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© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
The Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part
I – 6.
Kalachakra: The public and the secret initiations
6. KALACHAKRA: THE PUBLIC
AND THE SECRET INITIATIONS
The Kalachakra
Tantra (Time Tantra) is considered the last and most recent of all the
revealed tantra texts (c. tenth century), yet also as the “highest of all Vajrayana ways”, “the pinnacle of
all Buddhist systems”. It differs from earlier tantras in its encyclopedic
character. It has been described as the “most complex and profound
statement on both temporal and spiritual matters” (Newman, 1985, p. 31). We
can thus depict it as the summa
theologia of Buddhist Tantrism, as the root and the crown of the
teaching, the chief tantra of our “degenerate era” (Newman, 1985, p. 40).
Tsongkhapa (1357-1419), the significant reformer and founder of the Tibetan
Gelugpa order, was of the opinion that anybody who knew the Kalachakra Tantra mastered all other
secret Buddhist teachings without effort.
Even though all Tibetan schools practice the Kalachakra Tantra, there have always
only been individual experts who truly command this complicated ritual. For
the Yellow Hats (Gelugpa), these
are traditionally the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama. A
small study group from the Namgyal monastery are available to assist
the Dalai Lama in executing the ceremonies with technical knowledge.
The ritual consists of a public part and a secret
part, staged by the participants behind closed doors. Pupils with little
prior knowledge or even people with none may participate in the public
initiations. In contrast, the secret initiations are only accessible for
the chosen few.
Despite the elitist selection, the texts sometimes
suggest that the possibility of reaching the highest level of enlightenment
in the Kalachakra Tantra within a
single lifetime lies open to everybody. The reality is otherwise, however.
Of the hundreds who participate in a public event, one commentary states,
in the end only one will say his daily prayer. Of the thousands just one
will commence with the yoga praxis which belong to this tantra and of
these, only a handful will be initiated into the most secret initiations
(Mullin, 1991, p. 28). In the Vimalaprabha,
the earliest commentary upon the original text, it is stated in
unmistakable terms that laity (non-monks) may absolutely not set foot upon
the path to enlightenment (Newman, 1987, p. 422).
But even if the supreme goal remains closed to
him, every participant ought nevertheless to gain numerous spiritual
advantages for himself from the ritual mass events. According to statements
by the Dalai Lama, karmic stains may thus be removed and new seeds for good
karma begin to grow. The eager are beckoned by the prospect of rebirth in Shambhala, a paradise closely
associated with the Kalachakra myth.
At any rate the pupil has “ the opportunity to bask in the bright rays of
spiritual communion with the initiating lama, in this case His Holiness the
Dalai Lama, and hopefully to absorb a sprinkling of spiritual energy from
the occasion” (Mullin, 1991, p. 28). Since, according to the official
version, the celebrant guru conducts the Kalachakra ritual for, among other things, the “liberation of
all of humanity” and the “maintenance of world peace”, both the masses
present at the spectacle and the individual initiates participate in this
highly ethical setting of goals (Newman, 1987, p. 382).
Fundamentally, the Buddhist tantras are subdivided
into father tantras, mother tantras, or non-dual tantras. In father tantras
it is principally the “method” of creation of a divine form body (vajrakaya) with which the yogi
identifies which is taught. Hence the production of the self as a divinity
is central here. To this end the following negative attributes of the adept
need to be transformed: aggression, desire, and ignorance.
The mother tantras primarily lay worth upon the
creation of a state of emptiness and unshakable bliss, as well as upon the
calling forth of the clear light. Here the yogi exclusively employs the
transformation of sexual desire as a means.
The non-dual tantras are a combination of father
tantras and mother tantras. The “creation of a divine form body” is thus
combined with the “calling forth of the clear light” and “blissful
emptiness”. Thus, the yogi wants to both appear as a powerful deity and
attain the ability to rest unconditionally in a state equivalent to nirvana and to bathe himself in
mystic light.
Since the Kalachakra
Tantra promises all these possibilities of enlightenment, the famous
Tibetan scribe, Buston (1290-1364), classified it as a non-dual tantra. His
opinion did not remain uncontested, however. Another outstanding expert on
the rituals, Kay-drup-jay (1385-1438) described it, as do the majority of
Gelugpa authors, as a mother tantra.
A further classification subdivides the “Time
Tantra” into an external, internal, and alternative section.
The “external” tantra describes the formation and
destruction of the universe, includes treatises on astronomy and geography,
and concerns itself with the history of the world, with prophecies and
religious wars. The reports on the magic realm of Shambhala are of great importance here. Emphasis is also placed
upon astrology and the mathematical calculations connected with it. The entire
national calendar and time-keeping methods of the Tibetans are derived from
the astronomical and astrological system in the Kalachakra.
In contrast, the “internal” Kalachakra treats the anatomy of energy in the mystic body.
From a tantric viewpoint, the body of every person is composed of not just
flesh and blood but also a number of energy centers which are connected to
one another by channels. Fluids, secretions, and “winds” flow through and
pervade this complex network. Among the secretions, male semen and female
menstrual blood play an important role.
In the “alternative” Kalachakra we get to know the techniques with which the yogi
calls up, dissolves, or regulates these inner energy currents as needed.
Further, how these can be brought into a magic relation to the phenomena of
the external Kalachakra (sun,
moon, and stars ...) is also taught here.
Since the Time Tantra belongs to the highest
secret teachings (Anuttara Yoga
Tantra), it may only be practiced by a chosen few. In the introduction
to a contemporary commentary by Ngawang Dhargyey, we can thus read the
following: “Sale
and distribution of this book is restricted. We urgently request that only
initiates into Highest Yoga Tantra and preferably into the Kalachakra system itself should read
it. This caution is customary to the tradition, but to disregard it can
only be detrimental” (Dhargyey, 1985, p. iii).
Such threatening gestures are a part of occult
show business, then these days it is no longer
even necessary to understand Tibetan or Sanskrit in order to dip into the
tantras, since numerous texts plus their commentaries have been translated
into European languages and are generally accessible. Even Dhargyey’s
“forbidden” text (A Commentary on the
Kalachakra Tantra) can be found in large public libraries. David
Snellgrove, an outstanding and incorruptible interpreter of Tibetan
religious history, snidely remarks of the widespread secretiveness also
promoted by the lamas that, “There is nothing particularly secret about
sexual yoga in the Highest Yoga Tantras; one merely has to read the texts”
(Snellgrove, 1987, vol. 1, p. 269).
This was in fact different in the Tibet of
old. The highest yoga teachings were not allowed to be printed, and could
at best be distributed in handwriting instead. Even for monks it was very
difficult to receive higher initiations, and these afforded a much longer
preparation time than is usual in our day. Mass initiations were, in
contrast to the present day, extremely rare occasions.
The seven lower public initiations and their symbolic
significance
Let us now turn to the various stages of
initiation treated in the Kalachakra
Tantra and their features and methods. What can be understood by the
term initiation (abhisheka)? It concerns
the transmission of spiritual energies and insights from a priest to an
individual who has requested this of him. The initiation thus presupposes a
hierarchical relationship. In its classic form, a master (guru or lama)
communicates his knowledge and mystic powers to a pupil (sadhaka). This master too once sat
facing his own guru before the latter likewise initiated him. The chains of
the initiated, all of which can be traced back to the historical Buddha,
are known as “transmission lines”. It is usual for the transmission to
proceed orally, from ear to ear. This is thus also known as the
“ear-whispered lineage” (Beyer, 1978, p. 399). But words are in no sense a
necessity. The initiation can also proceed without speech, for example
through hand gestures or the display of symbolic images.
Both forms of transmission (the oral and the
nonverbal) still take place between humans. When, however, the Buddhist
deities initiate the pupil directly, without a physical go-between, this is
known as the “consciousness lineage of the victors”. The transcendent
Buddhas (Dhyani Buddhas) who
approach an earthly adept directly are referred to as “victors”. A subtype
of such communication from beyond is known as the “trust lineage of the
dakinis”. Here an adept discovers holy texts which were hidden for him in
caves and mountain clefts by the dakinis in times of yore in order to
instruct him following their discovery. Such “consciousness treasures”,
also known as termas, generally
provoked sharp criticism from the orthodox lamas, as they called into
question their privilege of being the only source of initiation.
