Roger R. Jackson

Ambiguous sexuality: Imagery and interpretation in tantric Buddhism

A critic of the thesis that asceticism and celibacy are central to mysticism might well turn for support to the Buddhist and Hindu tantras, whose practices often are assumed to involve ‘sex in the service of enlightenment’. I will attempt to show that the issue is not nearly so simple, by demonstrating the ambiguity of sexual imagery in Buddhist tantric texts and the historical ambivalence of the tantric tradition itself regarding the place and meaning of sexuality. After presenting three highly encoded ‘performance-songs’ (caryāgīti) of the Indian Buddhist adept Kānha (11th century), I will discuss the nature of interpretation in the tantric tradition, then the various ways in which the sexual imagery in Kānhas performance songs may be read. There appear to be at least four possible levels of interpretation: (1) literal, where sexuality is overt, (2) symbolic, where the surface sexuality is a metaphor for certain meditative achievements, (3) ‘higher’ literal, where the symbolized meditative achievements...

The Tibetan Tshogs Zhing (field of assembly): General notes on its function, structure and contents

Abstract The tshogs zhing, or field of assembly, is an important subject in Tibetan religious art. Typically, it focuses on ones own guru, seated at the crest of a great tree, with the gurus preceding him ranged in the sky above him and the deities of ones tradition ranged on the tree below him. The tshogs zhing is an object of visualisation in Tibetan guru yoga practices, and serves as both a ‘map’ of the Tibetan sacred cosmos and as an index of the gurus crucial role in the tradition as a mediator between the practitioner on the one hand and the diachronic lineage of teachers and the synchronie pantheon of deities, on the other.

How Mystical is Buddhism

Beyond Language and Reason: Mysticism in Indian Buddhism Ilkka Pyysiainen, 1993 Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum 66 Helsiniki, Sumolainen Tiedeakatemia