Part I
RITUAL AS POLITICS
Playboy:
Are you actually interested in the
topic of sex?
(14th) Dalai Lama:
My goodness! You ask a 62-year-old
monk
who has been celibate
his entire life a thing like that.
I don’t have much to
say about sex
— other than that it
is completely okay
if two people love
each other.
(The Fourteenth Dalai Lama in a
Playboy
interview (German edition), March 1998)
1. BUDDHISM AND MISOGYNY – AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW
A well-founded critique and — where
planned — a deconstruction of the Western image of Buddhism currently
establishing itself should concentrate entirely upon the particular school
of Buddhism known as “Tantrism” (Tantrayana
or Vajrayana) for two reasons. [1] The first is that the “tantric way”
represents the most recent phase in the history of Buddhism and is with
some justification viewed as the supreme and thus most comprehensive
doctrine of the entire system. In a manner of speaking Tantrism has
integrated all the foregoing Buddhist schools within itself, and further
become a receptacle for Hindu, Iranian, Central Asian, and even Islamic
cultural influences. Thus — as an oft-repeated Tantrayana statement puts it
— one who has understood the “Tantric Way” has also understood all
other paths to enlightenment.
The second reason for concentrating
upon Tantrism lies in the fact that it represents the most widely
distributed form of Buddhism in the West. It exerts an almost magical
attraction upon many in America and Europe. With the Dalai Lama at its head
and its clergy of exiled Tibetans, it possesses a powerful and flexible
army of missionaries who advance the Buddhization of the West with
psychological and diplomatic skill.
It is the goal of the present study to
work out, interpret and evaluate the motives, practices and visions of
Tantric Buddhism and its history. We have set out to make visible the
archetypal fields and the “occult” powers which determine, or at least
influence, the world politics of the Dalai Lama as the supreme
representative of Tantrayana. For
this reason we must familiarize our readers with the gods and demons who
–not in our way of looking at things but from a tantric viewpoint — have
shaped and continue to shape Tibet’s history. We will thus need to show
that the Tibetans experience their history and contemporary politics as the
worldly expression of a transcendental reality, and that they organize
their lives according to laws which are not of this world. In summary, we
wish to probe to the heart of the tantric mystery.
In light of the complexity of the
topic, we have resolved to proceed deductively and to preface the entire
book with the core statement of our research in the form of a hypothesis.
Our readers will thus be set on their way with a statement whose truth or
falsity only emerges from the investigations which follow. The formulation
of this hypothesis is necessarily very abstract at the outset. Only in the
course of our study does it fill out with blood and life, and
unfortunately, with violence and death as well. Our core statement is as
follows:
The mystery of Tantric Buddhism consists in the sacrifice
of the feminine principle and the manipulation of erotic
love
in order to attain universal androcentric power
An endless chain of derived forms of
sacrifice has developed out of this central sacrificial event and the
associated power techniques: the sacrifice of life, body and soul to the spirit;
of the individual to an Almighty God or a higher self; of the feelings to
reason; love to omnipotence; the earth to heaven; and so forth. This
pervasive sacrificial gnosis, which — as we shall see — ultimately lets the
entire universe end in a sea of fire, and which reaches its full maturity
in the doctrine of Tantrism, is already in place in the earlier phases of
Buddhism, including the legend of Buddha. In order to demonstrate this, we
think it sensible to also analyze the three Buddhist stages which precede Tantrayana with regard to the
“female sacrifice”, the “manipulation of erotic love”, and the “development
of androcentric power”.
The history of Buddhism is normally
divided into four phases, all of which found their full development in
India. The first recounts the legendary life and teachings of the
historical Buddha Shakyamuni, who bore the name Siddharta Gautama (c.560 B.C.E.–480 B.C.E.). The second phase, which begins directly
following his death, is known as Theravada
Buddhism. It is somewhat disparagingly termed Hinayana or the “Low Vehicle” by later Buddhist schools. The
third phase has developed since the second century B.C.E., Mahayana Buddhism,
or the “Great Vehicle”. Tantrism, or Tantrayana,
arose in the fourth century C.E.
at the earliest. It is also known as Vajrayana, or the “Diamond Vehicle”.
