Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest
Title | Monk, Householder, and Tantric Priest PDF eBook |
Author | David N. Gellner |
Publisher | |
Pages | 428 |
Release | 1993 |
Genre | Buddhism |
ISBN | 9788185618135 |
Courtesans and Tantric Consorts
Title | Courtesans and Tantric Consorts PDF eBook |
Author | Serinity Young |
Publisher | Psychology Press |
Pages | 299 |
Release | 2004 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 0415914833 |
In Courtesans and Tantric Consorts, Serinity Young takes the reader on a journey through more than 2000 years of Buddhist history, revealing the colourful mosaic of beliefs that inform Buddhist views about gender and sexuality.
Tantric Buddhism in East Asia
Title | Tantric Buddhism in East Asia PDF eBook |
Author | Richard K. Payne |
Publisher | Simon and Schuster |
Pages | 322 |
Release | 2006 |
Genre | Philosophy |
ISBN | 0861714873 |
Although Indian and Tibetan versions of tantric Buddhism are increasingly recognized, the East Asian variations on this practice remain largely overlooked. The only book to present the entire breadth of tantric Buddhism in East Asia, this collection remedies that situation with 12 key essays drawn from rare sources. Organized into four sections--China and Korea, Japan, Deities and Practices, and Influences on Japanese Religion--the book brings together a "critical mass" of scholarship, with the potential to create a sea change in the understanding of this subject
Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism
Title | Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism PDF eBook |
Author | Christian K. Wedemeyer |
Publisher | Columbia University Press |
Pages | 338 |
Release | 2014-05-06 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0231162413 |
Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism fundamentally rethinks the nature of the transgressive theories and practices of the Buddhist Tantric traditions, challenging the notion that the Tantras were “marginal” or primitive and situating them instead—both ideologically and institutionally—within larger trends in mainstream Buddhist and Indian culture. Critically surveying prior scholarship, Wedemeyer exposes the fallacies of attributing Tantric transgression to either the passions of lusty monks, primitive tribal rites, or slavish imitation of Saiva traditions. Through comparative analysis of modern historical narratives—that depict Tantrism as a degenerate form of Buddhism, a primal religious undercurrent, or medieval ritualism—he likewise demonstrates these to be stock patterns in the European historical imagination. Through close analysis of primary sources, Wedemeyer reveals the lived world of Tantric Buddhism as largely continuous with the Indian religious mainstream and deploys contemporary methods of semiotic and structural analysis to make sense of its seemingly repellent and immoral injunctions. Innovative, semiological readings of the influential Guhyasamaja Tantra underscore the text’s overriding concern with purity, pollution, and transcendent insight—issues shared by all Indic religions—and a large-scale, quantitative study of Tantric literature shows its radical antinomianism to be a highly managed ritual observance restricted to a sacerdotal elite. These insights into Tantric scripture and ritual clarify the continuities between South Asian Tantrism and broader currents in Indian religion, illustrating how thoroughly these “radical” communities were integrated into the intellectual, institutional, and social structures of South Asian Buddhism.
The Origins of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ
Title | The Origins of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ PDF eBook |
Author | Alexander Studholme |
Publisher | State University of New York Press |
Pages | 233 |
Release | 2012-02-01 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 0791488489 |
Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ, perhaps the most well-known of all Buddhist mantras, lies at the heart of the Tibetan system and is cherished by both layman and lama alike. This book documents the origins of the mantra, and presents a new interpretation of the meaning of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ, and includes a detailed, annotated precis of the Kāraṇḍavyūha Sūtra, opening up this important Mahayana Buddhist work to a wider audience. The Kāraṇḍavyūha— the earliest textual source for Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ—which describes both the compassionate activity of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva whose power the mantra invokes, and the mythical tale of the search for and discovery of the mantra. Through a detailed analysis of this sutra, Studholme explores the historical and doctrinal forces behind the appearance of Oṃ Maṇipadme Hūṃ in India at around the middle of the first millennium C.E. He argues that the Kāraṇḍavyūha has close affinities to non-Buddhist puranic literature, and that the conception of Avalokiteśvara and his six-syllable mantra is informed by the conception of the Hindu deity Śiva and his five-syllable mantra Namaḥ Śivāya. The sutra reflects an historical situation in which the Buddhist monastic establishment was coming into contact with Buddhist tantric practitioners, themselves influenced by Saivite practitioners.
Tantric Revisionings
Title | Tantric Revisionings PDF eBook |
Author | Geoffrey Samuel |
Publisher | Routledge |
Pages | 461 |
Release | 2017-09-08 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1351896172 |
Tantric Revisionings presents stimulating new perspectives on Hindu and Buddhist religion, particularly their Tantric versions, in India, Tibet or in modern Western societies. Geoffrey Samuel adopts an historically and textually informed anthropological approach, seeking to locate and understand religion in its social and cultural context. The question of the relation between 'popular' (folk, domestic, village, 'shamanic') religion and elite (literary, textual, monastic) religion forms a recurring theme through these studies. Six chapters have not been previously published; the previously published studies included are in publications which are difficult to locate outside major specialist libraries.
The Origins of Yoga and Tantra
Title | The Origins of Yoga and Tantra PDF eBook |
Author | Geoffrey Samuel |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 429 |
Release | 2008-03-27 |
Genre | Religion |
ISBN | 1139470213 |
Yoga, tantra and other forms of Asian meditation are practised in modernized forms throughout the world today, but most introductions to Hinduism or Buddhism tell only part of the story of how they developed. This book is an interpretation of the history of Indic religions up to around 1200 CE, with particular focus on the development of yogic and tantric traditions. It assesses how much we really know about this period, and asks what sense we can make of the evolution of yogic and tantric practices, which were to become such central and important features of the Indic religious scene. Its originality lies in seeking to understand these traditions in terms of the total social and religious context of South Asian society during this period, including the religious practices of the general population with their close engagement with family, gender, economic life and other pragmatic concerns.