|
The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
II – 5. Buddhocracy and anarchy: contradictory
or complementary?
© Victor & Victoria
Trimondi
5. BUDDHOCRACY AND ANARCHY:
CONTRATICTORY OR COMPLEMENTRAY?
The totalitarian Lamaist state
(the Tibetan Buddhocracy), headed by its absolute
ruler, the Dalai Lama, was — as contradictory
as this may at first appearance seem to be — only
one of the power-political forces which decisively
shaped the history of Tibet. On the other side
we find all the disintegrative and anti-state
forces which constantly challenged the clerical
sphere as dangerous opponents. As we shall soon
see, within the whole social structure they represented
the forces of anarchy: „Thus,
Tibetans understand power both“, writes Rebecca
Redwood French, „as a highly centralized, rigidly
controlled and hierarchically determined force
and as a diffuse and multivalent force” (Redwood
French, 1995, p. 108). What are these „diffuse
and multivalent” forces and how does the „highly
centralized … and hierarchically determined” Buddhist
state deal with them?
The powers which rebelled against
the established monastic order in the Tibet of
old were legion — above all the all-powerful nature of the country. Extreme
climatic conditions and the huge territory, barely
developed in terms of transport logistics, rendered
effective state control by the lamas only partially
realizable. But the problems were not just of
the factual kind. In addition, from the Tibetan,
animist point of view, the wilds of nature are
inhabited by countless gods, demons, and spirits,
who must all be brought under control: the lu — water spirits which contaminate
wells and divert rivers; the nyen — tree spirits that cause
illnesses, especially cancer; the jepo — the harmful ghosts
of bad kings and lamas who broke their vows; the
black dü — open rebels who deliberately
turn against the Dharma; the mamo, also black — a dangerous
breed of witches and harpies; the sa — evil astral demons; and
many others. They all posed a daily threat for
body and soul, life and possession in the Tibet
of old and had to be kept in check through constant
rituals and incantations. This animist world view
is still alive and well today despite Chinese
communist materialism and rationalism and is currently
experiencing an outright renaissance.
But it was not enough to have conquered
and enchained (mostly via magic rituals) the nature
spirits listed. They then required constant guarding
and supervision so that they did resume their
mischief. Even the deities known as dharmapalas, who were supposed
to protect the Buddhist teachings, tended to forget
their duties from to time and turn against their
masters (the lamas). This “omnipresence of the
demonic” kept the monks and the populace in a
constant state of alarm and caused an extreme
tension within the Tibetan culture.
On the social level it was, among
other things, the high degree of criminality which
time and again provoked Tibetan state Buddhism
and was seen as subversive. The majority of westerners
traveling in Tibet (in the time before the Chinese
occupation) reported that the brigandry in the
country represented a general nuisance. Certain
nomadic tribes, the Khampas for example, regarded
robbery as a lucrative auxiliary income or even
devoted themselves to it full-time. They were
admittedly feared but definitely not despised
for this, but were rather seen as the heroes of
a robber romanticism widespread in the country.
To go out without servants and unarmed was also
considered dangerous in the Lhasa of old. One
lived in constant fear of being held up.
In terms of popular culture, there were strong
currents of an original, anarchist (non-Buddhist)
shamanism which coursed through the whole country
and were not so easily brought under the umbrella
of a Buddhist concept of state. The same was true
of the Nyingmapa sect, whose members had a very
libertarian and vagabond lifestyle. In addition,
there were the wandering yogis and ascetics as
further representatives of “anarchy”. And last
not least, the great orders conducted an unrelenting
competitive campaign against one another which
was capable of bringing the entire state to the
edge of chaos. If, for example, the Sakyapas were
at the high point of their power, then the Kagyupas
would lay in wait so as to discover their weaknesses
and bring them down. If the Kagyupas seized control
over the Land of Snows, then they would be hampered
by the Gelugpas with help from the Mongolians.
The Lamaist state and anarchy have
always stood opposed to one another in Tibetan
history. But can we therefore say that Buddhism
always and without fail took on the role of the
state which found itself in constant conflict
with all the non-Buddhist
forces of anarchy? We shall see that the social
dynamic was more complex than this. Tantric Buddhism
is itself — as a result of the lifestyle which
the tantras require — an expression of “anarchy”,
but only partially and only at times. In the final
instance it succeeds in combining both the authoritarian
state and an anarchic lifestyle, or, to put it
better, in Tibet (and now in the West) the lamas
have developed an ingenious concept and practice
through which to use anarchy to shore up the Buddhocracy.
Let us examine this more closely through a description
of the lives of various tantric “anarchists”.
The grand sorcerers (Maha
Siddhas)
The anarchist element in the Buddhist
landscape is definitely not unique to Tibet. The
founding father, Shakyamuni himself, displayed
an extremely anti-state and antisocial behavior
and later required the same from his followers.
Instead of taking up his inheritance
as a royal ruler, he chose homelessness; instead
of opting for his wife and harem, he chose abstinence;
instead of wealth he sought poverty. But the actual
“anarchist” representatives of Buddhism are the
84 grand sorcerers or Maha Siddhas, who make up
the legendary founding group of Vajrayana and from whom the
various lineages of Tibetan Buddhism are traced.
Hence, in order to consider the origins of the
anti-state currents in Tibetan history, we must
cast a glance over the border into ancient India.
All of the stories about the Maha Siddhas tell of the spectacular
adventures they had to go through to attain their
goal of enlightenment (i.e., the ritual absorption
of gynergy). Had they succeeded
in this, then they could refer to themselves as
“masters of the maha mudra”. The number of
84 does not correspond to any historical reality.
