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

colors of the rainbow burst out of him. His worshippers pray to him as “father-mother”. Sometimes he
is portrayed as having four heads like the Buddhist time god. He governs as the “father of fire” or as
the “victory fire”. Through him, fire and time are equated. He is also cyclical time, in which the world
is swallowed by flames so as to arise anew.
Manichaeism (from the third century on) also took on numerous elements from the Zurvan religion
and mixed them with Christian/Gnostic ideas and added Buddhist concepts. The founder of the
religion, Mani, undertook a successful missionary journey to India. Key orientalists assume that his
teachings also had a reverse influence upon Buddhism. Among other aspects, they mention the
fivefold group of meditation Buddhas, the dualisms of good and evil, light and darkness, the holy
man’s body as the world in microcosm, and the concept of salvation. More specific are the white
robes which the monks in the kingdom of Shambhala wear. White was the cult color of the
Manichaean priestly caste and is not a normal color for clothing in Buddhism. But the blatant
eroticism which the Kalachakra translator and researcher in Asia, Albert Grünwedel, saw in
Manichaeism was not there. In contrast; Mani’s religion exhibits extremely “puritanical” traits and
rejects everything sexual: “The sin of sex”, he is reported to have said, “is animal, an imitation of the
devil mating. Above all it produces every propagation and continuation of the original evil” (quoted
by Hermanns, 1965, p. 105).
While the famous Italian Tibetologist, Guiseppe Tucci, believes Iranian influences can be detected in
the doctrine of ADI BUDDHA, he sees the Lamaist-Tibetan way in total rather as gnostic, since it
attempts to overcome the dualism of good and evil and does not peddle the out and out moralizing of
the Avesta or the Manichaeans. This is certainly true for the yoga way in the Kalachakra Tantra, yet it
is not so for the eschatology of the Shambhala myth. There, the “prince of light” (Rudra Chakrin) and
the depraved “prince of darkness” take to the field against one another.
There was a direct Iranian influence upon the Bon cult, the state religion which preceded Buddhism in
Tibet. Bon, often erroneously confused with the old shamanist cultures of the highlands, is a explicit
religion of light with an organized priesthood, a savior (Shen rab) and a realm of paradise
(Olmolungring) which resembles the kingdom of Shambhala in an astonishing manner.
It is a Tradition in Europe to hypothesize ancient Egyptian influences upon the tantric culture of
Tibet. This can probably be traced to the occult writings of the Jesuit, Athanasius Kirchner (1602-
1680), who believed he had discovered the cradle of all advanced civilizations including that of the
Tibetans in the Land of the Nile. The Briton, Captain S. Turner, who visited the highlands in the year
1783, was likewise convinced of a continuity between ancient Egypt and Tibet. Even this century,
Siegbert Hummel saw the “Land of Snows” as almost a “reserve for Mediterranean traditions” and
likewise nominated Egypt as the origin of the tradition of the Tibetan mysteries (Hummel, 1954, p.
129; 1962, p. 31). But it was especially the occultist Helena Blavatsky who saw the origins of both
cultures as flowing from the same source. The two “supernatural secret societies”, who whispered the
ideas to her were the “Brotherhood of Luxor” and the “Tibetan Brotherhood”.
The determining Greek influence upon the sacred art of Buddhism (Gandhara style) became a global
event which left its traces as far afield as Japan. Likewise, the effect of Hellenistic ideas upon the
development of Buddhist doctrines is well vouched for. There is widespread unanimity that without
this encounter Mahayana would have never even been possible. According to the studies of the
ethnologist Mario Bussagli, hermetic and alchemic teachings are also supposed to have come into