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The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part II – 5.
Buddhocracy and anarchy: contradictory or complementary?
© Victor & Victoria
Trimondi
5. BUDDHOCRACY AND ANARCHY: CONTRATICTORY OR COMPLEMENTRAY?
The totalitarian Lamaist state (the Tibetan
Buddhocracy), headed by its absolute ruler, the Dalai Lama, was — as
contradictory as this may at first appearance seem to be — only one of the
power-political forces which decisively shaped the history of Tibet. On the
other side we find all the disintegrative and anti-state forces which
constantly challenged the clerical sphere as dangerous opponents. As we
shall soon see, within the whole social structure they represented the
forces of anarchy: „Thus, Tibetans
understand power both“, writes Rebecca Redwood French, „as a highly
centralized, rigidly controlled and hierarchically determined force and as
a diffuse and multivalent force” (Redwood French, 1995, p. 108). What are
these „diffuse and multivalent” forces and how does the „highly centralized
… and hierarchically determined” Buddhist state deal with them?
The powers which rebelled against the
established monastic order in the Tibet of old were legion — above all the
all-powerful nature of the
country. Extreme climatic conditions and the huge territory, barely
developed in terms of transport logistics, rendered effective state control
by the lamas only partially realizable. But the problems were not just of
the factual kind. In addition, from the Tibetan, animist point of view, the
wilds of nature are inhabited by countless gods, demons, and spirits, who
must all be brought under control: the lu
— water spirits which contaminate wells and divert rivers; the nyen — tree spirits that cause
illnesses, especially cancer; the jepo
— the harmful ghosts of bad kings and lamas who broke their vows; the
black dü — open rebels who
deliberately turn against the Dharma; the mamo, also black — a dangerous breed of witches and harpies;
the sa — evil astral demons; and
many others. They all posed a daily threat for body and soul, life and
possession in the Tibet of old and had to be kept in check through constant
rituals and incantations. This animist world view is still alive and well
today despite Chinese communist materialism and rationalism and is currently
experiencing an outright renaissance.
But it was not enough to have conquered
and enchained (mostly via magic rituals) the nature spirits listed. They
then required constant guarding and supervision so that they did resume their
mischief. Even the deities known as dharmapalas,
who were supposed to protect the Buddhist teachings, tended to forget their
duties from to time and turn against their masters (the lamas). This
“omnipresence of the demonic” kept the monks and the populace in a constant
state of alarm and caused an extreme tension within the Tibetan culture.
On the social level it was, among other things, the high degree of
criminality which time and again provoked Tibetan state Buddhism and was
seen as subversive. The majority of westerners traveling in Tibet (in the
time before the Chinese occupation) reported that the brigandry in the
country represented a general nuisance. Certain nomadic tribes, the Khampas
for example, regarded robbery as a lucrative auxiliary income or even
devoted themselves to it full-time. They were admittedly feared but
definitely not despised for this, but were rather seen as the heroes of a
robber romanticism widespread in the country. To go out without servants
and unarmed was also considered dangerous in the Lhasa of old. One lived in
constant fear of being held up.
In terms of popular culture,
there were strong currents of an original, anarchist (non-Buddhist)
shamanism which coursed through the whole country and were not so easily
brought under the umbrella of a Buddhist concept of state. The same was
true of the Nyingmapa sect, whose members had a very libertarian and
vagabond lifestyle. In addition, there were the wandering yogis and
ascetics as further representatives of “anarchy”. And last not least, the
great orders conducted an unrelenting competitive campaign against one
another which was capable of bringing the entire state to the edge of
chaos. If, for example, the Sakyapas were at the high point of their power,
then the Kagyupas would lay in wait so as to discover their weaknesses and
bring them down. If the Kagyupas seized control over the Land of Snows,
then they would be hampered by the Gelugpas with help from the Mongolians.
The Lamaist state and anarchy have
always stood opposed to one another in Tibetan history. But can we
therefore say that Buddhism always and without fail took on the role of the
state which found itself in constant conflict with all the non-Buddhist forces of anarchy? We
shall see that the social dynamic was more complex than this. Tantric
Buddhism is itself — as a result of the lifestyle which the tantras require
— an expression of “anarchy”, but only partially and only at times. In the
final instance it succeeds in combining both the authoritarian state and an
anarchic lifestyle, or, to put it better, in Tibet (and now in the West)
the lamas have developed an ingenious concept and practice through which to
use anarchy to shore up the Buddhocracy. Let us examine this more closely
through a description of the lives of various tantric “anarchists”.
The grand sorcerers (Maha Siddhas)
The anarchist element in the Buddhist
landscape is definitely not unique to Tibet. The founding father,
Shakyamuni himself, displayed an extremely anti-state and antisocial behavior
and later required the same from his followers.
Instead of taking up his inheritance as
a royal ruler, he chose homelessness; instead of opting for his wife and
harem, he chose abstinence; instead of wealth he sought poverty. But the
actual “anarchist” representatives of Buddhism are the 84 grand sorcerers
or Maha Siddhas, who make up the
legendary founding group of Vajrayana
and from whom the various lineages of Tibetan Buddhism are traced. Hence,
in order to consider the origins of the anti-state currents in Tibetan
history, we must cast a glance over the border into ancient India.
All of the stories about the Maha Siddhas tell of the spectacular
adventures they had to go through to attain their goal of enlightenment
(i.e., the ritual absorption of gynergy).
Had they succeeded in this, then they could refer to themselves as “masters
of the maha mudra”. The number of
84 does not correspond to any historical reality. Rather, we are dealing
with a mystical number here which in symbolizes perfection in several
Indian religious systems. Four of the Maha
Siddhas were women. They all lived in India between the eighth and
twelfth centuries.
The majority of these grand sorcerers
came from the lower social strata. They were originally fishermen, weavers,
woodcutters, gardeners, bird-catchers, beggars, servants, or similar. The
few who were members of the higher castes — the kings, brahmans, abbots,
and university lecturers — all abandoned their privileges so as to lead the
life of the mendicant wandering yogis as “drop-outs”. But their biographies
have nothing in common with the pious Christian legends — they are violent,
erotic, demonic, and grotesque. The American, Keith Dowman, stresses the
rebellious character of these unholy holy men: „Some of these Siddhas are
iconoclasts, dissenters, anti-establishment rebels. [...] Obsessive caste rules and regulations in society
and religious ritual as an end in itself, were undermined by the siddhas’
exemplary free living” (Dowman, 1985, pp. 2). Dowman explicitly refers to
their lifestyle as „spiritual anarchism” which did not allow of any control
by institutionalism (Dowman, 1985, p. 3).
Ling-tsang Gyalpo – a great Nyinma Phurba
Master
The relationship with a woman so as to
perform the sexual magic rites with her was at the core of every Siddha’s
life. Whether king or beggar, they all preferred girls from the lower
castes — washer-women, prostitutes, barmaids, dancing girls, or cemetery
witches.
The grand sorcerers’ clothes and external
appearance was also in total contradiction to the image of the Buddhist
monks. They were demonically picturesque. With naked torsos, the Maha Siddhas wore a fur loincloth,
preferably that of a beast of prey. Huge rings hung from their ears and
about their necks swung necklaces of human bone. In contrast to the
ordained bhiksus (monks) the
grand sorcerers never shaved their heads, instead letting their hair grow
into a thick mane which they bound together above their heads in a knot.
Their style more resembled that of the Shivaite yogis and it was difficult
to recognize them as traditional followers of Gautama Buddha. Many of the Maha Siddhas were thus equally
revered by both the Shivaites and the Buddhists. From this the Indologist,
Ramachandra Rao, concludes that in the early phase of Tantrism the
membership of a particular religious current was in no way the deciding
criterion for a yogi’s world view, rather, it was the tantric technique
which made them all (independent of their religious affiliation) members of
a single esoteric community (Ramachandra Rao, 1989, p. 42).
The Maha
Siddhas wanted to provoke. Their “demonic nihilism” knew no bounds.
They shocked people with their bizarre appearance, were even disrespectful
to kings and as a matter of principle did the opposite of what one would
expect of either an “ordinary” person or an ordained Mahayana monk. It was a part of their code of honor to publicly
represent their mystic guild through completely unconventional behavior.
