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© Victor
& Victoria Trimondi
The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part II – 9. The war gods behind the mask of
peace
9. THE WAR GODS
BEHIND
THE MASK OF
PEACE
The aggressiveness of the Tibetan tutelary gods
(Dharmapalas)
Gesar of Ling - the Tibetan "Siegfried"
The Tibetan warrior kings and the clerical successors
The Dalai Lamas as the supreme war lords
The historical distortion of the "peaceful"
Tibetans
Is the XIV Dalai Lama the "greatest living prince of
peace"
Tibetan guerrillas and the CIA
Marching music and terror
Political calculation
and the Buddhist message of peace
“Buddha has smiled”: The Dalai
Lama and the Indian atomic tests
When Buddhism is talked about today in the West,
then the warlike past of Tibet
is not a topic. The majority of people understand the Buddha’s teaching to
be a religion with a program that includes inner and outer peace, humans
living together in harmony, the rejection of any form of violence or
aggression, a commandment against all killing, and in general a radically
pacifist attitude. Such a fundamental ethical attitude is rightly demanded
by Buddhists through an appeal to their founder. Admittedly, the historical
Buddha, Shakyamuni, was born as the descendant of a king from the warrior caste, however, he abandoned his family, became
“homeless”, and distanced himself from every aspect of the art of war. He
did so not just for moral reasons, but also because he recognized that wars
are the expression of one’s own misdirected awareness and that the dualism
taken to its limits in war contained a false view of the world. Reduced to
a concise formula, what he wanted to say with this was that in the final
instance the ego and its enemy are one. Shakyamuni
was a pacifist because he was an idealist epistemologist. Only later, in Mahayana Buddhism, did the ethical
argument for the fundamental pacifism of the dharma (the doctrine) emerge alongside the philosophical one. A
strict ban on killing, the requirement of nonviolence, and compassion with
all living beings were considered the three supreme moral maxims.
Both of these arguments against war, the
epistemological and the human-political, today play a fundamental role in
the international self-presentation of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
Tirelessly and upon countless occasions over the last decades His Holiness
has done what he can for world peace. For this reason he received the Nobel
peace prize in 1989. His pacifist sermons and political programs were not
the least reason for the fact that the Tibet of old (prior to the Chinese
occupation) was increasingly seen and admired in the West as a peaceful
sanctuary, inhabited by unwarlike and highly ethically developed people, a
paradise on earth. A western student of the dharma has summarized Tibet’s
history in the following concise sentence: “Buddhism turned their [the
Tibetan] society from a fierce grim world of war and intrigue into a peaceful,
colorful, cheerful realm of pleasant und meaningful living” (quoted by
Lopez, 1998, p. 7). With this longed-for image the Kundun seized upon a thread already spun by numerous
Euro-American authors (since the nineteen-thirties), above all James Hilton,
in his best-seller The Lost Horizon.
Under the leadership of their lamas, the Tibetans
in exile have thus succeeded in presenting themselves to the world public
as a spiritual people of peace threatened by genocide, who in a period
rocked by conflicts wish to spread their pacifist
message. “A confession with which one cannot go wrong”, wrote the German
news magazine, Spiegel, in
reference to Tibetan Buddhism, “Two-and-a-half thousand years of
peaceableness in place of the inquisition, monks who always seemed cheerful
rather than officious and impertinent religious leaders, hope for nirvana
rather than the threat of jihad —
Buddhism harms no-one and has become trendy”
(Spiegel, 16/1998, p. 109). And
the German Buddhist and actor Sigmar Solbach explained to his television
audience that “a war has never been fought in the name of Buddhism” (Spiegel, 16/1998, p. 109).
Regrettably, the opposite is the case — countless wars have been fought in
the name of Buddhism just as they have in the name of Christianity. The Shambhala myth has rightly — as we
shall demonstrate on the basis of historical events — been described as the
“Buddhist jihad” (holy war).
The aggressiveness of the Tibetan
tutelary gods (dharmapalas)
When we examine the iconography of Tantric Buddhism
it literally swarms with aggressive warriors, demons, vampires, monsters,
sword bearers, flame magicians, and avenging gods, who have at their
disposal an overflowing arsenal of weapons: spears, spikes, darts, shields,
clubs, hooks, slings, knives, daggers, and all manner of killing machines.
This downright grotesque collection of repellant figures reflects on the
one hand the social struggles which Indian Buddhism had to endure in the
dispute with Hinduism and later with Islam. On the other it is a dogmatic
part of the tantric project, which makes wrath, aggression, murder, and the
annihilation of enemies the starting point of its system of rituals. A
total of three types of warlike deities are distinguished in Vajrayana Buddhism:
- The horror aspect of a peaceful
Buddha, the so-called heruka.
- The “flesh-eating” dakini who
challenges the adept on his initiatory path.
- Warlike foreign gods who have been
incorporated in the tantric system as “protectors of the faith” (dharmapala).
In all three cases the “wrathful gods” direct
their potential for aggression outwards, against the “enemies of the
faith”, and without exaggerating one can say that the heruka aspect of a Buddha plays just as great a role in the
cultural life of Tibetan Buddhism as the peaceful aspect of a compassionate
Bodhisattva.
In Lamaism,
Tibet’s
mystic history and “civilization” has always been experienced and portrayed
as the coercion and enslavement of the local gods and demons. If these
wanted to remain alive after their magic struggle with the magician lamas
then they had to commit themselves under oath to serve in future as a
protective guard under Tibetan command. Their basic warlike attitude was
thus neither reduced at all nor transformed by Buddhism,
rather it was used as a means to achieve its own ambitions and thus
increased. This metapolitics of the Lamaist clergy has led to a systematic
extension and expansion of its grotesque pandemonium, which afflicted the
country across the centuries. There was no temple in which these monsters
were not (and still are) prayed to. In the gloomy gokhang, the chamber or hall where their cult worship took (and
still takes) place, hung (and still hang) their black thangkas, surrounded
by an arsenal of bizarre weapons, masks and stuffed animals. Dried human
organs were discovered there, the tanned skin of enemies and the bones of
children. Earlier western visitors experienced this realm of shadows as a
“chaotic, contradictory world like the images formed in a delirium” (Sierksma,
1966, p. 166).
There are dreadful rumors about the obscure
rituals which were performed in the “horror chambers” (Austin Waddell), and
not without reason, then human flesh, blood, and other bodily substances
were considered the most effective sacrificial offerings with which to
appease the terror gods. If this flow of bloody food for the demons ever
dries up, then according to Tibetan prophecies they fall upon innocent
people, indeed even upon lamas so as to still their vampire-like thirst
(Hermanns, 1956, p. 198).
Shrine of the tibetan war god Begtse
The number of “red and black executioners”, as the
“protectors of the doctrine” are sometimes known, is legion, since every
place in the land is served by its own regional demons. Nonetheless some
among them are especially prominent, like the war god Begtse, for example, also known as Chamsrin. In the iconography he strides over corpses swinging a
sword in his right hand and holding a human heart to his mouth with the left
so that he can consume it. His spouse, Dongmarma
the “red face”, chews at a corpse and is mounted upon a man-eating bear.
Another “protective god”, Yama,
the judge of the dead, king of hell and an emanation of Avalokiteshvara (and thus also of
the Dalai Lama), threatens with a club in the form of a child’s skeleton in
his right hand. Palden Lhamo, the
Tibetan god-king’s protective goddess whom we have already introduced,
gallops through a lake of blood using her son’s skin as a saddle.
