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

ecome one spirit and one flesh. Only through an act of love can man and woman return to their
divine origin in the continuity of all being. The tantric refers to this mystic event as yuganaddha,
which literally means ‘united as a couple’.
Both the bodies of the lovers and the opposing metaphysical principles are united. Thus, in Tantrism
there is no contradiction between erotic and religious love, or sexuality and mysticism. Because it
repeats the love-play between a masculine and a feminine pole, the whole universe dances. Yin and
yang, or yab and yum in Tibetan, stand at the beginning of an endless chain of polarities, which
proves to be just as colorful and complex as life itself.
The divine couple in Tantric Buddhism:
Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri
The “sexual” is thus in no way limited to the sexual act, but rather embraces all forms of love up to
and including agape. In Tantrism there is a polar eroticism of the body, a polar eroticism of the heart,
and sometimes — although not always — a polar eroticism of the spirit. Such an omnipresence of the
sexes is something very specific, since in other cultures “spiritual love” (agape), for example, is
described as an occurrence beyond the realm of yin and yang. But in contrast Vajrayana shows us
how heterosexual erotic love can refine itself to lie within the most sublime spheres of mysticism
without having to surrender the principle of polarity. That it is nonetheless renounced in the end is
another matter entirely.