The Kalachakra
Tantra is explicitly modeled upon the traditional Indian coronation
ceremony (Rajasuya). Just as the Rajasuya authorizes the heir to the
throne to take on the status of a king, so the tantric initiation empowers
the adept to function as the emanation of a Buddhist deity. Of course, it
is also not as a person that the lama communicates the divine energies to
the initiand, but rather as a superhuman being in human form.
It is the pupil’s duty to imagine his guru as a
living Buddha (Tibetan Kundun)
during the entire initiatory process. So that he never forgets the
superhuman nature of his master, the Kalachakra
Tantra prescribes a Guruyoga
liturgy, which is to be recited by the initiand at least three times a
day and three times per night. Several of these liturgies are hundreds of
pages long (Mullin, 1991, p. 109). But in all of them words to the
following effect can be found, with which the lama demands the pupil’s (sadhaka) absolute obedience: “From
henceforth I am your [deity] Vajrapani.
You must do what I tell you to do. You should not deride me, and if you do, ... the time of death will come, and you will fall
into hell” (Dalai Lama XIV, 1985, p. 242).
Since it is the goal of every tantric initiation
that the sadhaka himself achieve
a transhuman status, right from the outset of the initiatory path he
develops a “divine pride” and, as the First Dalai Lama informs us, is
transformed into a “vessel” in which the supernatural energies collect
(Mullin, 1991, p. 102). This is also true for the Kalachakra Tantra.
The self-sacrifice of the pupil
But doesn’t a metaphysical contest now arise
between the deity which stands behind the guru and
the newly created pupil deity? This is not the case for two reasons. On the
one hand, the divine being behind master and pupil forms a unity. One could
even consider it characteristic of divine entities that they are
simultaneously able to appear in various forms. On the other, it is not the
pupil (sadhaka) who produces the
deity; in contrast, he absolutely and completely loses his human
individuality and transforms himself into “pure emptiness”, without having
to surrender his perceivable body in the process. This empty body of the sadhaka is then in the course of the
initiation occupied by the deity or the lama respectively. Chögyam Trungpa
has expressed this in unmistakable terms: “If we surrender our body to the
guru we are surrendering our primal reference point. Our body becomes the
possession of the lineage; it is not ours any more. ... I mean that
surrendering our body, psychologically our dear life is turned over to
someone else. We do not have our dear life to hold any more” (June
Campbell, 1996, p. 161). The pupil has completely ceased to exist as an
individual soul and mind. Only his body, filled by a god or respectively by
his guru, visibly wanders through the world of appearances.
The Kalachakra
Tantra describes this process as an “act of swallowing” which the lama
performs upon the initiand. In a central drama of the Time Tantra which is
repeated several times, the oral destruction of the sadhaka is graphically
demonstrated, even if the procedure does only take place in the imagination
of the cult participants. The following scene is played out: the guru, as
the Kalachakra deity, swallows
the pupil once he has been melted down to the size of a droplet. As a drop
the initiand then wanders through the body of his masters until he reaches
the tip of his penis. From there the guru thrusts him out into the vagina
and womb of Vishvamata, the
wisdom consort of Kalachakra.
Within Vishvamata’s body the
pupil as drop is then dissolved into “nothingness”. The rebirth of the
sadhaka as a Buddhist deity takes place only after this vaginal
destruction. Since the androgyne vajra
master simultaneously represents Kalachakra
and Vishvamata within one
individual and must be imagined by the adept as “father–mother” during the
entire initiation process, he as man takes over all the sex-specific stages
of the birth process — beginning with the ejaculation, then the conception,
the pregnancy, up to the act of birth itself. [1]
In a certain sense, through the use of his pupil’s
body the guru , or at least his superhuman
consciousness, achieves immortality. So long the master is still alive he
has, so to speak, created a double of himself in the form of the sadhaka;
if he dies then his spirit continues to exist in the body of his pupil. He
can thus reproduce himself in the world of samsara for as long as there are people who are prepared for
his sake to sacrifice their individuality and to surrender him their bodies
as a home.
Accordingly, Tantrism does not develop the good
qualities of a person in order to ennoble or even deify them; rather, it
resolutely and quite deliberately destroys all the “
personality elements” of the initiands in order to replace them with
the consciousness of the initiating guru and of the deity assigned to him.
This leads at the end of the initiatory path to a situation where the
tantra master now lives on in the form of the pupil. The latter has de facto disappeared as an
individual, even if his old physical body can still be apprehended. It has
become a housing in which the spirit of his master dwells.
The lineage tree
The pupil serves as an empty vessel into which can
flow not just the spirit of his master but also the lineage of all the
former teachers which stretches back behind him, plus the deities they have
all represented. It is all of these who now occupy the sadhaka’s body and
through him are able to function in the real world.
In Lamaism, once anyone counts as part of the
lineage of the High Initiates, they become part of a “mystic tree” whose
leaves, branches, trunk, and roots consist of the numerous Buddhas and
Bodhisattvas of the Tibetan/tantric pantheon. At the tip or in the middle
of the crown of the tree the Highest Enlightenment Being (the ADI BUDDHA)
is enthroned, who goes by different names in the various schools.
The divine energy flows from him through every part to deep in the roots.
Evans-Wentz compares this down-flow to an electric current: “As electricity
may be passed on from one receiving station to another, so ... is the
divine Grace ... transmitted through the Buddha Dorje Chang (Vajradhara) to the Line of Celestial
Gurus and thence to the Apostolic Gurus on earth, and from him, to each of
the subordinate Gurus, and by them, through the mystic initiation, to each
of the neophytes” (Evans-Wentz, 1978, p. 9, quoted by Bishop, 1993, p.
118).
All of the high initiates are separated by a deep
divide from the masses of simple believers and the rest of the suffering
beings, who either prostrate themselves before the dynastic line tree in
total awe or are unable to even perceive it in their ignorance. Yet there
is still a connection between the timeless universe
of the gurus and “normal” people, since the roots of the mystic tree are
anchored in the same world as that in which mortals live. The spiritual
hierarchy draws its natural and spiritual resources from it, both material
goods and religious devotion and loving energy. The critical Tibet
researcher, Peter Bishop, has therefore, and with complete justification,
drawn attention to the fact that the mystic line tree in Lamaism takes on the
appearance of a bureaucratic, regulated monastic organization: “This
idealized image of hierarchical order, where everything is evaluated,
certified and allotted a specific place according to the grade of
attainment, where control, monitoring and authorization is absolute, is the
root-metaphor of Tibetan Buddhism” (Bishop, 1993, p. 118).
The first seven initiations
All together the Kalachakra Tantra talks of fifteen initiatory stages. The first
seven are considered lower solemnities and are publicly performed by the
Dalai Lama and open to the broad masses. The other eight are only intended
for a tiny, select minority. The Tibetologist Alexander Wayman has drawn a
comparison to the Eleusian mysteries of antiquity, the first part of which
was also conducted in front of a large public, whilst only a few
participated in the second, secret part in the temple at night (Wayman,
1983, 628).
The seven lower initiations ought to be succinctly
described here. They areas follows: the (1) the water initiation;(2) the crown
initiation; (3) the silk ribbon initiation; (4) the vajra and bell
initiation; (5) the conduct initiation; (6) the name initiation; and (7)
the permission initiation. All seven are compared to the developmental
stages of a child from birth to adulthood. In particular they serve to
purify the pupils.
Before beginning the initiatory path the neophyte
swears a vow with which he makes a commitment to strive for Buddhahood
incessantly, to regret and avoid all misdeeds, to lead other beings along
the path to enlightenment, and to follow absolutely the directions of the
Kalachakra master. But above all he must visualize his androgyne guru as
the divine couple, Kalachakra in union with his consort Vishvamata. With
blindfolded eyes he must imagine that he is wandering through a
three-dimensional mandala (an imaginary palace) which is occupied by the
four meditation Buddhas (Amitabha, Ratnasambhava, Amoghasiddhi, Vairochana)
and their partners.