Just as we have introduced the whole
text with a core hypothesis, we would also like to preface the description
of the four stages of historical Buddhism to which we devote the following
pages with four corresponding variations upon our basic statement about the
“female sacrifice”, the “manipulation of erotic love”, and the “development
of androcentric power”:
1.
The “sacrifice of the feminine
principle” is from the outset a fundamental event in the teachings of
Buddha . It corresponds to the Buddhist rejection of life, nature and the
soul. In this original phase, the bearer of androcentric power is the
historical Buddha himself.
2.
In Hinayana
Buddhism, the “Low Vehicle”, the “sacrifice of the feminine” is carried out
with the help of meditation. The Hinayana
monk fears and dreads women, and attempts to escape them. He also makes use
of meditative exercises to destroy and transcend life, nature and the soul.
In this phase the bearer of androcentric power is the is the ascetic holy
man or Arhat.
3.
In Mahayana,
the “Great Vehicle”, flight from women is succeeded by compassion for them.
The woman is to be freed from her physical body, and the Mahayana monk selflessly helps her
to prepare for the necessary transformation, so that she can become a man
in her next reincarnation. The feminine is thus still considered inferior
and despicable, as that which must be sacrificed in order to be transformed
into something purely masculine. In both founding philosophical schools of Mahayana Buddhism (Madhyamika and Yogachara), life, nature, the body and the soul are accordingly
sacrificed to the absolute spirit (citta).
The bearer of androcentric power in this phase is the “Savior” or Bodhisattva.
4.
In Tantrism or Vajrayana, the tantric master (yogi) exchanges compassion with the woman for absolute control
over the feminine. With sexual magic rites he elevates the woman to the
status of a goddess in order to subsequently offer her up as a real or
symbolic sacrifice. The beneficiary of this sacrifice is not some god, but
the yogi himself, since he absorbs within himself the complete life energy
of the sacrifice. This radical Vajrayana
method ends in an apocalyptic firestorm which consumes the entire universe
within its flames. In this phase the bearer of androcentric power is the
“Grand Master” or Maha Siddha.
If, as the adherents of Buddhist
Tantrism claim, a logic of development pertains between the various stages
of Buddhism, then this begins with a passive origin (Hinayana), switches to an active/ethical intermediary stage (Mahayana), and ends in an
aggressive/destructive final phase (Tantrayana).
The relationship of the three schools to the feminine gender must be
characterized as fugitive, supportive and destructive respectively.
Should our hypothesis be borne out by
the presentation of persuasive evidence and conclusive argumentation, this
would lead to the verdict that in Tantric Buddhism we are dealing with a
misogynist, destructive, masculine philosophy and religion which is hostile
to life — i.e., the precise opposite of that for which it is trustingly and
magnanimously welcomed in the West, above all in the figure of the Dalai
Lama.
The “sacrifice” of Maya: The Buddha legend
Even the story of
the birth of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni exhibits the fundamentally
negative attitude of early Buddhism towards the sexual sphere and toward
woman. Maya, the mother of the
Sublimity, did not conceive him through an admixture of masculine and
feminine seed, as usual in Indian thought, nor did he enter the world via
the natural birth channel. His conception was occasioned by a white
elephant in a dream of Maya’s. The Buddha also miraculously left his
mother’s womb through the side of her hip; the act of birth thus not being
associated with any pain.
Why this
unnatural birth? Because in
Buddhism all the female qualities — menstrual blood, feminine sexuality,
conception, pregnancy, the act of childbirth, indeed even a woman’s glance
or smile — were from the outset considered not to be indicators of the joys
of life; rather, in contrast, human life — in the words of Buddha —
ultimately exhausts itself in sickness, age and death. It proves itself to
be an existence without constancy, as an unenduring element. Life as such,
with its constant change and variety, stands opposed in unbearable contrast
to eternity and the unity of the spirit. With the abundance of being it
tries to soil the “pure emptiness” of consciousness, to scatter the unity
of the spirit with its diversity, or — in the words of the best-known
contemporary Buddhist cultural theorist, the American Ken Wilber — the
“biosphere” (the sphere of life) drags the “noosphere” (the sphere of the
spirit) down to a lower evolutionary level. Human life in all its weakness
is thus a lean period to be endured along the way to the infinite (“It were
better I had never been born”), and woman, who brings forth this wretched
existence, functions as the cause of suffering and death.
