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

a council and there forced through his “Buddhological” ideas.
Up until today the idea of the just “king of peace” has been celebrated in the figure of Ashoka, and it
has been completely overlooked that he confronted the sangha with the problem of state power. The
Buddhist monastic community was originally completely non-coercive. Following its connection with
the state, the principle of nonviolence necessarily came into conflict with the power political
requirements this brought with it. For example, the historical Buddha is said to have had such an
aversion to the death penalty that he offered himself as a substitute in order to save the life of a
criminal. Ashoka, however, who proclaimed an edict against the slaughter of animals, did not
renounce the execution of criminals by the state.
Whether during his lifetime or first due to later interpretations — the Emperor was (at any rate after
his demise) declared to be a Chakravartin (world ruler) who held the “golden wheel” of the Dharma
(the teaching) in his hands. He was the first historical Bodhisattva king, that is, a Bodhisattva
incarnated in the figure of a worldly ruler. In him, worldly and spiritual power were united in one
person. Interestingly he established his spiritual world domination via a kind of “cosmic sacrifice”.
Legend tells how the Emperor came into possession of the original Buddha relic and ordered this to
be divided into 84,000 pieces and scattered throughout the entire universe. Wherever a particle of this
relic landed, his dominion spread, that is, everywhere, since at that time in India 84,000 was a
symbolic number for the cosmic whole. [1] This pious account of his universal sovereignty rendered
him completely independent of the Buddhist sangha.
In the Mahayana Golden Shine Sutra, a few centuries after Ashoka, the coercive power of the state is
affirmed and presented as a doctrine of the historical Buddha. With this the anarchic period of the
Sangha was finally ended. By 200 C.E. at the latest, under the influence of Greco-Roman and Iranian
ideas, the Buddhist concept of kingship had developed into its fully autocratic form which is referred
to by historians as “Caesaropapism”. An example of this is provided by King Kanishka from the
Kushana dynasty (2nd century C.E.) In him, the attributes of a worldly king and those of a Buddha
were completely fused with one another. Even the “coming” Buddha, Maitreya, and the reigning king
formed a unit. The ruler had become a savior. He was a contemporary Bodhisattva and at the same
time the appearance of the coming Buddhist messiah who had descended from heaven already in this
life so as to impart his message of salvation to the people. (Kanishka cultivated a religious syncretism
and also used other systems to apotheosize his person and reign.)
The Dalai Lama and the Buddhist state are one
Tibet first became a centralized ecclesiastical state with the Dalai Lama as its head in the year 1642.
The priest-king had the self-appointed right to exercise absolute power. He was de jure not just lord
over his human subjects but likewise over the spirits and all other beings which lived “above and
beneath the world”. One of the first western visitors to the country, the Briton S. Turner, described the
institution as follows: “A sovereign Lama, immaculate, immortal, omnipresent and omniscient is
placed at the summit of their fabric. [!] He is esteemed the vice regent of the only God, the mediator
between mortals and the Supreme ... He is also the center of all civil government, which derives from
his authority all influence and power” (quoted by Bishop, 1993, p. 93).
Turner, who knew nothing about the secrets of Tantrism, saw the Dalai Lama as a kind of bridge
(pontifex maximus) between transcendence and reality. He was for this author the governor for and the
image of Buddha, his majesty appeared as the pale earthly reflection of the deity. This is, however,