In Tibetan tantric Buddhism, the image of the snake trapped in a bamboo tube is more than a vivid proverb. It functions as a doctrinal warning: once a student enters the tantric path, there is no lateral escape. One either goes upward toward awakening or downward toward failure and “vajra hell.” Teachers have used this image to describe the uncompromising nature of samaya, the vows that bind a student to the guru, the deity, and the tantric methods themselves.¹
What is striking is how explicitly the tradition frames tantra as irreversible and high-stakes, and how rarely that stark truth is communicated to Western beginners before they agree to the vows that supposedly make the tube snap shut behind them. This mismatch between traditional warning and Western presentation is not a minor detail; it shapes the entire experience of Vajrayāna in modern contexts.
When the Warning Arrives Too Late
Many longtime practitioners have reported that the “snake in the tube” metaphor is introduced only after they have taken empowerments, established loyalty to the teacher, and accepted vows they did not fully understand. In one account, students were told after receiving advanced teachings that they were now like snakes [in a tube] with no side exit, and that questioning or leaving the guru’s authority carried dire karmic consequences.² Once framed in these terms, the student is no longer encountering tantra freely. The imagery becomes a retrospective justification for total commitment and an interpretive trap that discourages reevaluation, dissent or disengagement.
This sequencing matters. Warnings given after the student is already inside the tube are not warnings at all; they function as a mechanism of control. Sadly, it’s not just empty scaremongering to get the student to do whatever the teacher wants. The teacher can play a part in destroying the student if he wishes.
Western students, however, often enter tantra without the cultural framework that understands concepts like vajra–hell, and as a result frequently interpret them metaphorically or ignore them altogether during empowerments or teachings. As a result, the gravity of samaya is often hidden in plain sight. Students may assume that vows are symbolic or aspirational when, within the tradition, they are treated as binding conditions that determine spiritual destiny.
The asymmetry of information here is profound. Tibetan teachers know the stakes, but Western students usually do not.
Fear as a Reinforcing Mechanism
Inside the tantric system, samaya is often discussed as a bond of trust and devotion. But its shadow side is rarely addressed openly: the way threats of karmic ruin can be used to enforce silence and obedience. If leaving the guru, criticizing harmful behavior, or even doubting the teacher’s purity is framed as a breach of samaya, then fear becomes central to the student’s experience. Some Tibetan masters teach that both teacher and student can fall into vajra-hell for damaging the guru-disciple bond.³ In practice, however, this warning is most often directed at students, who are told that speaking publicly about misconduct or abuse may destroy their spiritual future.
Why the Snake Matters
The “snake in the bamboo tube” metaphor distills these concerns with unusual clarity. It shows that tantra is not designed to allow experimentation or partial commitment. It requires total participation in a closed system with its own rules, hierarchies, and cosmology. In cultures where this system has historically been embedded, those entering it do so in fuller awareness of the stakes. In the West, students often do not and they may hear such warnings in a highly suggestible state, without really grasping the implications.
One famous guru in the 1980s bluntly told students that they could be both Christian and Buddhist with no conflict whatsoever. This blatantly goes against Christian teaching. In those days Westerners were often thrust into the three-year-retreat program shortly after they signed up for teachings at Dharma centers with no knowledge of what they were really getting into. Many had little preparation to truly understand the arcane nature of samaya and its risks. Furthermore, many Tibetan teachers took advantage of their roles as authority figures to manipulate vulnerable students into sexual relationships and other sorts of commitments. Engaging in secretive sexual relationships with students while pressuring them to take highest yoga tantra vows and practices that would bind them forever often led to deep confusion and psychological unmooring.
The result is a form of spiritual engagement that looks consensual on the surface but lacks true informed consent. Students may be drawn in by promises of transformation but only later discover the rigidity of the commitments they have made. This is especially jarring given that Vajrayāna wraps together the renunciation of the Hinayāna, the boundless compassion of the Mahāyāna, and the esoteric demands of tantra. In this unwieldy fusion, the same tradition that teaches gentle observation of thoughts can also insist that a single critical thought toward one’s guru carries the weight of karmic catastrophe. The threat of vajra-hell sits uneasily beside Buddhism’s wider emphasis on compassion and non-judgment. An ethical issue looms large: a path that describes itself as having no side exit should not be offered as if it does.
To treat tantra’s danger as a secret or secondary detail is to undermine the integrity of the path itself. If practitioners are indeed snakes in a tube, they deserve to be told before they go inside.
Footnotes
¹ “Once you take samaya you become like a snake in a vertical bamboo tube: you’re either going up, or you’re going down. You can’t sneak out the side.” (Kun zang.org) (kunzang.org) ² Note: practitioner-reports and forum posts indicate the metaphor is often applied post-initiation. For example: “A Vajrayana practitioner is like a snake in a tube; … he can either go up or down, not left or right.” (dharmawheel.net) ³ “The metaphor for samaya is a snake in a bamboo tube. It has only 2 directions – up to enlightenment or down to the hells.” (TibetDharma.com) (Tibetan Buddhism)
I am amazed that the PR for Tibetan Buddhism in the West managed for so long to conceal the extent of black magic practiced by lamas in Tibet historically and even to the present day. This concealment, aided and abetted by the squeamishness and obliviousness of some scholars, has to stop. In the dharma centers I was involved in, anything dark in Tibetan lore was relegated to the Bön religion, and the implication was that once Buddhism took hold in Tibet, any kind of evil acts such as harming or killing sentient beings was completely off the table. The truth is that black magic is in the lexicon of the highest lamas in the lineage as well as ngakpas and others. I believe these techniques are used liberally and current scholarship is finally exposing it.
Solomon G. FitzHerbert’s study of the mid-seventeenth century makes the core point plainly. I came across FitzHerbert’s article via a post on Adele Tomlin’s website www.dakinitranslations.com. He argues that tantric ritual and the rhetoric of ritual violence were central to how the Ganden Phodrang state established and legitimated power, not a peripheral curiosity. He writes that Tibetan sources “more than compensate” for the lack of hard military data with abundant materials about the “legitimation and maintenance of authority” through ritual technologies and narratives.¹
Before the rise of the Fifth Dalai Lama, Tibet’s Tsang rulers were already forging political alliances through tantric warfare. FitzHerbert shows that the Tsang kings deliberately patronized lamas famed for their mastery of wrathful and repelling rites. The most favored were the hierarchs of the Karma Kagyu, the “black hat” Karmapa and the “red hat” Zhamarpa, along with the Jonang scholar Taranatha, who was also enjoined to perform repelling rituals on behalf of his patrons.² Their alliances were explicitly religious and martial: an “ecumenical alliance in the name of defending religion and Tibet from foreign armies.”³
Among the Tsang rulers’ most celebrated ritual specialists was the Nyingma master Sokdokpa Lodrö Gyeltsen (1552–1624), self-styled “Repeller of Mongols.”⁴ A disciple of Zhikpo Lingpa, Sokdokpa was the main heir to the revealed cycle Twenty-Five Ways of Repelling Armies (Dmag zlog nyi shu rtsa lnga).⁵ His Mongol-repelling rites were widely famed, and he worked directly with the Tsang ruler Phuntsok Namgyel. One elaborate rite performed in 1605 to coincide with a Tsang military offensive involved producing “some 150,000 paper effigies of enemy soldiers.”⁶ These were ritually destroyed to annihilate the opposing force, with Bonpo specialists also enlisted for their expertise in magical harm.⁷
According to FitzHerbert, Phüntsok Namgyel successfully forged a broad anti-Geluk alliance using tantric technologies of protection and destruction.⁸ After his death, “reputedly at the hands of offensive magic being hurled at him by the Zhabsdrung Ngag dbang rnam rgyal (1594–1651), founder of the state of Bhutan,”⁹ his son Karma Tenkyong (1604–1642) inherited a weakened position. The Shabdrung’s tantric assault, still treated in Bhutanese and Tibetan sources as a historical fact, thus became the legendary moment when a ruler famed for weaponizing ritual power was himself undone by it. It is one of the rare episodes where the logic of esoteric warfare entered the realm of accepted political history.
