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We have now had what one might call a worst-case scenario in Buddhism.
And I have to say that the situation that has arisen in this way is not held against the Dalai Lama
directly, but rather against the people around the Dalai Lama.
There has just been this scandal between the Dalai Lama and a little Indian boy because it appears
to be an Indian boy and not a Tibetan boy because the Dalai Lama speaks English to that boy.
So he didn't speak Tibetan, but English.
That means the press was there, there were people who recorded it on video and you can see that
on the internet.
And now the really big scandal, where it comes down to it, did the action between the Dalai Lama
and the boy imply sexuality, so to speak, was it sexual abuse.
The Dalai Lama has also publicly apologized for the situation that happened.
And the people who are very close to the Dalai Lama then said, well, you know that the Dalai
Lama always does something very casual and stuff like that.
And that's outside of the narrow Buddhist scene.
Right now in the camp of people who are in the Tibetan Buddhist community, especially in the
West, it's incredibly difficult for practising Buddhists to sort that out.
There are those who defend what the Dalai Lama does and say yes, whatever the Dalai Lama does
is right and everything is okay.
And then, on the other hand, those who have lost a great deal of trust in the Buddha's teachings
as a result.
There were also people who are very critical of our social conditions in today's society.
And then a situation like the one that happened between the Dalai Lama and this little boy in
public.
That's what happened, and I'm just saying that now, because of course I can't prove it, but I know
myself that we often have situations where lamas and rinpoches are surrounded by very bad
advisors.
A Dalai Lama is not omniscient, because all the Rinpoches are not as realized as Buddha
Shakyamuni, it is said that he was omniscient, but the Rinpoches don't have that kind of
omniscience and lineage holders don't usually have that either.
And so, if you are somehow aware of this now, then we should understand that these problems
arise because we live in a degenerate age where the Dharma teacher himself, surrounded by the
students, can drag down the Dharma teacher.
Especially when someone has a lot of students.
Then you also have to understand that the Dalai Lama lives the way he does, also from a political
point of view, where you sometimes overhear statements from the Dalai Lama that may not
necessarily be logical, but where the point is that his main aim is that he has to take care of the
Tibetan people, all the Tibetans who are in exile.
They depend on him.
He holds together the Tibetans living in exile.
And then you have to see that there are a lot of powerful beings around him who also use the
Dalai Lama and influence how he behaves.
So I think that this happened partly because the people around him don't inform him enough. He
gets a lot of information, but not necessarily the information he needs socially.
The scandal that we had three or four years ago when it came to Sogyal Rinpoche is an example
of the fact that trust in Buddhism has now of course been greatly weakened as a result.
From this situation, as it is now publicly presented to the Dalai Lama, I can understand every
outsider's loss of trust in the Buddhist teachings as a result.
Trust has been lost from saying how Sogyal Rinpoche behaved. All these accusations at Sogyal
Rinpoche were being made, I listened carefully and built the constellation of how these different
things were presented.
Namely, what was the difference between what Sogyal Rinpoche did and what was here. Here
with the Dalai Lama dispute, it was a child and it was in public and what was portrayed there.
Anyone can google it themselves, what was there in detail, I don't want to describe it now, but
you can see it for yourself.
And I can understand why people don't get along with it.
With Sogyal Rinpoche, the situation was different. Those were adults. They were grown people.
And I've been dealing with this topic of Buddhism for almost 40 years.
In that time I met more than 60 teachers, and experienced the behavior of the students around
me, of all of us western students, all of whom I met, Germans, French, Americans, English,
Australians.
Everyone always wanted the highest teachings. So what we're doing here now is kindergarten for
them. What we did here this morning is preschool. They understood that a long time ago. They're
not interested in that. It bores them, it's boring to talk about the four thoughts that turn the
mind.
They wanted only the highest teachings. The very best, the most beautiful, the greatest. What's
the biggest? That's not even tantra anymore. There is a Kriya tantra, that is outer purity. No, they
want the non-dualistic. Yes, then let's do father and mother tantra. No, we want to do the non-
dual tantra. No, that's actually way too complicated.
We then do Mahamudra and Dzogchen. Actually, that's too much. We only do Maha Ati now. We
are Maha Ati.
And people think they have the skills. In order to be able to realize this at all, you need a Vajra
master.
A Dzogchen master. In order to realize Dzogchen, you don't have to listen and ponder
intellectually in your mind, but you have to experience the non-existent of the Self in your mind.
The non-self-experience. Only then can you realize Dzogchen. Only then can you realize non-
duality. So a Dzogchen master has only one task.
He has to keep kicking your ass. Constantly. He must get your ego boiling.
And I remember one teacher, I really appreciate him so much, it's Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche.
