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The Shadow of the
Dalai Lama – Postscript: Creative polarity beyond
tantrism
© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
POSTSCRIPT:
CREATIVE POLARITY BEYOND TANTRISM
As surprising as it may sound after
our critical analysis of Vajrayana, we would in conclusion
like to pose the question of whether Tantric Buddhism
does not harbor a religious archetype the disclosure,
dissemination and discussion of which could meet
with great transcultural interest. Would it not
be valuable to discuss as religious concepts such
tantric principles as the “mystical love between
the sexes”, the “union of the male and female
principles”, or the unio mystica between god and
goddess?
As we demonstrated at the start
of our study, Tantrism in all its variants is
based upon a vision of the polarity of being.
It sees the primary cultic event on the path to
enlightenment in a mystical conjunction of poles,
specifically in the mystical union of the sexes.
From a tantric point of view, all the phenomena
of the universe are linked to one another through
erotic love and sexuality, and our world of appearances
is seen as the field in which these two basic
forces (Tibetan yab and yum; Chinese yin and yang) act. They manifest themselves
as a polarity in both nature and the realm of
the spirit. In the tantric view of things, love
is the great life force that pulsates through
the cosmos, primarily as heterosexual love between
god and goddess, man and woman. Their mutual affection
acts as the creative principle.
“It is through love and in the
face of love that the world unfolds, through love
it regains its original unity and its eternal
nondivision” — this statement is also proclaimed
in Vajrayana
(Faure, 1994, p. 56). For the Tantric, erotic
and religious love are not separate. Sexuality
and mysticism, eros and agape (spiritual love) are
not mutually exclusive contradictions.
Let us once more repeat the wonderful
words with which tantric texts describe the “holy
marriage” between man and woman. In yuganaddha (the mystic union)
there is “neither affirmation nor denial, neither
existence nor non-existence, neither non-remembering
nor remembering, neither affection nor non-affection,
neither the cause nor the effect, neither the
production nor the produced, neither purity nor
impurity, neither anything with form nor anything
without form; it is but the synthesis of all dualities”
(Dasgupta, 1974, p. 114). In this synthesis “egoness
is lost and the two polar opposites fuse into
a state of intimate and blissful oneness” (Walker,
1982, p. 67).
A cooperation between the poles
now replaces the struggle between contradictions
(or sexes). Body and spirit, erotic love and transcendence,
emotions and reason, being (samsara)
and non-being (nirvana)
are wedded. In yuganaddha,
it is said, all wars and disputes between good
and evil, heaven and hell, day and night, dream
and perception, joy and suffering, praise and
contempt are pacified and stilled. Mirada Shaw
celebrates the embrace of the male and female
Buddha as "an image of unity
and blissful concord between the sexes, a state
of equilibrium and interdependence. This symbol
powerfully evokes a state of primordial wholeness
an completeness of being" (Shaw, 1994, p. 200).
Divine erotic love does not jut
lead to enlightenment and liberation; the tantric
view is that mystic gendered love can also free
all suffering beings. All forms of time originate
from the primordial divine couple. Along with
the sun and moon and the “pair of radiant planets”,
the five elements also owe their existence to
the cosmogonic erotic love. According to the Hevajra
Tantra, “By uniting the male
and female sexual organs the holder of the Vow
performs the erotic union.
From contact in
the erotic union, as the quality of hardness,
Earth arises; Water arises from the fluidity of
semen; Fire arises from the friction of pounding;
Air ist famed to be the movement and the Space
is the erotic pleasure” (Farrow and Menon, 1992, p. 134). Language,
emotions, the senses — all have their origin in
the love of the primordial couple. In a world
purged of darkness the couple stand at the edge
of darkness, the Kalachakra Tantra itself says
(Banerjee, 1959, p. 24).
Nevertheless, as we have demonstrated,
this harmonious primordial image is misused in
tantric rituals by an androcentric caste of monks
for the ends of spiritual and secular power. We
refrain from describing once more the sexual magic
exploitation in Vajrayana, and would instead
like to turn to a philosophical question raised
by this topic, namely the relationship between
the ONE (as the male principle) and the OTHER
(as the female principle).
Since Friedrich Hegel, the OTHER
has become a key topic of philosophical discussion.
The absolute ONE or absolute mind is unable to
tolerate any OTHER besides itself. Only when the
OTHER is completely integrated into the ONE, only
when it is “suspended” in the ONE is the way of
the mind complete. For then nature (the OTHER)
has become mind (the ONE). This is one way of
succinctly describing one of the fundamental elements
of Hegelian philosophy.
