The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part I – 2. Tantric Buddhism

© Victor & Victoria Trimondi

2. TANTRIC BUDDHISM

The fourth and final phase of Buddhism entered the world stage in the third century C.E. at the earliest. It is known as Tantrayana, Vajrayana or Mantrayana: the “Tantra Vehicle”, the “Diamond Path” or the “Way of the Magic Formulas”. The teachings of Vajrayana are recorded in the holy writings, known as tantras. These are secret occult doctrines, which — according to legend — had already been composed by Buddha Shakyamuni, but the time was not deemed ripe for them to be revealed to the believers until a thousand years after his death.

It is true that Vajrayana basically adheres to the ideas of Mahayana Buddhism, in particular the doctrine of the emptiness of all appearances and the precept of compassion for all suffering beings, but the tantric temporarily countermands the high moral demands of the “Great Vehicle” with a radical “amoral” behavioral inversion. To achieve enlightenment in this lifetime he seizes upon methods which invert the classic Buddhist values into their direct opposites.

Tantrism designates itself the highest level of the entire edifice of Buddhist teachings and establishes a hierarchical relation to both previous phases of Buddhism, whereby the lowest level is occupied by Hinayana and the middle level by Mahayana. The holy men of the various schools are ranked accordingly. At the base rules the Arhat, then comes the Bodhisattva, and all are reigned over by the Maha Siddha, the tantric Grand Master. All three stages of Buddhism currently exist alongside one another as autonomous religious systems.

In the eighth century C.E., with the support of the Tibetan dynasty of the time, Indian monks introduced Vajrayana into Tibet, and since then it has defined the religion of the “Land of Snows”. Although many elements of the indigenous culture were integrated into the religious milieu of Tantric Buddhism, this was never the case with the basic texts. All of these originated in India. They can be found, together with commentaries upon them, in two canonical collections, the Kanjur (a thirteenth-century translation of the words of Buddha) and the Tanjur (a translation of the doctrinal texts from the fourteenth century). Ritual writings first recorded in Tibet are not considered part of the official canon. (This, however, does not mean that they were not put to practical use.)

The explosion of sexuality: Vajrayana Buddhism

All tantras are structurally similar; they all include the transformation of erotic love into spiritual and worldly power. [1] The essence of the entire doctrine is, however, encapsulated in the so-called Kalachakra Tantra, or “Time Tantra”, the analysis of which is our central objective. It differs from the remaining tantra teachings in both its power-political intentions and its eschatological visions. It is — we would like to hypothesize in advance — the instrument of a complicated metapolitics which attempts to influence world events via the use of symbols and rites rather than the tools of realpolitik. The “Time Tantra” is the particular secret doctrine which primarily determines the ritual existence of the living Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and the “god-king’s” spiritual world politics can be understood through a knowledge of it alone.

The Kalachakra Tantra marks the close of the creative phase of Vajrayana’s history in the tenth century. No further fundamental tantra texts have been conceived since, whilst countless commentaries upon the existing texts have been written, up until the present day. We must thus regard the “Time Tantra” as the culmination of and finale to Buddhist Tantrism. The other tantric texts which we cite in this study (especially the Guhyasamaya Tantra, the Hevajra Tantra and the Candamaharosana Tantra), are primarily drawn upon in order to decipher the Kalachakra Tantra.

At first glance the sexual roles seem to have changed completely in Tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana). The contempt for the world of the senses and degradation of women in Hinayana, the asexuality and compassion for women in Mahayana, appear to have been turned into their opposites here. It all but amounts to an explosion of sexuality, and the idea that sexual love harbors the secret of the universe becomes a spectacular dogma. The erotic encounter between man and woman is granted a mystical aura, an authority and power completely denied it in the preceding Buddhist eras.

With neither timidity nor dread Buddhist monks now speak about “venerating women”, “praising women”, or “service to the female partner”. In Vajrayana, every female being experiences exaltation rather than humiliation; instead of contempt she enjoys, at first glance, respect and high esteem. In the Candamaharosana Tantra the glorification of the feminine knows no bounds: “Women are heaven; women are Dharma; ... women are Buddha; women are the sangha; women are the perfection of wisdom”(George, 1974, p. 82).

The spectrum of erotic relations between the sexes ranges from the most sublime professions of courtly love to the coarsest pornography. Starting from the highest rung of this ladder, the monks worship the feminine as “perfected wisdom” (prajnaparamita), “wisdom consort” (prajna), or “woman of knowledge” (vidya). This spiritualization of the woman corresponds, with some variation, to the Christian cults of Mary and Sophia. Just as Christ revered the “Mother of God”, the Tantric Buddhist bows down before the woman as the “Mother of all Buddhas”, the “Mother of the Universe”, the “Genetrix”, the “Sister”, and as the “Female Teacher”(Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, pp. 62, 60, 76).

