|
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
|
