© Victor
& Victoria Trimondi
The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part II – 6. Regicide as Lamaism’s myth of
origin and the ritual sacrifice of Tibet
6. REGICIDE AS LAMAISM’S MYTH OF ORIGIN AND THE RITUAL
SACRIFICE OF TIBET
In the first part of our study we
described the “tantric female sacrifice” as the central cultic mystery of
Tibetan Buddhism. To recap, in the sacrifice feminine energies (gynergy) are absorbed in the
interests of the androcentric power ambitions of a yogi. The general
principle behind this “energy theft”, namely to increase one’s own energy
field via the life force of an opponent, is common to all ancient
societies. In very “primitive” tribal cultures this “transfer” of life
energy was taken literally and one fed upon his slaughtered enemies. The
idea that the sacrificer benefited from the strengths and abilities of his
sacrifice was a widely distributed topos in the ancient culture of Tibet as
well. It applied not just to the sexual magic practices of Tantrism but
rather controlled the entire social system. As we shall see, Lamaism
sacrificed the Tibetan kingship out of such an ancient way of seeing
things, so as to appropriate its energies and legitimate its own worldly power.
Ritual regicide in the history of Tibet and the Tibetan
“scapegoat”
The kings of the Tibetan Yarlung
dynasty (from the 7th to the start of the 9th centuries C.E.) derived their
authority from a divine origin. This was not at all Buddhist and was only
reinterpreted as such after the fact. What counted as the proof of their
Buddhist origin was a “secret text” (mani
kabum) first “discovered” by an eager monk 500 years later in the 12th
century. In it the three most significant Yarlung rulers were identified as
emanations of Bodhisattvas: Songtsen Gampo (617–650) as an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, Trisong Detsen
(742–803) as an embodiment of Manjushri,
and Ralpachan (815–838) as one of Vajrapani.
Their original, pre-Buddhist myth of origin, in which they were descended
from an old race of gods from the heavenly region, was thereby forgotten.
From now on in a Lamaist interpretation of history, the kings represented
the Buddhist law on earth as dharmarajas
("law kings”).
Thanks to older, in part contemporary,
documents (from the 8th century) from the caves of Dunhuang, we know that
the historical reality was more complex. The Yarlung rulers lived and
governed less as strict Buddhists, rather they played the various religious
currents in their country off against one another in order to bolster their
own power. Sometimes they encouraged the Bon belief, sometimes the
immigrant Indian yogis, sometimes the Chinese Chan Buddhists, and sometimes
their old shamanist magic priests. Of the various rites and teachings they
only took on those which squared with their interests. For example,
Songtsen Gampo, the alleged incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, permitted human and animal sacrifices at the
ratification of contracts and his own burial as was usual in the Bon
tradition but strictly condemned by the Buddhists.
Alone the penultimate king of the
dynasty, Ralpachan, can be regarded as a convicted, even fanatical adherent
of Buddhism. This is apparent from, among other things, the text of a law
he enacted, which placed the rights of the monks far above those of
ordinary people. For example, whoever pointed a finger at one of the
ordained risked having it cut off. Anyone who spoke ill of the teaching of
the Buddha would have his lips mutilated. Anyone who looked askance at a
monk had his eyes poked out, and anyone who robbed one had to repay
twenty-five times the worth of the theft. For every seven families in the
country the living costs of one monk had to be provided. The ruler totally
subjected himself to the religious prescriptions and is said to have joined
a Sangha (monastic community). It
is not surprising that he was murdered in the year 838 C.E. after pushing
through such a harsh regime.
The murder of King
Langdarma
It is just as unsurprising that his
brother, Langdarma, who succeeded him on the throne, wanted to reverse the
monastic despotism which Ralpachan had established. Langdarma was firmly
resolved to work together with the old Bon forces once again and began with
a persecution of the Buddhists, driving them out or forcing them to marry. All
their privileges were removed, the Indian yogis were hunted out of the
country and the holy texts (the tantras) were burned. For the lamas
Langdarma thus still today counts as the arch-enemy of the teaching, an
outright incarnation of evil.
But his radical anti-Buddhist activity
was to last only four years. In the year 842 his fate caught up with him.
His murderer rode into Lhasa upon a white horse blackened with coal and
swathed in a black cloak. Palden
Lhamo, the dreadful tutelary deity of the later Dalai Lamas, had
commanded the Buddhist monk, Palgyi Dorje, to “free” Tibet from Langdarma.
Since the king thought it was a Bon priest who had called upon him, he
granted his murderer an audience. Beneath his robes Palgyi Dorje had hidden
a bow and arrow. He knelt down first, but while he was still getting up he
shot Langdarma in the chest at close range, fatally wounding him, and
crying out: “I am the demon Black Yashe. When anybody wishes to kill a
sinful king, let him do it as I have killed this one” (Bell, 1994, p. 48).