As far as sensual relationships with women are concerned, these are divided into four categories: “laughing, regarding, embracing, and union”. These four types of erotic communication form the pattern for a corresponding classification of tantric exercises. The texts of the Kriya Tantra address the category of laughter, those of the Carya Tantra that of the look, the Yoga Tantra considers the embrace, and in the writings of the Anuttara Tantra (the Highest Tantra) sexual union is addressed. These practices stand in a hierarchical relation to one another, with laughter at the lowest level and the tantric act of love at the highest.

In Vajrayana the latter becomes a religious concern of the highest order, the sine qua non of enlightenment. Although homosexuality was not uncommon in Buddhist monasteries and was occasionally even regarded as a virtue, the “great bliss of liberation” was fundamentally conceived of as the union of man and woman and accordingly portrayed in cultic images.

However, both tantric partners encounter one another not as two natural people, but rather as two deities. “The man (sees) the woman as a goddess, the woman (sees) the man as a god. By joining the diamond scepter [phallus] and lotus [vagina], they should make offerings to each other” we read in a quote from a tantra (Shaw, 1994, p. 153). The sexual relationship is fundamentally ritualized: every look, every caress, every form of contact is given a symbolic meaning. But even the woman’s age, her appearance, and the shape of her sexual organs play a significant role in the sexual ceremony.

The tantras describe erotic performances without the slightest timidity or shame. Technical instructions in the dry style of sex manuals can be found in them, but also ecstatic prayers and poems in which the tantric master celebrates the erotic love of man and woman. Sometimes this tantric literature displays an innocent joie de vivre. The instructions which the tantric Anangavajra offers for the performance of sacred love practices are direct and poetic: “Soon after he has embraced his partner and introduced his member into her vulva, he drinks from her lips which are dripping with milk, brings her to coo tenderly, enjoys rich pleasure and lets her thighs tremble.” (Bharati, 1977, p. 172)

In Vajrayana sexuality is the event upon which all is based. Here, the encounter between the two sexes is worked up to the pitch of a true obsession, not — as we shall see — for its own sake, but rather in order to achieve something else, something higher in the tantric scheme of things. In a manner of speaking, sex is considered to be the prima materia, the raw primal substance with which the sex partners experiment, in order to distill “pure spirit” from it, just as high-grade alcohol can be extracted from fermented grape must. For this reason the tantric master is convinced that sexuality harbors not just the secrets of humanity, but also furnishes the medium upon which gods may be grown. Here he finds the great life force, albeit in untamed and unbridled form.

It is thus impossible to avoid the impression that the “hotter” the sex gets the more effective the tantric ritual becomes. Even the most spicy obscenities are not omitted from these sacred activities. In the Candamaharosana Tantra for example, the lover swallows with joyous lust the washwater which drips from the vagina and anus of the beloved and relishes without nausea her excrement, her nasal mucus and the remains of her food which she has vomited onto the floor. The complete spectrum of sexual deviance is present, even if in the form of the rite. In one text the initiand calls out masochistically: “I am your slave in all ways, keenly active in devotion to you. O Mother”, and the “goddess” — often simulated by a prostitute — answers, “I am called your mistress!” (George, 1974, pp. 67-68).

The erotic burlesque and the sexual joke have also long been a popular topic among the Vajrayana monks and have, up until this century, produced a saucy and shocking literature of the picaresque. Great peals of laughter are still heard in the Tibetan lamaseries at the ribald pranks of Uncle Dönba, who (in the 18th century) dressed himself up as a nun and then spent several months as a “hot” lover boy in a convent. (Chöpel, 1992, p. 43)

But alongside such ribaldry we also find a cultivated, sensual refinement. An example of this is furnished by the astonishingly up-to-date handbook of erotic practices, the Treatise on Passion, from the pen of the Tibetan Lama Gedün Chöpel (1895–1951), in which the “modern” tantric discusses the “64 arts of love”. This Eastern Ars Erotica dates from the 1930s. The reader is offered much useful knowledge about various, in part fantastic sexual positions, and receives instruction on how to produce arousing sounds before and during the sexual act. Further, the author provides a briefing on the various rhythms of coitus, on special masturbation techniques for the stimulation of the penis and the clitoris, even the use of dildos is discussed. The Tibetan, Chöpel, does not in any way wish to be original, he explicitly makes reference to the world’s most famous sex manual, the Kama Sutra, from which he has drawn most of his ideas.

Such permissive “books of love” from the tantric milieu are no longer — in our enlightened era, where (at least in the West) all prudery has been superseded — a spectacle which could cause great surprise or even protest. Nonetheless, these texts have a higher provocative potential than corresponding “profane” works, in which descriptions of the same sexual techniques are otherwise to be found. For they were written by monks for monks, and read and practiced by monks, who in most cases had to have taken a strict oath of celibacy.

