© Victor & Victoria Trimondi
The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Part I – 12. Epilogue to part I
12. EPILOGUE TO PART I
We have shown that Buddhism
has from the very beginning considered the feminine principle to be a force
which acts in opposition to its redemptive concepts. All types of women,
from the mother to the lover, the wife, the hetaera, even the Buddhist nun,
are seen to be more or less obstructions along the path to enlightenment.
This negative evaluation of the feminine does not and never did have — as
is often currently claimed — a social origin, but must rather be considered
as a dogmatic and fundamental doctrine of this religion. It is an
unavoidable consequence of the opening sentence of the Four Noble Truths, which states that all life is, per se,
suffering. From this we can conclude that each and every birth brings only
misery, sickness, and death, or conversely, that only the cessation of
reincarnation leads to liberation. The woman, as the place of conception
and childbearing, opens the gateway to incarnation, and is thus considered
to be the greatest adversary to the spiritual development of the man and of
humanity in total.
This implies that the
deactivation, the sacrifice, and the destruction of the feminine principle is a central concern of Buddhism. The “female sacrifice”
is already played out in one of the first legends from the life of Buddha,
the early death of Buddha's mother Maya.
Even her name evokes the Indian goddess of the feminine world of illusion;
the death of Maya (illusion)
simultaneously signifies the appearance of the absolute truth (Buddha), since Maya represents only relative truth.
We have shown how Shakyamuni's fundamentally misogynist attitude was set
forth in the ensuing phases of Buddhism — in the meditative dismemberment
of the female during a spiritual exercise in Hinayana; in the attempt to change the sex of the woman so that she can
gain entry to the higher spiritual spheres as a male in Mahayana.
In Vajrayana the negative
attitude towards the feminine tips over into an apparently positive
valuation. Women, sexuality, and the erotic receive a previously unknown
elevation in the tantric texts, a deification in
fact. We have nonetheless been able to demonstrate that this reversal of
the image of the woman is for the yogi merely a means to an end — to steal
the feminine energy (gynergy)
concentrated within her as a goddess. We have termed the sexual magic
rituals through which this thieving transfer of energy is conducted the
“tantric female sacrifice”, intended in its broadest sense and irrespective
of whether the theft really or merely symbolically takes place, since the
distinction between reality and the world of symbols is in the final
instance irrelevant for a Tantric. All that is real is symbolic, and every
symbol is real!
The goal of the female
sacrifice and the diversion of gynergy is the production of a superhuman androgynous
being, which combines within itself both forces,
the masculine and the feminine. Buddhist Tantrics
consider such a combination of sexual energies within a single individual
to be an expression of supreme power. He as a man has become a bearer of
the maha mudra,
the vessel of an “inner woman”. In the light of the material we have
researched and reported, we must view our opening hypothesis, repeated
here, as confirmed:
The mystery of Tantric Buddhism consists in the sacrifice of
the feminine principle
and the manipulation of erotic love in order to obtain
universal androcentric power
Since, from the viewpoint of
a tantric master, the highest (androcentric
power) can only be achieved via the ritual transformation of the lowest
(the real woman), he also applies this miracle of transubstantiation to
other domains. Thus he employs all manner of repulsive, base substances in
his rituals, and commits criminal deeds up to and including murder, in
order to achieve, via the “law of inversion”, the exact opposite: joy,
power, and beauty. We have, however, indicated with some force how this
“familiarity with the demonic” can become a matter of course. This brings
with it the danger that the Tantric is no longer able to overcome the
negativity of his actions. The consequence is a fundamentally aggressive
and morbid attitude, which — as we will show — forms one of the
characteristics of the entire Tibetan culture.
As the Kalachakra Tantra
includes within itself the core ideas and the methods of all other tantras, and as it represents the central ritual of the
Dalai Lama, we concentrated upon an analysis of this text and offered a
detailed description of the various public and secret initiations. We were
able to demonstrate how the internal processes within the energy body of
the yogi are aligned with external ritual procedures, and how the “female sacrifice”
takes place in both spheres — externally through the “extermination” of the
real woman (karma mudra)
and internally through the extermination of the candali (“fire woman”).