Rather, we are dealing with a mystical number
here which in symbolizes perfection in several
Indian religious systems. Four of the Maha Siddhas were women. They
all lived in India between the eighth and twelfth
centuries.
The majority of these grand sorcerers
came from the lower social strata. They were originally
fishermen, weavers, woodcutters, gardeners, bird-catchers,
beggars, servants, or similar. The few who were
members of the higher castes — the kings, brahmans,
abbots, and university lecturers — all abandoned
their privileges so as to lead the life of the
mendicant wandering yogis as “drop-outs”. But
their biographies have nothing in common with
the pious Christian legends — they are violent,
erotic, demonic, and grotesque. The American,
Keith Dowman, stresses the rebellious character
of these unholy holy men: „Some
of these Siddhas are iconoclasts, dissenters,
anti-establishment rebels. [...] Obsessive
caste rules and regulations in society
and religious ritual as an end in itself, were
undermined by the siddhas’ exemplary free living”
(Dowman, 1985, pp. 2). Dowman explicitly refers
to their lifestyle as „spiritual anarchism” which
did not allow of any control by institutionalism
(Dowman, 1985, p. 3).
Ling-tsang Gyalpo – a great Nyinma Phurba Master
The relationship with a woman so
as to perform the sexual magic rites with her
was at the core of every Siddha’s life. Whether
king or beggar, they all preferred girls from
the lower castes — washer-women, prostitutes,
barmaids, dancing girls, or cemetery witches.
The grand sorcerers’ clothes and
external appearance was also in total contradiction
to the image of the Buddhist monks. They were
demonically picturesque. With naked torsos, the
Maha Siddhas
wore a fur loincloth, preferably that of a beast
of prey. Huge rings hung from their ears and about
their necks swung necklaces of human bone. In
contrast to the ordained bhiksus (monks) the grand
sorcerers never shaved their heads, instead letting
their hair grow into a thick mane which they bound
together above their heads in a knot. Their style
more resembled that of the Shivaite yogis and
it was difficult to recognize them as traditional
followers of Gautama Buddha. Many of the Maha
Siddhas were thus equally revered by both
the Shivaites and the Buddhists. From this the
Indologist, Ramachandra Rao, concludes that in
the early phase of Tantrism the membership of
a particular religious current was in no way the
deciding criterion for a yogi’s world view, rather,
it was the tantric technique which made them all
(independent of their religious affiliation) members
of a single esoteric community (Ramachandra Rao,
1989, p. 42).
The Maha Siddhas wanted to provoke.
Their “demonic nihilism” knew no bounds. They
shocked people with their bizarre appearance,
were even disrespectful to kings and as a matter
of principle did the opposite of what one would
expect of either an “ordinary” person or an ordained
Mahayana monk. It was a part
of their code of honor to publicly represent their
mystic guild through completely unconventional
behavior. Instead of abstinence they enjoyed brandy,
rather than peacemakers they were ruffians. The
majority of them took mind-altering drugs. They
were dirty and unkempt. They collected alms in
a skull bowl. Some of them proudly fed themselves
with human body parts which lay scattered about
the crematoria. We have reported upon their erotic
practices in detail in the first part of our study,
and likewise upon their boundless power fantasies
which did not shy at any crime. Hence, the magic
powers (siddhis)
were at the top of their wish list, even if it
is repeatedly stressed in the legends that the
“worldly” siddhis were of only secondary
importance. Telepathy, clairvoyance, the ability
to fly, to walk on water, to raise the dead, to
kill the living by power of thought — they constantly
performed wonders in their immediate environs
so as to demonstrate their superiority.
But how well can this “spiritual
anarchism” of the Maha
Siddhas be reconciled with the Buddhist conception
of state? In his basic character the Siddha is
an opponent all state hierarchies and every form
of discipline. All the formalities of life are
repugnant to him — marriage, occupation, position,
official accolades and recognition. But this is
only temporarily valid, then once the yogi has
attained a state of enlightenment a wonderful
and ordered world arises from this in accordance
with the law of inversion. Thanks to the sexual
magic rites of Tantrism the brothel bars have
now become divine palaces, nauseating filth has
become diamond-clear purity, stinking excrement
shining pieces of gold, horny hetaeras noble queens,
insatiable hate undying love, chaos order, anarchy
the absolute state. The monastic state is, as
we shall show in relation to the “history of the
church” in Tibet, the goal; the “wild life” of
the Maha Siddhas in contrast is
just a transitional phase.
For this reason we should not refer
to the tantric yogi not simply as a “spiritual
anarchist” as does Keith Dowman, nor as a “villain”.
Rather, he is a disciplined hero of the “good”,
who dives into the underworld of erotic love and
crime so as to stage a total inversion there,
in that he transforms everything negative into
its positive. He is no libertarian free thinker,
but rather an “agent” of the monastic community
who has infiltrated the red-light and criminal
milieu for tactic spiritual reasons. But he does
not always see his task as being to transform
the whores, murderers and manslaughterers into
saints, rather he likewise understands it as being
to make use of their aggression to protect and
further his own ideas and interests.
The anarchist founding
father of Tibetan Buddhism: Padmasambhava
The most famous of all the great
magicians of Tibet is, even though he is not one
of the 84 Maha Siddhas, the Indian,
Padmasambhava, the “Lotus Born”. The Tibetans
call him Guru Rinpoche, “valuable teacher”.
He is considered to be not just an emanation of
Avalokiteshvara (like the
Dalai Lama) but is himself also, according to
the doctrine of the “Great Fifth”, a previous
incarnation of the Tibetan god-king. The reader
should thus always keep in mind that the current
Fourteenth Dalai Lama is accountable for the wild
biography of Guru Rinpoche as his own former
life.
