Knowledge and Power

05-20-2001, 04:16 PM

>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.]