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

speech in Bonn.
The stolen revolution
Anybody who summarizes the elements of the political program running through Thurman’s book
Inner Revolution from cover to cover will soon recognize that they largely concern the demands of the
“revolutionary” grass roots movement of the 70s and 80s. Here there is talk of equality of the sexes,
individual freedom, personal emancipation, critical thought, nonconformity, grass roots democracy,
human rights, a social ethos, a minimum income guaranteed by the state, equality of access to
education, health and social services for all, ecological awareness, tolerance, pacifism, and selfrealization.
In an era in which all these ideas no longer have the same attraction as they did 20 years
ago, such nostalgic demands are like a balsam. The ideals of the recent past appear to have not been in
vain! The utopias of the 1960s will be realized after all, indeed, according to Thurman, this time
without any use of violence. The era of “cool revolution” has just begun and we learn that all these
individual and social political goals have always been a part of Buddhist cultural tradition, especially
Tibetan-style Lamaism.
With this move, Thurman incorporates the entire set of ideas of a protest generation which sought to
change the world along human-political lines and harnesses it to a Tibetan/Buddhist world view. In
this he is a brilliant student of his smiling master, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. Tens of thousands of
people in Europe and America (including Petra Kelly and the authors) became victims of this skillful
manipulation and believed that Lamaism could provide the example of a human-politically committed
religion. Thousands stood up for Tibet, small and oppressed, because they revered in this country a
treasure trove of spiritual and ethical values which would be destroyed by Chinese totalitarianism.
Tibetan Buddhism as the final refuge of the social revolutionary ideals of the 70s, as the inheritance of
the politically involved youth movement? This is — as we shall show — how Lamaism presents itself
in Thurman’s book, and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama gives this interpretation his approval. “Thurman
explained to me how some Western thinkers have assumed that Buddhism has no intention to change
society ... Thurman’s book provides a timely correction to any lingering notions about Buddhism as
an uncaring religion.” (Thurman1998, p. xiii)
But anyone who peeps behind the curtains must unfortunately ascertain that with his catalog of
political demands Thurman holds a mirror up to the ideals of the “revolutionary” generation of the
West, and that he fails to inform them about the reality of the Lamaist system in which used to and
still does function along completely contrary social political lines.
Thurman’s forged history
In order to prevent this abuse of power becoming obvious, the construction of a forged history is
necessary, as Thurman conscientiously and consistently demonstrates in his book. He presents the
Tibet of old as a type of gentle “scholarly republic” of introspective monks, free of the turbulence of
European/imperialist politics of business and war. In their seclusion these holy men performed over
centuries a world mission, which is only now becoming noticeable. Since the Renaissance, Thurman
explains, the West has effected the “outer modernity”, that is the “outer enlightenment” through the
scientific revolution. At the same time (above all since the rule of the Fifth Dalai Lama in the
seventeenth century) an “inner revolution” has taken place in the Himalayas, which the American
boldly describes as “inner modernity”: “So we must qualify what we have come to call ‘modernity’ in
the West as ‘materialistic’ or ‘outer’ modernity, and contrast it with a parallel but alternative Tibetan
modernity qualified as ‘spiritualistic’ or ‘inner’ modernity” (Thurman 1998, p. 247). At the 1996