The Early Development of Mahayana and Tantra

Within Mahayana, two major philosophical schools deve­loped, Madhyamaka and Chittamatra. The latter is also known as Yogachara and Vijnanavada. Madhyamaka appear­ed with the writings of Nagarjuna, a Buddhist master who lived in the Andhra area of the Shatavahana King­dom sometime between 150 and 250 CE. His famous Letter to a Friend (Suhṛllekha) was writ­ten to the Shatava­hana King Pulumayi II, noted for having renovated the Shri Dhanyakataka Stupa at Amaravati, the cite of the Buddha’s giving the Kālacakra Tantra. This letter advised many of the policies enacted several centuries earlier by King Ashoka.

The sutra basis for Madhyamaka was the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras. According to the Tibetan tradition, the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras had been entrusted to the nagas after they had been delivered by the Buddha. Nagas are half-human, half-serpent-like beings who often safeguard the teachings. The nagas kept these sutras in their realm beneath the lake that once occu­pied Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. They were u­nearthed by Nagar­juna, who is reported to have lived an ex­tremely long life. This seems to be a forerunner of the later Tibetan custom of redis­covering trea­sure teach­ings. 

Some Jungian psychologists take this account to be sym­bolic. The region under the lake is the unconscious, and the nagas are archetypes for the guardian psychological forces protecting the unconscious realm. Although Tibetans speak of treasure teachings being concealed and then rediscovered from the depths of the mind, such a description is not applied to Nagarjuna’s unearthing of the Prajñāpāramitā Sūtras. 

By 300 CE, the sutra sources of the Chit­tamatra school also emerged in Andhr­a. The most important of these is The Descent to Lanka Sutra (Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra). Asan­ga, the main writer of this school, lived dur­ing the first half of the fourth cen­tury in Gandhara. His bro­ther, Vasubandhu, was a major author of com­mentaries of the abhidharma system of spe­cial knowledge within the Vaibhashika school of Hinayana that had developed in Kash­mir.

The Chittamatra, or Mind-Only school, teaches that ­every­thing knowable exists dependent upon the mind that knows it. This does not mean, however, that everything is subjective, existing only in one’s mind. Otherwise, it would be difficult to justify developing compassion for others.  Chit­tamatra asserts that some things have true, unimputed exis­tence, such as a vase that one sees, while othe­rs are merely imputedly existent, such as the idea of a vase that one thinks about. The Madhyamaka school, on the other hand, asserts that nothing exists unimputedly. Nothing exists as this or that independent of the conceptualizing process of the mind.

Asanga is also famous for having transmitted the texts of Maitreya, which include teachings on the Buddha-nature and presentations of the stages of the path. According to the Tibetan tradition, Asanga received a pure vision of the future Buddha, Maitreya, after having meditated single-pointedly upon him for twelve years. Maitreya led Asanga to Tushita, his pure-land realm, where he passed on these texts. Asanga committed them to writing when he returned from this experience. Al­though only one morning had passed in Maitreya’s pure realm, fifty human years had passed on earth. 

In future centuries, several tantric texts appeared in India through a similar mechanism. This seems to be a forerun­ner of the Tibetan custom of certain lineages deriving from oral trans­missions received during pure visions.

According to tradition, Buddha is the source of all the Buddhist philosophical systems. They present increasingly refined explanations of reality. They may suit specific indi­vidu­als at their present level of development, but they are in­tended to present a gradual path to the most sophisticated understanding. 

The emergence of philosophical schools within Mahayana paralleled a similar development of six orthodox Brahmanic systems. The sutras of these six Hindu systems were composed between the third and sixth centuries CE, and commentaries were soon written to present their teachings in an organized fa­shion. The times were thus ready for the emergence of the Buddha’s philosophical systems and their commentaries. The Buddhist schools of tenets were a skillful means for addressing those who followed any of the Indian non-Buddhist systems of the time.

Although the Mahayana sutras and schools first appeared in the Andhra region of South India, they quickly spread north. Shortly after the reign of King Kanishka of the Kushan Dynas­ty, Mahayana began to appear in North India in the mid-second century CE. Soon, great monastic univer­sities were founded at which the Hinayana and Mahayana theo­ries were studied in a systematic manner. The earliest of these was Nalanda, founded in 427 CE in the central North Indian region of Maga­dha by Emperor Kumaragupta of the Gupta Empire. Although modern scholarship dates Nagar­juna between the mid-second to the mid-third centuries, Buddhist tradition asserts that he lived for 600 years and taught at Nalanda.  