Even for the “superhuman” lamas this hellish army
is only with difficulty kept under control. Hence it is not rare that
demons succeed in breaking free of their magical chains and then loosing
their wrath upon even the pious believers. For instance, in the past women
were not allowed to enter the main temple of the Kumbum monastery because
the “terrible gods” worshipped there would then fall into a blind rage and
there was a danger that they would take it out upon all of humanity.
Sometimes the rebellious spirits even seized the body of a naive monk,
possessed him with their destructive energy and then ran amok in this form.
Or, the other way around, a disappointed lama who felt himself to have been
unjustly treated in life upon dying transformed into a merciless vengeful
spirit. [1] The Tibetan government (the Kashag) and the Dalai Lama must
also defend themselves time and again against acts of revenge by opposing
protective spirits. In connection with the Shugden affair described above, James Burns refers to a total
of 11 historical examples (Burns, Newsgroup 9).
The clergy in the Tibet of old was busy day and
night defending themselves from foreign demons and keeping their own under
control. This was not motivated by fear alone, then
the fees for defensive rituals against malevolent spirits counted as a
lucrative source of income if not the most significant of all. As soon as
something did not seem right, the superstitious peoples suspected that a
demon was at work and fetched a lama to act as an exorcist for a fee and
drive it out.
The Dutch psychologist and cultural critic, Fokke
Sierksma, interpreted the cult of the terror gods as an “incomplete
acculturation of a warrior nation that for the sake of Buddhism has had to
give up a part of itself, of a Buddhism that for that warrior nation has
also had to abandon an integral part, while the two have not found ultimate
reconciliation” (Sierksma, 1966, p. 168). We do not find it difficult to
agree with this judgment. Yet it must be added that the abandonment of
Buddhist principles like nonviolence and peaceableness did not first begin
in Tibet;
it is, rather, implicit in the tantric doctrine itself. Thus it was not the
case that a pacifist Buddhism came out of India to tame a warlike
country, rather, the Indian founding fathers of Tibetan Buddhism themselves
brought numerous terror gods with them and thereby significantly added to
the already existing army of native demons. Mahakala, Vajrabhairava, Yama, Acala, or whatever their names
may be, are all of Indian origin.
Gesar of Ling: The Tibetan
“Siegfried”
Anybody who wishes to gain further insight into
the ancient warrior mentality of the Tibetans cannot avoid studying the
pre-Buddhist Gesar epic. Old
shamanic beliefs and “heathen” uses of magic play just as great a role in
the adventures of this national hero as the language of weapons. The
adventures of Gesar von Ling have
been compared with the Germanic Nibelungen epic, and not without reason:
daredevilry, braggadocio, intrepid courage, thirst for revenge, sporting
contests, tumultuous slaughter, military strategy, tricks, deception,
betrayal can be found in both, just like joy and suffering in love, courtly
love, feminine devotion, rape, mighty amazons, sorceresses, marital
infidelity, jealousy, revenge of the Furies. On the basis of the
similarities spanning whole scenes it may not even be ruled out that the
poets composing both epics drew upon the same sources. One difference lies
perhaps in that in Gesar’s milieu
it is even more barbarically eaten and drunk than among the Germanic
warriors.
Even if the name of the hero may be historically
derived from a Tibetification of the Latin Caesar ("emperor”), his mythic origin is of a divine
nature. The old soldier was dispatched from heaven to fulfill a mission.
His divine parents sent him to earth so that he could free the country of
Ling (Tibet)
from an evil demon which, after many superhuman deeds, he also succeeded in
doing. We do not intend to report here on the fantastic adventures of the
hero. What interests us is Gesar’s thoroughly
aggressive mentality. The numerous episodes that tell of the proud
self-awareness and physical strength of the women are especially striking,
so that the epic can definitely not have been penned by a lama. In some
versions (several widely differing ones are known) there are also quite
heretical comments about the Buddhist clergy and a biting sarcasm which
spares no aspect of monastic life. What remains beyond any criticism is, however, is an unbounded glorification of war. This
made Gesar a model for all the
military forces of central Asia.
As a sample of the bragging cruelty which
dominates the whole epic, we quote a passage translated by Charles Bell —
the song of a knight from Gesar’s
retinue:
We do not need swords;
our right hands are enough.
We split the body in the
middle,
and cut the side into
pieces.
Other men use clubs made
of wood;
We require no wood;
our thumbs and forefingers
are enough.
We can destroy by rubbing
thrice with our fingers.....
The blood of the liver [of our enemies] will
escape from the mouth.
Though we do not injure
the skin,
We will take out all the
entrails through the mouth.
The man will still be
alive,
Though his heart will
come to his mouth....
This body [of our enemy] with
eyes and head
Will be made into a hat
for the king of the white
tent tribe.
I offer the heart to the
war god
of the white people of
Ling
(Bell, 1994, pp. 13-14)
There is little trace of ethics, morality, or
Buddhist compassion here! In an anthology edited by Geoffrey Samuel, Pema
Tsering and Rudolf Kaschewsky also indicate that “the basic principle [of
the epic] is to seek one's own advantage by any means available. Whether
the opponent is led astray by deception, whether treachery is exploited or
the other's weakness brutally made use of, scruples or any qualms of
conscience are entirely lacking. If there is a basic idea that runs through
the whole work it is the principle that might is right” (Tsering and
Kaschewsky in Samuel, 1994, p. 64).
But this is precisely what makes the pre-Buddhist
Gesar myth so interesting for the philosophy of the Tantrics. It is for
this reason that Geoffrey Samuel also reaches the conclusion that the epic
is “a classical expression of the shamanic Vajrayana religion of Tibet” (Samuel, 1993, 55). This
would indeed mean that both systems, the Tantric Buddhism of India and the
pre-Buddhist shamanism of Tibet,
entered into a culture-bearing symbiosis with one another.
The Nyingmapas, for example, saw in the hero (Gesar) an incarnation of
Padmasambhava, who returned to drive the demons out of the Land of Snows. Other Lamaist interpreters of
the epic celebrate Gesar as “lord
over the three-layered cosmos” and as Chakravartin
(Hummel, 1993, p. 53). The belief that the “Great Fifth” was an incarnation
of the semi-divine warrior was and is still widely distributed. In eastern Tibet at
the start of last century the Thirteenth Dalai Lama was worshipped as Gesar reborn. In contrast, the
supreme clerical incarnation in Mongolia, the Jabtsundamba
Khutuktu, is considered to be an embodiment of Gesar’s miraculous horse.
A connection has also often been drawn between the
rough daredevil and the Shambhala myth.
Following his earthly demise he is supposed to have gone to the mythic
country in order to wait for the prophesied final battle. After he “has
left this mortal world once more, there is, according to the Tibetans, a
connection between him and the Lamaist apocalypse” (Hummel, 1993, p. 37).
Even in the twentieth century, his archetype as a
militant salvational figure played an important role for the Tibetan
guerrillas in the fifties and sixties. In the struggle against the Chinese
Communists the return of the war hero was longed for so that Tibet could
be freed from the “red tyranny”. The myth is currently again experiencing a
renaissance in Tibetan underground circles. In 1982 there was a movement in
the province
of Amdo whose leader,
Sonam Phuntsog, proclaimed himself to be an incarnation of Gesar the war hero. The group’s
activities were mostly of a magic nature and consisted above all in the
invocation of the terror gods.
