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

The lot of the young Twelfth was particularly tragic. His chamberlain, one of his few intimates, was
caught thieving from the Potala on a large scale. He fled upon discovery of the deed, was caught up
with, and killed. The body was strapped astride a horse as if it were alive. The dead man was thus led
before the young Kundun. Before the eyes of the fifteen year old, the head, hands and feet of the
wrongdoer were struck off and the trunk was tossed into a field. The god-king was so horrified by the
spectacle of the body of his “best friend” that he no longer wanted to see anyone at all any more and
sought refuge in speechlessness. Nevertheless, the visit to the horrifying temple of Palden Lhamo was
still expected of him afterwards. In contrast the “Great Thirteenth” did not visit the shrine of the
demoness before he was 25 years old and came away unscathed. Even the Chinese were amazed at
this. We do not know if the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has ever set foot in the shrine.
If one pursues a Tibetan/tantric logic, it naturally makes sense to interpret the premature deaths of the
four Dalai Lamas as sacrifices to Palden Lhamo, since according to tradition it is necessary to
constantly palliate the terror gods with blood and flesh. The demoness’s extreme cruelty is beyond
doubt, and that she desires the sacrifice of boys is revealing of her own tragic history. Incidentally, the
slaughter of her son may be an indicator of an originally matriarchal sacrificial cult which the
Buddhists integrated into their own system. For example, the researcher A. H. Francke has discovered
rock inscriptions in Tibet which refer to human sacrifices to the great goddess (Francke, 1914, p. 21).
But it could also– in light of the tantric methods — be that Palden Lhamo, converted to Buddhism not
from conviction but because she was magically forced to the ground, was compelled by her new lords
to murder her son and that she revenged herself through the killings of the young Dalai Lamas.
Even an apparently paradoxical interpretation is possible: as a female, the demoness stands in radical
confrontation to the doctrine of Vajrayana, and she may have sold her loyalty and subjugation for the
highest possible price, namely that of the sacrifice of the god-kings. Such sadomasochist satisfactions
can only be understood from within the tantric scheme, but there they are — as we know — not at all
seldom. Hence, if one set a limit on the sacrifice of the boys in terms of time and headcount, then they
may have been of benefit to later incarnations of the god-king, specifically, that is, to the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Dalai Lamas. The exceptionally long reign of the last two Kunduns would, according
to tantric logic, support such an interpretation.
Tara —Tibet’s Madonna
In the mytho-historical pantheon of Tibetan Buddhism, the gentle goddess Tara represents the exact
counterimage of the terrible Palden Lhamo. Tara is — in the words of European alchemy — the
“white virgin”, the ethereal-feminine supreme source of inspiration for the adept. In precisely this
sense she represents the positive feminine counterpart to the destructive Palden Lhamo, or hence to
the earth mother, Srinmo. The divided image of femininity found in every phase of Indian religious
history thus lives on in Tibetan culture. “Witch” and “Madonna” are the two feminine archetypes
which have for centuries dominated and continue to dominate the patriarchal imagination of Tibet just
like that of the west. If all the negative attributes of the feminine are collected in the witch, then all the
positive ones are concentrated within the Madonna.
The Tara cult is probably fairly recent. Although legends recount that the worship of the goddess was
brought to the Land of Snows in the seventh century by one of the women of the Tibetan king,
Songtsen Gampo, it is historically more likely that the Indian scholar Atisha first introduced the cult
in the eleventh century.