To hide these esoteric techniques from laypeople, old texts used various metaphors to made it hard to grasp the content of the rituals. For example, the vagina was routinely referred to as “lotus,” sperm was called “enlightenment consciousness,” menstrual blood was labeled
“the sun,” and breasts were the “vase that holds white.” Although until recently, Kalachakra masters did not reach an agreement about whether the presence of the second sex should be actual or symbolic, it is obvious that in the past, Kalachakra practices did involve ritual use of 11
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sexuality. h e best evidence for this is the images of Tibetan Buddhist gods, who were frequently portrayed brandishing various morbid objects such as skulls and weapons while simultaneously having sex with their divine female consorts.
As important as it might be, channeling sexual l uids into spiritual energy was not the only technique used at the stage of “perfection.” In the highest initiations, an adept was to ingest various substances forbidden in Tibetan Buddhism, such as menstrual blood, l esh, urine, pieces of skin, liver, and anal excrements. It was assumed that by exposing himself without fear to these disgusting substances, an adept was capable of going beyond good and evil toward spiritual bliss. In other words, to reach enlightenment, an initiate had to bravely stare the Devil in his eye. Or, as an old tantric wisdom said, “h ose things by which evil men conduct are bound, others turn into means and gain thereby release from the bonds of existence.” 15 h e same logic might explain why Tibetan-Mongol culture became so fascinated with the morbid. Buddhist art widely depicts images of skulls, severed heads, corpses, and scenes of murders. Monks were encouraged to meditate upon corpses in various stages of decay. It was also recommended that the highest Kalachakra initiations be performed at crematoria, charnel i elds, graves, and murder sites. 16
God Protectors and Defenders of the Buddhist Faith What immediately strikes one who looks at the images of Tibetan Buddhist deities is that many of them do not appear to be friendly beings.
One dei nitely will not i nd here any weeping Holy Marys or suf ering Christs. Instead, there are plenty of menacing and angry faces, sickles, daggers, and necklaces and cups made of human skulls, along with corpses trampled by divine feet. h e greater part of the text of h e Handbook of Tibetan Buddhist Symbols, the most complete description of Tibetan Buddhist iconography, deals with weapons, weapon-related artifacts, severed limbs and heads, human skulls, and bones. 17
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SHAMBHALA, KALACHAKRA TANTRA, AND AVENGING GODS OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM
Tibetan Buddhism has two special groups of deities that are invoked during a time of trouble to combat internal demons or enemies of the faith. h e i rst are god-protectors (yi-dam—Hevajara, Sang-dui, Ma-hamaya, Samvara, and Kalachakra)18 who shield lamas from demonic forces. h e second are eight terrible ones (dharmapalas), protectors of the faith (Begtse, Tsangs-pa, Kuvera, Palden Lhamo, Yama, Yamantaka, Hayagriva, and Mahakala), who wage war without mercy against all enemies of Buddhism. 19 Depicted on sacred scrolls or cast in bronze, these deities have wrathful features, and their body postures manifest anger and aggression as if saying, “Beware, demons and enemies of the faith.”
Figure 1.2. Black Mahakala, one of the wrathful deities in Tibetan Buddhism.
Bronze sculpture.
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h e avenging terrible ones are usually portrayed as short, muscular beings who wave various weapons (hatchets, battle axes, and swords) and crush human and supernatural enemies of Buddhism. Some of them wear crowns made of skulls with l aming pearls, ornaments of human bones, and necklaces of freshly severed human heads. One of the most important attributes of both god-protectors and the terrible ones are the skull cups (kapala) i lled with the blood of enemies. Moreover, many of these deities are frequently depicted having intercourse with their divine female companions—a reference to tantric practices.
h e most ferocious defender of the Buddhist faith is Palden Lhamo, the personal goddess-protector of the Dalai Lama and the holy city of Lhasa. On painted sacred scrolls, Palden Lhamo is frequently portrayed Figure 1.3. Palden Lhamo, a wrathful deity, protector of the Dalai Lama and the city of Lhasa. Bronze sculpture.
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SHAMBHALA, KALACHAKRA TANTRA, AND AVENGING GODS OF TIBETAN BUDDHISM
as a black, bony, four-armed lady with barred teeth, riding a horse. In her upper right hand she holds a chopper, and her second right arm holds a large red scull cup. h e upper let hand brandishes a diamond-shaped dagger. h e body of the goddess is covered with snakes, wreaths made of human skulls, and necklaces of severed heads. Her own head is topped with a crown of l owers. h e upper part of her body is covered with elephant skin and her hips with skin of an ox. Sometimes she is also pictured as standing amid a cemetery.
