VAJRAYANA SCHOOL – SpiritualNet

VAJRAYĀNA Skt., lit. “Diamond Vehicle”; a school of Buddhism” that arose, primarily in northeast and northwest India, around the middle of the first millennium. It developed out of the teachings of the Mahāyāna and reached Tibet, China, and Japan from Central Asia and India along with the Mahāyāna. This movement arose from a need to extend the worldview of Buddhism to inveterate “magical” practices and is characterized by a psychological method based on highly developed ritual practices. The Vajrayāna had its origin in small groups of practitioners gathered around a master (guru). The accessibility of Vajrayāna through written texts (Tantra) as well as its assimilation by monastic institutions was a relatively late development in this movement. Because of the use of certain sacred syllables (mantra), Tibetan Buddhism also refers to the Vajrayāna as the Mantrayāna.

The teachings of the Vajrayāna formed an esoteric tradition that combined elements of yoga and of the ancient Indian nature religion with original Buddhist thought. Decisive influences came from northwest India that led to a pronounced symbology of light. This strongly affected the sexual cult from the northeast that determined the iconography of the Vajrayāna.

The Vajrayāna was initially transmitted only orally, but later, between the 6th and 10th centuries, coherent doctrinal systems developed. Among its most important written works are the Guhyasamāja-tantra and the Kālachakra-tantra. The formulations found in these texts respectively document the beginning and the end of this phase. Along with the complex writings of the Tantras, the spiritual songs of the mahāsiddhas on the experience of mahāmudrā are also important vehicles of the tradition. These teachings became firmly established as part of Buddhism around the time it was being transmitted to Tibet. In Tibetan Buddhism an understanding of the prajñāpāramitā teachings as they were taught by Nāgārjuna and Asanga is seen as a precondition for mastery of Vajrayāna methods. Thus the prajñāpāramitā teachings are also called the “causal vehicle” and the Vajrayāna teachings, the “fruition [effect] vehicle.”

A decisive role is played in the Vajrayāna by initiations, given by an authorized master that empower the practitioner for meditative practice connected with a specific deity and also necessarily place him or her under an obligation to carry out such practice. Among the techniques transmitted in such initiations, which have as their goal the sublimation of the individual as a totality, are recitation of mantras, contemplation of mandalas, and special ritual gestures (mudrā).

For Vajrayāna Buddhists, the elimination of all duality —the experience of fundamental unity in enlightenment— is symbolized by the vajra.