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Penny Dahlen, Ed.D., is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Counselor Education at
Adams State College in Alamosa, Colorado. She is also a therapist at San Luis Valley Mental
Health Center, where she specializes in treating people who have been traumatized by
authority figures
This article is an electronic version of an article originally published in Cultic Studies Journal, 1997, Volume 14,
Number 1, pages 145-154. Please keep in mind that the pagination of this electronic reprint differs from that of the
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Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 96
Book Reviews
Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism. June
Campbell. George Braziller, New York, 1996, 240 pages.
Anyone who has followed the recent histories of Zen and Tibetan Buddhist teachers with
Western devotees knows that, too often, these same teachers have been criticized for both
authoritarian and sexual indiscretions. It is easy to play the cynic who believes that these
ostensibly celibate or married men --the teachers are almost always monks --find it hard
to resist “sexually liberal,” White Westerners who dote over them. And it is easy to degrade
devotees who submit “totally” to such gurus as no more than naïve seekers who should
have known better. In Traveller in Space, June Campbell delivers us beyond superficial
cynicism into a scholarly study of the unusual patriarchal system of Tibetan Tantra and its
relevance to female subjectivity.
Although Campbell speaks from extensive personal experience --she was a consort of an
important Tibetan lama (priest-monk) for several years and an accomplished translator of
Tibetan texts --this book is not another ex-member exposé for lay readers. This is an
important study that utilizes sophisticated psychoanalytic religious, and cultural theory.
Campbell explains and criticizes how the female role, the dakini, in Tibetan Tantra
(Vajrayana) has diminished the individual female integrity to comply with a male-
dominated, male-defined tradition. Campbell invokes feminist scholarship, especially that of
Luce Irigay, as well as such scholars of religion and mythology as Mircea Eliade, Joseph
Campbell (no relation to the author), and Agehananda Bharati, to reinforce her
perspectives.
In certain terms, Campbell points out the vulnerabilities of Tibetan Tantra to Western
influence. Tibetan dakinis have been acculturated to accept their roles as unequal, if
revered, “objects” useful to lamas in their sexual rituals. The latter, usually secret, are said
to provide powerful opportunities for the lama to attain “enlightenment.” Western ethics
(conditioned by a long history of Judeo-Christian influence) and feminist philosophy conflict
with this secret patriarchal system. Western women have long complained about sexual
exploitation by certain gurus who invoke an “enlightened” status, one that “entitles” them to
have sexual contact with devotees. Campbell provides a scholarly and psychoanalytic basis
for such complaints, as well as a new standard for women within the Tibetan tradition. She
admits that if this new standard --one that accepts women as self-determining “subjects” in
their own spiritual destiny --were incorporated, Tibetan Tantra would either revolutionize or
disappear.
More than a cross-cultural critique, Traveller in Space is a good primer on Lamaism and
Tantric religious history with its roots in Indian philosophy. Campbell analyzes how
separation from their mothers at a young age has certain emotional effects on
“reincarnated” lamas and their ensuing needs for “nurture” from consorts. The title is a
translation of the Sanskrit word dakini (Tibetan khandro), which means “sky-goer.” The
implication is that the submissive dakini is unattached to anything and functions as an
empty “space” to afford the partner-lama an experience of “enlightenment,” but, in
tradition, this does not work in reverse. Campbell systematically discusses and deconstructs
such male-generated notions as untenable and “illogical” within and “outwith” the system if
Tibetan Tantra is to incorporate status integrity for women. She also points out how lamas
manipulate their consorts, or dakinis, by suggesting that if they reveal the affair or rebel,
the dakini will suffer “madness, trouble, or even death.” The fact that this manipulative
behavior is somehow sanctioned by a centuries-long tradition, largely unchallenged by the
females within Tibetan culture, demonstrates how completely the “feminine” has been
politically framed by both male-generated symbology and signature, according to Campbell.