Dzogchen Khenpo Gyatso Rimpoche, 19th incarnate tulku of the Jubtrul lineage and head of the Diamond Dharma Buddhist Monastery, Woresley, Kent, was charged with gross negligence at Kent Crown Court today, in connection with a faulty prayer-wheel.Mr Gyatso stands accused of failing to properly maintain the 200 ton rosewood device, which is designed to pray for good karma and blessings. Regular servicing, prosecutors claim, could have averted last spring’s disaster in which a restraining bolt on the central camshaft became abraded and snapped, causing the giant apparatus of veneration to whirl around the monastery praying for a series of inappropriate boons.
“First I felt a rain of blossoms,” said Jenny Miller, tourist, who was caught in the stampede. “A minor miracle! I thought. I was just wondering who could have prayed for a thing of such fragrant beauty, when it came hurtling down the corridor at me and turned my cheeks into serpents - and my thoughts to liberation. There were people screaming everywhere, and monks stirred slightly from their yogic postures.”
She wasn’t the only one to suffer.
“It cast my soul into a herd of swine,” said monastery bouncer, Joanne Peterson.
“I saw smoke and incantations pouring from the lip of the device,” said visiting sage Wong Boying.
“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” said neophyte Dilbo Trugs, who was meditating on transience when the automated worshipping-device worked loose from its fittings. “It just seemed to just go wild, praying willy-nilly for whatever came into its mind. Later I was shot by police. I don’t know why.”
The prayer took on a darker twist, however, when the machine broke into the monks’ praying mantis collection and started praying for what they pray for.
“It was at this stage that we started to become concerned for the wellbeing of the three worlds,” confirmed rustic rappers Grosset Butterworth and Amour Spudder, who happened to have exchanged jobs with the G’Gondarrk, Chief Constable of Kent police, for a day that day, for TV. “Those are savage insects. It was now praying for things like peace, equality, justice and freedom. When it put in a request for a world with no greed or hunger, we knew we had to act.”
But defence lawyers argue that the Reverend Dharma Master is not to blame. According to Pauline Tandem QC, it was “merely a vigorous prayer-cycle initiated by an over-exuberant school party that caused the mayhem in the main hall. Although, at first glance, the machine does appear to be chasing monks and chastening terrified members of the public while chanting obscene mantras, this is not the case. In fact, CCTV footage gives a false impression, since the cameras themselves were in a state of panic.”
A number of gods are implicated in the granting, including God (the Christian god) and Coyote (the Plains Indian trickster god), but they are unlikely to be called to testify, as the heavens have no extradition treaty with the UK.
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