At these monastic universities, the dif­ferent systems of Bud­dhist philo­so­phi­cal tenets were studied and elaborated. These included Vai­bhashika and Sau­tran­tika with­in Hinayana Sar­vasti­vada, and Chit­ta­matra and Madhyamaka in Maha­yana. Each traced their positions back to the Bud­dha. Many com­men­taries were written to Buddha’s scrip­tural texts by various Indian masters specializing in one or another point of view. The most im­portant distinction among the tenet systems is that each gives a pro­gres­sively more sophisticated analysis of reality.

The great Buddhist logician, Dignaga, taught at Nalanda. Through his works, the traditions of logic and debate were established within Sautrantika and Mahayana. There was much debate not only among these Indi­an Buddhist schools, but also between them and the propo­nents of the great Brahmanic and Jain philosoph­ical traditions that deve­loped at this time.

Between the eighth and twelfth centuries, during the Pala Dynasty in Magadha and northeast India, the Buddhist monas­tic univer­sities reached their height. With royal patronage, the older monasteries were expanded and new ones were founded. Among the most famous of these new centers were Vikramashila and Odantapuri. Monastic univer­sities were built throughout the Pala territory, which in­cluded the northeast Indian areas of Bengal, Orissa and mode­rn-day Bangladesh.

Tantra (Vajrayana) is a branch of Mahayana based on the Madhyamaka presentation of voidness and reality. In early years, the tantric texts were transmitted privately, from a teacher to a small group of students. Perhaps as early as the third century CE, or at least by the sixth century, the tantras began to appear in writ­ten form. Like the Mahayana sutras, the earliest tantras, such as the Guhyasamāja Tantra, emerged in the Andhra region of South India. Commentaries soon fol­lowed, written by several of the Madhyamaka masters, such as Nagarjuna.

The tantric teachings also soon spread to North India. Between the mid-eighth and mid-ninth centuries, many more tantras emerged in written form in Oddiyana (northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan). They were then introduced into the monastic univer­sities, where many commentaries to them were written. Vikramashila was an especially noted center for not only philosophical sutra studies, but also for tantra. 

A tradition of eighty-four mahāsiddhas arose in North India, particularly from the eighth to the twelfth centuries during the Pala Dynasty. A maha­siddha is a greatly accom­plish­ed tantric practi­tioner with actual at­tainments. They trans­mitted different tantric systems and lineages of prac­tice. Many were noted for their unconven­tional behavior and teaching methods. One of the earliest of this tradition was Saraha, who critici­zed the aristocratic style of life in the monastic uni­versi­ties.

In the tenth cen­tury, the Kālacakra Tantra was one of the latest tan­tras to surface in India. It is the source of the Buddhist sciences of calendar-making, astronomy, astrol­ogy and several aspects of medicine.

Tantra em­phasizes the use of the imagination, employing the technique of visualizing oneself as a Buddha within the con­text of a full under­standing of reality. By im­agin­ing one al­ready has the body and mind of a Buddha, one builds up the causes for achieving this unified state more rapidly than with the ordinary Mahayana methods. Thus, one can fully help others more quickly. One also imagines that one is able to act in the way a Buddha does, effortlessly, exerting an enlighten­ing in­fluence on ever­yone. One imagines enjoying pleasures with pure joy and without confusion, the way a Buddha does. Furth­ermore, one regards one’s environment as perfectly pure and conducive for spiritual growth, like that around a Bud­dha.

When visualizing oneself to have the body of a Buddha, one may use any of a large number of different Buddha-forms (Tibe­tan: yid-dam), such as Avalokiteshvara, the embodiment of all the Buddhas’ compas­sion. Many of these figures have multiple arms, faces and legs, each having several levels of symbolism and represent­ing differ­ent reali­zations along the path. Visua­li­zing them is an aid for keeping in mind all the in­sights they represent, so as to build up the cause for an omniscient mind of a Buddha more efficiently. 

Each Buddha-form lives within a world-system known as a maṇḍala, which includes a palace and often many secon­dary figures. A two-dimen­sional diagram of a mandala is simi­lar to an ar­chitect’s blue­print of a three-dimensional build­ing. Each structural feature and secondary figure within the mandala also has many levels of symbolic meaning. Furthermore, each Bud­dha-form has a mantra associ­ated with it. While visua­lizing one­self as the entire configuration of the central Bud­dha-form, secondary figures, palace and surrounding environment, one recites the syl­lables of the a­ppropriate mantra as an aid for concen­tra­tion.

According to the later Tibetan formulation, there are four classes of tantra. The highest, anuttara­yoga, em­phasiz­es work­ing with the body’s sub­tle ener­gies in order to gain access to the subtlest level of con­scious­ness. This subt­lest conscious­ness, already non-conceptual, is the most efficient tool for see­ing real­ity and cutting quickly through one’s pro­blems and confu­sion to be able to help others the most effectively.

