When we interpret the problem of ethics in the Buddhist and Śaiva ascetic cultures of the cremation grounds within a demonological paradigm, we see that this problem emerges at the points at which the world with its pantheon of potentially harmful spirit deities intersects with the permeable conduit of the body. Early Buddhist communities promoted the idea that maintaining vows guaranteed some degree of protection from the spirit world, and that the perfection of those vows could afford total control-over and immunity-from possession and manipulation by spirit beings. Buddhist sources draw a direct correlation between the proper maintenance of lay or monastic vows that decrease an individual's propensity toward the core afflictions (kleśa) of ignorance (avidyā), hatred (dveṣa), and desire (tṛṣṇā) along with an extensive dossier of derivative afflictions and the saṅgha's power to control and guard against assault from spirit deities. Aspects of the tradition that are commonly subsumed under the rubric of 'Buddhist Ethics' were thus formulated, at least in part, in dialogue with the belief that improper ethical conduct and the habitual capitulation to afflictions such as desire left one vulnerable to assault from the world of spirit deities. As Decaroli argues, the Buddhist saṅgha was able to position itself as a mediating force between the world of
humans and spirit beings by parlaying its maintenance of moral purity into a powerful means of resisting attack from spirit beings such as nāgas, yakṣas, and pretas.149
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149!Decaroli,!Haunting(the(Buddha,!Chapter!2.!As!Decaroli!notes,!Buddhist!narratives!around!the!
conversion!and!rempurposing!of!local!spirit!deities!often!revolve!around!the!issues!of!morality!and!ethics!
in!which!Buddhists!are!often!described!as!relatively!immune!to!the!interference!of!spirit!beings!due!to!
having!brought!all!forms!of!behaviors!that!are!premised!on!desire!or!one!of!the!other!three!root!
Following Fred Smith's observations on the intersection of ethics and wellbeing in South Asian literature, bodily and mental health could provide proof of proper ethical conduct, whether this meant that one could effectively keep the spirit world at bay or simply that one had accumulated a great amount of virtuous karma in the current and previous lifetimes. This direct correlation between behavior and mental and physical wellbeing survives to this day in the Tibetan medical arts, where the imbalance of the three humors is directly attributed to an individual's capitulation to one or more of the three correlated root afflictions. The Tibetan medical tradition also attributes conditions that are either incurable or extremely difficult to treat either to possession by some persistent demonic being or to the force of ripening karma brought on by the vāsanas that one has generated in the current or previous lives.150
The Buddhist saṅgha could claim mastery over both through the ethical mechanics of the pratimokṣa vows. Aside from their obvious soteriological importance, ethics and moral conduct were thus part of an expansive portfolio of ritual methods for warding off
supernatural pathogens and protecting an otherwise highly permeable and vulnerable body.
This adds a new level of significance to the importance of performing the poṣadha or the bi-monthly monastic practice of confessing one's misdeeds and renewing one's commitment to the pratimokṣa vows. Management and mitigation of the spirit realm on behalf of patrons provided a key source of social and economic support for Buddhist institutions. Holding regular rituals for renewing the monastic saṅgha's commitments to its vows could guarantee
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afflictions!under!control.!Decaroli!also!offers!specific!examples!in!which!spirit!beings!are!said!to!lose!the!
ability!to!harm!a!potential!victim!because!the!target!has!been!rendered!impervious!due!to!their!unbroken!
maintenance!of!their!vows.!
150!For!a!modern!presentation!on!chronic!diseases!brought!on!by!spirits!and!karma!from!previous!
lifetimes,!see!Dr.!Yeshe!Donden,!Health(Through(Balance:(An(Introduction(to(Tibetan(Medicine!(Ithica:!
Snow!Lion!Publications,!1986),!19.!
that the saṅgha would maintain its authority and power over the world of spirit deities, and in turn maintain one of its most important economic functions in South Asian societies. While the maintenance of proper ethical and moral conduct functioned as a kind of 'preventative care' plan to ward off disease and disease causing spirits, the recitation of protective spells, be they paritta/parītta, dhāraṇī, mantra, or in some cases even entire texts, provided protection in more acutely dangerous circumstances. While the logic behind Buddhist formulations of ethical conduct (śīla) did not agree with the logic underlying ethics in the Vaidika Brahmanical system, both systems still functioned on the premise that ethical and morally appropriate behavior, however defined, was directly related to the concept of purity, and, by extension, to the mental and physical wellbeing of the individual. Both also
articulated their own means by which lapses in ethics and the resulting diminution of purity could be ritually repaired and restored.
Pāśupata asceticism broke with this premise in a very important way. The first and most important innovation was the role that dikṣā or initiation played in removing mala or impurity, a substance that, much like Jain (and perhaps some Buddhist)151 conceptions of karma, was considered to have an actual physical weight bearing down on the body.152 The tradition that has come down through Kauṇḍinya's Pāśupatasūtrabhāṣa in which initiation is
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151!The!fact!that!the!Jains!conceived!of!karma(in!this!way!is!relatively!well!known,!but!I!believe!there!is!
evidence!that!Buddhist!traditions!maintained!a!similar!conception!of!karma,!with!the!primary!distinction!
being!the!Buddhist!conception!of!'virtuous'!(kuśala)!karma(as!allowing!one!to!'ascend'!to!the!god!realms!
while!nonmvirtuous!(akuśala)!karma(causes!one!to!'fall'!to!the!lower!realms.!The!metaphysical!location!of!
the!realms!of!rebirth!follows!this!model,!as!does!the!iconographic!depiction!of!beings!falling!and!
ascending!due!to!their!negative!and!positive!karma(in!its!classical!depiction!in!the!Buddhist!bhavacakra.!
A!Buddhist!conception!of!karma(as!a!physical!substance!that!grants!corporeality!and!weighs!down!the!
body!also!appears!in!the!cosmogonic!narrative!of!the!Agaññasutta,!which!draws!a!direct!correlation!
between!the!dual!mental!and!physical!act!of!eating!with!its!attendant!cravings!and!the!descent!from!a!
state!of!disembodied!selfmluminance!to!a!physical,!embodied!state.!!
152!Diwakar!Acharya!has!noted!in!a!recent!article!that!this!conception!of!mala!as!having!an!actual!physical!
weight!was!the!reason!that!initiates!were!often!weighed!before!and!after!initiation!to!show!that!they!have!
in!fact!become!lighter.!See!Diwakar!Acharya,!"On!the!Śaiva!Concept!of!Innate!Impurity!(mala)!and!the!
Function!of!the!Rite!of!Initiation,"!in!Journal(of(Indian(Philosophy:(Special(Issue(on(Śaiva(Philosophy(42,!no.!
1,!guest!edited!by!Lyne!BansatmBoudon!and!Judit!Törzsök!(March!2014):!15.!
followed by the performance of a vrata in which one relinquishes one's personal and sectarian identity and surrenders one's commitment to the maintenance of normative brahmanical codes of ethical and ritual purity marks a rather radical departure from the traditional role of socially normative ethics in guaranteeing purity and protection from disease and possession. The Pañcārthika Pāśupata system may inscribe its own rhetoric of 'purity' and 'impurity' on this practice, but it still marks an important step in the direction of rejecting socially normative ethics and morality as the primary means of protection against the spirit world. The Pāśupata system thus made clear use of the mechanics of initiation as a means for affording protection to the initiated Pāśupata ascetic, even if that protection was partially constructed within a dialectic of purity and impurity. The Pāśupata initiation transformed the traditionally polluting practices of the avyakta stage in which one relinquishes all identifying sectarian marks and wanders in public courting disfavor and abuse into a means of purification. In this way, the Pāśupata ascetic rejected socially normative ethics without incurring any actual moral or ethical stain and inverted the typical relationship between morality and physical and mental wellbeing. The Pāśupata system can be said to preconfigure the transgressive ascetic practices of the Vajrayāna in the power that it affords the right of initiation to render the standard social ethics around behavior and codes of purity and impurity inconsequential.
So far working within the demonological paradigm has brought a number of factors regarding Buddhist charnel ground ascetic cultures to light. First, I have challenged the notion that traditional modes of renunciation such as Buddhist monasticism constituted a radical departure from the kind of protection offered by the basic social structure of the family. Related to this point, I have also suggested that we reject the conception of asceticism
as an essentially individualistic religious phenomenon. It is clear that Buddhist renunciants simply traded one protective familial structure for another. They 'wandered forth' from the kula of their birth only to immediately join a new kula to become 'sons and daughters of the lineage' (kulaputro vā kuladuhitā vā) or a 'child of the victor' (jinaputra). Given the Buddha's assumed superiority in governing over the world of spirit deities, joining the Buddhist saṅgha would actually have guaranteed a greater level of protection than the ordinary familial unit from the spirit world.
