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.