david_gray_-_mandala

The Journal of Religious History

Vol. 30, No. 3, October 2006

294

© 2006 Association for the Journal of Religious History

Blackwell Publishing AsiaMelbourne, AustraliaJORHJournal of Religious History0022-42272006 The Association for the Journal of Religious HistoryXXX

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

MANDALA OF THE SELF

JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS HISTORY

DAVID B. GRAY

Mandala of the Self: Embodiment, Practice, and Identity Construction in the

Cakrasamvara Tradition

Tantric traditions have often been ignored by scholars studying Asian social history,in part because the structure of traditions, and hence their social impact, have beenpoorly understood. This paper seeks to remedy this lacuna by exploring in somedepth a particular tradition, that centring around the

Cakrasamvara Tantra

, an IndianBuddhist scripture that became the basis of a popular practice tradition in Nepal andTibet. Following Charles Taylor and the Comaroffs, I will argue that the Cakrasamvarapractice tradition encourages a construction of self-identity based on a rather differentset of assumptions than those common in the West, i.e., assumptions concerning thelimits and constitution of the self. I will explore the nature of this considerablymore expansive and fluid sense of self and its social and historical ramifications,

both in the pre-modern and contemporary manifestations of this tradition.

Deconstructing the Body

The formation of a distinct identity is an essential step for any new socialgroup. In this paper I intend to explore this process as it occurred in an IndianBuddhist tradition, which at its inception was associated with non-Buddhistcommunities, and which thus had to forge a distinctly Buddhist identity. I willdo so by focusing on the meditative and ritual practices associated with thema

nd

ala, arguing that they are collectively deployed in the constitution of adistinct social space that articulates and reproduces individual identities. Theyalso presume a distinct view of the body and embodiment, one that differssignificantly from that view commonly held in the modern Western world.

The issue of identity and identity formation is one that has receivedconsiderable attention. Charles Taylor has charted the historical development ofmodern Western identities.

1

These, however, are not universal, but rather are

1. See Charles Taylor,

Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity

(Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1989). For an excellent example of the application of Taylor’s work toAsian religious theory and practice see Anne Klein’s

Meeting the Great Bliss Queen

(Boston:Beacon Press, 1995), 29–30, 43–4.

David B. Gray is an Assistant Professor at Santa Clara University.

mandala of the self

295


the products of distinct patterns of socio-historical conditions. There are aspectsof Western conceptions of identity that would seem limiting to persons condi-tioned in different cultural contexts. The notions of a localized, disengaged,and individually independent self, which Taylor sees as key features of Westernconstructions,

2

are not prevalent in pre-modern Indian conceptualizationsof the self. With regard to these, the observations made by Jean and JohnComaroff seem particularly relevant. They have suggested that “in manynon-Western ontologies, selfhood seems to exceed Western corporeal con-straints”

3

— that is, it exceeds the materialism or physicalism which roots theself in embodied experience yet insists upon its independence, despite the factthat its physical basis is entirely contingent. Other cultures have alternativeviews of the self, and do not necessarily imagine it as being completelyidentical with or limited to the material body. According to the Comarroffs,“Such constructions do not deny the distinctness of human beings. But theydo contest our own sense that organic being is unbreachable by either materialor immaterial forces.”

4

These views have consequences that play out in the fieldof practice, within the discourse concerning the construction and transformationof self-identity.

Indian religious thought presumes different conceptualizations of the self,which have ramifications that permeate their discourse and practice. Forexample, salvation is often seen as resulting from a process of creativeself-re-identification that is based upon different presuppositions concerningthe nature and limits of the self. Buddhists have long resisted essentialistconceptualizations of the self, and have instead argued for a non-essentialistontology that is process-oriented, focusing on causal interrelationality.Similar conceptions of the human entity as complex and permeable arecentral to Hinduism as well.

5

For Buddhists, salvation entails a transformation of the self via a process of(re)conditioning (

bh

a

van

a

) through practices involving focused attentionupon the mind-body complex.

6

For early Buddhists, “awakening” (

bodhi

) wasthe result of true and correct

knowledge

of the body and mind, which wereunderstood by them as being fundamentally divisible. Body and mind wereconceived as a dynamic and inherently unstable complex entity consisting ofimpermanent and interdependent factors. They were seen as being linked incomplex ways both to each other, within the system, and also to the largerworld, which in turn could be seen as a larger system in which individuals are

2. See Taylor,

Sources of the Self

, esp. 190ff.3. John Comaroff and Jean Comaroff,

Ethnography and the Historical Imagination

(Boulder:Westview Press, 1992), 75.4. Comaroff and Comaroff,

Ethnography

, 74, 75.5. See McKim Marriott’s influential article “Hindu Transactions: Diversity Without Dualism,”in

Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behavior

,ed. Bruce Kapferer (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976), 109–42.6. The term

bh

a

van

a

is usually translated as “meditation,” but this term can have a passivesense which does not capture the active sense of the word

bh

a

van

a

, which implies a “cultivation”or intentional reconditioning of the mind-body complex. See Michael Carrithers,

The ForestMonks of Sri Lanka

(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983), 44.

296

journal of religious history


parts.

7

For Mah

a

y

a

na Buddhists, there is no “thing” — ranging from the largestto smallest elements — in these overlapping systems, which has any sort of per-manent or unchanging nature. The realization of this, not merely intellectuallybut in meditation, was an essential prerequisite to the attainment of awakening.

Among early Buddhists, one of the most important types of meditativepractice was

vipassan

a

or “Insight” meditation, which, among other things,involves focused analytic attention upon the body and mind. These medita-tions typically involve the analysis of the body and mind into numerous com-ponent parts, each of which is identified and explored in a state of meditativeconcentration. In so doing, one is supposed to discover no essential orunchanging basis to one's embodied experience.

8

Instead, one learns that thisexperience is

baseless

, conditioned, and contingent, capable of maintainingonly the illusion of continuity. This realization is thought to undermineexclusive identification with our

individual

, physical bodies, which Buddhistsclaim leads to selfish and ultimately self-destructive behavioural patterns.

In Mah

a

y

a

na Buddhism, particularly in the Yog

a

c

a

ra school of thought andpractice which I believe provided the theoretical framework for TantricBuddhist practice, this basic view of the self and body as divisible was acceptedand further expanded upon. While our body exists, it is no reliable basis forself-identity, being a composite and constructed entity, one that is inextricablylinked to the world in which it arose and continues to exist interdependently,neither wholly self nor other. Their view is similar to that advanced byMark Taylor, who wrote:

as a result of its holey-ness or gappiness, the living body cannot be defined in termsof the binary opposites that structure conceptual reflection. The body is neither“subject nor object” . . . rather, the body is the

mean

between extremes — the“milieu’ in which opposites like interiority and exteriority, as well as subjectivityand objectivity, intersect. Never reducible to the differences it simultaneously joinsand separates, the body is forever

entre-deux

.

