This week’s reading immediately brought to mind a quote from the Danish Nobel Laureate in Physics, Niels Bohr: “The opposite of a small truth is simply false, but the opposite of a great truth is also true.” This paradoxical view is often demonstrated in Bohrs’ own field, quantum mechanics, in which, for example, the nature of light is understood to comprise both waves and particles—simultaneously.
Tantrism can also be seen as a reconciliation of paradox. For example, the twin poles of theism and atheism are encompassed in Tantrism by relating to the nature of reality as both theistic, that is, intimately personal—The Goddess, Mother of the Universe—while simultaneously understanding reality as non-theistic, or utterly impersonal, inconceivable and beyond all qualities. Thus to understand the Tantric worldview, one must grow beyond feeling uneasy with illogicality; one must embrace paradox as the authentic revelation. That is, if one’s model of reality does not include and resolve rival truths, that model is suspiciously incomplete.
Robert Brown points to this in his introduction to The Roots of Tantra:
The collapsing and overlapping identities of the teacher is one illustration of the transformational processes so central to Tantrism, that involve the movement both toward a unity, an essence, a center, and a monism while simultaneously breaking into dualities and multiples that replicate (often in numbered ranks) toward the periphery.
We should not be surprised, then, to notice that Tantrism, while sometimes appearing to be an “auto-mystical” path in the same manner as Buddhist dharma (“Be a lamp unto yourself.”) is at other times compatible with bhakti, the path of utter dependence on Grace (of the deity or guru), the necessity of love-desire for God(dess), and similar themes of devotional surrender.
Andre Padoux confesses he was frustrated as he wrestled with the issue, What Do We Mean by Tantrism? He deems “Tantra” an artificial term, a convention made up by Indic scholars. Separating Tantric philosophy and practice from the rest of Hinduism or Buddhism (which labels are themselves heuristic) may be an exercise in abstraction, not related to religious culture as it is lived. To use a mundane analogy, while a centrifuge can separate red blood cells from blood plasma, such segregation does not occur naturally; what we find in living people is always whole blood. Likewise, there may be no such thing as “pure” or “true” Tantra, but only characteristic beliefs and practices within the whole culture of Hinduism or Buddhism.
Padoux identifies one constituent of what has been called Tantrism to be the use of worldly means for supramundane goals. One seeks liberation not through abandoning desires, but by steering the powerful vehicle of desire toward heaven. As he quotes Madeleine Biardeau, this is achieved “by harnessing desire—kama , in all the meanings of that word and with all its related values—to the service of liberation.” Such liberation is not otherworldly, but the manifest freedom of spirit in the flesh.
The alchemical principle of, “As above, so as below,” or the great correspondence of the microcosmic body with the macrocosmic body, which I mentioned in class as a foundation of Tantrism, cannot be so isolated, as it turns out. Padoux writes, “The conception of the body as a structured receptacle of power and animated by that power, and the somato-cosmic vision upon which these practices are based are certainly pre-Tantric or extra-Tantric.”
Indeed, Padoux finds it problematic to locate any traits within Hinduism “that are both typically Tantric and found in most Tantric traditions, but not found outside these traditions.” He adds that the difficulty swells to impossibility when tackling Tantric Buddhism. He then reiterates that the problem is largely artificial, created by the category “Tantrism,” which cannot be segregated as a specific isotope. Tantrism, he concludes, should be regarded as more-or-less characteristic beliefs and practices that have evolved over millennia in a variety of forms within Hinduism and Buddhism, and should not be split apart as a special religious entity.
As for myself, I found the book’s most definitive description of Tantra in Robert Brown’s introduction:
The tools of Tantrism are less doctrines and beliefs than concrete things the practitioner learns to manipulate…Indeed, the ultimate tool of Tantra is the human body, both the outside and the inside, both the anatomical body…and the yogic anatomy of chakras and nadis. It is control of the body as a tool used to actuate processes that connects the practitioner with the universal power to reach his goals.
