In God's Name

Rest assured, there is no nudity in the following photographs. No exposed nipples, no unseemly kissing on Main Street. These photographs are of current events. These are photographs of something happening now. This is 2014. Let the whole world see what is being done in the name of the "one true God."

To All the Sangha I Knew Before

The Hat. I'm Passing.

I pray you always believe in yourself. I pray the same ideals that led to our connection in this life are still fresh, and clear, within you. Can you still find, inside of you, that which made our connection come about? Can you remember where refuge is found? Think often of how fortunate we were! Think, to yourself, how fortunate we still are!

This personal letter is addressed to those who feel themselves estranged from our Precious Master. I publish it in public, for whatever value those who are estranged from their own teachers care to assign.

Rather than disregard you as samaya breakers -- and there are even vows to that effect --  I cannot find it within myself to turn away from you, no matter what has become of your views. No matter you berate our Precious Master, as some of you now do. No matter you hold me in contempt. Ours is the religion of kindness, and if we cannot be kind to one another, it accounts as failure: yours and mine. Kindness is not a unilateral experience; kindness is a bilateral undertaking.

If I hold up my part of the kindness, can you hold up yours? 

You know, and I know, that we created a bond between ourselves in the presence of our Precious Master. In your mind, perhaps you believe you left all that behind; yet, sometimes, maybe in the course of a rabbit's meditation on a sleepless night, somewhere, deep in your heart, you hear a faint whisper that confesses: you cannot leave what has always been a part of you.

Let that whisper grow, my friend. Let that whisper grow.

For over 60 years now, I have served and honored a vision of my teacher, some 45 years of which coincide with his introduction of Guru Rinpoche's teachings in the West. For all these years, he has been immediately available to me. From the time I was a teenager until now, he has loved me unconditionally, and answered every cry for assistance. He has protected me, comforted me, instructed me, challenged me, and guided me through all of this life's conditions. "I taught you many things," he once wrote to me, "just let them unfold," and how true this is: a gift that refreshes itself every day. A gift that does not require hand-holding, constant watering, or the neurotic abdication of decision-making.

Who in your own life, right now, can love you like that, and guide you to liberation at the same time? Who takes the exquisite care our Precious Master invested in us? Who has such power, and precision? Look around you now: this world is filled with poor choices. Who is our Precious Master, do you know?

He gave me a wish-granting gem. He also gave one to you. What do you think we should give back to him, once we've made use of that gem?

If you say, "Well, Rinpoche doesn't talk to me anymore," then you might wish to ask yourself: why don't you talk to him anymore? Wasn't there a time when you, the newcomer, marched right up and knocked on the door? I know you did, because likely as not, I am the one who opened it to greet you. If you have -- for whatever reason -- alienated yourself from him all these years, then you have robbed yourself of the richest possible spiritual experience associated with human existence.

Yes, you.

You, who became so successful. You, with your real estate, your professions, your inventions. Who really made you what you are today? Be honest with yourself! 

You, who ran to the "easy" lamas. You, who valued yourself so much, clinging to obstacles, that you could not entertain Dharma apart from conventional society. Like a jilted lover you ran away in bitterness. Yes, you.

You, who despite over four decades of evidence, still believe you are in ordinary discourse with an ordinary man. You have let yourself become disaffected.

No matter how far away you have fallen, I am writing to you now, after all this time, to remind you that our Precious Master is near to 80, this life we share isn't going to last forever, and it is time for you to reach all the way to the bottom of your heart, take out whatever it is of value you can find, and give it to him.

Just give it away. No strings attached this time. No expectations. No transactions. Just give, and give the way he taught you to give.

If you have tens, give tens. If you have millions, give millions. If you have an estate to be willed, then visit the Notary. The amount doesn't matter. What matters is that we keep honest with each other about our shared dream, our shared vision, our shared responsibility, our shared oath, our shared ideals. What matters is that you find your way back to Berkeley, do you understand? Whenever or even wherever "Berkeley" was or is for you, find your way back to that first day you knocked on the door.

What really matters is to finish what you started. If you started something and could not finish, give what you were able to do, and keep on trying. Throw away conceit. Throw away guilt. Throw away doubt. Throw away apathy, lethargy, and excuses. Stop lying to yourself, and finish what you started. 

Whatever you do, strongly do! Remember?

Through the efforts of our Precious Master, his family, the residential and extended sangha, all those upholding personal life vows to Rinpoche as their Root Guru, and all volunteers, the work of the past years finally stands at the threshold of its greatest challenge.

