Monks vs. Monks

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Shugden activists denounce the crime and deny opponents' claims that they receive funds from the Chinese government. But the Chinese, happy at any exile strife, are restoring Shugden temples in occupied Tibet. And Lhodi Gyari, the Lama's Washington envoy, correctly warns that the squabble should not obscure the fact that "a culture and people are being destroyed."

American Tibetan-style Buddhists, however, will have to digest the occultism, interschool feuding and occasional violence that have long marked the culture they thought was their model. Donald S. Lopez Jr., a professor of Buddhist and Tibetan studies and author of an important new book, Prisoners of ShangriLa: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, says the fracas will help Americans realize they "have a bowdlerized version of Tibetan Buddhism." Editor Tworkov goes further. "This allows us as Westerners to ask, How do we bring this tradition into our society and our lives, and what is best left behind in Tibet or Japan? Every Buddhist culture has elements we'd rather not import. Those of us from non-Buddhist backgrounds did not lay down one set of cultural baggage to pick up another." True, but how much baggage can you jettison without calling off the whole trip?

--Reported by Richard N. Ostling/New York and Tim McGirk/New Delhi