The Psychology of Buddhist Tantra: Stuff and More Old Stuff

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Quite a few things to respond to! Otherwise, where did the ideas come from? Surely not a group of people sitting around who then decided to do all of this. Otherwise, why the Three Jewels? Of course, all the mythical details of his life and supernatural elements could clearly have been exagerated, added, or a form of visionary history, as you suggest.

Also, what about Mahavira? How does this seem to work? Do they practice Sutrayana in public and Tantra in private? Is there an exoteric and an esoteric face going on here? I felt the same shock as when I read about Milarepa, and this is a character revered for how enlightened he was.

Anyway, sorry to rant on. This has all been coming to a head in my own studies and practice and so I am glad to have had a catalyst to prompt me to think about it more and try to concrete it in words somehow. For that, many thanks, good sir! My understanding is that there is no strong evidence that Buddhism existed before the 1st century.

Apparently, there is no independent record of Buddhism having existed. So, as far as I know, the whole early history could be fiction. In particular, we have no reason apart from scripture to believe that there even was an early Sangha, much less that it was fervent, perfectly preserved oral history, etc. Actually, it seems to be uncontroversial among Western scholars that they did! Different parts of the Tripitaka were composed over several centuries by many different people in different places with different agendas.

I read recently two semi-popular attempts to sort this out, by Stephen Batchelor and Richard Gombrich. I found them both totally unconvincing. Neither has any sort of rigorous method; they just attribute to Gautama the bits they like and assert that the other bits were later accretions. About Mahavira I know zilch. As far as I know there is no independent evidence that their direct disciples debated each other or, indeed, that Gautama had direct disciples.

If there is, then most of what I wrote above is wrong. I know little about the FPMT. Yes, right on, exactly. In fact they are perfectly open and explicit about this, and there are plausible religious reasons for this secrecy. What is not spoken of is the non-religious reasons, which have to do with power and money. What one preserves from Sutra is spaciousness, or absence of neediness. That spaciousness is a prerequisite to Tantra. Tantric desire has to be empty desire. You have to be able to laugh at it. A Tantrika falls back on Sutra when desire or the other wisdom energies become solid and fixed—in other words, when they return to being kleshas rather than wisdoms.

But, the idea is that the kleshas are not extinguished, at all, in enlightenment. They are intensified—but since they are united with emptiness, they manifest as the five wisdoms.

Why I should shut up, and why I won’t

A Tantric Buddha displays vajra greed, vajra rage, vajra lust, vajra paranoia, and vajra idiocy. Which are, respectively, elegance, clarity, discrimination, accomplishment, and equanimity. I had very negative feelings about Tantra for a long time. It was shocking and repellent. And I still have mixed feelings!

I see Tantra as a step forward from Bodhisattvayana that becomes necessary at a certain point. If you practice Bodhisattvayana seriously, you become impatient. In the fight against samsara, I want a bazooka, not a popgun. This is interesting, regarding Mahavira the putative founder of Jainism. While I know very little about early Buddhism, Jayarava knows a great deal, and I find his judgement on such matters excellent. Early Jainism, then, is far more doubtful that early Buddhism, and we should know by now that early Buddhism is quite uncertain.

So that seems to be the answer as far as evidence for the existence of Gautama Buddha in the Jain tradition: I love your sites and have been poking around them. I think this might be the right place to ask the question, since it is a thread about the practise of tantra in the West.

They leave me cold, however. I think it would be a more appealing practise for myself if I were dealing with athena and aries, etc. What do you think? The yidams of Tibetan Buddhism have a complex mixture of Indian and Tibetan features. But, some aspects of Indian culture have been thoroughly incorporated into Tibetan culture. So, yes, they are more familiar to Tibetans than to Westerners. On the other hand, visualizing yourself as having bright blue skin and four arms and three heads is probably no easier for Tibetans or Medieval Indians than for us.

