Die Wahrheit des tibetischen Buddhismus

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Sexuelle Skandale der Lamas und Rinpoches

über die Dalai Lamas

Bevor der Buddhismus in Tibet eingeführt wurde, hatten die Tibetaner "Bön" als Volksglauben gehabt. Bön verehrt Geister, Gespenster und Götter, um ihren Segen zu erhalten. Bön gehört also zu lokalen Volksglauben.

Während der chinesischen Tang Dynastie, führte der tibetische König Songtsän Gampo den Buddhismus in Tibet ein und machte ihn zur Staatsreligion. Der sogenannte "Buddhismus" ist aber tantrischer Buddhismus, der sich in der Spätzeit des indischen Buddhismus ausbreitet. Der tantrische Buddhismus wird auch "linkshändigen Pfad" genannt, weil er die tantrische sexuelle Praxis macht. Um zur tibetischen Kultur zu passen, wird der tantrische Buddhismus mit "Bön" gemischt. Er wird dann noch exzessiver wegen dessen Glaubens an Geister und Gespenster.

Der tantrische Meister Atiśa lehrte die tantrische Sex heimlich. Padmasambhava lehrte sie dann aber offen. Der tibetische Buddhismus weichte nicht nur von buddhistischen Lehren ab, sondern auch von buddhistischer Form. Der tibetische Buddhismus gehört nicht zum Buddhismus und muss "Lamaismus" genannt.

   
                  Tibet and Its Guardians – between China and the West (2) -1

Tibet and Its Guardians – between China and the West (2)

 
© http://threeman.org/?p=713

Tibet on the Economic Chessboard
In April 1904 the British geographer, Halford J. Mackinder, wrote a hugely influential essay in The Geographical Journal (Vol. 23, No. 4) titled “The Geographical Pivot of History”. It focused on the supreme geopolitical importance of what he called “the Heartland”  -  the region from Eastern Europe through Central Asia and Northern Tibet to eastern Siberia. His slogan was: Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland  Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island (the Eurasian continent) Who rules the World-Island commands the World. His ideas about the central importance of the Heartland and the World Island would go on to influence German geopolitics expert Karl Haushofer, who introduced them to Hitler. They were also noted by Zbigniew Brzezinski (picture), former National Security Adviser in the Carter Administration in the US (1976-1980) and current foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama. (1) The Russophobic Brzezinski made them an underlying axiom of his master text of global strategy, The Grand Chessboard (1997). Then, in March 1999,  the U.S. Congress adopted the Silk Road Strategy Act [updated 2006], which defined America’s broad economic and strategic interests in a region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia… The successful implementation of the SRS requires the concurrent “militarization” of the entire Eurasian corridor as a means to securing control over extensive oil and gas reserves, as well as “protecting” pipeline routes and trading corridors.” (2)
 