Maya dies shortly after the birth of the
Sublimity. As the principle of natural life — her death can be symbolically
interpreted this way — she stood in the way of the supernatural path of
enlightenment of her son, who wished to free himself and humankind from the
unending chain of reincarnation. Is she the ancient primeval mother who
dies to make place for the triumphant progress of her sun/son? In Ken
Wilber’s evolutionary theory, the slaying of the Great Mother is considered
the symbolic event which, in both the developmental history of the
individual (ontogenesis) and the cultural history of humanity
(phylogenesis), must precede an emancipation of consciousness. The ego
structure can only develop in a child after the maternal murder, since the
infant is still an undifferentiated unity within the motherly source.
According to Wilber, a corresponding process can be observed in human
history. Here, following the destruction of the matriarchal, “typhonic”
mother cult, cultural models have been able to develop patriarchal
transcendence and male ego structures.
On the basis of this psychoanalytically
influenced thesis, one could interpret Maya’s
early death as the maternal murder which had to precede the evolution of
the male Buddha consciousness. This interpretation receives a certain spark
when we realize that the name Maya means
‘illusion’ in Sanskrit. For a contemporary raised within the Western
rationalist tradition, such a naming may seem purely coincidental, but in
the magic symbolic worldview of Buddhism, above all in Tantrism, it has a
deep-reaching significance. Here, as in all ancient cultures, a name refers
not just to a person, but also to those
forces and gods it evokes.
Maya — the name of Buddha’s mother — is also the
name of the most powerful Indian goddess Maya. The entire material universe is concentrated in Maya, she is the world-woman. In
ceaseless motion she produces all appearances and consumes them again. She
corresponds to the prima materia
of European alchemy, the basic substance in which the seeds of all
phenomena are symbolically hidden. The word maya is derived from the Sanskrit root ma-, which has also given us mother, material, and
mass. The goddess represents all
that is quantitative, all that is material. She is revered as the “Great
Mother” who spins the threads of the world’s destiny. The fabric which is
woven from this is life and nature. It consists of instincts and feelings,
of the physical and the psyche, but not the spirit.
Out of her
threads Maya has woven a veil and
cast this over the transcendental reality behind all existence, a reality
which for the Buddhist stands opposed to the world of appearances as the
spiritual principle. Maya is the
feminine motion which disturbs the meditative standstill of the man, she is
the change which destroys his eternity. Maya
casts out her net of “illusion” in order to bind the autonomous ego to her,
just as a natural mother binds her child to herself and will not let it go
so that it can develop its own personality. In her web she suffocates and
keeps in the dark the male ego striving for freedom and light. Maya encapsulates the spirit, her arch-enemy, in a cocoon.
She is the principle of birth and rebirth, the overcoming of which is a
Buddhist’s highest goal. Eternal life beckons whoever has seen through her
deceptions; whoever is taken in will be destroyed and reborn in unceasing
activity like all living things.
The death of Maya, the great magician who
produces the world of illusions, is the sine
qua non for the appearance of “true spirit”. Thus, it was no ordinary
woman who died with the passing of Shakyamuni’s mother. Her son had
descended to earth because he wished to tear aside the veil of illusion and
to teach of the true reality
behind the network of the phenomenal, because he had experienced life and
the spirit as forming an incompatible dualism and was convinced that this
contradiction could only be healed through the omnipotence of the spirit
and the destruction of life. Completely imprisoned within the mythical and
philosophical traditions of his time, he sees life, deceptive and sumptuous
and behind which Death lurks grinning, as a woman. For him too — as for the
androcentric system of religion he found himself within — woman was the
dark symbol of transience; from this it follows that he who aspires to
eternity must at least symbolically “destroy” the world-woman. That the
historical Buddha was spared the conscious execution of this “destructive
act” by the natural death of his mother makes no change to the fundamental
statement: only through the destruction of maya (illusion) can enlightenment be achieved!
