TANTRA

Tantra is the culmination of trends long present in Buddhism. Buddhist Tantra originated in the frontier lands of classical India, sometime during the sixth century AD, where it flourished, both in the far northwest and northeast of India. In the far northwest, it was influenced by Brahmanism. And northeast of India–in Bengal, Orissa, and Assam–Tantra was influenced by local magic and occult practices; Prajna-paramita ideas were combined in Tantra, uniting metaphysics with ritual, magical practices. Magic was allowed in Buddhism; the early Pali Canon contained spells, for instance, that offered protection from such dangers as snakebite. Magic spells, dharani, were also practiced in the Mahayana sutras as early as 200 AD These spells were thought to epitomize the doctrine of the sutras, giving those who repeated them a shortcut to enlightenment. By the seventh century, Buddhism borrowed the Hindu idea of intrinsically efficacious sounds, such as AUM, and created a set of magical syllables, each linked with a major figure in the Tantric pantheon and with a center or chakra in the meditator’s body and mystic physiology. (Robinson, Buddhist Religion, p. 116-123) Sexual union is often used as the great metaphor of Tantric transcendence, Kundalini and Shiva joined, there being many such yogic practices to thus over come duality.