Not only is this a chance for you to maintain the scales, but this is also a chance for you to "come home," overcome illusory obstacles, and rejoin your heart in progress.

I encourage you to reach out, repair what needs repairing, and remember how and why we are related.

9 September 2014

Dalai Lama's Birthday

Today is an excellent day to try our best to do what he suggests we do, and avoid what he suggests we avoid. This man is the best the human race can produce. May his life be long. May he remain firm.

In the above photograph, Dalai Lama thanks the over 100,000 well-wishers, pilgrims, and attendees at the 33rd Kalachakra Empowerment, in Ladakh: an event which coincides with his 79th birthday this year.

Local Spirits and Magical Reform

Artifacts of early peoples in the Americas are common in the Western United States. You can be wandering among the rocks, and suddenly find yourself walking on the remnants of ancient pottery. The great pity is, despite an absolute richness of archaeological evidence all around us, nobody pays our prehistory any mind. If you are a young person, looking for something worthwhile to do, come out to these deserts and mountains, and study the archaeology of these lands. You will learn more truth in the process than you would in a monastery, and you won't even have to learn "Buddhism" to understand you are obligated to get on your way to becoming a molecule in Maitreya.

Or, as in my own case, you can merely exercise no-account, passing interest in the things you find as you stumble around. Thus it happened, I was examining two pottery sherds yesterday: Holbrook Black-on-White, from circa 1050 to 1150 CE. 

Mind habitually wandering, as I held them in my hands, the following thoughts rather unaccountably came to me:

The pantheon of our ancestors, if not that of their collective, tale-told innermosts, or the magnetic harmony of shamans all over this planet, is ubiquitously inhabited by that logical class of spirits known as "local" spirits. The various spirits of a place. 

The dance of elements in subtle-meets-gross mystery and splendor, invested by mind-as-appearance, into appearance-as-mind.

If we wanted to come up with a universal typology of said spirits, I suppose we could. Nobody has managed yet - save the shamans - so we have complete spirit pantheons littered around space like galaxies, all the way down to complete spirit pantheons inhabiting the backyard. A cultural thing. A social thing. A human thing. A spirit pantheon thing.

There are the traditional call-outs of our shared belief system.  Generally speaking, we refer to these as protecting spirits, harming spirits, and/or obstructing spirits. You can find local spirits among each category.

If we just wanted to look around for ourselves, we could find spirits associated with land formations, or appearances of rocks, and so forth; spirits associated with trees, and plants; spirits associated with unique properties of a place, such as a healing mineral in abundance or a history of illness; spirits associated with known and unknown events, such as ancient battlegrounds; fundamental spirits, such as those of earth, or water; spirits of human visitation upon said fundamental spirits, such as earthworks, dams, roads, and bridges; visiting spirits, wandering spirits, traveling spirits, sly spirits, and furtive spirits; spirits of nests, ant-hills and animal burrows. These things just jump to mind. You know, the list is long, long, long. 

These spirits speak to us from prehistory, across hundreds of thousands of years. We know them like we know fire. Deep within ourselves, we believe in them whether we believe in them or not. We know they warm. We know they nourish. We know they burn. We don't have to touch them.

Nobody will disagree that high deserts, mountain passes, lonely rocks and trees, endless valleys, wild canyons, and twisted gorges are the locus of many a ritual offering: tangled strings of flags, inviting sounds of drums and welcoming bells, clouds of juniper smoke. 

Chants in this language or that language. The language we chant is not the language of their response. The chants are symbols, bridges, and sign-posts, of and to real languages of earth and sky, becoming recognized as mantra in the end.

The language of spirits is the language of their experience. 

Endless prayers are uttered: summoning, serving, admonishing, sealing, and dismissing local spirits by their local names. Here are grains, tormas, whiskey, nectar: offerings felt as somehow more or less imaginary than others -- this terrible compulsion we have to endlessly replicate the divisions that cause and condition a bewildering, grinding, time-infected wheel.

We startle at shadows and in consequence learn nothing of light's fullest possibilities.

***

Since the mid-twentieth century -- a period encompassing my own lifetime -- truly gifted magicians have been in the Americas, teaching unfamiliar but thoroughly sound practices; yet, they are often invoking local spirits from far, far away.

Rather an interesting subject, wouldn't you say?

The subject even occupied the generosity of the late Thinley Norbu Rinpoche, who remarked that North American local spirits require their own lexicon, and improved ritual.