Again and again,
this overcoming of the feminine principle set off by the early passing of
his mother accompanies the historical Buddha on his path to salvation. He
experiences both marriage and its polar opposite, sexual dissolution, as
two significant barriers blocking his spiritual development that he must
surmount. Shakyamuni thus without scruple abandons his family, his wife
Yasodhara and his son Rahula, and at the age of 29 becomes “homeless”. The
final trigger for this radical decision to give up his royal life was an
orgiastic night in the arms of his many concubines. When he sees the
“decaying and revolting” faces of the still-sleeping women the next
morning, he turns his back on his palace forever. But even once he has
found enlightenment he does not return to his own or re-enter the pulsating
flow of life. In contrast, he is able to convince Yasodhara and Rahula of
the correctness of his ascetic teachings, which he himself describes as a
middle way between abstinence and joie
de vivre. Wife and son follow his example, leave house and home, and
join the sangha, the Buddhist
mendicant order.
The equation of
the female with evil, familiar from all patriarchal cultures, was also an
unavoidable fact for the historical Buddha. In a famous key dramatic scene,
the “daughters of Mara” try to
tempt him with all manner of ingenious fleshly lures. Woman and her erotic
love — the anecdote would teach us — prevent spiritual fulfillment.
Archetypally, Mara corresponds to
the devil incarnate of Euro-Christian mythology, and his female offspring
are lecherous witches. But Shakyamuni remained deaf to their obscene talk
and was not impressed by their lascivious gestures. He pretended to see
through the beauty of the devil’s daughters as flimsy appearance by roaring
at them like a lion, “This [your] body is a swamp of garbage, an infectious
heap of impurities. How can anybody take pleasure in such wandering
latrines?” (quoted by Faure, 1994, p. 29).
During his
lifetime, the historical Buddha was plagued by a chronic misogyny; of this,
in the face of numerous documents, there can not be slightest doubt. His
woman-scorning sayings are disrespectful, caustic and wounding. “One would
sooner chat with demons and murderers with drawn swords, sooner touch
poisonous snakes even when their bite is deadly, than chat with a woman
alone” (quoted by Bellinger, 1993, p. 246), he preached to his disciples,
or even more aggressively, “It were better, simpleton, that your sex enter
the mouth of a poisonous snake than that it enter a woman. It were better,
simpleton, that your sex enter an oven than that it enter a woman” (quoted
by Faure, 1994, p. 72). Enlightenment and intimate contact with a woman were
not compatible for the Buddha. “But the danger of the shark, ye monks, is a
characteristic of woman”, he warned his followers (quoted by Hermann-Pfand,
1992, p. 51). At another point, with abhorrence he composed the following:
Those are not wise
Act like animals
Racing toward female forms
Like hogs toward mud
……………….
Because of their ignorance
They re bewildered by women, who
Like profit seekers in the marketplace
Deceive those who come near
(quoted by D. Paul,
1985, p. 9)
Buddha’s favorite disciple, Ananda,
more than once tried to put to his Teacher the explicit desire by women for
their own spiritual experience, but the Master’s answers were mostly
negative. Ananda was much confused by this refractoriness, indeed it
contradicted the stated view of his Master that all forms of life, even
insects, could achieve Buddhahood.
“Lord,
how should we behave towards women?”, he asked the Sublimity — “Not look at them!” — “But what if we must look at
them?” — “Not speak to them” — “But what if we must speak to them?” — “Keep
wide awake!” (quoted by Stevens, 1990, p. 45)
This disparaging attitude toward
everything female is all the more astounding in that the historical Buddha
was helped by women at decisive moments along his spiritual journey:
following an almost fatal ascetic exercise his life was saved by a girl
with a saucer of milk, who taught him through this gesture that the middle way between abstinence and joie de vivre was the right path to
enlightenment, not the dead end of asceticism as preached by the Indian
yogis. And again it was women, rich lay women, who supported his religious
order (sangha) with generous
donations, thereby making possible the rapid spread of his teachings.
The meditative dismemberment of woman: Hinayana Buddhism
At the center of Theravada, or Hinayana,
Buddhism — in which Shakyamuni’s teachings are preserved and only
negligibly further developed following his death — stands the enlightenment
of the individual, and, connected to this, his deliberate retreat from the
real world. The religious hero of the Hinayana
is the “holy man” or Arhat. Only he who has overcome his
individual — and thus inferior — ego, and, after successfully traversing a
initiation path rich in exercises, achieves Buddhahood, i.e., freedom from
all illusion, may call himself an Arhat.
He then enters a higher state of consciousness, which the Buddhists
call nirvana (not-being). In
order to reach this final stage, a Hinayana
monk concerns himself exclusively with his inner spiritual perfection and
seeks no contact to any kind of public.