After his blindfold has been removed, he tosses a
blossom onto a sacred image (mandala) spread out before him, which has been
prepared from colored sand. The place where the flower comes to rest
indicates the particular Buddha figure with which the pupil must identify
during his initiation journey. In the following phase he receives two reeds
of kusha grass, since the historical Buddha once experienced enlightenment
as he meditated while seated on this type of grass. Further, the Lama gives
him a toothpick for cleansing, as well as a red cord, which he must tie
around the upper arm with three knots. Then he receives instructions for
sleeping. Before he goes to bed he has to recite certain mantras as often
as possible, and then to lay himself on his right side with his face in the
direction of the sand mandala. Dreams are sent to him in the night which
the guru analyzes another day. It is considered especially unfavorable if a
crocodile swallows the pupil in his dream. The monster counts as a symbol
for the world of illusions (samsara) and informs the sadhaka that he is
still strongly trapped by this. But via meditation upon the emptiness of
all appearances he can dissolve all unfavorable dream images again.
Further instructions and rites follow which
likewise concern purification. At the end of the first seven stages the
Vajra master then dissolves the pupil into “emptiness” in his imagination,
in order to then visualize him as his own polar image, as Kalachakra in
union with Vishvamata. We should never forget that the androgynous tantric
teacher represents both time deities in one person. Since the pupil
possesses absolutely no further individual existence right from the
beginning of the initiation, the two time deities are doubled by this
meditative imagining — they appear both in the tantra master and in the
person of the sadhaka.
We can thus see that already in the first phase of
the Kalachakra initiation, the alternation between dissolution and creation
determines the initiatory drama. The teacher will in the course of the
rituals destroy his pupil many times more in imagination, so as to replace
him with a deity, or he will instruct the sadhaka to perform the individual
act of destruction upon himself until nothing remains of his personality.
In a figurative sense, we can describe this destruction and
self-destruction of the individual as a continually performed “human
sacrifice”, since the “human” must abandon his earthly existence in favor
of that of a deity. This is in no sense a liberal interpretation of the
tantra texts; rather it is literally demanded in them. The pupil has to
offer himself up with spirit and mind, skin and hair to the guru and the
gods at work through him. Incidentally, these, together with all of their
divine attributes, are codified in a canon, they
can no longer develop themselves and exert their influence on reality as
frozen archetypal images.
In the light of the entire procedure we have
described, it seems sensible to remind ourselves of the thesis posed above,
that the “production” of the deity and the “destruction” of the person
stand in an originally causal relation to one another, or — to put it even
more clearly — that the gods and the guru who manipulates them feed
themselves upon the life energies of the pupil.
The first two initiations, the water and crown initiations, are directed at the purification of the
mystic body. The water initiation (1) corresponds to the bathing of a child
shortly after its birth. The five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and
ether) become purified in the energy body of the sadhaka. Subsequently, the
guru in the form of Kalachakra imagines that he swallows the initiand who
has melted down to the size of a droplet, then thrusts him out through his
penis into the womb of his partner Vishvamata, who finally gives birth to
him as a deity. As already mentioned above, in this scenario of conception
and birth we must not lose sight of the fact that the androgynous guru
simultaneously represents in his person the time god and the time goddess.
The complete performance is thus set in scene by him alone. At the close of
the water initiation the master touches the initiand at the “five places”
with a conch shell: the crown, the shoulder, the upper arm, the hip and the
thigh. Here, the shell is probably a symbol for the element of water.
The crown initiation (2) which now follows
corresponds to the child’s first haircut. Here the so-called “five
aggregates” of the pupil are purified (form, feeling, perception,
unconscious structures, consciousness). By
“purification” we must understand firstly the dissolving of all individual
personality structures and then their “re-creation” as the characteristics
of a deity. The procedure is described thus in the tantra texts; however,
to be exact it is not a matter of a “re-creation” but of the replacement of
the pupil’s personality with the deity. At the end of the second initiation
the vajra master touches the “five places” with a crown.
The third and fourth initiations are directed at
the purification of speech. In the silk ribbon initiation (3), the androgynous
guru once more swallows the pupil and — in the form of Vishvamata — gives
birth to him as a god. Here the energy channels, which from a tantric way
of looking at things constitute the “mystic framework” of the subtle body,
are purified, that is dissolved and created anew. In the development of the
human child this third initiation corresponds to the piercing of the ears,
so that a golden ring can be worn as an adornment.
The vajra and bell initiation (4) follows, which
is compared to the speaking of a child’s first words. Now the guru cleanses
the three “main energy channels” in the pupil’s body. They are found
alongside the spine and together build the subtle backbone of the adept, so
to speak. The right channel becomes the masculine vajra, the left the
feminine bell (gantha). In the middle, “androgynous” channel both energies,
masculine and feminine, meet together and generate the so-called “mystic
heat”, which embodies the chief event in the highest initiations, to be
described in detail later. The pupil now asks the Kalachakra deity,
represented through the guru, to give him the vajra and the bell, that is,
to hand over to him the emblems of androgyny.
Yet again, an act of swallowing takes place in the
fifth initiation. The conduct initiation (5) corresponds to a child’s
enjoyment of the objects of the senses. Accordingly, the six senses (sight,
hearing, smell, etc.) and their objects (image, sound, scent, etc.) are
destroyed in meditation and re-created afterwards as divine
characteristics. The vajra master ritually touches the pupil’s “five
places” with a thumb ring.
In the name initiation (6) which follows, the
ordained receive a secret religious name, which is usually identical with
that of the deity assigned to them during the preparatory rites. The guru
prophecies that the pupil will appear as a Buddha in the future. Here the
six abilities to act (mouth, arms, legs, sexual organs, urinary organs, and
anus) and the six actions (speech, grasping, walking, copulation,
urination, and defecation) are purified, dissolved and re-created. As seems
obvious, the texts compare the naming of a child with the sixth initiation.
The fifth and sixth initiations together purify the spirit.
The permission initiation (7) remains — which
corresponds on the human level to the child’s first lesson in reading. Five
symbols (the vajra, jewel, sword, lotus, and wheel) which act as metaphors
for various states of awareness in deep meditation are purified, dissolved
and replaced. The androgynous guru swallows the pupil once more and as
Kalachakra in union with his consort gives birth to him anew. He then hands
him the vajra and the bell, as well as the five symbolic objects just
mentioned, one after another. A river of mantras pours from the lama’
mouth, flows over into the mouth of the pupil, and collects in his heart
center. With a golden spoon the master gives him an “eye medicine”, with
which he can cast aside the veil of ignorance. He then receives a mirror as
an admonition that the phenomenal world is illusory and empty like a
reflection in a mirror. A bow and arrow, which are additionally handed to
him, are supposed to urge him on to extreme concentration.
The ritual lays especial weight on the handing
over of the diamond scepter (vajra). The guru says “that the secret nature
of the vajra is the exalted wisdom of great bliss. Holding the vajra will
recall the true nature of the ultimate vajra, or
what is called ‘method’” (Bryant, 1992, p. 165). Through this closing
remark the tantra master forcefully evokes the masculine primacy in the
ritual. In that the pupil crosses his arms with the vajra in his right hand
and the feminine bell in his left (the Vajrahumkara gesture), he
demonstrates his androgyny and his tantric ability to control the feminine
wisdom energies (prajna) with “method” (upaya).
With this demonstration of dominance the seven
lower initiations are ended. The adept can now describe himself as a “lord
of the seventh level”. With immediate effect he gains the right to
disseminate the teaching of Buddha, albeit only within the limits of the
lower initiations described. The vajra master thus calls out to him, “Turn
the vajra wheel (teach the Dharma) in or to help all sentient beings”
(Bryant, 1992, p. 164).
In the truest sense of the word the first seven
solemnities are just the “foreplay” of the Kalachakra initiation. Then only
in the higher initiations which follow does it come to sexual union with a
real partner. The wisdom consorts of the seven lower levels are of a purely
imaginary nature and no karma mudra is needed for their performance.
Therefore they can also be given in public, even in front of great crowds.
The divine time machine
So far, the vajra master and his pupil appear as
the sole protagonists on the initiatory stage of the Time Tantra. Predominant
in all seven initiation scenes is the uninterrupted consolidation of the
position of the master, primarily depicted in the act of swallowing and
rebirth of the initiand, that is, in his destruction as a human and his
“re-creation” as a god. We can therefore describe the “death of the pupil”
and his “birth as a deity” as the key scene of the tantric drama,
constantly repeated on all seven lower initiation levels. The individual
personality of the sadhaka is destroyed but his visible body is retained.
