Author: David Gordon White
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 640
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8120817788
Description
The first book to bring together texts from the entire range of Tantric phenomena, Tantra in Practice continues the Princeton Reading in Religions series. The breadth of work included, geographic areas spanned, and expert scholarship highlighting each piece serve to expand our understanding of what it means to practice Tantra.
Tantra is an Asian body of beliefs and practices that seeks to channel the divine energy that grounds the universe, in creative and liberating ways. The subsequent chapters reflect the wide geographical and temporal scope of Tantra by examining thirty-six texts from China, India, Japan, Nepal and Tibet, ranging from the seventh century to the present day, and representing the full range of Tantric experience – Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, and even Islamic.
Each text has been chosen and translated , often for the first time, by an international expert in the field who also provides detailed background material. Students of Asian religions and general readers alike will find the book rich and informative.
The book includes plays, transcribed interviews, poetry, parodies, inscriptions, instructional texts, scriptures, philosophical conjectures, dreams, and astronomical speculations, each text illustrating one of the diverse traditions and practices of Tantra. Thus, the nineteenth-century Indian Buddhist Garland of Gems, a series of songs, warns against the illusion of appearance by referring to bees, yogurt, and the fire of Malaya Mountain; while fourteenth-century Chinese Buddhist manuscripts detail how to prosper through the Seven Stars of the Northern Dipper by burning incense, making offerings to scriptures, and chanting incantations.
In a transcribed conversation, a modern Hindu priest in Bengal candidly explains how he serves the black goddess Kali and feeds temple skulls lentils, wine, or rice. A seventieth-century Nepalese Hindu praise-poem hammered into the golden doors to the temple of the Goddess Taleju lists a king’s faults and begs her forgiveness and grace. An introduction accompanies each text, identifying its period and genre, discussing the history and influence of the work, and identifying points of particular interest of difficulty.
Contents
Preface
Notes on Transliteration
Contents by Tradition
Contents by Country
Contributors
Introduction
GURUS AND ADEPTS
The Tantric Guru
King Kunji’s Banquet
Interviews with a Tantric Kali Priest: Feeding Skulls in the Town of Sacrifice
A Parody of the Kapalikas in the Mattavilasa
A Trance Healing Session with Mataji
KINGS AND PRIESTS
The Consecration of the Monastic Compound at Mount Koya by Kukai
Praises of the Drunken Peacocks
Percepts for an Emperor
DEVOTEES AND DEITIES
Raising Snakes in Bengal: The Use of Tantric Imagery in Sakta Poetry Contests
The Wedding of Siva and the Goddess in the Kulalikamnaya
An Advertised Secret: The Goddess Taleju and the King of Kathmandu
Tantric Rites in Antal’s Poetry
TRADITIONS IN TRANSIT AND CONFLICT
The Jain Monk Jinapati Suri Gets the Better of a Nath Yogi
Longchenpa and the Possession of the Dakinis
The Anonymous Agama Prakasa: Preface to a Nineteenth-Century Gujarati Polemic
Conversation between Guru Hasan Kabiruddin and Jogi Kanipha: Tantra Revisited by
The Isma’ili Preachers
TANTRIC PATHS
Emptiness and Dust: Zen Dharma Transmission Rituals
The Necklace of Immortality: A Seventeenth-Century Vaisnava Sahajiya Text
The Tibetan Practice of the Mantra Path according to Lce-sgom-pa
The Ocean of the Heart: Selections from the Kularnava Tantra
Tantric Buddhism and Chinese Thought in East Asia
RITES & TECHNIQUES
Worship of the Ladies of the Dipper
The Wisdom Mother and the Good Tradition
Worship of Bell-Ears the Great Hero, a Jain Tantric Deity
Secret Yantra and Erotic Display for Hindu Temples
The Six Rites of Magic
The Worship of Kali According to the Todala Tantra
Ritual Manual for the Protective Fire Offering Devoted to Manjusri
The Purification of the Body
YOGA AND MEDITATION
A Tantric Meditation on Emptiness
Japanese Tantra, the Tachikawa-ryu, and Ryobu Shinto
Assorted Topics of the Great Completeness by Dodrupchen III
On the Seal of Sambhu
Vajrayoga in the Kalacakra Tantra
Jain Tantra: Divinatory and Meditative Practices in the Twelfth-Century Yogasutra
Cheating Death
Glossary of Foreign Terms
Index