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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part I – 3.
The tantric female sacrifice
© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
3. THE TANTRIC FEMALE SACRIFICE
Until now we have only examined
the tantric scheme very broadly and abstractly.
But we now wish to show concretely how the “transformation
of erotic love into power” is carried out. We
thus return to the starting point, the love-play
between yogi and yogini, god and goddess, and
first examine the various feminine typologies
which the tantric master uses in his rituals.
Vajrayana
distinguishes three types of woman in all:
- The “real woman” (karma mudra). She is a real
human partner. According to tantric doctrine
she belongs to the “realm of desire”.
- The “imaginary woman” or “spirit woman”
(inana
mudra). She is summonsed by the yogi’s meditative
imagination and only exists there or in his
fantasy. The inana mudra is placed in
the “realm of forms”.
- The “inner woman” (maha mudra). She is the
woman internalized via the tantric praxis, with
no existence independent of the yogi. She is
not even credited with the reality of an imagined
form, therefore she counts as a figure from
the “formless realm”.
All three types of woman are termed
mudra.
This word originally meant ‘seal’, ‘stamp’, or
‘letter of the alphabet’. It further indicated
certain magical hand gestures and body postures,
with which the yogi conducted, controlled and
“sealed” the divine energies. This semantic richness
has led to all manner of speculation. For example,
we read that the tantric master “stamps” the phenomena
of the world with happiness, and that as his companion
helps him do this, she is known as mudra (‘stamp’). More concretely,
the Maha
Siddha Naropa refers to the fact that a tantric
partner, in contrast to a normal woman, assists
the guru in blocking his ejaculation during the
sexual act, and as it were “seals” this, which
is of major importance for the performance of
the ritual. For this reason she is known as mudra, ‘seal’ (Naropa, 1994,
p. 81). But the actual meaning probably lies in
the following: in Vajrayana the feminine itself
is “sealed”, that is, spellbound via a magic act,
so that it is available to the tantric master
in its entirety.
The karma mudra: the real
woman
What then are the external criteria
which a karma
mudra, a real woman, needs to meet in order
to serve a guru as wisdom consort? The Hevajra
Tantra, for example, describes her in the
following words: “She is neither too tall, nor
too short, neither quite black nor quite white,
but dark like a lotus leaf. Her breath is sweet,
and her sweat has a pleasant smell like that of
musk. Her pudenda gives forth a scent
from moment to moment like different kinds of
lotuses or like sweet aloe wood. She is calm and
resolute, pleasant in speech and altogether delightful”
(Snellgrove, 1959, p. 116). At another juncture
the same tantra recommends that the guru “take
a consort who has a beautiful face, is wide-eyed,
is endowed with grace and youth, is dark, courageous,
of good family and originates from the female
and male fluids” (Farrow and Menon, 1992, p. 217).
Gedün Chöpel, a famous tantric from the 20th century,
draws a distinction between the various regions
from which the women come. Girls from Kham province,
for example, have soft flesh, lovers from Dzang
are well-versed in the erotic techniques, “Kashmiri
girls” are to be valued for their smile, and so
on (Chöpel, 1992, p. 45).
Sometimes it is also required of
the karma
mudra that as well as being attractive she
also possess specialized erotic skills. For example,
the Kalachakra
Tantra recommends training in the sophisticated
Indian sexual techniques of the Kama
Sutra. In this famous handbook on the intensification
of sexual lust, the reader can inform him- or
herself about the most daring positions, the use
of aphrodisiacs, the anatomical advantages various
women possess, the seduction of young girls, dealings
with courtesans, and much more. The sole intention
of the Kama Sutra, however, is to
sexualize life as a whole. In contrast to the
tantras there are no religious and power-political
intentions to be found behind this work. It thus
has no intrinsic value for the tantric yogi. The
latter uses it purely as a source of inspiration,
to stimulate his desires which he then brings
under conscious control.
Youth is a further requirement
which the mudra
has to meet. The Maha
Siddha Saraha distinguishes five different
wisdom consorts on the basis of age: the eight-year-old
virgin (kumari); the twelve-year-old
salika;
the sixteen-year-old siddha,
who already bleeds monthly; the twenty-year-old
balika, and the twenty-five-year-old
bhadrakapalini, who he describes
as the “burned fat of prajna” (Wayman, 1973, p.
196). The “modern” tantric already mentioned,
Lama Gedün Chöpel, explicitly warns that children
can become injured during the sexual act: “Forcingly
doing it with a young girl produces severe pains
and wounds her genitalia. ... If it is not the
time and if copulating would be dangerous for
her, churn about between her thighs, and it [the
female seed] will come out” (Chöpel, 1992, p.
135). In addition he recommends feeding a twelve-year-old
honey and sweets before ritual sexual intercourse
(Chöpel, 1992, p. 177).
When the king and later Maha Siddha, Dombipa, one
day noticed the beautiful daughter of a traveling
singer before his palace, he selected her as his
wisdom consort and bought her from her father
for an enormous sum
in gold. She was “an innocent virgin, untainted
by the sordid world about her. She was utterly
charming, with a fair complexion and classical
features. She had all the qualities of a padmini, a lotus child, the
rarest and most desirable of all girls” (Dowman,
1985, pp. 53–54). What became of the “lotus
child” after the ritual is not recorded.
“In the rite of ‘virgin-worship’
(kumari-puja)”,
writes Benjamin Walker, “a girl is selected and
trained for initiation, and innocent of her impending
fate is brought before the altar and worshipped
in the nude, and then deflowered by a guru or
chela” (Walker, 1982, p. 72). It was not just
the Hindu tantrics who practiced rituals with
a kumari, but also the Tibetans,
in any case the Grand Abbot of the Sakyapa Sect,
even though he was married.
On a numerological basis twelve-
or sixteen-year-old girls are preferred. Only
when none can be found does Tsongkhapa recommend
the use of a twenty-year-old. There is also a
table of correspondences between the various ages
and the elements and senses: an 11-year-old represents
the air, a 12-year-old fire, a 13-year-old water,
a 14-year-old earth, a15-year-old sound, a 16-year-old
the sense of touch, a 17-year-old taste, an 18-year-old
shape or form, and a 20-year-old the sense of
smell (Naropa, 1994, p. 189).
The rituals should not be performed
with women older than this, as they absorb the
“occult forces” of the guru. The dangers associated
with older mudras are a topic discussed
at length. A famous tantric commentator describes
21- to 30-year-olds as “goddesses of wrath” and
gives them the following names: The Blackest,
the Fattest, the Greedy, the Most Arrogant, the
Stringent, the Flashing, the Grudging, the Iron
Chain, and the Terrible Eye. 31- to 38-year-olds
are considered to be manifestations of malignant
spirits and 39- to 46-year-olds as “unlimited
manifestations of the demons”. They are called
Dog Snout, Sucking Gob, Jackal Face, Tiger Gullet,
Garuda Mug, Owl Features, Vulture’s Beak, Pecking
Crow (Naropa, 1994, p. 189). These women, according
to the text, shriek and scold, menace and curse.
In order to get the yogi completely off balance,
one of these terrible figures calls out to him
in the Kalachakra Tantra, “Human
beast, you are to be crushed today”. Then she
gnashes her teeth and hisses, “Today I must devour
your flesh”, and with trembling tongue she continues,
“From your body I will make the drink of blood”
(Grünwedel, Kalacakra
III, p. 191). That some radical tantras view
it as especially productive to copulate with such
female “monsters” is a topic to which we shall
later return.
How does the yogi find a real,
human mudra?
Normally, she is delivered by his pupil. This
is also true for the Kalachakra Tantra. “If one
gives the enlightened teacher the prajna [mudra] as a gift,” proclaims
Naropa, “the yoga is bliss” (Grünwedel, 1933,
p. 117). If a 12- or 16-year-old girl cannot be
found, a 20-year-old will suffice, advises another
text, and continues, “One should offer his sister,
daughter or wife to the ‘guru’”, then the more
valuable the mudra is to the pupil, the
more she serves as a gift for his master (Wayman,
1977, p. 320).
Further, magic spells are taught
with which to summons a partner. The Hevajra Tantra recommends
the following mantra: “Om
Hri — may she come into my power — savaha!” (Snellgrove, 1959,
p. 54). Once the yogi has repeated this saying
ten thousand times the mudra
will appear before him in flesh and blood and
obeys his wishes.
The Kalachakra Tantra urges the
yogi to render the mudra
pliant with intoxicating liquor: “Wine is essential
for the wisdom consort [prajna].
... Any mudra
at all, even those who are still not willing,
can be procured with drink” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra
III, p. 147). It is only a small step from
this to the use of direct force. There are also
texts, which advise “that if a woman refuses sexual
union she must be forced to do so” (Bhattacharyya,
1982, p. 125).
