Tantric Techniques (75 page)

Tsong-kha-pa’s treatment of this last issue comes at the end of his critical inquiry into the arguments into whether Action Tantra has self-generation and is much more dramatic than Ke-drup’s distillation. Tsong-kha-pa uses the issue as a means to make his main point—that deity yoga is at the very heart of tantric practice:
e

a
’dul bya’i gtso bo
.

b
ched du bya ba’i ’dul bya
.

c
’dul bya phal pa
.

d
Deity Yoga,
59.

e
Ibid., 60-62.

Controversy over Deity Yoga in Action Tantra
317

Although the two masters Buddhaguhya and Varabodhi do not describe entry of a wisdom-being into oneself [in their commentaries on Action Tantra and Performance Tantra], such entry is suitable, for it is described by many Indian scholars and adepts. Were it unsuitable, it would have to be because [trainees of these tantras] hold themselves and the deity—the wisdom-being—as separate and do not believe in holding them as one. However, this is not the case, for it is said that through the power of believing one’s own body, speech, and mind to be undifferentiable from the deity’s exalted body, speech, and mind, all one’s physical actions and movements are seals
a
and all one’s speech is mantra. In this way the
Vajrap
āṇ
i Initiation Tantra
says:

…If mantra practitioners believe in this way that these are undifferentiable, they attain purity of mind. At those times when they have a pure mind, they always view in all ways their own body to be the same as the deity’s body, their own speech to be the same as the deity’s speech, and their own mind to be the same as the deity’s mind; then, they are in meditative equipoise.…

This is also similar in Action Tantra because, when generation of oneself as a deity occurs, one must apply the pride that is the thought that one is the actual deity being generated, whether it is Vairochana or any other.

Therefore, to view one’s body as a deity, one’s speech as mantra, and one’s mind as absorbed in suchness is not a distinguishing feature of Highest Yoga. It is definitely required also in the lower tantra sets.

Tsong-kha-pa emphasizes the importance and centrality of imagining oneself as a deity for all four tantra sets, refuting claims about Highest Yoga Mantra that denigrate central features of the other tantra sets. By doing so, he brings to the fore what he considers the actual special features of Highest Yoga Mantra.

His cogent analysis created a new approach to a complex received tradition by absorbing it in a coherent and consistent fashion into a high tradition of training in compassion and wisdom,

a
phyag rgya, mudr
ā
.

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Tantric Techniques

showing how these remain the foundation of tantric practice. Tsong-kha-pa did this largely through noticing and emphasizing certain of the tradition’s own features, and thus he could view his own work as
exposing
a system integral to it rather than
creating
a new one.

Part Three:

The Difference Between

the Four Tantras

12. Bu-tön and Tsong-kha-pa: The Four Tantra Sets

Within the Mantra Vehicle, there are many presentations of varying numbers of tantra sets, but the dominant tradition is of a division into four.
a
Bu-tön’s three
Presentations of the General Tantra Sets
—called
Condensed, Medium-Length,
and
Extensive
b
—give a total of nine different ways of dividing the tantras into four groups. Tsong-kha-pa in his
Great Exposition of Secret Mantra
critically examines most of these and accepts only two with modification. While the brief explanations in Bu-tön’s catalogue provide glimpses of the rich culture of Tantra, Tsong-kha-pa’s critical appraisal fits Tantra into a coherent, high world-view. Let us consider these nine approaches to ordering the tantras.

Bu-tön reports that some hold that the four tantra sets are for the different castes. For instance, Ala
ṃ
kakalasha says in his
Commentary on the “Vajra Garland Tantra”:
c

Action Tantras were taught in order to accommodate Brahmins since they like bathing and cleanliness, hold the view that one is liberated through asceticism, consider their caste to be important, and hold that one is liberated through repetition and burnt offerings.…Performance Tantras, teaching both internal yoga of wisdom and method and external activities, were set forth in order to accommodate the merchant caste since they cannot engage in se-vere asceticism, will not become involved in low actions, and look down on external cleanliness and so forth.…Yoga Tantras [in which the gods and goddesses of the ma
ṇḍ
alas

a
This is so even in Nyingma in which the fourth division is further divided into Mah
ā
yoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga.

b
Condensed
version, 27a.1ff.;
Medium-Length
version, 641.7-650.5;
Extensive
version, 32.6-41.3.

c
rnal ’byor chen po’i rgyud dpal rdo rje phreng ba’i rgya cher ’grel pa zab mo’i don gyi ’grel pa, vajram
ā
l
ā
mah
ā
yogatantra
ṭī
k
ā
gambh
ī
r
ā
rthad
ī
pik
ā
;
P2660, vol. 61 (Toh. 1795); this passage is Cone
rgyud gi,
3a.2-4a.3. Cited in my supplement in
Tantra in Tibet,

202. For Tsong-kha-pa’s rebuttal see
Tantra in Tibet,
155-156.

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Tantric Techniques

correspond to a king and his retinue] were taught in order to accommodate those of the royal caste since they cannot engage in asceticism but enjoy the pleasures of the five attributes of the desire realm.…Highest Yoga Tantras, which teach the nonconceptual usage of the five fleshes and so forth, as well as low actions, were taught for those of the servant class who—without any regard for cleanliness— eat everything, engage in all actions, and have little conceptuality.

