Vajrayana

Approach

Vajrayana accepts the Mahayana goal — buddhahood for the sake of all beings — and claims a swifter means. Where the bodhisattva path is described as requiring incalculable aeons, tantric method holds that it can be accomplished far faster by working directly with the practitioner's body, speech and mind as already possessing the buddha nature to be realised.

The characteristic methods are mantra recitation, elaborate visualisation of deities and their mandalas, ritual gesture, and yogas working with the subtle body. Practice requires initiation from a qualified teacher, and the relationship with that teacher is central and binding in a way it is not elsewhere in Buddhism.

Deities and imagery

Vajrayana employs a large pantheon of buddhas, bodhisattvas, wrathful protectors and consorts, visualised in precise iconographic form. The practitioner identifies with the deity rather than petitioning it, which distinguishes the practice from devotion as usually understood.

Imagery includes wrathful and sexual forms that have often been misunderstood outside the tradition. Their interpretation within it is symbolic and technical — wrath as the energy of compassion directed against obstacles, union as the inseparability of wisdom and method — though the historical relationship between these readings and earlier practice is a live scholarly question.

Origins and texts

Buddhist tantras appear in India from about the sixth or seventh century CE and were developed at the great monastic universities alongside conventional scholastic study. The siddhas, unconventional adepts outside monastic settings, are also central to the tradition's account of itself.

Transmission to Tibet occurred in two main phases, and the Tibetan canon preserves an enormous tantric literature, much of whose Sanskrit originals are lost.

Distribution

Vajrayana is dominant in Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, Ladakh and Nepal, survives in Japan as Shingon, and had a substantial presence in Indonesia and in eastern India under the Palas before Buddhism's decline there.