Yoga Tantras

Overview

Tantras of the Yoga class based mainly on meditational practices, including those emphasizing skillful means followed by those emphasizing wisdom (Toh 479-493).

The Yoga Tantras are the highest of the three groups of so-called “outer” tantras. They are characterized by consecration and ritual, the detailed practice of deity yoga, the deployment of a fivefold maṇḍala structure, and the use of mantras and mudrās.

Compared to the two lower groups, the Yoga Tantras place more emphasis on the cultivation of internal meditative practices than on external, ritual purity. These internal practices combinate the relative, the method or skillful means (upāya, thabs) of the practice of visualizing oneself as the deity, with the ultimate, the state of non-conceptual wisdom (prajñā, shes rab) inseparable from the deity’s appearances.

Rather than the three families featuring in some tantras of the lower groups, the Yoga Tantras make use of maṇḍalas in which all five of the families found in the higher tantras are present, presided over by the Tathāgata family. The principal deity at the center is therefore Vairocana, or Mahāvairocana as the primordial buddha.

History

From a historical point of view, the Yoga Tantras are seen as forming the earliest cohesive corpus of texts to emerge from a mature system of tantric practice in India in the late seventh century ᴄᴇ, even if their categorization as “Yoga Tantra” only came a century or so later.

Early though they may be compared to the Mahāyoga and Yoganiruttara systems, the Yoga Tantras represent the last developments of tantra in India that were transmitted to Central Asia and China by Vajrabodhi and Amoghavajra in the eighth century, and subsequently to Japan, where they became and remain influential. Traces of their practice can be found as widely as Sri Lanka and parts of Southeast Asia.

Several of the Yoga Tantras were first transmitted and translated in Tibet during the early, imperial period of translation in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Although some sections seem to have been kept hidden or left untranslated, these tantras were perhaps more openly propagated than the Mahāyoga tantras introduced in the same period. Among other reasons, this may have been due to the funerary rites they provided.

During the later dissemination period under the patronage of the kings of Western Tibet, a new transmission lineage of the Yoga Tantras was introduced from Kashmir, and along with some newly translated works and commentaries some of the tantras translated earlier were revised, replaced, or supplemented by new versions, notably by Rinchen Zangpo and several Indian scholars.

Many of the elements and features of tantric practice first found in the Yoga Tantras seem to have been adopted and further developed in the tantra cycles belonging to the higher, later doxographical categories of Mahāyoga or Yoganiruttara, which were not taken up in China but only transmitted and studied in Tibet and Mongolia.

The Works in This Section and Their Classification

The tantras in this section tend to be composite works with several subdivisions, some of which are briefly detailed in the entries in the Degé Kangyur catalog (dkar chag).¹

The relatively small number of tantras of this class (fifteen, Toh 479-493) are subdivided into two main groups: those emphasizing method or skillful means, and those emphasizing wisdom. Two additional works not included in this section of the Kangyur are often taken as belonging to it from certain perspectives.

I. Eight tantras emphasizing skillful means (thabs gtso bor ston pa’i rgyud)

• The root tantra (rtsa rgyud):
  • The Tattva­saṃgraha (Toh 479), the main tantra of this group and an important early tantric work very influential in the development of tantra in China and Japan as well as in Tibet. It comprises an introduction, a main body with four parts, and an appended section containing the supplementary and further supplementary tantras. Among other significant elements it narrates the subjugation of Maheśvara (or Mahādeva) by Vajrapaṇi, a keystone of the tantric literature as a whole.
• Three explanatory tantras (bshad rgyud), all translated in the later translation period:
  • The Vajra­śekhara (Toh 480), the explanations in which cover the whole of the Tattvasaṃgraha, is nevertheless though to be incomplete;
  • The Sarva­rahasya (Toh 481), which covers the first part (the Vajra­dhātu section) of the Tattva­saṃgraha’s main body; and
  • The Trailokyavijaya (Toh 482), which covers the similarly titled second part of the Tattva­saṃgraha’s main body.
• The supporting tantras (cha mthun gyi rgyud):
  • The Sarva­durgati­pari­śodhana, often referred to in Tibetan as the “purification tantra” (sbyong rgyud) and widely used in funeral rites, represented by three texts:
    • Toh 483, the main part of the eighth century translation of the Sarva­durgati­pari­śodhana;
    • Toh 484, a brief section from the same eighth century translation that initially had been deliberately omitted due to its content detailing the rites for “coercive activities” (mngon spyod kyi las); and
    • Toh 485, the thirteenth century translation of the same work (in the rather different form it had taken in India some five centuries later).
  • Toh 486, the Supratiṣṭha­tantra.

