TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)103 It is a wide-spread belief in Indian yoga that the male seed is stored in the brain, cf.
ORC p.239-44.
104 See for example Eliade, Yoga, p.241-45. Normally, Buddhist tantras only operate
with four cakras (head, throat, heart, navel), cf. HVT Part I, p. 38. However,
schemes involving (at least by implication) five as well six cakras are also known
(ibid). Note that the positions of the cakras described by ST do not entirely corres-
pond to that found in Hindu tantras, cf. Eliade, ibid.
105 The Thought-of-Enlightenment, assimilated with the Moon (thus continuing the
Vedic assimilation of soma, the drink of immortality, with the Moon) may be
divided into fifteen digits (kala), further divided into three groups of five, each group
corresponding in the present text to one of the first three Joys. The Simultaneously-
arisen Joy is expressed as the "sixteenth digit", i.e. as transcendent. Cf. HVT ll.iv.
25-26: "The last of all must be firmly rejected, for there is no sixteenth phase. And
why is that? Because it is non-productive of an effect. The moon with its fifteen
phases represents the Thought-of-Enlightenment". The number sixteen is a sacred
number, expressing the whole or the immortal part, cf. Brhadiirm;yaka-up, !.5.14
"The Year is Prajapati, it has sixteen parts". Note that the Seal is frequently said to
be girl "sixteen years of age".
106 The u~I).T~a is the cakra situated at the top of the head. It is also well-known in non-
tantric Buddhism as one of the marks of a Buddha, represented iconographically as a
protruberance on the top of the head.
I 07 An essentially identical scheme is to be found in FBT p. 323, where there are,
however, only five cakras (head, throat, heart, navel, Vajra-Jewel) involved. There is
the same stress on the non-emission of the Thought-of-Enlightenment: "After (the
candidate's) entering into union, when he takes recourse to drawing the wind into
the "middle vein", the melted white element reaches the neck from the middle of the
forehead, at which time there is "joy" (ananda). After that, it reaches the heart, at
which time there is "super joy" (parama-ananda). After that, it reaches the navel, at
which time there is "extraordinary joy" (virama-ananda). After that, it reaches the tip
of the thunderbolt gem, and by his abiding by the precept to not allow it to be
emitted, at that time there is produced the knowledge of"together-bomjoy" (sahaja-
ananda)." (Lessing and Wayman's translation).
108 Seen. 105.
109 See Chap.II. To cite but one example, see Bharati, The Tantric Tradition, p. 184 n.
62, quoting the Guhyasiddhi ofPadmavajra.
110 E.g. Brhadiirm;yaka-up. VI.4.10 (Eliade, Yoga, p. 255). For beliefs and practices
connected with the retention of the semen, see Eliade, Yoga, p. 134, 248-49, 270,
406.
Ill The entire passage is translated below.
112 On this point opinions seem to vary. Tibetan texts attest to the tradition that any
coition will produce, however fleetingly, Simultaneously-arisen Joy. See Wayman,
"Female Energy" p. 94 (quoting Tsongkhapa), and The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
ed. W. Y. Evans-Wentz, London, 3rd ed. 1957, p. 179, which connects the experi-
encing of the Simultaneously-arisen Joy with the act of conception: "Just at this
moment when the sperm and the ovum are about to unite, the Knower experienceth
the bliss of the simultaneously-born state, during which state it fainteth away into
unconsciousness. (Afterwards) it findeth itself encased in oval form, in the embry-
onic state".
113 Cf. A VS p. 28 1.4 where vimarda ("consummation") likewise comes fourth, "in
repudiation ofhathayoga" (hathayoganiriilqtei)). See the following.
114 This may well be a direct reference to HVT II.iii.8. quoted above.
115 HVT Part I, p. 35.