In good dualist form,
these announced via a possession that „now is the time when the deities of
the 'white side' hold their heads high and the demons of the ‘dark side’
are defeated” (Schwartz, 1994. p. 229). It is astounding how seriously the “atheist”
Chinese take such magic séances and that they ban them as “open rebellion”.
The Gesar myth is experiencing a renaissance in
the West as well. For example, the Red Hat lama Chögyam Trungpa, allows the
barbarian to be worshipped by his pupils in the USA as a militant role-model.
In the meantime, the hero has become a symbol for freedom and
self-confidence worthy of emulation for many western Buddhists who have not
made the slightest effort to examine his atavistic lifestyle.
Even the Fourteenth Dalai Lama ("the greatest
living prince of peace”) does not criticize the war hero, but rather goes
so far as to see him — this view must be regarded as a high point of
tantric inversion — as a master of compassion: “Could Gesar return one day, as some people claim and others believe?”
asks the Kundun, and answers,
“The fact is that he promised this. ... Is it not also said that Gesar is an incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of
boundless compassion? He is thus also a master and masters have much power
...” (Levenson, 1990, p. 83). There is speculation in Buddhist circles on
the basis of such quotations as to whether His Holiness (likewise an
incarnation of Avalokiteshvara)
is not also an embodiment of the barbaric Gesar, particularly since the “Great Fifth” also claimed to be
so. The question of how compatible such a martial past can be with the
award of the Nobel peace prize remains unanswered, however.
According to Ronald D.
Schwartz, in the current protest movements in Tibet the return of the
mythic warrior Gesar, the
appearance of the Shambhala king,
and the epiphany of Buddha Maitreya
are eschatologically linked with the „immediate and tangible possibility of
the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet” (Schwartz, 1994, p. 231). Rainbows and earthquakes are supposed
to show that superhuman forces are also at work in the rebellion. [2]
However, so that Gesar’s martial character does
not scare off western souls or bring them into conflict with their Buddhist
ideals, the lamas solve the problem — as always in such cases — with a
subjectification of the myth. Hence, in the adventures of Gesar Tarthang
Tulku sees every adept’s inner struggle with his bad self: “Interpreted
symbolically, King Gesar, representing freedom and liberation from the
bondage of ignorance, is the King of the human mind. The Kingdom of Ling
is the realm of restless experience that must be unified and strengthened.
The treasure to win and protect is our own understanding. The enemies that
we must conquer are emotionality and ignorance” (quoted by Samuel, 1994, p.
65).
Western pupils, of whom hardly any may have read
the violent epic, swallow such messages with shining eyes. But if it were
consistently applied to the spiritual struggles, the Gesar pattern would imply that one would have to employ
brutality, murder, underhandedness, disloyalty, rape, coarseness, boasting,
mercilessness, and similar traits against oneself in order to attain
enlightenment. What counts is victory, and in achieving it all means are allowed.
The political danger which can arise from such an
undifferentiated glorification of Gesar
may perhaps become obvious if we think back to the Nibelungen epic, which,
as we have already mentioned, may according to several researchers draw
upon the same mythic sources. For the majority of Germans the fateful
glorification of Siegfried the dragonslayer by the national socialists (the
Nazis) still raises a shudder. Yet in comparison to his barbaric Tibetan
“brother”, the blond Germanic knight still appears noble, honest,
good-natured, and pious.
The Tibetan warrior kings and their clerical successors
In the guidelines for a new form of government
after the liberation of the Land
of Snows from the
imposition of the Chinese will, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama wrote (in 1993)
that, “under the control of its kings and the Dalai Lamas the political
system of Tibet
was firmly anchored in its spiritual values. As a consequence peace and
happiness reigned in Tibet”
(Dalai Lama XIV, 1993b, p. 24).
Whether this statement is true can only be proved
by the events of history. Let us cast a glance back then, into Tibet’s
past. As successful and brutal military leaders, the two most important
kings of the Yarlung dynasty, Songtsen Gampo (617-650) and Trisong Detsen
(742-803), extended their dominion deep into China with a thorough-going
politics of war. Both were, at least according to the sagas, incarnations
of Bodhisattvas, i.e., compassionate beings, although the Tibetan armies
were feared throughout all of inner Asia for their
merciless cruelty. Reports from the Tang annals also admire the highly
developed art of war of the Tibetan “barbarians”. Even modern authors still
today enthuse about the good old days when Tibet was still a major military
power: „These armies were probably better run and disciplined than those of
late Medieval Europe and would be recognisable in their general structure
to Generals of the modern era like generals like Wellington and Rommel”, we
can read in a 1990 issue of the Tibetan
Review (Tibetan Review,
October 1990, p. 15).
After the fall of the Yarlung dynasty there were
indeed no more major military incidents for centuries. But this was in no
way because the Tibetans had become more peaceful and compassionate.
Completely the opposite was true, the individual sects in mutual dispute
and the various factions among the people were so weakened by the frequent
internecine wars that it was not possible for an overarching state to be
formed. It was not at all rare for great lamas and their many monastic
minions to wage outright war against one another. In such conflicts, none
of the orientations shied away from inviting outsiders into the country so
as to take to the field against the others with their help. Up until well
into the twentieth century the Chinese and Mongolians could thus in any
case intervene in Tibetan politics as the invited allies of particular
monasteries.
For example, in 1290 the Brigung monastery of the
Kagyupa sect was razed to the ground by armed Sakyapa monks with help from
the Mongolians. “The misery was greater even than among those who have gone
into Hell!” (Bell, 1994, p. 67), a Red Hat text records. The only reason
the numerous military disputes in the history of the Land of Snows
are not more widely known about is because they usually only involved
smaller groups. Hence the battles neither continued for long, nor were they
spread over a wide territory. In addition, the “pure doctrine” officially
forbade any use of violence and thus all disputes between the orders were
hushed up or repressed as soon as possible by both parties. As paradox as
it may well sound, the country remained relatively “quiet” and “peaceful”,
because all of the parties were so embroiled in wars with one another. But
in the moment in which it came to the creation of a larger state structure
under the Fifth Dalai Lama in the 17th century, a most cruelly conducted
civil war was the necessary precondition.
The Dalai Lamas as supreme war lords
These days there is an unwillingness to speak
about this terrible civil war between the Gelugpas and the Kagyupas from
which the “Great Fifth” emerged as the hero of the battlefield. We know
that the Fifth Dalai Lama called up the war god Begtse against the Tibetans several times so as to force
through his political will. Additionally, in eastern Tibet he
was celebrated as an incarnation of the ancient hero, Gesar. He himself was the author of a number of battle hymns
like the following:
Brave and tested are the
warriors,
sharp and irresistible
the weapons,
hard and unbreakable the
shields,
Fleet and enduring the
horses.
(Sierksma, 1966, p. 140)
This brutal call to absolutely annihilate the
enemy into its third generation was also composed by him:
Make the lines like
trees that have had their
roots cut;
Make the female lines like brooks that have dried up in winter;
Make the children and grandchildren like eggs smashed
against rocks;
Make the servants and followers like heaps of grass consumed
by fire;
Make their dominion like a lamp whose oil has been exhausted;
In short, annihilate any traces of them, even their names.
