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

people would die out if it went dry. There is in fact a rumor among the Tibetans in exile that the
Chinese planned to drain the entire lake (Tibetan Review, January 1992, p. 4).
If a tantra master wants to put an enemy out of action through magic, then he must find his la and
launch a ritual attack upon it. This is of course also true for political opponents. If the life energy of an
enemy is hidden in a tree, for instance, then it makes sense to fell it. The opponent would instantly
collapse. Every lama is supposed on principle to be capable of locating the la of a person via astrology
and clairvoyance.
Magic wonder weapons
In the armories of the Kalachakra Tantra and of the “Great Fifth”, we find the “magic wheel with the
sword spokes”, described by a contemporary lama in the following words: “It is a magic weapon of
fearsome efficacy, a great wheel with eight razor-edge sharpened swords as spokes. Our magicians
employed it a long time ago in the battle against foreign intruders. The wheel was charged with magic
forces and then loosed upon the enemy. It flew spinning through the air at the enemy troops and its
rapidly rotating spikes mowed the soldiers down in their hundreds. The devastation wrought by this
weapon was so terrible that the government forbade that it ever be used again. The authorities even
ordered that all plans for its construction be destroyed” (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, p. 257).
A further magic appliance, which was, albeit without success, still put to use under the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama, was to be found in a Yellow Hat monastery near Lhasa (Kardo Gompa). It was referred
to as the “mill of the death demons” and consisted of two small round stones resting upon each other,
the upper one of which could be rotated. René von Nebesky-Wojkowitz reports how the lamas started
up this killing machine in 1950 at the beginning of the conflict with China: “The 'Mill of the Death
Demons' was employed by the Tibetan government to kill the leaders of the opposing party. A priest
who was especially experienced in the arts of black magic was appointed by the authorities to operate
the instrument. In meditations extending over weeks he had to try to transfer the life energy (la) of the
people he was supposed to kill into a number of mustard seeds. If he noticed from curtains indications
that he had succeeded, then he laid the seeds between the stones and crushed them. .... The
exterminating force which emanated from this magic appliance is supposed to even have had its effect
upon the magician who operated it. Some of them, it is said, died after turning the 'Mill of the Death
Demons'" (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, pp. 257-258).
The “Great Fifth” as magician and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
The Fifth Dalai Lama was a enthusiast and a master of magic ritual politics. A distinction was drawn
in the ceremonies he conducted between continuous, annually repeated state events, and special,
mostly enemy-combating events. His “rituals [were] concerned with power; spiritual and political”,
writes Samten Karmay, “... we stand in the arena of the dawn of modern Tibetan history” (Karmay,
1988, p. 26).
The god-king was firmly convinced that he owed his political victories primarily to “the profound
potency of the tantric rites” and only secondarily to the intervention of the Mongolians (Ahmad, 1970,
p. 134). According to a Kagyupa document, the Mongolian occupation of the Land of Snows was the
work of nine terror gods who were freed by the Gelugpas under the condition that they fetch the
Mongolian hordes into Tibet to protect their order. “But in the process they brought much suffering
on our land”, we read at the close of the document (Bell, 1994, p. 98).