9

As Merleau-Ponty argues, the body cannot properly be understood as a subjector object, as a sensor or the sensible, since it simultaneously shares the qualitiesof both of these conceptual extremes:

The sensor and the sensible do not stand in relation to each other as two mutuallyexternal terms, and sensation is not an invasion of the sensor by the sensible. It ismy gaze which subtends colour, and the movement of my hand which subtends theobject’s form, or rather my gaze pairs off with colour, and my hand with hardnessand softness, and in this transaction between the subject of sensation and the sensibleit cannot be held that one acts while the other suffers the action, or that one conferssignificance on the other.

10

7. For detailed accounts of the Buddhist perspective on this issue see Steven Collins,

SelflessPersons

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), and also Matthew Kapstein,

Reason’sTraces

(Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2001), 77–133.8. For a survey of the Buddhist meditative techniques preserved by the Therav

a

da tradition seeWinston L. King’s

Therav

a

da Meditation: The Buddhist Transformation of Yoga

(Delhi: MotilalBanarsidass, 1992).9. Mark. C. Taylor,

Altarity

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 69.10. Maurice Merleau-Ponty,

The Phenomenology of Perception

, trans. Colin Smith (London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962), 214.

mandala of the self

297


Likewise, Mah

a

y

a

na Buddhists argue that our conceptions of independentself-existence and consequent separation of self and other, subject and object,are based on incomplete and flawed patterns of perception and reasoningwhich ultimately result from ignorance. A classic passage expressing this ideaoccurs in the

La

N

k

a

vat

a

ra S

U

tra

, a Mah

a

y

a

na Buddhist scripture composed inIndia by the fourth century,

11

as follows:

There is no subject nor object, nor is there bondage or that which is bound; [allthings] are like an illusion, a mirage, a dream, a blind eye. If one who understandsreality sees non-discursively (

nirvikalpa

), free of taint, then perfected in yoga hesees me without a doubt. There is nothing to cognize, like a mirage in the sky; onewho cognizes things acknowledges nothing. In the relativity of being and non-beingthings do not arise; it is from the wandering of mind through the triple world thatvariety is known. The world has the same nature as a dream, and so too the variousforms within it . . . This mind is the source of the triple world, and wandering themind appears hither and thither.

12

Buddhists were very interested in deconstructing dualistic presuppositionsconcerning the nature of reality, particularly the deeply engrained sense ofindividual self existence in a world consisting of independently existent externalobjects. Naturally, they had to advance an alternative theory. The general theoryadvanced is that of interdependent origination (

prat

I

tyasamutp

a

da

), whichholds that all entities are deeply interdependent, collectively constituting avast network of interrelationality.

13

Buddhists developed a number of metaphorsto describe this vision of reality, but one of the more common metaphors isthe notion that all things collectively constitute a “body” that is the cosmos.

In deploying this metaphor, Buddhists were advancing what is evidently avery old idea in Indian thought, the conceptualization of the universe as abody. This theme is present in Vedic texts, most notably in the “Hymn ofMan” (

puru

s

as

U

kta

) in the

R

g Veda

,

14

which describes the universe as derivingfrom the sacrifice and dismemberment of a primal being. Within Mah

a

y

a

naBuddhism, in parallel with the development of the Yog

a

c

a

ra theory of theBuddha’s multiple levels of embodiment, we also see the development ofscriptures which posit Cosmic Buddhas or Bodhisattvas, such as Vairocanaand Samantabhadra in the

Avata

m

saka S

U

tra

, who are portrayed as pervadingthe universe.

15

Likewise, the KarandavyUha SUtra, a Buddhist scripture

11. Regarding the dating of the LaNkavatara, its terminus ad quem is 443 c.e. when it was firsttranslated into Chinese. Florin Sutton argues for an early fourth century composition in his Exist-ence and Enlightenment in the LaNkavatara-sUtra (Albany: State University of New York Press,1991), 13–19. Note that Christian Lindtner has argued convincingly that an early version of theLaNkavatara SUtra was an influence on Nagarjuna, which would date it to the second century.See his “The LaNkavatarasutra in Early Madhyamaka Literature,” Asiatische Studies/ÉtudesAsiatiques 46, No. 1 (1992): 244–79.12. My translation from the text edited in P. L. Vaidya, SaddharmalaNkavatarasUtram(Darbhanga: The Mithila Institute, 1963), 109; cf. D. T. Suzuki, The Lankavatara Sutra (London:George Routledge and Sons, 1932), 228–9.13. For a good introduction to the Buddhist doctrine of interdependent origination see PaulWilliams, Buddhist Thought (London: Routledge, 2000), 62–72.14. For a translation see Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, The Rig Veda (London: Penguin, 1981),30–1.15. For a translation and discussion of the relevant textual passages from this text see PaulWilliams, Mahayana Buddhism (London: Routledge, 1989), 120–27.

298 journal of religious history


composed during the fifth century,16 holds that the universe derived from thedivision of Avalokite3vara’s body, clearly borrowing from the older Vedicmyth in the purusasUkta.17

Mahayana Buddhists employed the image of the cosmos qua person intheir attempts to challenge attachment to the individual body, and encourageself re-identification with a larger whole that includes other beings. Thisnotion was expressed eloquently by 2antideva18 in his Bodhicaryavatara, asfollows:

Just as hands and so forth are cherished because they are limbs of the body, why areembodied beings (dehinah) not likewise [cherished], since they are limbs of theworld? Just as the belief in self with respect to one’s own body, which is devoid ofself, [arises] through conditioning, will not a sense of self with respect to others arisethrough conditioning?19

Mahayana Buddhists such as 2antideva, in critiquing the notion of theindividual body as the basis of self-identity, posited a complementary view ofthe cosmos as a larger whole in which we as individuals are parts. This idea iscomplemented by the Yogacara doctrine of the Triple Body, which holds thata Buddha realizes three “bodies” or embodiment perspectives in his or herawakening experience. These include the nirmanakaya or “ManifestationBody,” which correlates to our physical bodies, in which a Buddha can manifestto interact with unawakened beings. The next is the sambhogakaya or “CommunalEnjoyment Body,” which a Buddha manifests in his or her teaching encounters,and is particularly associated with communication and the power of speech.Lastly, there is the dharmakaya or “Reality Body.” The primary meaning ofthe term kaya is “body,” but in the sense of a composite entity.20 The termdharmakaya originally referred to the collection of the Buddha’s teachingsor his enlightened qualities, and later came to have the metaphysical senseof the body or collection of all that exists.21 Realizing this as the ultimate