Some people do advocate recycling Western deities as yidams. It seems like it would be difficult to separate the Western deities from the metaphysical systems they originated in. Can you really have Mary without salvation? Athena and Aries might be less problematic, since the metaphysical system they are part of is dead. Maybe they are metaphysically neutral. The advantage of the traditional yidams is that their iconography ties in with Buddhist metaphysics. For example, the three different heads may function to transform the three kleshas, and the four arms hold weapons that destroy the four philosophical extremes.

Also, their alienness and impossibility may be useful in itself. To practice a yidam is to make a great leap, which is actually the point. I like her a lot: Thanks for the response. I share your reticence to adopt Christian figures into a yidam pratices. I agree about the metaphysics, but they also seem to be lacking those emotional dimensions that make yidam practise what it is or what I take it to be.

I think the Greek pantheon, say, might work better that way then again, it may not. I was just interested to hear what you had to say about that. I am presently in a weird place with my Buddhist practise, because I do not accept the consensus view for all the reasons you have spoken about, but I cannot find myself wanting to say that all desire is bad and that the best solution too life is to abandon it. I want life to be joyous! So tantra seems the way to go this correlates well with some of my philosophical interests, too: Like I said, though, super hard to resonate with these yidams, though maybe more study under someone qualified is the way to go.

To what ultimate end?

Even the humblest of novice monks can outshine these so-called occult adepts. Magick and occult beliefs in general tend to feed into the underlying egoism that is already there in the individual. However, it was by way of magick that I started making links with Buddhism — the illusory, malleable-like appearance of reality, and the self. When I moved into Vajrayana from Theravada, I started seeing lots of links with Western magick and ritual — shared tools and techniques, if not goals or values.

This is something I wish to explore more. Wherever the Dharma went, it used the archetypal forms of the local peoples to connect with their collective mind. If it results in benefits for those people, and does not serve to merely pay lip service to the Dharma but assists in bringing them into the practice of the path, then I believe it is skilful means.

I can assure you, all he is saying is predominantly falling on deaf, uninterested ears. I personally am very comfortable with the Vajra-deities, and have come to adore their beauty, archetypal power and intricate symbolic significance. However, I can appreciate that for some, it is very difficult to connect with the distinctly Indian-Asian aesthetic.

I wonder if, like Ra-Hoor-Khuit, other pagan deities of the West could be appropriated as Dharma protectors. I would love to see more Greek, Roman and Egyptian deities in the beautiful Vajrayana-style depiction Webster worked on for the cover of his book with the artist Kat Lunoe. Their myths and samsaric dramas attest to the fact that the European gods clearly also suffer from impermanence, suffering and non-self, even if they do abide in the god realms. Imagine the splendour of a tantric Anubis of death and impermanence, psychopomp between the bardos, or a wrathful Athena who has turned her military intelligence towards the destruction of ignorance and the three poisons.

Or perhaps a Hermetic, Mercurial Manjushri Hermanjushri? It would just take a good artist learned in Tibetan art to take up the challenge. James — Yes, it sounds like tantra might be a good fit for your temperament. The difficulty is finding a way in, I suppose? I hope my writing may do a little to help make tantra more accessible. I like some aspects of their approach, but I find their Theravada framework emotionally opaque. Do they seem to retain an anti-enjoyment bias from that tradition?

Nietzsche is a major influence on me, obviously. Zac — Thanks, this is very interesting. I came to Buddhism via Wiccan Paganism , and have a little knowledge of Thelema as well. Al Jigen Billings openbuddha has a perhaps similar project at pagandharma. However, to be fair, Buddhists are not always exemplary people, either. I am fond of saying that, on average, the Mormons I have known have been much better people than the Buddhists I have known.

This is partly because the Western stuff was influenced by mainly-Hindu tantra that came back from India with British colonial officers in the s and early s. As you and Sam Webster note, the goals are quite different, though. So… which coopts which if you blend them? Or is a hybrid vigor possible? I like your vision of Athena as a wrathful yidam, though!

