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

—said that when he had appeared as Dipankara Buddha and Kashyapa Buddha, he had not given Tantric instruction because his audiences lacked the capacity to receive it. Two stories in the Vinaya Piṭaka describe supernatural attainments. The point is that the current of Tantra and mantra in Buddhism began with the Buddha himself; it is not a later interpolation.¹

Mahayana appeared as a liberal, reforming, and revolutionary branch. It developed first into Mantrayana and then into Vajrayana. Mantrayana is the gentle state; Vajrayana is its fierce form. The Pala king Ramapala installed images of Avalokiteshvara and Mahatara in the great monastery at Jagaddala. Mokshakara Gupta, a celebrated logician at Jagaddala, wrote the well-known Tarka-śāstra. His brother Shubhakaragupta wrote a commentary upon a Tantra entitled Siddhaikavīra Tantra, while Dharmakara, who lived at the same monastery, translated Krishnacharya's Saṃvara-vyākhyā. The implication is that the attention of Buddhist practitioners and scholars was gradually drawn with special force toward Tantric practice.

No great ingenuity is needed to discover the psychological cause. Yogacara certainly satisfied popular curiosity for a time, but the intricate knots and profound doctrines of Vijnanavada exhausted the human mind. People became weary of them and began to flee. They wanted something through which the greatest possible happiness could be obtained in the shortest possible time. This particular tendency gave birth to Vajrayana. Its images of Buddhist gods and goddesses—especially Vajrasattva and Mahatara—are found joined in sexual union. This may also be described as Shakta influence upon Buddhism.

As stated above, the popular form of religion flourished richly in Mahayana. Ordinary people cannot delight in abstruse puzzles, doctrines, and mysteries. They need a concrete support and a method or system of religious conduct that can be practised naturally while they continue to develop. Mahayana paid particular attention to making religion and practice accessible to all. Consequently, the conception of innumerable gods and goddesses, together with mantra, recitation, worship, ritual service, and the like, entered it with ease. A distinct branch of Mahayana emerged as mantra-naya, or Mantrayana. Mahayana thus came to have two branches: (1) the Way of the Perfections and (2) the Way of Mantra.