Twilight of the Tulkus, by Charles Carreon

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Twilight of the Tulkus, by Charles Carreon

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Twilight of the Tulkus
by Charles Carreon
March 16, 2020

THE CURRENT SITUATION

A THIRD OF AMERICANS BELIEVE IN REINCARNATION, IN LARGE PART BECAUSE THE DALAI LAMA HAS SERVED AS EVIDENCE OF THE DOCTRINE’S VALIDITY; HOWEVER, THE DALAI LAMA HAS JUST DECLARED THAT HE WILL NOT REINCARNATE, BECAUSE THE TRADITION OF SELECTING A NEW DALAI LAMA AFTER THE DEATH OF THE PREVIOUS ONE IS A FEUDAL ANACHRONISM. WHERE DOES THIS LEAVE US?

HISTORY OF THE TULKU SYSTEM

THIS ARTICLE PRESENTS THE HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE “TULKU SYSTEM” IN TIBET, THE WAY THAT TULKUS ARE RECOGNIZED TODAY IN THE WEST, AND THE EFFECTS OF THE SYSTEM ON TULKUS, THEIR STUDENTS, AND THE PROCESS OF TRANSMITTING BUDDHISM TO THE WEST.

SEVEN QUESTIONS TO ILLUMINATE HIS HOLINESS' MOTIVATION

WE THEN PRESENT SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR THE DALAI LAMA ABOUT THE TULKU SYSTEM, AND VENTURE SOME ANSWERS WHICH, WE HAZARD TO SAY, WILL ILLUMINE HIS HOLINESS’ MOTIVATIONS IN TERMINATING THE TRADITION OF REINCARNATING A DALAI LAMA.

His Holiness did not explain his motives further, and the incurious press has neither inquired of his office nor engaged in conjecture. But let us think it through. This is a super-heavy thing to say, assuming it will get around to the Tibetan people, both those living in Tibet and in émigré communities around the world. To say his announcement will be a disappointment is a serious understatement. The central tenet of the faith has been removed. The Tibetan Atlas has submitted his resignation. The throne of Tibet will soon be vacant, because its next God King has prospectively abdicated. The skies of Tibetan Buddhist cosmology are shaking on their medieval foundations. If the Fouteenth Dalai Lama really believed himself to be the “tulku” of Chenrezig, the Father of Tibet, who has altruistically, intentionally reincarnated fourteen times to lead the Tibetans, he wouldn’t abdicate.

THE LORD OF COMPASSION AND HIS WRATHFUL COUNTERPART

Chenrezig is a timeless figure. He’s not going to let some political changes on twenty-first century planet earth impede the fulfillment of his commitment to bring benefit to all living beings in general and Tibetans in particular. That would be backing down in the face of a worldly challenge, as Chenrezig would never do. Indeed, when the going gets tough, Chenrezig gets tougher, and becomes Hayagriva, whose wrath has been legendary for a thousand years, ever since he dealt with a traitor to the Buddha’s Sacred Doctrine by turning into a horse, riding straight up his anus, and out his mouth. While painful, Hayagriva’s wrathful therapy abruptly and totally rehabilitated the heretic, who attained Tibetan Buddhist liberation as the result of the apparently fatal rape.

This type of brutal spiritual parable often recurs in Tibetan Buddhism, because Tibetans were an extremely rough people. Although today, Tibetans are marketed as the spiritual athletes of the planet, this is a western fantasy. They have been better known throughout history by their neighbors as untameable brigands mostly likely to kill you on sight, who worship demons whose external forms appear as mountaintops, and to whom they offer simulated and non-simulated blood sacrifice. The Tibetan feudal system suffered from a shortage of arable land, so younger sons did not inherit, and rich and poor alike, one in four boys, were packed off to the monasteries, where the social divisions in the society at large were replicated. The abbots of major monasteries would all be tulkus, who enjoyed a plush lifestyle, eating much better, living in warmer, cleaner accommodations, enjoying an abundance of leisure.

TIBET -- A MUCH ROUGHER TURF THAN YOU HAVE BEEN LEAD TO EXPECT

Yes, the Dalai Lamas have been known to play rough -– the Fifth Dalai Lama made common cause with the Mongol conquerors to acquire monasteries and monks at the point of the sword. The Dalai Lamas have been treated roughly as well -– the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Dalai Lamas all died before reaching the age of majority. Their convenient deaths allowed Regents to rule uninterruptedly for nearly a hundred years, and malignant cliques within the Potala are presumed to have poisoned the young prelates. The situation of some tulkus today is little better. First, it is not beneficial to remove young children from their parents at an early age to be raised among male clergy. Second, hard evidence of sexual abuse in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries has come from many sources, eg., in 2013, Bhutanese health authorities were forced to distribute condoms at all Buddhist monastic schools to “stem the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV among young monks who are supposed to be celibate.”

THE NO-WAVE TULKUS

Today, because the young tulkus have ceremonial value, and can be toured as spiritual entertainment in China, Europe, and the US, collecting substantial donations for the clerical impresarios who mount these international tours, many tulkus are raised in an excess of indulgence and wealth, as the irascible tulku Dzongsar carped in a typically rambling screed a few years back. Most American-born tulkus would fall into the class of the needlessly pampered. They are never discovered, like occasionally happened to the old Tibetan tulkus, to have been born into a farming family from the hustings; rather, they are uniformly the male offspring of lamas or of women who have carried on with lamas, in and out of wedlock. These innocent souls are discovered as tulkus in their toddler years, when brother lamas recognize each other’s offspring as divine in exchange for love donations and future reciprocal recognitions.

Unfortunately, these bizarre titles of Tibetan clerical royalty are of limited value in the modern world, and really of no value at all to those unwilling to mime the appearance of sanctity and conduct meditation retreats. While the recipients of these bizarre titles may enjoy marinating in the rote adulation bestowed by abject believers, they rarely “train in meditation,” and many clearly suffer from impostor syndrome. They simultaneously benefit from their titles and connections -– getting jobs with UNESCO and other NGOs like some of the multiple Trungpa tulkus -– and wish to come across as “ordinary people” who are “not full of themselves.” In other words, they have been backed into a lie that they had no part in creating and have no idea how to carry off.

Some of these young people try to throw it off, declaring they’re done with the sanctimonious pose, but then, they end up back in the mind-healing business, like a Spanish boy who was “recognized” as a tulku, trained in India at a monastery, rejected the indoctrination and proclaimed his training a form of captivity in a degenerate environment, and left his robes behind, only to succumb to the allure of guruhood again, which he seems to be pursuing against his own better judgment. Some cases end up like Dzongsar, a bitter, bile-spitting little man who exhibits a fascination with spiritual totalitarianism and a raunchy sexuality that many would say ill befits a cleric.

