Shambala, reincarnation and prophecies as geopolitical means

Chinggis Khan riding a white horse, (19-20th century), Badγar Coyiling süme
(Wudang zhao 五當召) , Inner Mongolia, Isabelle Charleux

Whatever the conception of rebirth[1] in Buddhism was/is, Tibetan Buddhism, for practical reasons, developed its own version, better called re-incarnation, referring to a new emanation of the same enlightened entity[2] or a new incarnation of a great being (mahātma) from the past. Only clerics with sufficient recognized spiritual authority can decide whether an individual is a reincarnation and whose reincarnation it would be. In theory that is, in practice, the recognition of a reincarnated lama and the bestowing of their title and patrimony is mostly a religious-political act. Like that of a king granting a title of nobility to a member of a family that served him well, or could serve him well in future.

In post-imperial Tibet, the elites were often abbots of important monasteries under the patronage of khans. The abbots would give allegiance to khans and princes, who in exchange would give land and subjects to the monasteries. Thus, Kublai Khan bestowed three Tibetan regions to ‘Phags pa (1235-1280)[3], chief of the three feudal lords of Tibet at that time[4]. In 1642, Güshi Khan handed over the sovereign power over Tibet to the 5th Dalai Lama. Alliances through marriage being impossible for religious abbots, alliances through reincarnation were another means to obtain similar ends.

The “father” of the Mongolian people, Chinggis Khan, and his descendants were worshipped until the fourteenth or fifteenth century in memorial temples. The cult of Chinggis Khan was used by Kublai Khan to strengthen his own authority.

“They adopted an ancestor cult modeled along Confucian lines, conferring on Chinggis the title of Taizu 太祖, the ‘supreme ancestor,’ and built an Ancestors’ Temple (Taimiao 太廟) in the capital in which to keep the tablets of the deceased emperors and empresses. The ceremonies in the Taimiao were performed every year by male and female shamans who invited the ancestor’s soul to take part in the sacrifice.” (Chinggis Khan Ancestor, Buddha or Shaman, Isabelle Charleux, 2009)

After the Ganden Phodrang had become interested in an alliance with Mongolian khans to protect their own interests in Tibet (16th-17th centuries), Chinggis Khan was Buddhicized and integrated as a protector of the Dharma (dharmapāla), and an emanation of the dharmapāla Vajrapāni, the warlord of the gods. “The First lCang skya qutuγtu and the Seventh Panchen Lama wrote prayers to him. The Seventh Panchen Lama also drew and consecrated portraits of Chinggis Khan (Charleux).” Many khans were considered emanations of Vajrapāni. For those with sacred outlook (tib. dag snang), or for reasons of propaganda, all warlords on their side are emanations of Vajrapāni, Māhakāla, Kālī, etc.

Altan Khan (1507–1582) was recognised as the reincarnation of Kublai Khan by Sonam Gyatso, and in exchange conferred to the latter the title of “Dalai Lama” (the 3rd). Altan Khan’s own great-grandson was recognised as Sonam Gyatso’s reincarnation and became the 4th Dalai Lama Yonten Gyatso (1589–1617). That’s how alliances through reincarnation and “recomposed clans” work. Alliances through reincarnation are geopolitical “marriages” between secular and religious power.

“On the 5th day of the 4th month in 1642, the [5th] Dalai Lama was led in state to the palace of Shigatse and seated on the throne of the deposed king. With this act he replaced the rival dominant school of the Karmapas. Güshi Khan then declared that he bestowed the supreme authority of Tibet on Dalai Lama, from Tachienlu in the east to the Ladakh border in the west.[19] The 5th Dalai Lama in his turn confirmed the position of Güshi Khan as the Dharma king (or chogyal) of Tibet.” (Güshi Khan)

Resistance by Karma-Kagyu and Nyingma monks in Tibet was met with violence. “Many Karma Kagyü monasteries in the country were forcibly converted to Gelugpa, while Nyingma monks who had performed Mongol-repelling exorcism were imprisoned.” Güshi Khan was celebrated as the reincarnation of Padmasambhava.

Isabelle Charleux[5] writes:

“The process of Buddhicization of indigenous gods generally has two consequences: first the original deities were generally ambivalent, benevolent and dangerous at the same time, and needed special rituals to be propitiated. Once Buddhicized and tamed, although they keep their wrathful appearance, they become protectors of the Dharma (but they need to renew periodically their oath). In theory one should not give blood offerings anymore to them. Second, they are given a generic Buddhist name or their original name is hidden behind honorific Buddhist titles. They are assimilated to deities of the pantheon or emanation of deities, and are depicted like other heroic protectors: they therefore loose some of their specific personality, and their influence is weakened as they are diluted into the all-encompassing Tibeto-Mongolian pantheon.”

