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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
I – 12. Epilogue to part I
© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
12. EPILOGUE TO PART I
We have
shown that Buddhism has from the very beginning
considered the feminine principle to be a force
which acts in opposition to its redemptive concepts.
All types of women, from the mother to the lover,
the wife, the hetaera, even the Buddhist nun,
are seen to be more or less obstructions along
the path to enlightenment. This negative evaluation
of the feminine does not and never did have —
as is often currently claimed — a social origin,
but must rather be considered as a dogmatic and
fundamental doctrine of this religion. It is an
unavoidable consequence of the opening sentence
of the Four Noble Truths, which states
that all life is, per se, suffering. From this
we can conclude that each and every birth brings
only misery, sickness, and death, or conversely,
that only the cessation of reincarnation leads
to liberation. The woman, as the place of conception
and childbearing, opens the gateway to incarnation,
and is thus considered to be the greatest adversary
to the spiritual development of the man and of
humanity in total.
This implies
that the deactivation, the sacrifice, and the
destruction of the feminine principle is a central
concern of Buddhism. The “female sacrifice” is
already played out in one of the first legends
from the life of Buddha, the early death of Buddha's
mother Maya. Even her name evokes
the Indian goddess of the feminine world of illusion;
the death of Maya
(illusion) simultaneously signifies the appearance
of the absolute truth (Buddha), since Maya represents only relative
truth.
We have
shown how Shakyamuni's fundamentally misogynist
attitude was set forth in the ensuing phases of
Buddhism — in the meditative dismemberment of
the female during a spiritual exercise in Hinayana; in the attempt to
change the sex of the woman so that she can gain
entry to the higher spiritual spheres as a male
in Mahayana.
In Vajrayana the negative attitude
towards the feminine tips over into an apparently
positive valuation. Women, sexuality, and the
erotic receive a previously unknown elevation
in the tantric texts, a deification in fact. We
have nonetheless been able to demonstrate that
this reversal of the image of the woman is for
the yogi merely a means to an end — to steal the
feminine energy (gynergy) concentrated within
her as a goddess. We have termed the sexual magic
rituals through which this thieving transfer of
energy is conducted the “tantric female sacrifice”,
intended in its broadest sense and irrespective
of whether the theft really or merely symbolically
takes place, since the distinction between reality
and the world of symbols is in the final instance
irrelevant for a Tantric. All that is real is
symbolic, and every symbol is real!
The goal
of the female sacrifice and the diversion of gynergy is the production
of a superhuman androgynous being, which combines
within itself both forces, the masculine and the
feminine. Buddhist Tantrics consider such a combination
of sexual energies within a single individual
to be an expression of supreme power. He as a
man has become a bearer of the maha
mudra, the vessel of an “inner woman”. In
the light of the material we have researched and
reported, we must view our opening hypothesis,
repeated here, as confirmed:
The mystery of Tantric Buddhism
consists in the sacrifice of the feminine principle
and the manipulation of erotic
love in order to obtain universal androcentric
power
Since,
from the viewpoint of a tantric master, the highest
(androcentric power) can only be achieved via
the ritual transformation of the lowest (the real
woman), he also applies this miracle of transubstantiation
to other domains. Thus he employs all manner of
repulsive, base substances in his rituals, and
commits criminal deeds up to and including murder,
in order to achieve, via the “law of inversion”,
the exact opposite: joy, power, and beauty. We
have, however, indicated with some force how this
“familiarity with the demonic” can become a matter
of course. This brings with it the danger that
the Tantric is no longer able to overcome the
negativity of his actions. The consequence is
a fundamentally aggressive and morbid attitude,
which — as we will show — forms one of the characteristics
of the entire Tibetan culture.
As the
Kalachakra Tantra includes
within itself the core ideas and the methods of
all other tantras, and as it represents the central
ritual of the Dalai Lama, we concentrated upon
an analysis of this text and offered a detailed
description of the various public and secret initiations.
We were able to demonstrate how the internal processes
within the energy body of the yogi are aligned
with external ritual procedures, and how the “female
sacrifice” takes place in both spheres — externally
through the “extermination” of the real woman
(karma mudra) and internally
through the extermination of the candali (“fire woman”).