Sexual imagery is frequently found in the tantric teach­ings, particularly in those of the anuttarayoga class. When Buddhist practitioners have not been closely instructed and supervised by fully qualified masters, they have often misun­derstood this imagery and taken it literally. Bud­dha’s inten­tion, however, never was to advocate ordinary sex as a path to libera­tion or enlightenment.

Method and wisdom as inseparable causes giving birth to enlightenment are symbolized by a father and mother (Tibetan: yab-yum) in union. Visualizing oneself as a Buddha-form com­pas­sionately helping others is a method for achieving the en­lightening body of a Buddha. Concentrating on voidness, the lack of inherent, find­able existence of oneself and these Buddha-forms, builds up the wisdom that causes one to achieve an enlightening, omni­scient mind. Furthermore, the sexual union of a father and mother symbolizes the blissful con­sciousness generated in the subtle energy system through com­plex internal yogic practices. Such a blissful awareness helps one to reach the subtlest level of consciousness that is the quickest and most efficient tool for realizing voidness.

Formal empowerments (initiations), close guidance from a teacher and the strict keeping of vows of privacy and confi­dentiality about the teachings are all neces­sary in tantra in order to safeguard against misunderstanding. When such precau­tions were lax, degeneration arose.

Tantric teachings also appeared at this time in India in the Hindu and Jain traditions. The Hindu tantras also explain techni­ques for working with the subtle energy systems of the body, although the methods and the presentation of the energy systems are dif­ferent from the Buddhist ones. Hinduism too has various deities with multiple arms and faces. But it lacks the techni­que of visuali­zing oneself in the form of these fig­ures, because it does not aim to achieve an enlight­ening body that can help others the best. Furthermore, the philosophical and ethical bases in Buddhist and Hindu tantra are quite dif­ferent. What is taken symbolically in Buddhist tantra is often prac­ticed lit­erally in the Hindu version.

The Buddhist tantras were presented in a skillful manner so as to fit with the current themes of the times. Thus, Buddhist and Hindu tantras share a certain ter­mi­nology in common. For in­stance, the names of the stages of the six-branch yoga found in the Buddhist Guhyasamāja Tantra and Kālacakra Tantra are also found in the fore­runners of the Hindu tantras, the Maitrī Upaniṣad and the Yoga Sūtra of Patanjali. The terms, how­ev­er, are de­fined dif­ferently in the Bud­dhist and Hindu sys­tems. Even within these two men­tioned Bud­dhist tan­tras, the terms refer to dif­ferent prac­tices. 

Several terms from the Hindu Samkhya system of philosophy, such as the three guṇas (qualities) of rajas, sattva and tamas (activity, lightness and darkness), are also found in the Kālacakra Tantra. But again, they have complete­ly dif­ferent philosop­hical con­notations from that of their original context. The Kālacakra Tantra even uses the names of the ten incarnations of Vishnu for the ten stages of human devel­opment from concep­tion on­wards. Several important names in the his­torical teach­ings of the Kālacakra Tantra, such as Shambhala and Kalki, are also found in the popular Hindu text, the Viṣṇu Purāṇa.

The description of the universe in the Kālacakra Tantra is different from that found in the Buddhist abhidharma teach­ings. It bears a certain similarity with the Jain description. In Jainism, the universe is in the shape of a woman. In Kala­chakra, Mount Meru and the god realms above it are in the shape of the upper torso of a man. The purpose for the uni­verse being parallel to the human body in Kalachakra is to be able to purify the uncontrollable recurrence of both. This is done through meditating on a mandala world system that has the same proportions as the universe and the body. In Kalachakra, there is no idea of liberated persons rising to the top of the universal man as there is in Jainism.

The details of the universe in Kalachakra are much closer to those given in the Hindu Viṣṇu Purāṇa than to those found in the Buddhist abhidharma literature. In both the Kalachakra and Puranic descriptions, Mount Meru at the center of the uni­verse is in the shape of an upside-down truncated cone. Even some of the measurements of the cone are the same. In abhi­dharma, Mount Meru is an upside-down truncated square pyramid. The Southern Continent, Jambudvipa, is in the shape of a ring around Mount Meru in both Kalachakra and the Purana. In Kala­chakra, it is the outermost of seven ring continents, while in the Puranic version, it is the innermost of seven rings. The continents in both systems are separated by oceans made of different liquids. Many of the liquids are the same in both systems, but in a different order. The abhidharma de­scription of the continents is quite different.

Several Hindu deities appear in the Buddhist tantras. Some are shown iconographically under the feet of various Buddha-figures, signifying that their energies have been out­shined. Others are skillfully converted into protecting figures who ward off interferences from all directions. A se­lect few, such as Sarasvati, Garuda and Ganesha, appear as Buddha-figures, and one may visualize oneself in their aspect.