Thanks for your in-depth response and the links you have provided. They are exremely interesting reading. I was thinking that, depending on their particular mythologies, they could work that way. I would need to know about how the practices work though, before I could even begin contemplating Buddhizing other figures.

I really do appreciate your writing, it does make tantra more accessible — in fact, before reading your sites, I always rejected it out of hand seemed too weird beforehand.

A Tantric attitude

The Hardcore Dharma scene has an interesting sort of relationship to ordinary life, desire, etc. Indeed, some are quite vocally opposed to the notion. What appeals to me about him is his attitude that everything is alright the way it is, we just have to see that. Then again, I worry about that making one apathetic about things one ought not to be. My own background before Buddhism has been in neo shamanism and chaos magic. I cannot go into any details, but I ended up as a Vajrayana practitioner after I had completed an type of a operation which Thelemites call Knowledge and Communication of the Holy Guardian Angel.

Suddenly just some weird coincidences happened, and I found my teacher a bit later. HGA disappeared and yidams appeared. I do not practice anymore any of my old occult practices, and I happily focus completely to Vajrayana. However, there are some questions remaining. Finland has very peculiar old nature religion, which is distantly related to Siberian shamanic traditions http: It is very little related to the Indo-European religions, which are naturally more familiar to most western people.

Although I do not actually practice it, I value Finnish paganism in the sense that it is a huge element in my cultural heritage. I often wonder, how I could best communicate with the Finnish pagans when having slightly spiritual conversation. I have some sense of what they are talking about in experiential level — but I maintain the view of Vajrayana. How could I find the most communicative words and expressions?

Could some elements of the old Finish nature religion be assimilated into Tantra? Tapio as a dharma protector? He tells a good story about going into the absolute worst areas of LA and doing her mantra, and never being hassled by anyone. David — Just an idle aside, but following the mention of Mahavira above did you know that there is or at least, was tantra in Jainism? I was tentatively starting to look at this area in the context on an MPhil with Dr William Johnson student of Gombrich, and Jain specialist when I carelessly became a Buddhist.

I think I had read that there was tantra in Jainism, but no more detail than that. I have recently read several credible-sounding sources who say that there was, and still is, tantra in Theravada. That might be useful in legitimizing tantra for certain people.

That is an interesting thing about Nestorian Christianity.

I have always wondered why Christianity has been so renunciative about the world in practise. So I have always seen some room for a tantric approach there. Then further mucking up the mess already made with those special agents of Western imperialism out to demonstrate the inferiority of savage or near so buddhist teachings as justification for foreign rule and certainly for invasive missionaries — nearly all of our interpretation of Japanese Buddhism is fouled as the work of American colonialist missionaries — they compiled dictionaries, translated sutras and ritual manuals, interpreting whole traditions without the slightest modicum of undergoing training.

This is serious business. Such persecution was so effective, and the perpetuation of Catholic dogmatism into the Protestsant movement, our Orientalists were entirely ignorant of gnosis, suffering from what I call the Gnosis Deficiency Disorder! Conze was the greatest 20th century Prajnaparamita scholar, and I was one of his students. That volume includes a badly edited article by myself on the same topic.

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Gnosticism, including post-Latin Renaissance gnostic movements, are akin to but by not means as sophisticated as bodhisattva buddhism. The major deficit Western students face as obstacle is that of contemporary movements acting as the Roman Church for long did. Laymen were tacitly forbidden to read scripture, creating a monopoly and condition of priviledge.

For Western Buddhists, reading sutras is not mainstream: My training began with learning by heart to recite from memory sutras in Sanskrit and Japanese pronunciation of classical Chinese. Once memorized, lessons began — including language lessons. You get misinterpretations telling you how 19th and 20th century Christians failed to understand gnosis-driven buddhism.

If you take into account the Dunhuang caves of Western China, on the border of the great silk road deserts, just witness the evolution of artistic styles, including mandalas — elsewhere the liturgical voice and musical instrument expression is found. But not just any master. And you only need one living buddha at a time, and the emperor should lavishly support that living buddha to the exclusion of all other teachers and teachings.