Brzezinski’s book makes clear how crucially western policymakers regard control over Eurasia, which includes 75% of global population,
America’s global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained…most of the world’s physical wealth….60% of the world’s GNP and about three fourths of the world’s known energy resources”. … Eurasia is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions.. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail Africa ‘s subordination. … Eurasia is the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played.(3)
Brzezinski has tended to stay focused on Russia as the main threat to western interests and rarely criticises China; he knows the interest that his political mentor, David Rockefeller, has had in that country since his first visit there in 1973. That same year Rockefeller established the influential thinktank and lobby group, the Trilateral Commission, which was intended to link the elites of N. America, Europe and East Asia, and made his protégé Brzezinski a leading light in it. It is noteworthy that Tibet nowhere figures in Brzezinski’s book, though, like the government in Beijing, he is no doubt aware of the natural resources of Tibet:
    …. some of the world’s largest uranium and borax deposits, one half of the world’s lithium, the largest copper deposits in Asia, enormous iron deposits, and over 80,000 gold mines. Tibet ‘s forests are the largest timber reserve [in China]… Tibet also contains some of the largest oil reserves in the region. On the provincial border between Tibet and Xinjiang [there] is a vast oil and mineral region in the Qaidam Basin, known as a “treasure basin” [with] 57 different types of mineral resources with proven reserves including petroleum, natural gas, coal, crude salt, potassium, magnesium, lead, zinc and gold. These mineral resources have a potential economic value of 15 trillion yuan or US$1.8 trillion. Proven reserves of potassium, lithium and crude salt in the basin are the biggest in China …. Tibet is perhaps the world’s most valuable water source, …. the source of seven of Asia ‘s greatest rivers which provide water for 2 billion people. He who controls Tibet’s water has a mighty powerful geopolitical lever over all Asia. (4)
Here is one important reason why, in a world where the Great Powers and mega-corporations increasingly compete for resources, China is concerned to keep control of Tibet and why certain forces in the west are equally determined to prise Tibet from that Chinese control. Brzezinski may well have avoided mentioning Tibet in The Grand Chessboard because he seeks to ‘manage’ China by granting it regional hegemony, such as it last enjoyed in the days of the Manchu dynasty (1644-1912). Brzezinski believes that China wants to return to its former position as the centre of the world, or at least, of the East Asian world, and he thinks China will be satisfied with a regional hegemony, because he knows that China has never been an aggressive state that sought to conquer the world, and that consequently, western fears of a Yellow Peril that would sweep all before it like the Mongols are unrealistic. In this, I believe, he is partly right, for China has never been a nomadic culture like the Mongols or the Manchus; the settled urban and agrarian culture of China always feared attacks from the wandering shamanistic nomads on its own borders.
No sentimentalist about Tibet, Brzezinski is much more interested in the ‘Stans’, the new states of Central Asia, especially Uzbekistan (5). He is content to leave Tibet under nominal Chinese control, a diplomatic position that indeed, all western countries, including Russia, have maintained for over 200 years, and one that the present Dalai Lama himself agrees with. However, while professing himself willing to see China once more the regional hegemon, Brzezinski feels China must be kept under control, and one means for doing this is the nationalities and minorities question, hence his great interest in what he calls ‘the Balkans of Asia’, the Stans. Just as 100 years ago, the European Balkans were a  point of stress that the Great Powers could use to put pressure on each other, so today is the region from Chechnya and Georgia in the west to Tibet and Xinjiang in the east, where the USA can pressurise Russia, India and China by manipulating ethnic issues. American power projected in this area also enables the US to get close to the region’s sources of minerals and oil, as well as Chinese pipelines.
Drawing boundaries, pulling strings, mouthing phrases…
The political dimension to Chinese and western claims for guardianship of Tibet has two aspects – the boundaries of Tibetan control or autonomy, and human rights. One problem often missing from western discussion of Tibet  and which has always got in the way of negotiations between Chinese and Tibetans, is the significant question of which borders Tibet is to have (see map). Traditionally, Tibet consisted of three provinces –
Cultural/historical Tibet (highlighted) depicted with various competing territorial claims.Ü-Tsang, Amdo and Kham, The Chinese have always been prepared to allow  autonomy for ‘inner Tibet’ (Ü-Tsang, yellow on map), which they now call Xizang Autonomous Province, while the Tibetan Government-in-exile wants full autonomy (not independence) over Amdo and Kham as well (orange and red), which it claims has always been part of the greater Tibetan cultural area historically. This would include the current Chinese provinces of Qinghai and most of Sichuan. The Chinese have never been prepared to allow this, for obvious strategic reasons; Tibet would then simply be too large and would extend almost as far north as Mongolia.