Instead of abstinence they enjoyed brandy, rather than peacemakers they
were ruffians. The majority of them took mind-altering drugs. They were
dirty and unkempt. They collected alms in a skull bowl. Some of them
proudly fed themselves with human body parts which lay scattered about the
crematoria. We have reported upon their erotic practices in detail in the
first part of our study, and likewise upon their boundless power fantasies
which did not shy at any crime. Hence, the magic powers (siddhis) were at the top of their
wish list, even if it is repeatedly stressed in the legends that the
“worldly” siddhis were of only
secondary importance. Telepathy, clairvoyance, the ability to fly, to walk
on water, to raise the dead, to kill the living by power of thought — they
constantly performed wonders in their immediate environs so as to
demonstrate their superiority.
But how well can this “spiritual
anarchism” of the Maha Siddhas be
reconciled with the Buddhist conception of state? In his basic character the
Siddha is an opponent all state hierarchies and every form of discipline.
All the formalities of life are repugnant to him — marriage, occupation,
position, official accolades and recognition. But this is only temporarily
valid, then once the yogi has attained a state of enlightenment a wonderful
and ordered world arises from this in accordance with the law of inversion.
Thanks to the sexual magic rites of Tantrism the brothel bars have now
become divine palaces, nauseating filth has become diamond-clear purity,
stinking excrement shining pieces of gold, horny hetaeras noble queens,
insatiable hate undying love, chaos order, anarchy the absolute state. The
monastic state is, as we shall show in relation to the “history of the
church” in Tibet, the goal; the “wild life” of the Maha Siddhas in contrast is just a transitional phase.
For this
reason we should not refer to the tantric yogi not simply as a “spiritual
anarchist” as does Keith Dowman, nor as a “villain”. Rather, he is a
disciplined hero of the “good”, who dives into the underworld of erotic
love and crime so as to stage a total inversion there, in that he
transforms everything negative into its positive. He is no libertarian free
thinker, but rather an “agent” of the monastic community who has infiltrated
the red-light and criminal milieu for tactic spiritual reasons. But he does
not always see his task as being to transform the whores, murderers and
manslaughterers into saints, rather he likewise understands it as being to
make use of their aggression to protect and further his own ideas and
interests.
The anarchist founding father of Tibetan Buddhism:
Padmasambhava
The most famous of all the great
magicians of Tibet is, even though he is not one of the 84 Maha Siddhas, the Indian,
Padmasambhava, the “Lotus Born”. The Tibetans call him Guru Rinpoche, “valuable teacher”. He is considered to be not
just an emanation of Avalokiteshvara
(like the Dalai Lama) but is himself also, according to the doctrine of the
“Great Fifth”, a previous incarnation of the Tibetan god-king. The reader
should thus always keep in mind that the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama is
accountable for the wild biography of Guru
Rinpoche as his own former life.
Legend tells of his wondrous birth from
a lotus flower — hence his name (padma
means ‘lotus’). He appeared in the form of an eight-year-old boy “without
father or mother”, that is, he gave rise to himself. The Indian king
Indrabhuti discovered him in the middle of a lake, and brought the lotus
boy to his palace and reared him as a son. In the iconography,
Padmasambhava may be encountered in eight different forms of appearance,
behind each of this a legend can be found. His trademark, which
distinguishes him from all other Tibetan “saints”, is an elegant “French”
goatee. He holds the kathanga, a
rod bearing three tiny impaled human heads, as his favorite scepter. His
birthplace in India, Uddiyana, was famed and notorious for the wildness of
the tantric practices which were cultivated there.
Around 780 C.E. the Tibetan king, Trisong
Detsen, fetched Padmasambhava into Tibet. The political intentions behind
this royal summons were clear: the ruler wanted to weaken the power of the
mighty nobles and the caste of the Bon priests via the introduction of a
new religion. Padmasambhava was supposed to replace at court the Indian
scholar, Shantarakshita, (likewise a Buddhist), who had proved too weak to
assert himself against the recalcitrant aristocracy.
Guru Rinpoche, in contrast, was already
considered to be a tantric superman in Uddiyana. He demanded his own weight
in gold bars of the king as his fee for coming. When he finally stood
before Trisong Detsen, the king demanded that he demonstrate his respect
with a bow. Instead of doing so, Guru Rinpoche sprayed lightning from his
fingertips, so that it was the king who sank to his knees and recognized
the magician as the appropriate ally with whom to combat the Bon priests,
likewise skilled in magic things. The guru was thus bitterly hated by these
and by the nobles, even the king’s ministers treated him with the greatest
hostility imaginable.
Statue of Padmasambhava
The saga has made Padmasambhava the
founding father of Tibetan Buddhism. His life story is a fantastic
collection of miracles which made him so popular among the people that he
soon enjoyed a greater reverence than the historical Buddha, whose life
appeared sober and pale in comparison. Reports about Guru Rinpoche and his
writings are drawn primarily from the termas
(treasures) already mentioned above, which, it is claimed, he himself hid
so that they would come to light centuries later.
From a very young age the boy already
stood out because of his abnormal and violent nature. He killed a sleeping
baby by throwing a stone at it and justified this deed with the pretense that
the child would have become a malignant magician who would have harmed many
people in his later life. Apart from his royal adoptive father, Indrabhuti,
no-one accepted this argument, and several people attempted to bring him to
justice. At the urgings of a minister he was first confined to a palace by
soldiers. Shortly afterward the guru appeared upon the roof of the
building, naked except for a “sixfold bone ornament”, and with a vajra and a trident in his hands.
The people gathered rapidly to delight in the odd spectacle, among them one
of the hostile ministers with his wife and son. Suddenly and without
warning Padmasambhava’s vajra
penetrated the brain of the boy and the trident speared through the heart
of the mother fatally wounding both of them.
The pot boiled
over at this additional double murder and the entire court now demanded
that the wrongdoer be impaled. Yet once again he succeeded in proving that
the murder victims had earned their violent demise as the just punishment
for their misdeeds in earlier lives. It was decided to refrain from the
death penalty and to damn Padmasambhava instead. Thereupon a troupe of
dancing dakinis appeared in the skies leading a miraculous horse by the
halter. Guru Rinpoche mounted it and vanished into thin air. Acts of
violence were to continue to characterize his future life.
As much as he was a master of tantric
erotic love, he decisively rejected the institution of marriage. When
Indrabhuti wanted to find him a wife, he answered by saying that women were
like wild animals without minds and that they vainly believed themselves to
be goddesses. There were, however, exceptions, as well hidden as a needle
in a haystack, and if he would have to marry then he should be brought such
an exception. After many unsuccessful presentations, Bhasadhara was finally
found. With her he began his tantric practices, so that “the mountains
shook and the gales blew”.
The marriage did not last long. Like
the historical Buddha, Guru Rinpoche turned his back on the entertaining palace
life of his adoptive father and chose as his favorite place to stay the
crematoria of India. He was in the habit of meditating there, and there he
held his constant rendezvous with terrible-looking witches (dakinis). One
document reports how he dressed in the clothes of dead and fed upon their
decomposing flesh (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 195). He is supposed to have
visited a total of eight cemeteries in order to there and then fight out a
magical initiation battle with the relevant officiating dakinis.
His most spectacular encounter was
definitely the meeting with Guhya
Jnana, the chief of the terror goddesses, one of the appearances of Vajrayogini. She lived in a castle
made of human skulls. When Padmasambhava reached the gates he was unable to
enter the building, despite his magic powers. He instructed a servant to
inform her mistress of his visit. When she returned without having achieved
anything he tried once more with all manner of magic to gain entry. The
girl laughed at him, took a crystal knife and slit open her torso with it.
The endless retinue of all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas appeared within her
insides. “I am just a servant”, she said. Only now was Padmasambhava
admitted.
Guhya
Inana sat upon her
throne. In her hands she held a double-ended drum and a skull bowl and was
surrounded by 32 servant girls. The yogi bowed down with great respect and
said, “Just as all Buddhas through the ages had their gurus, so I ask you
to be my teacher and to take me on as your pupil” (Govinda, 1984, p. 226).
Thereupon she assembled the whole pantheon of gods within her breast,
transformed the petitioner into a seed syllable and swallowed him. Whilst
the syllable lay upon her lips she gave him the sacrament of Amitabha, whilst he rested in her
stomach he was initiated into the secrets of Avalokiteshvara. After leaving her lotus (i.e., vagina) he
received the sacraments of the body, the speech, and the spirit. Only now
had he attained his immortal vajra
body.