He then swung himself onto his horse and fled. Underway he washed the
animal in a river, so that its white coat reappeared. Then he reversed his
black coat which now likewise became white. Thus he was able to escape
without being recognized.
Up until the present day official
Tibetan history legitimates this “tyrannicide” as a necessary act of
desperation by the besieged Buddhists. In order to quiet a bad conscience
and to bring the deed into accord with the Buddhist commandment against any
form of killing, it soon became evaluated as a gesture of compassion: In
being killed, Langdarma was prevented from collecting even more bad karma
and plunging ever more people into ruin. Such “compassionate” murders,
which — as we shall see — were part of Tibetan state politics, avoided
using the word “kill” and replaced it with terms like “rescue” or
“liberate”. “To liberate the
enemy of the doctrine through compassion and lead his consciousness to a
better existence is one of the most important vows to be taken in tantric
empowerment”, writes Samten Karmay (Karmay, 1988, p. 72). In such a case
all that is required of the “rescuer” is that at the moment of the act of
killing he wish the murdered party a good rebirth (Beyer, 1978, pp. 304,
466; Stein, 1993, p. 219).
The sacred murder
But all of this does not make the
murder of King Langdarma an exceptional historical event. The early history
of Tibet is full of regicides (the murder of kings); of the eleven rulers
of the Yarlung dynasty at least six are said to have been killed. There is
even a weight of opinion which holds that ritual regicide was a part of
ancient Tibetan cultural life. Every regent was supposed to be violently
murdered on the day on which his son became able to govern (Tucci, 1953, p.
199f.).
But the truly radical and unique aspect
to the killing of Langdarma is the fact that with him the sacred kingship,
and the divine order of Tibet associated with it, finally reached its end.
Through his murder, the sacrifice of secular rule in favor of clerical
power was completed, both really and symbolically, and the monks’
Buddhocracy thus took the place of the autocratic regent. Admittedly this
alternative was first fully developed 800 years later under the Fifth Dalai
Lama, but in the interim not one worldly ruler succeeded in seizing power
over all of Tibet, which the great abbots of the various sects had divided
among one another.
Ritual regicide has always been a major
topic in anthropology, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis. In his
comprehensive work, The Golden Bough,
James George Frazer declared it to be the origin of all religions. In his
essay, Totem and Taboo, Sigmund
Freud attempts to present the underhand and collective killing of the
omnipotent patriarchal father by the young males of a band of apes as the
founding act of human culture, and sees every historical regicide as a
repetition of this misdeed. The arguments of the psychoanalyst are not very
convincing; nevertheless, his basic idea, which sees an act of violence and
its ritual repetition as a powerful cultural performance, has continued to
occupy modern researchers.
The immense significance of the
regicide becomes clear immediately when it is recalled that the ancient
kings were in most cases equated with a deity. Thus what took place was not
the killing of a person but of a god, usually with the melodramatic intent
that the ritually murdered being would be resurrected or that another deity
would take his place. Nonetheless, the deed always left deep impressions of
guilt and horror in the souls of the executors. Even if the real murder of
a king only took place on a single occasion, the event was ineradicably
fixed in the awareness of a community. It concentrated itself into a
generative principle. By this, René Girard, in his study of The Violence and the Sacred, means
that a “founding murder” influences all the subsequent cultural and
religious developments in a society and that a collective compulsion to
constantly repeat it arises, either symbolically or for real. This compulsive
repetition occurs for three reasons: firstly because of the guilt of the
murderers who believe that they will be able to exorcise the deed through
repetition; secondly, so as to refresh one’s own strengths through those
which flow from the victim to his murderers; thirdly as a demonstration of
power. Hence a chain of religious violence is established, which, however,
be comes increasingly “symbolized” the further the community is removed
from the original criminal event. In place of human sacrifices, the burning
of effigies now emerges.
The cham dance
The murder of King Langdarma was also
later replaced by a symbolic repetition in Tibet. The lamas repeat the
crime in an annually performed dance mystery, the ham dance. There are particular sequences which depend upon the
location and time, and each sect has its own choreography. There are always
several historical and mythical events to be performed. But at the heart of
this mystery play there always stands the ritual sacrifice of an “enemy of
the religion” for whom Langdarma furnishes the archetype.
As it is a ritual, a cham performance
can only be carried out by ordained monks. It is also referred to as the
“dance of the black hats” in remembrance of the black hat which the
regicide, Palgyi Dorje, wore when carrying out his crime and which are now
worn by several of the players. Alongside the Black Hat priests a
considerable number of mostly zoomorphic-masked dancers take part. Animal
figures perform bizarre leaps: crows, owl, deer, yak, and wolf. Yama, the horned god of the dead,
plays the main role of the “Red Executioner”.