In the Kālacakra Tantra, the Hindu deities, such as Brah­ma, Indra, Vishnu and so on, which often appear as directional protectors in other tantras, are found among the secondary figures around the central couple of the mandala. The main female figures are even called śakti (powerful la­dies), as in the Hindu tantras, although the connotation is different.

The Buddhist tantric ritual includes fire offerings. While visualizing oneself as a Buddha-form, one offers grains, clar­ified butter, flowers and so on into the flames of a fire visua­lized as the fire-deity Agni. Agni is also found in the Hindu pantheon, and the Buddhist ritual is reminiscent of Vedic fire ceremo­nies.

Physical exercises are sometimes used in the highest class of Buddhist tan­tra for making the subtle energy system suppler. This fa­cil­itates accessing the subtlest level of con­sciousness, which is the most efficient mind for realizing voidness. The yantra yoga system of exercises transmitted to Tibet from Padmasambhava by the translator Vairochana shares many postures and terms in common with Hindu hatha yoga. The Buddhist system is far more dynamic, however, with many more movements than hatha yoga. The Hindu system, deriving from the Yoga Sūtra of Patan­jali, has a totally different philosophical basis and meditative aim. Nevertheless, this is yet another example of the Bud­dhist use of skillful means to com­municate within the local cultural context.

The first Muslim conquests in the Indian subcontinent were by Abbasid Arab forces in the early eighth century. They took the Sindh region of modern-day southern Pakistan and, at the end of that century, destroyed the western Indian Buddhist monas­tic university of Valabhi. Many monks fled eastwards to the Pala Empire.

Most of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia had been conquered and converted to Islam by the Arabs during the late seventh century. They now started to move. First the Turkic Ghaznavids conquered eastern Afghanistan, destroying Buddhism in that area. They then took Gandhara, and in the 1020’s es­tablished a Tur­kish empire in northwestern India, including the Pun­jab. The Pala Dynasty in eastern India was overthrown by local warring fac­tions, and the Turks were then able to take all of North India by the end of the twelfth century. They destro­yed Nalan­da in 1198 and soon afterwards the other mona­stic univer­sities as well. Their advance east was checked in Assam at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and the Turks turned their atten­tion to the south in India.

A few Buddhist monks were able to continue on in the ruins of Nalanda for several decades after the Turkish conquests. But most of the monks who escaped the massacres fled to north­ern Myan­mar (Burma), Nepal and Tibet. In this way, Buddhism ended in its land of origin. It survived, how­ever, in the foreign lands to which it had previ­ously spread.

Much speculation has been made as to why Buddhism was un­able to survive the Muslim onslaught in India, whereas Hindu­ism did not suffer a similar fate. The most plausible reason is perhaps that Hinduism had always provided the basic family rituals for India. Indian Bud­dhism did not develop a marriage ceremo­ny, for instance, that could rival the ancient Vedic rite. Buddhism placed more emphasis on monastic life, and therefore its sur­vival depended largely on the existence of great monas­teries as centers of learning and practice. Once the monaster­ies were destroyed, there was no mechanism for perpetuating the teach­ings and rituals. Without a popular basis in the family to fall back upon, Buddhism died out.

Buddhism has survived persecutions in other countries, however, such as China, Myanmar and Tibet. In these socie­ties, popular levels of Buddhist practice deve­loped that did not require the scholarly training of the mona­steries. Al­though the quality of Buddhist education may have suffered greatly during these periods of persecution, still there was a popular basis from which a revival could be built.

In 1956, Ambedkar, leader of Maharashtra’s un­touch­ables, led 600,000 in a mass conversion to Buddhism. This popular Buddhist revival in eastern India seems to be mostly a reac­tion against Hindu caste discrimination. Although Buddha-figures have replaced the Hindu deities, the form of practice is much the same as in devotional Hinduism. 

Since their exile in 1959, teachers from the Tibetan refu­gee community in India have attracted only minimal inter­est in Buddhism among the Indians. This is in sharp contrast to the growing inter­est in the Tibe­tan form of Buddhism among tradi­tional Bud­dhists of Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and the overseas Chi­nese communi­ties of Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philip­pines. Many non-Tibetan Buddhists are drawn to the Tibetan tradition not only because of its vital and colorful rituals, but also because it provides clearer ex­planations of Buddha’s teachings than found in their own tra­ditions. Indian Hindus, on the other hand, see Buddha as an incarnation of Vishnu and Tibetan Buddhism as simply another regional form of their own uni­versal Hindu religion. With a background of acceptance of intrinsic region­al and caste dif­ferences, most Indians would not consider adopting the reli­gious trad­itions and customs of another Indian group.