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

itualist, would surely have considered the “mastering of the demoness” as the cause of Songtsen
Gampo's historical successes. Almost a thousand years later he too would precede almost every
political and military decision with a magic ritual.
One day, it is said, Songtsen Gampo appeared to him in a dream and demanded of him that he
manufacture a golden statue of him (the king) in the “style of a Chakravartin” and place this in the
Jokhang temple. When, in the year 1651, the “Great Fifth” visited locations at which the great king
was once active, according to the chronicles flowers began to rain from the skies there and the eight
Tibetan signs of luck floated through the air.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama and the question of incarnation
On July 6, 1935, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama was born as the child of ordinary people in a village by
the name of Takster, which means, roughly, “shining tiger”. In connection with our study of the topic
of gender it is interesting that the parents originally gave the boy a girl’s name. He was called Lhamo
Dhondup, that is, “wish fulfilling goddess”. The androgyny of this incarnation of Avalokiteshvara was
thus already signaled before his official recognition.
The story of his discovery has been told so often and spectacularly filmed in the meantime that we
only wish to sketch it briefly here. After the death of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, the then regent
(Reting Rinpoche) saw mysterious letters in a lake which was dedicated to the protective goddess
Palden Lhamo, which together with other visions indicated that the new incarnation of the god-king
was to be found in the northeast of the country in the province of Amdo. A search commission was
equipped in Lhasa and set out on the strenuous journey. In a hut in the village of Takster a small boy
is supposed to have run up to one of the commissioners and demanded the necklace of the Thirteenth
Dalai Lama which he held in his hands. The monk refused and would only give him it if the child
could say who he was. “You are a lama from Sera!”, the boy is said to have cried out in the dialect
which is only spoken in Lhasa. [6] Afterwards, from the objects laid out before him he selected those
which belonged to his predecessor; the others he laid aside. The bodily examination performed on the
child also revealed the necessary five features which distinguish a Dalai Lama: The imprint of a tiger
skin on the thigh; extended eyelashes with curved lashes; large ears; two fleshy protuberances on the
shoulders which are supposed to represent two rudimentary arms of Avalokiteshvara; the imprint of a
shell on his hand.
For understandable reasons the fact that a Chinese dialect was spoken in the family home of His
Holiness is gladly passed over in silence. The German Tibet researcher, Matthias Hermanns, who was
doing field work in Amdo at the time of the discovery and knew the family of the young Kundun well,
reports that the child could understand no Tibetan at all. When he met him and asked his name, the
boy answered in Chinese that he was called “Chi”. This was the official Chinese name for the village
of Takster (Hermanns, 1956, p. 319). Under difficult circumstances the child arrived in Lhasa at the
end of 1939 and was received there as Kundun, the living Buddha. Already as an eight year old he
received his first introduction into the tantric teachings.
Every little tulku who is separated from his family at a tender age misses the motherly touch. For the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama this role was taken over by his cook, Ponpo by name. Not at the death of his
mother, but rather at the demise of his substitute mother, Ponpo, the Kundun cried bitter tears. “He fed
me,” he said sadly, “most mammals consider the creature that feeds them as the most important in
their lives, That was the way I felt about Ponpo. I knew my teachers were more important than my