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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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