16. Alexander Studholme, contra previous authors who have dated the sUtra much later, arguesfor its composition by the late fourth or early fifth century. See his The Origins of OmManipadme HUm: A Study of the KarandavyUha SUtra (Albany, NY: State University of NewYork Press, 2002), 13–17.17. For a translation and study of the relevant passage from this text see Madhav Deshpande,“Who Inspired Panini? Reconstructing the Hindu and Buddhist Counter-claims,” Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society 117, No. 3 (1997): 458. It should be noted that this is a polemical textthat is a reaction to developments in Hindu theistic traditions.18. 2antideva’s dates are unclear, but he may have lived from 685–763 c.e. See Kate Crosby andAndrew Skilton, 2antideva, The Bodhicaryavatara (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), viii.2antideva here employs the body as a metaphor, seemingly to advance his vision of an inter-connected cosmos.19. My translation of Bodhicaryavatara 8.114, 115, from P. L. Vaidya, ed. Bodhicaryavatara of2antideva with Commentary Pañjika of Prajñakaramati (Darbhanga: Mithila Institute, 1960),162.20. The term kaya has the secondary meanings of “assemblage, collection, multitude.” See Sir MonierMonier-Williams, A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, corrected ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass,2002 [1899]), 274.1.21. As Paul Griffiths has shown, the dharmakaya, at least in Sthiramati’s Madhyantavibhaga-tIka, has a strong metaphysical sense of “the embodiment or assemblage of what there really is.”Griffiths, On Being Buddha: The Classical Doctrine of Buddhahood (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1994), 149.

mandala of the self 299


basis of one’s embodied experience is equated with buddhajñana, the gnosisof awakening.22

In what follows I will describe one tradition of yoga that aims to achieveprecisely this sort of non-discursive realization of the non-dual interconnectionbetween self and cosmos via a radically expanded sense of embodiment. It is atradition that also sheds light on the social and religious history of Buddhismin Northern India from the eighth century c.e. onward, as it highlights theprocess of creative appropriation whereby Buddhists borrowed elements from arival religious tradition, and were thus faced with the challenge of re-inscribingtheir tradition as Buddhist.

Reconstructing the Body of AwakeningThe Tantric Buddhist tradition that I study is based upon the foundation ofthis early tradition of meditative speculation concerning the body, anddevelops it in a very fascinating and historically important manner. In thispaper, I will propose that we examine closely the “map” of the body that isdescribed and implied in the Cakrasamvara Tantra and its ritual literature,and explore how it encodes and conditions a particular construction of the bodyand likewise social identity in those who are adept in the tradition’s ritual andmeditative practices. Lastly, I will seek to shed light on the social and politicalramifications of this.

The tradition in question is that which centres on the Cakrasamvara Tantra,an eighth-century Buddhist scripture that became the basis for several distinctlineage traditions of ritual, meditation, and commentary.23 The CakrasamvaraTantra is classified as a yoginI-tantra,24 and like other texts in this categoryit does not appear to be the product of normative monastic Buddhistcommunities.25 Rather, it was likely composed by or under the influenceof liminal communities of siddhas, male and female practitioners ofyoga and meditation. These communities were not strongly associated with

22. Although some early Buddhist conceptions of the dharmakaya appears to have been metaphys-ical in nature, later Yogacara and Madhyamaka thinkers tended to interpret it in an epistemologicalsense. That is, to realize it is to realize the very nature (dharmata) of things, which is emptiness(3Unyata). For an extended discussion of Yogacara and Madhyamaka interpretations of the conceptof dharmakaya see John Makransky, Buddhahood Embodied (Albany, NY: State University of NewYork Press, 1997). In Tantric texts such as the Cakrasamvara Tantra (CS), the dharmakaya retained amythical, if not doctrinal, association with the larger cosmos.23. A provisional terminus post quem for the CS is provided by quotations from it in a datable com-mentary, Vilasavajra’s Årya-NamasamgItitIka-mantrarthavalokinI-nama; Vilasavajra having livedin the second half of the eighth century. See Ronald Davidson’s “The Litany of the Names ofMañju3ri: Text and Translation of the Mañju3rinamasaMgiti,” in Tantric and Taoist Studies inHonour of R. A. Stein, ed. Michel Strickmann (Brussels: Institut belge des hautes étudeschinoises, 1981), 1:6–7.24. The term yoginI literally means a female practitioner of yoga, but it also refers to aclass of female divinities, also known as dakinIs, who are the focus of this and related TantricBuddhist works. For a study of these figures see Adelheid Herrmann-Pfandt, DakinIs: ZurStellung und Symbolik des Weiblichen im Tantrischen Buddhismus (Bonn: Indica et TibeticaVerlag, 1992).25. See my study and annotated translation of this text, The Cakrasamvara Tantra: A Study andAnnotated Translation (New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, forthcoming).



mainstream religious institutions, although they do appear to have had strongsectarian identities.26

For this tradition, the definitive statement regarding the awakening thatits practices are supposed to inculcate occurs in chapter ten, the firstverse of which reads: “Next I will explain the Triple Body in accordancewith non-dual union with 2ri Heruka, through which they succeed bymeans of consciousness only. Have no doubt regarding this.”27 The Cakras-amvara Tantra follows the pattern set by earlier Mahayana Buddhistscriptures in seeing its central deity, 2ri Heruka, as cosmically per-vasive, identifiable with the “Reality Body” which is the universe.Awakening is the result of a direct meditative realization of one’s self as2ri Heruka, a radical redefinition of self-identity that presupposes abreakdown of the individual’s unwavering identification with his or herphysical body.

