WHAT IS HINDUISM?
meditative exercises to destroy and transcend life, nature
and the soul. In this phase the bearer of androcentric
power is the ascetic holy man or Arhat.
- In Mahayana, the “Great Vehicle”, flight from women is
succeeded by compassion for them. The woman is to be
freed from her physical body, and the Mahayana monk
selflessly helps her to prepare for the necessary
transformation, so that she can become a man in her next
reincarnation. The feminine is thus still considered inferior
and despicable, as that which must be sacrificed in order to
be transformed into something purely masculine. In both
founding philosophical schools of Mahayana Buddhism
(Madhyamika and Yogachara), life, nature, the body and the
soul are accordingly sacrificed to the absolute spirit (citta).
The bearer of androcentric power in this phase is the
“Savior” or Bodhisattva. - In [Buddhist] Tantrism or Vajrayana, the tantric master
(yogi) exchanges compassion with the woman for absolute
control over the feminine. With sexual magic rites he
elevates the woman to the status of a goddess in order to
subsequently offer her up as a real or symbolic sacrifice.
The beneficiary of this sacrifice is not some god, but the
yogi himself, since he absorbs within himself the complete
life energy^1 of the sacrifice.
If, as the adherents of Buddhist Tantrism claim, a logic
of development pertains between the various stages of