Did the 1st named Dalai Lama order the destruction of those Mongolians practicing Shamanism?
excerpt:
...Those of us who are familiar with the concept of the tulku will find Kingsley’s scholarly approach somewhat shocking, since he doesn’t pull any punches. He takes us back to June 19th, 1578, when the Mongol ruler Altan Khan met with the Tibetan Buddhist monk, Sonam Gyatso. Each recognized the other as a tulku. Altan Khan was recognized “as the reincarnation of Kublai Khan, belonging in an unbroken line extending back to Genghis Khan himself (p. 59).” Sonam Gyatso was recognized by Altan Khan as a tulku and “became the first Tibetan to receive the Mongolian title “Dalai Lama.” (p. 59)” These men exchanged special favors, but the one requested by the first Dalai Lama was something the twenty-first century people who know the work of the 14th incarnation of this same soul would find hard to believe. This is what Kingsley says.
The new Dalai Lama asked one particular favor of the Khan. This was that he wipe out every single trace of shamanism among his Mongol people, smash and burn their sacred instruments, exterminate their practices, silence their songs, and annihilate any shaman stupid enough to resist.
Soon, with the assistance of Mongol troops sometimes lining the streets to keep order in Lhasa, the Dalai Lamas had become rulers over the whole country. . . And over the centuries, across Mongolia as well as Tibet, orders for extending the persecution and extermination of shamans were not just issued with the new rulers’ silent approval.
And now in these very different times the sincerest messages of kindness and nonviolence, of spiritual oneness and global peace, are almost enough to let it all fall away: to erase any remaining memories of those forced conversions, mass murders, communities and traditions destroyed, of people’s land being seized from them together with anything else they could name until they no longer remembered who or what they were, and of the silenced songs that if they ever happen to be heard still have the power to take your heart away. (pp. 59 & 60)
http://hermiades.wordpress.com/2012/02/04/shamans-tulkus-and-ancient-greek-philosophers/
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