This re-identification is achieved through meditation on the body as themandala. A term originally deriving from early Indian political discourse,the mandala designated the concentric, hierarchical power structurecentring on the figure of a king.28 Buddhists appropriated and redeployedthis term as the figurative “court” of deities surrounding a central cosmicBuddha. As Ronald Davidson noted, mandalas “are implicitly andexplicitly articulations of a political horizon in which the central Buddhaacts as Rajadhiraja [“king of kings”] in relationship to other figures inthe mandala.”29 Typically depicted in art as a court surrounding a centraldeity, the mandala is often cosmic in its proportions, a simulacrum ofthe universe, with the central deity presiding over it as a king presidesover his kingdom. For Tantric Buddhists, the mandala is a map of thecosmos, a Buddhist vision of the ideal universe, hierarchically arrangedaround a central deity or deity couple. The Cakrasamvara mandala, likemany mandalas, is a “cosmogram” which is believed to pervade both themacrocosm of the universe, the microcosm of one’s body, and themesocosm30 of the social world as lived by Buddhist communities — for

26. Regarding the siddha movement see Ronald Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A SocialHistory of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 169–235. Siddhagroups were quite diverse, and associated with Buddhist, Hindu, and even Jain renunciantmovements. In the case of the CS, there is significant evidence suggesting it receivedsignificant 2aiva influence, as will be discussed below. This influence, however, was subjectto Buddhist overcoding, suggesting that the authors of the text had a sense of Buddhist sectarianidentity.27. CS 10.1. This and all subsequent passages from this text are my translation from my editionof the text.28. The mandala political theory is first articulated in Kautiliya’s Artha3astra 6.2.13–27, a textlikely composed by the first or second century c.e. See the edition and translation in R. P.Kangle, The KautilIya Artha3astra, reprint ed., 3 vols. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986 [1960]).For a discussion of the relation between this earlier political theory and its impact on esotericBuddhism, see Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism, 131–44.29. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism, 131.30. Regarding this term see Robert Levy’s Mesocosm: Hinduism and the Organization of aTraditional Newar City in Nepal (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).



the mandala has been mapped across the landscape of India, the Kathmanduvalley,31 and the sacred sites of Tibet and the Tibetan Himalayas.32

The Cakrasamvara mandala is structurally simple. It focuses upon a centraldeity couple, 2ri Heruka and Vajravarahi. They are surrounded by the four“Essence Yoginis,” and then by the three “mind,” “speech,” and “body”wheels, each of which consists of eight deity couples. These, in turn, are sur-rounded by eight fierce goddesses who guard the directions and quarters. Thismandala, as we shall see, is mapped across the body, the landscape of India,and ultimately the entire cosmos.

The mandala is a complex symbol, subject to multiple deployments indiscourse and practice, by which it engenders specific subjectivities within adefinite social space. It is an example of what Stanley Tambiah termed an“indexical symbol,” capable of shifting between multiple levels of referentiality.33

This semiotic multivalency was essential to the development of Buddhistdiscourse and practice concerning the mandala. The tradition presupposes thatthe mandala, along with the deities who inhabit it, pervades the cosmos at itsvarious levels, including the microcosmic level of the body. As the Tantrastates concerning the male and female deities who inhabit the mandala:

The entire world is completely pervaded by the twenty-four heroes. The heroes’dakinis, the yoginis Pracanda and so forth, should be seen as positioned in thewheels. He who is adept in all rites and who desires power should always, well-equipoised, visualize himself as having the nature of the three wheels.34

One of the most important meditations in this tradition involves the creativevisualization of one’s body as the mandala, and it is called “body mandala”practice. It is textually rooted in a sadhana or meditative practice text attributedto the great Tantric saint Luipa.35 Although his dates are unknown, the text wascertainly composed prior to the late tenth century when it was translated bythe Tibetan Rinchen bZang-po and the Ka3miri scholar 2raddhakaravarman.36

31. For a general discussion of the identification of the Kathmandu valley as a mandala seeMary Slusser’s Nepal Mandala (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); for a specificdiscussion of the mapping of the Cakrasamvara mandala over the valley see David Gellner’sMonk, Householder, and Tantric Priest: Newar Buddhism and its Hierarchy of Ritual(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 190–2.32. See Toni Huber’s The Cult of Pure Crystal Mountain: Popular Pilgrimage and VisionaryLandscape in Southeast Tibet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). The CS mandala hasbeen remapped repeatedly across the terrain of Tibet. For example, the sacred site of Tsadrak inEastern Tibet is modelled on Tsari Mountain in Southeastern Tibet, which in turn is identifiedwith a Cakrasamvara pilgrimage site. Regarding this see Ngawang Zangpo, Sacred Ground: JamgonKongtrul on “Pilgrimage and Sacred Geography” (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2001).33. Regarding these Tambiah wrote “they have a duplex structure, because they combine tworoles: they are symbols which are associated with the represented object by a conventionalsemantic rule, and they are simultaneously also indexes in existential pragmatic relation with theobjects they represent” (156). See his “A Performative Approach to Ritual” (1981), reprinted inCulture, Thought and Social Action: An Anthrolopological Perspective (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1985), 123–66.34. CS 48.13–14.35. This is Luipa’s 2rIbhagavad-abhisamaya, To. 1427, D rgyud ‘grel Vol. wa, 186b−193a.36. Rinchen bZang-po travelled to Kashmir for the first time at age seventeen, ca. 975 c.e., andstayed there for seven years. It was during this time that he studied with 2raddhakaravarman. SeeGiuseppe Tucci, Rin-chen-bzan-po and the Renaissance of Buddhism in Tibet Around the Millenium,trans. Nancy Kipp Smith and Thomas J. Pritzker (New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 1988), 58–9.



In this practice tradition, one first visualizes one’s body as the mandala inorder to “purify” it, that is, break down one’s deeply conditioned sense ofisolated individuality. This practice involves identifying two sets of twenty-fourplaces in one’s body as the abodes of the twenty-four goddesses and godswho constitute the Mind, Speech, and Body wheels of the mandala.37

The choice of sites in the body upon which one is to focus is fascinating.As is illustrated in Table 1, the three wheels are arranged hierarchically alongthe body’s vertical axis. The Mind wheel, corresponding to the heavens in theancient Indian Triple World cosmology and the “Reality Body” of the BuddhistTriple Embodiment schema, more or less occupies the head and uppermostparts of the torso. The Speech Wheel corresponds to the upper torso andvocal organs, and is cosmically correlated to the surface of the earth and the“Communal Enjoyment Body” of a Buddha. Lastly, the Body Wheel corre-sponds to the lower torso, legs, and feet, and is correlated to the underworldand the “Emanation Body” of a Buddha.

In body mandala practice, the meditator imagines the deity couples in theirdivine abodes, which are, on the macrocosmic level, the sacred spaces ofIndia and the surrounding mountain areas, and, on the microcosmic level, thecorresponding body parts. The practitioner visualizes the deities in theseplaces while intoning the corresponding seed syllable, a process known as theplacement of the seed-syllables (bIjanyasa). The purpose of this is tostrengthen one’s sense of identity with cosmos that is the mandala, and thedivinities who reside within it, particularly with Heruka, who, the Tantra tellsus, pervades the universe.

