The Journal of Religious History Vol. 30, No. 3, October 2006
ORIGINAL MANDALA OF ARTICLE THEHistory SELF Blackwell Melbourne, Journal JORH 2006 0022-4227 XXX The ofAssociation Publishing Religious Australia Asia for the Journal of Religious History JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY
DAVID B. GRAY
Mandala of the Self: Embodiment, Practice, and Identity Construction in the Cakrasamvara Tradition
Tantric traditions have often been ignored by scholars studying Asian social history, in part because the structure of traditions, and hence their social impact, have been poorly understood. This paper seeks to remedy this lacuna by exploring in some depth a particular tradition, that centring around the Cakrasamvara Tantra, an Indian Buddhist scripture that became the basis of a popular practice tradition in Nepal and Tibet. Following Charles Taylor and the Comaroffs, I will argue that the Cakrasamvara practice tradition encourages a construction of self-identity based on a rather different set of assumptions than those common in the West, i.e., assumptions concerning the limits and constitution of the self. I will explore the nature of this considerably more expansive and fluid sense of self and its social and historical ramifications, both in the pre-modern and contemporary manifestations of this tradition.
Deconstructing the Body The formation of a distinct identity is an essential step for any new social group. In this paper I intend to explore this process as it occurred in an Indian Buddhist tradition, which at its inception was associated with non-Buddhist communities, and which thus had to forge a distinctly Buddhist identity. I will do so by focusing on the meditative and ritual practices associated with the mandala, arguing that they are collectively deployed in the constitution of a distinct social space that articulates and reproduces individual identities. They also presume a distinct view of the body and embodiment, one that differs significantly from that view commonly held in the modern Western world. The issue of identity and identity formation is one that has received considerable attention. Charles Taylor has charted the historical development of modern Western identities.1 These, however, are not universal, but rather are 1. See Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). For an excellent example of the application of Taylor’s work to Asian religious theory and practice see Anne Klein’s Meeting the Great Bliss Queen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 29–30, 43– 4. David B. Gray is an Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University.
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the products of distinct patterns of socio-historical conditions. There are aspects of Western conceptions of identity that would seem limiting to persons conditioned in different cultural contexts. The notions of a localized, disengaged, and individually independent self, which Taylor sees as key features of Western constructions,2 are not prevalent in pre-modern Indian conceptualizations of the self. With regard to these, the observations made by Jean and John Comaroff seem particularly relevant. They have suggested that “in many non-Western ontologies, selfhood seems to exceed Western corporeal constraints”3 — that is, it exceeds the materialism or physicalism which roots the self in embodied experience yet insists upon its independence, despite the fact that its physical basis is entirely contingent. Other cultures have alternative views of the self, and do not necessarily imagine it as being completely identical with or limited to the material body. According to the Comarroffs, “Such constructions do not deny the distinctness of human beings. But they do contest our own sense that organic being is unbreachable by either material or immaterial forces.”4 These views have consequences that play out in the field of practice, within the discourse concerning the construction and transformation of self-identity. Indian religious thought presumes different conceptualizations of the self, which have ramifications that permeate their discourse and practice. For example, salvation is often seen as resulting from a process of creative self-re-identification that is based upon different presuppositions concerning the nature and limits of the self. Buddhists have long resisted essentialist conceptualizations of the self, and have instead argued for a non-essentialist ontology that is process-oriented, focusing on causal interrelationality. Similar conceptions of the human entity as complex and permeable are central to Hinduism as well.5 For Buddhists, salvation entails a transformation of the self via a process of (re)conditioning (bhavana) through practices involving focused attention upon the mind-body complex.6 For early Buddhists, “awakening” (bodhi) was the result of true and correct knowledge of the body and mind, which were understood by them as being fundamentally divisible. Body and mind were conceived as a dynamic and inherently unstable complex entity consisting of impermanent and interdependent factors. They were seen as being linked in complex ways both to each other, within the system, and also to the larger world, which in turn could be seen as a larger system in which individuals are
2. See Taylor, Sources of the Self, esp. 190ff. 3. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 75. 4. Comaroff and Comaroff, Ethnography, 74, 75. 5. See McKim Marriott’s influential article “Hindu Transactions: Diversity Without Dualism,” in Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behavior, ed. Bruce Kapferer (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976), 109 – 42. 6. The term bhavana is usually translated as “meditation,” but this term can have a passive sense which does not capture the active sense of the word bhavana, which implies a “cultivation” or intentional reconditioning of the mind-body complex. See Michael Carrithers, The Forest Monks of Sri Lanka (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 44. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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parts.7 For Mahayana Buddhists, there is no “thing” — ranging from the largest to smallest elements — in these overlapping systems, which has any sort of permanent or unchanging nature. The realization of this, not merely intellectually but in meditation, was an essential prerequisite to the attainment of awakening. Among early Buddhists, one of the most important types of meditative practice was vipassana or “Insight” meditation, which, among other things, involves focused analytic attention upon the body and mind. These meditations typically involve the analysis of the body and mind into numerous component parts, each of which is identified and explored in a state of meditative concentration. In so doing, one is supposed to discover no essential or unchanging basis to one's embodied experience.8 Instead, one learns that this experience is baseless, conditioned, and contingent, capable of maintaining only the illusion of continuity. This realization is thought to undermine exclusive identification with our individual, physical bodies, which Buddhists claim leads to selfish and ultimately self-destructive behavioural patterns. In Mahayana Buddhism, particularly in the Yogacara school of thought and practice which I believe provided the theoretical framework for Tantric Buddhist practice, this basic view of the self and body as divisible was accepted and further expanded upon. While our body exists, it is no reliable basis for self-identity, being a composite and constructed entity, one that is inextricably linked to the world in which it arose and continues to exist interdependently, neither wholly self nor other. Their view is similar to that advanced by Mark Taylor, who wrote: as a result of its holey-ness or gappiness, the living body cannot be defined in terms of the binary opposites that structure conceptual reflection. The body is neither “subject nor object” . . . rather, the body is the mean between extremes — the “milieu’ in which opposites like interiority and exteriority, as well as subjectivity and objectivity, intersect. Never reducible to the differences it simultaneously joins and separates, the body is forever entre-deux.9
