Origins

Vajrayana (Sanskrit: “Diamond Vehicle” or “Thunderbolt Vehicle”) or Mantrayana (Sanskrit: “Path of the Sacred Formulas”), also known as Tantric Buddhism, first emerged in various parts of India and Sri Lanka. The esoteric nature of Tantric doctrine and practice makes identifying the origins of the Vajrayana school difficult, but some Buddhist traditions associate them with Nagarjuna and Asanga and therefore suggest that Vajrayana began to develop quietly in the 2nd or 4th century ce. Vajrayana was prominent in India and Tibet, and a form of it, which does not seem to have emphasized sexoyogic practices, spread to China and then to Japan, where it became associated with the Tendai and Shingon schools.

Although Vajrayana texts describe numerous yogic or contemplative stages that must be experienced before enlightenment can be achieved, they preserve the Mahayana identification of nirvana and samsara as a basic truth. Moreover, Vajrayana teaches that nirvana as shunyata (“voidness”) is one side of a polarity that must be complemented by karuna (“compassion of the bodhisattva”). Shunyata, according to the Vajrayana tradition, is the passive wisdom (prajna) that possesses an absolutely indestructible or diamond-like (vajra) nature beyond all duality, and karuna is the means (upaya) or dynamic aspect of the world. Enlightenment arises when these seeming opposites are understood to be one. This realization, which is known experientially and not cognitively, is portrayed in Vajrayana imagery and practice as the union of the passive female deity, which signifies wisdom or voidness, with the dynamic male, signifying compassion without attachment. Such a union, yab-yum (Tibetan: “father-mother”), is a symbol of the unity of opposites that brings the “great bliss,” or enlightenment.

Vajrayana Buddhists believe that, as all things are in truth of one nature—the void—physical-mental processes can be used as a vehicle for enlightenment. According to the Kalachakra-tanta, the Buddha taught that, in this age of degeneration, enlightenment must be achieved through the body, which contains the whole cosmos. Vajrayana specialists warn, however, that the first step toward enlightenment is taken by undergoing instruction by a master who has been initiated into the mysteries and can teach the correct use of the body’s process. The master directs every step so that the pupil learns to control mental and physical processes instead of being dominated by them.

The master, it is believed, leads the student to compassion through meditation on the transitoriness of life, the relation of cause and effect of one’s actions, and the suffering of humanity. After sympathy for human suffering has been aroused, the student is taught yogic, or contemplative, exercises that help to produce inner experiences corresponding to the various stages of spiritual growth. Advancement toward enlightenment involves the identification of the initiate with deities that represent various cosmic forces. These gods are first visualized with the help of mudras (meditative gestures and postures), mantras (sacred syllables and phrases), and icons portrayed in a mandala, all of which are believed to possess the essence of the divinities to be invoked. After this visualization the initiate identifies with the divinities and finds that each in turn is shunyata (“voidness”).

According to Vajrayana traditions, the culmination of this process, called vajrasattva yoga, gives the initiate a diamond-like body beyond all duality. The four stages in the process are described in four different groups of tantras (the Kriya-tantra, Charya-tantra, Yoga-tantra, and Anuttarayoga-tantra) that are compared with the fourfold phases of courtship (the exchange of glances, a pleasing or encouraging smile, the holding of hands, and consummation in the sexual act). The first stage involves external ritual acts, and the second combines these outward acts with contemplation. The third stage involves only contemplation, and the fourth is the unification of all dualities in the sexual act, symbolically or effectively. The last stage is divided into two phases. In the first the initiate uses controlled imagination to experience the union on an ideational level. The second phase is the maithuna, or sexual coupling. Unlike the ordinary sexual act, which gives only momentary pleasure, the maithuna is considered a technique to attain enlightenment and eternal bliss because the initiate has already realized the voidness of all things, allowing perfect control over emotions and a complete absence of attachment.

These Vajrayana practices have been condemned by some Buddhists and some modern scholars as degenerate, a view ostensibly borne out by the Guhyasamaja-tantra, which states that adultery and eating of human flesh are actions of the bodhisattva. Vajrayana practices and the imagery of its texts, however, were designed to shock the complacency and self-righteousness of more traditional Buddhists. Moreover, the imagery of the texts was based on the belief that voidness alone exists and that it is beyond good or evil in the usual sense. The imagery is also based on the belief that any acts that bring about this realization are acts that benefit the practitioner and all sentient beings.

Vajrayana literature

The tantras, the genre of texts unique to the Vajrayana tradition, are written in a highly figurative and symbolic language to enable individual spiritual development. Because of this symbolic character, the tantras have usually been kept secret, and a literalist interpretation of such texts has usually failed to make any sense out of them.

The Guhyasamaja-tantra (“Treatise on the Sum Total of Mysteries”), also called the Tathagataguhyaka (“The Mystery of Tathagatahood [Buddhahood]”), is the earliest-known tantra and is traditionally ascribed to Asanga (c. 4th century ce), the renowned Indian scholar and propounder of the Yogachara philosophy. Unlike most tantras, which do not explain the technical or symbolic terms that they employ, the Guhyasamaja-tantra devotes a very long chapter to the elucidation of these terms.

An important feature of all tantras is a polarity symbolism, which appears on the physical level as the union of male and female, on the ethical level as the union of beneficial activity and an appreciation of what there is as it is, and on the philosophical level as the synthesis of absolute reality and absolute compassion. The richness of this symbolism is apparent in the opening of the Guhyasamaja, where the absolute, which is depicted as a polarity, manifests itself in various mandalas (circular diagrams that have both a psychological and a cosmic reference), each related to one of the celestial buddhas—Akshobhya, Vairochana, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, and Amoghasiddhi. Each of these buddhas again represents a polarity that is often portrayed in iconographic works through their union with female consorts.

The tantras may emphasize either “beneficial activity” or “appreciative awareness” or their “unity,” and, therefore, Tantric literature has been divided into the so-called Father Tantra (emphasizing activity), the Mother Tantra (emphasizing appreciation), and the Nondual Tantra (dealing with both aspects unitively). The original Sanskrit versions of most of these works have been lost, but their influence is noticeable in works such as Jnanasiddhi (“Attainment of Knowledge”) by the great Vajrayana teacher Indrabhuti (c. 687–717), Prajnopayavinishchayasiddhi (“The Realization of the Certitude of Appreciative Awareness and Ethical Action”) by the 8th-century writer Anangavajra, and the songs of the 84 mahasiddhas (“masters of miraculous powers,” who were considered to have attained the Vajrayana goal). One of the last Sanskrit works to have been written in Central Asia was the Kalachakra-tantra (“Wheel of Time”), which probably entered India in 966 ce. It taught that the Adi-Buddha—primeval Buddhahood—manifested itself as a continuum of time (kala) and space (chakra).