The Visualization of the Secret: Atiśa’s Contribution to the Internalization of Tantric Sexual Practices

David B Gray

doi:10.3390/rel11030136

Abstract

This essay will explore the challenges presented by transgressive rituals, particularly the secret and wisdom-consort consecrations found in the Mahāyoga and Yoginī tantras. In particular, it examines how Atiśa Dīpaṅkara Śrījñāna aided in the dissemination of these traditions to Tibet during the eleventh century, in part through encouraging the enactment of transgressive rituals via internal visualization. I will do so through the exploration of a largely unstudied work by Atiśa, his commentary on a meditation manual (sādhana) attributed to the mahāsiddha Lūipa, “The Realization of the Cakrasaṃvara”, Cakrasaṃvarābhisamaya. Through an examination of this work, I will argue that Atiśa played an important role in facilitating the acceptance of the Yoginītantras in Tibet, during a time when tantric traditions were subject to a considerable amount of scrutiny.

Highlights

This essay will explore the challenges presented by transgressive rituals, the secret and wisdom-consort consecrations found in the Mahāyoga and Yoginıtantras
Through an examination of this work, I will argue that Atiśa played an important role in facilitating the acceptance of the Yoginıtantras in Tibet, during a time when tantric traditions were subject to a considerable amount of scrutiny
One of the defining features of the tantras is their antinomian rhetoric, namely passages describing violent or erotic rituals that challenged traditional Mahāyāna ethical norms. Such rhetoric is found in the earliest tantric Buddhist works dating to the seventh century,1 and rose to prominence in the Mahāyoga and Yoginıtantras, that were composed in India beginning in the eighth century.2. This antinomian rhetoric inspired considerable controversy, as evidenced in the apologetic defenses contained in the scriptures themselves,3 as well as in historical records

Summary

For a translation of the relevant passage from his Śrısam

Put.atantrarājat.ıkā-āmnāyamañjarı-nāma, see (Gray 2007, pp. 69–70). commentary is not motivated by the root text itself, but rather by extratextual or contextual concerns. One possibility is that the practice that Abhayākaragupta describes—of the majority of practitioners engaging in the transgressive rites via visualization only, with the actual performance of them reserved for exceptional practitioners—developed in North Indian monastic centers during the eleventh century While this might have been the norm by the end of the century when Abhayākaragupta was active, it may not yet have been fully established in the earlier part of the century, when Atiśa was immersed in this context. Atiśa’s work would reflect a development toward this compromise Another possibility is that this norm was already established by the early eleventh century, and that Atiśa found it politically necessary in A Lamp for the Path to Awakening to erect a barrier between erotic practices, real or imagined, and the monastic sangha, a barrier which turned out to be firm only with respect to the actual performance of these rites, and not their visualized enactments. I understand that the Sanskrit for this text is edited in (Sakurai 1996), I have not been able to secure a copy of this work

Primary Sources

Secondary Sources