This scene also grants the feminine
force an outstanding status within the initiation process. But there are
several versions of the story. In another account it is Padmasambhava who
dissolves Vajrayogini within his
heart. Jeffrey Hopkins even describes a tantra technique in which the pupil
imagines himself to be the goddess so as to then be absorbed by his teacher
who visualizes himself as Guru
Rinpoche (Hopkins, 1982, p. 180).
Without doubt, Padmasambhava’s
relationship with Yeshe Tshogyal, the karma
mudra given to him by Indrabhuti, and with Princess Mandavara, the
reincarnation of a dakini, display a rare tolerance. Thus within the
tradition both yoginis were able to preserve a certain individuality and
personality over the course of centuries — a rare exception in the history
of Vajrayana. For this reason it
could be believed that Padmasambhava had shown a revolutionary attitude
towards the woman, especially since the statement often quoted here in the
West is from him: “The basis for realizing enlightenment is a human body.
Male or female — there is no great difference. But if she develops the mind
bent on enlightenment, a woman's body is better” (Gross, 1993, p. 79).
But how can
this comment, which is taken from a terma
from the 18th century (!), be reconciled with the following statement
by the guru, which he is supposed to have offered in answer to Yeshe
Tshogyal’s question about the suitability of women for the tantric rituals?
„Your faith is mere platitude, your devotion insincere, but your greed and
jealousy are strong. Your trust and generosity are weak, yet your
disrespect and doubt are huge. Your compassion and intelligence are weak,
but your bragging and self-esteem are great. Your devotion and perseverance
are weak, but you are skilled at misguiding and distorting Your pure
perception and courage is small” (Binder-Schmidt, 1994 p. 56).
Yet this comment is quite harmless! The
“demonic” Guru Rinpoche also
exists — the aggressive butcher of people and serial rapist. There is for
instance a story about him in circulation in which he killed a Tibetan king
and impregnated his 900 wives so as to produce children who were devoted to
the Buddhist teaching. In another episode from his early life he was
attacked out of the blue by dakinis and male dakas. The story reports that
“he [then] kills the men and possesses the women” (R. Paul, 1982, p. 163).
Robert A. Paul thus sees in Padmasambhava an intransigent, active, phallic,
and sexist archetype whom he contrasts with Avalokiteshvara, the mild, asexual, feminized, and transcendent
counterpole. Both typologies, Paul claims, determine the dynamic of Tibetan
history and are united within the person of the Dalai Lama (R. Paul, 1982,
p. 87).
Many of the anecdotes about Guru Rinpoche which are in
circulation also depict him as a boastful superman. He paid for his beer in
a tavern by holding the sun still for two days for the female barkeeper.
This earned him not just the reputation of a sun-controller but also the
saga that he had invented beer in an earlier incarnation. His connection to
the solar cults is also vouched for by other anecdotes. For instance, one
day he assumed the shape of the sun bird, the garuda, and conquered the lu,
the feminine (!) water spirits. Lightning magic remained one of his
preferred techniques, and he made no rare use of it. An additional
specialty was to appear in a sea of flames, which was not difficult for him
as an emanation of the “fire god”, Avalokiteshvara.
His siddhis (magic powers) were
thought to be unlimited; he flew through the air, spoke all languages, knew
every magic battle technique, and could assume any shape he chose.
Nonetheless, all these magical techniques were not sufficient for him to
remain the spiritual advisor of Trisong Detsen for long. The Bon priests
and the king’s wife (Tse Pongza) were too strong and Guru Rinpoche had to
leave the court. Yet this was not the end of his career. He moved north in
order to do battle with the unbridled demons of the Land of Snows. The
rebellious spirits, usually local earth deities, constantly blocked his path.
Yet without exception all the “enemies of the teaching” were defeated by
his magic powers. The undertaking soon took on the form of a triumphal
procession.
It was Guru Rinpoche’s unique style to
never destroy the opponents he defeated but rather to demand of them a
threefold gesture of submission: 1. the demons had to symbolically offer up
to him their life force or “heart blood”; 2. they had to swear an oath of
loyalty; and 3. they had to commit themselves to fighting for instead of
against the Buddhist teachings in future. If these conditions were met then
they did not need to abandon their aggressive, bloodthirsty, and extremely
destructive ways. In contrast, they were not freed from their murderous
fighting spirit and their terrifying ugliness but instead from then on
served Tantric Buddhism as it terrible protective deities, who were all the
more holy the more cruelly they behaved. The Tibetan Buddhist pantheon was
thus gradually filled out with all imaginable misshapen figures, whose
insanity, atrocities, and misanthropy were boundless. Among them could be
found vampires, cannibals, executioners, ghouls (horrifying ghosts), and
sadists. Guru Rinpoche and his later incarnations, the Dalai Lamas, were
and still are considered to be the undisputed masters of this cabinet of
horrors, who they regally command from their lotus throne.
His victory over the daemonic powers
was sealed by the construction of a three-dimensional mandala, the first
Buddhist monastery in Tibet. Samye
symbolized nothing less than a microcosmic model of the tantric world
system, with Mount Meru at its center. The inaugurating ceremony conducted
by Padmasambhava was preceded by the banishment of all venomous devils.
Then the earth goddess, Srinmo, was
nailed down, in that Guru Rinpoche drove his phurba (ritual dagger) into the ground with a ceremonial
gesture. Among those present at this ritual were 50 beautifully adorned
girls and boys with vases filled with valuable substances. Durong the
subsequent construction works the rebellious spirits repeatedly tried to
prevent the completion of the temple and at night tore down what had been
achieved during the day. But here too, the guru understood how to tame the
nightly demons and then make construction workers of them.
In the holiest of holies of Samye there
could be found a statue of Avalokiteshvara
which was said to have arisen of itself. Apart from this, the monastery
had something of an eerie and gloomy air about it. The saga tells of how
once a year Tibet’s terror gods assembled on the roofs of the monastery for
a cannibalistic feast and a game of dice in which the stakes were human
souls. On these days all the oracle priests of the Land of Snows were said
to have fallen into a trance as if under the instruction of a higher power.
Because of the microcosmic significance of Samye, its protective god is the
Red Tsiu, a mighty force in the
pandemonium of the highlands. “He possesses red locks, his body is
surrounded by a glory of fire. Shooting stars fly from his eyes and a great
hail of blood falls from his mouth. He gnashes his teeth. ... He winds a
red noose about the body of an enemy at the same time as he thrusts a lance
into the heart of another” (Nebesky-Wojkowitz, 1955, p. 224).
A puzzling red-brown leather mask also
hung in the temple, which showed the face of a three-eyed wrathful demon.
Legend tells that it was made from clotted human blood and sometimes becomes alive to the horror of all.
Alongside the sacred room of the Red
Tsiu lay a small, ill-lit chamber. If a person died, said the monks,
then his soul would have to slip through a narrow hole into this room and
would be cut to pieces there upon a chopping block. Of a night the cries
and groans of the maltreated souls could be heard and a revolting stench of
blood spread through the whole building. The block was replaced every year
since it had been worn away by the many blows.
Guru
Rinpoche, the former
incarnation of the Dalai Lama, was a explosive mixture of strict ascetic
and sorcerer, apostle and adventurer, monk and vagabond, founder of a
culture and criminal, mystic and eroticist, lawmaker and mountebank,
politician and exorcist. He had such success because he resolved the
tension between civilization and wildness, divinity and the daemonic within
his own person. For, according to tantric logic, he could only defeat the
demons by himself becoming a demon. For this reason Fokke Sierksma also
characterizes him as an uninhibited usurper: “He was a conqueror, obsessed
by lust of power and concupiscence, only this conqueror did not choose the
way of physical, but that of spiritual violence, in accordance with the
Indian tradition that the Yogin's concentration of energy subdues matter,
the world and gods” (Sierksma, 1966, p. 111).
The orthodox Gelugpas also pull the
arch magician to pieces in general. For example, one document accuses him
of having devoted himself to the pursuit of women of a night clothed in
black, and to drink of a day, and to have described this decadent practice
as “the sacrifice of the ten days” (Hoffmann, 1956, p. 55).
It was different with the Fifth Dalai
Lama — for him Guru Rinpoche was the force which tamed the wilds of the
Land of Snows with his magic arts, as had no other before him and none who
came after. As magic was likewise for the “Great Fifth” the preferred style
of weapon, he could justifiably call upon Padmasambhava as his predecessor
and master. The various guises of the guru which appeared before the ruler
of the Potala in his visions are thus also numerous and of great intensity.