In Vajrayana terminology, the
absolute ONE that tolerates no OTHER beyond himself
is the androgynous ADI BUDDHA. The OTHER (the
feminine) surrenders its autonomy to the hegemony
of the ONE (the masculine). It is destroyed with
one word. Yet the absolute ONE of the ADI BUDDHA
is radically questioned by the existence of an
OTHER (the feminine); his claims to infinity,
cosmocentricity, omnipotence, and divinity are
threatened. “All is ONE or all is the ADI BUDDHA”
is a basic maxim of the tantric way. For this
reason the OTHER frightens and intimidates the
ONE. The Buddhist Ken Wilber (a proponent of the
ADI BUDDHA principle) quotes the Upanishads in
this connection: Wherever
the OTHER is, there is dread (Wilber, 1990, p.
174) — and himself admits that everywhere where
there is an OTHER, there is also fear (Wilber,
1990, p. 280).
As already indicated, behind this
existential fear of the OTHER lies a fundamental
gender issue. This has been taken up and developed
primarily by French feminists. In the “otherness”
(autruité) of the female Simone
de Beauvoir saw a highly problematic fixing of
the woman created by the androcentric persective.
Men wanted to see women as the OTHER in order
to be able to control them. The woman was forced
to define her identity via the perspective of
the man. Beauvoir’s successors, however, such
as the femininst Luce Irigaray, have lent “gender
difference” and AUTRUITÉ (otherness) a highly
positive significance and have made it the central
topic of their feminine philosophy. Otherness
here all but becomes a female world unable to
be grasped by either the male perspective or male
reason. It evades any kind of masculine fixation.
Female subjectivity is inaccessible for the male.
It is precisely the OTHERNESS which
lets women preserve their autonomy. They thus
escape being objectified by men (the male subject)
and develop their own subjectivity (the female
subject). Irigaray very clearly articulates how
existing religions block women’s path to a self-realization
of their own: “She must always
be for men, available for their transcendence” (quoted by June Campbell, 1996,
p. 155) — i.e., as Sophia, prajna, as the “white virgin”,
as a “wisdom dakini” (inana mudra). In the male
consciousness she lacks a subjectivity of her
own, and is a blank screen (shunyata)
onto which the man projects his own imaginings.
Yet the autonomy of the OTHER does
not need to be experienced as separation, fragmentation,
lack, or as an alienating element. It can just
as well serve as the opposite, as the prerequisite
for the union of two subjects, complementarity,
or copula. The masculine and the feminine can
behave in completely different ways toward one
another, either as a duality (of mutually exclusive
opposites = annihilation of the OTHER) or as a
polarity (mutually complentary opposites = encounter
with the OTHER). It is almost a miracle that the
sexes are fundamentally permitted to meet one
another in love without having to renounce their
autonomy.
Buddhist Tantrism, however, is
not about such an encounter between man and woman,
but purely the question of how the yogi (as the
masculine principle of the ONE) can integrate
the OTHER (the feminine principle) within himself
and render it useful by drawing off its gynergy.
Occult feminism involves the same phenomenon in
reverse: how can the yogini (here the feminine
principle of the ONE) appropriate the androenergy
of the man (here the OTHER) so as to win gynandric
power.
The appropriation of the OTHER
(the goddess) by the ONE (the ADI BUDDHA) is the
core concept of Buddhist Tantrism. This makes
it a phenomenon which, at this level of generality,
also shapes Western cultures and religions: “Male
religiosity masks an appropriation,” writes Luce
Irigaray. “This severs the relationship to the
natural universe, its simplicity is perverted.
Certainly, this religiousness symbolizes a social
universe organized by men. But this organization
is based on a sacrifice — of nature, of the gendered
body, especially that of the woman. It impels
a spirituality cut off from its natural roots
and its surroundings. It can thus not bring humanity
to perfection. Spiritualization, socialization,
cultivation require that we set out from what
is there. The patriarchal system does not do this
because it seeks to obliterate the foundations
upon which it is based” (Irigaray, 1991, p. 33).
The solution to the riddle of its
mysteries that Tantrism poses is obvious. It can
only involve the union of the two poles, not their
domination of one another. On its own the (masculine)
spirit is not sufficient to become “whole”, instead
nature and
spirit, emotions and
reason, logos
and eros, woman and man, god and goddess, a masculine and a feminine Buddha as two
autonomous beings must wed mystically (as yab and yum, yin and yang) as two subjects that
fuse together into a WE. The ADI BUDDHA of the
Kalachakra Tantra, however,
is a divine SUBJECT (a SUPER EGO) that tries to
consume the OTHER (the goddess). Not until ONE
SUBJECT forms a copula with ANOTHER SUBJECT can
a truly new dimension (WE) be entered: the great
WE in which both egos, the masculine and the feminine,
are truly “suspended”, truly “preserved”, and
truly “transcended”. Perhaps it is this WE that
is the cosmic secret to be discovered in the profoundest
sections of the tantras, and not the ADI BUDDHA.
