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Worries as Buddhist sect spreads in North - Residential centre to be opened
The Journal (UK)/January 26, 1999

By Gareth Walsh

A Buddhist sect at the centre of complaints from concerned families is seeking to strengthen its North powerbase.

Followers of the New Kadampa Tradition, once linked with allegations of a plot to overthrow the Dalai Lama, already boast a string of UK properties including two country houses, one of them their headquarters and home of their spiritual leader.

Overseas worshippers of the deity Dorje Shugden have been questioned over the brutal murder and mutilation of one of the Nobel Prize-winning Dalai Lama's closest confidants and two other monks.

And devotees in the NKT have been accused of putting family relationships under strain as their acolytes follow a fast track into the faith.

The NKT is now planning to open a new residential centre in Newcastle. In addition to the sect's HQ in a neo-gothic mansion in Ulverston, Cumbria, the NKT has an established residential centre in Milton Street, Darlington, County Durham, and a Georgian mansion near York.

It already holds teachings in 16 other North-East towns or cities, and plans new sessions in Hexham, Northumberland, and Whitley Bay, North Tyneside.

Ian Howarth, of the support group the Cult Information Centre, said: "We have certainly had complaints about NKT activities, and we are very concerned about them."

The centre has been approached by families and friends of some NKT members worried about personality changes among a number of people who join the group putting strain on relationships.

Concerns have also been expressed about the depth of commitment members make within a relatively short time of contacting the NKT, and about the group's opposition to the Dalai Lama.

The NKT is believed to be Britain's fastest-growing Buddhist sect with more than 3,000 members, and a publishing business.

Jim Belither, NKT secretary, says his organisation as a whole is no longer involved in the Dorje Shugden controversy, although he admits individual members may be.

"Individuals are free to be linked, but as an organisation, we are not involved."

Of complaints to the Cult Information Centre he said: "Sometimes people can get over-enthusiastic about the NKT, but then that rubs off, and they get back to everyday life. It's true some go over the top - but we try to encourage them to have a sensible long-term view.

"I do not believe the criticisms are borne out when you look at them properly. We do not encourage the break-up of families. We encourage people to keep up contact with families. "We do say we alter minds, because we believe all problems arise from the mind. But that comes from individuals, from their own side, not brainwashing." Power Play Plot

Were monks pawns in power play plot? - As an espionage thriller it would stretch the limits of credibility. But, as Gareth Walsh reports, truth may be stranger than fiction in the story of a North-based sect.

Centre of attention: Conishead Priory, once a home for Durham miners, is now the base of the New Kadampa Tradition.

AMID mature woodland, at the end of a driveway running through Cumbrian pasture, nestles Conishead Priory.

For more than 20 years the former Durham miners' home has played host to an unlikely resident, Tibetan Buddhist monk Geshe Kelsang.

>From the mansion, the New Kadampa Tradition, of which Kelsang is spiritual head, has spread its influence across the UK overseeing the setting up of residential centres for devotees, and is now pouring hundreds of thousands of pounds into overseas groups.

Among its latest targets is Newcastle, where the NKT hopes to open a permanent centre.

On a superficial level the charity looks like an increasingly successful fringe religious group playing to the spiritual dissatisfaction with '90s materialist society - though with a few hiccups along the way.

The NKT's total assets almost doubled from £141,555 in 1993 to £228,663 in 1997. From an income of £367,042 around 65pc went in charitable donations, much to its centres in the UK and overseas.

In its literature, the NKT asks supporters to give interest-free loans, tax-free deeds of covenant or gifts of more than £250, or to be included in supporters' wills. The purchase of NKT centres is largely facilitated by using residents' rents to cover mortgages.

The NKT supporters have been offered, and accepted, more than £90,000 in grants from English Heritage to renovate their Cumbria headquarters, although only £15,718 has so far been taken up.

South Lakeland District Council has previously taken enforcement action following unauthorised work on the grade two-listed priory but says the owners are now complying with regulations.