This is where the Fifth Dalai Lama comes into focus. FitzHerbert shows that in the 17th century the Great Fifth cultivated and systematized an official repertoire of destructive and protective rites in service of government aims. In his words, the Dalai Lama showed a “lifelong concern with learning, authoring and instituting an armory of defensive and offensive rituals for the mobilization of unseen forces” for the state.¹⁰ That program contributed to the Ganden Phodrang’s reputation for “magical power,” and helped stage what FitzHerbert calls the grandest “theatre state” in Tibetan Buddhist history.¹¹
FitzHerbert details three overlapping strategies. First, the new government suppressed, marginalized, or co-opted rival traditions of war magic associated with other schools, including Karma Kagyu and strands within Nyingma, while appropriating selective cycles that could be redeployed under Geluk authority.¹² Second, it rebuilt Nyingma institutions such as Dorjé Drak and Mindröling under Ganden Phodrang patronage, folding their esoteric prestige into the state project.¹³ Third, it sponsored new state rituals based on the Dalai Lama’s own visionary experiences, further centralizing ritual power in Lhasa.¹⁴
The rhetoric was not merely devotional. Lamas and ritual specialists acted as “bodyguards” whose professional task was destructive magic on behalf of patrons.¹⁵ Chroniclers attributed battlefield outcomes to the rites of powerful tantrikas. FitzHerbert highlights Chökyi Drakpa, famed for the Yamantaka cycle known as the “Ultra-Repelling Fiery Razor,” which centered on rites of “protecting, repelling and killing.”¹⁶ In one report, after deploying these rites against a Tümed encampment, “nothing was left behind but a name.”¹⁷
To grasp how such violence could be framed as meritorious, FitzHerbert shows the tantric logic that recasts killing as an enlightened “action” when performed by an empowered adept. The adept receives empowerment, performs extensive propitiation to forge identification with the deity, and then “incite[s]” and “dispatch[es]” oath-bound spirits to defend the dharma. By manipulating the five elements and the “public non-reality” of appearances, the practitioner can pacify, increase, control, or destroy, including against human enemies.¹⁸ The moral frame is clear in the sources he cites and translates. Killing is made licit because it is tantric, ritually purified and redirected as enlightened activity.¹⁹
FitzHerbert also situates Tibetan practices within a longer Indo-Buddhist lineage of war magic. He surveys Indian materials that speak of sainyastambha or army-repelling rites, and notes that the Hevajra states that “black magic for paralyzing armies,” is part of its “manifold purpose” and that the Kālacakra includes descriptions of war machines and siege methods such as “catapults, traps, siege towers, and so on,” alongside esoteric harm and protection.²⁰ He further notes the use of human effigies and effigy destruction in offensive rites against enemies, a hallmark of Tibetan ritual repertoires that drew on wider South Asian and even Indo-European precedents.²¹
Western idealization of Tibetan Buddhism has depended on ignoring this record. The lamas who administered and celebrated these rites were not outliers. They were the architects of a political order that fused charisma, ritual terror, and doctrinal justifications into a program of power. State-sponsored ritual violence was normalized in chronicles and hagiographies as enlightened means. The fact pattern is no longer obscure. It is all in the sources, and FitzHerbert has laid them out.
Although FitzHerbert’s focus is on state-sponsored ritual violence, similar technologies of harm have long been used by individual lamas against perceived enemies including, at times, their own disciples. The anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel has noted that the ritual power claimed by tantric masters can be turned inward, weaponizing spiritual authority to punish dissent or enforce obedience.²² In one well-documented episode from the nineteenth century, the treasure-revealer (tertön) Dorje Lingpa was said to have struck down a rival practitioner through wrathful ritual means, his death interpreted locally as a karmic consequence of opposing the lama’s command.²³ Such stories attest to a cultural logic in which ritual, psychic, or physical violence by enlightened masters could be valorized as the just expression of awakened power. I have personally been a victim of this deluded violent ritual power by Tibetan masters.
If Tibetan Buddhism is to be understood honestly outside Tibet, this history needs to be taught in dharma centers and discussed in scholarship without euphemism. The tradition’s own categories allow for destructive ritual and sanctified killing under certain conditions. Pretending otherwise does not protect the innocent devotees who arrive at dharma centers with open hearts seeking methods for developing compassion and loving kindness in service of enlightenment. Indeed, one must ask what kind of enlightenment tradition could allow, even glorify such violence.
Notes
FitzHerbert, Rituals as War Propaganda, 91. FitzHerbert, Solomon G. “Rituals as War Propaganda in the Establishment of the Tibetan Ganden Phodrang State in the Mid-17th Century.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 27 (2018): 49–119. https://www.persee.fr/doc/asie_0766-1177_2018_num_27_1_1508
Ibid., 95–96.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 101.
Ibid., 102–103.
Ibid., 94.
Ibid., 95.
Ibid., 96.
Ibid., 97.
Ibid., 98.
Ibid., 93.
Ibid., 100.
Ibid., 101.
Ibid., 71.
Ibid., 72.
Ibid., 98–99.
Ibid., 99.
Geoffrey Samuel, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), pp. 429–432.
Cathy Cantwell and Robert Mayer, “Representations of wrathful deities in treasure literature,” in Tantric Revisionings: New Understandings of Tibetan Buddhism and Indian Religion (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 131–133.
Sam van Schaik’s Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment through the Ages (2020) attends to the often-overlooked domain of spells, incantations, divination, healing rituals, and what one might call “magic” in Buddhist traditions. The book offers, among other things, a translation of a Tibetan spell-book from the Dunhuang corpus and situates it in a broad historical trajectory of Buddhist ritual technologies. Yet in his 2021 review for H-Net, Cameron Bailey argues that the book suffers from significant omissions, conceptual limitations, and a subtle apologetic tone toward the more aggressive, violent, and transgressive forms of magic found in tantric Buddhism.¹ Bailey suggests that this tone is not simply stylistic but stems from deeper disciplinary biases about what “real” Buddhism is and what kinds of ritual power are acceptable to the scholarly gaze.
For readers of Tantric Deception, which is concerned with hidden ritual power, subversive techniques, and coercive practices in the “shadow” side of tantra, Bailey’s critique is especially pertinent. The benign, therapeutic, protective aspects of magic are only half the story; the aggressive, destructive, boundary-breaking elements are equally constitutive. Here the critique unfolds on three levels: (1) Bailey’s reading of Chapter 3 of van Schaik’s book (on the Ba ri be’u ’bum); (2) his broader objections to how van Schaik defines “magic” and frames the field; and (3) implications for the study of tantric magic and deception.
Bailey’s Critique of Chapter 3: “A Tibetan Book of Spells”
Bailey looks at Chapter 3, which discusses the Tibetan spell-book known as the Ba ri be’u ’bum, compiled by Ba ri Lotsāwa in the eleventh century.² Van Schaik concludes the chapter by pointing to the presence of violent magical ritual, what might be called “black magic,” in Buddhist spell-books and tantric scriptures such as the Vajrabhairava Tantra.³
Bailey’s critique is threefold:
Understatement of prevalence. Van Schaik, he argues, seriously understates how widespread aggressive or destructive ritual practices are in tantric sources: “He could also have discussed the army-repelling magic in the Hevajra Tantra, the legendary violent magical exploits of the great tantric sorcerer Rwa Lotsāwa, or Nyingma Mahayoga scriptures, which are often positively brimming with black magic.”⁴
Authorial discomfort. Bailey detects an obvious unease with “aggressive” magic and with rituals that use human remains as ingredients, suggesting van Schaik takes an apologetic tone when discussing them.⁵
Scholarly bias. He links this tone to the longstanding tendency of Buddhist studies to privilege an idealized, pacifist Buddhism: “This kind of squeamishness … unconsciously replicates the biases of past generations of Buddhist scholars …. It is ultimately an artifact of Western observers thinking they know more about what should constitute normative Buddhism than their sources do …”⁶
For Bailey, this is not simply an omission but a rhetorical framing that soft-pedals the destructive dimensions of tantric magic.
Defining “Magic”: Bailey’s Broader Critique
Bailey extends his criticism to van Schaik’s opening chapters, where the author defines his working category of “Buddhist magic.” Van Schaik adopts a “family-resemblance” approach, noting that no direct equivalent of the Western word magic exists in Sanskrit or Tibetan.⁷ He describes magical practices as “focused on worldly ends, including healing, protection, divination, manipulation of emotions, and sometimes killing. The effects of these techniques are either immediate or come into effect in a defined, short-term period. The techniques themselves are usually brief, with clear instructions that do not need much interpretation, and are gathered together in books of spells.”⁸
Bailey objects that this framing:
Over-narrows the field by confining magic to short-term, worldly ends, thereby excluding tantric practices that are long, soteriological, and embedded in complex ritual technologies.⁹
Privileges text and literacy, focusing on manuals and specialists while sidelining oral, embodied, and popular forms of practice.¹⁰
Sanitizes the topic by foregrounding healing and protection while downplaying cursing, corpse-magic, and enemy destruction.¹¹
He concludes: “The way he defines and explains ‘magic,’ and describes how magical practices have traditionally been used by Buddhists across Asia, ends up inadvertently reinforcing many of the historical scholarly prejudices against magic that he ostensibly is trying to correct.”¹²
Van Schaik’s framework thus risks reproducing the very boundaries it seeks to challenge.
A Wider Blind Spot: Aggressive Magic and the Tantric World
Bailey argues that van Schaik should have engaged more fully with texts such as the Hevajra Tantra (with its army-repelling spells), the violent exploits of Rwa Lotsāwa, and the Nyingma Mahayoga scriptures filled with wrathful deities, corpse-magic, and enemy-destruction rites.¹³ By not doing so, or by treating such material as peripheral, van Schaik, he claims, sanitizes Tibetan Buddhism. “Van Schaik displays an obvious discomfort with the presence of ‘aggressive’ magic … and takes an apologetic tone when discussing them.”¹⁴
For scholars of tantra, this omission matters because tantric systems operate through extremes such as creation and annihilation, compassion and wrath, life-force and death. To highlight only healing and protection produces a partial picture of ritual power, one aligned with modern therapeutic Buddhism but detached from the coercive, political, and martial realities of historical tantric practice.
Bailey notes that while van Schaik does acknowledge violent spells (for example, in the Dunhuang materials), he does not trace how these recur and become canonical in later tantric systems.¹⁵ The result is a book that opens the field but keeps its most provocative elements at the margins.
Implications for the Study of Tantric Magic and Deception
Bailey’s critique has clear implications for the study of tantric ritual power:
Broaden the definition of magic. Magic in Buddhist contexts is not confined to short spells. It includes deity-yoga, state-sponsored rituals, corpse-assemblage, body technologies, and institutions of ritual power.
Recognize multiple aims. Magic serves soteriological as well as worldly purposes such awakening, subjugation, and mediation between spirits and humans.