The guru uses it as a living vessel into which he lets his divine
substances flow so as to multiply himself. The same gods now live in the
pupil and the master.
But is there no difference between the guru and
the sadhaka any more after the initiation? This is indeed the case when
both are at the same level of initiation. But if the master has been
initiated into a higher stage, then he completely encompasses the lower
stage at which the pupil still finds himself. For example, if the initiand
has successfully completed all seven lower solemnities of the Kalachakra Tantra yet the Kalachakra
master is acting from the eighth initiation stage, then the pupil has
become a part of the initiating guru, but the guru is in no sense a part of
the pupil, since his of spiritual power skills are far higher and more comprehensive.
The initiation stages and the individuals assigned
to them thus stand in a classic hierarchical relation to one another. The
higher always integrate the lower, the lower must always obey the higher, those further down are no more than the extended arm of
those above. Should, for example — as we suspect — the Dalai Lama alone
have attained the highest initiation stage of the Kalachakra Tantra, then all the other Buddhists initiated into
the Time Tantra would not simply be his subordinates in a bureaucratic
sense, but rather outright parts of his self. In his system he would be the
arch-god (the ADI BUDDHA), who integrated the other gods (or Buddhas)
within himself, then since all individual and
human elements of the initiand are destroyed, there are only divine beings
living in the body of the pupil. But these too stand in a ranked
relationship to one another, as there are lower, higher and supreme
deities. We thus need — to formulate things somewhat provocatively — to
examine whether the Kalachakra Tantra
portrays a huge divine time machine with the Dalai Lama as the prime mover
and his followers as the various wheels.
The four higher “secret” initiations
The seven lower initiations are supposed to first
“purify” the pupil and then transform him into a deity. For this reason
they are referred to as the “stage of production”. The following “four
higher initiations” are considered to be the “stage of perfection”. They
are known as: (8) the vase initiation; (9) the secret initiation; (10) the
wisdom initiation; and (11) the word initiation. They may only be received
under conditions of absolute secrecy by a small number of chosen.
In all of the higher initiations the presence of a
young woman of ten, twelve, sixteen, or twenty years of age. Without a
living karma mudra enlightenment cannot, at least according to the original
text, be attained in this lifetime. The union with her thus counts as the
key event in the external action of the rituals. Thus, as the fourth book
of the Kalachakra Tantra says
with emphasis, “neither meditation nor the recitation of mantras, nor the
preparation, nor the great mandalas and thrones, nor the initiation into
the sand mandala, nor the summonsing of the Buddhas confers the super
natural powers, but alone the mudra”
(Grünwedel, Kalacakra IV, p.
226).
Further, in the higher initiations the adept is
obliged to ritually consume the five types of meat (human flesh, elephant
meat, horseflesh, dog, and beef) and drink the five nectars (blood, semen,
menses ...).
In texts which are addressed to a broad public the
vase initiation (8) is euphemistically described as follows. The vajra master holds a vase up before
the sadhaka’s eyes. The adept visualizes a sacrificial goddess who carries
the vase. The vessel is filled with a white fluid (Henss, 1985, p. 51). In
reality, however, the following initiation scene is played out: firstly the
pupil brings the lama a “beautiful girl, without blemish”, twelve years of
age. He then supplicates to receive initiation and sings a hymn of praise
to his guru. “Satisfied, the master then touches the breast of the mudra in a worldly manner” (Naropa,
1994, p. 190). This all takes place before the pupil’s watchful gaze, so as to stimulate the latter’s sexual desire.
According to another passage in the texts — but
likewise in reference to the Kalachakra
Tantra — the vajra master
shows the undressed girl to the sadhaka and requires him to now stroke the
breasts of the karma mudra himself
(Naropa, 1994, p. 188). “There is not actually any vase or any pot that is
used for this empowerment”, we are informed by Ngawang Dhargyey, a modern
commentator on the Time Tantra. “What is referred
to as ‘the pot’ are the breasts of the girl, which are called the ‘vase
that holds the white’” (Dhargyey, 1985, p. 8). We have already drawn
attention to the fact that this white substance is probably the same magic
secretion from the female breast which the European alchemists of the
seventeenth century enthusiastically described as “virgin’s milk” and whose
consumption promised great magical powers for the adept.
The sight of the naked girl and the stroking of
her breasts causes the “descent” of the semen virile (male seed) in the
pupil. In the tantric view of things this originally finds itself at a
point below the roof of the skull and begins to flow down through the body
into the penis when a man becomes sexually aroused. Under no circumstances
may it come to the point of ejaculation here! If the pupil successfully
masters his lust, he attains the eighth initiation stage, which is known as
the “immobile” on the basis of the fixation of the semen in the phallus.
Let us now continue with the euphemistic depiction
of the next secret initiation (9): The pupil is blindfolded. The master
unites the masculine and feminine forces within himself
and subsequently lets the adept taste the “mystic nectar”, which is offered
to him in the form of tea and yogurt so that he may experience great bliss
(Henss, 1985, p. 52). In reality something different is played out on this
level: firstly the adept hands valuable clothes and other sacrificial
offerings over to the master. Then he presents him with a young and gracile
girl. The lama demands that the sadhaka leave the room or blindfold himself. Tantric dishes are served, the master venerates
and praises the mudra with songs
of adulation, elevates her to the status of a goddess and then couples with
her “until her sexual fluids flow” (Farrow and Menon, 1992, p. 121). He then,
exceptionally, allows his semen to flow into her vagina.
The mixture of “red-white fluid” thus created,
that is, of the male and female seed, is scooped out of the sexual organs
of the wisdom consort with a finger or a small ivory spoon and collected in
a vessel. The master then summons the pupil, or instructs him to remove his
blindfold. He now takes some of the “holy substance” with his finger once
more and moistens the tongue of the adept with it whilst speaking the
words, “This is your sacrament, dear one, as taught by all Buddhas ... “ —
and the pupil answers blissfully, “Today my birth has become fruitful.
Today my life is fruitful. Today I have been born into the Buddha-Family.
Now I am a son of the Buddhas” (Snellgrove, 1987, vol. 1, p. 272). Concretely,
this means that he has, through the consumption of the female and the male
seed, attained the status of an androgyne.
But there are also other versions of the second
initiation. When we read that, “The pupil visualizes the secret vajra of the vajra masters in his own mouth and tastes the white bodhicitta of the guru lama. This
white bodhicitta sinks to his own
heart chakra and in so doing generates bliss ...The name ‘secret
initiation’ is thus also a result of the fact that one partakes of the secret
substance of the vajra master”
(Henss, 1985, p. 53; Dhargyey, 1985, p. 8), then this in truth means that
the guru lays his sperm-filled penis in the mouth of the adept and the
latter tastes the semen, since the “white bodhicitta” and the “secret substance”
are nothing other than the semen
virile of the initiating teacher.
In the wisdom initiation (10) which follows, the
pupil is confronted with an even more sexually provocative scene: “... he
is told to look at the spreading vagina of a knowledge lady. Fierce passion
arises in him, which in turn induces great bliss” (Dalai Lama I, 1985,
p.155). The tantra master then “gives” the sadhaka the girl with the words,
“O great Being, take this consort who will give you bliss” (Farrow and
Menon, 1992, p. 186). Both are instructed to engage in sexual union
(Naropa, 1994, pp. 188, 190). During the ritual performance of the yuganaddha (fusion) the adept may
under no circumstances let go of his semen.
The Kalachakra
Tantra does not give away all of the secrets which are played out
during this scene. It therefore makes sense to fall back upon other tantra
texts in order to gain more precise information about the proceedings
during the tenth initiation stage. For example, in the Candamaharosana Tantra, once the master has left the room, the mudra now provokes the pupil with
culinary obscenities: “Can you bear, my dear,” she cries out, “to eat my
filth, and faeces and urine; and suck the blood from inside my bhaga [vagina]?” Then the candidate
must say: “Why should I not bear to eat your filth, O Mother? I must
practice devotion to women until I realize the essence of Enlightenment”
(George, 1974, p. 55).
