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

ather one of androcentric hegemony. The translation of upaya as ‘trick’ is thoroughly justified. We
can thus in no sense speak of a “mystic marriage” of prajna and upaya, and unfortunately we must
soon demonstrate that very little of the widely distributed (in the West) conception of Tantrism as a
sublime art of love and a spiritual refinement of the partnership remains.
The worship of “wisdom” (prajna) as a embracing cosmic energy already had a significant role to
play in Mahayana Buddhism. There we find an extensive literature devoted to it, the Prajnaparamita
texts, and it is still cultivated throughout all of Asia. In the famous Sutra of Perfected Wisdom in Eight
Thousand Verses (c. 100 B.C.E.) for example, the glorification of prajnaparamita (“highest
transcendental wisdom”) and the description of the Bodhisattva way are central. “If a Bodhisattva
wishes to become a Buddha, […] he must always be energetic and always pay respect to the
Perfection of Wisdom [prajnaparamita]”, we read there (D. Paul, 1985, p. 135). There are also
instances in Mahayana iconography where the “highest wisdom” is depicted in the form of a female
being, but nowhere here is there talk of manipulation or control of the “goddess”. Devotion, fervent
prayer, hymn, liturgical song, ecstatic excitement, overflowing emotion and joy are the forms of
expression with which the believer worships prajnaparamita.
The guru as manipulator of the divine
In view of the previously suggested dissonance between prajna and upaya, we must ask ourselves
who this authority is, who via the “method” makes use of the wisdom-energy for his own purposes.
This question is all the more pertinent, since in the visible reality of the tantric religions — in the
culture of Tibetan Lamaism for instance — Vajrayana is never represented as a pair of equals, but
almost exclusively as single men, in very rare cases as single women. The two partners meet only to
perform the ritual sexual act and then separate.
It follows conclusively from what has already been described that it must be the masculine principle
which effects the manipulation of the feminine wisdom. It appears in the figure of the “tantric
master”. His knowledge of the sacred techniques makes him a “yogi”. Whenever he assumes the role
of teacher he is known as a guru (Sanskrit) or a lama (Tibetan).
How does the tantric master’s exceptional position of power arise? Every Vajrayana follower
practices the so-called “Deity yoga”, in which the self is imagined as a divinity. The believer
distinguishes between two levels. Firstly he meditates upon the “emptiness” of all being, in order to
overcome his bodily, mental, and spiritual impurities and “blocks” and create an empty space. The
core of this meditative process of dissolution is the surrender of the individual ego. Following this, the
living image (yiddam) of the particular divine being who should appear in the appropriate ritual is
formed in the yogi’s imaginative consciousness. His or her body, color, posture, clothing, facial
expression and moods are described in detail in the holy texts and must be recreated exactly in the
mind. We are thus not dealing with an exercise of spontaneous and creative free imagination, but
rather with an accurate reproduction of a codified archetype.
The practitioner may externalize or project the yiddam, so that it appears before him. But this is just
the first step; in those which following he imagines himself as the deity. Thus he swaps his own
personal ego with that of a supernatural being. The yogi has now surmounted his human existence and
constitutes “to the very last atom” a unity with the god (Glasenapp, 1940, p. 101).
But he must never lose sight of the fact that the deity he has imagined possesses no autonomous