Following Decaroli's work and adopting a demonological paradigm has shown that management of the world of spirit deities was an essential aspect of Buddhist traditions from the earliest periods for which we have reliable data. Archeological and art historical evidence reveals the movement of spirit deities from the center to the periphery of the caitya with the advent of the Buddhist relic cult. Along that periphery, these beings retained their original role as guardians and protectors who were inscribed within an expanded hierarchical structure placing the Buddha and his arhats at its center. Textual and early ethnographic evidence from Chinese pilgrims indicates that the vihāra constituted a kind of protective structure, and that the services of powerful spirit deities could be enlisted to protect the saṅgha within the vihāra.
This examination points to two strategies that respond to the problem of possessing a permeable body in a world that is overrun by hordes spirit beings. The first is the generation and maintenance of a Buddhist oecumene that is conceived as a territory to which potentially harmful spirit deities cannot gain access or within which they are converted and enlisted as protectors. The second is essentially a Buddhist reworking of a broader correlation
throughout South Asia between socially normative ethics and physical and mental wellbeing
in which ethical conduct provides protection from possession and other forms of interference from spirit deities. These two strategies are aimed at confronting the basic South Asian existential condition that the demonological paradigm is designed to address—the fact that the psycho-physical constituents of a person construct an essentially open system that is situated in a world populated by a pandemonium of spirit beings intent upon seeking out and exploiting any weakness them for their own gain. The cultivation of ethics and, ultimately, realization of the nature of reality, the use of paritta, dhāraṇī, and mantra, and the caitya, the vihāra, and later the maṇḍala all represent solutions to this problem that create and maintain a protective barrier around the open conduit of the mind-body complex.
Chapter 3:
Generating the Body of an Indestructible Being
I. Introduction
The demonological paradigm's applications in the analysis of Buddhist ritual and ascetic practices in chapter two suggested interpreting the Buddhist maṇḍala as a protective structure that is internally constructed through the process of visualization and externally constructed as an actual physical space. Unlike their Śaiva counterparts,153 many Buddhist sects likely maintained a position of ontological non-dualism for centuries before the emergence of the ascetic and ritual cultures associated with a fully tantric, esoteric Buddhism. Thus it was perhaps inevitable that the ritual technology of the maṇḍala, as both a conceptually and physically constructed space, would eventually have to either be sublimated into a non-conceptual ontology or be rejected by those Buddhists who maintained the importance of eliminating, unraveling, transforming, or bypassing the processes of conceptual construction responsible for perpetuating the ignorance and delusion that lay at the root of rebirth in cyclical existence.
The kind of pronouncements against the use of the maṇḍala and other ritual
technologies witnessed in The Seven Siddhi Texts can be read in light of the demonological paradigm to suggest that the sādhaka's act of leaving the maṇḍala cannot be reduced to a
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153!Judit!Törzsök,!"Nondualism!in!Early!Śakta!Tantras:!Transgressive!Rites!and!Their!Ontological!
Justification!in!a!Historical!Perspective,"!in!Journal(of(Indian(Philosophy:(Special(Issue(on(Śaiva(Philosophy(
42,!no.!1,!guest!editors!Lyne!BansatmBoudon!and!Judit!Törzsök!(March!2014):!195–223.!Törzsök!makes!
the!important!argument!here!that!the!early!śākta!tantras!do!not!in!fact!subscribe!to!an!ontological!nonm duality!but!are!ontologically!dualist!works.!They!do,!however,!prescribe!what!Törzsök!calls!a!ritual!nonm duality!in!which!distinctions!such!as!'pure'!and!'impure'!must!be!utterly!absent!in!the!ritual!context.!This!
kind!of!ritual!nonmduality!has!its!roots!in!the!premtantric!Pāśupata!inversion!of!notions!of!brahmanical!
purity!in!the!pāśupatavrata,!as!has!been!demonstrated!in!chapter!two!through!Acharya's!inmdepth!
reading!of!the!verse!godharmamṛgadharmaḥ(vā((PS!5.18).!!
purely philosophical or soteriological interpretation. There is an apotropaic aspect to both the mental and physical construction of the maṇḍala, and the decision to adopt a form of
asceticism that specifically rejects such a protective structure and its associated ritual practices cannot be exclusively interpreted as an ontological non-dualist rejection of such rites as 'conceptual' constructs. The construction of a maṇḍala and its supporting ritual techniques of mantra installation/recitation and mudrā must also be understood in terms of the literal role that physically and mentally 'constructed' ritual spaces play in guarding the initiate against all forms of interference from human and non-human beings. The Buddhist rhetoric around rejecting these practices constitutes both a rejection of the ontological duality they imply and a rejection of relying upon actual physically constructed, protective space for the performance of tantric ritual. These two aspects of the 'construct,' the conceptual and the physical, are not necessarily exclusive categories in a literature and tradition that
demonstrates a remarkable sense of continuity between the idealist constructions of the mind and their material manifestations in the world.