For this reason the tantric Ars Erotica even today awake a great curiosity and throw up numerous questions. Are the ascetic basic rules of Buddhism really suspended in Vajrayana? Is the traditional disrespect for women finally surmounted thanks to such texts? Does the eternal misogyny and the denial of the world make way for an Epicurean regard for sensuality and an affirmation of the world? Are the followers of the “Diamond Path” really concerned with sensual love and mystical partnership or does erotic love serve the pursuit of a goal external to it? And what is this goal? What happens to the women after the ritual sexual act?

In the pages which follow we will attempt to answer all of these questions. Whatever the answers may be, we must in any case assume that in Tantric Buddhism the sexual encounter between man and woman symbolizes a sacred event in which the two primal forces of the universe unite.

Mystic sexual love and cosmogonic erotic love

In the views of Vajrayana all phenomena of the universe are linked to one another by the threads of erotic love. Erotic love is the great life force, the prana which flows through the cosmos, the cosmic libido. By erotic here we mean heterosexual love as an endeavor independent of its natural procreative purpose for the provision of children. Tantric Buddhism does not mean this qualification to say that erotic connections can only develop between men and women, or between gods and goddesses. erotic love is all-embracing for a tantric as well. But every Vajrayana practitioner is convinced that the erotic relationship between a feminine and a masculine principle (yin–yang) lies at the origin of all other expressions of erotic love and that this origin may be experienced afresh and repeated microcosmically in the union of a sexual couple. We refer to an erotic encounter between man and woman, in which both experience themselves as the core of all being, as “mystic gendered love”. In Tantrism, this operates as the primal source of cosmogonic erotic love and not the other way around; cosmic erotic love is not the prime cause of a mystical communion of the sexes. Nonetheless, as we shall see, the Vajrayana practices culminate in a spectacular destruction of the entire male-female cosmology.

Suspension of opposites

But let us first return to the apparently healthy continent of tantric eroticism. “It is through love and in view of love that the world unfolds, through love it rediscovers its original unity and its eternal non-separation”, a tantric text teaches us (Faure, 1994, p. 56). Here too, the union of the male and female principles is a constant topic. Our phenomenal world is considered to be the field of action of these two basic forces. They are manifest as polarities in nature just as in the spheres of the spirit. Each alone appears as just one half of the truth. Only in their fusion can they perform the transformation of all contradictions into harmony. When a human couple remember their metaphysical unity they can become one spirit and one flesh. Only through an act of love can man and woman return to their divine origin in the continuity of all being. The tantric refers to this mystic event as yuganaddha, which literally means ‘united as a couple’.

Both the bodies of the lovers and the opposing metaphysical principles are united. Thus, in Tantrism there is no contradiction between erotic and religious love, or sexuality and mysticism. Because it repeats the love-play between a masculine and a feminine pole, the whole universe dances. Yin and yang, or yab and yum in Tibetan, stand at the beginning of an endless chain of polarities, which proves to be just as colorful and complex as life itself.

The divine couple in Tantric Buddhism:

Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri

The “sexual” is thus in no way limited to the sexual act, but rather embraces all forms of love up to and including agape. In Tantrism there is a polar eroticism of the body, a polar eroticism of the heart, and sometimes — although not always — a polar eroticism of the spirit. Such an omnipresence of the sexes is something very specific, since in other cultures “spiritual love” (agape), for example, is described as an occurrence beyond the realm of yin and yang. But in contrast Vajrayana shows us how heterosexual erotic love can refine itself to lie within the most sublime spheres of mysticism without having to surrender the principle of polarity. That it is nonetheless renounced in the end is another matter entirely.

The “holy marriage” suspends the duality of the world and transforms it into a “work of art” of the creative polarity. The resources of our discursive language are insufficient to let us express in words the mystical fusion of the two sexes. Thus the “nameless” rapture can only be described in words which say what it is not: in the yuganaddha, “there is neither affirmation nor denial, neither existence nor non-existence, neither non-remembering nor remembering, neither affection nor non-affection, neither the cause nor the effect, neither the production nor the produced, neither purity nor impurity, neither anything with form, nor anything without form; it is but the synthesis of all dualities” (Dasgupta, 1974, p. 114).

Once the dualism has been overcome, the distinction between self and other becomes irrelevant. Thus, when man and woman encounter one another as primal forces, “egoness [is] lost, and the two polar opposites fuse into a state of intimate and blissful oneness” (Walker, 1982, p. 67). The tantric Adyayavajra described this process of the overcoming of the self as the “highest spontaneous common feature” (Gäng, 1988, p. 85).