In the center of a outdoor theater the
lamas have erected a so-called lingam.
This is an anthropomorphic representation of an enemy of the faith, in the
majority of cases a likeness of King Langdarma. Substitutes for a human
heart, lungs, stomach and entrails are fashioned into the dough figure and
everything is doused in a red blood-like liquid. Austine Waddell claims to
have witnessed on important occasions in Lhasa that real body parts are
collected from the Ragyab cemetery with which to fill the dough figure
(Waddell, 1991, p. 527).
Yama – the death god as Cham dancer
Afterwards, the masked figures dance
around the lingam with wild leaps
to the sounds of horns, cymbals, and drums. Then Yama, the bull-headed god of the dead, appears and pierces the
heart, the arms and legs of the figure with his weapon and ties its feet up
with a rope. A bell tolls, and Yama
begins to lop off the victim’s limbs and slit open his chest with his
sword. Now he tears out the bloody heart and other internal organs which
were earlier placed inside the lingam. In some versions of the play he then
eats the “flesh” and drinks the “blood” with a healthy appetite.
In others, the moment has arrived in
which the animal demons (the masked dancers) fall upon the already
dismembered lingam and tear it
apart for good. The pieces are flung in all directions. Assistant devils
collect the scattered fragments in human skulls and in a celebratory
procession bring them before Yama,
seated upon a throne. With a noble gesture he takes one of the bloody
pieces and calmly consumes it before giving the rest free for general
consumption with a hand signal. At once, the other mystery players descend
and try to catch hold of something. A wild free-for-all now results, in
which many pieces of the lingam
are deliberately thrown into the crowded audience. Everybody grabs a
fragment which is then eaten.
In this clearly cannibalist scene the
clerical cham dancers want to appropriate some of the life energy of the
royal victim. Here too, the ancient idea that an enemy’s powers are
transferred to oneself through killing and eating them is the barely
concealed intention. Thus every cham performance repeats on an “artistic”
level the political appropriation of secular royal power by Lamaism. But we
must always keep in mind that the distinction between symbol and reality
which we find normal does not exist within a tantric culture. Therefore,
King Langdarma is sacrificed together with his secular authority at every
cham dance performance. It is only all too understandable why the Fifth
Dalai Lama, in whose person the entire worldly power of the Tibetan kings
was concentrated for the first time, encouraged the cham dance so much.
Why is the victim and hence the “enemy
of the religion” known as the lingam?
As we know, this Sanskrit word means “phallus”. Do the lamas want to put to
service the royal procreative powers? The psychoanalyst, Robert A. Paul, offers
another interesting interpretation. He sees a “symbolic castration” in the
destruction of the lingam.
Through it the monks demonstrate that the natural reproductive process of
birth from a woman represents an abortive human development. But when applied
to the royal sacrifice this symbolic castration has a further,
power-political significance: it symbolizes the replacement of the dynastic
chain of inheritance — which follows the laws of reproduction and
presupposes the sexual act — by the incarnation system.
In his fieldwork, Robert A. Paul also
observed how on the day following a cham performance the abbot and his
monks dressed as dakinis and appeared at the sacrificial site in order to
collect up the scattered remains and burn them in a fire together with
other objects. Since the “male” lamas conduct this final ritual act in the
guise of (female) “sky walkers”, it seems likely that yet another tantric
female sacrifice is hidden behind the symbolic regicide.
The substitute sacrifice
The sacrifice of a lingam was a particular specialty of the Fifth Dalai Lama,
which he had performed not just during the cham dance but also used it, as
we shall soon see, for the destruction of enemies. We are dealing with a
widely spread practice in Tibetan cultural life. On every conceivable
occasion, small pastry figurines (torma
or bali) were created in
order to be offered up to the gods or demons. Made from tsampa or butter,
they were often shaped into anthropomorphic figures. One text requires that
they be formed like the “breasts of Dakinis” (Beyer, 1978, p. 312). Blood
and pieces of meat, resins, poisons, and beer were often added. In the
majority of cases substitutes were used for these. Numerous Tibet
researchers are agreed that the sacrifice of a torma involves the symbolic
reconstruction of a former human sacrifice (Hermann, Hoffmann,
Nebesky-Wojkowitz, Paul, Sierksma, Snellgrove, and Waddell).
