The emergence of the practice is strongly related to Tulku Dragpa Gyaltsen, a contemporary of the 5th Dalai Lama about whom exist different stories.
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Joseph Rock witnessed and documented a public invocation of the Panglung oracle in Kham (Eastern Tibet) in 1928.
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According to Joseph Rock there were two main Dorje Shugden oracles: Panglung Choje and Trode Khangsar Choje.
Some say that Dorje Shugden, the ghost of a powerful 17th-century monk, is a deity, but the Dalai Lama asserts that he is an evil spirit, which has caused a split in the Tibetan exile community.
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Dorje Shugden is the ghost of a powerful 17th-century monk who was murdered in his palace in Tibet.
When he was a youth, he received death threats from the ‘Secret Society of External and Internal Enemy Eliminators’ for his practice of Dorje Shugden, which forced him to stop his traditional studies in India and go to Western Europe.
Dorje Shugden | Trinley Thaye Dorje | Ogyen Trinley Dorje | Lhalu Tsewang Dorje |
As further evidence of their view they state the example of Phelgye Ling monastery that was transformed to a Gelug monastery by the 5th Dalai Lama, who gave the monastery a statue (about 20 cm high) of Dorje Shugden riding on a black horse, which still exists in the monastery in Kathmandu.
Chocktrul Rinpoche now concentrates on his own Dharma studies and practices as a private citizen in the USA where he is free to continue his practice of Dorje Shugden as in his previous lives.