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© Victor
& Victoria Trimondi
The
Shadow of the Dalai Lama – Postscript: Creative polarity beyond tantrism
POSTSCRIPT:
CREATIVE POLARITY BEYOND
TANTRISM
As surprising as it may sound after our critical
analysis of Vajrayana,
we would in conclusion like to pose the question of whether Tantric
Buddhism does not harbor a religious archetype the disclosure,
dissemination and discussion of which could meet with great transcultural interest. Would it not be valuable to
discuss as religious concepts such tantric principles as the “mystical love
between the sexes”, the “union of the male and female principles”, or the unio mystica between
god and goddess?
As we demonstrated at the start of our study, Tantrism in all its variants is based upon a vision of
the polarity of being. It sees the primary cultic event on the path to
enlightenment in a mystical conjunction of poles, specifically in the
mystical union of the sexes. From a tantric point of view, all the
phenomena of the universe are linked to one another through erotic love and
sexuality, and our world of appearances is seen as the field in which these
two basic forces (Tibetan yab and yum;
Chinese yin and yang) act. They manifest themselves
as a polarity in both nature and the realm of the spirit. In the tantric
view of things, love is the great life force that pulsates through the
cosmos, primarily as heterosexual love between god and goddess, man and
woman. Their mutual affection acts as the creative principle.
“It is through love and in the face of love that
the world unfolds, through love it regains its original unity and its
eternal nondivision” — this statement is also
proclaimed in Vajrayana
(Faure, 1994, p. 56). For the Tantric, erotic and religious love are not separate. Sexuality and mysticism, eros and agape (spiritual love) are not
mutually exclusive contradictions.
Let us once more repeat the wonderful words with
which tantric texts describe the “holy marriage” between man and woman. In yuganaddha
(the mystic union) there is “neither affirmation nor denial, neither
existence nor non-existence, neither non-remembering nor remembering,
neither affection nor non-affection, neither the cause
nor the effect, neither the production nor the produced, neither purity
nor impurity, neither anything with form nor anything without form; it is
but the synthesis of all dualities” (Dasgupta,
1974, p. 114). In this synthesis “egoness is lost
and the two polar opposites fuse into a state of intimate and blissful
oneness” (Walker, 1982, p. 67).
A cooperation between the poles now replaces the
struggle between contradictions (or sexes). Body and spirit, erotic love
and transcendence, emotions and reason, being (samsara) and non-being (nirvana) are wedded. In yuganaddha, it is said,
all wars and disputes between good and evil, heaven and hell, day and
night, dream and perception, joy and suffering, praise and contempt are
pacified and stilled. Mirada Shaw celebrates the embrace of the male and
female Buddha as "an image of unity and blissful concord
between the sexes, a state of equilibrium and interdependence. This symbol
powerfully evokes a state of primordial wholeness an
completeness of being"
(Shaw, 1994, p. 200).
Divine erotic love does not jut lead to
enlightenment and liberation; the tantric view is that mystic gendered love
can also free all suffering beings. All forms of time originate from the
primordial divine couple. Along with the sun and moon and the “pair of
radiant planets”, the five elements also owe their existence to the cosmogonic erotic love. According to the Hevajra Tantra, “By uniting the
male and female sexual organs the holder of the Vow performs the erotic
union. From contact in
the erotic union, as the quality of hardness, Earth arises; Water arises
from the fluidity of semen; Fire arises from the friction of pounding; Air ist famed to be the movement and the Space is the
erotic pleasure” (Farrow
and Menon, 1992, p. 134). Language,
emotions, the senses — all have their origin in the love of the primordial
couple. In a world purged of darkness the couple stand
at the edge of darkness, the Kalachakra Tantra itself says (Banerjee,
1959, p. 24).
Nevertheless, as we have demonstrated, this
harmonious primordial image is misused in tantric rituals by an androcentric caste of monks for the ends of spiritual
and secular power. We refrain from describing once more the sexual magic
exploitation in Vajrayana, and would instead like to turn to
a philosophical question raised by this topic, namely the relationship
between the ONE (as the male principle) and the OTHER (as the female
principle).
Since Friedrich Hegel, the OTHER has become a key
topic of philosophical discussion. The absolute ONE or absolute mind is
unable to tolerate any OTHER besides itself. Only when the OTHER is
completely integrated into the ONE, only when it is “suspended” in the ONE
is the way of the mind complete. For then nature (the OTHER) has become
mind (the ONE). This is one way of succinctly describing one of the
fundamental elements of Hegelian philosophy.