The final “word initiation” (11) is in a real
sense no longer an initiation by the guru, as its name indicates it only
exists in a literal form. It is thus also not revealed in any external
scenario, but instead takes place exclusively within the inner subtle body
of the former pupil, since the latter has already made the switch to a
perfected consciousness and been transformed into a deity. A commentary
upon the eleventh higher initiation thus belongs in the next chapter, which
concerns the microcosmic processes in the energy body of the practitioner.
Sperm and menstrual blood as magic substances
But before we continue with a discussion of the
four highest initiations, we would like to make a number of reflections on
the topic of sperm gnosis, which so decisively shapes not just the Kalachakra but rather all tantras.
The same name, bodhicitta, is
borne by both the male seed and the supreme mystic experience, that of the
“clear light”. This already makes apparent how closely interlaced the semen virile and enlightenment are.
The bodhicitta ("wisdom-mind”)
is characterized by the feeling of “supreme bliss” and “absolute
self-awareness”. A connection between both states of consciousness and the
male sperm seems to be a necessity for the tantric, since, as we may read
in the Hevajra Tantra, “without
semen there would be no bliss and without bliss semen would not exist.
Since semen and bliss are ineffective on their own they are mutually
dependent and bliss arises from the union with the deity” (Farrow and
Menon, 1992, p. 169).
In the tantras, the moon and water are
idiosyncratically assigned to the male seed, which is idiosyncratic because
both metaphors are of largely feminine character in terms of cultural
history. We will need to look into this anomaly in Tantric Buddhism later.
But a solar assignation of sperm is likewise known (Bharati, 1977, p. 237).
The exceptional meaning which is accorded to the semen virile in Vajrayana
has given rise to the conception among the Tibetan populace that, rather
than blood, male seed flows in the veins of a high lama (Stevens, 1993, p.
90).
The retention of sperm
For a Buddhist Tantric the retention of the male
seed is the sine qua non of the
highest spiritual enlightenment. This stands in stark opposition to the
position of Galen (129–199 C.E.), the highest medical authority of the
European Middle Ages. Galen was of the opinion that the retentio semenis would lead to a
putrefaction of the secretion, and that the rotten substance would rise to
the head and disturb the functioning of the brain.
In contrast, the tantras teach that the semen is
originally stored in a moonlike bowl beneath the roof of the skull. As soon
as a person begins to experience sexual desire, it starts to flow out, drop
by drop, passing through the five energy centers (chakras). In each of these the yogi experiences a specific
“seminal” ecstasy (Naropa, 1994, p. 191). The destination of the sperm’s
journey within the body is the tip of the penis. Here, through extreme
meditative concentration, the adept collects the lust: “The vajra [penis] is inserted into the
lotus [vagina], but not moved. When lust of a transient art arises, the
mantra hum should be spoken. ...
The decisive [factor] is thus the retention of the sperm. Through this, the
act obtains a cosmological dimension. ... It becomes the means of attaining
enlightenment (bodhi)” (Grönbold,
Asiatische Studien, p. 34).
“Delight resides in the tip of the vajra
[penis]", as is said in a Kalachakra
text (Grönbold, 1992a).
With the topic of sperm retention an appeal is
made to ancient Indian sexual practices which date from pre-Buddhist times.
In the national epic poem of the Indians, the Mahabharata, we can already read of ascetics “who keep the
semen up” (Grönbold, Asiatische
Studien, p. 35). In early Buddhism a holy man (Arhat) is distinguished by the fact
that his discharges have been conquered and in future no longer occur.
From Vajrayana comes the striking
saying that “A yogi whose member is always hard is one who always retains
his semen” (Grönbold, Asiatische
Studien, p. 34). In contrast, in India the flowing of the male seed
into “the fiery maw of the female sexual organ” is still today regarded as
a sacrificium and therefore
feared as an element of death (White, 1996, p. 28).
The in part adventurous techniques of semen
retention must be learnt and improved by the adept through constant, mostly
painful, practice. They are either the result of mental discipline or
physical nature, such as through pressure on the perineum at the point of
orgasm, through which the spermatic duct is blocked, or one stops the
seminal flow through his breathing. If it nonetheless comes to ejaculation,
then the lost sperm should be removed from the mudra’s vagina with the finger or tongue and subsequently drunk
by the practitioner.
Yet that which is forbidden under penalty of
dreadful punishments in hell for the pupil, this is not by a long shot the
case for his guru. Hence, Pundarika, the first commentator upon the Kalachakra Tantra, distinguishes
between one “ejaculation, which arises out of karma and serves to perpetuate
the chain of rebirth, and another, which is subject to mental control ...”
(Naropa, 1994, p. 20). An enlightened one can thus ejaculate as much as he
wishes, under the condition that he not lose his awareness in so doing. It
now becomes apparent why the vajra
master in the second higher initiation (9) of the Time Tantra is able to
without harm let his sperm flow into the vagina of the mudra so as to be able to offer the mixture (sukra) which runs out to the pupil
as holy food.
The female seed
As the female correspondence to male sperm the
texts nominate the seed of the woman (semen
feminile). Among Tantrics it is highly contested whether this is a
matter of the menstrual blood or fluids which the mudra secretes during the sexual act. In any case, the sexual
fluids of the man are always associated with the color white, and those of
the woman with red. Fundamentally, the female discharge is assigned an
equally powerful magic effect as that of its male counterpart. Even the
gods thirst after it and revere the menses as the nectar of “immortality”
(Benard, 1994, p. 103). In the old Indian matriarchies, and still today in
certain Kali cults, the
menstruating goddess is considered as one of highest forms of appearance of
the feminine principle (Bhattacharyya, 1982, pp. 133, 134). It was in the
earliest times a widespread opinion, taken up again in recent years by
radical feminists, that the entire natural and supernatural knowledge of
the goddess was concentrated in the menstrual blood.
Menstruating Dakini
Outside of the gynocentric and tantric cults
however, a negative valuation of menstrual blood predominates, which we
know from nearly all patriarchal religions: a menstruating woman is unclean
and extremely dangerous. The magic radiation of the blood brings no blessings, rather it has devastating effects upon the
sphere of the holy. For this reason, women who are bleeding may never enter
the grounds of a temple. This idea is also widely distributed in Hinayana Buddhism. Menstrual blood is seen
there as a curse which has its origins in a female original sin: “Because
they are born as women,” it says in a text of the “low vehicle”, “their
endeavors toward Buddhahood are little developed, while their
lasciviousness and bad characteristics preponderate. These sins, which
strengthen one another, assume the form of menstrual blood which is
discharged every month in two streams, in that it soils not just the god of
the earth but also all the other deities too” (Faure, 1994, p. 182). But
the Tantrics are completely different! For them the fluids of the woman
bear Lucullan names like “wine”, “honey”, “nectar”, and a secret is hidden
within them which can lead the yogi to enlightenment (Shaw, 1994, p. 157)
According to the tantric logic of inversion, that
precisely the worst is the most appropriate starting substance for the
best, the yogi need not fear the magical destructive force of the menses, as
he can reverse it into its creative opposite through the proper method. The
embracing of a “bleeding” lover is therefore a great ritual privilege. In
his book on Indian ecstatic cults, Philip Rawson indicates that “the most
powerful sexual rite ... requires intercourse with the female partner when
she is menstruating and her ‘red’ sexual energy is at its peak” (Rawson,
1973, p. 24; see also Chöpel, 1992, p. 191).
Astonishingly, the various types of menses which
can be used for divergent magical purposes have been cataloged. The texts
distinguish between the menstrual blood of a
virgin, a lower-class woman, a married woman, a widow, and so on.
(Bhattacharyya, 1982, p. 136) The time at which the monthly bleeding takes
place also has ritual significance. In Tibet yiddams (meditation images) exist which illustrate dakinis from
whose vaginas the blood is flowing in streams (Essen, 1989, vol. 1, p.
179).
In keeping with the Tantric’s preference for every
possible taboo substance, it is no wonder that he drinks the menses. The
following vision was in fact perceived by a woman, the yogini Yeshe
Tsogyal, it could however have been just as easily experienced by pretty
much any lama: “A red lady, perfectly naked and wearing not even a necklace
of bones, appeared before me. She placed her vagina at my mouth and blood
flowed out of it which I drank with deep draughts. It now appeared to me
that all realms were filled with bliss! The strength, only comparable to
that of a lion, returned to me!” (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 281).
