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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part II – 10. The
spearhead of the Shambhala war
© Victor &
Victoria Trimondi
10. THE SPEARHEAD OF THE SHAMBHALA
WAR
War in the Tibet of old on a
number of occasions meant the military intervention of various
Mongolian tribes into the internal affairs of the country. Over the
course of time a deep cultural connection with the warlike nomads
from the north developed which ultimately led to a complete
Buddhization of Mongolia. Today this is interpreted by Buddhist
“historians” as a pacification of the country and its inhabitants.
But let us examine more closely some prominent events in the history
of Central Asia under Buddhist control.
Genghis Khan as a
Bodhisattva
The greatest conqueror of all
humankind, at least as far as the expansion of the territory under
his control is concerned, was Genghis Khan (1167–1227). He united
the peoples of the Mongolian steppes in Asia and from them formed a
horseback army which struck fear into the hearts of Europe and China
just as much as it did in the Islamic states. His way of conducting
warfare was for the times extremely modern. The preparations for an
offensive usually took several years. He had the strengths and
weaknesses of his opponents studied in detail. This was achieved by
among other things a cleverly constructed network of spies and
agents. His notorious cavalry was neither chaotic nor wild, nor as
large as it was often said to be by the peoples that he conquered.
In contrast, they were distinguished by strict discipline, had the
absolutely best equipment, and were courageous, extremely effective,
and usually outnumbered by their enemies. The longer the
preparations for war were, the more rapidly the battles were
decided, and that with a merciless cruelty. Women and children found
just as little pity as the aged and the sick. If a city opposed the
great Khan, every living creature within it had to be exterminated,
even the animals — the dogs and rats were executed. Yet for those
who submitted to him, he became a redeemer, God-man, and prince of
peace. To this day the Mongolians have not forgotten that the man
who conquered and ruled the world was of their
blood.
Tactically at least, in wanting
to expand into Mongolia Tibetan Lamaism did well to declare Genghis
Khan, revered as divine, to be one of their own. It stood in the way
of this move that the world conqueror was no follower of the
Buddhist teachings and trusted only in himself, or in the shamanist
religious practices of his ancestors. There are even serious
indications that he felt attracted to monotheistic ideas in order to
be able to legitimate his unique global
dominion.
Yet through an appeal to their
ADI BUDDHA system the lamas could readily match their monotheistic
competitors. According to legend a contest between the religions did
also took place before the ruler’s throne, which from the Tibetan
viewpoint was won by the Buddhists. The same story is recounted by
the Mohammedans, yet ends with the “ruler of the world” having
decided in favor of the Teachings of the Prophet. In comparison, the
proverbial cruelty of the Mongolian khan was no obstacle to his
fabricated “Buddhization”, since he could without further ado be
integrated into the tantric system as the fearful aspect of a Buddha
(a heruka) or as a
bloodthirsty dharmapala
(tutelary god).Thus more and more stories were invented which
portrayed him as a representative of the Holy Doctrine (the dharma).
Among other things, Mongolian
lamas constructed an ancestry which traced back to a Buddhist Indian
law-king and put this in place of the zoomorphic legend common among
the shamans that Genghis Khan was the son of a wolf and a deer.
Another story tells of how he was descended from a royal Tibetan
family. It is firmly believed that he was in correspondence with a
great abbot of the Sakyapa sect and had asked him for spiritual
protection. The following sentence stands in a forged letter in
which the Mongol addresses the Tibetan hierarch: “Holy one! Well did
I want to summon you; but because my worldly business is still
incomplete, I have not summoned you. I trust you from here, protect
me from there” (Schulemann, 1958, p. 89). A further document “from
his hand” is supposed to have freed the order from paying taxes. In
the struggle against the Chinese, Genghis Khan — it is reported —
prayed to ADI BUDDHA.
