DESCRIPTION
Buddhist Tantric texts began to appear in India during the Gupta Period (320–550 CE). However, the earliest known datable Buddhist Tantra is considered to be the Awakening of Mahāvairocana Tantra, which was mentioned and collected by the Chinese pilgrim monk Wuxing (無行) c. 680 CE. Wuxing also reports that at the time he visited India, mantras were already very popular. Amoghavajra (704–774), a scholar translator who traveled to China, reports an Indian canon of eighteen tantras during the 8th century. A vast amount of tantric literature gets added to the Buddhist canon during the medieval period, however only a few texts have the status of a ‘sutra.’
SUGGESTED READING
📖 Ryūichi Abé, The Weaving of Mantra: Kūkai and the Construction of Esoteric Buddhist Discourse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999)
PART ONE: THE IRON STUPA
The "Legend of the Iron Stupa" recounts the origins of the Esoteric School of Buddhism and the "reappearance" of its key texts and rites contained in the Mahāvairocana Sūtra (T. 848) and in the Assembled Reality of All of the Tathāgatas (T. 865-66). Together these are the foundation of East Asian Esoteric Buddhism. Both of these texts are of South Asian origin and figure prominently as root texts in Indo-Tibetan Vajrayana. The second text, the Sarvatathāgatatattvasamgraha, is also known as the Vajraśekhara Sūtra or "Diamond Tip."
The story of the Iron Stupa is related by Amoghavajra, and is based on the oral teaching of his master Vajrabodhi. The tale of the origin of the Esoteric teachings becomes the key document in the construction of a lineage of transmission for the Esoteric School in China and Japan. Some Chinese sources and later Japanese sources trace the transmission of the Esoteric teachings from Mahāvairocana to Vajradhara, to Nāgārjuna, who is said to have fetched them from the Iron Stupa, to Nagarjuna's disciple Nāgabodhi, and finally to Vajrabodhi.
PART TWO: VAIROCANA SUTRAS
A unique feature of some schools of esoteric Buddhism is the understanding that, while all the sutras of the early Hinayana period and the sutras of Mahayana were spoken/taught by the historical Buddha, Gautama (i. e. Śākyamuni), the sutras of the esoteric tradition, particularly the Mahāvairocana Sūtra and the
, embody the words and teachings of Vairocana. This places the teachings of the tantric schools not as a ‘fourth’ turning of the Dharma Wheel, but as the turning of a whole new kind of Dharma Wheel.
Regarding the Mahāvairocana Sūtra, the founder of the Japanese esoteric Shingon school writes:
“As for the text of this sūtra, there are three kinds. The first is the vast, boundless text that exists spontaneously and permanently, namely, the maṇḍala of the Dharma of all the Buddhas. The second is the broader text that circulated in the world, that is, the sūtra of ten thousand verses transmitted by Nāgārjuna. The third is the abbreviated text of over three thousand verses in seven fascicles. However abbreviated it may be, it embraces in its brevity comprehensive, broader texts. That is because its each and every word contains countless meanings, and every single letter, even every single stroke or dot, encapsulates in itself innumerable truths.”
According to Kūkai, the original and complete text of the sūtra is the whole of the universe, which the Buddhas of the past, present, and future held, are holding, and will hold as the ultimate scripture illuminating the principle of the emptiness of all things. This is dharma maṇḍala, the maṇḍala consisting of all things of the world as its letters. It is the secret, ultimate "scripture" revealed by Mahavairocana in his cosmic palace of the eternal present to his interlocutor Vajrasattva. The second text is the one that Vajrasattva transmitted to Nagarjuna in the iron stūpa in southern India. It is therefore an abridged translation into human language of the original sūtra of the cosmic scale, a translation that is still an imposingly voluminous text, which Kūkai says circulated widely in India. The third is a further abbreviation of Nagarjuna's text that was transmitted to East Asia in seven fascicles and translated into Chinese by Śubhakarasimha. (See Ryūichi Abé, The Weaving of Mantra, p. 275)
PART THREE: PERFORMATIVE SPEECH ACTS
A distinguishing feature of Buddhist tantric texts is the inclusion of special syllables, words, or phrases known as mantras. Mantras are an important aspect of many Indian traditions, predating Buddhism by centuries if not millennia, yet there are very few if any references to mantras found in the early sutras of the Āgamas / Nikāyas. Mantras begin to appear occasionally in early Mahayana sutras, along with a related phonological device known as the dhāraṇī, but they are far from the focus of the text, usually appearing only at the end as an encapsulating summary or protective outro. During the early medieval period, however, as esoteric traditions are forming throughout Asia, the use of mantras becomes so prevalent that this new trend in Buddhism was often referred to as the Mantrayana - The Mantra Vehicle.
One way to understand mantras is to compare them to performative speech acts. Rather than the normal, descriptive mode of language, in which words and sentences ‘point to’ or indicate things or ideas which are not those words and sentences, performative speech acts coincide with their meaning or intent. For example, saying the words, ‘I am typing’ is not the same as the act of typing. The words point to the act. They are demonstrative. But if I take an oath or swear to a vow, and I am asked, ‘Do you swear to do such-and-such,’ the very utterance of the words, ‘I do,’ is the swearing. It is performative rather than demonstrative and therefore it is an interesting occasion wherein the three realms of karma - body, speech, and mind - are aligned in action.
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