In them Padmasambhava touched his royal pupil upon the forehead a number of
times with a jewel and thus transferred his power to him. Guru Rinpoche
became the “house prophet” of the “Great Fifth” — he advised the hierarch,
foretold the future for him, and intervened in the practical politics from
beyond, which fundamentally transformed the history of Tibet (through the
establishment of the Buddhist state) almost 900 years after his death.
The “Emperor” Songtsen Gampo and the
“Magician-Priest” Padmasambhava, the principal early heroes of the Land of
Snows, carried within them the germ of all the future events which would
determine the fate of the Tibetans. Centuries after their earthly
existence, both characters were welded together into the towering figure of
the Fifth Dalai Lama. The one represented worldly power, the other the
spiritual. As an incarnation of both the one and the other, the Dalai Lama
was also entitled and able to exercise both forms of power. Just how close
a relationship he brought the two into is revealed by one of his visions in
which Guru Rinpoche and King Songtsen Gampo swapped their appearances with
lightning speed and thus became a single person. A consequence of the Dalai
Lama’s strong identification with the arch-magician was that his chief
yogini, Yeshe Tshogyal, also appeared all the more often in his
envisionings. She became the preferred inana
mudra of the “Great Fifth”.
Under the rule of Trisong Detsen (who
fetched Padmasambhava into Tibet) the famous Council of Lhasa also took
place. The king ordered the staging of a large-scale debate between two
Buddhist schools of opinion: the teachings of the Indian, Kamalashila,
which said that the way to enlightenment was a graded progression and the
Chinese position, which demanded the immediate, spontaneous achievement of
enlightenment, which suddenly and unexpectedly unfolded in its full
dimensions. The representative of the spontaneity doctrine was Hoshang
Mahoyen, a master of Chinese Chan Buddhism. In Lhasa the Indian doctrine of
stages was at the end of a two-year debate victorious. Hoshang is said to
have been banished from the land and some of his followers were killed by
the disciples of Kamalashila. But the Chinese position has never completely
disappeared from Tibetan cultural life and is again gaining respectability.
It is quite rightly compared to the so-called Dzogchen teaching, which also
believes an immediate act of enlightenment is possible and which is
currently especially popular in the West. For example, the important abbot,
Sakya Pandita, attacked the Dzogchen practices because they were a
latter-day form of the Chinese doctrine which had been refuted at the
Council of Lhasa. In contrast the unorthodox Nyingmapa had no problem with the “Chinese way”.
These days the Tibetan lama, Norbu Rinpoche, who lives in Italy, appeals
explicitly to Hoshang.
Of its nature, the Dzogchen teaching
stands directly opposed to state Buddhism. It dissolves all forms at once
and it would not be exaggerating if we were to describe it as “spiritual
anarchism”. The political genius of the Fifth Dalai Lama, who knew that a
Buddhocracy is only sustainable if it can integrate and control the
anarchic elements, made constant use of the Dzogchen practice (Samuel,
1993, p. 464). Likewise the current Fourteenth Dalai Lama is said to have
been initiated into this discipline, at any rate he counts Dzogchen masters
among his most high ranking spiritual intimates.
It is also noteworthy that in feminist
circles the famous Council of Lhasa is evaluated as the confrontation
between a fundamentally masculine (Indian) and a feminine (Chinese) current
within Tibetan Buddhism (Chayet, 1993, pp. 322-323).
From anarchy to the discipline of the order: The Tilopa lineage
The reason the Maha Siddha Tilopa (10th century) is worthy of our special
attention is because he and his pupil Naropa are the sole historical
individuals from the early history of the Kalachakra Tantra who count among the founding fathers of
several Tibetan schools and because Tilopa’s life is exemplary of that of
the other 83 “grand sorcerers”.
According to legend, the Indian master
is said to have reached the wonderland of Shambhala and received the time doctrines from the reigning
Kalki there. After returning to India, in the year 966 he posted the symbol
of the dasakaro vasi (the “Power
of Ten”) on the entrance gates of the monastic university of Nalanda and
appended the following lines, already quoted above: “He, that does not know
the chief first Buddha (Adi-Buddha),
knows not the circle of time (Kalachakra). He, that does not know
the circle of time, knows not the exact enumeration of the divine
attributes. He that does not know the exact enumeration of the divine
attributes, knows not the supreme intelligence. He, that does not know the
supreme intelligence, knows not the tantrica principles. He, that does not
know the tantrica principles, and all such, are wanderers in the orb transmigratos, and are out of the
way of the supreme triumphator. Therefore Adi-Buddha must be taught by every true Lama, and every true
disciple who aspires to liberation must hear them” (Körös, 1984, pp.
21-22).
While he was still a very young child,
a dakini bearing the 32 signs of ugliness appeared to Tilopa and proclaimed
his future career as a Maha Siddha
to the boy in his cradle. From now on this witch, who was none other than Vajrayogini, became the teacher of
the guru-to-be and inducted him step by step in the knowledge of
enlightenment. Once she appeared to him in the form of a prostitute and
employed him as a servant. One of his duties was to pound sesame seeds (tila) through which he earned his
name. As a reward for the services he performed, Vajrayogini made him the leader of a ganachakra.
Tilopa always proved to be the androgynous
sovereign of the gender roles. Hence he one day let the sun and the moon
plummet from heaven and rode over them upon a lion, that is, he destroyed
the masculine and feminine energy flows and controlled them with the force
of Rahu the darkener. At another
point, in order to demonstrate his control over the gender polarity, he was
presented as the murderer of a human couple “who the beat in the skulls of
the man and the woman” (Grünwedel, 1933, p. 72).
Another dramatic scene tells of how
dakinis angrily barred his way when he wanted to enter the palace of their
head sorceress and cried out in shrill voices: “We are flesh-eating
dakinis. We enjoy flesh and are greedy for blood. We will devour your
flesh, drink of your blood, and transform your bones into dust and ashes”
(Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 207) .Tilopa defeated them with the gesture of
fearlessness, a furious bellow and a penetrating stare. The witches
collapsed in a faint and spat blood. On his way to the queen he encountered
further female monsters which he hunted down in the same manner. Finally,
in the interior of the palace he met Inana
Dakini, the custodian of tantric knowledge, surrounded by a great
retinue. But he did not bow down before her throne, and sank instead into a
meditative stance. All present were outraged and barked at him in anger
that before him stood the “Mother of all Buddhas”. According to one version
— which is recounted by Alexandra David-Neel — Tilopa now roused himself
from his contemplation, and, approaching the queen with a steady gait,
stripped her of her clothes jewelry and demonstrated his male superiority
by raping her before the assembled gaze of her entire court (Hoffmann,
1956, p. 149).
Tilopa’s character first becomes three
dimensional when we examine his relationship with his pupil, Naropa. The
latter first saw the light of the world in the year of the masculine fire
dragon as the son of a king and queen. Later he at first refused to marry,
but then did however succumb to the will of his parents. The marriage did
not last long and was soon dissolved. Naropa offered the following reason:
“Since the sins of a woman are endless, in the face of the swamp mud of
deceptive poison my spirit would take on the nature of a bull, and hence I
will become a monk” (Grünwedel, 1933, p. 54). His young spouse agreed to
the divorce and accepted all the blame: “He is right!”, she said to his
parents, “I have endless sins, I am absolutely without merit ... For this
reason and on these grounds it is appropriate to put an end to [the union
of] us two” (Grünwedel, 1933, p. 54). Afterwards Naropa was ordained as a
monk and went on to become the abbot of what was at the time the most
important of the Buddhist monastic universities, Nalanda.
Nevertheless, one day the ecclesiastical
dignitary renounced his clerical privileges just as he had done with his
royal ones and roamed the land as a beggar in search of his teacher,
Tilopa. He had learned of the latter’s existence from the dakini with the
32 markings of ugliness (Vajrayogini).
While he was reading the holy texts in Nalanda, she cast a threatening
shadow across his books. She laughed at him derisively because he believed
he could understand the meaning of the tantras by reading them.
After Naropa had with much trouble
located his master, a grotesque scene, peerless even in the tantric
literature, was played out. Tilopa fooled his pupil with twelve horrific
apparitions before finally initiating him. On the first occasion he
appeared as a foul-smelling, leprous woman. He then burnt fish that were
still alive over a fire in order to eat them afterwards. At a cemetery he
slit open the belly of a living person and washed it out with dirty water.