Legend tells of his wondrous birth
from a lotus flower — hence his name (padma means ‘lotus’). He appeared
in the form of an eight-year-old boy “without
father or mother”, that is, he gave rise to himself.
The Indian king Indrabhuti discovered him in the
middle of a lake, and brought the lotus boy to
his palace and reared him as a son. In the iconography,
Padmasambhava may be encountered in eight different
forms of appearance, behind each of this a legend
can be found. His trademark, which distinguishes
him from all other Tibetan “saints”, is an elegant
“French” goatee. He holds the kathanga, a rod bearing three
tiny impaled human heads, as his favorite scepter.
His birthplace in India, Uddiyana, was famed and
notorious for the wildness of the tantric practices
which were cultivated there.
Around 780 C.E. the Tibetan king,
Trisong Detsen, fetched Padmasambhava into Tibet.
The political intentions behind this royal summons
were clear: the ruler wanted to weaken the power
of the mighty nobles and the caste of the Bon
priests via the introduction of a new religion.
Padmasambhava was supposed to replace at court
the Indian scholar, Shantarakshita, (likewise
a Buddhist), who had proved too weak to assert
himself against the recalcitrant aristocracy.
Guru Rinpoche, in contrast, was
already considered to be a tantric superman in
Uddiyana. He demanded his own weight in gold bars
of the king as his fee for coming. When he finally
stood before Trisong Detsen, the king demanded
that he demonstrate his respect with a bow. Instead
of doing so, Guru Rinpoche sprayed lightning from
his fingertips, so that it was the king who sank
to his knees and recognized the magician as the
appropriate ally with whom to combat the Bon priests,
likewise skilled in magic things. The guru was
thus bitterly hated by these and by the nobles,
even the king’s ministers treated him with the
greatest hostility imaginable.
Statue of Padmasambhava
The saga has made Padmasambhava
the founding father of Tibetan Buddhism. His life
story is a fantastic collection of miracles which
made him so popular among the people that he soon
enjoyed a greater reverence than the historical
Buddha, whose life appeared sober and pale in
comparison. Reports about Guru Rinpoche and his
writings are drawn primarily from the termas (treasures) already
mentioned above, which, it is claimed, he himself
hid so that they would come to light centuries
later.
From a very young age the boy already
stood out because of his abnormal and violent
nature. He killed a sleeping baby by throwing
a stone at it and justified this deed with the
pretense that the child would have become a malignant
magician who would have harmed many people in
his later life. Apart from his royal adoptive
father, Indrabhuti, no-one accepted this argument,
and several people attempted to bring him to justice.
At the urgings of a minister he was first confined
to a palace by soldiers. Shortly afterward the
guru appeared upon the roof of the building, naked
except for a “sixfold bone ornament”, and with
a vajra and a trident in his
hands. The people gathered rapidly to delight
in the odd spectacle, among them one of the hostile
ministers with his wife and son. Suddenly and
without warning Padmasambhava’s vajra penetrated the brain
of the boy and the trident speared through the
heart of the mother fatally wounding both of them.
The pot boiled over at this additional
double murder and the entire court now demanded
that the wrongdoer be impaled. Yet once again
he succeeded in proving that the murder victims
had earned their violent demise as the just punishment
for their misdeeds in earlier lives. It was decided
to refrain from the death penalty and to damn
Padmasambhava instead. Thereupon a troupe of dancing
dakinis appeared in the skies leading a miraculous
horse by the halter. Guru Rinpoche mounted it
and vanished into thin air. Acts of violence were
to continue to characterize his future life.
As much as he was a master of tantric
erotic love, he decisively rejected the institution
of marriage. When Indrabhuti wanted to find him
a wife, he answered by saying that women were
like wild animals without minds and that they
vainly believed themselves to be goddesses. There
were, however, exceptions, as well hidden as a
needle in a haystack, and if he would have to
marry then he should be brought such an exception.
After many unsuccessful presentations, Bhasadhara
was finally found. With her he began his tantric
practices, so that “the mountains shook and the
gales blew”.
The marriage did not last long.
Like the historical Buddha, Guru Rinpoche turned
his back on the entertaining palace life of his
adoptive father and chose as his favorite place
to stay the crematoria of India. He was in the
habit of meditating there, and there he held his
constant rendezvous with terrible-looking witches
(dakinis). One document reports how he dressed
in the clothes of dead and fed upon their decomposing
flesh (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 195). He is supposed
to have visited a total of eight cemeteries in
order to there and then fight out a magical initiation
battle with the relevant officiating dakinis.
His most spectacular encounter
was definitely the meeting with Guhya Jnana, the chief of
the terror goddesses, one of the appearances of
Vajrayogini. She lived in
a castle made of human skulls. When Padmasambhava
reached the gates he was unable to enter the building,
despite his magic powers. He instructed a servant
to inform her mistress of his visit. When she
returned without having achieved anything he tried
once more with all manner of magic to gain entry.
The girl laughed at him, took a crystal knife
and slit open her torso with it. The endless retinue
of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas appeared within
her insides. “I am just a servant”, she said.
Only now was Padmasambhava admitted.
Guhya Inana sat upon her throne. In her hands she held
a double-ended drum and a skull bowl and was surrounded
by 32 servant girls. The yogi bowed down with
great respect and said, “Just as all Buddhas through
the ages had their gurus, so I ask you to be my
teacher and to take me on as your pupil” (Govinda,
1984, p. 226). Thereupon she assembled the whole
pantheon of gods within her breast, transformed
the petitioner into a seed syllable and swallowed
him. Whilst the syllable lay upon her lips she
gave him the sacrament of Amitabha, whilst he rested
in her stomach he was initiated into the secrets
of Avalokiteshvara. After leaving
her lotus (i.e., vagina) he received the sacraments
of the body, the speech, and the spirit. Only
now had he attained his immortal vajra
body.
