Tantra · Skt: tantra

Tantra names two things at once: a class of Buddhist scripture, and the esoteric method those texts teach. In the Tibetan canon the tantras form a division of their own. 84000, the project translating the Kangyur into English, describes it as “the principal tantra collection of 468 canonical tantras, mainly from the ‘later spread’ of Vajrayāna to Tibet”, and notes that “four different levels of tantra are traditionally explained as existing for practitioners of four different faculties, inclinations, degrees of ability and endeavor”.

What makes a practice tantric rather than ordinary Mahayana? The Tibetan philosopher Tsongkhapa gave the sharpest answer. Summarising him, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy says that “tantra is defined neither by special insight (vipaśyana) nor Mahāyāna universal altruism, but solely by deity yoga”, the practice in which, “from a first person perspective, the person is acting as a perfect, divine subject” in ritual. On that view tantra is “a subset of the Mahāyāna”: a body of method inside that vehicle, not a separate religion. It is the strand Tibetan Buddhism is built on.

Access is traditionally guarded. 84000 records that some of these texts are, “according to some traditions, only studied with authorization and after suitable preliminaries”, and reminds readers that “according to Vajrayāna Buddhist tradition there are restrictions and commitments concerning tantra”.

Tantra is not only Tibetan. In Japan, Kūkai managed to “succeed Hui-kuo in becoming the eighth patriarch of esoteric Buddhism” and carried that transmission home to found Shingon, which likewise sets esoteric teaching apart from the exoteric kind.