Earliest known Tibetan texts are also found at Dunhuang, predating the official starting date of Buddhism in Tibet and a scant years — Tibetan revisionism discovered! And who was the originator of dzog. Why, that literary character invention Bodhidharma, supposed an Indian monk by described as a Central Asian whose mixed ancestry would include Celtic DNA. Hello Ken, I found your comment absolutely fascinating. I am an undergrad currently writing my dissertation on the modernisation of Buddhist traditions and I would love to hear more.

You seem to have really done your research on this. Any help would be appreciated! In November received lifetime teaching certification as a Kyoshi Teachings Master in Kyoto, Japan, in a nearly year old post-monastic tradition co-founded by a couple. The history of Buddhism presented in the West is a travesty. Bob Scharf has done some great works as well. Ken , thank you very much for your long and interesting comment!

Sam van Schaik has been doing a lot of interesting work on sorting out the relationship between Chan and Dzogchen based on the Dunhuang manuscripts. As far as I know, no one ever alleged that Bodhidharma originated Dzogchen but I could be mistaken!

Visualization Practice in Tantra

The emic story is that Garab Dorje was its human originator, and it was propagated to Tibet by Padmasambhava, Vimalamitra, and others. Thanks for the pointer to Fathering Your Father: The several posts after that, on the re-making of Zen and Theravada, are probably relevant to your project, and have lots of citations. David, your blog here is simply wonderful. A breath of fresh air — with younger generations finally arising to meet the challenge of authentic, authorative interpretation head on.

I was flabber ghasted with discovery of your blog yesterday. Totally unexpected and a blessed relief. Thus discovery of your site is marvellous. More folks like myself out there, albeit considerably younger. So what to do with a collection? Usually hiers hold garage sales or sell collections off to used book stores! The name is bodhidharma[matha] as I recall. My sense of vajrayana is not as an exclusively Tibetan development, rather more likely from that loss realm of Central Asia and the Persian plane.

As an aside at a buddhist studies conference in Honolulu in a young Japanese scholar told me considerable research effort is underway in Iran due to translations from Sanskrit to Persian of otherwise lost Skt materials. Then there are those lost cities with lost temples that Sir Ariel Stein excavated a century ago, then recovered with sand to protect from further erosion. In the case of Tibet, something akin to archaeological excavation as textual criticism looking at layers and strata of development is really needed rather than just looking for doctrines, Same with myth and metaphor.

I have actually wondered before about the extent to which Buddhism penetrated Persia before Islam, and how that may have affected Buddhism elsewhere. In the case of Tibet, something akin to archaeological excavation as textual criticism looking at layers and strata of development is really needed rather than just looking for doctrines. Many things that made no sense when viewed as doctrine are now comprehensible as historical responses to political events. Boredom is just another form of aversion. New rituals will bore people too. Anyways, this thought popped into my head and I thought I would run it by some people who are hopefully more knowledgeable than me to see if it even comes close to the mark.

I read one ethnography of the Aghoris Hindu, not Buddhist, I know, but tantric , and a moderate strain for householders had taken up working with lepers, both as a kind of social service and spiritual path. So, this got me to thinking: All kinds of taboos around purity, sexuality, and caste are confronted.

Is there an analogy here to some kinds of leftist activism? So, could there be a kind of Tantric social practice that focused on working with the marginal, the outcast? Here, prisoners, the mentally ill, or other neglected causes or shunned types would be an obvious choice. Have I missed the point on Tantra, or is this an avenue that could lead somewhere? Yes, Buddhist tantrikas do this too. Both—as you say—as social service and as a spiritual practice.

I hung out with some of the most ritually-impure gay sub-groups back then, and there was a distinctly tantric flavor to their own worldview and celebrations, as well. Citrasena is an outsider: Her power comes from her otherness; from her willingness to go where no respectable person would dare… She wears spiked black leather and has a tongue piercing. She reads vile adult comic books. Sex with her is memorable, but not many people would want to repeat it.