Others end up like the child that Chogyam Trungpa sired upon the body of a Tibetan nun, then abandoned in childhood -– Osel Rangdrol Mukpo, aka the Sakyong Mipham. No one would envy young Osel’s upbringing -– life in India must have been tough with his mother, who received no support from his father Chogyam, and worked on a road crew after Osel was born; however, it was probably better than the two years he spent in an orphanage in England while his father was litigating over his custody with a family of English Buddhists who believed Trungpa and his sixteen-year old bride were a bit too punk rock to be raising children. When Trungpa finally got custody of Osel and brought him to his Boulder, Colorado enclave, he was whisked into a weird world where his father was a god to legions of dazzled Americans, and spent most of his life in a booze & coke haze, delivering himself of unusual Buddhist lectures that wordsmith students pounded into core Buddhist bestsellers, the backbone of the Shambhala Publishing empire.

Osel was not trained extensively in meditation, and it is rumored by those present during his internment at the Karmapa’s monastery that he was an impulsive sort, more given to blasting about on his motorcycle than engaging the “three wisdoms” of “hearing, contemplation, and meditation” that ripen a lama’s spiritual wisdom. Osel was not at all prepared to lead a spiritual movement. Nevertheless, when Trungpa’s chosen Regent, Thomas Rich, fell into disgrace and killed two students with a sexually-administered dose of AIDS, the original Trungpa succession plan was scrapped, and Osel found himself in the role of Top Banana.

Ultimately, Osel’s legacy was consumed by the absurd excesses his father engineered into the social structure of his “Kalapa Kingdom.” The “Kalapa Court” was a locus of licentiousness during Trungpa’s life, a playground of sex, drugs and alcohol that ensnared seven women that Trungpa married. Trungpa had been married to Diana for a few years when he started marrying seven other women, and she played turnabout deftly, cohabiting with Mitchell Levy and bearing his child, Ashoka. The extra seven women, called “Sang Yum,” received marriage licenses from the Kalapa Kingdom, and comprised the core of Trungpa’s inner social circle. One young woman, inducted into an intimate relationship at an early age and married to Trungpa at 18, later committed suicide. Among those who remain, some are venerated as near-saints, and appear in gushing profiles as ideals of the spiritual woman on the Shambhala.org website. Most of the surviving Sang Yum have kept their silence about the iniquities they observed and engaged in while serving as one-eighth of Trungpa’s sex life. One of the Sang Yum has broken silence, however, revealing Trungpa to be a cocaine addict, explaining, metabolically, how he could drink alcohol to extreme excess and remain mobile, if not ambulatory. This toxic lifestyle put an end to Trungpa’s earthly adventures at the age of 46 in 1987, but the shenanigans continued in the Kalapa Kingdom.

Trungpa’s love of intoxicants and an abundance of sexual encounters had spread throughout the group. Two teachers are currently incarcerated awaiting trial on charges of child molestation. Numerous others have been credibly accused of using their teacher status to extract sexual favors and obeisance from women and men. And Osel himself, the Sakyong, the monarch of his father’s spiritual kingdom, was outed in 2018 as the beneficiary of an entire system that, Weinstein-like, captured and sacrificed female followers to his drunken lust. Shambhala exhorts its followers to believe that their religion will someday take over the entire world and save it from a Moslem horde, which might seem a bizarre notion for modern American students to hold, but once you know that Trungpa was a rake and yet the founding saint of the religion, nothing is too crazy to believe. So just as sure as dogs come back and lick up their vomit, the Shambhala organization is moving with all deliberate speed to place Osel back on his throne, which, by the way, is ten feet high.

Asked about his father in a hagiographic video advertising Chogyam Trungpa’s “Crazy Wisdom” persona, Osel’s half-brother Gesar obliquely reveals that his father was a distant figure who gave him kingly respect, not fatherly affection: “My father respected me, and would listen to what I had to say. He treated me like a reincarnated lama -– like the king of another country.” Gesar has chosen not to act out the role of tulku, but wants to be a good Buddhist. Gesar’s half-brother Ashoka is the product of the loose sexual mores prevalent in Trungpa’s group, born to the extramarital union of Gesar’s mother Diana and Trungpa’s disciple Mitchell Levy. Ashoka has not donned Buddhist robes, currently is a staff reporter for the ACLU, and has enjoyed a series of plum jobs as a journalist, if his own webpage is accurate.

The son of Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche was offered a job that might have seemed attractive to many -– to take over the guidance of the spiritual flock amassed by his father, numbering into the thousands. But he was born in Italy to an Italian mother, his name is Yeshi Silvano Namkhai, and he got himself a western education and a job with IBM. In the movie, “My Reincarnation,” Silvano is depicted as a highly conflicted person. Silvano’s father is another distant type. The old lama grew up in a monastery from childhood, and although he was groomed to play father figure to thousands, and obviously does that job well, he didn’t bounce his kids on his knee while singing silly songs, or read them stories before bedtime. There’s this huge gap between father and son, and then the son is told that he’s a tulku. Silvano even goes off to Tibet and meets people who think he’s a reincarnation of their former guru. These people make it clear that they sacrificed much to care for his former incarnation. But now, what can he do for them? He doesn’t speak the language, he doesn’t know the rituals, he’s a hollow shell. In “My Reincarnation,” the narrative arc leads us to think that he’s actually beginning to warm to the role of spiritual leader, and since his father’s death, he has taken on the leadership role in the community; however, there are reasons to believe that his engagement is strictly limited by his own awareness of the limits to his personal commitment to the role.

For example, this April, Silvano was planning on giving a “transmission” of his father’s teachings, but only to those who have never received the transmission before (excluding all old students), and only in Italian (no translation provided). This is a strangely provisional approach to propagating a religion that I would venture to say springs more from Silvano’s respect for his father than from any inner impulse to teach Buddhism. Finding himself put upon by hundreds of people who say, “Don’t let your father’s lineage die,” he has given in, and is going to deliver a “transmission.” But such a transmission is more in the nature of a placebo than anything else. His father’s students are looking to Silvano to give them access to their own “true nature,” as his father taught. How can it be that they seriously believe they will receive it? Because they have psychologically transferred their power to the guru, and now need to get it back, even from a person who knows darn well he doesn’t have it.

