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

own father with a stake and was in the process of killing his mother held captive in the cellar. On
another occasion Naropa had to beat his penis with a stone until it spurted blood. At another time
Tilopa required of him that he vivisect himself.
In order to reveal the world to be an illusion, the tantra master had his pupil commit one crime after
another and presented himself as a dastardly criminal. Naropa passed every test and became one of
the finest experts and commentators on the Kalachakra Tantra.
One of his many pupils was the Tibetan, Marpa (1012-1097). Naropa initiated him into the secret
tantric teachings. After further initiations from burial ground dakinis, whom Marpa defeated with the
help of Tilopa who appeared from the beyond, and after encountering the strange yogi, Kukkuri ("dog
ascetic”), he returned from India to his home country. He brought several tantra texts back with him
and translated these into the national language, giving him his epithet of the “translator”. In Tibet he
married several women, had many sons and led a household. He is said to have performed the tantric
rites with his head wife, Dagmema. In contrast to the yoginis of the legendary Maha Siddhas,
Dagmema displays very individualized traits and thus forms a much-cited exception among the ranks
of female Tibetan figures. She was sincere, clever, shrewd, self-controlled and industrious. Besides
this she had independent of her man her own possessions. She cared for the family, worked the fields,
supervised the livestock and fought with the neighbors. In a word, she closely resembled a normal
housewife in the best sense.
A monastic interpretation of Marpa’s “ordinary” life circumstances reveals, however, how profoundly
the anarchist dimension dominated the consciousness of the yogis at that time: Marpa’s “normality”
was not considered a good deed of his because it counted as moral in the dominant social rules of the
time, but rather, in contrast, because he had taken the most difficult of all exercises upon himself in
that he realized his enlightenment in the so despised “normality”. “People of the highest capacity can
and should practice like that” (Chökyi, 1989, p. 143). Effectively this says that family life is a far
greater hindrance to the spiritual development of a tantra master than a crematorium. This is what
Marpa’s pupil, Milarepa, also wanted to indicate when he rejected marriage for himself with the
following words: “Marpa had married for the purpose of serving others, but ... if I presumed to
imitate him without being endowed with his purity of purpose and his spiritual power, it would be the
hare's emulation of the lion’s leap, which would surely end in my being precipitated into the chasm of
destruction” (R. Paul, 1982, p. 234)
Marpa’s pragmatic personality, especially his almost egalitarian relationship with his wife, is unique
in the history of Tibetan monasticism. It has not been ruled out that he conceived of a reformed
Buddhism, in which the sex roles were supposed to be balanced out and which strove towards the
normality of family relationships. Hence, he also wanted to make his successor his son, who lost his
life in an accident, however. For this reason he handed his knowledge on to Milarepa (1052–1135),
who was supposed to continue the classic androcentric lineage of the Maha Siddhas.
Milarepa’s family were maliciously cheated by relatives when he was in his youth. In order to avenge
himself, he became trained as a black magician and undertook several deadly acts of revenge against
his enemies. According to legend his mother is supposed to have spurred him on here. In the face of
the unhappiness he had caused, he saw the error of his ways and sought refuge in the Buddhist
teachings. After a lengthy hesitation, Marpa took him on as a pupil and increased his strictness
towards him to the point of brutality so that Milarepa could work off his bad karma through his own