He also used to spend a lot of time in this desert.

How do we apply Tibetan ritual to local spirits in the Americas, where the indigenous rituals applied to local spirits predate Buddhist Tibetan culture by centuries? To what extent are American rituals congruent with Bon? Are there, in fact, any antagonisms, differences, or polemics we need take up? Need we establish a rationale behind Dzogchen practitioners walking around riverbank and rise, looking at rocks, petroglyphs, and the way ravens fly? Are we supposed to be archaeologists? Anthropologists? Is such a rationale necessary? 

So, here I will muse about whether any sort of convenient, literary analogy between magicians of the "ancient ones" of North America, as identified within the Patayan cultural division -- the spirit terrain here where I live -- and the magicians of Tibet's "ancient ones," known as the Nyingmapa, is valid, apt analogy. 

I want to explain that both "Patayan," and "Nyingmapa," can translate as "Ancient Ones." The name Patayan is used in this sense by later Native American societies in reference to their spiritual and cultural ancestors.

By the way, I used to feel uncomfortable using the term "magician," until one afternoon I listened to the Dalai Lama discuss a particular lineage. He was going name by name, and he would say, "Oh, this one was a realized practitioner," or, "this other one was a great magician," and then, "another one was a great magician and a realized practitioner." 

A statement like that gives magicians ample reason to thoroughly re-examine appearances. 

No real mention is made by the traveling magicians from Tibet of long-identified American local spirits, beyond a generic nod to "spirits of the place," "landlord spirits," "local ghosts," etc. Perhaps we should be grateful that we are not faced with the endlessly interesting named spirits of Tibet; at least not unless we choose to be. 

Still, it is the business of magicians to examine these things, so we might plead for more care, study, and communion with the spirit classes of our lands.  Maybe we are culturally chauvinistic that way.

Lacking such exploration, it is certain that we, in our ignorance, have harmed and may even continue to harm those who inhabit trees, rocks, caves, and singular features of the environment having atavistic resonance. What of our offerings, for example? Do they replicate the offerings of another, far-away place, or do we use the indigenous offerings of our own place?

Maybe we are dense, culturally chauvinistic, xenophobic, environmentally sensitive, and locally sourcing all at the same time. 

So, then - 

Rest easy. Above is only the hope and fear-based interpretation. Humans speak hope-fear with a web of dialects. The webless way to communicate is openly, with love. When you love, you are careful. You love diligently, and take pains to dissolve distance. The web explodes. The intangible threads are still there, but they are traveling away from each other at light speed. Boundaries collapse, and you are free. Kindness takes over naturally. Maybe things become amusing.

Recognize that what you are loving is spontaneous display.

To recognize local spirits, love where you live. 

We are Buddhist, so we do our best to love like that.

Or, now --

Let me put it this way...

There is a sculptor in my backyard. The tools are time, wind, water, and trembling earth. They sculpt what they will. Whatever I think I see is whatever I think I see, and what I think I see is not what I see.

I just sit there until direct experience informs mind it has stopped making kaleidoscopic divisions.

* * * 

Somewhere around 9550 - 8050 BCE, ancient ones came to inhabit the place where I live. By the time Padmasambhava visited Tibet, America's magicians had already lived through centuries as respected lords in complex, temple cities, with the enormous patronage of inquisitive, theocratic monarchs. 

To this day, artifacts of them that pre-date Padmasambhava's journey to Samye are littered all over the West.

Not only North America, but Central and South America, as well. 

Funerary Model

Western Mexico Shaft Tomb culture, 300 BCE - 400 CE

Funerary Model

Han Dynasty 202 BCE - 220 CE

Once upon a time, people all over the world made clay houses with singular pigments - colored earth models - to take with them to the tomb. Seems to be a universal state at the time. We don't know this: we infer this. So, we as international humans arrived at a general agreement amongst ourselves that we need place clay models in tombs. Now, we as international humans try to agree upon what we agreed upon. Such is the manufacture of history.

Maybe it it is neither simple nor useful to let the hypothetical past inform the hypothetical present. Maybe we should just play it as it lays.

What is the difference, for example, between Jigme Lingpa's references to "soul stones," and the "cuya," or soul stones of the Quechua-Incan answer to the Kalachakratantra? Universal knowledge of soul stones may be coming from the same place as model houses of clay. Is this a reflection of universal spiritual development of the time?

Maybe Latin America is the mother of this world. I know some lamas who think so.