The Hinayana
believers’ general fear of contact is both confirmed and extended by their
fear of and flight from the feminine. Completely in accord with the Master,
for the followers of Hinayana the
profane and illusionary world (samsara)
was identical with the female universe and the network of Maya. In all her forms — from the
virgin to the mother to the prostitute and the ugly crone — woman stood in
the way of the spiritual development of the monk. Upon entering the sangha (Buddhist order) a novice had
to abandon his wife and children, just as the founder of the order himself
had once done. Marriage was seen as a constant threat to the necessary
celibacy. It was feared as a powerful competitor which withheld men from
the order, and which weakened it as a whole.
Taking Buddha’s Mara experience as their starting point, his successors were
constantly challenged by the dark power and appeal of woman. The literature
of this period is filled with countless tales of seductions in which the
monks either bravely withstood sexual temptations or suffered terribly for
their errant behavior, and the victory of chastity over sexuality became a
permanent topic of religious discussion. “Meditational
formulae for alleviating lustful thoughts were prescribed”, writes Diana
Paul, the American religious scholar, “The cathartic release of meditative
ecstasy rivaled that of an orgasm [...] The image of woman had gradually
developed as the antithesis antithesis of religion and morality.” (D. Paul,
1985, p. 8) The Buddha had already said of the “archetypal” holy man of this
period, the ascetic Arhat, that
“sexual passion can no more cling to an Arhat than water to a lotus leaf”
(quoted by Stevens, 1990, p. 46).
In early Buddhism, as in medieval
Christian culture, the human body as such, but in particular the female
body, was despised as a dirty and inferior thing, as something highly
imperfect, that was only superficially beautiful and attractive. In order
to meditate upon the transience of all being, the monks, in a widespread
exercise, imagined a naked woman. This so-called “analytic meditation”
began with a “perfect” and beautiful body, and transformed this step by step
into an old, diseased, and dying one, to end the exercise by picturing a
rotting and stinking corpse. The female body, as the absolute Other, was
meditatively murdered and dismembered as a symbol of the despised world of
the senses. Sexual fascination and the irritations of murderous violence
are produced by such monastic practices. We return later to historical
examples in which monks carried out the dismemberment of women’s bodies in
reality.
There are startling examples in the
literature which show how women self-destructively internalized this
denigration of their own bodies. “The female novice should hate her impure
body like a jail in which she is imprisoned, like a cesspool into which she
has fallen”, demands an abbess of young nuns. (Faure, 1994, p. 29) Only in
as far as they rendered their body and sexuality despicable, and openly
professed their inferiority, could women gain a position within the early
Buddhist community at all.
In the Vinaya Pitaka, the great book of rules of the order, which is
valid for all the phases of Buddhism, we find eight special regulations for
nuns. One of these prescribes that they have to bow before even the
lowliest and youngest of monks. This applies even to the honorable and aged
head of a respected convent. Only with the greatest difficulty could the
Buddha be persuaded to ordinate women. He was convinced that this would
cause his doctrine irreparable damage and that it would thus disappear from
India 500 years earlier than planned. Only after the most urgent pleas from
all sides, but primarily due to the flattering words of his favorite
disciple, Ananda, did he finally concede.
But even after granting his approval
the Buddha remained skeptical: “To go forth from home under the rule of the
Dharma as announced by me is not suitable by women. There should be no
ordination or nunhood. And why? I women go forth from the Household life,
then the rule of Dharma will not be maintaned over a long period.” (quoted
by D. Paul, 1985, p. 78). This reproach, that a nun would neglect her
family life, appears downright absurd within the Buddhist value system,
since for a man it was precisely his highest duty to leave his family,
house and home for religious reasons.
Because of the countless religious and
social prejudices, the orders of nuns were never able to fully flourish in
Buddhist culture, remained few in number, and to the present day play a
completely subordinate role within the power structures of the androcentric
monastic orders (sangha) of all
schools.
