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Tantra - introduction

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Almost every study of Tantrism begins by apologizing. Scholars say it is little understood, that it cannot be easily or precisely defined and that it lacks a coherent structure. Andre Padoux in his article in this volume (What do we Mean by Tantrism?) outlines some of what makes defining Tantrism so difficult.

First, it is a term, in fact a notion, that is Western. It is not a concept that comes from within the religious system itself, although it is generally recognized internally as different from the Vedic tradition. This immediately makes it suspect as an independent category.

Second, Tantrism is not a coherent system; it is an accumulation of practices and ideas from various sources distributed unevenly in different times, places, and sects and among individuals. While the pieces of Tantrism (doctrines and practices) can be listed, none is exclusively Tantric, and all are components of other 2 Robert L. Brown

religious systems. Rather, one might see them as cumulative, with some systems having more components being weighted toward the Tantric. Thus there are levels or degrees of Tantrism.

Third, Tantric pieces can be mixed easily with other non-Tantric aspects, such as bhakti (devotional) worship being used alongside Tantric approaches to the deity.

For one who worships the deity in multiple ways, can we say he or she is at one point a Tantric practitioner, and not at another point? Thus, even to argue what it is by saying what it is not is not entirely successful.

Rather than a system, cult, or religion Andre Padoux speaks of a “Tantric vision” and includes among its characteristics the use of ritual, manipulation of power, transgression of norms, use of the mundane to reach the supramundane, and identification of the microcosm with the macrocosm. The reader may want as well to refer to the list of eighteen constituents of Tantrism in Teun Goundriaan’s introduction to Hindu Tantrism.

Unfortunately for the topic of this book, what is or is not Tantric is of importance. The articles in the book came from two conferences focused on the question, what were the roots of Tantrism? Scholars were asked to explore how, when, and where Tantrism began.

What were the sources for Tantrism and when can we begin to speak of Tantrism as an independent religious tradition? What were the causes, historical and religious? While these questions are not answered fully in the papers of this volume, they are carefully and extensively explored from a variety of viewpoints, methodologies, and approaches. One of the book’s strengths is that the questions are pursued not only from a textual viewpoint, but from art historical and historical approaches as well.

It was decided to focus on Hindu Tantrism. While Buddhist Tantrism is discussed in some papers, it is not given equal weight in the volume. This is not because we felt Buddhist Tantrism was less important or that it could not be explored for Tantra’s roots, but that it would require another book.

Before turning to the papers, I want to propose a way of viewing Tantrism in terms of process rather than as a static structure of characteristics. Emphasis on process points out that Tantrism is predominantly action, either physical or mental, with less stress on belief, doctrine, or theology. It also allows identification of what is and is not Tantric in terms of application rather than in terms of the qualities and characteristics themselves. I will present the model in a diagram, and then make some comments on it:


 Processes Accomplished by Guided by Goals

 visualization ritual (kriya) teacher/guru enlightenment
 verbalization yoga, the body, deity mukti
 identification man¸dala, cakra, ¸ worldly power
 internalization mantra, yantra, bhukti
 concretization puja, icon
 transformation


Starting with the goals first, both enlightenment and worldly success are expected. These goals are frequently separated in religions, including Indian re�ligions, with two different sets of activities expected to achieve them. Enlightenment, often seen as a difficult process of endless rebirths achievable only by advanced religious specialists, can be reached in Tantrism during one lifetime while the practitioner is still alive.

On the other hand, worldly power, even of the most mundane kind, for example success in love, is also achievable at the same time as enlightenment; they are intertwined. Success in this world need not be shunned to achieve enlightenment, a position held by ´ sramanic (mendicant) Buddhists, Jains, and the Brahmanic tradition of the Hindus. For non-Tantric Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus, the life of a householder is a serious impediment for full spiritual accomplishment; instead the ascetic life is needed to move forward.

The way for Tantric practitioners to reach dual goals comes by connecting themselves to a power that flows through the world, including their own bodies, a power usually visualized as female. Tantrins identify the power, locate it, activate it, and use it for their own desires. The process brings into play the other three categories of the chart above: a guide, a set of tools, and various transformational actions.