Ironically, the Twelfth Trungpa tulku, whose eleventh incarnation as Chogyam Trungpa is lauded as the pre-eminent transmitter of the Kagyu lineage to the west, has been supplanted by his mere physical progeny, i.e., poor old little Osel. So now, the Twelfth Trungpa lives isolated in Tibet, neglected by his spiritual relatives. The Twelfth Trungpa has never been taught English, has begged on YouTube to have the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa translated into Tibetan so he can read them, and lives in an isolated monastery in Tibet. Meanwhile his American “relatives” give him the sop of faint praise, a stipend and some building funds, while the Sakyong parties like a rockstar, and a small coterie of insiders live well by exploiting the mass of students accumulated by the original “crazy yogi.” Memories are indeed short in the spiritual world, and the irony of the mistreatment of the Twelfth Trungpa tulku seems to elicit no comment from spiritual writers. While other Tibetan Buddhists rush to re-enthrone their deceased teachers and exalt them in their new life-form, Trungpa’s devotees frankly don’t seem to give a damn where Trungpa’s incarnation ended up. But it doesn’t matter, because Shambhala has simmered down to being what all religions are at bottom -- social clubs that profess a faith, collect donations and bequests, and issue insurance redeemable in the afterlife. American Tibetan Buddhists have been groomed to expect the tulku tradition to continue, but as Shambhala’s disappearance of the Twelfth Trungpa Tulku illustrates, the outlines of that tulku tradition are quite unclear. The fact that Shambhala students tolerate the conceptual sleight of hand that makes Trungpa disposable while all other tulkus are venerable tells you something about the effect of good mental programming. Get people to accept contradictory ideas early on, and eventually, they don’t even notice them.

Gullible students are a valued commodity, however, and they are not always present to make every modern tulku’s life comfortable. The tulku of Kalu Rinpoche, who had thousands of students worldwide, was routinely raped by multiple monks and nearly murdered by his tutor, a matter to which the young, victimized Tibetan boy testified on YouTube. It appears that such occurrences have not been unusual in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, and the current pampering that tulkus receive in the west is essentially an anomaly. Dzongsar reports that, “As a child I had just two handmade toys that I made myself. Worse, my tutor confined me to one room not just for a few weeks or months but for a whole year, so that even going to the toilet became a long awaited excursion. We also suffered regular verbal and physical abuse that went as far as making us bleed from the head and whipping us with nettles.”

PREDATOR-GURUS

Tulkus aren’t the only ones abused in this system. Some people pretend to be tulkus, and pay lamas to agree that they are tulkus, in order to wield mind-control powers over gullible students, who will accept any type of abuse from people who are called “Rinpoche,” the honorific that is properly applied only to reincarnated tulkus. Sogyal formerly-known-as-RInpoche is the scariest case of a self-annointed tulku disporting himself like a wolf among the spiritual sheep. Sogyal Lakar was born to a family of hereditary retainers for the legendary Nyingmapa tulku, Dudjom Rinpoche, and educated by Jesuits in India. His first efforts at establishing himself in the spiritual fields of America misfired, and after he was sued for sexual assault in California, he decamped for Britain, where his schtick found a warm reception. Still, nobody recognized him as an altruistically, intentionally reincarnated being until he began generating large numbers –- as in sales of his “Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,” ghostwritten by Andrew Harvey, a British writer who has published a number of books with spiritual themes, none of which sold anywhere near as well as what he wrote for Sogyal. The dynamic of branding has tremendous power in the spiritual field, where devotees will vacuum up all of the literature offered by a popular teacher, often in a first rush of enthusiasm, sometimes over a lifetime of deepening devotion. Besides publishing a runaway spiritual bestseller, Sogyal had other techniques for gathering disciples.

First, he got folks to call him Rinpoche. It may have seemed a harmless indulgence to the lamas who knew he was lying, which was all of them, given how much money he could spread around. An invitation from Sogyal to teach at a Rigpa center could provide a Tibetan lama with more money in a weekend than he would otherwise make all year. Sogyal also targeted the vulnerable for sexual and financial predation. He preyed upon the bereaved, using his bona fides as a Tibetan lama to enviegle his way into the confidence of those who had lost their loved ones. Sometimes women weeping for their lost loved ones were subjected to crass advances, or worse. He demanded sex and got it from the willing and the unwilling alike. Sogyal often threatened students with hell in the afterlife, a serious threat when leveled by a Rinpoche, whose actions are presumed to carry weight with the karmic authorities. When his desires for worldly comforts, food, and lavish amenities were not swiftly fulfilled, he struck students, sometimes causing serious injury, and always causing psychological pain.

A lawfirm hired by Rigpa Foundation, the organization Sogyal founded to spread Tibetan Buddhist teachings, advised Rigpa’s leadership to separate the corporation from Sogyal permanently, because it had discovered pervasive evidence not only of Sogyal’s direct misconduct, but of widespread enabling of abuse, denial of its existence, and retaliation against those who complained about the sick situation. A trustee of Rigpa, Patrick Gaffney, was banned from serving on the nonprofit board after the UK’s Charity Commission investigated, and found Gaffney “had knowledge of instances [of] sexual and physical abuse against students [and] failed to take appropriate action and is therefore responsible for misconduct … in administration of the charity.” Nor was Gaffney alone. After the entire affair had burst like a pustulent boil on the front pages of the world periodicals, a considerable group of high-level followers wrote a letter to the Board asking for Sogyal to be reinstated as Rigpa’s head. Sogyal’s madness had corrupted an entire organization.

SEVEN QUESTIONS FOR THE DALAI LAMA THAT MAY ILLUMINATE HIS DECISION NOT TO REINCARNATE

After this discussion, we might ask ourselves again why the Dalai Lama declared his own reincarnations at an end. First, he might have reflected on the psychological cost to the young men, like himself, who are recruited for these strange jobs without consent. Second, he might have considered whether creating tulkus serves any use in the modern world, where they aren’t needed to serve as the abbots for huge monasteries. Third, he could have reflected on how badly some of the new tulkus are doing, and have seen that when tulkus are created for no purpose, they may suffer from a lack of clear mission or purpose, perhaps for their entire lives. Fourth, he could have reflected on how the misuse of the tulku doctrine causes injury to everyone when lamas engage in sexual, physical and financial abuse of their students. Fifth, he could have reflected on how, since tulkus have no real purpose, the doctrine will tend to be used by pious frauds who adopt the name of tulku for selfish purposes, which will bring Tibetan Buddhism into discredit, and render it an inappropriate vehicle for sharing his message of compassion and humanism. Sixth, he could have considered how the Chinese and his other political opponents will make the next Dalai Lama’s selection a circus, and that he will not be around to make it turn out right. Seventh, he might have realized that the tradition of “recognizing” tulkus such as the Dalaia Lama, is inherently a vehicle subject to manipulation by deception, and should be put to rest before he dies.

