Shaman, Lama, Buddha: ‘‘Occult

Techniques’’ and the Popularization of

Tantric Ritual in Tibet
CLAIRE VILLARREAL
Rice University

[T]he overwhelming success of the Secret Path has propelled it into

a position where it has become perhaps the least secret of all the
Buddhist meditative systems.1

In a remote valley in the Himalayas, residents of the local villages flock to

the most prominent monastery in the region to watch its monks’ and lamas’
symbolic dances and to receive the blessings of the Buddha of Compassion
during an initiation by the monastery’s reincarnate lama. The monks’ dances,
the initiation, and the rituals that frame these activities can all be understood
as having multiple layers of meaning and are all tantric practices offered by
skilled religious professionals for the edification (and entertainment) of local
residents. Such festivals are often social high points for villagers, and yet they
also occupy the intersection between tantra and related practices as elite-
level, liberative religious practices on the one hand and, on the other, tantra
as a path to magicoreligious powers to bestow long life and drive away illness,
among other outcomes. Tantra is commonly referred to as ‘‘esoteric’’ Budd-
hism, yet it has become the dominant form of popular practice in Tibetan
and other Himalayan cultures. In an effort to account for the popular dimen-
sion of this elite domain of practices, this essay will explore tantra’s transfor-
mations from a body of esoteric magico-religio-shamanic rituals in first-
millennium India to a Tibetan patchwork cultural landscape in which genu-
inely secret practices share religious space with ‘‘open secrets’’ accessible to
the lay public. In order to trace these remarkable transformations through the

1. Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism (New York: Columbia University

Press, 2002), 339.

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (Summer 2014)

Copyright 䉷 2014 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 63

centuries and across the Himalayas from India to Tibet, this paper will make
two general narrative arcs, the first examining the magicoshamanic roots of
tantric practices in India and the shamanic milieu in Tibet, which contributed
to their popular acceptance, and the second backtracking to trace the course
of the new tradition’s ‘‘domestication’’2 or ‘‘institutionalization’’3 into more
traditional Buddhism and its positioning as the secret peak of that system.

TANTRA, SECRECY, AND ESOTERIC BUDDHISM

First, a word about words: ‘‘esoteric’’ Buddhism is widely understood to refer

to tantra, both in translation and in Tibetan words referring to tantric prac-
tices (e.g., man-ngag, lit. ‘‘secret speech’’4). In most cases, the term ‘‘esoteric’’
accurately translates the intent of the Tibetan, conveying a sense of secrecy
and at the same time of transmission under the right circumstances. The
problem thus cannot be reduced to one of translation. Western scholars, fol-
lowing emic models, have adopted the term ‘‘esoteric Buddhism’’ as synony-
mous with tantric traditions.5 Indeed, there is much in these systems that is
not openly taught, and there is reason to consider these practices as genuinely
esoteric in some contexts.
Before a general discussion of tantra, some description of the system is
necessary, and more detail will be provided in the relevant sections below.
Tantric Buddhism (i.e., Vajrayāna) comprises practices designed, in the tradi-
tion’s terms, to work directly with the body’s subtle energies in order to
effect a radical transformation in the practitioner’s consciousness in which
she6 goes from seeing herself as an ordinary being to realizing (ultimately) her
true identity as a buddha. As a prelude to tantric practice, the dedicated stu-
dent typically must spend at least some time on such standard Buddhist fare

2. See Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washing-

ton, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993).
3. Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism.
4. Jim Valby, Ives Waldo, and Rangjung Yeshe definitions, accessed through the
Tibetan and Himalayan Library online translation tool (http://www.thlib.org/refer
ence/dictionaries/tibetan-dictionary/translate.php).
5. See Matthew Kapstein, The Tibetans (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006),
e.g., 224; David Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism: Indian Buddhists and Their Tibetan
Successors (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2002, originally published 1987), e.g.,
119; and the title of Davidson’s 2002 Indian Esoteric Buddhism, to name a few of many
possible examples.
6. In Himalayan Buddhist societies, men are more likely than women to occupy
elite religious roles, though some women do gain recognition as practitioners. How-
ever, following the lead of some male authors who choose to use masculine pronouns
because they are men, I will use the feminine.

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64 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

as the philosophical deconstruction of ordinary reality into emptiness, the

generation of a compassionate intention to liberate all beings from sam . sāra
(the endless round of births and deaths in which unawakened beings are
trapped), the sufferings of this cyclic existence, and the like. In these and
other ways (explored at more length below), tantric Buddhism is connected
with earlier Buddhisms.
Where the Vajraýmna connects with shamanism is more complicated. The
possible historical connections will come into play below, but the practical
overlaps deserve some attention here. Many authors have connected Himala-
yan Buddhist practices with shamanic ones in various ways, one of which is
the connection between tantric deity yoga and the magicoshamanic powers
held to result from such practices.7 In comparing tantric practices with sha-
manic ones, Geoffrey Samuel’s description of ‘‘shamanism’’ (formulated for
a Tibetan context) is helpful: Shamanism is ‘‘the regulation and transforma-
tion of human life and human society through the use (or purported use) of
alternate states of consciousness by means of which specialist practitioners
are held to communicate with a mode of reality alternative to, and more
fundamental than, the world of everyday experience.’’8 This definition side-
steps the historical and comparative issues surrounding the use of the term
‘‘shamanic.’’ It also defines the common ground on which Tibetan practices
of various kinds attempt to navigate, invoke, and/or control the nonhuman
entities of their world.
The rhetoric of the Vajrayāna portrays its rituals and other methods of self-
transformation as engaging this ‘‘alternative’’ and ‘‘more fundamental’’ level
of reality in order to allow the practitioner to realize full buddhahood and
benefit all living beings. The typical ritual liturgy of a tantric practice includes
various subunits such as taking refuge in the buddha with which the ritual
practitioner will identify herself, vowing to attain full buddhahood in order
to benefit all beings, making offerings to the buddha invoked, inviting that
being to be present, reciting its mantra while visualizing herself as that buddha
or receiving the blessings of it, dissolving into light along with the entire
world, re-arising in the form of that buddha, and dedicating the merit of the
practice to the benefit of all living beings. Normative Vajrayāna Buddhism
holds that through such practice, one begins to identify as in fact being a
buddha and lets go of ordinary identity.

