Reference: Buddhism
Reference: The World’s Religions by Huston Smith
[NOTE: In color are Vinaire’s comments.]
The Dalai Lama is a receiving station toward which the compassion principle of Buddhism in all its cosmic amplitude is continuously channeled, to radiate thence to the Tibetan people most directly, but by extension to all sentient beings.
We have spoken of two yanas or paths in Buddhism, but we must now add a third. If Hinayana literally means the Little Way and Mahayana the Great Way, Vajrayana is the Diamond Way.
Vajra was originally the thunderbolt of Indra, the Indian Thunder God who is often mentioned in the early, Pali Buddhist texts; but when Mahayana turned the Buddha into a cosmic figure, Indra’s thunderbolt was transformed into the Buddha’s diamond scepter. We see here a telling instance of Buddhism’s capacity to accommodate itself to local ideas while revaluing them by changing the spiritual center of gravity; for the diamond transforms the thunderbolt, symbol of nature’s power, into an emblem of spiritual supremacy, while retaining the connotations of power that the thunderbolt possessed. The diamond is the hardest stone—one hundred times harder than its closest rival—and at the same time the most transparent stone. This makes the Vajrayana the way of strength and lucidity—strength to realize the Buddha’s vision of luminous compassion.
There is another way in Buddhism—the way of strength and lucidity—called Vajrayana.
We just noted that the roots of the Vajrayana can be traced back to India, and it continues to survive in Japan as Shingon Buddhism; but it was the Tibetans who perfected this third Buddhist path. For Tibetan Buddhism is not just Buddhism with Tibet’s pre-Buddhist Bon deities incorporated. Nor is it enough to characterize it as Indian Buddhism in its eighth-and ninth century heyday, moved northward to be preserved against its collapse in India. To catch its distinctiveness we must see it as the third major Buddhist yana, while adding immediately that the essence of the Vajrayana is Tantra. Tibetan Buddhism, the Buddhism here under review, is at heart Tantric Buddhism.
The essence of the Vajrayana is Tantra.
Buddhists have no monopoly on Tantra, which first showed itself in medieval Hinduism where the word had two Sanskrit roots. One of these is “extension.” In this meaning Tantra denotes texts, many of them esoteric and secret in nature, that were added to the Hindu corpus to extend its range. This gives us only the formal meaning of the word, however. For the content of those extended texts we should look to the second etymological meaning of Tantra, which derives from the weaving craft and denotes interpenetration. In weaving, the threads of warp and woof intertwine repeatedly. The Tantras are texts that focus on the interrelatedness of things. Hinduism pioneered such texts, but it was Buddhism, particularly Tibetan Buddhism, that gave them pride of place.
The Tantras are texts that focus on the interrelatedness of things.
The Tibetans say that their religion is nowise distinctive in its goal. What distinguishes their practice is that it enables one to reach nirvana in a single lifetime. This is a major claim. How do the Tibetans defend it?
What distinguishes tantric buddhism is that it enables one to reach nirvana in a single lifetime.
They say that the speed-up is effected by utilizing all of the energies latent in the human make-up, those of the body emphatically included, and impressing them all into the service of the spiritual quest.
It utilizes all of the energies latent in the human make-up for the spiritual quest.
The energy that interests the West most is sex, so it is not surprising that Tantra’s reputation abroad has been built on its sacramental use of this drive. H. G. Wells once said that God and sex were the only two things that really interested him. If we can have both—not be forced to choose between them as in monasticism and celibacy—this is music to modern ears, so much so that in the popular Western mind Tantra and sex are almost equated. This is unfortunate. Not only does it obscure the larger world of Tantra; it distorts its sexual teachings by removing them from that world.
Unfortunately, in the popular Western mind Tantra and sex are almost equated, for it obscure the larger world of Tantra.
Within that world Tantra’s teachings about sex are neither titillating nor bizarre: they are universal. Sex is so important—after all, it keeps life going—that it must be linked quite directly with God. It is the divine Eros of Hesiod, celebrated in Plato’s Phaedrus and in some way by every people. Even this, though, is too mild. Sex is the divine in its most available epiphany. But with this proviso: It is such when joined to love. When two people who are passionately, even madly—Plato’s divine madness—in love; when each wants most to receive what the other most wants to give;—at the moment of their mutual climax it is impossible to say whether the experience is more physical or spiritual, or whether they sense themselves as two or as one. The moment is ecstatic because at that moment they stand outside—ex, out; stasis, standing—themselves in the melded oneness of the Absolute.
Tantra’s teachings about sex are neither titillating nor bizarre: they are universal. In Tantra’s sacramental use of this drive, correct understanding and discipline is essential.
Nothing thus far is uniquely Tantric; from the Hebrew Song of Songs to the explicit sexual symbolism in mystical marriages to Christ, the principles just mentioned turn up in all traditions. What distinguishes Tantra is the way it wholeheartedly espouses sex as a spiritual ally, working with it explicitly and intentionally. Beyond squeamishness and titillation, both, the Tantrics keep the physical and spiritual components of the love-sex splice in strict conjunction—through their art (which shows couples in coital embrace), in their fantasies (the ability to visualize should be actively cultivated), and in overt sexual engagement, for only one of the four Tibetan priestly orders is celibate. Beyond these generalizations it is not easy to go, so we shall leave the matter with a covering observation. Tantric sexual practice is pursued, not as a law-breaking revel, but under the cautious supervision of a guru, in the controlled context of a non-dualist outlook, and as the culminating festival of a long sequence of spiritual disciplines practiced through many lives. The spiritual emotion that is worked for is ecstatic, egoless, beatific bliss in the realization of transcendent identity. But it is not self-contained, for the ultimate goal of the practice is to descend from the non-dual experience better equipped to experience the multiplicity of the world without estrangement.
