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© Victor
& Victoria Trimondi
The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part II – 13. The doomsday guru Shoko Asahara and the XIV. Dalai Lama
13. THE
JAPANESE DOOMSDAY
GURU SHOKO ASAHARA
AND THE XIV. DALAI LAMA
On March 20, 1995 there was a poison gas attack in
Tokyo’s underground system that killed a number of people and injured
around 5,500 further victims and shook the world public. It was a sect
leader, Shoko Asahara, who gave the command. Asahara was born in 1955 as the son of a large Japanese
family. As he could barely see, he had to attend a school for the blind.
After finishing school he tried without success to gain admittance to Tokyo
University. In the following years he became involved in Asian medicine and
started to practice various yoga exercises. He married in 1978. This
marriage produced six children. The first spiritual group, which he founded
in 1984,was known as AUM Shinsen-no-kai,
that is, “AUM — Group of the mountain ascetics”.
Shoko Asahara’s relationship to
the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
The „mystic” history of
the AUM sect began in India in 1986. Shoko Asahara
had wandered through the southern slopes of the Himalayas for weeks
visiting Buddhist monasteries. This journey was supposed to mark the end of
years of pilgrimage through the most varied esoteric landscapes: „I tried
all kinds of practices such as Taoism, Yoga, Buddhism, incorporating their
essence into my training. My goal was supreme spiritual realization and
enlightenment. I continued the austere practices with Buddhist texts as my
only resort. Finally, I reached my goal in the holy vibration of the
Himalayas. I attained supreme realization and enlightenment. […] I also
acquired supernatural powers” (Asahara, 1991,
vol. 2, p. 13). Upon returning to Japan he changed the name of his yoga
group and called it AUM Shinrikyo, which means roughly „AUM — Doctrine of
the absolute truth”. From this point on, Asahara’s
world view was shaped by the compassionate ethos of Mahayana Buddhism: „I could not bear the fact that only I was
happy and the other people were still in the world of suffering. I began to
think: I will save other people at the sacrifice of my own self. I have
come to feel it is my mission. I am to walk the same path as Buddha Shakyamuni” (Asahara, 1991,
vol. 2, p. 13).
But the Himalayas did not yet loose
their hold over him. Almost a year later, in February 1987, Shoko Asahara stood before the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. He was
received by the supreme Kalachakra master in person. He probably first met him
in the year 1984, as His Holiness conducted a ceremony in Tokyo at the
invitation of the Agon-shu sect. Asahara was at this stage still a member of this
religious community.
The Japanese would later report the following of
his meeting in Dharamsala: “Imagine my delight at
being able to meditate with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama,
… And in His Holiness’s private meditation room! ‘I’ll sit here
where I always sit; you sit there,’ he instructed me. ‘Let me give you a
Buddha image.’ … After a few minutes of loud, deep breathing, all traces of
the Dalai Lama vanished. He must have completely stopped his breath. At
that moment, the astral vision of the golden face of Shakyamuni
Buddha radiated from my ajuna chakra.
The vision persisted steadily, without a flicker. ‘Ah, this is the Buddha
image the Dalai Lama was talking about,’ I thought. I continued my
meditation” (Bracket, 1996, p. 68). Smiling, the Dalai Lama then took his
leave of him after an intensive exchange of ideas with the following words:
“Dear friend, … Look at the Buddhism of Japan
today. It has degenerated into ceremonialism and has lost the essential
truth of the teachings. … If this situation continues, …
Buddhism will vanish from Japan. Something needs to be done” (Kaplan and
Marshall, 1996, p. 13). Thereupon the god-king entrusted him with a
spiritual mission: “You should spread real Buddhism there [in Japan]. … You
can do that well, because you have the mind of a Buddha. If you do so, I
shall be very pleased. It will help me with my mission” (Kaplan and
Marshall, 1996, p. 13). Asahara was indeed more
than happy. Afterwards, His Holiness blessed him with water and posed for a
photo with him. Eight years later this photo was to appear in all the
newspapers of the world. From now on, the Japanese guru referred to himself
as a pupil of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. The god-king’s final version of
affairs is different. He never commissioned the Japanese to do anything at
all, nor established any special relation with him, and definitely did not
take him on as a sadhaka.
For him Asahara was just one of the many hundreds
of worshippers and visitors whom he met with in the course of a year. After
the fact, His Holiness made a critical pronouncement with reference to the
Japanese guru, which he obviously took to apply to others, but not himself:
“I am suspicious of miracles and supernatural powers. Believers in Buddhism
should not rely to much
on a specific leader. This is unhealthy” (Tibetan Review, May 1995, p. 9).
But Asahara was not a
complete nobody
for the god-king. According to the German magazine, Stern, they had met five times since 1987 (Stern 36/95, p. 126). Amazingly, weeks after the first poison gas
attack, His Holiness still called the guru a “friend, although not
necessarily a perfect one” (Stern
36/95, p. 126). Then a document from 1989 came to light in which the Kundun
thanked the AUM sect for donations and confirmed that they “encouraged public
awareness through religious and social activities” (Focus 38/95, p. 114). On January 21, 1989 Asahara
had sent the sum of $100,000 to Dharamsala for
the assistance of Tibetan refugees. As a kind of service in return he
received an official note from the Council
for religious and cultural affairs of His Holiness the Dalai Lama in
which one can read: “To the best of our knowledge, AUM attempts to promote
public well-being through various religious and social activities, for
example through instruction in Buddhist doctrines and yoga” (Focus 38/95, p. 116–117).
On February 8, Asahara
wrote back: “It is my fervent wish that Tibet will return to the hands of
the Tibetans in the near future. I am willing to do whatever I can to be of
help” (Shimatsu, I). The Japanese guru’s
gratitude is only too easy to understand, then with the aforementioned note
in his hand he succeeded in being recognized as a religious body by the
Japanese administration and thus exempt from taxes.
Admittedly there was a certain cooling of
relations between the two religious leaders before the poison gas attack,
since Tibetans in exile from Japan had sharply criticized Asahara’s public appearances. Yet he simply ignored
such criticisms. This is shown by his spectacular letter to the Kundun of
February 24, 1995, which was sent about a month before the events in Tokyo.
The letter leaves no room for doubt about how deeply the Japanese sect
leader felt himself to be connected to the Tibetan
religious sphere. In it Asahara not without pride
announces that his son, Gyokko, is the
reincarnation of the Panchen Lama who died in
1989: “May I report to His Holiness most humbly that I am convinced that Gyokko is a reincarnation of Panchen
Rinpoche” (Shimatsu, I,
HPI 008).
As evidence for this suspicion Asahara
appeals to synchronicities and miraculous signs. Like the Panchen Lama, his son was also deaf in one ear. Yet the
vision which appeared to the child’s mother was even more unambiguous: “A
boy flying in spurts over a snowy mountain range with his legs crossed in a
full Lotus posture. A low male voice said: 'Panchen
Lama'. The voice continued, 'Tibetan Buddhism is finished. I have come to
rebuild it ...'" (Shimatsu, I).