The Kalachakra Tantra,
too, has as its goal the “alchemical” creation of a cosmic androgyne, who is supposed to exercise total control
over time, the planets, and the universe. This androgynous universal ruler
(dominus mundi) is the ADI BUDDHA. Only
after he can align his sexual magic rites and his inner physiological
processes with the laws of the heavens and earth can a practicing yogi
become ADI BUDDHA. He then sets sun, moon, and stars in motion with his
breath, and by the same means steers the evolution of the human race. His
mystic body and the cosmic body of the ADI BUDDHA form a unit, and thus his
bodily politics (the motions of the internal energy flows) affects and
effects world politics in every sense.
On the astral plane, the
yogi unleashes a gigantic war among the stars before he becomes ADI BUDDHA,
which likewise aims to sacrifice the gender polarity (represented by the
sun and moon). In the final act of this apocalyptic performance, the
tantric master burns up the cosmos in a murderous firestorm so as to allow
a new world to emerge from the ashes of the old, a world which is totally
subject to his imagination and will. [1]
Only than does the ADI BUDDHA's (or yogi's) dominion encompass the entire
universe, in the form of a mandala.
In his political role (as
King of the World) the ADI BUDDHA is a Chakravartin, a cosmic wheel
turner who governs the cosmos, conceived of as a wheel. This vision of
power is linked by the Shambhala myth
in the Kalachakra Tantra to
a political utopia, one which is
aggressive and warlike, despotic and totalitarian. This Buddhocratic
world kingdom is controlled by an omnipotent priest-king (the Chakravartin),
a lord of evolution, a further emanation of the
ADI BUDDHA.
Admittedly, there are many
literary attempts to interpret the entire construction of the Kalachakra Tantra as
the symbolic playing out of psychic/spiritual processes which ought to be
accessible to any person who sets out upon the Vajrayana path. But there is a strong suspicion — and in our historical
section we table conclusive evidence for this — that the ideas and the
goals of the Time Tantra are meant literally,
i.e., that we are concerned with a real
dominus mundi (world ruler), with the
establishment of a real Buddhocracy, the real
Buddhization of our planet — even (as the Shambhala myth prophesies) through military
force.
But perhaps the Shambhala vision is even more concrete, then the concept of an ADI BUDDHA and a Chakravartin
can only refer to one present-day individual, who has for years and uncontestedly fulfilled all the esoteric conditions of
the Kalachakra Tantra.
This individual is His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama.
The Time Tantra
would then form the ideological and dogmatic basis of a strategy for the
spiritual conquest of our planet by the Tibetan god-king. Thus, if we wish
to understand his political decisions in their full depth, we must start
with the magic metapolitics of the Kalachakra Tantra,
since both levels (the ritual/magical, and the real/political) are — as we
will demonstrate through many examples — intimately interwoven in the
ancient world of Lamaism. The autocratic religious system of the god-king
integrates all the social domains and political powers which have been
separated in our Western culture at least since the North American and
French Revolutions. The Dalai Lama is — according to the doctrine — Emperor
and Pope, state and god in one person, he is the living sacred center of a
“Buddhocracy”.
He meets all the criteria we
have brought to light for a tantric world ruler (Chakravartin) or an ADI
BUDDHA. But, since he does not really govern our planets, his rituals and
political powerplay decisions, his negotiations
and his statements must all be seen as tactical and strategic steps towards
the eventual achievement of the final global goal (of world domination). [2] This ambitious enterprise will in no way
be interrupted by the death of the god-king, since he can — reincarnated —
build upon the acts of his predecessor (which he also was) and continue his
work.
His Holiness would never
publicly admit that he aspired to the global role of a Chakravartin through the Kalachakra
initiations. Yet numerous symbolic events which have accompanied his
ceremonial life since childhood are harbingers of his unrestricted claim to
“world domination”. In 1940, as a five year-old, he was led with much
ostentation into the Potala,
the “Palace of the Gods”, and seated upon the richly symbolic “Lion
Throne”. This enthronement already demonstrated his kingship of the world
and expressed his right to worldly power, as the “Lion Throne”, in contrast
to the Seat of the Lotus, is a symbol of the imperium (secular power) and
not the sacerdotium
(spiritual power). On 17 November 1950, the god-king was ceremoniously
handed the “Golden Wheel”, which identified him as the “universal wheel
turner” (Chakravartin).
