Tantra religious texts

Tantra, (Sanskrit: “Loom”) is any of numerous texts dealing with the esoteric practices of some Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain sects. In the orthodox classification of Hindu religious literature, Tantra refers to a class of post-Vedic Sanskrit treatises similar to the Puranas (medieval encyclopedic collections of myths, legends, and other topics). In this usage, Tantras are, theoretically, considered to treat of

theology, Yoga, construction of temples and images, and religious practices; in reality, they tend to deal with such aspects of popular Hinduism as spells, rituals, and symbols. They are distinguished along Hindu sectarian lines between the Shaiva Agamas, the Vaishnava Samhitas, and the Shakta Tantras.

The lists of the Shakta Tantras differ considerably from one another but suggest that the earliest manuscripts date from about the 7th century. They emphasize the goddess Shakti as the female personification of the creative power or energy of the god Shiva. This view taken to its extreme holds that Shiva without his Shakti is like a corpse. In the Tantras that deal with Yoga, Shakti is identified with the

kundalini, or the energy that lies coiled at the base of the spine until brought up through the body by yogic disciplines. The Tantras also stress the efficacy of yantras and mandalas (ritual diagrams) and of mantras (mystic syllables or sacred formulas). Among the major Shakta Tantras are the Kularnava-tantra, which treats of “left-hand” practices, such as ritual copulation; the Kulacudamani-tantra, which discusses ritual; and the Sharadatilaka-tantra, which deals almost exclusively with magic.

Hinduism: Shakta Tantras

The Buddhist Tantras are traced to the 7th century or earlier, the Tathagataguhyaka being an early and extreme work. They were translated into Tibetan and Chinese from about the 9th century onward, and some texts have been preserved only in those languages, the Sanskrit originals having been lost. Among the Buddhist Tantras, an important text is the Kalacakra-tantra.

Kālacakra-tantra, (Sanskrit: “Wheel of Time Tantra”) chief text of a divergent, syncretistic, and astrologically oriented school of Tantric Buddhism, or Vajrayana, that arose in India in the 10th century. The work represents the final phase of Tantric Buddhism in India, just before the Muslim invasion, but it has remained prominent in Tibet.

At the center of the text’s mandala

At the centre of the text’s mandala (ritual drawing) is an image of the deity Kālacakra, another manifestation of the Buddha Akṣobhya, either alone or embracing his consort Viśvamātṛ (Mother of the Universe). Surrounding them are more than 250 divine figures, arranged in an outwardly radiating series of concentric circles and squares. Many of these are Hindu deities, and many of the ideas in the text suggest

non-Buddhist and even non-Indian origins. The most notable innovation in this tantra is its astrological frame of reference. The figures constituting the mandala are identified with planets and stars, and the structure of the mandala—one of the most complex in Tantric Buddhism—is correlated with the temporal rhythms of the heavens.

Tattvasamgraha Tantra, (Sanskrit: “Symposium of Truth of All the Buddhas Tantra”) tantra of Chen-yen Buddhism.

During the 7th, 8th, and 9th centuries, the Vajrayāna forms of Esoteric Buddhism that were developing in India spread to Southeast Asia and to East Asia. In East Asia Esoteric Buddhism became established in the Chen-yen (“True Word”) school in China and in the Tendai (see T’ien-t’ai) and Shingon schools in Japan. According to the Chen-yen tradition, developed and systematized forms of the Esoteric tradition were

first brought from India to China by three missionary monks: Shubhakarasimha, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra. Shubhakarasimha arrived in China from the famous Indian center of learning at Nalanda in 716, and he translated into Chinese the Mahavairocana Sūtra and a closely related ritual compendium known as the Susiddhikara. Vajrabodhi and his disciple Amoghavajra arrived in 720 and produced two abridged translations

of the Sarvatathagatatattvasamgraha, also known as the Tattvasamgraha. The Tattvasamgraha and the Mahavairocana Sūtra became the two basic Chen-yen texts. A fully developed “Five Buddha” complex found its primary expression in the Tattvasamgraha, in which Shakyamuni, as Vairocana, appears as the central Buddha.