He has done and is still doing such fantastic things.
I'm always touched by him whenever he says anything. And he also does it very cleverly and he
noticed that with Sogyal Rinpoche and then also what's going on in America with Mipham
Rinpoche and Shambala and stuff like that.
And Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche said he is not as courageous as Trungpa Rinpoche and Sogyal
Rinpoche.
These Rinpoches offered their disciples their own flesh, their own bodies. Not sexually, but they
sacrificed their body, sacrificed it to the students.
They gave everything to them. The students wanted Dzogchen Mahamudra and the Rinpoches
did everything to make that happen. They have every means that was right, that was at all
possible, to crack the ego to give them a chance to experience non-duality.
Trungpa Rinpoche had a situation with them where they said, somehow he just called the closer
people at night, to say he wanted to eat this and that now.
And then they thought, that wanting to eat something, was his greed.
But he only did what he had to do. What does he have to do?
Imagine yourselves, Wolf and Dorothy, are lying comfortably in bed, the phone rings, and you
pick it up.
"Get up! I want pancakes now!", I say to you as if I were your Vajra master, which I'm not. (I'm a
slob.)
Imagine you are hanging up on me and Dorothy saying: "Has Horst lost his mind?"
"Well, you know, Dorothy," Wolf would note, "we said we wanted Dzogchen Mahamudra from
him. So is this the price for that? Having to get up at night and then get him pancakes because he
wants to eat pancakes now? I can't believe it. Does he have a quirk?"
And so, if I were a Vajra master now, you then begin to fight my effort to boil your ego.
And then I would say to Ramon: "You know Ramon, every time you come I want a tenth of your
net income from you.
Give me that." And when you bring me ten percent, I would say, why don't you give me fourteen
percent?
I would like to have ten percent, be a little generous, give me fourteen percent.
And then you'd think, he's suddenly become so greedy.
Be glad you didn't do that and I wouldn't do that to you, either.
But of course I am not your vajra master. I have no intention of letting the vajra master hang out
around here.
However, if people mean they really want to experience non-duality, then they have to pay the
price.
They can't have it for free. Not because Sogyal Rinpoche, a vajra master, needs it.
But we in the West, we're so arrogant, we're so lofty that we think we're great students like
Naropa, like Marpa, like Milarepa, like Gampopa, like the first Karmapa.
We would be such eligible students for a Vajra master.
But when the Vajra master makes BOOH, we go BAAAAH.
And because of that, I examined the various things that were assumed of Sogyal Rinpoche, I
examined them analytically and looked what causes his behavior, what he does then.
He cuts across Westerners' concepts of anything.
And Trungpa Rinpoche did something similar in the 1980s when he was in Marburg.
Oh, Trungpa Rinpoche comes to Marburg!
There is only one public event!
And at that time, I think, they were supposed to pay something around 300 or 350 Deutschmarks
for the evening.
That's more expensive than a concert with the Beatles or the Rolling Stones back then.
I think that's triple or quadruple if you sat in the front row.
Not everyone is sitting in the front row in that hall in Marburg.
The event was announced to start at half past seven.
Now that we've paid 300 Deutschmarks, we want something for it, don't we?
However, Trungpa Rinpoche keeps people waiting.
Seven forty-five. Eight. Half past eight. Eight forty-five.
People just wait.
We have now paid so much, now we want something for it.
This is our attitude.
And he comes in swaying, held by his students.
Completely drunk. He looks that way.
He staggers in.
Sits down on the chair.
Says a few sentences.
I think the whole thing lasted a maximum of fifteen minutes from what I've been told.
Then he gets up and goes outside.
And the whole thing was still like that, I think until ten o'clock.
We just sat in there and said, will he be right back? Does this go any further?
But he's out.
Did he just want to pee outside?
No, he's gone then, he didn't come back.
And we paid 300 Deutschmarks for that?
It's mean, isn't it?
Isn't that mean?
Fifteen minutes.
Everyone who participates actually knows that this is the 11th Trungpa Rinpoche.
They know he presents crazy wisdom.
Everyone who took part knows that.
They knew there was something said to show the nature of mind.
For this, one has to be prepared.
And he did.
He showed people the nature of mind.
And they didn't look.
Maybe some, but very few.
I then heard later that was the scandal that was going around at the time.
He took so much money for it and they complained that they got so little.
That was half a year later, in Albertstrasse in Berlin.
A photographer who also took beautiful black and white photos of Tai Sitoo Rinpoche, told me
he had been there.
People were really pissed off.
And I said, shit, if I had only gone there.
I didn't have enough money and neither did I have the time and I didn't have a car.
I didn't have a friend with whom to stay overnight in Marburg, I would have needed a hotel or
whatever, so I didn't manage to get there.
