Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism

By Miranda Shaw

The now-classic exploration of the role of women and the feminine in Buddhist Tantra

The crowning cultural achievement of medieval India, Tantric Buddhism is known in the West primarily for the sexual practices of its adherents, who strive to transform erotic passion into spiritual bliss. Historians of religion have long held that this attempted enlightenment was for men only, and that women in the movement were at best marginal and subordinated and at worst degraded and exploited. In Passionate Enlightenment, Miranda Shaw argues to the contrary and presents extensive evidence of the outspoken and independent female founders of the Tantric movement and their creative role in shaping its distinctive vision of gender relations and sacred sexuality. Including a new preface by the author, this Princeton Classics edition makes an essential work available for new audiences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Release date: Jun 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9780691235608

Book preview

PASSIONATE ENLIGHTENMENT

PASSIONATE ENLIGHTENMENT

WOMEN IN TANTRIC BUDDHISM

Miranda Shaw

With a new preface by the author

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS    PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright © 1994 by Princeton University Press

Preface to the Princeton Classics edition copyright © 2022, by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

Princeton, New Jersey 08540

99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX

All Rights Reserved

First edition, 1994

First paperback printing, 1995

First Princeton Classics edition, with a new preface by the author, 2022

Paperback ISBN 9780691235592

ISBN (e-book) 9780691235608

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021951460

Cover images: (top) Dorje Pakmo, the Diamond Sow, Tibetan Mahayana Buddhist manifestation of the Hindu goddess Varahi, embraced by her consort, Demchok (Samvara). Detail from a Tibetan thangka. Image credit: Pictures from History/Bridgeman Images. (bottom) iStock.

press.princeton.edu

(To Lama Sonam Jorphel Rinpoche,

consummate Tantric guide,

for unforgettable kindness

and rare compassion)

Contents

List of Illustrationsix

Preface to the Princeton Classics Editionxi

Acknowledgmentsxvii

Guide to Transliterationxxi

Chapter One. Seeking the Traces of Sky-Dancers3

Scholarly Contexts4

Theoretical Considerations8

Methodology12

Chapter Two. Tantric Buddhism in India: Religious and Historical Introduction20

Tantric Buddhist Thought and Practice21

Cultural Background of the Tantric Movement30

Chapter Three. Women in Tantric Theory: Powerful and Auspicious35

Numinous, Sky-Borne Women37

Respect and Honor39

Consequences of Disrespect47

Classifications of Women53

Mothers, Sisters, and Daughters58

Dancers, Courtesans, and Low-Caste Women59

The Dancer and the King63

Tantric Gender Ideology: A Gynocentric Balance68

Chapter Four. Women in Tantric Circles: Adepts and Experts74

Challenging Androcentric Readings75

Magic and Ritual78

Tantric Feasts81

Envisioning Deities and Mandalas84

Inner Yogas and Perfection Stage86

Realization and Enlightenment87

Women as Gurus97

Chapter Five. Women in Tantric History: Founders and Pioneers101

Vajravatī and Wrathful Red Tārā, a Female Buddha102

Niguma and a Cakrasaṃvara Healing Maṇḍala107

Lakṣmīnkara and Severed-Headed Vajrayoginī110

Mekhalā, Kanakhalā, and Severed-Headed Vajrayoginī Inner Yoga113

Siddharājñī and the Buddha of Infinite Life117

Siddharājñī and the Lord Who Dances on a Lotus122

Bhikṣuṇī Lakṣmī and Avalokiteśvara Fasting Practice126

The Mothers of the Founding Fathers130

Chapter Six. Women in Tantric Relationships: Intimacy as a Path to Enlightenment140

Tantric Union: Centerpiece of the Tantric Paradigm142

Union with an Imagined Partner147

Tantric Union and Tantric Metaphor149

Union as Worship of the Female Partner152

The Inner Yoga of the Yogini159

Inner Fire Offering163

Intimacy and Tantric Union166

Women’s Competence for Tantric Union168

Reciprocity and Tantric Union173

Chapter Seven. Spontaneous Jewellike Yogini on Passion and Enlightenment179

The Teachings of Spontaneous Jewellike Yogini182

Spontaneous Jewellike Yogini, the Woman190

Chapter Eight. Conclusions195

Historiographic Issues195

Iconographic Issues201

Buddhological Issues203

Notes207

Bibliography265

Tibetan Sources265

Sanskrit and Western Language Sources269

Index283

List of Illustrations

FIGURE 1. Yogini reveling in skylike freedom. Drawing from Tibetan painting, by Merry Norris and Emily Martindale.

