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

with the ritual performance of the external time doctrine. Apart from this he introduced a Kalachakra
prayer into the general liturgy of the Gelugpa order which had to be recited on the eighth day of every
Tibetan month. We are also indebted to him for the construction of the Kalachakra sand mandala and
the choreography of the complicated dances which still accompany the ritual.
Anarchy and state Buddhism thus do not need to contradict one another. They could both be
coordinated with each other. Above all, the “Great Fifth” had recognized the secret: the Land of
Snows was to be got the better of through pure statist authority, it had to be controlled tantricly, that
is, the chaos and anarchy had to be integrated as part of the Buddhocracy. Applied to the various
Tibetan religious schools this meant that if he were to succeed in combining the puritanical,
bureaucratic, centralizing, disciplined, industrious, and virtuous qualities of the Gelugpas with the
libertarian, phantasmagorical, magic, and decentralizing characteristics of the Nyingmapas, then
absolute control over the Land of Snows must be attainable. All the other orders could be located
between these two extremes.
Such an undertaking had to achieve something which in the views of the time was impossible, then
the Gelugpas were a product of a radical critique of the sexual dissolution and other excesses of the
Nyingmapas. But the political-religious genius of the Fifth Dalai Lama succeeded in this impossible
enterprise. The self-disciplined administrator upon the Lion Throne preferred to see himself as
Padmasambhava (the root guru of the Nyingmapas) and declared his lovers to be embodiments of
Yeshe Tshogyal (Padmasambhava’s the wisdom consort). Tibet received a ruler over state and
anarchy.
The political mythic history of the Land of Snows thus falls into line with a tantric interpretation. At
the beginning of all the subsequent historical events stands the shackling of the chaotic earth goddess,
Srinmo, by the king, Songtsen Gampo, (the conquest of the karma mudra by the yogi). Through this,
the power of the masculine method (upaya) over the feminine wisdom (prajna) invoked in the sexual
magic ritual precedes the supremacy of the state over anarchy, of civilization over wilderness, of
culture over nature. The English anthropologist, Geoffrey Samuel, thus speaks of a synthesis which
arose from the dialectic between anti-state/anarchist and clerical/statist Buddhism in Tibet, and
recognizes in this interrelationship a unique and fruitful dynamic. He believes the Tibetan system
displays an amazingly high degree of fluidity, openness, and choice. This is his view of things.
But for us, Samuel is making a virtue of necessity. We would see it exactly the other way around: the
contradiction between the two hostile extremes (anarchy and the state) led to social tensions which
subjected Tibetan society to an ongoing acid test. One has to be clear that the tantric scheme produces
a culture of extreme dissonance which admittedly sets free great amounts of energy but has neither led
historically to a peaceful and harmonic society to the benefit of all beings nor can do so in the future.
Samuel makes a further mistake when he opposes clerical state Buddhism to wild tantric Buddhism
as equal counterpoles. We have shown often enough that the function of control (upaya) is the more
important element of the tantric ritual, more important and more steadfast than the temporary letting
loose of wild passions. Nevertheless the contradiction between wildness (feminine chaos) and taming
(masculine control) remains a fundamental pattern of every sexual magic project — this is the reason
that ("controlled”) anarchy is a part of the Tibetan “state theology” and thus it was never, neither for
Atisha nor Tsongkhapa, the two founding fathers of state Buddhism, a question of whether the tantras
should be abolished. In contrast, both successfully made an effort to strengthen and extend the control