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

fantastic historical myths of the eternally peaceful and mysterious, occult highlands (Shangri La)
which at the first conference they claimed to be the invention of a errant “western orientalism”. In
turn, at the congresses of “committed Buddhists”, the Tibet of old is built up as the sanctuary of all
those values which are gaining ground in postmodern society. „Tibetan exiles”, Toni Huber writes,
„have reinvented a kind of modern, liberal Shangri-La image of themselves”, in that they adopt
images from the protest movements of the industrialized West „which are now transnational in scope
and appeal: environmentalism, pacifism, human rights, and feminism” (Huber, 2001, p. 358). Yet
Western values, like the separation of ecclesiastical and secular power, equality before the law, the
rule of law, freedom of expression, social pluralism, political representation, equality of the sexes, and
individualism, had no place in the history of Tibet.
But it is not just a result of pure naïveté when government sources in Europe and America express the
opinion that autocratic Lamaism is compatible with the fundamentals of a modern constitution.
Behind this also lie the tactical politics of power with an “impending” Chinese threat. Washington in
particular is most interested in making use of an oppressed Tibet as an argument in discussions with
China, the USA’s greatest competitor.
This dangerous antagonism between the two superpowers (China vs. the USA) is efficiently stirred up
by their respective internal politics, and Dharamsala does not let a chance pass without pouring gas on
the flames. The Kundun with his loud and “heartfelt” criticism of China is a American king-piece in
the political chess game between Washington and Beijing. In it, official posts in the USA are
thoroughly informed about the “true” history of the old and the new Tibet as well as the
“undemocratic” circumstances in Dharamsala. They are advised by such objective scholars as, among
others, A. Tom Grunfeld and Melvyn C. Goldstein. In public, however, the State Department has until
now followed the pro-Tibetan arguments of the Hollywood actor and Kalachakra initiate, Richard
Gere.
“Clash of Religions”: The fundamentalist contribution of Lamaism
In the last fifteen years, the West has to its great surprise discovered just how much political
explosiveness religiously based strategies for world domination (like the Shambhala myth) and magic/
mystic practices (like the Kalachakra ritual) have been able to develop today, on the threshold of the
third millennium. Catching the western cultures unprepared, theocratic (and Buddhocratic) visions of
the most varied schools of belief have burst forth explosively from the depths of the human
subconscious, where they have survived in hiding since the bourgeois Enlightenment (of the 18 th
century). Events in Iran, the country where the mullahs established the first smoothly functioning
Moslem religious state of the modern era, triggered a culture shock in the West. All at once the
atavistic attitudes and rules of violence, the warrior ethic, racism, intolerance, discrimination against
women, the dictatorship of the priesthood, the persecution of nonbelievers, inquisitions, visions of
global wars and the end of the world, etc., with which theocratic (and Buddhocratic) systems are
associated were once more (as in the Middle Ages) were very current issues.
In a widely respected book, Clash of Civilizations, the American political scientist Samuel P.
Huntington, has indicated with convincing arguments that the confrontations which await the world of
the 21st century primarily have neither economic, class conflict, nor nationalistic causes. In their
search for identity, people have since the eighties been grouping themselves around “cultures”, but
most especially around religions.