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

Avalokiteshvara in the form of the Death God Yama
In the face of this splendor of light it is all too easy to forget that Avalokiteshvara also has his shady
side. Every Buddha and every Bodhisattva — tantric doctrine says — can appear in a peaceful and a
terrible form. This is also true for the Bodhisattva of supreme compassion. Among his eleven heads
can be found the terrifying head of Yama, the god of the dead. He and Avalokiteshvara form a unit.
Hence, as the “king of all demons” (one of Yama’s epithets), the “light god” also reigns over the
various Buddhist hells.
Yama is depicted on Tibetan thangkas as a horned demon with a crown of human skulls and an
aroused penis. Usually he is dancing wildly upon a bull beneath the weight of which a woman, with
whom the animal is copulating, is being crushed. Fokke Sierksma and others see in this scene an
attack on a pre-Buddhist (possibly matriarchal) fertility rite (Sierksma, 1966, p. 215).
As god of the dead (Yama) and snarling monster Avalokiteshvara also holds the “wheel of life” in his
claws, which is in truth a “death wheel” (a sign of rebirth) in Buddhism. Among the twelve
fundamental evils etched into the rim of the wheel which make an earthly/human existence appear
worthless can be found “sexual love”, “pregnancy” and “birth”.