For 46 years, from the time of the British invasion of Tibet in 1904 until the Chinese invasion in 1950, Tibet’s political status was in a kind of limbo. Recognised by the Powers as still nominally part of China, Tibet was left alone by Beijing in a de facto state of complete autonomy, as China descended into its 20th century chaos. The first western notions of full ‘independence’ for Tibet emerged only in the context of the Cold War, after a Communist takeover in China began to seem inevitable in the late 1940s. CIA veteran John K. Knaus’ book Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan Struggle for Survival (1999) details the secret 1943 mission to Lhasa by the OSS (forerunners of the CIA) in which Major Ilia Tolstoy (grandson of Leo Tolstoy) and Captain Brooke Dolan II established the first official contact between the Dalai Lama’s government and Washington. Their expedition was a classic, daring ‘forward manoeuvre’ in the old imperial Great Game tradition The two men swiftly fell for the Tibetan mystique and, claiming that America was ‘a great nation that supported the rights of small countries’, found themselves implanting in the Tibetans hopes of support for independence that could not be fulfilled.
The British, who for decades had maintained the only non-Chinese official representation in Lhasa (a ‘trade agency’), were at cross purposes over this OSS mission. The Viceroy in New Delhi loftily commented that it would not be ‘sound’ for Britain to hasten the process of American enlightenment ‘in matters Tibetan’. He was reiterating the traditional British position: Tibet remains part of China. Meanwhile, in Lhasa, Frank Ludlow, the head of the British Mission was encouraging the Americans and informed New Delhi: “some good might result [from this first contact] with the President and people of a great nation which champions the rights of small nations. It might also be indicated [by the Allies] that Tibet regards itself as independent and is different in race, physical features, religion and language from any other nation.” (6)
This was the line the two Americans themselves took and which later would be followed by hard-line ideological anti-communist elements in the CIA and the US establishment who wished to cause trouble for China within the context of the Cold War. The traditional British imperial position would come to be adopted by the more realpolitik-oriented elements in the US, especially after the  ‘pong pong’ diplomacy that preceded the visit to China by Nixon and Kissinger in 1972.
With the outbreak of the Korean War and China’s invasion of Tibet in 1950, Washington began to study more seriously how it could benefit from the issue of Tibetan independence. Recently declassified detailed documents have revealed the CIA’s Operation CIRCUS (1956-1969) that trained Tibetan guerillas, particularly members of the martial Khampa people of northern Tibet, in Colorado (1958-64) and then flew them out to Nepal for infiltration into Tibet. The campaign included cooperation with Indian intelligence services and frequent airdrops to Tibetan insurgents; it continued until Nixon ‘s rapprochement with Maoist China in the early 1970s. With the failure of the CIA-sponsored 1959 uprising in Tibet, any American hopes for Tibetan independence faded. Sam Halpern, ex-head of CIA Far Eastern Operations, has cynically if realistically commented: “Basically [the CIA's activity in] Tibet was just a nuisance to the ChiComms. It was fun and games. It didn’t have any real effect.”(7) Most of the Khampa guerillas trained by the CIA, however, surely did not see it that way; it has been estimated that probably three out of four of them were  tracked down and killed by Chinese forces.
It is highly unlikely that the significant events of 2008 (the Tibetan riots of March, the massive earthquake in May in the half-Tibetan province of Sichuan, the insurgent violence in Xinjiang and Yunnan, the spectacular success of the Olympics) will lead China to change its views on the issue of independence for Tibet, nor does the Dalai Lama himself claim to seek independence but rather, greater autonomy for Tibet within China. However, in recent years a more militant campaign has emerged among younger Tibetan emigrés which does call for full independence, and this ‘Free Tibet’ movement has been substantially funded and supported by US intelligence agencies and NGOs. To this writer, a greater measure of autonomy within China, which has been the de facto position for the last three centuries, would indeed seem to represent the best option for Tibet. The problem is how great that ‘measure’ is to be. The Tibetan people’s movement is increasingly in danger of fragmenting as younger, more westernised Tibetans lose patience with the Dalai Lama’s more nuanced position or feel rejected by his excommunication of the followers of the deity Dorje Shugden (see part 1 of this article). The Dalai Lama has warned his own people against resorting to violence but has also said that Tibetans should be in control of everything except for foreign policy and defence; however, there is no way China is going to allow the Tibetans any real control of the region’s key natural resources. They are too important to the economy of China as a whole and to her national defence and strategic interests.
With China’s increasing integration into global affairs and the steady decay of communism itself, the West ought not to be thinking any longer of using Tibet as a weapon against China. It is surely hypocritical of the western media, who lose no opportunity to undermine or attack religion, especially Catholicism, to claim to support a Tibetan Pope and the idea that he should re-establish  temporal and spiritual control over Tibet, a state of affairs, incidentally, which only existed for some 300 years after 1642, when the 5th Dalai Lama and his Gelugpa (Yellow Hat) sect was able for the first time to gain temporal power over a unified Tibetan state with the assistance of the  Mongol warlord, Ghushi Khan. While there are monks in all the sects of Buddhism, only in Tibet have monks and monasteries achieved any real degree of systematic political power. This was never the case in China, Korea and Japan, where  Mahayana Buddhism also flourished. The Dalai Lama may feel himself to be in his heart, as he says, “just a simple monk”, but no Dalai Lama is in fact ever “just a simple monk”. He is regarded as a king and the incarnate Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara (Chenrezig in Tibetan). We in