As has already been mentioned, the monthly flow is
not always recognized as the substance yearned for by the yogi. Some
authors here also think of other fluids which the woman releases during the
sexual act or through stimulation of the clitoris. “When passion is
produced, the feminine fluid boils”, Gedün Chöpel, who has explored this
topic intensively, tells us (Chöpel, 1992, p. 59). From him we also learn
that the women guard the secret of the magic power of their discharges:
“However, most learned persons nowadays and also women who have studied many
books say that the female has no regenerative [?] fluid.
Because I like conversation about the lower parts, I asked many women
friends, but aside from shaking a fist at me with shame and laughter, I
could not find even one who would give me a honest answer” (Chöpel, 1992,
p. 61).
The sukra
In the traditional Buddhist conception an embryo
arises from the admixture of the male seed and the female seed. This
red-white mixture is referred to by the texts as sukra Since the fluids of man and woman produces new life, the
following analogic syllogism appears as obvious as it is simple: if the
yogi succeeds in permanently uniting within himself both elixirs (the semen virile and the semen feminile), then eternal life
lies in store for him. He becomes a “born of himself”, having overcome the
curse of rebirth and replaced it with the esoteric vision of immortality.
With the red-white mixture he attains the “medicine of long life”, a
“perfected body” (Hermanns, 1965, pp. 194, 195). Sukra is the “life juice” par
excellence, the liquid essence of the entire world of appearances. It
is equated with amrta, the “drink
of immortality” or the “divine nectar”.
Even if many tantric texts speak only of bodhicitta, the male seed, at heart
it is a matter of the absorption of both fluids, the male and the female,
in short — of sukra. Admittedly
the mixing of the sexual fluids does seem incompatible with the prohibition
against ejaculation, but through the so-called Vajroli method the damaging consequences of the emission of semen
can be reversed, indeed this is considered a veritable touchstone of the
highest yogic skill. Here, the tantra master lets his bodhicitta flow into his partner‘s vagina in order to
subsequently draw back into himself through his urethra the male-female mixture
which has arisen there. “After he has streamed forth,” Mircea Eliade quotes
a text as saying, “he draws in and says: through my force, through my seed
I take your seed — and she is without seed” (Eliade, 1985, p. 264). The man
thus steals the seed of the woman under the impression that he can through
this become a powerful androgynous being, and leaves her without her own
life energy.
Some of the “initiated” even succeed in drawing up
the semen feminile without
ejaculating any sperm so as to then produce the yearned-for sukra mixture in their own body. The
mastery of this method requires painful and lengthy exercises, such as the
introduction of small rods of lead and “short lengths of solder” into the
urethra (Eliade, 1985, p. 242). Here can be seen very clearly how much of a
calculating and technical meaning the term upaya (method) has in the tantras. Yet this does not hinder the
Tantric Babhaha from celebrating this thieving process in a poetic stanza:
In the sacred citadel of the vulva of
a superlative, skillful partner,
do the praxis of mixing white seed
with her ocean of red seed.
Then absorb, raise, and spread the nectar—
A stream of ecstasy such as you’ve never known.
(quoted
by Shaw, 1994, p. 158).
Ejaculation
Now what happens if the yogi has not mastered the
method of drawing back? Fundamentally, the following applies: “Through the
loss of the bindu [semen] comes death, through its retention, life” (Eliade, 1985,
p. 257). In a somewhat more tolerant view, however, the adept may catch the
sukra from out of the vagina in a
vessel and then drink it (Shaw, 1994, p. 157). It is not rare for the
drinking bowl to be made from a human skull. The Candamaharosana Tantra recommends sucking the mixture up with a
tube (pipe) through the nose (George, 1974, p. 75). If one sips the sukra out of his mudra’s genitals with his mouth,
then the process is described as being “from mouth to mouth” (White, 1996,
p. 200). Without exaggeration one can refer to this drinking of the “white-red
bodhicitta” as the great tantric
Eucharist, in which semen and blood are sacredly consumed in place of bread
and wine. Through this oriental “Last Supper” the power and the strength of
the women are passed over to the man.
Already, centuries before Tantrism
,the nightly ejaculations of the Buddhist Arhats (holy men) were a topic of great debate. In Tantrism, a
man who let his sperm flow was referred to as a pashu, an “animal”, whereas anyone who could retain it in the
sexual act was a vira, a “hero”,
and accorded the attribute divya,
“divine” (Bharati, 1977, p. 1977 148).
We have already reported how ejaculation is
equated simply with death. This too we already learn from the pre-Buddhist
Upanishads. In fact, Indian culture is, in the estimation of one of its
best interpreters, Doniger O’Flaherty, characterized by a deadly fear of
the loss of semen far beyond the limits of the tantric milieu: “The fear of
losing body fluids leads not only to retention, but to attempts to steal
the partner's fluid (and the fear that the partner will try the same trick)
— yet another form of competition. If the woman is too powerful or too old
or too young, terrible things will happen to the innocent man who falls
into her trap, a fact often depicted in terms of his losing his fluids”
(O'Flaherty, 1982/1988, p. 56). Agehananda Bharati also shares this
evaluation, when he writes in his book on the tantric traditions that, “the
loss of semen is an old, all-pervasive fear in Indian tradition and
probably the core of the strongest anxiety syndrome in Indian culture”
(Bharati, 1977, p. 237).
The drawing up of sperm by a woman is viewed by a
tantric yogi as a mortally dangerous theft and a fundamental crime. Is this
purely a matter of male fantasies? Not at all — a gynocentric
correspondence to the thieving seed-absorption is, namely, known from the Kali cults to be a ritual event.
Here, the woman assumes the upper position the sex act and in certain rites
leaves the man whose life energies she has drained behind as a corpse.
According to statements by the Tibet researcher, Matthias Hermanns¸ there
were yoginis (female yogis) who received instruction in a technique
“through which they were able to forcibly draw their partners’ semen from
out of the penis”, and the author concludes from this that, “It is thus the
counterpart of the procedure which the yogi employs to soak up the genital
juices of several women one after another through his member” (Hermanns,
1965, p. 19). The theft of the male sperm in waking and in dream likewise
counts as one of the preferred entertainments of the dakinis.
Alchemy and semen gnosis
Before we continue with the initiation path in the
Kalachakra Tantra, we would like
to throw a brief glance over Indian alchemy and the sexual substances it
employs, because this half-occult science by and large coincides with the
tantric seed gnosis. The Sanskrit term for alchemy is Rasa-vada. Rasa means
‘liquid’ or ‘quicksilver’. Quicksilver was considered the most important
chemical substance which was made use of in the “mystic” experiments, both
in Europe and in Asia. The liquid metal was employed in the transformation
of materials both in the east and the west, in particular with the
intention of producing gold. In the Occident it bore the name of the Roman
god, Mercury. The Kalachakra Tantra
also mentions quicksilver at several points. The frequency with which it is
mentioned is a result of its being symbolically equated with the male seed
(bodhicitta); it was, in a manner
of speaking, the natural-substance form of the semen virile.
It is a characteristic of quicksilver that it can
“swallow” other substances, that is, chemically bind with them. This
quality allowed the liquid metal to become a powerful symbol for the
tantric yogi, who as an androgyne succeeds in absorbing — i.e.,
“swallowing” — the gynergy of his
wisdom consort.
The corresponding feminine counterpart to mercury
is sulfur, known in India as Rasa-vada,
and regarded as a chemical concentrate of menstrual blood. Its magic
efficacy is especially high when a woman has been fed sulfur twenty-one
days before her menses. Both substances together, mercury and sulfur,
create cinnabar, which,
logically, is equated with sukra,
the secret mixture of the male and female seed. In the Indian alchemic
texts it is recommended that one drink a mixture of quicksilver and sulfur
with semen and menstrual blood for a year in order to attain exceptional
powers (White, 1996, p. 199).