The Buddhization of
Mongolia
But it was only after the death
of the Great Khan that the missionary lamas succeeded in converting
the Mongolian tribes to Buddhism, even if this was a process which
stretched out over four centuries. (Incidentally, this was
definitely not true for all, then a number took up the Islamic
faith.) Various smaller contacts aside, the voyage of the Sakya,
Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen, to the court of the nomad ruler Godän Khan
(in 1244), stands at the outset of the conversion project, which
ultimately brought all of northern Mongolia under Buddhist
influence. The great abbot, already very advanced in years,
convinced the Mongolians of the power of his religion by healing
Ugedai’s son of a serious illness. The records celebrate their
subsequent conversion as a triumph of civilization over
barbarism.
Some 40 years later (1279), there
followed a meeting between Chögyel Phagpa, likewise a Tibetan great
abbot of the Sakyapa lineage, and Kublai Khan, the Mongolian
conqueror of China and the founder of the Yuan dynasty. At these
talks topics which concerned the political situation of Tibet were
also discussed. The adroit hierarch from the Land of Snows succeeded
in persuading the Emperor to grant him the title of “King of the
Great and Valuable Law” and thus a measure of worldly authority over
the not yet united Tibet. In return, the Phagpa lama initiated the
Emperor into the Hevajra
Tantra.
Three hundred years later (in
1578), the Gelugpa abbot, Gyalwa Sonam Gyatso, met with Althan Khan
and received from him the fateful name of “Dalai Lama”. At the time
he was only the spiritual ruler and in turn gave the Mongolian
prince the title of the “Thousand-Golden-Wheel turning World Ruler”.
From 1637 on the cooperation between the “Great Fifth” and Gushri
Khan began. By the beginning of the 18th century at the latest, the
Buddhization of Mongolia was complete and the country lay firmly in
the hand of the Yellow Church.
But it would be wrong to believe
that the conversion of the Mongolian rulers had led to a fundamental
rejection of the warlike politics of the tribes. It is true that it
was at times a moderating influence. For instance, the Third Dalai
Lama had demanded that women and slaves no longer be slaughtered as
sacrificial offerings during the ancient memorial services for the
deceased princes of the steppe. But it would fill pages if we were
to report on the cruelty and mercilessness of the “Buddhist” Khans.
As long as it concerned the combating of “enemies of the faith”, the
lamas were prepared to make any compromise regarding violence. Here
the aggressive potential of the protective deities (the dharmapala) could be lived
out in reality without limits. Yet to be fair one has to say that
both elements, the pacification and the militarization developed in
parallel, as is indeed readily possible in the paradoxical world of
the tantric doctrines. It was not until the beginning of the 20th
century that the proverbial fighting spirit of the Mongolians would
once more really shine forth and then, as we shall see, combine with
the martial ideology of the Kalachakra
Tantra.
Before the Communists seized
power in Mongolia in the twenties, more than a quarter of the male
population were simple monks. The main contingent of lamas belonged
to the Gelugpa order and thus at least officially obeyed the
god-king from Lhasa. Real power, however, was exercised by the
supreme Khutuktu, the
Mongolian term for an incarnated Buddha being (in the Tibetan
language: Kundun). At the
beginning of his term in office his authority only extended to
religious matters, then constitutionally the steppe land of Genghis
Khan had become a province of China.
In the year 1911 there was a
revolt and the “living Buddha”, Jebtsundamba Khutuktu, was
proclaimed as the first head of state (Bogd Khan) of the autonomous
Mongolian peoples. At the same time the country declared its
independence. In the constitutional decree it said: “We have
elevated the Bogd, radiant as the sun, myriad aged, as the Great
Khan of Mongolia and his consort Tsagaan Dar as the mother of the
nation” (Onon, 1989, p. 16). The great lama’s response included the
following: “After accepting the elevation by all to become the Great
Khan of the Mongolian Nation, I shall endlessly strive to spread the
Buddhist religion as brightly as the lights of the million suns ...”
(Onon, 1989, p. 18).
