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

them. He also makes use of meditative exercises to destroy and transcend life, nature and the soul.
In this phase the bearer of androcentric power is the is the ascetic holy man or Arhat.
3. In Mahayana, the “Great Vehicle”, flight from women is succeeded by compassion for them.
The woman is to be freed from her physical body, and the Mahayana monk selflessly helps her to
prepare for the necessary transformation, so that she can become a man in her next reincarnation.
The feminine is thus still considered inferior and despicable, as that which must be sacrificed in
order to be transformed into something purely masculine. In both founding philosophical schools
of Mahayana Buddhism (Madhyamika and Yogachara), life, nature, the body and the soul are
accordingly sacrificed to the absolute spirit (citta). The bearer of androcentric power in this phase
is the “Savior” or Bodhisattva.
4. In Tantrism or Vajrayana, the tantric master (yogi) exchanges compassion with the woman
for absolute control over the feminine. With sexual magic rites he elevates the woman to the
status of a goddess in order to subsequently offer her up as a real or symbolic sacrifice. The
beneficiary of this sacrifice is not some god, but the yogi himself, since he absorbs within himself
the complete life energy of the sacrifice. This radical Vajrayana method ends in an apocalyptic
firestorm which consumes the entire universe within its flames. In this phase the bearer of
androcentric power is the “Grand Master” or Maha Siddha.
If, as the adherents of Buddhist Tantrism claim, a logic of development pertains between the various
stages of Buddhism, then this begins with a passive origin (Hinayana), switches to an active/ethical
intermediary stage (Mahayana), and ends in an aggressive/destructive final phase (Tantrayana). The
relationship of the three schools to the feminine gender must be characterized as fugitive, supportive
and destructive respectively.
Should our hypothesis be borne out by the presentation of persuasive evidence and conclusive
argumentation, this would lead to the verdict that in Tantric Buddhism we are dealing with a
misogynist, destructive, masculine philosophy and religion which is hostile to life — i.e., the precise
opposite of that for which it is trustingly and magnanimously welcomed in the West, above all in the
figure of the Dalai Lama.
The “sacrifice” of Maya: The Buddha legend
Even the story of the birth of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni exhibits the fundamentally negative
attitude of early Buddhism towards the sexual sphere and toward woman. Maya, the mother of the
Sublimity, did not conceive him through an admixture of masculine and feminine seed, as usual in
Indian thought, nor did he enter the world via the natural birth channel. His conception was
occasioned by a white elephant in a dream of Maya’s. The Buddha also miraculously left his mother’s
womb through the side of her hip; the act of birth thus not being associated with any pain.
Why this unnatural birth? Because in Buddhism all the female qualities — menstrual blood, feminine
sexuality, conception, pregnancy, the act of childbirth, indeed even a woman’s glance or smile —
were from the outset considered not to be indicators of the joys of life; rather, in contrast, human life
— in the words of Buddha — ultimately exhausts itself in sickness, age and death. It proves itself to
be an existence without constancy, as an unenduring element. Life as such, with its constant change
and variety, stands opposed in unbearable contrast to eternity and the unity of the spirit. With the
abundance of being it tries to soil the “pure emptiness” of consciousness, to scatter the unity of the
spirit with its diversity, or — in the words of the best-known contemporary Buddhist cultural theorist,
the American Ken Wilber — the “biosphere” (the sphere of life) drags the “noosphere” (the sphere of