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

doctrine were thoroughly capable of being combined now and again with the principle of biological
descent. Hence, among the powerful Sakyapas, where the office of abbot was inherited within a
family dynasty, both the chain of inheritance and the precepts of incarnation were observed.
Relatives, usually the nephews of the heads of the Sakyapa order, were simply declared to be tulkus.
Let us consider the Lamaist “lineage tree” or “spiritual tree” and its relation to the tulku system.
Actually, one would assume that the child recognized as being a reincarnation would already possess
all the initiation mysteries which it had acquired in former lives. Paradoxically, this is however not the
case. Every Dalai Lama, every Karmapa, every tulku is initiated “anew” into the various tantric
mysteries by a master. Only after this may he consider himself a branch of the “lineage tree” whose
roots, trunk, and crown consist of the many predecessors of his guru and his guru’s guru. There are
critics of the system who therefore claim with some justification that a child recognized as an
incarnation first becomes the “vessel” of a deity after his “indoctrination” (i.e., after his initiation).
The traditional power of the individual Lamaist sects is primarily demonstrated by their lineage tree.
It is the idealized image of a hierarchic/sacred social structure which draws its legitimation from the
divine mysteries, and is supposed to imply to the subjects that the power elite represent the visible and
time transcending assembly of an invisible, unchanging meta-order. At the origin of the initiation tree
there is always a Buddha who emanates in a Bodhisattva who then embodies himself in a Maha
Siddha. The roaming, wild-looking founding yogis (the Maha Siddhas) are, however, very soon
replaced in the generations which follow by faceless “civil servants” within the lineage tree; fantastic
great sorcerers have become uniformed state officials. The lineage tree now consists of the scholars
and arch-abbots of the lama state.
The “Great Fifth” and the system of incarnation
Historically, for the “yellow sect” (the Gelugpa order) which traditionally furnishes the Dalai Lama,
the question of incarnation at first did not play such a significant role as it did, for example, among
the “Red Hats” (Kagyupa). The Fifth Dalai Lama first extended the system properly for his institution
and developed it into an ingenious political artifact, whose individual phases of establishment over the
years 1642 to 1653 we can reconstruct exactly on the basis of the documentary evidence. The “Great
Fifth” saw himself as an incarnation of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara. The embodiment of the
Tibetan “national god” was until then a privilege claimed primarily by the Sakyapa and Kagyupa
orders but not by the Gelugpa school. Rather, their founder, Tsongkhapa, was considered to be an
emanation of the Bodhisattva Manjushri, the “Lord of Transcendental Knowledge”. In contrast,
already in the thirteenth century the Karmapas presented themselves to the public as manifestations of
Avalokiteshvara.
An identification with the Tibetan “national god” and first father, Chenrezi (Avalokiteshvara), was, so
to speak, a mythological precondition for being able to rule the Land of Snows and its spirits, above
all since the subjugation and civilization of Tibet were associated with the “good deeds” of the
Bodhisattva, beginning with his compassionate, monkey union with the primal mother Srinmo.
Among the people too, the Bodhisattva enjoyed the highest divine authority, and his mantra, om mani
padme hum, was recited daily by all. Hence, whoever wished to rule the Tibetans and govern the
universe from the roof of the world, could only do so as a manifestation of the fire god, Chenrezi, the
controller of our age.
The “Great Fifth” was well aware of this, and via a sophisticated masterpiece of the manipulation of