From now on, just as in Tibet a
Buddhocracy with the incarnation of a god at its helm reigned in
Mongolia. In 1912 an envoy of the Dalai Lama signed an agreement
with the new head of state in which the two hierarchs each
recognized the sovereignty of the other and their countries as
autonomous states. The agreement was to be binding for all time and
pronounced Tibetan Buddhism to be the sole state
religion.
Jabtsundamba Khutuktu (1870–1924)
was not a native Mongol, but was born in Lhasa as the son of a
senior civil servant in the administration of the Dalai Lama. At the
age of four his monastic life began in Khüre, the Mongolian capital
at the time. Even as a younger man he led a dissolute life. He loved
women and wine and justified his liberties with tantric arguments.
This even made its way into the Mongolian school books of the time,
where we are able to read that there are two kinds of Buddhism: the
“virtuous way” and the “mantra path”. Whoever follows the latter,
“strolls, even without giving up the drinking of intoxicating
beverages, marriage, or a worldly occupation, if he contemplates the
essence of the Absolute, ... along the path of the great yoga
master.” (Glasenapp, 1940, p. 24). When on his visit to Mongolia the
Thirteenth Dalai Lama made malicious comments about dissoluteness of
his brother-in-office, the Khutuktu is said to have foamed with rage
and relations between the two sank to a new
low.
The “living Buddha” from Mongolia
was brutal to his subjects and not rarely overstepped the border to
cruelty. He is accredited with numerous poisonings. It was not
entirely without justification that he trusted nobody and suspected
all. Nonetheless he possessed political acumen, an unbreakable
ambition, and also a noteworthy audacity. Time and again he
understood how, even in the most unfathomable situations, to seize
political power for himself, and survived as head of state even
after the Communists had conquered the country. His steadfastness in
the face of the Chinese garnered him the respect of both ordinary
people and the nobility.
There had barely been a peaceful
period for him. Soon after its declaration of independence (in 1911)
the country became a plaything of the most varied interests: the
Chinese, Tsarist Russians, Communists, and numerous national and
regional groupings attempted to gain control of the state. Blind and
marked by the consumption of alcohol, the Khutuktu died in 1924. The
Byelorussian, Ferdinand Ossendowski, who was fleeing through the
country at the time attributes the following prophecy and vision to
the Khutuktu, which, even if it is not historically authenticated,
conjures up the spirit of an aggressive pan-Mongolism: “Near
Karakorum and on the shores of Ubsa Nor I see the huge multi-colored
camps. ... Above them I see the old banners of Jenghiz Khan, of the
kings of Tibet, Siam, Afghanistan, and of Indian princes; the sacred
signs of all the Lamaite Pontiffs; the coats of arms of the Khans of
the Olets; and the simple signs of the north-Mongolian tribes. ....
There is the roar and crackling of fire and the ferocious sound of
battle. Who is leading these warriors who there beneath the reddened
sky are shedding their own and others’ blood? ... I see ... a new
great migration of peoples, the last march of the Mongols …"
(Ossendowski, 1924, pp. 315-316).
In the same year that
Jabtsundamba Khutuktu died the “Mongolian Revolutionary People’s
Party” (the Communists) seized complete governmental control, which
they were to exercise for over 60 years. Nonetheless speculation
about the new incarnation of the “living Buddha” continued. Here the
Communists appealed to an old prediction according to which the
eighth Khutuktu would be reborn as a Shambhala general and would
thus no longer be able to appear here on earth. But the cunning
lamas countered with the argument that this would not hamper the
immediate embodiment of the ninth Khutuktu. It was decided to
approach the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and the Ninth Panchen Lama for
advice. However, the Communist Party prevailed and in 1930 conducted
a large-scale show trial of several Mongolian nobles and spiritual
leaders in connection with this search for a new
incarnation.