Acknowledge popular practice. Lay and non-monastic forms of magic interpenetrate elite traditions. Focusing solely on literate specialists truncates the field.¹⁶
Examining the Aggressive and Transgressive
To understand tantric magic fully, scholarship must confront its aggressive, destructive, and taboo aspects such as spells to kill or incapacitate, invocations of wrathful deities, rituals using human remains, and forms of mystical violence justified through tantric cosmology. When these are treated as aberrations, the study of tantric sovereignty, ethics, and power becomes impoverished.
Deception, Hidden Power, and Normativity
Bailey’s review also raises a methodological issue: the scholar’s discomfort can itself become a form of concealment. Reluctance to confront violent or transgressive material filters what is studied and what remains hidden. Bailey argues that van Schaik’s apologetic tone mirrors earlier generations of scholarship that preferred a morally “respectable” Buddhism.¹⁷
For research into deception, secrecy, and power in tantra, this is crucial. Reflexivity is required: how much of what we present as Buddhism is sanitized by our own unease with its violent, ambiguous realities?
Conclusion
Cameron Bailey’s critique of Buddhist Magic is more than a review. It is a reminder that scholarly framing shapes what becomes visible and what remains unseen in the study of ritual power. Van Schaik’s work makes an important contribution by bringing spells and enchantments to the center of Buddhist studies. Yet, as Bailey insists, by downplaying the aggressive and coercive sides of tantric magic, it perpetuates a pacified image of [Tibetan] Buddhism.
For those exploring tantra, deception, and hidden power, the shadow side of magic demands attention. Spells of domination and annihilation, corpse-magic, and state-sorcery are part of the story. Scholarly discomfort cannot determine what counts as legitimate tantric Buddhism. True understanding must include the violent and transgressive alongside the healing and protective.
Van Schaik opened the door; Bailey challenges us to step through. In tantra, concealment is not accidental, it is a method and a weapon. So too must scholarship have the courage to unmask it.
Notes
Cameron Bailey, “Review of Sam van Schaik, Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment through the Ages,” H-Buddhism (H-Net Reviews), July 2021. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56639.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 4.
Van Schaik, Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment through the Ages (Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 2020), pp. 6–8; Bailey, review.
Quoted in “Think Again Before You Dismiss Magic,” Lions Roar, April 2020.
Bailey, review, p. 3.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 2.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 4.
References
Bailey, Cameron. “Review of Sam van Schaik, Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment through the Ages.” H-Buddhism (H-Net Reviews), 2021. https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56639. Van Schaik, Sam. Buddhist Magic: Divination, Healing, and Enchantment through the Ages. Boulder: Shambhala Publications, 2020. “Think Again Before You Dismiss Magic.” Lions Roar, April 2020.
Tibetan Buddhism’s terma tradition is usually framed as a luminous, providential means by which enlightened masters hide and later reveal teachings at the exact moment needed. That’s part of the story, but it’s not the whole story by any means. Read closely, and a darker current runs through the terma corpus: treasures hidden and guarded by wrathful powers, revelations that arrive through strange, sometimes malevolent intermediaries, and rituals whose intent and method look remarkably like what modern people would call dealings with spirits or demons. In short, many tertons don’t simply find teachings; they negotiate with non-human, often wrathful forces that can reasonably be described as demonic. Below I’ll examine Dylan Esler’s study of Gya Zhang Khrom (rGya Zhang khrom)¹ and other scholarly sources as a base to examine the phenomena of tertons and terma.
What the words mean
A terma (gter ma) is literally a “hidden treasure”: text, ritual object, or practice concealed (often in a rock, lake, or the mindstream of a guru) to be discovered by a tertön (gter ston), the treasure-revealer. Academic treatments correctly emphasize the social and legitimating functions of these discoveries in prophecies, lineages, and performative acts that make the revelation believable to followers. But the same sources that record authentication narratives also preserve striking descriptions of how termas are hidden, guarded, and recovered: they are defended by territorial spirits or “treasure-lords,” transmitted by non-human yogins, and often carry explicitly wrathful, “black magic” contents. Non-human yogins can take the form of visionary yogins, dakinis/dakas, local spirits, or wrathful entities, and they act as the intermediaries who hide, protect, or hand over the treasure.
A close example: Gya Zhang Khrom and wrathful treasures
Dylan Esler’s article on Gya Zhang Khrom in the (Byang gter) Northern Treasures tradition recounts the classic terma motif: a mysterious yogin leads the future tertön to a hidden cache of ritual objects and scrolls that come out of fissures in rock, and the revealer deciphers and transmits material that includes both beneficent and harmful ritual instructions. Esler notes items described as “cycles for benefiting and harming,” in other words, materials for both white and black magic, and he situates Gya Zhang’s revelations within a Northern Treasure program that explicitly deploys wrathful, coercive ritual means. That combination of secret caches, hidden custodians, and instruction sets for destructive rituals is exactly the pattern that supports reading many termas as arriving via a demonic or semi-demonic channel.
Treasure-protectors and Lords of the Treasures: the institutional side of the “demonic”
The literatures that record terma narratives repeatedly mention gter srung (treasure-protectors) and gter bdag (lords of the treasures). These are not neutral filing cabinets: they are spirits of place, frequently wrathful, who demand protocols and substitutions (gter tshab) when a cache is opened. Ethnographic and textual scholarship treats these beings as part of the class of local, elemental, or “demonic” forces that Tibetan ritual both confronts and incorporates. Scholarly surveys of protector deities and the oral/ritual ecology around termas make clear that treasures do not simply sit inert but are guarded by active, sometimes dangerous entities. If a tertön is authorized by prophecy, that can mitigate local resistance; if not, accusations of theft and collusion with spirits arise.²
Demon-taming, wrathful methods, and ambiguous agency
The well-known motif of Padmasambhava as demon-tamer is instructive: foundational tantric figures are often framed as subduers of hostile spirits, and the very act of revealing a terma can be portrayed as the tertön’s success in negotiating or subduing a guardian force. But negotiation is not always tame or benign. A number of terma traditions preserve wrathful practices intended to overthrow enemies, cure epidemics, or control hostile spirits—techniques that look like pacts or coercive exchanges with non-human agencies. Scholarly work on Dzogchen/Northern Treasure liturgies and on early treasure careers shows repeated, explicit intersections between revealing termas and advancing ritual technologies of domination or protection over local powers.³
So, do tertons get their termas from demons?
In many traditional narratives and ritual contexts, yes. Termas are mediated by, guarded by, or negotiated with non-human beings that function similar to what observers would call demons. That’s a historical and anthropological claim. The primary sources and modern scholarship present a consistent pattern: treasures are hidden in the landscape or mind, are protected by wrathful custodians, and are sometimes transmitted by shadowy yogins or through visions that are indistinguishable from encounters with spirits. Where the contemporary, institutional presentation emphasizes enlightened intent and salvific purpose, the deeper ritual ecology reveals frequent recourse to powers that are territorial and morally ambiguous.
Final thoughts
Terma studies that stop at the rhetoric of revelation miss the subterranean reality that produces and polices those revelations. Esler’s account of Gya Zhang Khrom’s discoveries of materials explicitly useful for harming as well as helping presents a pattern replicated across the terma corpus. Read with discernment, the terma tradition looks less like a straight line from enlightened source to human disciple and more like a braided negotiation between the human revealer, local spirits or demons, and the institutional needs of Buddhist communities. That picture is central to my argument: many tertons operate at the shadowy margins where demonic forces and tantric techniques meet, and their termas are as much the products of those encounters as they are of the “pure” spiritual origins claimed by their lineages.
Notes:
Dylan Esler, “Yamāntaka’s Wrathful Magic: An Instance of the Ritual Legacy of gNubs chen Sangs rgyas ye shes on the Byang gter Tradition via the Figure of rGya Zhang khrom,” Revue d’Études Tibétaines, no. 62 (Feb. 2022): 190–215, https://himalaya.socanth.cam.ac.uk/collections/journals/ret/pdf/ret_62_08.pdf (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).
Christopher Bell, “Worldly Protector Deities in Tibetan Buddhism,” in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 2: Major Personages in Myth, Hagiography and Historical Biography (Leiden: Brill, 2019), 1254–66, https://brill.com (entry available online; access depends on subscription) (accessed Oct. 7, 2025).
I spent years as a Tibetan tantric Buddhist practitioner. I once assumed the mantra, ritual, and mandala machinery I practiced was simply the Buddha’s own teaching passed down intact. We were taught that although the historical Buddha did not teach tantra in person, he taught it after his passing, on Mount Malaya, to gods and men. Koichi Shinohara’s work forces a different view and poses the question: Did Sakyamuni really teach the long formulaic dhāraṇīs, image worship, and mandala visualization as later practitioners used them? Or did later communities invent those ritual technologies and then cloak them in the Buddha’s authority so people would better accept them?
In Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals, Shinohara gives us a working hypothesis that can be pressed hard for answers.[1] The rituals in question are most plausibly later innovations that used the Buddha’s prestige to become authoritative. They were not the Buddha’s core teachings in any strictly historical sense. That does not make them illegitimate as religious forms for people who practice them today. It does mean historians and critics should stop pretending these rituals are reflections of Sakyamuni’s own instructions. The burden of proof rests on anyone who wants to show unbroken doctrinal transmission from the Buddha to the later esoteric ritual machinery.
