Knowledge and Power

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>From _Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism_ by Lama Anagarika Govinda

 

Part Three. Padma: The Path of Creative Vision

 

3

KNOWLEDGE AND POWER:

PRAJNA VERSUS SAKTI

 

The influence of Tantric Buddhism upon Hinduism was so profound, that up to

the present day the majority of Western scholars labour under the

impression that Tantrism is a hinduistic creation which was taken over by

later, more or less decadent, Buddhist Schools.

Against this view speaks the great antiquity and consistent

development of Tantric tendencies in Buddhism. Already the early

Mahasan-gikas had a special collection of mantric formulas in their

Dharani-Pitaka, and the Manjusrimulakalpa, which according to some

authorities goes back to the first century A.D., contains not only mantras

and dharanis, but numerous mandalas and mudras as well. Even if the dating

of the Manjusrimulakalpa is somewhat uncertain, it seems probable that the

Buddhist Tantric system had crystallized into a definite form by the end of

the third century A.D., as we can see from the well-known Guhyasamaja

(Tib.: dpal-gsan-hdus-pa) Tantra.

To declare Buddhist Tantrism as an off-shoot of Shivaism is only

possible for those who have no first-hand knowledge of Tantric literature.

A comparison of the Hindu Tantras with those of Buddhism (which are mostly

preserved in Tibetan and which therefore have long remained unnoticed by

Indologists) not only shows an astonishing divergence of methods and aims,

in spite of external similarities, but proves the spiritual and historical

priority and originality of the Buddhist Tantras.

Sankaracarya, the great Hindu philosopher of the ninth century A.D.,

whose works form the foundation of all saivaite philosophy, made use of the

ideas of Nagarjuna and his followers to such an extent that orthodox Hindus

suspected him of being a secret devotee of Buddhism. In a similar way the

Hindu Tantras, too, took over the methods and principles of Buddhist

Tantrism and adapted them to their own purposes (just as the Buddhists had

adapted the age-old principles and techniques of yoga to their own systems

of meditation). This view is not only held by Tibetan tradition and

confirmed by a study of its literature, but has been verified also by

Indian scholars after a critical investigation of the earliest Sanskrit

texts of Tantric Buddhism and their historical and ideological relationship

to the Hindu Tantras.

Thus Benoytosh Bhattacharyya in his Introduction to Buddhist Esoterism

has come to the conclusion that 'it is possible to declare, without fear of

contradiction, that the Buddhists were the first to introduce the Tantras

into their religion, and that the Hindus borrowed them from the Buddhists

in later times, and that it is idle to say that later Buddhism was an

outcome of Saivaism' (p. I47).

One of the main propagators of this mistaken idea, which was built

upon the superficial similarities of Hindu and Buddhist Tantras, was Austin

Waddell who is often quoted as an authority on Tibetan Buddhism.1

 

[1 L. A. Waddell: Buddhism of Tibet or Lamaism.]

 

In his estimation Buddhist Tantrism is nothing but 'saivaite idolatry;

sakti worship and demonology'. Its 'so-called mantras and dharanis' are

'meaningless gibberish','its mysticism a silly mummery of unmeaning jargon

and "magic circles"', and its Yoga a 'parasite whose monster outgrowth

crushed and cankered most of the little life of purely Buddhist stock yet

left in the Mahayana (p. 14). 'The Madhyamika doctrine was essentially a

sophistic nihilism' (p. 11) ; 'the Kala-cakra unworthy of being considered

a philosophy' (p. 131).

As it was mainly from such 'authorities' that the West got its first

information of Tibetan Buddhism, it is no wonder that up to the present day

numerous prejudices against Buddhist Tantrism are firmly entrenched in the

Western mind as well as in the minds of those who have approached the

subject through Western literature.

To judge Buddhist Tantric teachings and symbols from the standpoint of

Hindu Tantras, and especially from the principles of Saktism is not only

inadequate but thoroughly misleading, because both systems start from

entirely different premisses. As little as we can declare Buddhism to be

identical with Brahmanism, because both make use of Yoga methods and of

similar technical and philosophical terms, as little is it permissible to

interpret the Buddhist Tantras in the light of the Hindu Tantras, and vice

versa.