The works contained in The Seven Siddhi Texts are consistent with the rejection of the ritual technologies of the lower kriyā- and caryātantra systems in Buddhist siddha literature. This chapter adopts a demonological paradigm to analyze the rhetoric around rejection such practices as constructing maṇḍalas and the use of mudrā and mantra in The Seven Siddhi Texts. It argues that the rejection of these practices highlights a mutual
identification of the attainment of non-dual gnosis (advayajñāna) or ultimate reality (tattva) with the demonstration of a tantric practitioner's attainment of an indestructible and
embodied realization. The chapter presents passages from each of the works in The Seven Siddhi Texts that demonstrate these authors' engagement with the basic existential ground for
the demonological paradigm—possessing a permeable body that is embedded in a world populated by potentially harmful spirit beings. Two models for the management of this basic existential ground are at work in these texts. The first, the 'exoteric model,' already
mentioned in chapter two, focuses on the elimination of non-virtue and the cultivation of virtue as strategies for protecting the body from harmful spirit beings. When viewed through the modality of a demonological paradigm, the cultivation of ethical conduct and insight into the nature of reality in the exoteric traditions functioned as preventative measures for
guarding against demonic possession and interference from the world of spirit deities. The second, 'esoteric model,' builds upon the exoteric model by adding a number of ritual technologies centered on the mastery or union (yoga) and consecration (abhiṣeka). The incorporation of the ritual technology of initiation in this latter model, as suggested in chapter two, has strong affinities with the initiatory asceticism that is at work in Pāśupata Śaivism.
One could also argue, at the same time, that this feature in both the Pāśupata and Buddhist initiatory traditions has strong resonances with the earlier śrāmaṇa ascetic trope of
'wandering forth' and 'going for refuge,' where the protective structure of family identity was given new expression in renunciant communities like the early Buddhist saṅgha. Both the exoteric and esoteric models conceive of realization as a specifically embodied phenomenon in which the soteriological goal of liberation from rebirth in cyclical existence is coterminous with the attainment of an apotropaic goal of protecting the psychophysical complex of the body and rendering it invulnerable to attack from both human and non-human beings.
The Seven Siddhi Texts contain a number of different strategies for cultivating a fully embodied realization that resolves the problem of the permeable body's vulnerability to possession and influence from the unseen forces of the spirit world. These strategies can be
correlated to the first of the two-phased yogas of the generation stage (utpattikrama) and completion stage (utpannakrama) and the higher consecrations that are bestowed at the culmination of the yoga of the generation stage. When they are analyzed within the
demonological paradigm, the generation stage yogas and the higher consecration rites appear as ritual technologies whose aim is a fully embodied realization with a dual soteriological and apotropaic function. Their soteriological function corresponds to the realization of the nature of ultimate reality, while their apotropaic function corresponds to rendering the actual corporeal body invulnerable to attack from both human and non-human beings. This
interrelationship means that demonstrating mastery in terms of the apotropaic function of these practices functions as a sign for one's mastery of their soteriological component.154 The dual apotropaic-soteriological function of this ultimate goal on the Buddhist yogic path is said to depend upon a number of things such as the recognition of the nature of ultimate reality within one's own body, the generation of a spontaneous mutual identification of the body with the deity maṇḍala, and complete establishment of that nature in the body through the ritual mechanics of consecration. The culmination of the generation stage yoga may then be interpreted within the demonological paradigm as a process through which a sādhaka so thoroughly transforms the body into a maṇḍala that the protective structures of the maṇḍala need no longer be generated at all, as an external structure or an internalized visualization.
The union (yoga) at the culmination of this stage of practice is a spontaneous (and thus not
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154!Decaroli's!work!in!Haunting(the(Buddha(indicates!that!this!phenomenon!is!not!unique!to!the!esoteric!
model.!As!discussed!in!chapter!two,!while!membership!to!the!protective!community!or!family!of!the!
Buddhist!saṅgha!and!residence!in!the!protective!structure!of!the!vihāra!could!guard!against!interference!
Buddhist!saṅgha!and!residence!in!the!protective!structure!of!the!vihāra!could!guard!against!interference!