Shinohara offers a testable, evidence-driven reconstruction. He traces a plausible sequence from simple spoken spells through image ritual to organized visualization. Crucially, he foregrounds early, datable Chinese dhāraṇī collections and ritual manuals. Those Chinese witnesses often predate the surviving Sanskrit and Tibetan corpora scholars have relied on. That chronological fact is the hinge of the whole argument. (Columbia University Press)
What Shinohara’s working hypothesis means
A working hypothesis is provisional and falsifiable. Shinohara is not issuing an ideological verdict. He is proposing a historical explanation that organizes the evidence and makes concrete predictions that could be falsified by earlier, securely dated Indian or canonical texts showing the full ritual machinery already present in the Buddha’s time. To press the hypothesis hard, scholars should look for those disconfirming witnesses. So far the datable documentary and manuscript evidence he emphasizes points toward post-Buddha innovation that relied on attribution to the Buddha for legitimacy.
The core empirical point
Early Buddhism included ritual speech. The Pali paritta corpus shows that communal protective chants and recitations were an early feature of Buddhist practice. Importantly, these early chants are directed primarily to the historical Buddha and the Triple Gem, the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha, rather than to the later, expanded pantheon of cosmic buddhas and bodhisattvas that appear in Mahāyāna and tantric literature. By contrast, the long, formulaic dhāraṇīs with non-lexical syllables, their ritual manuals, and the tightly scripted mandala visualizations appear in the surviving record mainly in later sources, often first in Chinese translations and compilations dated to the fourth through eighth centuries. That pattern strongly suggests the later technical dhāraṇī and mandala apparatus developed after the historical Buddha and used his name as an authority seal rather than being his literal, unbroken teaching (see Ratana Sutta and the paritta collections; Access to Insight).
Pali paritta versus three representative dhāraṇīs
Below is one short Pali paritta example and three representative dhāraṇī excerpts that have early Chinese witnesses. For each dhāraṇī there is a short literal transliteration excerpt, the earliest datable Chinese witness, and why this matters for Shinohara’s thesis.
A note about transliteration and length. Full dhāraṇī texts can be very long and use non-lexical syllables. I quote short, clearly identifiable openings or kernel sequences and give citations to the editions or translations where you can read the full texts.
A. Pali paritta exemplar (short protective chant from the Buddha’s time)
Text (Pali, introductory formula used in paritta recitation): Namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammāsambuddhassa. Translation: “Homage to the Blessed One, the Worthy One, the Fully and Exactly Awakened One.” Dating and context: part of the Ratana Sutta and the paritta repertoire attested in the earliest Pali strata and used continuously in Theravada protective ritual. These are short, lexically meaningful formulas employed in communal contexts. (Access to Insight)
This matters because paritta recitation shows early Buddhists used spoken protective formulas directed to the Buddha and the Triple Gem. That continuity leaves an opening for later mantra culture to develop, but continuity alone does not prove that the later technical dhāraṇīs were the Buddha’s teaching.
B. Uṣṇīṣavijayā dhāraṇī: short transliteration excerpt and dating
Transliteration excerpt (IAST style, short kernel): oṃ aḥ hūṃ uṣṇīṣa vijaya svāh. Translation: “Om. Ah. Hum. Victory to the Ushnisha. Svāhā.” Note: full versions are much longer and include complex Siddhaṃ syllables. The line above is a short recognizable kernel rather than the entire dhāraṇī.
Earliest datable witness: multiple Tang dynasty Chinese translations; primary translations appear in the late seventh century and the text circulated widely in Tang China thereafter. Several ritual manuals for this dhāraṇī were also translated into Chinese. (84000)
This is important because Uṣṇīṣavijayā is a canonical example of a dhāraṇī that crystallized as a ritual unit in China by the seventh century. Its early and repeated Chinese attestations show how the formulaic dhāraṇī corpus became standardized in East Asia, a datum that supports Shinohara’s emphasis on Chinese witnesses. (84000)
C. Nīlakaṇṭha / Great Compassion dhāraṇī: short transliteration excerpt and dating
Transliteration excerpt (short recognizable opening): Namo ratna trayāya … oṃ namaḥ parāya svāhā. Translation: “Homage to the Three Jewels… Om. I bow to the Supreme. Svāhā.” Again, the dhāraṇī in practice is very long; this is a short illustrative kernel.
Earliest datable witness: Bhagavaddharma’s Chinese transliteration of the Thousand-armed Avalokiteśvara dhāraṇī is commonly dated to ca. 650–661 CE at Khotan, and Dunhuang manuscript copies are attested from the eighth century onward. The standard East Asian version is listed in Taishō as T.1060. (Wikipedia)
This matters because the Great Compassion dhāraṇī’s early Chinese and Central Asian circulation shows the mobility of formulaic spells across cultural borders and their crystallization in Chinese textual layers before the later Tibetan tantra apparatus matured. That pattern again undercuts a simple claim of unbroken oral descent from the historical Buddha.
D. The Dhāraṇī of the Six Gates: transliteration indicator and dating
Short indicator: the sutra opens with formulaic addresses and contains six gate dhāraṇī sequences; full transliteration is available in modern critical editions. The Chinese translation by Xuanzang is dated to 645 CE (Taishō 1360). (84000)
This matters because Xuanzang’s mid-seventh century translation gives a secure terminus ante quem for certain dhāraṇī forms in East Asia. The existence of such dated translations is exactly the kind of evidence Shinohara places in the foreground when reconstructing the genealogy of ritual techniques. (84000)
Short methodological point about dates and what they prove
When a long formulaic dhāraṇī and a ritual manual appear in a secure, dated Chinese translation in the seventh century but not in any securely dated Indian source from the centuries immediately after the Buddha, the safest historical inference is that the particular ritual form crystallized later and that Chinese transmission played a major role in its textual preservation and standardization. That does not prove the practice first originated in China. It does show that the textual and ritual machinery as preserved and circulated in East Asia is early and often predates surviving Sanskrit witnesses. Shinohara uses exactly this dating logic to show how spells, images, and visualization interrelate historically. (Columbia University Press)
Did the Buddha forbid images or deification of himself?
Canonical passages caution against attachment to the person of the teacher. A well known example is the Vakkali Sutta where the Buddha tells the sick Vakkali that seeing the Dhamma is what matters, not seeing his physical body: “One who sees the Dhamma sees me; one who sees me sees the Dhamma.” That admonition has been read as discouraging hero cult and literal deification. (SuttaCentral)
The archaeological and textual record complicates the claim that the Buddha formally forbade images. However, here is a settled scholarly debate about early “aniconism” in Buddhist art. Most scholars agree that standardized, large anthropomorphic Buddha images do not appear widely until several centuries after the historical Buddha’s death. Some specialists argue that early absence of the anthropomorphic image reflects doctrinally driven aniconism. Other specialists argue the evidence is better explained by devotional practice, material culture, and local circumstances rather than by a simple canonical ban. In short, canonical caution about attachment to persons exists, but practice evolved in ways that embraced images for devotional, pedagogical, and institutional reasons. (Wikipedia)
For the former practitioner who wants a practical takeaway
If you were taught that tantric rituals are from Sakyamuni’s own instructions, the historical picture is more complicated and poses big questions to that narrative. The very technical dhāraṇī machinery, image cults, and visualization systems that define much of later tantric practice have a historical biography. They emerge, consolidate, and professionalize in the centuries after the Buddha lived, and much of the documentary evidence that preserves them comes from dated Chinese compilations and Dunhuang manuscripts. That history changes how they should be presented when someone claims they were directly taught by the Buddha himself.
History cannot prove the metaphysical provenance of a ritual. Textual and manuscript research can show whether a practice dates to Sakyamuni’s lifetime or to later cultural development, but it cannot by itself settle whether a given visionary or ritual impulse is benign or malign. If you take the language of spiritual warfare seriously, that uncertainty argues for caution. Here are four practical questions to ask before you embrace a practice: Where does its chain of transmission point? Does it coherently line up with the ethical core of the Buddha’s teaching, such as nonharm, compassion, and right conduct? What fruits does it produce in practitioners’ lives, emotionally and morally? And how transparent are its teachers about origins and effects? If a practice fails those tests, step back and favor practices that visibly cultivate ethical integrity and mental clarity. For someone who has been inside the tantric world, this is not an abstract exercise. It is a matter of spiritual survival. Let historical honesty inform your discernment, and let the lived, ethical results of practice be the final arbiter.
Sources and Bibliography
[1] Koichi Shinohara. Spells, Images, and Maṇḍalas: Tracing the Evolution of Esoteric Buddhist Rituals. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. xxii, 324 pp. ISBN 9780231166140. See especially Chapter 1, “The Three Ritual Scenarios” (pp. 1–28), the material on the Collected Dhāraṇī Sūtras and the All-Gathering ceremony (pp. 28–89), and the chapters on the introduction of visualization practice (pp. 89–160). Recommended exact pages to quote when discussing the three scenarios and Chinese-dated evidence: consult pp. 1–4, pp. 28–64, and pp. 89–118 for Shinohara’s core arguments and manuscript citations. (Columbia University Press)
Primary dhāraṇī witnesses and editions (quick references)
Dhāraṇīsaṃgraha, Taishō no. 901, translated by Atikūṭa in the Tang; contains collected dhāraṇī sūtras and an early mandala initiation ritual. See Taishō T.901 and catalog entry. (NTI Reader)
Uṣṇīṣavijayā Dhāraṇī. Multiple Tang Chinese translations; widely circulated from the late seventh century. See 84000 Reading Room entries explaining translation history. (84000)
Nīlakaṇṭha / Great Compassion Dhāraṇī. Bhagavaddharma’s Khotan transliteration dated ca. 650–661 CE; standard Taishō entry T.1060 and Dunhuang manuscripts attest its early East Asian circulation. (Wikipedia)
Dhāraṇī of the Six Gates. Chinese translation by Xuanzang dated 645 CE (Taishō 1360). See Xuanzang colophon and modern critical editions. (84000)
Pali and early canonical material (for paritta comparison)
Ratana Sutta, Sutta Nipāta 2.1. Standard Pali editions and translations; see SuttaCentral and Access to Insight translations for text and context. (Wikipedia)
Secondary literature and resources on dating, aniconism, and early ritual evidence
Scholarly debate on Buddhist aniconism and the delayed appearance of anthropomorphic Buddha images. See Susan L. Huntington, “Early Buddhist Art and the Theory of Aniconism” and subsequent debates summarized in surveys of early Buddhist art. (Buddhism Library)
Columbia University Press page for Shinohara’s book with contents and excerpt. (Columbia University Press)
Kurukullā, the red goddess of magnetizing, depicted in a traditional Tibetan thangka style, embodying the tantric power to attract and bind.