In Vajrayana terminology, the absolute ONE that tolerates
no OTHER beyond himself is the androgynous ADI
BUDDHA. The OTHER (the feminine) surrenders its autonomy to the hegemony of
the ONE (the masculine). It is destroyed with one word. Yet the absolute
ONE of the ADI BUDDHA is radically questioned by the existence of an OTHER
(the feminine); his claims to infinity, cosmocentricity,
omnipotence, and divinity are threatened. “All is ONE or all is the ADI
BUDDHA” is a basic maxim of the tantric way. For this reason the OTHER
frightens and intimidates the ONE. The Buddhist Ken Wilber (a proponent of
the ADI BUDDHA principle) quotes the Upanishads in this connection: Wherever the OTHER is, there is dread (Wilber, 1990, p. 174) — and himself admits that everywhere where there is an OTHER,
there is also fear (Wilber, 1990, p. 280).
As already indicated, behind this existential fear
of the OTHER lies a fundamental gender issue. This has been taken up and
developed primarily by French feminists. In the “otherness” (autruité) of
the female Simone de Beauvoir saw a highly problematic fixing of the woman
created by the androcentric persective.
Men wanted to see women as the OTHER in order to be able to control them. The
woman was forced to define her identity via the perspective of the man.
Beauvoir’s successors, however, such as the femininst
Luce Irigaray, have lent “gender difference” and
AUTRUITÉ (otherness) a highly positive significance and have made it the
central topic of their feminine philosophy. Otherness here all but becomes
a female world unable to be grasped by either the male perspective or male
reason. It evades any kind of masculine fixation. Female subjectivity is
inaccessible for the male.
It is precisely the OTHERNESS which lets women
preserve their autonomy. They thus escape being objectified by men (the
male subject) and develop their own subjectivity (the female subject). Irigaray very clearly articulates how existing
religions block women’s path to a self-realization of their own: “She must
always be for men, available for their transcendence” (quoted by June Campbell, 1996, p.
155) — i.e., as Sophia, prajna, as
the “white virgin”, as a “wisdom dakini” (inana mudra).
In the male consciousness she lacks a subjectivity of her own, and is a
blank screen (shunyata)
onto which the man projects his own imaginings.
Yet the autonomy of the OTHER does not need to be
experienced as separation, fragmentation, lack, or as an alienating
element. It can just as well serve as the opposite, as the prerequisite for
the union of two subjects, complementarity, or
copula. The masculine and the feminine can behave in completely different
ways toward one another, either as a duality (of mutually exclusive
opposites = annihilation of the OTHER) or as a polarity (mutually complentary opposites = encounter with the OTHER). It
is almost a miracle that the sexes are fundamentally permitted to meet one
another in love without having to renounce their autonomy.
Buddhist Tantrism,
however, is not about such an encounter between man and woman, but purely
the question of how the yogi (as the masculine principle of the ONE) can
integrate the OTHER (the feminine principle) within himself
and render it useful by drawing off its gynergy.
Occult feminism involves the same phenomenon in reverse: how can the yogini (here the feminine principle of the ONE)
appropriate the androenergy of the man (here the
OTHER) so as to win gynandric power.
The appropriation of the OTHER (the goddess) by
the ONE (the ADI BUDDHA) is the core concept of Buddhist Tantrism. This makes it a phenomenon which, at this
level of generality, also shapes Western cultures and religions: “Male
religiosity masks an appropriation,” writes Luce Irigaray.
“This severs the relationship to the natural universe, its simplicity is
perverted. Certainly, this religiousness symbolizes a social universe
organized by men. But this organization is based on a sacrifice — of
nature, of the gendered body, especially that of the woman. It impels a
spirituality cut off from its natural roots and its surroundings. It can
thus not bring humanity to perfection. Spiritualization, socialization,
cultivation require that we set out from what is there. The patriarchal
system does not do this because it seeks to obliterate the foundations upon
which it is based” (Irigaray, 1991, p. 33).
The solution to the riddle of its mysteries that Tantrism poses is obvious. It can only involve the
union of the two poles, not their domination of one another. On its own the
(masculine) spirit is not sufficient to become “whole”, instead nature and spirit, emotions and reason, logos and eros, woman and man, god and goddess, a masculine and
a feminine Buddha as two autonomous beings must wed mystically (as yab and yum, yin and yang) as two
subjects that fuse together into a WE. The ADI BUDDHA of the Kalachakra Tantra,
however, is a divine SUBJECT (a SUPER EGO) that tries to consume the OTHER
(the goddess). Not until ONE SUBJECT forms a copula with ANOTHER SUBJECT can
a truly new dimension (WE) be entered: the great
WE in which both egos, the masculine and the feminine, are truly
“suspended”, truly “preserved”, and truly “transcended”. Perhaps it is this WE that is the cosmic secret to be discovered in
the profoundest sections of the tantras, and not
the ADI BUDDHA.