(quoted by Sperling,
2001, p. 318)
With these instructions to
batter his enemy’s children to death against the rocks and to make their
women barren, the „Great Fifth” (the preeminent historical model for the
current Fourteenth Dalai Lama) turned to the Mongolians under Gushri Khan
and thus legitimated the terrible deeds they inflicted upon the Tibetans.
„One may say with some confidence,” Elliot Sperling writes, „that the Fifth
Dalai Lama does not fit the standard image that many people today have of a
Dalai Lama, particularly the image of a Nobel Peace Prize laureate”
(Sperling, 2001, p. 319). Barely
two centuries later (at the end of the 18th century) a Red Hat
lama sought revenge for the humiliation of his order by the Dalai Lama, and
fetched the Indian gurkhas into the country.
The “Great Thirteenth” himself formed an army
consisting of regular troops, a lay militia, and the “golden army” as the
monastic soldiers were known. Warrior monks were
nothing out of the ordinary in the Tibet of old, although their
training and their military equipment was less than desirable. They firmly
believed in the law of violence, worshipped their special deities, and
maintained their own secret cults. Lama ‘Longear’ was the leader of the
troops in the lamasery, it says in western travel report of a lama
commander (at the start of the twentieth century). “Although a monk, he
didn't know how to say his prayers and because he had killed several people
was not allowed to have part in the chanting services. But he was
considered a man of courage and audacity — greatly feared in the lamasery,
a mighty friend and terror to his enemies” (quoted by Sierksma, 1966, p.
130).
The Tibetan army assembled by the Thirteenth Dalai
Lama was composed of three services: the cavalry, equipped with lances and
breastplates, the somewhat more modern infantry, and the artillery. Oddly
enough, the name of Allah was
engraved in the riders’ helmets. These came from a Mohammedan army which
was said to have once moved against Lhasa.
A terrible snowstorm surprised them and froze them all to death. Their
weapons and armor were later brought into the capital and displayed there
in an annual parade. It was probably believed that the helmets would offer
protection in the battle against the Mohammedans — the arch-enemy from the Kalachakra Tantra — since they would
not dare to fire at the holy name of their supreme god.
This army of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, to a large
part composed of serfs, was more or less picturesque, which naturally did
their warlike, “unBuddhist” performance no harm. Yet one did not just fight
with weapons in the hand but also operated magically. During the “Great
Prayer Festival” for example tormas
(dough figures) of the cavalry and the infantry were thrown into a fire so
as to do harm to the enemies of the land through this fire magic. Every
single sacrificial offering was supposed to later “function [like a] bomb”
in reality (Chö-Yang, vol. 1 no. 2, 1987, p. 93). [3]
Of even greater martial pomposity than the Tibetan
army was the so-called “monks’ police”. Heinrich Harrer (the “best friend
of the Dalai Lama”) describes the “dark fellows” who were responsible for
law and order in Lhasa
at the beginning of the fifties in the following words: “The figures in the
red habits are not always gentle and learned brethren. The majority re
coarse and unfeeling fellows for whom the whip of discipline cannot be
strong enough. ... They tie a red band around their naked arm and blacken
their faces with soot to as to appear really frightening. They have a huge
key tucked into their belts which can serve as a knuckleduster or a
throwing weapon as required. It is not rare for them to also carry a sharp
cobblers’ knife hidden in their pocket. Many of them are notorious
fighters; even their impudent stride seems provocative; their readiness to
attack is well known, and one avoids aggravating them” (Harrer, 1984, pp.
216-217).
Just like the police from Lhasa, the officers and other ranks of
the Tibetan armed forces tended towards excessive corruption and of a night
committed all manner of crimes. Like the western mafia they demanded
protection money from businesses and threatened to attack life and limb if
not paid. This was certainly not the intention of their supreme military
commander, the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, who still in his last will dreamed of
“efficient and well-equipped troops ... as a sure deterrent against any
adversaries” (Michael, 1982, p. 173).
Since the once mighty Tibet has been unable to
develop itself into a great military power again
since the fall of the Yarlung dynasty (in the ninth century), the country
all but vibrates with bottled-up military energy. This has been confirmed
by a number of western travelers. The British friend of the Thirteenth
Dalai Lama, Charles Bell, was also forced to ascertain “that the martial
energy of the Tibetans, though sapped by Buddhism, has not even now been
destroyed. Should Buddhism ever go, the combative spirit will return”
(Bell, 1994, p. 77). Bell
overlooks here that this spirit is already a part of tantric practice, yet
he seems to have an inkling of this when he continues as follows: “Indeed, Tibet
expects later to fight for her religion. You can sometimes read in Tibetan
books about the country called Shambhala
... a mystical country which, three or four centuries hence, will be the
scene of hostilities, fierce and decisive, between Buddhists and
Muhammadans” (Bell, 1994, p. 77). It is a Tibetan saying that “for The
Buddha faced by foemen his disciples don their armor” (Bell, 1994, p. 191).
The historical distortion of the “peaceful” Tibetans
The impression, widely distributed in the West, of
ancient Tibet
as a peaceful country is thus a deliberate and gross misrepresentation of
history. Even official texts from the Tibetan tradition are seldom tempted
to such pacifist exaggerations as is the Dalai Lama today, above all since
being awarded the Nobel peace prize. The local historians knew full well
about the fighting spirit and aggressive potential which slumbered in the
Tibetan soul. They did not deny that the lamas often enough had to use violence
in their own interests. The Mani
Kambum, a book about the mythic history of Tibet from the 13th century,
reported already that its inhabitants had inherited faith, wisdom, and
goodness from their father, Avalokiteshvara,
and from their mother, Srinmo, however,
“pleasure in killing, bodily strength, and courage” (Stein, 1993, p. 37).
Lamaism’s evaluation of war is fundamentally
positive and affirmative, as long as it involves the spread of Buddhism.
(We shall later demonstrate this through many examples.) This in no sense
implicates a discontinuity between historical reality and the
Buddhist/pacifist doctrine. Vajrayana
itself cultivates an aggressive, warlike behavior and indeed not just so as
to overcome it through mental control. Wars are declared — as is usual
among other religions as well — so as to proceed against the “enemies of
the faith”. The state religion of the Land of Snows
(Vajrayana) has always been
essentially warlike, and a Buddhist Tantric reaches for his weapon not just
in desperation, but also so as to conquer and to eliminate opponents. The
virtues of a soldier — courage, self-sacrifice, bravery, honor, endurance,
cunning, even fury, hate, and mercilessness — are likewise counted among
the spiritual disciplines of Buddhist Tantrism.
Yet the lamas do not conduct “wars” on real
battlefields alone. Many more battles are fought in the imagination. Anyone
can ascertain this, even if they only cast a fleeting glance over the
aggressive tantric iconography. Likewise, all (!) tantras apply military
language to religious events and describe the struggle of the spirit
against its besmirchment as a “war”. Along the path to enlightenment it is
fought, beaten, pierced through, burned up, cut to pieces, chained,
decapitated, defeated, destroyed, won, and exulted. The Buddhas take to the
battlefield of samsara (our
so-called world of illusion) as “victors”, “heroes”, “fighters”,
“generals”, and “army commanders”.
Accordingly, Tibetan society has always revered
the “figure of the warrior” alongside the “figure of the saint” (Buddha,
Bodhisattva, or tulku) as their supreme archetype. From the half mythical
kings of the 7th century to the modern guerilla leaders of the Khampas, the “fighting hero” is the
heroic archetype adopted even today by thousands of youths and young men in
Tibet
and in exile. Already from the beginnings of Tibetan history on the border
between “warrior” and “saint” has been blurred. A good “pupil” of the Vajrayana and a Shambhala “warrior” are still identical today.