The transformation of women into men: Mahayana Buddhism
In the following phase of Mahayana Buddhism (from 200 B.C.E.), the “Great Vehicle”, the
relation to the environment changes radically. In place of the passive,
asocial and self-centered exercises of the Arhat, the compassionate activities of the Bodhisattva now emerge. Here we find a superhuman deliverer of
salvation, who has renounced the highest fruits of final enlightenment,
i.e., the entry into nirvana
(not-being), in order to help other beings to also set out along the
spiritual path and liberate themselves. The denial of the world of the Hinayana is replaced by compassion (karuna) for the world and its
inhabitants. In contrast to the Arhat,
who satisfies himself, the Bodhisattva,
driven by “selfless love”, ideally wanders the land, teaching people the
Buddhist truths, and is highly revered by them because of his
self-sacrificing and “infinitely kind” acts. All Bodhisattvas have open hearts. Like Jesus Christ they
voluntarily take on the suffering of others to free them from their
troubles and motivate their
believers through exemplary good deeds.
The “Great Vehicle” also integrated a
large number of deities from other religions within its system and thus
erected an impressive Buddhist pantheon. Among these are numerous
goddesses, which would certainly have been experienced as a revolution by
the anti-woman monks of early Buddhism. However, Mahayana at the same time, in several philosophical schools
which all — even if with varying arguments — teach of the illusion of the
world of appearances (samsara),
questions this realm of the gods. In the final instance, even the heavenly
are affected by the nothingness of all being, or are purely imaginary.
“Everything is empty” (Madhyamika
school) or “everything is consciousness” (Yogachara school) are the two basic maxims of cognitive theory
as taught in Mahayana.
The Mahayana
phase of Buddhism took over the Vinaya
Pitaka (Rules of the Order) from Hinayana
and thus little changed for the Buddhist nuns. Nonetheless, a redemptive
theme more friendly to women took the place of the open misogyny. Although
the fundamentally negative evaluation of the feminine was not thus
overcome, the Bodhisattva, whose
highest task is to help all suffering creatures, now open-handedly and
selflessly supported women in freeing themselves from the pressing burden
of their sex. If the thought of enlightenment awakens in a female being and
she follows the Dharma (the
Buddhist doctrine), then she can gather such great merit that she will be
allowed to be reborn as a man in her next life. If she then, in male form,
continues to lead an impeccable existence in the service of the
“teachings”, then she will, after “her” second death, experience the joy of
awakening in the paradise of Buddha, Amitabha,
which is exclusively populated by men. Thus, albeit in a sublime and more
“humane” form, the destruction of the feminine is a precondition for
enlightenment in Mahayana
Buddhism too. Achieving the advanced stages of spiritual development and
being born a female are mutually exclusive.
Only at the lower grades (from a total
of ten) was it possible in the “Great Vehicle” for a woman to act as a
Bodhisattva. Even the famous author of the most popular Mahayana text of all, The Lion’s Roar of Queen Sri Mala
(4th century C.E.), was not
permitted to lay claim to all the Bodhisattva stages and therefore did not
attain complete Buddhahood. Women were thus fundamentally and categorically
denied the role of a “perfected” Buddha. For them, the “five cosmic
positions” of Brahma (Creator of
the World), Indra (King of the
Gods), Great King, World Ruler (Chakravartin),
and Bodhisattva of the two highest levels were taboo.
Indeed, even the lower Bodhisattva
grades were opened to women by only a few texts, such as the Lotus Sutra (c. 100 C.E.) for example. This text stands
in crass opposition to the traditional androcentric views which were far
more widespread, and are summarized in a concise and unambiguous statement
from the great scholar Asangha (4th century C.E.): “Completely perfected Buddhas
are not women. And why? Precisely because a Bodhisattva .... has completely
abandoned the state of womanhood. Ascending to the most excellent throne of
enlightenment, he is never again reborn as a woman. All women are by nature
full of defilement and of weak intelligence. And not by one who is by
nature full of defilement and of weak intelligence, is completely perfected
Buddhahood attained.” (Shaw, 1994, p. 27)
In Mahayana
Buddhism, gender became a karmic category, whereby incarnation as a woman
was equated with lower karma. The
rebirth of a woman as a man implied that she had successfully worked off
her bad karma. Correspondingly, men who had led a sinful life were reincarnated
as “little women”.
