Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

adopted it, or do they seek for a way to combine both systems? Someone who knew the Kalachakra
Tantra well, the Kagyupa guru, Kalu Rinpoche, who died in 1989, gave a clear and concise answer to
all three questions: “Each of these cosmologies is perfect for the being whose karmic projections
cause them to experience their universe in this manner. ... Therefore on a relative level every
cosmology is valid. At a final level, no cosmology is absolutely true. It cannot be universally valid as
long as there are beings in fundamentally different situations” (Brauen, 1992, p. 109). According to
his, the cosmos is an apparition of the spirit. The world has no existence outside of the consciousness
which perceives it. If this consciousness changes then the world changes to the same degree. For this
reason the cosmography of Buddhism does not describe nature but solely forms of the spirit. Such an
extreme idealism and radical relativism helps itself to the power to undermine with a single dry
statement the foundations of our scientific world view. But if nothing is final any more, it follows that
everything is possible, even the cosmology of the Abhidharmakosa. Yet, the lamas argue, only at the
point in time where all of humanity have adopted the Buddhist paradigm can they also perceive the
gigantic Meru mountain in the middle of their universe. Today, Tibetan gurus claim, only the few
“chosen” have this ability.
In the second part of our study, we shall examine the intensive and warm relationship between the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama and modern Western scientists and show that the radical relativism of a Kalu
Rinpoche is also distributed in such circles. Similar philosophical speculations by Europeans can be
found, even from earlier times. Heinrich Harrer, who traveled extensively through Tibet tells in an
anecdote of how Westerners readily — even if purely out of coquetry — take on the Tibetan world
view. Harrer was assigned to impart to the Tibetans, but in particular the young Dalai Lama, the
modern scientific world view. In the year 1948, as he tried to explain to a group of Tibetan nobles at a
party that our earth is round and is neither flat nor a continent, he called upon the famous Italian
Tibetologist, Giuseppe Tucci, who was also present, to be his witness and support his theory. “To my
greatest surprise”, says Harrer, “he took the side of the doubters, since he believed that all sciences
must constantly revise their theories and one day the Tibetan teaching could just as well prove to be
right” (Harrer, 1984, p. 190).
Thus, following a Buddhization of our world there would be no need for the “converted” population
of the world to do without the traditional cosmic “map” of the Abhidharmakosa, since in accordance
with the Buddhist theory of perception the “map” and the territory it describes are identical. Both, the
geography and its likeness in consciousness, ultimately prove themselves to be projections of one and
the same spirit.
The downfall of the tantric universe
The mystic bodily structure of the yogi (ADI BUDDHA) duplicates the cosmogram of the
Chakravala. Correspondingly, the fate of his energy body proves to be identical to the fate of the
universe. Just as the fore woman in the form of the candali burns up all the coarse elements inside the
tantra master step by step, so at the end of time the whole universe becomes the victim of a world fire,
which finds its origin at the roots of Mount Meru in the form of Kalagni. Step by step, Kalagni set the
individual segments of the world axis aflame and arises flickering up to the region of the form gods
(the Forms). Only in the highest heights, in the sphere of formlessness, does the destructive fire come
to a standstill. When there is nothing more to burn the flame is extinguished from alone. That which
remains of the whole of Chakravala are atomic elements of space ("galactic seeds”), which provide
the building blocks for the construction of a new cosmos, and which, in accordance with the law of
eternal recurrence, will look exactly the same as the old one and share the same fate as its predecessor.