What distinguishes Tantra is the way it wholeheartedly espouses sex as a spiritual ally, working with it explicitly and intentionally.
With Tantra’s sexual side thus addressed, we can move on to more general features of its practice. We have already seen that these are distinctive in the extent to which they are body-based, and the physical energies the Tantrics work with most regularly are the ones that are involved with speech, vision, and gestures.
The physical energies the Tantrics work with most regularly are the ones that are involved with speech, vision, and gestures.
To appreciate the difference in a religious practice that engages these faculties actively, it is useful to think back to the raja yoga of Hinduism and Zen in Buddhism. Both of these meditation programs set out to immobilize the body so that for practical purposes the mind might rise above it. A snapshot could capture the body in those practices, whereas with the Tibetans a motion picture camera would be needed, and one that is wired for sound. For, ritualistically engaged, the Tibetans’ bodies are always moving. The lamas prostrate themselves, weave stylized hand gestures, pronounce sacred syllables, and intone deep-throated chants. Audially and visually, something is always going on.
For, ritualistically engaged, the Tibetans’ bodies are always moving. The lamas prostrate themselves, weave stylized hand gestures, pronounce sacred syllables, and intone deep-throated chants.
The rationale they invoke for engaging their bodies in their spiritual pursuits is straightforward. Sounds, sights, and motion can distract, they admit, but it does not follow that they must do so. It was the genius of the great pioneers of Tantra to discover upayas (skillful means) for channeling physical energies into currents that carry the spirit forward instead of derailing it. The most prominent of these currents relate to the sound, sight, and movement we have referred to, and the names for them all begin with the letter “m.” Mantras convert noise into sound and distracting chatter into holy formulas. Mudras choreograph hand gestures, turning them into pantomime and sacred dance. Mandalas treat the eyes to icons whose holy beauty draws the beholder in their direction.
The rationale they invoke for engaging their bodies in their spiritual pursuits is straightforward. Sounds, sights, and motion can distract, they admit, but it does not follow that they must do so.
If we try to experience our way into the liturgy by which the Tibetans put these Tantric devices into practice, the scene that emerges is something like this. Seated in long, parallel rows; wearing headgear that ranges from crowns to wild shamanic hats; garbed in maroon robes, which they periodically smother in sumptuous vestments of silver, scarlet, and gold, gleaming metaphors for inner states of consciousness, the monks begin to chant. They begin in a deep, guttural, metric monotone, but as the mood deepens those monotones splay out into harmonics that sound like full-throated chords, though actually the monks are not singing in parts; harmony (a Western discovery) is unknown to them. By a vocal device found nowhere else in the world, they reshape their vocal cavities in ways that amplify overtones to the point where they can be heard as discrete tones in their own right. Meanwhile, their hands perform stylized gestures that kinesthetically augment the states of consciousness that are being accessed.
Here we have a description of how the Tibetans put these Tantric devices into practice.
A final, decisive feature of this practice would be lost on observers because it is totally internal. Throughout the exercise the monks visualize the deities they are invoking—visualize them with such intensity (years of practice are required to master the technique) that, initially with closed eyes but eventually with eyes wide open, they are able to see the deities as if they were physically present. This goes a long way toward making them real, but in the meditation’s climax, the monks go further. They seek experientially to merge with the gods they have conjured, the better to appropriate their powers and their virtues. An extraordinary assemblage of artistic forms are orchestrated here, but not for art’s sake. They constitute a technology, designed to modulate the human spirit to the wavelengths of the tutelary deities that are invoked.
Through their chanting and gestures they are able to visualize the deities they are invoking; and then they seek experientially to merge with the gods they have conjured.
To complete this profile of Tibetan Buddhism’s distinctiveness, we must add to this summary of its Tantric practice a unique institution. When in 1989 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, that institution jumped to worldwide attention.
The Dalai Lama is not accurately likened to the pope, for it is not his prerogative to define doctrine. Even more misleading is the designation God-King, for though temporal and spiritual authority do converge in him, neither of these powers define his essential function. That function is to incarnate on earth the celestial principle of which compassion or mercy is the defining feature. The Dalai Lama is the bodhisattva who in India was known as Avalokiteshvara, in China as the Goddess of Mercy Kwan Yin, and in Japan as Kannon. As Chenrezig (his Tibetan name) he has for the last several centuries incarnated himself for the empowerment and regeneration of the Tibetan tradition. Through his person—a single person who has thus far assumed fourteen successive incarnations—there flows an uninterrupted current of spiritual influence, characteristically compassionate in its flavor. Thus in relation to the world generally, and to Tibet in particular, the office of the Dalai Lama is chiefly neither one of administration nor of teaching but an “activity of presence” that is operative independently of anything he may, as an individual, choose to do or not do. The Dalai Lama is a receiving station toward which the compassion principle of Buddhism in all its cosmic amplitude is continuously channeled, to radiate thence to the Tibetan people most directly, but by extension to all sentient beings.
The Dalai Lama is a receiving station toward which the compassion principle of Buddhism in all its cosmic amplitude is continuously channeled, to radiate thence to the Tibetan people most directly, but by extension to all sentient beings.
Whether the Dalai Lama will reincarnate himself again after his present body is spent is uncertain, for at present the Chinese invaders are determined that there will be no distinct people for him to serve. If there are not, something important will have withdrawn from history. For as rain forests are to the earth’s atmosphere, someone has said, so are the Tibetan people to the human spirit in this time of its planetary ordeal.
For as rain forests are to the earth’s atmosphere, someone has said, so are the Tibetan people to the human spirit in this time of its planetary ordeal.
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