This practice reflects many of the presuppositions of early Buddhism,including the notion that the body and mind are divisible, and that meditativepractice must necessarily analyse the elements of psycho-physical experienceinto its component parts, in order to meditatively engender a direct experienceof selflessness. For early Buddhists, the body was generally regarded withdisgust, and the meditations that focused upon it often sought to highlight thebody’s foulness, in order to undermine the attachment to the body that earlyBuddhists saw as a major obstacle to the practice of monastic renunciation, anattitude which was typically linked as well with misogyny.38 Although startingfrom the same point as early Buddhist practice, meditation on the body’scomponent parts, the “body mandala” meditation has an entirely differentpurpose, the purification and transformation of the body via creative visualizationpractices.

Of particularly interest is the list of body constituents correlating to thetwenty-four male deities.39 This list is a bit peculiar, as it lacks the organizationalong the vertical axis of the prior list, consisting mainly of internal and

37. It is important to note that the CS does not give a complete accounting of the elements ofthis practice, as it does not list the body parts and constituents. This information, however, isprovided in several of the “Explanatory Tantras” (vyakhyatantra) of the CS tradition, namely theAbhidhanottara, YoginIsamcara, and Samvarodaya tantras.38. See Liz Wilson, Charming Cadavers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).39. See Table 1 below.



Table 1 The Three Wheels of the Cakrasamvara mandala1†Mind Wheel

Speech Wheel

Body Wheel

Sacred placeSeed (bIja) Goddess Body part Consort

Bodily constituent

E Pulliramalaya puM Pracanda head Khandakapala teeth & nailsS Jalandhara jaM Candak5i crown Mahakankala head & body hairW Odiyana oM Prabhavati right ear KaNkala skin & filthN Arbuda aM Mahanasa back of neck VikatadaM5tri fleshNE Godavari goM Viramati left ear Suravairi tendonsNW Rame3vari raM Kharvari between the

eyebrowsAmitabha bones

SW Devikota deM LaNke3vari eyes Vajraprabha kidneysSE Malava maM Drumacchaya shoulders Vajradeha heart

Sacred placeSeed (bIja) Goddess Body part Consort

Bodily constituent

E Kamarupa kaM Airavati armpits ANkuraka eyesS Odra oM Mahabhairava breasts Vajrajatila bileW Tri3akuni triM Vayuvega navel Mahavira lungsN Ko3ala koM Surabhak5i tip of the nose VajrahuMkara large intestineNE KaliNga kaM 2yamadevi mouth Subhadra small intestineNW Lampaka laM Subhadra throat Vajrabhadra stomachSW Kañci kaM Hayakarni heart Mahabhairava fecesSE Himalaya hiM Khaganana perineum Virupak5a part of the hair

Sacred placeSeed(bIja) Goddess Body part Consort

Bodily constituent

E Pretapuri preM Cakravega penis Mahabala phlegmS Grhadevata grM Khandaroha anus Ratnavajra pusW Saura5tra sauM 2aundini thighs Hayagriva bloodN Suvarnadvipa suM Cakravarmini calves Åka3agarbha sweatNE Nagara naM Suvira toes Heruka fatNW Sindhu siM Mahabala dorsal feet Padmanarte3vara tearsSW Maru maM Cakravartini big toes Vairocana salivaSE Kuluta kuM Mahavirya knees Vajrasattva snot

†Sources: CS ch. 41, 48; Martin Kalff, Selected Chapters from the AbhidhAnottara-Tantra (NewYork: Columbia University Dissertation, 1979), 157–0, 191–8, 285–6, 317–20; Janardan ShastriPandey, ed. YoginIsamcAratantram (Sarnath: Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, 1998),37–40, 121–2; Shinichi Tsuda, The Saµvarodaya-Tantra: Selected Chapters (Tokyo: TheHokuseido Press, 1974), 94–5, 260–2.



external organs as well as bodily effluvia. This list appears to have been derivedfrom an earlier list given in a text of the Pali canon, the MahasatipatthanaSutta, or “Scripture on the Foundations of Mindfulness,” a pivotal earlyBuddhist meditation text that is highly valued in the Theravada tradition.40 Inthis text, the list is given for the purpose of the common meditation techniqueof analysing the body into its constituent parts. The text takes a quite dis-passionate tone, and if anything exhibits the revulsion toward the body thatwas quite common in early Buddhist discourse.

It is quite remarkable then that the Cakrasamvara tradition takes this verysame list, which admittedly contains some quite unpleasant elements, andcorrelates them to the male deities. The aim here is to completely re-envisionone’s body as the pure abode of the mandala deities, an abode that is in factco-extensive with the universe. This visualization is extended even to theconventionally most foul and objectionable of body parts and bodily sub-stances, perhaps to challenge the meditator to overcome his deeply engrainedconditioning concerning the body. No doubt for this reason, at the conclusionof this meditation the adept recites the following mantra: om vajra3uddhah

sarvadharma vajra3uddho ‘ham, “OM All things are adamantly-purified, andadamantly-purified am I.” Ati3a DipaNkara3rijñana,41 writing during theearly to mid-eleventh century, commented on a variant of this mantra42 asfollows:

If one wonders, of what are they purified, [the answer is] illusion and so forth. Theaim of that is this: Consider the appearance [of the world] in one’s mind as beingstained by the habitual propensities that condition conceptual thought patterns,which are deceptive regarding the subject and object [dichotomy], etc., such thatthere is no distinction between the Triple World and a dream, etc., for one regardsthat mere appearance as void [of intrinsic reality].43

The purpose of this exercise is to recondition one’s conception and imageof one’s body, a reconditioning that is effected via the metaphor and practiceof the mandala. Having done this, the adept then moves on to visualizehimself as 2ri Heruka, ensconced at the centre of both the universe as wellas one’s own body. To do this is to realize the true nature of the body, which forthis tradition is not exclusively limited to our physical forms, as well as the

40. For a translation of this text see Maurice Walshe, The Long Discourses of the Buddha: ATranslation of the DIgha Nikaya (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1995), 335–50. Buddhaghosaalso comments on the thirty-two elements in the sutta’s list, highlighting the foulness of theseelements. See Visuddhimagga 8.81–138, translated in Bhikku Ñanamoli, The Path of Purification(Berkeley, CA: Shambhala Press, 1976), 268–83. While it is possible that the version of this listpresent in the Yoginitantras derives not from the Mahasatipatthana Sutta but some other source,there is evidence suggesting that the Yoginitantra version derives ultimately from a Pali source,which I discuss in the introduction to my forthcoming book.41. Ati3a was a BaNgali Buddhist monk who lived from 982–1054 c.e., and journeyed to Tibetin 1040 c.e., where he played an important role in the dissemination of Buddhism there.See Alaka Chattopadhyaya, AtI3a and Tibet, reprinted ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981[1967]).42. That is, the mantra om svabhava3uddhah sarvadharmah svabhava3uddho ‘ham, “OM Allthings are naturally pure, and naturally pure am I,” which occurs at Luipa, Abhisamaya, fol.197a.43. Ati3a, AbhisamayavibhaNga, To. 1490, D rgyud ‘grel Vol. zha, fol. 189a.



true nature of the mind, which is ultimately the creator of all bodily conceptionsand social identities.