Is the Fourteenth Dalai Lama the “greatest living prince of
peace”?
Since being awarded the Nobel peace prize (in
1989) the Fourteenth Dalai Lama has been celebrated in the western press as
the “greatest living prince of peace”. With a self-confident and kindly
smile he accepts this appellation and modestly reminds his audience what an
enormous debt he owes to Mahatma Gandhi. Armed with the latter’s doctrine
of nonviolence (ahimsa), there is
no topic which His Holiness speaks of more often or with more emotion than
that of “outer” and “inner” peace. “For me, violence cannot possibly be the
way” is in recent years the phrase most often heard upon his lips
(Levenson, 1992, p. 349).
Ahimsa (the rejection of all violence) was
originally not a Buddhist value, especially not in the context of the
tantras. The Thirteenth Dalai Lama, for example, when Gandhi encouraged him
in a letter to join in with his idea, did not at all know where he was at
with the term. Be that as it may — the future Tibet, freed from the Chinese
yoke, is in the words of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama supposed to be
transformed into a “peace and ahimsa
zone”. There will be no army, no weapons, above
all no nuclear warheads any more in the Land of Snows
after its liberation. Further, the Kundun
considers the trade in military hardware to be something just as
irresponsible as the aggressive and uncontrolled temper of an individual.
In an exemplary fashion he invites the Israelis and the Palestinians to lay
down their weapons. He proclaims the demilitarization of the entire planet
as a desirable final goal.
War toys
Surprisingly, in opposition to this constantly
publicly demonstrated basic pacifist attitude there stands a particular
fascination for the art of warfare which captivated His Holiness whilst
still a child. In Martin Scorsese’s film (Kundun) about the life of the Dalai Lama, this fondness is
graphically depicted in a short scene. The child god-king is playing with
some tin soldiers. Suddenly, with a sweep of his hand he knocks them aside
and cries out emphatically, “I want power!”. This
film anecdote could well be more realistic than the widespread and pious
legend in which the young god-king had these tin soldiers melted down and
then recast as toy monks.
As an adolescent the Kundun enjoyed target practice with an air gun he inherited
from his predecessor and is still proud of being a good shot. Without
embarrassment he reveals in his autobiography that he owns an air pistol
and that he practices target shooting with it. One day he killed a hornet
which was plundering a wasp’s nest. “A protector of the unprotected!” was
the reverential comment of one of his biographers on this piece of sharp
shooting (Hicks and Chögyam, 1985, p. 197).
The Kundun’s
openly admitted weakness for war literature and war films
has surprised not a few of his admirers. As a youth he enthused over
English military books. They provided him with the images from which to
construct models of fighter planes, ships, and tanks. Later he had passages
from them translated into Tibetan. Towards the end of the forties the
former member of the Nazi SS, Heinrich Harrer, had to recount for him the
only recently played out events of the second world war. There has been
little change in this passion for military objects since his youth. As late
as 1997 the Kundun admitted his
enthusiasm for uniforms in an interview: “but [they] are also very
attractive. ... Every button on the jacket shines so prettily. And then the
belt. The insignia” (Süddeutsche
Zeitung Magazin, March 21,
1997, p. 79). On a visit to Germany
in 1998 the Nobel peace prize winner told how “even as a child I liked
looking at illustrated books from my predecessor’s library, especially
about the First World War. I loved all the instruments, the weapons and the
tanks, the airplanes, the fantastic battleships and submarines. Later I
asked for books about World War II. When I visited China in 1954 I knew
more about it than the Chinese did” (Zeitmagazin,
no. 44, October 22, 1998, p. 24). Asked (again in Germany)
about his television viewing habits, he chatted about his preference for
war films: “Earlier though, I had a favorite program. You won’t believe me!
‘M.A.S.H.’ — the US
series about the Vietnam War. Very funny … (laughs)(Focus 44/1998, p. 272).
When he was visiting Normandy in 1986, he unexpectedly and in
complete contradiction to the planned schedule expressed the wish to see
the Allied bridgehead from the Second World War. “I also wanted to see the
weapons, these mighty cannon and all these rifles which painfully moved me.
In the vicinity of these machines, these weapons, and this sand I felt and
shared the emotions of those who were there then ...” (Levenson, 1992, p.
291). Despite such pious affirmations of compassion with the victims of
battle, here too his childlike enthusiasm for the machinery of war can be
heard. Or is it only a mood of the “time god”, whose enthusiasm for various
systems of weaponry is — as we have already reported — expressed at such
length in the Kalachakra Tantra?
Even if such martial preferences and play may
normally be harmless, we must never forget that, unlike an ordinary person,
the Dalai Lama represents a symbolic figure. In the meantime, all the pious
aspects which are otherwise known of the childhood and life of the god-king
are, thanks to a powerful film propaganda,
considered to be a wonderful omen and the indicators of a cosmic plan. Is
it then not logically consistent to also interpret his fascination for the
military milieu as a sign which flags the aggressive potential of his
religion?
Reting Rinpoche and the
murder of the Dalai Lama’s father
The early life of the young Dalai Lama was
anything but peaceful. In the forties his milieu was caught up in violent
and bloody clashes which could in no way be blamed solely on the Chinese.
Although the then regent, the discoverer and first teacher of the god-king,
Reting Rinpoche, had transferred the business of state to his successor,
Taktra Rinpoche, in 1941, he later wanted to regain the power he had lost.
Thus, from 1945 on it came to ever more serious discordances between the
Tibetan government and the ex-regent. Uncouth and feared for his escapades
countrywide, the Dalai Lama’s father, Choekyong Tsering, counted among the
latter’s faithful followers. In 1947 he died suddenly at the age of 47
during a meal. It is not just Gyalo Thondup, one of the Kundun’s brothers, who is convinced
that he was poisoned by someone from government circles (Craig, 1997, p.
120).
Shortly after the poisoning, Reting Rinpoche
decided to stage an open rebellion. His followers attempted to assassinate
the regent, Taktra, and approached the Chinese about weapons and munitions.
But they were soon overpowered by Tibetan government troops, who took
captive the ex-regent. Monks from the Sera monastery rushed to his aid.
First of all they murdered their abbot, a Taktra supporter. Then, under the
leadership of an 18-year-old lama, Tsenya Rinpoche, who had been recognized
as the incarnation of a wrathful tutelary deity (dharmapala) and was referred to by his fellow monks as a “war
leader”, they stormed off to Lhasa
in order to free Reting Rinpoche. But this revolt also collapsed under the
artillery fire of the government troops. At least 200 Sera monks lost their
lives in this monastic “civil war”. Reting’s residence was razed to the ground.
Soon afterwards he was charged with treason, found
guilty, and thrown into the notorious Potala dungeons. He is said to have
been cruelly tortured and later strangled. According to other reports he
was poisoned (Goldstein, 1989, p. 513). A high-ranking official who was
said to have sympathized with the rebels had his eyeballs squeezed out.
Just how cruel and tormenting the atmosphere of this time was has been
described later by a Tibetan refugee (!):"Rivalry, in-fighting,
corruption, nepotism, it was decadent and horrible. Everything was a matter
of show, ceremonial, jockeying for position” (quoted by Craig, 1997, p.
123).