Considering the first question, the Dalai Lama would certainly probably agree that kidnapping young boys early in life and grooming them to be abbots might have been somewhat functional in Tibet’s feudal theocracy, but there’s no need for that sacrifice anymore. The Chinese have utterly altered the society, and the centers of culture are no longer isolated monasteries lodged in craggy mountain ranges, requiring the stabilizing belief in an enduring local ruler who reincarnates to maintain the ritual practices that assure good fortune on earth. Estimates made by China in the 1950s placed 24% of Tibet’s male population in monasteries, approximately 120,000 monks in 2,700 monasteries. (M.C. Goldstein, Tibetan Buddhism and Mass Monasticism) The Chinese have reduced the monastic population to 46,000, still a substantial number, but due to Han immigration from China, there are now 3.18 Million people in Tibet, so their influence on society is no longer vital. In truth and in fact, continued fidelity to the image of the Dalai Lama as Lord Chenrezig, the God King of Tibet, while a source of comfort to many of the faithful no doubt, seems unlikely to bring substantial benefit to the Land of Snows.

Second, the Dalai Lama could see that making tulkus is not in any way necessary to the propagation of the Buddhist Dharma, as he has formulated it, which is a form of non-sectarian humanism with an emphasis on compassion and optimism, and a meditation practice founded in “mindfulness,” a practice style that is more common to Thailand and Burma than Tibet. The colorful gods and demons who ruled Tibet with splendor and terror are not making the jump from their land of origin to the west, and for good reason. The Tibetan sorcerers would contend with bad weather by casting spells, legendarily standing on a mountaintop going toe to toe with demons, being battered with hail and snow to fight them with the magic of the Lotus-Born Guru. Ah, those were the days, and they’re gone forever. Even the staunchest Tibetan Buddhist doesn’t think we’re going to exorcise our way out of global warming. Just as we have no place for sorcerers, so we have no need for tulkus. If gurus want to pass their students on to their children, there’s nothing to stop them –- they don’t need to pretend their children are divine. Zen teachers have passed temple abbot positions down through a hereditary system for centuries. The famed Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s father was a Zen master, and he ultimately took over the family temple after serving elsewhere, and before traveling to establish Zen Center San Francisco, and the Tassajara and Green Gulch monasteries.

Third, considering whether it is good for the tulkus to be created to live in a world that doesn’t need them, he has probably seen enough of the results. There was a time, from the 1970s into the first decade of this century, when there was a lot of enthusiasm for traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Americans and Europeans were excited by the idea that tulkus might be born into American and European Buddhist families, and indeed, they have been recognized. But the crop has pretty much rotted in the basket. As we’ve discussed above, these young men are lost, having been inducted into a system that no longer exists except for sentimental purposes. If they take themselves seriously, they risk becoming corrupted by an idea in which they have no basis for real belief. None of these boys “remembers their past life.” Consider the strangeness of the Twelfth Trungpa’s plea to be able to read the works of the Eleventh Trungpa in Tibetan. For heaven’s sake, the whole purpose of being an intentionally reborn being was to remember the wisdom from your past lives! If you need to read books to learn this stuff, where’s the inherent wisdom? So being called a tulku is actually just a ticket to becoming disconnected from reality.

Not only Tibetans can be afflicted with the tulku delusion. Plenty of westerners are afflicted by the belief that they attained wisdom in past lives and are here to dispense it. For example, a couple of years ago, I ran into a man in his fifties whom I have known for thirty years. A fringe player in the Oregon Buddhist community, he was the big fellow with the deficit of smarts who tagged along, drove cars, hauled loads, smiled, bowed, and basked in every ounce of love that ever came his way from the lamas. Unfortunately, one of them heedlessly told him that he was actually a tulku. Ever since then, this poor man has felt cheated out of the assistance that he has been lead to believe tulkus should receive. He desires fervently to be recognized by others as a saintly man, so much so that he’s become lonely, isolated, resentful, and frankly lost. Stories like these are far from uncommon, because many lamas will use this sort of flattery to extract favors from the gullible, who allow themselves to be paid for labor and devotion in false praise. Like a fetish that gives pleasure merely from being handled and gazed upon, the delusion that one possesses inherent spiritual eminence feeds a spiritual narcissism that is no less toxic than the worldly variety.

Fourth, there have been enough stories of recognized and unrecognized tulkus abusing their students, and the Dalai Lama has not been pleased by any of them. He hasn’t said much about them, either, but that is probably because the massive pedophile scandal swallowing the Catholic Church dominates the airwaves, and a compliant press never asks the Dalai Lama anything embarrassing. But he has to see that the conduct of Sogyal, Trungpa and Osel Mukpo has injured their students and besmirched the Buddhist doctrine. So he may not say much about it, but he certainly has it in mind.

Fifth, the continued existence of the tulku tradition corrupts lamas into selling recognitions, and results in the devaluation of the entire concept of Tibetan Buddhism, when gauche American clowns ape the ecclesiastical elite. The absurd “recognition” of Steven Seagal, now recognized as one of Hollywood’s merry band of celebrity rapists, is a classic example. Seagal has always been a self-impressed blowhard whose primary gift is his enormous body, his ability to use it to kill people, and his willingness to display that skill in dreadful movies where the body count is the measure of Seagal’s star achievement. The same lama who recognized Seagal also recognized a woman whose given name was Alice Zeoli, who renamed herself Catherine Burroughs and became a Washington DC psychic catering to the spiritual element in the nation’s capitol, then snagged a tulkuship and become Akon Jetsun Norbu Lhamo, aka Jetsunma, aka “The Buddha from Brooklyn,” as Martha Sherrill’s book on the woman is entitled. Zeoli fled Maryland after being charged with beating one of the nuns in her compound, and has found an appropriate perch in the land where anything might be true –- Sedona, Arizona.

Sixth, the Chinese are wily adversaries who have been playing politics with Tibet for a couple of millennia. They have conquered the land, they are subjugating the people and flooding the region with the Han ethnic Chinese settlers, and they regulated Buddhism in Tibet as they do in China. Temples require licenses to operate, their doctrines are subject to censorship, and the monastic population has been greatly reduced, initially by outright murder and imprisonment, and today by the imposition of coercive forces usually less extreme. The Chinese have always exercised as much control as possible over Tibetan reincarnations. The Panchen Lama’s latest rebirth was dictated by the Chinese. There are two Karmapa tulkus, because the Chinese chose one, and a Tibetan faction chose another, and both have continued to represent themselves as the Seventeenth Karmapa. Tai Situ, a high Kagyu lama, has made himself very comfortable as a creator of fake tulkus for power and profit, and he has close Chinese connections. Thus, the manipulation of the next Dalai Lama’s birth by the Chinese is a foregone conclusion.