Alright, then -- and in conclusion --

Do we reform the ritual texts to the point of xenophobia? Or, do we adopt the broad view and say that it doesn't matter what we do at all?

The local spirits can hear our hearts.

If you really believe this, and if you can really do this, then it is great.

Otherwise, once upon a time, a long, long time ago, somebody was making pottery in the Mojave Desert and somebody else was introducing the Kalachakratantra to Tibet, and they both loved the earth the same way at the same time in different places. 

Somehow, fragments of that pottery crossed the centuries, and came to my hand. These are broken, unconnected pieces. I can try to learn as much as I can. I can make inferences. I can enjoy the benefit of scientific instruments. I can classify them. I can also appreciate them as prehistoric messages from mankind to mankind, made from clay, carbon, and fire.

Where I am, on the 2014 Summer Solstice, ancient symbols danced across the sky, disguised as clouds, and the light hit the rocks a certain way. They began to whisper. I began to listen.

That is a rationale. Maybe it is not "the" rationale, but it is a rationale nonetheless. If a thing is helpful, use it, and if not, discard it. Don't worry what the books, or the people, or the rocks, or the clouds have to say.

Consider finding the listener, instead.

BREAKING: Sharmar Rinpoche Dies

Well informed sources are now reporting that the 14th Sharmapa has passed away. He suffered a massive heart attack during breakfast, went into cardiac arrest, and paramedics were unable to revive him at the scene. Details here.

Since You Asked

Our trustworthy and well-beloved Digital Tibetan Buddhist Altar is, as you have undoubtedly gathered, moribund. Still, there are over 2,000 different articles herein, and thousands of illustrations. One simply uses the search box at right, to search for specifics; or, one browses here and there according to whim.

There is also, as we now announce a new, miniscule, Facebook page, where you are more likely to find us these days. 

This blog began eight years ago, as an exercise in personal, digital journaling. It then, quite unintentionally, morphed into digital journalism. We became the "biggest Buddhist blog," with an average daily readership of 1,400,000 unique views. 

Now, that river is a trickle: almost dry. 

While the river was running, we tried to do everyone a bit of good. The mere favorable mention of a book, for example, would cause Amazon to sell out of that book within an hour. If we jumped on a story, other media would follow us. The mention of an event would invariably increase attendance at said event. When we rang the gong of public debate, public debate came forth. We helped make First Amendment case law. We made people angry, we made people happy, we made people question, and we made people think.

We made a difference.

Speaking personally, since early 2012, I have been transitioning from Blogger to Facebook. The latter forum is, I believe, better suited to the immediacy I had envisioned for Digital Tibetan Buddhist Altar as a journalistic exercise. I deliberately made no attempt to link between the two, beyond experimentally linking blog posts to the Facebook page, which is where you can find us from now on. I like Facebook because it is easy to use, and it allows the reader to become directly involved. With a blog, feedback is never all that simple to manage.

So, then.

In Case You Missed It

"As for these present appearances of stones and rocks, mountains and forests, trees and plants, and so forth, do not believe them to be anything at all, and do not assert them to be anything at all. Do not deny what appears, and do not assert them to be or not to be. Their appearance is a natural appearance, and their... emptiness is a natural emptiness. Like the identity of space, let their identity be naturally empty, and let their appearance be devoid of a self-nature."

                                                          --Padmasambhava

Can We Talk?

Every April, thousands of live rabbits are sacrificed for an essenceless, seasonal holiday. They are given as "Easter gifts," usually to children, and fully 90% of them will die horrid, lonely deaths in choking, little cages.

Please, get out and do something right now to stop this barbaric practice.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Rabbits

Losar 2014 Year of the Wood Horse 2141

Losar Tashi Delek to our many readers, all over this world. Now comes the Year of the Horse, in Tibetan calculation. May all things be in accord with your wishes.

Doorway to Dharma

This photograph is not Photoshopped. This photograph was taken a few days ago. Are any other details at all germane to alleviating the misery seen here?

If you consider yourself a Buddhist, please look carefully.

Master Calligrapher Tashi Mannox to Visit America

He is brilliantly gifted, and arguably, the greatest master of Tibetan calligraphy the world has ever seen. Tashi Mannox, the internationally celebrated artist, will be visiting the United States. He'll be doing a workshop April 4, 5, 6, 2014 for the Shang Shung Institute in Conway, Massachusetts, and is set for the Rubin Museum on April 2, 2014.

The Rubin Museum has a great, filmed interview with Tashi, and introduction to his legendary work. Further information can be found by clicking here. This is an extremely rare opportunity: one you will not want to miss!