Now there are several views about what
the offering of a substitute sacrifice signifies. For example, all that is
evil, even one’s own bad features, can be projected onto the torma so as to
then be destroyed. Afterwards, the sacrificer feels cleansed and safe from
harmful influences. Or the sacrifice may be offered up for the demons to
devour, whether to render them favorable or to avert them from harming a
particular individual. Here we are dealing with the bali ritual codified by the Fifth Dalai Lama. The purpose of
the ceremony consists in hampering the dakinis or other malignant spirits
from taking a sick or dying person with them into their domain. So that the
patient is not tempted by them, a lama depicts the land of the dakinis in a
truly terrible light and portrays its female inhabitants as monsters:
They consume warm human flesh as
food
They drink warm human blood as a
beverage
They lust to kill and work to
dismember
There is not a moment in which they
cease to battle and fight.
And the addressee is then abjured:
Please do not go to such a country,
stay in the homeland of Tibet!
(Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 463)
With this, the soul of the sick person
has indeed been deterred, but the dakinis who wanted to seize him or her
have not yet been satisfied. For this reason the texts recommend a
substitute sacrifice. The female cannibals are offered a bali pyramid consisting of a skull,
torn-off strips of skin, butter lamps filled with human fat, and various
organs floating in a strong-smelling liquid made from brain, blood and
gall. This is supposed to assuage the greed of the “sky walkers” and
distract them from the sick person (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 466).
The Tibetan “scapegoat”
The anthropologist, James George
Frazer, likewise draws a connection between ritual regicide and the
symbolic sacrificial rites practiced by many peoples at the beginning of a
year. The past year, represented by the old ruler, is sacrificed, and the
new year celebrates its entry in the figure of a young king. In the course
of time the reigning kings were able to escape this rite, deeply anchored
in human history, by setting up substitutes upon whom the ritual violence
could be let out. Such sacrificial substitutes for the king were attributed
with all kinds of negative features like illnesses, weaknesses, barrenness,
poverty, and so on, so that these would no longer be a burden on the
community following the violent death of the substitute.
This role of a human “scapegoat” during
the Tibetan New Year’s feast (Monlam)
was taken on by a person who bore the name of the “king of impurity”, “ox
demon”, or “savior king”. Half of his face was painted white and the other
half black, and he was dressed in new clothes. He then took to the streets
of Lhasa, swinging a black yak’s tail as a scepter, to collect offerings
and to appropriate things which appealed to him. Many also gave money, but
the former owners invested all of these objects with every misfortune with
which they might reckon in the future.
This continued for several days. At a
pre-arranged time the “ox demon” appeared in front of Lhasa’s cathedral,
the Jokhang. There a monk from the Drepung monastery was waiting for him in
a magnificent robe. In the scene which was now played out he represented
the Dalai Lama. First up there was a violent battle of words in which the
scapegoat mocked the Buddhist teachings with a sharp tongue. Thereupon the
pretend Dalai Lama challenged him to a game of dice. If the “king of
impurity “ were to win, the disastrous consequences for the whole country
would have been immense. But preparations had been made to ensure that this
did not happen, then he had a die which displayed a one on every face,
whilst his opponent always threw a six. After his defeat the loser fled
from the town on a white horse. The mob followed him as far as it could,
shooting at him with blanks and throwing stones. He was either driven into
the wilderness or taken prisoner and locked in one of the horror chambers
of the Samye monastery for a time. It was considered a good omen if he
died.
Even if he was never deliberately
killed, he often paid the highest price for his degrading treatment. Actually
his demise was expected, or at least hoped for. It was believed that
scapegoats attracted all manner of rare illnesses or died under mysterious
circumstances. If the expelled figure nonetheless save his skin, he was
permitted to return to Lhasa and once again take on the role.
Behind the “scapegoat ritual” — an
event which can be found in ancient cultures all the world — there is the
idea of purification. The victim takes on every repulsiveness and all
possible besmirchment so as to free the community of these. As a
consequence he must become a monster which radiates with the power of
darkness. According to tradition, the community has the right, indeed the
duty, to kill or drive off with an aggressive act this monster who is
actually nothing more than the repressed shadowy side of his persecutors.
The sacrificers are then freed of all evil, which the scapegoat takes to
its death with him, and society returns to a state of original purity.
Accordingly, the ritual power applied is not a matter of self-interest, but
rather a means of attaining the opposite, social peace and an undisturbed
state. The scapegoat — René Girard writes — has to “take on the evil power
in total so as to transform it via his death into benevolent power, into
peace and fruitfulness. ... He is a machine which changes the sterile and
contagious power into positive cultural values” (Girard, 1987, pp. 143,
160).
