VAJRAYANAAND LATER INDIAN BUDDHISM 133revolved around whether the earliest formulations of the Buddhist Path were
to be regarded as absolute, unchanging truths. Hinayana schools cited the fact
that the Noble Eightfold Path is a noble truth on par with the truth of the
goal. Even though the Siitra Pitaka maintains that the spiritual impact of an
action is determined by the state of mind in which it is committed, it also
notes that certain actions are inherently unskillful, in that they invariably in-
volve subtle levels of unskillful motivation. Thus the Hinayanists rejected any
means not in accord with the Path. For them, Awakening by any other
means-and divorced from any reference to the Buddha's original insights
concerning karma-was self-deception, and not true Awakening; thus, the
Tantric taboo against associating with Hinayanists, and the general lack of syn-
cretism between Hinayana and Tantrism. The only extant Hinayana Tantras
fit into the Action and Performance classes; none of them claim to bring about
Awakening.
The Mahayana schools, even if they did not all embrace the new move-
ment, did provide room in their doctrines for placing the means of the Path
on a lower level of truth as compared with the absolute truth of the goal (see
Section 4.2). If everything is Siinya (empty), as Madhyamika says, and if dis-
tinctions exist only on the imaginary level, as Yogacara claims, nothing should
be disallowed as a means of realization for properly motivated and trained prac-
titioners of Unexcelled Yoga. Vices could be used to overcome vices, because
both vice and nonvice were essentially empty (Strong EB, sec. 5.5.1). From
this point of view, the pattern of inversion and denial of distinctions could be
interpreted as being analogous to the overcoming of the limits of conventional
truth and the arrival at the ultimate truth of emptiness: the identification of
sarp.sara with niryaJ!.a; the vision of the imaginary as simply a wave on the
ocean of the perfeCted. Given this rationale, it was only a short step to accept-
ing the unkempt siddhas and yoginis into the tradition. Thus was born main-
stream Vajrayana.
Before the adepts of Unexcelled Yoga could enter the mainstream, how-
ever, they had to be laundered somewhat so as not to offend monastic sensi-
bilities. Beginning in the tenth century, monastic scholars from the great
universities began writing voluminous commentaries on the Unexcelled Yoga
Tantras, interpreting even their most scandalous passages in terms of tradi-
tional Buddhist doctrine, primarily Madhyamika.
The basic assumption in adopting these texts into the mainstream was that
the ritual of sexual yoga could be re-created in the imagination, arousing the
male and female energies within each meditator, thus becoming a practice
that even a celibate monk or nun could practice (see Section 11.5 for a de-
tailed description of deva-yoga in a monastic setting). Ritual implements-a
stylized thunderbolt and a bell-were manipulated in place of the male and
female organs in the course of imagining the rite. One issue that remained
unsettled was whether the imagined or the performed rite was superior. Some
claimed that the imagined rite was perfectly adequate for gaining Awakening,
and was actually superior in that it avoided the pitfalls inherent in the per-
formed rite. Others maintained that the imagined rite was simply a mental