In the next scene the master had skewered his own father with a stake and was
in the process of killing his mother held captive in the cellar. On another
occasion Naropa had to beat his penis with a stone until it spurted blood.
At another time Tilopa required of him that he vivisect himself.
In order to reveal the world to be an illusion,
the tantra master had his pupil commit one crime after another and
presented himself as a dastardly criminal. Naropa passed every test and
became one of the finest experts and commentators on the Kalachakra Tantra.
One of his many pupils was the Tibetan,
Marpa (1012-1097). Naropa initiated him into the secret tantric teachings.
After further initiations from burial ground dakinis, whom Marpa defeated
with the help of Tilopa who appeared from the beyond, and after
encountering the strange yogi, Kukkuri ("dog ascetic”), he returned
from India to his home country. He brought several tantra texts back with
him and translated these into the national language, giving him his epithet
of the “translator”. In Tibet he married several women, had many sons and
led a household. He is said to have performed the tantric rites with his
head wife, Dagmema. In contrast to the yoginis of the legendary Maha Siddhas, Dagmema displays very
individualized traits and thus forms a much-cited exception among the ranks
of female Tibetan figures. She was sincere, clever, shrewd, self-controlled
and industrious. Besides this she had independent of her man her own
possessions. She cared for the family, worked the fields, supervised the
livestock and fought with the neighbors. In a word, she closely resembled a
normal housewife in the best sense.
A monastic interpretation of Marpa’s
“ordinary” life circumstances reveals, however, how profoundly the
anarchist dimension dominated the consciousness of the yogis at that time:
Marpa’s “normality” was not considered a good deed of his because it
counted as moral in the dominant social rules of the time, but rather, in
contrast, because he had taken the most difficult of all exercises upon
himself in that he realized his enlightenment in the so despised
“normality”. “People of the highest capacity can and should practice like
that” (Chökyi, 1989, p. 143). Effectively this says that family life is a
far greater hindrance to the spiritual development of a tantra master than
a crematorium. This is what Marpa’s pupil, Milarepa, also wanted to
indicate when he rejected marriage for himself with the following words:
“Marpa had married for the purpose of serving others, but ... if I presumed to imitate him without being
endowed with his purity of purpose and his spiritual power, it would be the
hare's emulation of the lion’s leap, which would surely end in my being
precipitated into the chasm of destruction” (R. Paul, 1982, p. 234)
Marpa’s pragmatic personality,
especially his almost egalitarian relationship with his wife, is unique in
the history of Tibetan monasticism. It has not been ruled out that he
conceived of a reformed Buddhism, in which the sex roles were supposed to
be balanced out and which strove towards the normality of family relationships.
Hence, he also wanted to make his successor his son, who lost his life in
an accident, however. For this reason he handed his knowledge on to
Milarepa (1052–1135), who was supposed to continue the classic androcentric
lineage of the Maha Siddhas.
Milarepa’s family were maliciously
cheated by relatives when he was in his youth. In order to avenge himself,
he became trained as a black magician and undertook several deadly acts of
revenge against his enemies. According to legend his mother is supposed to
have spurred him on here. In the face of the unhappiness he had caused, he
saw the error of his ways and sought refuge in the Buddhist teachings.
After a lengthy hesitation, Marpa took him on as a pupil and increased his
strictness towards him to the point of brutality so that Milarepa could
work off his bad karma through his own suffering. Time and again the pupil
had to build a house which his teacher repeatedly tore down. After Milarepa
subsequently meditated for seven nights upon the bones of his dead mother
(!), he attained enlightenment. In his poems he does not just celebrate the
gods, but also the beauty of nature. This “natural” talent and inclination
has earned him many admirers up until the present day.
Like his teacher, Marpa, Milarepa is
primarily revered for his humanity, a rare quality in the history of Vajrayana. There is something so
realistic about Marpa’s arbitrariness and the despair of his pupil that
they move many believers in Buddhism more than the phantasmagoric cemetery
scenes we are accustomed to from the Maha
Siddhas and Padmasambhava. For this reason the ill treatment of
Milarepa by his guru counts among the best-known scenes of Tibetan
hagiography. Yet after his initiation events also became fantastic in his
case. He transformed himself into all manner of animals, defeated a
powerful Bon magician and thus conquered the mountain of Kailash. But the
death of this superhuman is once again just as human as that of the Buddha
Shakyamuni. He died after drinking poisoned milk given him by an envious
person. The historical Buddha passed away at the age of 80 after consuming
poisoned pork.
Milarepa’s sexual life oscillated
between ascetic abstinence and tantric practices. There are several
misogynous poems by him. When the residents of a village offered the poet a
beautiful girl as his bride, he sang the following song:
At first, the lady is like a heavenly angel;
The more you look at her, the more you want to gaze.
Middle-aged, she becomes a demon with a corpse’s eyes;
You say one word to her and
she shouts back two.
She pulls your hair and hits your knee.
You strike her with your staff, but back she throws a ladle….
I keep away from women to avoid fights and quarrels.
For the young bride you mentioned, I have no appetite.
(Stevens, 1990, p.
75)
The yogi constantly warned of the
destructive power of women, and attacked them as troublemakers, as the
source of all suffering. Like all the prominent followers of Buddha he was exposed
to sexual temptations a number of times. Once a demoness caused a huge
vagina to appear before him. Milarepa inserted a phallus-like stone into it
and thus exorcised the magic. He conducted a ganachakra with the beautiful Tserinma and her four sisters.
Milarepa’s pupil, Gampopa (1079–1153),
drew the wild and anarchic phase of the Tilopa lineage to a close. This man
with a clear head who had previously practiced as a doctor and became a
monk because of a tragic love affair in which his young wife had died,
brought with him sufficient organizational talent to overcome the
antisocial traits of his predecessors. Before he met Milarepa, he was
initiated into the Kadampa order, an organization which could be traced
back to the Indian scholar, Atisha, and already had an statist character.
As he wanted to leave them to take the yogi poet (Milarepa) as his teacher,
his brethren from the order asked Gampopa ,: “Aren’t our teachings enough?”
When he nonetheless insisted, they said to him: “Go, but [do] not abandon
our habit.” (Snellgrove, 1987, vol. 2, p. 494). Gampopa abided by this
warning, but likewise he took to heart the following critical statement by
Milarepa: “The Kadampa have teachings, but practical teachings they have
not. The Tibetans, being possessed by evil spirits, would not allow the
Noble Lord (Atisha) to preach the Mystic Doctrine. Had they done so, Tibet
would have been filled with saints by this time” (Bell, 1994, p. 93).
The tension between the rigidity of the
monastic state and the anarchy of the Maha
Siddhas is well illustrated by these two comments. If we further follow
the history of Tibetan Buddhism, we can see that Gampopa abided more
closely to the rules of his original order and only let himself be
temporarily seduced by the wild life of the “mountain ascetic”, Milarepa.
In the long term he is thus to be regarded as a conqueror of the anarchic
currents. Together with one of his pupils he founded the Kagyupa order.
The actual chief figure in the
establishment of the Tibetan monastic state was the above-mentioned Atisha
(982–1054). The son of a prince from Bengal already had a marriage and nine
children behind him before he decided to seek refuge in the sangha. Among others, Naropa was one
of his teachers. In the year 1032, after several requests from the king of
Guge (southern Tibet), he went to the Land of Snows in order to reform
Buddhism there. In 1050, Atisha organized a council in which Indians also
participated alongside many Tibetan monks. The chief topic of this meeting
was the “Re-establishment of religion in Tibet”.
Under Tantrism the country had declined
into depravity. Crimes, murders, orgies, black magic, and lack of
discipline were no longer rare in the sangha
(monastic community). Atisha opposed this with his well-organized and
disciplined monastic model, his moral rectitude and his high standard of
ethics. A pure lifestyle and true orderly discipline were now required. The
rules of celibacy applied once more. An orthodoxy was established, but
Tantrism was in no sense abolished, but rather subjected to maximum
strictness and control. Atisha introduced a new time-keeping system into
Tibet which was based upon the calendar of the Kalachakra Tantra, through which this work became exceptionally
highly regarded.