The
scapegoat of Gyantse, adorned with animal intestines
Yet it is not just an annual
psycho-purification of Lamaism which is conducted through the Tibetan
Monlam feast, but also the collective cleansing of the historical
defilement which bleeds as a deep wound in the subconscious of the monastic
state. The driving off or killing of the scapegoat is, just like the cham
dance, a ritual of atonement for the murder of King Langdarma. In fact,
numerous symbolic references are made to the original deed in the scenario
of the festivities. For example, the “ox demon” (one of the names for the
scapegoat) appears colored in black and white and flees on a white horse
just like the regicide, Palgyi Dorje. The “ox” was also Langdarma’s totem
animal. During the feast, from a mountain where the grave of the apostate
king could be found, units of the Tibetan Artillery fired off three cannon,
two of which were called the “old and the young demoness”. “Since the Dalai
Lamas are actually, in a broad historical sense, beneficiaries of Palgyi
Dorje's [Langdarma’s murderer] crime,” the ethnologist Robert A. Paul
writes, “we may suppose that part of the purpose of the annual scapegoat
ritual is to allow the guilt for that act to be expressed through the
figure of the Ox-demon; and then to reassert the legitimacy of the Dalai
Lama's reign by demonstrating his ability to withstand this challenge to his
innocence” (R. Paul, 1982, p. 296).
Authors like James George Frazer and
Robert Bleichsteiner are even of the opinion that the “king of impurity” in
the final instance represents the Dalai Lama himself, who indeed became the
“illegitimate” successor of the killed regent as the worldly ruler of
Tibet. “The victim in older times was certainly the king himself,”
Bleichsteiner informs us, “who was offered up at the beginning of a new
epoch as atonement and guarantee for the well-being of the people. Hence the
lamaist priest-kings were also considered to be the atoning sacrifice of
the New Year ... “ (Bleichsteiner, 1937, p. 213). It also speaks in favor
of this thesis that in early performances of the rite the substitute was
required to be of the same age as the god-king and that during the ceremony
a doll which represents the Dalai Lama is carried along (Richardson, 1993,
p. 64). The evil, dark, despotic, and unfortunate shadow of the hierarch
would then be concentrated in the scapegoat, upon whom the populace and the
hordes of monks let loose could let out their rage.
Then, once the “Great Fifth” had
institutionalized the celebrations, anarchy reigned in Lhasa during the
period of the New Year’s festivities: 20,000 monks from the most varied
monasteries had cart blanche.
Everything which was normally forbidden was now permitted. In bawling and
wildly gesticulating groups the “holy” men roamed the streets. Some prayed,
others cursed, yet others gave vent to wild cries. They pushed each other
around, they argued with one another, they hit each other. There were
bloody noses, black eyes, battered heads and torn clothes. Meditative
absorption and furious rage could each become the other in an instant.
Heinrich Harrer, who experienced several feasts at the end of the forties,
describes one of them in the following words: “As if awakened from a
hypnosis, in this instant the tens of thousands plunge order into chaos.
The transition is so sudden that one is stunned. Shouting, wild
gesticulation ... they trample one another to the ground, almost murder
each other. The praying [monks], still weeping and ecstatically absorbed,
become enraged madmen. The monastic soldiers begin their work! Huge blokes
with padded shoulders and blackened faces — so that the deterrent effect is
further enhanced. They ruthlessly lay into the crowd with their staffs. ...
Howling, they take the blows, but even the beaten return again. As if they
were possessed by demons” (Harrer, 1984, p. 142).
The Tibetan feast of Monlam is thus a
variant upon the paradoxes we have already examined, in which, in
accordance with the tantric law of inversion, anarchy and disorder are
deliberately evoked so as to stabilize the Buddhocracy in total. During
these days, the bottled- up anti-state aggressions of the subjects can be
completely discharged, even if only for a limited time and beneath the
blows of the monastic soldiers’ clubs.
It was once again the “Great Fifth” who
recognized the high state-political value of the scapegoat play and thus
made the New Year’s festival in the year 1652 into a special state
occasion. From the Potala, the “seat of the gods”, the incarnation of Avalokiteshvara could look down
smiling and compassionately at the delirium in the streets of Lhasa and at
the sad fate of his disgraceful doppelganger
(the scapegoat).
The scapegoat mechanism can be
considered part of the cultural heritage of all humanity. It is
astonishingly congruent with the tantric pattern in which the yogi deliberately
produces an aggressive, malicious fundamental attitude in order to
subsequently transform it into its opposite via the “law of inversion”: the
poison becomes the antidote, the evil the cure. We have indicated often
enough that this does not at all work out to plan, and that rather, after
practicing the ritual the “healing priests” themselves can become the
demons they ostensibly want to drive out.
