|
The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
II – 9. The war gods behind the mask of peace
©
Victor & Victoria Trimondi
9. THE WAR GODS BEHIND
THE MASK OF PEACE
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 |