FIGURE 2. Maṇibhadrā attaining enlightenment. Detail of sixteenth-century painting. Used by kind permission of Tibet House, New Delhi. Photo courtesy of John C. Huntington.

FIGURE 3. Female Buddha Vajrayoginī. Nepalese woodblock print.

FIGURE 4. Siṃhamukhā, wrathful female Buddha. Drawing in author’s collection.

FIGURE 5. Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa, defender of women, with Dveṣavajrī. Drawing from Nepalese painting, by Emily Martindale.

FIGURE 6. Padmalocanā, Jñānalocanā, and Śavari. Detail of sixteenth-century painting. Used by kind permission of Tibet House, New Delhi. Photo courtesy of John C. Huntington.

FIGURE 7. Ḍombīyoginī and Ḍombīpa riding a tigress. Detail of sixteenth-century painting. Used by kind permission of Tibet House, New Delhi. Photo courtesy of John C. Huntington.

FIGURE 8. Ḍombīyoginī dancing on lake. Drawing from Tibetan woodblock print, by Emily Martindale.

FIGURE 9. Buddha Tārā. Nepalese woodblock print.

FIGURE 10. Severed-Headed Vajrayoginī. Drawing from Tibetan and Indian paintings, by Emily Martindale.

FIGURE 11. Sister adepts Mekhalā and Kanakhalā. Detail of sixteenth-century painting. Used by kind permission of Tibet House, New Delhi. Photo courtesy of John C. Huntington.

FIGURE 12. Siddharājñī holding vase of immortality. Drawing from Tibetan woodblock print, by Emily Martindale.

FIGURE 13. Avalokiteśvara (left) and Bhikṣuṇī Lakṣmī in cave (right). Tibetan xylograph reproduced by Lokesh Chandra in Buddhist Iconography, figure 1627.

FIGURE 14. Arrow-making Yogini, Saraha’s guru. Drawing from Tibetan woodblock prints, by Emily Martindale.

FIGURE 15. Gopā and Śākyamuni in sacred union. Detail of sixteenth-century painting. Used by kind permission of Tibet House, New Delhi. Photo courtesy of John C. Huntington.

FIGURE 16. Rapt, blissful gaze of divine couple. Photo by author.

FIGURE 17. Courtesan’s daughter and Ghaṇṭapa enjoying enlightenment. Drawing from Tibetan painting, by Emily Martindale.

FIGURE 18. Yogini riding tiger. Drawing from Tibetan woodblock prints, by Emily Martindale.

Preface to the Princeton Classics Edition

THE PATH that led to Passionate Enlightenment can be traced to an exhibition of Tibetan paintings I attended as a sophomore in college. I was captivated by images of boldly dancing and leaping females with billowing hair framing supple limbs, unclad bodies draped with delicate adornments fashioned from flowers and bone, and intense gazes seeming to penetrate the depths of reality. They conveyed freedom, mastery, and spiritual power. Their portrayal was unlike any female imagery I had encountered in Western art, and I felt compelled to find out about the women who inspired such potent images. When scholarly literature provided scant answers, my interest intensified into a quest that set the course of my academic journey through art history, language study, Buddhist studies, and fieldwork in South Asia—the heartland of Buddhist Tantra, or Vajrayana, in the eighth through twelfth centuries CE and still host to the living tradition.

My research was part of an emerging (and ongoing) effort across disciplines and around the globe by feminist scholars of many cultures and ethnicities to restore women’s stories, voices, and views to the historical record. In many cases, such as the present volume, the discoveries revise our understanding of the period, movement, or tradition in question.

I turned next to the female divinities of South Asian and Himalayan Buddhism. I traced the evolution of the pantheon through the twelfth century and had more scope to delve into the Vajrayana deities. Results of this research were published in Buddhist Goddesses of India (Princeton University Press, 2006). Passionate Enlightenment establishes the female-affirming orientation of the tradition as one that stipulates honor for women and requires reverential attitudes, behaviors, and rituals (such as strī-pūjā, ceremonial worship of women) from male practitioners. The founding roles of female visionaries, gurus, and teachers evince esteem for the guiding wisdom of women. The principles and practices are embedded in the gynocentric metaphysical matrix of Vajrayana cosmology, ontology, epistemology, and soteriology. By the second century CE, Mahāyāna had recognized two metaphysical ultimates as feminine, namely, emptiness and wisdom. Emptiness (śūnyatā, a feminine noun) is the matrix of reality, the cosmic womb, the all-encompassing space wherein all phenomena arise and dissolve in endless stream. The maternal source of enlightenment is the liberating wisdom (prajñā, a feminine noun) that crowns the spiritual quest, personified as a glorious golden goddess installed at the apex of the pantheon as the eternal mother who gives birth to all Buddhas and the ever-flowing font of all that Buddhas teach.

