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

is strongly and radically active in opposition to the immigration of Moslems to Europe.
As problematic as we perceive fundamentalist Islam to be, we are nonetheless not convinced that the
Kalachakra ideology and the final battle with the Mlecchas (Mohammedans) prognosticated by the
tantra can solve the conflict at the heart of the struggle between the cultures. A contribution to an
internet-based discussion rightly described the idea of a Shambhala warrior as the Buddhist
equivalent to the jihad, the Moslem “holy war”. Religious wars, which have the goal of eliminating
the respective non-believers, have in fact, and for the West unexpectedly, become a threat to world
peace in recent years. We return to this point in our conclusion, especially the question of whether the
division of humanity into two camps — Buddhist and Islam — as predicted in the Kalachakra Tantra
is just a fiction or whether it is a real danger.
Shamanism
Up until well into the eighties, the encounter with nature religions played a significant role for the
Dalai Lama. There was at that stage a lot of literature that enthusiastically drew attention to the
parallels between the North American culture of the Hopi Indians and Tibetan Buddhism. The same
terminology was even discovered, just with the meanings reversed: for example, the Tibetan word for
“sun” was said to mean “moon” in the language of the Hopi and vice versa, the Hopi sun
corresponded to the Tibetan moon (Keegan, 1981, unnumbered). There are also said to be amazing
correspondences among the rituals, especially the “fire ceremonies”.
For a time the idea arose that the Dalai Lama was the messiah announced in the Hopi religion. In the
legend this figure had been a member of the “sun clan” in the mythical past and had left his Indian
brothers so as to return in the future as a redeemer. “They wanted to tell me about an old prophecy of
their people passed on from generation to generation,” His Holiness recounted, “in which one day
someone would come from the east. ... They thought it could be me and had come to tell me
this” (Levenson, 1992, p. 277).
In France in 1997 an unusual meeting took place. The spiritual representatives of various native
peoples gathered there with the intention of founding a kind of international body of the “United
Traditions” and presenting a common “charta” to the public. By this the attendees understood a global
cooperation between shamanistic religions, still practiced all over the world, with the aim of
articulating common rights and gaining an influence over the world’s conscience as the “circle of
elders”. The Dalai Lama was also invited to this congress, organized by a Lamaist monastery in
France (Karma Ling). Just how adroitly the organizers made him the focal figure of the entire event,
which was actually supposed to be a union of equals, is shown by the subtitle of the book
subsequently published about the event, The United Traditions: Shamans, Mecidine Men and Wise
Women around the Dalai Lama. The whole scenario did in fact revolve around the Dalai Lama.
Siberian shamans, North, South, and Central American medicine men (Apaches, Cheyenne,
Mohawks, Shuars from the Amazon, and Aztecs), African voodoo priests (from Benin),Bon lamas,
Australian Aborigines, and Japanese martial artists came together for an opening ceremony at a
Vajrayana temple, surrounded “by the amazing beauty of the Tibetan décor” (Eersel and Grosrey,
1998, p. 31). The meeting was suddenly interrupted by the cry, “His Holiness, His Holiness!” —
intended for the Dalai Lama who was approaching the meeting place. The shamans stood up and went
towards him. From this point on he was the absolute center of events. There were admittedly mild
distantiations before this, but only the Bon priests dared to be openly critical. Their representative,
Lopön Trinley Nyima Rinpoche, strongly attacked Lamaism as a repressive religion that has