As Merleau-Ponty argues, the body cannot properly be understood as a subject or object, as a sensor or the sensible, since it simultaneously shares the qualities of both of these conceptual extremes: The sensor and the sensible do not stand in relation to each other as two mutually external terms, and sensation is not an invasion of the sensor by the sensible. It is my gaze which subtends colour, and the movement of my hand which subtends the object’s form, or rather my gaze pairs off with colour, and my hand with hardness and softness, and in this transaction between the subject of sensation and the sensible it cannot be held that one acts while the other suffers the action, or that one confers significance on the other.10 7. For detailed accounts of the Buddhist perspective on this issue see Steven Collins, Selfless Persons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), and also Matthew Kapstein, Reason’s Traces (Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 77–133. 8. For a survey of the Buddhist meditative techniques preserved by the Theravada tradition see Winston L. King’s Theravada Meditation: The Buddhist Transformation of Yoga (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1992). 9. Mark. C. Taylor, Altarity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 69. 10. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 214. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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Likewise, Mahayana Buddhists argue that our conceptions of independent self-existence and consequent separation of self and other, subject and object, are based on incomplete and flawed patterns of perception and reasoning which ultimately result from ignorance. A classic passage expressing this idea occurs in the LaNkavatara SUtra, a Mahayana Buddhist scripture composed in India by the fourth century,11 as follows: There is no subject nor object, nor is there bondage or that which is bound; [all things] are like an illusion, a mirage, a dream, a blind eye. If one who understands reality sees non-discursively (nirvikalpa), free of taint, then perfected in yoga he sees me without a doubt. There is nothing to cognize, like a mirage in the sky; one who cognizes things acknowledges nothing. In the relativity of being and non-being things do not arise; it is from the wandering of mind through the triple world that variety is known. The world has the same nature as a dream, and so too the various forms within it . . . This mind is the source of the triple world, and wandering the mind appears hither and thither.12
Buddhists were very interested in deconstructing dualistic presuppositions concerning the nature of reality, particularly the deeply engrained sense of individual self existence in a world consisting of independently existent external objects. Naturally, they had to advance an alternative theory. The general theory advanced is that of interdependent origination (pratItyasamutpada), which holds that all entities are deeply interdependent, collectively constituting a vast network of interrelationality.13 Buddhists developed a number of metaphors to describe this vision of reality, but one of the more common metaphors is the notion that all things collectively constitute a “body” that is the cosmos. In deploying this metaphor, Buddhists were advancing what is evidently a very old idea in Indian thought, the conceptualization of the universe as a body. This theme is present in Vedic texts, most notably in the “Hymn of Man” (purusasUkta) in the Rg Veda,14 which describes the universe as deriving from the sacrifice and dismemberment of a primal being. Within Mahayana Buddhism, in parallel with the development of the Yogacara theory of the Buddha’s multiple levels of embodiment, we also see the development of scriptures which posit Cosmic Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, such as Vairocana and Samantabhadra in the Avatamsaka SUtra, who are portrayed as pervading the universe.15 Likewise, the KarandavyUha SUtra, a Buddhist scripture 11. Regarding the dating of the LaNkavatara, its terminus ad quem is 443 c.e. when it was first translated into Chinese. Florin Sutton argues for an early fourth century composition in his Existence and Enlightenment in the LaNkavatara-sUtra (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 13–19. Note that Christian Lindtner has argued convincingly that an early version of the LaNkavatara SUtra was an influence on Nagarjuna, which would date it to the second century. See his “The LaNkavatarasutra in Early Madhyamaka Literature,” Asiatische Studies/Études Asiatiques 46, No. 1 (1992): 244–79. 12. My translation from the text edited in P. L. Vaidya, SaddharmalaNkavatarasUtram (Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute, 1963), 109; cf. D. T. Suzuki, The Lankavatara Sutra (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1932), 228– 9. 13. For a good introduction to the Buddhist doctrine of interdependent origination see Paul Williams, Buddhist Thought (London: Routledge, 2000), 62 – 72. 14. For a translation see Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda (London: Penguin, 1981), 30–1. 15. For a translation and discussion of the relevant textual passages from this text see Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism (London: Routledge, 1989), 120 – 27. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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composed during the fifth century,16 holds that the universe derived from the division of Avalokite3vara’s body, clearly borrowing from the older Vedic myth in the purusasUkta.17 Mahayana Buddhists employed the image of the cosmos qua person in their attempts to challenge attachment to the individual body, and encourage self re-identification with a larger whole that includes other beings. This notion was expressed eloquently by 2antideva18 in his Bodhicaryavatara, as follows: Just as hands and so forth are cherished because they are limbs of the body, why are embodied beings (dehinah) not likewise [cherished], since they are limbs of the world? Just as the belief in self with respect to one’s own body, which is devoid of self, [arises] through conditioning, will not a sense of self with respect to others arise through conditioning?19
