Conjuring the Buddha

Over the past twenty years, Jacob P. Dalton has made significant contributions to the study of Tibetan Buddhist tantric literature. Working initially from the trove of Tibetan tantric Buddhist manuscripts preserved at Dunhuang, Dalton expanded to explore the tantras transmitted during the early dissemination (snga dar) of Buddhism in Tibet and the origin narratives preserved within this literature. In Conjuring the Buddha, Dalton builds upon his past work and makes a serious contribution to the study of tantric Buddhist ritual literature and the early history of tantric Buddhist traditions.The field of tantric studies has tended to focus on the central scriptures of tantric traditions, the tantras and their commentaries. The far more numerous ritual manuals preserved by tantric traditions have tended to be ignored, perhaps due to the belief that they are derivative, expanding on the ritual passages found in the tantras themselves. One of Dalton's major contributions has been to show that tantric ritual literature is far from derivative. In an earlier work, he argued that “ritual manuals were in fact the principle creative source for early tantric innovation, and the tantras were written, and rewritten, to encapsulate and canonize these ritual changes.”1 In this volume Dalton expands this earlier insight and demonstrates the central role ritual literature played in the development of tantric traditions.The book focuses on the study of four distinct ritual texts preserved at Dunhuang, each of which is the focus of a chapter. These focused studies follow the opening chapter, which serves to contextualize both the early history of tantric Buddhist traditions and the Tibetan Buddhist texts preserved at Dunhuang. Each of the four texts studied here is worthy of serious consideration, and these chapters show how the texts shed light on early Indian and Tibetan tantric Buddhist history. Each of these chapters (chaps. 2–5) is followed by an appendix containing a full annotated translation for each ritual text. In so doing, Dalton makes an important contribution, since the ninth- and tenth-century handwritten Tibetan manuscripts preserved at Dunhuang are notoriously difficult to study. He thus makes these texts available to a much larger scholarly audience. He also argues that these texts played a central role in tantric traditions from their emergence up to the present day. Drawing on evidence from translations preserved in the Chinese canon, Dalton argues that ritual manuals appear to have begun to circulate widely in Indian Buddhist circles in the fifth and sixth centuries and that these Buddhist ritual manuals were the direct precursors of the Buddhist tantras, which emerged about two centuries later, in the mid-seventh century (48–49). This is significant as it places the ritual manual as the source from which the later tantras developed.The first text Dalton presents to the reader is an initiation manual connected with the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana tradition, an early tantric tradition that played an important role in the development of Tibetan Buddhist funerary traditions. Here he discusses the evolution of the dhāraṇī sūtra genre, which, over time, sometimes had ritual manuals (vidhi) appended to them, with later works of this sort including the ritual instructions within the text itself. Eighth-century tantric authors like Amoghavajra composed ritual manuals for older dhāraṇī sūtras that incorporated new tantric ritual practices, blurring the line between the tantras and their older Mahayana precursors. Specifically, he argues that the Sarvadurgatipariśodhana Tantra emerged from a “ritual matrix” centering on earlier traditions such as the Uṣṇīṣavijayā-dhāraṇī (61). Dalton also explores the development of the origin narrative found within this body of works.Dalton then turns to the genre of meditation manuals, dedicating three chapters to their analysis. In the first one, he raises the interesting topic of possession (āveśa) and its relation to the development of early tantric Buddhist rituals. He does so via an exploration of a meditation manual (sādhana) connected with the Sarvatathāgata-tattvasaṃgraha, an influential early tantric Buddhist tradition. He explores the development of visualization practices and their deployment in tantric Buddhist ritual and contemplative exercises. He explains in detail how the sādhana seeks to bring about union with the Buddha, and he proposes an innovative literary analysis of this ritual text, arguing that its deployment of the image of the mirror and its use of chiasmus, or inverted parallelism, seek to evoke a transformative experience of union with the deity (125–27).In the fourth chapter, Dalton studies another sādhana text connected with the Mahāyoga tradition of practice. This work is concerned with so-called sexual yogic practice. Dalton provides an interesting analysis of a rather cryptic text, while shedding light on how transgressive text and practices were integrated into Tibetan Buddhist traditions. He connects these practices with the sexual components in tantric initiations and explores their development during the eighth and ninth centuries. Here he makes a major contribution to our understanding of this extremely important genre of tantric Buddhist literature. The author perhaps should have discussed the Śaiva Hindu precursors to these possession (āveśa) and sexual fluid sacramental practices, but despite this minor lacuna the analysis is excellent.The final sādhana text that Dalton brings to our attention is a fascinating tenth-century work titled the Samādhi-sādhana, a short meditation manual that integrates Tibetan Mahāyoga and Chinese Chan contemplative practices. It is an idiosyncratic text that moves the meditator through a spare evocation of the generation stage, in which one visualizes the mandala and the deities who occupy it and identifies with the central deity, segueing to perfection stage contemplations that evidently are the focus of the text. One of the interesting features of the text is its description of breath cycling techniques that accompanied sexual yogic practices. Dalton argues that this text represents a relatively early presentation of perfection stage practice, one that presages the well-known systems developed in the ninth and tenth centuries but also contains elements not found in those later systems. Quoting the ninth-century Tibetan author Nupchen Sangyé Yeshe, Dalton suggests that during the ninth century there were already two distinct methods of perfection stage practice, with this text representing the “lower door” approach, which later fell out of favor (202–5). Here he sheds light on an extremely obscure topic—namely, the history of the early development of perfection stage practices.In conclusion, Dalton makes a major contribution to our understanding of Tibetan tantric Buddhist ritual texts as well as the history of the tradition in which they play an essential but still little-understood role. Thanks to Dalton, however, our understanding is now greater than it was a year ago, prior to the publication of this work. It is highly recommended for anyone with an interest in tantric Buddhism and its early development in Tibet

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Buddhism · Gautama Buddha · Literature · Tantra · Chinese history and philosophy · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies

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