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

In this, Mao was more like a red pontiff than a people’s rebel. His followers revered him as a godman
in the face of whom the individuality of every other mortal Chinese was extinguished. “The
'equality before god'", Wolfgang Bauer writes in reference to the Great Chairman Mao Zedong,
“really did illuminate, and allowed those who felt themselves moved by it to become ‘brothers’, or
monks [!] of some kind clothed in robes that were not just the most lowly but thus also identical and
that caused all individual characteristics to vanish” (Bauer, 1989, p. 569).
The Tibetans, themselves the subjects of a god-king, had no problems with such images; for them the
“communist” Mao Zedong was the “Chinese Emperor”, at least from the Cultural Revolution on.
Later, they even transferred the imperial metaphors to the “capitalist” reformer Deng Xiaoping:
“Neither the term 'emperor' nor 'paramount leader' nor ‘patriarch’ appear in the Chinese constitution
but nevertheless that is the position Deng held ... he possessed political power for life, just like the
emperors of old” (Tibetan Review, March 1997, p. 23).
Mao Zedong’s “Tantrism”
The most astonishing factor, however, is that like the Dalai Lama Mao Zedong also performed
“tantric” practices, albeit à la chinoise. As his personal physician, Li Zhisui reports, even at great age
the Great Chairman maintained an insatiable sexual appetite. One concubine followed another. In this
he imitated a privilege that on this scale was accorded only to the Chinese Emperors. Like these, he
saw his affairs less as providing satisfaction of his lust and instead understood them to be sexual
magic exercises. The Chinese “Tantric” [4] is primarily a specialist in the extension of the human
lifespan. It is not uncommon for the old texts to recommend bringing younger girls together with
older men as energetic “fresheners”. This method of rejuvenation is spread throughout all of Asia and
was also known to the high lamas in Tibet. The Kalachakra Tantra recommends “the rejuvenation of
a 70-year-old via a mudra [wisdom girl]" (Grünwedel, Kalacakra II, p. 115).
Mao also knew the secret of semen retention: “He became a follower of Taoist sexual practices,” his
personal physician writes, “through which he sought to extend his life and which were able to serve
him as a pretext for his pleasures. Thus he claimed, for instance, that he needed yin shui (the water of
yin, i.e., vaginal secretions) to complement his own yang (his masculine substance, the source of his
strength, power, and longevity) which was running low. Since it was so important for his health and
strength to build up his yang he dared not squander it. For this reason he only rarely ejaculated during
coitus and instead won strength and power from the secretions of his female partners. The more yin
shui the Chairman absorbed, the more powerful his male substance became. Frequent sexual
intercourse was necessary for this, and he best preferred to go to bed with several women at once. He
also asked his female partners to introduce him to other women — ostensibly so as to strengthen his
life force through shared orgies” (Li Zhisui, 1994, pp. 387-388). He gave new female recruits a
handbook to read entitled Secrets of an Ordinary Girl, so that they could prepare themselves for a
Taoist rendezvous with him. Like the pupils of a lama, young members of the “red court” were
fascinated by the prospect of offering the Great Chairman their wives as concubines (Li Zhisui, 1994,
pp. 388, 392).
The two chief symbols of his life can be regarded as emblems of his tantric androgyny: the feminine
“water” and masculine “sun”. Wolfgang Bauer has drawn attention to the highly sacred significance
which water and swimming have in Mao’s symbolic world. His demonstrations of swimming, in
which he covered long stretches of the Yangtze, the “Yellow River”, were supposed to “express the