Summarizing, we can thus say that, over
and above the “tantric female sacrifice”, Tibetan Buddhism has made all
possible variants of the symbolic sacrifice of humans an essential element
of its cultural life. This is also no surprise, then the whole tantric idea
is fundamentally based upon the sacrifice of the human (the person, the
individual, the human body) to the benefit of the gods or of the yogi. At
least in the imaginations of the lamas there are various demons in the
Tibetan pantheon who perform the sacrificial rites or to whom the
sacrifices are made. The fiends thus fulfill an important task in the
tantric scenario and serve the teaching as tutelary deities (dharmapalas). As reward for their
work they demand still more human blood and still more human flesh. Such
cannibal foods are called kangdza in
Tibetan. They are graphically depicted as dismembered bodies, hearts that
have been torn out, and peeled skins in ghastly thangkas, which are
worshipped in sacred chambers dedicated to the demons themselves. Kangdza means “wish-fulfilling
gifts”, unmistakably indicating that people were of the opinion that they
could fulfill their greatest wishes through human sacrifices. That this
really was understood thus is demonstrated by the constant use of parts of
human corpses in Tibetan magic, to which we devote the next chapter.
Ritual murder as a current issue among exile Tibetans
The terrible events of February 4, 1997
in Dharamsala, the Indian seat of government of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,
demonstrate that ritual human sacrifice among the Tibetans is in no way a
thing of the past but rather continues to take place up until the present
day. According to the police report on that day six to eight men burst into
the cell of the 70-year-old lama, Lobsang Gyatso, the leader of the
Buddhist dialectic school, and murdered him and two of his pupils with numerous
stab wounds. The bloody deed was carried out in the immediate vicinity of
the Dalai Lama's residence in a building which forms part of the Namgyal
monastery. The Namgyal Institute is, as we have already mentioned on a
number of occasions, responsible for the ritual performance of the Kalachakra Tantra. The world press —
in as far as it reported the crime at all — was horrified by the extreme
cruelty of the murderers. The victims' throats had been slit and according
to some press reports their skin had been partially torn from their bodies
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1997, No.
158, p. 10). There is even a rumor among the exile Tibetan community that
the perpetrators had sucked out the victims' blood in order to use it for
magical purposes. All this took place in just under an hour.
The Indian criminal police and the
western media were united in the view that this was a matter of a ritual
murder, since money and valuable objects, such as a golden Buddha which was
to be found there for example, were left untouched by the murderers. The
“mouthpiece” for the Dalai Lama in the USA, Robert Thurman, also saw the
murder as a ritual act: “The three were stabbed repeatedly and cut up in a
way that was like exorcism.” (Newsweek,
May 5, 1997, p. 43).
In general the deed is suspected to
have been an act of revenge by followers of the protective deity, Dorje Shugden, of whom Lobsang
Gyatso was an open opponent. But to date the police have been unable to
produce any real evidence. In contrast, the Shugden followers see the murders as an attempt to marginalize
them as criminals by the Dalai Lama. (We shall discuss this in the next
chapter.)
As important as it may be that the case
be solved, it is not of decisive significance for our analysis who finally
turns out to have committed the deed. We are under any circumstances
confronted with an event here, in which the tantric scheme has become
shockingly real and current. The ritual murders of 4 February have put a
final end to the years of “scientific” discussion around the question of
whether the calls to murder in the tantras (which we have considered in
detail in the first part of this study) are only a symbolic directive or
whether they are to be understood literally. Both are the case. On this
occasion, this has even been perceived in the western press, such as, for
example, when the Süddeutsche Zeitung
asks: “Exorcist ritual murders? Fanatics even in the most gentle of all
religions? For many fans of Buddhism in the West their happy world falls a
part.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 1997,
No. 158, p. 10). It nonetheless remains unclear which metaphysical
speculations were involved in the bloody rite of February 4.
The ritual sacrifice of Tibet
In dealing with the occupation of Tibet
by the Chinese, the otherwise most “mystical” lamas prefer to argue in
exclusively western and non-mythological terms. There is talk of breaches
of human rights, international law, and “cultural genocide”. If, however,
we consider the subjugation of the Land of Snows and the exodus of the
Dalai Lama from a symbolic/tantric viewpoint, then we reach completely
different conclusions.
Primarily, as we have extensively
demonstrated, a politically oriented tantra master (especially if he
practices the Kalachakra Tantra
as does the Dalai Lama) is not at all interested in strengthening and
maintaining an established and orderly state. Such a conservative position
is valid only for as long as it does not stand in the way of the final
goal, the conquest of the world by a Buddhocracy. This imperial path to
world control is paved with sacrifices: the sacrifice of the karma mudra (the wisdom consort),
the sacrifice of the pupil’s individual personality, the symbolic sacrifice
of worldly kingship, etc.