The guide is above all the teacher (the guru) who is simultaneously the deity and ultimately the student as well. Indeed, the collapsing and overlapping identities of the teacher is one illustration of the transformational processes so central to Tantrism that involve the movement both toward a unity, an essence, a center, and a monism while simultaneously breaking into dualities and multiples that replicate (often in numbered ranks) toward the periphery.

The importance of the guru cannot be overstated, as she/he is the only way for a student to learn Tantric practice. The oft-stated idea that Tantrism is esoteric because a secret tradition is passed between teacher and student is not unfounded.

It helps to explain the individual approach to worship, the lack of a temple or monastery, and less focus on a loving relationship with a deity (all characteristics of theistic Hinduism). It also brings into question the use of written texts in the Tantric tradition, the primary source for scholars of Tantrism. Is it like attempting to understand the art of auto mechanics by reading through the auto parts catalogs? We may know a great deal about the components, but how they come together and work is known only by hands-on experience.

The tools used by the teacher and student listed in the second column are not intended to be inclusive. They share, however, certain characteristics: they are all “things” or involve the manipulation of “things.” I have put the word things in quotation marks because they can be visualized or imagined, and they can be internalized so that they are placed within the body.

There is often a hierarchy imposed on them as well, so that, for example, the drawing of a physical yantra is of a lower spiritual power than one drawn in the heart of the practitioner. The spiritual scale going from the concrete to the more abstract is found in all Indic religions.

The tools in Tantrism are less doctrines and beliefs than concrete things that 4 Robert L. Brown

the practitioner learns to manipulate in certain specific ways, sequences, and patterns. This involves actions and processes with things being taken through time and space. Indeed, the ultimate tool in Tantra is the human body, both the outside and the inside, both the anatomical body of arms, hands, tongue, heart, genitals, and mind, and the yogic anatomy of cakras and n¯ad¯¸ıs. It is control of the body as a tool used to actuate processes that connects the practitioner with the universal power to reach his goals.

I have listed six processes, again not intending to be comprehensive, that the tools are used to bring about. They can be seen as paired. The first two, visualization and verbalization, involve seeing and speaking the power into being. The importance of seeing (dar´sana) in approaching the deity has often been noted in Indian religions and it is used in Tantric practice as well, but often is interiorized or envisaged rather than directed toward an icon. One of the abilities of a Tantric worshiper is to create visions of the deities (and other signs) in his mind’s eye.

Verbalization is of the greatest importance in Tantric worship as the recitation of sounds (mantras). Mantras are learned from the teacher and are conceived as sounds, not as written word; and, just as visualizing brings about the deities and the powers they manifest, so does the use of mantra.

The paired processes of identification and internalization indicate actions that make the worshiper divine, the realization of which is needed to gain access to the universal power. An example of identification has already been mentioned above, when the teacher and the deity are identified as one.

Such telescoping of identities is needed to pull everything into the body of the worshiper so that the ultimate identification can be made of the deity with the worshiper. The importance of internalizing the concrete “thing” as a mental image is central to being able to create within the body what is outside it. Tantric ritual seems to be set up as a pairing of doing something involving manipulating a thing (like drawing a yantra) and then imagining it within through a mental image.

The last pairing consists of concretization and transformation, two seem�ingly opposite procedures. Once internalization is achieved, it does not mean that the process is unidirectional as the ritual always involves arranging, moving, and changing real things, even when internalization has taken place; the processes are intertwined and occilating.

By concretization I mean that, for the Tantric practitioner, things (including such things as sounds or deities) have a reality that takes form in the world, cannot be abandoned, and must be used. The final process, transformation, can be applied to all the processes, as it seems to me the most essential of them all, as all involve one thing changing into another. Indeed, the ability to change one reality through ritual manipulation of things into another truer, more powerful reality may be one definition of Tantrism.

