At the age of 80, the Dalai Lama is once again at the center of controversy as protests and complaints about him and his clique have been heard in China and elsewhere.

At an event held in California to celebrate the Dalai Lama's birthday on Monday, Shugden Buddhists, who revere a deity denounced by the Dalai Lama since 1996, gathered to ask him to "allow religious freedom" and to "stop lying".

They also released a book titled "The False Dalai Lama", in an effort to reveal "the scheming political mind" behind his "media-friendly smiles and soundbites".

Similar protests were also reported in Switzerland and Denmark.

Back in China, Tibetan herding families complained about the Dalai Lama clique's schemes to accumulate wealth.

According to reports from the China Tibetology Research Center, the clique has intensified its attempts to collect money for birthday celebrations from Buddhists on the Chinese mainland, including herdsmen who have only recently emerged from poverty.

To raise 100,000 yuan for her son who was studying in the "Drepung Monastery" in India to thank his tutors and fellow monks as a premise to obtain diploma, shepherd Ondrangkyi from Qinghai had to sell her house built with government support and move back to her pasture home with a leaking roof.

Analysts with the center said the move reflected the fall in the Dalai Lama's international standing.

During his birthday celebrations, the Dalai Lama has repeatedly emphasized cultivating universal compassion and the unbiased compassion that can be extended even to enemies.

The tricky question here is when he will stop cultivating prejudice against China and and let go his obsession with the privileges he inherited in feudal Tibet.

Editor: Lucia Su