Mahayana Buddhists such as 2antideva, in critiquing the notion of the individual body as the basis of self-identity, posited a complementary view of the cosmos as a larger whole in which we as individuals are parts. This idea is complemented by the Yogacara doctrine of the Triple Body, which holds that a Buddha realizes three “bodies” or embodiment perspectives in his or her awakening experience. These include the nirmanakaya or “Manifestation Body,” which correlates to our physical bodies, in which a Buddha can manifest to interact with unawakened beings. The next is the sambhogakaya or “Communal Enjoyment Body,” which a Buddha manifests in his or her teaching encounters, and is particularly associated with communication and the power of speech. Lastly, there is the dharmakaya or “Reality Body.” The primary meaning of the term kaya is “body,” but in the sense of a composite entity.20 The term dharmakaya originally referred to the collection of the Buddha’s teachings or his enlightened qualities, and later came to have the metaphysical sense of the body or collection of all that exists.21 Realizing this as the ultimate
16. Alexander Studholme, contra previous authors who have dated the sUtra much later, argues for its composition by the late fourth or early fifth century. See his The Origins of Om Manipadme HUm: A Study of the KarandavyUha SUtra (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002), 13 –17. 17. For a translation and study of the relevant passage from this text see Madhav Deshpande, “Who Inspired Panini? Reconstructing the Hindu and Buddhist Counter-claims,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 117, No. 3 (1997): 458. It should be noted that this is a polemical text that is a reaction to developments in Hindu theistic traditions. 18. 2antideva’s dates are unclear, but he may have lived from 685–763 c.e. See Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton, 2antideva, The Bodhicaryavatara (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), viii. 2antideva here employs the body as a metaphor, seemingly to advance his vision of an interconnected cosmos. 19. My translation of Bodhicaryavatara 8.114, 115, from P. L. Vaidya, ed. Bodhicaryavatara of 2antideva with Commentary Pañjika of Prajñakaramati (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1960), 162. 20. The term kaya has the secondary meanings of “assemblage, collection, multitude.” See Sir Monier Monier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, corrected ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2002 [1899]), 274.1. 21. As Paul Griffiths has shown, the dharmakaya, at least in Sthiramati’s MadhyantavibhagatIka, has a strong metaphysical sense of “the embodiment or assemblage of what there really is.” Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 149. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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basis of one’s embodied experience is equated with buddhajñana, the gnosis of awakening.22 In what follows I will describe one tradition of yoga that aims to achieve precisely this sort of non-discursive realization of the non-dual interconnection between self and cosmos via a radically expanded sense of embodiment. It is a tradition that also sheds light on the social and religious history of Buddhism in Northern India from the eighth century c.e. onward, as it highlights the process of creative appropriation whereby Buddhists borrowed elements from a rival religious tradition, and were thus faced with the challenge of re-inscribing their tradition as Buddhist. Reconstructing the Body of Awakening The Tantric Buddhist tradition that I study is based upon the foundation of this early tradition of meditative speculation concerning the body, and develops it in a very fascinating and historically important manner. In this paper, I will propose that we examine closely the “map” of the body that is described and implied in the Cakrasamvara Tantra and its ritual literature, and explore how it encodes and conditions a particular construction of the body and likewise social identity in those who are adept in the tradition’s ritual and meditative practices. Lastly, I will seek to shed light on the social and political ramifications of this. The tradition in question is that which centres on the Cakrasamvara Tantra, an eighth-century Buddhist scripture that became the basis for several distinct lineage traditions of ritual, meditation, and commentary.23 The Cakrasamvara Tantra is classified as a yoginI-tantra,24 and like other texts in this category it does not appear to be the product of normative monastic Buddhist communities.25 Rather, it was likely composed by or under the influence of liminal communities of siddhas, male and female practitioners of yoga and meditation. These communities were not strongly associated with
22. Although some early Buddhist conceptions of the dharmakaya appears to have been metaphysical in nature, later Yogacara and Madhyamaka thinkers tended to interpret it in an epistemological sense. That is, to realize it is to realize the very nature (dharmata) of things, which is emptiness (3Unyata). For an extended discussion of Yogacara and Madhyamaka interpretations of the concept of dharmakaya see John Makransky, Buddhahood Embodied (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997). In Tantric texts such as the Cakrasamvara Tantra (CS), the dharmakaya retained a mythical, if not doctrinal, association with the larger cosmos. 23. A provisional terminus post quem for the CS is provided by quotations from it in a datable commentary, Vilasavajra’s Årya-NamasamgItitIka-mantrarthavalokinI-nama; Vilasavajra having lived in the second half of the eighth century. See Ronald Davidson’s “The Litany of the Names of Mañju3ri: Text and Translation of the Mañju3rinamasaMgiti,” in Tantric and Taoist Studies in Honour of R. A. Stein, ed. Michel Strickmann (Brussels: Institut belge des hautes études chinoises, 1981), 1:6–7. 24. The term yoginI literally means a female practitioner of yoga, but it also refers to a class of female divinities, also known as dakinIs, who are the focus of this and related Tantric Buddhist works. For a study of these figures see Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt, DakinIs: Zur Stellung und Symbolik des Weiblichen im Tantrischen Buddhismus (Bonn: Indica et Tibetica Verlag, 1992). 25. See my study and annotated translation of this text, The Cakrasamvara Tantra: A Study and Annotated Translation (New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, forthcoming). © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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mainstream religious institutions, although they do appear to have had strong sectarian identities.26 For this tradition, the definitive statement regarding the awakening that its practices are supposed to inculcate occurs in chapter ten, the first verse of which reads: “Next I will explain the Triple Body in accordance with non-dual union with 2ri Heruka, through which they succeed by means of consciousness only. Have no doubt regarding this.”27 The Cakrasamvara Tantra follows the pattern set by earlier Mahayana Buddhist scriptures in seeing its central deity, 2ri Heruka, as cosmically pervasive, identifiable with the “Reality Body” which is the universe. Awakening is the result of a direct meditative realization of one’s self as 2ri Heruka, a radical redefinition of self-identity that presupposes a breakdown of the individual’s unwavering identification with his or her physical body. This re-identification is achieved through meditation on the body as the mandala. A term originally deriving from early Indian political discourse, the mandala designated the concentric, hierarchical power structure centring on the figure of a king.28 Buddhists appropriated and redeployed this term as the figurative “court” of deities surrounding a central cosmic Buddha. As Ronald Davidson noted, mandalas “are implicitly and explicitly articulations of a political horizon in which the central Buddha acts as Rajadhiraja [“king of kings”] in relationship to other figures in the mandala.”29 Typically depicted in art as a court surrounding a central deity, the mandala is often cosmic in its proportions, a simulacrum of the universe, with the central deity presiding over it as a king presides over his kingdom. For Tantric Buddhists, the mandala is a map of the cosmos, a Buddhist vision of the ideal universe, hierarchically arranged around a central deity or deity couple. The Cakrasamvara mandala, like many mandalas, is a “cosmogram” which is believed to pervade both the macrocosm of the universe, the microcosm of one’s body, and the mesocosm30 of the social world as lived by Buddhist communities — for