Asahara also met with other high Tibetan tantra masters — Khamtrul Rinpoche, for example, an important Nyingmapa
teacher, and Kalu Rinpoche,
the Kalachakra
specialist of the Kagyupas whose multifarious
activities we have already considered. There is supposed to have been a
meeting between the Tibetan scholar, Khamtrul
(who the Kundun
had prophesied to be the future Rudra Chakrin), the Dalai Lama, and a member of the AUM
sect (Hisako Ishii) at which the publication of esoteric teachings of Padmasambhava in Japanese was discussed. According to
statements by Asahara, Khamtrul
Rinpoche confirmed his “perfect, absolute, divine
wisdom” (quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 18). On May 24,
1989, the Tibetan is supposed to have issued the Japanese guru with the
following letter of recommendation:
“Teacher Asahara is my
old friend, and I consider it an honor to be able to say the following in
favor of him and of his religious activities:
- I am
filled with boundless admiration for Teacher Asahara’s
innate Buddhist traits, like enthusiasm for his work, goodliness,
generosity, and selflessness.
- He is
an experienced and qualified meditation; tantra;
and yoga instructor.
- On
the condition that he receives fitting recognition, Teacher Asahara can become a truly well-known teacher of
Buddhism, who is capable of re-establishing the true doctrine of the
Dharma in Japan.
- I
also know that AUM Shinrikyo, Teacher Asahara’s religious organization, is a religious
association that distinguishes itself through discipline and good
organization and wide-ranging activities in order to suitably further
social well-being.
- Teacher
Asahara’s sympathy and assistance in regard
to the people and culture of Tibet is an example of generosity and
concern for the poor.
- It is
painful for me to see that AUM, with no regard for its good intentions
and activities, has up until now not found the recognition and support
it is due from the Japanese government.
- I
emphatically recommend that AUM be accorded the justly deserved status
of a tax-free organization, and that it likewise receive all necessary
governmental and social privileges. Many thanks, Khamtul
Giamjang Dontup Rinpoche.” (AUM Shinrikyo,
HPI 013)
In Sri Lanka, the land of Therevada
Buddhism, he was additionally praised as the “greatest religious person in
Japan” and “the only one who can save the world” (also quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 18). The Prime Minister gave him a Shakyamuni relic, thus equipping him with an important
symbol of authority. Then, in the foreword to one of his books it also says
“The Buddha of our times is Shoko Asahara”
(quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 18). And the guru
preaches to his followers “You ought to become Buddhas
yourselves. You should preach my teachings, or rather the cosmic truth, and
should produce many Buddhas. Spread the AUM
system of training on a global scale and scatter Buddhas
around the whole world. If we accomplish this, all battles and conflicts
shall come to an end” (quoted by Repp, 1997, p.
35).
In light of the in hindsight extremely
embarrassing meetings of the Kundun and high Lamaist
dignitaries with Shoko Asahara, His Holiness’s
representative in Japan (Karma Gelek Yuthok) issued a interesting
communiqué some weeks after the attack. Before the world press Karma Gelek Yuthok explained that
“Whatever little relationship Asahara had with
His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan lamas fell purely under the
religious domain in spirit and deed. I had nothing to do with the
world-shocking criminal acts known and alleged to have been committed by
the AUM cult. It is unthinkable that His Holiness the Dalai Lama is related
with the criminal acts of AUM simply because of his casual spiritual
relationship with Asahara” (Samdup).
We see this in a completely different light,
however. It was precisely because of these spiritual encounters with the god-king and his “viceroys” and his
intensive study of the Tibetan/tantric esoterica
and apocalyptica that the inexorable madness
developed in Asahara’s mind which made him become the doomsday
guru of the western press.
The staged Shambhala war
Let us begin, then, to present the “spiritual”
evidence and incriminating material piece by piece: there is no doubt that Asahara believed himself to be the incarnation of a Shambhala
warrior and was absolutely convinced that he was acting as a delegate of
the mythic kingdom. “There will be a final battle between Rudra Chakrin, the king of Shambhala,
and a foolish being called Vemacitta. The war at the end of this century is the
last event seen by many prophets for the past several thousand years. When
it happens, I want to fight bravely”, the guru had proclaimed via his radio
station four (!) months before the Tokyo assassination (on December 4,
1994) (Archipelago, I, HPI 003). Rudra Chakrin (“the terrible wheel turner”), the militant
doomsday king of Shambhala, is also an epithet of
the Indian god, Shiva. The destroyer god and the Buddha blend into one
figure for Asahara, just as they merge into one
as the final Shambhala king, Rudra
Chakrin, in the Kalachakra Tantra.
As his followers were called upon “to have the purest faith in the guru,
the Great Lord Shiva, or the Buddhas”, Asahara declared in December 1990 that “Here, the Buddhas and the Great Lord Shiva mean the guru [Asahara], who is their incarnation” (quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 18). Or, even more succinctly: “The
first thing you should do is to understand the Great Lord Shiva, the Buddhas, and the guru as one, as the embodiment of
truth and to take refuge in them. Refuge means to learn their teachings, to
make sacrifices, and perform services for them (quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 30). As early as in spring 1985, whilst
meditating on the beach at Miura, south of Tokyo, he was visited by a
vision of Shiva “the god of light who leads the armies of the gods” who
“charged him with building an ideal society made up of those who had
attained psychic powers, a society called the Kingdom of Shambhala. … Asahara’s
seaside epiphany was the origin of his claim to be a messiah and his
leadership role in Armageddon, or final war, which would destroy Japan”
(Brackett, 1996, p. 66). A sect pamphlet suggests that Asahara
himself came from Shambhala and had descended to
earth in order to direct and save it: “This kingdom (Shambhala),
ruled by the god Shiva, is a world where only those souls which have
attained the complete truth of the universe can go. In Shambhala,
the ascetic practices of messianic persons have made great advances in
order to lead souls to gedatsu (emancipation)
and save them. Master Asahara has been reborn
from there into the human world so that he might take up his mission as a
messiah. Therefore, the Master’s efforts to embody truth throughout the
human world have been sanctioned by the great will of the god Shiva”
(quoted by Brackett, 1996, 70).
In his own words, Asahara
drew up a “Japan Shambhalization Plan . This was said to be “the first step to Shambhalizing the world. … If you take part,” he
explained to his readers, “you will achieve great virtue and rise to a
higher world” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 18). IN the pamphlet already
quoted above, it says, “For that reason Aum Shinri Kyo’s plan to
transform Japan into Shambhala was presented.
