The Karmapa
Did he or didn’t he?
I’ve just passed my 83rd. So I figure, if I don’t tell this story now…
It took place 8 years ago, but is still reverberating within my own community. The Buddhist community. Or at least the Tibetan part of it.
It’s a terrible story. And it breaks my heart. And it’s the reason why I am no longer a member of that community. But if I don’t tell it here, it might never get told. At least not my version of it.
But there are at least a couple of other versions out there, depending on who you ask — so I will have to let you draw your own conclusions.
To just put it out there: the leader of the Kagyus, my lineage — the Karmapa, on the same level as the leader of the Gelugpa lineage, His Holiness the Dalai Lama — raped a nun.
Or so the nun said. And My Holiness has never denied the accusation. Nor confirmed it. And therein lies the mystery. Did he or didn’t he?
When I told my friend Bill about it, his first response was “That doesn’t sound very likely.”
As in, does it sound likely to you that Our Holiness, the current Resident of the White House (I refuse to say President) raped a woman in a luxury department store in broad daylight? You bet it does, and more than likely. To the tune of a unanimous $88 million judgment.
But the leader of a religious sect with roughly 1.5 million followers (including those inside Tibet under Chinese administration)? Who had to take a vow of celibacy before putting on His monastic robes?
Nevertheless, the nun insisted that she had been raped. And to prove it, she said that only a month later, she found herself pregnant.
And after another 7 months, she gave birth to a daughter, and asked the court — in Canada, where she currently resides — to require the Karmapa to submit to a paternity test. And some “insider” accounts sympathetic to her claim say that the court agreed. And in January of 2022, the Karmapa was “said” to have given his DNA sample in London.
And yet another “insider” source — a monk in Germany — claimed on his website that he had evidence confirming the Karmapa as the father.
And not only that, a few months later, he leaked another juicy tidbit: that the nun had sued the leaders of the Kagyu establishment for child support and they had agreed, after she signed an NDA, to pay her a staggering sum, roughly $10 million, to be doled out over the next 10 years, to guarantee her compliance.
An agreement the leaders of the establishment have vigorously denied.
And in fact, they have vigorously denied that any rape ever took place, and that all the accusations are only a vicious hoax, manufactured by the Chinese government in order to discredit the Karmapa, in an attempt to make sure that he will not be able to assume leadership of the Tibetan Buddhist community after the death of the Dalai Lama.
At which point, I did what I always do, and put on my Deerstalker, and set out on the trail, magnifying glass in hand, to find out for myself.
And the first thing I did was to write an email to Lama Z. — a nice JuBu from New Jersey (I’m a JuBu from the Bronx) — who runs KTD’s tiny meditation center in Albany, in upstate New York. And asked him if it was true, what they were saying about the Karmapa.
And Lama Z. replied the very next day, bristling with indignation. How could I imagine that anything like THAT could be remotely possible?!?! And when I inquired as to how he knew for sure, he patiently explained to me that since the Karmapa is, by definition, a “10th-level Bodhisattva” (there is no 11), it’s simply NOT possible. Like “Duh!”
And then I wondered how the Karmapa could possibly have gotten to the top level so quickly, having escaped from under the noses of his Chinese captors at the age of 14, sneaking out of his monastery at night with only 2 servants and making his way over the Himalayas all the way to India, just as the new century made its debut. And now he was just 36.
So I went looking for something about his upbringing. And lo and behold, found a TED talk, given in India in 2009, to the usual enthralled TED audience, with the Karmapa’s super-competent translator providing a nearly instant, blow-by-blow translation. And I too was enthralled.
As he told everyone about his miraculous discovery, at the age of 7, when a knock at the door of the hut where he lived with his parents in eastern Tibet announced the arrival of a “search party” — a group of senior lamas, who proceeded to give him the traditional test, an array of objects, only some of which had belonged to the previous Karmapa (#16). And after apparently making the correct choices, he was summarily declared to be #17.
And just as quickly, he was whisked away from his parents and transported to an enormous monastery, where his trainers eagerly awaited his arrival. [But how, you may be wondering, did they find the hut? According to tradition, the previous Karmapa leaves a note, just prior to his passing, giving everyone a hint. And then the State Oracle, wearing an enormous headdress, falls into a blind trance, and he/she divines most of the the rest. Whether this procedure was followed in the case of #17, I am unable to confirm.]