Just as the guru is able to evoke
mental states in his sadhaka
(pupil) which lead to the fragmentation of the latter’s psyche so that he
can be reborn on a higher
spiritual plane, so too he applies such deliberately initiated practices of
dismemberment to the state and society as well, in order for these to
re-emerge on a higher level. Just
as the tantra master dissolves the structures of his human body, he can
likewise bring down the established structures of a social community. Then
the Buddhist/tantric idea of the state has an essentially symbolic nature
and is fundamentally no different to the procedures which the yogi performs
within his energy body and through his ritual practices.
From the viewpoint of the Kalachakra Tantra, all the important
events in Tibetan history point eschatologically to the control of the
universe by a Chakravartin (world
ruler). The precondition for this is the destruction of the old social
order and the construction of a new society along the guidelines laid down
in the Dharma (the teaching). Following such a logic, and in accordance
with the tantric “law of inversion”, the destruction of a national Tibet
could become the requirement for a higher
transnational Buddhocratic order.
Have — we must now ask ourselves — the
Tibetan people been sacrificed so that their life energies may be freed for
the worldwide spread of Lamaism? As fantastic and cynical as such a
mythical interpretation of history may sound, it is surreptitiously widely
distributed in the occult circles of Tantric Buddhism. Proud reference is
made to the comparison with Christianity here: just as Jesus Christ was
sacrificed to save the world, so too the Tibet of old was destroyed so that
the Dharma could spread around the globe.
In an insider document which was sent
to the Tibetologist Donald S. Lopez, Jr. in 1993, it says of the Chinese
destruction of Tibetan culture: “From an esoteric viewpoint, Tibet has
passed through the burning ground of purification on a national level. What
is the 'burning ground'? When a developing entity, be it a person or a
nation (the dynamic is the same), reaches a certain level of spiritual
development, a time comes for the lower habits, old patterns, illusions and
crystallized beliefs to be purified so as to better allow the spiritual
energies of inner being to flow through the instrument without distortion
..... After such a purification the entity is ready for the next level of
expansion in service. The Tibetans were spiritually strong enough to endure
this burning ground so as to pave the way for its defined part in building
the new world”. In this latter, the authors assure us, the “first Sacred
Nation” will become a “point of synthesis” of “universal love, wisdom and
goodwill” (quoted by Lopez, 1998, p. 204).
Or was the exodus of the omnipotent l
and the killing of many Tibetan believers by the Chinese even “planned” by
the Buddhist side, so that Tantrism could conquer the world? The
Tibetologist Robert Thurman (the “mouthpiece of the Dalai Lama” in America)
discusses such a theory in his book Essential
Tibetan Buddhism. “The most compelling, if somewhat dramatic [theory],”
Thurman writes, “is that Vajrapani (the Bodhisattva of power) emanated
himself as Mao Tse-tung and took upon himself the heinous sin of destroying
the Buddha Dharma's institutions [of Tibet], along with many beings, for
three main reasons: to prevent other, ordinarily human, materialists from
reaping the consequences of such terrible acts; to challenge the Tibetan
Buddhists to let go the trapping of their religion and philosophy and force
themselves to achieve the ability to embody once again in this terrible era
their teachings of detachment, compassion, and wisdom, and to scatter the
Indo-Tibetan Buddhist teachers and disseminate their teachings throughout
the planet among all the people, whether religious or secular, at this apocalyptic
time when humanity must make a quantum leap from violence to peacefulness
in order to preserve all life on earth” (quoted in Lopez, 1998, p. 274).
Such visions of purification and
sacrifice may sound bizarre and fantastic to a western historian, but we
must nevertheless regard them as the expression of an ancient culture which
recognizes the will and the plan of a supreme being behind every historical
suffering and every human catastrophe. The catastrophe of Tibet is foreseen
in the script of the Kalachakra
Tantra. Thus for the current Dalai Lama his primary concern is not the
freedom of the nation of Tibet, but rather the spread of Tantric Buddhism
on a global scale. “My main concern, my main interest, is the Tibetan
Buddhist culture, not just political independence”, he said at the end of
the eighties year in Strasbourg (Shambhala
Sun, Archive, November 1996).
How deeply interconnected politics and
ritual are felt to be by the Kundun’s
followers is shown by the vision described by a participant at a
conference in Bonn ("Mythos Tibet”) who had traveled in Tibet: he had
suddenly seen the highlands as a great mandala. Exactly like the sand
mandala in the Kalachakra Tantra
it was then destroyed so that the whole power of Tibet could be
concentrated in the person of the Dalai Lama as the world teacher of the
age to come.