Tibetan guerrillas and the CIA
In the fifties and with the support of the USA, a
guerilla army was developed in Tibet which over many years
undertook military action against the Chinese occupation forces. A broad
scale anti-Communist offensive was planned together with Taiwanese special
units and indirect support from the Indian secret service. At the head of
the rebellion stood the proud and “cruel” Khampas. These nomads had been feared as brigands for
centuries, so that the word Khampa
in Tibet
is a synonym for robber. In the
mid-fifties the American secret service (CIA) had brought several groups of
the wild tribe to Taiwan
via eastern Pakistan
and later to Camp
Hale in the USA. There
they received training in guerilla tactics. Afterwards the majority of them
were dropped back into Tibet
with parachutes. Some of them made contact with the government in Lhasa at that stage.
Others did not shy away from their traditional trade of robbery and became
a real nuisance for the rural population whom they were actually supposed
to liberate from the Chinese and not drive into further misery through
pillaging.
Despite the Dalai Lama’s constant affirmations,
still repeated today, that his flight took place without any external
influence, it was in fact played out months in advance in Washington by high military officials.
Everything went as planned. In 1959, the American-trained guerillas
collected His Holiness from his summer residence (in Lhasa). During the long trek to the
Indian border the underground fighters were in constant radio contact with
the Americans and were supplied with food and equipment by aircraft. We
learn from an “initiate” that “this fantastic escape and its major
significance have been buried in the lore of the CIA as one of the
successes that are not talked about. The Dalai Lama would never have been
saved without the CIA” (Grunfeld, 1996, pp. 155-156).
In addition, the Chinese were not particularly
interested in pursuing the refugees since they believed they would be
better able to deal with the rebellion in Tibet if the Kundun was out of the country. Mao
Zedong is thus said to have personally approved of the flight of the Dalai
Lama after the fact (Tibetan Review,
January 1995, p. 10). Yes — Beijing
was convinced for months after the exodus that His Holiness had been
kidnapped by the Khampas.
In fact, the Chinese had every reason to make such
an assumption, as becomes apparent from a piece of correspondence between
the Kundun and the Chinese
military commander of Lhasa,
General Tan Guansan. Only a few days before the god-king was able to flee
the town, he had turned to the General with the most urgent appeal to
protect him from the “reactionary, evil elements “ who
“are carrying out activities endangering me under the pretext of protecting
my safety” (Grunfeld, 1996, p. 135). What he meant by these “evil elements”
were hundreds of Tibetans who had surrounded his summer palace day and
night to cheer him on. This crowd was called upon a number of times by the
Dalai Lama’s political staff to abandon their “siege” since it was
provoking the Chinese and there was a real danger that they would answer
with artillery fire at the illegal rally and in so doing quite possibly
threaten the life of the Kundun.
But the people nevertheless remained, on the pretext of caring for the
security of their “god-king”. Thereupon the latter wrote the above request
to General Tan Guansan. But in a furtive maneuver he was secretly collected
by a group of Khampas and brought to the Indian border unharmed.
The flight, organized by the CIA and tolerated by
the Chinese, was later mythologized by the western press and the Dalai Lama
himself into a divine exodus. There was mysterious talk of a “mystic cloud”
which was supposed to have veiled the column of refugees during the long
trek to India
and protected them from the view of and attack by the Chinese enemy. The
CIA airplanes which gave the refugees air cover and provided them with
supplies of food became Chinese “reconnaissance” flights which circled
above the fleeing god-king but, thanks to wondrous providence and the
“mystic cloud”, were unable to discern anything.
www.naatanet.org/shadowcircus/shang4.html: “Resistance fighters escorted the Dalai Lama
through guerrilla-held territory. The two CIA-trained men met up with the
escape party halfway on their journey and accompanied them to the Indian
border, keeping the Americans updated about their progress. The Dalai
Lama’s escape triggered a massive military operation by the Chinese who
brutally quelled the revolt in Lhasa
and went on the offensive against the resistance bases in southern Tibet. The
guerrillas suffered major setbacks. Andrug Gompo Tashi and the remainder of
his force had no choice but to join the exodus of Tibetans who were
streaming across the Himalaya, following their leader into exile.” (From
the Film The Shadow Circus – The CIA
in Tibet)
Even if the Kundun
has for years publicly distanced himself from the Tibetan guerillas, he
always showed great sympathy in the community of Tibetans in exile for
“his” underground fighters. His Holiness has also valued the services of
his guerillas in exile and on a number of occasions since 1959 publicly
stood by them. “Despite my belief”, he says in his autobiography published
in 1964 “I much admire their courage and their determination to take on the
fierce struggle which they began for our freedom, our culture, and
religion. I thank them for their strength and their daring, and also
personally for the protection which they gave me. ... Hence I could not
honorably give them the advice to avoid violence. In order to fight they
had sacrificed their homes and all the comforts and advantages of a
peaceful life. Now they could not see any alternative to continuing to
struggle and I had nothing to oppose that with” (Dalai Lama XIV, 1964, p.
190). In the new edition of the autobiography of the in the meantime winner
of the Nobel peace prize which appeared in 1990 (Freedom in Exile), this passage is no longer mentioned. It is
too obvious a contradiction of the current image of the Kundun as “the supreme prince of
peace of the century”.
Another statement, which can be read in the
biography, The Last Dalai Lama by
Michael Harris Goodman, shows even more clearly the god-king’s
two-facedness concerning nonviolence: “In [the message]", he is
supposed to have said, “I called the guerillas 'reactionaries', stated that
the Tibetan people should not support them. At the same time the delegation
was instructed to tell the guerillas to keep on fighting. We spoke in two
tongues, the official and the unofficial. Officially we regarded their act
as rebellion, and unofficially we regard them as heroes and told them so”
(Goodman, 1986, p. 271).
Already in exile, at the beginning of the sixties
the Dalai Lama bestowed on a distinguished rebel leader the same honors which
normally accompany an appointment to the rank of general (Grunfeld, 1996,
p. 142). At the same time a number of volunteer exile Tibetans flew to the USA in
order to once again be trained in guerilla warfare under the supervision of
the CIA. The action was mediated by Gyalo Thondup, a
elder brother of the Dalai Lama.
Parallel to this, together with the Indian secret
service Thondup established the Special
Frontier Force (SFF) in 1962 with exile Tibetan recruits, a powerful
and well-equipped mountain army which could be dropped into Tibet by
parachute at any moment. It had 10,500 men under arms and its own officer
corps. At the same time the “National Volunteer Defence Army” was founded.
It can hardly be assumed that the Kundun
was not very well informed about these ambitious military projects of his
brother. Nonetheless it continues to be officially denied up to the present
day. His Holiness is also not supposed to have known anything about the
$1.7 million which the CIA provided annually to the Tibetans for military
activities in the sixties.
The armed struggle of the Tibetans was prepared
for at the highest political levels, primarily in Washington, Delhi, and Taipei. The only reason it was not
brought into action was that at the start of the seventies Richard Nixon
began with his pro-China politics and cancelled all military support for
the Tibetans. But without American support the outlook for a guerilla war
was completely hopeless, and from this point on the Dalai Lama publicly
distanced himself from any use of violence.
Military action now no
longer had any chance of success and in Dharamsala the work began of
effectively reformulating the history of the Tibetan guerillas „in that one
encouraged the fiction that the popular resistance had been nonviolent”, as
Jamyan Norbu writes, before continuing, Tibetan officials, Buddhist
followers, Western supporters and intellectuals […] regard the resistance movement as an
embarrassment [...] because it somehow detracts from the preferred
peace-loving image of Tibet as a Shangri-La”
(Huber, 2001, p. 369).