26. Regarding the siddha movement see Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 169–235. Siddha groups were quite diverse, and associated with Buddhist, Hindu, and even Jain renunciant movements. In the case of the CS, there is significant evidence suggesting it received significant 2aiva influence, as will be discussed below. This influence, however, was subject to Buddhist overcoding, suggesting that the authors of the text had a sense of Buddhist sectarian identity. 27. CS 10.1. This and all subsequent passages from this text are my translation from my edition of the text. 28. The mandala political theory is first articulated in Kautiliya’s Artha3astra 6.2.13 – 27, a text likely composed by the first or second century c.e. See the edition and translation in R. P. Kangle, The KautilIya Artha3astra, reprint ed., 3 vols. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986 [1960]). For a discussion of the relation between this earlier political theory and its impact on esoteric Buddhism, see Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism, 131–44. 29. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism, 131. 30. Regarding this term see Robert Levy’s Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of a Traditional Newar City in Nepal (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990). © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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the mandala has been mapped across the landscape of India, the Kathmandu valley,31 and the sacred sites of Tibet and the Tibetan Himalayas.32 The Cakrasamvara mandala is structurally simple. It focuses upon a central deity couple, 2ri Heruka and Vajravarahi. They are surrounded by the four “Essence Yoginis,” and then by the three “mind,” “speech,” and “body” wheels, each of which consists of eight deity couples. These, in turn, are surrounded by eight fierce goddesses who guard the directions and quarters. This mandala, as we shall see, is mapped across the body, the landscape of India, and ultimately the entire cosmos. The mandala is a complex symbol, subject to multiple deployments in discourse and practice, by which it engenders specific subjectivities within a definite social space. It is an example of what Stanley Tambiah termed an “indexical symbol,” capable of shifting between multiple levels of referentiality.33 This semiotic multivalency was essential to the development of Buddhist discourse and practice concerning the mandala. The tradition presupposes that the mandala, along with the deities who inhabit it, pervades the cosmos at its various levels, including the microcosmic level of the body. As the Tantra states concerning the male and female deities who inhabit the mandala: The entire world is completely pervaded by the twenty-four heroes. The heroes’ dakinis, the yoginis Pracanda and so forth, should be seen as positioned in the wheels. He who is adept in all rites and who desires power should always, wellequipoised, visualize himself as having the nature of the three wheels.34
One of the most important meditations in this tradition involves the creative visualization of one’s body as the mandala, and it is called “body mandala” practice. It is textually rooted in a sadhana or meditative practice text attributed to the great Tantric saint Luipa.35 Although his dates are unknown, the text was certainly composed prior to the late tenth century when it was translated by the Tibetan Rinchen bZang-po and the Ka3miri scholar 2raddhakaravarman.36 31. For a general discussion of the identification of the Kathmandu valley as a mandala see Mary Slusser’s Nepal Mandala (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); for a specific discussion of the mapping of the Cakrasamvara mandala over the valley see David Gellner’s Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 190–2. 32. See Toni Huber’s The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: Popular Pilgrimage and Visionary Landscape in Southeast Tibet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). The CS mandala has been remapped repeatedly across the terrain of Tibet. For example, the sacred site of Tsadrak in Eastern Tibet is modelled on Tsari Mountain in Southeastern Tibet, which in turn is identified with a Cakrasamvara pilgrimage site. Regarding this see Ngawang Zangpo, Sacred Ground: Jamgon Kongtrul on “Pilgrimage and Sacred Geography” (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2001). 33. Regarding these Tambiah wrote “they have a duplex structure, because they combine two roles: they are symbols which are associated with the represented object by a conventional semantic rule, and they are simultaneously also indexes in existential pragmatic relation with the objects they represent” (156). See his “A Performative Approach to Ritual” (1981), reprinted in Culture, Thought and Social Action: An Anthrolopological Perspective (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 123 – 66. 34. CS 48.13–14. 35. This is Luipa’s 2rIbhagavad-abhisamaya, To. 1427, D rgyud ‘grel Vol. wa, 186b −193a. 36. Rinchen bZang-po travelled to Kashmir for the first time at age seventeen, ca. 975 c.e., and stayed there for seven years. It was during this time that he studied with 2raddhakaravarman. See Giuseppe Tucci, Rin-chen-bzan-po and the Renaissance of Buddhism in Tibet Around the Millenium, trans. Nancy Kipp Smith and Thomas J. Pritzker (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1988), 58 –9. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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In this practice tradition, one first visualizes one’s body as the mandala in order to “purify” it, that is, break down one’s deeply conditioned sense of isolated individuality. This practice involves identifying two sets of twenty-four places in one’s body as the abodes of the twenty-four goddesses and gods who constitute the Mind, Speech, and Body wheels of the mandala.37 The choice of sites in the body upon which one is to focus is fascinating. As is illustrated in Table 1, the three wheels are arranged hierarchically along the body’s vertical axis. The Mind wheel, corresponding to the heavens in the ancient Indian Triple World cosmology and the “Reality Body” of the Buddhist Triple Embodiment schema, more or less occupies the head and uppermost parts of the torso. The Speech Wheel corresponds to the upper torso and vocal organs, and is cosmically correlated to the surface of the earth and the “Communal Enjoyment Body” of a Buddha. Lastly, the Body Wheel corresponds to the lower torso, legs, and feet, and is correlated to the underworld and the “Emanation Body” of a Buddha. In body mandala practice, the meditator imagines the deity couples in their divine abodes, which are, on the macrocosmic level, the sacred spaces of India and the surrounding mountain areas, and, on the microcosmic level, the corresponding body parts. The practitioner visualizes the deities in these places while intoning the corresponding seed syllable, a process known as the placement of the seed-syllables (bIjanyasa). The purpose of this is to strengthen one’s sense of identity with cosmos that is the mandala, and the divinities who reside within it, particularly with Heruka, who, the Tantra tells us, pervades the universe. This practice reflects many of the presuppositions of early Buddhism, including the notion that the body and mind are divisible, and that meditative practice must necessarily analyse the elements of psycho-physical experience into its component parts, in order to meditatively engender a direct experience of selflessness. For early Buddhists, the body was generally regarded with disgust, and the meditations that focused upon it often sought to highlight the body’s foulness, in order to undermine the attachment to the body that early Buddhists saw as a major obstacle to the practice of monastic renunciation, an attitude which was typically linked as well with misogyny.38 Although starting from the same point as early Buddhist practice, meditation on the body’s component parts, the “body mandala” meditation has an entirely different purpose, the purification and transformation of the body via creative visualization practices. Of particularly interest is the list of body constituents correlating to the twenty-four male deities.39 This list is a bit peculiar, as it lacks the organization along the vertical axis of the prior list, consisting mainly of internal and 37. It is important to note that the CS does not give a complete accounting of the elements of this practice, as it does not list the body parts and constituents. This information, however, is provided in several of the “Explanatory Tantras” (vyakhyatantra) of the CS tradition, namely the Abhidhanottara, YoginIsamcara, and Samvarodaya tantras. 38. See Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 39. See Table 1 below. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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Table 1 The Three Wheels of the Cakrasamvara mandala1† Mind Wheel
Sacred place
Seed (bIja)
Goddess
E S W N NE NW
Pulliramalaya Jalandhara Odiyana Arbuda Godavari Rame3vari
puM jaM oM aM goM raM
Pracanda Candak5i Prabhavati Mahanasa Viramati Kharvari
SW SE
Devikota Malava
deM maM
Body part
head crown right ear back of neck left ear between the eyebrows LaNke3vari eyes Drumacchaya shoulders
Consort
Bodily constituent
Khandakapala Mahakankala KaNkala VikatadaM5tri Suravairi Amitabha
teeth & nails head & body hair skin & filth flesh tendons bones
Vajraprabha Vajradeha
kidneys heart
Speech Wheel
E S W N NE NW SW SE
Seed Sacred place (bIja) Goddess
Body part
Consort
Bodily constituent
Kamarupa Odra Tri3akuni Ko3ala KaliNga Lampaka Kañci Himalaya
armpits breasts navel tip of the nose mouth throat heart perineum
ANkuraka Vajrajatila Mahavira VajrahuMkara Subhadra Vajrabhadra Mahabhairava Virupak5a
eyes bile lungs large intestine small intestine stomach feces part of the hair
kaM oM triM koM kaM laM kaM hiM
Airavati Mahabhairava Vayuvega Surabhak5i 2yamadevi Subhadra Hayakarni Khaganana
Body Wheel
E S W N NE NW SW SE
Sacred place
Seed (bIja)
Goddess
Body part
Consort
Bodily constituent
Pretapuri Grhadevata Saura5tra Suvarnadvipa Nagara Sindhu Maru Kuluta
preM grM sauM suM naM siM maM kuM
Cakravega Khandaroha 2aundini Cakravarmini Suvira Mahabala Cakravartini Mahavirya
penis anus thighs calves toes dorsal feet big toes knees
Mahabala Ratnavajra Hayagriva Åka3agarbha Heruka Padmanarte3vara Vairocana Vajrasattva
phlegm pus blood sweat fat tears saliva snot
†Sources: CS ch. 41, 48; Martin Kalff, Selected Chapters from the AbhidhAnottara-Tantra (New York: Columbia University Dissertation, 1979), 157–0, 191–8, 285–6, 317–20; Janardan Shastri Pandey, ed. YoginIsamcAratantram (Sarnath: Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, 1998), 37–40, 121–2; Shinichi Tsuda, The Saµvarodaya-Tantra: Selected Chapters (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1974), 94–5, 260–2.
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external organs as well as bodily effluvia. This list appears to have been derived from an earlier list given in a text of the Pali canon, the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, or “Scripture on the Foundations of Mindfulness,” a pivotal early Buddhist meditation text that is highly valued in the Theravada tradition.40 In this text, the list is given for the purpose of the common meditation technique of analysing the body into its constituent parts. The text takes a quite dispassionate tone, and if anything exhibits the revulsion toward the body that was quite common in early Buddhist discourse. It is quite remarkable then that the Cakrasamvara tradition takes this very same list, which admittedly contains some quite unpleasant elements, and correlates them to the male deities. The aim here is to completely re-envision one’s body as the pure abode of the mandala deities, an abode that is in fact co-extensive with the universe. This visualization is extended even to the conventionally most foul and objectionable of body parts and bodily substances, perhaps to challenge the meditator to overcome his deeply engrained conditioning concerning the body. No doubt for this reason, at the conclusion of this meditation the adept recites the following mantra: om vajra3uddhah sarvadharma vajra3uddho ‘ham, “OM All things are adamantly-purified, and adamantly-purified am I.” Ati3a DipaNkara3rijñana,41 writing during the early to mid-eleventh century, commented on a variant of this mantra42 as follows: If one wonders, of what are they purified, [the answer is] illusion and so forth. The aim of that is this: Consider the appearance [of the world] in one’s mind as being stained by the habitual propensities that condition conceptual thought patterns, which are deceptive regarding the subject and object [dichotomy], etc., such that there is no distinction between the Triple World and a dream, etc., for one regards that mere appearance as void [of intrinsic reality].43
