Buddhism in India

Transitoriness and Transformations 111

Finally, the Buddha or ‘Buddha-nature’ and Nirvana seem to have

been treated in such a way as to make them seem little different

from the overriding ‘Brahman’ or supreme being of Vedanta.

The Diamond Path

Water in the ear is removed by more water, a thorn by another thorn. So

wise men rid themselves of passion by yet more passion (Tantric saying)

Beyond the exalted heavens, jeweled palaces and diamond trees of

Mahayana imagination lay another realm of joy—the human body.

Sometime between 700–1000 CE, the influence of Tantra practices

and beliefs, oriented to the magical and mystical aspects of the

union of male and female, began to spread all over India. Tantric

adepts were associated with secretive, esoteric philosophy; with

rituals and arcane cosmologies; with worship of the mother Goddess;

and with the ritual use of the forbidden ‘five Ms’—mamsa(meat),

madhya(alcohol), matsya(fish), mudra (women) and maithuna

(sexual intercourse).

Like other forms of Buddhism, Tantra has ambiguous elements.

The association with sexuality is quite explicit in many Tantric

texts, particularly the Guhyasamaja-tantrawhich describes elabo-

rate rituals for group orgies. Many of the more ‘shocking’ aspects

of these are argued to be symbolic by most followers of Tantra.

(Another set of ‘Ms’, for example, includes instead mantras or

chants, mudrasor symbolic gestures and mandalasor symbolic dia-

grams of cosmic forces). Whatever the esoteric practices may have

been, the role of gurus, rituals including the brahmanic homaor

the fire ceremony, and the emphasis on the awesome and destruc-

tive as well as erotic aspects of existence in Tantric art and sculp-

ture represent bewildering new forms of religious expression that

seem very different in spirit from classical Buddhism (Bapat 1997:

313–27; Wayman 1995: 219–24).

A sociological view of Vajrayana could begin by noting that it

was Buddhism in an age of Brahmanic ‘Hindu’ dominance. The last

half of the millennium saw a hardening of caste and hierarchy, a

proliferation of kingdoms, an elaboration or intensification of the

agrarian economy with trade with the outside world to a large

extent monopolised by the Muslim Arabs and others (see Chapter 5).

This was very different from the open, mobile, trade-oriented

womb). An ‘extreme’ version of this would lead to essentialism and
then to the Tantric notion of the identity of the world (samsara) and
enlightenment (nirvana). The text also claims to present the ekayana,
the ‘one way’ in which all the forms of Buddhism, Theravada,
Mahayana, Varjayana, etc., are united—a kind of spiritual imperia-
lism similar to later Hindu claims that all religions are one but that
one is best expressed in Vedanta. At the same time, it is significant
that this important and popular text is put in the mouth of a queen;
this and the fact that it gives a role to daughters equally with sons
of the family has led its translators to argue that it was written in
the period of the matrilineal Iksvakus, whose queens and other
royal ladies were the important donors financing the magnificent
viharas, stupas and carvings of Nagarjunakonda and Amravati
(Wayman 1974: 1; Stone 1994: 1–20). (The same considerations
could link it with the Satavahanas themselves). Finally, the naming
of the queen as Srimala (Pali ‘Siri-mala’) seems a reference to the
most ancient popular goddess of India, Siri or Shri (Rhys Davids
1997: 217–21).
A major contribution of Mahayana was the emphasis on
compassion that was involved with the figure of the Bodhisattva
who rejected nirvana itself in order to save the world. This model of
love and self-sacrifice had been expressed in all the Jataka stories
of the heroic sacrifices of King Sibi, but the striking new image of
the Bodhisattva ideal was tremendously powerful. For instance,
Shantideva, an 8th century Mahayana monk, became known for
writing, ‘My own self and my pleasures, all my righteousness, past,
present and future, I sacrifice without regard, in order to achieve
the welfare of all beings.’ However, his major work, the
Bodhicaryavatara, from which this has been taken from, centered
on a meditational method known the ‘exchange of self and others’
and many verses of this appear much more practical than is
suggested by the extravagance of the famous quotation (Skilton
1994: 110; Feuerstein 2000).
The valuable aspect of Mahayana is that it involved, in a sense,
a ‘socialisation’ of the original focus on individualism found in
Theravada Buddhism. However, in treating this in terms of a transfer
of merit that simply enabled other individual beings to achieve
a liberation beyond the empirical world, Mahayana remained
transcendental, and for this reason was probably less able than
Theravada Buddhism to influence the development of Indian society.

110 Buddhism in India