Whether or not a karma mudra needs special
training before the ritual is something which
receves varying answers in the texts and commentaries.
In general, she should be familiar with the tantric
doctrine. Tsongkhapa advises that she take and
keep a vow of silence. He expressly warns against
intercourse with unworthy partners: “If a woman
lacks ... superlative qualities, that is an inferior
lotus. Do not stay with that one, because she
is full of negative qualities. Make an offering
and show some respect, but don’t practice (with
her)” (quoted in Shaw, 1994, p. 169). In the Hevajra
Tantra a one-month preparation time is required,
then “the girl [is] freed of all false ideas and
received as though she were a boon” (Snellgrove,
1987, vol. 1, p. 261).
But what happens to the “boon”
once the ritual is over? “The karma mudra ... has a purely
pragmatic and instrumental significance and is
superfluous at the finish” writes the Italian
Tibetologist Raniero Gnoli in the introduction
to a Kalachakra commentary (Naropa,
1994, p. 82). After the sexual act she is “of
no more use to the tantrik than husk of a shelled
peanut”, says Benjamin Walker (Walker, 1982, pp.
72–73). She has done her duty, transferred her
feminine energy to the yogi, and now succumbs
to the disdain which Buddhism holds for all “normal”
women as symbols of the “supreme illusion” (maha
maya). There is no mention of an initiation
of the female partner in the codified Buddhist
tantra texts.
The karma mudra and the West
Since the general public demands
that a Tibetan lama lead the life of a celibate
monk, he must keep his sexual practices secret.
For this reason, documents about and verbal accounts
of clerical erotic love are extremely rare. It
is true that the sexual magic rites are freely
and openly discussed in the tantra texts, but
who does what with whom and where are all “top
secret”. Only the immediate followers are informed,
the English author June Campbell reports.
And she has the authority to make
such a claim. Campbell had been working for many
years as translator and personal assistant for
the highest ranking Kagyüpa guru, His Holiness
Kalu Rinpoche (1905–1989), when the old man (he
was then approaching his eighties) one day asked
her to become his mudra. She was completely
surprised by this request and could not begin
to imagine such a thing, but then, she reluctantly
submitted to the wishes of her master. As she
eventually managed to escape the tantric magic
circle, the previously uninformed public is indebted
to her for a number of competent commentaries
upon the sexual cabinet politics of modern Lamaism
and the psychology of the karma mudra.
What then, according to Campbell,
are the reasons which motivate Western women to
enter into a tantric relationship, and then afterwards
keep their experiences with the masters to themselves?
First of all, their great respect and deep reverence
for the lama, who as a “living Buddha” begins
and ritually conducts the liaison. Then, the karma mudra, even when she
is not publicly acknowledged, enjoys a high status
within the small circle of the informed and, temporarily,
the rank of a dakini, i.e., a tantric goddess.
Her intimate relationship with a “holy man” further
gives her the feeling that she is herself holy,
or at least the opportunity to collect good karma
for herself.
Of course, the mudra must swear a strict
vow of absolute silence regarding her relations
with the tantric master. Should she break it,
then according to the tantric penal code she may
expect major difficulties, insanity, death and
on top of this millennia of hellish torments.
In order to intimidate her, Kalu Rinpoche is alleged
to have told his mudra, June Campbell, that
in an earlier life he killed a woman with a mantra
because she disobeyed him and gossiped about intimacies.
“The imposition of secrecy ... in the Tibetan
system”, Campbell writes, “when it occurred solely
as a means to protect status , and where it was
reinforced by threats, was a powerful weapon in
keeping women from achieving any kind of integrity
in themselves. ... So whilst the lineage system
[the gurus’ chain of initiation] viewed these
[sexual] activities as promoting the enlightenment
state of the lineage holders, the fate of one
of the two main protagonists, the female consort,
remained unrecognized, unspoken and unnamed” (June
Campbell, 1996, p. 103). June Campbell also first
risked speaking openly about her experiences,
which she found repressive and degrading, after
Kalu Rinpoche had died.
In her book, this author laments
not just the subsequent namelessness of and disregard
for the karma mudra despite the guru
praising her as a “goddess” for as long as the
ritual lasted, but also discusses the traumatic
state of “used up” women, who, once their master
has “drunk” their gynergy, are traded in for
a “fresh” mudra.
She also makes reference to the naiveté of Western
husbands, who send their spouses to a guru in
good faith, so that they can complete their spiritual
development. (June Campbell, 1996, p. 107). During
her relationship with Kalu Rinpoche he was also
practicing with another woman who was not yet
twenty years old. The girl died suddenly, of a
heart attack it was said. We will return to this
death, which fits the logic of the tantric pattern,
at a later stage. The fears which such events
awakened in her, reports Campbell, completely
cut her off from the outside world and left her
totally delivered up to the domination of her
guru.
This masculine arrogance becomes
particularly obvious in a statement by the young
lama, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, who announced
the following in response to Campbell’s commotion
stirring book: “If Western women begin sexual
relationships with Tibetan lamas, then the consequence
for a number of them is frustration, because their
culturally conditioned expectations are not met.
If they hope to find an agreeable and equal lover
in a Rinpoche, they could not be making a bigger
mistake. Certain Rinpoches, who are revered as
great teachers, would literally make the worst
partners of all — seen from the point of view
of the ego. If one approaches such a great master
expecting to be acknowledged, and wishing for
a relationship in which one shares, satisfies
one another, etc., then one is making a bad choice
— not just from the ego’s point of view, but also
in a completely normal, worldly sense. They probably
won’t bring them flowers or invite them to candlelight
dinners” (Esotera, 12/97, p. 45; retranslation).
It speaks for such a quotation that it is honest,
since it quite plainly acknowledges the spiritual
inferiority of women (who represent the ego, desire
and banality) when confronted with the superhuman
spiritual authority of the male gurus. The tantric
master Khyentse Rinpoche knows exactly what he
is talking about, when he continues with the following
sentence: “Whilst in the West one understands
equality to mean that two aspects find a common
denominator, in Vajrayana
Buddhism equality lies completely outside of twoness
or duality. Where duality is retained, there can
be no equality” (Esotera, 12/97, p. 46; retranslation).
That is, in other words: the woman as equal and
autonomous partner must be eliminated and has
to surrender her energies to the master’s completion
(beyond duality).
The “sexual abuse” of Western women
by Tibetan lamas has meanwhile become something
of a constant topic in the Buddhist scene and
has also triggered heated discussion on the Internet.
There we can read the following from an author
called Mary Finnigan: “In some instances a male
teacher would be having sex with several women
students over a period of time. Each would be
sworn to secrecy and each would be led to believe
that she was the only consort. Then inevitably
the secret came out and the effect of this on
the particular dharma group was devastating” (Finnigan,
Newsgroup 5). Finnigan answers the question of
how the Tibetans behaved in such cases as follows:
“My understanding is that Tibetan women regarded
it as an honor and a duty to sleep with a lama
if requested. I do not think the concept of sexual
abuse was known to them until they became refugees
(Finnigan, Newsgroup 5).
Even the official office of the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama has had to respond to the
increasingly common allegations: “What some of
these students have experienced is terrible and
most unfortunate”, announced Tenzin Tethon, a
secretary to His Holiness, and admitted that for
a number of years there had already been reports
of such incidents (Lattin, Newsgroup 2). Naturally,
Tenzin Tethon made no mention of the fact that
the sexual exploitation of women for spiritual
purposes forms the heart of the tantric mystery.
But there are more and more examples
where women are beginning to defend themselves.
Thus, in 1992 the well-known bestseller author
and commentator on the Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Sogyal Rinpoche, had to face the Supreme Court
of Santa Cruz, alleged to have “used his position
as an interpreter of Tibetan Buddhism to take
sexual and other advantage of female students
over a period of many years” (Tricycle 1996, vol. 5 no.
4, p. 87). The plaintiff was seeking 10 million
dollars. It was claimed Sogyal Rinpoche had assured
his numerous partners that it would be extremely
salutary and spiritually rewarding to sleep with
him. Another mudra,
Victoria Barlow from New York City, described
in an interview with Free Press how she, at the
age of 21, was summoned into Sogyal Rinpoche’s
room during a meditative retreats: “I went to
an apartment to see a highly esteemed lama and
discuss religion. He opened the door without a
shirt on and with a beer in his hand”. When they
were sitting on the sofa, the Tibetan “lunged
at me with sloppy kisses and groping. I thought
[then] I should take it as the deepest compliment
that he was interested and basically surrender
to him”. Today, Barlow says that she is “disgusted
by the way the Tibetans have manipulated the reverence
westerners have for the Buddhist path” (Lattin,
Newsgroup 2). The case mentioned above was, however,
settled out of court; the result, according to
Sogyal’s followers, of their master’s deep meditation.
