TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)experience nonamnestic dissociational states which merge into categories of
Buddhist saintliness where various aspects of time and space can be known and
recalled.
Finally, as a historical phenomenon, it is interesting that there seems to be a
correspondence between where the 'das-log and the archaic shaman flourish.
Both the biographical and the ethnographic evidence point to Tibet's outlying
areas, which included a higher percentage of semicivilized (non-Buddhist)
shamanist-animist peoples than in Central Tibet. Shamanism deals principally
with low-order spirits, which symbolize the ad hoc social and environmental
dangers which humans face. When, say, sickness strikes, or when one loses his
soul to a spirit, a shaman may find the offending demon, drive it away from his
client, or bargain with it for the return of the soul. However, the moral frame-
work in which such transactions take place is exceedingly narrow and is based
upon exchange, ransom, and threat. Buddhism aspires to a loftier view, which is
based upon a more abstract notion of how the world and human nature operate.
World relationships are based upon the systematic operations of karma; sickness
and soul-loss are ultimately not the results of ad hoc encounters with demons,
rather they occur as the result of the karmic intersection of victim and persecu-
tor, whose origin lies in moral debts that must be paid. And humans, while
imbued with the creative potential of Buddha-nature, are more likely to fail in
their realization of it, because they too easily fall prey to their own ignorance,
attachment and hatred. As the 'das-log texts continually remind us, all those
scary things which appear in Bardo and hell are appearances of our own minds,
and we have but to recognize our own ultimate nature to be free of them. The
'das-log's task then is clear; he must transform both the experience and the
moral framework of shamanism into a Buddhist view of things.^31
From a psychological point of view, the 'das-log's experience is patently a
shaman's initiatory "illness," displaying the classical symptoms of a dissociative
state: trance, oneiroid or hallucinatory phenomena, paramnesia and so on. We
use the word "illness" here with caution, since in recent "anthropological and
psychological literature, the pathological bias towards dissociation has been
lifted. For example, West (1967: 890) writes that dissociation is not necessarily
to be considered psychopathological ... Bourguignon (1965) emphasizes the
healing aspects of dissociation (writing of) "dissociation in the service of the
self' (1965: 55). It is linked to Kris' (1952: 60) formulation of "regression in
the service of the ego," i.e., a regressive experience which then leads to artistic
inspiration and creative integration, "which" can be cathartic and give relief and
expression to repressed thoughts, feelings and desires, as well as provide altern-
ative roles which satisfy individual needs." (Peters and Price-Williams 1980:
402).^32 West (1967: 889) also remarks that a dissociated state is a defence of ego
against material perceived as dangerous on either a conscious or unconscious
level: "maturational shortcomings, emotional conflicts, and stressful life situ-
ation are then superimposed upon each other to create a trap or impasse that
cannot be resolved by the patient 1-ecause of overwhelming anxiety inherent in