Philosophy East and West

André Padoux (1920-2017) was among a small number of scholars, including Harvey P. Alper and Lilian Silburn, who introduced the study of Tantra to Western scholars. He authored such important works as Vāc: The Concept of the Word in Selected Hindu Tantras and Tantric Mantras: Studies on Mantrasastra. Padoux's 2017 Hindu Tantric World: An Overview is a significant revision of his 2010 Comprendre le tantrisme: Les sources hindoues.

Padoux seeks to discover what constitutes Tantric Hinduism by investigating its essential notions and its numberless practices. These are bound together, "since there is no practice without a theory that gives it meaning and explains it" (p. xvi). He discusses the Tantric body, as it "is a fundamental element because, except for the abstract thinker, there is no Tantrism (or any creed) without its being experienced, lived, in the body--or, more exactly, in an indivisible body-mind totality" (p. xvii). Tantric Buddhism is not discussed, as it is significantly different from Tantric Hinduism.

The Hindu Tantric World is divided into three parts: "The Hindu Tantric Domain," "The Tantric World," and "Tantra Today." The first part has four chapters. In "The Hindu Tantric Field: Terminology and Attempts at Defining a Tantric Domain," Padoux writes that Tantra's pervasive influence on Hinduism and Buddhism is frequently unrecognized. Hinduism's worship (pūjā) comes from Tantra, for example, not from the Vedas. While Tantra is not present in the Vedas, Tantra originated early in India's history. Tantra is a set of beliefs and practices that are lived and experienced in the body. The Sanskrit word tantra comes from verbal root tan, which can mean "to expand," "to spread," "to spin out," "to weave," "to display," "to put forth," or "to compose" a verse, system, or doctrine. There is no single Sanskrit term for all Tantric phenomenon just as there was no single Sanskrit term for Hinduism before the presence of Islam in India. Although tantra refers to text, not all texts called "Tantra" are Tantric, and not all Tantric [End Page 1] texts are called "Tantra," especially in Tantric Buddhism. Tantric texts are primarily Śaiva, frequently in its nondualist traditions, which hold that everything is Śiva's manifestation. Tantric texts present themselves as the revelation of a divine being who brought them down, and so there is a descent of Tantra (tantrāvatāra) to humans. By asserting that doctrines progressively ascend (uttarottaravaiśiṣṭya), Tantra claims to encompass and supersede the Vedic tradition. Tantra maintains that the Brahmanical teaching and rules which are based on the Vedas are valid only at a lower level: they provide guidance for social life and salvation, but not liberation. Tantra claims that it is more effective than the Vedas in obtaining liberation in the present dark age (kaliyuga) where passion and desire (kāma) prevail. While the adjective "Tantric" (tāntrika) comes to be opposed to "Vedic" (vaidika), Kullūka Bhaṭṭa (fifteenth century) refers to both as revelation (śruti). Knowledge of Tantra is continually developing. Many texts have been discovered since 1950, and texts are still being found.

Padoux accepts David Gordon White's distinction between a hard-core transgressive Tantra tradition and a soft-core tradition that is found generally in Hindu thought and practice. However, the importance of Tantra is "its pervasive interpenetration of brahmanical elements" (p. 15). Tantra may lead to power, but its aim is liberation. Tantra is transgressively heterodox, to varying degrees. The point of Tantric transgressions is for its practitioners to experientially recognize that the world is the Deity's manifestation, and hence that everything is equally pervaded by the divine. Tantra has continually changed and developed, so that what is regarded as its main features is actually a synthesis that does not wholly correspond to any historically or actually existing Tantra. Nonetheless, Tantra generally maintains that the world emanates from the Deity through a primordial vibration or...