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

Wheel of the Word” took place (Coomaraswamy, 1979, p. 25). As a consequence, the Chakravartin is
the supreme world teacher and therefore also holds the “wheel of truth” in his hands. As cosmic
“wheel turner” he has overcome the “wheel of life and death” through which the unenlightened must
still wander.
In the revolutionary milieu of the tantras (since the fourth century C.E.), the political, war-like aspects
of the “wheel turner” known from Hinduism became current once more, to then reach — as we shall
see — their most aggressive form in the Shambhala myth of the Kalachakra Tantra. The
Chakravartin now leads a “just” war, and is both a Buddha (or at least a Bodhisattva) and the glorious
leader of an army in one person. The “lord of the wheel” thus displays clear military political traits.
As the emblem of control the “wheel” also symbolizes his chariot with which he leads an invincible
army. This army conquers and subjugates the entire globe and establishes a universal Buddhocracy.
The Indian religious scholar, Coomaraswamy, also makes reference to the destructive power of the
wheel. Like the discus of the Hindu god Vishnu, it can shave off the heads of the troops of entire
armies in seconds.
Destruction and resurrection are thus equally evoked by the figure of the Chakravartin. He therefore
also appears at the intersection of two eras (the iron and the subsequent golden age) and represent
both the downfall of the old and the origin of the new eon. This gives him marked apocalyptic and
messianic characteristics. He is incarnated as both world destroyer and world redeemer, as universal
exterminator and universal savior.
Profane and spiritual power
The history of India, just like that of medieval Europe, is shaped by the clash between spiritual and
worldly power. “Pope” and “Emperor” also opposed one another on the subcontinent in the form of
Brahman and King, the battle between sacerdotium (ecclesiastical rule) and regnum (kingly rule) was
also a recurrent political topic in the India of old. Interestingly, this dispute is regarded in both the
Occident and in Asia as a gender conflict and the two sex roles are transferred onto the two pretenders
to power. Sometimes the king represented the masculine and the priest the feminine, on other
occasions it was the reverse, depending on which political party currently had the say.
This long-running topic of the “political battle of the sexes” was picked up by the intellectual elite of
European fascism in the thirties of this century. The fascists had an ideological interest in conceding
the primary role in the state and in society to the warrior type and thus the monarchy. It was a
widespread belief at that time that the hypocritical and cunning priestly caste had for centuries
impeded the kings in their exercise of control so as to seize power for themselves. Such warriorfriendly
views of history influenced the national socialist mythologist, Alfred Rosenberg, just as they
did the Italian Julius Evola, who for a time acted as “spiritual” advisor to Mussolini. Both believed the
masculine principle to be obviously at work in the “king” and the inferior feminine counterforce in the
“priest”. “The monarchy is entitled to precedence over the priesthood, exactly as in the symbolism
[where] the sun has precedence over the moon and the man over the woman “, Evola wrote (Evola,
1982, p. 101).
The Indian philosopher of religion, Ananda Coomaraswami, answers him with a counter-thesis:
originally the king was “unquestionably feminine” and the priest masculine: “The sacerdotium and
the man are the intellectual, and the regnum and the woman the active elements in what should be
literally a symphony” (Coomaraswamy, 1978, p. 6). Thus we find here the conception, widespread in
India, that the feminine is active, the masculine passive or contemplative, and that control can be