It would normally be correct to
dismiss such “sex stories” as superfluous gossip
and disregard them. In the occult logic of Vajrayana, however, they need
to be seen as strategically placed ritual practices
designed to bring the guru power and influence.
Perhaps they additionally have something to do
with the Buddhist conquest of the West, which
is symbolized by various mudras. Such conjectures may
sound rather bizarre, but in Tantrism we are confronted
with a different logic to that to which we are
accustomed. Here, sexual events are not uncommonly
globalized and capable of influencing all of humankind.
We shall return to this point.
But at least such examples show
that Tibet’s “celibate” monks “practice” with
real women — a fact about which the Tibetan clergy
including the Fourteenth Dalai Lama have deceived
the West until now. Because more and more “wisdom
consorts” are breaking their oath to secrecy,
it is only now that the conditions are being created
for a public discussion of the tantric rituals
as such. The criticism to date has not gone beyond
a moral-feminist discourse and in no case known
to us (with the exception of some of June Campbell’s
statements) has it extended to the occult exploitative
mechanism of Vajrayana.
On the other hand, the fact that
the sexual needs of the lamas can no longer be
covered up, has, in a type of advance strategy,
led to a situation in which their “spiritual”
work with karma
mudras is presentable as something to be taken
for granted, and which is not inherently shocking.
“Many Rinpoches”, one Christopher Fynn has written
on the Internet, “including Jattral Rinpoche,
Dzongsar Khyentse, Dilgo Khyentse and Ongen Tulku
have consorts — which everyone knew about” (Fynn,
Newsgroup 4).
And the Dalai Lama, himself the
Highest Master of the sexual magic rites, raises
the moral finger: “In recent years, teachers from
Asia and the West have been involved in scandals
about sexual misbehavior towards male and female
pupils, the abuse of alcohol and drugs, and the
misuse of money and power. This behavior has caused
great damage to the Buddhist community and individual
people. Pupils of both sexes should be encouraged
to confront teachers with unethical aspects of
their behavior in an appropriate manner” (Esotera, 12/97, p. 45; retranslation).
What should be made of such requests by His Holiness,
which are also silent about the sexist mechanisms
of Tantrism is a topic which we explore in detail
in the second part of our study.
Following these up-to-date “revelations”
about Western karma mudras, let us return
to our presentation of the tantric scenario as
described in the traditional texts.
The inana mudra: the woman
of imagination
In contrast to the real karma mudra, the inana mudra is a purely spiritual figure, who appears
as a goddess, the wisdom consort of various Buddhas,
or as a “dakini”. She is the product of the imagination.
But we must keep in mind that the inana
mudra may never be a random fantasy of the
guru, rather, her external appearance, the color
of her hair, her clothing, her jewelry and the
symbols which surround her, are all codified.
Thus, in his imagination the tantric copies an
image which is already recorded in the Buddhist
pantheon. In this regard the cult of inana mudra worship has much
in common with Christian mysticism surrounding
Sophia and Mary and has therefore often been compared
with, for example, the mater gloriosa at the end
of Goethe’s Faust,
where the reformed alchemist rapturously cries:
Highest mistress
of the world!
Let me in the azure
Tent of Heaven,
in light unfurled
Hear thy Mystery
measure!
Justify sweet thoughts
that move
Breast of man to
meet thee!
And with holy bliss
of love
Bear him up to
greet thee!
(Faust II, 11997–12004)
Here, “the German poet Goethe …
unsuspectingly voices expresses the Buddhist awareness
of the Jñānamudrā [inana
mudra]”
notes Herbert Guenther, who has attempted in a
number of writings to interpret the tantras from
the viewpoint of a European philosopher (Guenther,
1976, p. 74).
It should however be noted that
such Western sublimations of the feminine only
correspond to a degree with the imaginings of
Indian and Tibetan tantrics. There, it is not
just noble and ethereal virgins who are conjured
up in the yogis’ imaginations, but also sensuous
“dakinis” trembling with lust, who not uncommonly
appear as figures of horror, goddesses with bowls
made of skulls and cleavers in their hands.
But whatever sort of a woman the
adept imagines, in all events he will unite sexually
with this spiritual being during the ritual. The
white and refined “Sophias” from the realm of
the imagination are not exempted from the ritual
sexual act. “Among the last phases of the tantrik’s
progress”, Benjamin Walker tells us, “is sexual
union on the astral plane, when he invokes elemental
spirits, fiendesses and the spirits of the dead,
and has intercourse with them” (Walker, 1982,
p. 74).
Since the yogi produces his wisdom
companion through the imaginative power of his
spirit, he can rightly consider himself her spiritual
father. The inana mudra is composed of
the substance of his own thoughts. She thus does
not consist of matter, but — and this is very
important — she nonetheless appears outside of
her imagination-father and initially encounters
him as an autonomous subject. He thus experiences
her as a being who admittedly has him alone to
thank for her being, but who nevertheless has
a life of her own, like a child, separated from
its mother once it is born.
In all, the tantras distinguish
two “types of birth” for imagined female partners:
firstly, the “women produced by spells”; secondly,
the “field-born yoginis”. In both cases we are
dealing with so-called “feminine energy fields”
or feminine archetypes which the tantric master
can through his imaginative powers render visible
for him as “illusory bodies”. This usually takes
place via a deep meditation in which the yogi
visualizes the inana
mudra with his “spiritual eye” (Wayman, 1973,
pp. 193–195).
As a master of unbounded imagination,
the yogi is seldom content with a single inana mudra, and instead creates
several female beings from out of his spirit,
either one after another or simultaneously. The
Kalachakra Tantra describes
how the imagined “goddesses” spring from various
parts of his body, from out of his head, his forehead,
his neck, his heart and his navel. He can conjure
up the most diverse entities in the form of women,
such as elements, planets, energies, forces and
emotions — compassion for example: “as the incarnation
of this arises in his heart a golden glowing woman
wearing a white robe. ... Then this woman steps
... out of his heart, spreads herself out to the
heaven of the gods like a cloud and lets down
a rain of nourishment as an antidote for all bodily
suffering” (Gäng, 1988, p. 44).
Karma
mudra vs. inana mudra
In the tantric literature we find
an endless discussion about whether the magical
sexual act with a karma mudra of flesh and blood
must be valued more highly than that with an imagined
inana mudra. For example,
Herbert Guenther devotes a number of pages to
this debate in his existentialist study of Vajrayana. Although he also
reports in detail about the “pro-woman” intentions
of the tantras, he comes to the surprising conclusion
that we have in the karma mudra a woman “who yields
pleasure containing the seed of frustration”,
whilst the inana mudra is “a woman who
yields a purer, though unstable, pleasure” (Guenther,
1976, p. 57).
As a product of the PURE SPIRIT,
he classes the inana
mudra above a living woman. She “is a creation
of one’s own mind. She is of the nature of the
Great Mother or other goddesses and comprises
all that has been previously experienced” (Guenther,
1976, p. 72, quoting Naropa). But she too finally
goes the way of all life and “therefore also,
even love, Jñānamudrā [inana mudra], gives us merely
a fleeting sense of bliss, although this feeling
is of a higher, and hence more positive, order
than the Karmamūdra [karma mudra] who makes us
‘sad’…” (Guenther, 1976, p. 75).
On the other hand there are very
weighty arguments for the greater importance of
a real woman (karma mudra) in the tantric
rite of initiation. Then the purpose of the ritual
with her is the final transcending of the real
external world of appearance (maya) and the creation of
a universe which functions solely according to
the will and imagination of the tantric master.
His first task is therefore to recognize the illusory
character of reality as a whole. This is naturally
represented more graphically, tangibly, and factually
by a woman of flesh and blood than by a fictive
construction of the own spirit, which the inana
mudra is. She appears from the outset as the
product of an illusion.
A karma mudra thus presents
an exceptionally difficult challenge to the spiritual
abilities of the adept, since the real
human woman must also be recognized as an
illusion (maya)! This means, in the
final instance, nothing less than that the yogi
no longer grants the entire physical world, which
in Indian tradition concentrates itself in the
form of a woman, an independent existence, and
that as a consequence he recognizes matter as
a conceit of his own consciousness. He thereby
frees himself from all restrictions imposed by
the laws of nature. Such a radical dissolution
of reality is believed to accelerate several times
the initiation process which otherwise takes numerous
incarnations.