7. For instance, see Anne Klein and Khetsun Sangpo’s ‘‘Hail Protection’’ in Reli-
gions of Tibet in Practice, ed. Donald Lopez (Princeton: University Presses of California,
Columbia, & Princeton Limited, 1997): 400–409.
8. Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 8.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 65

This same process of identifying with a buddha (also referred to as a

‘‘deity’’ [Tib. lha] by the tradition) provides the basis for Himalayan shamanic
practices. Samuel explains succinctly:

The ultimate aim of [the deity yoga practice described above] as of all Tantric yoga is
the attainment of Buddhahood, the ‘‘supreme siddhi’’ (siddhi ⳱ magical power, magi-
cal attainment). Once practitioners have taken on the identity of deities, however, en
route as it were to Buddhahood, the powers of the deities are accessible to them. This
is the basis of the ordinary or relative siddhis, which include such pragmatic and this-
worldly matters as healing, long life, prosperity, divination of future events, or the
destruction of obstacles and hostile forces. It is also the foundation of the ritual prac-
tice of the lamas.9

Samuel, in his Civilized Shamans, labels three ‘‘orientations’’ he finds in

Tibetan Buddhism: the Bodhi Orientation, the goal of which is complete
buddhahood; the Karma Orientation, which aims at a favorable rebirth
through virtuous actions; and the Pragmatic Orientation, which ‘‘is con-
cerned with this-worldly goals such as health and prosperity.’’10
One example of the mingling of the Bodhi and Pragmatic concerns is in
Ju Mipam Rinpoché’s ‘‘Calf ’s Nipple’’ (Be’u bum), a collection of magical
practices compiled by one of the most highly esteemed lamas of the nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries. Ju Mipam was a master of the elite
traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, and his compilation of potentially dangerous
magical spells ‘‘was never intended for wide distribution.’’11 In it, some 225
‘‘occult techniques’’ are catalogued, offering ways to fulfill one’s worldly
desires, from protection from dangerous animals and pests, to defenses against
malicious spirits and meteorological conditions, to success in divination, to
controlling others.12 These techniques rely on powers acquired through iden-
tifying oneself with a buddha, but they are clearly not aligned with the Bodhi
Orientation.
However, despite the deep connections between Bodhi-oriented tantric
practices and practices like those described in Ju Mipam’s text, the Tibetan
tradition itself holds ‘‘magic’’ distinct from ‘‘tantra.’’ The practices in the

9. Samuel, Tantric Revisionings: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian

Religion (Delhi: Ashgate, 2005), 75.
10. Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 5–7.
11. Bryan Cuevas, ‘‘The ‘Calf ’s Nipple’ (Be’u bum) of Ju Mipam,’’ in Tibetan
Ritual, ed. José Ignacio Cabezón (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 167.
12. Ibid., 175–81.

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66 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

‘‘Calf ’s Nipple’’ clearly fall into the former category, while a deity yoga prac-
tice not performed to achieve Pragmatic goals falls into the latter. Tibetan
cultures took (and take) spiritual or shamanic powers as a tangibly real cate-
gory, and the power to enact magical rituals is not fundamentally separate
from tantra. Of course, one person’s use of a wrathful deity’s power to stop
an invading army is another person’s sorcery and magical politics, but a prac-
titioner defends such actions by citing an ultimately compassionate intention
(e.g., to stop the killing of innocents or to kill a ‘‘wrongdoer’’ in order to
protect one’s lineage against another’s attacks).
Thus, in Tibet tantra clearly can be used to address Samuel’s ‘‘pragmatic’’
concerns. In Indian Esoteric Buddhism, Ronald Davidson makes a similar claim
concerning the origins of tantric Buddhism in the medieval Indian communi-
ties of lay siddhas who introduced many of the concepts and tropes familiar
to the later tradition. These communities, he argues, flourished outside tradi-
tional monastic settings, frequently living in such marginal spaces as among
tribal peoples and in charnel grounds.13 Siddhas’ strong affiliation with char-
nel grounds suggested familiarity with the spirits believed to frequent these
areas and to cause disease, and because they were believed to exercise control
over spirits, siddhas were also seen as potent intermediaries able to drive out
the harmful spirits that cause illness or to harness those spirits to wreak havoc
on enemies.14 Indeed, Alexis Sanderson goes so far as to argue that all of the
Buddhist Yoginı̄tantras were pieced together from non-Buddhist tantric texts
(citing chapters from Buddhist tantras that very closely resemble non-
Buddhist tantric chapters), but that these texts then serve a distinctly Buddhist
function.15
Significantly, though the Buddhist siddhas and their antinomian practices
were influenced by Śaiva and Śākti siddhas and their (often deplored) prac-
tices, they were also, according to Davidson, influenced by tribal beliefs and
practices.16 For a variety of reasons, normative medieval Indian society began
to experience greater contact with tribal peoples, leading to an evident shift
in portrayals of these peoples in nontribal literature and a valorization—even
a romanticizing—of their ‘‘natural’’ lifestyle by nontribal traditions, Bud-
dhism among them. As part of this trend, tribal concerns and practices found

13. See Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, particularly 173–235; and Alexis Sanderson,
‘‘Vajrayana: Origin and Function,’’ in Buddhism into the Year 2000: International Confer-
ence Proceedings (Khlong Sam, Thailand: Dhammakāya Foundation, 1994), 87–102.
14. Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, 187–88 and 234.
15. Sanderson, ‘‘Vajrayana,’’ 92–93.
16. Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, 224ff.; Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 408ff.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 67

their way into the heart of the siddha tradition, with practices designed to
subjugate spirits or manipulate the energies of the world for various purposes
(healing among them, but also magical rites for subduing or even killing
enemies, bringing wealth, and other such ‘‘worldly’’ concerns).17 As we will
see later, integrating these new elements into traditional Buddhist ethics
proved a formidable challenge, one impossible to resolve completely. For the
moment, however, it is sufficient to underscore the borrowing taking place
from tribal praxis into institutional Buddhism via the tantric siddhas.
One final note on Davidson’s presentation of tantra as an amalgam of
Indian Buddhist praxis: If Davidson’s thesis is correct, and tantric/siddha
materials arose in lay communities and found support in royal courts even as
they were being massaged into the existing structures of Indian Buddhism,
then it should come as no surprise that they would appeal to lay Tibetans in
ways that monastic and scholastic exoteric Indian Buddhism would not. The
trend in monastic Indian Buddhism at the time of the first wave of dissemina-
tion into Tibet was toward the teachings of the so-called Second Turning of
the Wheel of Dharma, emphasizing such refined topics as the lack of inherent
existence (but not of mere functional existence) of all phenomena whatso-
ever.18 Not only did such topics require years of study—and, thus, literacy—
but they had very little bearing on the average lay practitioner’s daily life.
Indeed, given the sheer difficulty of access to these philosophical Himalayas,
they might, taken on their own merit alone, be aptly called esoteric (though
of course they were framed as a part of the exoteric underpinnings of the
Buddhist tradition, including the tantras).
However, Davidson’s theory of the origins of Indian Buddhist tantra has
been contested recently by Christian Wedemeyer, among others. Using semi-
otics to analyze Indian Buddhist tantric texts, he argues against the tribal and
shamanic origins theory and holds instead that these writings emerged from
within a monastic context and that the wandering, (anti-)ascetic lifestyle
described (and at times prescribed) by such works was temporary rather than
a distinct vocation for which monks would have to abandon their monaster-
ies. I will briefly explore his perspective below for the insights and correctives
it offers, but ultimately it obscures the shamanic concerns prevalent in the
Indian texts and in historical and contemporary Tibetan tantric practices.
Wedemeyer, citing the lack of historical evidence regarding the origins of
Buddhist tantra, turns to semiotics for assistance in unraveling the antinomian

17. Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 422; Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism.

18. Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, 99–102; Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism
pp. 81–94.

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68 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

elements mentioned above and integrated into more ‘‘normative’’ Bud-

dhisms with some difficulty. This discipline, he claims in a paraphrase of
Roland Barthes, offers a way to understand, for instance, injunctions to con-
sume the five meats (‘‘beef, dog, elephant, horse, and human flesh’’) and five
ambrosias (‘‘feces, urine, blood, semen, and marrow’’19): Such injunctions
establish new networks of meaning by deliberately overturning previous ethi-
cal injunctions. ‘‘[B]ehind the diversity of individual utterances (paroles), there
are discernible patterns of rhetoric that are susceptible to analysis and that
allow us to get some purchase on the larger system of signification (langue) in
which those utterances make sense.’’20 Thus, transgressive Buddhist tantra
only functions in conversation with normative Buddhist ethics.
Using this line of reasoning, Wedemeyer argues that the antinomian ele-
ments in Buddhist tantra were introduced as deliberate inversions of the tra-
ditional ethics, designed as part of an intentional system to collapse the
practitioner’s categories of good and bad and promote a full realization of
nonduality.

What does it mean, then, for a practitioner of the Mahāyoga Tantras . . . to eat from
a skull a foul soup of polluting meats and bodily fluids? In this semiosis . . . , the
complete sign from the natural language of mainstream Indian culture—the signifier
beef, and so on in semiological union with its signified ‘‘ritual pollution’’—acts as a
signifier in the process of ritual consumption considered as a discourse. The signified
in this semiosis is the attainment of the enlightened state of nondual gnosis (advayajñā),
called in some sources communion (yuganaddha)—the ultimate goal of the prac-
titioner in which the deluded perception of things as having an intrinsic nature (pure
or polluting, good or evil) is transcended.21

Thus, the seemingly barbaric injunction to consume the flesh of humans and
dogs, among other animals, is explained by the gnostic function such ritual
consumption would have for a member of a Buddhist (or, potentially, any
ancient Indian) community.
Therefore, Wedemeyer argues, there is no need to ascribe the revolting
aspects of Buddhist tantra to ‘‘primitives’’ such as shamanically oriented tribal
peoples: ‘‘[T]he operative concept in this [tribal] interpretation is similarly
the notion that it must be simple, primitive societies, in which ‘magic’ held

19. Christian Wedemeyer, Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology, and
Transgression in the Indian Traditions (NY: Columbia University Press, 2013), 106.
20. Ibid., 7.
21. Ibid., 121–22.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 69

sway, from which the Tantras derive.’’22 Wedemeyer consistently seems to

assume that to label a tradition ‘‘shamanic’’ is to deride it as unsophisticated
and ‘‘primitive,’’ an assumption perhaps shared by earlier Western historians
of tantra but (as seen above) not necessarily by Davisdon and Samuel.
Wedemeyer also points out in his fifth chapter that Buddhist tantrikas and
their Śaivite counterparts were likely borrowing from each other in an envi-
ronment of mutual influences. Instead of simple Buddhist borrowing from
Śaiva sources, he argues on the basis of the term caryāvrata, used similarly in
both systems, that in this case

what one sees is a fairly clear example of a Tantric feature that has developed, not in
a Śaiva vacuum, nor even necessarily from a Śaiva prototype, but that gestated in a
shared ascetical zeitgeist in which a number of similar regimens (vrata) were in circula-
tion, and in which forms and features of the Buddhist and Śaiva idioms, as well as
from the overarching orthodox Smārta traditions, were mutually emulated.23

This approach makes sense, given the large amount of contact and mutual
influence evident between Buddhist and non-Buddhist religious elites in
ancient India. It also avoids unanswerable questions of the origins of specific
terms and practices. Wedemeyer also notes that although both systems use
the term caryāvrata, the Buddhist meaning seemed relatively stable, while the
Śaiva use of it ‘‘shifted significantly over time, progressively approximating
that found in the Buddhist sources.’’24 This presentation of mutual influ-
ence—rather than trying to figure out who was borrowing from whom—
does not assume that a given practice is either ‘‘Buddhist’’ or ‘‘Śaiva’’ but
does recognize points of contact between the traditions, a clear improvement
on earlier models of contact.
Finally, Wedemeyer provides textual arguments that the nondual tantras
were written by members of monastic communities rather than by marginal
siddha figures. After offering evidence that the tribal identities of some prom-
inent tantric Buddhist figures were entirely contrived (obscuring high-caste
status) and that the authors of the nondual Buddhist tantras were intimately
familiar with ‘‘standard-issue . . . nontransgressive’’ esoteric texts,25 he stakes
his own claim about early Indian Buddhist tantra: ‘‘Given these observations,
the most likely explanation is that the antinomian traditions of the later

22. Ibid., 24.

23. Ibid., 155.
24. Ibid.
25. Wedemeyer, 176.

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70 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

Buddhist Tantras grew out of and were initially practiced within Buddhist
monastic or quasi-monastic enclaves.’’26 By his reading, the ‘‘massaging’’ of
the Buddhist tantras by high-status monastics (by means of commentaries and
the like) would have been done by groups of people similar to those who
originally composed the texts.
Much of what Wedemeyer brings to the discourse is very valuable, but he
does misread earlier historians, particularly Samuel, on the topic of the sha-
manic aspects of Indian Buddhist tantra. First, Samuel never suggests that the
shamanic elements of Tibetan Buddhism are ‘‘primitive’’ or in any way less
sophisticated than its philosophy or other ‘‘high’’ elements of the tradition;
quite the contrary, his Mind, Body, and Culture discusses shamanic states and
the ways they contribute to societies.27
In addition, there do seem to be elements of the ancient Indian Buddhist
tantras that clearly reflect shamanic concerns, and contemporary Indian (and
Tibetan) tantric practices also engage in a shamanic world of manipulating
spirits and other powerful nonhuman entities. Wedemeyer cites a non-
Buddhist tantric practice’s claim that if ‘‘the murderous rite it teaches’’ are
properly deployed, ‘‘ ‘[even] one who is renowned [as accomplished in] the
vidyāvrata [and] adorned with fame and so on, is affected by this procedure
and dies without further ado.’ ’’28 He then refers to a comparable Buddhist
tantra that claims its rite can ‘‘kill even a buddha,’’29 interpreting such claims
as functioning in the service of ‘‘transcendence of conceptuality.’’30 However,
Tibetan history suggests that rites to kill one’s enemies have at times been
used with just that purpose in mind, and Ju Mipam Rinpoché’s Calf ’s Nipple
offers more recent textual evidence of the same. Shortly after the above cita-
tion, Wedemeyer cites a passage from the Mahāvairocana tantra:

Gods such as Śakra, Brahmā and the like, piśāca-s, and mahorāga-s,
Paying homage from afar, will also protect all [associated with the mantrin].
They will also pay heed and do what they are commanded. . . .
Obstructors (vighna), evil gremlins (vināyaka),
demons (rāks.asa) and demonesses (mātr.kā)—
When they see the one who upholds the mantras, they pay homage from afar.31

26. Ibid., 177.

27. Samuel, Mind, Body.
28. Wedemeyer, Making Sense, 160.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Wedemeyer, Making Sense, 162.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 71

Samuel’s definition of the shamanic (‘‘the regulation and transformation of

human life and human society through the use (or purported use) of alternate
states of consciousness by means of which specialist practitioners are held to
communicate with a mode of reality alternative to, and more fundamental
than, the world of everyday experience’’32) applies precisely to this type of
expectation about a given practice. For first-millennium CE Indians, the idea
of a practitioner becoming identified with a tantric deity and thereby gaining
control over nonhuman entities was not simply a signifier for having col-
lapsed cognitive duality; it was factual in a way that we as postmodern schol-
ars often find challenging.
In addition, June McDaniel’s Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls provides a
wealth of information about contemporary Bengali tantric communities. It is
impossible, of course, to extrapolate from modern data what shape tantric
practices in medieval India might have taken, and yet her fieldwork suggests
that shamanic concerns often mingle seamlessly with tantric practice. Indeed,
near the end of the second chapter, ‘‘Tantric and Yogic Shaktism,’’ she
defends her classification of the varieties of ‘‘Shakta tantra in West Bengal’’
as folk and classical by identifying two different influences on the develop-
ment of tantra in that area: ‘‘the tribal traditions of Bengal’s rural ojhas and
gunins’’ and ‘‘the Sanskrit philosophical traditions of Advaita Vendanta and
Samkhya.’’33 She suggests that these two varieties of tantra ‘‘are linked by the
value on esoteric yogic knowledge and practice, which can adapt to each.
Tribal shamanism plus esoteric yoga equals folk tantra; classical philosophy
plus esoteric yoga equals classical tantra.’’34 It seems plausible that ancient
Indian Buddhist tantra may have developed in a similarly diverse cultural
milieu, with different practitioners emphasizing different aspects or potential-
ities of a common set of practices. Certainly that seems to have been the case
for Tibetan tantrikas.
T IB E TAN SP I R I T S
As we shift to the Tibetan context, we must begin by noting some similarities
between Indian tribal concerns and Tibetan pre-Buddhist concerns.35 David-
son characterizes Indian tribal religion as concerned with the subjugation and

32. Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 8.

33. June McDaniel, Offering Flowers, Feeding Skulls: Popular Goddess Worship in
West Bengal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 142–43.
34. McDaniel, Offering Flowers, 144.
35. Traditionally pre-Buddhist religious thought was once unquestioningly
termed ‘‘Bön’’ (bon), but that designation is now widely acknowledged as problematic
and will not be used in that context in this paper. In addition, I would note that most
of these concerns are shared, to one degree or another, with many traditional cultures

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72 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

manipulation of spirits, which were believed to congregate especially at char-

nel grounds and other such socially marginal places.36 In Tibet virtually every
element of the landscape was (and continues to be) considered alive, and
mountains and lakes in particular were associated with powerful local deities.
The people of pre-Buddhist Tibet, in addition to propitiating these deities
for help, protection, and healing, showed great concern for the transition of
the living into the land of the dead, with elaborate funerary rites in particular
for the rulers. Tibetans also placed great value on spirit mediums who served
as intermediaries between these local beings and the human communities
who shared their space.37 Given this brief sketch of the Tibetan pre-Buddhist
stage, we can now follow the story of the introduction of Indian Buddhism
to Tibet and the eventual Tibetan embrace of all things tantric.38 When
Tibetans received teachers, texts, and lineage transmissions from India, they
could fit Buddhist tantric rites into their existing constellation of concerns
with relative ease.
Of course, there was initial resistance to this new and foreign religion from
the human and, according to legend, nonhuman inhabitants of Tibet. A brief
summary of the later mythic reconstruction of Buddhism’s introduction to
the Land of Snows will serve as a Tibetan cultural self-portrait. When, in the
eighth century CE, the nation of Tibet had only recently been unified under
the Yarlung kings and the great ruler Tri Songdetsen (Khri Srong-lde-brtsan)
wanted to establish the first Buddhist monastery in Tibet, he invited the
Indian monk Śāntaraks.ita to do the job. But when construction on the site
at Samye began, the fearsome spirits of the land would come by night and
tear down the work that had been completed during the day. Śāntaraks.ita
declared that only Padmasambhava, a great tantrika, could tame this wild
land, and the king duly sent for him. Padmasambhava (a.k.a. Guru Rinpoché,
‘‘the Precious Guru’’), summoned from the culturally Indian borderlands of
Tibet, made his way to Central Tibet, engaging along the way in combat
with the local deities—and winning, of course, thus converting these fierce
beings into sworn protectors of the Buddhadharma. With the trio of Tri

and are in no way uniquely Tibetan. However, it is helpful to examine briefly how
they manifest in the Tibetan context.
36. Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, 187–88.
37. Kapstein, Tibetans, 46–49.
38. It should be noted, at least in passing, that India was far from the only source
for Tibetan Buddhism. Central Asia and China also played important—though subse-
quently forgotten or downplayed—roles in transmitting Buddhist teachings. How-
ever, information on these early transmission lineages is extremely limited, and this
paper focuses on the continuity of Indian Buddhist tantra with its Tibetan form.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 73

Songdetsen, Śāntaraks.ita, and Padmasambhava (the ruler, the monk, and the
tantrika) in place, the conversion of Tibet into a Buddhist nation could begin
in earnest.39
This narrative illustrates the Tibetans’ regard for their land (and, by exten-
sion, for their native spirits) as wild and difficult to tame, as well as their
deeply felt esteem for the magical powers of the accomplished tantrika.
Indeed, of the famous trio of king, monk, and tantrika, it is Guru Rinpoché
who is cast in legend as having visited every corner of the Land of Snows
and worked in countless ways to plant the seeds of a future (shamanically and
esoterically inclined) Buddhism. Śāntaraks.ita’s deeds seem to pale by compar-
ison in the Tibetan narrative imagination (though his scholarly texts are
greatly revered).
David Snellgrove, who has made a decades-long study of the Indo-Tibetan
tradition and of the pre-Indian-Buddhist tradition of Tibet, offers the follow-
ing insightful reflection on the popular embrace of Buddhism during the
early period of diffusion:

At a . . . popular level there was certainly a ready willingness to test the magical
powers of those representatives of the new religion who claimed the necessary com-
petence. . . . The general Tibetan belief in the malign activities of a host of nonhuman
beings provided Buddhist teachers with the opportunity of demonstrating their supe-
rior powers, and they could perhaps win their new clients with a more impressive
ritual and a greater display of confident knowledge than their rivals possessed. . . .
The nonhuman beings of Tibet . . . were already there when the first Buddhist
teachers arrived, and they had no choice but to come to terms with them. Thus the
general demand for the kinds of rites readily available in tantric literature was bound
to assist its promulgation.40

Significantly, rites of this kind were the domain of esoteric tantra, not
exoteric sūtra. Thus, although—according to the tenuous synthesis still being
forged in India at that time—one had to understand emptiness and fully culti-
vate bodhichitta before engaging in tantric practice, the reality on the ground
in Tibet at the time of the first diffusion of Indian Buddhism was that popular
interest seems to have been most engaged by the pragmatic applications of
the esoteric teachings. Monastic and institutional Buddhism had been estab-
lished in India for over a thousand years before tantra began to work its way

39. This version of the story is condensed from Kapstein, Tibetans, 68–70.
40. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, 452.

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74 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

into the tradition, but in Tibet there was no such precedent, and in a popu-
lace who could neither read nor write and had never received teachings on
nontantric Buddhist philosophy, tantra naturally appealed more strongly than
exoteric sūtra at a popular level.
To return to a more standard Western account of Tibetan history, the
period of the first introduction of Indian Buddhism to Tibet (eighth to tenth
centuries CE) saw the introduction of the forms being developed in North-
west India, with an emphasis on the tantras but with many important sūtras
and nontantric commentaries also introduced at this time.41 For a variety of
reasons, it is difficult to know exactly which texts were translated into
Tibetan during this very early period. However, it is clear that Buddhist
teachers were welcomed and patronized by the imperial Tibetan court.
Beyond the predispositions of the Tibetan people, a broader paradox of
the esoteric must be acknowledged here. Esoteric discourse often revolves
around the efficacy (perhaps even supremacy) of its own praxis. It seems only
natural, then, that everyone—‘‘qualified’’ or not—should gravitate toward a
system that claims to be the most effective. As Dan Brown’s runaway success
with The Davinci Code illustrates, interest in ‘‘esoteric’’ topics has never been
restricted to the intellectual or spiritual elite. The Tibetan (and now the
Western) history of engagement with tantric Buddhism shows the same
trend: as soon as esoteric teachings make their way into the marketplace
of ideas and praxis, people will find ways of either employing the services of
adepts or of putting populist versions of the practices into use, regardless of
their own level of skill with the materials. And now, we bend this paper’s
exploration back to examine how these essentially shamanic themes and con-
cerns were carefully retooled in the Indian tradition during the long process
of domesticating tantra for use in monastic settings.

THE BUDDHIST D OMESTICATION OF TANTRA

In this second section of my argument I will show that tantric practice, wild
and sometimes dangerous as it could be, worked its way into the fold of the
greater Buddhist community by being mythically reframed and creatively
reinterpreted. As a backdrop to the developments of tantra, some knowledge

41. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, 451ff.; Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 444ff.

As a note of counterbalance to the popular embrace of tantra, Kapstein and Snellgrove
both significantly point to the emperors’ preference for sūtric teachings (and the insti-
tutions of higher learning which they entail) rather than the antinomian tantric prac-
tices (Kapstein, Tibetans, 71ff.; Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, 451). Indeed, the
future weakness of the Tibetan central political authorities may have much to do with
the generally permissive attitude toward tantra in following centuries.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 75

of medieval Indian society and Buddhism’s place in it is necessary. Davidson’s

2002 Indian Esoteric Buddhism provides that backdrop, painting a picture of an
Indian state fragmenting into smaller feudal regions after the fall of the Gupta
dynasty, with large and prosperous cities falling prey to attack by neighboring
city-states, while commercial guilds losing sway as long-distance trade drops
off. By the late first millennium CE, north Indian Buddhism had become
largely Mahāyāna and was concentrated in large monastic institutions, which
thus lost two of their most reliable sources of support: strong rulers and trade
guilds. In this new atmosphere of social uncertainty and opportunistic warfare
between neighboring city-states, Buddhists suddenly found themselves com-
peting for patronage with other religious groups (most prominently Śaiva and
Śākta orders) who were willing and able to legitimize rulers’ ruthless tactics
through their narrative and religious traditions. The Śaiva in particular, as
followers of Śiva, had ascetic members who were helping to define emerging
forms of tantric practice: propitiation of spirits to gain magical powers, trans-
gressive rituals that included (sometimes literal) ritual cannibalism and antino-
mian sexual and dietary practices (examples will be given below of Buddhist
appropriations of these rituals), lifestyles designed to provoke social censure
and rejection, and a general swing toward extreme moral relativism or out-
right rejection of moral obligations altogether.42
As Davidson notes, these sorts of behaviors were antithetical to traditional
Buddhist values, and Wedemeyer’s reading also acknowledges (or at least
does not explain away) a great tension between normative monastic Bud-
dhism and antinomian practices. Buddhists’ identity (and prestige) in earlier
Indian society had been rooted in their high ethical standards and intellectual
prowess. For a sample of traditional Buddhist ethics, we can turn to Sānti-
deva, who lived and wrote at Nālandā monastery (which had a temple dedi-
cated to tantric practice, though the monks may not all have practiced
tantra43) in Northern India roughly during the seventh to eighth centuries
CE,44 when the process of institutionalizing tantra was certainly underway. A
short passage from Śāntideva’s most famous work, the Bodhicaryāvatāra, will
illustrate the tone of traditional monastic Buddhist morality during this
period.

One should never cast the eyes to and fro for no purpose. The gaze should be bent
low as if continually absorbed in meditation.

42. Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, 62–90 and 177–86.

43. Ibid.
44. Kate Crosby and Andrew Skilton. The Bodhicaryāvatāra (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995), viii.

