i've been thinking about tantra...
Nov. 13th, 2018 09:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cattasallaIt's been a long time since I've really considered tantric practices, so this little diversion has been interesting. And I remember why I never really pursued them...they strongly resemble the magical practices of the occult Western tradition, which I did in my early 20s, and decided to ultimately leave behind because invocations and traversing the Paths of the Tree of Life and the Greater Rite of the Hexagram seemed to be no more or less effective than just paying attention to my breath in simple, boring old ānāpānasati or zazen.
Disclaimer: I am basing this entirely on what is publicly available about tantric practice. I have no initiations or empowerments, and if there's any special secrets that are only orally transmitted by gurus, I don't have that.
Before launching into some of the specifics, a note on what I glean to be the historical development of mainstream Indian Buddhism: It's largely a history of stagnation followed by revitalization. I touched on this in a previous post. The central practice of Buddhism is meditation, and along with that are meditation instructions. These instructions get turned into philosophical systems, and then meditation is neglected for study of the philosophy, so a new generation has to come around with new meditation instructions and new philosophical doctrines to blow apart the previous ones. As a side note, one thing I find interesting about this is that the revitalizations seem to always involve adding to the previous doctrines rather than ever going back to the basics of the original suttas...perhaps because they have already been dismissed as belonging to the Inferior Vehicle so not worth recovering? Anyway, I think that would be an interesting thing to study.
With tantra, it seems to me that what you have is Buddhists basically borrowing a bunch of magical practices from Śaivism, which can produce powerful altered states of consciousness, and recasting them with Buddhist doctrine.
So let's talk about those practices. Specifically, I want to talk about four features that are generally considered features specific to tantra: guru yoga, deity yoga, transgressive sacrality, and the revaluation of pleasure.
Guru yoga seems to me to be an intensified, advanced devotional practice. The purpose, it seems to me, is to engender a certain amount of faith and confidence. This is accomplished in part because the guru is supposed to be an example of a spiritually advanced person, but what's very important to that is the student believing the guru is spiritually advanced and has something unique worth offering. I really only have one experience with anything like that: when I received the transmission of the Five Precepts from Thich Nhat Hanh's nephew, Chan-Huy. It was a powerful experience that invigorated my practice and that I can still look back on and draw on. The entire retreat was set up to climax in that event, and also it was my first time really practicing with a sangha, so my mind had been conditioned to invest the experience with a lot of meaning. And, in general, I think devotional practices are great. They create a mind-set that is both more receptive to Dhamma instruction and more likely to undertake the difficult work of the practice. Buddhism takes a lot of effort, and unless you believe it's worth it, you're not going to be able (or even want) to do it.
Deity yoga is what most resembles the ritual magic I used to do (specifically, I had blended some of the insights of Chaos Magick with a somewhat more orthodox Thelemite interpretation of the Tree of Life). The purpose of these invocations is to embody a deity, and to take on its positive qualities, which then inform the rest of your life. It really is great and effective stuff. It's mythologizing your spiritual development...taking it from the mundane into the heroic. However, is it necessary?
The principle advantage I see to it is that boring, simple old meditations like just paying attention to your breath or your mind is hard. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of concentration, and not everyone is able to just sit down and do it. Complex and dynamic visualizations, on the other hand, are exciting and are able to occupy minds that might be bored by otherwise just breathing, and thus be able to stabilize concentration in a way that's helpful for practice. So, for someone who can't just sit and breathe, visualizations and deity yogas could be helpful for building the skill set necessary to then turn attention to their own mind and watch how that works. One method is not superior to the other (despite the fondness many tantrics have for referring to the Inferior Vehicle but insisting that's actually not derogatory), it's just different.
Transgressive sacrality seems very valuable in situations where repression is a problem. The fact is, mental blocks are a problem. They prevent awakening. So full liberation and awakening is simply not possible until those blocks are removed. Transgressive sacrality can accomplish this. It can release psychological energies blocked, which is a very powerful experience.