the West have had a faith – Christianity - according to which a Being from another world than the physical entered this physical plane in the Incarnation: Jesus is of the world, the Christ is not. This twofold nature of Jesus-Christ implies balance between the material and the immaterial. Before Christ, Asian Buddhists, oppressed by the pain of material existence,  longed to escape from the material into the immaterial and return to mankind’s spiritual roots. The western world by contrast, since Christ, has steadily turned its back on the immaterial and embraced the physical plane, to the point where, since the 18th century, the educated increasingly pour scorn on the very notion of a non-physical existence, a life before birth and after death. As part of this intellectual rejection, the concept of reincarnation – which has always existed in Hinduism and Buddhism – was very largely excised from western culture,  and many westerners today still find this concept difficult to entertain. If we accept the idea of reincarnation for a moment, it could raise the interesting picture of numerous people walking around in the West today, who in their previous lives were in Asia or other cultures with a looser connection to this physical plane, souls who have a stronger yearning for a spiritual world or something resembling it, than do the rest of the western community. Whilst many such westerners rally to what they see as the cause of Tibet,  others, with neither of these motivations, may call for a ‘free Tibet’ out of a straightforward, very modern but often very abstract idealism based on their personal understanding of human rights, irrespective of whether they know much or anything about Tibet and China. Meanwhile, other westerners who may have no spiritual interests or inclinations nevertheless support the Tibetan cause for psychological reasons, perhaps because they were bullied at school or by a family member and therefore sympathise with underdogs everywhere. Those without such personal experiences may nevertheless be more or less unconsciously influenced by ideas that tell them that one should take the side of the underdog, and that, for example, Britain went to war for the sake of Belgium, Poland etc. – ideas which, on examination, sometimes bear little relation to reality.
In 1918 Rudolf Steiner observed that often the deepest impulses in the West are fostered by nothing more powerfully than by the development of feelings that are untrue but are sensed as in some way holy, that can represent the people of the East….as barbarians. In this connection he referred to the “crusading temperament in America: This consists  in the feeling  that America is called to spread over the whole earth freedom and justice and I know not what other beautiful things.(1.12.1918) In Britain too, the deep-rooted imagery of King Arthur’s heroes venturing forth to slay demons and right wrongs and of St. George rescuing the princess from the dragon influences many Britons subconsciously to adopt this ‘holier-than-thou’ crusading mentality. Steiner drew attention to the fact that what he called “the age of economic imperialism”, in which we now live, is marked by an absence of spiritual values and a consequent culture of ‘empty words and phrases’. Fine-sounding words are used as impulses, to get people to agree to this or that (“the will of the international community”, “democracy”, “freedom”, “the rule of law”) but underlying them is actually nothing but the desire for economic gain. This is because people would not readily fight and die if their politicians urged them to do so for the sake of another X million barrels of oil, but feel impelled to action to stop the suffering in Darfur, In Burma, Zimbabwe, or Tibet. “Free Tibet !” “To Save Tibet is to save the World!” they shout, ignorant of the complexities of the issue or the clandestine funding and manipulation that may be fuelling such a cause for ulterior motives. For example, an American organisation called ‘the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)’ sounds a fine thing, yet it is but a polite front for the CIA. Founded by the Reagan Administration in the early 1980s, on the recommendation of William Casey, Reagan ‘s CIA Director, and  designed to pose as an autonomous NGO, the first acting President of the NDA, Allen Weinstein, commented to the Washington Post that, “A lot of what we [the NED ] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
The most prominent pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organization today is the International Campaign for Tibet, founded in Washington in 1988. Since at least 1994 the ICT has been receiving funds from the NED. The ICT awarded their annual Light of Truth award in 2005 to Carl Gershman, founder of the NED. …The ICT Board of Directors is peopled with former US State Department officials… Another especially active anti-Beijing organization is the US-based Students for a Free Tibet, (founded 1994) as a project of the US Tibet Committee and the NED-financed International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). The SFT is most known for unfurling a 450 foot banner atop the Great Wall in China ; calling for a free Tibet, and accusing Beijing of wholly unsubstantiated claims of genocide against Tibet. … The SFT was among five organizations which … proclaimed the start of a “Tibetan people’s uprising” [for] Jan 4 this year and co-founded a temporary office in charge of coordination and financing. … Among related projects, the US Government-financed NED also supports the Tibet Times newspaper, run out of the Dalai Lama’s exile base at Dharamsala, India. The NED also funds the Tibet Multimedia Center for “information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet,” also based in Dharamsala. And the NED finances the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy. (8)
Wang Lixiong is a Chinese intellectual, a writer who is deeply sympathetic to the Tibetan cause and yet is without illusions about how the Tibetan and foreign representatives of that cause often operate. He and his Tibetan wife have been under house arrest in Beijing since the  disturbances in Tibet last March. Wang is well aware of how skillfully the Tibetans have quickly adapted to western concerns and inclinations:
 …the  14th Dalai Lama  has now become one of the most  influential figures in the international community, more welcomed in the West than  even the West’s own religious leaders. There is no denying that through decades of  constant interaction with the international community, the exiled Tibetans have succeeded in establishing their own image, and consequently have become the darlings of  the international community.
The Dalai Lama…has learned well how to exploit Western social psychology and manipulate the Western media to break into Western affairs. He has Western advisers who have long served him, having hired the best legal firms in the  United States to conduct extra-legal proceedings for him. His speeches throughout the  West are invariably about burning issues in the West such as human rights, the environment, peace, the anti-nuclear issue . . . with his values and language also being particularly  consistent with the Western model. The cleverness of the Dalai Lama, who is well aware of the Western humanitarian climate, can also be seen in that the movement that he leads  does not take a purely political line. For instance, he avoids directly discussing Tibetan independence, always saying that he is most concerned about continuing Tibetan civilization. His suggestion for settling the Tibet matter is to make Tibet a naturally and culturally protected zone with neither an army nor environmental pollution, a peace zone overseen by the international community. Since this blueprint coincides exactly with the  Western ideal of a pure land, it has won widespread support. Meanwhile, the Dalai Lama goes about saying that he is not just taking from the West, but is giving the West a precious gift: Tibetan religion. On 5 October 1989 , the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee announced that it was giving the Dalai Lama the Nobel Peace Prize. All Western nations [then] threw open their doors to him, and all leaders met with him. (9)
While this Chinese writer has respect for the Dalai Lama as an individual and as a leader of his people, one can see here that he has concerns about the Dalai Lama’s methods of advocacy on their behalf. From 1959 until 1985 the Dalai Lama was not the cult figure in the West that he is today, moving easily among high profile western political, scientific, religious, and artistic figures. In the 1970s and early 80s he had to content himself with bringing his cause to the attention of the New Age movement, who were attracted to the awesome powers of the seemingly authentic and enlightened Tibetan monks and spiritual teachers who moved West in the 1960s and 70s. Through these young people the Dalai Lama would later be able to connect with the environmental movement. Petra Kelly, a high profile young leader of the German Green Party, for example, rendered especial service in this regard. But from about 1985 the Dalai Lama began to break into the western political establishment and a formidable ‘Tibet Lobby’ was formed. A key figure in this process was the Dutch lawyer Michael van Walt van Praag, who became the Dalai Lama’s personal legal adviser.(10) After Tiananmen Square in 1989, American criticism of China greatly increased; that same year the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the following year The Voice of America began broadcasting programs in Tibetan; in 1991 van Walt van Praag managed to enable the Dalai Lama to address Congress in the USA.  He had thus ‘arrived’ in political terms. He went on to meet President George Bush (Snr.), who began to refer to Tibet as an “occupied country”. With his Nobel Peace Prize as the door-opener, the Dalai Lama was welcomed in all kinds of western political circles, right or left, red, blue or green; he was made welcome everywhere. Major entertainers and environmentalists, wrote the German magazine Der Spiegel, have found a common denominator in their commitment to the kingdom on the roof of the world. Hollywood meets Robin Hood — Tibet’s Buddhism is the common denominator.(11) In 1992 he showed up at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro and on the Greenpeace flagship The Rainbow Warrior.
Alienation, longing, pride and fear
The Dalai Lama’s triumphal progress through the West steadily increased in the 1990s and peaked in 1998-9. Certainly, the cause of Tibetan Buddhism as a spiritual path was facilitated enormously by the political cause of the Tibetan people, which garnered sympathy even from people with no spiritual interests. Omnipresent in the West in the 1990s, from Vogue to Playboy, from religious conferences on ecumenism to scientific seminars on particle physics, the Dalai Lama’s success in the West’s ‘spiritual’ realm was especially evident in Hollywood, where in 1998 alone two major movies about him were released and five others were in the pipeline. Among numerous Hollywood celebrities, Martin Scorsese, Brad Pitt and the Dalai Lama’s own personal pupil Richard Gere (picture) were especially voluble in their advocacy. Other doors were opened through actress Uma Thurman, the daughter of the Dalai Lama’s first initiated westerner and pre-eminent propagandist in the USA, Robert A. Thurman, whom the Herald Tribune called the academic godfather of the Tibetan cause. The readiness with which such western cultural figures look beyond themselves and their own culture for spiritual nourishment may be understandable but can yet be called into question. Rudolf Steiner once remarked that: the hollow mockery of a situation must be sensed in which the British Isles founded an economic empire that spanned the world and then, when seeking profound mystical spirituality, turned to those  they had conquered economically – and are now exploiting economically – in order to glean from them their spirituality. The real obligation is to take one’s own spiritual substance and pour it into the outer form of the social organism. (lecture of 22.1.1920) (my emphasis)

