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

first public initiation in exile (in Dharamsala) was staged. He himself had a dream shortly before this:
“When I woke up, I knew that in the future I would perform this ritual many times. I think in my
previous lifetimes I had a connection with the Kalachakra teaching. It's a karmic force” (Bryant,
1992, p. 112). This dream was in fact to come true in the years which followed.
In the summer of 1981, the “iron bird year” of the Tibetan calendar, the god-king granted a public
Kalachakra initiation for the first time outside of Asia. The date and the location (Wisconsin, USA) of
the initiation were drawn directly from a prophecy of the Tibetan “religious founder”,
Padmasambhava, who introduced Vajrayana to the Land of Snows from India in the eighth century:
“When the iron bird flies and the horses roll on wheels … the Dharma will come to the land of the
Red Man” (Bernbaum, 1982, p. 33). The iron birds — in the interpretation of this vision — are
airplanes, the wheeled horses are automobiles, and the land of the Red Man (the American Indians) is
the United States. During the ritual a falcon with a snake in its claws is supposed to have appeared in
the sky. In it the participants saw the mythic bird, garuda, representing the patriarchal power which
destroys the feminine in the form of a snake. [4] Do we have here the image of a tantric wish
according to which the West is already supposed to fall into the clutches of Tibetan Buddhism in the
near future?
Not more than 1200 people took part in the first western initiation in Wisconsin. In1983 the
Kalachakra ceremony was performed in Switzerland and thus for the first time in Europe. Now there
were already 6000 western participants. In the same year more than 300,000 people appeared at the
initiation in Bodh Gaya (in India). This grandiose spectacle was declared by the press to be the
“Buddhist event of the century” (Tibetan Review, January 1986, p. 4). Many very poor Tibetans had
illegally crossed the Chinese border in order to take part in the festivities. It is certainly worth
mentioning that at least fifty people died during the ritual! (Tibetan Review, January 1986, p. 6).
In 1991, in Madison Square Gardens in New York City, there was a further Kalachakra ceremony in
front of 4000 participants which attracted much public attention. At the same time a sand mandala
was constructed in the Museum of Asian Art which drew tens of thousands of visitors. By the
beginning of 1998, the Dalai Lama could look back over 25 public initiations into the Time Tantra
which he had conducted as the supreme vajra master.
List of Kalachakra Initiations given by the XIV Dalai Lama
S.No. Date Place Attendants
1 May 1954 Norbulingka, Lhasa, Tibet 100,000
2 April 1956 Norbulingka, Lhasa, Tibet 100,000
3 March 1970 Dharamshala, India 30,000
4 May 1971 Bylakuppe, Karnataka, India 10,000
5 December 1974 Bodh Gaya, Bihar, India 100,000
6 September 1976 Leh, Ladakh, India 40,000
7 July 1981 Madison, Wisconsin, USA 1,500
8 April 1983 Bomdila, Arunachal Pradesh, India 5,000
9 August 1983 Tabo, Spiti, Himachal Pradesh, India 10,000
10 July 1985 Rikon, Switzerland 6,000