Especially if “enlightenment” and
liberation from the constraints of reality is
to be achieved in a single lifetime, it is necessary
in the opinion of many tantra commentators to
practice with a human mudra. In the Cakrasamvara Tantra we read
for example, that “the secret path without a consort
will not grant perfection to beings” (quoted by
Shaw, 1994, p. 142). Tsongkhapa, founder of the
Tibetan Gelugpa sect is of the same opinion: “A
female companion is the basis of the accomplishment
of liberation” (quoted by Shaw, 1994, p. 146).
Imagined women are only recommendable for less
qualified individuals, or may serve at the beginning
of the ritual path as a preliminary exercise,
reports Miranda Shaw, who makes reference to modern
Gelugpa Masters like Lama Yeshe, Geshe Kelsang
Gyatso and Geshe Dhargyey (Shaw, 1994, pp. 146,
244, notes 26, 27, 29).
A further reason for the use of
a karma
mudra can be seen in the fact that for his
magical transformations the yogi needs a secretion
which the woman expresses during the sexual act
and which is referred to as “female seed” in the
texts. It is considered a bodily concentrate of
gynergy. This coveted vaginal
fluid will later be the subject of a detailed
discussion.
The maha mudra: the inner
woman
During the tantric ritual the karma mudra must therefore
be recognized by the yogi as an illusion. This
is of course also true of the inana
mudra, since the tantric master as an autonomous
being has to transcend both forms of the feminine,
the real and the imagined. We have already learned
from Herbert Guenther that the “spirit woman”
is also of fleeting character and prone to transitoriness.
The yogi may not attribute her with an “inherent
existence”. At the beginning of every tantric
ritual both mudras still appear outside
of him; the karma
mudra before his “real” eyes, the inana mudra before his “spiritual”
eyes.
But does this illusory character
of the two types of woman mean that they are dissolved
into nothing by the tantric master? As far as
their external and autonomous existence is concerned,
this is indeed the yogi’s conception. He does
not accord even the real woman any further inherent
existence. When, after the tantric ritual in which
she is elevated to a goddess, she before all eyes
returns home in visible, physical form, in the
eyes of the guru she no longer exists as an independent
being, but merely as the product of his imagination,
as a conceptual image — even when a normal person
perceives the girl as a being of flesh and blood.
But although her autonomous feminine
existence has been dissolved, her feminine essence
(gynergy) has not been lost.
Via an act of sexual magic the yogi has appropriated
this and with it achieved the power of an androgyne.
He destroys, so to speak, the exterior feminine
in order to internalize it and produce an “inner
woman” as a part of himself. “He absorbs the Mother
of the Universe into himself”, as it is described
in the Kalachakra Tantra (Grünwedel,
Kalacakra
IV, p. 32). At a later stage we will describe
in detail the subtle techniques with which he
performs this absorption. Here we simply list
some of the properties of the “inner woman”, the
so-called maha mudra (“great” mudra). The boundary with
the inana
mudra is not fixed, after all the maha
mudra is also a product of the imagination.
Both types of woman thus have no physical body,
and instead transcend “the atomic structure and
consist of a purely spiritual substance” (Naropa,
1994, p. 82). But the inana
mudra still exists outside of the tantric
master, the “inner woman”, however, as her name
indicates, can no longer be distinguished from
him and has become a part of his self. In general,
the maha
mudra is said to reside in the region of the
navel. There she dances and acts as an oracle
as the Greek goddess Metis once did in the belly
of Zeus.
She is the “in-born” and produces the “in-born
joy of the body, the in-born joy of language,
the in-born joy of the spirit and the in-born
joy of consciousness” (Naropa, 1994, p. 204).
The male tantric master now has
the power to assume the female form of the goddess
(who is of course an aspect of his own mystical
body), that is, he can appear in the figure of
a woman. Indeed, he even has the magical ability
to divide himself into two gendered beings, a
female and a male deity. He is further able to
multiply himself into several maha mudras. In the Guhyasamaja Tantra, with the
help of magical conjurations he fills an entire
palace with female figures, themselves all particles
of his subtle body.
Now one might think that for the
enlightened yogi the book of sensual pleasures
would be closed, since for him there are no more
exterior women. But the contrary is the case.
His lust is not transformed, but rather made eternal.
Thus in his imagination, he is “united day and
night [with the maha mudra]. The yogi often
says, he would not live without her kiss and embrace”
(Dasgupta, 1974, p. 102). He is even able to imaginatively
stimulate the sexual organs of the inner woman
in order to combine her erotic pleasure with his
own (he simultaneously enjoys both), and thus
immeasurably intensify it. (Farrow and Menon,
1992, pp. 271, 272, 291).
Despite this sexual turbulence
he retains a strict awareness of the polarity
of the primal cosmic forces, it is just that these
are now realized within his own person. He is
simultaneously masculine and feminine, and has
both sexual energies under his absolute control.
He incarnates the entire tantric theater. He is
director, actor, audience, plot and stage in one
individual.
Such agitated games are, however,
just one side of the tantric philosophy, on the
other is a concept of eternal standstill of being,
linked to the image of the maha mudra. She appears as
the “Highest Immobile”, who, like a clear, magical
mirror, reflects a femininity turned to crystal.
An obedient femininity with no will of her own,
who complies with the looks, the orders, the desires
and fantasies of her master. A female automaton,
who wishes for nothing, and blesses the yogi with
her divine knowledge and holy wisdom.
Whether mobile or unmoving, erotic
or spiritualized — the maha mudra is universal. From
a tantric viewpoint she incarnates the entire
universe. Consequently, whoever has control over
his “inner woman” becomes a lord of the universe,
a pantocrat. She is a paradox, eternal and indestructible,
but nevertheless, like the whole cosmos, without
an independent existence. For this reason she
is known as a “magical mirror” (Naropa, 1994,
p. 81). In the final instance, she represents
the “emptiness”.
In Western discussion about the
maha mudra
she is glorified by Lama Govinda (Ernst Lothar
Hoffmann) as the “Eternal Feminine” which now
counts as part of the yogi’s essential being.
(Govinda, 1991, p. 111). According to Govinda
she fulfills a role comparable to that of the
muse, who up until the 19th century whispered
inspiration into the ears of European artists.
Muses could also become incarnated as real women,
but in the same manner existed as “inner goddesses”,
known then under the name of “inspiration”.
The Buddhist doctrine of the maha mudra has also been compared
with Carl Gustav Jung’s concept of anima (Katz 1977). Jung proposed
that the human soul of a man is double gendered,
it has a masculine and a feminine part, the animus and the anima. In a woman the reverse
is true. Her feminine anima corresponds to a masculine
animus.
With some qualifications, the depth psychologist
was convinced that the other-gendered part of
the soul could originally be found in the psyche
of every person. Jung thus assumes the human soul
possesses a primary androgyny, or gynandry, respectively.
The goal of an integrated psychology is that the
individual recognize his or her other-gendered
half and bring the two parts of the soul into
harmony.
Even if we attribute the same intentions
to Tantrism, an essential difference remains.
This is, as all the relevant texts claim, that
the feminine side of the yogi is initially found
outside himself — whether in the form of a real
woman or the figure of an imaginary one — and
must first be integrated through sacred sexual
practices. If — as in Jung — the anima were to be found in
the “mystic body” of the tantric master from the
start, then he would surely be able to activate
his feminine side without needing to use an external
mudra.
If he could, then all the higher and highest initiations
into Vajrayana would be redundant,
since they always describe the “inner woman” as
the result of a process which begins with an “exterior
woman”.
It is tempting to conclude that
a causal relation exists between both female tantric
“partners”, the internal and the external. The
tantric master uses a human woman, or at least
an inana
mudra to create his androgynous body. He destroys
her autonomous existence, steals her gynergy, integrates this in
the form of an “inner woman” and thus becomes
a powerful double-gendered super-being. We can,
hypothetically, describe the process as follows:
the sacrifice of the exterior woman is the precondition
for the establishment of the inner maha mudra.
The “tantric female sacrifice”
But are we really justified in
speaking of a “tantric female sacrifice”? We shall
attempt to find an answer to this difficult question.
Fundamentally, the Buddhist tantric distinguishes
three types of sacrifice: the outer, the inner
and the secret. The “outer sacrifice” consists
of the offering to a divinity, the Buddhas, or
the guru, of food, incense, butter lamps, perfume,
and so on. For instance in the so-called “mandala
sacrifice” the whole universe can be presented
to the teacher, in the form of a miniature model,
whilst the pupil says the following. “I
sacrifice all the components of the universe in
their totality to you, O noble, kind, and holy
lama!” (Bleichsteiner, 1937, p. 192)
In the “inner sacrifice” the pupil
(Sadhaka)
gives his guru, usually in a symbolic act, his
five senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and
touch), his states of consciousness, and his feelings,
or he offers himself as an individual up to be
sacrificed. Whatever the master demands of him
will be done — even if the sadhaka must cut the flesh
from his own limbs, like the tantric adept Naropa.