Die Dalai Lamas

»Die Dalai Lamas werden von ihren Anhängern als fortgeschrittene Mahayana Bodhisattvas angesehen, mitfühlende Wesen, die sozusagen ihren eigenen Eintritt in das Nirvana zurückgestellt haben, um der leidenden Menschheit zu helfen. Sie sind demnach auf einem guten Wege zur Buddhaschaft, sie entwickeln Perfektion in ihrer Weisheit und ihrem Mitgefühl zum Wohle aller Wesen. Dies rechtertigt, in Form einer Doktrin, die soziopolitische Mitwirkung der Dalai Lamas, als Ausdruck des mitfühlenden Wunsches eines Bodhisattvas, anderen zu helfen.«

?Hier sollten wir zwei Dinge feststellen, die der Dalai Lama nicht ist: Erstens, er ist nicht in einem einfachen Sinne ein ?Gott-König?. Er mag eine Art König sein, aber er ist kein Gott für den Buddhismus. Zweitens, ist der Dalai Lama nicht das ?Oberhaupt des Tibetischen Buddhismus? als Ganzes. Es gibt zahlreiche Traditionen im Buddhismus. Manche haben ein Oberhaupt benannt, andere nicht. Auch innerhalb Tibets gibt es mehrere Traditionen. Das Oberhaupt der Geluk Tradition ist der Abt des Ganden Klosters, als Nachfolger von Tsong kha pa, dem Begründer der Geluk Tradition im vierzehnten/fünfzehnten Jahrhundert.«

Paul Williams, »Dalai Lama«, in
Clarke, P. B., Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements
(New York: Routledge, 2006), S. 136.

Regierungsverantwortung
der Dalai Lamas

?Nur wenige der 14 Dalai Lamas regierten Tibet und wenn, dann meist nur für einige wenige Jahre.?

(Brauen 2005:6)

»In der Realität dürften insgesamt kaum mehr als fünfundvierzig Jahre der uneingeschränkten Regierungsgewalt der Dalai Lamas zusammenkommen. Die Dalai Lamas sechs und neun bis zwölf regierten gar nicht, die letzten vier, weil keiner von ihnen das regierungsfähige Alter erreichte. Der siebte Dalai Lama regierte uneingeschränkt nur drei Jahre und der achte überhaupt nur widerwillig und auch das phasenweise nicht allein. Lediglich der fünfte und der dreizehnte Dalai Lama können eine nennenswerte Regieruagsbeteiligung oder Alleinregierung vorweisen. Zwischen 1750 und 1950 gab es nur achtunddreißig Jahre, in denen kein Regent regierte!«

Jan-Ulrich Sobisch,
Lamakratie - Das Scheitern einer Regierungsform (PDF), S. 182,
Universität Hamburg

Der Fünfte Dalai Lama,
Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso

Der Fünfte Dalai Lama, Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso

?Der fünfte Dalai Lama, der in der tibetischen Geschichte einfach ?Der Gro?e Fünfte? genannt wird, ist bekannt als der Führer, dem es 1642 gelang, Tibet nach einem grausamen Bürgerkrieg zu vereinigen. Die ?ra des fünften Dalai Lama (in etwa von seiner Einsetzung als Herrscher von Tibet bis zum Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts, als seiner Regierung die Kontrolle über das Land zu entgleiten begann) gilt als pr?gender Zeitabschnitt bei der Herausbildung einer nationalen tibetischen Identit?t - eine Identit?t, die sich im Wesentlichen auf den Dalai Lama, den Potala-Palast der Dalai Lamas und die heiligen Tempel von Lhasa stützt. In dieser Zeit wandelte sich der Dalai Lama von einer Reinkarnation unter vielen, wie sie mit den verschiedenen buddhistischen Schulen assoziiert waren, zum wichtigsten Beschützer seines Landes. So bemerkte 1646 ein Schriftsteller, dass dank der guten Werke des fünften Dalai Lama ganz Tibet jetzt ?unter dem wohlwollenden Schutz eines wei?en Sonnenschirms zentriert? sei; und 1698 konstatierte ein anderer Schriftsteller, die Regierung des Dalai Lama diene dem Wohl Tibets ganz so wie ein Bodhisattva - der heilige Held des Mahayana Buddhismus - dem Wohl der gesamten Menschheit diene.?

Kurtis R. Schaeffer, »Der Fünfte Dalai Lama Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso«, in
DIE DALAI LAMAS: Tibets Reinkarnation des Bodhisattva Avalokite?vara,
ARNOLDSCHE Art Publishers,
Martin Brauen (Hrsg.), 2005, S. 65

Der Fünfte Dalai Lama:
Beurteilungen seiner Herrschaft I

?Gem?? der meisten Quellen war der [5.] Dalai Lama nach den Ma?st?ben seiner Zeit ein recht toleranter und gütiger Herrscher.?

Paul Williams, »Dalai Lama«, in
(Clarke, 2006, S. 136)

?Rückblickend erscheint Lobsang Gyatso, der ?Gro?e Fünfte?, dem Betrachter als überragende, allerdings auch als widersprüchliche Gestalt.?