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76 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

However, one might occasionally look to the horizon in order to rest the eyes,
and if one notices someone within one’s field of vision, one should look up to greet
them. . . .
It is not desirable to spit out tooth-cleaning sticks and phlegm in public, and it is
also forbidden to urinate and so forth on land or into water that is usable.
One should not eat with a mouth overfull, noisily, nor with mouth wide open.
One should not sit with a leg hanging down, likewise one should not rub both arms
at the same time.45

The above injunctions suggest the level of detail monastic Buddhists were
expected to pay to their daily conduct. The Vinaya, the teachings of the
Buddha regarding the behavior of monks and nuns, lays out such explicit
instructions for most areas of daily life. This passage gives a sense of the level
of discipline and conformity that would be expected of monks in North India
during the time when the siddhas were active and monastic hermeneuts were
incorporating their literary productions into the received Buddhist canon.
The tantric passages cited below will seem all the more shocking in light of
Śāntideva’s instructions to his fellow monks.
Distinctive Buddhist identity in India weakened further with the forma-
tion of communities of Buddhist siddhas (‘‘perfected ones,’’ persons consid-
ered masters of tantric practices). These communities would have closely
resembled non-Buddhist communities following similar practices in addition
to living in ways antithetical to established Buddhist ethical guidelines. The
real danger came when siddhas’ practices found their way into monasteries
of traditional, celibate monks whose virtue made them objects of veneration
and offerings by the laypeople.
We have now reached the proper subject matter of this second section,
with novel practices making their way into the very heart of the Buddhist
tradition. With the rise of Buddhist siddhas and the accommodation of their
practices into the Buddhist textual canon, institutional Buddhism suddenly
found itself validating passages like the following, which not only contradicts
the basic Buddhist ethics of sexual continence and refraining from killing but
which invokes Hindu deities (Brahmā, Śiva, and Visnu) to boot:

Then Vajrapāni, Lord of all the Buddhas, brought forth the Pledge (samaya) of
Brahmā from his own Vajra Body, Speech and Mind:
Whatever actions one performs, fearful and terrible, in the way of Delusion, being
conducive to the enlightenment of a Buddha, it is essentially Vajra-Body.

45. Ibid., 37 and 42.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 77

Then he brought forth likewise the pledge of Rudra:

One should make love to all women in their various modes of existence, regarded
as the triple Vajra, throughout the threefold world.
This is the most wonderful pledge (relative to Passion).
Then he brought forth likewise from his own Vajra Body, Speech and Mind this
Pledge of the Triple Vajra:
The Vajra of Body is Brahmā. The Vajra of Speech is Maheśvara (Śiva). The Holder
of the Vajra of Mind, the King, is Visnu of great magical power.46

This passage comes not from some obscure tantra or a marginalized siddha’s
composition but from the Guhyasamāja Tantra, one of the major tantras in
the initial wave of the introduction of Indian Buddhism to Tibet. In fact,
compared to the injunctions in some tantras to consume human flesh during
the course of a given ritual, the quote above seems relatively easy to harmo-
nize with the traditional Buddhist values of compassion and self-restraint. But
compared with Śāntideva’s precise directions against casting the eyes wan-
tonly about, even this relatively tame section from the Guhyasamāja Tantra is
completely shocking in its content and its tenor alike. The discontinuities
between earlier institutional Buddhism (as opposed to the noninstitutional
wandering communities of siddhas) are apparent enough, and later in this
section we will explore several techniques employed by Indian monks to
adapt the new tantras for use in monasteries. However, before we turn to
Indian efforts to harmonize the disjunctions, the philosophical continuities
bear investigation.

CONTINUITY THROUGH Ś ŪNYATĀ

Śūnyatā (emptiness), which formed the centerpiece of exoteric Buddhist phi-

losophy, would make possible the incorporation of this material into a
uniquely Buddhist system of self-cultivation. The doctrine of śūnyatā was
proposed by Nāgārjuna (ca. second–third centuries CE) and elaborated by
Chandrakı̄rti (seventh century CE) into the form that would later be called
Prāsangika-Madhyamaka. It states that everything that exists does so provi-
sionally, by means of arising in dependence on causes and conditions—
including the cause of being imputed by the mind that perceives it.
Candrakı̄rti’s formulation of the doctrine does away with the inherent, estab-
lished existence even of any ultimate level of reality whatsoever.47 Instead, all

46. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, 129.

47. By comparison, philosophical formulations of the ‘‘no-self ’’ doctrine from
Early Buddhist schools usually called into question a ‘‘self ’’ imputed on the basis of

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78 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

things are perpetually in a state of flux, a constant arising and passing away
without even a fundamentally existent substrate.
This well-accepted notion of the insubstantiality of one’s ordinary form of
existence (indeed, of everything an ordinary being can perceive) provided
for some the grounds to rationalize such acts as killing living beings (after all,
there is no inherently existent being there to kill or to do the killing) or
engaging in dubious forms of sexual activity, as well as the grounds to speak
of the radical transformation of one’s ordinary experience of self (if there is
no inherently existent ‘‘I’’ behind my experiences, why should a human form
be any more accurate in expressing ‘‘my’’ reality than some other form?).
The following passage demonstrates this sense of transformative potential and
the explicit connection between that potential and śūnyatā:

Having fixed the cloudlike mandala of the [Sanskrit] alphabet,

[The Lord and Lady]48 recited these verses of magical manifestation:
Mind itself which has no basis is yet the basis of all dharmas [existent things].
Mind itself has the self-nature of this alphabet.
The alphabet as active mind (manas) is this gemlike cloud.
Having perfected the netlike mandala, all forty-two letters of this magical mandala,
One accomplishes all perfect mandalas in the ten directions and four periods of
time.
Acting as an elixir it disposes of all evil spirits and the four hundred and four
diseases.
Appearing as the Glorified Body (sambhoga) it eliminates all evil rebirths.
It accomplishes whatever one wants anywhere. . . .

the various aggregates of mind and body, but they stopped short of negating the
established existence of those aggregates themselves. Śūnyatā became a cornerstone of
Mahāyāna thought and one basis of the Mahāyānist claim of superiority over earlier
Buddhist systems. Some Buddhist thinkers, feeling that śūnyatā had come perilously
close to nihilism (a claim many systems made regarding especially the Prāsangika
formulation of the doctrine) propounded doctrines that would come to be known as
Yogācāra, emphasizing an all-pervasive and truly established Buddha nature. This sys-
tem in many ways laid the groundwork for the incorporation of tantra into Bud-
dhism. Unfortunately, laying out the details of this centuries-long progression could
easily fill another paper of this length. For a more substantial history of this develop-
ment, please see Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.
48. ‘‘Here the Lord and Lady are subject and object, mind (yid⳱manas) and ideas
(chos⳱dharmas, ‘‘elements of existence’’), thus representing the concepts of grahaka
(‘dzin-pa, apprehender) and grahya (gzung-ba, apprehended) of the Mind-Only school
[which was related to the Yogācāra school mentioned above].’’ Snellgrove, Indo-
Tibetan Buddhism, 459.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 79

The world in all its parts is dispersed.

