stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

246 STRIPPING THE GURUS
proval to the recognition on the basis of reportedly false evidence,
could not backtrack and admit that he was wrong.)
The other was recognized after a more sincere search
Updates to that continuing dispute exist at www.karmapacontroversy.org.
Interestingly, one of the aforementioned four lineage holders
claims to have found the reincarnated Trungpa in eastern Tibet.
That same holder, however, was not only apparently making deals
with the government of China, but had also recognized over three
hundred other tulkus within the space of a mere few years previously.
The fact that most of those came from an area bordering his
own primary seat in Tibet (Lehnert, 1998), however, casts a certain
doubt....
Still, if Trungpa’s really back in circulation, “Let’s party!”
* * *
It is not only “avant-garde” lamas who have “bent” the rules which
one would otherwise have reasonably assumed were governing
their behaviors. Rather, as June Campbell (1996) has noted from
her own experience:
[I]n the 1970s, I traveled throughout Europe and North
America as a Tibetan interpreter, providing the link,
through language, between my lama-guru [Kalu Rinpoche,
1905 – 1989] and his many students. Subsequently he requested
that I become his sexual consort, and take part in
secret activities with him, despite the fact that to outsiders
he was a very high-ranking yogi-lama of the Kagya lineage
who, as abbot of his own monastery, had taken vows of celibacy.
Given that he was one of the oldest lamas in exile at
that time, had personally spent fourteen years in solitary retreat,
and counted amongst his students the highest ranking
lamas in Tibet, his own status was unquestioned in the Tibetan
community, and his holiness attested to by all....
[I]t was plainly emphasized that any indiscretion [on my
part] in maintaining silence over our affair might lead to
madness, trouble, or even death [e.g., via magical curses
placed upon the indiscreet one].