The purpose of this exercise is to recondition one’s conception and image of one’s body, a reconditioning that is effected via the metaphor and practice of the mandala. Having done this, the adept then moves on to visualize himself as 2ri Heruka, ensconced at the centre of both the universe as well as one’s own body. To do this is to realize the true nature of the body, which for this tradition is not exclusively limited to our physical forms, as well as the 40. For a translation of this text see Maurice Walshe, The Long Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the DIgha Nikaya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 335 – 50. Buddhaghosa also comments on the thirty-two elements in the sutta’s list, highlighting the foulness of these elements. See Visuddhimagga 8.81–138, translated in Bhikku Ñanamoli, The Path of Purification (Berkeley, CA: Shambhala Press, 1976), 268–83. While it is possible that the version of this list present in the Yoginitantras derives not from the Mahasatipatthana Sutta but some other source, there is evidence suggesting that the Yoginitantra version derives ultimately from a Pali source, which I discuss in the introduction to my forthcoming book. 41. Ati3a was a BaNgali Buddhist monk who lived from 982–1054 c.e., and journeyed to Tibet in 1040 c.e., where he played an important role in the dissemination of Buddhism there. See Alaka Chattopadhyaya, AtI3a and Tibet, reprinted ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981 [1967]). 42. That is, the mantra om svabhava3uddhah sarvadharmah svabhava3uddho ‘ham, “OM All things are naturally pure, and naturally pure am I,” which occurs at Luipa, Abhisamaya, fol. 197a. 43. Ati3a, AbhisamayavibhaNga, To. 1490, D rgyud ‘grel Vol. zha, fol. 189a. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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true nature of the mind, which is ultimately the creator of all bodily conceptions and social identities. Socio-Political Considerations The above description is just a brief overview of the mandala meditative practices that are described in very great detail in a number of the texts of this tradition. This tradition is radical in arguing that one’s sense of self is not given or natural, but is a conditioned phenomenon, one which can be reconditioned to affect alternate subjectivities, alternate senses of self, embodiment, and interdependency. This tradition operates via an attempt to recondition the practitioner’s sense of physical embodiment. While this appears to be a given and unalterable aspect of lived experience, apparently it is socially conditioned and thus alterable. As Mary Douglas argued, The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society. There is a continual exchange of meaning between the two kinds of bodily experience so that each reinforces the categories of the other. As a result of this interaction the body itself is a highly restricted medium of expression.44
If our sense of embodiment is socially conditioned, it should not surprise us that ritual and meditation can be deployed to recondition it, given the work that has been done in this area by theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu and Catherine Bell. Following Bourdieu, I would like to suggest that the practices of this tradition, which truly involve a “dialectical relationship between body and a space structured according to the mythico-ritual oppositions,”45 are also productive of a distinct social structure which is reproduced every time Buddhist masters perform large group rituals such as consecration within a mandala, and strengthened whenever an individual reproduces this structured space within his or her own body in private meditation practice. I will begin with a historical discussion of how these practices probably contributed to the constitution of a particular Buddhist identity in South Asia, and then will conclude with reflection on how these also contributed to the dissemination of this tradition across cultural boundaries. As one can see in Table 1, the body parts and deities are also correlated to sites scattered across the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayan region. Most of these sites are not particularly associated with Buddhism, and some are connected with Hindu and Jain pilgrimage practice. The Cakrasamvara Tantra exhibits numerous traces indicating its origin in a social milieu that was not strongly Buddhist in terms of sectarian identification. Numerous indications link it to the Kapalikas, a quasi-heretical group of 2aiva renunciants who were noted for their extremely unconventional and transgressive 44. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols (London: Routledge, 1973), 65. 45. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 89, and also the discussion of this in Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 98ff. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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Table 2 Cakrasamvara Pilgrimage Sites and the Bodhisattva Grounds† Type of sacred site
Pilgrimage site
Bodhisattva ground
1.
“Seat,” pItha
“Joyous,” pramudita
2.
“Subsidiary Seat,” upapItha
3. 4. 5. 6.
“Field,” ksetra “Subsidiary Field,” upaksetra Chandoha Upachandoha
Pulliramalaya, Jalandhara, Odiyana, Arbuda Godavari, Rame3vari, Devikota, Malava Kamarupa, Odra Tri3akuni, Ko3ala KaliNga, Lampaka Kañci, Himalaya
7. 8.
“Meeting Places,” melapaka “Subsidiary Meeting Places,” upamelapaka 9. “Charnel Grounds,” 3ma3ana 10. “Subsidiary Charnel Grounds,” upa3ma3ana
Pretapuri, Grhadevata Saura5tra, Suvarnadvipa Nagara, Sindhu Maru, Kuluta
“Immaculate,” vimala “Illuminating,” prabhakarI “Effulgent,” arcismatI “Facing,” abhimukhI “Very-difficult-to-conquer,” sudurjaya “Far Reaching,” dUraNgama “Immovable,” acala “Accomplished,” sadhumatI “Cloud of Truth,” dharmamegha
†Source: CS ch. 50. Note that this text reverses the usual order for the fifth and sixth grounds.
practices.46 As the textual and practice traditions originating in this non-Buddhist context were adopted by Buddhist monastic communities during the eighth and ninth centuries, Buddhists sought to transform the tradition so as to remove the taint of heresy which was associated with it. Both the influence of this “heretical” group on a Buddhist tradition, as well as the efforts undertaken by this tradition to engender a distinctly Buddhist identity, can be illustrated through the discourse and practices centring upon the tradition’s mandala. The passage in the Cakrasamvara Tantra that lists these twenty-four sacred sites, which are correlated to ten classes of pilgrimage places (see Table 2),47 apparently derives from Hindu scriptural sources,48 where it appears to be an early Kapalika variant of the much better known 2akta pilgrimage route of fifty-one sacred sites.49 While the Cakrasamvara tradition never openly acknowledges 46. The case for Kapalika influence on the Buddhist Yogini Tantras, and specifically the Cakrasamvara Tantra, has been made by Alex Sanderson in his “2aivism and the Tantric Traditions,” in The World’s Religions, ed. Stewart Sutherland et al. (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1988), 667ff. On the Kapalikas in general see David Lorenzen’s The Kapalikas and the Kalamukhas: Two Lost 2aivite Sects, 2nd rev. ed. (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991). The Kapalika’s were considered heretical by most mainstream Hindu groups, and their marginal status vis-à-vis mainstream Hindu institutions may have made them useful allies (and objects of appropriation) for Tantric Buddhist groups. I am grateful to Iain Sinclair for sharing this observation with me. 47. This list and its correlations also occur in several other Yoginitantras. See, for example, David Snellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 1:69 –70. 48. Alexis Sanderson argues that the passage in question, in CS chapter forty-one, derives from a “Kapalika scripture,” the Tantrasadbhava, in his “Vajrayana: Origin and Function,” in Buddhism into the Year 2000: International Conference Proceedings (Los Angeles: Dhammakaya Foundation, 1994), 94–5. 49. Regarding these see D. C. Sircar’s seminal work The 2akta PIthas, 2nd rev. ed. (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973). There are numerous overlaps between this and the older KapalikaBuddhist list. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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its debt to the 2aiva Kapalikas, it did surreptitiously address it. It did so through the deployment of mythic discourse, one that, via projective inversion, attributed to the Hindus the very heretical qualities for which the Cakrasamvara tradition was suspect in Buddhist circles.50 The myth relates that the Buddhist deity 2ri Heruka and his retinue, in order to discipline the Hindu deity Bhairava and his evil-doing followers, manifested in the sacred sites dominated by these deities. They subdued them while simultaneously assuming their appearance, smeared with ash, with bone ornaments and crescent moon emblems.51 This myth thus provides an account of why a Buddhist tradition quite literally appears with non-Buddhist accoutrements. As Charles Taylor argued, “the self is partly constituted by its selfinterpretations.”52 In other words, self-identity is constructed and reinforced by the stories that we tell about ourselves. When group identity is at stake, these stories are invariably political insofar as they articulate difference and thus attempt to negotiate the conceptual boundaries that distinguish one group from another. Myths such as this represent attempts to forge a group identity precisely where this identity is most threatened by ambiguity, and it proceeds by an assertion of a totalizing cosmology, one which subsumes the other within a hegemonic taxonomy,53 the mandala in which the other is reduced to a subordinate position, the subdued Hindu deities trampled under the feet of 2ri Heruka and his consort. The Hindu deities trampled under the foot of their Buddhist usurpers is a fitting symbol for the process of what Tony Stewart and Carl Ernst have termed “appropriation,” a process “wherein the borrowed item is transformed through the process of incorporation, thus fundamentally altering both the appropriated and the appropriator.”54 Those who founded and elaborated the Cakrasamvara tradition, in appropriating textual, ritual, and iconographic elements from a rival Hindu tradition, also transformed these elements, and constructed an edifice of discourse to disguise this process. In addition to 50. Regarding “projective inversion” see Alan Dundes, “The Ritual Murder or Blood Libel Legend: A Study of Anti-Semitic Victimization Through Projective Inversion,” in The Blood Libel Legend, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 336 – 76. 51. The fullest version of this myth occurs in Grags-pa rGyal-mtshan’s dpal he ru ka’i byung tshul, in The Complete Works of the Great Masters of the Sa Skya Sect of the Tibetan Buddhism. Vol. 3. The Complete Works of Grags Pa Rgyal Mtshan, comp. Sod nams rgya mtsho (Tokyo: The Toyo Bunko, 1968), 298:4 –300:2. This text is partially translated in Ronald Davidson’s “Reflections on the Maheshvara Subjugation Myth: Indic Materials, Sa-skya-pa Apologetics, and the Birth of Heruka,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 14, No. 2 (1991): 197– 235. See also my translation of Indrabhuti’s telling of the myth, which is probably the earliest version of it, in my forthcoming book. 52. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 34. 53. Regarding “totalizing cosmology” see Bruce Lincoln’s essay “Sacrificial Ideology and Indo-European Society,” in Death, War, and Sacrifice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 167–75. The uses of taxonomy in the in the construction and maintenance of social hierarchy are discussed in Lincoln’s essay “The Tyranny of Taxonomy,” in Discourse and the Construction of Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 131–41. 54. Tony K. Stewart and Carl W. Ernst, “Syncretism,” in South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia, ed. Margaret Mills et al. (London: Routledge, 2003), 587. Stewart and Ernst suggest the term “appropriation,” defined in this sense, as an alternative to the rather vague term “syncretism.” See also Stewart’s essay “Alternate Structures of Authority: Satya Pir on the Frontier of Bengal,” in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 21– 54. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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composing the myth of the origin of the Cakrasamvara mandala, its adherents also sought to re-encode the mandala to avoid the charge of heresy. One tried and true method of re-encoding was correlating suspect entities with classical Buddhist categories. Chapter fifty of the Cakrasamvara Tantra correlates the ten types of pilgrimage places to the ten Bodhisattva Grounds (bhUmi), providing them with a normative Mahayana Buddhist association.55 Doing so links this text and its external practices of pilgrimage and internal meditation practices with the rich Mahayana Buddhist tradition of viewing progress along the spiritual path as a pilgrimage, most famously exemplified in the story of Sudhana’s journey in the GandavyUha SUtra.56 This evidently was not sufficient to fully assuage Buddhist discomfort. After providing this correlation, the text concludes with the following passage: This teaching of 2ri Heruka concerns the inner grounds. With respect to the ten perfections and grounds there is the heretical language (mlecchabhasa) of the yoginIs. The Hero’s body, by nature mobile and immobile, is in heaven, the underworld, and in the mortal worlds. The teaching regarding Pulliramalaya and so forth is that they are positioned both outside and inside.57
The text suggests that the Buddhist assumption of non-Buddhist terminology and practice (such as a non-Buddhist pilgrimage circuit), is an example of the “heretical language” of the yoginis which is found throughout the text. This language is not “foreign” from the perspective of the Indian cultural world; it is “foreign” or “heretical” only from the normative Buddhist perspective. Such appropriation is justified by the myths of conversion, and also here via the claim for the omnipresence of 2ri Heruka. That is, since “the Hero’s body, by nature mobile and immobile, is in heaven, the underworld, and in the mortal worlds,” therefore it pervades all pilgrimage sites, Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike. The text, however, backs away from this claim to totalizing all-inclusiveness, limiting the “teaching of 2ri Heruka” to “the inner grounds,” which probably reflects the likely political reality that Buddhists did not have control over many or any of the sites listed in chapter forty-one. This may represent a case where the attempted conversion of South Asian sacred spaces by Buddhists was less than successful. Buddhists thus tended to de-emphasize the literal, “outer” interpretation of the mandala as a map of external pilgrimage places, and emphasized instead an inner interpretation, which involved the re-mapping of the mandala onto the body. This was effected ritually through meditative practices such as 55. The Bodhisattva Grounds are the stages though which a bodhisattva or aspiring Buddha must proceed in order to reach his or her goal of becoming a completely awakened Buddha. For an extensive analysis of these see Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist Sanskrit Literature, reprinted ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970 [1932]). For an illustration of this correlation see Table 2. 56. This was in fact a paradigmatic text for Mahayana Buddhist pilgrimage practices; see Susan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü, Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992), 5. 