For in WE all the polarities of
the universe fuse, subjectivity and objectivity,
rule and servitude, union and division. The unio
mystica with the partner dissolves both the
individual and the transpersonal subjectivity
(the human ego and the divine ego). Both poles,
the masculine and the feminine, experience their
spiritual, psychic and physical unity as intersubjectivity,
as exchange, as WE. They join into a higher dimension
without destroying one another. The mystic WE
thus forms a more encompassing quality of experience
than the ADI BUDDHA’s mystic EGO which seeks to
swallow the OTHER (the goddess).
Were man and woman to understand
themselves as the cosmic center, as god and goddess
— as the tantric texts proclaim — were they to
experience themselves together as a religious
authority, then the androgynous guru in his role
as the supreme god of “the mysteries of gendered
love” would vanish. In an essay on tantric practices,
the Indologist Doninger O’Flaherty describes several
variants on androgyny and supplements these —
not without a trace of irony — with an additional
“androgynous” model which is basically not a model
at all. “A third psychological androgyne, less
closely tied to any particular doctrine, is found
not in a single individual but in two: the man
and the woman who join in perfect love, Shakespeare’s
beast with two backs. This is the image of ecstatic
union, another metaphor for the mystic realization
of union with godhead. This is the romantic ideal
of complete merging, one with the other, so that
each experiences the other’s joy, not knowing
whose is the hand that caresses or whose the skin
that is caressed. In this state, the man and the
woman in tantric ritual experience each other’s
joy and pain. This is the divine hierogamy, and,
in its various manifestations — as yab–yum, yin and yang, animus and anima — it is certainly the
most widespread of androgynous concepts” (O’Flaherty,
1982, p. 292).
When together — as Tantrism teaches
us despite everything — power is concentrated
in man and woman; divided they are powerless.
WE equally implies both the gaining of power and
its renunciation. In WE the two primal forces
of being (masculine—feminine) are concentrated.
To this extent the WE is absolute, the Omnipotent.
But at the same time WE limits the power of the
parts, as soon as they appear separately or lay
claim to the cosmos as individual genders (as
an androgynous Almighty God or as a gynandric
Almighty Goddess). To this extent, WE is essentially
relative. It is only effective when the two poles
behave complementarily. As the supreme principle,
WE is completely unable to abuse any OTHER or
manipulate it for its own ends since every OTHER
is by definition an autonomous part of WE. In
political terms, WE is a fundamental democratic
principle. It transcends all concepts of an enemy
and all war. The traditional dualisms of upper
and lower, white and black, bright and gloomy
unite in a creative polarity in the WE.
As we have been able to demonstrate
on the basis of both the ritual logic of Vajrayana and, empirically,
the history of Tantric Buddhism (especially Lamaism),
the androgynous principle of Buddhist Tantrism
leads ineluctably to human sacrifice and war.
The origins of every war lie in the battle of
the sexes — this aphorism from Greek mythology
is especially true of Tantrism, which traces all
that happens in the world back to erotic love.
Doesn’t this let us also conclude the reverse,
that peace between the sexes can produce peace
in the world? Global responsibility arises from
mutual recognition and from respect for the position
of the partner, who is the other half of the whole.
Compassion, sensitivity towards everything that
is other, understanding, harmony — all have their
origin here. In the cosmogonic erotic love between
two people, Ludwig Klages sees a revolutionary
power that even has the strength to suspend “history”.
“Were the incredible to happen, even if were only
between two out of hundreds of millions, the power
of the spirit’s curse would be broken, the dreadful
nightmare of ‘world history would melt away’,
and ‘awakening would bloom in streams of light’”
(Klages, 1930, p. 198). The end of history via
the love between man and woman, god and goddess:
the concept would definitely be compatible with
a tantric philosophy if it were not for the yogi’s
final act of masculine usurpation.
Perhaps, we would like to further
speculate, mystic gender love might provide the
religious mystery for a universal “culture of
erotic love” built upon both sensual and spiritual
foundations. Such an idea is by no means new.
In the late 1960s in his book Eros
and Civilization, the American philosopher
Herbert Marcuse outlined an “erotic” cultural
schema. Unfortunately, his “paradigmatic” (as
it would be known these days) approach, which
was widely discussed in the late 1960s has become
completely forgotten. Among
the basic joys of human existence, according to
Marcuse, is the division into sexes, the difference
between male and female, between penis and vagina,
between you and me, even between mine and yours,
and these are extremely pleasant and satisfying
divisions, or could be; their elimination would
not just be insane, but also a nightmare — the
peak of repression” (Marcuse, 1965, p. 239). This nightmare becomes real in
the alchemic practices of the Buddhist tradition.
