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

there were fourteen offices of state which were reserved for Lamaist tulkus but not always occupied.
The Tibetan doctrine incarnation is often misunderstood. Whilst concepts of rebirth in the West are
dominated by a purely individualist idea in the sense that an individual progresses through a number
of lifetimes on earth in a row, a distinction is drawn in Tibet between three types of incarnation:
1. When the incarnation as the emanation of a supernatural being, a Buddha, Bodhisattva, or a
wrathful deity. Here, incarnation means that the lama in question is the embodiment of a deity,
just as the Dalai Lama is an embodiment of Avalokiteshvara. The tulku lives from the spiritual
energies of a transcendent being or, vice versa, this being emanates in a human body.
2. When reincarnation arises through the initiatory transfer from the master to the sadhaka, that
is, the “root guru” (represented by the master) and the deities who stand behind him embody
themselves in his pupil.
3. When it concerns the rebirth of a historical figure who reveals himself in the form of a new
born baby. For example, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama is also an incarnation of the Fifth Dalai
Lama.
The first and third concepts of incarnation do not necessarily contradict one another, rather they can
complement each other, so that a person who has already died and deity can simultaneously be
embodied in a person. But come what may, the deity has priority and supreme authority. It seems
obvious that their bodily continuity and presence in this world is far better ensured by the doctrine of
incarnation than by a natural line of inheritance. In a religious system in which the person means
ultimately nothing, but the gods who stand behind him are everything, the human body only
represents the instrument through which a higher being can make an appearance. From the deity’s
point of view a natural reproduction would bring the personal interests of a family into conflict with
his or her own divine ambitions.
The incarnation system in contrast is impersonal, anti-genetic, and anti-aristocratic. For this reason the
monastic orders as such are protected. through the rearing of a “divine” child it creates for itself the
best conditions for the survival of its tradition, which can no longer be damaged by incapable heirs,
family intrigues, and nepotism.
On a more fundamental symbolic level, the doctrine of incarnation must nevertheless be seen as an
ingenious chess move against the woman’s monopoly on childbirth and the dependence of humanity
upon the cycle of birth. It makes things “theoretically” independent of birth and the woman as the
Great Mother. That mothers are nonetheless needed to bring the little tulkus into the world is not
significant from a Buddhological point of view. The women serve purely as a tool, they are so to
speak the corporeal cradle into which the god settles down in the form of an embryo. The conception
of an incarnated lama (tulku) is thus always regarded as a supernatural procedure and it does not arise
through the admixture of the male and female seed as is normal. Like in the Buddha legend, where the
mother of the Sublime One is made pregnant in a dream by an elephant, so too the mother of a
Tibetan tulku has visions and dreams of divine entities who enter into her. But the role of the “wet
nurse” is taken over by the monks already, so that the child can be suckled upon the milk of their
androcentric wisdom from the most tender age.
The doctrine of reincarnation was fitted out by the clergy with a high grade symbolic system which
cannot be accessed by ordinary mortals. But as historical examples show, the advantages of the