The situation became more complex during the “Great Game”, “between the 19th-century British and Russian Empires over influence in Asia, primarily in Afghanistan, Persia, and later Tibet”. During the 18th century the Kālacakra Tantra and its associated legends about Shambala became popular. Was this Kālacakra boost due to the political situation? The 6th Panchen Lama, Lobsang Palden Yeshe, the author of the Sham ba la'i lam yig[6] ("Der Weg nach Shambhala"), built Thukor (Kālacakra) Monastery in 1762 and the 7th Dalai Lama (Namgyal Monastery) started giving Kālacakra initiations to large communities of ordained and lay practitioners in Tibet.

It is less clear to me how the Kālacakra/Shambala project evolved during the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, but by the end of the 19th century it seemed to have become more widespread, as had the idea of a “Pan-Mongolian State” (the Buryat Neisse-Gegeen/Neichi Gegeen as head of state) or an “Asiatic State” (Ungern-Sternberg) and diplomatic relations between Tibet and Tsarist Russia, in which the Russian-born Tibetan diplomat Agvan Dorjiev (1853-1938) played a key role.

From Red Shambala, Andrei Znemanski

In the winter of 1873 Dorjiev was a member of the Mongolian religious embassy that was to bring the Mongolian 8th Khalkha Jetsundampa (1869-1924), born and raised in Tibet, to Urga where he was enthroned as a monarch (Treasury of lives 2016, Ryosuke Kobayashi). Dorjiev studied in Urga in Mongolia, at Wutai Shan in China, and entered Gomang College in Tibet, where he obtained (1888) his Geshe Lharampa degree. He was appointed as one of the 13th Dalai Lama's assistant tutors (tib. mtshan zhabs) and established a close relationship with the young Dalai Lama (Treasury of lives).

“Between 1898 and 1901, Dorjiev was dispatched to Russia three times under the instruction of the Dalai Lama for negotiations with the Russian imperial court in order to gain political and military support for Tibet.”

This diplomatic approach caused serious concern to the Qing and the British.

Coronation of Nicholas II and empress Alexandra Fedorovna (picture)

Due to the propaganda of various Buddhist missionaries, The “White Tsar” Nicolas II was said to be an emanation of “White Tara”, and the Romanovs were said to directly descend from Sucandra, a legendary king of Shambhala. In order for an alliance to be possible the intended ally needed to have the required letters of credit. Just like Shambala, Russia was situated in Tibet’s North (tib. byang).

“Before the British army marched into Lhasa in July 1904, the Dalai Lama fled to Urga with Dorjiev to gain Russian assistance. The Dalai Lama ultimately wanted the Russian Government to provide refuge to him.”

But historical events put an end to that project. The Chinese Qing Empire had fallen in 1912. Mongolia declared its independence in 1913, the 8th Jetsundampa Khutuktu was enthroned as the Bogd Khan of Mongolia and Dorjiev continued to support the Russian Empire's war efforts and pursued his Buddhist activities in Buryatia together with Dashi Dorzho Itigelov (1852-1927), the Pandito Khambo Lama (or Bandido-Khambo Lama), “the supreme ecclesiastical Buryat leader”. This project to enthrone high lamas was interrupted by the demise of the Romanov Dynasty and the Russian revolution. Others like Ungern-Sternberg in the 1920s kept fighting to restore/establish monarchies and theocracies with the help of an “order of military Buddhists", whatever may have been his own inclinations, strengthened herein by the Panchen Lama’s Kālacakra prophecies, that he was said to always carry around with him. Shambala is a shapeshifting utopian Buddhist utopia that can materialize wherever (“de-ci, de-là”) required.

"People praying in a Buddhist temple in St. Petersburg" in 1915 (Wikimedia)

I recommend Dany Savelli’s article (in French), Shambhala de-ci, de-là : syncrétisme ou appropriation de la religion de l’Autre ? (Autour de l’expédition Roerich en Asie centrale) for those who want to read more about the diplomatic efforts of the polymath Nicolas Roerich (1874-1947), who seem to have had theocratic ambitions for himself[7]. Roerich explained that he first heard about the Shambala legend from "an extremely learned Buryat lama[8] " he met in 1909 during the construction of the Buddhist temple in St Petersburg. Roerich was a theosophist and probably already knew about Shambala through Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine (1888). Roerich was active in the spreading of the idea that Jesus went to India and Tibet, and that Tibet was the source of many religions. When Roerich actually discovers Tibet, he finds that it doesn’t agree at all with what was taught in theosophist circles in St Petersburg and starts publishing articles in US newspapers about “a corrupt theocracy in a state of serious degeneration”[9].

“Unlike the rich and the lamas, the poor have absolutely nothing to eat and have to eat carrion and the carcasses of yaks, benguins [sic] or Tibetan sheep. They eat raw flesh that they tear into pieces.[10]”

“The Tibetans are the world's great fundamentalists. [...] They are fanatics, followers of a perverted Buddhism” (“The Forbidden Country”, Evening Tribune, 26 mai 1928).