This plan is without equal in its scope, as it wants to extend Aum’s sacred sphere throughout all of Japan, making
Japan the base for the salvation of the whole world by fostering the
development of multitudes of holy people. This plan cannot be realized
without the help of our believers. Please come and join us!” (quoted by Brackett, 1996, p. 70). The two journalists,
David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, with somewhat too little fantasy and
far too restrictively see this “Shambhala project” as a plan “to open AUM offices and
training centers in every major Japanese city and establish a 'Lotus
Village' or utopian community where AUM members would survive Armageddon”
(Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 18). But whatever Asahara
may have understood by this, Shambhala was for him the guiding star that led him into
the abyss and that he deliberately followed. One of the songs the members
of the sect had to listen to daily on headphones goes “Shambhala, Shambhala!”
The sect’s system of rituals is Tantric Buddhist
Asahara became familiar with the teachings of Tantric
Buddhism at a very early stage. In the early 1980s he joined a religious
group by the name of Agon Shun (founded by Seiyu Kiriyma), which among other things employed sexual
magic rites to attain rapid enlightenment. Asahara,
despite having been a keen pupil, left the group and turned to the
preferred teachings of Mahayana Buddhism. HE saw himself as an orthodox
Buddhist who wanted to anchor afresh the “Four Noble Truths”, the
“Bodhisattva vow”, and the system of monks and nuns in decadent Japan.
After his contacts with the Tibetan lamas, however, this pure Mahayana
orientation became increasingly complemented by tantric practices and
viewpoints. In the spring of 1990 he introduced what he called the Tantra-Vajrayana System of Practice as a discipline
of AUM Shinrikyo.
Some time later a journal by the title of Vajrayana Sacca appeared.
Shoko Asahara in
Front of a Tantric Deity
From this point on the gateway to the legitimation of any crime lay open. In accordance with
the tantric “law of inversion” the low was from now on inverted into the
high. „Bad deeds”, the young tantra master
wrote, „instantly change into good deeds. This is a tantric way of thinking”
(Asahara, 1991, vol. 1, p. 65). At another point it says, “If the guru
possesses a crystal clear spirit, if a being can see through everything,
then for him there are no lies; lies no longer mean anything to him. […]
Good and evil also change according to their circumstances. Somebody who
has lied so as to motivate another to follow the practice of truth, for
instance. The fact that he has lied will certainly bring him bad karma, but
the fact that he led somebody to the truth brings him merit. Hence, what
one chooses to stress depends upon what one is aiming for. In the practice
of Mahayana, this kind of exercise is not used. From a tantric point of
view it is seen as good, then you will be of use to others because of your
self-sacrifice” (quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 32).We
also learn of Asahara’s commitment to the
“crimes” of Tantric Buddhism from the charges laid against him by the state
prosecutor: “The teachings of esoteric Buddhism from Tibet were really
quite horrible”, he is supposed to have said, “If, for example, a guru
ordered a pupil to kill a thief, the pupil did so, and treated the deed as
a virtuous one. In my previous existence I myself
killed somebody at the guru’s command” (Quoted by Repp,
1997, p. 33).
True to the tantric doctrine, Asahara
explained the sexual magic symbolism of his system as follows: “For normal
Japanese sensibilities it is a very obscene image. A man and a woman in
sexual embrace. But the facts of the matter are quite different […] This
consort can be Parvati [Shiva’s wife] or Dakini, and if one practices guru yoga the union is the
holy union to create our astral bodies. It is the union of yin and yang”
(quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 27). He regularly held
public lectures about Kundalini Yoga, he even spoke
about the “fire serpent” in the Moscow sport stadium — naturally without
going into the sexual magic practices of his Tantra-Vajrayana System. As the highest guru, all the women of the organization
were at his disposal both on the basis of divine benevolence and de facto, and he made frequent use
of this right, but it did not prevent him from granting his wife (Tomoko
Ishii) the highest spiritual rank in the sect aside from his own. Just as
in Tibet’s monasteries, the tantric union with a karma mudra was for him exclusively
the privilege of the highest initiates. In contrast, the main body of AUM
members had to submit to a strict commandment of sexual abstinence. Anyone
who was caught masturbating had to spend several days in solitary
confinement.
This, however, was only the case — and here too we
can see how strictly Asahara adhered to Vajrayana
laws — if it came to ejaculation; other than that he recommended the exact
opposite to his male pupils: “Masturbate daily, but do not ejaculate! …
Continue this for ten days. Then start masturbating twice a day ... Find a
picture of your favorite entertainment star, preferably nude. Use the photo
to activate your imagination and start masturbating four times a day”
(Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 159). The number of daily masturbations is increased
further in the course of the initiatory path.
By the sixth week the time has come. A female
partner is found and given a little alcohol to drink. Then the couple
withdrew together and began first with “some petting” in which the adept
stroked the nipples of his mudra and stimulated her clitoris. Afterwards he
copulated with the girl according to a predetermined rhythm that was always
derived from factors of the number nine: keeping still for 81 breaths,
moving the phallus in and out nine times; keeping still for another 81
breath units, 27 times in and out, and so forth. It is not clear from the
translation by Kaplan and Marshall whether here too the seed is retained.
At any rate they had to “always let her come first” (Kaplan and Marshall,
1996, p. 160).
The offering up of the wisdom consort to the guru
necessary in the high tantras was likewise
practiced by the AUM sect. A pupil who made his girlfriend available
justified this offertory act as follows: “If she and the guru fuse together
her mental level rises. … By sacrificing himself, he pours his energy into
a woman. It’s better [for her] than fusing with me” (Kaplan and Marshall,
1996, p. 161). Asahara also made use of this
reason: “This is a Tantric initiation. Your energy will rise quickly and
you’ll achieve enlightenment faster”, he is said to have told a reluctant
female pupil whilst he tore the clothes from her body (Kaplan and Marshall,
1996, p. 158).
Asahara also worked with the tantric fluids of blood and
sperm. He had his own blood drawn off and offered it, often for high
prices, to the members of the sect as a cure-all. His hair was boiled and
drunk as a kind of tea. Even his bathwater is supposed to have been sold as
a holy substance. Such practices were also widespread in Tibet’s monasteries,
for example the excrement of the great lamas was considered to be a
medicine and sold well when manufactured into pills with other substances.
The science department of AUM, it was said one
day, had discovered that the “DNA of the master” possessed magic
characteristics and would grant anyone who drank it supernatural powers (siddhis).
This was about Asahara’s sperm, a small flask of
which went for the price of $7000 according to Kaplan and Marshall. Here
too there is an allusion to the sperm gnosis of the Kalachakra Tantra,
where the master gives the pupil to taste during the “secret initiation”.
Likewise the horror scenarios the members of the sect
had to go through in order to practice fearlessness are also tantric.
“Delinquents” who transgressed the rules of the order were locked up in
small chambers and had to watch videos of one horror film after another.
