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

has made all possible variants of the symbolic sacrifice of humans an essential element of its cultural
life. This is also no surprise, then the whole tantric idea is fundamentally based upon the sacrifice of
the human (the person, the individual, the human body) to the benefit of the gods or of the yogi. At
least in the imaginations of the lamas there are various demons in the Tibetan pantheon who perform
the sacrificial rites or to whom the sacrifices are made. The fiends thus fulfill an important task in the
tantric scenario and serve the teaching as tutelary deities (dharmapalas). As reward for their work
they demand still more human blood and still more human flesh. Such cannibal foods are called
kangdza in Tibetan. They are graphically depicted as dismembered bodies, hearts that have been torn
out, and peeled skins in ghastly thangkas, which are worshipped in sacred chambers dedicated to the
demons themselves. Kangdza means “wish-fulfilling gifts”, unmistakably indicating that people were
of the opinion that they could fulfill their greatest wishes through human sacrifices. That this really
was understood thus is demonstrated by the constant use of parts of human corpses in Tibetan magic,
to which we devote the next chapter.
Ritual murder as a current issue among exile Tibetans
The terrible events of February 4, 1997 in Dharamsala, the Indian seat of government of the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama, demonstrate that ritual human sacrifice among the Tibetans is in no way a
thing of the past but rather continues to take place up until the present day. According to the police
report on that day six to eight men burst into the cell of the 70-year-old lama, Lobsang Gyatso, the
leader of the Buddhist dialectic school, and murdered him and two of his pupils with numerous stab
wounds. The bloody deed was carried out in the immediate vicinity of the Dalai Lama's residence in a
building which forms part of the Namgyal monastery. The Namgyal Institute is, as we have already
mentioned on a number of occasions, responsible for the ritual performance of the Kalachakra
Tantra. The world press — in as far as it reported the crime at all — was horrified by the extreme
cruelty of the murderers. The victims' throats had been slit and according to some press reports their
skin had been partially torn from their bodies (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1997, No. 158, p. 10). There is
even a rumor among the exile Tibetan community that the perpetrators had sucked out the victims'
blood in order to use it for magical purposes. All this took place in just under an hour.
The Indian criminal police and the western media were united in the view that this was a matter of a
ritual murder, since money and valuable objects, such as a golden Buddha which was to be found
there for example, were left untouched by the murderers. The “mouthpiece” for the Dalai Lama in the
USA, Robert Thurman, also saw the murder as a ritual act: “The three were stabbed repeatedly and
cut up in a way that was like exorcism.” (Newsweek, May 5, 1997, p. 43).
In general the deed is suspected to have been an act of revenge by followers of the protective deity,
Dorje Shugden, of whom Lobsang Gyatso was an open opponent. But to date the police have been
unable to produce any real evidence. In contrast, the Shugden followers see the murders as an attempt
to marginalize them as criminals by the Dalai Lama. (We shall discuss this in the next chapter.)
As important as it may be that the case be solved, it is not of decisive significance for our analysis
who finally turns out to have committed the deed. We are under any circumstances confronted with an
event here, in which the tantric scheme has become shockingly real and current. The ritual murders of
4 February have put a final end to the years of “scientific” discussion around the question of whether
the calls to murder in the tantras (which we have considered in detail in the first part of this study) are
only a symbolic directive or whether they are to be understood literally. Both are the case. On this
occasion, this has even been perceived in the western press, such as, for example, when the