few. Nydahl went that path more or less and he follows his experiences. That is what he makes him a yogi and not a monk. He followes the left-handed path and made his samayas in a specific form and due to this samyas he is obligated to have sex everyday, specialy with young girls, but also with older women. And he does. Not for his personal pleasure or desire but for the reason of the tantric rules or ideology to spread the transferences and to gather female energy.

When you write (tantric-tibetan Buddhism) is a philosophy which aims at transcending dualistic desire, than you forget to determine the experiences on which this "philosophy" is grounding.

So let me quote the Dalai Lama:

“When we experience subtler level of minds, this level of consciousness can then be transformed into wisdom that understand is emptiness, selflessness.In order to do this, first the practitioner has to stop the grosser levels of consciousness,and to do this, it is necessary to bring about the change of the movement of the white and red basic constituents. This is where sex becomes involved. The strongest change in the level of consciousness that can be utilized by a practitioner occurs during sex. Because of this fact, sex is used as a technique of tantric path.”

He says here, the strongest change in consciousness happened during sex, not during philosophy. This is the core of Lamaism and the condition for enlightment in one life.

To expose someone like Nydahl it is at first essential to understand him.

Thanks for the clarification here, but Nydahl wasn't talking about tantra for a select few, nor was he making a statement about working with desire - the lecture topic was about parallels between quantum mechanics and Buddhist philosophy. It's hard to convey his tone in writing, but I would say it was at the grossest level, much like a builder encouraging his workmates to wolf-whistle a passing girl. Nydahl wasn't talking about a path only for the few, he was talking about ALL men.

The Dalai Lama's statement comes across as Buddhist wisdom. Nydahl's came across as the opposite.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2012 11:20PM by suenam.

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jamgon
Suenam:

Yes - I think given the quoted 2013 date, the dodgy signature, and the totally different style, I think the letter is questionable.

No, it is not. Shamar Rinpoche has two signatures - one in Tibetan script and one Western - and uses them interchangeably. For an example of Shamar's "Tibetan" signature see:

[www.kagyuoffice.org]

The linked letter was witnessed by Urgyen Tulku so I do not know how one would question the authenticity of the signature. In any case - had the letter been forged do you not think that Shamarpa would have gone public to expose the fraud?

I notice Shamarpa's take on Islamic extremism, "...just as we should show compassion on the victims, we should also have compassion on the terrorists due to their ignorance." is also radically different to Nydahl's patronising, dismissive, and dualistic approach.

The intent of the letter is very clear and does not require your re-interpretation:

Until today Lama Ole is a genuine teacher, passing on the teachings exactly as he himself has received them from the late 16th Karmapa, Kalu Rimpoche, Tenga Rinpoche and myself.

(…)

I want to express appreciation for Lama Ole’s forty-year-long work to transmit the Buddha’s teachings to the West for the benefit of all beings. I make wishes that Lama Ole’s activity continues to grow.

There is really not much to add - Lama Ole enjoys Shamarpa’s full support. You may not like it but coming up with a theory of the forged letter which somehow (despite being forged) proves that Shamarpa disagrees with Lama Ole is a bit desperate.

Peace.

Personally I find an undated letter where the link claims it is from 2013 to be suspicious at best, but that's just me.

I gave no re-interpretation - the quote was from a separate article by Shamarpa which appears (to me) as showing a far greater maturity and wisdom than anything I have heard from Nydahl on that topic.

While it is true that Shamarpa continues to appear to support Nydahl, considering that it was only a year ago Nydahl wrote,

"As the purity of the Dharma and the confidence among us is so important in our lives, and Shamarpa Rinpoche seems incapable of posting my replies together with his allegations, conditions force me to publish my recent exchange with him first on DWBN, then on my website, and if he does not by then retract his wrong information, to have it follow his statements everywhere they went."

it would appear as if Nydahl does not enjoy it as fully as you suggest. It seems pretty clear that any support is motivated more by political concerns that anything to do with the Dharma.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2012 12:21AM by suenam.

@puella
karam-mudra expressed regret that the DBU-Forum is no longer accessible. I provided information to the discussion that she wanted to contribute herself.

Quote
karam-mudra
But really funny is the behavier of one member of the leader-board who is Zen-Buddhist, not a follower of Nydahl. He and some others discussed my story on the DBU-forum and he had such wonderful phantasies about the way I should be treated. I cannot repeat his proposals because of the complicated legal register he used and since they discussed about me, the forum is damaged as a result of technical problems, otherwise I would have posted the link.

I'm not sure right now, but I think karam-mudra also posted links to her blog, which contains her real name, so I saw no problem in keeping the text as is without anonymizing it. The statement by the DBU was not withdrawn, but is not accessible because their forum is currently down due to technical problems.

