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

supposed to have performed to attack the young thirteenth god-king, and because of a conspiracy with
the Chinese. He was thrown into one of the dreadful monastery dungeons, chained up, and maltreated
him till he died. A co-conspirator, head of a distinguished noble family, was brought to the Potala
after his deeds were discovered and pushed from the highest battlements of the palace. His names,
possessions and even the women of his house were then given to a favorite of the Dalai Lama’s as a
gift.
In 1904 the god-king had to flee to Mongolia to evade the English who occupied Lhasa. Under
pressure from the Manchu dynasty he visited Beijing in 1908. We have already described how the
Chinese Emperor and the Empress Dowager Ci Xi died mysteriously during this visit. He later fell out
with the Thirteenth Dalai Lama with the Panchen Lama, [5] who cooperated with the Chinese and
was forced to flee Tibet in 1923. The “Great Thirteenth” conducted quite unproductive fluctuating
political negotiations with Russia, England, and China; why he was given the epithet of “the Great”
nobody really knows, not even his successor from Dharamsala.
An American envoy gained the impression that His Holiness (the Thirteenth Dalai Lama) „cared very
little, if at all, for anything which did not affect his personal privileges and prerogatives, that he
separated entirely his case from that of the people of Tibetan, which he was willing to abandon
entirely to the mercy of China” (Mehra, 1976, p.20) When we recall that the institution of the Dalai
Lama was a Mongolian arrangement which was put through in the civil war of 1642 against the will
of the majority of the Tibetans, such an evaluation may well be justified.
As an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the thirteenth hierarch also (like the “Great Fifth”) saw himself
surrounded less by politicians and heads of state than by gods and demons. David Seyfort Ruegg most
astutely indicates that the criteria by which Buddhists in positions of power assess historical events
and personalities have nothing in common with our western, rational conceptions. For them,
“supernatural” forces and powers are primarily at work, using people as bodily vessels and
instruments. We have already had a taste of this in the opposition between the god-king as an
incarnation of Avalokiteshvara and Guanyin in the form of the Empress Dowager Ci Xi. Further
examples in the coming chapters should show how magic and politics, war and ritual are also
interwoven here.
Now what is the situation with regard to these topics and the living Fourteenth Dalai Lama? Has his
almost 40--year exposure to western culture changed anything fundamental in the traditional political
understanding? Is the current god-king free of the ancient, magical visions of power of his
predecessors? Let us allow him to answer this question himself: in adopting the position of the Fifth
Dalai Lama, the Kundun explained in an interview in 1997, “I am supposed to follow what he
did” (Dalai Lama, HPI 006). As a consequence we too are entitled to accredit the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama with all the deeds and visions of the great fifth hierarch and to assess his politics according to
the criteria of his famous exemplar.
Incarnation and power
Lamaism’s particular brand of controlling power is based upon the doctrine of incarnation. Formerly
(before the Communist invasion) the incarnation system covered the entire Land of Snows like a
network. In Tibet, the monastic incarnations are called “tulkus”. Tulku means literally the “selftransforming
body”. In Mongolia they are known as “chubilganes”. There were over a hundred of
these at the end of the nineteenth century. Even in Beijing during the reign of the imperial Manchus