Finally, what aspects of Indian religions (Pur¯anic Hinduism and Buddhism, ¸ for example) are less stressed by this Tantric view? Immediately, there are prob�lems; to separate Hinduism and Buddhism from Tantric practices is, as noted above, difficult. Andre Padoux’s observation that “for a thousand years, most Introduction 5

Hinduism has been either Tantric or Tantricized”5 underlines the futility in attempting to categorize and divide what is and is not Tantric in current Hindu practices. Still, if we say we are talking about emphasis, not difference, we can suggest several areas less emphasized in Tantric practice than in certain other Indic religions.

I will suggest five: less stress on mythology and narrative stories of deities, less stress on love for god, less stress on moral action (for Buddhism), less stress on temple worship and priests, and less stress on patronage of art, temples, and good works (on merit and therefore on karma).

To expand and explain these would take us too far afield, but I ask the reader to keep them in mind while reading through the articles in this book. Evidence in support of this less-stressed list (and it can certainly be lengthened) is seen in part from observing that the topics are not important aspects of the discussions in the articles in this book.


The very brief and simple introduction to Tantrism given above is intended to orient the reader, particularly one who comes to the topic without much background, as discussions of Tantrism can become fairly complex and technical.

The book’s twelve papers are divided into five sections with the first including two papers that give overviews of Tantrism while focusing on the issues of beginnings and relationships.


Overviews


The first essay by Andre Padoux sets up for us (as mentioned already) some of the overall questions regarding Tantrism and why these questions have not been answered, demonstrating why the search for Tantra’s roots will not be easy. In addition, Padoux points out a source of confusion—and one that is particularly important for us—between Tantric practice and its sources, what might be called its mimetic nature.

Again and again, Tantrism appears to replicate or copy either pre-Tantric or local practices. The question is whether the relationship is in terms of sources or of parallel but independent origins. Padoux mentions as examples micro-macrocosmic correspondences, magic use of power, power in terms of violence and transgression, and feminine aspect of the deity, all characteristic of Tantrism but all found in either pre-Tantric or autochthonous local religion. Are these roots or merely parallel branches from the same trunk?

Padoux ends his essay by proposing two possible definitions of Tantrism that might focus its seemingly amorphous nature, both of which, however, he ultimately rejects.


One is to confine Tantrism to the “hard core” practitioners: a system of observances (often transgressive in nature) that are given meaning by a more or less power-oriented vision of man and the cosmos, a system where power is manipulated, where micro-macrocosmic correspondences play an essential role.

Also, there is usually a high degree of esotericism (the higher, the more esoteric, the more “Tantric”) together with a particular type of pan Robert L. Brown the on (not necessarily sexually differentiated however), and a particular and very developed type of ritual. Outside these qualifications, there may exist a varying number and proportion of Tantric traits, but not Tantrism as such.

The second definition is one frequently applied to Tantrism, “to stress its ritual aspect without omitting entirely the ideological side, but subordinating it to ritual.” Padoux rejects both approaches and ends his essay saying, “I fear we still have to toil to find a solution to the problem of Tantrism.”


The second essay by David N. Lorenzen, “Early Evidence for Tantric Religion,” is a straightforward review of the historical evidence for the appearance of Tantrism, serving as an excellent pendant to Padoux’s thematic article. Lorenzen suggests that there are two ways to define Tantrism, one is “a narrow definition [that] considers as Tantric only religious phenomena directly associated with the Tantras, Samhit¯as and ¸ Agamas,” that is texts written in Sanskrit and thus directed ¯ toward an elite.

The second broader definition adds “an ample range of popular ‘magicalbeliefs and practices, including much of Sakta and Hatha Yoga traditions,” traditions that use predominantly vernacular languages.

Lorenzen chooses the second as a definition, and then proceeds to sort through historical, textual, and epigraphical sources to locate in time and geography the beginnings of Tantrism. He concludes that Tantrism begins to be discerned in the fifth century .

and is clearly seen by the seventh. By the ninth it was fully manifested in both Hinduism and Buddhism. He finds its beginnings to be “primarily a northern phenomena,” with its centers in Bihar, Bengal, Assam, Kashmir, Nepal, Tibet, the Punjab, and Rajasthan. While these dates and localities may seem rather conservative to some, Lorenzen’s historical evidence supports them. He does not deny that there are characteristics of Tantrism that can be traced to a much earlier time. His point is that Tantrism as such (“the complex as a whole”) cannot be earlier.