There were attempts in Mongolia
at the time to make Communist and Buddhist ideas compatible with one
another. In so doing, lamas became excited about the myth that Lenin
was a reincarnation of the historical Buddha. But other voices were
likewise to be heard. In a pamphlet from the twenties we can also
read that “Red Russia and Lenin are reincarnation of Langdarma, the
enemy of the faith” (Bawden, 1969, p. 265). Under Josef Stalin this
variety of opinion vanished for good. The Communist Party proceeded
mercilessly against the religious institutions of Mongolia, drove
the monks out of the monasteries, had the temples closed and forbade
any form of clerical teaching program.
The Mongolian Shambhala
myth
We do not intend to consider in
detail the recent history of Mongolia. What primarily interests us
are the tantric patterns which had an effect behind the political
stage. Since the 19th century prophetic religious
literature has flourished in the country. Among the many mystic
hopes for salvation, the Shambhala myth ranks as the
foremost. It has always accompanied the Mongolian nationalist
movement and is today enjoying a powerful renaissance after the end
of Communism. Up until the thirties it was almost self-evident for
the Lamaist milieu of the country that the conflicts with China and
Russia were to be seen as a preliminary skirmish to a future,
worldwide, final battle which would end in a universal victory for
Buddhism. In this, the figures of the Rudra Chakrin, of the Buddha Maitreya, and of Genghis Khan were combined
into an overpowering messianic figure who would firstly spread
unimaginable horror so as to then lead the converted masses, above
all the Mongols as the chosen people, into paradise. The soldiers of
the Mongolian army proudly called themselves “Shambhala warriors”. In a
song of war from the year 1919 we may read
We raised the yellow
flag
For the greatness of the
Buddha doctrine;
We, the pupils of the
Khutuktu,
Went into the battle of
Shambhala!
(Bleichsteiner, 1937, p.
104).
Five years later, in 1924, the
Russian, Nicholas Roerich, met a troop of Mongolian horsemen in Urga
who sang:
Let us die in this
war,
To be
reborn
As horsemen of the Ruler of
Shambhala
(Schule der Lebensweisheit, 1990, p.
66).
He was informed in mysterious
tones that a year before his arrival a Mongol boy had been born,
upon whom the entire people’s hopes for salvation hung, because he
was an incarnation of Shambhala.
The Buriat, Agvan Dorjiev, a
confidante of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, about him we still have
much to report, persistently involved himself in every event which
has affected Mongolia since the beginning of the twentieth century.
“It was his special contribution”, John Snelling writes, “to expand
pan-Mongolism, which has been called 'the most powerful single idea
in Central Asia in the twentieth century', into the more expansive
pan-Buddhism, which, as we have already noted, he based upon the Kalachakra myths, including
the legend of the messianic kingdom of Shambhala” Snelling, 1993,
p. 96).
The Shambhala myth lived on in
the underground after Communist accession to power, as if a military
intervention from out of the mythic kingdom were imminent. In 1935
and 1936 ritual were performed in Khorinsk in order to speed up the
intervention by the king of Shambhala. The lamas
produced postcards on which could be seen how the armies of Shambhala poured forth out
of a rising sun. Not without reason, the Soviet secret service
suspected this to be a reference to Japan, whose flag carries the
national symbol of the rising sun. In fact, the Japanese did make
use of the Shambhala
legend in their own imperialist interests and attempted to win over
Mongolian lamas as agents through appeals to the
myth.
Dambijantsan, the bloodthirsty
avenging lama
To what inhumanity and cruelty
the tantric scheme can lead in times of war is shown by the story of
the “avenging lama”, a Red Hat monk by the name of Dambijantsan. He
was a Kalmyk from the Volga region who was imprisoned in Russia for
revolutionary activities. “After an adventurous flight”, writes
Robert Bleichsteiner, “he went to Tibet and India, where he was
trained in tantric magic. In the nineties he began his political
activities in Mongolia. An errant knight of Lamaism, demon of the
steppes, and tantric in the style of Padmasambhava, he awakened
vague hopes among some, fear among others, shrank from no crime,
emerged unscathed from all dangers, so that he was considered
invulnerable and unassailable, in brief, he held the whole Gobi in
his thrall” (Bleichsteiner, 1937,p. 110).
