Tag: Shyama

Shaiva and Bhakti Tantras within Tibetan Buddhism

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Would you like to hear a really catchy version of Tibetan Buddhism’s 100-syllable mantra to Vajrasattva (Benzo Sato in Tibetan), the primary mantra for invoking the primary deity of Tibetan Buddhism, which is a corrupted version of Shiva-Shakti Tantra? 

Shiva Nataraj, the Lord of Dance commonly called the “cosmic dancer,” creating and destroying through sound and movement (song and dance). The iconography won’t be explained here, but note Nataraja’s attributes: His eyes are “bloodshot” and wild, his hair “disheveled” and splayed out in all directions, and his head, adorned with the moon on the right side and the source of the river Ganga on the left (above the cobra), the whole image typically surrounded by a ring of fire, all strongly suggest a cosmic body erupting. Credit: unknown

Buddhism technically doesn’t have deities, because it’s supposed to be an atheistic religion that doesn’t believe in the reality of the individual  self or of the visible world, and certainly cannot be seen to be worshipping one. Fortunately, Tibetan Buddhism isn’t really Buddhism, it has plenty of deities (meditational dhyani buddhas, Taras, dakinis, herukas and many others), and is technically called Vajrayana, a corrupted form of Shaiva (Shiva worship) and Bhakti (devotional goddess worship) Tantra. Tantra simply means union with a deity. 

Kali trampling Shiva by Ravi Varma
Kali, known by names including Bhairavi (terrible one) and Shyama (dark, black, blue), is a bloodthirsty aspect of the goddess, variously said to have emerged from the forehead of the goddesses Kaushiki or Durga to defeat the nearly invincible demon Raktabija. After defeating the demon by drinking his blood, Kali continues her rampage until Shiva intervenes by blocking her path, which he alone among the gods could do. Note that her left foot steps on Shiva in this famous image, signifying the Left Hand Path (Vama Marga) where everything is permitted. The various tantras were created by Shaivas and Shaktas, devotees of the two deities. Credit: Ravi Varma
Goddess Kali
Another painting of Kali. She is depicted as wearing a crown, bangles, bells and other jewelry not because Kali — naked but for a garland made of human heads and a skirt made of human arms — would have worn such things, but to designate her as a goddess. The iconography is correct in both images: four-armed, with one hand holding up the severed head of the demon, another a bowl, a third pointing up (in this case, the sword hand) and the fourth pointing down. In the West, hands pointing both up and down are a symbol of duality and the Devil. In many ways, Kali is the very incarnation of the Christian enemy of mankind. Credit: unknown

The Buddha is reported to have said his teaching would last 1,000 years, which corresponds with the time of a great Shaiva revival in India that eventually extinguished Buddhism there. A couple of centuries later, Tantra migrated to Tibet and married Mahayana Buddhism there to create Vajrayana (the “Diamond” Vehicle, which in my opinion is a misnomer based on a misunderstanding). 

The Buddha is also reported to have said that if women were allowed to join the Sangha, then his teaching would only last 500 years. The Sangha (monkhood) is one of the three pillars of Buddhism, with the other two being the Buddha, the Awakened One, and the Dharma, his teaching. By some coincidence, 500 years after the Buddha is exactly around the time when Mahayana Buddhism — the Great Vehicle for the masses — appeared (women had been allowed to join the Sangha). When knowledge of the Dharma fades away, a new avatar comes to refresh the eternal teaching.

Mahayana again is not traditional Buddhism, having substituted the quest for individual liberation from the cycle of birth and death for the vow taken when joining the Mahayana path, namely to continue to reincarnate voluntarily and indefinitely until “all sentient beings” are liberated from suffering. In other words, a meaningless vow that only serves to bind the individual further. Compassionate Mahayana served as a foundation of Vajrayana 500 years later, when it married into the Tantra tradition of India.

Vajrayana as the “Diamond Path” is based on a misunderstanding, because in reality vajra means not “diamond” but “cosmic thunderbolt” — as seen, for example, in the hands of Zeus, King of the Gods (the planet Jupiter). Once the vajra was forgotten as a natural phenomenon, one its attributes — indestructibility — was equated with the diamond, earthly symbol of indestructibility. In that sense the diamond is a symbol, not a literal translation. The vajra preserves its original meaning, however, both in its depictions and in the sense that Vajrayana is understood to be the immediate path — instant enlightenment, as a thunderbolt instantly enlightens. Today we can restore the symbol’s true meaning.

A vajra, dorje (Tibetan) or cosmic thunderbolt.

The tiny ball in the exact center of the vajra would be the planet erupting (to give you an idea of the scale). A cosmic thunderbolt can be understood as interplanetary electric discharge due to different electric potentials between two planets, causing the current to arc. When the gods were “warring” and the planets were not yet in their current orbits, the God of War, Ares or Mars, is said to have been hit with one of Zeus’s (or Jupiter’s) thunderbolts. In fact, the planet Mars does carry a huge scar across its surface.

The lightning-scarred planet Mars.
Zeus, King of the Gods, wielding the cosmic thunderbolt. Discovered at Smyrna on the Aegean coast, this impeccable sculpture is now housed at the Louvre. Credit: Wikipedia

So the three kinds of Buddhism are: (1) Hinayana (small vehicle) or Theravada (true word), the original form of Buddhism; (2) Mahayana, the Great Vehicle that is most popular today; and (3) Vajrayana, the instant path, also called Tantric or Tibetan Buddhism, which owes much to the traditions of India and especially the siddha (powers) yoga in the foothills of the Himalayas. 

Kali as Vajrayogini, the primary female deity of Tibetan Buddhism.
Copper, gold and acrylic statue by Termatree, Nepal. Courtesy: Etsy.

In distant antiquity, the worship of Shiva (today the second-most popular deity in India, after Vishnu-Krishna) was probably much more widespread than we realize. According to its own tradition, Shaiva is one of the oldest belief systems on earth, predating Vedism and the Aryan conquest of the Indus Valley in the second millennium B.C. Under its umbrella you can include Tibetan Buddhism — with its meditational non-deity Vajrasattva (also known in China as Kwan Yin, compassionate Queen of Heaven) — as a bastardized form of Shiva-Shakti that has forgotten its roots.

Kwan Yin as Nataraja, the cosmic dancer. Credit: unknown
Kwan Yin as Kali, pointing both up and down. Credit: unknown

Since we mentioned the cosmic imagery of Nataraja, another identification of Shiva and Kali could be as the planets Jupiter — Greek Zeus — and Venus — Greek Athene, who “sprang fully formed” from the head of Zeus. Their iconography encodes the chaos and catastrophes these two planets inflicted on the Earth during the Warring Gods era of prehistory — and so terrorized the people that they instantly began worshipping the two deities all over the world. Some experts on religion say that cosmic terror, and terror of the natural world in general, is the source of all religion. For more on cosmic mythology as encoded history, please visit Thunderbolts.info.