The Fundamental Rationale of Tantric Buddhism
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone! 🙏🙏🙏
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
I personally find that the fundamental rationales of the Tantric tradition and the Sutric tradition are completely different. I can tell that the approach employed by the Sutric tradition to salvage sentient beings is the method once used by an ancient Chinese man called Gun, who tried to control a flood by blocking it. However, the approach of Tantric Buddhism liberates sentient beings through the method employed by Gun`s son, Yu, who controlled the flood by channeling the water.
These approaches of blocking and channeling are meant to deal with the three poisons of greed, anger and ignorance. Both the Sutric and Tantric Buddhist traditions acknowledge the presence of these three poisons in the hearts of humans, existing as the accumulated karmic residue from ages. While the Sutric system aims on removing these poisons, Tantric Buddhism cultivates by coexisting with greed, anger and ignorance.
I have highlighted: Greed - The Jambhala Practice. Anger - The Wrathful Guardian Practice. Ignorance - The Consort Practice.
This is the fundamental rationale of Tantric Buddhism, of which the divine deities can be addressed directly as `greedy Buddha`, `angry Guardian`, `ignorant Bodhisattva` or `desirous Bodhisattva`. The rationale of Tantric Buddhism is that coexisting with greed, anger and ignorant, thereby satisfying the wishes of sentient beings through the methods of cultivation, proves to be the most effective approach. Once a practitioner attains the Dharma taste, he or she will naturally understand that greed is emptiness, anger is compassion, and ignorance is wisdom. Eventually, by means of transformation, one realizes there is no gain and loss, and therefore achieves the subjugation of the ego self. The practitioner sees through the illusion of lust, and arises to spirituality, attaining the Primal Wisdom of the Buddha.
Tantric Buddhism regards lust, anger and ignorance as aspects of Buddhadharma, thus it liberates sentient beings accordingly, based on their respective basic instincts and natures. Furthermore, the Tantric mantras are able to bind all evils, prevent them from arising, arrest any evil actions, and help in the increase of wisdom. This is the foundation of the rationale. Tantric mantras can transform all impurities into purity.
Many people today have little understanding of the fundamental rationale of Tantric Buddhism, and they barely scratch the surface of its teachings. They commonly associate Tantric Buddhism with things related to strange, mystical, cult-like activities, which engage in the use of spells, wine and meat. But seriously speaking, the rationale of Tantric Buddhism ultimately aims to transform all defilements into purity, purify one`s mind, and attain supreme purity.