In the essay, Imagery of the Self from Veda to Tantra, Teun Goudriaan explains that metaphor and simile within Tantric texts serve “to realize a process of concretization, exteriorization, or even personification, in order to facilitate human understanding of abstract notions.” Through such linguistic artistry, one approaches the inconceivable. Nevertheless, he points out that using language in this way implies a paradox. “The spiritual is present as the concrete, although it is not identical with it.”
That intriguing line may hit the bull’s eye of the Tantric worldview. I read it this way: The Goddess (or reality) is not radically split off from the world, and the world is not illusion; indeed, the Goddess is the very existence and power of the world. Again, the paradox: The Goddess (reality) is not fully revealed unless the world is transcended. Unless I am reading too much into it, this understanding seems congruent with m]]Dy]m]I¿ (the Middle Way
Goudriaan spends several pages on the theme of the eternal flame, a ritual archetype that stretches from the Indo-European, Vedic and Tantric commandment to keep a ritual fire continuously burning in a sacred hearth, to the ever-burning hearth in the temple at Delphi in Greece, to the Vesta in Rome, to the Eternal Lamp of Judaism in the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, to the Eternal Fire of Zarathustra in ancient Persia. Surprisingly, he never links the linguistic and ritual metaphor of physical fire with the fiery internal energy of Kundalini Shakti. Every mystical tradition of which I am aware repeats in its literature and artwork the motif of its holy persons immersed in flames or surrounded by halos of light and radiant energy. For example, in the New Testament, John the Baptist says of Jesus, “He will baptize with Holy Spirit and with fire.” I believe the sacred fire central to Vedic and Tantric rites is an outer representation of this inner fire of awakened psycho-spiritual energy.
In his essay, Tongues of Flame, Richard Payne asks why modern Westerners should feel disdain toward complicated Vedic and Tantric rites, regarding them as superstitious Mumbo Jumbo, while at the same time admiring the philosophy of the Upanishads as a triumphant exposition of unitive wisdom. He seems to believe that if we recognize the strong historical and cultural connection between the “ritual speculations of the Brahmanas and the philosophic speculations of the Upanishads,” we will then appreciate the priestly rituals of the Vedas and Tantras as equally liberating and wise.
Not so! It is my own view that philosophical insight unencumbered by ritual decreed as a necessity has greater power to awaken a person to her inherently free nature than a religious way that depends on complex rites to gain liberation. In addition, when hundreds of passages in the Vedic and Tantric texts prescribe magical techniques to cause change (such as a ritual to harm your wife’s lover) it simply does not sit well in the modern, rational mind. By contrast, the philosophy of Vedanta as elucidated in the principal Upanishads does not look foolish in the light of current science and even provides a model of reality congruent with recent discoveries within the fields of quantum physics, cosmology and systems theory.
This paper’s brevity precludes me from going much further in this vein, but I’ll mention that I think that the great error Westerners make when they turn toward the East for inspiration (and relief from a limiting, materialistic worldview) is to renounce their own scientific and rational heritage. So many Westerners have plunged uncritically into astrology, Vajrayana, Zen, and so forth, consuming the entire package of pre-scientific, pre-rational cultures—ghosts, demons, bogey men, patriarchy and all. This betrays our own ancestors and their hard work to bring us the vast encyclopedia of knowledge and technology that we have inherited. As Ken Wilber repeatedly emphasizes, the goal is to awaken to and integrate the trans-rational, not the pre-rational!
Thomas Coburn’s essay, The Structural Interplay of Tantra, Vedanta and Bhakti, verbally describes the diagram supplied on the following page for comparing these three spiritual schools.
Hinduism Tantrism
Ontological dualism: relationship between deities and humans. Ontological monism
Epistemology: commonsense world is knowable and valid. Epistemology: physical world is real
Devotional surrender to Gods and Goddesses. The ritual actualization of Goddess power
Advaita Vedanta
Ontological monism
Epistemological dualism: two realms, illusion and truth.
Brahman alone is Real. The world of the senses is maya,
a fantastical dream. Piercing the veil of the illusion, the
seer realizes the reality of unqualified Brahman.