Via a loudspeaker they were inundated with constant death threats.
Already after his first trip to India Asahara believed himself to be in possession of
“supernatural powers” (siddhi). He claimed he could make contact with the dead
and read the thoughts of others. Like the “maha siddhas”
he was said to be able to walk through walls. “In the future … I will be
able to fly freely through the sky” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 7), he
prophesied. He Later he developed the “Divine Ear” and was, on his own
account, in a position “to hear the voices of the gods and humans” (Kaplan
and Marshall, 1996, p. 199).
Asahara’s gods
The metaphysics and spiritual practices of the
sect were primarily dominated by Tibetan Buddhist images and exercise.
Basically, “AUM Supreme Truth”, we learn from Kaplan and Marshall,
“became a familiar New Age blend of Eastern religion and mysticism. Its
beliefs and rituals were drawn heavily from Tibetan Buddhism, its physical
rigor from yoga” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 15). He himself referred to
his rituals as “Tibetan Buddhism” (Tibetan
Review, May 1995, p. 9).
Of course, this is
rejected by Dharamsala with protestation, in that
the blame for the Japanese’s practices is (as often happens) pinned on the
Hindu competition: „The rituals he teaches his disciples include practice
of yoga, levitation and other acts that are neither Tibetan nor Buddhism
and are more akin to ritual of Indian sadhus
(Hindu ascetics). The teacher as well as the disciples
wear flowing white robes, something that no practitioner of Buddhism
does” (Tibetan Review, May, 1995,
p. 9). This too is not
entirely correct — in certain scenes from the Kalachakra ritual white robes
are worn, and all the priests of Shambhala are dressed in white.
Asahara regarded himself as an incarnation of Buddha Shakyamuni. Publicly he declared that he was “at the
same level as Buddha” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 25). In Bihar in India
he sat upon the sacred seat and announced to those present, “I am Buddha”
(Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 67). “The Buddha in our times is Master
Shoko Asahara”, was the praise of his pupils
(Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 67). Many of the members of the sect were
given Buddhist names. His closest collaborator, the sect’s éminence grise, Kiyohide Hayakawa, was called “Tiropa”
(i.e., Tilopa) after the great Kalachakra
master. The guru recognized him as “a Bodhisattva in his past life” and
declared that “without Master Tiropa’s efforts
there would be no AUM Supreme Truth” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 75). It
was Asahara’s proclaimed intention to Buddhize the planet. “Spread the training system of AUM
on a global scale”, the guru preached, “and scatter Buddhas
over the world” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 16).
We have discussed in detail the description of
Tantric Buddhism as a solar cult. Asahara also
made appearances like a sun priest and like the prophet of a coming empire
of light: “After insubstantial religions with pseudo-light, there will be a
religion which produces light as the sun does, and it will change the
future” (Archipelago, I, NPI 003).
Although his system of rituals was decisively
influenced by Tibetan mysticism, this was not universally true of the gods.
Here, in accordance with the guru’s world concept, the deities of other
religions were also invoked. Since these were, according to the laws of Tantrism, nothing more than the yogi’s projections the
doctrine was able to easily overcome the cultural hurdles.
Behind Asahara’s
decision to carry out his act of destruction lay the Indian god, Shiva, the lord of destruction. The
latter appeared to him a number of times, the guru said, and confirmed his
enlightenment in his own words. The members of the sect were from now on
expressly required to replace their own wills with the will of Shiva. One epithet of this god who lays waste to the world so as to subsequently
produce it anew in the violent cycle of death and rebirth, is Rudra.
Translated from the Sanskrit it means the “terrible one “, the “wild one “,
the “violent one”. As the Rudra of the apocalyptic fire (Kalagni Rudra) he destroys the universe and
time itself (White, 1996, p. 232). “Once it has consumed the waters of the
ocean,” it says in a tantric text, “it will become the Kalagni Rudra, the fire that consumes time”
(White, 1996, p. 232). There can be no doubt that Asahara
adopted Rudra’s
will to destroy from Tantric Buddhism. This is probably also true of the
name: Rudra Chakrin,
the 24th Shambhala
king who contests the final battle, undoubtedly combines the
characteristics of Buddha and of the wrathful Shiva in his person. That is exactly what Asahara
sought to do. Incidentally, the region around Dharamsala,
the seat of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in Exile, is from a
Hindu point of view dedicated to the god Shiva.
The Japanese guru does not stop at making loans
from Christianity either. After his first reading of the Bible he already
announced: “I hereby declare myself to be the Christ” (Kaplan and Marshall,
1996, p. 67). Afterwards he wrote a book on this topic and in it drew
attention to his similarities to Jesus of Nazareth: “Jesus changed water to
wine, I changed ordinary water to the water that emits light” (Kaplan and
Marshall, 1996, p. 18). Here, Asahara is
referring to a transformatory miracle he
performed in the presence of his pupils. From his own lips we learn “I am
the last messiah in this century” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 67).
“The guru’s most insistent megalomanic claim was to deity. In addition to declaring
himself an avatar of Shiva, he professed to have achieved ‘the state of a
Buddha who has attained mirror-like wisdom’ and to be the ‘divine emperor’
of Japan and the world; the declared Christ, who will ‘disclose the meaning
of Jesus’ gospel’; the ‘last twentieth-century savior’; the ‘holiest holy
man’, one ‘beyond the Bible’; and the being who will inaugurate the Age of
Aquarius and preside over a ‘new era of supreme truth’. For disciples
transfixed by guruism, he could indeed be all
these things (Lifton, 2000, p. 167)
The fantasy worlds of certain comics also had an
influence upon him. It is a fact that Asahara and
members of the sect took the virtual reality of the comic strips for real.
The same is true of science fiction novels. Isaac Asimov’s famous Foundation epic was declared to be a
kind of holy book. In it we can read the following sentences: “The Empire
will vanish and all its good with it. Its accumulated knowledge will decay
and the order it has imposed will vanish” (quoted by Kaplan and Marshall,
1996, p. 29). Additionally Asahara was convinced
that extraterrestrials constantly visit our planet. He was, however, not on
a friendly footing with them, as he believed among other things that they
fed themselves with human flesh. From the world of “esoteric fascism” he
had his reverence for Adolf Hitler, who was said to be still alive and be
landing with an escort of UFOs in the near future.
The Japanese Chakravartin
Within his group the “Buddha of our times” had an
absolute power monopoly. He was lord over life and death in the truest
sense of the word, the there were cases where members who resisted his will
were tormented to death. In accordance with the absolutification
of the teacher drawn from the tantras, he
demanded that his pupils replace their own will with his own.