Nobody would accuse the Buddha of corrupting his doctrine by accepting

the gods of Hindu mythology as a background of his teachings or by using

them as symbols of certain forces or meditative experiences or as the

exponents of higher states of consciousness - but if the Tantras follow a

similar course, they are accused of being corrupters of genuine Buddhism.

It is impossible to understand any religious movement, unless we

approach it in a spirit of humility and reverence, which is the hallmark of

all great scholars and pioneers of learning. We therefore have to see the

various forms of expression in their genetic connexions and against the

spiritual background from which they developed in their particular system,

before we start comparing them with similar features in other systems. In

fact the very things which appear similar on the surface are very often

just those in which the systems differ most fundamentally. The same step

that leads upwards in one connexion may well lead downwards in another one.

Therefore, philological derivations and iconographical comparisons,

valuable though they may be in other respects, are not adequate here.

'The developments in Tantra made by the Buddhists, and the

extraordinary plastic art they developed, did not fail to create an

impression also in the minds of the Hindus, who readily incorporated many

ideas, doctrines, practices and gods, originally conceived by the Buddhists

for their religion. The literature, which goes by the name of the Hindu

Tantras, arose almost immediately after the Buddhist ideas had established

themselves' (p. 50).

At the end of his convincing historical, literary, and iconographical

proofs, which substantiate what is evident to every student of Buddhist

Tantras and Tibetan tradition, Bhattacharyya concludes: 'It is thus amply

proved that the Buddhist Tantras greatly influenced the Hindu Tantric

literature, and it is, therefore, not correct to say that Buddhism was an

outcome of Saivaism. It is to be contended, on the other hand, that the

Hindu Tantras were an outcome of Vajrayana, and that they represent baser

imitations of Buddhist Tantras' (p. 163).

We therefore fully agree with Bhattacharyya when he says:'The Buddhist

Tantras in outward appearance resemble the Hindu Tantras to a marked

degree, but in reality there is very little similarity between them, either

in subject matter or in philosophical doctrines inculcated in them, or in

religious principles. This is not to be wondered at, since the aims and

objects of the Buddhists are widely different from those of the Hindus'

(op. cit., p. 47).

The main difference is, that Buddhist Tantrism is not Saktism. The

concept of Sakti, of divine _power_, of the creative female aspect of the

highest God (Siva) or his emanations does not play any role in Buddhism.

While in the Hindu Tantras the concept of power (sakti) forms the focus of

interest, the central idea of Tantric Buddhism is prajna: knowledge,

wisdom.

To the Buddhist sakti is maya, the very power that creates illusion,

from which only prajna can liberate us. It is therefore not the aim of the

Buddhist to acquire power, or to join himself to the powers of the

universe, either to become their instrument or to become their master, but,

on the contrary, he tries to free himself from those powers, which since

aeons kept him a prisoner of samsara. He strives to perceive those powers

which have kept him going in the rounds of life and death, in order to

liberate himself from their dominion. However, he does not try to negate

them or to destroy them, but to transform them in the fire of knowledge, so

that they may become forces of Enlightenment which, instead of creating

further differentiation, flow in the opposite direction: towards union,

towards wholeness, towards completeness.

The attitude of the Hindu Tantras is quite different, if not opposite.

'United with the Sakti, be full of power', says the Kulacudamani-Tantra.

'From the union of Siva and Sakti the world is created.' The Buddhist,

however, does not want the creation and unfoldment of the world, but the

coming back to the 'uncreated, unformed' state of sunyata from which all

creation proceeds, or which is prior and beyond all creation (if one may

put the inexpressible into human language) .

The becoming conscious of this sunyata (Tib.: ston-pa-nid) is prajna

(Tib.: ses-rab): highest knowledge. The realization of this highest

knowledge in life is enlightenment (bodhi; Tib.: byan-chub), i.e., if

prajna (or sunyata), the passive, all-embracing female principle, from

which everything proceeds and into which everything recedes, is united with

the dynamic male principle of active universal love and compassion, which

represents the means (upaya; Tib.: thabs) for the realization of prajna and

sunyata, then perfect Buddhahood is attained. Because intellect without

feeling, knowledge without love, reason without compassion, leads to pure

negation, to rigidity, to spiritual death, to mere vacuity - while feeling

without reason, love without knowledge (blind love), compassion without

understanding, lead to confusion and dissolution. But where both sides are

united, where the great synthesis of heart and head, feeling and intellect,

highest love and deepest knowledge have taken place, there completeness is

re-established, perfect Enlightenment is attained.

