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

can resolve these couples in his meditation. Little by little he realizes that their objective existence is
illusory and that they are but a function. ... He transcends them and comes to see them as images
reflected in a mirror, as a mirage and so on” (Carelli, 1941, p. 18).
However, outside of the rites and meditation sessions, that is, in the real world, the double-gendered
super-being appears almost exclusively in the body of a man and only very rarely as a woman, even if
he exclaims in the Guhyasamaja Tantra, “I am without doubt any figure. I am woman and I am man, I
am the figure of the androgyne” (Gäng, 1998, p. 66).
What happens to the woman?
Once the yogi has “stolen” her gynergy using sexual magic techniques, the woman vanishes from the
tantric scenario. “The feminine partner”, writes David Snellgrove, “known as the Wisdom-Maiden
[prajna] and supposedly embodying this great perfection of wisdom, is in effect used as a means to an
end, which is experienced by the yogi himself. Moreover, once he has mastered the requisite yoga
techniques he has no need of a feminine partner, for the whole process is re-enacted within his own
body. Thus despite the eulogies of women in these tantras and her high symbolic status , the whole
theory and practice is given for the benefit of males” (Snellgrove, 1987, vol. 1, p. 287).
Equivalent quotations from many other Western interpreters of Tantrism can be found: “In ...
Tantrism ... woman is means, an alien object, without possibility of mutuality or real
communication” (quoted by Shaw, 1994, p. 7). The woman “is to be used as a ritual object and then
cast aside” (also quoted by Shaw, 1994, p. 7). Or, at another point: the yogis had “sex without
sensuality ... There is no relationship of intimacy with an individual — the woman ... involved is an
object, a representation of power ... women are merely spiritual batteries” (quoted by Shaw, 1994, n.
128, pp. 254–255). The woman functions as a “salvation tool”, as an “aid on the path to
enlightenment”. The goal of Vajrayana is even “to destroy the female” (quoted by Shaw, 1994, p. 7).
Incidentally, this functionalization of the sexual partner is addressed — as we still have to show —
without deliberation or shame in the original Vajrayana texts. Modern Western authors with views
compatible to those of Buddhism, on the contrary, tend toward the opinion that the tantric androgyne
harmonizes both sexual roles equally within itself, so that the androgynous pattern is valid for both
men and women. But this is not the case. Even at an etymological level, androgyny (from Ancient
Greek anér ‘man’ and gyné ‘woman’) cannot be applied to both sexes. The term denotes — when
taken literally — the male-feminine forces possessed by a man, whilst for a woman the respective
phenomenon would have to be termed “gynandry” (female-masculine forces possessed by a woman).
Androgyny vs. gynandry
Since androgyny and gynandry are used in reference to the organization of sex-specific energies and
not a description of physical sexual characteristics, it could be felt that we are being overly pedantic
here. That would be true if it were not that Tantrism involved an extreme cult of the male body,
psyche and spirit. With extremely few exceptions all Vajrayana gurus are men. What is true of the
world of appearances is also true at the highest transcendental level. The ADI BUDDHA is primarily
depicted in the form of a man.
Following our discussion of the “mystic” physiology of the yogi, we shall further be able to see that
this describes the construction of a masculine body of energy. But any doubts about whether
androgyny represents a virile usurpation of feminine energies ought to vanish once we have aired the