February Is Adopt-A-Rabbit Month

"It Is Done"

On Friday, November 8, 2013, Kyabje Tarthang Rinpoche declared, "It is done."

Many of you responded to our earnest call for donations, to cast this history-making, twenty-two foot bronze statue of Padmasambhava. As you can see from the above photograph, the statue is now poured, polished, and complete. It has been consecrated, and is now installed in the main temple at Odiyan, in Northern California.

This entire project was carried out within the boundaries of a Tibetan temple complex in the United States, conducted by the authentic representatives of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. The readers of this blog made significant donations toward the completion of this project, and may I thank each and every one of you personally.

Let It Be Auspicious!

Murder of Akong Rinpoche: The Murderer and the Motive

The following release has just been received here:

PRESS RELEASE FROM LAMA YESHE LOSAL RINPOCHE, ABBOT OF KAGYU SAMYE LING MONASTERY, SCOTLAND

RE: THE DEATH OF CHOJE AKONG TULKU RINPOCHE

Now that the Chengdu Police have released the names of the men who killed Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche, his nephew and attendant, we are in a position to confirm that one of the suspects named by the police, Tu Dan Gu Sha also known as Thubten Kunsal, had previously spent more than five years in the UK, and returned to China two years ago. 

Whilst residing in the UK he made religious statues at our monastery in Scotland and our London centre. He left very happy and there was no question of any economic dispute. My brother, Chuje Akong Tulku Rinpoche had always been very kind to Thubten Kunsal and welcomed him into the heart of our community.

According to an official microblog post by the Chengdu police force, the three suspects confronted my brother and the other two victims, with knives, at his home in Chengdu in what is being described as an “economic dispute.”

We strongly refute any claims that Thubten Kunsal was owed money by Akong Rinpoche, the monastery or our London centre. When he was with us in the UK we supported his living expenses as agreed in writing, and there was never any dispute about that. 

We are therefore very shocked that two years later he came demanding money, knowing that Akong Rinpoche was about to send funds to the ROKPA charitable projects in the Tibetan areas of China. As we have already stated, Akong Rinpoche died defending those funds. 

It has been reported in the press that the driver who was killed was a monk from Samye Ling. This is not correct. It was Akong Tulku Rinpoche's Tibetan attendant, from his Monastery Dolma Lhakang, who has not been to the UK.

I hope this statement will clear up any misunderstandings,

With thanks for your prayers and kind wishes,

Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche

Abbot of Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery, Scotland.

Long Life Wishes for Kyabje Tarthang Rinpoche

We are sending expressions of loving respect, and deep devotion to the great Kyabje Tarthang Rinpoche. By tradition, his birthday is generally observed "around this time."

Rinpoche is either 79 or 80 this year, or timeless, depending upon how you like to think.

The Murder of Akong Rinpoche: Chengdu Police Have Three In Custody

Police in Chengdu, China, have reportedly issued a statement that Akong Rinpoche and his two companions were stabbed to death in a residential area of that city. Three suspects, said to be Tibetans, one from Derge, and the two others from Chamdo Joda, are in custody. Police speculated that the incident was an "argument over money." Later reports indicate the three suspects "have confessed."

Knives are frequently the weapon of choice in Chengdu. In the above photograph, Chengdu CSI responds to a recent, wholly unrelated "stabbing in a residential area," arising from an "argument over money."

As of our local time here, an unidentified spokesperson for the Foreign Office extends us the courtesy to inform that "consular assistance is currently being rendered."

The Murder of Akong Rinpoche: Party Line Reporting?

The following story, originating with Chinese sources massaging British reporting, sets forth the conditions of Akong Rinpoche's murder much in the manner one stacks a deck of cards. We must be very careful not to accept any version of these events, until a detailed investigation is conducted by professionals. In the meantime, idle speculation in social media only serves the interests of those who bear hostility. Please note carefully the linkages proposed by this story. Here is the headline and the text:

Founder of first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Europe stabbed to death in Chengdu

Choje Akong Rinpoche, the founder of Europe's first Tibetan Buddhist monastery, was killed along with his nephew and driver in a stabbing in Chengdu on Tuesday morning. Akong's family have dubbed the killing as an 'assassination.'

Akong's brother posted a message to the monastery's website, as found by The Telegraph:

To all dear friends of Samye Ling and Choje Akong Rinpoche, I am very, very sorry to inform you all that tragically, my brother Choje Akong Rinpoche, my nephew and one monk who was travelling with then, were all assassinated in Chengdu today.

