Sadguru Exclusive: Tantric Buddhism - No. 2 (of 6)

Sadhguru Exclusive

Tantric Buddhism: How Tantrics from India merged Tantra with Bon to create Tantric Buddhism

11 minutes - 1998

Location of talk: Isha Yoga Center - Volunteers Meet




**********


Definitions to help with the context of this transcript:


Sadhguru uses the word Occult in a different way than does JMG or western tradition teachers. When he uses the word Occult he always means any superpowers that depend upon manipulation of various pranic energies in specific ways to get things done. Occult is still within the realm of the physical. A very subtle physical but still physical. A lot of rituals and ceremonial magic may depend upon these same rarefied, subtle pranic energies to get things done so there's a possibility in that sense that what western traditions call Occult and what the Yogic and Tantric Dharma traditions call Occult may coincide.




****Transcript follows****


Q from male audience member:


Namaskaram Sadhguru. One of the great sages, Naropa or Milarepa, I don't know who it is but it is said that they have left their position as the chief abbot of a monastery and pursued the path of tantra. Could you please throw some light on that? And...and what is the significance of Dakini...Dakini?


Sadhguru A:

[Laughs and smiles]


Tibet...the Bon religion of Tibet was largely very rudimentary occult.



Later on Buddhism made inroads into Tibet but the Tibetan people were....(pauses)...found Buddhism too tasteless because Gautama largely devised Buddhism for monks.



[Video cuts to show hordes of red-robed, shaved-head Tibetan Buddhist monks]


If you had left it to Gautama, the Buddha - if he succeeded he would have ended the humanity because he would have turned the whole world into monks.


In the very nature of things he cannot succeed, that's different. But that's his intention because life is seen as dukkha or suffering. So his intention is, if you do not take a body then he can fix you. He can release you. So he wants to release all life ultimately. Well, that's his intention but you want the....you want to do it when they're alive but he evolved a strategy if we convert the whole world into monks and the next generation doesn't take on a body, I can dismantle them. So that's why he said, "I will wait. I will wait till the last one crosses the line and dismantle all of them." But that strategy in its very nature cannot work on the planet and it did not.



So the Tibetans because they came from a culture which was steeped in the occult, very rudimentary occult but still occult. They are looking for magic, they're not looking for meditation.



These people are not looking for meditation, they were looking for magic, they want things to happen. So Buddhism spread and they took to Buddhism but they could not give up their occult, they were waiting for something to happen and the right things happened for them. In the sense, the Islamic invasions in India, when they came the first things that they attacked is the spiritual centers. The gurus and the spiritual aspirants were slaughtered in public and burnt and whatever, terrible things were done. So those who could leave, when the persecution started widespread, those who could leave - they left.



Where to go? The safest place was to go into the mountains. So some went into the Indian part of the Himalayas. You can't really make much of a life in Indian part of Himalayas because it's steep and slopey. Others went further into the Tibetan plateau which is a huge plateau. For those of you a whole...I mean generally most people on the planet think Tibet is some small, little place. No, it's a huge plateau, ok? It's as large as the whole of northern plains of Ame...India, ok? Like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Bengal...if you put everything together how large it is - it is that big and more. Tibet is a huge plateau you can drive a thousand kilometers and still not get anywhere.


[video cuts to show car driving endless miles through the plateau of Tibet]



So this large plateau, they moved in and immediately the teachers or the people who went there who were of a certain stature and power and capability; so naturally they gathered people and they were not the kind - they have no problem with anything. So they did not replace Buddha with something else, they added Rakinis and Dakinis and everybody to Buddha.


[video cuts to paintings of Tibetan deities, Rakinis, Dakinis, etc.]


Whether he likes it or not, they have no distinction. In their mind, this man who is simply meditative wants to...and lives as a monk and Dakini, who is completely of a different nature, they have no issues with both, they just get them together because they have no distinction like that. So they added up all the goddesses that they had to Buddhist way of life - which in principle, in Buddhist principle it doesn't fit in.


But in the tantric principle everything fits in because there's no principle. The principle is of unity, the principle is of non-discrimination. So they simply added gods and goddesses and saints and devils and all kinds that they were using in their life in their way of doing things to it. And this came in handy for the Tibetan people who were looking for magic Dakini. He's more magical than Gautama the Buddha - he is too straight.


So Tibetan Buddhism is hardly Buddhism, is hardly the Buddhism that Gautama taught because Gautama's Buddhism is entirely meditative. No ritual at all. Because he witnessed at his time, India had come to a place...at least...certain communities in India had come to a place where ritual was the most dominant thing because ritual made money. Meditation does not make money, you need to understand this. If you teach somebody to meditate, he'll close his eyes and meditate but if you conduct a ritual for him, every time he has to come back and it makes money. So it became a huge force, and once it is making money, exploitation begins - all kinds of people doing all kinds of things - which is still happening.



So ritual was misused in so many different ways. So when he saw this he became anti-ritual, no ritual of any kind, only meditativeness, completely internalized or in other words - he's choosing yoga. All aspects of tantra - eliminated, because he wants yoga, so that there is no misuse because he's not thinking of spiritual process for a handful of people...he is thinking of spiritual process for an entire population. So his vision made him become totally meditative, eliminating all aspects of ritual.



But today if you look at Tibetan Buddhism it has more ritual than India has (Sadhguru laughs). India has given up ritual but Tibetan Buddhism has taken up ritual, elaborate rituals. Gautama will spin in his grave because he was against all ritual. So Tibetan Buddhism is more tantricism, somehow they hybridized it with Buddhism which is entirely (Sadhguru shakes head and laughs)....two things that they cannot mate, they put together somehow and it's going on.


[Video cuts to a famous Tibetan painting of the famed Tibetan yogi Milarepa]



Sadhguru continues:


So Milarepa and others, they come from the Bon tradition but when they saw the Indian teachers coming in what they found was, they were of entirely different level of sophistication and competence, so they naturally embraced those things. Many of the known Tibetan masters of the day...of those days...all made trips to India to learn further. This is constantly spoken in the Tibetan traditions that they all made trips constantly. Today everybody is making trips to Tibet because....(closes eyes)...nothing much very alive, very little left but people are kind of little excited about this mixture of very rigid, morally very rigid Buddhism and culturally very loose tantricism. They can't come to terms with it but at the same time it excites them.


It's a...a certain, it's very fashionable...hybridization is very fashionable, always.