Just how fundamental the “female seed” was for the
opus of the Indian alchemists can
be deduced from the following story. The yogi and adept Nagarjuna, highly
revered by the Tibetans and a namesake of the famous founder of Mahayana Buddhism with whom he is
often put on the same level, experimented for years in order to discover
the elixir of life. Albert Grünwedel has therefore christened him the
“Faust of Buddhism”. One day, fed up with his lack of success, he threw his
book of formulas into the river. It was fished out by a bathing prostitute
and returned to the master. He saw this as a higher sign and began anew
with his experimentation with the assistance of the hetaera. But once more
nothing succeeded, until one evening his assistant spilt a liquid into the
mixture. Suddenly, within seconds, the elixir of life had been created,
which Nagarjuna had labored fourteen years in vain to discover.
Anyone who knows the tantras would be aware that
the prostitute was a dakini and that the wonderful liquid was either the
female seed or menstrual blood. Nagarjuna could thus only attain his goal
once he included a mudra in his
alchemical experiments. For this reason, among the Alchemists of India a
“female laboratory assistant” was always necessary to complete the “great
work” (White, 1996, p. 6).
There are also European manuals of the “great art”
which require that one work with the “menstrual blood of a whore”. In one
relevant text can be read: “Eve keeps the female seed” (Jung, 1968, p.
320). Even the retention of sperm and its transmutation into something
higher is known in the west. Hence the seventeenth-century doctor from
Brussels, Johannes Baptista Helmont, states that, “If semen is not emitted,
it is changed into a spiritual force that preserves its capacities to
reproduce sperm and invigorates breath emitted in speech” (Couliano, 1987,
p. 102). Giordano Bruno, the heretic among the Renaissance philosophers,
wrote a comprehensive essay on the manipulation of erotic love through the
retention of semen and for the purposes of attaining power.
“Ganachakra” and the four “highest” initiations
The initiation path of the Kalachakra Tantra, to which we now return following this detour
into the world of seed gnosis, now leads us on to the four highest
initiations, or rather to the twelfth to fifteenth initiation stages. The
reader will soon see that we are dealing with an extended copy of the four
“higher initiations” (8–11). They thus also bear the same names: (12) the
vase initiation; (13) the secret initiation; (14) the wisdom initiation;
and (15) the word initiation. The difference primarily consists in the fact
that rather than just one mudra,
ten wisdom consorts now participate in the ritual. All ten must be offered
to the master by the pupil (Naropa, 1994, p. 193). There are different
rules for monks and laity in this regard. It is required of a layman that
the mudras be
members of his own family — his mother, his sister, his daughter, his
sister-in-law, and so on (Naropa, 1994, p. 192). This makes it de facto impossible for him to
receive the Kalachakra solemnity.
Although the same commandment applies to a monk, it is interpreted
symbolically in his case. Hence, he has to deliver to his guru numerous
girls from the lower castes, who then adopt the names and roles of the
various female relatives during the ritual. Among other things the elements
are assigned to them: the “mother” is earth, the “sister” water, the
“daughter” fire, the “sister’s daughter” is the wind, and so on (Grünwedel,
Kalacakra III, p. 125).
After the pupil has handed the women over to his
master, he is given back one of them as a symbolic “spouse” for the
impending rites (Naropa, 1994, p. 193). There are thus ten women present on
the tantric ritual stage — one as the “wife” of the sadhaka and nine as
substitutes for the rest of his female relatives. The master now chooses
one of these for himself. The chosen wisdom consort bears the name of Shabdavajra. It is prescribed that
she be between twelve and twenty years old and have already menstruated.
First the guru fondles the jewelry of the young women, then
he undresses her and finally embraces her. The tantric couple
are surrounded by the remaining eight women along with the pupil and
his “spouse” in a circle. All the yoginis have a particular cosmic meaning
and are assigned to among other things the points of the compass. Each of
them is naked and has let down her hair so as to evoke the wild appearance
of a dakini. In their hands the women hold a human skull filled with
various repulsive substances and a cleaver (Naropa, 1994, p. 193/194).
The guru now moves to the center of the circle (chakra) and performs a magic dance.
Subsequently he unites with Shabdavajra
in the divine yoga, by inserting “the jewel of his vajra” (his phallus) into her (Naropa, 1994, p. 194). After he
has withdrawn his member again, in the words of Naropa, the following
happens: “'He places his vajra
[phallus], which is filled with semen in the mouth [of the pupil]'. After
that the master gives him his own mudra,
whom he has already embraced” (Naropa, 1994, p. 1994,195).
On the basis of the texts before us we have been unable to determine
whether or not the pupil now couples with the girl. This part of the ritual
is referred to as the vase initiation and forms the twelfth initiation
level.
In the secret initiation (13) which now follows,
“the master must lay his own vajra
[phallus] in the mouth of the pupil’s wife and, whilst the pupil is
blindfolded, he [the guru]must suck upon the Naranasika of the wisdom consort”
(Naropa, 1994, p. 195). Translated from Sanskrit, naranasika means ‘clitoris’. “Then,”
Naropa continues, “the master must give his own mudra to the pupil with the idea that she is his wife” (Naropa,
1994, p. 195). This passage remains a little unclear, since he has already
given a mudra to the pupil as
“wife” during the preceding vase initiation (12).
During the following wisdom initiation (14), the
sadhaka, surrounded by the remaining women, unites firstly with the mudra which the guru has let him
have. But it does not remain just the one. “Since it is a matter of ten mudras, the master must offer the
pupil as many of them as he is able to sexually possess, and that in two
periods of 24 minutes each, beginning from midnight until the sun rises”,
Naropa reports (Naropa, 1994, p. 195). He thus has tenfold sexual
intercourse in the presence of the master and the remaining women.
In contrast to his guru, the sadhaka may under no circumstances express his semen during the
ritual; rather he must only bring his drops of bodhicitta to the tip of his penis and then draw up the semen feminile of one yogini after
another (Naropa, 1994, p. 196). Should he not succeed, he is condemned to
hell. There is, however, still a chance for him to escape divine judgment:
“If, due to a weakness of the spirit, the bodhicitta [semen] is spilled in the vulva, then it is
advisable to collect with the tongue that of it which remains outside of
the lotus [vagina]" (Naropa, 1994, p. 196).
The fourth, word initiation (15) designates the
“supreme state of perfection”. In the three prior initiations the sadhaka
has drawn off the gynergy of his
partners and reached a state of bliss. He has now become a vajra master himself. This is the
result of the inner energy processes in his mystic body, which he has
completed during the ritual and which we describe in the next chapter.
What happens now, at the end of this “disciplined”
orgy, to the women who participated in the “witches’ Sabbath”? The sources
are scant. But we nonetheless have access to a translation from the third
chapter of the Kalachakra Tantra
by Albert Grünwedel. This is to be treated with great caution, but taking
into account the concreteness of the images the translator can not have
made many errors here. Grünwedel tells us that, “At the end of the
solemnity a breast-jacket, beneficial to her tender body, is to be given to
the blessed earthly formed [i.e., the karma
mudras mentioned above]. Holy yoginis are to be given another
breast-jacket with a skirt” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra
III, p. 201). And in the following section the tantra recommends giving
the girls scented flowers, fruit, and a scarf as mementos of the unique
rendezvous (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III,
p. 202).
The four-stage ritual just described is known as Ganachakra. It is the deepest secret
of the Kalachakra Tantras, but is
also known in the other Highest Tantras. Now, at which secret locations are
such Ganachakras carried out? The
famous (fourteenth-century) Tibetan historian, Buston, suggests using
“one’s own house, a hidden, deserted or also agreeable location, a
mountain, a cave, a thicket, the shores of a large lake, a cemetery, a
temple of the mother goddess” (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 376). Not
recommendable are, in contrast, the home of a Brahman or noble, a royal palace
or a monastery garden. The Hevajra
Tantra is more degenerate and less compromising regarding the choice of
location for the Ganachakra
ritual: “These feasts must be held in cemeteries, in mountain groves or
deserted places which are frequented by non-human beings. It must have nine
seats which are made of parts of corpses, tiger skins or rags which come
from a cemetery. In the middle can be found the master, who represents the
god Hevajra, and round about the
yoginis ... are posted” (Naropa, 1994, p. 46). With the guru in the center
these form a magic circle, a living mandala.
The number of participating yoginis differs from
tantra to tantra. It ranges from eight to sixty-four. Numbers like the
latter appear unrealistic. Yet one must bear in mind that in the past Ganachakras were also carried out by
powerful oriental rulers, who would hardly have had difficulties organizing
this considerably quantity of women together in one place. It is, however,
highly unlikely that these tantra masters copulated with all 64 yoginis in
one night.
