Many of us tend to see Buddhism in a somewhat sanctimonious light; I've heard people say "there's never been a Buddhist holy war!", which isn't really accurate.
Anyway, here's an example of how anything, even the Dhamma, can be corrupted... This is food for thought, not an assertion of position by me.
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(excerpt from: Fascist Occultism and its Close Relationship to Buddhist Tantrism (www.american-buddha.com/fascis...lt.htm)
"Visionary fascism was, and indeed still is, exceptionally deeply fascinated by the Buddhocratic form of state. In the late thirties (as the various fascist systems bloomed in Europe and the whole world) Spencer Chapman, a traveler in Tibet, wrote that even in the days of the dictators one can only be amazed at what uncontested power the Dalai Lama possesses” (Chapman, 1940, p. 192). The idea of kingship of the world, the uniting of spiritual and secular power in a single person, the ideology of war in the Shambhala myth, the uncompromisingly androcentric orientation, the tantric vision of the feminine, the whole occult ambience and much more besides were specifically adopted by several fascist ideologists and welded together into an aggressive myth. As we shall soon see, entire fascist systems are based upon the adoption of Tibetan/tantric doctrines.
The Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s national socialist friends:
As depressing as it may be for the Nobel peace prize winner’s followers, there has been continuous contact between the Dalai Lama and the far right wing and former national socialists (Nazis). His close friendship with his German mentor, Heinrich Harrer has become the most well-known of these. It caused a small scandal in 1997-1998 when, after years of research, the Austrian journalist, Gerald Lehner, succeeded in making public Harrer’s “brown-shirt” (i.e., German fascist) past, which the latter had been able to keep secret for many years. Harrer is not just anybody. He is one of the best-known international authors and has sold over four million books in 57 languages (mostly about Tibet and the Fourteenth Dalai Lama).
The Austrian mountain climber and competition skier joined the SS on April 1, 1938 and in the same year received instructions to climb Nanga Parbat in the Himalayas after an official meeting with Adolf Hitler. Heinrich Himmler, himself most interested in occult phenomena is said by Harrer to have offered him a Tibet expedition. In 1942, the Reichsführer of the SS (Himmler) ordered the creation of the Sven Hedin Institut für Innerasienforschung [Sven Hedin Institute for Central Asian Research]. This educational establishment had combined esoteric, scientific, and racial studies goals. It was completely in this vein that Himmler was interested in occult doctrines from “mysterious Tibet”, and assumed — probably under the influence of theosophical ideas — that a “race with Nordic blood” existed there, oppressed by the English and Chinese, and waiting for their liberation by the Germans. Himmler’s “advisor”, reports the German magazine Spiegel, “… and the scientist Ernst Schäfer believed that Tibet was the cradle of humanity, the refuge of an ‘Aryan root race’, where a priestly caste had created a mysterious kingdom of Shambhala — decorated with the Buddhist symbol of the wheel of teaching, a swastika. In 1934 Schäfer set out on the first of two expeditions financed by the SS to track down remnants of the ‘Nordic intellectual’ nobility” (Spiegel, 16/1998, p. 111).
Dr. Ernst Schäfer, a specialist on Tibet and an ornithologist, was one of Himmler’s personal staff and in 1943 took over the scientific leadership of the notorious project, “Ahnenerbe” (‘ancestral inheritance’), primarily devoted to racial studies. His third research trip to the Himalayas was officially described as the “SS Schäfer Expedition” and was considered a huge success (Kater 1997, p. 80). Upon his return in August 1939, the scientist was presented with the SS skull ring and dagger of honor in recognition. Subsequently, the Reichsführer of the black corps (Himmler) had grand plans for his protégé: Schäfer was supposed to return to Tibet and “stir up the Tibetan army against the British/Indian troops” with a shock troop of 30 men (Kater, 1997, p. 212). The undertaking was, however, called off at Hitler’s direct order. In the years to follow, Schäfer instead built up the Sven Hedin Institute for Central Asian Research with great success, making it the largest division within the Ahnenerbe project.