Vajrayana enlarged the female pantheon and expanded the scope of female primacy to encompass a full range of generative, transformative, and liberative powers. For instance, the blue female Buddha Nairātmyā personifies emptiness. Her bodily hue evokes sky and infinite space, representing the universal expanse of awareness freed from the bounds of separate selfhood. She is the root source of mantras, the essential element of all Vajrayana practice. Mantras activate the power of sound to transform consciousness and attune practitioners to the deities and sacred realities. In the esoteric yogic method of karmic purification at the subtle anatomical level, the transforming power is a feminine force, the inner heat or fire (caṇḍālī) that is kindled in the navel chakra and spread through the body, incinerating karmic dross. The inner flame is personified by the fiery red goddess Caṇḍālī, whose ferocity heralds that she can burn through any karmic obstacle in her path. Although primary source as female finds many expressions in the Vajrayana domain, Buddhism has never held that what is real and true is fully expressible or definable. The Vajrayana imaginaire is evocative rather than literally descriptive on grounds that all verbal and visual renderings are offered to inspire practitioners for whom they are meaningful and liberating.

An issue frequently raised since the book was published is whether Vajrayana is hetero-normative. The question arises because of the pervasive use of male-female pairing (of deities, doctrines, ritual components, and visual and symbolic motifs) throughout the system. Moreover, instructions for sexual yogic practices describe the differing anatomy and roles of male and female partners. To assess the import of the focus on male-female coupling, it is helpful to consider cultural perspectives on gender identity, sexual identity, and same-sex relations that were in place well before and during the centuries when Vajrayana emerged, as attested in scriptures, mythic narratives, erotic manuals, and religious arts. In the South Asian purview, there is no gender identity in the Western sense. Across the religious spectrum, personal traits are considered adventitious, fluctuating over a lifetime and across multiple lives, while identity resides in a deeper, enduring core, such as the soul (ātman) in Hindu contexts and Buddha-nature (tathāgata-garbha) in Buddhism.

Absent belief in stable gender identity, gender fluidity wends through the cultural terrain in many variations of gender changes, transvestism, and androgyny, both human and divine. Instances of all these phenomena in the stories and images of supreme deities provide divine exemplars and a hallowed template for the human realm. Nor was South Asian thinking bound to a binary gender system. For at least two millennia, the Sanskrit vocabulary has included a third gender, neither man nor woman (napuṃsaka), a capacious category with no pejorative connotation. Myriad constellations of third gender persons and directions of sexual desire were recognized. Same-sex attractions, desires, and acts were included on the sexual spectrum as male-male and female-female without evaluative comment or placement in a distinct category. The concept of sexual identity would be misplaced in this setting and entered Western discourse only when homosexual came into the lexicon to designate a kind of person (rather than a behavior) in the late nineteenth century and heterosexual acquired its current meaning in the mid-twentieth century.

Considering the cultural landscape in which Vajrayana took root, we can better assess whether the focus on male-female coupling intentionally prescribes heterosexuality or prohibits or excludes homoerotic relations. There was no salient homophobia with which to contend and no controversy surrounding homoeroticism on which the founders of Vajrayana might be prompted to take a stand. Vajrayana did renounce the prevalent form of sexual discrimination, which was based on a hierarchy of social class (four main castes and their subdivisions) and strictures designed to safeguard the purity of members of the highest, priestly class from pollution by the lower classes. Close bodily contact and exchange of bodily fluids posed the greatest dangers. Therefore, sexual misconduct revolved around cross-caste relationships, which are minutely catalogued by combinations of castes and subcastes and considerations of which partner was male and female, the level of contact (from kissing to coition), whether it happened once or more, whether it was done knowingly, and the seriousness of each violation and attendant penalty. Cross-caste marriage and ensuing progeny are classified to a similar degree. Male-male and female-female relations find rare mention and do not in themselves constitute sexual misconduct. Vajrayana scriptures reject caste discrimination and pollution taboos, exhorting practitioners to refrain from making distinctions based on social categories and norms. When practitioners gather for a ritual, feast and drink together, or select Tantric partners, they are enjoined to give no thought to purity or impurity and who is highborn or low. Tantric partners are to be chosen on the basis of spiritual compatibility, such as commensurate advancement on the path or a karmic connection developed over lifetimes, regardless of suitability by social standards. From the standpoint of nondual wisdom, all conceptual and verbal constructs are context-specific and not ultimately applicable. The equality that reigns in Tantric circles and ceremonial life reflects the ontological view that reality is an indivisible whole and that all beings are enlightened in essence. The equality and sacredness of all living beings is revealed when seen truly, with the purified vision of enlightened awareness.

