The History of Buddhist Thought c26.69

c26.69

Why Buddhism declined and almost disappeared in the land of its birth is still a matter of discussion, but there is one other development still to be mentioned, tantric Buddhism. This was certainly flourishing in the tenth century. It is not properly speaking a development of Buddhism, but an amalgamation with a form of religion called Tantrism, which affected certain branches both of Buddhism and Hinduism. Tantrism as a form of religion is of unknown origin, and may possibly have arisen among some indigenous and non-Aryan people. It consists in giving a religious significance to the facts of sex. Such a development, at least in a certain stage of society, is not necessarily immoral. Its discussion, however, belongs to medical psychology. The unpleasantness of the subject has sometimes led writers to speak of it as mere debauchery, but a proper examination of the facts would probably show that it belongs to an exceptional but not abnormal social development. When introduced into a quite different state of society it must appear both abnormal and immoral. In any case a proper discussion of the subject could only be made by including and treating of the facts as they have existed in all the various forms of Hinduism and as they exist now. One peculiar feature of Buddhist Tantrism is that it adopted religious technical terms and applied them in new senses, so that what appear as quite ordinary expressions may bear a surprisingly different meaning, and a tantric sense may be lurking where least expected. It is usually found combined with two other factors, the use of magic formulas, and yoga-practice. All the three have this in common that they represent attempts to get beyond the hard world of facts and achieve the marvellous results imagined by the mystic.