Biernacki Loriliai Renowned Goddess of Women Sex and Speech in Tantra

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. 129In contrast to Raheja s proverb, in the Blue Goddess of Speech Tantra (NST),the Great God Siva says, Better to abandon Brahma, Sambhu and Hari, betterthat I (Bhairava) myself be abandoned, than that one should insult one s be-loved (fem.). One s worship is in vain, one s mantra recitation is useless, thehymns one recites are in vain, the fire ceremonies with gifts to priests; all theseare in vain if one does that which is offensive to a woman. 130If one insults a woman, then all one s spiritual endeavors are useless.Inthis instance one can imagine this playing out on the domestic front a hus-band all wrapped up in his spiritual quest, worshiping the gods while his wifetries to get him to take care of her and the family s needs.(The husband pro-tagonist in Deepa Mehta s Fire [1998] comes to mind.) In our scenario here,this wife would have a scriptural injunction to back her case.Siva, however,58 renowned goddess of desiregoes further than this; he continues, Better to die than to do that which isoffensive to a woman. 131The MT offers the same advice as the NST, and then goes even further.Here, not only are the male gods playing second fiddle, and one should give upone s life rather than insult a woman, but more than this, even the goddess isrelegated to a secondary position. Better even that one should abandon theGoddess (dev%2ł); but one should not in any way abandon one s own belovedfemale partner. 132 This is especially key in that the ordinary woman is givenmore importance than the goddess.Usually we find that the ordinary womanhas importance only because she is understood as the goddess temporarilyincarnate.However, here, this author contrasts the two and declares the or-dinary woman more important.The MT also supplies the rationale for prior-itizing one s female partner: Not the creator, not Viqpu, not Siva, not thebeautiful Goddess, not the primeval eternal Goddess none of these [godsor goddesses] will be able to protect the person who does that which is offen-sive to women. 133 That is, this ordinary woman has a power intrinsic to herbeing and deserves respect as a result.So women are accorded this respectbecause intrinsically they are gods, striyo devah. However, it is rather curiousthat the texts all use the masculine word god (deva).That is, women aregods and not goddesses.Elsewhere in these texts in profusion, women areassimilated to goddesses.For instance, Siva says to the goddess, women are intheir essence, you, 134 using the feminine form.Why are they here in the Kal%2ł Practice indicated by the masculine term god?135I m going to suggest that the use of the masculine here is a linguisticmarker referencing another class of gods, and that as a class of gods, womenresemble this other class of living breathing gods.That is, the status that wefind for women in these texts in many respects parallels the bhu-deva, the earth-gods, that is, Brahmins, that class of humans who are like gods, butwalk the face of the earth.This is corroborated in other ways; for instance, the GST applies thesame procedure of feeding Brahmins for the attainment of religious merit towomen. Earlier the rules were given that one should feed a Brahmin accord-ing to one s ability.In the same way one should feed a woman (GST 5.9bf.).Women are like Brahmins, and just as feeding a Brahmin brings merit, so doesfeeding a woman.Similarly, the BT also tells us that worshiping a womanbrings results equal to that which one gains by giving a learned Brahmin a fieldrich with grain (BT 6.7f.).Elsewhere, in a list where we might expect to findBrahmins listed, women take their place.The CT says, One should makegreat efforts and with devotion worship the guru, goddess, sadhus (itinerantpractitioners), woman, and the immortal self. 136 It would not have been at allthe kl%2ł practice 59against normative expectations to find Brahmins in this fourth position slot;instead here we find the category women. Again, the GST describes for eachof the four castes the state of beatitude one can expect from the repetition of themantra associated with the Five Ms.137 Here, the Brahmin is absorbed into thesupreme self; the warrior caste (kqatriya) gets to dwell with the supreme god-dess eternally; the merchant attains the same form as the supreme goddess(svarupa); and the servant caste (sudra) gets to live in the same general world asthe goddess (saloka).The text then includes women as a fifth caste, who getabsorbed into the body of the goddess.138The point of interest for us here is that women are marked as a class, likeBrahmins, like the other three castes.They function as a category, just as Brah-mins function as a category.One should not harm women as a class, becausewomen are a class.Like Brahmins, who should also not be harmed becausethey are earth-walking gods (bhu-devah), women are also a class of gods whohappen to be walking on earth.And again, just as we find in normative Hin-duism that serving Brahmins, these earth-walking gods, leads a person to sal-vation, so similarly, all beings reach salvation by serving women. 139 Earlier Inoted a verse from the GST that assimilates women as a class to the creatorgod.In fact, this is precisely what we find with Brahmins who get linguisticallyand otherwise assimilated to the creator god Brahma.This class action reverence is not at all like the respect accorded to the guruor the yog%2ł.In the case of the guru especially, most Tantric texts, includingthese, are eminently cognizant of the existence of both good and false gurus,and take no pains to supply us with lists of the qualities we might expect to seein both.Gurus are individuals and individually merit worship and respect.Notso the case with Brahmins, and here with women.Just as Brahmins as a classare categorically offered respect, so these texts enjoin this sort of class-basedrespect toward women.We should keep in mind here how radically this di-verges from normative Hindu tradition where women as a caste are mostlylumped in with, or placed on a par with, the lowest of the four castes, thesudras.140 Likewise, women s facility with mantras extends to members of theclass as a whole and not specifically to particular women.What does this class action reverence mean for women? It affords a way forshifting the status women have in the social sphere.For our own purposes,what s interesting about this is precisely that it does not rely especially upon aversion of gender founded on a duality.This nonbinary model, I suspect, ispart of what s key in the reconfiguring of women s roles.A dualistic model, onecould argue, implicitly structures itself around a notion of self and other thatinevitably encodes an agonistic model, which by its very form as duality resistsreconciliation.It may be that, as Kristeva and Lacan argue, insofar as we60 renowned goddess of desireconstruct our sense of self out of an element that must be extruded outside andalienated as other to our selves and as an other that has historically takenthe form of woman, as both Lacan and Kristeva note141 this other, as aperpetually alienated other, then becomes and remains intrinsic to the sta-bility of self.That is, we can t get rid of the other without destabilizing oursense of self [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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