What is Tantra?: Setting the record straight

“Tantra” is now a buzzword in the modern Western world. We see it on the covers of popular magazines and books, usually linked suggestively with the notion of superlative sexual experience. Though almost everyone has heard this word, almost no one—including many people claiming to teach something called tantra—knows much about the original teachings of the Indian spiritual tradition that Sanskrit scholars refer to as Tantra. What these academics study under the name Tantra, and likewise what Indian Tantric practitioners are doing in their practice, bears little to no resemblance to the sexuality & intimacy practices taught under the same name on the workshop circuit of Western alternative spirituality. It would take me a long time to explain why that gap is so wide—it's a deeply complex issue of cultural mediation and strange misunderstandings spread over 100+ years. However, my book Tantra Illuminated presents a comprehensive overview of the original Indian spiritual tradition that was articulated in Sanskrit scriptures called tantras (which is where the name came from). Why would this be of interest to modern Westerners? There is one outstanding reason: tens of millions of Westerners are today practicing something called yoga, a practice which, though much altered in form and context, can be traced back to the Haṭha-yoga tradition of late medieval India, which itself can be traced back to the classical Tantric tradition.

Yoga is a living tradition profoundly influenced by Tantra, yet has forgotten much of its own history. There is a new wave of investigative work by scholars who are also practitioners, such as myself, whose goals are to rediscover and reintegrate some of what has been forgotten, clarify the roots of many ideas and practices that are floating around (thereby grounding them and enhancing their richness), and chart clearly the vast and varied landscape of Indian spiritual thought, with a view to what it can contribute to our lives today. For it is certainly the case that most 20th century teaching and writing on Indian thought was either exciting but incoherent and ungrounded (the practitioner context) or systematic but dry, boring, and insipid (the academic context). In the 21st century, we are finally rectifying that; and no Indian tradition has been more misunderstood, relative to its deep influence on global spirituality, than Tantra.

You may wonder what the phrase “classical Tantra” refers to. It identifies the peak period of the Tantric spiritual movement (from about 800-1100 CE) and distinguishes our subject matter from syncretistic late Hindu Tantra and haṭha-yoga traditions (both 1100-1800), and also from modern neo-Tantra (which was invented around 1900 by the American Pierre Bernard). The classical Tantra that I treat in my book is associated with a specific religious tradition, the religion of Shiva & Shakti, commonly known as Shaivism--which is the religion that originated the Tantric movement in the first place, starting around the year 500. Shaivism was once practiced all over what is now India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bengal, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia, and was the dominant religion of the Indian subcontinent in the medieval period. Tantra began as a spiritual movement within Shaivism, then propagated into all the other religions existing in the subcontinent at that time, including Buddhism. So many of the practices of Buddhist Tantra that are known to Westerners today (in their Tibetan forms) were directly adopted from classical Śaiva Tantra (as Sanderson has shown in his magisterial 200-page article "The Śaiva Age"). Furthermore, many of the higher spiritual teachings of Buddhist Tantra (such as those of Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā) are virtually indistinguishable from some of the nondual Tantric Śaiva teachings. (Śaiva being the adjective related to Shaivism.)

From a recent cutting-edge scholarly publication on the subject, we find this important statement opening the work: “Tantric scriptures form the basis of almost all the various theistic schools of theology and ritual in post-Vedic India, as well as of a major strand of Buddhism (Vajrayāna). Among these schools, those centered on the Hindu deities Śiva and Viṣṇu spread well beyond the Indian subcontinent to [the region of] Kambuja (Cambodia/Laos/Thailand), Champa (Vietnam) and Indonesia, while Buddhist Tantrism quickly became pan-Asian [propagating into China and Japan especially].” (Goodall, Sanderson, and Isaacson, EFEO/IFP)

And, in another seminal work, “Śaivism and the Tantric Traditions” by Alexis Sanderson, we find this orienting statement: “The term Śaivism here refers to a number of distinct but historically related systems comprising theology, ritual, observance and yoga, which have been propagated in India as the teachings of the Hindu deity Śiva. A Śaiva is one who practices such a system. . . . The scriptural revelations of the Śaiva mainstream are called Tantras, and those that act in accordance with their prescriptions are consequently termed tāntrikas. The term tantra means simply a system of ritual or essential instruction”—a system documented in a Sanskrit scripture called likewise called a tantra. There are well over a hundred tantras; each major Tantric lineage is associated with at least one specific tantra, and often three or four. We use the general term Tantra to refer to the tradition that is documented in the entire corpus of tantras. 

There is an argument to be made that Śaiva Tantra constitutes both the original and most undiluted form of classical Tantra (though my Buddhist colleagues may beg to differ). And Śaiva Tantra is not just a relic of the past: its teachings survived all the way down to the present, though it’s true that they only barely survived. To be more precise, different elements of the tradition of Śaiva Tantra survived in different regions. The nondual philosophy of classical Tantra survived in Kashmīr (at least until 1992, by which time it had become part of our global human heritage), many of the practices of Tantric Yoga survived in parts of India (such as Rājasthān) until the early modern colonial period, while in the in the East (Assam and Bengal), some of the transgressive & sexual practices of classical Tantra survived down to the early 20th century, but without the sophisticated philosophy of awareness cultivation that once went along with them. Finally, in the far south (Kerala and Tamil Nāḍu), many of the beautiful Tantric ritual forms survived, remnants of which are still seen today. But in none of these areas can we find the ritual forms, the yogic practices, and the spiritual philosophy all together, as it was 1000 years ago. Each surviving lineage lost substantial parts of the tradition along the way, becoming in many cases highly attenuated, such that no Tantric lineage of the 20th century preserved all the pieces of the puzzle. What I am interested in is something like a Tantric Revival, specifically in the sense of putting the puzzle back together again—restoring the original integrity of the classical Tantric tradition. 