The central Tantric practice is deity yoga, a process of envisioning oneself as a deity in order to awaken the divine qualities and powers that are present but latent. Men and women can visualize themselves as a male or female deity, and there are many among which to choose, from luminously peaceful to blazingly ferocious. The gender of the deities is fluidic; they manifest different bodies to serve different persons, populations, and purposes. In a conversation that unfolded between a Buddha couple in sexual embrace, the male Buddha declared that he is woman, man, and neither man nor woman (napuṃsaka) and that the same is true of his female partner. A distinctive contribution of Tantra to the Buddhist historical stream was to integrate intimate relationships and erotic experience into practices on the path to enlightenment. Vajrayana was expanding the repertoire of spiritual disciplines to include sexuality, not foreclosing on what forms of sexuality are allowed or acceptable. The purpose of sexual yoga is to elevate the pleasures of erotic communion to higher octaves of bliss, while meditative focus on lovemaking is a portal to nondual wisdom. According to Tantric embryology, a drop of pure bliss joins the egg and sperm at the moment of conception and settles in the heart, ready to be awakened. Therefore, the experience of bliss depends on having a body, not a body of a particular gender. If a Tantric scripture or treatise describing sexual yoga for same-sex partners has survived, it has not yet been discovered, but one may yet be written. Tantra is a tradition of ongoing revelation, allowing for adaptation to different settings and historical moments.

Even in the known texts and published materials, however, most of the methods to heighten pleasure, direct energy through the subtle yogic anatomy, and share energy to accelerate the process do not vary according to the gender(s) of the partners and can be applied in homoerotic context, as Tibetologist Jeffrey Hopkins has illustrated for male couples.¹ To do so is fully in the spirit, if not the letter, of Tantra. A necessary element of the practice is to relinquish ordinary perceptions and conceptions of one’s partner as a separate self with definable traits in favor of seeing their sacred core. Relating to one another as divinities, the partners leave the illusions of conventional reality behind, merge in oneness, and reach a state of transcendent bliss and nondual awareness.

The male-female pairing is a metaphor, not a prescriptive or proscriptive view of sexual partnering. Buddhism has perennially recognized the myriad methods and teachings of the tradition as conventional. The goal of full awakening is singular, but ways to express and attain it are ever evolving and limitless. Any duality invoked in a visual or verbal teaching is intended to point beyond itself and serve as a means of transport to an experiential realization, like a raft that is abandoned on the shore once the river has been crossed. Therefore, the imagery of male and female is conventional, not descriptive in an ultimate or essentialist way. Dual pairs are provided to signal the differences and separations that dissolve in the nondual state of enlightened awareness.

Notes

1. Jeffrey Hopkins, Sex, Orgasm, and the Mind of Clear Light: The Sixty-Four Arts of Gay Male Love (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1998).

Acknowledgments

MY MENTOR, Masatoshi Nagatomi, supported this project long before it showed concrete promise. He sets an unattainable standard of passionate, rigorous scholarship that is ever an inspiration. Diana Eck’s astute questions have challenged and deepened my thought, while Tu Wei-ming lent invaluable theoretical insights. Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza provided inspiration through her feminist historical work on early Christianity. It was her courageous example that spurred my decisive commitment to this project.

I would like to acknowledge several valued companions in exploration. John Huntington’s enthusiastic introduction to Tantric Buddhist art awakened my lifelong fascination with the subject. He and Susan Huntington introduced me to the joys of scholarship and adventures of research. Robert Thurman was my unforgettable and peerless guide first to Madhyamaka texts and later to the Tantric genre. Frédérique Apffel Marglin has been a constant advisor since our first meeting in Orissa. I cannot overestimate my debt of gratitude to her for helping to forge insights that shape every page of this work.

Gaining entree to any religious tradition requires the cooperation of adherents of that tradition, and that necessity is heightened in the case of an esoteric tradition like Tantric Buddhism. Therefore, I want to thank all the yoginis, yogis, lamas, monks, scholars, and lay people who graciously opened their monasteries, temples, rituals, homes, hermitages, pilgrimages, and hearts to me. I went to them for information and came away deeply enriched with both knowledge and affection.

