Review
of The Shadow of the
Dalai Lama
A different Tibetan Buddhism
A closer look into the history and traditions
surrounding
the Dalai Lama reveals a cautionary tale
by
Michael Nenonen
A few years ago
I had the chance to hear members of a Shambhala Centre talk about Chogyam
Trungpa Rinpoche, the Tibetan lama who started their movement. Like other
Tibetan Buddhist figures, Trungpa was described in ways befitting a
spiritual superman. His legacy is indeed formidable. Besides establishing
the first Buddhist University in the United States, he founded over 100
meditation centres around the world, wrote two dozen books on Buddhist
themes, and attracted thousands of students. He’s spoken highly of by the 14
th Dalai Lama, and revered by countless people in both the East and West.
Many social activists, seeking spiritual guidance in a world full of
discredited religious organizations, continue to find direction through his
“Shambhala path.”
Imagine my surprise,
then, when I read in Katy Butler’s essay Encountering the Shadow in
Buddhist America (Common Boundary, May/June 1990) that “When Trungpa
Rinphoche lay dying in 1986 at the age of 47, only an inner circle knew the
symptoms of his final illness. Few could bear to acknowledge that their
beloved and brilliant teacher was dying of terminal alcoholism, even when
he lay incontinent in his bedroom, belly distended and skin discolored,
hallucinating and suffering from varicose veins, gastritis and esophageal varices,
a swelling of veins in the esophagus caused almost exclusively by cirrhosis
of the liver.” In addition to being an alcoholic, ChogyamTrungpa had sexual
relationships with his followers, encouraged the use of mind-altering
drugs, and was rather abusive. In one of his seminars, for instance, he
ordered two students to be stripped of all their clothing against their
will.
His successor,
Osel Tendzin, was even less savoury. Before he died in 1990, this saint
admitted to having sex with over a hundred men and women even though he
knew that he had AIDs. A number of these partners contracted the disease
themselves.
Many still
believe that Chogyam Trungpa and Osel Tendzin were spiritual masters, and
use all sorts of mystical rationalizations to defend their adoration. Their
blind faith demonstrates one of the dangers of religion: the dissolution of
the ego can, if accompanied by the dissolution of the critical intellect,
result in abject subjugation to another person’s ego, an ego that may have
a hidden and unpalatable agenda.
When confronted
by such scandals, some argue that, without the checks and balances of the
monastic system, Tibetan masters can easily succumb to what Chogyam Trungpa
himself called “Spiritual Materialism.” The problem, according to these
accounts, lies with the individual masters and the Western milieu, rather
than with anything more fundamental to Tibetan Buddhism. I’ve made this
argument myself, but lately I’ve had my doubts.
Why, I’ve
wondered, hasn’t the 14 th Dalai Lama, the God-King of Tibetan Buddhism,
explicitly condemned the US military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Mahatma Gandhi, with whom the Dalai Lama has often been compared, was an
outspoken anti-imperialist. Other spiritual leaders like Martin Luther King
Jr and Desmond Tutu have been equally vocal about the evils of American
imperialism. If the Dalai Lama is to be counted among these ethical
paragons, then why does he seem to modify his message depending on the
audience he’s addressing? Would Ghandi, King, or Tutu ever hug Senator
Jesse Helms like the Dalai Lama did in September 1995? After reading Victor
and Victoria Trimondi’s
The Shadow of
the Dalai Lama, my doubts have deepened.
Victor and
Victoria Trimondi are pen names used by Mariana and Herbert Röttgen. Their
book was published to wide acclaim in Germany in 1999 by the respected
Patmos Group. The Shadow of the Dalai Lama hasn’t been published in
English, but a translation can be found at the author’s website,
trimondi.de. This scholarly work is highly critical of the Dalai Lama and
the religious system he presides over.
The authors
were themselves once followers of the Dalai Lama. Herbert Röttgen was a
personal friend of the Dalai Lama, he published a number of the Dalai
Lama’s books, and he organized several symposia and major events for him.
When the authors sat down to research Tibetan Buddhism, they expected to
find a world consistent with the Dalai Lama’s expressed philosophies of
pacifism and compassion. What they found was the exact opposite.
As the authors
write, “Lamaism was caught up in bloody struggles between the various
monastic factions from the outset. There was a terrible ‘civil war’ in
which the country’s two main orders faced one another as opponents.
Political murder has always been par for the course and even the Dalai
Lamas have not been spared. Even in the brief history of the exiled
Tibetans it is a constant occurrence. The concept of the enemy was deeply
anchored in ancient Tibetan culture, and persists to this day. Thus the
destruction of ‘enemies of the teaching’ is one of the standard
requirements of all tantric ritual texts. The sexual magic practices which
lie at the center of this religion . . . are based upon a fundamental
misogyny. The social misery of the masses in old Tibet was shocking and
repulsive, the authority of the priestly state was absolute and extended
over life and death.”