Behind the “secret sacrifice” hides,
finally, a particular ritual event which attracts
our especial interest, since it is here that the
location of the “tantric female sacrifice” is
to be suspected. It concerns — as can be read
in a modern commentary upon the Kalachakra Tantra — “the spiritual
sacrifice of a dakini to the lama” (Henss,
1985, p. 56). Such symbolic sacrifices of goddesses
are all but stereotypical of tantric ceremonies.
“The exquisite bejeweled woman ... is offered
to the Buddhas” (Gäng, 1988, p. 151), as the Guhyasamaja Tantra puts it.
Often eight, sometimes sixteen, occasionally countless
“wisdom girls” are offered up in “the holy most
secret of offerings” (quoted by Beyer, 1978, p.
162)
The sacrifice of samsara
A sacrifice of the feminine need
not be first sought in Tantrism, however; rather
it may be found in the logic of the entire Buddhist
doctrine. Woman per se– as Buddha Shakyamuni
repeatedly emphasized in many of his statements
— functions as the first and greatest cause of
illusion (maya), but likewise as the
force which generates the phenomenal world (samsara). It is the fundamental
goal of every Buddhist to overcome this deceptive
samsara. This world of appearances
experienced as feminine, presents him with his
greatest challenge. “A woman”, Nancy Auer Falk
writes, “was the veritable image of becoming and
of all the forces of blind growth and productivity
which Buddhism knew as Samsara. As such she too
was the enemy — not only on a personal level,
as an individual source of temptation, but also
on a cosmic level” (Gross, 1993, p. 48). In this
misogynist logic, it is only after the ritual
destruction of the feminine that the illusory
world (maya) can be surmounted and
transcended.
Is it for this reason that maya (illusion), the mother
of the historical Buddha, had to die directly
after giving birth? In her early death we can
recognize the original event which stands at the
beginning of the fundamentally misogynist attitude
of all Buddhist schools. Maya
both conceived and gave birth to the Sublime
One in a supernatural manner. It was not a sexual
act but an elephant which, in a dream, occasioned
the conception, and Buddha Shakyamuni did not
leave his mother’s body through the birth canal,
but rather through her hip. But these transfeminine
birth myths were not enough for the tellers of
legends. Maya
as earthly mother had, on the path to enlightenment
of a religion which seeks to free humanity from
the endless chain of reincarnation, to be proclaimed
an “illusion” (maya) and destroyed. She receives
no higher accolade in the school of Buddha, since
the woman — as mother and as lover — is the curse
which fetters us to our illusory existence.
Already in Mahayana Buddhism, the naked
corpse of a woman was considered as the most provocative
and effective meditation object an initiand could
use to free himself from the net of Samsara.
Inscribed in the iconography of her body were
all the vanities of this world. For this reason,
he who sank bowed over a decaying female body
could achieve enlightenment in his current life.
To increase the intensity of the macabre observation,
it was usual in several Indian monastic orders
to dismember the corpse. Ears, nose, hands, feet,
and breasts were chopped off and the disfigured
trunk became the object of contemplation. “In
Buddhist context, the spectacle of the mutilated
woman serves to display the power of the Buddha,
the king of the Truth (Dharma) over Mara, the
lord of the Realm of Desire.”, writes Elizabeth
Wilson in a discussion of such practices, “By
erasing the sexual messages conveyed by the bodies
of attractive women through the horrific spectacle
of mutilation, the superior power of the king
of Dharma is made manifest to the citizens of
the realm of desire.” (Wilson, 1995, p. 80).
In Vajrayana, the Shunyata doctrine (among others)
of the nonexistence of all being, is employed
to conduct a symbolic sacrifice of the feminine
principle. Only once this has evaporated into
a “nothing” can the world and we humans be rescued
from the curse of maya
(illusion). This may also be a reason why the
“emptiness” (shunyata), which actually
by definition can not possess any characteristics,
is hypostasized as feminine in the tantras. This
becomes especially clear in the Hevajra Tantra. In staging
of the ritual we encounter at the outset a real
yogini (karma mudra) or at least an
imagined goddess (inana
mudra), whom the yogi transforms in the course
of events into a “nothing” using magic techniques.
By the end the tantric master has completely robbed
her of her independent existence, that is, to
put it bluntly, she no longer exists. “She is
the Yogini without a Self” (Farrow and Menon,
1992, pp. 218–219). Thus her name, Nairatmya, literally means
‘one who has no self, that is, non-substantial’
(Farrow and Menon, 1992, p. 219). The
same concept is at work when, in another tantra,
the “ultimate dakini” is visualized as a “zero-point”
and experienced as “indivisible pleasure and emptiness”
(Dowman, 1985, p. 74). Chögyam Trungpa
sings of the highest “lady without being” in the
following verses:
Always present,
you do not exist ...
Without body, shapeless,
divinity of the true.
(Trungpa, 1990, p. 40)
Only her bodilessness, her existential
sacrifice and her dissolution into nothing allow
the karma mudra to transmute into
the maha
mudra and gynergy to be distilled out of the
yogini in order to construct the feminine ego
of the adept with this “stuff”. “Relinquishing
her form [as] a woman, she would assume that of
her Lord” the Hevajra Tantra establishes
at another point (Snellgrove, 1959, p. 91).
The maha mudra has, it is said,
an “empty body” (Dalai Lama I, 1985, p. 170).
What can be understood by this contradictory metaphor?
In his commentary on the Kalachakra Tantra, Ngawang Dhargyey describes
how the “empty body” can only be produced through
the destruction of all the “material” elements
of a physical, natural “body of appearance”. In
contrast to such, “their bodies are composed simply
of energy and consciousness” (Dhargyey, 1985,
p. 131). The physical world, sensuality, matter
and nature — considered feminine in not just Buddhism
— thus become pure spirit in an irreconcilable
opposition. But they are not completely destroyed
in the process of their violent spiritualization,
but rather “sublated” in the Hegelian sense, namely
“negated” and “conserved” at the same time; they
are — to make use of one of the favorite terms
of the Buddhist evolutionary theorist, Ken Wilber
— “integrated”. This guarantees that the creative
feminine energies are not lost following the material
“dissolution” of their bearers, and instead are
available solely to the yogi as a precious elixir.
A sacrifice of the feminine as an autonomous principle
must therefore be regarded as the sine
qua non for the universal power of the tantric
master. These days this feminine sacrifice may
only be performed entirely in the imagination.
But this need not have always been the case.
“Eating” the gynergy
But Vajrayana is concerned with
more than the performance of a cosmic drama in
which the feminine and its qualities are destroyed
for metaphysical reasons. The tantric recognizes
a majority of the feminine properties as extremely
powerful. He therefore has not the slightest intention
of destroying them as such. In contrast, he wishes
to make the feminine forces his own. What he wants
to destroy is solely the physical and mental bearer
of gynergy
— the real woman. For this reason, the “tantric
female sacrifice” is of a different character
to the cosmogonic sacrifice of the feminine of
early Buddhism. It is based upon the ancient paradigm
in which the energies of a creature are transferred
to its killer. The maker of the sacrifice wants
to absorb the vital substance of the offering,
in many cases by consuming it after it has been
slaughtered. Through this he not only “integrates”
the qualities of the killed, but also believes
he may outwit death, by feeding up on the body
and soul of the sacrificial victim.
In this connection the observation
that world wide the sacred sacrifice is contextually
linked with food and eating, is of some interest.
It is necessary to kill plants and animals in
order to nourish oneself. The things killed are
subsequently consumed and thus appear as a necessary
condition for the maintenance and propagation
of life. Eating increases strength, therefore
it was important to literally incorporate the
enemy. In cannibalism, the eater integrates the
energies of those he has slaughtered. Since ancient
humans made no basic distinction between physical,
mental or spiritual processes, the same logic
applied to the “eating” of nonbodily forces. One
also ate souls, or prana,
or the élan
vital.
In the Vedas, this general “devouring
logic” led to the conception that the gods nourished
themselves from the life fluids of ritually slaughtered
humans, just as mortals consume the bodies of
animals for energy and nourishment. Thus, a critical-rational
section of the Upanishads advises against
such human sacrifices, since they do not advance
individual enlightenment, but rather benefit only
the blood-hungry supernatural beings.
