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

hospital after a number of days, the 50-year-old monk, Thubten Ngodub, publicly self-immolated,
with the cry of “Long live the Dalai Lama!” on his lips. [2] He was declared a martyr of the nation
and his funeral in Dharamsala was a moving demonstration which went on for hours. Youths wrote
Free Tibet on their chests in their own blood. In a public communiqué from the youth organization
(TYC) it was said that “The Tibetan people have sent a clear message to the world that they can
sacrifice themselves for the cause of an independent Tibet ... More blood will flow in the coming
days” (AFP, New Delhi, April 29, 1998). The names of many more Tibetans who were prepared to
die for their country were placed on a list.
On the one hand, the Dalai Lama condemned such proceedings because they were a resort to violent
means (suicide is violence directed against the self), on the other hand he expressed that he admired
the motivation and resolve of these Tibetans (who sacrifice themselves) (The Office of Tibet, April 28,
1998). He visited the hunger strikers and blessed the national martyr, Ngodub, in a special ritual. The
grotesque aspect of the situation was that, at the same time and under American pressure, the Kundun
was preparing for an imminent encounter with the Chinese. Whilst he repeatedly stresses in public
that he renounced an “independent Tibet”, his subjects sacrifice themselves for exactly this demand.
We shall come to speak later of the discordance which arises between Lamaism and the national
question.
Real violence and one’s own imaginings
Is perhaps the violence which the Land of Snows has had to experience under Chinese occupation a
mirror image of its own culture? If we look at the scenes of unbounded suffering and merciless
sadism which are depicted upon countless thangkas, then we have before our eyes an exact visual
prognosis of what was done to the Tibetans by the Chinese. In just casting a glance at in the Tibetan
Book of the Dead one is at once confronted with the same infernal images as are described by Tibetan
refugees. The history of horrors is — as we know — codified in both the sacred iconography of
Tantric Buddhism and in the unfolding scenes of the tantras.
In light of the history of Tibet, must Lamaism’s images of horror just be seen as a prophecy of events
to come, or did they themselves contribute to the production of the brutal reality? Does the deed
follow the meditative envisioning, like thunder follows lightning? Is the Tibetan history of suffering
aligned with a tantric myth? Were the Buddhist doctrine of insight applied consistently, it would have
to answer this question with “yes”. Joseph Campbell, too, is one of the few western authors to
describe the Chinese attacks, which he otherwise strongly criticizes, as a “vision of the whole thing
come true, the materialization of the mythology in life” and to have referred to the depiction of the
horrors in the tantras (Joseph Campbell, 1973, p. 516).
If one spins this mythological net out further, then the following question at once presents itself: Why
were Tibet and the “omnipotent” lamas not protected by their deities? Were the wrathful dharmapalas
(tutelary deities) too weak to repel the “nine-headed” Chinese dragon and drive it from the “roof of
the world”? Perhaps the goddess Palden Lhamo, the female protective spirit of the Dalai Lama and
the city of Lhasa, had freed herself from the clutches of the andocentric clergy and turned against her
former masters? Had the enchained Srinmo, the mother of Tibet, joined up with the demons from the
Middle Kingdom in order to avenge herself upon the lamas for nailing her down? Or was the exodus
of the omnipotent lamas intentional, in order to now conquer the world?
Such questions may also appear bizarre and fantastic to a western historian; but for the Tibetan/tantric