Among the lamas to be thanked for assisting me, the foremost is His Holiness the Dalai Lama, for giving his approval, offers of assistance, and an indispensable interview. The following lamas assisted my research in various ways: in the dGe-lugs order, Lati Rinpoche, Tārā Tulku Rinpoche, and Gungru Tulku; in the ‘Bri-gung bKa’-brgyud order, H. H. Chetsang Rinpoche, Ayang Rinpoche, and Khenpo Kon-chog Gyaltsen; in the Karma bKa’-brgyud order, H. H. Shamarpa Rinpoche, Pawo Rinpoche, and Trangu Rinpoche; in the Sa-skya school, H. H. Sakya Trizin, Jetsun Chime Luding, Luding Khen Rinpoche, and Khenpo Abbe; and in the rNying-ma tradition, H. H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Minglin Trichen, Tulku Thondup, and Lama Tsultrim. Several of these venerable teachers have subsequently passed away, and I am honored that their memory is woven into these pages. Sonam Sangpo helped me locate some manuscripts in exceptionally hot weather in Kathmandu and then helped me translate them after we had found them. Ngawang Jorden of Sakya College, Dehra Dun, fortuitously came to Harvard at the same time that I returned from the field and has remained a willing and knowledgeable advisor ever since.

When I was in India, it was a privilege to have the brilliant historian Bitendra Nath Mukherjee as my project advisor. The inimitable Narendra Nath Bhattacharyya offered his piquant insights over many cups of Indian tea. Abhijit Ghosh shared his philological expertise during many enjoyable hours of reading Hindu tantras and Sanskrit fiction. I am grateful to the staff of the United States Educational Foundation in India, at both the New Delhi and Calcutta offices, for assistance with the arcane world of Indian bureaucracy and for a myriad of indispensable arrangements when I was in the field.

The institutions whose directors, staffs, and libraries greatly aided my research include the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies, Simla; Tibet House, New Delhi; Lokesh Chandra, International Academy of Indian Culture, New Delhi; Sahitya Akademii, Delhi; Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, Sarnath; Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Dharamsala; Orissa State Museum Library; The National Library, Calcutta; The Asiatic Society, Calcutta; Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Calcutta; and Yenching Institute, Harvard University. I am also grateful to Joseph Loizzo for the loan of his bsian-’gyur for the duration of this project, to Melbourne Taliaferro for procuring copies of some essential texts, and to Musashi Tachikawa for a timely gift of the rGyud sde kun btus.

This project required fieldwork, archival research, and time for translation and writing free from other obligations. All this would not have been possible without the funding provided by the dean of Rad-cliffe College, the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religions under the directorship of John Carman, the Fulbright-Hays Foundation, the Charlotte W. Newcombe Foundation, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, and the Faculty Research Committee of the University of Richmond. Steven Zimmerman and Pamela Russell also deserve special thanks for two crucial trips to Nepal.

For advice, encouragement, helpful references, and editorial advice I am indebted to Tsultrim Allione, Paula Kane Arai, Theodore Bergren, Agehananda Bharati, Annie Dillard, Sherab Drolma, John Dunne, Elinor Gadon, Herbert Guenther, Adelheid Hermann-Pfandt, Toni Kenyon, Cliff Leftwich, Miriam Levering, Sara McClintock, Mildred Munday, Robin Rao, Shiníchi Tsuda, and Alex Wayman. Special appreciation is due to Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya for luminous dance interpretations of the comportment of Tantric deities. Emily Martindale gave the project a final infusion of energy with her exquisite line-drawn renderings of Tibetan paintings and woodblock prints.

My deepest gratitude goes to Lama Sonam Jorphel Rinpoche, a ‘Bri-gung bKa’-brgyud lineage holder, for sharing the precious resource of his time and the abundant stores of his kindness and erudition during three months at his mountain hermitage in Ladakh, hundreds of hours of discussions in the following months, and two months going over the fine points of the manuscript in Kathmandu. Nothing can ever repay this debt.

Finally, to the family that nurtured and supported me: my grandmother, Frances Wilson Eberle, who taught me the importance of books; my mother, Merry Gant Norris, whose appreciation sweetens every accomplishment; and Kenneth Rose, companion in life and intellectual journeying, whose numerous personal and scholarly ministrations helped to bring this book into being.