Admittedly there is a story which tells
of how a wild dakini initiated him in a cemetery, and he also studied for
three years at the notorious Uddiyana from whence Padmasambhava came, but
his lifestyle was from the outset clear and exact, clean and disciplined,
temperate and strict. This is especially apparent in his choice of female
yiddam (divine appearance), Tara.
Atisha bought the cult of the Buddhist “Madonna” to Tibet with him. One
could say he carried out a “Marianization” of Tantric Buddhism. Tara was essentially quite distinct
from the other female deities in her purity, mercifulness, and her relative
asexuality. She is the “spirit woman” who also played such a significant
role in the reform of other androcentric churches, as we can see from the
example provided by the history of the Papacy.
At the direction of his teacher,
Atisha’s pupil Bromston founded community of Kadampas whom we have already
mentioned above, a strict clerical organization which later became an
example for all the orders of the Land of Snows including the Nyingmapas
and the remainder of the pre-Buddhist Bonpos. But in particular it paved
the way for the victory march of the Gelugpas. This order saw itself as the
actual executors of Atisha’s plans. With it the nationalization of Tibetan
monasticism began. This was to reach its historical high point in the
institutionalization of the office of the Dalai Lama.
The pre-planned counterworld to the clerical bureaucracy:
Holy fools
The archetype of the anarchist Maha Siddha is primarily an Indian
phenomenon. Later in Tibet it is replaced by that of the “holy fools”, that
is, of the roaming yogis with an unconventional lifestyle. While the “grand
sorcerers” of India still enjoyed supreme spiritual authority, before which
abbots and kings had to bow, the holy fools only acted as a social pressure
valve. Everything wild, anarchic, unbridled, and oppositional in Tibetan
society could be diverted through such individuals, so that the repressive
pressure of the Buddhocracy did not too much gain the upper hand and incite
real and dangerous revolts. The role of the holy fools was thus, in
contrast to that of the Maha Siddhas,
planned in advance and arranged by the state and hence a part of the
absolutist Buddhocracy. John Ardussi and Lawrence Epstein have encapsulated
the principal characteristics of this figure in six points:
- A general rejection of the usual social patterns of behavior
especially the rules of the clerical establishment.
- A penchant for bizarre clothing.
- A cultivated non-observance of politeness, above all with
regard to respect for social status.
- A publicly proclaimed contempt for scholasticism, in
particular a mockery of religious study through books alone.
- The use of popular poetic forms, of mimicry, song, and stories
as a means of preaching.
- The frequent employment of obscene insinuations (Ardussi and
Epstein, 1978, pp. 332–333).
These six characteristics doe not
involve a true anarchist rejection of state Buddhism. At best, the holy fools
made fun of the clerical authorities, but they never attacked these as
such.
The roaming yogis primarily became
famous for their completely free and uninhibited sexual morals and thus
formed a safety valve for thousands of abstinent monks living in celibacy,
who were subjected to extreme sexual pressure by the tantric symbolism.
What was forbidden for the ordained monastery inmates was lived out to the
full by the vagabond “crazy monks”: They praised the size of their phallus,
boasted about the number of women they had possessed, and drifted from
village to village as sacred Casanovas. Drukpa Kunley (1455–1529) was the
most famous of them. H sings his own praises in a lewd little song:
People say Drukpa Kunley is utterly mad
In Madness all sensory forms are the Path!
People say Drukpa Kunley’s organ is immense
His member brings joy to the hearts of young girls!
(quoted by Stevens,
1990, p. 77)
Kunley’s
biography begins with him lying in bed with his mother and trying to seduce
her. As, after great resistance, she was prepared to surrender to her son’s
will, he, a master of tantric semen retention, suddenly springs up and
leaves her. Amazingly, this uninhibited outsider was a member of the strict
Kadampa order — this too can only be understood once we have recognized the
role of the fool as a paradoxical instrument of control.
An anarchist erotic: The Sixth Dalai Lama
At first glance it may appear absurd to
include the figure of the Sixth
Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso (1683-1706), in a chapter on “Anarchism and
Buddhocracy”, yet we do have our reasons for doing so. Opinions are divided
about this individual: for those who are sympathetic towards him, he counts
as a rebel, a popular hero, a poète
maudit, a Bohemian, a romantic on the divine throne, an affectionate
eroticist, as clever and attractive. The others, who view him with disgust,
hold him to be a heretic and besmircher of the Lion Throne, reckless and
depraved. Both groups nonetheless describe him as extremely apolitical.
He became well-known and notorious
above all through his love poems, which he dedicated to several attractive
inhabitants of Lhasa. Their self ironic touch, melancholy and subtle
mockery of the bureaucratic Lamaist state have earned them a place in the
literature of the world. For example, the following five-line poem combines
all three elements:
When I’m at the Potala Monastery
They call me the Learned Ocean of Pure Song;
When I sport in the
town,
I’am known as the Handsome Rogue who loves Sex!.
(quoted by Stevens,
1990, p. 78)
The young “poet prince” stood in
impotent opposition to the reigning regent, Sangye Gyatso (1653-1705), who
claimed the power of state for himself alone. The relationship between the two
does not lack a certain piquancy if, following Helmut Hoffmann, one assumes
that the regent was the biological son of the “Great Fifth” and thus stood
opposed to the Sixth Dalai Lama as the youthful incarnation of his own
father. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from treating the young
“god-king” as a marionette in his power play with the Chinese and
Mongolians. When the Dalai Lama expressed own claim to authority, his
“sinful activities “ were suddenly found to be so offensive that his
abdication was demanded.
Oddly enough the sixth Kundun accepted this without great
pause, and in the year 1702 decided to hand his spiritual office over to
the Panchen Lama; his worldly authority, however, which he de jure but never de facto exercised, he wanted to
retain. This plan did not come to fruition, however. A congregation of
priests determined that the spirit of Avalokiteshvara
had left him and appointed an opposing candidate. In the general political
confusion which now spread through the country, in which the regent, Sangye
Gyatso, lost his life, the 24-year-old Sixth Dalai Lama was also murdered.
Behind the deed lay a conspiracy between the Chinese Emperor and the
Mongolian Prince, Lhabsang Khan. Nonetheless, according to a widely
distributed legend, the “god-king” was not killed but lived on anonymously
as a beggar and pilgrim and was said to have still appeared in the country
under his subsequent incarnation, the Seventh Dalai Lama.
Western historians usually see a tragic
aesthete in the figure of the poet prince, who with his erotic lines
agreeably broke through the merciless power play of the great lamas. We are
not entirely convinced by this view. In contrast, in our view Tsangyang
Gyatso was all but dying to attain and exercise worldly power in Tibet, as
was indeed his right. It is just that to this end he did not make use of
the usual political means, believing instead that he could achieve his goal
by practicing sexual magic rites. He firmly believed in what stood in the
holy texts of the tantras; he was convinced that could gain power over the
state via “sexual anarchy”.
The most
important piece of information which identifies him as a practicing Tantric
is the much-quoted saying of his: „Although I sleep with a woman every
night, I never lose a drop of semen” (quoted by Stevens, 1990, p. 78). With this statement he not only
justified his scandalous relationships with women; he also wanted to
express the fact that his love life was in the service of his high office
as supreme vajra master. One story
tells of how, in the presence of his court, he publicly urinated from the
platform roof of the Potala in a long arc and was able to draw his urine
back into his penis. Through this performance he wanted to display the
evidence that in his much-reproached love life he behaved correctly and in
accordance with the tantric codex, indeed that he had even mastered the
difficult draw-back technique (the Vajroli
method) needed in order to appropriate the female seed (Schulemann,
1958, p. 284). It is not very difficult to see from the following poem that
his rendezvous were for him about the absorption of the male-female fluids.
Glacier-water (from) 'Pure Crystal Mountain'
Dew-drops from (the herb) 'Thunderbolt of Demonic Serpent'
(Enriched by) the balm of tonic elixir;
(Let) the Wisdom-Enchantress(es)
be the liquor-girl(s):
If you drink with a pure commitment
Infernal damnation need not be tasted.
(see Sorensen, 1990,
p. 113)
Other verses of his also make
unmistakable references to sexual magic practices (Sorensen, 1990, p. 100).
He himself wrote several texts which primarily concern the terror deity, Hayagriva. From a tantric point of
view his “seriousness” would also not have been reduced by his getting
involved with barmaids and prostitutes, but rather in contrast, it would
have been all but proven, because according to the law of inversion, of
course, the highest arises from the most lowly. He is behaving totally in
the spirit of the Indian Maha Siddhas
when he sings:
If the bar-girl does not falter,
The beer will flow on and on.