Socio-Political ConsiderationsThe above description is just a brief overview of the mandala meditativepractices that are described in very great detail in a number of the texts of thistradition. This tradition is radical in arguing that one’s sense of self is notgiven or natural, but is a conditioned phenomenon, one which can be recon-ditioned to affect alternate subjectivities, alternate senses of self, embodiment,and interdependency. This tradition operates via an attempt to recondition thepractitioner’s sense of physical embodiment. While this appears to be a givenand unalterable aspect of lived experience, apparently it is socially conditionedand thus alterable. As Mary Douglas argued,

The social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physicalexperience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it isknown, sustains a particular view of society. There is a continual exchange ofmeaning between the two kinds of bodily experience so that each reinforces thecategories of the other. As a result of this interaction the body itself is a highlyrestricted medium of expression.44

If our sense of embodiment is socially conditioned, it should not surprise usthat ritual and meditation can be deployed to recondition it, given the workthat has been done in this area by theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu andCatherine Bell. Following Bourdieu, I would like to suggest that the practicesof this tradition, which truly involve a “dialectical relationship between bodyand a space structured according to the mythico-ritual oppositions,”45 arealso productive of a distinct social structure which is reproduced every timeBuddhist masters perform large group rituals such as consecration within amandala, and strengthened whenever an individual reproduces this structuredspace within his or her own body in private meditation practice. I will beginwith a historical discussion of how these practices probably contributed tothe constitution of a particular Buddhist identity in South Asia, and then willconclude with reflection on how these also contributed to the disseminationof this tradition across cultural boundaries.

As one can see in Table 1, the body parts and deities are also correlatedto sites scattered across the Indian subcontinent and the Himalayan region.Most of these sites are not particularly associated with Buddhism, and someare connected with Hindu and Jain pilgrimage practice. The CakrasamvaraTantra exhibits numerous traces indicating its origin in a social milieu thatwas not strongly Buddhist in terms of sectarian identification. Numerousindications link it to the Kapalikas, a quasi-heretical group of 2aiva renun-ciants who were noted for their extremely unconventional and transgressive

44. Mary Douglas, Natural Symbols (London: Routledge, 1973), 65.45. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1977), 89, and also the discussion of this in Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 98ff.



practices.46 As the textual and practice traditions originating in this non-Buddhistcontext were adopted by Buddhist monastic communities during the eighthand ninth centuries, Buddhists sought to transform the tradition so as toremove the taint of heresy which was associated with it. Both the influence ofthis “heretical” group on a Buddhist tradition, as well as the efforts undertakenby this tradition to engender a distinctly Buddhist identity, can be illustratedthrough the discourse and practices centring upon the tradition’s mandala.

The passage in the Cakrasamvara Tantra that lists these twenty-four sacredsites, which are correlated to ten classes of pilgrimage places (see Table 2),47

apparently derives from Hindu scriptural sources,48 where it appears to be an earlyKapalika variant of the much better known 2akta pilgrimage route of fifty-onesacred sites.49 While the Cakrasamvara tradition never openly acknowledges

46. The case for Kapalika influence on the Buddhist Yogini Tantras, and specifically theCakrasamvara Tantra, has been made by Alex Sanderson in his “2aivism and the Tantric Tradi-tions,” in The World’s Religions, ed. Stewart Sutherland et al. (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1988),667ff. On the Kapalikas in general see David Lorenzen’s The Kapalikas and the Kalamukhas:Two Lost 2aivite Sects, 2nd rev. ed. (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1991). The Kapalika’s wereconsidered heretical by most mainstream Hindu groups, and their marginal status vis-à-vis mainstreamHindu institutions may have made them useful allies (and objects of appropriation) for TantricBuddhist groups. I am grateful to Iain Sinclair for sharing this observation with me.47. This list and its correlations also occur in several other Yoginitantras. See, for example, DavidSnellgrove, The Hevajra Tantra (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), 1:69–70.48. Alexis Sanderson argues that the passage in question, in CS chapter forty-one, derives froma “Kapalika scripture,” the Tantrasadbhava, in his “Vajrayana: Origin and Function,” in Buddhisminto the Year 2000: International Conference Proceedings (Los Angeles: Dhammakaya Foundation,1994), 94–5.49. Regarding these see D. C. Sircar’s seminal work The 2akta PIthas, 2nd rev. ed. (New Delhi:Motilal Banarsidass, 1973). There are numerous overlaps between this and the older Kapalika-Buddhist list.

Table 2 Cakrasamvara Pilgrimage Sites and the Bodhisattva Grounds†

Type of sacred site Pilgrimage site Bodhisattva ground

1. “Seat,” pItha Pulliramalaya, Jalandhara,Odiyana, Arbuda

“Joyous,” pramudita

2. “Subsidiary Seat,” upapItha Godavari, Rame3vari, Devikota, Malava

“Immaculate,” vimala

3. “Field,” ksetra Kamarupa, Odra “Illuminating,” prabhakarI4. “Subsidiary Field,” upaksetra Tri3akuni, Ko3ala “Effulgent,” arcismatI5. Chandoha KaliNga, Lampaka “Facing,” abhimukhI6. Upachandoha Kañci, Himalaya “Very-difficult-to-conquer,”

sudurjaya

7. “Meeting Places,” melapaka Pretapuri, Grhadevata “Far Reaching,” dUraNgama

8. “Subsidiary Meeting Places,”upamelapaka

Saura5tra, Suvarnadvipa “Immovable,” acala

9. “Charnel Grounds,” 3ma3ana Nagara, Sindhu “Accomplished,” sadhumatI10. “Subsidiary Charnel Grounds,”

upa3ma3anaMaru, Kuluta “Cloud of Truth,”

dharmamegha

†Source: CS ch. 50. Note that this text reverses the usual order for the fifth and sixth grounds.



its debt to the 2aiva Kapalikas, it did surreptitiously address it. It did sothrough the deployment of mythic discourse, one that, via projective inver-sion, attributed to the Hindus the very heretical qualities for which theCakrasamvara tradition was suspect in Buddhist circles.50 The myth relatesthat the Buddhist deity 2ri Heruka and his retinue, in order to discipline theHindu deity Bhairava and his evil-doing followers, manifested in the sacredsites dominated by these deities. They subdued them while simultaneouslyassuming their appearance, smeared with ash, with bone ornaments andcrescent moon emblems.51 This myth thus provides an account of why aBuddhist tradition quite literally appears with non-Buddhist accoutrements.