Guide to Transliteration

SANSKRIT WORDS that can be found in English dictionaries generally occur without diacritical marks or italicization (e.g., karma, mantra, yogi, yogini). In the interests of devising a readable format, I have tried to use English words whenever possible. When the context is Indian, the Sanskrit term will generally be given in the body of the text or in a note. When the context is Tibet or the Himālayas, the Sanskrit and/or Tibetan terms will be given.

Tibetan words are transliterated according to the Wylie system.* Few Tibetan personal names are used, and they are spelled without hyphens and according to a widespread and recognizable usage (e.g., Tsongkhapa, Milarepa, Rechungpa). In the cases of other Tibetan proper nouns, such as the titles of texts, sects, and lesser-known names, the Tibetan names are transliterated and hyphenated.

Tantric adepts have multiple names, and the problems in identification raised by this, particularly in the tendency to name people after great masters of the past, are compounded by the variety of spellings that occur in Sanskrit and Tibetan sources. Therefore, it has been necessary to standardize names in the absence of certainty regarding the original names.

Tibetans generally add the suffix -pa to Sanskrit names, which helps to identify them as names. At times I include this suffix, when it has become part of the common form of the name and readers will find the name in that form in other works and indices (e.g., Nāropa, Luipa, and Tilopa), but in the case of lesser-known persons and whenever possible I have omitted this suffix.

The editions of Sanskrit and Tibetan texts upon which translations are based are cited in the endnotes. In most cases multiple versions have been consulted, but only one version is cited in the note, since this is adequate documentation for another researcher seeking to retrace my steps. In the case of Tibetan canonical texts, my first preference was for the sDe-dge edition; however, in some cases because of availability, greater legibility, or a significant variation I have translated from another edition and have specified the edition in the endnotes and bibliography. The sDe-dge numbers used in the notes and bibliography correspond to the Tohoku catalogue of the sDe-dge edition, while the Peking numbers and folio references refer to the Otani edition. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own.

* See Turrell Wylie, A Standard System of Tibetan Transcription.

PASSIONATE ENLIGHTENMENT

CHAPTER ONE

Seeking the Traces of Sky-Dancers

ANYONE WHO READS a Tantric text or enters a Tantric temple immediately encounters a dazzling array of striking female imagery. One discovers a pantheon of female Buddhas and a host of female enlighteners known as ḍākinīs. The ḍākinīs leap and fly, unfettered by clothing, encircled by billowing hair, their bodies curved in sinuous dance poses. Their eyes blaze with passion, ecstasy, and ferocious intensity. One can almost hear the soft clacking of their intricate bone jewelry and feel the wind stirred by their rainbow-colored scarves as they soar through the Tantric Buddhist landscape. These unrestrained damsels appear to revel in freedom of every kind. Expressions of this motif in Tantric literature describe yoginis with magical powers, powerful enchantresses with the ability to change shape at will, and enlightened women who can spark a direct experience of reality with a precisely aimed word or gesture.

These female figures, with their exuberant air of passion and freedom, communicate a sense of mastery and spiritual power. They inspired my initial interest in the Tantric tradition and served as the lodestar of my explorations throughout. It seemed to me that the yoginis who grace Tantric literature and gaze so compellingly from Tantric paintings and statuary may provide evidence of the women of Tantric Buddhism—their historical existence, spiritual liberation, and religious insights. The present study is the fruit of my search for the women who inspired and helped to create these evocative female images.

Interpreters of Tantric art and literature have maintained that the positive female imagery does not reflect women’s lives or accomplishments. Rather, historians have held that Tantric Buddhism was an oppressive movement in which women were at best marginal and subordinate and at worst degraded and exploited. The prevalent view is that the human counterparts of the exuberant yoginis of Tantric iconography were downtrodden prostitutes and low-caste women exploited for ritual purposes. This assessment is not surprising, for statements that discount women’s religious lives are seen in all fields of historical study before significant research on women has been undertaken. For instance, similar assertions were made about the lowly estate of women in medieval European Christianity, before the first trickle of historical interest several decades ago became a rushing stream of increasingly specialized and methodologically sophisticated studies. Such statements also resemble those made about Australian Aboriginal women before female ethnographers discovered the rich world of women’s myth and ritual from which men—including male researchers—are excluded. Therefore, casual assumptions made in passing about the marginality of women in Tantric circles need not discourage deeper inquiry; they simply underscore the need for further research.