But for Asahara power
was not just spiritual in nature. He combined practical political concepts
with it very early on. When as a younger man he applied albeit unsuccessfully
for admission to Tokyo University, he wanted to become the prime minister
of Japan. Later he saw himself at the head of a Japanese Buddhocracy. He prophesied that he would soon ascend
the imperial throne and created a shadow cabinet from among his people. Yet
the guru was not even to be content with this role as a Tennos. Asahara
intended to establish a “millennial kingdom” (!) which was to span the
entire planet. He called his political model the “Supreme State”. Kaplan
and Marshall comment that this description “leaves no doubt about who would
inherit the world. And on top of the great empire, ruling serenely over the
cosmos, sat Shoko Asahara, now deemed the Holy
Monk Emperor” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 157). The claim to the world
throne of the Chakravartin
was thus a political program: “I intend to become a spiritual dictator … A
dictator of the world”, the doomsday
guru openly proclaimed (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 25).
The financial motivations which Kaplan and
Marshall attribute to him were thus not his first priority. He considered
them to be only means to an end. A Japanese expert on the sect has
expressed this most clearly: “Asahara
distinguished himself from the other cult leaders in that he did not spend
large sums of money upon himself. ... His primary goal was to attain power”
(Repp, 1996b, p. 195).
Murder, violence, and religion
Only a few months before it came to an explosion
of violence, Shoko Asahara attempted to gain
power via legal means — he founded a party (the Truth Party) and stood for
election. Even this short sequence in his religious political career
demonstrates how deeply allied to Buddhism in general and Tibetan Buddhism
in particular he felt himself to be. He formed a shadow cabinet from among
the members of his sect and gave these the names of either pupils of the historical Buddha or of high Tibetan
lamas. [1] The ostentatious election campaign ended in a disastrous defeat.
It is said that not even all the members of the sect voted for him. Soon
afterwards he turned to the tactics of terror.
Asahara’s aggression arose from its opposite.
Everything began with his proclaimed self-sacrifice in the sense of
Mahayana Buddhism. One of the mantras which the members of the sect had to
repeat constantly went as follows: “I make a joy of my suffering; I make
the suffering of others my own suffering” (Repp,
1996a, p. 45). Completely in the Buddhist tradition, the guru wanted “to
rescue people from their suffering” and “to lead the world to
enlightenment”.(Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, pp.
14-15). Thus, in this early phase the rejection of violence was one of his
highest ethical principles: “Nonviolence”, Asahara
said, “means to love every living creature”, and at another point he
declaimed that “killing insects means accumulating the bad karma of
killing” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 50).
But in accordance with the tantric “law of
inversion”, and thanks to the fact that the Buddha can also appear in his
terrible form as Heruka,
this nonviolence soon became transformed into its exact opposite —
cold-blooded terrorism. We spare ourselves the details of the sect’s
numerous crimes. These include cases of imprisonment, extortion, bodily
harm, child abuse, torture and all kinds of murder. The police charged Asahara’s followers with a total of 27 murders.
The murder of certain individuals was legitimated
by a ritual which Asahara called phowa and
which he had also imported from Tibetan cultural circles. This was
understood to involve the deliberate leading of a soul to a higher
spiritual level so that it could be freed from the harmful karma which
clung to it in this current life. From a Tibetan point of view phowa
practices can also include the murder of an individual. Asahara
committed his followers to murder through an oath in the form of a prayer
known as the “Vajrayana Vow” that required
complete subjugation to the guru and the practice of phowa. It was recommended
that the following prayer be recited “a thousand, a million, a billion
times” (Brackett, 1996, p. 96).
I take refuge in the Tantra Vajrayana!
(repeated four times)
What is the first law?
To be mindful of the Buddha.
And in Tantra Vajrayana,
the Buddha and the Guru are identical.
I take refuge in the Guru!
(repeated four times)
What is the Guru?
The Guru is a life form born to phowa all souls.
Any method that leads to salvation is acceptable.
My life will come to an end sometime.
It makes no difference if the end comes in twenty years,
thirty years, or eighty years,
It will come regardless.
What’s important is how I give my life.
If I give it for salvation,
eliminating all the evil karma I have accumulated,
freeing myself from all karma, the Guru and Shiva
and all winners of truth
will without fail lead me to a higher realm.
So I practice the Vajrayana
without fear.
The Armageddon taught in the Bible approaches,
The final battle is upon us.
I will be among the holy troops of this last great battle
And phowa the evil ones.
I will phowa one or two evil ones.
Phowa is the highest virtue
And phowa is the path to the highest
level of being.
(Brackett, 1996, pp.
96-97)
In the end, the Tibetan phowa ritual became the
guiding principle behind the acts of terrorism and also played a
significant role in the prosecution’s case against Asahara.
There, the following incriminating quotations from the guru were also
tabled: “If your guru commands you to take somebody’s life it is an
indication that this person’s time is already up. With other words you are
killing this person at precisely the right time and making possible the phowa of this
person. […] The end justifies the means. Take the example of a person who
is burdened by so many sins that he is certain to go to hell. If an
enlightened person decides that it would be best to put an end to his life
and to really kill him, this act would generally be seen by society as a
straightforward murder. But in the light of our teachings the killing comes
to the same thing as making his phowa possible for this person. Every enlightened person
would see at once that both the murderer and the murdered benefit from the
deed” (quoted by Repp, 1997, p. 33).
The guru justified all of his orders to kill by
appealing to the Tibetan practice of phowa, even in the case of
the one-year-old son of the lawyer, Sakomoto, who
took the sect on legally: “The child ended up not being raised by Sakomoto, who tried to repeat bad deeds”. It would be
“born again in a higher world” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 42).
According to Kaplan and Marshall, the guru is also supposed to have said
that “it is good to eliminate people who continue to do bad things and are
certain to go to hell” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 50). This was
primarily directed at the immediate opponents of the sect, like the parents
of members, lawyers and journalists.
“Within Aum,
Asahara’s attack guruism
was anchored in what was called the mahamudra. In Tibetan Buddhism, the term refers to a
state in which a devotee achieves ‘the unity of emptiness and luminosity’
and, thereby, ‘the purification ... [of] the transitory contamination of
confusion.’ The concept was sometimes conceived in this way in Aum, and a few of of Asahara’s closest disciples were described as achieving
mahamudra.
But given Aum’s atmosphere, attaining mahamudra
came largely to mean the overcoming of all resistances to an absolute and
unquestioned dedication to the guru himself” (Lifton,
2000, p. 63).
The Japanese Armageddon
Asahara made himself familiar
with the “theologies of destruction” early on. A year after his visit to
the Dalai Lama (in 1988) he began with his study of the Apocalypse of St. John. The Prophecies of Nostradamus followed
soon after. This French prophet became a leading light for the sect. On the
basis of inspirations whispered to him by the terror gods, the guru now
developed his own apocalyptic prognostications.
At first they concerned rescue plans. The planet
was supposed to be in danger and AUM had been chosen to secure world peace.
