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Philosophy East and West
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Tibetan tantra
In Oriental art there may be no more evocative portrayal of what Rudolf Otto
calls the mysterium tremendum than the wrathful deities of Tibetan Tantric
Buddhism. Fearful in form, wreathed in flames, adorned with garlands of
human heads, and brandishing dagger and skull-cup, their painted images
conjure the feelings of dread and fascination which Otto describes in The Idea
of the Holy. In this seminal work, he sets out to describe the central element
of religious experience such that there is "no religion in which it does not live
as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the
name." 1
This article will be an inquiry into whether the holy, described as mysterium tremendum, does indeed stand as the core of the tantric path of
Tibetan Buddhism and will be a comparison of the methods of approaching
the holy or "numinous" as set forth by Otto and Tibetan scholars. The
presentation of tantra given here will follow that of the Gelukba order of
Throughout Otto draws sharp distinctions between the natural and the
supernatural and between the rational and the nonrational. The "numinous"
but only by their means." 7 Further, the numinous is nonrational and "completely eludes apprehension in terms of concepts" 8 and "can only be suggested by means of the special way in which it is reflected in the mind in terms of
feeling." 9
Donald S. Lopez, Jr. is a doctoral candidate in Buddhist Studies and an instructor in the Department
of Religious Studies, University of Virginia.
Philosophy East and West 29, no. 4 (October, 1979) ( by The University Press of Hawaii. All rights reserved.
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468 Lopez
Weber's "religious virtuosos," because they stress "the non-rational or suprarational elements in religion." 10
part of The Idea of the Holy to a description of these feelings, the first of
which centers in the subject's sense of creature-consciousness, "the emotion of
a creature, submerged and overwhelmed by its own nothingness in contrast to
fear, "a terror fraught with an inward shuddering such as not even the most
menacing and overpowering created thing can instil." 13
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469
religions." 7 Thus, against all those who would see the rise of religion
emanating from any number of "natural" factors, Otto holds the numinous to
be "the basic factor and basic impulse underlying the entire process of
religious evolution." 18
Weber also notes such a similarity between religion and art. However,
Weber observes that for the mystic "the indubitable psychological affinity of
order to achieve union with a reality that is beyond form. Weber perceives a
contradiction between religion and art, with the result that "the more religion
has emphasized either the supra-worldliness of its God or the otherworldliness of salvation, the more harshly has art been refuted." 20
Otto on the other hand, far from refuting art, suggests that aesthetic
feelings reveal the transcendent reality, that "in great art the point is reached
at which we may no longer speak of the 'magical,' but rather are confronted
with the numinous itself, with all its impelling power, transcending reason,
expressed in sweeping lines and rhythm." 21
Finally, our capacity for experience of the numinous is a priori as well. The
object of religious experience is the numinous, of which we are aware through
these feelings. However, from the subject's side there exists an a priori
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470 Lopez
potency which allows the numinous to be experienced. This Otto calls "a
hidden, substantive source, from which the religious ideas and feelings are
formed, which lies in the mind independently of sense-experience." 24 It is a
"primal element of our psychical nature that needs to be grasped in its
uniqueness and cannot itself be explained by anything else." 25
to persuade the unconvinced with his arguments. His words are offered only
to kindred spirits, those whose innate capacity for the numinous has been
awakened, for whom he eloquently verbalizes the experience of the holy, "the
feeling which remains where the concept fails."27 At the very outset, Otto
invites the reader "to direct his mind to a moment of deeply-felt religious
experience, as little as possible qualified by other forms of consciousness.
Whoever cannot do this, whoever knows no such moments in his experience,
is requested to read no further."28 It is his purpose then, to "suggest this
unnamed Something to the reader as far as we may, so that he may himself
feel it." 29
end makes his appeal to feeling. The numinous is "something which the
'natural' man cannot, as such, know or even imagine," 30 and no "intellectual,
dialectical dissection or justification of such intuition is possible, nor indeed
Once experienced, there need not be doubt concerning the validity of these
numinous feelings for they are a priori by which Otto means that "as soon as
It is Otto's contention that the numinous and the feelings it evokes are
common to all religions. To test this claim in the case of Tibetan tantra, it is
first necessary to identify the numinous element in Buddhism.
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471
However, if we take the view found in Western metaphysics that phenomena refer to sense objects and that "behind the phenomena which present
noumena and phenomena that can be applied to the PrasangikaMadhyamika view. That is, impermanent things or products (samskrta), the
appearing objects of direct perception (pratyaksa), are phenomena and those
objects which initially must be known through relying on inference (anumdana)
are noumena.35 For the purpose of comparison with Otto, we may consider
only the most important of such objects-emptinesses (sunyatd)-the ultimate truths (paramdrthasatya) of the Prasangika-Madhyamika system, the
realization of which leads to liberation from cyclic existence (samsdra). Otto
identifies emptiness as the numinous element in Buddhism, writing that "the
'void' [emptiness] of the eastern, like the 'nothing' of the western, mystic is a
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472 Lopez
Otto holds the mysterious to be an essential attribute of religious experience and for support points to a "mode of manifestation that in every
religion occupies a foremost and extraordinary place,"44 namely, miracle.
Although the settings and circumstances of many Buddhist suitras, especially
in the Mahayana, may be termed magical or miraculous, miracles are not a
central teaching technique of Buddha.