At first, the young boy was amazed by his good fortune — “I thought things were going to be pretty fun and that I would have more toys to play with.” But by the time he was 10, reality had set in. The training was brutal and unrelenting and he was continually chastised for mistakes. He was, so he had been told, already a 10th-level Bodhisattva, as his previous incarnation had demonstrated to everyone who met him, and so it was about time that he started acting like one, even though he didn’t feel like one. Act like one and it would only be a matter of time before…
But all he really felt… was alone. Without friends. No visits from mom & dad. Everyone was afraid to approach him. Since a 10th-level Bodhisattva is the closest thing on earth to a god. “I was being treated like a statue…”
He goes on to say how important it is to establish a “heart-to-heart and mind-to-mind connection” with others. But then he adds: “… still I feel a sense of impediment, I’ve always been advised [by my teachers] that I need to exercise intelligence, that being in a position like mine, then something dangerous may happen to me.”
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But what actually happened to him over the next few years of his tenure at the helm was that he found himself more and more isolated, increasingly burdened with responsibilities that only he could fulfill. And after a while he began to complain about it openly in talks, telling his listeners that he felt like Atlas, having to carry the entire Kagyu world on his shoulders.
And I’ve even had a chance to see for myself, firsthand, as I live in the town of Meredith in upstate New York, just a few miles from the retreat center His Holiness came to visit one day on his tour of North America.
I sat in the third row in the shrine room and even took a photo.
He was talking to us in Tibetan with his translator next to him. But I was only watching his hands.
As he played with two rubber dinosaurs. Which he had pocketed when he entered the shrine room, from a collection of small figurines and trinkets— rabbits, frogs, ducks, elephants, and dinosaurs — that the head monk had left on a table by the door. A few toys. For the boys.
The Karmapa held a dinosaur in each hand and then proceeded to stage a savage fight between them. He looked up at us and we all laughed.
And that’s the guy who raped a nun, in the women’s quarters, right next door to the shrine room. On the night of October 14, 2017.
They are alone together in the cabin. And he has pulled up her nun’s robe and is straddling her. And she is about to scream.
NO! NO! Stop!
But no! If you thought that is what happened, you’d be wrong.
For what she is really about to scream is
YES! YES! Please don’t stop!
For they are lovers. And have been for at least several months.
And she has already conceived their child. (She will be born only 8 months later.)
And now they have come together in the cabin to enact the “rape scene” that they have been planning all along.
And soon she will bring a lawsuit against the Kagyu establishment and “force” the Karmapa to submit to a paternity test that will establish his guilt, and facing a ruinous scandal, they will have no choice but to offer her an exceedingly generous “settlement.”
And the Karmapa, free at last, no longer has to play the role of figurehead
for his church and pretend that he is an enlightened master who can do
no wrong. He can go anywhere and do anything he wants from now on.
Not a god. Only another human being.
Perhaps they are living together in a suburb of Vancouver, in a condo purchased with funds the Karmapa has provided, and where they are quietly raising their daughter?
I have no idea (though the condo purchase is real enough). Nor do I know if any of the rest of my story is true (though they DID meet several years earlier and engaged in a lengthy correspondence).
But, my friend Bill asked, “Isn’t he still the public head of the org?”
Yes, but in name only. He’s now become a ghost. Every so often, he has reappeared to give a brief video talk — sitting alone, not on his throne, but behind a desk in an anonymous office in an undisclosed location. And even those have become much less frequent.
But the people at KTD, the monastery in Woodstock at the center of the organization in North America, just pretend that he is still there. And it’s just business as usual. And nothing ever happened.
But it did happen.
And my version of what took place makes sense to me. And makes a lot more sense to me than all the other versions. Does it make sense to you?
Feel free to draw your own conclusions.
But none of the parties are telling the truth. So we will never know.
A conundrum wrapped in a riddle.
ps. The above was written back in December. If you want an update on the current situation, and the Karmapa’s latest appearance, please see the post I’ve published on my own personal account.