“At a time when Buddhism is becoming a fashionable cult among some of our 'bigoted' Americans, Professor Nicolas Roerich, who has just returned from Tibet, tells the world the sad story of the cruel superstition, dishonesty, ignorance and misery that are ravaging Tibet, the most deeply Buddhist country in the world. The Buddhism that delicately perfumed missionaries preach in cultural circles and the Buddhism that has had a sad influence on unfortunate Tibet for centuries are two very different things.[11]”

Dany Savelli shows that Roerich’s great deception with the “Tibetan mystification” didn’t put an end to his theosophical dreams about Shambala, that became a religion in itself.

“America is the land of Shambhala," say the lamas. America is the country of the future, and as all Shambhala tends towards teaching the future, they see us as much as an experience as a source of instruction [...].[12]”

Roerich declares Hoover is a god with his own temple in Northern Tibet… and that Tibetans want to learn everything about the industrial Ford…[13] He encourages US capitalist entrepreneurs to build factories and roads in Tibet. From archives, only revealed in 1965, it became evident that before trying it on in the United States, Roerich actually did the same in the Soviet Union between June the 13nd and July the 22nd in 1926. These were the days before Stalin. He invited the USSR to help create a new country called “Shambala”, “because of the compatibility[14] between Communist ideas and the Buddha’s teaching” and because of the past links between Russia and Tibet.

Jawaharlal Nehru and Nicolas Roerich,
India, unknown author 1942?

After this project failed and before turning to the USA, Roerich went on a mission to Tibet in 1927 to propose the Unification of Eastern and Western Buddhists under the Dalai Lama’s patronage, but due to climatic circumstances had to give up (Andreyev, 2003). Roerich published a book on his Shambala ideas in 1933.

Dany Savelli

What gave Roerich (at least in his own eyes) the authority to negotiate as the ambassador of Western Buddhists? Apparently, Tibetan monks in Darjeeling had recognized him as the reincarnation of the great Fifth Dalai Lama and Roerich believed himself to be one, on the (theosophist) authority of Mahatma El Morya[15]…

Burning of Darkness 1924, painting by Roerich
I imagine a Tibetan valley with mahatmas...

“Sometime by 1923, the Roeriches concluded the moment was right for them to plug into and use Shambhala and similar prophecies to build in Asia a powerful spiritual state based on reformed Buddhism: “For those who imagine Shambhala as a legendary invention, this indication is superstitious myth. But there are also others, fortified by more practical knowledge.” The Roeriches assumed that, if properly channeled, these prophecies might develop according to the scenario prescribed by the Great White Brotherhood. “ (Andrei Znamenski, Red Shambala, p.165)

Dany Savelli ends her article on the note of the action of Roerich and others regarding Tibetan Buddhism (and in particular its Kālacakra/Shambala content) as “dispossessing the Other of his or her religion”, “as an example of cultural colonialism”, but were Roerich and Ungern-Sternberg really in control of the Shambala myth, or didn’t it rather possess them? Who is controlling whom when reincarnation claims and titles are thrown out and the destinaries bite? Tsar Nicholas II didn’t need a title or a mythical utopian kingdom. For Roerich, Ungern-Sternberg and others it was a different situation. Did they ever manage to “culturally colonize” Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetans? Did they even come close? The destructive Chinese cultural revolution could be seen as proper cultural colonialism, but not the pathetic attempts of self appointed Western or Russian missionaries who could project all the Orientalism they were capable of, or simply using Tibetan myths for their own benefit or pipe dreams, without the slightest chance of succeeding. They lacked the authority to do so. The same goes for all the present-day “attempts” of “cultural colonialism”. If one really wants to see them as "colonialism", it’s giving them far too much credit.

“Cultural colonialism” seems to be especially problematic when it comes to religions. Things are much easier with music, literature, cuisine, ideas and ideologies where borrowing and adapting is no problem, at least until the invention of copyrights... It’s something else for religions that are far more political and have genuine power, because they’re part of the core identity of a people, or are perceived as such. One could say that early Christianity projected its Orientalism onto Judaism, “dispossessing the Other of his or her religion”, yet who would nowadays accuse Christianity of “cultural colonialism”, and did they succeed in their endeavor? The same goes for basically all cults on earth, that always evolved from other cults, or borrowed from them, “dispossessing” them. Nothing new under the sun.

Shambala as a Promised Land, but in the 19th-20-th century no longer the old Judeo-Christian Promised Land or the Christian “Jerusalem” of the British empire, but a Eurasian Buddhist version, that wishes to restore spiritual order after the wreckage caused by modern values. After India, Buddhism, the Tibetan valleys with its mahatmas, as the cradle of all religions, were thought to be able to help find back the lost meaning and to re-enchant the world.