This scene also grants the feminine
force an outstanding status within the initiation
process. But there are several versions of the
story. In another account it is Padmasambhava
who dissolves Vajrayogini within his heart.
Jeffrey Hopkins even describes a tantra technique
in which the pupil imagines himself to be the
goddess so as to then be absorbed by his teacher
who visualizes himself as Guru Rinpoche (Hopkins, 1982,
p. 180).
Without doubt, Padmasambhava’s
relationship with Yeshe Tshogyal, the karma mudra given to him by
Indrabhuti, and with Princess Mandavara, the reincarnation
of a dakini, display a rare tolerance. Thus within
the tradition both yoginis were able to preserve
a certain individuality and personality over the
course of centuries — a rare exception in the
history of Vajrayana.
For this reason it could be believed that Padmasambhava
had shown a revolutionary attitude towards the
woman, especially since the statement often quoted
here in the West is from him: “The basis for realizing
enlightenment is a human body. Male or female
— there is no great difference. But if she develops
the mind bent on enlightenment, a woman's body
is better” (Gross, 1993, p. 79).
But how
can this comment, which is taken from a terma from the 18th
century (!), be reconciled with the following
statement by the guru, which he is supposed to
have offered in answer to Yeshe Tshogyal’s question
about the suitability of women for the tantric
rituals? „Your faith is mere platitude, your devotion
insincere, but your greed and jealousy are strong.
Your trust and generosity are weak, yet your disrespect
and doubt are huge. Your compassion and intelligence
are weak, but your bragging and self-esteem are
great. Your devotion and perseverance are weak,
but you are skilled at misguiding and distorting
Your pure perception and courage is small” (Binder-Schmidt,
1994 p. 56).
Yet this comment is quite harmless!
The “demonic” Guru
Rinpoche also exists — the aggressive butcher
of people and serial rapist. There is for instance
a story about him in circulation in which he killed
a Tibetan king and impregnated his 900 wives so
as to produce children who were devoted to the
Buddhist teaching. In another episode from his
early life he was attacked out of the blue by
dakinis and male dakas. The story reports that
“he [then] kills the men and possesses the women”
(R. Paul, 1982, p. 163). Robert A. Paul thus sees
in Padmasambhava an intransigent, active, phallic,
and sexist archetype whom he contrasts with Avalokiteshvara, the mild,
asexual, feminized, and transcendent counterpole.
Both typologies, Paul claims, determine the dynamic
of Tibetan history and are united within the person
of the Dalai Lama (R. Paul, 1982, p. 87).
Many of the anecdotes about Guru Rinpoche which are in
circulation also depict him as a boastful superman.
He paid for his beer in a tavern by holding the
sun still for two days for the female barkeeper.
This earned him not just the reputation of a sun-controller
but also the saga that he had invented beer in
an earlier incarnation. His connection to the
solar cults is also vouched for by other anecdotes.
For instance, one day he assumed the shape of
the sun bird, the garuda, and conquered the
lu, the feminine (!) water
spirits. Lightning magic remained one of his preferred
techniques, and he made no rare use of it. An
additional specialty was to appear in a sea of
flames, which was not difficult for him as an
emanation of the “fire god”, Avalokiteshvara. His siddhis (magic powers) were
thought to be unlimited; he flew through the air,
spoke all languages, knew every magic battle technique,
and could assume any shape he chose. Nonetheless,
all these magical techniques were not sufficient
for him to remain the spiritual advisor of Trisong
Detsen for long. The Bon priests and the king’s
wife (Tse Pongza) were too strong and Guru Rinpoche
had to leave the court. Yet this was not the end
of his career. He moved north in order to do battle
with the unbridled demons of the Land of Snows.
The rebellious spirits, usually local earth deities,
constantly blocked his path. Yet without exception
all the “enemies of the teaching” were defeated
by his magic powers. The undertaking soon took
on the form of a triumphal procession.
It was Guru Rinpoche’s unique style
to never destroy the opponents he defeated but
rather to demand of them a threefold gesture of
submission: 1. the demons had to symbolically
offer up to him their life force or “heart blood”;
2. they had to swear an oath of loyalty; and 3.
they had to commit themselves to fighting for
instead of against the Buddhist teachings in future.
If these conditions were met then they did not
need to abandon their aggressive, bloodthirsty,
and extremely destructive ways. In contrast, they
were not freed from their murderous fighting spirit
and their terrifying ugliness but instead from
then on served Tantric Buddhism as it terrible
protective deities, who were all the more holy
the more cruelly they behaved. The Tibetan Buddhist
pantheon was thus gradually filled out with all
imaginable misshapen figures, whose insanity,
atrocities, and misanthropy were boundless. Among
them could be found vampires, cannibals, executioners,
ghouls (horrifying ghosts), and sadists. Guru
Rinpoche and his later incarnations, the Dalai
Lamas, were and still are considered to be the
undisputed masters of this cabinet of horrors,
who they regally command from their lotus throne.
His victory over the daemonic powers
was sealed by the construction of a three-dimensional
mandala, the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet.