Bu-ston (born 1290—died 1364), was a Tibetan Buddhist scholar who was a member of the Saskya-pa sect and for many years served as the head of the Zwa-lu monastery. Bu-ston formulated a notion of the “Three Turnings of the Buddhist Law” (Hīnayāna, Māhayāna, and Vajrayāna) which he employed in the organization of his important History of Buddhism and in his highly influential classification of texts considered to be

“canonical” in the Tibetan tradition. He also generated what became the standard classification of Tantric texts into four groups: the Korya (Sanskrit: Kriyā) tantras, the Carya (Sanskrit: Caryā) Tantras, the Yoga Tantras, and the Asvattavayoga (Sanskrit: Anuttarayoga) Tantras.

Bu-ston was active as a translator and interpreter for many Vajrayāna texts and was recognized as a master of Vaj-rayāna/Tantric ritual practice. In addition, he was a student of Buddhist architecture who both wrote about Buddhist stupas and oversaw the construction of an important stupa in the Zwa-lu area.

Scripture, is the revered text, or Holy Writ, of the world’s religions. Scriptures comprise a large part of the literature of the world. They vary greatly in form, volume, age, and degree of sacredness, but their common attribute is that their words are regarded by the devout as sacred. Sacred words differ from ordinary words in that they are believed either to possess and convey spiritual and magical powers or to be the means through which a divine being or other sacred reality is revealed in phrases and sentences full of power and truth.

Characteristics

Most sacred scriptures were originally oral and were passed down through memorization from generation to generation until they were finally committed to writing. A few are still preserved orally, such as the hymns of Native Americans. Many bear the unmistakable marks of their

oral origin and can best be understood when recited aloud; in fact, it is still held by many Hindus and Buddhists that their scriptures lack, when read silently, the meaning and significance they have when recited aloud, for the human voice is believed to add to the recited texts dimensions of truth and power not readily grasped by the solitary reader. '

Not all scriptures, however, were originally oral, nor were they in all parts directly effectual in rituals that sought the granting of magical and spiritual powers. The greater part of recorded scripture has either a narrative or an expository character. The types of sacred and semisacred texts are, in fact, many and varied. Besides magical runes (ancient Germanic alphabet characters) and spells from primitive

and ancient sources, they include hymns, prayers, chants, myths, stories about gods and heroes, epics, fables, sacred laws, directions for the conduct of rituals, the original teachings of major religious figures, expositions of these teachings, moral anecdotes, dialogues of seers and sages, and philosophical discussions. Scriptures include every form of literature capable of expressing religious feelings or convictions.

Types of sacred literature vary in authority and degree of sacredness. The centrally important and most holy of the sacred texts have in many instances been gathered into canons (standard works of the faith), which, after being determined either by general agreement or by

official religious bodies become fixed—i.e., limited to certain works that are alone viewed as fully authoritative and truly beyond all further change or alteration. The works not admitted to the canons (those of a semisacred or semi canonical character) may still be quite valuable as supplementary texts.

Scriptures in non-Western religions

A striking instance of making a distinction between canonical and semi-canonical scriptures occurs in Hinduism. The Hindu sacred literature is voluminous and varied; it contains ancient elements and every type of religious literature that has been listed, except historical details on the lives of the seers and sages who produced it. Its earliest portions, namely the four ancient Vedas (hymns), seem to have been

provided by Indo-European families in northwestern India in the 2nd millennium BCE. These and the supplements to them composed after 1000 BCE—the Brahmanas (commentaries and instruction in ritual), the Aranyakas (forest books of ascetics), and the Upanishads (philosophical treatises)—are considered more sacred than any later writings. They are collectively referred to as Shruti (“Heard”; i.e., communicated by

revelation), whereas the later writings are labeled Smriti (“Remembered”; i.e., recollected and reinterpreted at some distance in time from the original revelations). The former are canonical and completed, not to be added to nor altered, but the latter are semi-canonical and semisacred.

