Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East Asia

4 charles d. orzech, richard k. payne, henrik h. sørensen

Hermeneutics and Teleology

At some level all research and interpretation involves bias and teleol-

ogy. We always stand in the present interpreting the past in terms of

present concerns. As historians, awareness of these biases can help us

to disentangle our hermeneutical aims from those of the people we

are studying. The modern study of esoteric Buddhism and the Bud-

dhist tantras has been dominated by two grand narratives. On the one

hand, scholars of Buddhism cited the tantras as evidence of the decay

of Buddhism from a pristine rationalist beginning. On the other hand

some have privileged relatively late tantras as embodying the most

advanced insights of Buddhism. Both models—decay or progress—

have served a range of contemporary agendas, some of them sectar-

ian. We have intended that this collection contribute to understanding

Buddhist practitioners in more accurately contextualized ways, while

at the same time contributing to contemporary intellectual concerns.

Contested Terminology: Esoteric Buddhism and Tantra
The title of this volume, Esoteric Buddhism and the Tantras in East
Asia, was carefully chosen. There is broad agreement that the systems
based on the Mahāvairocanābhisaṃbodhi sūtra (MVS), the Susiddhi-
kara, and the Sarvatathāgatatattvasaṃgraha (STTS) developed in South
Asia and introduced to the Chinese court in the mid-Tang (eighth
century) represented a body of practice and ideology founded on the
Mahāyāna but with a distinct identity.^1 But the import of the key terms
of our title is anything but transparent or universally agreed upon.^2
Indeed, even the orthography of the term ‘esoteric Buddhism’ is
contested. By and large we are following contemporary preference in
style which encourages lower case usage whenever possible. But the
meaning and scope of term ‘esoteric Buddhism’ is itself not agreed

(^1) The MVS is sometimes referred to as the Vairocanābhisaṃbodhi, while Japanese
scholarship often refers to the STTS as the Vajraśekhara. On this latter title see David-
son, “Sources and Inspirations,” in this volume. What the Chinese did with these mate-
rials is another matter. Thus, there is a difference between the tradition promulgated by
Śubhākarasiṃha and that of Vajrabodhi / Amoghavajra. This does not even begin to
consider purely Chinese, Korean, or Japanese developments and innovations.
(^2) For our purposes we bracket any connections that might be drawn with Western
“esoteric” or hermetical traditions, though it is not insignificant that the emergence
of the term Esoteric Buddhism in English is traceable to doctrines put forward by
the Theosophist A. P. Sinnett in his Esoteric Buddhism (1883). For more on this see
Orzech, 2006b, 39–40.