Samye symbolized nothing less
than a microcosmic model of the tantric world
system, with Mount Meru at its center. The inaugurating
ceremony conducted by Padmasambhava was preceded
by the banishment of all venomous devils. Then
the earth goddess, Srinmo, was nailed down, in
that Guru Rinpoche drove his phurba (ritual dagger) into
the ground with a ceremonial gesture. Among those
present at this ritual were 50 beautifully adorned
girls and boys with vases filled with valuable
substances. Durong the subsequent construction
works the rebellious spirits repeatedly tried
to prevent the completion of the temple and at
night tore down what had been achieved during
the day. But here too, the guru understood how
to tame the nightly demons and then make construction
workers of them.
In the holiest of holies of Samye
there could be found a statue of Avalokiteshvara which was
said to have arisen of itself. Apart from this,
the monastery had something of an eerie and gloomy
air about it. The saga tells of how once a year
Tibet’s terror gods assembled on the roofs of
the monastery for a cannibalistic feast and a
game of dice in which the stakes were human souls.
On these days all the oracle priests of the Land
of Snows were said to have fallen into a trance
as if under the instruction of a higher power.
Because of the microcosmic significance of Samye,
its protective god is the Red Tsiu, a mighty force in
the pandemonium of the highlands. “He possesses
red locks, his body is surrounded by a glory of
fire. Shooting stars fly from his eyes and a great
hail of blood falls from his mouth. He gnashes
his teeth. ... He winds a red noose about the
body of an enemy at the same time as he thrusts
a lance into the heart of another” (Nebesky-Wojkowitz,
1955, p. 224).
A puzzling red-brown leather mask
also hung in the temple, which showed the face
of a three-eyed wrathful demon. Legend tells that
it was made from clotted human blood and sometimes
becomes alive to the horror of all. Alongside
the sacred room of the Red
Tsiu lay a small, ill-lit chamber. If a person
died, said the monks, then his soul would have
to slip through a narrow hole into this room and
would be cut to pieces there upon a chopping block.
Of a night the cries and groans of the maltreated
souls could be heard and a revolting stench of
blood spread through the whole building. The block
was replaced every year since it had been worn
away by the many blows.
Guru Rinpoche, the former incarnation of the Dalai Lama,
was a explosive mixture of strict ascetic and
sorcerer, apostle and adventurer, monk and vagabond,
founder of a culture and criminal, mystic and
eroticist, lawmaker and mountebank, politician
and exorcist. He had such success because he resolved
the tension between civilization and wildness,
divinity and the daemonic within his own person.
For, according to tantric logic, he could only
defeat the demons by himself becoming a demon.
For this reason Fokke Sierksma also characterizes
him as an uninhibited usurper: “He was a conqueror,
obsessed by lust of power and concupiscence, only
this conqueror did not choose the way of physical,
but that of spiritual violence, in accordance
with the Indian tradition that the Yogin's concentration
of energy subdues matter, the world and gods”
(Sierksma, 1966, p. 111).
The orthodox Gelugpas also pull
the arch magician to pieces in general. For example,
one document accuses him of having devoted himself
to the pursuit of women of a night clothed in
black, and to drink of a day, and to have described
this decadent practice as “the sacrifice of the
ten days” (Hoffmann, 1956, p. 55).
It was different with the Fifth
Dalai Lama — for him Guru Rinpoche was the force
which tamed the wilds of the Land of Snows with
his magic arts, as had no other before him and
none who came after. As magic was likewise for
the “Great Fifth” the preferred style of weapon,
he could justifiably call upon Padmasambhava as
his predecessor and master. The various guises
of the guru which appeared before the ruler of
the Potala in his visions are thus also numerous
and of great intensity. In them Padmasambhava
touched his royal pupil upon the forehead a number
of times with a jewel and thus transferred his
power to him. Guru Rinpoche became the “house
prophet” of the “Great Fifth” — he advised the
hierarch, foretold the future for him, and intervened
in the practical politics from beyond, which fundamentally
transformed the history of Tibet (through the
establishment of the Buddhist state) almost 900
years after his death.
The “Emperor” Songtsen Gampo and
the “Magician-Priest” Padmasambhava, the principal
early heroes of the Land of Snows, carried within
them the germ of all the future events which would
determine the fate of the Tibetans. Centuries
after their earthly existence, both characters
were welded together into the towering figure
of the Fifth Dalai Lama. The one represented worldly
power, the other the spiritual. As an incarnation
of both the one and the other, the Dalai Lama
was also entitled and able to exercise both forms
of power. Just how close a relationship he brought
the two into is revealed by one of his visions
in which Guru Rinpoche and King Songtsen Gampo
swapped their appearances with lightning speed
and thus became a single person. A consequence
of the Dalai Lama’s strong identification with
the arch-magician was that his chief yogini, Yeshe
Tshogyal, also appeared all the more often in
his envisionings. She became the preferred inana
mudra of the “Great Fifth”.
Under the rule of Trisong Detsen
(who fetched Padmasambhava into Tibet) the famous
Council of Lhasa also took place. The king ordered
the staging of a large-scale debate between two
Buddhist schools of opinion: the teachings of
the Indian, Kamalashila, which said that the way
to enlightenment was a graded progression and
the Chinese position, which demanded the immediate,
spontaneous achievement of enlightenment, which
suddenly and unexpectedly unfolded in its full
dimensions. The representative of the spontaneity
doctrine was Hoshang Mahoyen, a master of Chinese
Chan Buddhism. In Lhasa the Indian doctrine of
stages was at the end of a two-year debate victorious.
Hoshang is said to have been banished from the
land and some of his followers were killed by
the disciples of Kamalashila. But the Chinese
position has never completely disappeared from
Tibetan cultural life and is again gaining respectability.