Various ritual objects are handed to the women
during the ritual of which the majority, if not all, are of an aggressive
nature: cleavers, swords, bone trumpets, skulls, skewers.
As a cult meal the above-mentioned holy nectars are served: excrement,
human flesh, and the meat of various taboo animals. To drink there is
menstrual blood, urine, semen, and so forth. The third chapter of the Kalachakra Tantra recommends “slime,
snot, tears, fat, saliva, filth, feces, urine, marrow, excrement, liver,
gall, blood, skin, flesh, sperm, entrails” (Grünwedel, Kalacakra III, p. 155).
The sacrificial flesh of the “sevenfold born”
which we mention above is, when available, also offered as a sacred food at
a Ganachakra. In the story which
frames a tantric tale, the Vajradakinigiti,
several dakinis kill a sevenfold-born king’s son in order to make a
sacrificial meal of his flesh and blood. Likewise, two scenes from the life
of the Kalachakra master Tilopa
are known in which the consumption of a “sevenfold born” at a dakini feast
is mentioned (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, pp. 393-394).
Albert Grünwedel believed that the female partners
of the gurus were originally sacrificed at the Ganachakra and in fact were burned at the stake like European
witches so as to then be resurrected as “dakinis”, as tantric demonesses.
His hypothesis is difficult to confirm on the basis of the available
historical evidence. Nonetheless, as far as the symbolic significance of
the ritual is concerned, we can safely assume that we are here dealing with
a sacrificial ceremony. For example, Buston (14th century), in connection
with the highest Kalachakra
initiations and thus also in relation to the Ganachakra, speaks of “secret victims” (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992,
p. 386). The ten karma mudras present during the ritual go
by the name of “sacrificial goddesses”. One event in the Ganachakra proceedings is known as
“sacrifice of the assembly”, which can only have meant the sacrifice of the
women present (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 386). A further interpreter of the
tantras, Abhinavagupta, refers to the Ganachakra
as the “sacrifice of the wheel” (chakra
means ‘wheel’) or as the “highest sacrifice” (Naropa, 1994, p. 46).
Everything which we have said about the “tantric
female sacrifice” is without doubt also true for the Ganachakra. There are documents which prove that such
sacrifices were really carried out. In the eleventh century a group of the
notorious “robber monks” became prominent, of whom the following can be
read in the Blue Annals: “The
doctrine of the eighteen [robber monks] consisted of a corrupt form of the
tantric praxis, they kidnapped women and men and were in the habit of
performing human sacrifices during the tantric feasts (ganacakra - puja)” (Blue
Annals, 1995, p. 697). Such excesses were criticized already by the
traditional Tibetan historians, albeit with a certain leniency. Thus the
Fifth Dalai Lama, who himself wrote a history of Tibet, exonerated the guru
of the eighteen robber monks, Prajnagupta by name, of all guilt, whilst he
condemned his “pupils” as the guilty party (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p. 418,
note 11).
Obviously, a Buddhist Ganachakra is always led by a man. Yet, like much in Tantrism,
this ritual also seems to have had a matriarchal origin. The Indologist
Marie-Thérèse de Mallmann describes in detail such a gynocentric “circle
feast” from the sixth century. It was staged by a powerful oriental queen.
In one document it is said of her that, “through her [the queen], the
circle king was reduced to the role of a sacrifice which was performed in
the circle (chakra) of the
goddesses” (Mallmann, 1963, p. 172). It thus involved the carrying out of a
king sacrifice, found in many ancient matriarchal cultures, in which the
old king was replaced by a new one. The sacrificial victim here is at any
rate a man. In the Ganachakra of
Buddhist Tantrism precisely the opposite took place! The yoginis are
sacrificed and the guru elevates himself to the triumphant king of the
circle.
The gynocentric ritual was also known under the
names of “wheel of the goddesses”, “wheel of the mother” or “wheel of the
witches”. Its wide distribution in the fifth and sixth centuries, above all
in Kashmir, supports our above hypothesis, that there was a powerful
reawakening of old matriarchal cults in India during this period.
Contemporary feminism has also rediscovered the
matriarchal origins of the Ganachakra.
Adelheid Herrmann-Pfand is able to refer to several somewhat ambivalent
Tibetan textual passages in which in her view Ganachakras were formerly directed by women (Herrmann-Pfand,
1992, pp. 379, 479). She therefore reaches the conclusion that this ritual
is a matter of a “patriarchal usurpation” of a matriarchal cult.
Miranda Shaw on the other hand, can almost be said
to revel in the idea of “female witch circles” and takes every Ganachakra which is mentioned in the
tantras to be a purely female feast. She reverses the proceedings outright:
“Tantric literature”, the feminist writes, “records numerous instances
wherein yogis gain admittance to an assembly of yoginis. Inclusion in a
yogini feast is seen as a high honor for a male practitioner. In the
classic scenario, a yogi unexpectedly finds himself in the presence of a convocation of yoginis, perhaps in the depths of a
forest, a deserted temple, or a cremation ground. He seeks entry to their
assembly circle and feasts with them, receives initiation from them, and
obtains magical lore and tantric teachings” (Shaw, 1994, p. 82). Based upon
what we have analyzed to date, Shaw’s interpretation cannot be dismissed
out of hand. In Buddhist Tantrism women were indeed accorded all power, it
is just that at the end of the game the gynergy
and power of the woman have, through the accomplished use of method (upaya), landed in the hands of the
male guru.
As always, in this case too the question emerges
as to whether the Ganachakra is
to be understood as real or “just” symbolically. Texts by Sapan (thirteenth
century) and Buston (fourteenth century) leave no doubt about its really
being conducted. Alexandra David Néel nevertheless concludes that the
sacrificial feast in the described form have no longer been practiced in
our century. Symbolic stagings, in which no real women participate and are
replaced by substitutes such as vases, are a different matter. According to
statements by modern lamas, such ersatz Ganachakras
were widespread up until the Chinese occupation (Herrmann-Pfand, 1992, p.
416).
We would like to briefly discuss whether we are
dealing with an orgy in the case of the Ganachakra.
Archaic people understood an orgy to be indiscriminate sexual mixing within
a group. It was precisely the chaotic, ecstatic, and uncontrolled behavior
of the participants determined the course of events amid the general
promiscuity. Through the orgy ordered time was suspended, there was no
hierarchy among the participants. For a few hours the “profane” state of
established social order seceded to the “holy” turbulence of chaos.
Usually, this occurred so as to invoke the fertility of the earth. It was
agricultural and horticultural societies who preferentially fostered the
orgy as a high point of their sacred rites. In contrast ,
the Buddhist Ganachakra must be
seen as a controlled performance from start to finish. Admittedly it does
make us of elements of the orgy (group sexuality and the wild dances of the
yoginis), but the tantra master always maintains complete control over
events.
Thus, at the end of this presentation of the
fifteen initiation stages of the Kalachakra
Tantra we can establish that all the essential features which we
described in the general section on Tantrism reemerge in this “highest”
occult teaching of Tibetan Buddhism: the absorption of gynergy, the alchemic transmutation of sexual energy, indeed
from sexual fluids into androcentric power, the creation of androgyny, the
sacrifice of the mudra and the sadhaka, the destruction of people
to the benefit of the gods, and so on. To this extent the Kalachakra in essence does not
differ from the other tantric systems of teachings. It is simply more
comprehensive, magnificent and logically consistent. Additionally, there is
its political eschatology, which allowed it to become the state tantra of
Lamaism and which we still have to explore.
All the events in the tantric performance which we
have described so far have been played out in the external world, in the
system of rituals, the sexual magic practices and perceptible reality. The
final goal of this visible tantric endeavor is that the yogi
absorb all of the energies set free during the ritual (those of the mudra, the pupil, and the evoked
deities). Only thus can he become the ONE who concentrates within himself
the “many”, but above all the masculine and feminine principles, so as to
subsequently, in a still to be described second phase, bring it all forth
again. From here on he has first reached his perfected form, that of the
ADI BUDDHA (the Highest Buddha), who in Tantrism is the ultimate cause of
all appearances.
Footnotes:
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