Kritik am Buch „The Shadow Of The Dalai Lama ... - Neues von Shi De

“thunderbolt”.
The gesture of dominance with which the tantric master seals his consort during the sexual act is
called the Vajrahumkara mudra: he crosses both hands behind the back of his partner, with the vajra
held in his right hand, and the gantha in the left. The symbolic content of this gesture can only be the
following: the yogi as androgyne is lord over both sexual energies, the masculine (symbolized by the
vajra) and the feminine (symbolized by the gantha). In encircling ("sealing”) his wisdom consort with
the androgyne gesture, he wishes to express that she is a part of his self, or rather, that he has
absorbed her as his maha mudra ("inner woman”).
The dakini
Among the noisy retinue of Kali can, in Hindu accounts, be found a cluster of lesser female demons
known as dakinis. A s we have already seen, these also play an indispensable role in the salvational
practices of Buddhist Tantrism. The “sky walkers”- as their name can be translated — are less a
female species of angel; rather, they are primarily a subordinate class of female devils. Since they
originally belonged to the Kali milieu, their historically more recent transformation into a Buddhist
support unit must surely provide some interesting insights into the early history of Tantrism and its
relation to the gynocentric cults.
The dakinis have a preference for hanging around crematoria. Their favorite fare is human flesh,
which they use for magical purposes in their rituals. They visit sickness upon women, men, and
children, especially fever, obsessions, consumption, and sterility. Like the European witches they fly
through the air and assume the most varied animal forms. They thus torment those around them as
cats, poisonous snakes, lionesses and bitches. They are reviled as “noise-makers, women who take
away, hissers, and flesh-eaters”. As vampires, they suck up fresh blood and ritually consume
menstrual discharge — their own or that of others. Like the Greek harpies, with whom they have
much else in common, they devour afterbirth and feed themselves from corpses. They have a great
predilection and craving for the male seed. These horror-women can even consume the breath of a
living person (O’Flaherty, 1982, p. 237).
Their terrible appearance is described in a biography of the great Tibetan deliverer of salvation,
Padmasambhava: some ride upon lions with their hair let out and carry skulls in their hands as signs
of victory; others perch upon the backs of birds and let out shrill shrieks; the bodies of yet others are
topped by ten faces and ten mouths with which they devour human hearts; a further group vomit up
dogs and wolves; They generate lightning, and descend upon their victims with a thunderclap. “The
trace of a third eye upon her forehead [can be found], they have long clawlike finger-nails, and a
black heart in her vagina” (Stevens, 1990, p. 73). Ritual curved knives, with which they dismember
corpses; a skull bowl out of which they slurp all sorts of blood; a small two-ended drum prepared
from the brain-pans of two children, with which she summons her companions and a scepter, upon
which three skulls are skewered, — are all considered part of a dakini’s standard equipment.