The Buddhist Tantras

Light on Indo-Tibetan Esotericism

Alex Wayman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780415461634
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135029210
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Religion

Originally published in 1973.

The volume is divided into four sections:

1. The introduction places the position of the Buddhist Tantras within Mahayana Buddhism and recalls their early literary history, especially the Guhyasamahatantra; the section also covers Buddhist Genesis and the Tantric tradition.
2. The foundations of the Buddhist Tantras are discussed and the Tantric presentation of divinity; the preparation of disciples and the meaning of initiation; symbolism of the mandala-palace Tantric ritual and the twilight language.
3. This section explores the Tantric teachings of the inner Zodiac and the fivefold ritual symbolism of passion.
4. The bibliographical research contains an analysis of the Tantric section of the Kanjur exegesis and a selected Western Bibliography of the Buddhist Tantras with comments.

III
Special Studies

Both the one who is ignorant of the yoga of wind
And the one who knowing it does not practice it,
Are saṃsāra’s worm,
Afflicted by all sorts of suffering.

Saṃvarodaya-tantra

12
The Nine Orifices of the Body

It is a well-known feature of Buddhist canonical literature that one of the chief early disciples of the Buddha, Maudgalyāyana (Pāli: Moggallāna) was credited with special magical powers (iddhi in Pāli, ṛddhi in Sanskrit) with which he often visited various other realms of the world than ours, such as the hells and heavens. The Mahāvastu (Vol. I) soon takes up an account of this disciple’s visits to the eight great hells and other realms. These stories do not explain how he managed to accomplish the feat. It is only much later—as far as I know—in the Buddhist Tantra literature, that one can find an explanation of how a yogin can contact the subdivisions of the three worlds, according to the traditional Buddhist classification, that is to say, the realm of desire, realm of form, and formless realm. The realm of desire is said to include the six passion deity families, as well as men, animals, hungry ghosts (preta), and hell beings. The realm of form is called, for meditative purposes, the four dhyānas, and has further divisions. The formless realm also has its divisions of the bases of infinite space, infinite perception, and so on. These divisions are known from early Buddhist literature and are discussed acutely in the branch of literature called Abhidharma. According to the tantric literature as will be cited below, the way a yogin like Maudgalyāyana can gain entrance to those worlds is analogous to how a person might go there after death by reason of destiny. In short, the yogin concentrates in a special way on various body orifices that are deemed to be correlated with the beings of various realms, while the person who dies with his stream of consciousness passing through one orifice or another, goes to the appropriate realm of the intermediate state (antarābhava). The orifices themselves are made salient in ancient Indian literature. The rest may well have been strictly oral for centuries; but there are suggestions of the rather curious theory herein unfolded in the wide-spread injunction to think of a deity in the hour of death so as to go to the realm of that deity. Such a teaching is found in the Hindu classic, the Bhagavadgītā, and the famous American Sanskritist Franklin Edgerton once collected many materials on this subject for an article in Annals of the Bhandarkar Institute (1927).

The nine orifices are referred to in the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad, which has this well-known verse (III, 18):

The embodied swan moves to and fro, in the city of nine gates and outside, the Controller of the whole world, of the stationary and the moving.

This tradition of nine is maintained in the Bhagavadgītā (V, 13), where the mention of nine gates is commented upon as the two eyes, the two ears, the two nostrils, the mouth, and the two organs (male) of excretion and generation. However, the Kaṭha Upaniśad (II, 2, 1) refers to the city of eleven gates, and the commentary adds the navel and the opening at the top of the skull to the list of nine.

In a native Tibetan work of astrology, the Dge Idan rtsis… (Sec. Ja) by Mi-pham tshaṅs-sras dgyes-pa’i-rdo-rje, there is a correspondence of orifices and planets which is of interest to mention here simply because the nine differ by inclusion of the navel and omission of the mouth, which at least shows a lack of unanimity on what the nine orifices are when spelled out:

When we pass to the Buddhist Tantras, we find in the Buddhajñānapāda wing of the Guhyasamājatantra tradition, in the work of the founder Buddhaśrijñānapāda, his Dvikrama-tattvabhāvanā-nāma-mukhāgama (PTT, Vol. 65, p. 8-5 to p. 9-1), this list of nine orifices in explanation of transfer or transit (saṃkrānti) by a yogin or through death by way of one or other orifice to an associated external realm: 1. forehead, 2. navel, 3. crown of head, 4. eyes, 5. ears, 6. nostrils, 7. mouth, 8. urethra, and 9. anus. This list includes the eleven of the Kaṭha Upaniśad, reduced in number by counting the eyes, ears, and nostrils, as one each; and then adds the forehead center. The work continues in this manner:

One should understand the forehead as the prognostic of the realm of form (rüpadhātu) and birth (there). The navel is the prognostic place of the gods of the realm of desire (kāmadhātu) and certainty of birth among them. The crown of head is the prognostic source of the formless realms (arüpyas) and birth therein. If there is transfer of knowledge in the two nostrils, the person is born in the abode of the yakśas. The two ears are the certain passage to the abode of vidyādharas. The two eyes are the prognostics for birth as a king of men. In the case of transit of knowledge through the mouth, one may understand it as the prognostic of pretas (hungry ghosts). One should take the urethra as the prognostic for prognostics of animals. One should understand the going of knowledge through the anus as the prognostic of the hell beings. Having thus understood the individual aspects for transfer of knowledge, one should do (mantra) placement in the seven upper orifices by means of the syllable of five soundings (nādita). One should place SṺṂ in the urethra and KṢUṂ in the anus. Having thus stopped up the seven orifices, when one searches the place through the following sequence with one’s own mind, he will certainly go to that very realm.

Before going further, let me summarize that passage:

Orifice	Prognostic of what place or beings
forehead	realm of form
navel	passion gods in realm of desire
crown of head	formless realms
nostrils	abode of yaksas
ears	abode of vidyadharas
eyes	a king of men
mouth	hungry ghosts
urethra	animals
anus	hell beings

Vitapāda’s commentary on that work, the Mukhāgamavṛtti (PTT., Vol. 65, p. 65-1,2) explains: The six orifices, forehead, etc. are good. The three orifices, urethra, etc. are bad. Therefore, one should understand the prognostic for birth therein by the coming and going of one’s own knowledge (jñāna) in either the good or bad orifices. (His subsequent comments show that “knowledge” means the yogin’s knowledge; hence that the yogin can establish a correlation with a certain realm by centering his knowledge or know-how, in a certain orifice). In the case of the yaksas, this means birth as Vaisravana and other yakṣas on Mt. Meru. Vidyādhara (holding the occult science) means becoming a yogin who has vidyā and the eight siddhis of “eye ointment”, etc. The five soundings are HṺṂ, because this is the sounding of the five Buddhas. In the case of SUṂ for the urethra, this is white. KṢUṂ for the anus is yellow. Having stopped up (or plugged) the orifices, one goes to one’s own realm of mind (cittadhātu). One “searches” by the eight methods of recitation, etc.

In agreement with a portion of these statements, Bhavabhadra states in the Śrivajraḍāka-nāma-mahātantrarājavivṛti (Derge Tanjur, Rgyud, Tsha, 137a-2):

The text, “From the navel, the gods of the desire realm,” means that any perceptual stream (vijñāna) that goes forth from the navel orifice, is born among the gods of the desire realm. The text, “With the form of the bindu, heaven,” means that any such one that goes forth from the orifice in the middle of the forehead is born among the gods of the realm of form. The text, “proceeding upwards,” means going forth through the golden door (the Brahmarandhra).

This author, Bhavabhadra, has written a commentary on the Tantra Ārya-Catuṣpitha, which is also an authority for what are known as the “gates to the intermediate state (antarābhava).”

Notice, in short, that the three bad destinies of hungry ghosts, animals and hell beings, are correlated respectively with the mouth, urethra, and anus, which accordingly are the three “bad” orifices; while the two good destinies of men and gods are correlated with the other six, which are the “good” orifices. But notice also that the mouth is included among the seven upper orifices in terms of methods for blocking the orifices. Apparently, the praxis of the yogin to stop or inhibit the passage through the orifices is accomplished by imagining a mantra syllable at each of the orifices.

I also noticed what at first seemed to be a peculiar theory in the Saṃpuṭatantra about nine orifices, and did not feel confident about including it without Consulting the commentaries. Upon referring to the three commentaries in the Tanjur (using the Narthang edition), I did not readily find the place in Indrabhüti’s com...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• I. Introductions
• II. Foundations of the Buddhist Tantra
• III. Special Studies
• Index