The Nobel peace prize winner’s statements on the
armed struggle of the Tibetans are most contradictory and were in the past
more oriented to the political situation and constellations of power than
fundamental principles. At times the Dalai Lama expressed the view that “it
is quite appropriate to fight for a just cause and even to kill” (Levenson,
1992, p. 135). In an interview in 1980 he answered the question of whether violence
and religion did not exclude one another as follows: „They can be combined.
It depends on the motivation and the result. With good motivation and
result, and if under the circumstances there is no other alternative, then
violence is permissible” (Avedon, 1980, p. 34).
Only since 1989, after he was awarded the Nobel
peace prize, has the god-king cultivated an exclusively pacifist
retrospective on the violent history of his country. A few years ago one
still heard from His Holiness that there was much which was aggressive in
the Tibet
of old, about which one could not exactly be happy. From 1989 on, the
stereotypical message is that there had only been “peace and happiness” in
the Land of Snows’ past. [4] Earlier, the Kundun had stated that “the Tibetans
are predisposed to be fairly aggressive and warlike” and could only be
tamed by Buddhism (Dalai Lama XIV, 1993a, p. 18). Today, we read from the
same author that “The Tibetan people are of an upright, gentle, and
friendly nature” (Dalai Lama XIV, 1993b, p. 34), whilst at the same time
the Indian press describes Tibetan youths in Dharamsala as “militant”,
“violent”, “impatient” and “restless” (Tibetan
Review, May 1991, p. 19). In 1994 a Tibetan youth stabbed a young
Indian which led to violence breaking out against the exile Tibetan
community.
Marching music and terror
Are the Tibetans a peaceful people? In the camp of
the Tibetans in exile a somewhat different tone is struck than at the
western press conferences of the Dalai Lama. Anyone who has ever participated
in the official festivities of the Tibetan national holiday (March 10) in
Dharamsala and seen the uniformed groups of youths parading past the Lion
Throne of His Holiness, anyone who has been able to experience the
ceremonies of the flag and hear the war and fighting songs sung there, must
have gained the impression that this was a military parade and definitely
not a peace festival of gentle monks. Admittedly, the Kundun also always introduces these
festivities with a profession of nonviolence, but after his speech — in the
words of the historian, Christiaan Klieger — „the tone of the event turns
decidedly martial” (Klieger, 1991, p. 62). The Khampa warriors with whom we are already
familiar appear in ancient leopard skin uniforms. Guards of honor salute
the Tibetan flag, on which the two snow lions symbolize the twin pillars of
church and state. Enthusiastically sounds the tune of “Song of the Uprising
People” (Long shog), which was
composed as a military march. Its two final verses go as follows:
Tibet follows its true leader
...
The Great Protector, His
Holiness the Dalai Lama,
Accepted by Tibetans in
and out.
The red-handed butcher –
enemy,
The imperialistic Red
Chinese,
Will surely be kicked out
of Tibet.
Rise up, all patriots!
(Klieger, 1991, p. 63)
Such warlike marching songs may be of great
importance for the formation of the poorly developed Tibetan national
consciousness — they are also sung with the appropriate gusto by all
present — but they have absolutely nothing to do with the much invoked
principle of ahimsa. In contrast,
they reify the concept of an enemy and glorify His Holiness ("the
greatest living apostle of peace”) as the “supreme military commander”.
The warlike tendencies among the Tibetans in exile
are not exhausted by marching music and ceremonial displays during the
national holiday celebrations. Already at the start of the sixties a small
group of militants resolved “that the time had come to employ terrorism in
the fight for Tibet”
(Avedon, 1985, p. 146). In 1998, at a press conference in Dharamsala,
Kuncho Tender, a militant who spent 20 years in the Tibetan underground,
argued for a renaissance of the guerilla movement in Tibet “which would
kill one Chinese after another until the country [is] free” (Associated
Press, Dharamsala, May 28, 1998).
Discussion about “terror as an instrument of
politics” is also very current once more among radical Tibetan underground
groups in the occupied Land of Snows, for example the Tiger-Leopard Youth Organization: „Our non_violent methods”,
it says in a letter from this organization to the United Nations General
Secretary, „have been taken as a sign of weakness. We are determined to
regain our freedom, and the recent UN vote [in which a criticism of China was
rejected] clearly shows us that without bloodshed, sabotage, and aggressive
acts we will not gain publicity, sympathy and support. [...] So why should
we not follow the destructive path?” (Schwartz, 1994, p. 224). Further the
young patriots affirm that they are aware that these methods disagree with
the politics of the Dalai Lama but no other option remained open to them.
Another underground
organization from eastern Tibet
calls itself the „Volunteer Army to Defend Buddhism” (Huber, 2001, p. 363).
Calling themselves
this shows that this group does not see the “destructive path” to
liberation as being in contradiction to their religion. In contrast, an
urgent prayer with which the terrible protective gods of the country are
invoked and incited against the Chinese enemy counts as part of the daily
work of the underground. In 1996 there were three bomb attacks in Lhasa.
Such activities cannot harm the Kundun at all, then
by publicly criticizing them he furthers his image as an “apostle of
peace”. This need not prevent him from secretly encouraging the “armed
groups” as he already did with the Khampas. Even if this contradicts his
pacifist professions, it does not contradict the principles of Tantric
Buddhism.
In the meantime, discussions about Buddhism and
the military are becoming an increasingly popular topic in Buddhist circles
in the West. For example, there was an article in the journal Tricycle in 1996 with the title Apology of a Buddhist Soldier, in
which the author gathered together arguments which are supposed to
legitimate a “just” war for a Buddhist (Tricycle,
V (3), p. 71). It is of course all very ethical, with reference to, among
others, the Buddhist Emperor Ashoka (273–226 B.C.E.) who united India into
a peaceful realm. Ashoka was, however, a great and cruel military commander
who conducted the bloodiest of campaigns before he achieved power,. Some Buddhist traditions revere him without
inhibition as a merciless war hero. “Thus the need to kill”, P. J. Tambiah
writes in reference to the Emperor, “before becoming a great king who can the rule righteously is a Buddhist root dilemma. —
Kings must be good killers before they can turn to piety and good works”
(Tambiah, 1976, pp. 50, 522).
Political calculation and
the Buddhist message of peace
It is not the task of our analysis to make a
personal choice between “armed rebellion” and the “ahimsa principle” or to answer the question whether violent
action in Tibet
is morally justified and makes sense in terms of national politics. We also
do not want -as the Chinese attempt to do — to expose the Kundun as no more than a fanatical
warmonger in sheep’s clothing. Perhaps, by and large he is personally a peace-loving person,
but without doubt he represents a culture which has from its very origins
been warlike and which does not even think of admitting to its violent
past, let alone reappraising it.