The co-operation of the poles now takes the place of the battle of opposites (or sexes). Body and spirit, erotic love and transcendence, emotion and intellect, being (samsara) and not-being (nirvana) become married. All wars and disputes between good and evil, heaven and hell, day and night, dream and reality, joy and suffering, praise and contempt are pacified and suspended in the yuganaddha. Miranda Shaw, a religious scholar of the younger generation, describes “a Buddha couple, or male and female Buddha in union ... [as] an image of unity and blissful concord between the sexes, a state of equilibrium and interdependence. This symbol powerfully evokes a state of primordial wholeness an completeness of being.” (Shaw, 1994, p. 200)

But is this state identical to the unconscious ecstasy we know from orgasm? Does the suspension of opposites occur with both partners in a trance? No — in Tantrism god and goddess definitely do not dissolve themselves in an ocean of unconsciousness. In contrast, they gain access to the non-dual knowledge and thus discern the eternal truth behind the veil of illusions. Their deep awareness of the polarity of all being gives them the strength to leave the “sea of birth and death” behind them.

Divine erotic love thus leads to enlightenment and salvation. But it is not just the two partners who experience redemption, rather, as the tantras tell us, all of humanity is liberated through mystical sexual love. In the Hevajra-Tantra, when the goddess Nairatmya, deeply moved by the misery of all living creatures, asks her heavenly spouse to reveal the secret of how human suffering can be put to an end, the latter is very touched by her request. He kisses her, caresses her, and, whilst in union with her, he instructs her about the sexual magic yoga practices through which all suffering creatures can be liberated (Dasgupta, 1974, p. 118). This “redemption via erotic love” is a distinctive characteristic of Tantrism and only very seldom to be found in other religions.

Cultic worship of the sexual organs

What symbols are used to express this creative polarity in Vajrayana? Like many other cultures Tantric Buddhism makes use of the hexagram, a combination of two triangles. The masculine triangle, which points upward, represents the phallus, and the downward-pointing, feminine triangle the vagina. Both of these sexual organs are highly revered in the rituals and meditations of Tantrism.

Another highly significant symbol for the masculine force and the phallus is a symmetrical ritual object called the vajra. As the divine virility is pure and unshakable, the vajra is described as a “diamond” or “jewel”. As a “thunderbolt” it is one of the lightning symbols. Everything masculine is termed vajra. It is thus no surprise that the male seed is also known as vajra. The Tibetan translation of the Sanskrit word is dorje, which also has additional meanings, all of which are naturally associated with the masculine half of the universe. The Tibetans term the translucent colors of the sky and firmament dorje. Even in pre-Buddhist times the peoples of the Himalayas worshipped the vault of the heavens as their divine Father.

Vajra and Gantha (bell)

The female counterpart to the vajra is the lotus blossom (padma) or the bell (gantha). Accordingly, both padma and gantha represent the vagina (yoni). It may come as a surprise to most Europeans how much reverence the yoni is accorded in Tantrism. It is glorified as the “seat of great pleasure” (Bhattacharyya, 1982, p. 228). In “the lap of the diamond woman” the yogi finds a “location of security, of peace and calm and, at the same time, of the greatest happiness” (Gäng, 1988, p. 89). “Buddhahood resides in the female sex organs”, we are instructed by another text (Stevens, 1990, p. 65). Gedün Chöpel has given us an enthusiastic hymn to the pudenda: “It is raised up like the back of a turtle and has a mouth-door closed in by flesh. ... See this smiling thing with the brilliance of the fluids of passion. It is not a flower with a thousand petals nor a hundred; it is a mound endowed with the sweetness of the fluid of passion. The refined essence of the juices of the meeting of the play of the white and red [fluids of male and female], the taste of self-arisen honey is in it.” (Chöpel, 1992, p. 62). No wonder, with such hymns of praise, that a regular sacred service in honor of the vagina emerged. This accorded the goddess great material and spiritual advantages. “Aho!”, we hear her call in the Cakrasamvara Tantra, “I will bestow supreme success on one who ritually worships my lotus [vagina], bearer of all bliss” (Shaw, 1994, p. 155).

This high esteem for the female sexual organs is especially surprising in Buddhism, where the vagina is after all the gateway to reincarnation, which the tantric strives with every means to close. For this reason, for all the early Buddhists, irrespective of school, the human birth channel counted as one of the most ominous features of our world of appearances. But precisely because the yoni thrusts the ordinary human into the realm of suffering and illusion it has — as we shall see — become a “threshold to enlightenment” (Shaw, 1994, p. 59) for the tantric. Healed by the mystic sexual act, it is also accorded a higher, transcendental procreative function. From it emerges the powerful host of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. We read in the relevant texts “that the Buddha resides in the womb of the goddess and the way of enlightenment [is experienced] as a pregnancy” (Faure, 1994, p. 189).

