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

Kalmyk lama Geshe Wangyal (1901–1983). Lama Wangyal was Robert Thurman’s actual “line
guru”, and this line leads via Wangyal directly to the old master Agvan Dorjiev (Lama Wangyal’s
guru). Dorjiev the Buriat, Wangyal the Kalmyk, and Thurman the American thus form a chain of
initiation. From a tantric point of view the spirit of the master lives on in the form of the pupil. One
can thus assume that Thurman as Dorjiev’s successor represents an emanation of the extremely
aggressive protective divinity Vajrabhairava who is supposed to have become incarnate in the Buriat.
At any rate the American must be drawn into the context of the global Shambhala utopia, which was
the principal concern of Dorjiev’s metapolitics.
What Thurman understands by this can be most clearly illustrated by a vision which was bestowed
upon him in a dream in September 1979, before he saw the Dalai Lama again for the first time in
eight years: “The night before he landed in New York, I dreamed he was manifesting the pure land
mandala palace of the Kalachakra Buddha right on top of the Waldorf Astoria building. The entire
collection of dignitaries of the city, mayors and senators, corporate presidents and kings, sheikhs and
sultans ,celebrities and stars—all of them were swept up into the dance of 722 deities of the three
buildings of the diamond palace like pinstriped bees swarming on a giant honeycomb. The amazing
thing about the Dalai Lama’s flood of power and beauty was that it appeared totally effortless. I could
feel the space of His Holiness’s heart, whence all this arose. It was relaxed, cool, an amazing well of
infinity” (Thurman 1998, p. 18).
The magic projection of the Tibetan “god-king” as ADI BUDDHA and world ruler cannot be
illustrated more vividly. He reigns as some kind of queen bee in the middle of New York, and lets the
world’s greatest, whom he has bewitched with sweet honey, dance to his tune. It is typical that there is
no mention of grass roots democracy here, and that it is just the political, business, and show business
Establishment which performs the sweet dance of the bees. Anyone who is aware how much
significance is granted to such dreams in the world of Tibetan initiation will without further ado
recognize a metapolitical program in Thurman’s vision. [1]
In 1992, as Director of Tibet House in New York City which he co-founded with Richard Gere, he
sponsored “the Kalachakra Initiation at New York’s Madison Square Garden.” (Farrer-Halls 1998, p.
92) The Tibet Center houses a three dimensional Kalachakra Mandala and the only life sized statue of
the Kalachakra deity outside of Tibet. Following the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, “The
Samaya Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the Port Authority jointly sponsored
the Wheel of Time (Kalachakra) Sand Mandala, or Circle of Peace, in the lobby of Tower 1.” (Darton
1999, p. 219) For over thirty days, many of the World Trade Center workers and visitors were invited
by the Namgyal Monks to participate in the construction of the mandala. It is said that, “ Its shape
symbolized nature’s unending cycle of creation and destruction and in the countless grains of its
material, it celebrated life’s energy taking ephemeral form, then returning to its source. At the end of
the mandala’s month long lifespan, the monks swept up the sand and “offered it to the Hudson River.”
This ritual, they believed, purified the environment. (Darton 1999, p. 219)
Report of a former participant of the Kalachakra Ceremony in New York: “Get a call from one of my Kalachakra
sisters I haven't heard from since the Indiana Kalachakra in '99. […] The topic shifted to the Kalachakra Mandala
that was made at One World Trade Center. I was at the dissolution ceremony there, may be around '96. The monks
gathered up all the sand from the Mandala at 1 WTC, put it in a vase, then carried it across the bridge into World
Financial Center through the Winter Garden, then dumped the sand ceremoniously into the Hudson River for the
sake of World Peace. The surface of the river glittered with the afternoon sun, and I cried. 5 years later, the whole
building is gone, just like the sand Mandala.”