We had Shambala as a Promised Land in Russia (Dorjiev), Europe and Eurasia (Ungern-Sternberg), the USA in the 1920s (Roerich), the USA in the 1970s (Trungpa), no doubt there will be others in the future.

***

[1] “Rebirth in Buddhism refers to the teaching that the actions of a sentient being lead to a new existence after death, in an endless cycle called saṃsāra. This cycle is considered to be dukkha, unsatisfactory and painful. The cycle stops only if mokṣa (liberation) is achieved by insight and the extinguishing of craving.” Rebirth (Buddhism)

[2] Not strictly a nirmāṇakāya (sprul sku), as the part of the triple Buddha Body (trikāya) that can manifest as anything needed to bring sentient beings to awakening.

[3] “Sonam Gyatso publicly announced that he was a reincarnation of the Tibetan Sakya monk Drogön Chögyal Phagpa (1235–1280) who converted Kublai Khan, while Altan Khan was a reincarnation of Kublai Khan (1215–1294), the famous ruler of the Mongol Empire and Emperor of China, and that they had come together again to cooperate in propagating the Buddhist religion.” Wikipedia, Laird, Thomas (2006). The Story of Tibet: Conversations with the Dalai Lama, p. 146. Grove Press, N.Y. ISBN 978-0-8021-1827-1.

[4] The merging of Religious and Secular Rule in Tibet, Professor Dungdkar blo-bzang phrin-las of the Central Institute for Nationalities in Beijing and Tibet University in Lhasa, p. 40-46

[5] In Chinggis Khan: Ancestor, Buddha or Shaman?

[6] Or byang sham ba la'i lam yig. According to The Blue Annals (Book 10 - The Kālacakra), this text was based on Manglungpa the Great’s (born in 1239) Man lungs pa'í lam yig.

[7] Nicholas Roerich: The Artist Who Would Be King, John McCannon

[8] Probably the Pandito Khambo Lama or Neichi Gegeen?

[9] “Perverted Buddhism is spreading in Central Asia, Roerich finds; Tibetan worships demons and fire”, Commercial Tribune (Cincinnati), August, 22nd 1928.

[10] Automatic translation from the French “U. S. Expedition to Tibet. Roerich’s story… “, The Statesman, 12 juin 1928.

[11] Automatic translation from the French Queen’s World [?] (Saint Louis), nov. 1928

[12] Automatic translation from the French “3 or 4 mates for each wife rule in Tibet”, The Washington Herald, June 23rd 1929.

[13] “Natives in remote Asia regard Hoover as legendary giant who feed all peoples" , The New York Times, 9 mai 1929 ; "Hoover a god in Tibet returning artist avers", The New York Evening Post, June 6th 1929 ; "Hoover is a god to Thibetans", The World Magazine, June 7th 1929“

[14] “To the Narkom Roerich further disclosed his (or rather the Mahatmas') scheme for the great unification of the Buddhist nations in Asia. This consisted of 9 points:

1) The Buddha's Doctrine presents a revolutionary movement; 2) Maitreya is the symbol of communism; 3) Millions of Asian Buddhists can be drawn in the world movement in support of the ideals of Community; 4) The basic law, or Gautama's simple teachings, will easily penetrate into the popular masses; 5) Europe will be shattered by the union of Buddhism and Communism; 6) The Mongols, Tibetans and Kalmyks agree about the dates when the Maitryea prophesies will be fulfilled and are prepared to apply these to the present evolution; 7) The Tashi Lama's departure from Tibet provides an unprecedented occasion for a [revolutionary] action in the East; 8) Buddhism explains the negation of God as a natural phenomenon; 9) Action should be urgently taken, jointly with the Soviet Government, taking fully into account the local conditions and the Asian prophecies.” Nicholas Roerich and his "Western Buddhist Embassy", Alexandre Andreyev, Brill, (2003)

[15] Meyer and Brysac, Tournament of Shadows..., pp. 469–470. In the same book:
“In the final count it is clear that Roerich was right. Tibet discouraged both the Russians (by refusing to have any direct relations with the USSR), the Americans (by mishandling the Roerich Expedition that claimed, even if incorrectly, to represent the United States), and even its closest neighbors the Indians (by raising territorial claims against India already in its independence year 1947). The Tibetan Government blindly believed the likes of Colonel Bailey, which left it completely alone on its Roof of the World. When China invaded, Britain turned its back on her former ally, India was too weak to do anything (having just been partitioned and burdened with two Pakistans at its borders), and both the US and the USSR were not interested in helping the country that refused to have any direct dealings with them. Great Britain and the US have blocked Tibet’s last-minute desperate attempt at joining the United Nations Organization. Roerich’s words came true, with a vengeance.”