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

tantric master from the start, then he would surely be able to activate his feminine side without
needing to use an external mudra. If he could, then all the higher and highest initiations into
Vajrayana would be redundant, since they always describe the “inner woman” as the result of a
process which begins with an “exterior woman”.
It is tempting to conclude that a causal relation exists between both female tantric “partners”, the
internal and the external. The tantric master uses a human woman, or at least an inana mudra to create
his androgynous body. He destroys her autonomous existence, steals her gynergy, integrates this in
the form of an “inner woman” and thus becomes a powerful double-gendered super-being. We can,
hypothetically, describe the process as follows: the sacrifice of the exterior woman is the precondition
for the establishment of the inner maha mudra.
The “tantric female sacrifice”
But are we really justified in speaking of a “tantric female sacrifice”? We shall attempt to find an
answer to this difficult question. Fundamentally, the Buddhist tantric distinguishes three types of
sacrifice: the outer, the inner and the secret. The “outer sacrifice” consists of the offering to a divinity,
the Buddhas, or the guru, of food, incense, butter lamps, perfume, and so on. For instance in the socalled
“mandala sacrifice” the whole universe can be presented to the teacher, in the form of a
miniature model, whilst the pupil says the following. “I sacrifice all the components of the universe in
their totality to you, O noble, kind, and holy lama!” (Bleichsteiner, 1937, p. 192)
In the “inner sacrifice” the pupil (Sadhaka) gives his guru, usually in a symbolic act, his five senses
(sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), his states of consciousness, and his feelings, or he offers
himself as an individual up to be sacrificed. Whatever the master demands of him will be done —
even if the sadhaka must cut the flesh from his own limbs, like the tantric adept Naropa.
Behind the “secret sacrifice” hides, finally, a particular ritual event which attracts our especial
interest, since it is here that the location of the “tantric female sacrifice” is to be suspected. It concerns
— as can be read in a modern commentary upon the Kalachakra Tantra — “the spiritual sacrifice of a
dakini to the lama” (Henss, 1985, p. 56). Such symbolic sacrifices of goddesses are all but
stereotypical of tantric ceremonies. “The exquisite bejeweled woman ... is offered to the
Buddhas” (Gäng, 1988, p. 151), as the Guhyasamaja Tantra puts it. Often eight, sometimes sixteen,
occasionally countless “wisdom girls” are offered up in “the holy most secret of offerings” (quoted by
Beyer, 1978, p. 162)
The sacrifice of samsara
A sacrifice of the feminine need not be first sought in Tantrism, however; rather it may be found in
the logic of the entire Buddhist doctrine. Woman per se– as Buddha Shakyamuni repeatedly
emphasized in many of his statements — functions as the first and greatest cause of illusion (maya),
but likewise as the force which generates the phenomenal world (samsara). It is the fundamental goal
of every Buddhist to overcome this deceptive samsara. This world of appearances experienced as
feminine, presents him with his greatest challenge. “A woman”, Nancy Auer Falk writes, “was the
veritable image of becoming and of all the forces of blind growth and productivity which Buddhism
knew as Samsara. As such she too was the enemy — not only on a personal level, as an individual
source of temptation, but also on a cosmic level” (Gross, 1993, p. 48). In this misogynist logic, it is
only after the ritual destruction of the feminine that the illusory world (maya) can be surmounted and
transcended.