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

housework, and similar ideas which are drawn less from Buddhism as from the moderate wing of the
women’s movement.
Like the Italian, Tsultrim Allione, Gross sees it as a further task of hers to seek out forgotten female
figures in the history of Buddhism and to reserve a significant place for them in the historiography.
She takes texts like the Therigatha, in which women in the Hinayana period already freely and very
openly discussed their relationship to the teachings, to be proof of a strong female presence within the
early phase of Buddhism. It is not just the lamas who are to blame for the concealment of
“enlightened women”, but also above all the western researchers, who hardly bothered about the
existence of female adepts.
She sees in Buddhist Tantrism a technique for overcoming the gender polarity, in the form of an
equality of rights of course. One can say straight out that she has not understood the alchemic process
whereby the feminine energy is sucked up during the tantric ritual. Like the male traditionalists she
seizes upon the image of an androgyny (not that of a gynandry), of which she erroneously approves as
a “more sexually neutral” state.
4. Fourthly, there are those women who wish to reverse the complex of sexual themes in Buddhism
exclusively for their own benefit. The American authors, Lynn Andrews and, above all, Miranda
Shaw, can be counted among these. In her book, Passionate Enlightenment — Women in Tantric
Buddhism, she speaks openly of a “gynocentric” perspective on Buddhism (Shaw, 1994, p. 71). Shaw
thus stands at the forefront of western women who are attempting to transform the tantric doctrine of
power into a feminist intellectual edifice. With the same intentions June Campbell subtitles her highly
critical book, Traveller in Space, as being “In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism”. She
too renders tantric practices, which she learned as the pupil of the Kagyu master, Kalu Rinpoche, over
many years, useful for the women’s movement. Likewise one can detect in the German Tibetologist,
Adelheid Herrmann-Pfand’s study about the dakinis the wish to detect female alternatives within the
tantric scheme of things.
But of all of these Miranda Shaw has the most radical approach. We shall therefore concentrate our
attention upon her. Anybody who reads her impassioned book must gain the impression that it
concerns the codification of a matriarchal religion to rival Vajrayana. All the feminine images which
are to be found in Tantrism are reinterpreted as power symbols of the goddess. The result is a
comprehensive world view governed by a feminine arch-deity. We may recall that such a matriarchal
viewpoint need not differ essentially from that of an androcentric Tantric. He too sees the substance
of the world as feminine and believes that the forces which guide the universe are the energies of the
goddess. Only in the final instance does the vajra master want to have the last say.
For this reason the “tantric” feminists can without causing the lamas any concern reach into the
treasure chest of Vajrayana and bring forth the female deities stored there, from the “Mother of all
Buddhas”, the “Highest Wisdom”, the goddess “Tara”, to all conceivable kinds of terror dakinis.
These formerly Buddhist female figures — the nurturing and protective mother, the helper in times of
need, and the granter of initiations — apparently stand at the center of a new cult. Shaw can rightly
draw attention to numerous cases in which women were inducted into the secrets of Tantrism as the
dakinis of Maha Siddhas. It was they who equipped their male pupils with magic abilities. Their
powers, the legends teach us, vastly exceeded those of the men. The tantra texts are also said to have
originally been written by women. The ranks of the 84 official Maha Siddhas (great Tantrics) at any