This central worship of the yoni has led to a situation in which nearly all tantra texts begin with the fundamental sentence, “I have heard it so: once upon a time the Highest Lord lingered in the vaginas of the diamond women, which represent the body, the language and the consciousness of all Buddhas”. Just as the opening letters of the Bible are believed in a tenet of the Hebraic Kabbala to contain the concentrated essence of the entire Holy Book, so too the first four letters of this tantric introductory sentence — evam (‘I have heard it so’) — encapsulate the entire secret of the Diamond Path. “It has often been said that he who has understood evam has understood everything” (Banerjee, 1959, p. 7).

The word (evam) is already to be found in the early Gupta scriptures (c. 300 C.E.) and is represented there in the form of a hexagram, i.e., the symbol of mystic sexual love. The syllable e stands for the downward-pointing triangle, the syllable vam is portrayed as a upright triangle. Thus e represents the yoni (vagina) and vam the lingam (phallus). E is the lotus, the source, the location of all the secrets which the holy doctrine of the tantras teaches; the citadel of happiness, the throne, the Mother. E further stands for “emptiness and wisdom”. Masculine vam on the other hand lays claims to reverence as “vajra, diamond, master of joys, method, great compassion, as the Father”. E and vam together form “the seal of the doctrine, the fruit, the world of appearances, the way to perfection, father (yab) and mother (yum)” (see, among others, Farrow and Menon, 1992, pp. xii ff.). The syllables e-vam are considered so powerful that the divine couple can summon the entire host of male and female Buddhas with them.

The origin of the gods and goddesses

From the primordial tantric couple emanate pairs of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, gods and demons. Before all come the five male and five female Tathagatas (Buddhas of meditation), the five Herukas (wrathful Buddhas) in union with their partners, the eight Bodhisattvas with their consorts. We also meet gods of time who symbolize the years, months and days, and the “seven shining planetary couples”. The five elements (space, air, fire, water and earth) are represented in pairs in divine form — these too find their origin in mystic sexual love. As it says in the Hevajra Tantra: “By uniting the male and female sexual organs the holder of the Vow performs the erotic union. From contact in the erotic union, as the quality of hardness, Earth arises; Water arises from the fluidity of semen; Fire arises from the friction of pounding; Air is famed to be the movement and the Space is the erotic pleasure” (Farrow and Menon, 1992, p. 134).

It is not just the “pure” elements which come from the erotic communion, so do mixtures of them. Through the continuous union of the masculine with the feminine the procreative powers flow into the world from all of their body parts. In a commentary by the famous Tibetan scholar Tsongkhapa, we read how the legendary Mount Meru, the continents, mountain ranges and all earthly landscapes emerge from the essence of the hairs of the head, the bones, gall bladder, liver, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, tendons, ribs, excrement, filth (!), and pus (!). The springs, waterfalls, ponds, rivers and oceans form themselves out of the tears, blood, menses, seed, lymph fluid and urine. The inner fire centers of the head, heart, navel, abdomen and limbs correspond in the external world to fire which is sparked by striking stones or using a lens, a fireplace or a forest fire. Likewise all external wind phenomena echo the breath which moves through the bodies of the primeval couple (Wayman, 1977, pp. 234, 236).

In the same manner, the five “aggregate states” (consciousness, intellect, emotions, perception, bodiliness) originate in the primordial couple. The “twelve senses” (sense of hearing, other phenomena, sense of smell, tangible things, sense of sight, taste, sense of taste, sense of shape, sense of touch, smells, sense of spirit, sounds) are also emanations of mystic sexual love. Further, each of the twelve “abilities to act” is assigned to a goddess or a god — (the ability to urinate, ejaculation, oral ability, defecation, control of the arm, walking, leg control, taking, the ability to defecate, speaking, the “highest ability” (?), urination).

Alongside the gods of the “domain of the body” we find those of the “domain of speech”. The divine couple count as the origin of language. All the vowels (ali) are assigned to the goddess; the god is the father of the consonants (kali). When ali and kali (which can also appear as personified divinities) unite, the syllables are formed. Hidden within these as if in a magic egg are the verbal seeds (bija) from which the linguistic universe grows. The syllables join with one another to build sound units (mantras). Both often have no literal meaning, but are very rich in emotional, erotic, magical and mystical intentions. Even if there are many similarities between them, the divine language of the tantras is still held to be more powerful than the poetry of the West, as gods can be commanded through the ritual singing of the germinal syllables. In Vajrayana each god and every divine event obeys a specific mantra.

