Re: Ole Nydahl and Diamond Way Buddhism
Date: July 14, 2010 07:46AM
Thank you for those posts Zara - they seemed to disappear from Shamarpa's website rather quicky, and those letters could well explain why.
"9. July 2010 email to Shamarpa Rinpoche:
Dear Shamar Rinpoche,
Apparently I didn’t make myself completely clear. Please add the following to your webpage. Otherwise I would have to publicly protect my name and work which probably neither of us wishes.
Hopefully the last statement for your webpage:
....."
- clearly there is a veiled threat here - as I suggested before - Ole is building up the numbers of DWB members to try to gain this leverage, and in his letter of the 8th July he clearly refers to support for "our" Karmapa. (apparently the same thing happened with the Buddhist council in Germany)
Ole clearly wants to pull some political strings to have influence in the Karma Kagyu lineage at quite a high level, and he dares to dictate what Shamarpa should post on his own website.
It is unfortunate that Shamarpa has to engage with Ole's political and rather unsubtle power games.
What stood out for me in Shamarpa's posts on his website was the idea that Vajrayana is appropriate for a more agressive climate, and it seems very obvious that DWB mambers have an investment in creating this climate to justify their own practices after the fact.
In my own experience this happened on a small scale - where incidents that could easily have been dealt with compassionately, and with patience and some understanding, instead got blown into full scale conflicts.
I see exactly the same thing happening in the above dialogue - where Shamarpa has clearly tried to deal with these issues privately prior to these public statements, and yet Ole has taken them as divisive and refused to compromise - refusing to defer to Shamarpa's higher wisdom, Ole has instead chosen to weild his own power - supported neither by wisdom nor compassion, but merely by sheer weight of numbers gained from his populist approach, Ole seems to have this "might is right" approach which he has also projected onto his phantom foe, Islam.
The point is not whether Ole teaches tantra, nor whether we choose to judge his sexual preaching as dignified or not - the fact remains the Ole teaches Vajrayana Buddhism and Shamarpa is very clear about the atmosphere which surrounds this form of practice.
No doubt those who feel they live in an agressive environment will say that is therefore appropriate - yet one has to question their perception (and creation) of this "agressive environment". Justifying one's behavior by rationalisation based upon one's own distorted perceptions - This is spiritual materialism at its worst.
Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2010 07:55AM by suenam.