Buddha

Buddhist sacred literature recollects Gautama Buddha’s life and teaching in the 6th century BCE and first appeared in the dialect called Pali, allied to the Magadhi that he spoke. As time passed and his movement spread beyond India, Buddhism adopted as its medium Sanskrit, the

Indian classical language that was widely used in ancient Asia. A distinction arose between the Theravada (“Way of the Elders”), preserved in Pali and regarded as canonical, and the vast number of works written in Sanskrit within the more widely dispersed Buddhism called by its adherents Mahayana (“Greater Vehicle”). The Mahayana works were later translated and further expanded into Tibetan, Chinese, and Japanese.

Whether the basic texts of indigenous Chinese religion should be called sacred, in the sense of Holy Writ, is open to question. Neither classical Daoism nor Confucianism can be said to have been based on revelation; the texts of these faiths were originally viewed as human

wisdom, books written by humans for humans. They acquired authority, actually a canonical status, however, that caused them to be regarded with profound reverence and thus, in effect, as sacred. This certainly was true of the revered Daoist book, the Daodejing (“Classic of the Way of Power”), and of the Wujing (“Five Classics”) and the Sishu (“Four Books”) of Confucianism.

Jesus

Jesus was enthroned as Lord of All (Pantocrator), with the explaining letters IC XC, a symbolic abbreviation of Iesus Christus; a 12th-century mosaic in the Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Sicily.

The most precisely fixed canons are those that have been defined by official religious bodies. The Jewish canon, known to Christians as the Old Testament, was fixed by a synod of rabbis held at Yavneh, Palestine, about 90 CE. The semisacred books that were excluded were labeled by Christians as the Apocrypha (Greek: “Hidden Away”). Roman Catholicism later included them in its canon. Jesus, the founder of Christianity,

left nothing in writing, but he so inspired his followers that they preserved his sayings and biographical details about him in oral form until they were written down in the four Gospels. To these were added the letters of St. Paul and others and the Book of Revelation to John, the whole forming a sacred canon called the New Testament, which was ecclesiastically sanctioned by the end of the 4th century. There was also a New Testament Apocrypha, but it did not achieve canonical status because of numerous spurious details.

Qurʾān with illuminated manuscript pages featuring ink, gold, and lapis lasuli, late 18th–early 19th century. Where no religious body has provided sanction or authorization, scriptures have had to stand on their authority. Muslims believe that

the Qurʾān does this easily. The Qurʾān, their only sacred canon or standard of faith, authenticates itself, they believe, by its internal self-evidencing power, for it is composed of the very words of God communicated to Muhammad and recited by him without addition or subtraction. This faith of Muslims in the Qurʾān is similar to that of fundamentalist Christians who believe that the Bible, as God’s word, is verbally inspired from beginning to end.

Other religious or devotional literature

There exists a large body of literature that possesses less of the aura of true scripture than the works just noted. They are interpretations of divine truth and divine commands, or stories that illustrate how persons, exalted or lowly, have acted (with or without awareness) in response to a divine stimulus. They are, in effect, supportive of true scripture.

An outstanding instance is the Talmud, a compendium of law, lore, and commentary that to many Jews has very nearly the authority of the Mosaic Torah (the Law, or the Pentateuch). Indeed, in the postbiblical rabbinical writings, it was generally considered a second Torah,

complementing the Written Law of Moses. Another instance is provided by the Christian church. Its major creeds have, at one time or another, been regarded as infallible statements, to depart from which would be heresy. This is particularly true of the Apostles’ Creed and the three “ecumenical creeds” of Nicaea (325), Constantinople (381), and Chalcedon (451). Roman Catholics add to these the papal decrees summarizing

in credal form the conclusions of the councils of the Roman Catholic Church concerning the sacraments, transubstantiation (the changing of the substance of the bread and wine in the mass into the body and blood of Christ), confession, the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, papal infallibility, and the Assumption of the body and soul of the Virgin Mary to heaven. More or less binding for Protestants are their distinctive statements of faith: the Augsburg Confession of 1530 (Lutheran), the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563 (Reformed), the Westminster Confession of 1646 and Shorter Westminster Catechism of 1647 (Presbyterian), and others.

