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

mechanisms within the tantric rites.
If the “political theology” of Lamaism applies the tantric pattern to Tibetan society, then — from a
metaphysical viewpoint — it deliberately produces chaos to the point of disintegration so as to ex
nihilo establish law and order anew. Internally, the production of chaos takes place within the mystic
body of the yogi via the unchaining of the all-destroying Candali. Through this internal fragmentation
the yogi is completely “freed” of his earthly personality so as to be re-created as the emanation of the
spiritual horde of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and protective deities who are at work behind all reality.
This inverted logic of the tantras corresponds on an outwardly level to the production of anarchy by
the Buddhist state. The roaming “holy fools”, the wild lives of the grand sorcerers (Maha Siddhas),
the excesses of the founding father, Padmasambhava, the still to be described institution of the
Tibetan “scapegoats” and the public debauchery during the New Year’s festivities connected with
this, yes, even the erotic games of the Sixth Dalai Lama are such anarchist elements, which stabilize
the Buddhocracy in general. They must — following the tantric laws — reckon with their own
destruction (we shall return to this point in connection with the “sacrifice” of Tibet), then it
legitimates itself through the ability to transform disorder into order, crime into good deeds, decline
and fall into resurrection. In order to implement its program, but also so as to prove its omnipotence,
the Buddhist Tantric state — deliberately — creates for itself chaotic scenarios, it cancels law and
custom, justice and virtue, authority and obedience in order to, after a stage of chaos, re-establish
them. In other words it uses revolution to achieve restoration. We shall soon see that the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama conducts this interplay on the world stage.
It nonetheless remains to be considered that the authority of Tibetan state Buddhism has not
surmounted the reality of a limited dominion of monastic orders. There can be no talk of a
Chakravartin’s the exercise of power, of a world ruler, at least not in the visible world. From a
historical point of view the institution of the Dalai Lama remained extremely weak, measured by the
standards of its claims, unfortunately all but powerless. Of the total of fourteen Dalai Lamas only one
is can be described as a true potentate: the “Great Fifth”, in whom the institution actually found its
beginnings and whom it has never outgrown. All other Dalai Lamas were extremely limited in their
abilities with power or died before they were able to govern. Even the Thirteenth, who is sometimes
accorded special powers and therefore also referred to as the “Great”, only survived because the
superpowers of the time, England and Russia, were unable to reach agreement on the division of
Tibet. Nonetheless the institution of the god-king has exercised a strong attraction over all of Central
Asia for centuries and cleverly understood how to render its field of competence independent of the
visible standards of political reality and to construct these as a magic occult field of forces of which
even the Emperor of China was nervous.
"Crazy wisdom” and the West
Already in the nineteen twenties, the voices of modern western, radical-anarchist artists could be
heard longing for and invoking the Buddhocracy of the Dalai Lama. “O Grand Lama, give us, grace
us with your illuminations in a language our contaminated European minds can understand, and if
need be, transform our Mind ...” (Bishop, 1989, p. 239). These melodramatic lines are the work of
Antonin Artaud (1896-1948). The dramatist was one of the French intellectuals who in 1925 called
for a “surrealist revolution”. With his idea of the “theater of horrors”, in which he brought the
representation of ritual violence to the stage, he came closer to the horror cabinet of Buddhist
Tantrism than any other modern dramatist. Artaud’s longing for the rule of the Dalai Lama is a