Tibetan Buddhism in the West: The Dorje Shugden Controversy and the New Kadampa Tradition
Abstract
This paper is about that area of Tibetan Buddhism that does not get covered as
often in the media. To a large degree, it remains untouched in academia. It is also
about the west's reaction a controversy within Tibetan Buddhism. It is about ghosts,
oracles, murders, and fierce, blood-drinking deities - hardly the pristine image of
Tibetan Buddhism presented in the west. However, figures like Dorje Shugden are an
integral a part if Tibetan Buddhism, and are indeed much older than the figurehead of
Buddhism in the west, the Dalai Lama.