This maiden is my refuge,
and this place my haven.
(Stevens, 1990, p.
78, 79)
He ordered the construction of a
magnificently decorated room within the Potala probably for the performance
of his tantric rites and which he cleverly called the “snake house”. In his
external appearance as well, the “god-king” was a Vajrayana eccentric who evoked the long-gone magical era of the
great Siddhas. Like them, he let his hair grow long and tied it in a knot.
Heavy earrings adorned his lobes, on every finger he wore a valuable ring.
But he did not run around naked like many of his role-models. In contrast,
he loved to dress magnificently. His brocade and silk clothing were admired
by Lhasa’s jeunesse dorée with
whom he celebrated his parties.
But these were all just externals.
Alexandra David-Neel’s suspicion is obviously spot on when she assumes:
“Tsangyang Gyatso was apparently initiated into methods which in our terms
allow or even encourage a life of lust and which also really signified
dissipation for anyone not initiated into this strange schooling”
(Hoffmann, 1956, 178, 179).
We know that in the tantric rituals the
individual karma mudras (wisdom
girls) can represent the elements, the stars, the planets, even the
divisions of time. Why should they not also represent aspects of political
power? There is in fact such a “political” interpretation of the erotic
poems of the Sixth Dalai Lama by Per K. Sorensen. The author claims that
the poetry of the god-king used the erotic images as allegories: the “tiger
girl” conquered in a poem by the sixth Kundun
is supposed to symbolize the clan chief of the Mongols (Sorensen, 1990, p.
226). The “sweet apple” or respectively the “virgin” for whom he reaches out
are regarded as the “fruits of power” (Sorensen, 1990, p. 279). Sorensen
reinterprets the “love for a woman” as the “love of power” when he writes:
“We shall tentatively attempt to read the constant allusion to the girl and
the beloved as yet a hidden reference to the appropriation of real power, a
right of which he [the Sixth Dalai Lama] was unjustly divested by a
despotic and complacent Regent, who in actual fact demonstrated a
conspicuous lack of interest in sharing any part of the power with the young
ruler” (Sorensen, 1990, p. 48).
But this is a matter of much more than
allegories. A proper understanding of the tantras instantly makes the
situation clear: the Sixth Dalai Lama was constantly conducting tantric
rituals with his girls in order to attain real power in the state. In his
mind, his karma mudras represented various energies
which he wanted to acquire via his sexual magic practices so as to gain the
power to govern which was being withheld from him. If he composed the lines
As long as the pale moon
Dwells over the East Mountain,
I draw strength and bliss
From the girl’s body
(Koch, 1960, p. 172)
- then this was with power-political
intentions. Yet some of his lines are of such a deep melancholy that he
probably was not able to always keep up his tantric control techniques and
had actually fallen deeply in love. The following poem may indicate this:
I went to the wise jewel, the lama,
And asked him to lead my spirit.
Often I sat at his feet,
But my thoughts crowded around
The image of the girl.
The appearance of the god
I could not conjure up.
Your beauty alone stood before my eyes,
And I wanted to catch the most holy teaching.
It slipped through my hands, I count the hours
Until we embrace again.
(Koch, 1960, p. 173)
A tantric history of Tibet
The following, Seventh Dalai Lama
(1708-1757) was the complete opposite of his predecessor. Until now no
comparisons between the two have been made. Yet this would be worthwhile,
then whilst the one represented wildness, excess, fantasy, and poetry, his
successor relied upon strict observance, bureaucracy, modesty, and
learning. The tantric scheme of anarchy and order, which the “Great Fifth”
ingeniously combined within his person, fell apart again with both of his
immediate successors. Nothing interested the Seventh Dalai Lama more than
the state bureaucratic consolidation of the Kalachakra Tantra. He
commissioned the Namgyal Institute, which still today looks after this
task, with the ritual performance of the external time doctrine. Apart from
this he introduced a Kalachakra
prayer into the general liturgy of the Gelugpa order which had to be
recited on the eighth day of every Tibetan month. We are also indebted to
him for the construction of the Kalachakra
sand mandala and the choreography of the complicated dances which still
accompany the ritual.
Anarchy and state Buddhism thus do not
need to contradict one another. They could both be coordinated with each
other. Above all, the “Great Fifth” had recognized the secret: the Land of
Snows was to be got the better of through pure statist authority, it had to
be controlled tantricly, that is, the chaos and anarchy had to be
integrated as part of the Buddhocracy. Applied to the various Tibetan religious
schools this meant that if he were to succeed in combining the puritanical,
bureaucratic, centralizing, disciplined, industrious, and virtuous
qualities of the Gelugpas with
the libertarian, phantasmagorical, magic, and decentralizing characteristics
of the Nyingmapas, then absolute
control over the Land of Snows must be attainable. All the other orders
could be located between these two extremes.
Such an undertaking had to achieve
something which in the views of the time was impossible, then the Gelugpas were a product of a radical
critique of the sexual dissolution and other excesses of the Nyingmapas. But the
political-religious genius of the Fifth Dalai Lama succeeded in this
impossible enterprise. The self-disciplined administrator upon the Lion
Throne preferred to see himself as Padmasambhava (the root guru of the
Nyingmapas) and declared his lovers to be embodiments of Yeshe Tshogyal
(Padmasambhava’s the wisdom consort). Tibet received a ruler over state and
anarchy.
The political mythic history of the
Land of Snows thus falls into line with a tantric interpretation. At the
beginning of all the subsequent historical events stands the shackling of
the chaotic earth goddess, Srinmo, by
the king, Songtsen Gampo, (the conquest of the karma mudra by the yogi). Through this, the power of the
masculine method (upaya) over the
feminine wisdom (prajna) invoked
in the sexual magic ritual precedes the supremacy of the state over
anarchy, of civilization over wilderness, of culture over nature. The
English anthropologist, Geoffrey Samuel, thus speaks of a synthesis which
arose from the dialectic between anti-state/anarchist and clerical/statist
Buddhism in Tibet, and recognizes in this interrelationship a unique and
fruitful dynamic. He believes the Tibetan system displays an amazingly high
degree of fluidity, openness, and choice. This is his view of things.
But for us, Samuel is making a virtue
of necessity. We would see it exactly the other way around: the
contradiction between the two hostile extremes (anarchy and the state) led
to social tensions which subjected Tibetan society to an ongoing acid test.
One has to be clear that the tantric scheme produces a culture of extreme
dissonance which admittedly sets free great amounts of energy but has
neither led historically to a peaceful and harmonic society to the benefit
of all beings nor can do so in the future.
Samuel makes a further mistake when he
opposes clerical state Buddhism
to wild tantric Buddhism as equal
counterpoles. We have shown often enough that the function of control (upaya) is the more important element
of the tantric ritual, more important and more steadfast than the temporary
letting loose of wild passions. Nevertheless the contradiction between
wildness (feminine chaos) and taming (masculine control) remains a
fundamental pattern of every sexual magic project — this is the reason that
("controlled”) anarchy is a part of the Tibetan “state theology” and
thus it was never, neither for Atisha nor Tsongkhapa, the two founding
fathers of state Buddhism, a question of whether the tantras should be
abolished. In contrast, both successfully made an effort to strengthen and
extend the control mechanisms within the tantric rites.
If the
“political theology” of Lamaism applies the tantric pattern to Tibetan
society, then — from a metaphysical viewpoint — it deliberately produces
chaos to the point of disintegration so as to ex nihilo establish law and order anew. Internally, the production of chaos takes place within the
mystic body of the yogi via the unchaining of the all-destroying Candali. Through this internal fragmentation the yogi is
completely “freed” of his earthly personality so as to be re-created as the
emanation of the spiritual horde of Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and protective
deities who are at work behind all reality.