Seventh, death makes fools of us all when we try to exercise control from the grave. It just doesn’t work. We control the earth while we live, and then death takes our power and hands in to the next generation. Chogyam Trungpa thought he could control the future. He made his intentions crystal clear, and it wasn’t to spend his next incarnation as the Twelfth Trungpa in a remote monastery in Tibet, uneducated in the English language, and ignored by the students of his Eleventh incarnation. He trusted his boyfriend Thomas Rich, a lascivious bisexual with whom Trungpa may have had intimacies, to serve as his Regent, and trusted his lawyer, Alexander Halpern, to fulfill his intentions. But Halpern is a practical man, who provides legal advice to the Dalai Lama and many other Tibetan lamas, and Halpern unloaded the bad press associated with Trungpa’s name deftly and permanently, cutting the Twelfth Trungpa out of the action by changing the Articles of Incorporation, structuring authority around Osel Mukpo, and changing the name of the corporation from Vajradhatu to Shambhala. Everything is now precisely as the Eleventh Trungpa did not want it to be. He is on the outside, his blood kin on the inside. The Dalai Lama can see these dynamics could afflict his own succession. The Fifteenth Dalai Lama could be chosen by China, and put to work undoing the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s life work. Questions arise, as well. Presumably, the Fifteenth Dalai Lama would be the ruler of the Tibetan Government in Exile, and from that position, he could declare the existence of Tibet null and void. The world would not shift in its course, if he did.

Tibet is in fact, already a historic relic. As the source of virtually all of the rivers that pour through China and India, it was inevitable that the Chinese would take over what they saw as an unoccupied square on the chessboard of the Great Game. The fantasies of Tibetan Buddhism were like rarefied species that live only on high mountains. As the Tibetans rightly feared when they left, their culture has not proven particularly useful to them or to the other inhabitants of the world beyond the mountains that ring the Land of Snows. Because this is the way of impermanence. Things arise based upon the confluence of conditions, and they disappear along with those conditions. The conditions that gave rise to the tulku tradition are gone, and with them all need for the tradition. The Dalai Lama has recognized this. Whether American Buddhists will is an open question.
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Re: Twilight of the Tulkus, by Charles Carreon

Post by Tara »

What I am concerned with here is that the Tibetan “tulkus” not be allowed to get away with the incredible spiritual crimes they perpetrated on the Tibetan people throughout many centuries, and the rest of the world for the last century, and continuing to the present day, without experiencing severe censure for their crimes. It is nowhere near good enough for the Dalai Lama to say, “Hey, us Tulkus -- been there, done that! It was all made up anyway.” No. If you believe in karma -- and even if you don’t, you still believe in causes and consequences in this life -- they perpetrated an elitist spiritual fraud on their people, and now on the larger world. Believing their deceptions causes severe, continuing injury to our karma.

Elitists arrogate authority to themselves, asserting power as if divinely chosen to lead us. Why do they have so much money and power? It can’t be they've stolen it from the people. But this is exactly what they have done. "Behind every great fortune lies a great crime," as the aphorism drawn from Balzac goes, and the Tibetan oligarchs fled with all the gold their yaks and dzo could haul, you bet. These are the actual facts of life, and we all know them. Why should we the people venerate criminals who predate on us, and make fools of us at the same time -- leading us about by the nose with demonic fairytales?

I am here going to make as complete a list of their “spiritual” crimes as I can, and ask that they be held responsible for them. These Tibetan “tulkus” induced people to entrust them with worldly wealth and power for spiritual reasons, based on spiritual “truths” that weren’t true. They fostered the belief that “tulkus” could intentionally reincarnate, and use the power and knowledge they accumulated through many lifetimes to the benefit of all beings, in this world and myriad other imagined realms. Where was the slightest iota of benefit ever given to the Tibetan people from a “tulku”? All the real benefit in money, food, land, and power went the other direction, from the people to the “tulkus.” What the “tulkus” disseminated to the people was lies and craziness. They wasted everyone’s precious human body, and precious human minds that could have been used to see the world clearly, and the actual causes of suffering. They planted mistaken ideas in followers' minds. If you believe in karma throughout many lifetimes, those mistaken ideas will extend their time in samsara. Certainly it has extended our time in samsara in this lifetime.

They are increasing confusion, superstition, and “primitive beliefs about reality" by promoting beliefs like these:

• The universe is influenced by gods and demons who can be controlled through magic spells.
• We must kill “enemies of the dharma,” or convert them at the point of a sword.
• Special people hide texts in rocks and caves that will be discovered by "tulkus" just when we need them.
• If we have a bad life, or have birth defects, like blindness, dumbness or lameness, it’s all our fault.
• Humans can be “emanations” of deities.
• We can build temples with the help of nature entities.
• Special people associated with "tulkus” can tell if someone is a reincarnation of a deity or not.
• If we don’t eat a piece of skin from the thighbone trumpet we are making, it will lack the power to summon demons.
• Mt. Meru is the center of the universe, around which is nothing but void.
• Hell realms actually exist.
• We will be judged after we die on the basis of our so-called “good” and “bad” deeds, interpreted, of course, according to their doctrine.
• Everyone’s identity, “I” and “ego” is a mistake.
• The real is unreal, and the unreal is actually real.
• Everything is “void.”
• The “Buddhas” can save us.
• It is good to worship ferocious and bloodthirsty beings.
• We can attain magical powers that will allow us to go anywhere, assume any shape, and control all natural laws.
• Existence is ideal, and that the name of a thing is the same as the thing itself. Therefore, all we have to do is meditate and imagine that it's happening, and magically, it does!
• We can “become” the form of a deity or demon.
• If a “tulku” says something, it must be true.
• Learning a bunch of nonsense, gibberish, and superstition in a so-called “monk college” is an accomplishment equivalent to our Ph.Ds!
• Punishment, even to torture and mutilation, and extracting of eyeballs, is just and right in any situation they decide.
• It is good to enslave our children so we can pay taxes to the lamas.
• It is good to abandon all the women in our society, and take care of only the men.
• It is good to put ourselves in dark rooms and not move for three years.
• We can get rid of our crimes of murdering animals for food by making prayers for them.
• Dreams can tell the future.
• Our hallucinations for fame and profit are meaningful.
• Being born a female is an inferior rebirth.
• Taking boys from their mothers to put them in monasteries with men who are going to rape them is good for them.
• Gold is holy, and golden religious items the holiest.
• We should worship wrathful beings who devour body parts, stand on writhing victims or corpses, and are busy engaged in making holy hell.
• "Pure” Tibetans are better than people of other “races.”
• It is inspiring to be surrounded by wrathful, violent, bloody images everywhere we go.
• A baby can be born on a lotus in a lake and be eight years old.
• If our knee hurts, we can heal it by touching the deity's knee in a picture, and then touching our own knee.
• Anyone who is rich and powerful, whoever they might be (Napoleon, The Queen of England, William Gladstone) is a Buddha.
• Certain women are “special” because they are the incarnation of a primeval pig.
• It is good to worship and give food to demons that cause disease, or who have flayed their own sons, or eat human brains and blood from a skullcup.
• There are dragons in the earth who watch over hidden treasures.
• It can be a good idea to make blood sacrifices to ghosts.
• Every house has a house god who must be given a special seat, and whose movements must be constantly attended to, or else penalties and elaborate rituals must be paid. (e.g., when a god is at the door, no bride or bridegroom can pass unless an image of a horse or yak is made with wheat flour; then on this is placed skin and hair of various animals; then offer tea and beer; then invite the house god to sit on this image; then unhinge the door and carry it outside; then bride or bridegroom can pass.)
• Padmasambhava, who brutally killed numerous “enemies of the dharma,” who goes around with a trident stuck in his armpit topped with 3 skulls in various states of decay, representing the king of death, attended by two wives who offer him skullcups of blood and pieces of human corpses, is a saint.
• The excrement of “tulkus” should be eaten as medicine.
• A turnip can defeat demons.
• Eating a piece of paper that has a special charm written on it will cure disease.
• We can drink washings of a mirror image of magical letters written on paper, and it will cure disease.
• Wearing a charm around our neck, or an amulet filled with a piece of a "tulku’s" robe, or peacock feathers, or kusa grass, will bring spiritual benefit.
• Placing a piece of paper with the right words written on it on our roof will prevent lightning attacks.
• We can avoid getting hit by a bullet by writing an upside down “D” with the blood of a wounded man, then wrapping it in red silk, and wearing it around our neck.
• We can ward off animal attacks by writing a magic letter (ZAH) on a miniature knife, and carrying it around.
• We can prevent a fight with our family members by writing a magic letter (RE) on a piece of paper and wrapping it up with the hairs of a dog, goat or sheep.
• We can prevent bad cooking smells by writing a magic letter (GAU) on a piece of paper with the blood of a bull-calf, and placing it in the kitchen.
• We can cure cholera, vomiting, or cramps by writing a magic letter (ZA) on a piece of paper with the feces of a black horse, then folding it in a piece of snakeskin, and wearing it around our neck.
• We can prevent a dogbite by drawing a picture of a muzzled, chained dog, with a thunderbolt and some mantras, and wearing it around our neck.
• We can kill an enemy by (1) making a three-headed axe charm with the heads of a bull, snake and pig, and (2) putting in the pig’s mouth an image of our enemy made from wheat flour, whose upper body has been painted black, and the lower part has been painted red, and (3) drawing planets and constellations, and the claws of a garuda, wings of an eagle, and a snake’s tail, (4) hanging a bow and arrow on the left, and an owl’s feather and a piece of poison tree, (5) surrounding this image with red swords on all sides, and (6) while sitting in meditation, reciting a curse that details all the various effects these actions will have on our enemy, the axe obviously cleaving the heart of our enemy in two.
• An enemy can be tortured unto death by sticking copper pins into a clay image made in his or her likeness.
• Flying prayer flags will make all our dreams come true.
• Offering all our food and wealth to images of the Buddha will bring good luck.
• If we hold festivals on the 10th and 15th of every month, they will be in special harmony with the universe.
• Chanting a certain mantra will make a mother conceive a boy as opposed to the ever unwanted girl.
• Spending all our time in meditation will benefit beings in the real world.
• Fasting, or celibacy, makes us “pure”.
• A lama can imbibe the divine essence of a deity by attaching a string to a statue and holding it over his heart, making the divine spirit pass through the string like a telegraph wire, and turning him into the deity.
• Lamas can tell our future, including that we will be a loser for life, and cursing our entire lifetime.
• Various days of the month are lucky or unlucky.
• We can employ a devil-dancer to ward off sickness.
• We can employ armies of lamas to read scriptures in our house in order to avoid certain harms.
• We can divine the future by reading the best of three card-pulls, or throwing a black seed on a diagram consisting of 21 squares (The 21 Taras), or throwing dice.
• The lamas can determine our future rebirths by throwing dice on a chessboard where each square is said to represent a certain phase of existence, or one of the six regions of rebirth. (Here, they sometimes load the dice so that our result is particularly bad, so we have to pay more money to do more rites.)
• A lama can stop the sun in its path.
• Burning incense, offering alcohol, beating a drum and banging cymbals, will summon demons to good purpose.
• At death, a lama can extract our soul and send it to Amitabha’s or anyone else's paradise.
• Our grandparents caused our death, therefore our relatives must take a sheep’s head and earth from many places, and put on our body to avert the evil.
• When a person dies on a certain day of the week (Friday), their family must stuff many-colored things in a leather bag and hurl it towards the northwest, then place a horse or serpent skull on the corpse.
• If the person died under a certain star, an ass or goat’s skull must be placed on the corpse.
• When a person dies, their corpse should be tied into a sitting posture, placed in the family house, and all the relatives be invited to party and drink for several days, all the while offering the corpse food and drink, muttering prayers and turning prayer wheels, in order to expel the death demon.
• Lamas have “second-sight,” that allows them to see that we have gone to hell, so they can advise our family to pay for more prayers and services.
• A mask of the person who has died needs to be made, then burned in a butter lamp, in order to expel the death demon from the house, and that the lamas can tell from the color of the flame what our next rebirth will be.
• Every spirit in hell can be released by paying enough money to the lamas.
• The ghost of a dead person can be expelled by getting a large number of lamas to gather outside our house to (1) make a magic circle with a triangle inside, around which sticks are piled, and also a hundred fragments of every kind of food, stone, tree-twigs, leaves, poison, bits of dress, and money, (2) then they pour oil over it and set it on fire, (3) while muttering spells, and (4) throwing a piece of paper into the fire with the dead person’s name on it.
• Lamas don’t need to have these kinds of death services performed for them, because they are already on the right path.
• The Dog star Sirius is a saint dwelling in the heavens in deep meditation, who turns water into ambrosia.
• The “bad luck of people” can be transferred to a scapegoat who is then sacrificed for the good of the country.
• Every new year, each household in a village should make a dough image to which they stick pieces of cloth and money according to their means, and that when a lama carries it out to a place “where four paths meet”, and throws it in the dirt, this gets rid of the village’s “demons of ill-luck.”
• Doing “mystery plays” of stories that no one actually knows the meaning of, is useful.
• Having some guys dress up in devil, skeleton, ghost, and monster outfits, carry all manner of skullcups and weapons, and dance around to cacophonous music, while shrieking and howling at lamas who drive them back to commemorate an ancient practice of human sacrifice and cannibalism, will secure good luck for the new year.
• Making an effigy of a human victim into which are placed fake organs and blood, and then stabbing it with a mystic phurba, chopping off its limbs, slitting its breast open to extract the bleeding heart, lungs and intestines, then throwing the pieces to the demons and crowd to eat, is so much better than doing actual human sacrifice and cannibalism, except that the human sacrifice and cannibalism is still there when they insert actual flesh from corpses of criminals into the image.
• Blessings come from worshipping blood-drinking demons.
• Invoking the image of tearing out the hearts of evil spirits and “utterly” exterminating them is a inspiring.
• Cutting pieces of our own flesh off and throwing them into a fire to honor a deity is a good idea.
• Giving away the wealth of our country, including our wife, children and even our own eyes, to greedy people who want to make us their slaves, is actually a way to collect merit. (The Prince of Charity)
• A mother can curse her daughter into taking rebirth as a deer who is then murdered, and in another cursed rebirth, the husband can beat his wife to death. (Nan-sa)
• We should do whatever a lama tells us, even if it is to throw ourselves off a cliff.
• Learning to read and write is bad.
• Western medicine is bad.
• You can read all of these ideas in Laurence Waddell’s “The Buddhism of Tibet” and Ekai Kawaguchi’s “Three Years in Tibet.” I noticed that a lot of their magic involves writing a spell and putting it around our neck. The metaphor of having their so-called powers tied around our neck all the time has slave-resonance.

