TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)question? The final issue is gender-based: can the images of sexuality developed
in the tantric tradition be seen as transcending particular gender identities -
after all, males may visualize themselves as female deities in union with male
deities, and vice versa - or, given their cultural heritage, are they derived from
an androcentric understanding of the nature of sexuality and gender that might
run contrary to female experience? Might females have developed Tantra differ-
ently, or, for that matter, might they have contributed to its development? Do the
reports of female practitioners reflect values not found in male practitioners'
accounts, or do they reflect instead the internalization of a standard style of
'tantric' discourse itself developed primarily by males? The answers to these
and the other questions I have just posed go considerably beyond my present
scope and competence, and will have to await another time, or another voice.
Notes
This essay originally was presented at the annual meeting of the American Academy
of Religion, New Orleans, Louisiana, November, 1990.
2 I take the four technical terms employed in this paragraph as follows: 'mysticism' is
any practice that aims at the most direct identification with ultimate reality of which a
human being is considered capable; 'celibacy' is the avoidance of sexual intercourse;
'chastity' is the limitation of sexual activity to the most conservative limits prescribed
by a tradition; and 'asceticism' is the denial of ordinary pleasures for the purpose of
attaining an extraordinary goal.
3 E.g. Yukei Matsunaga (ed.), The Guhyasamiija Tantra: A New Critical Edition,
Osaka, Toho Shuppan 1978, p.4; D. L. Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra: Sanskrit text,
Tibetan texts and English rendering, 2 vols, London, Oxford University Press 1959,
vol. II, p.2.
4 The Sanskrit is evaiJ! mayii srutam/ekasmin samaye bhagaviin sarvatathii-
gatakiiyaviik-cittahrdayavajraym;idbhagesu vijahiira. Alternative, somewhat bowd-
lerized translations include that of Snellgrove: 'Thus have I heard - at one time the
Lord dwelt in bliss with the Vajrayoginl who is the Body, Speech and Mind of all the
Buddhas' (op. cit., vol. I, p.47; but cf. his Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Boston, MA,
Shambhala 1987, vol. I, p. 121); and Dasgupta: 'It is heard by me that once upon a
time, the Lord sported in the heart of super-human knowledge arising out of the body,
speech and mind of all the Tathagatas', see S. B. Dasgupta, An Introduction to
Tantric Buddhism, 3rd Edn, rpt., Calcutta, University of Calcutta 1974, p. 120. The
crucial phrase here is yosidbhagesu. Yosit is, unambiguously, a woman; bhaga may
mean a number of things, including fortune, beauty, loveliness, and 'amorous sport'.
It also means the vulva or vagina, and used with yosit, denotes this. On the issue of
bowdlerization in tantra translation, see John Ronald Newman, The Outer Wheel of
Time: Vajrayiina Buddhist Cosmology in the Kiilacakra Tantra, Dissertation, Univer-
sity of Wisconsin-Madison 1987, Ann Arbor, UMI 1987, pp. 30-1 and note 5.
5 Michael M. Broido, 'Killing, lying, stealing, and adultery: a problem of interpretation
in the tantras', in DonaldS. Lopez, Jr (ed.), Buddhist Hermeneutics, Honolulu, Uni-
versity of Hawaii Press 1988, pp. 71-118.
6 Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, vol. I, pp. 255--62; and C. S. George, The Cm;-
tf_amahiirosal)atantra, chapters I-VIII. Sanskrit and Tibetan texts with English trans-
lation, New Haven, Oriental Society I974,passim.
7 See Keith Dowman, Masters of Mahamudra: Songs and Histories of the Eighty-Four
Siddhas, Albany, NY, State University ofNew York Press 1985, pp. 130--1.