This volume challenges the prevailing view of the women of Tantric Buddhism by bringing forth new historical and textual evidence and reinterpreting central motifs and doctrines in light of that evidence. There is extensive evidence that women participated fully in the emerging Tantric movement. Tantric biographies portray bold, outspoken, independent women. Tantric texts prescribe how women should be respected, served, and ritually worshipped. Tantric literature introduces practices performed solely by women and others performed by women and men together. Tantric theory advances an ideal of cooperative, mutually liberative relationships between women and men. Where interpretive categories previously applied to practices, doctrines, gender relations, and social groups discussed herein have been found to be inadequate, they have been critiqued and either modified or abandoned in order to develop the following analyses.

SCHOLARLY CONTEXTS

Buddhist studies has lagged behind other fields in the use of gender as an analytic category. Male dominance has long been accepted as an ahistorical, immutable principle of Buddhist history. Since women have been present throughout all epochs of Buddhist history for over two and a half millennia and their presence inevitably had an impact on the ongoing creation of the tradition, there is little justification for continuing to neglect this dimension of Buddhist history. In the case of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, some progress has been made in the areas of women in early Buddhism,¹ monasticism,² and Mahāyāna Buddhism.³ Two articles have seriously broached the topic of women in Indian Tantric Buddhism,⁴ while somewhat more attention has been devoted to Tibetan nuns⁵ and lay yoginis.⁶

By concentrating on women in Tantric Buddhism in India, this study provides a basis for differentiating gender relations during the Indian phase of the movement from historical developments in Tibet.⁷ The emergence of powerful Buddhist dynasties, the consolidation of a priestly hierarchy that dominated the economic and political life of the country, the inauguration of an incarnation system that allowed male hierarchs to reproduce themselves without marrying, and a thriving eremitic subculture all affected the participation of women in ways that have yet to be studied in depth.⁸ The more radical Tantric teachings, such as those involving sexual practices, encountered official resistance in Tibet, resulting in restrictions upon the translation of offending texts.⁹ Nonetheless, the full spectrum of Tantric teachings survived and flourished in the Land of Snows. The Tantric ideal of inclusivism and the Utopian vision of men and women as companions in the spiritual quest were like embers that could be fanned into flame whenever a teacher or cultural setting supported their expression.¹⁰ Conflicts between celibate and noncelibate partisans, clerical authority and charismatic leadership, and hierarchical and egalitarian tendencies added greatly to the vitality of the Tibetan tradition. The present book also considers the degree to which the female pioneers of the Tantric movement are remembered and credited for their innovations by their spiritual heirs in Tibet.

This book is located within an expanding body of literature on women and religion and presents material relevant to cross-cultural inquiry in areas such as cultural constructions of gender, the self, the body, sexuality, and ritual. In the area of feminist theology, some scholars have articulated Buddhist principles that may complement, inform, and be informed by Western feminism, particularly by offering alternative models of selfhood and power. These scholars—most notably Anne Klein and Rita Gross—have concentrated on central Buddhist philosophical concepts and psychological insights, such as Buddhist understandings of nonself, interdependence, and meditative awareness.¹¹ Tantric understandings of embodiment, ecstasy, and the transformative dimensions of passion and intimacy may enrich this dialogue.

One of the foremost aims of this volume is to contribute a chapter on Tantric Buddhism to the religious history of Indian women. In the study of women and religion in India, as in other parts of the world, previous opinions are being revised and overturned by careful attention to women’s lives and religious expressions. Indologists in the past have tended to accept male religiosity as normative and universally representative. Many factors have predisposed scholars to fail to recognize the existence of women’s religious activities, such as an uncritical acceptance of the reports of male informants in the field, unwitting participation in sectarian polemics, an inability to gain access to women’s gatherings and religious practices (particularly in a highly gender-stratified society like that of India), and a concentration upon written sources at the expense of ritual and oral traditions. Scholars have begun to document the existence of religious traditions in India in which women are the custodians of treasuries of cultural knowledge, ritual and meditative arts, and oral and local traditions.¹² The impressive results of such pioneering studies reveal that the religious history of Indian women has just begun to be told.

