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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama –
Part I – 12. Epilogue to part I
© Victor & Victoria
Trimondi
12. EPILOGUE TO PART
I
We have
shown that Buddhism has from the very beginning considered the
feminine principle to be a force which acts in opposition to its
redemptive concepts. All types of women, from the mother to the
lover, the wife, the hetaera, even the Buddhist nun, are seen to be
more or less obstructions along the path to enlightenment. This
negative evaluation of the feminine does not and never did have — as
is often currently claimed — a social origin, but must rather be
considered as a dogmatic and fundamental doctrine of this religion.
It is an unavoidable consequence of the opening sentence of the Four Noble Truths, which
states that all life is, per se, suffering. From this we can
conclude that each and every birth brings only misery, sickness, and
death, or conversely, that only the cessation of reincarnation leads
to liberation. The woman, as the place of conception and
childbearing, opens the gateway to incarnation, and is thus
considered to be the greatest adversary to the spiritual development
of the man and of humanity in total.
This
implies that the deactivation, the sacrifice, and the destruction of
the feminine principle is a central concern of Buddhism. The “female
sacrifice” is already played out in one of the first legends from
the life of Buddha, the early death of Buddha's mother Maya. Even her name evokes
the Indian goddess of the feminine world of illusion; the death of
Maya (illusion)
simultaneously signifies the appearance of the absolute truth (Buddha), since Maya represents only
relative truth.
We have
shown how Shakyamuni's fundamentally misogynist attitude was set
forth in the ensuing phases of Buddhism — in the meditative
dismemberment of the female during a spiritual exercise in Hinayana; in the attempt to
change the sex of the woman so that she can gain entry to the higher
spiritual spheres as a male in Mahayana.
In Vajrayana the negative
attitude towards the feminine tips over into an apparently positive
valuation. Women, sexuality, and the erotic receive a previously
unknown elevation in the tantric texts, a deification in fact. We
have nonetheless been able to demonstrate that this reversal of the
image of the woman is for the yogi merely a means to an end — to
steal the feminine energy (gynergy) concentrated within
her as a goddess. We have termed the sexual magic rituals through
which this thieving transfer of energy is conducted the “tantric
female sacrifice”, intended in its broadest sense and irrespective
of whether the theft really or merely symbolically takes place,
since the distinction between reality and the world of symbols is in
the final instance irrelevant for a Tantric. All that is real is
symbolic, and every symbol is real!
The goal
of the female sacrifice and the diversion of gynergy is the production of
a superhuman androgynous being, which combines within itself both
forces, the masculine and the feminine. Buddhist Tantrics consider
such a combination of sexual energies within a single individual to
be an expression of supreme power. He as a man has become a bearer
of the maha mudra, the
vessel of an “inner woman”. In the light of the material we have
researched and reported, we must view our opening hypothesis,
repeated here, as confirmed:
The mystery of Tantric
Buddhism consists in the sacrifice of the feminine
principle
and the manipulation of
erotic love in order to obtain universal androcentric power
Since,
from the viewpoint of a tantric master, the highest (androcentric
power) can only be achieved via the ritual transformation of the
lowest (the real woman), he also applies this miracle of
transubstantiation to other domains. Thus he employs all manner of
repulsive, base substances in his rituals, and commits criminal
deeds up to and including murder, in order to achieve, via the “law
of inversion”, the exact opposite: joy, power, and beauty. We have,
however, indicated with some force how this “familiarity with the
demonic” can become a matter of course. This brings with it the
danger that the Tantric is no longer able to overcome the negativity
of his actions. The consequence is a fundamentally aggressive and
morbid attitude, which — as we will show — forms one of the
characteristics of the entire Tibetan culture.
As the Kalachakra Tantra includes
within itself the core ideas and the methods of all other tantras,
and as it represents the central ritual of the Dalai Lama, we
concentrated upon an analysis of this text and offered a detailed
description of the various public and secret initiations. We were
able to demonstrate how the internal processes within the energy
body of the yogi are aligned with external ritual procedures, and
how the “female sacrifice” takes place in both spheres — externally
through the “extermination” of the real woman (karma mudra) and internally
through the extermination of the candali (“fire
woman”).