These ideas never did anyone any good, and did not contribute in any way to the lessening of suffering in this world; quite the opposite, these ideas increased the suffering in this world.

Any praise that has ever been given to these Tibetan lamas has thus been completely mistaken. They are not Buddhists; they are not compassionate; they do not have the secrets to our psychological health; they don’t know anything about the real universe; and they are certainly not all-knowing, or enlightened. They are violent, primitive beings who are steeped in delusion. Are they now going to lead us into the “New Age”? Tibetan Buddhism as a means of enlightenment is a cultural myth built on sand steeped with blood, bones, body parts, and human suffering. It should be utterly rejected by anyone wishing to have a better world.

-- Tara Carreon
Admin
Posts: 127
Joined: Fri Mar 29, 2019 4:56 am

Re: Twilight of the Tulkus, by Charles Carreon

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Update to the original statement that two top-level Shambhala teachers were incarcerated awaiting trial. Michael Smith pled guilty, and was sentenced to twenty years of confinement. Bill Karelis, the second top-level teacher, has gotten his trial date postponed into "spring 2021" (sloppy journalism) for coronavirus reasons, with the local DA raising no objection to the postponement.
wrote: Ex-Boulder Shambhala member pleads guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child
Posted: Mar 4, 2020 / 04:09 PM MST / Updated: Mar 4, 2020 / 04:11 PM MST
Michael Smith

BOULDER, Colo. (KDVR) — A former member of a Boulder Buddhist organization pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and attempted sexual assault on a child, the 20th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.

Michael Smith, 55, met the victim when he was staying at her parents’ house in 1997. The victim was 13 years old at the time. According to the DA’s office, Smith groomed the victim and “subjected her to sexual contact for a number of years.”

Smith and the victim’s parents were members of Shambhala, a Tibetan Buddhist organization.

In 1998, Smith trapped the victim in a small closet and attempted to have intercourse with her, the DA’s office said.

The victim contacted the Boulder Police Department.

“The victim’s parents decided not to provide the name of the defendant to the Boulder Police Department and dealt with the ongoing sexual abuse within the Shambhala community,” the DA’s office said in a written statement.

In 2019, the victim again reported the abuse to BPD after police arrested William Karelis, another former member of the Boulder Shambhala, on suspicion of sexual assault on a child.

Smith was then arrested.

“The District Attorney’s Office is committed to fighting for victims of sexual abuse. This defendant sexually assaulted the victim for years. Even with the passage of time, sex offenses often cause lasting trauma for the victims. I appreciate the response and efforts of the Boulder Police Department and our staff. Their hard work allowed us to secure the right outcome in this case,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said.

Police said a second woman said she was victimized by Smith when she was 11 years old at a Buddhist retreat center in Barnet, Vermont. That case is being investigated by law enforcement in Vermont.

Smith’s sentencing is scheduled for May 6. He faces between 15 and 25 years in prison.
Former Boulder Shambhala member sentenced to 20 years in prison on child sex assault case
By MITCHELL BYARS | mbyars@prairiemountainmedia.com | Boulder Daily Camera
PUBLISHED: June 23, 2020 at 5:22 p.m. | UPDATED: June 23, 2020 at 5:23 p.m.
The former member of Boulder’s Shambhala Center who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing a child in the late 1990s was sentenced to 20 years in prison Tuesday.

Michael Smith, 55, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault and attempted sexual assault on a child in March, with attorneys agreeing on a sentence of 15 to 25 years in prison.

Smith was originally set for sentencing on June 5, but at the end of that hearing Smith asked about trying to withdraw his guilty plea, leading Boulder District Judge Bruce Langer to delay the sentencing.

Smith ultimately decided not to ask to withdraw the plea, and reaffirmed the decision Tuesday when asked by Langer.

Prosecutors asked for 25 years in prison while Smith and his defense attorney Steve Louth asked for 15, but Langer ultimately split the difference and issued a 20-year prison sentence on the first-degree assault count followed by five years of mandatory parole.

Langer also issued a three-year prison sentence on the attempted sex assault charge that will run concurrent to the 20-year sentence.

“Our office appreciates the victim’s strength in coming forward and disclosing what this defendant did to her when she was a child,” Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in a statement. “The trauma inflicted upon children who are sexually assaulted can often remain with them for their entire lives. It is because of this victim’s courage, and the excellent work by the Boulder Police Department, that this outcome was reached.

“The Boulder Police Department worked hard and put together a very strong case, which led to the defendant’s guilty plea and today’s sentence. Justice was delayed, but not denied. For other kids, and for our community, this is the right outcome.”

‘I was a child, and the adults around me failed’
Prosecutors allege Smith sexually abused a girl multiple times starting in 1997.

According to an arrest affidavit, the girl lived in Boulder and her family was heavily involved in the Shambhala community. Her parents took her to a Shambhala retreat in Vermont every year, which is where she said she first met Smith when she was 9 or 10 years old.

