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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
II – 6. Regicide as Lamaism’s myth of origin and
the ritual sacrifice of Tibet
© Victor & Victoria
Trimondi
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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