But let us return to Heinrich Harrer. War broke out while he was still in India and the young German was interned by the British. It was not until 1944 that he was able to flee to Tibet with a comrade. Coincidence or fate led to his acting as the young Dalai Lama’s personal tutor until the early 50s, and teaching him about all the “wonders” of western civilization and introducing him to the English language as well. It is very likely that his lessons were tainted by the contemporary zeitgeist which had swept through Hitler’s Germany, and not by the British attitudes of the envoy Hugh Richardson, also present in Lhasa. This led in fact to some problems at the court of the young god-king and the English were not happy about his contact to Harrer. But there are nevertheless no grounds for describing the lessons the former SS member gave his “divine” pupil as fascist, particularly since they were primarily given after the end of the World War II. In 1952 His Holiness’s German “teacher “ returned to Europe.
The adaptation to film of Harrer’s autobiographic bestseller, Seven Years in Tibet, triggered an international protest. Since the famous traveler through Tibet had told director Jean Jacques Annaud nothing about his “brown-shirt” past, and this only became public knowledge after the film had been finished, Annaud felt pressured to introduce “corrections”. A remorseful Austrian was now shown, who begins his mountain-climbing career as a supporter of a regime accused of genocide and then, under the influence of the young Kundun and Tibetan Buddhism, reforms to become a “campaigner for human rights”. In the film, he says of the brutal Chinese: “Terrible — I dare not think about how I myself was once so intolerant “ (Stern 41/97, p. 24).
Reinhold Messner, the famous mountain climber, found such an admission of guilt from Hollywood’s dream factory difficult to understand. He spoke up, confirming that he had long known about Harrer’s political opinions. This man, he said had up until the present day still not learned anything, he still believed in the national socialist alpinist ideals. In contrast, the Dalai Lama’s brother, Gyalo Thondup, defended the former SS member with the tasteless argument that what the Chinese had done to the Tibetans was worse and more cruel than what the Nazis had done to the Jews.
It is a fact that Harrer — in his own account -- first turned against the Chinese invaders at the end of the fifties, after he had already left Tibet. There is not the slightest trace of a deep catharsis as depicted in Annaud’s film to be found in the German’s books. This was purely an invention of the director to avoid losing face before a world audience.
The journalist Gerhard Lehner also pursued a second lead: on September 13, 1994 eight veterans who had visited and reported from Tibet before 1950 met with the Dalai Lama in London. In a photo taken to record the occasion a second major SS figure can be seen beside Heinrich Harrer and directly behind the Kundun, Dr. Bruno Beger. Beger was the actual “expert” who pushed forward the racial studies research by Himmler’s Ahnenerbe project (Kater, 1997, p. 208). He too, like the Tibetan explorer Ernst Schäfer, was a member of Himmler’s personal staff. In 1939 he went to the Himalayas as a member of the SS Expedition. There he measured the skulls of more than 400 Tibetans in order to investigate a possible relationship between the Tibetan and Aryan ‘races’. In 1943, Beger was sent to Auschwitz where he took the measurements of 150 mainly Jewish prisoners. These were later killed and added to a collection of skeletons. In 1971 Beger appeared in a German court and was sentenced to three years imprisonment on probation for his national socialist crimes.
The racialist, who was the last survivor of the “SS Schäfer Expedition” (dying in 1998), met His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama at least five times (in 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, and 1994). The meetings were all very hearty affairs. The former SS member dedicated a small brochure entitled “My Encounters with the Ocean of Knowledge” to the first three (Beger, 1986).
The Dalai Lama (worshipped by his followers as the “Ocean of Wisdom” because of his “omniscience”) claims not to have been informed about his Nazi friends’ past. One may well believe this, yet he has not distanced himself from them since their exposure. His statements about Adolf Hitler and the “final solution to the question of the Jews” also seem strange. Just like his brother, Gyalo Thondup, he sees the dictator as a more noble figure than the Chinese occupiers of Tibet: “In 1959, in Lhasa, the Chinese shot Tibetan families from aeroplanes with machine guns. Systematic destruction in the name of liberation against the tyranny of the Dalai Lama! Hu, Hu, Hu! In Hitler's case he was more honest. In concentration camps he made it clear he intended to exterminate the Jews. With the Chinese they called us their brothers! Big brother bullying little brother! Hu, Hu, Hu! It’s less honest, I think.” (Daily Telegraph, August 15, 1998)..."
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