On a more profound level however, the NKT may have inadvertently stepped into a Communist plot affecting the lives of millions of Tibetans.

Despite the tranquillity of the priory, renamed the Manjushri Centre, all has not been well in Buddhaland. For not only has Kelsang been at odds with the Nobel Prize-winning Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetans exiled by the invasion of their homeland, he may also have unwittingly played straight into the hands of Chinese agents aiming to sow havoc among the Lama's followers.

The quarrel between the two holy men broke out over the worship of a centuries-old Tibetan deity Dorje Shugden. The Dalai Lama insists Shugden worship is crass, commercial and damaging. Kelsang says the Lama is trampling human rights by trying to ban an important religious practice.

Had their dispute been played out in India, seat of Tibet's exile government, it would have made at most a few column inches in the West. It was when NKT supporters - Western Buddhists - took to European streets that the schism made headlines.

Following protests in May 1997 the Dalai Lama eventually entered the fray and criticised Dorje Shugden worshippers for praying to the deity for success in business.

Concern about Shugden supporters grew following the bloody murder of the Dalai Lama's close friend, 70-year-old Lobsang Gyatso,and two young monks, a few hundred yards from the Lama's northern Indian home.

Shugdens in India were questioned about the killings but were not charged.

The NKT says it has stopped its campaign against the Dalai Lama. But the damage may already have been done in the playing out of a covert political plot featuring unwitting NKT members.

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Christine A. Chandler,....

Chandler spent nearly thirty years studying and practicing the most esoteric teachings of the Tibetan Lamas, before realizing she was involved in an authoritarian cult that had purposely targeted the ‘educated’ class, in order to infiltrate into academia, psychology, and other ‘soft sciences,’ to weaken our institutions from within.

She also spent many years taking care of the son of a high-ranking Tibetan Lama, Chogyam Trungpa, giving her a bird’s eye view of the more hidden aspects of Tibetan Buddhism that most people, especially the fringe fans of the Dalai Lama, never see.

M.A., C.A.G.S. trained as a social worker and psychologist, who specialized in the areas of sexual abuse and dysfunctional systems. She earned postgraduate degrees in psychology, counseling and family systems therapy, as well as in school psychology. She has worked as a LICSW social worker, family therapist, and licensed school psychologist in the public school systems of Massachusetts, Vermont, and Colorado and as a licensed protective social worker in Massachusetts.

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When author, Christine Chandler, signed up for a simple meditation retreat, she had no idea she would be severing emotional ties with her ordinary life, in order to obey the intense practices of Tibetan Lamas; becoming one of their many western devotees and 'change agents' to help the lamas overwhelm western values and ethics in order to replace them with a Buddhist-disguised Tantric spirituality.

After nearly thirty years as a Tibetan 'Buddhist,' Chandler finally realized that she had been part of a thousand-year old, guru-worshiping cult that uses mindfulness and other contemplative practices, along with ancient and sophisticated techniques, to recruit, commit and entrap westerners into the Tibetan Lama's medieval, misogynistic world. A world where the Tibetan lamas can secretly keep harems of young women, cuckold the men, and financially, physically and spiritually exploit their students.

Chandler had a front row seat to the Tibetan Lama hierarchy and how it operates, having taken care of the son of Chogyam Trungpa, the notorious 'crazy wisdom guru.' This gave Chandler exposure to not only Trungpa's Vajradhatu/Shambhala inner workings, but also to the dozens of celebrity Tibetan lamas, who have been infiltrating our western institutions with their occult Tantra and their western devotees, for the last forty years.

Deep inside this Tantric net, Chandler found that all Tibetan Lamas teach from the same guru-worshiping, thought-controling plan; whether they call it Shambhala, Mahamudra, Dzogchen or Mahayana Buddhism. It is all Tantra: a cult of mass manipulation and coercive persuasion, designed to undermine the reasoning abilities of educated populations; changing their values and behaviors; turning them into obedient devotees; no longer able to think and act for themselves. If someone does leave Tibetan Buddhism and dares to be publicly critical, that person is labelled 'too angry,' 'crazy' or a 'liar'; their articles or books discredited; until their message is drowned out. Inside the group they are to be shunned as a "heretic.'

