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

According to one pious tale of origin, Chinnamunda severs her own head because her two servants
complain of a great hunger which she is unable to assuage. The decapitation was thus motivated by
great compassion with two suffering beings. It nevertheless appears grotesque that an individual like
Chinnamunda, in possession of such extraordinary magical powers, would be forced to feed her
companions with her own blood, instead of conjuring up an opulent meal for them with a spell.
According to another, metaphysical interpretation, the goddess wanted to draw attention to the
unreality of all being with her self-destructive deed. Yet even this philosophical platitude can barely
explain the horrible scenario, although one is accustomed to quite a deal from the tantras. Is it not
therefore reasonable to see a merciless representation of a “tantric female sacrifice” in the
Chinnamunda myth? Or are we here dealing with an ancient matriarchal cult in which the goddess
gives a demonstration of her triune nature and her indestructibility via an in the end “ineffectual” act
of self-destruction?
This gynocentric thesis is reminiscent of an analysis of the ritual by Elisabeth Anne Benard, in which
she explains Chinnamunda and her two companions to be an emanation of the triune goddess
(Benard, 1994, p. 75). [1]
Chinnamunda is in no sense the sole victim in this macabre horror story; rather, she also extracts her
life energies from out of the erotic love between the two sexes, just like a Buddhist tantra master.
Indeed, in her canonized iconographic form she dances about upon one or two pairs of lovers, who in
some depictions are engaged in sexual congress. The Indologist David Kinsley thus sums up the
events in a concise and revealing equation: “Chinnamasta [Chinnamunda] takes life and vigor from
the copulating couple, then gives it away lavishly by cutting off her own head to feed her
devotees” (Kinsley, 1986, p. 175). Thus, a “sacrificial couple” and the theft of their love energy are to
be found at the outset of this so difficult to interpret blood rite.
Yet the mystery remains as to why this particular drama, with its three female protagonists, was
adopted into Tantric Buddhist meditative practices. We can see only two possible explanations for
this. Firstly, that it represents an attempt by Vajrayana to incorporate within its own system every
sacrificial magic element, regardless how bizarre, and even if it originated among the followers of a
matriarchal cult. By appropriating the absolutely foreign, the yogi all the more conspicuously
demonstrates his omnipotence. Since he is convinced of his ability to — in the final instance — play
all gender roles himself and since he also believes himself a lord over life and death, he thus also
regards himself as the master of this Chinnamunda “female ritual”. The second possibility is that the
self-sacrifice of the goddess functions as a veiled reference to the “tantric female sacrifice” performed
by the yogi, which is nonetheless capable of being understood by the initiated. [2]
Summary
The broad distribution of human sacrifice in nearly all cultures of the world has for years occasioned a
many-sided discussion among anthropologists and psychologist of the most varied persuasions as to
the social function and meaning of the “sacrificium humanum”. In this, reference has repeatedly been
made to the double-meaning of the sacrificial act, which simultaneously performs both a destructive
and a regulative function in the social order. The classic example for this is the sacrifice of the socalled
“scapegoat”. In this case, the members of a community make use of magical gestures and spells
to transfer all of their faults and impurities onto one particular person who is then killed. Through the
destruction of the victim the negative features of the society are also obliterated. The psychologist
Otto Rank sees the motivation for such a transference magic in, finally, the individual’s fear of death.