In that Vajrayana dissolves all differences,
ultimately even the polarity of the sexes, into
the androgynous principle of the ADI BUDDHA, it
destroys the “Eros” of life, even though it paradoxically
recognizes this sexual polarity as the supreme
cosmic force.
As we were working on the final
proofs of our manuscript, the German magazine
Bunte, which only a few weeks
before had celebrated the Dalai Lama as a god
on earth, carried an article by the cultural sociologist
Nicolaus Sombart entitled “Desire for the divine
couple”. Sombart so precisely expressed our own
ideas that we would like to quote him at length.
“Why does the human project have a bipartite form
in the divine plan? The duality symbolizes the
polarity of the world, the bipolarity that is
the basis for the dynamic of everything which
happens in the world. Yin
and yang.
Apparently divided and yet belonging together,
contradictory, and complementary, antagonistic
but designed for harmony, synthesis and symbiosis.
Only in mutual penetration do they complete each
other and become whole. The model of the world
is that of a couple eternally striving for union.
The cosmic couple stand by one another in the
interaction of an erotic tension. It is a pair
of lovers. The misery of the world lies in the
separation, isolation, and loneliness of the parts
that are attracted to each other, that belong
together; the joy and happiness lie in the union
of the two sexes; not two souls, this is not enough,
but two bodies equipped for this purpose — a pleasurable
foretaste of the return to paradise” (Bunte,
46/1998, p. 40).
It is nonetheless remarkable how
unsuccessful mystic gendered love has been in
establishing itself as a religious archetype in
human cultural history. Although the mystery of
love between man and woman is and has been practised
and experienced by millions, although most cultures
have both male and female deities, the unio
mystica of the sexes has largely not been
recognized as a religion. Yet there is so much
which indicates that the harmony and love between
man and woman (god and goddess) could be granted
the gravity of a universal paradigm and become
a bridge of peace between the various cultures.
Selected insights and images from the mysteries
of Tantric Buddhism ought to be most useful in
the development of such a paradigm.
Divine couples are found in all
cultures, even if their religious veneration is
not among the central mysteries. We also encounter
them in the pre-Buddhist mythologies of Tibet,
where the two sexes share their control over the
world equally. Matthias Hermanns tells us about
Khen pa, the ruler of the
heavens, and Khon
ma, the earth mother, and quotes the following
sentence from an aboriginal Tibetan creation myth:
“At first heaven and earth are like father and
mother” (Hermanns, 1965, p. 72). In the times
of the original Tibetan kings there was a god
of man (pho-lha) and a goddess of
woman (mo-lha).
A number of Central Asian myths see the sun and
moon as equal forces, with the sun playing the
masculine and the moon the feminine role (Bleichsteiner,
1937, p.19). In one Bon myth, light and darkness
are held to be the primordial cosmic couple (Paul,
1981, p. 49).
In Tantric Buddhism, the central
Buddhist couple celebrated by the Nyingmapa School,
Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri — in translation
the “supreme male good” and the “supreme female
good” — are such a potential primal couple. This
Buddha couple are depicted in a yab–yum
posture. Both partners are naked, i.e., pure
and free. Neither of them is carrying any symbols
which might point to some hidden magicoreligious
intention. Their nudity could be interpreted as
saying that Samantabhadra
and Samantabhadri
are beyond the world of symbolism and are thus
an image of polar purity, freed of gods, myths,
and insignia. Only the color of their bodies could
be interpreted as a metaphor. Samantabhadra is blue as clear
and open as the heavens, Samantabhadri is white as
the light.
Were one to formulate such visions
of the religious worship of the couple in Buddhist
terminology, the four Buddha couples of the four
directions might emanate from a primal Buddha
couple, without this mystical pentad needing to
be appropriated by a tantric master in the form
of an androgynous ADI BUDDHA (or by a sexual magic
mistress as a gynandric Almighty Goddess). In
one Nepalese tantra text, for instance, the ADI
BUDDHA (“supreme consciousness”) and the ADI PRANJNA
(“supreme wisdom”) are revered as the primordial
father and the primordial mother of the world
(Hazra, 1986, p. 21). According to this text,
all the female beings in the universe are emanations
of the ADI PRAJNA, and all males those of the
ADI BUDDHA.
Annex:
CRITICAL
FORUM KALACHAKRA TANTRA
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