Chandler takes the reader through her own experiences, from her first mindfulness meditation weekend, at a Boston Shambhala meditation center

(custodians of Chogyam Trungpa's sect), through her next decades, studying with the celebrity Tibetan Lamas and their western inner circles, drawn deeper and deeper into their Tantric net, until she finally breaks free; realizing that being well-educated was no protection but, instead makes westerners more susceptible to the lamas' double-binding techniques; believing they are studying the most esoteric of Buddhist philosophies, while becoming infantilized members of a Tantric cult.

Enthralled: The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism exposes the many levels of deception, used by Tibetan Lamas, and their western inner circles. They collect billions of tax-exempt dollars in donations, recruit wealthy sponsors to their mission, and ensnare new student-recruits into a web of free labor, unquestioning devotion, and for some, sexual exploitation by these Tibetan lamas.

Chandler deconstructs Tibetan Tantric Lamaism according to the criteria of anti-cult experts, Lifton and Margaret Singer, demonstrating how these lamas radically alter a person's perceptions, to create a 'change agent' to further the lamas' globalist ambitions.

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Top critical review
See all 3 critical reviews›
3.0 out of 5 starswell researched but a bit over the top
Byatcon September 16, 2017
It is understandable that someone who feels that they wasted years of their life in a cult of Tibetan Buddhism should feel annoyed.
What is difficult to credit, is that the writer, who already had a degree in psychology before joining the cult, did not do a little research on the religion she was joining.
The book is over 500 pages long, and is on the whole well researched. It could be a useful source of reference for people with an interest in cults.
Chandler makes some very good points, i.e .that those westerners who listen to Lamas giving teachings in Tibetan only really know what the translators say and this may differ in substance from what the lama says. It is not unknown for translators to 'tidy up' the translation as they work. or to slant the emphasis away from anything that might upset a target audience.

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Chris and I met years ago when she kindly took me for a photographic tour of Buddhist monasteries in the Crestone, Colo. area. A witness to much of what happened to her in the Crestone section of the book and in Crestone itself, I can vouch for everything said there.

I am no stranger to cults; I simply cover them from a different religious perspective. I have suffered many of the same types of things Chris herself experiences, but on a different level. The most powerful thing about Chris’s book is that she explains so well how the mind-think she exposes permeates our entire society today, to an extent never suspected by the average American — or citizens of other countries, for that matter. And she explains it in great detail, carefully documenting her journey, and leaving nothing to the imagination......

And likewise, all the abuses are the same. The use of members to make the leaders look good and promote the cause, while leaders are enjoying the high life and often are doing nothing; the predatory mindset, selecting the choicest lambs of the flock to be singled out for favors or persecutions; the sexual abuse, usually denied, ignored, hidden or disguised as “divine love”; the sly and insidious pitting of members and different factions, one against the other; turning members against their families and siphoning money from even the poorest members — these are the most well-recognized forms of abuse, although there are others. What Chandler explains for her own group and her own experience is a lesson for all.

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author's decades long stay in Lamaism will not be wasted if her personal experiences can be made widely known
ByAmazon Kundeon August 21, 2017

The author's decades long stay in Lamaism will not be wasted if her personal experiences can be made widely known. Anyone with a decent heart will truly appreciate Christine's efforts and admire her bravery in recollecting such excruciating memories. I am deeply touched by the statement, "This book is dedicated to all the abuse victims of Tantric Lamaism, whose voices have been silenced for centuries.”

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Tibetan Buddhism is neither a good idea, good for Tibet nor has anything to do with Buddhism. It is pure Lamaism.