But can a necrophiliac witch be as noble as Gautama? Or do transgressive outsiders just cause trouble? In fact, many Western tantrikas do such work, and do see it as part of their spiritual practice. Many Modern Buddhists who are not explicitly tantric also do such work, and see it as part of the spiritual practice.

I mentioned social justice activism specifically as an example in that post. A particularly extreme version of this practice, I thought, might include working in an institutional environment where one had to play a supportive, therapeutic role to those whose crimes were, by any imagination, beyond the pale.

Like being a counselor or prison chaplain to violent sex offenders. In this way, the adept would have to take up a discipline few are called to in their daily lives: I have found an absence of sources on those considered ritually impure in Tibetan Buddhism, and, although I gather from some sources like the life of Gelongma Palmo that leprosy and other diseases constituted a kind of ritual impurity, most of the scholarly articles I find refer to it in the Hindu context. Yes, I like the suggestion in your first paragraph. In a tantric context, this would count as deliberately entering a charnel ground see my post on charnel practice in order to transform it.

For those who have the capacity. I did a quick search on Buddhist tantra and lepers, and found several dozen mentions. In general, spending time with lepers and magically curing them is a stock element in hagiographies; but this gives no significant insight into what the actual social practice was.

Examples chosen at random:. Chekawa knew mind training to be the essence of the Dharma, but he thought few would be capable of receiving it, so initially he was reluctant to teach it. Then, out of compassion, he taught some lepers who had been forsaken by the doctors and had abandoned any hope of finding happiness in life. As a result of the practice, they were cured of their leprosy and gained great realization. So it was that he became a great master of these instructions and an incomparable bodhisattva.

Yeshe Tsogyel sometimes also pursued her practice within society. In addition to her long sojourns at the royal court, she performed many services for suffering humanity: Giving oneself sexually seems to be the special provenance of female bodhisattvas. Young, Courtesans and Tantric Consorts. Kusali, a monk living in thirty-six vows, came by and saw this leper. Please take me there. Even though he was a monk and even though she was a leper oozing pus and blood, without any hesitation and with incredible compassion he lifted the woman onto his back. When he reached the middle of the river, she then appeared to him as Vajravarahi, not as an ordinary woman any more.

Two podcasts: Rebuilding the ruined city of Buddhism

Whereas previously she had only kept company with abbots, masters, and monastics, never with lay people, after this realization she kept company with lepers and beggars—a sign that she had cut through craving for friends. This passage, in context, is a theoretical muddle. One could spend time in the company of lepers:. Or, put more charitably, it gives you tools to practice in all these ways simultaneously. Oh, one other thing. The sources I looked at confirm that leprosy did constitute religious ritual impurity. For instance, lepers were explicitly disbarred from becoming monks.

Hey David, just discovered your site and am thoroughly excited in checking it out. My interest in Tantra has been stoked lately, but knowing that a lot of teachings are secretive, I was wondering if you had any recommendations book-wise that go into some of the techniques.

Thanks in advance, and look forward to reading you! This post may help explain why. It would be like trying to learn gymnastics from books. You need a personal teacher, who can give you feedback and demonstrations and specific advice for your obstacles and interests. Almost all tantric practices are described in texts that are publicly available in English translation. But, you have to already know how to do the practice before the description makes sense. Books on Vajrayana can be valuable as inspiration, and as explanation of the way-of-seeing. I recommended some here. Among them, Wearing the Body of Visions is the most practice-oriented.

Currently, there is no really good solution to this problem. However, this post suggests some Vajrayana teachers whose world-view is relatively modern, and some modern Buddhist teachers who incorporate some tantric elements in their curriculum. It does not require any of the traditional tantric commitments or rigamarole, and does give basic tantric instruction one-on-one, over the internet, with a qualified mentor.