This inverted logic of the tantras
corresponds on an outwardly level
to the production of anarchy by the Buddhist state. The roaming “holy
fools”, the wild lives of the grand sorcerers (Maha Siddhas), the excesses of the founding father,
Padmasambhava, the still to be described institution of the Tibetan
“scapegoats” and the public debauchery during the New Year’s festivities
connected with this, yes, even the erotic games of the Sixth Dalai Lama are
such anarchist elements, which stabilize the Buddhocracy in general. They
must — following the tantric laws — reckon with their own destruction (we
shall return to this point in connection with the “sacrifice” of Tibet),
then it legitimates itself through the ability to transform disorder into
order, crime into good deeds, decline and fall into resurrection. In order
to implement its program, but also so as to prove its omnipotence, the
Buddhist Tantric state — deliberately — creates for itself chaotic
scenarios, it cancels law and custom, justice and virtue, authority and
obedience in order to, after a stage of chaos, re-establish them. In other
words it uses revolution to achieve restoration. We shall soon see that the
Fourteenth Dalai Lama conducts this interplay on the world stage.
It nonetheless remains to be considered
that the authority of Tibetan state Buddhism has not surmounted the reality
of a limited dominion of monastic orders. There can be no talk of a Chakravartin’s the exercise of
power, of a world ruler, at least not in the visible world. From a
historical point of view the institution of the Dalai Lama remained
extremely weak, measured by the standards of its claims, unfortunately all
but powerless. Of the total of fourteen Dalai Lamas only one is can be
described as a true potentate: the “Great Fifth”, in whom the institution
actually found its beginnings and whom it has never outgrown. All other
Dalai Lamas were extremely limited in their abilities with power or died
before they were able to govern. Even the Thirteenth, who is sometimes
accorded special powers and therefore also referred to as the “Great”, only
survived because the superpowers of the time, England and Russia, were
unable to reach agreement on the division of Tibet. Nonetheless the
institution of the god-king has exercised a strong attraction over all of
Central Asia for centuries and cleverly understood how to render its field
of competence independent of the visible standards of political reality and
to construct these as a magic occult field of forces of which even the
Emperor of China was nervous.
"Crazy wisdom” and the West
Already in the nineteen twenties, the
voices of modern western, radical-anarchist artists could be heard longing
for and invoking the Buddhocracy of the Dalai Lama. “O Grand Lama, give us,
grace us with your illuminations in a language our contaminated European
minds can understand, and if need be, transform our Mind ...” (Bishop,
1989, p. 239). These melodramatic lines are the work of Antonin Artaud
(1896-1948). The dramatist was one of the French intellectuals who in 1925
called for a “surrealist revolution”. With his idea of the “theater of
horrors”, in which he brought the representation of ritual violence to the
stage, he came closer to the horror cabinet of Buddhist Tantrism than any
other modern dramatist. Artaud’s longing for the rule of the Dalai Lama is
a graphic example of how an anarchist, asocial world view can tip over into
support for a “theocratic” despotism. [1]
There was also a close connection between
Buddhism and the American “Beat Generation”, who helped decisively shape
the youth revolts of the sixties. The poets Jack Kerouac, Alan Watts, Gary
Snyder, Allan Ginsberg, and others were, a decade earlier, already
attracted by Eastern teachings of wisdom, above all Japanese Zen. They too
were particularly interested in the anarchic, ordinary-life despising side
of Buddhism and saw in it a fundamental and revolutionary critique of a
mass society that suppressed all individual freedom. “It is indeed puzzling”,
the German news magazine Der Spiegel wondered in connection with
Tibetan Buddhism, “that many anti-authoritarian, anarchist and feminist
influenced former ‘68ers’ [members of the sixties protest movements] are so
inspired by a religion which preaches hierarchical structures,
self-limiting monastic culture and the authority of the teacher” (Spiegel, 16/1998, p. 121).
Alan Watts (1915-1973) was an
Englishman who met the Japanese Zen master and philosopher, Daietsu Teitaro
Suzuki, in London. He began to popularize Suzuki’s philosophy and to
reinterpret it into an unconventional and anarchic “lifestyle” which
directed itself against the American dream of affluence.
Timothy Leary, who propagated the
wonder drug LSD around the whole world and is regarded as a guru of the
hippie movement and American subculture, made the Tibetan Book of the Dead the basis of his psychedelic
experiments. [2]
Already at the start of the fifties
Allen Ginsberg had begun experimenting with drugs (peyote, mescaline, and
later LSD) in which the wrathful tantric protective deities played a
central role. He included these in his “consciousness-expanding sessions”.
When he visited the Dalai Lama in India in 1962, he was interested to know
what His Holiness thought of LSD. The Kundun replied with a
counter-question, however, and wanted to find out whether Ginsberg could,
under influence of the drug, see what was in a briefcase that was in the
room. The poet answered yes, the case was empty. It was! (Shambhala Sun, July 1995).
The Tibetan Lama Dudjom Rinpoche, the
then leader of the Nyingmapa, later explained the emptiness of all things
to him. When Ginsberg asked him for advice about how he should deal with
his LSD horror trips, the Rinpoche answered, “If you see something horrible,
don't cling to it, and if you see something beautiful, don't cling to it” (Shambhala Sun, July 1995). This
statement became the life-maxim of the beat poets.
In Sikkim in 1962, Ginsberg
participated in the Black Hat ceremony of the Karmapa and at that early
stage met the young Chögyam Trungpa. Ten years later (1972) he was quoting
radical poems together with him at spectacular events. At these “readings”
both “Buddha poets” lived out their anarchist feelings to the full, with
Lama Trungpa usually being drunk.
It demonstrates his ingenious instinct
for mental context that the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, when asked whether he
ever meditated by Ginsberg, who was in revolt against the state and every
form of compulsion, answered, “No, I don't have to” (Tricycle, vol. 5, no. 2, p. 6). In contrast, we have learned
from other interviews with His Holiness that he spends four hours
meditating every morning, as is proper for a good Buddhist monk. The Kundun thus has the appropriate
answer ready for whatever the spiritual orientation of his conversation
partner may be. Through this he succeeds in making himself popular
everywhere.
His nonchalance on this occasion in
contrast to the in other contexts strongly emphasized meditative discipline
is congruent with Ginsberg’s fundamentally anarchist and anti-authoritarian
attitudes. In turn, the latter’s unconventional escapades are compatible
with the Tibetan archetype of the “holy fool”. For this reason, Ginsberg
also explained his poems to be an expression of “crazy wisdom”, a phrase
which soon proved to be a mark of quality for the anti-conventional
attitude of many Tibetan lamas in the West.
Within the tantric system of logic, the
god-king did not need to fear the chaotic and anti-bourgeois lifestyle of
the sixties or its anarchic leaders. Indeed, all the Maha Siddhas had been through a wild phase before their
enlightenment. The Beat Generation represented an almost ideal starting
substance (prima materia) for the
divine alchemist upon the Lion Throne to experiment with, and he was in
fact successful in “ennobling” many of them into propagandists for his
Buddhocratic vision.
From the beginning of his artistic
career, the famous and unconventional German conceptual artist, Joseph
Beuys, saw himself as an initiate of a shamanist/Tartar tradition. He
justified his renowned works in felt, a material used primarily by the
Mongolian nomads, with his affinity to the culture and religion of the
peoples of the steppes. A number of meetings between him and the Dalai Lama
occurred, which — without it being much discussed in public — were of
decisive significance for the development of the artist’s awareness.
In Amsterdam in 1990 famous artists
like Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage met with His Holiness. The painter,
Roy Lichtenstein, and Philip Glass the composer are also attracted to
Buddhism. In 1994 together with the Czech president and former writer,
Vaclav Havel, the Kundun amused
himself over the erotic poems of his anarchist predecessor, the Sixth Dalai
Lama.
The god-king is even celebrated in the
pop scene. Major stars like David Bowie, Tina Turner, and Patty Smith
openly confess their belief in the Buddha’s teachings. Monks from the
Namgyal monastery, which is especially concerned with the Kalachakra Tantra, perform at pop festivals
as exotic interludes.
But – as we know — anarchist Buddhism
is always only the satyric foreplay to the idea of the Buddhocratic state.
Just as wild sexuality is transformed into power in Vajrayana, indeed forms the precondition for any power at all,
so the anarchist art scene in the West forms the raw material and the
transitional phase for the establishment of a totalitarian Buddhocracy. We
can observe such a sudden change from anti-authoritarian anarchy into the
concept and ideas of an authoritarian state within the person of Chögyam
Trungpa, who in the course of his career in the USA has transformed himself
from a Dharma freak into a mini-despot with fascistoid allures. We shall
later present this example in more detail.
Footnotes:
Next Chapter:
6.
REGICIDE AS LAMAISM’S MYTH OF ORIGIN
AND THE RITUAL
SACRIFICE OF TIBET
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