Bu-tön attributes this tradition both to Ala
ṃ
kakalasha and also to “the speech of lamas,” giving it additional authority. Also, he gives the impression that this one has his approval when immediately thereafter he cites a passage on the four tantras and declares that it should be analyzed as to whether it is fake or not.

That Ala
ṃ
kakalasha, certain lamas, and, most likely, Bu-tön himself approved this tradition highlights how radical Tsong-kha- pa’s criticism, scathing in its devastating reasonableness, is. Tsong-kha-pa says:
a

If Ala
ṃ
kakalasha propounds this thinking that there is a similarity between the trainees of the four tantras and the four castes, such does not encompass the different features of those who engage in Mantra through the four tantra sets. If it is asserted that members of the four castes are needed for the trainees of the four tantras sets, this is not seen to be correct because such is never definite and is not even predominantly so. Though the deities of, for instance, the vajra element (
rdo rje’i dbyings, vajradh
ā
tu
) [taught in the
Compendium of Principles
] are described as having features that accord with kings and their retinue, this does not prove that trainees [of Yoga Tantra] are members of the royal caste.

The First Pa
ṇ
-chen Lama, Lo-sang-chö-kyi-gyel-tsen, clarifies Tsong-kha-pa’s points:
b

It is wrong to posit the four tantra sets from the viewpoint of the four castes. If this means that those of the four castes

a
Ibid., 156.

b
Notes Presenting the General Teaching and the Four Tantra Sets,
Collected Works, vol. 4 (New Delhi: Gurudeva, 1973), 17a.2-17a.4; cited in
Tantra in Tibet,
202-203.

Bu-tön and Tsong-kha-pa: The Four Tantra Sets
323

are the special trainees of the four tantras, then this entails the fault of being too broad [since not all members of the castes practice tantra]. If this means that members of the four castes are needed for the main trainees of the four tantras, then this entails the fault of being too narrow [because the main trainees of the four tantras come from any part of society, not from a specific caste]. If this means that there are cases of the four tantras taming members of the four castes, then this entails the fault of indefiniteness [since there are cases of each of the four taming members of each of the four; therefore, this could not serve to distinguish the tantras].

The criticism is unrelenting, not leaving a shred of a possible reasonable explanation.

In favor of sense, Tsong-kha-pa and his followers unceremo-niously drop this tradition, despite its being found in the work of an Indian scholar and repeated in Tibet. Simply put, the trainees of all four tantra sets are drawn from all levels of society, and, furthermore, not all persons of any level of society are suitable as practitioners of Tantra. In the light of reasoned examination, this tradition looks ridiculous; one can appreciate how abrasive such analysis would appear to those who opted, instead, to maintain their traditions (and most did!). Hard to ignore but impossible to absorb, Tsong-kha-pa’s reasoned paradigm would remain a thorn in the side.

Despite the old tradition’s unreasonableness, I find some sense in it, albeit through a different perspective. It strikes me that the connection of the four tantra sets with the four castes might have arisen from masters’ using the four castes as examples in order to illustrate certain practices, such as ritual bathing. For instance, a master might exhort initiates that, in order to meditate on themselves as the main figure in a Yoga Tantra ma
ṇḍ
ala, they would have to consider themselves as kings; or in order to practice the strict cleanliness that is found in the preliminary rituals of Action Tantra, they would have to be like Brahmins, who are renowned for bathing three times a day; or, in order to practice the nondifferen-tiation of conceptions of cleanliness and uncleanliness in Highest Yoga Mantra, they would have to be like members of the lowest class. The energy that is involved in the imagination of kingly behavior or low-class behavior is drawn to the path by associating the

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Tantric Techniques

path with it; this indeed is a fundamental procedure of Tantra, mimicking ordinary activities and affairs in a different context, both so that these are understood differently and so that the ener-gy associated with them is made available for and associated with deeper practice. Still, such are only metaphors and cannot reasonably be put forward as the means of differentiating the four tantra sets by way of their trainees.