But then the prognoses became increasingly gloomy. The planetary countdown
was said to be in the offing: „In my opinion” Asahara
said, „the realm of desire by the law of this universe, has already entered
the process of going back to its original form to where it all started. In
short, we are heading for Armageddon” (Asahara,
1996, vol. 2, p. 103). He
actually used the Hebrew word “Armageddon”. But even now there was still
talk of compassion and assistance and Asahara
believed that “If AUM tries hard , we can reduce
the victims of Armageddon to a fourth of the world’s population. … However,
at present, my rescue plan is totally delayed. The rate of survivors is
getting smaller and smaller” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 31). “And what
will happen after Armageddon?”, he asked in one of
his sermons, “After Armageddon the beings will be divided into two extreme
types: the ones who will go to the Heaven of Light and Sound, and the ones
who will go to Hell”(Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, pp. 48-49).
His apocalyptic visions are dated precisely: in
one of his prophecies from 1987, the year of enlightenment, he says that
“Japan will rearm herself in 1992. Between 1999 and 2003, a nuclear war is
sure to break out. I, Asahara, have mentioned the
outbreak of nuclear war for the first time. We have only fifteen years
before it” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 16).
“Any imagined Armageddon is
violent, but the violence tends to be distant and mythic, to be brought
about by evil forces that leave God with no other choice but total
cleansing of this world. With Aum’s Armageddon
the violence was close at hand and palpable. Aum
was always an actor in its own Armageddon drama, wheter
as a target of world-destroying enemies or as a fighting force in a great
battle soon to begin or already under way. As time went on, however, Aum increasingly saw itself as the initiator, the
trigger of the final event” (Lifton, 2000, p.
59).
Somewhat later, in his book Day of Annihilation, there was no longer so much time left.
According to this text, Japan would sink into the ocean already in 1996.
The end of the world would begin in 1998/99. A pupil saw in a vision how a
branch of AUM would move to Jerusalem in 1998 and that members of the sect
would be imprisoned there and then tortured. In a triumphant campaign the
fellow believers would be freed. Asahara, this
prophecy predicted, would die the death of a martyr during the liberation
and set off a final world war.
In order to introduce his “Shambhalization
of the world”, it was only natural that Asahara
would want to lead a great apocalyptic army, then that is integral to the
script of the tantric myth. Hence, as he was meditating on the Japanese
Pacific coast, one day a powerful voice told him, “I have chosen you to
lead God’s army” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 12). From this point in
time on the sect’s music also changed; in place of the old harmonic New Age music of the spheres,
military marches now sounded over the loudspeakers. “The time has come … We
have to fight ... Defeat means death for the guru”, Asahara’s
closest intimate wrote in his notebook (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 154).
The connection between the destruction of the world and emptiness invoked
by the Kalachakra Tantra
also had a decisive influence on Shoko Asahara,
and even found expression in the title of one of his writings, From Destruction to Emptiness: A Sequel
to the Day of Destruction.
Religion and chemical laboratories
The final war could not be fought without
effective weapons. Asahara recruited a small
group of highly qualified scientists, all university graduates in the
natural sciences: chemists, biochemists, electronic engineers. They were
commissioned to establish large laboratories for the manufacture of
chemical and biological weapons. According to Kaplan and Marshall colonies
of all sorts of deadly bacteria were cultivated there, anthrax, influenza,
and even the notorious Ebola virus. The young people dreamed of gigantic
laser cannons. “When the power of this laser is increased,” Asahara says, “a perfectly white belt, or sword can be
seen. This is the sword referred to in the Book of Revelations. This sword
will destroy virtually all life” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 207). He
was especially fascinated by a “microplasm”
weapon with which all living things could be vaporized in seconds. “The
weapons used in World War III” he wrote in 1993, “will make the atomic and
hydrogen bombs look like toys. At present, the centerpiece of the Russian
arsenal is called the star-reflector cannon. The United States has the
Strategic Defense Initiative and the extension of this is 'microplasma’" (Archipelago, I, HPI 003).
In particular, Asahara’s
ingenious scientist, Hideo Murai reveled at the
idea of all kinds of apocalyptic weapons of destruction. He was a
specialist in electromagnetic (EM) phenomena. For him too, and for his
work, the tantric law of inversion would one day take effect.
At first Murai began by constructing weapons to
defend the cult against the military apparatus of the superpowers. For
years his paranoid guru believed himself to be the target of
electromagnetic and chemical attacks by the most varied worldly and religious
secret services. It was only thanks to his elevated spirituality that he
was still alive at all. As redeemer of the world he wanted to rescue
humanity from an imminent war of destruction and hence he devoted his
thoughts to what countermeasures could be developed. But then came the
moment when defense turned into attack. Hideo Murai
was commissioned by his guru to develop miraculous weapons that were no
longer defensive, but would rather accelerate the end of the world.
The sect now focused on the physical theories and
experiments of the famous Serbo-Croatian inventor, Nikola Tesla
(1846-1943), who had undertaken extensive research into the enormous
electromagnetic (EM) energy fields that are said to span the globe. Tesla
believed that influence could be gained over these and that earthquakes
could thus be triggered or the weather changed. He is supposed to have
designed appropriate machines and conducted successful experiments. In the
course of his investigations he reached the conclusion that it would be
possible to split the world into two halves like an apple with an “EM
experiment”. This tempting apocalyptic conception motivated the young
scientists at AUM to write to the Tesla Society in New York and to visit
the Tesla Museum in Belgrade so as to be able to examine his notes.
In March 1994 Hideo Murai
went to Australia with several assistants and carried out electromagnetic
(EM) experiments on a sheep station bought by the sect. He is supposed to
have built an all round machine,
which could both evoke earthquakes and act as a shield against nuclear
warheads. This apparatus proved to be the ideal weapon of mass destruction
for the “final war” (Archipelago, I). There are speculations that the
Japanese earthquake in Kobe (in 1995) had an artificial origin and was
staged by the technicians of the AUM sect. This may well sound just too
fantastic, but on this occasion one of Asahara’s
prophesies, which were otherwise very rarely fulfilled, came true. Nine
days before the big earthquake which shook the Hanshin region, on January
8, 1995 the guru announced on a radio program that “Japan will be attacked
by an earthquake in 1995. The most likely place is Kobe” (Archipelago, II,
HPI 004). After the event AUM announced that the infrastructure of the
province of Kobe with its skyscrapers and major bridges had been “the best
place for simulating an earthquake-weapon attack against a big city such as
Tokyo. Kobe was the appropriate guinea pig” (Archipelago, II, HPI 004).
But at the foot of the holy Mount Fuji conventional
weapons were also being mass produced. Members of the sect there were
producing Russian automatic rifles (the AK-47) in factories disguised as
spiritual centers. Sources purchased a military helicopter in Russia that
was then dismantled and shipped to Japan piece by piece.