I used google translate for most of the text, which provided "supressed", a valid translation of the german word "unterbunden".

I never claimed anything about karam-mudra's mental health myself. Quoting something does not neccessarily mean agreeing with it.

In response to Jamgon’s post …

“There is really not much to add - Lama Ole enjoys Shamarpa’s full support. You may not like it but coming up with a theory of the forged letter which somehow (despite being forged) proves that Shamarpa disagrees with Lama Ole is a bit desperate”.

I find it difficult to believe that Ole Nydahl enjoys Shamarpa’s full support given the contents of Shamarpa’s open letter from 2012 in which he stated:


“Lama Ole was deeply devoted to His Holiness the 16th Karmapa, and that is the basis of his connection with me. It is the continuation of the relationship he, as a Karma Kagyu practitioner, had with the late Karmapa. Nothing more and nothing less. My attitude towards anyone who is a follower of the Karma Kagyu is the same: if someone's attitude is the same as it was during the late Karmapa's time, our attitude is also the same”.

My interpretation of this is that Shamarpa maintains contact with Nydahl and DWB only because of Nydahls connection with His Holiness the 16th Karmapa not because there is any significant connection between Shamarpa and Nydahl. He affirms this with the sentence, “nothing more and nothing less”. So it isn’t Nydahl’s work that Shamarpa supports but the 16th Karmapa’s work. Shamarpa maintains his contact with Nydahl and DWB because that was the wish of HH the 16th Karmapa at the time of his death.

The most significant part of the letter is the line, “If someone’s attitude is the same as it was during the late Karmapa’s time, our attitude is also the same”. This is a conditional sentence … if the first condition is met (someone’s attitude is the same as it was during the late Karmapa’s time) then the result is we have the same attitude (significantly he doesn’t mention support). If the first condition isn’t met then their attitude is conflicting.

To me this is Shamarpa putting distance between himself and Nydahl without explicitly denouncing him. I think it is clear that it isn’t a glowing endorsement of Nydahl and his teaching style.

Of course this letter was pulled from Shamarpa’s web site after Nydahl made threats.

So why would Shamarpa now issue a letter which appears to offer his support? It could be that Shamarpa acknowledges his error in the first place and does indeed support Nydahl’s work. It could be that he realises that after Nydahl’s death DWB will need clear direction and that he has a responsibility to the 16th Karmapa to ensure that these students receive this clear instruction. This is the “basis of his connection” with Nydahl as he stated in his first letter. There may be other factors at play but only Shamarpa and Nydahl know for sure.

To Puella

I also recall the letter criticising his students for discussing Islam in his centres. I agree with you that this stinks of hypocrisy. Nydahl has been extremely vocal in his condemnation of Islam and in my experience some of his students who are already harbouring racial prejudices see this as an endorsement of their racism. Here is a quote from the same open letter by Shamarpa commenting on Nydahl.

“The only difference between Lama Ole and many other western Vajrayana practitioners is that Lama Ole publicly says everything and also encourages his followers to think the same way as he does”.

Here Shamarpa acknowledges that Nydahl “encourages his followers to think the same way as he does”. This is why some of his students make sweeping overgeneralised statements about Islam and Muslims. This is why some of his students think black Africans only have themselves to blame for their plight. This is why some of his students like to jump out of airplanes. This is why some of his students frequently exchange sexual partners. This is why some of his students can be seen taking snuff at meditation courses. They then justify their behaviour by stating “we are the crazy yogi lineage”.

In response to Steve James’s comment:

“The occasional comments he has made about radical Islam have been grouped together and circulated in order to cause offence.”

Firstly, they are not occasional comments. You know I attended many lectures by Nydhal both in the UK and abroad and you know that they are made at EVERY lecture (or at least they were, perhaps he has had to be more careful of late).

Secondly, they have not been grouped together in order to cause offence … the comments on their own cause offence. It doesn’t matter how many you group together just one single comment causes offence.

Steve

dariusb:

Most probably the Shamarpa's letter genuine it is just interesting that Shamar Rimpoche in English language letter would use his Tibetan signature?

Of course the letter is genuine which we should all acknowledge and move on to discuss its implications. To make up conspiracies based on a false assumption that the signature is forged is silly. I do not know why Shamarpa signed this particular letter using Tiberan script but it is not particularly relevant - the issue is whether the signature is his or not. However, here is another letter in English Shamarpa signed using Tibetan script so maybe this is not as unusual as you think:

[www.zhaxizhuoma.net]

Plus your given link does not provide with his signature unfortunately and knowing the controversy and resent development with the court cases there is not much of credibility in example given above.

I am not sure what you mean - it links to the letter with a signature identical to the one on the recent letter for Lama Ole's 40th anniversary, and which was witnessed as having been signed by Shamarpa. The controversy you mentioned actually adds credibility to the signature. This letter is very important politically and had the signature been forged Shamarpa would have come out to disown it.