As erotic love leaves nothing aside, the entire spectrum of the gods’ emotions (as long as these belong to the domain of desire) is to originally be found in the mystical relationship of the sexes. There is no emotion, no mood which does not originate here. The texts speak of “erotic, wonderful, humorous, compassionate, tranquil, heroic, disgusting, furious” feelings (Wayman, 1977, p. 328).

The origin of time and emptiness

In the Kalachakra Tantra (“Time Tantra”) the masculine pole is the time god Kalachakra, the feminine the time goddess Vishvamata. The chief symbols of the masculine divinity are the diamond scepter (vajra) and the lingam (phallus). The goddess holds a lotus blossom or a bell, both symbols of the yoni (vagina). He rules as “Lord of the Day”, she as “Queen of the Night”.

The mystery of time reveals itself in the love of this divine couple. All temporal expressions of the universe are included in the “Wheel of Time” (kala means ‘time’ and chakra ‘wheel’). When the time goddess Vishvamata and the time god Kalachakra unite, they experience their communion as “elevated time”, as a “mystical marriage”, as Hieros Gamos. The circle or wheel (chakra) indicates “cyclical time” and the law of “eternal recurrence”. The four great epochs of the world (mahakalpa) are also hidden within the mystery of the tantric primal couple, as are the many chronological modalities. The texts describe the shortest unit of time as one sixty-fourth of a finger snap. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years, the entire complex tantric calendrical calculations, all emerge from the mystic sexual love between Kalachakra and Vishvamata. The four heads of the time god correspond to the four seasons. Including the “third eye”, his total of 12 eyes may be apportioned to the 12 months of the year. Counting three joints per finger, in Kalachakra’s 24 arms there are 360 bones, which correspond to the 360 days of the year in the Tibetan calendar.

Kalachakra and Vishvamata

Time manifests itself as motion, eternity as standstill. These two elements are also addressed in the Kalachakra Tantra. Neither cyclical nor chronological time have any influence upon the state of motionlessness during the Hieros Gamos. The river of time now runs dry, and the fruit of eternity can be enjoyed. Such an experience frees the divine couple from both past and future, which prove to be illusory, and gives them the timeless present.

What is the situation with the paired opposites of space and time? In European philosophy and theoretical physics, this relationship has given rise to countless discussions. Speculation about the space-time phenomenon are, however, far less popular in Tantrism. The texts prefer the term shunyata (emptiness) when speaking of “space”, and point out the secret properties of “emptiness”, especially its paradoxical power to bring forth all things. Space is emptiness, “but space, as understood in Buddhist meditation, is not passive (in the western sense). ... Space is the absolutely indispensable vibrant matrix for everything that is” (Gross, 1993, p. 203).

We can see shunyata (emptiness) as the most central term of the entire Buddhist philosophy. It is the second ventricle of Mahayana Buddhism. (The first is karuna, compassion for all living beings.) “Absolute emptiness” dissolves into nothingness all the phenomena of being up to and including the sphere of the Highest Self. We are unable to talk about emptiness, since the reality of shunyata is independent of any conceptual construction. It transcends thought and we are not even able to claim that the phenomenal world does not exist. This radical negativism has rightly been described as the “doctrine of the emptiness of emptiness”.

In the light of this fundamental inexpressibility and featurelessness of shunyata, one is left wondering why it is unfailingly regarded as a “feminine” principle in Vajrayana Buddhism. But it is! As its masculine polar opposite the tantras nominate consciousness (citta) or compassion (karuna). “The Mind is the Lord and the Vacuity is the Lady; they should always be kept united in Sahaja [the highest state of enlightenment]”, as one text proclaims (Dasgupta, 1974, p. 101). Time and emptiness also complement one another in a polar manner.

Thus, the Kalachakra divinity (the time god) cries emphatically that, “through the power of time air, fire, water, earth, islands, hills, oceans, constellations, moon, sun, stars, planets, the wise, gods, ghosts/spirits, nagas (snake demons), the fourfold animal origin, humans and infernal beings have been created in the emptiness” (Banerjee, 1959, p. 16). Once she has been impregnated by “masculine” time, the “feminine” emptiness gives birth to everything. The observation that the vagina is empty before it emits life is likely to have played a role in the development of this concept. For this reason, shunyata may never be understood as pure negativity in Tantrism, but rather counts as the “shapeless” origin of all being.

The clear light

The ultimate goal of all mystic doctrines in the widest variety of cultures is the ability to experience the highest clear light. Light phenomena play such a significant role in Tantric Buddhism that the Italian Tibetologist, Giuseppe Tucci, speaks of a downright “photism” (doctrine of light). Light, from which everything stems, is considered the “symbol of the highest intrinsicness” (Brauen, 1992, p. 65).

