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

“Mind and Life”).
Many researchers from the West, starved of mystic experiences for decades, have finally found their
spiritual master in the “living Buddha” from Dharamsala. They have become converts to Buddhism
like Francisco Varela or the nuclear physicist David Bohm, or, like Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker,
they fall into a kind of private ecstasy when confronted with the Kundun. Although His Holiness’s
“scientific” interventions remain very general and abstract and in fact repeatedly boil down to just a
handful of epistemological statements, he is nonetheless treated as a “colleague” by a number of
scientists, behind whom the omniscience of a yogi shines forth. „Well, as has often been the case in
this conference,” Francisco Varela enthuses for example, „Your Holiness, seem to anticipate the
scientists’ questions” (Hayward, 1992, p. 230).
Neuroscientists see red over Dalai Lama
www.nature.com/news/2005/050725/full/436452b.html
Whoever it is who can formulate and consolidate the “scientific” paradigms of an era in human
history actually ought to be regarded as the “spiritual ruler” of the era; he represents the force which
determines the awareness, the feelings and the thoughts of millions for centuries. Ptolemy,
Copernicus, Descartes, Newton, Marx, Freud, and Einstein were such “spiritual giants”. The
Fourteenth Dalai Lama, a brilliant master of the workings of consciousness, knows full well about this
historical force and the power-political significance of the paradigmatic conflict. Likewise, he knows
that a “Buddhization” of western science would make him especially powerful in contrast to other
religious orientations. The Buddhist epistemological theories furnish the ideal conditions for such a
process of appropriation. Both the Yogachara school ("everything is awareness”) and the
Madhyamika school ("everything arises from emptiness”) permit (at least in theory) a relativization of
the scientific culture of the West and its replacement with the world view of the Kalachakra Tantra.
As subtly, philosophically, and rationally as the tantric world view is discussed among the Western
scientific elite, the more spectacular, emotional, and mythical is the spread of Tantric Buddhism
among the masses. The Kundun has in the last five years succeeded in engaging the greatest
propaganda machine in the world, the Hollywood film industry, for himself and his cause.
Hollywood and Tantric Buddhism
The exotic flair projected by the Tibetan god-king and his lamas with their mysterious doctrine and
adventurous history has led to a situation in which Tibet and its religion have increasingly become the
stuff celluloid dreams are made of. First of all, the Italian film director, Bernardo Bertolucci, created a
somewhat saccharine but highly regarded monument to the religious founder with his work, Little
Buddha. The film provided great propaganda value for Tibetan Buddhism because it told the story of
the reincarnation of a lama in an American boy and an Indian girl and thus paved the way for the
spread of the doctrine in the West.
While we were writing this book two major films about His Holiness appeared. One of them, Martin
Scorsese’s Kundun, features the life story of the god-king from his discovery as a boy up until his
flight from Tibet (in 1959), the other, Seven Years in Tibet, directed by Jean Jacques Arnaud, is about
the adventures of the Austrian mentor of the Dalai Lama and SS member, Heinrich Harrer, with Brad
Pitt in the lead role. “Tibet is the flavor of the season! ... In recent months around two million
Germans have wanted to see the teenage idol Brad Pitt as the Austrian adventurer and Lama friend,