Life and death imply one another
in this logic, the one being a condition for the
other. The whole circle of life was therefore
a huge sacrificial feast, consisting of the mutual
theft and absorption of energies, a great cosmic
dog-eat-dog. Although early Buddhism gave vent
to keen criticism of the Vedic rites, especially
the slaughter of people and animals, the ancient
sacrificial mindset resurfaces in tantric ritual
life. The “devouring logic” of the Vedas also controls the Tantrayana. Incidentally,
the word tantra
is first found in the context of the Vedic sacrificial
gnosis, where it means ‘sacrificial framework’
(Smith, 1989, p. 128).
Sacred cannibalism was always communion,
holy union with the Spirit and the souls of the
dead. It becomes Eucharistic communion when the
sacrifice is a slaughtered god, whose followers
eat of him at a supper. God and man are first
one when the man or woman has eaten of the holy
body and drunk the holy blood of his or her god.
The same applies in the relation to the goddess.
The tantric yogi unites with her not just in the
sexual act, but above all through consuming her
holy gynergy, the magical force
of maya.
Sometimes, as we shall see, he therefore drinks
his partner’s menstrual blood. Only when the feminine
blood also pulses in his own veins will he be
complete, an androgyne, a
lord of both sexes.
To gain the “gynergy” for himself, the
yogi must “kill” the possessor of the vital feminine
substances and then “incorporate” her. Such an
act of violence does not necessarily imply the
real murder of his mudra, it can also be performed
symbolically. But a real ritual murder of a woman
is by like measure not precluded, and it is not
surprising that occasional references can be found
in the Vajrayana texts which blatantly
and unscrupulously demand the actual killing of
a woman. In a commentary on the Hevajra Tantra, at a point
where a lower-caste wisdom consort (dombi) is being addressed,
stands bluntly, “I kill you, o Dombi, I take your life!”
(Snellgrove, 1987,
vol. 1, p. 159).
Sati or the sacred inaugural
sacrifice
In any case, in all the rituals
of the Highest Tantra initiations a symbolic female sacrifice
is set in scene. From numerous case studies in
cultural and religious history we are aware that
an “archaic first event”, an “ inaugural sacred
murder” may be hiding behind such symbolic stagings.
This “original event”, in which a real wisdom
consort was ritually killed, need in no sense
be consciously acknowledged by the following generations
and cult participants who only perform the sacrifice
in their imaginations or as holy theater. As the
French anthropologist René Girard convincingly
argues in his essay on Violence and the Sacred, the
original murderous deed is normally no longer
fully recalled during later symbolic performances.
But it can also not become totally forgotten.
It is important that the violent origin of their
sacrificial rite be shrouded in mystery for the
cult participant. “To maintain its structural
force, the inaugural violence must not make an
appearance”, claims Girard (Girard, 1987, p. 458).
Only thus can the participants experience that
particular emotionally laden and ambivalent mixture
of crime and mercy, guilt and atonement, violence
and satisfaction, shuddering and repression which
first lends the numinous aura of holiness to the
cult events.
It thus seems appropriate to examine
Tantric Buddhism for signs of such an “inaugural
sacrifice”. In this connection, we would like
to draw attention to a Shiva myth, which has nonetheless
had an influence on the history of the Buddhist
tantras.
In the mythical past, Sati was the consort of the
god Shiva.
When her father Daksa
was planning a great sacrificial feast, he failed
to invite his daughter and son-in-law. Unbidden,
Sati nonetheless attended
the feast and was deeply insulted by Daksa. Filled with shame and
anger she threw herself upon the burning sacrificial
altar and died. (In another version of the story
she alone was invited and cremated herself when
she heard that her spouse was barred from the
feast.) Shiva,
informed of the death of his wife, hurried at
once to the scene of the tragedy and decapitated
Daksa.
He then took the body of his beloved Sati, laid her across his
shoulders and began a funeral procession across
all India. The other gods wanted to free him from
the corpse and set about dismembering it, piece
by piece, without Shiva noticing what they were
doing.
The places where the fragments
fell were destined to become holy sites known
as Shakta pithas. There where
Sati’s
vulva came to land the most sacred location was
established. In some texts there is talk of 24,
in others of 108
pithas, the latter being the holy number of
Buddhism. At Sati’s numerous graves cemeteries
were set up forthwith, at which the people cremated
their dead. Around these locations developed a
many-sided, and as we shall see, extremely macabre
death culture, which was nurtured by Tantrics
of all schools (including the Buddhist variety).
In yet another version of the Sati legend, the corpse of
Shiva’s
wife contained a “small cog — a symbol of
manifest time -, [which] destroyed the body of
the goddess from the inside out. ... [It] was
then dismembered into 84 fragments which fell
to earth at the various holy sites of India” (Hutin,
1971, p. 67). This is indeed a remarkable variant
on the story, since the number of famous Maha Siddhas (Grand Sorcerers),
who in both the Buddhist and Hindu tradition introduced
Tantrism to India as a new religious practice,
is 84. These first Tantrics chose the Shakta
pithas as the central locations for their
rituals. Some of them, the Nath Siddhas, claimed
Sati had sacrificed herself
for them and had given them her blood. For this
reason they clothed themselves in red robes (White,
1996, p. 195). Likewise, one of the many Indian
cemetery legends tells how five of the Maha Siddhas emerged from
the cremated corpse of a goddess named Adinatha (White, 1996, p.
296). It can be assumed that this is also a further
variation on the Sati
legend.
It is not clear from the tale whether
the goddess committed a sacrificial suicide or
whether she was the victim of a cruel murder.
Sati’s voluntary leap into
the flames seems to indicate the former; her systematic
dismemberment the latter. A “criminological” investigation
of the case on the basis of the story alone, i.e.,
without reference to other considerations, is
impossible, since the Sati legend must itself be
regarded as an expression of the mystifying ambivalence
which, according to René Girard, veils every inaugural
sacrifice. All that is certain is that all of
the originally Buddhist (!) Vajrayana’s significant cult
locations were dedicated to the dismembered Hindu
Sati.
Earlier, however, claims the Indologist
D. C. Sircar, famous relics of the “great goddess”
were said to be found at the Shakta pithas. At the heart
of her cult stood the worship of her yoni (‘vagina’) (Sircar,
1973, p. 8). We can only concur with this opinion,
yet we must also point out that the majority of
the matriarchal cults of which we are aware also
exhibited a phallic orientation. Here the phallus
did not signalize a symbol of male dominance,
but was instead a toy of the “great goddess”,
with which she could sexual-magically manipulate
men and herself obtain pleasure.
We also think it important to note
that the practices of Indian gynocentric cults
were in no way exempt from sacrificial obsession.
In contrast, there is a comprehensive literature
which reports the horrible rites performed at
the Shakta
pithas in honor of the goddess Kali. Her followers bowed
down before her as the “consumer of raw meat”,
who was constantly hungry for human sacrifices.
The individuals dedicated to her were first fed
up until they were sufficiently plump to satisfy
the goddess’s palate. On particular feast days
the victims were decapitated in her copper temple
(Sircar, 1973, p. 16).
Naturally we can only speculate
that the “dismemberment of the goddess” in the
Sati myth might be a masculine
reaction to the original fragmentation of the
masculine god by the gynocentric Kali. But this murderous reciprocity
must not be seen purely as an act of revenge.
In both cases it is a matter of the increased
life energy which is to be achieved by the sacrifice
of the opposite sex. In so doing, the “revolutionary”
androcentric yogis made use of a similar ritual
praxis and symbolism to the aggressive female
followers of the earlier matriarchy, but with
reversed premises. For example, the number 108,
so central to Buddhism, is a reminder of the 108
names under which the great goddess was worshipped
(Sircar, 1973, p. 25).
The fire sacrifice of the dakini
The special feature of Greek sacrificial
rites lay in the combination of burning and eating,
of blood rite and fire altar. In pre-Buddhist,
Vedic India rituals involving fire were also the
most common form of sacrifice. Humans, animals,
and plants were offered up to the gods on the
altar of flame. Since every sacrifice was supposed
to simulate among other things the dismemberment
of the first human, Prajapati, it always concerned
a “symbolic human sacrifice”, even when animal
or plant substitutes were used.
At first the early Buddhists adopted
a highly critical attitude towards such Vedic
practices and rejected them outright, in stark
opposition to Vajrayana later, in which
they were to regain central significance. Even
today, fire pujas are among the most
frequent rituals of Tantric Buddhism. The origin
of these Buddhist “flame masses” from the Vedas becomes obvious when
it is noted that the Vedic fire god Agni appears in the Buddhist tantras as the “Consumer
of Offerings”. This is even true of the Tibetans.
