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

In every paradigmatic conflict, the determination of a cosmogony has pride of place. What does our
world look like, is it round or quadratic, a disc or a sphere, a center or part of the periphery, is it the
result of a big bang or the seven-day work of a demiurge? The Orientalist John Wanterbury from
Princeton fears for example that Islamic fundamentalism could lead to a “new age of flat earthism”.
By “flat earthism” he means that the people from the Moslem cultures will start to believe again that
the Earth is a disc (as the Koran teaches) and that every dissident opinion will be condemned as
heresy. Should the Kalachakra Tantra and the Buddhist cosmology of Abhidharma associated with it
become firmly paradigmatically established, we face something similar: a universe with Mount Meru
in the middle, surrounded by the twelve continents and the planets orbiting it.
Such a model of the world contradicts the scientific discoveries of the West far more than the
Ptolemaic system supplanted by Nicholas Copernicus, in which the sun circles the Earth. But how
does His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama react to the incompatibility of the two world systems
(the Buddhist and the western one)? He appears in this case to be prepared to make a revision of the
tantric cosmology. Also with the justification that everything arises from the emptiness, we may read
that „I feel that it is totally compatible with the basic attitude of Buddhism to refute the literal
interpretation of Abhidharma that says the earth is flat, because it is incompatible with the direct
experience of the world as being round.” (Hayward, 1992, p. 37)
This statement is, however, in stark contradiction to the doctrine of the Kalachakra Tantra, the entire
cosmogonic design of which is aligned with the Abhidharma model. Yet more — since the
microcosmic bodily structure of the tantra master simulates the macrocosmic world with Mount Meru
at its center and the surrounding continents and oceans, a change in the tantric cosmology means that
the mystic body of the Dalai Lama (as the supreme Kalachakra master) must also be transformed.
This is simply inconceivable, since our modern cosmology rejects any anthropomorphic form of outer
space! Also, with a fundamental rejection of the Abhidharma, the whole Kalachakra system would
lose its sense as the synchronic connection between the yogi’s body and the cosmic events of
Buddhist “evolution”. Consequently, up until now all the schools of Tibetan Buddhism have stuck
strictly to the traditional cosmogony (and its correspondence in the mystic body). Besides the sand
mandala of the Time Tantra (which also represents the Buddhist universe) Tibetan monks far more
frequently construct the so-called Meru mandala. This, as its name suggests, is a likeness of the
Buddhist cosmos in miniature with the world mountain Meru as its central axis.
When the Dalai Lama, who institutes no fundamental changes in the ritual system of Tantric
Buddhism, says in public that the cosmology of the Abhidharma is in need of revision, then this
definitely does not seem to be intended sincerely. More likely one must be prepared for his radical
subjectivist epistemology ("everything is awareness, everything arises from emptiness”) to suspend
the natural scientific world as illusion (samsara) at any moment and replace it with the fantastic
model of the world from the Abhidharma which it is capable of making appear sensible and
“rational”. From a tantric point of view, cosmogonies do not possess any objectivity of their own,
rather they are ultimately the result of subjective conceptions; this is of course also true of the
Copernican system. Kalu Rinpoche, the Kagyu master of the Kalachakra Tantra whom we have
already often cited , has clearly expressed this dependency of space upon an appropriate awareness in
the following words: “Each of these cosmologies is perfect for the being whose karmic projections
lead them to experience their universe in this way. There is a certain relativity in the way in which one
experiences the world. ... Hence, on a relative level every cosmology is valid. At an ultimate level, no
cosmology is absolutely true. It cannot be universally valid as long as there are beings in