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

visited by women. The case concerns the Tsari, a mountain which was the seat of a powerful female
deity in pre-Buddhist times. She was defeated by a yogi in the twelfth century. The brutal battle
between her and the vajra master displays clear traits of a tantric performance. As the yogi entered the
region under her control, the goddess let a series of vaginas appear by magical manipulation so as to
seduce her challenger, yet the latter succeeded in warding off the magic through a brutal act of
subjugation. As she then, lying on the ground, showed herself willing to sleep with her conqueror, she
was at first rejected on the grounds that she was of the female sex (!). But after a while the yogi
accepted her as a wisdom consort and took away all her magic powers once they had united sexually
(Huber, 1994, p. 352).
From this point in time on, Tsari, which was among the most holy mountains of the highlands,
became taboo for women, both for Buddhist nuns and for laity. This ban has remained in force until
modern times. Groups of pilgrims who visited the mountain in the eighties sent their women back in
advance. Toni Huber questioned several lamas about he significance of this misogynist custom. The
majority of answers made reference to the “purity of the location” which in the view of the monks
formed a geographic mandala: “Because it is such a pure abode, .... women are not allowed. ... The
only reason is that women are of inferior birth and impure. There are many powerful mandalas on the
mountain that are divine and pure, and women are polluting” (Huber, 1994, p. 356).
But there was also another justification for the exclusion of the female pilgrims which likewise shows
how and with what presumption the androcentric power elite of the land seize possession of the
formerly feminine geography: “The reason why women can't go up there is that at Tsari are lots of
small, self-produced manifestations of the Buddha genitals made of stone. If you look at them they
just appear ordinary, but they are actually miraculous phalluses of the Buddha, so if women go there
these miracles would become spoiled by their presence, and the women would get many problems
also. They would get sick and perhaps die prematurely. It is generally harmful for their health so that
is why they stopped women going to the holy place in the past, for their own benefit. The problem is
that women are low and dirty, thus they are too impure to go there” (Huber, 1994, p. 357). It is no
wonder that in feminist circles the future climbing of Tsari by a woman and its “re-conquest” has
become a symbol for female resistance against patriarchal Lamaism.
Matriarchy in the Land of Snows?
Siegbert Hummel sees remnants of a long lost maternal cult in the Tibetan female mountain deities
and their attributes. These could have already reached India and the Tibetan plateau from
Mediterranean regions in the late stone age (from 4000 B.C.E.). It is a matter of one of the two
contrary cultural currents, which may have embedded themselves deeply in the Tibetan popular
psyche thousands of years ago: “The first is lunar in character and could be connected with the
Tibetan megalithic. ... Its world view is triadic, exhibits chthonic, demonic and phallicist tendencies,
snake and tree cults, as well as the worship of maternal deities ... The other component is markedly
solar, dualist and heaven-related, primarily nomadic. Shamanist elements, probably from an earlier
solar, hunting basis, are numerous” (Hummel, 1954, p. 128).
In that he nominates the sexual discord which has kept the civilizations of the Land of Snows in
suspense since the earliest times, Hummel speaks here with the vocabulary of Tantrism, probably
without knowing it. In his view then, the two heavenly orbs of moon and sun already stood opposed
as two polar, culture-shaping forces in pre-Buddhist Tibet. Following the solar Bon cult Tantric
Buddhism has taken over the sunly role since the eighth century. In contrast, the moon cults have