It is quite rightly compared to the so-called
Dzogchen teaching, which also believes an immediate
act of enlightenment is possible and which is
currently especially popular in the West. For
example, the important abbot, Sakya Pandita, attacked
the Dzogchen practices because they were a latter-day
form of the Chinese doctrine which had been refuted
at the Council of Lhasa. In contrast the unorthodox
Nyingmapa had no problem with the “Chinese
way”. These days the Tibetan lama, Norbu Rinpoche,
who lives in Italy, appeals explicitly to Hoshang.
Of its nature, the Dzogchen teaching
stands directly opposed to state Buddhism. It
dissolves all forms at once and it would not be
exaggerating if we were to describe it as “spiritual
anarchism”. The political genius of the Fifth
Dalai Lama, who knew that a Buddhocracy is only
sustainable if it can integrate and control the
anarchic elements, made constant use of the Dzogchen
practice (Samuel, 1993, p. 464). Likewise the
current Fourteenth Dalai Lama is said to have
been initiated into this discipline, at any rate
he counts Dzogchen masters among his most high
ranking spiritual intimates.
It is also noteworthy that in feminist
circles the famous Council of Lhasa is evaluated
as the confrontation between a fundamentally masculine
(Indian) and a feminine (Chinese) current within
Tibetan Buddhism (Chayet, 1993, pp. 322-323).
From anarchy to the discipline
of the order: The Tilopa lineage
The reason the Maha Siddha Tilopa (10th century)
is worthy of our special attention is because
he and his pupil Naropa are the sole historical
individuals from the early history of the Kalachakra
Tantra who count among the founding fathers
of several Tibetan schools and because Tilopa’s
life is exemplary of that of the other 83 “grand
sorcerers”.
According to legend, the Indian
master is said to have reached the wonderland
of Shambhala and received the
time doctrines from the reigning Kalki there.
After returning to India, in the year 966 he posted
the symbol of the dasakaro vasi (the “Power
of Ten”) on the entrance gates of the monastic
university of Nalanda and appended the following
lines, already quoted above: “He, that does not
know the chief first Buddha (Adi-Buddha), knows not the
circle
of time (Kalachakra). He, that does
not know the circle of time, knows not the exact
enumeration of the divine attributes. He that
does not know the exact enumeration of the divine
attributes, knows not the supreme intelligence.
He, that does not know the supreme intelligence,
knows not the tantrica principles. He, that does
not know the tantrica principles, and all such,
are wanderers in the orb transmigratos, and are out
of the way of the supreme triumphator. Therefore
Adi-Buddha must be taught
by every true Lama, and every true disciple who
aspires to liberation must hear them” (Körös,
1984, pp. 21-22).
While he was still a very young
child, a dakini bearing the 32 signs of ugliness
appeared to Tilopa and proclaimed his future career
as a Maha Siddha to the boy in
his cradle. From now on this witch, who was none
other than Vajrayogini, became the teacher
of the guru-to-be and inducted him step by step
in the knowledge of enlightenment. Once she appeared
to him in the form of a prostitute and employed
him as a servant. One of his duties was to pound
sesame seeds (tila)
through which he earned his name. As a reward
for the services he performed, Vajrayogini
made him the leader of a ganachakra.
Tilopa always proved to be the
androgynous sovereign of the gender roles. Hence
he one day let the sun and the moon plummet from
heaven and rode over them upon a lion, that is,
he destroyed the masculine and feminine energy
flows and controlled them with the force of Rahu the darkener. At another
point, in order to demonstrate his control over
the gender polarity, he was presented as the murderer
of a human couple “who the beat in the skulls
of the man and the woman” (Grünwedel, 1933, p.
72).
Another dramatic scene tells of
how dakinis angrily barred his way when he wanted
to enter the palace of their head sorceress and
cried out in shrill voices: “We are flesh-eating
dakinis. We enjoy flesh and are greedy for blood.
We will devour your flesh, drink of your blood,
and transform your bones into dust and ashes”
(Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 207) .Tilopa defeated
them with the gesture of fearlessness, a furious
bellow and a penetrating stare. The witches collapsed
in a faint and spat blood. On his way to the queen
he encountered further female monsters which he
hunted down in the same manner. Finally, in the
interior of the palace he met Inana Dakini, the custodian
of tantric knowledge, surrounded by a great retinue.
But he did not bow down before her throne, and
sank instead into a meditative stance. All present
were outraged and barked at him in anger that
before him stood the “Mother of all Buddhas”.
According to one version — which is recounted
by Alexandra David-Neel — Tilopa now roused himself
from his contemplation, and, approaching the queen
with a steady gait, stripped her of her clothes
jewelry and demonstrated his male superiority
by raping her before the assembled gaze of her
entire court (Hoffmann, 1956, p. 149).
Tilopa’s character first becomes
three dimensional when we examine his relationship
with his pupil, Naropa. The latter first saw the
light of the world in the year of the masculine
fire dragon as the son of a king and queen. Later
he at first refused to marry, but then did however
succumb to the will of his parents. The marriage
did not last long and was soon dissolved. Naropa
offered the following reason: “Since the sins
of a woman are endless, in the face of the swamp
mud of deceptive poison my spirit would take on
the nature of a bull, and hence I will become
a monk” (Grünwedel, 1933, p. 54). His young spouse
agreed to the divorce and accepted all the blame:
“He is right!”, she said to his parents, “I have
endless sins, I am absolutely without merit ...
For this reason and on these grounds it is appropriate
to put an end to [the union of] us two” (Grünwedel,
1933, p. 54). Afterwards Naropa was ordained as
a monk and went on to become the abbot of what
was at the time the most important of the Buddhist
monastic universities, Nalanda.