You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account. You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Notify me of new posts via email. Skip to content A conversation has begun about what post-Consensus Buddhisms could be. A Tantric attitude For me, the heart of the Tantric path is not magical methods or esoteric concepts. Nobility If spacious passion is the path, what is the goal? Tantric history The posts up to this point in the outline sketch what I hope are inspiring if vague possibilities.

In any case, I hope to show that: Tantra has innovated radically through most of its history. This means that there have been many different Tantric Buddhisms. So, there are diverse starting points available for future Tantric Buddhisms, which we can draw on according to taste and need. Further, this shows that Buddhist Tantra is not inherently conservative, and that further development is historically legitimate. Tantra has been in political conflict with mainstream Buddhism throughout its history. This is as true now as ever. Future Tantric Buddhisms will face the same conflict—although Western tolerance and freedom of religion should lessen the impact.

The ruling class has always seen Tantra as a powerful weapon. They have sought to monopolize it as a tool in their power struggles. They have tried to restrict access denying it to potential opponents , and have controlled Tantric adepts as resources for their own use. This continues up to the present, and explains part of why Buddhist Tantra is so difficult to get into. There was a wave of promising Tantric innovation in the West in the s. It was suppressed, successfully, in the s and s by a coalition of politically-conservative Tibetans and politically-correct Americans.

That coalition is losing its grip, and new Tantric initiatives are emerging now. An automotive engineering approach Now we get down to nuts and bolts. Reinventing Buddhist ritual Ritual is often said to be the defining feature of Buddhist Tantra. Reddit Facebook Twitter Google.

David Chapman Author of the book Meaningness and several Buddhist sites. Interested to hear more, however… Best, Bradley.

Visualization Practice in Tantra — Study Buddhism

Hi Bradley, Shambhala was my introduction to Buddhist tantra, too, and I had a good experience with it. I have been thinking about mountain climbing as well. Maybe these are really what I am wondering: Just my 2 cents. Hi, Zac, Thank you very much for this! Of course, we are entirely deluded The Tantric view is that no one is entirely deluded. Of course, it can lead to various practical problems, which need to be dealt with intelligently.

Relatedly, samsara and nirvana are inseparable. There is nowhere else to go, except here. That is a core concept of all Buddhisms that cannot be denied — ending the rounds of rebirth, either now or in the future, is the ultimate goal, and ending the craving of sense pleasures is the method to get there All Buddhisms except Vajrayana. Thanks again for a clear and accurate statement of the view of the Other Leading Brand! The Life and Teachings of Patrul Rinpoche.

The Guru Drinks Bourbon? Detalhes do produto Formato: Snow Lion 16 de setembro de Vendido por: Compartilhe seus pensamentos com outros clientes. On my spiritual path, I found that I excellently and fortunately have a karma connection to a Tibetan lama. When I was allowed to begin the preliminary practices, however, they seemed culturally alien, and while I understood the practices conceptually, I struggled to bring them into my heart.

Rob Preece's book has been an invaluable bridge to allow my preliminary practice to become focused on removing the obstacles to true dharma practice as encountered by a western person. His cultural version of the mandala offering prayer is worth the price of the book alone, and epitomizes the practice cutting through attachments required on this path.

There are now quite a number of books that describe the mechanics of the practice, presented from a very traditional viewpoint. This one helps people explore the heart of the practice, allowing the path of transformation to unfold. Preece reprises his Jungian take on Tibetan Buddhism, this time focused on ngondro, or the so-called preliminary practices the meditator engages as an entryway into the Vajrayana path.

Preece shares his own experience with the five classic practices -- prostrations, refuge and bodhicitta, purification, offering and devotion -- plus several more that, altho not a part of the traditional practice, are equally important. For those practitioners looking for a psychological framework, in this case Jungian, this book may be interesting.

Great read for the psychologist or highly motivated mediation practitioner. Probably not for the newbie, as the concepts are intricate and take a while to understand. Great book on how to prepare also highlights how you may have already begun the process in a compassionate and inspiring way. As always, everything written by this author is excellent and helpful. The symbolism used in tantra is a long way to be understood by the eyes of a western culture.