Dambijantsan believed himself to
be the incarnation of the west Mongolian war hero, Amursana. He succeeded over
a number of years in commanding a relatively large armed force and
in executing a noteworthy number of victorious military actions. For
these he was awarded high-ranking religious and noble titles by the
“living Buddha” from Urga. The Russian, Ferdinand Ossendowski,
reported of him, albeit under another name (Tushegoun Lama) [1],
that “Everyone who disobeyed his orders perished. Such a one never
knew the day or the hour when, in his yurta or beside his
galloping horse on the plains, the strange and powerful friend of
the Dalai Lama would appear. The stroke of a knife, a bullet or
strong fingers strangling the neck like a vise accomplished the
justice of the plans of this miracle worker” (Ossendowski, 1924, p.
116). There was in fact the rumor that the god-king from Lhasa had
honored the militant Kalmyk.
Dambijantsan’s form of warfare
was of a calculated cruelty which he nonetheless regarded as a
religious act of virtue. On August 6, 1912, after the taking of
Khobdo, he had Chinese and Sarten prisoners slaughtered within a
tantric rite. Like an Aztec sacrificial priest, in full regalia, he
stabbed them in the chest with a knife and tore their hearts out
with his left hand. He laid these together with parts of the brain
and some entrails in skull bowls so as to offer them up as bali sacrifices to the
Tibetan terror gods. Although officially a governor of the Khutuktu,
for the next two years he conducted himself like an autocrat in
western Mongolia and tyrannized a huge territory with a reign of
violence “beyond all reason and measure” (Bawden, 1969, p. 198). On
the walls of the yurt he live in hung the peeled skins of his
enemies.
It was first the Bolsheviks who
clearly bothered him. He fled into the Gobi desert and entrenched
himself there with a number of loyal followers in a fort. His end
was just as bloody as the rest of his life. The Russians sent out a
Mongolian prince who pretended to be an envoy of the “living
Buddha”, and thus gained entry to the camp without harm. In front of
the unsuspecting “avenging lama” he fired off six shots at him from
a revolver. He then tore the heart from the body of his victim and
devoured it before the eyes of all present, in order — as he later
said — to frighten and horrify his followers. He thus managed to
flee. Later he returned to the site with the Russians and collected
the head of Dambijantsan as proof. But the “tearing out and eating
of the heart” was in this case not just a terrible means of
spreading dread, but also part of a traditional cult among the
Mongolian warrior caste, which was already practiced under Genghis
Khan and had survived over the centuries. There is also talk of it
in a passage from the Gesar epic which we have
already quoted. It is likewise found as a motif in Tibetan thangkas:
Begtse, the highly
revered war god, swings a sword in his right hand whilst holding a
human heart to his mouth with his left.
In light of the dreadful tortures
of which the Chinese army was accused, and the merciless butchery
with which the Mongolian forces responded, an extremely cruel form
of warfare was the rule in Central Asia in the nineteen twenties.
Hence an appreciation of the avenging lama has arisen among the
populace of Mongolia which sometimes extends to a glorification of
his life and deeds. The Russian, Ossendowski, also saw in him an
almost supernatural redeemer.
Von Ungern Sternberg: The
“Order of Buddhist Warriors”
In 1919 the army of the
Byelorussian general, Roman von Ungern Sternberg, joined up with
Dambijantsan. The native Balt was of a similar cruelly eccentric
nature to the “avenger lama”. Under Admiral Kolchak he first
established a Byelorussian bastion in the east against the
Bolsheviks. He saw the Communists as “evil spirits in human shape”
(Webb, 1976, p. 202). Later he went to
Mongolia.