II. Seven tantras emphasizing wisdom (shes rab gtso bor ston pa’i rgyud), a tantric sub-corpus of the Prajñā­pāramitā literature known as the Paramādya cycle, of which the different works share similar content in different form, and mostly feature Vairocana and Vajrapaṇi as the principal interlocutors. The first five of these works are closely related and are often considered to be expanded or contracted versions of The Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred and Fifty Lines, nominally represented here as Toh 489. The parallels of these tantras are of particular importance in the Shingon tradition of Japan and its Chinese antecedents.

• The two parts into which the Tibetan translation of the Śrī­paramādya itself is divided, being by different translators, although in the Indian textual tradition the work was seen as a single text:
  • Toh 487, the initial section of the Paramādi­kalpa; and
  • Toh 488, the (considerably longer) section consisting mainly of ritual prescriptions.
• A set of three works, two identified by their titles as Prajñā­pāramitā sūtras and one closely related to them:
  • Toh 489, The Principles of the Perfection of Wisdom in One Hundred and Fifty Lines (the Prajñā­pāramitā­naya­śata­pañca­śatikā or Adhyardha­śatikā), a Prajñā­pāramitā text also found as Toh 17 in the Perfection of Wisdom section of the Kangyur; the existence of seven successive Chinese translations of this work suggests that it may have evolved from a shorter non-tantric version;
  • Toh 490, the Vajra­maṇḍālaṃkāra, an extended Paramādya version featuring Mañjuśrī rather than Vajrapaṇi; and
  • Toh 491, the The Twenty-Five Entrances to the Perfection of Wisdom (Pañca­viṃśatikā­prajñā­pāramitā­mukha), a short Prajñā­pāramitā text featuring part of the content of Toh 489, and also found as Toh 20 in the Perfection of Wisdom section of the Kangyur.
• Two further works in this category:
  • Toh 492, the Guhyālaṃkāra­vyūha­tantra; and
  • Toh 493, the Guhya­maṇi­tilaka­sūtra.

III. Two tantras also sometimes classified as Yoga Tantras‍

• Toh 360, the Mañjuśrī­nāma­saṃgīti (’jam dpal mtshan brjod), placed in the Degé Kangyur with the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, but interpreted by some commentaries as a Yoga Tantra; and
• Toh 466, the Māyā­jāla­tantra (sgyu ’phrul dra ba), also placed more usually with the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras.

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Bibliography and Further Reading

Works in Tibetan

Butön Rinchen Drup (bu ston rin chen grub). rnal ’byor rgyud kyi rgya mtshor ’jug pa’i gru gzings. In Collected Works of Bu-ston, Part 11 (da). Lhasa: Zhol Printing House, 1990, 1a.1-92b.2; photographic reproduction Delhi: International Academy of Indian Culture, 1968.

Kongtrül Yönten Gyatso (skong sprul yon tan rgya mtsho). “rnal ’byor rgyud kyi rnam gzhag bshad pa.” In shes bya kun khyab, pp. 595–600. Beijing: mi rigs dpe skrun khang [Minorities Publishing House], 2002. English translation in Jamgön Kongtrul, 2005.

Situ Paṇchen Chökyi Jungné (si tu pan chen chos kyi ’byung gnas). dkar chag [Degé Kangyur Catalog]. Toh 4568. Degé Kangyur, vol. 103 (dkar chag, la k+sh+mI), folios 1.a–172.a. 

Works in English

Astley-Kristensen, Ian. The Rishukyō: The Sino-Japanese Tantric Prajñā­pāramitā in 150 Verses (Amoghavajra’s Version). Buddhica Britannica, Series Continua III. Tring: Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1991.

Jamgön Kongtrul; Guarisco, Elio, and Ingrid McLeod (trs.). Systems of Buddhist Tantra. Treasury of Knowledge Series, Book Six, Part Four. Ithaca and Boulder: Snow Lion, 2005.

Tomabechi, Toru (ed.). Adhyardha­śatikā Prajñā­pāramitā: Sanskrit and Tibetan texts. Beijing-Vienna: China Tibetology Publishing House and Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2009.

Weinberger, Steven Neal. The Significance of Yoga Tantra and the Compendium of Principles (Tattva­saṃgraha Tantra) within Tantric Buddhism in India and Tibet. University of Virginia, PhD dissertation, 2003.