The Buddhist Tantras is an excellent and clear presentation of the historical development, contents, and dissemination of Buddhist tantras across Asia. While demonstrating a command of the relevant sources, Gray has succeeded in making a complex material accessible to a broad variety of readers. Those teaching courses on Buddhist tantras will find this book to be an essential course reading."
Vensa A. Wallace, Professor of South Asian and Inner Asian Religious Traditions, University of California, Santa Barbara
The tantric Buddhist traditions emerged in India beginning in the seventh century CE and flourished there until the demise of Buddhism in India circa the fifteenth century. The central scriptures for these traditions were generally designated by the term tantra. Tantras are works that purport to relate secret teachings of the buddhas that enable awakening in as short as one lifetime. As such they are understood by their advocates to be the inspired speech of a buddha, and hence worthy of inclusion in the canons of Buddhist traditions. This volume provides a detailed introduction to the Buddhist tantras by exploring their key teachings as well as the history of their interpretation and their connection to traditions of ritual and contemplative practices.
It also introduces the classification of the tantras and their place in Buddhist scriptural canons. It suggests their transgressive rhetoric and practices served an important role in Buddhist tantric traditions, which may be why they persist despite the challenges they have presented to the dissemination of these traditions.
The Buddhist tantras are one of the least understood bodies of scripture-with good reason: they are deliberately obscure to maintain the secrecy that traditionally surrounds the teachings and practices of tantric Buddhist traditions. Tantric Buddhist traditions are conceived as a distinct path to awakening, the goal of Buddhist traditions, and it is usually termed either the "adamantine path" (vajrayana) or the "mantric path" (mantrayana), the latter highlighting a key feature, that is, mantras, or sacred formulas. which are recited in tantric ritual and contemplative practices. While they are part of the larger "Greater Path" Mahayana Buddhist tradition, the Buddhist tantric traditions are, more accurately, offshoots of this larger tradition. They accept the basic premises of Mahayana Buddhism but claim to possess secret teachings that enable awakening in as short as one lifetime.
This volume will attempt to introduce this genre to interested readers, and it presupposes no prior understanding of Buddhism. As a result, the volume will use the English language whenever possible, translating and explaining Buddhist titles and technical terms when they are first introduced, excepting only those Buddhist terms that have entered English and are generally well understood, such as buddha, mantra, karma, and so forth. To best introduce the tantras, many passages from tantric scriptures and commentaries will be included and translated into English in the clearest manner possible. On rare occasions Buddhist terms from other languages, such as a Sanskrit, are used, due to the ambiguity of their meaning in context, but the reason for this and the possible range of the term's meanings will be explained.
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