Western seekers approaching Tibetan Buddhism are usually drawn to its most humane face. Chenrezig practice promises the cultivation of boundless compassion through visualizing Avalokiteśvara and reciting his mantra Om Mani Peme Hung. Tonglen “taking and sending” practice trains the mind to breathe in the suffering of others and breathe out relief. These sincere aspirations are the public face of Tibetan Buddhism. Yet this religion also preserves a hidden curriculum. Alongside compassionate practices sit the four activities that structure tantric ritual: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating. This fuller picture is rarely presented to beginners, and yet it has consequences for any claim to informed consent.[1]
The four activities: not just compassion
The four activities, known in Sanskrit as caturkarman, classify tantric rites by their intended effect:
Pacifying (śāntika) calms illness and obstacles.
Enriching (puṣṭika) augments longevity, merit, charisma, retinues, and wealth.
Magnetizing (vaśīkaraṇa) draws people and circumstances into a chosen orbit.
Subjugating (abhicāra) forces or destroys enemies.
These are not modern inventions but standard categories across tantric manuals and commentaries.[2]
While Western students are typically introduced to the activities of pacifying and enriching, the other two, magnetizing and subjugating, remain obscure, despite being prominent in tantric ritual literature. Historian Jacob Dalton has shown that violent tantric rites were not marginal but integral, even harnessed by Tibetan states to consolidate power in the medieval period.[3]
Kurukullā: the red goddess of attraction
Kurukullā, a red goddess associated with Amitābha and Tara, epitomizes magnetizing. In traditional texts she is praised as the deity of attraction, and in Tibetan sources she is sometimes known as the “Magnetizing Tara.” She is depicted holding a arrow, bow, flower and hook, all instruments of enchantment. [4]
Contemporary dharma centers sometimes describe her as a deity of love and influence, a kind of esoteric Cupid. But Tibetan ritual manuals, as catalogued by Stephan Beyer and translated in part by modern scholars, show that Kurukullā rites include binding the loyalty or desire of others.[5]
The omission of this material in introductory teachings is significant. Students often hear of compassion, not of enchantment and coercion.
Subjugation and tantric violence
Subjugating rituals, by contrast, can be overtly violent. Dunhuang manuscripts detail effigy rites and “liberation” practices, in which enemies are ritually slain to protect practitioners and their patrons. Dalton notes that these methods scaled from local shamanic forms into state-sanctioned tantric technologies by the 13th century.[6]
Even today, wrathful practices remain part of Tibetan public culture. Cham dances of Mahākāla, staged annually in monasteries, dramatically enact the destruction of obstacles. While these are often seen as symbolic, their presence keeps alive a framework where wrathful force is ritually mobilized against perceived threats.[7]
Samaya: the binding vow
In Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments, disciples take vows of refuge, bodhisattva vows, and tantric samaya commitments. Samaya is described as a “sacred bond” with the guru and the deity. Root downfalls include disrespecting the master or revealing tantric secrets. Breach is said to bring spiritual ruin.[8]
This means that students who take empowerments without understanding the full scope of tantric practices, including magnetizing, subjugating, and punishment rites, are effectively giving consent under partial information. Despite not understanding fully what they are entering into, the bond of samaya can become a blanket mechanism of control.
As the 17th Karmapa indicated in teachings earlier this year, samaya breakers are spoken of in language that implies wrathful retribution, both spiritual and physical. The retribution he described is not symbolic but actual. See my essay, “Read Between the Lines,” for more on this.[9]
Survivors’ voices
Accounts from survivors and critical practitioners suggest that magnetizing and wrathful practices are not just metaphors. Women have described experiences of sexual energy being manipulated at a distance, sometimes calling it a form of “astral rape.” Whether one interprets this as energetic manipulation or psychological intrusion, the perception of violation is real.
Lion’s Roar published testimonies arguing that samaya has been used as a principal mechanism of coercion in abuse cases. Independent investigations of groups like Shambhala document patterns where devotion and secrecy prevented victims from speaking out.[10]
Buddhist communities are now grappling with these realities. Some organizations are introducing explicit consent policies, recognizing that the charisma of a guru, altered states of consciousness induced during a ritual, and the binding reality of vows can impair a student’s capacity to freely choose.[11]
Historical context does not erase ethical duty
Scholars such as Ronald Davidson have contextualized tantric violence as a product of medieval frontier politics and kingship.[12] This explains how such rites developed. But historical context does not remove the ethical obligation to disclose them to modern students.
Without disclosure, the vows taken in empowerments are not truly informed. The student consents to Buddhist compassion, but is bound to a system that also contains sexual enchantment, psychological manipulation, and deadly punishments.
Conclusion
The compassionate practices of Chenrezig and Tonglen have a genuine power to transform, yet Tibetan Buddhism’s esoteric side contains hidden technologies that are not peaceful but harmful: the rites of magnetizing, subjugation, and punishment. These are attested in texts, preserved in ritual, and acknowledged by scholars and survivors alike. Until these dimensions are more fully disclosed, the vows taken in tantric empowerments remain shadowy. Consent given without knowledge of the whole spectrum of practice is not true consent. It is, as this essay argues, an illusion.
Source Notes
1. Rigpa Wiki, “Four activities,” accessed 2025. Rigpa Wiki is a practitioner-maintained encyclopedia that summarizes key Vajrayana concepts. Its entry on the “four activities” clearly lays out pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and subjugating as the classical categories of tantric ritual. It is not a critical academic source, but it reflects how contemporary Tibetan Buddhist institutions themselves present the material.
2. Study Buddhism, “What is Samaya?” and “Empowerment.” Study Buddhism is a project led by Alexander Berzin and colleagues, offering accessible introductions to Buddhist theory and practice. These entries explain samaya as a binding relationship with a guru and empowerment as the ritual granting of authority to practice tantra. They are useful for showing how Tibetan teachers explain vows and empowerments to Western audiences.
3. Jacob P. Dalton, The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism (Yale University Press, 2011). Dalton’s book is a landmark study of ritual violence in Tibetan Buddhism. Drawing on Dunhuang manuscripts, he shows that wrathful rites, including violent subjugation and “liberation” rituals, were integral to tantric practice. Dalton’s work challenges romantic views of Buddhism as purely peaceful.
4. Wikipedia, “Kurukullā” The Wikipedia entry gives a concise overview of Kurukullā as a magnetizing deity across Buddhist cultures.
5. Stephan Beyer, The Cult of Tārā: Magic and Ritual in Tibet (University of California Press, 1973). Beyer’s study remains a foundational ethnography of tantric ritual in Tibet. His translations of ritual manuals include examples of both compassionate and wrathful practices, including rites of attraction and subjugation. It is particularly valuable for showing how deity practices were embedded in everyday Tibetan religious life.
6. Dalton, Taming of the Demons; see also Jacob P. Dalton, “A Crisis of Doxography,” in Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 28, no. 1 (2005). In addition to his book, Dalton’s article “A Crisis of Doxography” analyzes how violent rites were classified in Tibetan scholastic traditions. He shows that even systematizing scholars struggled to reconcile wrathful tantric methods with Buddhist ideals, which underscores their presence and their tension.
7. Associated Press, “Wrathful deities in Tibetan Cham dance,” 2024. This news report covers annual cham dances in Tibet and in exile communities, where wrathful deities like Mahākāla are invoked to repel obstacles. It illustrates that wrathful practices are still a living part of Tibetan Buddhist culture, even if framed from the public as symbolic or theatrical.
8. Study Buddhism, “Samaya”; Rigpa Wiki, “Empowerment.” Both entries describe the vows and commitments made during empowerment rituals. They confirm that samaya includes strict obligations to the guru and to secrecy. Their language highlights how the bonding process is explained to new students, and how much is left unspoken.
9 “Read Between the Lines: A Glimpse Into the Dark Heart of Guru Devotion,” Tantric Deception, April 4, 2025. This essay analyzes a teaching by the 17th Karmapa, where he discussed samaya and hinted at punitive consequences for breaking devotion. It shows how even contemporary high lamas continue to invoke the discourse of samaya enforcement, reinforcing the concerns about consent.
10. Lion’s Roar, “When Samaya is Used as a Weapon,” 2018; Buddhist Project Sunshine Reports, 2018–2019. Lion’s Roar published reflections by teachers and survivors on how samaya language has been used to silence or coerce students in abuse cases. Buddhist Project Sunshine was a grassroots effort to document sexual misconduct in Shambhala and other Tibetan Buddhist organizations. These sources provide survivor-centered evidence of how samaya functions in practice.
11. Buddhist Ethics Working Group, “Consent in Vajrayana,” 2021. This collective statement from Buddhist practitioners and ethicists proposes new standards for sexual and spiritual consent in Vajrayana contexts. It emphasizes enthusiastic, ongoing consent and rejects the misuse of tantric language to excuse coercion. It is an attempt at reform efforts from within the tradition.
12. Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (Columbia University Press, 2002). Davidson’s historical study situates tantric Buddhism in the political and social context of medieval India. He shows how esoteric practices were bound up with kingship, warfare, and elite patronage. His work helps explain how violent and manipulative rites could become integral to the tradition, even if they clash with Buddhist ethics.
Buddhism is usually presented in the West as a religion of mindfulness and compassion. But hidden in its tantric wing is something darker. In the eighteenth century, Sélung Shepa Dorjé (Sle lung Bzhad pa’i rdo rje) compiled a sixteen-volume cycle called Secret Gnosis Dakini (Gsang ba ye shes mkha’ ’gro, or GYCK). This was not just a collection of esoteric philosophy, but also a grimoire filled with magical spells.
According to Cameron Bailey in The Magic of Secret Gnosis: A Theoretical Analysis of a Tibetan Buddhist “Grimoire,” grimoires of spell instructions are common in Tibetan Buddhism. They often appear inside larger tantric cycles like the GYCK or in the collected works of great lamas. As the scholar Berounsky, cited by Bailey, put it, the operations in such texts are “an amalgam of tantric interventions combined with popular magic.” [1]
Volumes four and twelve of the GYCK preserve dozens of rituals for worldly power. The twelfth volume in particular reads like a magician’s handbook. It does not hide its intent; it offers ninety-two spells to heal, protect, enrich, and subjugate.
Rituals of Control
Among these spells are some dedicated to domination. Far from the common image of Buddhism as a purely gentle path of liberation, the Secret Gnosis spells allowed practitioners to bind and control others. One entire text, The Magic Lasso, instructs adepts on capturing their targets through visualization and mantra. Other spells direct them to create talismans and effigies, ritually charged to influence or destroy enemies.
Bailey emphasizes that these rituals work by merging tantric deity yoga with ritual techniques: the practitioner visualizes themselves as a wrathful god, projects light rays at the target, and seals the action with mantra. Your meditation becomes, in effect, a weapon.
The Spellbook as Technology
The grimoire aspect of the Secret Gnosis cycle cannot be overlooked. It contains practical instructions for bending reality to one’s desire. Substances like herbs, turquoise, and even urine or flesh are prescribed as tools of ritual practice.
Bailey notes that these spells are framed within a bodhisattva ethic. They are said to protect the Dharma or defend communities. Yet to modern eyes, they read unmistakably as instructions for control. This is where interpretation diverges. Bailey highlights the philosophical and ritual integration, while a critical lens reveals the coercive logic beneath the compassionate rhetoric.
A Tradition of Ambivalence
Figures like Milarepa warned against sorcery, even though his story is entangled with it. The Buddhist tradition as a whole often drew a line between miracle powers that “arise naturally” from meditation and deliberate ritual magic. But that line was blurred from the beginning. The Secret Gnosis makes clear how deeply magical domination was preserved within the canon.
Conclusion
The Secret Gnosis Dakini cycle exposes a side of tantric Buddhism rarely acknowledged publicly. Bailey shows that its grimoire-like sections are integral to tantric practice, not just marginal curiosities. What I emphasize here is that these spells—especially those of subjugation—show a system where manipulation was not an aberration but an option built into the tradition. What is presented today as a path of compassion was also, sometimes, a path of great harm.
[1] Cameron Bailey, “The Magic of Secret Gnosis: A Theoretical Analysis of a Tibetan Buddhist ‘Grimoire,’” Journal of the Korean Association for Buddhist Studies 93 (2020): 535–570.
Vajrayana Buddhism, also known as Tibetan Buddhism or Tantric Buddhism, stands out for its rituals, deity worship, and complex esoteric practices. Its mantras, mandalas, and meditations on wrathful and yab/yum deities bear clear resemblance to Hindu Tantra, Vedic ritualism, and indigenous spirit cults.
So how did it convince anyone, especially devout Buddhists, that it was authentically taught by the historical Buddha?
The answer lies in a strategic combination of hidden teaching narratives, scriptural mimicry, ritual power, and imperial patronage. Let’s explore how this transformation occurred and what it means when viewed through the lens of Catholic faith and biblical discernment.
Secret Teachings: “The Buddha Taught It, But in Secret”
Vajrayana scriptures claim that the Buddha did teach tantra, but only in secret, to highly realized disciples. These teachings were said to have been hidden in celestial realms, entrusted to beings like Vajrapani or dakinis, or taught in the Buddha’s “enjoyment body” (sambhogakaya) form in other worlds such as Akanistha.(1)
This tactic mirrored earlier Mahayana developments, where new sutras like the Lotus or Avatamsaka were claimed to be higher revelations spoken by the Buddha, but not understood by his early disciples. The concept of esoteric knowledge reserved for the spiritually mature made these late texts seem like rediscovered treasures, rather than innovations.
Scriptural Mimicry and Retroactive Legitimization
To reinforce their authority, tantric scriptures deliberately mimicked the structure of traditional sutras. They often began with the familiar phrase, “Thus have I heard,” and depicted the Buddha teaching not only in celestial realms surrounded by bodhisattvas, but sometimes in radically transgressive settings such as charnel grounds, encircled by ḍākinīs and wrathful deities. These texts introduced elaborate cosmologies, detailed ritual instructions, and esoteric vows, presenting them as timeless wisdom, even though they were composed many centuries after the Buddha’s death.[2]
Authors also invented lineages, claiming that tantric teachings had been passed down secretly from Vajrapani to Nagarjuna, or from Padmasambhava to Tibetan kings.
Syncretism with Hindu and Folk Traditions
Instead of denying its similarities with Hindu Tantra, Vajrayana reinterpreted them. Wrathful deities were said to be enlightened Buddhas. Sexual rituals were described as a symbolic means to transform desire into wisdom. Offerings of blood, bones, and taboo substances were spiritualized as purifications of dualistic perception.
By repackaging Vedic and folk practices into a Buddhist framework, Vajrayana could absorb local traditions and declare them “Buddhist skillful means.”
Imperial Support and Monastic Integration
Tantra spread rapidly through the support of kings and monasteries. In Tibet, tantric masters were invited to subdue native spirits, secure political power, and perform rituals for prosperity. At Indian centers like Nalanda and Vikramashila, tantric scholars and monks practiced Mahayana logic by day and tantric visualization by night.
With the backing of the state and the academic establishment, Vajrayana was not seen as a fringe practice but as the “highest vehicle” of Buddhism.
Ritual Power and Psychological Experience
For the average practitioner, tantra “worked.” It offered visions, emotional catharsis, ritual protection, and the promise of fast-track enlightenment. The experiential pull of mantra, deity yoga, and initiation ceremonies gave people tangible results even if the doctrinal basis was historically shaky.
In the end, many believed not because of historical evidence, but because the system delivered experiences of spiritual intensity.
How Christianity Views This: The Domain of the Second Heaven
From a biblical and Catholic perspective, this raises serious concerns. The spiritual beings Vajrayana practitioners encounter, wrathful deities, dakinis, yidams, do not proclaim Christ as Lord and Savior. They do not point to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They offer power and enlightenment through self-transformation, not redemption.
The Bible is clear: Satan is the prince of the power of the air, ruling the spiritual domain between heaven and earth until Christ returns (Ephesians 2:2). What some refer to as the “second heaven” is where fallen angels operate, deceiving through false light, hidden knowledge, and seductive spiritual experiences.
Teachers like Derek Prince and Dr. Michael Heiser have explained how fallen entities inhabit unseen realms and impersonate divine figures such gods, ascended masters, or beings of light. Applying this view, the Buddhist realm of Akanistha, where the Buddha is said to teach in his sambhogakaya form, may not be a divine domain at all, but a carefully constructed counterfeit, orchestrated by spiritual powers aligned against the Kingdom of God.
This helps explain how a system like Vajrayana could emerge long after the Buddha’s time, imbued with supernatural power, spiritual visions, and doctrinal sophistication, yet still operate in direct opposition to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Final Reflection: What About the Historical Buddha Himself?
This raises a deeper question: What about the historical Gautama Buddha?
His teachings, centered on renunciation, ethical conduct, and insight, seem far removed from tantric fire offerings, deity visualizations, and magical spells. He did not claim to be a god. He emphasized detachment from craving and moral clarity. So, was he simply a wise man? Or was he also deceived?
From a Catholic and biblical perspective, any system that does not point to Christ as the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6) must be seen as incomplete at best, and spiritually dangerous at worst. Even teachings that emphasize compassion and morality can become a snare if they direct people away from the living God.
It is possible that the historical Buddha, though perhaps sincere and ethically inclined, encountered spiritual influences he did not fully understand. If he received his insights through meditation without divine revelation, then he may have opened himself to guidance from fallen beings presenting themselves as enlightened or falsely divine. This is a sobering possibility, but one that must be considered if we are to remain faithful to biblical truth.
The gospel does not offer esoteric techniques. It offers a person, Jesus, who does not ask you to awaken into the realization of emptiness. He calls you by name into communion with him, into truth, and finally, into eternal life.
Footnotes:
(1) Akanistha, also spelled Akaniṣṭha, is considered in Mahayana and Vajrayāna cosmology to be the highest of the seventeen or eighteen heavens in the form realm (rūpadhātu), and specifically the realm where Buddhas in their “enjoyment body” (sambhogakāya) manifest and teach advanced bodhisattvas. It is portrayed as a pure, radiant dimension beyond ordinary perception, where tantra and esoteric teachings are said to be revealed. From a Christian perspective, such realms existing in the unseen spiritual domain, may correspond to what theologians like Derek Prince and Michael Heiser describe as the “second heaven,” a sphere under temporary dominion of fallen angelic beings capable of impersonating divine figures (see Ephesians 6:12, Daniel 10:13).