ByMikeon August 15, 2017

When Chris Candler first came onto our blog and told the tale of what I thought was Tibetan Buddhism I thought she was off the wall. She was claiming that it had nothing to do with Buddhism, and a lot to do with Tibet. However, it was not pretty with connections to Hitler, the CIA and the new glue to keep the Communist party of China in power.

I had now for 20 years being dealing with tales of sex abuse, but by a skilful side steps those involved with the Dalai Lama were able to act as if this particular lama was an exception. The problem we were being briefed by Buddhists from Taiwan that these Tibetan Lamaists were trying to mind control with mindlessness training their programme of unreformed Tantric couple sex. This was not just an aberration but the recipe was in fact on the tin. Of course we were told we were under the influence of the Communist Chinese which was a little difficult as we were connecting to the heretics and splitists from Taiwan. The Dalai Lama was himself up to his eyes with this stuff and has forty years covered up this cult of mindfulness and sexual depravity from his western disciples.

As an expert in cultism, I always obtained advice from formidable experts in Buddhism who were trying to expose this but they always said this or that Lama was the exception rather than the rule.

What Chris Chandler has demonstrated is that the exception is the and the norm and the exception idea is the diversionary tactic to get you off the scent. She used to come onto our blog and she fought hand to hand comment warfare with the trolls and the General of the exception Tenpel the master of diversion.

Here is how you can see this working out by following her battles like Arjuna in the chariot. Then I realised I had to go it alone, as Chris wisely realised if she was on social media much longer she might as well take refuge in a place for the overwhelmed.

She went into retreat, healing herself by the logos therapy of recovering the western mind, and removing those hidden mindfulness programmes and by writing the book. It is a statement of liberation, it is also a charter for a truly Free Tibet, not one of letting these Slave masters Lamas near the place. Does it involve the continued Han take over of the country? Obviously not but in order for Tibet to be freed it needs to freed from these Lamas on their Feudal thrones

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Buddhism1Aug 20

It is no surprise that Soygal lama and many other lamas’ scandalous sexual abuses are so often heard, as sexual practice is Lamaism’s core tenet to attain 'enlightenment"; so sexual abuses are not isolated cases, but are bound to happen in Lamaism’s world.

“A sexual practice with female partners, being an essential component of their Tantric teachings, created a double-bind of its own for the tulkus; trained in this androcentric and misogynistic system since childhood. Once they reach the advanced Tantric practices, now they were expected to have real females as their serial sexual partners, to journey toward their bizarre ideas about ‘enlightenment.’

“The repetitive iconic images of copulation, seen depicted in Tibetan imagery, told to a naïve public and early recruits to be merely symbolic—the merging of wisdom and emptiness—reflects the Tibetan lamas’ very real obsession with sexual intercourse as the only way to experience, and then sustain, a ‘state’ of enlightenment for themselves, as they obsess over their own semen, mixed with female biological fluids, and their belief that they can make this ‘elixir’ travel backwards, to the top of their heads; a belief based on medieval fantasies of a Hindu Tantric alchemy that tells them to ’absorb’ the essence of female energy, coming to possess it as their own. This is so these tulkus can become a transcendent, androgynous-empowered cosmic ruler of the phenomenal world: A Lord Chakravartin.”
Enthralled - The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism, p. 60

“Chogyam Trungpa, my first Tibetan lama, was a serial sexual addict, kept a harem of favorite women, and drank himself to death. His constant seeking of women was justified, in his Western Buddhist, sangha, and still is, by his ‘crazy wisdom’ Vajrayana ‘spiritual practices.’”
Enthralled - The Guru Cult of Tibetan Buddhism, p.66

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As any inpatient will tell you, a specialist unit is the best place to learn how to be really, really good at anorexia.

They also breed their own subculture. Some patients have reported bullying and intimidation by the hard-core cases. If they eat anything at all, they’re called fat cows’ (Rice, 2004).

Vandereycken refers to ‘a most interesting blog’ post

[www.greythinking.com]