The History and Development of Tantra


Most of the book’s essays deal in some way with developments of Tantrism through time, but the three included in this section demonstrate three distinctly different approaches to understanding development and change. The most comprehensive is M. C. Joshi’s “Historical and Iconographic Aspects of Sakta Tantr�ism,” which traces goddess worship in India from the Upper Paleolithic through the thirteenth century

Joshi uses as evidence texts, inscriptions, and art to outline the major shifts and changes in the worship of goddesses, and the essay serves as an excellent survey of the historical points at which Tantric flavored imagery and practices were added. Joshi assumes that goddess worship is, in some way, Tantric by nature, stating at the beginning that “Sakta Tantrism has its roots in prehistoric concepts of a fertile mother goddess and ancient systems for her worship.” He does not suggest any one point in time or change in iconography Introduction 7


that divides ancient goddesses from Tantric goddesses, nor contemporary non Tantric goddesses from Tantric ones. The advantage of this is that he is never forced to propose a confining and monolithic definition of Tantrism, but outlines a continuous, cumulative development. Nor does he attempt to show why the changes he notes have taken place. In other words, he assumes that Tantrism exists in some form from the beginning of religion in India, that it is connected to goddess worship, and that the way the goddesses developed over time is in itself a history of Tantrism.


A very different approach to Sakta Tantrism is given in Douglas Renfrew Brooks’s article “Auspicious Fragments and Uncertain Wisdom: The Roots of Srıvidya Sakta Tantrism in South India.” Rather than a historical survey of practices, Brooks’s study is a detailed look at a particular text, the Tirumantiram, written in Tamil by the seventh century saint Tirumular. Brooks finds that Tirumular knew aspects of a highly detailed and organized form of Tantric goddess worship, the Srıvidy¯a.

What he is able to show is that Tirumular—while a Saivite and not a Tantric worshiper—knew and used essential aspects, particularly ´ the´srıvidya mantra, of the Srıvidya system.

Since the Srıvidy¯a system developed in north India, probably in Kashmir, and takes form in Sanskrit texts only in the ninth century, Brooks demonstrates that “the structure of Srıvidy¯a ideology must have been in place perhaps as long as two centuries before its crystallization in Sanskrit texts.” Furthermore, that Tirumular was familiar with this ideology and could incorporate it into his own religious system, argues for a surprisingly early India-wide awareness of “Tantricthought that existed outside of texts and temples. Brooks’s paper suggests there was a shared Tantric ideology in India that existed before codification in Sanskrit texts and that was not yet restricted to specific groups.


The third paper in this section, Thomas B. Coburn’s “The Structural Inter�play of Tantra, Ved¯anta, and Bhakti: Nondualist Commentary on the Goddess,” focuses the discussion on a single passage from the sixth-century Devı Mahatmya.


Coburn’s approach to the passage is to compare the analysis of two eighteenth century Indian commentators, N¯agoji Bhat¸ta and Bhaskararaya, the first an Advaita Vedantin and the second a Tantric follower of Srıvidya (the system mentioned by Brooks). Coburn finds that the two use similar references, and both are involved in attempts to apply a monistic or nondual reading of the passage and of reality.

But whereas Nagoji Bhat¸ta must ultimately say that even the goddess must ¸ be subordinate to a more ultimate reality (“Brahman-without-qualities”), the Tantric Bh¯askarar¯aya is:

unwilling to ascribe secondary status to the physical world, or to the senses, or to the manifest diversity of the Goddess’s form. The way in which [he avoids] epistemological dualism is not philosophically, but ritually—through the esoteric, experiential transformation of the world. . . . What 8 Robert L. Brown

differentiates the two nondualisms, then, is that one—Advaita Vedanta—is of a public and profoundly philosophical sort, while the other—Tantra— inclines toward a private and ritualized experience of oneness.

Each of the authors in this section—Joshi, Brooks, and Coburn—has

focused on the goddess and the development of S¯´akta Tantrism, but each has addressed them very differently, demonstrating the advantages and disadvantages of going from a broad historical survey to a focused and highly detailed analysis of a single moment.