In this connection, Helmut von Glasenapp describes
one of the final scenes from the large-scale Kalachakra ritual, which the
Panchen Lama performed in Beijing 1932: A “woodpile
was set alight and the fire god invited to take
his place in the eight-leafed lotus which stood
in the middle of the fireplace. Once he had been
offered abundant sacrifices, Kalachakra was invited to
come hither from his mandala and to become one
with the fire god” (von Glasenapp, 1940, p. 142).
Thus the time god and the fire unite.
The symbolic burning of “sacrificial
goddesses” is found in nearly every tantra. It
represents every possible characteristic, from
the human senses to various states of consciousness.
The elements (fire, water, etc.) and individual
bodily features are also imagined in the form
of a “sacrificial goddesses”. With the pronouncement
of a powerful magic formula they all perish in
the fire. In what is known as the Vajrayogini ritual, the pupil
sacrifices several inana mudras to a red fire god who
rides a goat. The chief goddess, Vajrayogini, appears here
with “a red-colored body which shines with a brilliance
like that of the fire of the aeon” (Gyatso, 1991,
p. 443). In the Guhyasamaya Tantra the goddesses
even fuse together in a fiery ball of light in
order to then serve as a sacrifice to the Supreme
Buddha. Here the adept also renders malignant
women harmless through fire: “One makes the burnt
offerings within a triangle. ... If one has done
this three days long, concentrating upon the target
of the women, then one can thus ward them off,
even for the infinity of three eons” (Gäng, 1988,
p. 225). A “burning woman” by the name of Candali plays such a significant
role in the Kalachakra initiations that
we devote an entire chapter to her later. In this
context we also examine the “ignition of feminine
energy”, a central event along the sexual magic
initiation path of Tantrism.
In Buddhist iconography, the tantric
initiation goddesses, the dakinis are represented dancing
within a fiery circle of flame. These are supernatural
female beings encountered by the yogi on his initiatory
journey who assist him in his spiritual development,
but with whom he can also fall into serious conflict.
Translated, dakini means “sky-going one”
or “woman who flies” or “sky dancer”. (Herrmann-Pfand,
1996, pp. 68, 38). In Buddhism the name appeared around 400 C.E.
The German Tibetologist Albert
Grünwedel was his whole life obsessed with the
idea that the “heaven/sky walkers” were once human
“wisdom companions”, who, after they had been
killed in a fire ritual, continued to function
in the service of the tantric teachings as female
spirit beings (genies). He saw in the dakinis
the “souls of murdered mudras” banished by magic,
and believed that after their sacrificial death
they took to haunting as Buddhist ghosts (Grünwedel,
1933, p. 5). Why, he asked, do the dakinis always
hold skull cups and cleavers in their hands in
visual representations? Obviously, as can be read
everywhere, to warn the initiands against the
transient and deceptive world of samsara and to cut them off
from it. But Grünwedel sees this in a completely
different light: For him, just as the saints display
the instruments of their martyrdom in Christian
iconography, so too the tantric goddesses demonstrate
their mortal passing with knives and skulls; like
their European sisters, the witches, with whom
they have so much in common, they are to be burnt
at the stake (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, p. 41) Grünwedel
traces the origin of this female sacrifice back
to the marked misogyny of the early phase of Buddhism:
“The insults [thrown at] the woman sound dreadful.
... The body of the woman is a veritable cauldron
of hell, the woman a magical form of the demons
of destruction” (Grünwedel, 1924, vol. 2, p. 29).
One could well shrug at the speculations
of this German Tibetologist and Asian researcher.
As far as they are understood symbolically, they
do not contradict tantric orthodoxy in the slightest,
which even teaches the destruction of the “external”
feminine as an article of faith. As we have seen,
the sacrificial goddesses are burnt symbolically.
Some tantras even explicitly confirm Grünwedel’s
thesis that the dakinis were once “women of flesh
and blood”, who were later transformed into “spirit
beings” (Bhattacharyya, 1982, p. 121). Thus she
was sacrificed as a karma
mudra, a human woman in order to then be transformed
into an inana mudra, an imaginary
woman. But the process did not end here, then
the inana mudra still had an existence
external to the adept. She also needed to be “sacrificed”
in order to create the “inner woman”, the maha mudra. A passage from
the Candamaharosana
Tantra thus plainly urges the adept: “Threaten,
threaten, kill, kill, slay slay all Dakinis!”
(quoted by George, 1974, p. 64)
But what is the intent behind a
fiery dakini sacrifice? The same as that behind
all the other tantric rituals, namely the absorption
of gynergy upon which to found
the yogi’s omnipotence. Here the longed-for feminine
elixir has its own specific names. The adept calls
it the “heart blood of the dakini”, the “essence
of the dakini’s heart”, the “life-heart of the
dakini” (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 342). “Via the
‘conversion’ the Dakinis become protectors of
the religion, once they have surrendered their
‘life-heart’ to their conqueror”, a tantra text
records (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 204).
This “surrender of the heart” can
often be brutal. For example, a Tibetan story
tells of how the yogini Magcig declares that she
is willing for her breast to be slit open with
a knife — whether in reality or just imagination
remains unclear. Her heart was then taken out,
“and whilst the red blood — drip, drip — flowed
out”, laid in a skull bowl. Then the organ was
consumed by five dakinis who were present. Following
this dreadful heart operation Magcig had transformed
herself into a dakini (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p.
164). As macabre as this story is, on the other
hand it shows that the tantric female sacrifice
need not necessarily be carried out against the
will of woman to be sacrificed. In contrast, the
yogini often surrenders her heart-blood voluntarily
because she loves her master. Like Christ, she
lets herself be crucified for love. But her guru
may never let this love run free. He has a sacred
duty to control the feelings of the heart, and
the power to manipulate them.
In the dakini’s heart lies the
secret of enlightenment and thus of universal
power. She is the “Queen of Hearts”, who — like
Diana, Princess of Wales — must undergo a violent
“sacrificial death” in order to then shine as
the pure ideal of the monarchy
(the “autocratic rule” of the yogis). Lama
Govinda also makes reference to a fiery sacrificial
apotheosis of the dakini when he proclaims in
a vision that all feminine forces are concentrated
in the sky walkers, “until focused on a point
as if through a lens they kindle to a supreme
heat and become the holy flame of inspiration
which leads to perfect enlightenment” (Govinda,
1991, p. 231). It need not be said that here the
inspiration and enlightenment of the male tantra
master alone is meant and not that of his female
sacrifice.
Vajrayogini
The “tantric female sacrifice”
has found a sublime and many-layered expression
in what is known as the “Vajrayogini
rite”, which we would like to examine briefly
because of its broad distribution among the Tibetan
lamas. Vajrayogini is the most important
female divine figure in the highest yogic practices
of Tibetan Buddhism. The goddess is worshipped
as, among other things, “Mistress of the World”,
the “Mother of all Buddhas”, “Queen of the Dakinis”,
and a “Powerful Possessor of Knowledge”. Her reverential
cult is so unique in androcentric Lamaism that
a closer examination has much to recommend it.
In so doing we draw upon a document on Vajrayogini praxis by the
Tibetan lama Kelsang Gyatso.
This tantric ritual, centered upon
a principal female figure, begins like all others,
with the pupil’s adoration of the guru. Seated
upon two cushions which represent the sun and
moon, the master holds a vajra and a bell in his hands, thus emphasizing
his androgyny and transsexual power.
Vajra Yogini in the burning circle
External, internal, and secret
sacrifices are made to him and his lineage. Above
all this concerns many imagined “sacrificial goddesses”
which emanate from the pupil’s breast and from
there enter the teacher’s heart. Among these are
the goddesses of beauty, music, flowers, and the
light. With the “secret sacrifices” the sadhaka
pronounces the following: “And I offer most attractive
illusory mudras, a host of messengers born from
places, born from mantra, and spontaneously born,
with lender bodies, skilled in the 64 arts of
love” (Gyatso, 1991, p. 250).
In the Vajrayogini praxis a total
of three types of symbolic female sacrifice are
distinguished. Two of these consist in the offering
of inana mudras, that is of “spirit
women”, who are drawn from the pupil’s imagination.
In the third sacrificial offering he presents
his teacher with a real sexual partner (karma
mudra) (Gyatso, 1991, p. 88).
Once all the women have been presented
to the guru and he has absorbed their energies,
the image of the Vajrayogini
arises in his heart.
Her body appears in red and glows like the
“apocalyptic fire”. In her right hand she holds
a knife with a vajra-shaped handle, in her
left a skull bowl filled with blood. She carries
a magic wand across her shoulders, the tip of
which is adorned with three tiny human heads.
She wears a crown formed out of five skulls. A
further fifty severed heads are linked in a chain
which swings around her neck. Beneath her feet
the Hindu divinity Shiva and the red Kalarati crouch in pain.