[2] Alexis Sanderson, “The Śaiva Age: The Rise and Dominance of Śaivism during the Early Medieval Period,” in Genesis and Development of Tantrism, edited by Shingo Einoo (Tokyo: Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo, 2009), pp. 124–126. Sanderson provides detailed evidence that Buddhist tantras were modeled after Śaiva texts and appeared centuries after the Buddha’s life.
David B. Gray, The Cakrasamvara Tantra: The Discourse of Śrī Heruka, (New York: American Institute of Buddhist Studies, 2007), Introduction, pp. 18–25. Gray discusses the charnel ground setting and the structure of tantric texts, including the invocation of ḍākinīs and wrathful deities, and their divergence from earlier Buddhist sūtra literature.
In the hidden corners of Vajrayana Buddhism lies a strand of practice that few dare to discuss openly: bairaṇa (Sanskrit: vairana) rituals. These are wrathful rites aimed at the destruction of enemies, both spiritual and human.
Often sanitized or dismissed as purely symbolic by modern interpreters, the historical and textual record suggests something more visceral, more deadly: these rituals were, and in some cases, still are, performed with the explicit intention to eliminate human beings. This underscores the urgent need for transparency in the study and transmission of Vajrayana practices, especially as many naive spiritual seekers are drawn to Tibetan Buddhism by its outward promise of peace, compassion, and enlightenment, often without awareness of its esoteric and potentially violent dimensions.
What Is a Bairaṇa Ritual?
The term bairaṇa appears in the tantric classification of the four karmas: four magical functions that a Vajrayana practitioner may perform:
Pacifying (śānti)
Enriching (puṣṭi or vaśya)
Subjugating (stambhana)
Destroying (bairaṇa)
The purpose of the fourth category, “subjugating,” is unambiguous: obliteration. Within Tibetan Buddhist traditions, especially in the rites of wrathful deities such as Vajrakīla, Yamantaka, and Mahākāla, bairaṇa rituals are used to eliminate:
Samaya breakers: Those who violate sacred tantric vows
Enemies: Individuals perceived to be actively working against the practitioner
Obstructive spirits: Demonic forces, ghosts, or elemental energies believed to cause illness, insanity, or misfortune
Political enemies: In historical contexts, entire state-level rituals were conducted against rival kings or invading armies
Ritual Actions: Effigy Creation and Destruction
Texts such as The Cult of the Deity Vajrakīla describe in detail the creation of effigies to represent obstructive forces. These are crafted using materials such as cloth taken from the target, filled with charnel substances, and inscribed with mantras.(1) The effigy is then subjected to violent ritual acts such as stabbing with ritual daggers (phurba), binding, burning, or drowning.
Example: Vajrakīla Tantras (summary from Boord, The Cult of the Deity Vajrakīla)
“Fashion a figure of the enemy from black wool… fill it with the five meats and five nectars. Tie it with red thread, place it beneath the kīla (ritual dagger). Stab it while reciting the mantra… Then, place it in the fire, imagining flames consuming the soul of the enemy.”
This is not metaphor. The rite involves constructing a magical double of the target and ritually executing it. The “enemy” may be a real, named person.
Fire Offerings and Mantra Recitation
Often, the effigy is placed in a consecrated fire pit and incinerated while wrathful mantras are recited, invoking deities to consume and destroy the obstacle.
Example: From the Dujum Namchok Putri Ritual
“To receive these five aggregates of the malefactors who are our hostile enemies and obstructing spirits (causing harm)! We now feed them into your (wide open) mouths; may you accept (these morsels and devour them)—Kharam Khahi!”
This passage metaphorically frames the act of feeding the enemy to wrathful deities, representing a kind of karmic annihilation. In tantric contexts, this has often been interpreted as a sanctioned form of ritual killing.
Another Example: From the Rituals of the Secret Assembly Tantra
“Bind the name and essence of the breaker of samaya into the effigy… May his limbs be broken, his breath cease, and his karmic stains be consumed in fire.”
How Were These Used Historically?
Scholars like Ronald Davidson and Martin Boord have documented numerous instances where wrathful rites were used to eliminate perceived threats, including human beings. These were not fringe practices. They were part of the institutionalized ritual life of powerful lamas and state-sponsored religion.
For example:
In the 17th century, the Gelugpa used wrathful rites against rival schools.
The Fifth Dalai Lama reportedly employed Vajrakīla rituals to eliminate political enemies and to legitimize military campaigns.
In the Nyingma tradition, terma (revealed teachings) include instructions for magical actions against sorcerers and heretics.
Ethics of Wrathful Means
Here lies the uncomfortable truth: Vajrayana Buddhism is not a pacifist tradition. It is a path of power, and power is always ambiguous.
Proponents argue that wrathful actions arise from compassion, a fierce compassion that liberates by force when necessary. Critics, both within and outside the tradition, question whether such acts truly serve liberation or whether they reveal the manipulation of tantric power for worldly gain.
Conclusion: A Tradition of Dangerous Possibilities
The bairaṇa rituals of Vajrayana are not relics of a mythic past. They are living technologies, still transmitted under specific conditions to qualified initiates.
Yet when removed from their sacred context, or cloaked in euphemism, they reveal a deeper concern: the boundary between symbolic and literal violence in Tibetan Buddhism has often been porous. The image of Tibetan Buddhism as purely peaceful and benevolent does not survive close scrutiny.
(1) In Tantric practice, particularly within cremation-ground or charnel-ground rituals, practitioners engage directly with “charnel substances.” These substances include human bones (such as skulls and femurs), cremation ashes, decomposed flesh, fat, blood, and bodily fluids, as well as soil and items saturated with the energy of death. Some rituals involve the use of skull cups (kapalas) for offerings, bone ornaments worn on the body, or the smearing of ash.
Sources and Suggested Reading
Boord, Martin. The Cult of the Deity Vajrakīla: According to the Texts of the Northern Treasures Tradition of Tibet. Tring: The Institute of Buddhist Studies, 1993.
Davidson, Ronald M. Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement. Columbia University Press, 2002.
Dalton, Jacob. The Taming of the Demons: Violence and Liberation in Tibetan Buddhism. Yale University Press, 2011.
Hirshberg, Daniel. Remembering the Lotus-Born: Padmasambhava in the History of Tibet’s Golden Age. Wisdom Publications, 2016.
Tantric initiation (Vajrayana empowerment) is often described as a ritual that grants permission to engage in deity yoga and awaken one’s inner Buddha-nature. Yet traditional Tibetan sources suggest that something more mystical and intrusive is occurring, that the lama actually places the deity’s essence into the disciple’s mindstream. This critical detail, essentially the guru implanting or merging the deity (yidam) with the initiate’s mind, is conspicuously absent in most contemporary teachings.
This article examines classical tantras and commentaries to determine whether they explicitly describe the guru installing the deity in the disciple’s mind. It then compares that understanding with modern teachings, exposing a deliberate omission that raises serious questions about transparency in Vajrayana transmission.
Traditional Teachings on Tantric Empowerment
In Vajrayana Buddhism, empowerment (Tib. wang, Skt. abhisheka) is essential. “In the Secret Mantra Vehicle, there can be no accomplishment without empowerment.”¹ Classical definitions stress that this is not merely symbolic but a ritual that transforms the disciple’s mindstream.
According to the Rigpa Wiki, empowerment “awakens the special capacity for primordial wisdom to arise in the mind of the disciple.”² The Dalai Lama’s teachings on the Kalachakra Tantra state the guru “ripens the disciple’s psycho-physical continuum with the initiations.”³ Traditional analogies liken this to planting a seed that, with the right conditions, will grow into Buddhahood. This “seed” is not just metaphorical but is a spiritual presence that enters the disciple.
Tantric texts and commentaries describe empowerment as a mystical transmission wherein the wisdom deity (jnanasattva) is invited to enter the samaya deity (samayasattva), the visualized form of the disciple. Sam van Schaik summarizes: “in empowerment… the wisdom being becomes embodied in the samaya being.”⁴ The two minds are joined.
Instructions for such ceremonies explain that the lama generates themselves as the deity and transmits that awakened essence into the disciple through vase water, mantras, and gestures. The disciple visualizes the deity dissolving into themselves, signifying that the deity’s mind is being placed within them. Lineage sources stress that the lama must already hold the deity’s realization in order to transmit it. As one commentary puts it: “You have to hold something in you before you can give it.”⁵
In short, classical sources affirm that empowerment involves the lama implanting the deity’s essence into the disciple. Without this, Vajrayana texts say, real accomplishment is impossible, “like trying to press oil from sand.”
Does the Lama Literally Install a Deity?
While ancient texts may not use the modern phrase “implant the deity,” their intent is clear. An authoritative Kagyu explanation says the lama “places a recipient in connection with a particular Tantric deity,” enabling a “merging of essences.” This “connection” implies not just a symbolic affiliation but a mystical joining.
The empowerment ritual is the cause that activates and personifies the disciple’s Buddha-nature as a specific deity. This is not something the student can do alone; it requires the guru’s intervention. In Highest Yoga Tantra, multiple initiations (vase, secret, wisdom, word) facilitate this process in stages. During empowerment, the disciple imagines themselves as the deity (samaya being) and invites the wisdom deity to enter. When the two merge, the disciple becomes “in union” with the deity.