It seems to me this approach is similar to the deity yoga in that it's a mythologizing of experience. I think both tantrics and "sutra" Buddhists can agree that developing an aversion to desire or anger is simply replacing one form of attachment with another. Repression is almost always going to create some sort of problem. True liberation from desire and anger and other defilements and hindrances comes from examining them and understanding them. Experience them fully without being carried away by them, and see what causes and conditions cause them to arise. Learn how they work, how they delude, and how to release them and prevent them from controlling you. The difference between the tantric method and the sutra method is simply that the former embeds it in ritual and visualization and magic and the latter doesn't. This also means that the tantric experience is associated with powerful altered visionary states of consciousness, whereas the sutric experience is just patience and probably doesn't get you nearly as stoned. If being stoned is what you need to accomplish liberation, then by all means, go for the occult methods!
The revaluation of pleasure is an interesting one. It took me a whole damn book to get to the part where Lama Yeshe finally explained what he meant by "using the energy of pleasure". First off, I have to note that it seems to me that the tantric methods culminate in the experience of meditative bliss, and don't go any further than that, which leads me to some additional questions I'll have to ask a tantrika at some point. In the suttas, the Buddha is pretty clear that meditative bliss is a stage one should endeavor to get beyond...sukha means there's still mental activity (and ultimately clinging) that needs to be quieted. The mind is still disturbed and hasn't reached nibbāna. Indeed, the experiences of the Deathless that I've read don't really discuss pleasure at all--they seem far beyond the duality of pleasure and pain (which the Mahāyāna like to say they are, too). So, to the extent that the jhānas can be assigned altitude, it seems what the tantrics do is lower than what the Buddha talks about. Now, this can open into questions about whether or not jhāna is necessary for awakening, and what level is necessary, which is a gigantic debate within Theravāda, so I'll just set it aside, other than to say that if "dry insight" can win the Deathless, then certainly the tantric bliss of emptiness can.
Anyway, it seems that, once the tantric has reached a certain level, then they can indulge in ordinary sensual pleasure and channel that into their blissful, awakened (or at least partially awakened?) consciousness. Which, okay, fine. I mean, I'm betting anyone sufficiently advanced can do that...if you're truly liberated from craving than you can indulge or refrain from pleasure as you see fit. But...why do it? I don't know, this to me gets to the question of whether or not tantrics who do teach this are truly liberated from pleasure or just looking for an excuse to keep enjoying worldly pleasures.
So yeah. That's where I am with tantra, now. I'm more or less satisfied with what I learned about it, and will now turn my attention back to my inferior practices...
Disclaimer: I am basing this entirely on what is publicly available about tantric practice. I have no initiations or empowerments, and if there's any special secrets that are only orally transmitted by gurus, I don't have that.
Before launching into some of the specifics, a note on what I glean to be the historical development of mainstream Indian Buddhism: It's largely a history of stagnation followed by revitalization. I touched on this in a previous post. The central practice of Buddhism is meditation, and along with that are meditation instructions. These instructions get turned into philosophical systems, and then meditation is neglected for study of the philosophy, so a new generation has to come around with new meditation instructions and new philosophical doctrines to blow apart the previous ones. As a side note, one thing I find interesting about this is that the revitalizations seem to always involve adding to the previous doctrines rather than ever going back to the basics of the original suttas...perhaps because they have already been dismissed as belonging to the Inferior Vehicle so not worth recovering? Anyway, I think that would be an interesting thing to study.
With tantra, it seems to me that what you have is Buddhists basically borrowing a bunch of magical practices from Śaivism, which can produce powerful altered states of consciousness, and recasting them with Buddhist doctrine.
So let's talk about those practices. Specifically, I want to talk about four features that are generally considered features specific to tantra: guru yoga, deity yoga, transgressive sacrality, and the revaluation of pleasure.
Guru yoga seems to me to be an intensified, advanced devotional practice. The purpose, it seems to me, is to engender a certain amount of faith and confidence. This is accomplished in part because the guru is supposed to be an example of a spiritually advanced person, but what's very important to that is the student believing the guru is spiritually advanced and has something unique worth offering. I really only have one experience with anything like that: when I received the transmission of the Five Precepts from Thich Nhat Hanh's nephew, Chan-Huy. It was a powerful experience that invigorated my practice and that I can still look back on and draw on. The entire retreat was set up to climax in that event, and also it was my first time really practicing with a sangha, so my mind had been conditioned to invest the experience with a lot of meaning. And, in general, I think devotional practices are great. They create a mind-set that is both more receptive to Dhamma instruction and more likely to undertake the difficult work of the practice. Buddhism takes a lot of effort, and unless you believe it's worth it, you're not going to be able (or even want) to do it.
Deity yoga is what most resembles the ritual magic I used to do (specifically, I had blended some of the insights of Chaos Magick with a somewhat more orthodox Thelemite interpretation of the Tree of Life). The purpose of these invocations is to embody a deity, and to take on its positive qualities, which then inform the rest of your life. It really is great and effective stuff. It's mythologizing your spiritual development...taking it from the mundane into the heroic. However, is it necessary?
The principle advantage I see to it is that boring, simple old meditations like just paying attention to your breath or your mind is hard. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of concentration, and not everyone is able to just sit down and do it. Complex and dynamic visualizations, on the other hand, are exciting and are able to occupy minds that might be bored by otherwise just breathing, and thus be able to stabilize concentration in a way that's helpful for practice. So, for someone who can't just sit and breathe, visualizations and deity yogas could be helpful for building the skill set necessary to then turn attention to their own mind and watch how that works. One method is not superior to the other (despite the fondness many tantrics have for referring to the Inferior Vehicle but insisting that's actually not derogatory), it's just different.
Transgressive sacrality seems very valuable in situations where repression is a problem. The fact is, mental blocks are a problem. They prevent awakening. So full liberation and awakening is simply not possible until those blocks are removed. Transgressive sacrality can accomplish this. It can release psychological energies blocked, which is a very powerful experience.
It seems to me this approach is similar to the deity yoga in that it's a mythologizing of experience. I think both tantrics and "sutra" Buddhists can agree that developing an aversion to desire or anger is simply replacing one form of attachment with another. Repression is almost always going to create some sort of problem. True liberation from desire and anger and other defilements and hindrances comes from examining them and understanding them. Experience them fully without being carried away by them, and see what causes and conditions cause them to arise. Learn how they work, how they delude, and how to release them and prevent them from controlling you. The difference between the tantric method and the sutra method is simply that the former embeds it in ritual and visualization and magic and the latter doesn't. This also means that the tantric experience is associated with powerful altered visionary states of consciousness, whereas the sutric experience is just patience and probably doesn't get you nearly as stoned. If being stoned is what you need to accomplish liberation, then by all means, go for the occult methods!
The revaluation of pleasure is an interesting one. It took me a whole damn book to get to the part where Lama Yeshe finally explained what he meant by "using the energy of pleasure". First off, I have to note that it seems to me that the tantric methods culminate in the experience of meditative bliss, and don't go any further than that, which leads me to some additional questions I'll have to ask a tantrika at some point. In the suttas, the Buddha is pretty clear that meditative bliss is a stage one should endeavor to get beyond...sukha means there's still mental activity (and ultimately clinging) that needs to be quieted. The mind is still disturbed and hasn't reached nibbāna. Indeed, the experiences of the Deathless that I've read don't really discuss pleasure at all--they seem far beyond the duality of pleasure and pain (which the Mahāyāna like to say they are, too). So, to the extent that the jhānas can be assigned altitude, it seems what the tantrics do is lower than what the Buddha talks about. Now, this can open into questions about whether or not jhāna is necessary for awakening, and what level is necessary, which is a gigantic debate within Theravāda, so I'll just set it aside, other than to say that if "dry insight" can win the Deathless, then certainly the tantric bliss of emptiness can.
Anyway, it seems that, once the tantric has reached a certain level, then they can indulge in ordinary sensual pleasure and channel that into their blissful, awakened (or at least partially awakened?) consciousness. Which, okay, fine. I mean, I'm betting anyone sufficiently advanced can do that...if you're truly liberated from craving than you can indulge or refrain from pleasure as you see fit. But...why do it? I don't know, this to me gets to the question of whether or not tantrics who do teach this are truly liberated from pleasure or just looking for an excuse to keep enjoying worldly pleasures.
So yeah. That's where I am with tantra, now. I'm more or less satisfied with what I learned about it, and will now turn my attention back to my inferior practices...