As Charles Taylor argued, “the self is partly constituted by its self-interpretations.”52 In other words, self-identity is constructed and reinforcedby the stories that we tell about ourselves. When group identity is at stake,these stories are invariably political insofar as they articulate difference andthus attempt to negotiate the conceptual boundaries that distinguish onegroup from another. Myths such as this represent attempts to forge a groupidentity precisely where this identity is most threatened by ambiguity, and itproceeds by an assertion of a totalizing cosmology, one which subsumes theother within a hegemonic taxonomy,53 the mandala in which the other isreduced to a subordinate position, the subdued Hindu deities trampled underthe feet of 2ri Heruka and his consort.

The Hindu deities trampled under the foot of their Buddhist usurpers is afitting symbol for the process of what Tony Stewart and Carl Ernst havetermed “appropriation,” a process “wherein the borrowed item is transformedthrough the process of incorporation, thus fundamentally altering both theappropriated and the appropriator.”54 Those who founded and elaborated theCakrasamvara tradition, in appropriating textual, ritual, and iconographicelements from a rival Hindu tradition, also transformed these elements, andconstructed an edifice of discourse to disguise this process. In addition to

50. Regarding “projective inversion” see Alan Dundes, “The Ritual Murder or Blood LibelLegend: A Study of Anti-Semitic Victimization Through Projective Inversion,” in The BloodLibel Legend, ed. Alan Dundes (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 336–76.51. The fullest version of this myth occurs in Grags-pa rGyal-mtshan’s dpal he ru ka’i byungtshul, in The Complete Works of the Great Masters of the Sa Skya Sect of the Tibetan Buddhism.Vol. 3. The Complete Works of Grags Pa Rgyal Mtshan, comp. Sod nams rgya mtsho (Tokyo: TheToyo Bunko, 1968), 298:4–300:2. This text is partially translated in Ronald Davidson’s “Reflectionson the Maheshvara Subjugation Myth: Indic Materials, Sa-skya-pa Apologetics, and the Birth ofHeruka,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 14, No. 2 (1991): 197–235.See also my translation of Indrabhuti’s telling of the myth, which is probably the earliest versionof it, in my forthcoming book.52. Taylor, Sources of the Self, 34.53. Regarding “totalizing cosmology” see Bruce Lincoln’s essay “Sacrificial Ideology andIndo-European Society,” in Death, War, and Sacrifice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991),167–75. The uses of taxonomy in the in the construction and maintenance of social hierarchy arediscussed in Lincoln’s essay “The Tyranny of Taxonomy,” in Discourse and the Construction ofSociety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 131–41.54. Tony K. Stewart and Carl W. Ernst, “Syncretism,” in South Asian Folklore: An Encyclopedia,ed. Margaret Mills et al. (London: Routledge, 2003), 587. Stewart and Ernst suggest the term“appropriation,” defined in this sense, as an alternative to the rather vague term “syncretism.” Seealso Stewart’s essay “Alternate Structures of Authority: Satya Pir on the Frontier of Bengal,” inBeyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia, ed. DavidGilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), 21–54.



composing the myth of the origin of the Cakrasamvara mandala, its adherentsalso sought to re-encode the mandala to avoid the charge of heresy. One triedand true method of re-encoding was correlating suspect entities with classicalBuddhist categories. Chapter fifty of the Cakrasamvara Tantra correlates theten types of pilgrimage places to the ten Bodhisattva Grounds (bhUmi),providing them with a normative Mahayana Buddhist association.55 Doing solinks this text and its external practices of pilgrimage and internal meditationpractices with the rich Mahayana Buddhist tradition of viewing progressalong the spiritual path as a pilgrimage, most famously exemplified in thestory of Sudhana’s journey in the GandavyUha SUtra.56

This evidently was not sufficient to fully assuage Buddhist discomfort. Afterproviding this correlation, the text concludes with the following passage:

This teaching of 2ri Heruka concerns the inner grounds. With respect to the tenperfections and grounds there is the heretical language (mlecchabhasa) of theyoginIs. The Hero’s body, by nature mobile and immobile, is in heaven, theunderworld, and in the mortal worlds. The teaching regarding Pulliramalaya and soforth is that they are positioned both outside and inside.57

The text suggests that the Buddhist assumption of non-Buddhist terminologyand practice (such as a non-Buddhist pilgrimage circuit), is an example of the“heretical language” of the yoginis which is found throughout the text. Thislanguage is not “foreign” from the perspective of the Indian cultural world; itis “foreign” or “heretical” only from the normative Buddhist perspective.Such appropriation is justified by the myths of conversion, and also here viathe claim for the omnipresence of 2ri Heruka. That is, since “the Hero’s body,by nature mobile and immobile, is in heaven, the underworld, and in the mortalworlds,” therefore it pervades all pilgrimage sites, Buddhist and non-Buddhistalike. The text, however, backs away from this claim to totalizing all-inclusiveness,limiting the “teaching of 2ri Heruka” to “the inner grounds,” which probablyreflects the likely political reality that Buddhists did not have control overmany or any of the sites listed in chapter forty-one. This may represent a casewhere the attempted conversion of South Asian sacred spaces by Buddhistswas less than successful.