Coburn’s essay presents a puzzling verse from the Devi-Mahatmya in which the Goddess Mahalakshmi splits herself into three forms in order to conquer two demon brothers who are wreaking havoc in Indra’s heaven. Coburn then compares two analyses of the text provided by the 18th-Century scholars, Nagoji Bhatta and Bhaskarya. The first commentator is an advaitin; the second man represents the Tantric view. The defining characteristic of Bhaskarya, the Tantric adept, is his regard of the physical world of the senses as real, not illusion and not of secondary status. Bhaskarya’s path, Coburn says, “is the ritual actualization of the power of the unmanifest Mahalakshmi, which is ontologically connected to and assessable in the mantras of the Devi-Mahatmya.”
In our first class, Dr. Erndl mentioned that Tantra as actually practiced requires an apprenticeship under the guidance and blessings of a mature adept. As a spiritual path laden with rituals, Tantra, above all else, involves practice. However, as she also said, the premise of modern academia is that all fields of knowledge are appropriate subjects for investigation. An expression from Latin summarizes this attitude: Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto. It means, “I am a man; I regard nothing that concerns man as foreign to my interests.”
This intellectually liberating attitude has been with us since the Renaissance, and I wholly agree with it in principle. However, I think we should acknowledge the inherent limitations of any attempt to study an esoteric mystical tradition from the outside. It is like studying an auto parts catalog believing that by analyzing the many components one might grasp the soul of a Lamborghini racecar. But really, how does it feel to sideslip a Lamborghini around a hairpin turn in the Monte Carlo Gran Prix, doing eighty?
Similarly, we can locate the word “orgasm” in a dictionary, a sex manual, or in an erotic story, and we’ll find three different levels of meaning of the word, from objective and cool to subjective and hot. None of these meanings, however, will actually elicit in us an orgasm. My point is, Tantra elicits in its practitioners—those yogis who draw maps of the body’s subtle nerve channels and chakras and sing hymns of erotic-spiritual communion with the divine—something we will not get from reading and discussing a book. Ludwig Wittgenstein warned, “The word is not the thing.” One could add: The map is not the territory; the menu is not the tofu-burger.
Having said all that, here are my questions to open up discussion:
- Goudriaan says that the ultimate view of the Goddess “in her purest essence, realized without accessories within the space of the heart, is compared to the brilliant sun that rises in the clear sky.” He quotes an Upanishad that describes the original nature of the Goddess as “the pure solar orb with rays.” The question occurs to me: How is the use of similes, metaphors, allegories, icons and rituals helpful as a guide to approaching that which transcends all sensual and intellectual experience? Is it that a sadhaka uses training wheels at the outset and then in a moment of readiness, abandons all the props? How does one avoid becoming dependent on one’s own crutches? Perhaps that which (ultimately) cannot be imagined should not be imagined. Consider the stubbornness of Zen masters on this issue: “What is Buddha nature?”—“Dried shit on a stick.”
- How real is the Goddess? Absolutely and fundamentally real, or relatively and culturally real? (Of course, this begs the ultimate ontological question: What do we mean by “reality”? Alternatively, as a linguist and cognitive scientist might put it: What do we mean by “meaning”?)
- Joshi touched upon the Kamakala, the triad of Shiva, Shakti and Nada-Brahma. Is this analogous to the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit? Consider that the Holy Spirit is called in Greek, Logos, or Word. (“In the beginning was the Word…”) In Sikhism, it is called Satnam, or True Name. Do all these terms refer to the same principle, a primordial creative energy that corresponds to sound and language?
- Goudriann points to the heart (or, at any rate, the center of the chest) as the usual abode and bodily seat of the soul in both pre-Tantric archaic cultures and Tantrism. Yet, the physical heart is a muscular pump, not a brain. Moreover, although the chest region contains the solar nerve plexus and the thymus gland, it has not been shown by modern physiologists to be any kind of seat of consciousness. Is locating the seat of consciousness at the heart completely mistaken? Is this idea only metaphorical, with no anatomical meaning whatsoever? Or is there a more subtle anatomy—a spiritual anatomy that accounts for this puzzling and prevalent archetype, the Heart?
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