But, as should be self-evident, the tantra master Asahara saw the
explosive force of his own mind as the most dangerous weapon of all. “In Tantrayana
vows,” we hear from the man himself, “ there is
one that prohibits attainers from destroying
villages and towns. This means that the power to destroy a town or village
is obtained through Tantrayana
and Vajrayana
practice” (Archipelago, I, HPI 003). In accordance with the tantric logic
of inversion that we have described in detail, the guru believed he was
thoroughly justified in breaking this vow.
Fundamentally, Asahara’s
factories corresponded conceptually to the alchemical laboratories of the
17th and 18th centuries in Europe, although they were incomparably more
technical. In both cases scientists did not just experiment with chemical
substances, rather they combined their findings with religious concepts and
symbols. Let us recall how the couple, Nicholas and Helena Ivanovna Roerich, described the temple structures of Shambhala as “laboratories”
and glorified the monastic priests of the wonderland as “adepts of a sacred
alchemy”.
Asahara also gave his chemical factory holy names and
called it the “Clear Stream Temple” or “Supreme Science” (Kaplan and Marshall,
1996, p. 87). Several altars were to be found in the three-story building
in which the poison gases were created. Shortly after entering one reached
a mezzanine and came face to face with a golden figure of the destroyer god
Rudra Shiva. To the left of this stood a
small devotional shrine which according to Asahara
housed some of the bones of the historical Buddha. He had brought them back
with him from Sri Lanka to Japan. The room in which a wide variety of
tinctures for the production of poisonous gases were stored was referred to
as the “Room of Genesis”. Things were more matter of fact on the ground
floor, there were tanks, extruders, reactors, ducting systems, circulating
pumps. The main hall was called Satian 7,
which meant “Truth 7". But it also had a nickname. The young
scientists referred to it simply as “the magician”. In the last days before
the fateful attack on the underground a gigantic statue of Buddha was
erected there.
The Song of Sarin
Since it is not difficult to manufacture and the
ingredients were easy for AUM to obtain, research and production were
concentrated upon a highly effective nerve gas by the name of Sarin. This poison had been developed by the German
national socialists in the Second World War. Asahara’s
relation to the deadly substance proved to be very multi-layered. It
followed a fiendish three-stage cycle. At first there was constant talk of
how the sect itself was the victim of poison gas attacks. “Wherever I go,”
the Guru announced, “I have been sprayed from helicopters or planes. The
hour of my death has been foretold. The gas phenomenon has already
happened. Next time it might be an atomic bomb” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996,
p. 125). As a consequence of this paranoia it was decided to hit back with
the same weapon. In the third phase the poison became independent and
developed into a quasi-divine substance. It was given half-ironic names
like “Magic, Witch, and Sally” (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 121) and sung
about in the following hymn:
It came from Nazi Germany, a dangerous little chemical
weapon,
Sarin! Sarin!
If you inhale the mysterious vapor, you will fall with
bloody vomit
from your mouth,
Sarin! Sarin! Sarin
— the chemical weapon.
Song of Sarin, the brave.
In the peaceful night of Matsumoto City
People can be killed, even with our own hands,
Everywhere there are dead bodies,
There! Inhale
Sarin, Sarin,
Prepare Sarin! Prepare Sarin! Immediately poisonous gas weapons
will fill the place.
Spray! Spray! Sarin, the brave Sarin
(Kaplan and Marshall,
1996, pp. 212-213)
The original plan was to spray the poison gas over
the parliament and government buildings with a helicopter so as to paralyze
the Japanese apparatus of state. The attack on the underground system was
therefore regarded as only a preparatory exercise.
Interestingly, 60 years before the events in Tokyo
the Russian whom we have already portrayed in detail, Nicholas Roerich, had
linked the Shambhala myth to poison gases. He was
convinced that the wonderland was protected from invaders by a gaseous substance
that he called “sur”. Here is his story, told to
him on his travels through Central Asia in search of Shambhala by a Buddhist monk:
“A lama, leader of a caravan, covers his mouth and nose with a scarf. He is
asked why, since it is not cold. He reports: 'Caution is needed now. We are
approaching the forbidden zone of Shambhala. We shall soon notice 'sur',
the poisonous gas that protects the border of Shambhala. Konchok, our Tibetan, rides up to us and says in a
subdued voice: 'Not far from here, as the Dalai Lama was traveling to
Mongolia, all the people and animals in the caravan began to tremble and
the Dalai Lama explained that they should not be alarmed since they had
entered the forbidden zone of Shambhala and the vibrations of the air were strange to
them” (Schule der Lebensweisheit, 1990, p. 73). A plume of toxic gas
is also supposed to have streamed out of one of the famous Indian
crematoria, the meeting place of many Maha Siddhas.
It was assimilated by the submarine fire of the doomsday mare (Kalagni) also
mentioned in the Kalachakra Tantra
(White, 1996, p. 234).
Since Auschwitz , the
terror of gas is also associated with the fate of the Jews and it is not
surprising that Asahara as an admirer of Hitler
integrated an aggressive anti-Semitism into his system. In a special issue
of the AUM journal, Vajrayana Sacca,
entitled “Manual of Fear”, war is declared on the Jewish people: “On behalf
of the world’s 5.5 billion people, Vajrayana Sacca hereby declares war on the ‘world shadow
government’ that murders untold numbers of people and, while hiding behind
sonorous phrases and high-sounding principles, plans to brainwash and
control the rest. Japanese awake! The hidden enemy’s plot has long since
torn our lives to shreds” (Brackett, 1996, pp. .107-108).
The international contacts
AUM Shinrikyo was not a
purely Japanese phenomenon but rather an international one that spread
explosively through several countries, principally Russia. The starving nation,
hungry for any spiritual message after so many years of communist
dictatorship, became a paradise on earth for the guru from the Far East. In
1992 he stood in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow with 300 of his
followers, smiling and giving the victory salute. The pose had its effect.
Within just a few months AUM was experiencing an unbroken rise in
popularity across all of Russia. At its peak the number of members exceeded
30,000. Asahara enjoyed a surprisingly broad
public recognition. He held a sermon on “Helping The World to Happiness
with the Truth” before a packed crowd at the University of Moscow. He was
introduced to the nascent capitalist power elite as “Japan’s representative
Buddhist leader (Kaplan and Marshall, 1996, p. 70).
The guru even gained influence over leading
Russian politicians. He maintained an especially warm relationship with the
influential chairman of the Russian Security Council, Oleg Ivanovich Lobov, at this
stage one of Boris Yeltsin’s close friends. Lobov
is said to have done not a little to assist the spread of the sect. Asahara also knew how to cultivate contacts with
well-known scientists. Things were similarly successful on the propaganda
front: in 1992, the government station Radio Moscow broadcast his program “The
Absolute Truth of Holy Heaven” twice a day.
