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

The Maha Siddhas wanted to provoke. Their “demonic nihilism” knew no bounds. They shocked
people with their bizarre appearance, were even disrespectful to kings and as a matter of principle did
the opposite of what one would expect of either an “ordinary” person or an ordained Mahayana
monk. It was a part of their code of honor to publicly represent their mystic guild through completely
unconventional behavior. Instead of abstinence they enjoyed brandy, rather than peacemakers they
were ruffians. The majority of them took mind-altering drugs. They were dirty and unkempt. They
collected alms in a skull bowl. Some of them proudly fed themselves with human body parts which
lay scattered about the crematoria. We have reported upon their erotic practices in detail in the first
part of our study, and likewise upon their boundless power fantasies which did not shy at any crime.
Hence, the magic powers (siddhis) were at the top of their wish list, even if it is repeatedly stressed in
the legends that the “worldly” siddhis were of only secondary importance. Telepathy, clairvoyance,
the ability to fly, to walk on water, to raise the dead, to kill the living by power of thought — they
constantly performed wonders in their immediate environs so as to demonstrate their superiority.
But how well can this “spiritual anarchism” of the Maha Siddhas be reconciled with the Buddhist
conception of state? In his basic character the Siddha is an opponent all state hierarchies and every
form of discipline. All the formalities of life are repugnant to him — marriage, occupation, position,
official accolades and recognition. But this is only temporarily valid, then once the yogi has attained a
state of enlightenment a wonderful and ordered world arises from this in accordance with the law of
inversion. Thanks to the sexual magic rites of Tantrism the brothel bars have now become divine
palaces, nauseating filth has become diamond-clear purity, stinking excrement shining pieces of gold,
horny hetaeras noble queens, insatiable hate undying love, chaos order, anarchy the absolute state.
The monastic state is, as we shall show in relation to the “history of the church” in Tibet, the goal; the
“wild life” of the Maha Siddhas in contrast is just a transitional phase.
For this reason we should not refer to the tantric yogi not simply as a “spiritual anarchist” as does
Keith Dowman, nor as a “villain”. Rather, he is a disciplined hero of the “good”, who dives into the
underworld of erotic love and crime so as to stage a total inversion there, in that he transforms
everything negative into its positive. He is no libertarian free thinker, but rather an “agent” of the
monastic community who has infiltrated the red-light and criminal milieu for tactic spiritual reasons.
But he does not always see his task as being to transform the whores, murderers and manslaughterers
into saints, rather he likewise understands it as being to make use of their aggression to protect and
further his own ideas and interests.
The anarchist founding father of Tibetan Buddhism: Padmasambhava
The most famous of all the great magicians of Tibet is, even though he is not one of the 84 Maha
Siddhas, the Indian, Padmasambhava, the “Lotus Born”. The Tibetans call him Guru Rinpoche,
“valuable teacher”. He is considered to be not just an emanation of Avalokiteshvara (like the Dalai
Lama) but is himself also, according to the doctrine of the “Great Fifth”, a previous incarnation of the
Tibetan god-king. The reader should thus always keep in mind that the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama
is accountable for the wild biography of Guru Rinpoche as his own former life.
Legend tells of his wondrous birth from a lotus flower — hence his name (padma means ‘lotus’). He
appeared in the form of an eight-year-old boy “without father or mother”, that is, he gave rise to
himself. The Indian king Indrabhuti discovered him in the middle of a lake, and brought the lotus boy
to his palace and reared him as a son. In the iconography, Padmasambhava may be encountered in