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

Naturally we can only speculate that the “dismemberment of the goddess” in the Sati myth might be a
masculine reaction to the original fragmentation of the masculine god by the gynocentric Kali. But
this murderous reciprocity must not be seen purely as an act of revenge. In both cases it is a matter of
the increased life energy which is to be achieved by the sacrifice of the opposite sex. In so doing, the
“revolutionary” androcentric yogis made use of a similar ritual praxis and symbolism to the
aggressive female followers of the earlier matriarchy, but with reversed premises. For example, the
number 108, so central to Buddhism, is a reminder of the 108 names under which the great goddess
was worshipped (Sircar, 1973, p. 25).
The fire sacrifice of the dakini
The special feature of Greek sacrificial rites lay in the combination of burning and eating, of blood
rite and fire altar. In pre-Buddhist, Vedic India rituals involving fire were also the most common form
of sacrifice. Humans, animals, and plants were offered up to the gods on the altar of flame. Since
every sacrifice was supposed to simulate among other things the dismemberment of the first human,
Prajapati, it always concerned a “symbolic human sacrifice”, even when animal or plant substitutes
were used.
At first the early Buddhists adopted a highly critical attitude towards such Vedic practices and
rejected them outright, in stark opposition to Vajrayana later, in which they were to regain central
significance. Even today, fire pujas are among the most frequent rituals of Tantric Buddhism. The
origin of these Buddhist “flame masses” from the Vedas becomes obvious when it is noted that the
Vedic fire god Agni appears in the Buddhist tantras as the “Consumer of Offerings”. This is even true
of the Tibetans. In this connection, Helmut von Glasenapp describes one of the final scenes from the
large-scale Kalachakra ritual, which the Panchen Lama performed in Beijing 1932: A “woodpile was
set alight and the fire god invited to take his place in the eight-leafed lotus which stood in the middle
of the fireplace. Once he had been offered abundant sacrifices, Kalachakra was invited to come hither
from his mandala and to become one with the fire god” (von Glasenapp, 1940, p. 142). Thus the time
god and the fire unite.