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

further section of the New Age scene now serve as his dogsbodies through their commitment to the
issue of Tibet, and are spiritual rewarded from time to time with visits from lamas and retreats.
Modern science and Tantric Buddhism
In 1939 in a commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung
wrote to the effect that to practice yoga on the 5th Avenue or anywhere else that could be reached by
telephone would be a spiritual joke. Jung was convinced that the ancient yoga practices of Tibetan
Tantrism was incompatible with the modern, scientifically and technologically determined, western
world view. For him, the combination of a telephone and Tibet presented a paradox. “The telephone!
Was there no place on earth where one could be protected from the curse”, a west European weary of
civilization asks in another text, and promptly decides to journey to Tibet, the Holy Land, in which
one can still not be reached by phone (Riencourt, 1951, pp. 49-50). Yet such yearning western images
of an untouched Tibet are deceptive. Just one year after Jung’s statement (in 1940) the Potala had its
own telephone line.
But there were also other voices in the thirties! Voices that dared to make bold comparisons between
modern technical possibilities and the magic powers (siddhis) of Tantrism: Evans-Wentz, for
example, the famous translator of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, enthuses about how “As from mighty
broadcasting stations, the Great Ones broadcast over the earth that Vital Spirituality which alone
makes human evolution possible” (Evans-Wentz, 1978, p. 18). These “Great Ones” are the Maha
Siddhas ("Grand Sorcerers”) who are in hiding in the Himalayas (in Shambhala) and can with their
magic reach out and manipulate every human brain as they will.
In the last thirty years Tibetan Buddhism has built up a successful connection to the modern western
age. From the side of the “atavistic” religion of Tibet there is no longer any fear of contact with the
science and technology of the West. All the information technologies of the Occident are skillfully
and abundantly employed by Tibetan monks in exile and their western followers. There are countless
homepages preaching the dharma (the Buddhist teaching) on the internet. The international jet set
includes lamas who fly around the globe visiting their spiritual centers all over the world.
But Tibetan Buddhism goes a step further: the monastic clergy does not just take on the scientific/
technical achievements of the West, but attempts to render them epistemologically dependent on its
Buddhocratic/tantric world view. Even, as we shall soon show, the Kundun is convinced that the
modern natural sciences can be “Buddhized”. This is much easier for the Buddhists than the Moslems
for example, who are currently pursuing a similar strategy with western modernity. The doctrine of
Mohammed is a revelatory religion and has been codified in a holy book, the Koran. The Koran is
considered the absolute word of God and forms the immutable foundation of Islamic culture. It proves
itself to be extremely cumbersome when attempts are made to subsume the European scientific
disciplines within this revelatory text.
In contrast, Tibetan Buddhism (and also the Kalachakra Tantra) is based upon an abstract philosophy
of “emptiness” which as the most general of principles can “include” everything, even western
culture. “Everything arises out of shunyata (the emptiness)!” — with this fundamental statement,
which we still have to discuss, the Lamaist philosophical elite gains access to the current paradigm
discussion which has had European science holding its breath since Heisenberg’s contribution to
quantum theory. What does this all mean?