Claims on this forum that Shamarpa's letter of support for Lama Ole is forged are absurd.

Peace

I think we must acknowledge that the letter and signature are genuine. The implications for Nydahl and DWB are too damaging for someone to fake them. Shamarpa would only need to expose it as fake to discredit Nydahl and his organisation. It makes no sense to forge the letter or signature.

In a correction to my post above, Shamarpa's open letter was published in 2011 I believe, not 2012 as I stated.

Steve

Quote
jamgon
dariusb:

Most probably the Shamarpa's letter genuine it is just interesting that Shamar Rimpoche in English language letter would use his Tibetan signature?

Of course the letter is genuine which we should all acknowledge and move on to discuss its implications. To make up conspiracies based on a false assumption that the signature is forged is silly. I do not know why Shamarpa signed this particular letter using Tiberan script but it is not particularly relevant - the issue is whether the signature is his or not. However, here is another letter in English Shamarpa signed using Tibetan script so maybe this is not as unusual as you think:

[www.zhaxizhuoma.net]

Plus your given link does not provide with his signature unfortunately and knowing the controversy and resent development with the court cases there is not much of credibility in example given above.

I am not sure what you mean - it links to the letter with a signature identical to the one on the recent letter for Lama Ole's 40th anniversary, and which was witnessed as having been signed by Shamarpa. The controversy you mentioned actually adds credibility to the signature. This letter is very important politically and had the signature been forged Shamarpa would have come out to disown it.

Claims on this forum that Shamarpa's letter of support for Lama Ole is forged are absurd.

Peace

No one claims that the letter is a forgery, simply there is no date on the official letter and his signature is different to his previous letters.I would never suggest that people who run official line of DWB would be that stupid and put a forgery online for everyone to see.
I have to agree with Steve's explanation of Shamarpa's stand on this issue.
Concerning Shamarpa's change of mind about Karmapas recarnation he Shamarpa gave his explanation on numerous occasions. But again religion and politics&money don't realy go very well together. Good example would be reasant charges against Ogyen Trinley Dorje and his close people.

Suenam:

Personally I find an undated letter where the link claims it is from 2013 to be suspicious at best, but that's just me.

I presume "2013" in the link on the German website (and not in the letter itself!) refers to the year of Lama Ole's 40th anniversary - he was sent by Karmapa to teach in the West in 1973. I do not want to sound like a broken record but letters are either authentic or forged. Based on the info at hand I have no doubt this letter is completely authentic in a sense that Shamarpa had it typed for him, signed it and then distributed it. What do you think? If you believe it is a forgery what (if anything) would make you change your mind? I am asking this out of general interest - it is fascinating how people cling to their views even in the face of contradicting evidence.

While it is true that Shamarpa continues to appear to support Nydahl, considering that it was only a year ago Nydahl wrote,

"As the purity of the Dharma and the confidence among us is so important in our lives, and Shamarpa Rinpoche seems incapable of posting my replies together with his allegations, conditions force me to publish my recent exchange with him first on DWBN, then on my website, and if he does not by then retract his wrong information, to have it follow his statements everywhere they went."

it would appear as if Nydahl does not enjoy it as fully as you suggest. It seems pretty clear that any support is motivated more by political concerns that anything to do with the Dharma.

I do not believe the email exchange from which you are selectively quoting proves that Shamarpa does not support Lama Ole. The issue has been thrashed to death here and elsewhere so just for the record: Shamarpa made allegations that lama Ole teaches karma mudra, Ole denied it, Shamarpa went back to his information sources, found them untrustworthy and recanted the original allegations. A while later he issued a letter which reads:

Until today Lama Ole is a genuine teacher, passing on the teachings exactly as he himself has received them from the late 16th Karmapa, Kalu Rimpoche, Tenga Rinpoche and myself.

(…)

I want to express appreciation for Lama Ole’s forty-year-long work to transmit the Buddha’s teachings to the West for the benefit of all beings. I make wishes that Lama Ole’s activity continues to grow.

There is no need to second-guess what Shamarpa thinks about Lama Ole's teaching activity - he stated it very clearly himself.

Peace

Quote
jamgon
There is no need to second-guess what Shamarpa thinks about Lama Ole's teaching activity - he stated it very clearly himself.

Yes, and I think SteveLpool's analysis above captures it perfectly.

You may want to see it in black and white - either Shamarpa is for or against Nydahl - either the letter is authentic or forged, but as daruisb has pointed out, no one has made the claim it was forged so I do not see the need for your polemic.

My view is that Shamarpa remains to be as fully convinced as you seem to want to believe and yet remains open minded to the possibility of reform within DWB - something which will only be seen in future developments.