And I said, man, I'm sorry I wasn't there.
Because that would have been the chance.
A mind-to-mind transmission, that's what Trungpa Rinpoche did there.
Because I knew the stories of what such yogis, who have crazy wisdom from earlier times, do.
And I regretted that I wasn't there.
And then all of a sudden it was like being struck by lightning.
My joy and my regret that I was not there resulted in me getting the blessing of it even though I
wasn't there.
It went through my whole body like lightning.
And suddenly a lot of things that I never understood, made sense to me.
The ones I didn't get along with.
Oh, that's how it is.
Oh, that's what it means.
Oh, I see.
That went for days.
A lot of things I didn't understand, I then understood them afterwards.
Not that I can now say I have any yogic abilities, which are now theoretically here.
None of that.
But if you as Westerners hang in there like that, and don't know the culture, don't understand a
lot, and suddenly it becomes so clear to you.
You are told what it is exactly, and here is what I commend to you.
Be careful when people judge any teacher.
Now, with Sogyal Rinpoche, I still defend Sogyal Rinpoche and I don't let dirt and dust fall on
him.
And if people should picture me on the internet as a somehow narcissistic ego teacher or
whatever, totally gaga - well, I can live with their cursing, I have no problem with that.
And I will continue to defend him.
I will defend Trungpa Rinpoche and also Mipham Rinpoche in America.
All the allegations are going on there and we don't just have what's going on with the Dalai
Lama.
We still have that people keep claiming and just repeating the claims because someone else said,
repeat that and they say there must be something to it if anyone says so, and so on.
For example that the Karmapa had illegitimate children somewhere, well, our Karmapa, Ogyen
Trinley Dorje, he's under supervision all the time, he's never alone, and the close monks around
him, they wouldn't understand if he took a woman in there with him, and then he's practically
next to the door, and they kind of pop around in there and stuff.
And people then say, Karmapa should just give a DNA sample, and then one can check whether
it's true.
Just this idea of ??doing this, going into it, now Karmapa has to prove if he is the father or non-
father, or else it is just claimed that he had done it.
And then in 'Buddhismus heute', a magazine by the DBU, a woman wrote, that there was a
scandal about the Karmapa in Canada, the proceedings were discontinued, an out-of-court
agreement was then reached - without mentioning that this is speculation, but continuing that
dropping the case would be an admission that something had happened.
That's how westerners write about it.
Why? Because they just want to make themselves important like the monk Tenzin here in
Germany, who only cares because he picks on Sogyal Rinpoche.
I don't know how he's dealing with this story now, with the Dalai Lama, the way he's doing it now,
because Tenzin said that the Dalai Lama praised him, that he does a lot of great things, how
Tenzin is behaving now.
I am not criticizing the Dalai Lama for what he did, it's not my job to criticize that.
All I'm saying is it's a very awkward situation for all Buddhists in the west, people are losing faith,
and that's because of the atmosphere created around the Dalai Lama, the advisors that he has.
And I know that when a situation is very unfavorable to a great teacher, weak students who think
they have more power than the teacher, can drag the teacher into difficult situations.
Karmically it doesn't have a direct effect now, so that the Dalai Lama would have to suffer
because of this, but it simply means that his work becomes more difficult, his activities become
more difficult.
Likewise the activities of Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje, of the Buddha who, somewhere in Europe,
how do you say, works incognito all the time and gives teachings via Zoom, if such talk is used,
his activities will of course be restricted.
And so remember, if you hear any criticism of teachers, it's interesting that in all the scandals, the
real abusers will not be in the spotlight, like the one Zen teacher in Bavaria or Baden-
Wuerttemberg, the one sentenced to eight years in prison for real sexual abuse of refugee
children.
You hear next to nothing about it in the Buddhist scene.
Then there is this film by Arte, where at the beginning they mention a French teacher, a Buddhist
teacher who opens up there as if he was a super lama and started a community there. You don't
hear anything about his sentence from a French court to seven or eight years on probation
because he was found guilty in many, many cases where he treated children very, very badly -
psychological, physical violence or whatever, I haven't read the charges.
The children had to do prostrations, they had to practice Buddhism, which of course doesn't work
at all in our western society.
In Tibet the children like to do this on their own and voluntarily, but not here.
And when the western parents will become Buddhists, children will be forced into such an
institution.
And if they will not participate and will not obey, then there's a kind of food deprivation or they
get bad food or something like that.
He was found guilty.
That will not be discussed.
But what you then accuse the great teachers of, that's a big deal.
There you have it.
There are several more cases, for example in America, of former students of Trungpa Rinpoche,
Westerners who then thought, well, I'm also a Dharma teacher now and when Trungpa Rinpoche
has sex with women, well, then I can move my student to having sex with me, too, because I'm so
great, as well.