A gory legend, which one will never i nd in current cof ee-table books about Tibetan Buddhism, recounts how this goddess turned into such a ferocious being. Palden Lhamo was married to the king of Ceylon, who did not care about Buddhism, and that drove her crazy. As a die-hard true believer, Palden Lhamo took a horrible oath: if she failed to convert her husband to the true faith, she would destroy all her children in order to interrupt the royal lineage so hostile to Buddha’s creed.
No matter how hard she tried, the goddess could not convert her ini del husband, and, eventually, while the king was away, she had to fuli ll her terrible oath by murdering their only son. Not only did the queen kill the little one, but she also skinned him, ate his l esh, and drank his blood from a skull cup. Having completed this ferocious act, Palden Lhamo saddled her horse, using the son’s skin as a saddle, and galloped northward. Furious, the devastated father shot at her with a poisonous arrow and hit her horse. h e runaway queen pulled out the arrow and uttered magic words: “May the wound of my horse become an eye large enough to overtake the twenty-four regions, and may I myself extirpate the race of these malignant kings of Ceylon!” Sadly, the legend does not have a happy ending. Unpunished, the sadistic mother continued her journey through India, Tibet, and Mongolia, eventually settling in southern Siberia. 20 One does not need to guess twice to i gure out the brutal moral of the story: loyalty to one’s faith is supreme.
Modern-day literature about Tibetan Buddhism, which has been adjusted to Western ideas of human rights and universal peace, does not mention these facts from the past lives of the terrible ones, which is 15
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perfectly i ne: people who do not wish to be stuck in a medieval time tunnel usually change their religion and move on. For example, Celestial Gallery, an oversized cof ee-table book composed by current ad-herents of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, asks us not to fear Palden Lhamo’s garlands of skulls because she is simply “the wrathful mother who tramples on the enemies of complacency and self-deception” and challenges us to step on the path of spiritual evolution. h e same book also reveals that her demonic forms symbolize our own dark forces we have to deal with. 21
h e worship of wrathful dharmapalas was, and still is, very popular in the Tibetan Buddhist world. Common folk believe that prayers to the terrible ones are more ef ective than those addressed to benevolent gods, who are good anyway. In the past, to appease the ears of Palden Lhamo, Mahakala, Begtse, and other angry gods, lamas usually played thighbone trumpets made from human or tiger thighbones. Equally pleasing for these deities were sounds produced by skull drums made of human skins stretched over two human craniums. People could solicit the help of these gods through various of erings. h e most ef ective one, at least in the past, was blood, preferably from humans. h e best
blood was to be taken from a corpse or extracted from people suf ering from a contagious disease, for example leprosy. Menstrual blood of widows and prostitutes was also considered very ef ective. Another type of good blood could come from the blade of a sword or from a young healthy man killed during battle. 22 h e text of a 1903 sacrii cial prayer addressed to Genghis Khan (who had been turned into a protective deity) to ward of enemies of the faith, robbers, and lawbreakers prescribed, “Mix the following in brandy in equal parts: the blood of a man who has been killed, swarf from an iron bar by which a man has been killed, and of er this with l our, butter, milk and black tea. When this kind of sacrii ce is of ered, without any omission, then one will certainly be able to master anything, be it acts of war, enemies, robbers, brigands, the curses of hated opponents, or any adversity.” 23
16
As soon as Maitreya is born, he will walk seven steps forward, and where he puts down his feet a jewel or a lotus will spring up. He will raise his eyes to the ten directions, and will speak these words: “h is is my last birth. h
ere
will be no more rebirth at er this one. Never will I come back here, but, all pure, I shall win Nirvana!”
—Prophecy of Buddha Maitreya
Two
Power for the Powerless:
The Mongol-Tibetan World and Its
Prophecies
In modern times, the people of Mecca were no longer a threat to Tibetan Buddhism. In fact, now the mlecca were on the defensive, trying to shield themselves from the advances of Western civilization.
Beginning around the 1500s, Moslem encroachments on the followers of Buddha subsided, replaced by assertive advances by the Chinese, later joined by the Russians and, at the very end of the nineteenth century, by the English. h ese new “barbarians” did not care about converting the Mongols and Tibetans to their religions. h eir major interests were power and land for the Chinese and Russians, and trade for the English.
In the 1600s and 1700s, the Manchu Dynasty that ruled China secured control over Mongolia, Tuva, and Tibet. In the meantime, the Russian Empire rolled into southern Siberia and the Far East, taking over the Altai and Trans-Baikal area, clashing with China over spheres of inl uence. Finally, in the 1890s, Britain, i rmly established in India, began banging on the gates of Tibet, demanding that the “Forbidden Kingdom” open itself to international trade. When it refused, in 1904, like a bolt of lightning, the English thrust into the heart of Tibet, crushing Buddha’s warriors armed with swords and antiquated muskets. China and Russia did not like such aggressive advances in their backyard, and 19