Thereupon her image penetrates
the pupil, and takes possession of him, transforming
him into itself via an internalized iconographic
dramaturgy. That the sadhaka now represents the
female divinity is considered a great mystery.
Thus the master now whispers into his ear, “Now
you are entering into the lineage of all yoginis.
You should not mention these holy secrets of all
the yoginis to those who have not entered the
mandala of all the yoginis or those who have no
faith” (Gyatso, 1991, p. 355). With divine pride
the pupil replies, “I am the Enjoyment Body of
Vajrayogini!” (Gyatso, 1991,
p. 57) or simply and directly says, “I am Vajrayogini!” (Gyatso, 1991,
p. 57). Then, as a newly arisen goddess he comes
to sit face-to-face with his guru. Whether the
latter now enjoys sexual union with the sadhaka
as Vajrayogini
cannot be determined from the available texts.
At any rate we must regard this
artificial goddess as a female mask, behind which
hides the male sadhaka who has assumed her form.
He can of course set this mask aside again. It
is impressive just how vivid and unadorned the
description of this reverse transformation of
the “Vajrayogini pupil” into his
original form is: “With the clarity of Vajrayogini”, he says in one
ritual text, “I give up my breasts and develop
a penis. In the perfect place in the center of
my vagina the two walls transform into bell-like
testicles and the stamen into the penis itself”
(Gyatso, 1991, p. 293).
Other sex-change transfigurations
are also known from Vajrayogini praxis. Thus,
for example, the teacher can play the role of
the goddess and let his pupil take on the male
role . He can also divide himself into a dozen
goddesses — yet it is always men (the guru or
his pupils) who play the female roles.
Chinnamunda
The dreadful Chinnamunda (Chinnamastra) ritual also
refers to a “tantric female sacrifice”. At the
center of this ritual drama we find a goddess
(Chinnamunda) who decapitates
herself. Iconographically, she is depicted as
follows: Chinnamunda stands upright
with the cleaver with which she has just decapitated
herself clenched in her right hand. On her left,
raised palm she holds her own head. Three thick
streams of blood spurt up from the stump of her
neck. The middle one curves in an arc into the
mouth of her severed head, the other two flow
into the mouths of two further smaller goddesses
who flank
Chinnamunda. She usually tramples upon one
or more pairs of lovers. This bloody cult is distributed
in both Tantric Buddhism and Hinduism.
Chinnamunda with two servants
According to one pious tale of
origin, Chinnamunda
severs her own head because her two servants complain
of a great hunger which she is unable to assuage.
The decapitation was thus motivated by great compassion
with two suffering beings. It nevertheless appears
grotesque that an individual like Chinnamunda, in possession
of such extraordinary magical powers, would be
forced to feed her companions with her own blood,
instead of conjuring up an opulent meal for them
with a spell. According to another, metaphysical
interpretation, the goddess wanted to draw attention
to the unreality of all being with her self-destructive
deed. Yet even this philosophical platitude can
barely explain the horrible scenario, although
one is accustomed to quite a deal from the tantras.
Is it not therefore reasonable to see a merciless
representation of a “tantric female sacrifice”
in the Chinnamunda myth? Or are we
here dealing with an ancient matriarchal cult
in which the goddess gives a demonstration of
her triune nature and her indestructibility via
an in the end “ineffectual” act of self-destruction?
This
gynocentric thesis is reminiscent of an analysis
of the ritual by Elisabeth Anne Benard, in which
she explains Chinnamunda and her two companions
to be an emanation of the triune goddess (Benard,
1994, p. 75). [1]
Chinnamunda is in no sense the sole victim
in this macabre horror story; rather, she also
extracts her life energies from out of the erotic
love between the two sexes, just like a Buddhist
tantra master. Indeed, in her canonized iconographic
form she dances about upon one or two pairs of
lovers, who in some depictions are engaged in
sexual congress. The Indologist David Kinsley
thus sums up the events in a concise and revealing
equation: “Chinnamasta [Chinnamunda] takes life and
vigor from the copulating couple, then gives it
away lavishly by cutting off her own head to feed
her devotees” (Kinsley, 1986, p. 175). Thus,
a “sacrificial couple” and the theft of their
love energy are to be found at the outset of this
so difficult to interpret blood rite.
Yet the mystery remains as to why
this particular drama, with its three female protagonists,
was adopted into Tantric Buddhist meditative practices.
We can see only two possible explanations for
this. Firstly, that it represents an attempt by
Vajrayana
to incorporate within its own system every sacrificial
magic element, regardless how bizarre, and even
if it originated among the followers of a matriarchal
cult. By appropriating the absolutely foreign,
the yogi all the more conspicuously demonstrates
his omnipotence. Since he is convinced of his
ability to — in the final instance — play all
gender roles himself and since he also believes
himself a lord over life and death, he thus also
regards himself as the master of this Chinnamunda “female ritual”.
The second possibility is that the self-sacrifice
of the goddess functions as a veiled reference
to the “tantric female sacrifice” performed by
the yogi, which is nonetheless capable of being
understood by the initiated. [2]
Summary
The broad distribution of human
sacrifice in nearly all cultures of the world
has for years occasioned a many-sided discussion
among anthropologists and psychologist of the
most varied persuasions as to the social function
and meaning of the “sacrificium humanum”. In this,
reference has repeatedly been made to the double-meaning
of the sacrificial act, which simultaneously performs
both a destructive and a regulative function in
the social order. The classic example for this
is the sacrifice of the so-called “scapegoat”.
In this case, the members of a community make
use of magical gestures and spells to transfer
all of their faults and impurities onto one particular
person who is then killed. Through the destruction
of the victim the negative features of the society
are also obliterated. The psychologist Otto Rank
sees the motivation for such a transference magic
in, finally, the individual’s fear of death. (quoted
by Wilber, 1990, p. 176).
Another sacrificial gnosis, particularly
predominant in matriarchal cults presupposes that
fertility can be generated through subjecting
a person to a violent death or bleeding them to
death. Processes from the world of vegetative
nature, in which plants die back every year in
order to return in spring, are simulated. In this
view, death and life stand in a necessary relation
to one another; death brings forth life.
A relation between fertility and
human sacrifice is also formed in the ancient
Indian culture of the Vedas.
The earth and the life it supports, the entire
universe in fact, were formed, according to the
Vedic myth of origin, by the independent self-dismemberment
of the holy adamic figure Prajapati. His various limbs
and organs formed the building blocks of our world.
But these lay unlinked and randomly scattered
until the priests (the Brahmans) came and wisely
recombined them through the constant performance
of sacrificial rites. Via the sacrifices, the
Brahmans guaranteed that the cosmos remained stabile,
and that gave them enormous social power.
All these aspects may, at least
in general, contribute to the “tantric female
sacrifice”, but the central factors are the two
elements already mentioned:
- The destruction of the feminine as a symbol
of the highest illusion (Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism)
- The sacrifice of the woman in order to absorb
her gynergy
(Tantrayana).
Let us close this chapter by once
again summing up why the female sacrifice is essential
for the tantric rite: Everything which opposes
a detachment from this world, which is characterized
by suffering and death, all the obscuring of
Maya, the entire deception of samsara
is the shameful work of woman. Her liquidation
as an autonomous entity brings to nothing this
world of appearances of ours. In the tantric logic
of inversion, only transcending the feminine can
lead to enlightenment and liberation from the
hell of rebirth. It alone promises eternal life.
The yogi may thus call himself a “hero” (vira), because he had the
courage and the high arts needed to absorb the
most destructive and most base being in the universe
within himself, in order not just to render it
harmless but to also transform it into positive
energy for the benefit of all beings.
This “superhuman” victory over
the “female disaster” convinced the Tantrics that
the seed for a radical inversion into the positive
is also hidden in all other negative deeds, substances,
and individuals. The impure, the evil, and the
criminal are thus the raw material from which
the Vajra master tries to distill
the pure, the good, and the holy.
Footnotes:
[2] The
Tibetan texts which describe the rite of Chinnamunda,
see in it a symbol for the three energy channels,
with which the yogi experiments in his mystical
body. (We will discuss this in detail later.)
Hence, the famous scholar Taranatha writes,
“when the [female] ruler severs her head from
her own neck with the cleaver held in her right
hand, the three veins Avadhuti, Ida and Pingala
are severed,and through this the flow of greed,
hate, and delusion is cut off, for herself and
for all beings” (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, pp. 263–264). This comparison is somewhat
strained, however, since the inner energy channels
are in fact sex-specific (Ida — masculine; Pingala
— feminine; Avadhuti — androgyne) and for this
reason could well present difficulties for a represention
in the form of
three women.
Next Chapter:
4. THE LAW OF INVERSION
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