A Book: "The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama"

[shankara 0]

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO “THE SHADOW OF THE DALAI LAMA”

(if you want to skip straight to the book without reading this introductory article, which I recommend that you read, the link is at the end of the text...)

The Dalai Lama is considered by Tibetans to be a God, an emanation of Chenrezig, the supreme Bodhisattva. Most Tibetans wouldn’t dare to criticize him even today, it would be like a Christian criticizing Jesus. Furthermore, for some reason many Westerners have also fallen into the trap of considering him an infallible saint, or at least a great man of peace. The book The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama shows something of what’s behind the mask.

YELLOW HATS

The Dalai Lama is the head of the order known as the Gelug lineage or “Yellow Hats”. Theosophists such as H.P. Blavatsky considered the “Yellow Hats” to be the pure practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism. The “Dugpa” or “Red Hats” the Theosophists believed to be Adepts of The Left-Hand Path. Yet the book illuminates the reality that the Gelug themselves engage, or engaged until recently, in many shadowy Left-Hand Path practises.

The Gelug came to rule Tibet with the aid of the Mongols, following a civil war with the Kagyu, another school of Tibetan Buddhism. The image of Tibet being some land of peace and freedom destroyed by the barbaric Chinese may be in part truthful, yet Tibet before the Chinese invasion was no paradise. The Gelug Lamas ruled along with a secular aristocracy, most of the Tibetans were merely serfs and cruel punishments such as mutilation and dismemberment were common.

KALACHAKRA

The Kalachakra is a Tantra (secret sacred text) of the Gelug, and the main subject of The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama. A major part of it consists of a prophecy of an Apocalyptic battle against Muslim “barbarians”. The book states that the Kalachakra Tantra is an essentially imperialist philosophy, in which a worldwide Buddhocracy will be established by a king, the “Rudra Chakrin”. The Dalai Lama was a friend of Shoko Asahara who ordered the 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo metro, and Asahara’s sect was based around a militant form of Buddhism with Apocalyptic prophecies like those of the Kalachakra, prophecies in which he and his followers would save the world.

According to The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama the making of mandalas and giving of Public Kalachakra Initiations in the West (“Kalachakra for World Peace”) is an occult means of “taming” people, subjugating them to the power of the Lamas. The book contests that there is more to it than the apparently benevolent act of “bestowing blessings” and bringing about World Peace. It claims the initiation is in fact a ritual aimed at bringing about the surrendering of individuality, which means the destruction of personality so that the Lama and the lineage can live through the initiated pupil. If this is the case, then the body of the pupil becomes merely a vehicle for the consciousness of the Guru:

“The pupil has completely ceased to exist as an individual soul and mind. Only his body, filled by a god or respectively by his guru, visibly wanders through the world of appearances”

Beyond the Public Initiations are the Secret Kalachakra Initiations, not given to Westerners or indeed laypeople in general. They involve various Left-Hand Path sexual practises. These include the person being initiated uniting with ten women in one night, without at any point emitting semen. The Lama however is not only permitted but required to ejaculate. During one initiation the Lama ejaculates in the vagina of a consort and the pupil must spoon the sperm out of the vagina and eat it. In another initiation he must suck the sperm from the Lama’s penis after the Lama has engaged in sexual union. This is not among the “Red Hats”, the “Dugpa” (though they may also engage in similar practises), but among the “Yellow Hats”, the Gelug.

 

DARKNESS

The book also covers practises not specifically in the Gelug, sorcery, ritual murder and murder by ritual, incest, cannibalism. It speaks of the use of women in sexual rituals simply as a source of power, simply “spiritual batteries”. The woman “is to be used as a ritual object and then cast aside”. The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama as a whole illuminates a panoply of inhuman doctrines and disturbing rituals, manifestations of the “law of inversion” (overcoming passion by passion, evil by doing evil), which many of the modern Tibetan Lamas would like to assure us are merely symbolic.

Many people in the West are now becoming interested in Tibetan Buddhism, and this book might serve as a stark warning of what they are actually getting into. If there is so much darkness in such a teaching, how will you distinguish the darkness from the Light? Do you have the necessary discrimination to tell a good spirit from an evil one, a mantra designed to heal from one designed to kill? If you believe that you can navigate in such perilous waters, then good luck to you...

Of course, all of the dark symbolism of Tantric Buddhism is very fascinating for some, all of the terrifying wrathful deities representing forceful compassion, all of the bone ritual implements reminding us of death, a reality we all have to face up to. It’s true that in each one of us there is what Jung called ‘The Shadow’ which needs to be integrated rather than repressed, but have Tibetan Buddhists been consumed by The Shadow rather than integrating it? Has the doctrine degenerated to a point where little trace is left of the original wisdom of the teaching? If the Lamas are truly enlightened beings then we can accept notions such as:

“If we surrender our body to the guru we are surrendering our primal reference point. Our body becomes the possession of the lineage; it is not ours any more.”

Yet Chogyam Trungpa, the very Lama who said that, was an alcoholic. The Tibetans would say that doesn’t matter because everything a Bodhisattva Lama does is due to compassion, but isn’t that potentially a way of avoiding genuinely valid criticism? It’s all very well to say that Lamas are flawless in reality and that their outer flaws are only to hold up a mirror to others in order to help them, but really what use is it to humanity to manifest alcoholism? Poor ethics might make a teacher attractive to those who don’t want to practice ethical conduct, but are such disciples likely to arrive at true spiritual attainments?

Ultimately we must all seek the answers to these questions for ourselves. We are all free to choose our own spiritual way, there are problems in all spiritual schools and virtues also. Still, it would be wise to remember:

“HE WHO FIGHTS WITH MONSTERS MUST TAKE CARE LEST HE THEREBY BECOME A MONSTER”

 

Read THE SHADOW OF THE DALAI LAMA at http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm