256 martin lehnertaccomplishment. Such concepts worked their way from the non-
institutional periphery right into the heart of Buddhist institutional
practice, and went beyond what was regarded as appropriate from
a Mahyna point of view: the Susiddhikara for example placed the
hierophant on the same level as the “Three Jewels” (i.e., buddha, dharma,
sa gha) and—referring to his (occult) skills—compared him to bodhi-
sattvas or even a buddha.^31 The demonological stress is made explicit
in the siddha’s envisaged ascent to the status of a “sorcerer sovereign”
(Skt. vidydhararja) or “perfect sorcerer” (Skt. siddhavidydhara):^32 located
at the margins of civilisation both in mundane as well as mythic realms,
he embodied a thaumaturgical link between mystic eroticism and
necromancy, being a medium of divine force invoked through spirit-
possession rituals (Skt. vea).^33
The importance attached to accomplishment by way of skill in
means quali es Tantric Buddhism as techne-oriented instrumentalism.
This is explicitly testi ed in the Mahvairocanbhisa bodhi, which became
a basic scripture of the “secret teachings” throughout East Asia. An
often quoted key sentence reads as follows:
Mind of awakening is the cause, compassion is the root, skill in means
is the nal ultimate.^34When applied under “worldly conditions” of human action, skill in
means cannot be separated from any appropriation of (divine) sov-
ereignty and the option of deliberately serving as an instrument for
political ends. Hence, Tantric Buddhist ritual as well as doctrinal forms
of content are vested with a “technocratic” disdain regarding the limita-
tions of ethics and law as appropriate only for incompetent subjects.
The rise of Tantric pragmatics strengthened the Buddhist ability
to cope with contingency, conditioning its cosmological plan, ethic
legitimisation and aesthetic representation in relation to skill in means,
instrumentalism and salvi c techne. Tantric Buddhism, whether based
on monastic order or non-institutional siddha practice, appears to be the
most techne oriented, decidedly “technocratic” form of Buddhism. This(^31) T.893.18.605a4–7; tr. Giebel 2001, p. 136.
(^32) See Davidson 2002, pp. 187–188, 194–196.
(^33) On the three basic types of Tantric ritual, abhieka, homa and vea, see Strickmann
1996, pp. 49–52.
(^34) T.848.18.1b29–c1.
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