But it is less these
insignia of power which make him (who has lost his entire land) a potential
planetary sovereign in the eyes of his Western believers, [3] than the fact
that a long dormant image of desire has resurfaced in the imaginations of
Europeans and Americans. “Which people, which nation, which culture”,
Claude B. Levenson enthuses about the Dalai Lama,
for example, “has not, within its collective consciousness, dreamed of a perfect
monarch, who, imbued with a sense of justice and equanimity, is entrusted
to watch over the well-ordered course of a harmonic and in every sense just
society? The image of the Great King also nestles somewhere in the depths
of the human spirit ... there is something of Judgment Day and the
Resurrection in these manifold interpretations of sincere belief” (Levenson 1990, p.303).
Such a global dominion, that
is, total power over the earth, contradicts the apparent total political
impotence of the Dalai Lama which is enhanced by his constantly repeated
statements of self-denial ("I am just a simple monk”). But let us not
forget the tantric play upon paradox and the “law of inversion”. This
secular powerlessness is precisely the precondition for the miracle which
reveals how the lowly, the empty, and the weak give rise to the exalted,
the abundant, and the strong. The “simple monk from Tibet” can — if the
doctrines of his tantric texts are correct — count on the dizzying rotation
which will one day hurl him high from the depths of impotence to become the
most powerful ruler of the universe. Absolute modesty and absolute power
are for him as Tantric two sides of the same coin.
The Dalai Lama never appears
in the public light as a Tantric, but always as a Mahayana Bodhisattva, who thinks only upon the suffering of all
living beings, and regards it with deepest compassion. Tantrism,
upon which Tibetan Buddhism in its entirety is essentially based, thus
belongs to the shadow side of the Kundun
("living Buddha”). His sexual magic rites shun the light just as much
as the claims for global domination they intend. This is especially true of
the Kalachakra Tantra.
We mentioned already in the
introduction that a person can deny, suppress, or outwardly project his
shadow. Insofar as he knowingly veils the procedures which take place in
the highest initiation of the Time Tantra, the
Dalai Lama denies his tantric
shadow; in as far as he is probably unclear about the catastrophic
consequences of the Shambhala myth (as we will
demonstrate in the case of Shoko Asahara), he suppresses his tantric shadow;
insofar as he transfers everything negative, which according to the “law of
inversion” represents the starting substance (prima materia)
for spiritual transformation anyway, to the Chinese, he projects his tantric shadow onto
others.
The aggression and morbidity
of the tantra, the sexual excesses, the “female
sacrifice”, the “vampirism” of energy, the omnipotent power claims, the
global destructive frenzy — all of these are systematically disguised by
the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and can, even when the majority of the tantric
texts are publicly available, be still further disguised — on the one hand
by the argument that it is all only a matter of symbolic events that would
never be conducted in reality, and, on the other hand, by the tantras’ claim that any negative actions have
transformed themselves into positive ones by the end of the ritual.
As far as the first argument
is concerned, we have been able to present numerous cases where the tantric
texts have been interpreted thoroughly literally. Further, we have shown
that this argument collapses upon itself, since no distinction between
symbol and reality may be drawn by a Vajrayana Buddhist, as
opposed to a contemporary “westerner”.
The second argument, that
the tantras transform the negative into the
positive (i.e., would call upon the devil to drive the devil out), needs to
be able to stand up to empirical testing. The most telling body of evidence
for the tantric theory, in particular for the philosophy and vision of the Kalachakra Tantra, is
history itself. Over many hundreds of years thousands of tantric rituals
have been performed in Tibet; for centuries people have tried to influence
the history of the country through tantric rituals. But what, up to now,
has this ritual politics achieved for the Tibetans and for humanity, and
what is it aiming to achieve? We will consider the use of Buddhist Tantrism as a political method for better understanding
the history of Tibet and influencing the country's destiny in the
following, second part of our book. Here, our topic will be the influence
of Vajrayana
upon the Buddhist state, the economy, the military, upon foreign affairs
and world politics.
Footnotes:
[2] For this reason we must
regard statements on practical politics by the Dalai Lama, which contradict
the ideas of the Time Tantra (like, for instance
his professions of belief in western democracy), as a mere tactic or trick
(upaya)
in order to mislead those around him as to his true intentions (the
establishment of a worldwide Buddhocracy).
[3] For Tibetans and
Mongolians who believe in Lamaism, the conception of the Dalai Lama as the Chakravartin
is a matter of course.
Next Chapter:
PART II – INTRODUCTION – POLITICS AS RITUAL
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