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

The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part II – 15. The buddhocratic conquest of the west
© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
15. THE BUDDHOCRATIC CONQUEST
OF THE WEST
Robert A. Thurman: “The academic godfather of the Tibetan cause”
The stolen revolution
Thurman’s forged history
A worldwide Buddhocracy
Tibet a land of enlightenment?
Thurman as “high priest” of the Kalachakra Tantra
In the view of the Tibetan lamas, the spread of Buddhism in the West is predicted by an ancient
prophecy. The historical Buddha is said to have made the following prognosis: “Two thousand and
five hundred years after my passing the Dharma will spread to the land of the red-faced
people” (Mullin, 1991, p. 145). This they take to be a reference to the USA and the continent’s native
inhabitants, the North American Indians. There is an astonishingly similar prophecy by the founder of
Tibetan culture, Padmasambhava: “When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels … the Dharma
will come to the land of the Red Man” (Bernbaum, 1982, p. 33). Western cultural figures like the
director Martin Scorsese cite a famous pronouncement of the Tibetan state oracle prior to the flight of
the Kundun in the 1950s: “The jewel that grants wishes shines in the West” says the prophecy (Focus,
46/1997, p. 168) “The jewel that grants wishes” is an epithet for the Dalai Lama.
In the 1960s and 70s the spread of Tantric Buddhism in the West still proved difficult, especially with
regard to its social acceptance. The Buddhist groups shared more or less the same fate as all the other
“exotic” sects. No distinction was drawn in public between Hare Krishna, Bhagwan followers or
Gelugpa monks. Yet thanks to the mobility, political skill, sophisticated manner and charismatic aura
of the Dalai Lama, Lamaism’s isolation has in the meantime become transformed into its opposite and
in recent years it has become a triumphal parade. Whilst for the other Eastern sects the number of new
members has been stagnating or even declining since the 90s, Tibetan Buddhism has been growing
“like an ocean wave” the news magazine Spiegel reports, continuing, “In the wake of sects and
esoterica, Germans have [found] a new haven from the crisis of senselessness: Buddhism. In the
[German] Federal Republic 300,000 people are sympathetic towards the far Eastern religion which
discriminates against women, requires celibacy of its monks and nuns, and whose western teachers
preach banalities as truths.” (Spiegel, 6/1994) Four years later the same magazine reports, this time in
a leading article which over many pages reads like a hymn of praise for the Kundun, that half a
million Germans now follow the Buddhist path already. The Spiegel says that, “Advertising
copywriters and heads of business, university professors and housewives profess their faith in the far
Eastern religion — a rapidly increasing tendency. ... Even in the new federal states, in Menz in