Police said the girl’s family often rented out rooms in their house to other Shambhala members, and Smith lived at the house for two to three years. During that time, the woman told police Smith sexually abused her numerous times, performing oral sex on her, forcing her to touch his privates, and kissing her breasts.

The girl first told a family friend about the abuse in 1998 and then told her parents, according to a police report.

According to the report, a Buddhist teacher told the girl’s family to have Smith enter a “restorative justice” program rather than go to police. Smith entered treatment and also paid for the girl to go to therapy.

The family told police in 1998 they did not want to pursue charges.

Langer said that while it is not unusual for sex assault allegations to come out after the actual incident, he did say this case was unusual in that Smith already admitted to some of the conduct and went through treatment without a criminal case.

Louth has repeatedly said he wished the case had been prosecuted in 1998 and that Smith would have been sentenced differently back then, but Langer said he was not sure that would be the case.

“We don’t know what the real effect is on the passage of time,” Langer said.

But the victim, who listened in on the June 5 hearing but on Tuesday chose to address the court, said it was not her fault that a case was not filed 25 years ago.

She said it was disappointing to hear members of the public speaking on Smith’s behalf, many of whom said the knew about the incident at the time and some of whom made comments about the victim’s looks and behavior.

“I heard character witnesses say they knew and didn’t do anything,” she said. “I was a child, and the adults around me failed.”

Additional allegations
The victim said she came forward not for herself or to see Smith punished, but to protect other girls who might be victimized.

“It is clear to me the defendant takes no responsibility for his actions,” she said.

Langer also said he was worried about Smith’s level of acceptance.

“I do have significant concerns that Mr. Smith, even now, after his treatment, doesn’t fully get it, and isn’t fully owning up to what happened,” he said.

Langer said he watched an interview Smith gave to police in which, “the general sense that one gets is Mr. Smith was minimizing this conduct, that he was victim blaming.”

The judge pointed to two statements in particular in which Smith said there was “no stopping (the victim)” and about the victim never using their “safe word.”

“I just don’t know what to say about that,” Langer said. “It’s hard to imagine anyone saying that about sexual contact with a child.”

Boulder Senior Deputy District Attorney Laura Kinde also pointed out another woman has come forward since the sentencing hearing and accused Smith of similar conduct in Pennsylvania eight years ago.

Prosecutors said information on the Pennsylvania case was sent to local authorities so they could make a decision on charges.
Another former Boulder Shambhala member accused of sexual assault on a child. This is in addition to another woman who accused Smith of inappropriate conduct in Vermont in the 90s, though local authorities did not pursue that case.

“We want to thank the survivor for coming forward and reporting what happened to her over 20 years ago,” Kinde said in a statement. “In doing so, we were able to discover other young girls the defendant had victimized and stop the defendant from perpetrating sexual abuse on any additional young girls. The Boulder Police Department did an outstanding job with this investigation and because of that we were able to secure a conviction and sentence that will protect the community for years to come.”

While neither case has resulted in charges, Langer said the law does allow him to take the allegations into account when sentencing.

“They’re strikingly similar, and that’s very concerning,” he said.

While Langer limited comments at this hearing because of the June 5 hearing, he did allow Smith to address the court again. Smith again pointed out he had already gone through treatment in 1998 and said 15 years was “a tremendous amount of time for something that happened 25 years ago.”

“I am deeply regretful,” Smith said. “I did admit what I did back then, I feel a tremendous amount of remorse that is tearing through my heart, and that is the truth.”

But in response to Smith’s repeated plea of, “What more could I have done?” the victim had a response.

“He could have taken responsibility, he could have really gotten help,” she said. “He could have never hurt me.”
Former Shambhala teacher has Boulder sex assault pushed back to spring of 2021
By MITCHELL BYARS | mbyars@prairiemountainmedia.com | Boulder Daily Camera
July 14, 2020 at 2:36 p.m.

A former Shambhala teacher accused of sexually assaulting a girl he was mentoring had his trial pushed back to the spring of 2021 due to concerns about the impact of the coronavirus.

William Karelis, 72, in December pleaded not guilty to sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust and was set for a seven-day trial starting Sept. 21.

But at a remote motions hearing Tuesday, Karelis’ attorney Paul McCormick asked Boulder District Judge Bruce Langer that the trial be delayed due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus. McCormick said some witnesses have said they are “very, very worried about their health and testifying in September.”

“What we want to have is a trial that is set out far enough where there is a reasonable likelihood that, it’s not going to be over, but that the juror and witness concerns are significantly abated,” McCormick said.

Senior Deputy District Attorney Laura Kinde said the victim has objected to a continuance, but said that the Boulder District Attorney’s office would be “amenable” to a delay given the concerns surrounding the coronavirus.

Langer said he and Boulder District Judge Thomas Mulvahill, who will oversee the trial, were “reluctant” to delay the trial. Langer said his impression was that the Colorado Supreme Court would not be extending its order halting jury trials up until August.

“I’m frankly torn, because I have people who are screaming for their trials, and people who want to continue their trials,” Langer said.

But Langer said that since prosecutors were not objecting to a continuance, he would grant it.

“If the people don’t object and Mr. Karelis is willing to waive speedy trial, then I will grant it,” Langer said.

Karelis, who is out on bond and appeared remotely, did waive his speedy trial rights to accommodate a new trial date, and Langer set a new seven-day trial starting March 1.

According to an affidavit, Karelis met the girl in the 1990s when she was about 8 through Shambhala, when Karelis was assigned to her as her meditation instructor.

The girl, who was living in Denver at the time, spent time getting to know Karelis and told police in the first few years she spent a lot of one-on-one meditation time with him.

According to the affidavit, things began to escalate in 2000 when the girl was about 13, and she began taking the bus with her parents’ permission to spend weekends at Karelis’ Boulder house for teachings.

The girl would sleep in a downstairs room at Karelis’ home, but told police Karelis would come into her room after his wife fell asleep and would perform oral sex on her.

The girl told police this happened 10 times over about 18 months.

Investigators did not become aware of the case until August 2018, when the named victim — now in her 30s — told a friend about the incident and the friend reported it to Boulder police.

Karelis resigned from Shambhala in 2009. When he was arrested in February, Shambhala’s board released a statement noting the organization had conducted two “Care and Conduct complaint procedures” in 2002 and 2008, initiated by women who alleged Karelis had behaved inappropriately toward them.

His teaching and meditation instructor credentials were suspended in 2004 and revoked in 2008 after he failed to comply with the Care and Conduct procedure, according to the statement.
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