For in WE all the
polarities of the universe fuse, subjectivity and objectivity, rule and
servitude, union and division. The unio mystica with the partner dissolves both the
individual and the transpersonal subjectivity (the human ego and the divine
ego). Both poles, the masculine and the feminine, experience their
spiritual, psychic and physical unity as intersubjectivity,
as exchange, as WE. They join into a higher dimension without destroying
one another. The mystic WE thus forms a more encompassing quality of
experience than the ADI BUDDHA’s mystic EGO which seeks to swallow the
OTHER (the goddess).
Were man and woman to understand themselves as the
cosmic center, as god and goddess — as the tantric texts proclaim — were
they to experience themselves together as a religious authority, then the
androgynous guru in his role as the supreme god of “the mysteries of
gendered love” would vanish. In an essay on tantric practices, the Indologist Doniger O’Flaherty
describes several variants on androgyny and supplements these — not without
a trace of irony — with an additional “androgynous” model which is
basically not a model at all. “A third psychological androgyne,
less closely tied to any particular doctrine, is found not in a single
individual but in two: the man and the woman who join in perfect love,
Shakespeare’s beast with two backs. This is the image of ecstatic union,
another metaphor for the mystic realization of union with godhead. This is
the romantic ideal of complete merging, one with the other, so that each
experiences the other’s joy, not knowing whose is the hand that caresses or
whose the skin that is caressed. In this state,
the man and the woman in tantric ritual experience each other’s joy and
pain. This is the divine hierogamy, and, in its
various manifestations — as yab–yum, yin and yang, animus and anima — it is certainly the most
widespread of androgynous concepts” (O’Flaherty, 1982, p. 292).
When together — as Tantrism
teaches us despite everything — power is concentrated in man and woman;
divided they are powerless. WE equally implies
both the gaining of power and its renunciation. In WE
the two primal forces of being (masculine—feminine) are concentrated. To
this extent the WE is absolute, the Omnipotent. But at the same time WE
limits the power of the parts, as soon as they appear separately or lay
claim to the cosmos as individual genders (as an androgynous Almighty God
or as a gynandric Almighty Goddess). To this
extent, WE is essentially relative. It is only
effective when the two poles behave complementarily. As the supreme
principle, WE is completely unable to abuse any
OTHER or manipulate it for its own ends since every OTHER is by definition
an autonomous part of WE. In political terms, WE is
a fundamental democratic principle. It transcends all concepts of an enemy
and all war. The traditional dualisms of upper and lower, white and black,
bright and gloomy unite in a creative polarity in the WE.
As we have been able to demonstrate on the basis
of both the ritual logic of Vajrayana and, empirically,
the history of Tantric Buddhism (especially Lamaism), the androgynous
principle of Buddhist Tantrism leads ineluctably
to human sacrifice and war. The origins of every war lie in the battle of
the sexes — this aphorism from Greek mythology is especially true of Tantrism, which traces all that happens in the world
back to erotic love. Doesn’t this let us also conclude the reverse, that
peace between the sexes can produce peace in the world? Global
responsibility arises from mutual recognition and from respect for the
position of the partner, who is the other half of the whole. Compassion,
sensitivity towards everything that is other, understanding, harmony — all have their origin here. In the cosmogonic
erotic love between two people, Ludwig Klages
sees a revolutionary power that even has the strength to suspend “history”.
“Were the incredible to happen, even if were only between two out of
hundreds of millions, the power of the spirit’s curse would be broken, the
dreadful nightmare of ‘world history would melt away’, and ‘awakening would
bloom in streams of light’” (Klages, 1930, p.
198). The end of history via the love between man and woman, god and
goddess: the concept would definitely be compatible with a tantric
philosophy if it were not for the yogi’s final act of masculine usurpation.
Perhaps, we would like to further speculate,
mystic gender love might provide the religious mystery for a universal
“culture of erotic love” built upon both sensual and spiritual foundations.
Such an idea is by no means new. In the late 1960s in his book Eros and Civilization, the American
philosopher Herbert Marcuse outlined an “erotic” cultural schema.
