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

purified so as to better allow the spiritual energies of inner being to flow through the instrument
without distortion ..... After such a purification the entity is ready for the next level of expansion in
service. The Tibetans were spiritually strong enough to endure this burning ground so as to pave the
way for its defined part in building the new world”. In this latter, the authors assure us, the “first
Sacred Nation” will become a “point of synthesis” of “universal love, wisdom and goodwill” (quoted
by Lopez, 1998, p. 204).
Or was the exodus of the omnipotent l and the killing of many Tibetan believers by the Chinese even
“planned” by the Buddhist side, so that Tantrism could conquer the world? The Tibetologist Robert
Thurman (the “mouthpiece of the Dalai Lama” in America) discusses such a theory in his book
Essential Tibetan Buddhism. “The most compelling, if somewhat dramatic [theory],” Thurman writes,
“is that Vajrapani (the Bodhisattva of power) emanated himself as Mao Tse-tung and took upon
himself the heinous sin of destroying the Buddha Dharma's institutions [of Tibet], along with many
beings, for three main reasons: to prevent other, ordinarily human, materialists from reaping the
consequences of such terrible acts; to challenge the Tibetan Buddhists to let go the trapping of their
religion and philosophy and force themselves to achieve the ability to embody once again in this
terrible era their teachings of detachment, compassion, and wisdom, and to scatter the Indo-Tibetan
Buddhist teachers and disseminate their teachings throughout the planet among all the people,
whether religious or secular, at this apocalyptic time when humanity must make a quantum leap from
violence to peacefulness in order to preserve all life on earth” (quoted in Lopez, 1998, p. 274).
Such visions of purification and sacrifice may sound bizarre and fantastic to a western historian, but
we must nevertheless regard them as the expression of an ancient culture which recognizes the will
and the plan of a supreme being behind every historical suffering and every human catastrophe. The
catastrophe of Tibet is foreseen in the script of the Kalachakra Tantra. Thus for the current Dalai
Lama his primary concern is not the freedom of the nation of Tibet, but rather the spread of Tantric
Buddhism on a global scale. “My main concern, my main interest, is the Tibetan Buddhist culture, not
just political independence”, he said at the end of the eighties year in Strasbourg (Shambhala Sun,
Archive, November 1996).
How deeply interconnected politics and ritual are felt to be by the Kundun’s followers is shown by the
vision described by a participant at a conference in Bonn ("Mythos Tibet”) who had traveled in Tibet:
he had suddenly seen the highlands as a great mandala. Exactly like the sand mandala in the
Kalachakra Tantra it was then destroyed so that the whole power of Tibet could be concentrated in
the person of the Dalai Lama as the world teacher of the age to come.
As cynical as it may sound, through such imaginings the suffering the Tibetans have experienced
under Chinese control attain a deeper significance and spiritual solemnity. It was the greatest gift for
the distribution of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. [1]
The spectacular self-sacrifice has since the spring of 1998 become a new political weapon for both the
Tibetans who remained and those in exile: in 1997, the majority of monks from the Tibetan Drepung
monastery were convinced that the Dalai Lama would soon return with the support of the US in order
to free Tibet. Thus, now would be the right moment to sacrifice oneself for His Holiness, for the
religion, and for Tibet (Goldstein, 1998, p. 42). To bring the situation in their home country to the
world’s attention and above all to raise the question of Tibet in the UN, Tibetan monks protested in
India with a so-called “hunger strike to the death”. When the Indian police admitted the protesters to