Chapter Three: The Madhura Disposition in India's Inner (Esoteric) Religious Disciplines

After the Blessed Buddha's nirvana, a fierce dispute arose among his followers over the true purport of the Tathagata's words. Assemblies or “councils” of Buddhist followers therefore began to be held. The first council met at Rajagriha, capital of Magadha. People were not satisfied with it, however, and a second council was held at Kaushambi. There the Buddhist Sangha divided into two principal groups: (1) the Sthaviravadins and (2) the Mahasanghikas. The rigorously conservative monks who would accept no change whatever in the Vinaya became Sthaviravadins, or Theravadins. Those who accepted necessary alterations, revisions, and reforms—and who were greater in number—became known as the Mahasanghikas. Thus branches and sub-branches gradually arose in Buddhism, each with its own separate camp.¹

Yāna means a chariot or vehicle. Each of these paths of practice praised its own vehicle and proclaimed its distinctive, invincible, and unfailing power to accomplish the final goal.

The Mahasanghikas disregarded the Buddha's “human body” and raised him above the human realm into the divine. Later still, the Vetullavadins explicitly accepted that the Buddha had never come to this earthly world at all and had never taught here. Had the matter ended there, no great harm would have followed. They also held that sexual union could be practised when undertaken with a single intention. It must therefore be accepted, without doubt, that this gave rise to Tantric Buddhism, or Vajrayana.

We must nevertheless consider the subject carefully: why and how did esoteric practice enter Buddhism, and what caused the emergence and development of the Vajrayana branch?

Study of the Tripitakas makes clear that the seeds of Tantra and mantra were already present within the Buddha's original teaching. Even the Sthaviravadins accepted that the Tathagata possessed many supernatural powers. They hold that Buddhism provides equally for welfare in this world and the next. Shantarakshita's view is that the Buddha himself taught Tantric subjects such as mantra-dhāraṇīs for obtaining wisdom, health, prosperity, and other benefits in this life.² The Guhyasamāja Tantra also records that, while instructing his followers, the Tathagata—