(TibetanReview.net, Mar08, 2014) – Writing in The Huffington Post Mar 6, noted Buddhist scholar Prof Robert Thurman has said the cult of the Dolgyal-Shugden spirit continues its campaign against the Dalai Lama at the behest of, and with substantial funding from, the United Front Work Department of the People’s Republic of China, the agency handling relations with non-Chinese “minority nationalities.” The cult’s followers have been staging angry protests against the Dalai Lama during his ongoing visit to the USA, keeping on shouting slogans even when he tried to talk and reason with one of them.
He has said the cult’s aim was to “alienate Tibetans from the Dalai Lama, their beloved leader, and even to turn world public opinion against the acclaimed Nobel Laureate and Gandhi heir.”
He has said the cult’s attack campaign was futile because its main claims were so easy to refute. To begin with, he has noted that Dolgyal is not a protector at all, as claimed by its followers, but a mischievous “king” spirit known as Dolgyal (“king demon from Dol”), thereby refuting the fundamental basis of their campaign.
He feels that the whole fuss would have died down long ago except for the fact that the “hard-line” operatives of the “United Front Work Department” of the People’s Republic of China, the agency in charge of dealing with China’s “minority nationalities,” see the cult as a potential wedge they hope to drive between the Dalai Lama and his people and between him and world opinion. They therefore fund the leaders of the cult in Tibet, Mongolia, India and the West, and provide them the means to carry on their expensive propaganda campaigns.
He has said the leaders of the Dolgyal Shugden cult had benefited no one over the past 30 years except those misguided operatives in the Chinese government.