The legal
system was especially cruel: “Bizarre mutilations like blindings, the
cutting off of limbs or tearing out of tongues, deliberately allowing
people to freeze to death, the pillory, shackling, yoking, lifelong
imprisonment in damp pits all count as common punishments up until the 20th
century, even after the 13 th Dalai Lama had introduced a number of
moderations.” The authors mention that every major monastery had a dungeon
where tortures comparable to those used in Europe’s Middle Ages persisted
until very recently, and that these monasteries were often decorated by
human body parts.
It goes without
saying that this picture is at odds with our popular understanding of
Tibetan Buddhism. The authors contend that the lama community, under the
Dalai Lama’s leadership, has misrepresented Tibet’s history, its religious
doctrines, and their own ethical beliefs in order to cater to Western
sensitivities.
The Dalai Lama
rarely speaks to Western audiences about the higher levels of the
Kalachakra Tantra, for example, the most important religious text in
Tibetan Buddhism. The authors write that “In the eight secret higher
initiations of the Kalachakra Tantra, extreme mental and physical exercises
are used to push the initiand into a state beyond good and evil. The
original text thus requires the following misdeeds and crimes of him:
killing, lying, stealing, infidelity, the consumption of alcohol, sexual
intercourse with lower-class girls. As in all the other tantras, here too
these requirements can be understood both symbolically and literally.” This
last point is important. While Tibetan Buddhists in the West argue that the
violent passages in their religious texts are meant to be read as metaphors
for psychological processes, there’s a great deal of evidence that in Tibet
they were taken quite literally, and that the Lama community continues to
take them literally today.
In his Western
appearances the Dalai Lama also downplays the Shambhala myth, which is a
cornerstone of Tibetan Buddhism. This myth foretells the rise of a despotic
Buddhist world-ruler and an apocalyptic war in 2327 between Buddhists and
the followers of Islam, a war in which all those of other faiths will be
exterminated.
The Shambhala
myth may illuminate what the authors argue is the current Dalai Lama’s
long-standing association with prominent fascists. The Lama community
welcomed Nazi research expeditions into Tibet during the 1930s. The Dalai
Lama’s European tutor, Heinrich Harrer, was a member of the SS and, despite
his portrayal in the film version of Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer remained
true to his Nazi beliefs throughout his life. The authors write that the
Dalai Lama met at least three times over the years with his “friend” Miguel
Serrano, a leader of the National Socialist Party of Chile and the chief
proponent of “esoteric Hitlerism,” and five times with Shoko Asahara, the
leader of the AUM cult responsible for the sarin gas attack on a Japanese
subway in 1995. SS occultism, Serrano’s writings, and Shoko Asahara’s
doctrines are all clearly influenced by the legend of Shambhala.
The authors’
most provocative contention is that the global spread of Tibetan Buddhism
may be laying the seeds for a new, highly aggressive, and virulently anti-
Islamic form of fundamentalism. They suggest that Tibetan Buddhism’s
user-friendly facade is simultaneously a lure and an anesthetic: it draws
people to the religion while numbing their religious skepticism. As they
get deeper into the movement, as their egos dissipate and their
consciousness is populated by the images of Tibetan deities and demons,
students may mistake indoctrination for enlightenment. This is a danger in
the West, but is perhaps even more threatening in the East, where the
Tibetan faith is rapidly growing at the expense of other forms of Buddhism.
The Shadow of
the Dalai Lama is an extremely controversial book, but one thing is clear:
Tibet was never the Shangri-La we so often yearn for. It was instead a
pre-modern, totalitarian theocracy—or, to be more precise, Buddhocracy.
State structures like this can only be maintained through the most vicious
means; the official religions in such states necessarily reflect and
legitimize the violence and exploitation required by the social order.
Tibet isn’t unique; this kind of society used to be quite common. Tibet’s
unusual only insofar as it retained this system well into the Twentieth
Century.
Spiritual enlightenment
is a worthy quest, but the journey is inevitably beset by cul-de-sacs and
perils. The greatest danger lies in our own hopes and the blindness they
can produce. Fairy tales about magical father-figures and enchanted
kingdoms are delightfully soothing, but we mustn’t let them cloud our
vision. If The Shadow of the Dalai Lama is correct, then instead of
delivering psychological liberation, the inner mysteries of Tibetan
Buddhism may offer only the shackles of Buddhocratic folly.
©
Michael Nenonen (11/04/2007)
Source: http://www.chinabuddhismencyclopedia.com/en/index.php/Tibetan_Dalai_Lama_%E2%80%93_Not_What_You_Think
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