Buddhists thus tended to de-emphasize the literal, “outer” interpretation ofthe mandala as a map of external pilgrimage places, and emphasized insteadan inner interpretation, which involved the re-mapping of the mandala ontothe body. This was effected ritually through meditative practices such as

55. The Bodhisattva Grounds are the stages though which a bodhisattva or aspiring Buddhamust proceed in order to reach his or her goal of becoming a completely awakened Buddha. Foran extensive analysis of these see Har Dayal, The Bodhisattva Doctrine in Buddhist SanskritLiterature, reprinted ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970 [1932]). For an illustration of thiscorrelation see Table 2.56. This was in fact a paradigmatic text for Mahayana Buddhist pilgrimage practices; seeSusan Naquin and Chün-fang Yü, Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China (Los Angeles: Universityof California Press, 1992), 5.57. CS 50.24c−26b. Note, however, that in the Tibetan text mlecchabhasam is not translatedliterally, but figuratively as “symbolic speech” (brda yi skad). See To. 368, D rgyud ‘bumVol. ka, 245b.



Luipa’s “body mandala.” This re-mapping was reinforced in Buddhist dis-course through the development of taxonomies of disciples that categorizespractitioners in accordance with the degree of sophistication of their praxis.In one such taxonomy, the Indian Buddhist scholar-saint Abhayakaraguptaposited five classes of practitioners, the lowest of which are the “childish”fools who literally practice external pilgrimage. He wrote that:

Here the “seats” (pItha), etc. such as Jalandhara are taught so that the childish mightwander the land; this is not applicable to everyone. This is because the Vajrayoginiswho are born among the brahmin, warrior (ksatriya), commoner (vai3ya), servant(3Udra) classes and among the outcastes, live also in the cities, and they also existin lands such as Tibet and China. This is not taught in the Concise Tantras, but itdoes say in the Extensive Tantras that the seats, etc. are in all countries and in allcities.58

In other words, he undermines the authority of the Indian pilgrimage circuitlisted in the text by arguing that the powerful female figures who supposedlydwell there also exist elsewhere, at other locations such as the ostensiblynon-sacred urban centres of India, as well as in other regions of the world.This text thus served two general Buddhist political interests. One was tode-emphasize a non-Buddhist pilgrimage circuit, which was to be replacedby a “superior” internal meditative praxis. The second was to facilitate thetransmission of the tradition to other cultural contexts. The mention of Tibetand China is surely not accidental, as these were major destinations for itstransmission, of which erudite Indian Buddhists such as Abhayakara wassurely aware. He thus legitimates the actual re-mapping of the sacred sites ofthe tradition to the landscape of Tibet and China, which was ongoing asAbhayakara was writing in the eleventh century, and with which he wasinvolved.59 Evidently, external pilgrimage is not a problem provided thatBuddhists are in control of the sites in question. This sort of interpretiveflexibility was an essential factor in the transformations the tradition had toundergo as it crossed boundaries. These include the boundary between theliminal renunciant groups and the mainstream monastic Buddhist communitiesin South Asia, as well as the cultural and geographic boundaries the traditioncrossed as it was transmitted across Asia.

To return to the issue of identity, the mandala, as an indexical symbol, permitscross-referentiality between the bodies of individual practitioners, the cosmos,and the social world, in turn effecting the production of distinct subjectivitiesand the inextricably related, hierarchically organized social spaces. Tambiah’snotion of the indexical symbol is, as he argues,

58. Abhayakaragupta, 2rIsamputatantrarajatIkamnayamañjarI-nama, To. 1198, D rgyud ‘grelVol. cha, 152a.59. Abhayakaragupta has been dated to the late eleventh and early twelfth century. Accordingthe Tibetan historical tradition Abhayakara was an instructor of the Tibetan rMa Lotsawa, whostudied in India and Nepal at this time. See George N. Roerich, trans. The Blue Annals by gZhon-nudPal (1949), 2nd ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976), 219. See also Elliot Sperling, “Rtsa-miLo-tsa-ba Sangs-rgyas grags and the Tangut Background to Early Mongol-Tibetan Relations,” inTibetan Studies, ed. Per Kvaerne (Oslo: Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture,1994), 2:808, note 5, and also Bireshwar Prasad Singh, “A Tibetan Account of Abhayakara-gupta,” Journal of the Bihar Research Society 54 (1968): 179–98.



useful for showing how important parts of a ritual enactment have a symbolic oriconic meaning associated with the cosmological plane of content, and at the sametime how those same parts are existentially or indexically related to participants inthe ritual, creating, affirming or legitimating their social positions and powers.60

That is, the practices associated with the mandala, which include not onlythe internal meditations but also the public rituals of consecration, pilgrimage,and so forth, constitute what Bourdieu termed a “social space,” that is, “struc-tures of differences in symbolic capital,”61 which can be articulated in termsof the principles of hierarchization through which the mandala is structured.Upon entering the mandala to receive consecration, an individual is formallyinitiated via ritual representations into a social space in which he or she hasalready been informally immersed as a candidate. In this space, as Bourdieunoted, “what does exist is a space of relationships that is as real as a geo-graphical space, in which movements are paid for in work, in efforts andabove all in time.”62 Movement within the mandala, i.e., from the peripheryto the centre, where is ensconced the guru,63 is carefully regulated, and theseregulations are enforced via the samaya commitments to which a candidatemust pledge him or herself. Subsequent exercises, such as meditations inwhich one reproduces the mandala within one’s body, or envisions its presencethroughout one’s physical environment, serve to reinforce this social space,and thus one’s identity as an individual who is a part of it. Among otherthings, these bodies of practices are socializing disciplines, which reproducea distinct social order, namely, the guru-centred social hierarchy of certainBuddhist communities, and yield as well as distinct individual identities. Thatis, they yield not only different conceptions of the person but also differentconstitutions of the person. These, in turn, have definite and undeniable politicalconsequences, which include the reported instances of abuse committed by thegurus and lamas who are positioned in power through these very practices.64

This is an issue with which Buddhists will have to come to terms as they continueto disseminate these traditions in the contemporary world.

60. Tambiah, “Performative Approach to Ritual,” 156.61. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 32.62. Pierre Bourdieu, “The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups,” Theory and Society 14,No. 6 (1985): 725.63. Tantric ritual centres upon the figure of the guru or lama, who ritually assumes the roleof the central deity around whom the mandala is hierarchically organized. He thus becomes thecentral figure not only in a cosmic hierarchy symbolized by the mandala, but a social hierarchyas well, one which mobilizes and brings under his control significant economic resources inTantric Buddhist communities.64. With respect to the Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and troubling reports concerning abusescommitted by lamas who played leading roles in its dissemination to North America see JuneCampbell’s Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism (New York:George Braziller, 1996) and also Jeffrey Kripal’s “Inside-out, Outside-in: Existential Place andAcademic Practice in the Study of North American Guru Traditions,” Religious Studies Review25, No. 3 (1999): 233–38.

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