Unfortunately, his “paradigmatic” (as it would be known these days)
approach, which was widely discussed in the late 1960s has become
completely forgotten. Among the basic joys of human existence, according
to Marcuse, is the division into sexes, the difference between male and female,
between penis and vagina, between you and me, even between mine and yours,
and these are extremely pleasant and satisfying divisions, or could be;
their elimination would not just be insane, but also a nightmare — the peak
of repression” (Marcuse, 1965, p. 239). This nightmare becomes real in the alchemic
practices of the Buddhist tradition. In that Vajrayana dissolves all
differences, ultimately even the polarity of the sexes, into the
androgynous principle of the ADI BUDDHA, it destroys the “Eros” of life,
even though it paradoxically recognizes this sexual polarity as the supreme
cosmic force.
As we were working on the final proofs of our
manuscript, the German magazine Bunte, which only a few weeks before had celebrated the
Dalai Lama as a god on earth, carried an article by the cultural
sociologist Nicolaus Sombart
entitled “Desire for the divine couple”. Sombart
so precisely expressed our own ideas that we would like to quote him at
length. “Why does the human project have a bipartite form in the divine
plan? The duality symbolizes the polarity of the world, the bipolarity that
is the basis for the dynamic of everything which happens in the world. Yin and yang. Apparently divided and yet belonging together,
contradictory, and complementary, antagonistic but designed for harmony,
synthesis and symbiosis. Only in mutual penetration do they complete each
other and become whole. The model of the world is that of a couple
eternally striving for union. The cosmic couple stand
by one another in the interaction of an erotic tension. It is a pair of
lovers. The misery of the world lies in the separation, isolation, and
loneliness of the parts that are attracted to each other, that belong
together; the joy and happiness lie in the union of the two sexes; not two
souls, this is not enough, but two bodies equipped for this purpose — a
pleasurable foretaste of the return to paradise” (Bunte, 46/1998, p. 40).
It is nonetheless remarkable how unsuccessful
mystic gendered love has been in establishing itself as a religious
archetype in human cultural history. Although the mystery of love between
man and woman is and has been practised and
experienced by millions, although most cultures have both male and female
deities, the unio mystica of
the sexes has largely not been recognized as a religion. Yet there is so
much which indicates that the harmony and love between man and woman (god
and goddess) could be granted the gravity of a universal paradigm and
become a bridge of peace between the various cultures. Selected insights
and images from the mysteries of Tantric Buddhism ought to be most useful
in the development of such a paradigm.
Divine couples are found in all cultures, even if
their religious veneration is not among the central mysteries. We also
encounter them in the pre-Buddhist mythologies of Tibet, where the two sexes
share their control over the world equally. Matthias Hermanns
tells us about Khen pa, the ruler of the heavens, and Khon ma, the earth mother, and quotes
the following sentence from an aboriginal Tibetan creation myth: “At first
heaven and earth are like father and mother” (Hermanns,
1965, p. 72). In the times of the original Tibetan kings there was a god of
man (pho-lha)
and a goddess of woman (mo-lha). A number of Central Asian myths see the sun
and moon as equal forces, with the sun playing the masculine and the moon
the feminine role (Bleichsteiner, 1937, p.19). In
one Bon myth, light and darkness are held to be the primordial cosmic
couple (Paul, 1981, p. 49).
In Tantric Buddhism, the central Buddhist couple
celebrated by the Nyingmapa School,
Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri — in translation the “supreme male
good” and the “supreme female good” — are such a potential primal couple. This Buddha couple are depicted in a yab–yum posture. Both partners are naked, i.e., pure and free.
Neither of them is carrying any symbols which might point to some hidden magicoreligious intention. Their nudity could be
interpreted as saying that Samantabhadra and Samantabhadri are beyond the
world of symbolism and are thus an image of polar purity, freed of gods,
myths, and insignia. Only the color of their bodies could be interpreted as
a metaphor. Samantabhadra
is blue as clear and open as the heavens, Samantabhadri is white as the
light.
Were one to formulate such visions of the
religious worship of the couple in Buddhist terminology, the four Buddha
couples of the four directions might emanate from a primal Buddha couple,
without this mystical pentad needing to be appropriated by a tantric master
in the form of an androgynous ADI BUDDHA (or by a sexual magic mistress as
a gynandric Almighty Goddess). In one Nepalese tantra text, for instance, the ADI BUDDHA (“supreme
consciousness”) and the ADI PRANJNA (“supreme wisdom”) are revered as the
primordial father and the primordial mother of the world (Hazra, 1986, p. 21). According to this text, all the
female beings in the universe are emanations of the ADI PRAJNA, and all
males those of the ADI BUDDHA.
Annex:
CRITICAL FORUM KALACHAKRA TANTRA
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