Tantric Techniques

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Authors: Jeffrey Hopkins

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Tantric Techniques

Jeffrey Hopkins

Edited by Kevin Vose

Snow Lion Publications

Ithaca, New York

Snow Lion Publications

P.O. Box 6483

Ithaca, NY 14851 USA (607) 273-8519

Printed in USA on acid-free recycled paper. ISBN-10: 1-55939-320-3

ISBN-13: 978-1-55939320-1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hopkins, Jeffrey.

Tantric techniques / Jeffrey Hopkins ; edited by Kevin Vose.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-55939320-1 (alk. paper)

ISBN-10: 1-55939-320-3 (alk. paper)

1. Meditation--Tantric Buddhism. 2. Yoga--Tantric Buddhism. I. Vose, Kevin, 1970-II. Title.

BQ8938.H67 2009 294.3'4436--dc22

2008047799

Contents

Technical Notes 6

Introduction 7

Part One:
The Procedure of Deity Yoga 11

The S
ū
tra Mode of Meditation 13
The Tantric Mode of Meditation 45
Jung’s Warnings Against Inflation 65
The Path in Action Tantra: Divine Body 83
Mantra Repetition 117
Concentration Without Repetition 145
The Practice 165
Part Two:
The Difference Between S
ū
tra and Mantra 203
Bu-tön Rin-chen-drup’s Stimulating Catalogue 205
Long-chen-rap-jam’s Dramatic Evocation 243
Tsong-kha-pa’s Reasoned Analysis of Path-Structure 263
Controversy over Deity Yoga in Action Tantra 303
Part Three:
The Difference Between the Four Tantras 319
Bu-tön and Tsong-kha-pa: The Four Tantra Sets 321

Appendix:

The First Pa
ṇ
-chen Lama’s Reformulation of Tsong-kha-pa’s Presentation of the Vehicles
translated by Donald S. Lopez
359

List of Abbreviations 387 Bibliography 389

Index 413

Technical Notes

Please notice that:

Full bibliographical references are given in the footnotes at first citation.
For translations and editions of texts, see the Bibliography.
The names of Indian Buddhist schools are translated into English in an effort to increase accessibility for non-specialists.
For the names of Indian scholars and systems cited in the body of the text,
ch, sh,
and
ṣ
h
are used instead of the more usual
c,
ś
,
and
ṣ
for the sake of easy pronunciation by non-specialists; however,
cch
is used for
cch,
not
chchh
. In parentheses the usual transliteration system for Sanskrit is used.
Transliteration of Tibetan is done in accordance with a system devised by Turrell Wylie; see “A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription,”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
22 (1959): 261-267.
The names of Tibetan authors and orders are given in “essay phonetics” for the sake of easy pronunciation.
Introduction
Across the vast reaches of the Tibetan cultural region in Inner Asia—stretching from Kalmyk Mongolian areas near the Volga Riv-er (in Europe) by the Caspian Sea and reaching through Outer Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, the Buriat Republic of Siberia, Bhutan, Sik-kim, Ladakh, parts of Nepal, and what is currently called the “Tibetan Autonomous Region” but also most of Qinghai Province, and parts of the Gansu, Sichuan, and Yunnan Provinces which were included in greater Tibet before the Chinese remapped the area— Buddhism is practiced in many forms by a plethora of sects and sub-sects. Though their systems vary widely, they agree on dividing their practices into basically two styles, S
ū
tra and Mantra (also called Tantra), and all offer reasons why the Mantra system is superior. Based on Indian expositions of the greatness of Mantra, many scholar-practitioners catalogued and creatively developed these explanations, which came to be the means through which they perceived and ordered the otherwise overwhelmingly diverse forms of practice inherited from Buddhist India.
Most of the presentations of the distinctiveness of Mantra em-ploy multiple formats for demonstrating its greatness, but one Tibetan scholar boils these down into a single central distinguishing feature—deity yoga, the meditative practice of imagining oneself to be an ideal being fully endowed with compassion and wisdom and their resultant altruistic activities. Whether or not one accepts that deity yoga is
the
central distinctive feature of Mantra, it is an important feature, and since meditation on emptiness is said to be the “life” of the S
ū
tra and Mantra paths and thus also of deity yoga, this book initially presents how S
ū
tra and Mantra describe the practice of reflecting on emptiness and then of relating to appearances. As a basic theme of Great Vehicle Buddhism, the compatibility of emptiness and appearance offers a window through which S
ū
tra and Mantra can be not just glimpsed but felt in imagination. Thus, although I have explained in two other books
a
the S
ū
tra style of meditation on emptiness, here, using a meditation manual by the Fifth
a
Jeffrey Hopkins,
Meditation on Emptiness
(London: Wisdom Publications, 1983; rev. ed., Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1996) and
Emptiness Yoga
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1987).
8
Tantric Techniques
Dalai Lama, I will explore the process of this central meditation emphasizing its implications regarding its relation with appearances. It is in this issue that one of the prime differences between these two systems lies.
These two models—S
ū
tra and Mantra—are viewed by some Tibetan scholars as progressively more profound techniques of spiritual development in what, by the style of presentation, seems to be a
harmonious
development, much as histories of science often present developments as rational, step-by-step acquisitions of wid-er perspectives rather than a shifting of perspective. The gradualistic harmonious approach, while being valuable in showing the continuity between the two traditions, tends to obscure the innovative profundity of tantric meditation that may be experienced as a solution to a spiritual crisis centered around the appearance of phenomena. It strikes me as possible that the S
ū
tra model of meditation on emptiness, when it is implemented in effective practice, induces a problem-situation that is resolved in the tantric model of meditation.
In order to discuss that possibility, this book explores the S
ū
tra and Mantra models of meditation in considerable detail so that the discussion does not become an exercise in mere abstraction, for my points are founded not in abstract conceptualization but in practical implementation. Therefore, after the S
ū
tra model of meditation on selflessness and subsequent experience of appearances is given, the tantric model of meditating on oneself as an ideal being, a deity, is presented in detail in the second chapter through the example of a particular Action Tantra.
For comprehending the distinctiveness of the tantric practice of deity yoga, the theory of paradigm change—as enunciated by Thomas Kuhn in
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
a
and adapted by Hans Küng for theology
b
—offers insights that help to distinguish S
ū
tra and Mantra models of meditation by calling attention to a possible personal crisis to which the S
ū
tra model may lead. Thus, at the end of the second chapter the theory of paradigm change is introduced as a way to reveal the necessity for the development of the tantric model; my aim is not to use the data of this Asian tradition to support Kuhn’s model but to use his model to make
a
Second edition; Chicago: 1970.
b
See “Paradigm Change in Theology and Science,” in
Theology for the Third Millennium: An Ecumenical View
(New York: Doubleday, 1988), 123-169.
Introduction
9
more accessible facets of the tradition that could easily be missed. The S
ū
tra and Mantra models of meditation are investigated with the aim of exposing a possible crisis that
requires
an individual to move to the tantric model; the analysis is “historical,” not in the sense of charting and reflecting on centuries of development in schools of Buddhism, though undoubtedly such happened, but of an
individual’s
progress in one life or over many lives.
In the third chapter, in order to convey a sense of the profundity of the tantric enterprise—the enormity of its claims of effective-ness—Carl Jung’s exposition of the grave consequences of positive and negative inflation will be considered. His insights constitute warnings against doing just what the tantrics advise—identifying with a deity. Then, to present the full breadth of the path-structure of a tantric system, the next three chapters deal with the compli-cated series of practices following imagination of oneself as a deity in Action Tantra. Powerful techniques for concentrating the mind and inducing realization are implemented with the aim of de-autonomizing psychological and perceptual complexes.
In Part Two, presentations of the distinctiveness of Mantra from three Tibetan savants are considered, the underlying agenda being to highlight the plurality of approaches in two of these expositions in contrast to the emphasis on the sole feature of deity yoga found in the highly rationalistic writings of the late fourteenth-and early fifteenth-century founder of the Ge-luk-pa
a
order, Tsong-kha- pa
L
o-sang-drak-pa.
b
His system is thereby put into historical context; the radical nature of his distilling the distinctive essence of Mantra down to the single central feature of deity yoga becomes clear through juxtaposing two earlier multifaceted approaches. First is a presentation on the difference between the Perfection and Mantra vehicles by Tsong-kha-pa’s chief source, the prolific scholar Bu-tön Rin-chen-drup
c
(1290-1364), whose catalogue of traditional opinions provided the context for Tsong-kha-pa’s analytical and critical delineation of which traditions could, in his mind, bear examination in the light of a larger coherent path-structure. Next is the creative and evocative presentation by the Nyingma master Long-chen-rap-jam
d
(1308-1363). His multifaceted inspired
a
dge lugs pa.
b
tsong kha pa blo bzang grags pa
, 1357-1419.
c
bu ston rin chen grub.
d
klong chen rab ’byams dri med ’od zer
.
10
Tantric Techniques
rendering is followed by a synopsis of Tsong-kha-pa’s radically critical analysis of these traditions, with the First Pa
ṇ
-chen Lama’s reformulation of Tsong-kha-pa’s presentation also in an Appendix.