Of course, Asahara was
not tightfisted when it came to donations, a gesture which at that time in
Russia opened all doors. But that doesn’t explain the large influx of
enthusiasts who received nothing other than the pretty words of the “last
messiah”. One gains the impression that here an heir of Agvan
Dorjiev’s Shambhala vision- where the hidden kingdom was to be
sought in Russia — was at work.
AUM Shinrikyo was the
first religious sect from a highly industrialized country which with
deliberate terror tactics turned on humanist society as such. It came from
a religious milieu which espoused like no other the principle of
nonviolence — that of Buddhism. Until then, people had known only occult
groups like the 900 followers of Jim Jones in Jonestown, or the Sun Temple
in Switzerland and Canada or the Branch Davidians
from Waco, who had exterminated themselves but not uninvolved bystanders.
Because of this new quality of religious violence, the events in Tokyo caused
much dismay all around the world.
One might have thought that this would provoke
global research into and discussion of the causes of and background to the Asahara phenomenon. If so one would have been forced to
recognize the major influence Vajrayana had
had upon the system of the doomsday
guru. One would also have discovered the close connection between the Shambhala myth and the Kalachakra Tantra.
Although such links are overt, since Asahara
refers to them explicitly in his writings, both the Western and the Eastern
public have chosen to act blind and passively await the next catastrophe.
In the press of the world the event has already been forgotten repressed.
In Japan too, nobody wants to look behind the scenes, although Asahara’s trial is currently in progress: “In general
this contradiction between religion and violence is resolved here by simply
saying that AUM is not a religion at all” writes Martin Repp,
and continues, “One cannot make it so easy for oneself, then AUM Shinrikyo is in its own understanding and in its
practice [a] religion and has an essentially Buddhist creed” (Repp, 1996b, p. 190).
The two different brothers
In the light of our study one could rightly say
that the AUM sect was a consistent and true to the letter pupil of the
tantric teachings. The occult magic world view, kundalini yoga, sexual magic,
the linkage of power and seed retention, the grasping for the Siddhis, the
invocation of the gods, the hastening of the end of the universe, the
glorification of destruction, the great fascination with fantastic machines
of destruction, the military obsessions, the idea of redemption, hope for a
paradise, the claim to world domination, the Shambhala myth — all of these leitmotifs
that were so significant for Asahara are melodies
from the repertoire of Tibetan Buddhism, in particular that of the Kalachakra Tantra.
For Asahara, the tantric path to enlightenment
began in the Himalayas and was supposed to also end there. In 1988 he wrote
that “After the United States we will go to Europe. Finally we will
establish a center in the Himalayas, the origin of Buddhism and yoga. At
this point my mission will be at an end” (quoted by Repp,
1997, p. 27).
The story of Asahara
demonstrates clearly that Vajrayana and the Shambhala myth contain an extremely demonic potential that can be
activated at any moment. For the Asian side, especially for the Mongolians
(as we have seen), the aggressive warrior ethos nascent in the idea of Shambhala has
never been questioned and still continues to exist today in the wishful
thinking of many. There is a definite danger — as we shall show in the next
chapter — that it could develop into a pan-Asian vision of fascist-like
character.
Things are different with Tibetan Buddhism in the
West: there the lamas play only the pacifist card with much success. It is
almost the highest trump with which His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
wins the hearts of the people. He is thus revered all over the planet as
the “greatest prince of peace of our time”.
What is the Kundun’s position on Shoko Asahara now? The
Dalai Lama needs the support of religious groups in Japan since the majority of Buddhist schools in the country are friendly
to China and foster frequent changes with Chinese monasteries. It is said
of the very influential Soka Gakkai
sect that they are in constant contact with the Chinese leadership. The Agon Shun sect (to which Asahara
originally belonged) which was formerly friendly to the Dalai Lama has also
switched loyalties and is now oriented towards Beijing (Repp
1997, p. 95). Additionally, Asahara had
transferred large sums of money to the Tibetans in exile — official sources
put the total at US $1.7 million. All of these are factors in the political
calculations which might help explain the contact between the Dalai Lama
and the Japanese guru. If, however, we regard the meeting (with Asahara) from a tantric point of view, we are forced to
conclude that at one of their meetings the Dalai Lama, as the supreme master
of the Time Tantra, initiated the doomsday guru directly into the
secrets of his “political mysticism” (the Shambhala myth). The reports of people who have because of his magical
aura experienced an audience with the Kundun as a kind of
initiation are by now legion. Indeed, how could it be otherwise in the
light of an “omnipotent” and “omniscient deity” in the figure of a “simple
Tibetan monk”. Hence, in interpreting the encounter between the two gurus
in tantric terms, we have to assume it was an occult relation between a
“god” (the Dalai Lama) and a “demon” (Asahara).
Now, in what does the relationship between these
two unequal brothers consist? From a symbolic point of view the two share
the duties laid out in the tantric world view: the one plays the
compassionate Bodhisattva (the
Dalai Lama), the other the wrathful Heruka (Asahara); the one the
“mild” Avalokiteshvara
who “looks down from above” (the Dalai Lama), the other the god of death
and prince of hell, Yama
(Asahara). The anthropologist and psychoanalyst,
Robert A. Paul, has been able to demonstrate with convincing arguments how
profoundly this two-facedness of the “good” and the “evil” Buddha has shaped Tibetan culture. The two Buddha beings (the
light and the dark) are considered to be the counterposed
forms of appearance of the one and the same divine substance which has both
a light and a shadowy side. We may recall that Palgyi
Dorje wore a white/black coat when he carried out
the ritual murder of King Langdarma.
On this basis then, is Asahara
the outwardly projected shadow of the Dalai Lama? His two most important
predecessors also had such “shadow brothers” in whom cruelty and
criminality were concentrated. Under the Fifth Dalai Lama it was the
Mongol, Gushri Khan. This counterpart transformed
Tibet into a “sea of boiling blood”. The thirteenth hierarch was
accompanied by the bloodthirsty Kalmyk “Vengeful Lama”, Dambijantsan.
Is it really only a coincidence that the Fourteenth Dalai Lama appeared on
the world stage together with the Japanese doomsday guru, Shoko Asahara?
Footnotes:
[1] The names of the
other members of the shadow cabinet aside from Shoko Asahara
were Maha Kheema, Maitreya, Maha Angulimala, Milarepa, Sakula, Kisa Gotami, Punna.mantaniputta
Saitama 3rd, Machig Lapdrön, Manjushrimitra, Mahakasappa, Kankha-Revata, Marpa, Naropa, Uruvela-kasappa, Siha, Vangisha, Sukka, Jivaka, Ajita, Tissa, Dharmavajiri, Vajiratissa, Bhaddakapilani, Sanjaya (Bracket, 1996, p. 80).
Next
Chapter:
14. CHINA’S METAPHYSICAL RIVALERY WITH TIBET
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