In describing supernatural light phenomena, the tantric texts in no sense limit themselves to tracing these back to a mystical primal light, but rather have assembled a complete catalog of “photisms” which maybe experienced. These include sparks, lamps, candles, balls of light, rainbows, pillars of fire, heavenly lights, and so forth which flash up during meditation. Each of these appearances presages a particular level of consciousness, ranked hierarchically. Thus one must traverse various light stages in order to finally bathe in the “highest clear light”.

The truly unique feature of Tantrism is that this “highest clear light” streams out of the yuganaddha, the Hieros Gamos. It is in this sense that we must understand the following poetic sentence from the Kalachakra Tantra: “In a world purged of darkness, in the end darkness awaits a couple” (Banerjee, 1959, p. 24).

Summarizing, we can say that Tantrism has made erotic love between the sexes its central religious theme. When the divine couple unite in bliss, then “by the force of their joy the members of the retinue also fuse”, i.e., the other gods and goddesses, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas with their wisdom consorts (Wayman, 1968, p. 291). The divine couple is all-knowing, as it knows and indeed itself represents the germinal syllables which produce the cosmos. With their breath the time god (Kalachakra) and time goddess (Vishvamata) control the motions of the heavens. Astronomy along with every other science has its origin in them. They are initiated into every level of meditation, have mastery over the secret doctrines and every form of subtle yoga. The clear light shines out of them. They know the laws of karma and how they may be suspended. Compassionately, the god and goddess care for humankind as if we were their children and devote themselves to the concerns of the world. As master and mistress of all forms of time they determine the rhythm of history. Being and not-being fuse within them. In brief, the creative polarity of the divine couple produces the universe.

Yet this image of complete beauty between the sexes does not stand on the highest altar of Tantric Buddhism. But what could be higher than the polar principle of the universe and infinity?

Wisdom (prajna) and method (upaya)

Before answering this, we want to quickly view a further pair of opposites which are married in yuganaddha. Up to now we have not yet considered the most often cited polarity in the tantras, “wisdom” (prajna) and “method” (upaya). There is no original tantric text, no Indian or Tibetan commentary and no Western interpreter of Tantrism which does not treat the “union of upaya and prajna” in depth.

“Wisdom” and “method” are held to be the outright mother and father of all other tantric opposites. Every polar constellation is derived from these two terms. To summarize, upaya stands for the masculine principle, the phallus, motion, activity, the god, enlightenment, and so forth; prajna represents the feminine principle, the vagina, calm, passivity, the goddess, the cosmic law. All women naturally count as prajna, all men as upaya. “The commingling of this Prajna and Upaya [are] like the mixture of water and milk in a state of non-duality” (Dasgupta, 1974, p. 93). There is also the stated view that upaya becomes a fetter when it is not joined with prajna; only both together grant deliverance and Buddhahood (Bharati, 1977, p. 171).

Prajna and Upaya

This almost limitless extension of the two principles has led to a situation in which they are only rarely critically examined. Do they stand in a truly polar relation to one another? Why — we ask — does “wisdom” need “method”? Somehow this pair of opposites do not fit together — can there even be an unmethodical, chaotic “wisdom”? Isn’t prajna (wisdom) enough on its own; does it not include “method” as a partial aspect of itself? What is an “unmethodical” wisdom? Even if we translate upaya — as is often done — as ‘technique’, we still do not have a convincing polar correspondence to prajna. This combination also seems far-fetched — why should “technique” and “wisdom” meet in a mystic wedding? The opposition becomes even more absurd and profane if we translate upaya (as it is clearly intended) as “cunning means” or even “trick” or “ruse” (Wilber, 1987, p. 310). [2] Whereas with “wisdom” one has some idea of what is meant, comprehending the technoid term upaya presents major difficulties. We must thus examine it in more detail.

“At all events”, writes David Snellgrove, a renowned expert on Tantrism, “it must be emphasized that here Means remains a doctrinal concept, serving as means to an end, and in no sense can this concept be construed as an end in itself, as is certainly the case with perfection of wisdom [prajna]” (Snellgrove, 1987, vol. 1, p. 283). “Method” is thus an instrument which is to be combined with a content, “wisdom”. “Wisdom”, Snellgrove adds, “can seen as representing the evolving universe” (Snellgrove, 1987, vol. 1, p. 244). Due to the distribution of both principles along gender lines this has a feminine quality.

The instrumental “method”, which is assigned to the masculine sphere, thus proves itself — as we shall explain in more detail — to be a sacred technique for controlling the feminine “wisdom”. Upaya is nothing more than an instrument of manipulation, without any unique content or substance of its own. Method is at best the means to an end (i.e., wisdom). Analytical reserve and technical precision are two of its fundamental properties. Since wisdom — as we can infer from the quotation from Snellgrove — represents the entire universe, upaya is the method with which the universe can be manipulated; and since prajna represents the feminine principle and upaya the masculine, their union implies a manipulation of the feminine by the masculine.