Tantra in both its Hindu and Buddhist sectarian varieties appears to represent an arena in which Indian women can engage in religious disciplines freely, seriously, and at their own initiative. This is the conviction primarily of Indian scholars and of Westerners like Sir John Woodroffe and Lilian Silburn who have spent long periods in India as Tantric novitiates. These native and engaged scholars report that women can be gurus and perform rituals of initiation in Tantric traditions,¹³ and in some Tantric lineages women are regarded as preferable to men as gurus.¹⁴ Proponents also point out that male Tantrics are required to respect, venerate, and ritually worship women.¹⁵ In view of the generally high status of women in Tantric circles, several Indian scholars suggest that Tantra (both Hindu and Buddhist) originated among the priestesses and shamanesses of matrilineal tribal and rural societies.¹⁶

Rare firsthand accounts have provided an intriguing glimpse of women in Tantra as a living tradition. For instance, the feisty female Sakta and Vaisnava Tantrics interviewed by anthropologist Bholanath Bhattacharya displayed a complete lack of subservience to their male companions and belie any suggestion that they practice Tantra for the sake of someone other than themselves.¹⁷ In her anthropological fieldwork on women ascetics in Benares, Lynn Denton found the female Tantrics to be unconstrained by social conventions and freely and forthrightly to choose their own male partners and life patterns.¹⁸ In his spiritual autobiography, Brajamadhava Bhattacharya describes the instruction and initiations he received from his Tantric guru, the Lady in Saffron, a coconut-vendor in his native village who initiated and taught disciples independently of any male authority.¹⁹ Indologist Lilian Silburn’s technical descriptions of sexual yoga in Kashmir Śaivism, enriched by teachings she received as an initiate, demonstrate the complete reciprocity of male and female adepts in the performance of advanced kuṇḍalinī practices, for which both partners must be comparably qualified and from which they derive equal benefit.²⁰ These studies, while not directly relevant to the question of women in medieval Buddhist Tantra, confirm that women can be active, independently motivated participants in Tantric movements.

These positive assessments by native and engaged scholars find no echo in most Western scholarship on Tantric Buddhism. When writing about its reformist tendencies, scholars stress the egalitarianism and radical inclusiveness of the emerging movement, but when discussing women, they assert the sexist oppressiveness and exploitativeness of Tantric circles, without explaining this dramatic inconsistency. Most Western scholars insist that the genuine, serious practitioners of Tantra were men and that women were only admitted to rituals when their services were required by male Tantrics. These authors depict the Tantric yoginis in derogatory, even contemptuous, terms:

The feminine partner … is in effect used as a means to an end, which is experienced by the yogin himself.²¹

We get the impression that they [men] are the main actors, and … their female companions are passive counterparts, participating solely to help bring about spiritual insights on part [sic] of the yogins.²²

In … Tantrism … woman is means, an alien object, without possibility of mutuality or real communication.²³

The goal of Sahajayāna sādhanā is … to destroy the female.²⁴

Women … are assumed to be recruited on each occasion and are made to participate in the assembly²⁵

The slut or ḍombi refers to a woman of the despised, low Ḍom caste—they earned their living as laundresses, vendors and prostitutes…. Tantric yogins employed them for the performance of sexual rituals.²⁶

The role played by girls of low caste and courtesans in the tantric orgies (cakra, the tantric wheel) is well known. The more depraved and debauched the woman, the more fit she is for the rite.²⁷

Their presence was essential to the performance of the psycho-sexual rites and their activities generally are so gruesome and obscene as to earn them quite properly the name witch.²⁸

Similar pronouncements have been made about women and Tantra in general:

Their attitude toward the woman is … she is to be used as a ritual object and then cast aside.²⁹

The chief role of women in the &akta Tantric cult … is to act as female partners (śakti, dūtī) of the male adepts.³⁰

These speculations are all offered in passing and treated as self-evident, without benefit of documentation or analysis. The scenario that these scholars have agreed upon is unambiguous. The men are religious seekers, and the women are passive counterparts who are employed, available, and used as a ritual object or alien object. Apparently the men had a religious motivation, but the women did not. The explanation offered for the women’s behavior is that they are sluts, lewd, depraved and debauched, gruesome and obscene. Although this scenario seems to have been crafted to elevate men as the true practitioners of the tradition, it has the presumably unintended consequence of creating an image of ruthless, self-serving Tantric yogis who will use anything—even the bodies of other human beings—in their pursuit of spiritual perfection.

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

The consistent disparity between indigenous and Western assessments of female Tantrics is telling. Several theoretical presuppositions have created a lens or prism that refracts the images in a predictable way. This refraction is now familiar as the pattern of colonial reactions to aspects of India that seemed incomprehensible, repugnant, or irreducibly alien. For instance, the disdainful appraisal of female Tantric practitioners is reminiscent of colonialist judgments of the Indian devadāsīs as temple prostitutes. These women, who are artists, scholars, and performers of ritual dance and worship, presented an unfamiliar and apparently disquieting sight to the colonial gaze. Since British civil servants and missionaries could not comprehend the religious offices of these temple