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

arose from a tear of Avalokiteshvara, the Czar as Tara must also be a product of the Dalai Lama, the
highest living incarnation of Avalokiteshvara. Further to this there is the idea derived from the tantras
that the Czar (and thus Russia) as Tara could be coerced via a sexual magic act. This appears
downright fantastic, but — as we know — the tantra master does use his karma mudra as symbols for
the elements, planets, and also for countries.
In the nineteenth century the idea likewise arose that the British Queen, Victoria, was a reincarnation
of Tara, yet on occasion Palden Lhamo was also nominated as being the goddess functioning behind
the facade of the English Queen. It was thus more natural for the Dalai Lama to cooperate with the
British or the Russians — since the Chinese had been possessed for centuries by a “nine-headed
demoness” with whom it was impossible to reach an accord. The China-friendly Panchen Lama,
however, saw this differently. For him, the Chinese Emperors of the Manchu dynasty, who professed
to the Buddhist faith, were incarnations of the Bodhisattva, Manjushri, and could thus be considered
as acceptable negotiators.
Tara and Mary
A comparison of the Tibetan Tara with the Christian figure of Mary has by now become a
commonplace in Buddhist circles. The Fourteenth Dalai Lama also makes liberal use of this cultural
parallel with pious emotionalism. For the “yellow pontiff” Mary represents the inana mudra (the
“imagined female”) so to speak of Catholicism. „Whenever I see an image of Mary,” — the Kundun
has said — „I feel that she represents love and compassion. She is like a symbol of love. Within
Buddhist iconography, the goddess Tara occupies a similar position” (Dalai Lama XIV, 1996c, p. 83).
Not all that long ago, the „god-king” undertook a pilgrimage to Lourdes and afterwards summarized
his impressions of the greatest Catholic shrine to Mary with the following moving words. „There —
in front of the cave — I experienced something very special. I felt a spiritual vibration, a kind of
spiritual presence there. And then in front of the image of the Virgin Mary, I prayed” (Dalai Lama
XIV, 1996 c, p. 84).
The autobiographical book with the title of Longing for Darkness: Tara and the Black Madonna by
the American, China Galland, reports on the attempt to incorporate the Catholic cult of Mary via the
Tibetan cult of Tara. After the author’s second marriage failed, she returned to the Catholic Church
and devoted herself to an excessive Mary worship with feministic undertones. The latter was the
reason why Galland felt herself attracted above all to the black Madonnas worshipped in Catholicism.
The “Black Virgin” has already been worshipped for years by feminists as an apocryphal mother deity.
One day the author encountered the Tibetan goddess, Tara, and the American was instantly
fascinated. Tara struck her as a pioneer of “spiritual” women’s rights. The goddess had — this author
believed –proclaimed that contrary to Buddhist doctrine enlightenment could also be attained in a
female body. The author felt herself especially attracted to figure of the “green Tara”, whom she
equates with the black Kali of Hinduism at one point in her book: “The darkness of this female gods
comforted me. I felt like a balm on the wound of the unending white maleness tha we had deified in
the West. They were the other side of everything I had ever known about God. A dark female God.
Oh yes!” (Galland, 1990, p. 31).
In Galland we are thus dealing with a spiritual feminist who has rediscovered her original black
mother and is seeking traces of her in every culture. In the Buddhist Tara cult this author thus also
sees archetypal references to the many-breasted Artemis of Ephesus, to the Egyptian Isis, to the