Karl-Heinz Golzio / Pietro Bandini,
»Die vierzehn Wiedergeburten des Dalai Lama«,
O.W. Barth Verlag, 1997, S. 118

»Einmal an der Macht, zeigte er den anderen Schulen gegenüber beträchtliche Großzügigkeit. […] Ngawang Lobsang Gyatso wird von den Tibetern der ›Große Fünfte‹ genannt, und ohne jeden Zweifel war er ein ungewöhnlich kluger, willensstarker und doch gleichzeitig großmütiger Herrscher.«

Per Kvaerne, »Aufstieg und Untergang einer klösterlichen Tradition«, in:
Berchert, Heinz; Gombrich, Richard (Hrsg.):
»Der Buddhismus. Geschichte und Gegenwart«,
München 2000, S. 320

Der Fünfte Dalai Lama:
Beurteilungen seiner Herrschaft II

?Viele Tibeter gedenken insbesondere des V. Dalai Lama bis heute mit tiefer Ehrfurcht, die nicht allein religi?s, sondern mehr noch patriotisch begründet ist: Durch gro?es diplomatisches Geschick, allerdings auch durch nicht immer skrupul?sen Einsatz machtpolitischer und selbst milit?rischer Mittel gelang es Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso, dem ?Gro?en Fünften?, Tibet nach Jahrhunderten des Niedergangs wieder zu einen und in den Rang einer bedeutenden Regionalmacht zurückzuführen. Als erster Dalai Lama wurde er auch zum weltlichen Herrscher Tibets proklamiert. Unter seiner ?gide errang der Gelugpa-Orden endgültig die Vorherrschaft über die rivalisierenden lamaistischen Schulen, die teilweise durch blutigen Bürgerkrieg und inquisitorische Verfolgung unterworfen oder au?er Landes getrieben wurden.

Jedoch kehrte der Dalai Lama in seiner zweiten Lebenshälfte, nach Festigung seiner Macht und des tibetischen Staates, zu einer Politik der Mäßigung und Toleranz zurück, die seinem Charakter eher entsprach als die drastischen Maßnahmen, durch die er zur Herrschaft gelangte. Denn Ngawang Lobzang Gyatso war nicht nur ein Machtpolitiker und überragender Staatsmann, sondern ebenso ein spiritueller Meister mit ausgeprägter Neigung zu tantrischer Magie und lebhaftem Interesse auch an den Lehren anderer lamaistischer Orden. Zeitlebens empfing er, wie die meisten seiner Vorgänger, gebieterische Gesichte, die er gegen Ende seines Lebens in seinen ›Geheimen Visionen‹ niederlegte.«

(Golzio, Bandini 1997: 95)

Der Dreizehnte Dalai Lama,
Thubten Gyatso

Der Dreizehnte Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso

?Ein anderer, besonders wichtiger Dalai Lama war der Dreizehnte (1876-1933). Als starker Herrscher versuchte er, im Allgemeinen ohne Erfolg, Tibet zu modernisieren. ?Der gro?e Dreizehnte? nutzte den Vorteil des schwindenden Einflusses China im 1911 beginnenden Kollaps dessen Monarchie, um faktisch der vollst?ndigen nationalen Unabh?ngigkeit Tibets von China Geltung zu verschaffen. Ein Fakt, den die Tibeter von jeher als Tatsache erachtet haben.?

Paul Williams, »Dalai Lama«, in
(Clarke, 2006, S. 137)

?Manche m?gen sich vielleicht fragen, wie die Herrschaft des Dalai Lama im Vergleich mit europ?ischen oder amerikanischen Regierungschefs einzusch?tzen ist. Doch ein solcher Vergleich w?re nicht gerecht, es sei denn, man geht mehrere hundert Jahre in der europ?ischen Geschichte zurück, als Europa sich in demselben Zustand feudaler Herrschaft befand, wie es in Tibet heutzutage der Fall ist. Ganz sicher w?ren die Tibeter nicht glücklich, wenn sie auf dieselbe Art regiert würden wie die Menschen in England; und man kann wahrscheinlich zu Recht behaupten, dass sie im Gro?en und Ganzen glücklicher sind als die V?lker Europas oder Amerikas unter ihren Regierungen. Mit der Zeit werden gro?e Ver?nderungen kommen; aber wenn sie nicht langsam vonstatten gehen und die Menschen nicht bereit sind, sich anzupassen, dann werden sie gro?e Unzufriedenheit verursachen. Unterdessen l?uft die allgemeine Verwaltung Tibets in geordneteren Bahnen als die Verwaltung Chinas; der tibetische Lebensstandard ist h?her als der chinesische oder indische; und der Status der Frauen ist in Tibet besser als in beiden genannten L?ndern.?