Some texts describe this as light or energy entering the disciple symbolizing the deity’s mind entering their heart. The Indian master Vilāsavajra described the climax of empowerment as a point when “wisdom and samaya come together.”⁶ The disciple leaves not just authorized but changed, carrying the seed of the deity from that point forward.
Jamgön Kongtrul writes that empowerment “introduces the disciple into the deity’s mandala” and allows the deity’s form and wisdom to “take root.”⁷ A Nyingma commentary states the guru, visualized as the deity, dissolves into the disciple, granting the blessing of the deity’s mind. Even the phrase “blessings enter the disciple’s stream” implies the transfer of a conscious presence.
In effect, tantric empowerment functions like a spiritual implantation, or even possession, in which the enlightened mind of the deity is placed into the disciple. The initiate now carries the deity within them, not merely as a concept but a living presence.
Modern Teachings: Omission or Adaptation?
If this is the traditional view, why don’t modern teachers say so? Contemporary teachings, especially those aimed at Western or general audiences, consistently describe empowerment in vague terms: permission, inspiration, activation of inner potential. The mystical detail of the lama implanting the deity is nearly always omitted.
In a transcribed teaching from a famous lama, now deceased (see below), empowerment is described as a prerequisite for deity meditation: the disciple receives empowerment, then instructions, and cultivates their body as the deity’s form. No mention is made of the lama placing anything into the disciple. It reads more like ceremonial enrollment than spiritual fusion.
This pattern is widespread: contemporary teachers often emphasize psychological language such as inner transformation, personal growth, and discovering potential, while minimizing the traditional notion of external metaphysical transmission. For instance, the Rubin Museum describes empowerment as a “ritual to introduce us to our own innermost Buddha qualities,”⁸ rather than as the reception of a deity from the lama. Such a framing casts the guru as a guide rather than a spiritual agent. However, this reinterpretation flattens the ritual’s ontological depth and misrepresents the original esoteric function of empowerment.
Even phrases like “placing the disciple in connection with the deity” or “ripening the mindstream” are left undefined. Many Vajrayana students, unless they study technical commentaries, may never realize that the tradition sees empowerment as a supernatural event. The omission is so consistent that one might suspect it’s intentional, perhaps to avoid alarming newcomers with the idea of having a foreign spirit installed in their mind.
Secrecy and Obfuscation in Vajrayana
To understand this omission, we must examine the role of secrecy. Vajrayana has always been esoteric. Revealing inner teachings to the uninitiated is a root downfall. As such, teachers often avoid revealing too much, especially in public settings.
Defenders of this approach argue that it’s compassionate: premature disclosure can cause misunderstanding or fear. Teachings are “graduated” and deeper layers revealed as the student progresses. In this view, the omission is considered skillful, not deceptive.
Yet critics argue that this secrecy amounts to intentional obfuscation in the modern information age. Newcomers are told that Vajrayana is about archetypes and psychological growth; this is appealing, secular-friendly language. Only later do they learn that the practice involves guru-bestowed metaphysical empowerment and deity implantation.
Few Vajrayana centers provide an upfront disclosure like: “In this empowerment, you will vow lifelong devotion and we believe that the deity’s mind will enter into yours.” Without this, informed consent becomes impossible. What if the student has been raised Christian and bound by the First Commandment: “You shall not have strange gods before Me”⁹? Would they agree to deity possession if fully informed?
The disconnect between outer presentation and inner doctrine has led some former practitioners to label the tradition dishonest. Years may pass before students learn that guru-deity fusion/possession are standard parts of the system. At that point, it may be too late as they’ve taken vows, invested emotionally, and become spiritually entangled.
Some defenders argue that Vajrayana’s opacity is necessary, that it was never meant for everyone. But in modern multi-cultural societies, this clandestine approach resembles a bait-and-switch. Students sign up for meditation, not spiritual merging with an imported god. They deserve to know what they’re consenting to.
Restoring Honesty in Transmission
Is omitting the “deity implantation” deceptive? From an academic standpoint, the answer is yes: there is a clear disconnect between traditional texts and public presentation. The idea that the guru installs a deity in the disciple’s mindstream is a core teaching, not a fringe view.
Yet most public talks and introductory texts never say this plainly. The true nature of the ritual, guru/deity fusion with the recipient, is hidden behind euphemism. This may prevent questions, but it is morally dishonest.
Vajrayana dharma centers must move toward transparency. Honesty about what is really occurring would both honor the teaching and protect the student. That this is seldom done nowadays is deeply disturbing.
In a predominantly Christian culture, where devotion to other gods violates divine commandments, the omission is not just deceptive, it’s a spiritual breach of consent. Prospective practitioners deserve to know what is happening before the ritual occurs, not after.
The tradition holds that through the guru’s blessing, one’s mind becomes inseparable from the deity. Then let us insist that teachers explain that clearly, before it is too late for the recipient to turn back.
Sources:
Traditional Vajrayana saying; cited in various commentarial teachings on abhisheka.
His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Kalachakra Initiation Teachings.
Sam van Schaik, “The Limits of Transgression: The Samaya Vows of Mahāyoga” (2010).
Ngawang Phuntsok, On Receiving Wang (Empowerment).
Vilāsavajra, commentary on tantric vows; source referenced in academic discussion on Mahāyoga.
Jamgön Kongtrul, The Treasury of Knowledge, Book Eight, Part Three: The Elements of Tantric Practice.
Scott Globus, “Empowerments: Awakening the Buddha Within,” Rubin Museum, 2021.
Exodus 20:3, The Holy Bible.
Kalu Rinpoche – Teachings on Karmamudra and Mahamudra–California, Los Angeles, December 21, 1988
Transcript:
The gentleman is asking whether there is any connection between the traditional Buddhist approach to tantric practice and various sexual yogas—whether these practices have any bearing on the traditional path or whether that’s a misconception.
Yes, there is a connection. Previously, I spoke of the four major classes of tantra: Kriya Tantra, Charya Tantra, Yoga Tantra, and the fourth, Anuttara Yoga Tantra, or the Tantra of Unsurpassable Union. This fourth category is divided into Father Tantra, Mother Tantra, and Non-dual Tantra.
Principally in the classes of Mother and Non-dual Tantra, there are techniques involving sexual union as a basis for spiritual practice, technically termed karma mudra. These practices form part of a broader cycle known as the teachings on the Four Mudras. These teachings, as taught by the Buddha, are authentic and part of the tradition—the challenge lies in practicing them purely.
Traditionally, an individual would first undergo a long period of purification—purifying body, speech, and mind from harmful actions and obscurations, while cultivating positive qualities like merit and awareness. This is done through preliminary practices known as ngöndro.
Next, the individual would receive an authentic empowerment into one of the major tantric cycles from a qualified teacher. They would then receive extensive instruction in deity meditation and cultivate the experience of their own body as the deity’s form—experiencing the union of form and emptiness not as an idea, but as direct realization. Their speech would become the union of sound and emptiness, often practiced through extensive mantra recitation. They would also cultivate the awareness of mind as the union of intelligent clarity and emptiness, stabilizing it through meditative absorption.
Following this, the person would practice tummo or inner heat. This practice is done in stages and begins with the generation of inner warmth at the navel. As the warmth spreads, energy from the crown of the head flows downward. Through mastery of this flow, the practitioner experiences a profound bliss that pervades the mind-body complex.
Advanced stages involve focusing energy through the chakras. When energy is drawn to the throat, joy arises. At the heart, sublime joy. At the navel, special joy. And when energy is drawn down and contained within the genital chakra, co-emergent joy. Karma mudra practice requires the ability to hold this energy without losing it through orgasm. This leads to a nondual, non-conceptual state of awareness.
Eventually, the practitioner reverses the flow of energy upward through the chakras. Mastery over lowering and raising energy is required before karma mudra practice can be properly undertaken. With that mastery, energy is consciously directed through the 72,000 subtle channels (nadis) in the body. The ultimate aim is not sexual pleasure, but realization of Mahamudra.
Examples of individuals who attained enlightenment through such practices include the Indian king Indrabhuti, who is said to have relied on 1,000 consorts over six years. Tibetan lay practitioners like Marpa the Translator—who had eight consorts—are also examples. These paths exist, but must be practiced with purity and commitment.
Misunderstanding these practices—believing tantra is simply about sex—is a serious mistake. One of the 14 root downfalls in Vajrayana practice involves this misunderstanding, particularly the indulgence in orgasm, which is seen as a loss of energy that could otherwise be harnessed for enlightenment.
Another audience question asked about how long to leave a corpse undisturbed after death. In Tibetan tradition, the consciousness remains associated with the body for about 3.5 days. During this time, the body should ideally not be touched. A practitioner of phowa (transference of consciousness) is then called to assist the consciousness in departing skillfully.
After that, the body may be disposed of through burial, water burial, or cremation—accompanied by ritual and chanting to aid the consciousness. These practices can still be valuable even in cultures where such methods are not common, and ideally a phowa practitioner should be contacted if possible.
Another question asked whether one can attain liberation in a single lifetime through tantra. The answer is yes—realization of Buddhahood is possible. However, the physical manifestations may differ from those of a SambhogakayaBuddha, who displays specific physical marks of perfection. Still, the inner realization can be the same.
To discern an authentic teacher, look for someone with an unbroken lineage, proper transmission, sincere motivation, and correct understanding. Avoid teachers who have been disowned by their own lineage, or who act out of selfish motives. Examine their character, conduct, and consistency with traditional teachings.
In closing, the speaker encourages all listeners to study, practice, and seek qualified teachers. The merit of the teaching session is dedicated to the awakening of all sentient beings from ignorance, and the spreading of primordial awareness so that all beings may eventually attain Buddhahood.
Tantric Deception 