Nevertheless, one day the ecclesiastical
dignitary renounced his clerical privileges just
as he had done with his royal ones and roamed
the land as a beggar in search of his teacher,
Tilopa. He had learned of the latter’s existence
from the dakini with the 32 markings of ugliness
(Vajrayogini). While he was
reading the holy texts in Nalanda, she cast a
threatening shadow across his books. She laughed
at him derisively because he believed he could
understand the meaning of the tantras by reading
them.
After Naropa had with much trouble
located his master, a grotesque scene, peerless
even in the tantric literature, was played out.
Tilopa fooled his pupil with twelve horrific apparitions
before finally initiating him. On the first occasion
he appeared as a foul-smelling, leprous woman.
He then burnt fish that were still alive over
a fire in order to eat them afterwards. At a cemetery
he slit open the belly of a living person and
washed it out with dirty water. In the next scene
the master had skewered his own father with a
stake and was in the process of killing his mother
held captive in the cellar. On another occasion
Naropa had to beat his penis with a stone until
it spurted blood. At another time Tilopa required
of him that he vivisect himself.
In order to reveal the world to
be an illusion, the tantra master had his pupil
commit one crime after another and presented himself
as a dastardly criminal. Naropa passed every test
and became one of the finest experts and commentators
on the Kalachakra Tantra.
One of his many pupils was the
Tibetan, Marpa (1012-1097). Naropa initiated him
into the secret tantric teachings. After further
initiations from burial ground dakinis, whom Marpa
defeated with the help of Tilopa who appeared
from the beyond, and after encountering the strange
yogi, Kukkuri ("dog ascetic”), he returned from
India to his home country. He brought several
tantra texts back with him and translated these
into the national language, giving him his epithet
of the “translator”. In Tibet he married several
women, had many sons and led a household. He is
said to have performed the tantric rites with
his head wife, Dagmema. In contrast to the yoginis
of the legendary Maha Siddhas, Dagmema displays
very individualized traits and thus forms a much-cited
exception among the ranks of female Tibetan figures.
She was sincere, clever, shrewd, self-controlled
and industrious. Besides this she had independent
of her man her own possessions. She cared for
the family, worked the fields, supervised the
livestock and fought with the neighbors. In a
word, she closely resembled a normal housewife
in the best sense.
A monastic interpretation of Marpa’s
“ordinary” life circumstances reveals, however,
how profoundly the anarchist dimension dominated
the consciousness of the yogis at that time: Marpa’s
“normality” was not considered a good deed of
his because it counted as moral in the dominant
social rules of the time, but rather, in contrast,
because he had taken the most difficult of all
exercises upon himself in that he realized his
enlightenment in the so despised “normality”.
“People of the highest capacity can and should
practice like that” (Chökyi, 1989, p. 143). Effectively
this says that family life is a far greater hindrance
to the spiritual development of a tantra master
than a crematorium. This is what Marpa’s pupil,
Milarepa, also wanted to indicate when he rejected
marriage for himself with the following words:
“Marpa had married for the purpose of serving
others, but ... if I presumed to imitate him
without being endowed with his purity of purpose
and his spiritual power, it would be the hare's
emulation of the lion’s leap, which would surely
end in my being precipitated into the chasm of
destruction” (R. Paul, 1982, p. 234)
Marpa’s pragmatic personality,
especially his almost egalitarian relationship
with his wife, is unique in the history of Tibetan
monasticism. It has not been ruled out that he
conceived of a reformed Buddhism, in which the
sex roles were supposed to be balanced out and
which strove towards the normality of family relationships.
Hence, he also wanted to make his successor his
son, who lost his life in an accident, however.
For this reason he handed his knowledge on to
Milarepa (1052–1135), who was supposed to continue
the classic androcentric lineage of the Maha Siddhas.
Milarepa’s family were maliciously
cheated by relatives when he was in his youth.
In order to avenge himself, he became trained
as a black magician and undertook several deadly
acts of revenge against his enemies. According
to legend his mother is supposed to have spurred
him on here. In the face of the unhappiness he
had caused, he saw the error of his ways and sought
refuge in the Buddhist teachings. After a lengthy
hesitation, Marpa took him on as a pupil and increased
his strictness towards him to the point of brutality
so that Milarepa could work off his bad karma
through his own suffering. Time and again the
pupil had to build a house which his teacher repeatedly
tore down. After Milarepa subsequently meditated
for seven nights upon the bones of his dead mother
(!), he attained enlightenment. In his poems he
does not just celebrate the gods, but also the
beauty of nature. This “natural” talent and inclination
has earned him many admirers up until the present
day.
Like his teacher, Marpa, Milarepa
is primarily revered for his humanity, a rare
quality in the history of Vajrayana.
There is something so realistic about Marpa’s
arbitrariness and the despair of his pupil that
they move many believers in Buddhism more than
the phantasmagoric cemetery scenes we are accustomed
to from the Maha Siddhas and Padmasambhava.
For this reason the ill treatment of Milarepa
by his guru counts among the best-known scenes
of Tibetan hagiography. Yet after his initiation
events also became fantastic in his case. He transformed
himself into all manner of animals, defeated a
powerful Bon magician and thus conquered the mountain
of Kailash. But the death of this superhuman is
once again just as human as that of the Buddha
Shakyamuni. He died after drinking poisoned milk
given him by an envious person. The historical
Buddha passed away at the age of 80 after consuming
poisoned pork.
Milarepa’s sexual life oscillated
between ascetic abstinence and tantric practices.
There are several misogynous poems by him. When
the residents of a village offered the poet a
beautiful girl as his bride, he sang the following
song:
At first, the lady
is like a heavenly
angel;
The more you look
at her, the more you want to gaze.