Sir Charles Bell, »Der Große Dreizehnte:
Das unbekannte Leben des XIII. Dalai Lama von Tibet«,
Bastei Lübbe, 2005, S. 546

Der Dreizehnte Dalai Lama:
Beurteilungen seiner Herrschaft

?War der Dalai Lama im Gro?en und Ganzen ein guter Herrscher? Dies k?nnen wir mit Sicherheit bejahen, auf der geistlichen ebenso wie auf der weltlichen Seite. Was erstere betrifft, so hatte er die komplizierte Struktur des tibetischen Buddhismus schon als kleiner Junge mit ungeheurem Eifer studiert und eine au?ergew?hnliche Gelehrsamkeit erreicht. Er verlangte eine strengere Befolgung der m?nchischen Regeln, veranlasste die M?nche, ihren Studien weiter nachzugehen, bek?mpfte die Gier, Faulheit und Korruption unter ihnen und verminderte ihren Einfluss auf die Politik. So weit wie m?glich kümmerte er sich um die zahllosen religi?sen Bauwerke. In summa ist ganz sicher festzuhalten, dass er die Spiritualit?t des tibetischen Buddhismus vergr??ert hat.

Auf der weltlichen Seite stärkte er Recht und Gesetz, trat in engere Verbindung mit dem Volk, führte humanere Grundsätze in Verwaltung und Justiz ein und, wie oben bereits gesagt, verringerte die klösterliche Vorherrschaft in weltlichen Angelegenheiten. In der Hoffnung, damit einer chinesischen Invasion vorbeugen zu können, baute er gegen den Widerstand der Klöster eine Armee auf; vor seiner Herrschaft gab es praktisch keine Armee. In Anbetracht der sehr angespannten tibetischen Staatsfinanzen, des intensiven Widerstands der Klöster und anderer Schwierigkeiten hätte er kaum weiter gehen können, als er es tat.

Im Verlauf seiner Regierung beendete der Dalai Lama die chinesische Vorherrschaft in dem großen Teil Tibets, den er beherrschte, indem er chinesische Soldaten und Beamte daraus verbannte. Dieser Teil Tibets wurde zu einem vollkommen unabhängigen Königreich und blieb dies auch während der letzten 20 Jahre seines Lebens.«

Sir Charles Bell in (Bell 2005: 546-47)

Der Vierzehnte Dalai Lama,
Tenzin Gyatso

Der Vierzehnte Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso

?Der jetzige vierzehnte Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso) wurde 1935 geboren. Die Chinesen besetzten Tibet in den frühen 1950er Jahren, der Dalai Lama verlie? Tibet 1959. Er lebt jetzt als Flüchtling in Dharamsala, Nordindien, wo er der Tibetischen Regierung im Exil vorsteht. Als gelehrte und charismatische Pers?nlichkeit, hat er aktiv die Unabh?ngigkeit seines Landes von China vertreten. Durch seine h?ufigen Reisen, Belehrungen und Bücher macht er den Buddhismus bekannt, engagiert sich für den Weltfrieden sowie für die Erforschung von Buddhismus und Wissenschaft. Als Anwalt einer ?universellen Verantwortung und eines guten Herzens?, erhielt er den Nobelpreis im Jahre 1989.?

Paul Williams, »Dalai Lama«, in
(Clarke, 2006, S. 137)

Moralische Legitimation
der Herrschaft Geistlicher

Für Sobisch ist die moralische Legitimation der Herrschaft Geistlicher ?außerordentlich zweifelhaft?. Er konstatiert:

?Es zeigte sich auch in Tibet, da? moralische Integrit?t nicht automatisch mit der Zugeh?rigkeit zu einer Gruppe von Menschen erlangt wird, sondern allein auf pers?nlichen Entscheidungen basiert. Vielleicht sind es ?hnliche überlegungen gewesen, die den derzeitigen, vierzehnten Dalai Lama dazu bewogen haben, mehrmals unmi?verst?ndlich zu erkl?ren, da? er bei einer Rückkehr in ein freies Tibet kein politische Amt mehr übernehmen werde. Dies ist, so meine ich, keine schlechte Nachricht. Denn dieser Dalai Lama hat bewiesen, da? man auch ohne ein international anerkanntes politisches Amt inne zu haben durch ein glaubhaft an ethischen Grunds?tzen ausgerichtetes beharrliches Wirken einen enormen Einfluss in der Welt ausüben kann.?

Jan-Ulrich Sobisch,
Lamakratie - Das Scheitern einer Regierungsform (PDF), S. 190,
Universität Hamburg