Buddhas neither wash sins away with water
Neither the short parable, the ironic dismissal, or the pathetic penitential
sermon of the Galilean prophet, nor the address resting on visions of the
Arabic holy leader find any sort of parallels to the lectures and conversations
which seem to have constituted the true form of Buddha's activity. They
address themselves purely to the intellect and affected the quiet, sober
judgement detached from all internal excitement; their factual manner
exhausts the topic always in systematic dialectical fashion.48
system one has chosen to follow is correct. A choice between two systems is
find which does or does not bear the truth; thus, it would not be suitable to
cite them as proof (of their own truth). Only reason distinguishes what is or is
not true."49
Citation of scripture, mere belief, or respect are not suitable bases for
strong conviction in a system of practice, as is evident in this quotation from
the Buddha:
Monks and scholars should
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473
itself must fundamentally trace back to valid experiences common to ourselves and others."51 Such reasonings are those set forth by Nagarjuna in his
Treatise on the Middle Way (Madhyamakasdstra).
According to Ge-lug-pa, the many reasonings presented by Nagarjuna are
explicitly intended for the purpose of destroying the conception of inherent
existence, the root cause of suffering. As far as this false conception forms the
Hlnayana, for others in Mahayana.53 The dharma is not an end in itself but,
like a raft, is to be discarded upon reaching the further shore.54
"a practical art consisting of acts which are only means to a definite end
expected to follow later on"55 and which are not ends in themselves. This is
not to suggest that Buddhism is indeed magic, but rather to point out the
difficulty, also encountered in Otto, in making general statements which are
intended to hold true for all religions.
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474 Lopez
ddhi), and wisdom (prajida), all of which are necessary for realization of
emptiness. For example, a bodhisattva of the suitra system must engage in
limitless forms of the six perfections (paramita)-giving, ethics, patience,
effort, concentration, and wisdom-over many aeons in order to accumulate
the merit which will empower his mind to penetrate emptiness and eventually
interest in the mind."63 For him, reasoning cannot be the key to the
experience of the numinous because "our knowledge has certain irremovable
limits." 64
We find then, two different approaches to this hidden numinous, inaccessible to ordinary sense perception. For the Ge-lug-pas, the process of
reasoning and analysis leads to the experience of reality. For Rudolf Otto,
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475
NOTES
1. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University
Press, 1976), p. 6.
endowed with rational qualities see John P. Reeder, "The Relation of the Moral and the
Numinous in Otto's Notion of the Holy," in Religion and Morality: A Collection of Essays, ed.
Gene Outka and John P. Reeder, Jr. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1973), pp. 255-292.
24. Ibid., p. 114.
25. Ibid., p. 124.
26. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Otto, Rudolf," by William J. Wainwright.
27. Ibid., p. xxi.
28. Ibid., p. 8.
29. Ibid., p. 6.
30. Ibid., p. 51.
31. Ibid., p. 147.
32. Ibid., p. 137.
33. Joachim Wach, Understanding and Believing: Essays by Joachim Wach, edited with an
Introduction by Joseph M. Kitagawa (Boston, Massachusetts: Harper and Row, 1968), p. 8.
34. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, s.v. "Metaphysics, Nature of," by W. H. Walsh.
35. Geshe Lhundup Sopa and Jeffrey Hopkins, Practice and Theory of Tibetan Buddhism
(Rider: London, 1976), p. 134.
36. Otto, p. 30.
37. Tenzin Gyatso, The Buddhism of Tibet and the Key to the Middle Way (New York: Harper
and Row, 1975), p. 77.
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476 Lopez
38. Tsong-ka-pa, Tantra in Tibet: The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra (London: Allen and
Unwin, 1978), p. 191.
39. Ninian Smart criticizes Otto on this point using the example of Theravada Buddhism. See
Ninian Smart, Philosophers and Religious Truth (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1969), p. 113.
40. Tenzin Gyatso, p. 77.
41. Ten-dar-hla-ram-pa (bsTan-dar-lha-ram-pa), A Presentation of the Lack of One and Many,
an Elimination of Error Collected from the Ocean of Good Explanations (Gcig du bral gyi rnam
gzhag legs bshad rgya mtsho las btus pa'i 'khrul spong bdud rtsi'i gzegs ma) (Lhasa: Great Press at
the base of the Potala, Fire Dog Male year of the sixteenth cycle), blockprint of 43 folios, pp.
3a-3b.
47. Sutta Nipdta, trans. V. Fausb6ll, in Sacred Books of the East (Oxford, 1881), Vol. 10, pt. 2,
pp. 11-15.
48. Max Weber, The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism, trans. and ed.
Hans H. Gerth and Don Martindale (New York: The Free Press, 1967), p. 225.
49. Tsofig-kha-po, p. 87.
50. Tenzin Gyatso, p. 55.
54. Middle Length Sayings (Majjhima-Nikdya), trans. I. B. Horner, Pali Text Society
Translation Series, No. 29 (London: The Pali Text Society, 1976), 1:173-74.
55. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (New York: Anchor
Books, 1954), p. 88.
56. Otto, p. 145.
57. Ibid., p. 141.
58. Ibid., p. 4.
59. The Fifth Salai Lama, The Practice of Emptiness, trans. Jeffrey Hopkins (Dharamsala,
India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1974), p. 21.
60. Na-wang-pel-den (Ngag-dbang-dpal-ldan), Presentation of the Grounds and Paths of the
Four Great Secret Tantra Sets (gSang chen rgyud sde bzhi'i sa lam gyi rnam gzhag rgyud gzhung
gsal byed) (modern blockprint, rGyud smad par khang, date and place of publication not given),
pp. 7a3-8al.
61. Tsoiig-kha-pa, p. 60.
62. Ibid., p. 32.
63. Otto, p. 29.
64. Ibid., p. 59.
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