To illustrate this process, we should take a quick look at a Greek myth which recounts how Zeus acquired wisdom (Metis). One day the father of the gods swallowed the female Titan Metis. (In Greek, metis means “wisdom”.) “Wisdom” survived in his belly and gave him advice from there. According to this story then, Zeus’s sole contribution toward the development of “his” wisdom was a cunning swallow. With this coarse but effective method (upaya) he could now present himself as the fount of all wisdom. He even became, through the birth of Athena, the masculine “bearer” of feminine prajna. Metis, the mother of Athena, actually gives birth to her daughter in the stomach of the father of the gods, but it is he who brings her willy-nilly into the world. In full armor, Athene, herself a symbol of wisdom, bursts from the top of Zeus’s skull. She is the “head birth” of her father, the product of his ideas.

Here, the swallowing of the feminine and its imaginary (re)production (head birth) are the two techniques (upaya) with which Zeus manipulates wisdom (prajna, Metis, Athene) to his own ends. We shall later see how vividly this myth illustrates the process of the tantric mystery.

At any rate, we would like to hypothesize that the relation between the two tantric principles of “wisdom” and “method” is neither one of complementarity, nor polarity, nor even antinomy, but rather one of androcentric hegemony. The translation of upaya as ‘trick’ is thoroughly justified. We can thus in no sense speak of a “mystic marriage” of prajna and upaya, and unfortunately we must soon demonstrate that very little of the widely distributed (in the West) conception of Tantrism as a sublime art of love and a spiritual refinement of the partnership remains.

The worship of “wisdom” (prajna) as a embracing cosmic energy already had a significant role to play in Mahayana Buddhism. There we find an extensive literature devoted to it, the Prajnaparamita texts, and it is still cultivated throughout all of Asia. In the famous Sutra of Perfected Wisdom in Eight Thousand Verses (c. 100 B.C.E.) for example, the glorification of prajnaparamita (“highest transcendental wisdom”) and the description of the Bodhisattva way are central. “If a Bodhisattva wishes to become a Buddha, […] he must always be energetic and always pay respect to the Perfection of Wisdom [prajnaparamita]”, we read there (D. Paul, 1985, p. 135). There are also instances in Mahayana iconography where the “highest wisdom” is depicted in the form of a female being, but nowhere here is there talk of manipulation or control of the “goddess”. Devotion, fervent prayer, hymn, liturgical song, ecstatic excitement, overflowing emotion and joy are the forms of expression with which the believer worships prajnaparamita.

The guru as manipulator of the divine

In view of the previously suggested dissonance between prajna and upaya, we must ask ourselves who this authority is, who via the “method” makes use of the wisdom-energy for his own purposes. This question is all the more pertinent, since in the visible reality of the tantric religions — in the culture of Tibetan Lamaism for instance — Vajrayana is never represented as a pair of equals, but almost exclusively as single men, in very rare cases as single women. The two partners meet only to perform the ritual sexual act and then separate.

It follows conclusively from what has already been described that it must be the masculine principle which effects the manipulation of the feminine wisdom. It appears in the figure of the “tantric master”. His knowledge of the sacred techniques makes him a “yogi”. Whenever he assumes the role of teacher he is known as a guru (Sanskrit) or a lama (Tibetan).

How does the tantric master’s exceptional position of power arise? Every Vajrayana follower practices the so-called “Deity yoga”, in which the self is imagined as a divinity. The believer distinguishes between two levels. Firstly he meditates upon the “emptiness” of all being, in order to overcome his bodily, mental, and spiritual impurities and “blocks” and create an empty space. The core of this meditative process of dissolution is the surrender of the individual ego. Following this, the living image (yiddam) of the particular divine being who should appear in the appropriate ritual is formed in the yogi’s imaginative consciousness. His or her body, color, posture, clothing, facial expression and moods are described in detail in the holy texts and must be recreated exactly in the mind. We are thus not dealing with an exercise of spontaneous and creative free imagination, but rather with an accurate reproduction of a codified archetype.

The practitioner may externalize or project the yiddam, so that it appears before him. But this is just the first step; in those which following he imagines himself as the deity. Thus he swaps his own personal ego with that of a supernatural being. The yogi has now surmounted his human existence and constitutes “to the very last atom” a unity with the god (Glasenapp, 1940, p. 101).

But he must never lose sight of the fact that the deity he has imagined possesses no autonomous existence. It exists purely and exclusively as an emanation of his imagination and can thus be created, maintained and destroyed at will. But who actually is this tantric master, this manipulator of the divine? His consciousness has nothing in common with that of a ordinary person, it must belong to a sphere higher than that of the gods. The texts and commentaries describe