Through his daredevilry he there
succeeded in building up an army of his own and positioning himself
at its head. This was soon to excite fear and horror because of its
atavistic cruelty. It consisted of Russians, Mongolians, Tibetans,
and Chinese. According to Ossendowski, the Tibetan and Mongolian
regiments wore a uniform of red jackets with epaulettes upon which
the swastika of Genghis Khan and the initials of the “living Buddha”
from Urga were emblazoned. (In the occult scene von Ungern Sternberg
is thus seen as a precursor of German national
socialism.)
In assembling his army the baron
applied the tantric “law of inversion” with utmost precision. The
hired soldiers were firstly stuffed with alcohol, opium, and hashish
to the point of collapse and then left to sober up overnight. Anyone
who now still drank was shot. The General himself was considered
invulnerable. In one battle 74 bullets were caught in his coat and
saddle without him being harmed. Everyone called the Balt with the
shaggy moustache and tousled hair the “mad baron”. We have at hand a
bizarre portrait from an eyewitness who saw him in the last days
before his defeat: “The baron with his head dropped to his chest,
silently rode in front of his troops. He had lost his hat and
clothing. On his naked chest numerous Mongolian talismans were
hanging on a bright yellow cord. He looked like the incarnation of a
prehistoric ape man. People were afraid even to look at him” (quoted
by Webb, 1976, p. 203).
This man succeeded in bringing
the Khutuktu, driven away by the Chinese, back to Urga. Together
with him he staged a tantric defense ritual against the Red Army in
1921, albeit without much success. After this, the hierarch lost
trust in his former savior and is said to have made contact with the
Reds himself in order to be rid of the Balt. At any rate, he ordered
the Mongolian troops under the general’s command to desert. Von
Ungern Sternberg was then captured by the Bolsheviks and shot. After
this, the Communists pushed on to Urga and a year later occupied the
capital. The Khutuktu had acted correctly in his own interests, then
until his death he remained at least pro forma the head of state,
although real power was transferred step by step into the hands of
the Communist Party.
All manner of occult speculations
surround von Ungern Sternberg, which may essentially be traced to
one source, the best-seller we have already quoted several times by
the Russian, Ferdinand Ossendowski, with the German title of Tiere, Menschen, Götter
[English: Beasts, Men and Gods]. The book as a whole is seen by
historians as problematic, but is, however, considered authentic in
regard to its portrayal of the baron (Webb, 1976, p. 201). Von
Ungern Sternberg quite wanted to establish an “order of military
Buddhists”. “For what?”, Ossendowski has him ask rhetorically. “For
the protection of the processes of evolution of humanity and for the
struggle against revolution, because I am certain that evolution
leads to the Divinity and revolution to bestiality” (Ossendowski,
1924, p. 245). This order was supposed to be the elite of an Asian
state, which united the Chinese, the Mongolians, the Tibetans, the
Afghans, the Tatars, the Buriats, the Kyrgyzstanis, and the
Kalmyks.
After calculating his horoscope
the lamas recognized in von Sternberg the incarnation of the mighty
Tamerlan (1336-1405), the founder of the second Mongolian Empire.
The general accepted this recognition with pride and joy, and as an
embodiment of the great Khan drafted his vision of a world empire as
a “military and moral defense against the rotten West…" (Webb, 1976,
p. 202). “In Asia there will be a great state from the Pacific and
Indian Oceans to the shore of the Volga”, Ossendowski presents the
baron as prophesying. “The wise religion of Buddha shall run to the
north and the west. It will be the victory of the spirit. A
conqueror and leader will appear stronger and more stalwart than
Jenghiz Khan .... and he will keep power in his hands until the
happy day when, from his subterranean capital, shall emerge the king
of the world” (Ossendowski, 1924, p. 265).