The Kalachakra Tantra, too, has
as its goal the “alchemical” creation of a cosmic androgyne, who is
supposed to exercise total control over time, the planets, and the
universe. This androgynous universal ruler (dominus mundi) is the ADI
BUDDHA. Only after he can align his sexual magic rites and his inner
physiological processes with the laws of the heavens and earth can a
practicing yogi become ADI BUDDHA. He then sets sun, moon, and stars
in motion with his breath, and by the same means steers the
evolution of the human race. His mystic body and the cosmic body of
the ADI BUDDHA form a unit, and thus his bodily politics (the
motions of the internal energy flows) affects and effects world
politics in every sense.
On the
astral plane, the yogi unleashes a gigantic war among the stars
before he becomes ADI BUDDHA, which likewise aims to sacrifice the
gender polarity (represented by the sun and moon). In the final act
of this apocalyptic performance, the tantric master burns up the
cosmos in a murderous firestorm so as to allow a new world to emerge
from the ashes of the old, a world which is totally subject to his
imagination and will. [1] Only
than does the ADI BUDDHA's (or yogi's) dominion encompass the entire
universe, in the form of a mandala.
In his
political role (as King of the World) the ADI BUDDHA is a Chakravartin, a cosmic wheel
turner who governs the cosmos, conceived of as a wheel. This vision
of power is linked by the Shambhala myth in the Kalachakra Tantra to a
political utopia, one
which is aggressive and warlike, despotic and totalitarian. This
Buddhocratic world kingdom is controlled by an omnipotent
priest-king (the Chakravartin), a lord of
evolution, a further emanation of the ADI
BUDDHA.
Admittedly, there
are many literary attempts to interpret the entire construction of
the Kalachakra Tantra as
the symbolic playing out of psychic/spiritual processes which ought
to be accessible to any person who sets out upon the Vajrayana path. But there is
a strong suspicion — and in our historical section we table
conclusive evidence for this — that the ideas and the goals of the
Time Tantra are meant literally, i.e., that we are concerned with a
real dominus mundi (world
ruler), with the establishment of a real Buddhocracy, the real Buddhization of our
planet — even (as the Shambhala myth prophesies)
through military force.
But
perhaps the Shambhala
vision is even more concrete, then the concept of an ADI BUDDHA
and a Chakravartin can
only refer to one present-day individual, who has for years and
uncontestedly fulfilled all the esoteric conditions of the Kalachakra Tantra. This
individual is His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai
Lama.
The Time
Tantra would then form the ideological and dogmatic basis of a
strategy for the spiritual conquest of our planet by the Tibetan
god-king. Thus, if we wish to understand his political decisions in
their full depth, we must start with the magic metapolitics of the
Kalachakra Tantra, since
both levels (the ritual/magical, and the real/political) are — as we
will demonstrate through many examples — intimately interwoven in
the ancient world of Lamaism. The autocratic religious system of the
god-king integrates all the social domains and political powers
which have been separated in our Western culture at least since the
North American and French Revolutions. The Dalai Lama is — according
to the doctrine — Emperor and Pope, state and god in one person, he
is the living sacred center of a
“Buddhocracy”.
He meets
all the criteria we have brought to light for a tantric world ruler
(Chakravartin) or an ADI
BUDDHA. But, since he does not really govern our planets, his
rituals and political powerplay decisions, his negotiations and his
statements must all be seen as tactical and strategic steps towards
the eventual achievement of the final global goal (of world
domination). [2] This ambitious
enterprise will in no way be interrupted by the death of the
god-king, since he can — reincarnated — build upon the acts of his
predecessor (which he also was) and continue his
work.
His
Holiness would never publicly admit that he aspired to the global
role of a Chakravartin
through the Kalachakra
initiations. Yet numerous symbolic events which have accompanied his
ceremonial life since childhood are harbingers of his unrestricted
claim to “world domination”. In 1940, as a five year-old, he was led
with much ostentation into the Potala, the “Palace of the
Gods”, and seated upon the richly symbolic “Lion Throne”. This
enthronement already demonstrated his kingship of the world and
expressed his right to worldly power, as the “Lion Throne”, in
contrast to the Seat of the Lotus, is a symbol of the imperium (secular power) and
not the sacerdotium
(spiritual power). On 17 November 1950, the god-king was
ceremoniously handed the “Golden Wheel”, which identified him as the
“universal wheel turner” (Chakravartin).