Now I’m ready to offer you my definition of Nondual Śaiva Tantra, which is the area of my specialization. This phrase refers to that form of Śaiva Tantra whose spiritual teachings are nondualistic; that is to say, whose teachings emphasize the fundamental oneness or identity of God (or Goddess) and the true Self of all sentient beings.

So, nondual Śaiva Tantra is a spiritual tradition originating in India that is primarily characterized by three features: 

  1. Emphasis on direct experience of a divine reality that has transcendent and immanent aspects, called Śiva and Śakti respectively, with Śiva primarily understood as the uncontracted (open & spacious) awareness that is the ground of being, and Śakti primarily understood as the flowing patterns of energy that make up the entire manifest universe.

  2. Formal or informal initiation into a student-teacher relationship and an egalitarian kula, or spiritual community.

  3. Spiritual practice aimed at both increased happiness and, eventually, a state of unconditioned liberation (in every possible sense of that word), [practice] that unfolded in four primary modes: contemplation of View teachings (a.k.a. spiritual philosophy), meditative ritual performance, yogic techniques of the body and subtle body, and the aesthetic cultivation of the senses (that is to say, learning to experience exquisite beauty in what is sensually perceived in everyday life).

That’s a fairly precise definition and description of nondual Śaiva Tantra. But the latter shares much in common with other Tantric traditions. The form of classical Tantra most visible today is of course Tibetan Buddhism. But because Tibetan Buddhism is the only form of original Tantra that most Westerners have come across, they don't realize that many of its most salient features (such as uniquely Tantric mantras, maṇḍalas, mudrās, initiation rituals, deity yoga, guru-yoga, internalized worship, and more) are not actually particular to Tibetan Buddhism, but always exemplified the pan-Indian Tantric movement which infused itself into all the Indic religions that were around at that time (Shaivism, Buddhism, Vaishnavism, Jainism, etc.).

So Tantra was a spiritual movement that influenced the development of most Asian religions. But what is the essence of Tantra, you might ask? How do I know it when I see it? Scholars have debated that question and settled on a list of features (which you can see on p. 33 of my book) rather than a single essence. However, I want to single out one of those features for special mention, since it is this feature that makes nondual Tantra different from all other yogic paths: it is fundamentally world-embracing rather than world-denying. As a non-renunciatory path, it is focused on experiencing the transcendent in the very fabric of everyday life. It seeks harmonius and healthy acceptance of all the features of human life that other yogic paths renounce . . . in other words, it is a path that is radically life-affirming rather than life-negating. All other forms of yoga are transcendentalist and renunciatory in character, except where they are influenced by Tantra itself. ‘Transcendentalist’ means holding the view that the Divine is wholly beyond what we can contact with our senses, and that therefore one must achieve ‘higher states of consciousness’ to unite with Divine essence, thereby negating and leaving behind some aspects of our ‘messy’ humanity. By contrast, nondual Tantra teaches that though the Divine is more than meets the eye, it is also everything the eye can meet (or the ear can hear, etc.). Therefore we don’t seek allegedly ‘higher’ states of consciousness, but a more complete awareness of the totality of Being here and now, a deeper sense of the miracle of life revealed in every form, feeling, and creature. And, the Tantric argument goes, that deeper sense is revealed through specific practices of awareness cultivation and embodiment, not merely through contemplation or a change of your beliefs. You cannot think your way to enlightenment; uniquely empowering, transformative practices are necessary, and such are provided in abundance by the classical Tantric tradition.

To learn more, please read my book!  It is the very first comprehensive introduction to the philosophy and history of classical Tantra written for a general audience.*

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*I will substantiate this claim with reference to the three books that might appear to challenge it. Georg Feuerstein’s Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy presents us with an overview, not of the unique philosophical system of classical Tantra, but rather of those elements of Tantra that were incorporated into mainstream Hinduism. Thus his book may be seen as a good introduction to the post-classical Hindu Tantra of the 13th century onward. The classical Tantrik philosophy presented in my book is related, but considerably different. The second book I am thinking of is Kamalakar Mishra’s Kashmir Shaivism: The Central Philosophy of Tantrism. This covers much classical Tantrik philosophy but does not cover the history and social context of the religion which gave rise to it. Mishra perpetuates the now almost century-old misunderstanding that this tradition was a phenomenon of the region of Kashmīr, whereas in fact, it was a pan-Indian (and eventually pan-Asian) spiritual movement. Thirdly, we have Lama Yeshe’s classic Introduction to Tantra. This lovely little book gives the reader a good sense of the values and worldview and aesthetics of the Tantrik movement, but contains very little in the way of specificity, either of historical development or of the details of practice.

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