Tantra

Tantra is a South Asian religious philosophy and set of practices that emerged in India around the sixth century and went on to transform both Hinduism and Buddhism. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions describes it as one of the main streams of Indian religious thought, standing in some tension with orthodox Vedic religion; it runs through the Hindu traditions of Śaivism, Śāktism and Vaiṣṇavism and also influenced Jainism. The word is also used as a collective name for Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religious systems built on esoteric practices set out in sacred texts known as Tantras.

Description

Key terms

• Tantra (from the Sanskrit root tan, "to weave" or "to compose") names both a type of instructional sacred text and the religious systems built on such texts.
• Shakti (Śakti): the unlimited divine feminine power that, in the Tantric view, animates all material reality.
• Sādhana: spiritual practice, in Hindu Tantra aimed at uniting the passive and active poles of reality to reach liberation (mokṣa).
• Guru: the teacher whose guidance the Tantras require.

The word and the texts

The Sanskrit word tantra comes from the verbal root tan, meaning "to weave" or "to compose", and names a type of text that gives instruction, often in the form of a conversation between a god and a goddess. The word has also been translated as "extension" or "warp on a loom". The Tantras set out rituals for calling on one of the many Tantric deities, including visualisation and yoga, and require the guidance of a teacher, or guru. For Buddhists, the Tantras are writings attributed to the Buddha that explain how a believer may attain enlightenment.

Beliefs

In the Tantric worldview, all material reality is animated by Shakti, unlimited divine feminine power, and everything is sacred, including what is usually considered profane or impure. Hindu Tantra emphasises the feminine side of a two-sided reality, in which the god Śiva is passive and the goddess Śakti active, and teaches a practice (sādhana) meant to unite these two poles and so reach liberation (mokṣa). The body is seen as a small-scale model of the cosmos and is central to Tantric practice.

Practice

Because the body is treated as a small-scale cosmos, Tantric practice works through the body rather than seeking to escape it. Tantric practice consists of worship (pūjā) and yoga. Worship may be daily, for special occasions, or for a particular wish. Tantra developed a sophisticated esoteric anatomy of the body, with energy centres (cakras or chakras) linked by channels (nāḍīs), which practitioners visualise in Tantric yoga. One Tantric practice that became especially popular was Hatha yoga, in which yogis used postures and muscular contractions to direct the breath, and visualised the goddess Kundalini as a serpent at the base of the spine who rises through the chakras.

Tantric initiation was open to people from different social backgrounds. Curator Imma Ramos writes that this challenge to the caste system made Tantra especially appealing to women and to people on the margins of society.

Bowker distinguishes a "right-hand" path, which interprets certain ritual elements symbolically, from a "left-hand" path, which interprets them literally. Many Tantric texts included rituals that crossed existing social and religious boundaries, in keeping with the teaching that everything is sacred.

Tantric Buddhism

Tantric Buddhism, also known as Vajrayana ("Path of the Thunderbolt"), flourished in eastern India, where monasteries studied and taught the Tantras and drew pilgrims from across Asia. Teachers known as Mahasiddhas ("Great Accomplished Ones") carried Tantric teachings from India to the Himalayas, and major monasteries were founded in Tibet. In Tantric Buddhist meditation, the two qualities to be cultivated on the path to enlightenment, wisdom and compassion, are pictured as a goddess and a god, and the practitioner seeks to take these qualities into themselves by visualising the deities within the body.

Scope

What it includes

• Ritual worship and yoga, including visualisation and work with the 'yogic body'
• Study of the Tantras under a guru, with initiation
• Hindu, Buddhist and Jain forms

What it is not

• Tantra is not a separate religion standing apart from Hinduism and Buddhism: it has run through and changed both traditions from the beginning.
• Tantra is broader than its popular Western image. The University of Chicago Press, introducing André Padoux's overview The Hindu Tantric World, notes that Western fascination with its sexual side has hidden Tantra's philosophical depth, its rituals and its importance to Hinduism. Padoux devotes a chapter to explaining that sex is not a main part of Tantra; this view differs from that of the scholar David Gordon White, who saw sexual rites as the main distinctive feature of Tantric traditions. Ramos writes that in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, Tantra was reimagined as a "cult of ecstasy".
• According to Padoux, most of the Tantra websites found on the internet are worthless and misleading, and the living reality of Tantra is to be found in India, past and present.