Do you understand?
These scandals won't happen, I can see from that how partisan and how paradoxical Westerners'
criticism is of the various people where something like this happens.
And the reason why I mention this now is so that it is very clear: I stand for the Buddhist
teachings, I stand behind the teachers, I also talk about it when there are problems but I want to
make it clear that we need to think why anything can happen in the first place.
That it has a lot to do with the sensitivity of the people who are around a teacher, where you then
say, well, here it would be cheaper, we now live here in public.
There are so many problems, let's think how in America, for example, right now since Biden is in
office, about 100,000 children, unaccompanied children, come across the border and disappear
somewhere in America.
Nobody knows where they are.
For child trafficking where abuse of children is supported by the Biden administration, by the fact
that down there everyone can get in unchecked.
And we also had that here in Germany, in 2015, where many children who were not registered
simply disappeared.
In the beginning there were so and so many children and then the kids were gone.
One would say, well, they just disappeared somewhere among their family relatives.
But they're just gone, because, if they had showen up at the families, then the families would
suddenly have more children, right?
But it doesn't happen.
So also in Europe, all over the world children are abused, they are helpless, helpless objects of
sexual desires, with delusions that they have.
And then, of course, when something happens like that with the Dalai Lama, people think in the
back of their minds: the Dalai Lama kind of gives the blessing that children can be used and
treated like shit.
No!
Because here in this case it was the boy asking the Dalai Lama, if he can hug the Dalai Lama.
And then the Dalai Lama said yes.
And that's exactly where you see it, this situation, a limit, where one does not know from the
outside what is it that the child felt, what is what the Dalai Lama felt - but what emerges on the
outside.
Hug, then kiss, and then tongue touch, with your own tongue.
Then it's a chain reaction where you say you don't know if the child wanted it of his own accord,
or whether it did so because the Dalai Lama said so.
So when do we in the West really call it sexual abuse?
If I ask if a child will you hug me, then it's something of me, when the child comes up to me and
says, will you hug me, or just comes and hugs me, then I can allow it because it would not be
sexual abuse.
It would come from me if I asked the child to give me something.
And that's the difficult thing, when a lot of people who are now trying to protect children, just
have this sequence. Then all the others arrive that have thrown dirt on the Dalai Lama before, like
some Goldner or so, an Austrian, who has spent an hour and a half on the internet, in a university
or somewhere, ranting about what nonsense the Dalai Lama is telling.
I also listened to what he said, it just became clear to me he didn't understand at all what the
Dalai Lama was talking about, because he lacks the basics.
So if we're missing the basics as I say it here, that all appearances that we have around us here are
of a purely illusory nature, they are dreamlike, nothing of what is around us is a reality.
If you don't have a Buddhist basis there, then you might say that, if it's actually just an illusion, a
dreamlike appearance, not real, then you may commit any abuse.
You may as well do any damage you want, right?
That's your consequence, because you lack the foundation.
This is why one often speaks of the secret teachings, meaning they are not secret because they are
hidden, but because they are not understood.
Also, the appreciation for the words is not there because the structure is missing.
So therefore always try to think for yourselves, when you do something with Buddhism, the first
priority is: you turn to the Buddha's teaching because you want to overcome your suffering.
That should be your only motivation.
Your motivation should not be, you want to save the world now.
For the benefit of all sentient beings.
No, be honest - you're only doing it because you want to overcome the suffering in your mind.
The second is, keep in your mind, keep in your mind all the time that you have a direct
relationship with the teachings of the Buddha.
And not about others and what others think - instead, it is always a personal, intimate connection
that we have with the Buddha's teachings. + + +
A Commentary by Yogi Horst R Brumm, German Buddhist Institute Karma Tengyal Ling.
For over 30 years, Horst R Brumm, born 1954, headed the non-profit German Buddhist Institute Karma Tengyal Ling. Her Eminence Khandro Rinpoche asked him to teach in 2010. In 2016 she officially declared him a yogi. In 2023 he was named Dharma teacher for Germany.
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Already published episodes with alternating languages:
Dharma für Anfänger 3
Missverständnis Buddhismus (1 through 3)
'weisheit spezial' episodes (Lama teachings)
Christmas greeting for Christians and Buddhists by Yogi Horst R Brumm (no sound, read only)
Sogyal Rinpoche and Fatal Errors of Western Buddhists (dubbed).
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Our presentation to view and download (12MB pdf) : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1J3W9B377b7CE3lJWJ8D0QXuVpr8FR55COHxyRy7Ilwk/edit?usp=sharing
Our Youtube channel:
https://youtube.com/@KarmaTengyalLing
