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

There is no figure in the Buddhist pantheon who enjoys greater respect than he does. His name means
“he who looks down kindly”. He is identified by his chief characteristic of mercy and compassion for
all living creatures. This close linkage to emotional life has won him the deep reverence of the masses.
Avalokiteshvara can appear in countless forms, 108 of which are iconographically fixed. In an official
prayer, he is described as a puer aeternus (an eternal boy):
Generated from ten million rays,
his body is completely white.
His head is adorned
and his locks reach down to his breast. [...]
His kindly, smiling features
are those of a sixteen year old.
(Lange, n.d., p. 172)
His best known and most original appearance shows him with eleven heads and a thousand arms. This
figure arose — the myth would have it — after the Bodhisattva’s head split apart into countless
fragments because he could no longer bear the misery of this world and the stupidity of the living
creatures. Thereupon his “father”, Amitabha, took the remnants with him to the paradise of Sukhavati
and formed ten new heads from the fragments, adding his own as the tip of the pyramid. This selfdestruction
out of compassion for humanity and the Bodhisattva’s subsequent resurrection makes it
tempting to compare this Bodhisattva’s tale of suffering with the Passion of Christ.
In some Mahayana Buddhist texts the figure of Avalokiteshvara is exaggerated so that he becomes an
arch-god, who absorbs within himself all the other gods, even the Highest Buddha (ADI BUDDHA).
He also already appears in India (as later in Tibet in the form of the Dalai Lama) as Chakravartin, i.e.,
as a “king of all kings”, as a “ruler of the world” (Mallmann, 1948, p. 104).
His believers prostrate themselves before him as the “shining lord”. In one interesting picture from the
collection of Prince Uchtomskij he is depicted within a circle of flame and with the disc of the sun.
His epithet is “one whose body is the sun” (Gockel, 1992, p. 21). He sits upon a Lion Throne, or rides
upon the back of a lion, or wears the fur of a lion. Thus, all the solar symbols of Amitabha and the
historical Buddha are also associated with him.