tantra Archives - Journal of Contemplative Studies

The Hidden Bodhicaryāvatāra: Double Entendres, the Confession of Sins, and the Invocation of Mañjunātha

Modern teachings on Buddhist meditation often draw on Śāntideva’s eighth-century Bodhicaryāvatāra (Introduction to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life). While Śāntideva’s thought is presented as fit for broad global audiences, the fact that it developed in tandem with restricted tantric practices has received little attention. Visualization techniques in the early chapters parallel transgressive rituals in the system of the Secret Communion (Guhyasamāja Tantra). Śāntideva pays homage to Mañjunātha, an esoteric knowledge deity unknown in mainstream Mahāyāna texts, and his emphasis on holding on to bodhicitta, the “thought of awakening,” contains apparent double entendres about libertine yogis. Whereas tantric yoga aims at deification, Śāntideva’s mandalic confession rite aims to foster humility and altruism. Śāntideva’s indirect critique of transgressive bodily yogas paves the way for the internalization of tantric praxis. This article reconsiders the relationship between guided meditation and other kinds of ritual action in an influential contemplative tradition.

Review of The Words and World of Ge bcags Nunnery

Elizabeth McDougal’s The Words and World of Ge bcags Nunnery: Tantric Meditation in Context is a pioneering ethnographic study of a Nyingma nunnery located in the Eastern Tibet region of Nangchen, in present-day Qinghai province in China.

The Persistence of Habit: Tantric Engagements with Dharmakīrti’s View of Yogic Perception

Dharmakīrti’s view of yogic perception (yogipratyakṣa) and mental cultivation (bhāvanā) has generated a good deal of discussion—in Dharmakīrti’s text tradition, in the works of its various critics, and in the contemporary study of Buddhist philosophy. However, tantric authors’ appeals to yogic perception are at odds with Dharmakīrti’s intentions in important ways. In this paper, I show why this appropriation of Dharmakīrti on yogic perception might be surprising, and then I reveal a tantalizing thread of Dharmakīrtian thinking about cultivation that nevertheless runs through certain Sanskrit Buddhist tantric debates.

The Art of Imagination at the Intersection of Pramāṇa and Samaya: Normative Epistemology and Tantric Ethics in Early Philosophical Vajrayāna

Buddhist thinkers in Tibet, most especially those associated with Tibet’s Nyingma or Old School of Buddhism, have produced a rich and understudied current of tantric philosophy advancing the authority, validity, and rationality of the tantric view. This paper examines the text, Establishing Appearance as Divine (Snang ba lhar bsgrub pa) by Rongzom (fl. 11th–12th c.). It is our earliest documented instance of a Tibetan “tantric pramāṇa”—that is, an approach characterized by the philosophical integration of exoteric philosophical thought and esoteric ritual and ideology. As such, and in contrast to more narrowly focused studies of Tibetan ritual or Tibetan philosophy, this paper details the form, content, and context of Rongzom’s tantric pramāṇa or epistemological discourse in terms of both classical epistemology and Buddhist Tantra. This study thus sheds light on the relationship envisioned between ritual and philosophy in traditions of Vajrayāna.

Practicing the “Threefold Mystery”: Rethinking a Shingon Ritual from Dichotomy to Dialectic

After a century and a half of focus on Buddhist doctrine, academic attention is increasingly being paid to practice. What remains undertheorized, however, is the relation between the two. Despite its prevalence, the dichotomous representation of doctrine and practice is methodologically dysfunctional. As an alternative, it is proposed that the relation between doctrine and practice is better understood as dialectical, sometimes represented in Buddhist literature by the image of “the two wings of a bird.” This relation is explored by examining a particular tantric ritual, a Shingon homa.

Portrait of a Poison: Datura in Buddhist Magic

The psychoactive plant Datura metel appears across a range of traditions in premodern South Asia including the form of tantric Buddhism (Vajrayāna) located in the yoginī tantras, where the plant is most prominently used in instructions for bringing about magical acts (ṣaṭkarman). This paper explores the possibility that datura was consumed for its hallucination-inducing potential by considering how the plant was viewed and used in premodern South Asia through an ethnobotanical approach to relevant texts. It argues that the material potency of the plant as a dangerous poison gave it a magical potency that made it a favored ingredient in several hostile magic rites (abhicāra) and suggests that the line between material and magical is an inappropriate distinction to draw when examining these tantras.