All is decomposed and void [śūnya].
By means of this meditation one conjures forth, one sends away,
One binds, one releases, one enlivens, one kills, one brings defeat or victory.
The terms such as ‘‘form’’ (rūpa) and so on are self-manifestations of absolute
knowledge,
And their transformation into the self-nature of mind
Is like the changing of darkness to light or the production of gold by alchemy.49

This passage highlights the role that the doctrine of śūnyatā played in the
transition from more traditional Mahāyāna approaches to transformation
toward tantric understandings of transformation. Whereas earlier texts
emphasized the gradual cultivation of an intellectual understanding of śūnyatā
coupled with the patient collection of merit and development of compassion
(bodhicitta), which required several eons of effort, tantric yogis claimed that
their new methods could bring liberation in a single lifetime by means of the
adept’s simply and directly realizing the empty nature of all perceptions. The
practitioner’s experiences, even of her own body and mind, were to be trans-
figured on the spot through identification with a deity or, as in the passage
above, through practice with a mandala.
MAKING THE S HOE FIT
The two tantric passages above illustrate several of the challenges to Buddhist
ethics posed by these new compositions. Indian Buddhist institutions (partic-
ularly the large monastic universities, which were the locus of much of this
integrative work) employed various strategies in order to bring this material
into their fold.50 The first hurdle to overcome was mythological. The wide

49. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, 459, from a Tun-huang manuscript

included in the canon of the most ancient school of Buddhism in Tibet, the Nying-
ma (rNying-ma).
50. There were, it bears mentioning, many groups who simply found the new
materials shocking and un-Buddhist and so maintained earlier standards for canonic-
ity. Snellgrove makes this point explicitly: ‘‘[I]t must be fairly recognized that very
few scholars outside the Indo-Tibetan tradition of interpretation have felt able to
accept this last Buddhist phase in its entirety. Certainly Chinese and Japanese Bud-
dhists have found much canonical tantric material objectionable, and have either
employed evasive translations or have treated whole texts as later corruptions. More
recently, Western and modern Indian scholars have freely attributed to tantric devel-
opments the gradual decline of Buddhism in India from the eighth to the thirteenth
centuries A.D., as though it had allowed itself to be submerged indistinguishably into
forms of popular Hinduism. There is considerable evidence against such a view.’’
(Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, 117) Snellgrove thus takes issue with implications like David-

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80 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

variety of materials in the Mahāyāna Buddhist canon had been reconciled in

earlier generations by means of the doctrine of the three Turnings of the
Wheel of Dharma: the first Turning comprised the universally accepted sūtras
of Early Buddhism, taught at Sarnath (as in the Early Buddhist narrative) to
the Buddha’s ordinary disciples after his enlightenment. The second Turning
occurred at Vulture’s Peak, when the Buddha taught the doctrine of empti-
ness to his bodhisattva disciples. To account for the fact that no one in the
human realm heard these sūtras for several hundred years after the parinirvān.a
(passing away into nirvāna) of the Buddha—until Nāgārjuna’s exposition of
the doctrine, in fact—Mahāyānists proposed the explanation that these teach-
ings had been hidden in the realm of the nāgās (superhuman snake-like crea-
tures that live in the water), and Nāgārjuna had ventured to the bottom of
the ocean to retrieve them. (This is why Nāgārjuna is typically portrayed in
iconography with a cobra’s hooded head raised above his own.) The third
Turning of the Wheel produced the Yogācāra or Cittamātra teachings regard-
ing Buddha nature, which acted as a counterbalance to the nihilistic tenden-
cies of the emphasis on emptiness in the second Turning (though this Turning
seemed not to necessitate a narrative addition to the myth of the Buddha’s
life and teachings).51
One problem tantric monks faced as they worked to incorporate such
radically new materials was that Buddhist communities were already familiar
with the standard ways of telling the life of the Buddha, and tantric practice,
let alone sexual tantra, played no part in those narratives. In order to meet
even the flexible Mahāyāna standards to be considered ‘‘buddhavacana’’ (the
word of the Buddha), the tantras must have been taught by the Buddha
during his lifetime. Accordingly, the domesticators of the tantras constructed
a bold back-story to legitimize their new doctrine:

[T]he process [of Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree] is interrupted . . .
by the Buddhas of the Ten Directions, who arouse him from his composure by snap-
ping their fingers and announcing: ‘‘You cannot become a perfected Buddha just by

son’s that the introduction of tantra to Buddhism contributed to the erosion of a

distinct Buddhist self-identity and argues later in this passage that Buddhists continued
to hold their self-identity as unique in the Indian religious landscape. Davidson’s
documentation, from archaeology as well as Buddhist and non-Buddhist texts, is
more persuasive, however, than Snellgrove’s argument on the basis only of Buddhist
self-identification. I suspect that addressing this topic thoroughly would require a
great deal of space, and the point is largely moot here since the Tibetan situation
regarding tantra is this paper’s ultimate focus. Nonetheless, this contrary view must
be aired, even if only in a footnote.
51. For fuller versions of the Three Turnings doctrine, see Snellgrove, Indo-

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 81

this inner composure.’’ Then leaving his physical body on the banks of the Nairanjana
River, they conducted his mind-made body to the Highest heaven, where they
bestowed upon him the preliminary consecrations, followed by the five stages of
Perfect Enlightenment (abhisambodhi) as marked by five formulas of self-consecration.
Thus he became the perfected Buddha, the Great Vairocana, and having taught the
Yoga Tantras on the summit of Mount Meru, he descended to the everyday world,
took possession of his physical body, defeated Māra, the Evil One, and so the earlier
traditional account of his ministry follows.52

The Supreme Yoga Tantras (anuttarayoga-tantra; this is the category of tan-

tra that includes sexual union) may even begin, as usual, with the place and
circumstance of their teaching by the Buddha: ‘‘Thus have I heard: at one
time the Lord reposed in the vaginas of the Vajra-maidens—the heart of the
Body, Speech and Mind of all Buddhas.’’53 Snellgrove notes in a telling foot-
note to this passage, from his translation of the Hevajra Tantra: ‘‘I have tended
to gloss over such imagery, as indeed so often do the Tibetans.’’ This extraca-
nonical note points to the need for sources outside the textual record regard-
ing the institutionalization of tantric practices, since simply reading this
opening verse of the tantra gives no indication of hesitation as the author
portrays the Buddha in multiple forms engaging simultaneously in sexual
union with multiple ‘‘Vajra-maidens.’’ The next two topics in this section
address some results of the unease with which authorities often incorporated
these materials, leading them to declare much of the nonmonastic materials
metaphorical or to be practiced only by lay yogis, not by monastics.

TAMING TANTRA

Metaphor was to prove one of the most useful tools at hermeneuts’ disposal
as they massaged tantric materials into more established monastic practice
environments. The metaphorical accommodation runs like this: The tantric
injunctions to kill and/or engage in sexual activity as an element of practice
must be metaphorical, since (obviously) such actions run counter to estab-
lished methods of Buddhist practice. Therefore, one ‘‘kills’’ wrong views in
the mind, and one ‘‘unites with’’ ultimate reality.
Snellgrove offers a classical example of the beginning of this movement as
a sexual ritual’s contents are framed in specifically Buddhist terms, in this case

Tibetan Buddhism, 94–95; for the concern to build mythic narratives to hold new
doctrinal developments, see Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, 241.
52. Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, 120–21.
53. Ibid., 121.

