Scholars have been, still are, and probably always will be, divided on the question of whether Hindu Tantricism grew out of Buddhist Tantricism or vice versa. The older view, now held by only a minority of scholars, was that Buddhism had come into contact with Tantricism or some similar cult and that from a blending of philosophical and theological concepts derived from the former and sexo-yogic techniques derived from the latter had come into existence Vajrayana Buddhism—the oldest school of Tantric Buddhism—which although it was eventually extinguished in its Indian motherland, successfully survived in Tibet. The more modern, and now generally accepted theory is that all Hindu schools using sexual polarity symbolism were originally derived from Buddhism.2
In any real sense the problem is insoluble. Perhaps, as has been suggested by Sh. Dasgupta, neither Buddhist nor Hindu Tantricism grew out of the other—although there seems little doubt that the oldest Buddhist Tantras are chronologically earlier than the oldest surviving Hindu Tantras—but that both grew out of a religious, sexo-yogic cult of ancient India, this cult manifesting as Tantric Buddhism when in contact with Buddhist philosophy, and as Saiva and Shakta Tantricism when associated with the religious speculations of the Saivas and Shaktas.
The philosophy of all schools of Tantricism sees both the universe, the macrocosm, and man himself, the microcosm, as being made up of two opposing aspects—male and female, static and dynamic, negative and positive3—and holds that the existence of these opposites in a state of duality is the source of all sorrow, pain, change, and suffering. The object of all religious endeavour should be, so it is believed, liberation from this duality and a return to a state in which the two opposing principles are united in a state of absolute non-duality.
Hindu Tantricism has called the male, that is to say the negative, passive, principle, Shiva, and the female, dynamic principle Shakti. In the human body (which, as in western occultism, is regarded a microcosm, a universe in miniature) the two principles are regarded as being particularly associated with two of the chakras—the centres of psycho-spiritual force which are of such importance in the esoteric physiology of Yoga. Shiva is regarded as dwelling in the Sahasrara chakra, the “thousand-petalled lotus” supposedly situated at the crown of the head, while Shakti is associated with the Muladhara chakra which is believed to lie over the perineum and the base of the spine. Liberation from duality can only be achieved, so it is believed by enabling Shakti, often symbolised as a coiled serpent, to uncoil herself, to rise up through the psychic centres, and to unite herself with Shiva in the thousand-petalled lotus.
The theory of Tantric Buddhism seems to show considerable similarity. The male principle—here seen as the active, phenomenal, aspect of the polarity—dwells in the head, and only by uniting it with the female principle of voidness, residing in the navel and solar plexus, can non-duality be achieved and liberation attained.
It is not, however, the theory of the various Tantric schools that is important, but their sexo-yogic practice, and in this the various schools show a remarkable resemblance to one another; just as, in the western world, the mystical practices of George Fox, the Quaker, and Madame de Guyon, the Catholic, were almost identical in spite of their theological differences, so the sexo-yogic practices of both Hindu and Buddhist Tantrics are essentially the same,4 in spite of the fact that the former believes in the existence of some sort of “real”, eternal ego, while the latter does not. In the last analysis it is only the nature of the actual psycho-spiritual experiences undergone by Tantric practitioners that are of any real importance, and we are forced to regard these as identical, at least until the unlikely event of a Hindu Tantric being converted to Buddhism (or vice versa) and reporting a change in the experiences undergone by him. The only fundamental difference between Hinduism and Buddhism is that the first has an ontology, the second has not.
The central core of Tantric religious practice is sexual intercourse—either actual or symbolic. Those who use the rites in which physical copulation takes place are termed followers of the left-hand path, those whose union is only symbolic are referred to as followers of the right-hand path. A good deal of nonsense has been talked about these terms, “left-hand” and “right-hand”, by western occultists who, following H. P. Blavatsky’s erroneous interpretation of them, have endeavoured to endow them with some moral significance—the transition from “left” to “sinister”, and from thence to “evil” is an easy, and misleading, one for the European to make. In reality the terms have no moral significance whatsoever. They simply express the plain fact that in rites culminating in physical sexuality the woman practitioner sits on the left of the male, while in those in which the copulation is merely symbolic she sits on his right.
The preliminaries to the sexual rites of Hindu Tantricism are very similar to those of more orthodox Hindu worship, but these preliminaries are followed by a type of religious observance that is as shocking to an orthodox Hindu as is the Black Mass to a believing Roman Catholic. “I shall proclaim left-handed practice, the supreme religious observance of Durga”, says one Tantric text, and goes on “following which the adept gains magical powers speedily in this Kali-Yuga. The rosary should be made of human teeth, the goblet of a man’s brain-pan, the seat of the skin of an adept, the bracelet of a woman’s hair. The sacrificial ingredients are to be saturated with wine, one must have sexual intercourse with another’s wife, no matter what her caste may be. Thus is left-handed practice, which bestows all magical powers, described, O benign Goddess.”
At times the Tantras are even more outspoken. Thus one of them says that “he who but once offers a hair of his Shakti5 in the cemetery becomes a great poet, a Lord of the Earth and goes forth mounted on an elephant”. A commentary upon this passage explains “hair” as meaning a pubic hair with its root which after male ejaculation has been soaked in semen. Another recension of the same Tantra advocates the physical consumption of semen by the male operator from the vagina of his partner.
The five “sacraments” partaken of by the practitioners of Tantric rites are usually known as the five Ms. They are matsya (fish), mamsa (meat, often beef, in normal circumstances completely for bidden to Hindus), madya (any alcoholic beverage), mudra (this word usually means ritual gesture, but in Tantric terminology it refers to kidney beans or any parched grain believed to have aphrodisiac qualities), and Maithuna (sexual intercourse). The participants in the rite also take hemp (i.e. cannabis indica, which contains more of the essential alkaloid than cannabis americana, the American variety of the same plant from which marijuana is derived) but as a preparation for the ceremony, not as part of it. Probably this is done because, as Agehananda Bharati has suggested, unless under the influence of some hallucinogenic drug pious Hindus would find it quite impossible to break through traditional taboos and partake of the five Ms.6