As so many women nevertheless wished to
follow the Way of the Buddha, a possible acceleration of the gender
transformation was considered in several texts. In the Sutra of the Pure Land female Buddhists had to wait for their
rebirth as men before they achieved enlightenment; in other sutras they
“merely” needed to change their sex in their current lives and thus achieve
liberation. Such sexual transmutations are of course miracles, but a female
being who reached for the fruits of the highest Buddhahood must be capable
of performing supernatural acts. “If women awaken to the thought of
enlightenment,” says the Sutra on
changing the Female Sex, “then they will have the great and good
person’s state of mind, a man’s state of mind, a sage’s state of mind. […]
If women awaken to the thought of enlightenment, then they will not be
bound to the limitation of a woman’s state of mind. Because they will not
be limited, they will forever separate from the females sex and become
sons.” I.e. a male follower of Buddha. (quoted by D. Paul, 1985, p.
175/176).
Many radical theses of Mahayana Buddhism (for example, the
dogma of the “emptiness of all being”) lead to unsolvable contradictions in
the gender question. In principle, the Dharma
(the teachings) say that a perfect being is free from every desire and
therefore needs to be asexual. This requirement, with which the
insignificance of gender at higher spiritual levels is meant to be
emphasized, however, contradicts the other orthodox rule that only men have
earned enlightenment. Such dissonant elements are then taken advantage of
by women . There are several extremely clever dialogs in which female
Buddhists conclusively annul their female inferiority with arguments which
are included within the Buddhist doctrine itself. For example, in the
presence of Buddha Shakyamuni the girl Candrottara explains that a sex
change from female to male makes no sense from the standpoint of the
“emptiness of all appearances” taught in the Mahayana and is therefore superfluous. Whether man or woman is
also irrelevant for the path to enlightenment as it is described in the Diamond Sutra.
The asexuality of Mahayana Buddhism has further led to a religious glorification
of the image of the mother. This is indeed a most astonishing development,
and is not compatible with earlier fundamentals of the doctrine, since the
mother is despised as the cause of rebirth just as much as the young woman
as the cause of sexual seduction. An apotheosis of the motherly was
therefore possible only after the monks had “liberated” the mother
archetype from its “natural” attributes such as conception and birth. The
“Great Mothers” of Mahayana
Buddhism, like Prajnaparamita for
instance, are transcendental beings who have never soiled themselves
through contact with base nature (sexuality and childbearing).
The have only their warmth, their
protective role, their unconditional readiness to help and their boundless
love in common with earthly mothers. These transcendental mothers of the Mahayana are indeed powerful
heavenly matrons, but the more powerful they are experienced to be, the
more they dissolve into the purely allegorical. They represent “perfect
wisdom”, the “mother of emptiness”, “transcendent love”. When, however, the
genesis of these symbolic female figures is examined (as is done at length
in our analysis of Vajrayana
Buddhism), then they all prove to be the imaginary products of a superior
male Buddha being.
In closing this chapter we would like
to mention a phenomenon which occurred much more frequently than one would
like to accept in Mahayana:
“compassionate copulation”. Sexual intercourse between celibate monks and
female beings was actually allowed in exceptional circumstances: if it was
performed out of compassion for the woman to be slept with. There could
even be a moral imperative to sleep with a woman: “If a woman falls violently in love with a
Bodhisattva and is about to sacrifice her life for him, it is his duty to
save her life by satisfying all her desires” (Stevens, 1990, p. 56). At
least some monks probably took much pleasure in complying with this
commandment.
In Western centers of modern Buddhism
too, irrespective of whether Zen or Lamaist exercises are practiced, it is
not uncommon for the masters to sleep with their female pupils in order to
“spiritually” assist them (Boucher, 1985, p. 239). But it is mostly a more
intimate affair than in the case of the present-day Asian guru who boasted
to an American interviewer, “I have slept with a thousand women. One of them
had a hump. I gave her my love, and she has become a happy person. ... I am
a ‘Buddhist scouring pad’. A scouring pad is something which gets itself
dirty but at the same time cleans everything it touches” (Faure, 1994, p.
92).
Footnotes:
[1] The Sanskrit word tantra,
just like its Tibetan equivalent rguyd,
has many meanings, all of which, however, are originally grouped around
terms like ‘thread’, ‘weave’, ‘web’, and ‘network’. From these, ‘system’
and ‘textbook’ finally emerged. The individuals who follow the Tantric Way
are called Tantrika or Siddha. A distinction is drawn
between Hindu and Buddhist systems of teaching. The latter more
specifically involves a definite number of codified texts and their
commentaries.
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2. TANTRIC BUDDHISM
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