Here he had uttered the key
phrase which continues to this day to hold the occult scene of the
West enthralled, the “king of the world”. This figure is supposed to
govern in a kingdom below the ground somewhere in Central Asia and
from here exercise an influence on human history. Even if
Ossendowski refers to his magic empire under the name of Agarthi, it is only a
variant upon or supplement to the Shambhala myth.[2] His “King
of the World” is identical to the ruler of the Kalachakra kingdom. He
“knows all the forces of the world and reads all the souls of
humankind and the great book of their destiny. Invisibly he rules
eight hundred million men on the surface of the earth and they will
accomplish his every order” (Ossendowski, 1924, p. 302). Referring
to Ossendowski, the French occultist, René Guénon, speculates that
the Chakravartin may be
present as a trinity in our world of appearances: in the figure of
the Dalai Lama he represents spirituality, in the person of the
Panchen Lama knowledge, and in his emanation as Bogdo Khan
(Khutuktu) the art of war (Guénon, 1958, p.
37).
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama and
Mongolia
Since the end of the fifties the
pressure on the remainder of the “Yellow Church” in Mongolia has
slowly declined. In the year 1979 the Fourteenth Dalai Lama visited
for the first time. Moscow, which was involved in a confrontation
with China, was glad of such visits. However it was not until 1990
that the Communist Party of Mongolia relinquished its monopoly on
power. In 1992 a new democratic constitution came into
effect.
Today (in 1999) the old
monasteries destroyed by the Communists are being rebuilt, in part
with western support. Since the beginning of the nineties a real
“re-Lamaization” is underway among the Mongolians and with it a
renaissance of the Shambhala
myth and a renewed spread of the Kalachakra ritual. The
Gelugpa order is attracting so many new members there that the
majority of the novices cannot be guaranteed a proper training
because there are not enough tantric teachers. The consequence is a
sizeable army of unqualified monks, who not rarely earn their living
through all manner of dubious magic practices and who represent a
dangerous potential for a possible wave of Buddhist
fundamentalism.
The person who with great
organizational skill is supervising and accelerating the “rebirth”
of Lamaism in Mongolia goes by the name of Bakula Rinpoche, a former
teacher of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and his right hand in the
question of Mongolian politics. The lama, recognized as a higher
tulku, surprisingly also functions as an Indian ambassador in Ulan
Bator alongside his religious activities, and is accepted and
supported in this dual role as ambassador for India and as a central
figure in the “re-Lamaization process” by the local government. In
September of 1993 he had an urn containing the ashes of the
historical Buddha brought to Mongolia for several weeks from India,
a privilege which to date no other country has been accorded by the
Indian government. Bakula enjoys such a great influence that in 1994
he announced to the Mongolians that the ninth incarnation of the
Jabtsundamba Khutuktu, the supreme spiritual figure of their
country, had been discovered in India.
The Dalai Lama is aware of the
great importance of Mongolia for his global politics. He is
constantly a guest there and conducts noteworthy mass events (in
1979, 1982, 1991, 1994, and 1995). In Ulan Bator in 1996 the
god-king celebrated the Kalachakra ritual in front
of a huge, enthusiastic crowd. When he visited the Mongolian Buriats
in Russia in 1994, he was asked by them to recognize the greatest
military leader of the world, Genghis Khan, as a “Bodhisattva”. The
winner of the Nobel peace prize smiled enigmatically and silently
proceeded to another point on the agenda. The Kundun enjoys a
boundless reverence in Mongolia as in no other part of the world
(except Tibet). The grand hopes of this impoverished people who once
ruled the world hang on him. He appears to many Mongolians to be the
savior who can lead them out of the wretched financial state they
are currently in and restore their fame from the times of Genghis
Khan.
Footnotes:
[2] Marco
Pallis is of the opinion that Ossendowski has simply substituted the
name Agarthi for Shambhala, because the
former was very well known in Russia as a “world center”, whilst the
name Shambhala had no
associations (Robin, 1986, pp. 314-315).
Next Chapter:
11. THE SHAMBHALA
MYTH AND THE WEST
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