Traditions and lineage

Origins

The origins of Tantra are obscure. It arose on the edges of Aryan influence in northern India, Bengal and Assam, reached its peak around 1000 CE, and has never died out. Sources differ slightly on dates: Ramos places its emergence around the sixth century, while Sofia Sundstrom, reviewing Padoux, writes that a form of Tantra was present in India from the fifth century CE, spread through the subcontinent in the eighth and ninth centuries, and had its main period in India from the eighth to the fourteenth century.

Medieval India

Tantra developed in medieval India at a time when many new kingdoms arose after the decline of the Gupta and Vakataka dynasties. Many rulers were drawn to Tantra's promise of power, and public temples often included Tantric deities as guardians. Tantra inspired a dramatic rise in the worship of goddesses, among them the Yoginis. Most Yogini temples were circular and roofless; one, at Hirapur in Odisha, dates from the tenth century. Between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tantra kept its hold on many rulers, including Rajput, Mughal and Sultanate rulers.

Colonial and modern times

In Bengal the Tantric goddess Kali was widely worshipped, and the poet Ramprasad Sen praised her as a ruthless yet compassionate Mother. Many British officials regarded Kali as a threat to colonial rule, and Bengali revolutionaries reimagined her as a symbol of resistance and of India itself. In the 1960s and 1970s Tantra influenced radical politics and counterculture in the United Kingdom and the United States. Sects in India such as the Aghoris continue Tantric practice today.

In Hindu practice today, Tantra can be seen in the ritual worship of deities, including some that are not themselves Tantric. Bowker notes that Tantrism has influenced modern religious movements such as Ananda Marga.

Context

Within Spiritualism

Spiritfold has found no published source linking Tantra with Spiritualism.

The one indirect point of contact is the chakra system. Tantra developed the esoteric anatomy of energy centres (chakras) and channels described above, and in her study of a Spiritualist church in Montreal, the anthropologist Deirdre Meintel found that chakras were widely accepted by members but were regarded as borrowed from other traditions and not integral to Spiritualism (see Chakras).

In Australian Spiritualism

Spiritfold has found no published source linking Tantra with Spiritualism in Australia.

A Spiritualist perspective

Tantra is a religious tradition in its own right, with sacred texts, deities, teachers and initiations that run through Hindu, Buddhist and Jain life, as the page describes. A Spiritualist would approach it as a guest approaches another faith: with respect, curiosity and humility, and without claiming it as part of Spiritualism. Spiritfold has found no link between the two.

Some Spiritualists will meet Tantric ideas indirectly, through yoga or the chakras. A teacher would encourage anyone drawn further to learn from those who hold the tradition, under its proper guidance, rather than from a borrowed or simplified version. Within a Spiritualist church or circle, Tantric practice would not be taught or offered, since it belongs to its own religious context and requires its own initiation and teachers.

Tantra in Australia

Tantric Buddhist teaching has been given publicly in Australia. Towards the end of 1996 the Dalai Lama gave a Kalachakra initiation at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney; SBS reports that it was the first Kalachakra initiation held in the Southern Hemisphere, and describes the Kalachakra ("Wheel of Time") as one of the most important and elaborate Buddhist teachings the Dalai Lama confers. According to the Office of the Dalai Lama, the Kalachakra is a Buddhist tantra of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantra class, the last of the four classes of tantra, and its practice, like that of all Buddhist tantric systems, begins with receiving the proper initiations from a qualified guru.

Related modalities

• Chakras

Further reading

• Bowker, John. "Tantrism". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions. Oxford University Press. Encyclopedia.com.
• Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. "Introduction to the Kalachakra". dalailama.com.
• Padoux, André. The Hindu Tantric World: An Overview. University of Chicago Press, 2017.
• Ramos, Imma. "What is Tantra?". British Museum, 2020.
• Sundstrom, Sofia. "The Hindu Tantric World" (review). International Institute for Asian Studies.