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

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