Joseph Smith and Moroni

Moroni delivering the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith, lithograph, 1886.

During the last seven centuries in the West, some religious writings have attained a semisacred, if not fully sacred, status: Imitatio Christi of Thomas à Kempis (1379/80–1471); John Bunyan’s (1628–88) The Pilgrim’s Progress; Mary Baker Eddy’s (1821–1910) Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures; and the reputed discovery of Joseph Smith (1805–44), the Book of Mormon.

Buddhist text

Guhyasamāja-tantra, (Sanskrit: “Treatise on the Sum Total of Mysteries”) (“The Mystery of Tathāgatahood [[[Buddhahood]]]”), oldest and one of the most important of all Buddhist Tantras. These are the basic texts of the Tantric—an esoteric and highly symbolic—form of Buddhism, which developed in India and became dominant in Tibet. The Tantric form stands, along with the Mahāyāna and Theravāda, as one of the main branches of Buddhism.

The Guhyasamāja Tantra is ascribed by tradition to the sage Asaṅga. Much of its symbolism, appearing at the beginning of the Vajrayāna tradition, exercised a normative influence over that tradition’s development. The first of 18 chapters presents the text’s mandala (literally, “circle”), a visual image used in ritual and meditation and understood as the symbolic embodiment of a Tantric text. In the

center of the mandala of this text stands Akṣobhya, the Imperturbable Buddha, the central celestial figure in Tantric Buddhist symbolism. Surrounding him are Vairocana, the Illuminator Buddha, in the east; Amitābha, the Buddha of Infinite Light, who dwells in the Western Paradise, the Pure Land; and the celestial Buddhas, Amoghasiddhi in the north and Ratnasambhava in the south. Other chapters present sexual and horrific symbolism, spiritual techniques, the nature of enlightened consciousness, and other central Tantric concerns.

Sutra, (Sanskrit: “thread” or “string”) in Hinduism, a brief aphoristic composition; in Buddhism, a more extended exposition, the basic form of the scriptures of both the Theravada (Way of Elders) and Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) traditions. The early Indian philosophers did not work with written texts and later often disdained the use of them; thus, there was a need for explanatory works of the utmost brevity that

could be committed to memory. The earliest sutras were expositions of ritual procedures, but their use spread. The grammatical sutras by the Sanskrit grammatician Panini (6th–5th century BCE) became in many respects a model for later compositions. All the systems of Indian philosophy (except the Samkhya, which had its karikas, or doctrinal verses) had their sutras, most of which were preserved in writing early in the Common Era.

Different from its usages in Hindu literature, the Buddhist sutra (Pali: sutta) denotes a doctrinal work, sometimes of considerable length, in which a particular point of doctrine is propounded and deliberated. The most important collection of the Theravada sutras is to be found in the Sutta Pitaka section of the Pali canon (Tipitaka, or “Triple Basket”), which contains the discourses attributed to the historical Buddha. In Mahayana Buddhism, the name sutra is applied to expository texts.

Esoteric, is the quality of having an inner or secret meaning. This term and its correlative exoteric were first applied in the ancient Greek mysteries to those who were initiated (eso, “within”) and to those who were not (exo, “outside”), respectively. They were then transferred to denote the distinction supposedly drawn by certain philosophers between the teaching given to the whole circle of their pupils and that

containing a higher and secret philosophy that was reserved for a select number of privileged disciples. This distinction was probably adopted by the Pythagoreans and was also attributed to Plato and, by some late writers, to Aristotle. Esoteric in the sense of mystic is also used to describe certain schools of Buddhism.