As cynical as it may sound, through
such imaginings the suffering the Tibetans have experienced under Chinese
control attain a deeper significance and spiritual solemnity. It was the greatest
gift for the distribution of Tibetan Buddhism in the West. [1]
The spectacular self-sacrifice has
since the spring of 1998 become a new political weapon for both the
Tibetans who remained and those in exile: in 1997, the majority of monks
from the Tibetan Drepung monastery were convinced that the Dalai Lama would
soon return with the support of the US in order to free Tibet. Thus, now
would be the right moment to sacrifice oneself for His Holiness, for the
religion, and for Tibet (Goldstein, 1998, p. 42). To bring the situation in
their home country to the world’s attention and above all to raise the
question of Tibet in the UN, Tibetan monks protested in India with a
so-called “hunger strike to the death”. When the Indian police admitted the
protesters to hospital after a number of days, the 50-year-old monk,
Thubten Ngodub, publicly self-immolated, with the cry of “Long live the
Dalai Lama!” on his lips. [2] He was declared a martyr of the nation and
his funeral in Dharamsala was a moving demonstration which went on for
hours. Youths wrote Free Tibet on
their chests in their own blood. In a public communiqué from the youth
organization (TYC) it was said that “The Tibetan people have sent a clear
message to the world that they can sacrifice themselves for the cause of an
independent Tibet ... More blood will flow in the coming days” (AFP, New
Delhi, April 29, 1998). The names of many more Tibetans who were prepared
to die for their country were placed on a list.
On the one hand, the Dalai Lama condemned
such proceedings because they were a resort to violent means (suicide is
violence directed against the self), on the other hand he expressed that he
admired the motivation and resolve of these Tibetans (who sacrifice
themselves) (The Office of Tibet,
April 28, 1998). He visited the hunger strikers and blessed the national
martyr, Ngodub, in a special ritual. The grotesque aspect of the situation
was that, at the same time and under American pressure, the Kundun was preparing for an imminent
encounter with the Chinese. Whilst he repeatedly stresses in public that he
renounced an “independent Tibet”, his subjects sacrifice themselves for
exactly this demand. We shall come to speak later of the discordance which
arises between Lamaism and the national question.
Real violence and one’s own imaginings
Is perhaps the violence which the Land
of Snows has had to experience under Chinese occupation a mirror image of
its own culture? If we look at the scenes of unbounded suffering and
merciless sadism which are depicted upon countless thangkas, then we have
before our eyes an exact visual prognosis of what was done to the Tibetans
by the Chinese. In just casting a glance at in the Tibetan Book of the Dead
one is at once confronted with the same infernal images as are described by
Tibetan refugees. The history of horrors is — as we know — codified in both
the sacred iconography of Tantric Buddhism and in the unfolding scenes of
the tantras.
In light of the history of Tibet, must
Lamaism’s images of horror just be seen as a prophecy of events to come, or
did they themselves contribute to the production of the brutal reality?
Does the deed follow the meditative envisioning, like thunder follows
lightning? Is the Tibetan history of suffering aligned with a tantric myth?
Were the Buddhist doctrine of insight applied consistently, it would have
to answer this question with “yes”. Joseph Campbell, too, is one of the few
western authors to describe the Chinese attacks, which he otherwise
strongly criticizes, as a “vision of the whole thing come true, the
materialization of the mythology in life” and to have referred to the
depiction of the horrors in the tantras (Joseph Campbell, 1973, p. 516).
If one spins this mythological net out
further, then the following question at once presents itself: Why were
Tibet and the “omnipotent” lamas not protected by their deities? Were the
wrathful dharmapalas (tutelary
deities) too weak to repel the “nine-headed” Chinese dragon and drive it
from the “roof of the world”? Perhaps the goddess Palden Lhamo, the female protective spirit of the Dalai Lama
and the city of Lhasa, had freed herself from the clutches of the
andocentric clergy and turned against her former masters? Had the enchained
Srinmo, the mother of Tibet,
joined up with the demons from the Middle Kingdom in order to avenge
herself upon the lamas for nailing her down? Or was the exodus of the
omnipotent lamas intentional, in order to now conquer the world?
Such questions may also appear bizarre
and fantastic to a western historian; but for the Tibetan/tantric
“discipline of history”, which suspects superhuman forces are at work
behind politics, they do make sense. In the following chapter we would like
to demonstrate how decisively such an atavistic view influences the
politics of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama through a consideration of the
Tibetan oracle system and the associated Shugden affair.
Footnotes:
[1] On the other hand, the
“sacrificing” of Tibet is lamented on all sides or seven linked to the fate
of all humanity: “If one allows such a spiritual society to be destroyed,”
writes the director Martin Scorcese, “we lose a part of our own soul” (Focus, 46/1997, p. 168).
[2] There is a passage in the Lotus Sutra in which a Bodhisattva burns
himself up as a sacrifice for a Buddha.
Next Chapter:
7. THE WAR
OF THE ORACLE GODS AND THE SHUGDEN AFFAIR
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