The Kalachakra Tantra, too, has
as its goal the “alchemical” creation of a cosmic
androgyne, who is supposed to exercise total control
over time, the planets, and the universe. This
androgynous universal ruler (dominus mundi) is the ADI
BUDDHA. Only after he can align his sexual magic
rites and his inner physiological processes with
the laws of the heavens and earth can a practicing
yogi become ADI BUDDHA. He then sets sun, moon,
and stars in motion with his breath, and by the
same means steers the evolution of the human race.
His mystic body and the cosmic body of the ADI
BUDDHA form a unit, and thus his bodily politics
(the motions of the internal energy flows) affects
and effects world politics in every sense.
On the
astral plane, the yogi unleashes a gigantic war
among the stars before he becomes ADI BUDDHA,
which likewise aims to sacrifice the gender polarity
(represented by the sun and moon). In the final
act of this apocalyptic performance, the tantric
master burns up the cosmos in a murderous firestorm
so as to allow a new world to emerge from the
ashes of the old, a world which is totally subject
to his imagination and will. [1]
Only than does the ADI BUDDHA's (or yogi's) dominion
encompass the entire universe, in the form of
a mandala.
In his
political role (as King of the World) the ADI
BUDDHA is a Chakravartin, a cosmic wheel
turner who governs the cosmos, conceived of as
a wheel. This vision of power is linked by the
Shambhala myth in the Kalachakra Tantra to a political
utopia,
one which is aggressive and warlike, despotic
and totalitarian. This Buddhocratic world kingdom
is controlled by an omnipotent priest-king (the
Chakravartin), a lord of evolution,
a further emanation of the ADI BUDDHA.
Admittedly, there
are many literary attempts to interpret the entire
construction of the Kalachakra
Tantra as the symbolic playing out of psychic/spiritual
processes which ought to be accessible to any
person who sets out upon the Vajrayana path. But there
is a strong suspicion — and in our historical
section we table conclusive evidence for this
— that the ideas and the goals of the Time Tantra
are meant literally, i.e., that we are concerned
with a real
dominus mundi (world ruler), with the establishment
of a real Buddhocracy, the real Buddhization of our planet
— even (as the Shambhala myth prophesies)
through military force.
But perhaps
the Shambhala
vision is even more concrete, then the concept
of an ADI BUDDHA and a Chakravartin
can only refer to one present-day individual,
who has for years and uncontestedly fulfilled
all the esoteric conditions of the Kalachakra Tantra. This individual
is His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama.
The Time
Tantra would then form the ideological and dogmatic
basis of a strategy for the spiritual conquest
of our planet by the Tibetan god-king. Thus, if
we wish to understand his political decisions
in their full depth, we must start with the magic
metapolitics of the Kalachakra
Tantra, since both levels (the ritual/magical,
and the real/political) are — as we will demonstrate
through many examples — intimately interwoven
in the ancient world of Lamaism. The autocratic
religious system of the god-king integrates all
the social domains and political powers which
have been separated in our Western culture at
least since the North American and French Revolutions.
The Dalai Lama is — according to the doctrine
— Emperor and Pope, state and god in one person,
he is the living sacred center of a “Buddhocracy”.
He meets
all the criteria we have brought to light for
a tantric world ruler (Chakravartin)
or an ADI BUDDHA. But, since he does not really
govern our planets, his rituals and political
powerplay decisions, his negotiations and his
statements must all be seen as tactical and strategic
steps towards the eventual achievement of the
final global goal (of world domination). [2]
This ambitious enterprise will in no way be interrupted
by the death of the god-king, since he can — reincarnated
— build upon the acts of his predecessor (which
he also was) and continue his work.
His Holiness
would never publicly admit that he aspired to
the global role of a Chakravartin
through the Kalachakra
initiations. Yet numerous symbolic events which
have accompanied his ceremonial life since childhood
are harbingers of his unrestricted claim to “world
domination”. In 1940, as a five year-old, he was
led with much ostentation into the Potala, the “Palace of the
Gods”, and seated upon the richly symbolic “Lion
Throne”. This enthronement already demonstrated
his kingship of the world and expressed his right
to worldly power, as the “Lion Throne”, in contrast
to the Seat of the Lotus, is a symbol of the imperium (secular power) and
not the sacerdotium
(spiritual power). On 17 November 1950, the god-king
was ceremoniously handed the “Golden Wheel”, which
identified him as the “universal wheel turner”
(Chakravartin).