But it is
less these insignia of power which make him (who has lost his entire
land) a potential planetary sovereign in the eyes of his Western
believers, [3] than the fact that a long dormant image of desire has
resurfaced in the imaginations of Europeans and Americans. “Which
people, which nation, which culture”, Claude B. Levenson enthuses
about the Dalai Lama, for example, “has not, within its collective
consciousness, dreamed of a perfect monarch, who, imbued with a
sense of justice and equanimity, is entrusted to watch over the
well-ordered course of a harmonic and in every sense just society?
The image of the Great King also nestles somewhere in the depths of
the human spirit ... there is something of Judgment Day and the
Resurrection in these manifold interpretations of sincere belief”
(Levenson 1990, p.303).
Such a
global dominion, that is, total power over the earth, contradicts
the apparent total political impotence of the Dalai Lama which is
enhanced by his constantly repeated statements of self-denial ("I am
just a simple monk”). But let us not forget the tantric play upon
paradox and the “law of inversion”. This secular powerlessness is
precisely the precondition for the miracle which reveals how the
lowly, the empty, and the weak give rise to the exalted, the
abundant, and the strong. The “simple monk from Tibet” can — if the
doctrines of his tantric texts are correct — count on the dizzying
rotation which will one day hurl him high from the depths of
impotence to become the most powerful ruler of the universe.
Absolute modesty and absolute power are for him as Tantric two sides
of the same coin.
The Dalai
Lama never appears in the public light as a Tantric, but always as a
Mahayana Bodhisattva, who
thinks only upon the suffering of all living beings, and regards it
with deepest compassion. Tantrism, upon which Tibetan Buddhism in
its entirety is essentially based, thus belongs to the shadow side
of the Kundun ("living Buddha”). His sexual magic rites shun the
light just as much as the claims for global domination they intend.
This is especially true of the Kalachakra
Tantra.
We
mentioned already in the introduction that a person can deny,
suppress, or outwardly project his shadow. Insofar as he knowingly
veils the procedures which take place in the highest initiation of
the Time Tantra, the Dalai Lama denies his tantric shadow;
in as far as he is probably unclear about the catastrophic
consequences of the Shambhala myth (as we will demonstrate in the
case of Shoko Asahara), he suppresses his tantric
shadow; insofar as he transfers everything negative, which according
to the “law of inversion” represents the starting substance (prima
materia) for spiritual transformation anyway, to the Chinese, he projects his tantric shadow
onto others.
The
aggression and morbidity of the tantra, the sexual excesses, the
“female sacrifice”, the “vampirism” of energy, the omnipotent power
claims, the global destructive frenzy — all of these are
systematically disguised by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and can, even
when the majority of the tantric texts are publicly available, be
still further disguised — on the one hand by the argument that it is
all only a matter of symbolic events that would never be conducted
in reality, and, on the other hand, by the tantras’ claim that any
negative actions have transformed themselves into positive ones by
the end of the ritual.
As far as
the first argument is concerned, we have been able to present
numerous cases where the tantric texts have been interpreted
thoroughly literally. Further, we have shown that this argument
collapses upon itself, since no distinction between symbol and
reality may be drawn by a Vajrayana Buddhist, as
opposed to a contemporary “westerner”.
The
second argument, that the tantras transform the negative into the
positive (i.e., would call upon the devil to drive the devil out),
needs to be able to stand up to empirical testing. The most telling
body of evidence for the tantric theory, in particular for the
philosophy and vision of the Kalachakra Tantra, is history itself.
Over many hundreds of years thousands of tantric rituals have been
performed in Tibet; for centuries people have tried to influence the
history of the country through tantric rituals. But what, up to now,
has this ritual politics achieved for the Tibetans and for humanity,
and what is it aiming to achieve? We will consider the use of
Buddhist Tantrism as a political method for better understanding the
history of Tibet and influencing the country's destiny in the
following, second part of our book. Here, our topic will be the
influence of Vajrayana
upon the Buddhist state, the economy, the military, upon foreign
affairs and world politics.
Footnotes:
[2] For
this reason we must regard statements on practical politics by the
Dalai Lama, which contradict the ideas of the Time Tantra (like, for
instance his professions of belief in western democracy), as a mere
tactic or trick (upaya)
in order to mislead those around him as to his true intentions (the
establishment of a worldwide Buddhocracy).
[3] For
Tibetans and Mongolians who believe in Lamaism, the conception of
the Dalai Lama as the Chakravartin is a matter of
course.
Next
Chapter:
PART II – INTRODUCTION – POLITICS AS
RITUAL
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