“Rinpoche’s body has been taken to hospital where a post mortem will be carried out. That is all the news I have so far. If I receive further news I will let you know.

The victims were stabbed by three ethnic Tibetans who have now been detained by police. The incident was apparently sparked by "a dispute about money." Akong, who was 73, fled Tibet in 1959 and lived a controversial life in exile, only to eventually reestablish good relations with the Chinese government:

Akong fled from Tibet into India in 1959, following the Chinese occupation of the country. But in recent years he had established unusually good relations with the Chinese government, and was able to travel in the country supervising schools and medical programmes that had been established by his charity The ROKPA Foundation. He was on a visit to these projects when he was killed.

Akong had played a key part in one of the most controversial episodes in Tibetan Buddhism in recent years In 1992, he led the search party that brought a seven-year-old boy Apo Gaga from his home in a nomad’s tent in Eastern Tibet to Tsurphu monastery, near Lhasa, where with the permission of the Chinese authorities, he was enthroned as the 17th Karmapa, Urgyen Trinley Dorje - the second most important figure after the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy.

Akong is most known for founding the Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery in the UK, near the English-Scottish border, and Chengdu is rapidly becoming better known for its stabbings.

The Murder of Akong Rinpoche: A Monk Remembers

The following memoir was written by Kunga Dondrup, a monk living in Kathmandu. As he explains, he met Akong Rinpoche when he was younger, and this is his memory of that particular meeting. 

Apparently, he walked away with a jewel.

-o-0-o-

Some years ago, in Cardiff, I had an interview with Akong Rinpoche. I was feeling really low, and sorry for myself, as things were going pretty badly at that time. I told him what I was going through. 

He looked at me flatly and said, 'Welcome to Samsara.' 

And that was it.

I felt a little deflated at first. After all, I'd opened my heart to the man, revealed the anguish that was eating me, and all he could say was this? 

And then the penny dropped: What won't work in the first place can't be fixed. What else should I expect? It was a wake up call for me.

If we accept Buddha's teaching then we really do need to make its central theme our personal experience, the springboard for our outlook and practice: Life is full of suffering; the cause of suffering is clinging; but there is a way out; and this is to follow the path which arose from the Buddha's realisation. 

Samsara won't work. It can't be fixed. In other words, there will always be suffering, in as many ways as causes and conditions permit, until the very causes of suffering themselves have been overcome, and we achieve arhatship or Buddhahood.

I was very sorry to hear of Rinpoche's death today, as I am very grateful for the teachings I received from him. They were always practical, earthy and wise. And so, rather than wax emotional about how I miss him - which would be connected more with my own emotional self-indulgence, than with what he has personally experienced - I honour his memory by sharing the very same teaching he gave to me.

I am sure Rinpoche will continue to benefit many beings. If we want to do the same, as Mahayana practitioners should, then we need to remember and implement Buddha's teaching and make it bear fruit in our lives. 

Welcome to Samsara.

Akong Rinpoche Assassinated at Chengdu, Two Others

Choje Akong Rinpoche, of Kagyu Samye Ling Monastery in Scotland, along with two others, has been "assassinated" near Chengdu, according to his brother, Lama Yeshe Rinpoche. We run the announcement as received here:

To all dear friends of Samye Ling and Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche
I am very, very sorry to inform you all that tragically, my brother Choje Akong Rinpoche, my nephew and one monk who was travelling with then, were all assassinated in Chengdu today. Rinpoche’s body has been taken to hospital where a post mortem will be carried out. That is all the news I have so far. If I receive further news I will let you know.
My nephew Kating Lama has been able to inform His Holiness Karmapa’s sister who has informed H H Karmapa, H H Dalai Lama and Chamgon Kenting Tai Situpa and they are all saying prayers.
We will have to do a lot of special prayers and make a lot of appropriate offerings on Rinpoche’s behalf and any contributions you wish to make in his name will be much appreciated.
I request you all to do whatever prayers you can.
With best wishes,
Lama Yeshe Rinpoche

Frequently noted as the friend (and occasional critic) of Trungpa Rinpoche, with whom he founded Samye Ling, in Scotland, Akong Tulku was a major figure in the transition of Tibetan Buddhism to the West.  His accomplishments are the subject of a documentary film, "Akong: A Remarkable Life."

We have no further details at this time, save to say that indigenous Chinese reporting on the incident in Chengdu is self-serving, and might well be discarded.