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AMBIGUOUS SEXUALITY
Imagery and interpretation in Tantric Buddhism'
Roger R. Jackson
Source: Religion 22 (1992): 85-100.
A critic of the thesis that asceticism and celibacy are central to
mysticism might well turn for support to the Buddhist and Hindu
tantras, whose practices often are assumed to involve 'sex in the
service of enlightenment'. I will attempt to show that the issue is
not nearly so simple, by demonstrating the ambiguity of sexual
imagery in Buddhist tantric texts and the historical ambivalence of
the tantric tradition itself regarding the place and meaning of
sexuality. After presenting three highly encoded 'performance-
songs' (caryiiglti) of the Indian Buddhist adept KaJ:.lha (lith
century), I will discuss the nature of interpretation in the tantric
tradition, then the various ways in which the sexual imagery in
Kal.lha's performance songs may be read. There appear to be at
least four possible levels of interpretation: (I) literal, where sexu-
ality is overt, (2) symbolic, where the surface sexuality is a
metaphor for certain meditative achievements, (3) 'higher' literal,
where the symbolized meditative achievements are actualized by
ritual sexuality, and (4) yogic, where sexual rites are revealed to
entail sublimation rather than indulgence, asceticism rather than
eroticism. By way of conclusion, I will address some possible crit-
icisms of my analysis, and suggest broader comparative issues
arising from it.I. Introduction
In most comparative works on mysticism, the figures chosen for discussion -
whether Asian or Western, male or female - are predominantly celibate. St
Augustine (at least, eventually), Bernard of Clairvaux, Meister Eckhart, Cather-
ine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Rabi'a,
Buddhaghosa, Niigiiijuna, Sailkara, Milarepa, Tsong kha pa, Huineng, Dogen:
all of these exemplary figures were unmarried. This hardly is surprising when