TANTRIC BUDDHISM (INCLUDING CHINA AND JAPAN)kept secret; thus "musk" conceals "urine." But, if this is true, why is it that
"urine" sometimes appears openly in a tantric text? Does "urine" conceal the use
of "musk"? Does "urine" conceal "Ak~obhya"? Our last question is rhetorical,
of course, but we can conceive of an affirmative answer. It could be advanta-
geous or even humanitarian to hide a powerful yogic term or device from
persons who might abuse it somehow, and such an interpretation has the merit of
accommodating both ambiguity and secrecy since what is powerful need not be
accessible to reason. It may be this argument that Govinda has in mind when he
describes "twilight language" as a "protection" against the "misuse of yogic
methods and psychic forces by the ignorant or uninitiated."^50 But, in the final
analysis, we are forced to recognize that nothing is concealed, for whatever
reason, even though some texts speak of secrecy.
We have remarked already that we see no clear and satisfying way through
these many difficulties; we can, however, suggest possible lines of inquiry for
further research. It may be that part of the problem of secrecy needs to be shifted
to a new locus, namely, to "inner yoga completely." We judge that errors in
Tantra studies can sometimes be attributed to a failure to recognize the internal
dimension of Anuttara Yoga Tantra. If the "outsiders" from whom certain things
need to be kept secret are really inside the yogin, then a new sort of discussion
pertains. We would be able to discuss secrecy with regard to the external
environment of a yogin-following materials like those of Tsori-kha-pa as we
have done-and then discuss the same issue with regard to that yogin's inner
landscape, which would probably be open to conclusions peculiar to it. Vajra-
garbha's commentary actually provides the clue to this line of reasoning by
referring to the two divisions of "symbolism," body and speech. The symbolism
of body here is the mutual gesturing between yo gins and yogin1s at the place of
meeting, the lcyetra or pltha. But Tsuda has been able to show the transfer of the
external pztha to a place within the body in Buddhist Tantrism.^51 If that transfer
occurs, it can be said that all events associated with the pltha also are internal-
ized; the gesturing as well as the symbolic speech-"twilight language"-
would somehow take place within the yogin. A quite different line of inquiry
could take up the problem of ambiguity and its relationship to the interesting
ambiguities of scholarship surrounding the problem. Could it be that we can
find no consistent interpretation here because this, too, is a characteristic of
sarrzdhii-bhii$ii? A candidate for the tantric goal is no doubt confronted effect-
ively by the ambiguous meaning of yogic states; but he may also be confronted
by the specific contradiction of secrecy coupled with rational inaccessibility, the
paradox of definite references to indefinite states, the ambiguity of verbal
equivalents whose relationship seems arbitrary at best. And he might find in the
midst of the unsettling interchange of these equivalents that for him language
has ceased to function in an ordinary way-like climactic time-because mean-
ings overlap or intersect, like day and night at the time of twilight. To be more
precise about these matters, however, we need more materials and more
research.