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82 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

justifying the fourth consecration in a ritual of Supreme Yoga Tantra. In such

a ritual, the (male) initiate would bring a female sexual partner with him to
the consecration, in the process of which the vajra master would perform a
ritual to transform himself into the deity and then practice ritual sexual union
with the female partner. The initiate would then ingest some of the couple’s
mingled sexual fluids (the ejaculate of the master having been transfigured
into the seed of the deity). The initiate himself would then couple with his
female partner, thus assuming the identity of the deity. Here is the reading
Snellgrove offers of this ritual, based on an interpretation found in the Advay-
avajraśamgraha:

Through the union of Wisdom [the female partner] and Means [the vajra master] there
comes the Thought of Enlightenment (bodhicitta), ‘‘produced simultaneously on both
sides’’ . . . and this is identified ritually with the drop of semen (bindu) at the tip of the
vajra (the male organ) as it rests in the lotus (the female organ). It is with this ‘‘drop’’
taken ‘‘from the secret places of Wisdom and Means’’ that the master consecrates his
pupil in the Secret Consecration by placing it on the tip of his tongue. Thus conse-
crated, the pupil may proceed to the next consecration, the Knowledge of Wisdom,
when he knows Wisdom herself by being united with her. He experiences in her
embrace external experience (the external world as defined by the four elements
etc. . . .), which through the ecstatic union becomes reabsorbed into the natural nondual
state of absolute nonduality, as defined in Mahāyāna philosophical concepts.54

The passage cited above, though not metaphorical in its interpretation of

the consecration, moves in that direction by coupling a challenging new
praxis with traditional Buddhist philosophical underpinnings. Samuel
remarks on the difficulty of knowing what is intended as metaphor and what
is not (and clarifies the use of the bivalent term ‘‘bodhicitta’’ as cited above):
‘‘[I]t can be hard to tell what is literal and what is metaphorical. At times
both meanings may be intended simultaneously: bodhicitta can be both the
bodhisattva’s motivation of compassion towards all living beings and the semi-
nal fluid whose control forms a central part of the internal processes of Tantric
yoga. . . . Elsewhere, the use of language may be purely symbolic.’’55
Davidson, after commenting on the use of metaphor to domesticate rituals
like the fourth consecration above, goes further in the direction of problema-
tizing simple readings of difficult passages as purely metaphorical:

54. Ibid., 244–45.

55. Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 415.

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 Villarreal  Shaman, Lama, Buddha 83

Recent apologists for the Buddhist tantras have concentrated on linguistic decon-
struction through the artifice of ‘‘coded language’’ (samdhā/samdhyā/samdhāya-bhāsa),
which had been used by selected commentators to take some of the spice from the
brew. According to this idea, all the language of the tantras is figurative, not literal.
Thus the eros and thanatos of the esoteric scriptures are to be understood as indicative
of a secret coded form of language, referring to internal experiences. The key to such
language was revealed in the esoteric transmission from master to disciple, and only
uninformed outsiders considered that the statements might be simple declarative pro-
nouncements.
Unfortunately, as shown below, the invocation of the various strategies of textual
hermeneutics—of which ‘‘coded language’’ is only one—is highly idiosyncratic and
lacks any uniform method of application. . . . A single section of a tantra may be
taken as literal or variously figurative by different commentators in India (or China,
Tibet, or Japan), even with the same commentator sometimes adopting different
explanations mid-stride. . . . Thus the argument against literalness appears to lose a
degree of force in the absence of hermeneutic unanimity.56

This passage is part of Davidson’s larger argument that these practices began
as literal enactments and were institutionalized via metaphorical interpreta-
tions. His attack on ‘‘the argument against literalness’’ should be read in that
context.
Treating challenging passages from the tantras as metaphorical language
opened the institutional door to a great deal of new material, and monastic
authorities had a simple way to deal with material not sufficiently tamed by this
process: Declare some practices off-limits to monastics. Most texts could be
interpreted and practiced in ways that would enable celibate monastics to keep
their vows (and indeed many Indian monks did—and virtually all Tibetan
monastics do—tantric practice of some sort), with individual teachers and lin-
eages working out their own solutions to controversial issues such as whether
physical intercourse is necessary for full realization in a single lifetime.
This integration of the siddhas’ materials into institutional Indian Bud-
dhism was to form the basis and also the pattern for tantric practice to become
such a vital force in Tibetan culture, both inside and outside the monastery.
On the one hand, Indian hermeneuts’ attempts to wrestle the siddhas’ materi-
als into a form that harmonized with established forms of Buddhism created
a version of established Buddhism, which spoke in a vocabulary resonant
with lay concerns (particularly those concerns that could be addressed
through shamanic practice). On the other hand, this process legitimized

56. Davidson, Esoteric Buddhism, 247.

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84 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft  Summer 2014

monasteries as vehicles that could transmit esoteric teachings and located sha-
manic forms of practice within the very social structures that would come in
Tibet to be centers of political power in their own right. As Samuel persua-
sively argues, the coupling of a weak central government unable to police
monasteries’ activities and the increasing sociopolitical clout of the monaster-
ies and their lamas combined over the course of the centuries57 to allow
tantric practice to flourish not only in closely held secret transmission lineages
but also in visible, popular forms.58 This paper cannot examine the political
dimensions of the Tibetan integration of Indian Buddhist tantra, but it is
important to note at least in passing that there were strong and unusual politi-
cal forces behind the extraordinary level of accommodation that tantric prac-
tice found in Tibetan society.

F I N A L TH O U G H T S
The first section of this paper explored how Buddhist tantra has addressed lay
concerns by shamanic means from its inception in India and how that orienta-
tion helped the new religion spread into Tibetan society in the late first millen-
nium. The second section traced in greater detail the process by which Indian
monks integrated the new materials into existing institutions. Together, these
two portions of the narrative help to explain why and how esoteric Indian
traditions came to function as the public face of Buddhism in Tibet, a ‘‘secret’’
shared among an entire society. The transmission of Tibetan Buddhism to non-
Tibetan communities offers many living opportunities to explore the popular
appeal of traditions that include occult techniques of a pragmatic and useful
nature, whose widespread appeal is hardly negated by the fact that their own
rhetoric declares them the territory of the elite. In addition, the Tibetan
embrace of tantra offers a centuries-long history affording many opportunities
for exploration of the tensions between the popular appeal of ‘‘esoteric’’ tradi-
tions and the elite nature of their practice at the highest levels. Most other
cultures’ esoteric traditions faced stronger external constraints (often from gov-
ernments affiliated with the hierarchy of exoteric lineages), so the Tibetan situ-
ation provides an apt dialogue partner to the contemporary reception of
esoteric practices (Buddhist or other) in secular societies.

57. Particularly from the mid-ninth century, with the construction of Samye
Monastery and the introduction of the monastic institution to Tibet, to the fifteenth
century, with the spread of the tulku (sprul sku) system which allowed political and
spiritual authority to remain in the reincarnation lineage of a monk held to be an
enlightened master. (Samuel, Civilized Shamans, 494–95)
58. This is the thesis of Samuel’s 2002 Civilized Shamans, and his Part Three,
359ff., addresses this topic in detail.

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