Instead, Dharamsala and the current Dalai Lama
make a constant propaganda project of presenting Tibetan Buddhism and the
history of Tibet
to the world public as a storehouse of eternal teachings about nonviolence
and peace. There is thus a refusal to accept that the Kundun first acquired his pacifist ideas (e.g., under the
influence of Mahatma Gandhi) after his flight; instead it is implied that
they are drawn from the inexhaustible inheritance of a many hundred year
old tradition and history. Even the aggressive “Great Fifth” and the “Great
Thirteenth” with his strong interest in military matters now appear as the
precursors of the current “Buddhism of peace”. On the basis of this
distortion, the current Dalai Lama is able to fully identify with his fifth
incarnation without having to mention his warlike and Machiavellian power
politics and murderous magic: “By holding the position of the Fifth Dalai
Lama I am supposed to follow what he did, this is the reason I have to
interfere”, the Kundun explained
in 1997 (HPI 006). Thus there is much which speaks for the pacifism of the
Dalai Lama being nothing more than a calculated political move and never
having been the expression of a principle. Jamyang Norbu, co-director of
the Tibetan cultural institute, thus accuses his “revered leader” (the Kundun) and his exile Tibetan
politicians of fostering the formation of the western myth of the good and
peaceful Tibet
of old. At no stage in history have the Tibetans been particularly pacifist
— the terrible fighting out of the conflicts between individual monasteries
proves this, as well as the bloody resistance to the occupation in the
fifties. “The government in exile”, says Norbu, “capitalizes upon the western
clichés, hampers a demythologization, a critical examination of its own
history” (Spiegel, 16/1998).
There is also absolutely no intention of doing
this. For the Dalai Lama the fundamental orientation to be adopted is
dependent upon what is favorable in the prevailing power-political
situation. Thus a immediate volte-face to a fighting lineage is thoroughly laid out in his
system. Neither religious, nor ideological, and definitely not historical
incarnational obstacles stand in the way of a possible decision to go to
war. In contrast, the Tibetan war gods have been waiting for centuries to
strike out and re-conquer their former extended empire. Every higher tantra
includes a call to battle against the “enemies of the faith”. In any event,
the Kalachakra ritual and the
ideology at work behind it are to be understood as a declaration of war on
the non-Buddhist world. Important members of the Tibetan clergy have
already reserved their places in the great doomsday army of Shambhala. „Many of them already know
the names and ranks they will have.” (Bernbaum, 1980, p. 29, 30).
When the political circumstances are ripe the
“simple monk” from Dharamsala will have to set aside his personal pacifist
tendencies and, as the embodied Kalachakra
deity, will hardly shrink from summoning Begtse the god of slaughter or from himself appearing in the
guise of a heruka. “The wrathful
goddesses and the enraged gods are there,” we learn from his own mouth
(before he was awarded the Nobel peace prize), “in order to demonstrate that
one can grasp the use of violence as a method; it is an effective
instrument, but it can never ever be a purpose” (Levenson, 1992, p. 284).
There is no noteworthy political leader in the violent history of humankind
who would have thought otherwise. Even for dictators like Adolf Hitler or
Joseph Stalin violence was never an end in itself, but rather an “effective
instrument” for the attainment of “honorable” goals.
Even some western voices these days no longer
shrink from drawing attention to the dangerous and violent aspects of the
figure of the Kundun in
fascination: “This man has something of a pouncing wild cat, a snow leopard
imbued with freedom and loneliness which no cage could hold back”, his
biographer, Claude B. Levenson, has written (Levenson, 1992, p. 160).
“Buddha has smiled”: The Dalai Lama and
the Indian atomic tests of 1998
In the opinion of the Indian military as well, the
religion of the Buddha appears to be not so pacifist as it is presented to
us e here in the West. Why else would the first Indian nuclear weapons
tests (in 1974) have been referred to under the secret code of “The Lord
Buddha has smiled!”? Why were the spectacular tests
in 1998 deliberately launched on the birthday of the Gautama Buddha? (Focus, 21/1998, p. 297; Spiegel, 21/1998, p. 162). In fact
the sole “living Buddha” at this time, the Dalai Lama, has a profound
interest in the Indian atomic tests. For him ("as the smiling third
party”) a confrontation between the two Asian giants (China and India)
would be of great political advantage. It was thus only logical that the
“god-king” from Tibet
gave the demonstration of a nuclear capability by his host country the
Buddhist blessing. While the whole world, especially the heads of state of
the G8 countries gathered at the time in Birmingham, protested sharply (President
Bill Clinton spoke of “a terrible mistake”) the Tibetan “Nobel peace prize
winner” approved of the Indian bomb. “India should not”, said the
Dalai Lama “be pressured by developed nations to get rid of nuclear
weapons. ... It should have the same access to nuclear weapons as developed
countries. ... The assumption of the concept that few nations are ok to
possess nuclear weapons and the rest of the world should not — that's
undemocratic” [5] (Associated Press, May 13, 1998). But the disastrous
implication of such a statement is that any nation ought to be able to
acquire nuclear weapons simply because other countries also possess them.
It should be obvious that the Indian public was enthusiastic about the Kundun’s approbation. “If a man of
peace like Dalai Lama can approve of India's nuclear position,” one Mamata
Shah wrote on the Internet, “Gandhi too would have no hesitation in
approving it” (Nospamlchow, Newsgroup 8).
In addition, the whole nuclear display between
India and Pakistan symbolically heralds the Shambhala war prophesied in the Kalachakra Tantra. The bomb of the smiling Buddha was “the signal for the Pakistanis to forcefully
pursue the development of
the Islamic bomb”
and to test it (Spiegel, 21/1998)
— a foretaste of what awaits us when (according to the Shambhala myth) Buddhists and Moslems face each other in the
final battle.
Dalai
Lama praises US approach to bombing Afghanistan: "At the same time, as
a quiet fellow, I am amazed and admire that, at this moment, unlike First
World War, Second World, Korean War and Vietnam War, I think the American
side is very, very carefully selecting targets, taking maximum precautions
about the civilian casualties." - "I think this is a sign of more
civilization," said the Dalai Lama. He warned, however, that
"bombing can eliminate only physical things, not thoughts or emotions.
Talk and reasoning is the
only long-term solution." (Strasbourg, Oct 24 – AFP)
Footnotes:
[1] How current and far reaching
such activities by “vengeful lamas” can be is shown by the Shugden affair described above in
which the “protective god” (Dorje
Shugden) has succeeded in overshadowing the public image of the Dalai
Lama.
[2]During a cult ceremony in
Kongpo in 1989, the “gods” Amitabha,
Avalokiteshvara, and Padmasambhava appeared. Ever more
mediums are emerging, through whom the dharmapalas
(the tutelary deities) speak and announce the liberation from the Chinese
yoke (Schwartz, 1994, p. 227).
[3] In 1954, Rudolf A. Stein
took part in a martial ceremony in Sikkim, at which various war gods were
invoked. There was one “recitation to incite the sword” and another for the
rifle. The text ended with an “incitement” of the planet Rahu (Stein, 1993, p. 247). Such
ceremonies were also performed in the Tibet of old.
[4] Only since 1997, under the
influence of the Shugden affair
has a self critical position begun to emerge. This too — as we shall later
show — is purely tactically motivated.
[5] This statement
stands, even if two days later the Dalai Lama, certainly under pressure
from the West, stressed that he was in favor of a general disarmament. The
news agency CND even reversed the statement by His Holiness into its
opposite and reported on May 20 that the “Dalai Lama said on Tuesday that
he was disappointed by India's nuclear test and backed China's call to ban
all nuclear weapons” (CND, May 20, 1998). The unrestricted opportunism of
the god-king, of which we still have numerous examples to mention, easily
allows one to presume that he made both statements (both for and against
India).
Next
Chapter:
10. THE SPEARHEAD OF THE SHAMBHALA WAR
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