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