The process of Enlightenment is therefore represented by the most

obvious, the most human and at the same time the most universal symbol

imaginable: the union of male and female in the ecstasy of love - in which

the active element (upaya) is represented as a male, the passive (prajna)

by a female figure - in contrast to the Hindu Tantras, in which the female

aspect is represented as Sakti, i.e., as the active principle, and the male

aspect as Siva, as the pure state of divine consciousness, of 'being',

i.e., as the passive principle, the 'resting in its own nature'.

In Buddhist symbolism the Knower (Buddha) becomes one with his

knowledge (prajna), just as man and wife become one in the embrace of love,

and this becoming one is highest, indescribable happiness (mahasukha; Tib.:

bde-mchog). The Dhyani-Buddhas (i.e., the ideal Buddhas visualized in

meditation) and Dhyani-Bodhisattvas as embodiments of the active urge of

enlightenment, which finds its expression in upaya, the all-embracing love

and compassion, are therefore represented in the embrace of their prajna

symbolized by a female deity, the embodiment of highest knowledge.

This is not the arbitrary reversal of Hindu symbology, in which 'the

poles of the male and the female as symbols of the divine and its

unfoldment had to be exchanged apparently, as otherwise the gender of the

concepts which they were intended to embody in Buddhism, would not have

been in harmony with them',1 but it is the consequent application of a

principle which is of fundamental importance for the entire Buddhist

Tantric system.

 

[1 H. Zimmer: Kunstform und Yoga im Indischen Kultbild, p. 75.]

 

In a similar way the Hindu Tantras are an equally consistent

application of the fundamental ideas of Hinduism, even though they have

taken over Buddhist methods wherever they suited their purpose. But the

same method, when applied from two opposite standpoints, must necessarily

lead to opposite results. There is no need to resort to such superficial

reasons as the necessity to comply with the grammatical gender of prajna

(feminine) and upaya (masculine).

Such reasoning however was only the consequence of the wrong

presupposition that the Buddhist Tantras were an imitation of the Hindu

Tantras, and the sooner we can free ourselves from this prejudice, the

clearer it will become that the concept of sakti has no place in Buddhism.

Just as the Theravadin would be shocked if the term anatta (Skt. :

anatman) were turned into its opposite and were rendered by the brahmanical

term atman or were explained in such a way as to show that the Theravadin

accepted the atman-idea (since Buddhism was only a variation of

Brahmanism!), so the Tibetan Buddhist would be shocked by the

misinterpretation of his religious tradition by the Hindu term sakti, which

is never used in his scriptures and which means exactly the opposite of

what he wants to express by the term prajna or by the female counterparts

of the Dhyani-Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

One cannot arbitrarily transplant termini of a theistic system,

centred round the idea of a God-Creator into a non-theistic system which

emphatically and fundamentally denies the notion of a God-Creator. From

such a confusion of terminology arises finally the mistaken idea that the

Adibuddha of the later Tantras is nothing but another version of the

God-Creator, which would be a complete reversal of the Buddhist point of

view. The Adibuddha, however, is the symbol of the universality,

timelessness and completeness of the enlightened mind, or as Guenther puts

it more forcefully: 'The statement that the universe or man is the

Adibuddha is but an inadequate verbalization of an all-comprehensive

experience. The Adibuddha is assuredly not a God who plays dice with the

world in order to pass away his time. He is not a sort of monotheism

either, superimposed on an earlier, allegedly atheistic Buddhism. Such

notions are the errors of professional semanticists. Buddhism has no taste

for theorization. It attempts to delve into the secret depths of our inmost

being and to make the hidden light shine forth brilliantly. Therefore the

Adibuddha is best translated as the unfolding of man's true nature.'1

 

[1 H. V. Guenther: Yuganaddha, the Tantric View of Life (Chowkhamba

Sanskrit Series), Banaras, 1952, p. 187.]