But it
is less these insignia of power which make him
(who has lost his entire land) a potential planetary
sovereign in the eyes of his Western believers,
[3] than the fact that a long dormant image of
desire has resurfaced in the imaginations of Europeans
and Americans. “Which people, which nation, which
culture”, Claude B. Levenson enthuses about the
Dalai Lama, for example, “has not, within its
collective consciousness, dreamed of a perfect
monarch, who, imbued with a sense of justice and
equanimity, is entrusted to watch over the well-ordered
course of a harmonic and in every sense just society?
The image of the Great King also nestles somewhere
in the depths of the human spirit ... there is
something of Judgment Day and the Resurrection
in these manifold interpretations of sincere belief”
(Levenson 1990, p.303).
Such a
global dominion, that is, total power over the
earth, contradicts the apparent total political
impotence of the Dalai Lama which is enhanced
by his constantly repeated statements of self-denial
("I am just a simple monk”). But let us not forget
the tantric play upon paradox and the “law of
inversion”. This secular powerlessness is precisely
the precondition for the miracle which reveals
how the lowly, the empty, and the weak give rise
to the exalted, the abundant, and the strong.
The “simple monk from Tibet” can — if the doctrines
of his tantric texts are correct — count on the
dizzying rotation which will one day hurl him
high from the depths of impotence to become the
most powerful ruler of the universe. Absolute
modesty and absolute power are for him as Tantric
two sides of the same coin.
The Dalai
Lama never appears in the public light as a Tantric,
but always as a Mahayana
Bodhisattva, who thinks only upon the suffering
of all living beings, and regards it with deepest
compassion. Tantrism, upon which Tibetan Buddhism
in its entirety is essentially based, thus belongs
to the shadow side of the Kundun ("living Buddha”).
His sexual magic rites shun the light just as
much as the claims for global domination they
intend. This is especially true of the Kalachakra Tantra.
We mentioned
already in the introduction that a person can
deny, suppress, or outwardly project his shadow.
Insofar as he knowingly veils the procedures which
take place in the highest initiation of the Time
Tantra, the Dalai Lama denies his tantric shadow;
in as far as he is probably unclear about the
catastrophic consequences of the Shambhala myth
(as we will demonstrate in the case of Shoko Asahara),
he suppresses his tantric shadow;
insofar as he transfers everything negative, which
according to the “law of inversion” represents
the starting substance (prima materia) for spiritual
transformation anyway, to the Chinese, he projects his tantric shadow
onto others.
The aggression
and morbidity of the tantra, the sexual excesses,
the “female sacrifice”, the “vampirism” of energy,
the omnipotent power claims, the global destructive
frenzy — all of these are systematically disguised
by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and can, even when
the majority of the tantric texts are publicly
available, be still further disguised — on the
one hand by the argument that it is all only a
matter of symbolic events that would never be
conducted in reality, and, on the other hand,
by the tantras’ claim that any negative actions
have transformed themselves into positive ones
by the end of the ritual.
As far
as the first argument is concerned, we have been
able to present numerous cases where the tantric
texts have been interpreted thoroughly literally.
Further, we have shown that this argument collapses
upon itself, since no distinction between symbol
and reality may be drawn by a Vajrayana Buddhist, as opposed
to a contemporary “westerner”.
The second
argument, that the tantras transform the negative
into the positive (i.e., would call upon the devil
to drive the devil out), needs to be able to stand
up to empirical testing. The most telling body
of evidence for the tantric theory, in particular
for the philosophy and vision of the Kalachakra Tantra, is history itself.
Over many hundreds of years thousands of tantric
rituals have been performed in Tibet; for centuries
people have tried to influence the history of
the country through tantric rituals. But what,
up to now, has this ritual politics achieved for
the Tibetans and for humanity, and what is it
aiming to achieve? We will consider the use of
Buddhist Tantrism as a political method for better
understanding the history of Tibet and influencing
the country's destiny in the following, second
part of our book. Here, our topic will be the
influence of Vajrayana
upon the Buddhist state, the economy, the military,
upon foreign affairs and world politics.
Footnotes:
[2] For
this reason we must regard statements on practical
politics by the Dalai Lama, which contradict the
ideas of the Time Tantra (like, for instance his
professions of belief in western democracy), as
a mere tactic or trick (upaya)
in order to mislead those around him as to his
true intentions (the establishment of a worldwide
Buddhocracy).
[3] For
Tibetans and Mongolians who believe in Lamaism,
the conception of the Dalai Lama as the Chakravartin is a matter of
course.
Next Chapter:
PART II – INTRODUCTION – POLITICS AS RITUAL
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