57. CS 50.24c−26b. Note, however, that in the Tibetan text mlecchabhasam is not translated literally, but figuratively as “symbolic speech” (brda yi skad). See To. 368, D rgyud ‘bum Vol. ka, 245b. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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Luipa’s “body mandala.” This re-mapping was reinforced in Buddhist discourse through the development of taxonomies of disciples that categorizes practitioners in accordance with the degree of sophistication of their praxis. In one such taxonomy, the Indian Buddhist scholar-saint Abhayakaragupta posited five classes of practitioners, the lowest of which are the “childish” fools who literally practice external pilgrimage. He wrote that: Here the “seats” (pItha), etc. such as Jalandhara are taught so that the childish might wander the land; this is not applicable to everyone. This is because the Vajrayoginis who are born among the brahmin, warrior (ksatriya), commoner (vai3ya), servant (3Udra) classes and among the outcastes, live also in the cities, and they also exist in lands such as Tibet and China. This is not taught in the Concise Tantras, but it does say in the Extensive Tantras that the seats, etc. are in all countries and in all cities.58
In other words, he undermines the authority of the Indian pilgrimage circuit listed in the text by arguing that the powerful female figures who supposedly dwell there also exist elsewhere, at other locations such as the ostensibly non-sacred urban centres of India, as well as in other regions of the world. This text thus served two general Buddhist political interests. One was to de-emphasize a non-Buddhist pilgrimage circuit, which was to be replaced by a “superior” internal meditative praxis. The second was to facilitate the transmission of the tradition to other cultural contexts. The mention of Tibet and China is surely not accidental, as these were major destinations for its transmission, of which erudite Indian Buddhists such as Abhayakara was surely aware. He thus legitimates the actual re-mapping of the sacred sites of the tradition to the landscape of Tibet and China, which was ongoing as Abhayakara was writing in the eleventh century, and with which he was involved.59 Evidently, external pilgrimage is not a problem provided that Buddhists are in control of the sites in question. This sort of interpretive flexibility was an essential factor in the transformations the tradition had to undergo as it crossed boundaries. These include the boundary between the liminal renunciant groups and the mainstream monastic Buddhist communities in South Asia, as well as the cultural and geographic boundaries the tradition crossed as it was transmitted across Asia. To return to the issue of identity, the mandala, as an indexical symbol, permits cross-referentiality between the bodies of individual practitioners, the cosmos, and the social world, in turn effecting the production of distinct subjectivities and the inextricably related, hierarchically organized social spaces. Tambiah’s notion of the indexical symbol is, as he argues, 58. Abhayakaragupta, 2rIsamputatantrarajatIkamnayamañjarI-nama, To. 1198, D rgyud ‘grel Vol. cha, 152a. 59. Abhayakaragupta has been dated to the late eleventh and early twelfth century. According the Tibetan historical tradition Abhayakara was an instructor of the Tibetan rMa Lotsawa, who studied in India and Nepal at this time. See George N. Roerich, trans. The Blue Annals by gZhon-nu dPal (1949), 2nd ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), 219. See also Elliot Sperling, “Rtsa-mi Lo-tsa-ba Sangs-rgyas grags and the Tangut Background to Early Mongol-Tibetan Relations,” in Tibetan Studies, ed. Per Kvaerne (Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, 1994), 2:808, note 5, and also Bireshwar Prasad Singh, “A Tibetan Account of Abhayakaragupta,” Journal of the Bihar Research Society 54 (1968): 179 – 98. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
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useful for showing how important parts of a ritual enactment have a symbolic or iconic meaning associated with the cosmological plane of content, and at the same time how those same parts are existentially or indexically related to participants in the ritual, creating, affirming or legitimating their social positions and powers.60
That is, the practices associated with the mandala, which include not only the internal meditations but also the public rituals of consecration, pilgrimage, and so forth, constitute what Bourdieu termed a “social space,” that is, “structures of differences in symbolic capital,”61 which can be articulated in terms of the principles of hierarchization through which the mandala is structured. Upon entering the mandala to receive consecration, an individual is formally initiated via ritual representations into a social space in which he or she has already been informally immersed as a candidate. In this space, as Bourdieu noted, “what does exist is a space of relationships that is as real as a geographical space, in which movements are paid for in work, in efforts and above all in time.”62 Movement within the mandala, i.e., from the periphery to the centre, where is ensconced the guru,63 is carefully regulated, and these regulations are enforced via the samaya commitments to which a candidate must pledge him or herself. Subsequent exercises, such as meditations in which one reproduces the mandala within one’s body, or envisions its presence throughout one’s physical environment, serve to reinforce this social space, and thus one’s identity as an individual who is a part of it. Among other things, these bodies of practices are socializing disciplines, which reproduce a distinct social order, namely, the guru-centred social hierarchy of certain Buddhist communities, and yield as well as distinct individual identities. That is, they yield not only different conceptions of the person but also different constitutions of the person. These, in turn, have definite and undeniable political consequences, which include the reported instances of abuse committed by the gurus and lamas who are positioned in power through these very practices.64 This is an issue with which Buddhists will have to come to terms as they continue to disseminate these traditions in the contemporary world.
60. Tambiah, “Performative Approach to Ritual,” 156. 61. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 32. 62. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups,” Theory and Society 14, No. 6 (1985): 725. 63. Tantric ritual centres upon the figure of the guru or lama, who ritually assumes the role of the central deity around whom the mandala is hierarchically organized. He thus becomes the central figure not only in a cosmic hierarchy symbolized by the mandala, but a social hierarchy as well, one which mobilizes and brings under his control significant economic resources in Tantric Buddhist communities. 64. With respect to the Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and troubling reports concerning abuses committed by lamas who played leading roles in its dissemination to North America see June Campbell’s Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism (New York: George Braziller, 1996) and also Jeffrey Kripal’s “Inside-out, Outside-in: Existential Place and Academic Practice in the Study of North American Guru Traditions,” Religious Studies Review 25, No. 3 (1999): 233 – 38. © 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History