Middle-aged, she
becomes a demon with a corpse’s eyes;
You say one word
to her and
she shouts back two.
She pulls your
hair and hits your knee.
You strike her
with your staff, but back
she throws a ladle….
I keep away from
women to avoid fights and quarrels.
For the young bride
you mentioned, I have no appetite.
(Stevens, 1990, p. 75)
The yogi constantly warned of the
destructive power of women, and attacked them
as troublemakers, as the source of all suffering.
Like all the prominent followers of Buddha he
was exposed to sexual temptations a number of
times. Once a demoness caused a huge vagina to
appear before him. Milarepa inserted a phallus-like
stone into it and thus exorcised the magic. He
conducted a ganachakra
with the beautiful Tserinma and her four sisters.
Milarepa’s pupil, Gampopa (1079–1153),
drew the wild and anarchic phase of the Tilopa
lineage to a close. This man with a clear head
who had previously practiced as a doctor and became
a monk because of a tragic love affair in which
his young wife had died, brought with him sufficient
organizational talent to overcome the antisocial
traits of his predecessors. Before he met Milarepa,
he was initiated into the Kadampa order, an organization
which could be traced back to the Indian scholar,
Atisha, and already had an statist character.
As he wanted to leave them to take the yogi poet
(Milarepa) as his teacher, his brethren from the
order asked Gampopa ,: “Aren’t our teachings enough?”
When he nonetheless insisted, they said to him:
“Go, but [do] not abandon our habit.” (Snellgrove,
1987, vol. 2, p. 494). Gampopa abided by this
warning, but likewise he took to heart the following
critical statement by Milarepa: “The Kadampa have
teachings, but practical teachings they have not.
The Tibetans, being possessed by evil spirits,
would not allow the Noble Lord (Atisha) to preach
the Mystic Doctrine. Had they done so, Tibet would
have been filled with saints by this time” (Bell,
1994, p. 93).
The tension between the rigidity
of the monastic state and the anarchy of the Maha Siddhas is well illustrated
by these two comments. If we further follow the
history of Tibetan Buddhism, we can see that Gampopa
abided more closely to the rules of his original
order and only let himself be temporarily seduced
by the wild life of the “mountain ascetic”, Milarepa.
In the long term he is thus to be regarded as
a conqueror of the anarchic currents. Together
with one of his pupils he founded the Kagyupa
order.
The actual chief figure in the
establishment of the Tibetan monastic state was
the above-mentioned Atisha (982–1054). The son
of a prince from Bengal already had a marriage
and nine children behind him before he decided
to seek refuge in the sangha.
Among others, Naropa was one of his teachers.
In the year 1032, after several requests from
the king of Guge (southern Tibet), he went to
the Land of Snows in order to reform Buddhism
there. In 1050, Atisha organized a council in
which Indians also participated alongside many
Tibetan monks. The chief topic of this meeting
was the “Re-establishment of religion in Tibet”.
Under Tantrism the country had
declined into depravity. Crimes, murders, orgies,
black magic, and lack of discipline were no longer
rare in the sangha (monastic community).
Atisha opposed this with his well-organized and
disciplined monastic model, his moral rectitude
and his high standard of ethics. A pure lifestyle
and true orderly discipline were now required.
The rules of celibacy applied once more. An orthodoxy
was established, but Tantrism was in no sense
abolished, but rather subjected to maximum strictness
and control. Atisha introduced a new time-keeping
system into Tibet which was based upon the calendar
of the Kalachakra Tantra, through
which this work became exceptionally highly regarded.
Admittedly there is a story which
tells of how a wild dakini initiated him in a
cemetery, and he also studied for three years
at the notorious Uddiyana from whence Padmasambhava
came, but his lifestyle was from the outset clear
and exact, clean and disciplined, temperate and
strict. This is especially apparent in his choice
of female yiddam (divine appearance), Tara.
Atisha bought the cult of the Buddhist “Madonna”
to Tibet with him. One could say he carried out
a “Marianization” of Tantric Buddhism. Tara was essentially quite
distinct from the other female deities in her
purity, mercifulness, and her relative asexuality.
She is the “spirit woman” who also played such
a significant role in the reform of other androcentric
churches, as we can see from the example provided
by the history of the Papacy.
At the direction of his teacher,
Atisha’s pupil Bromston founded community of Kadampas
whom we have already mentioned above, a strict
clerical organization which later became an example
for all the orders of the Land of Snows including
the Nyingmapas and the remainder of the pre-Buddhist
Bonpos. But in particular it paved the way for
the victory march of the Gelugpas. This order
saw itself as the actual executors of Atisha’s
plans. With it the nationalization of Tibetan
monasticism began. This was to reach its historical
high point in the institutionalization of the
office of the Dalai Lama.
The pre-planned counterworld
to the clerical bureaucracy: Holy fools
The archetype of the anarchist
Maha Siddha is primarily an
Indian phenomenon. Later in Tibet it is replaced
by that of the “holy fools”, that is, of the roaming
yogis with an unconventional lifestyle. While
the “grand sorcerers” of India still enjoyed supreme
spiritual authority, before which abbots and kings
had to bow, the holy fools only acted as a social
pressure valve. Everything wild, anarchic, unbridled,
and oppositional in Tibetan society could be diverted
through such individuals, so that the repressive
pressure of the Buddhocracy did not too much gain
the upper hand and incite real and dangerous revolts.
The role of the holy fools was thus, in contrast
to that of the Maha Siddhas, planned in advance
and arranged by the state and hence a part of
|