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no recognized authority, but upon those practicing the religion, there
was no form of Indian religious practice that did not now have some
Buddhist equivalent. 1
This opened the way for a new religious trend to be incorporated
into Buddhist theory and practice. From about 500 CE, texts called
tantras appear in both Hindu and Buddhist versions. Tantric systems
focus on rituals of identification with a deity by means of which a
71
72 Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism
practitioner can come to exercise ultimate control over the processes
of mind and matter. Their unorthodox methods are regarded as the
fast but dangerous route to liberation. Friedhelm Hardy summarizes
the general tantric approach as follows:
Man lives in a universe which is pervaded by all kinds of
forces. Many of them are destructive and threatening, oth-
ers relate in a more positive manner to his life. What con-
ventional society has on offer as the means of controlling
these forces is believed to be limited and restrictive as to
the realisation of man s full potential; there is, however, a
knowledge available which the more adventurous and
mature person can draw on and thereby improve that real-
ization radically. But it is esoteric, well guarded by a secret
tradition. With the help of this esoteric knowledge it be-
comes possible to expose oneself to even the most danger-
ous and powerful of such universal forces and not just
survive, but actually control them and absorb them for one s
own fulfillment.2
Regarding the transmission of tantra to Tibet, Hardy further makes
the important point that the Tibetans adopted Tantric Buddhism not
as an already fixed system, but as a still dynamic affair, and they
actively continued the conceptualization of the Tantric approach in
terms of Mahåyåna thought. 3
The amalgamation of Mahåyåna doctrine and tantric methods
formed an entirely new vehicle, the Vajrayåna, which took as its prime
symbol the vajra, originally a symbol of the scepter or thunderbolt of
Indra, the ancient Vedic king of the gods. In Vajrayåna Buddhism, the
vajra (also translated diamond to indicate strength and clarity) rep-
resents the indestructible, indivisible union of the phenomenal (things
that appear to the senses) and the absolute (the indeterminate, inef-
fable nature of all appearances). The vajra further signifies the dia-
mond-like clarity of the mind that penetrates all seeming solidities
and perceives their dreamlike, empty nature. Another name given to
the tantric way was Mantrayåna, the Mantra-vehicle. This refers to the
primary method by which the devotee connects and identifies with
the deity through repetition of the mantra. Repeating the mantra
hundreds of thousands of times, the devotee eventually becomes one
with the deity and its power. Incantation and ritual have been an
aspect of Buddhist practice from its earliest period. However, it is only
in the Mahåyåna and, subsequently, the Vajrayåna development that
these methods became a dominant means of attaining the goal of lib-
Dream in the Tibetan Context 73
eration. The ideal spiritual person in the Vajrayåna is the siddha, the
spiritual adept, described by Snellgrove as the one who gains power
over beings in other spheres of existence, either dominating them, so
that they may do one s will, or identifying . . . with them, so that one
may enjoy their higher states of existence. 4 The Buddhism that inter-
acted with the shamanic culture of ancient Tibet was established infor-
mally via peripatetic tantric Indian yogis, as well as formally through
state-sponsored visits by respected Buddhist monks. It incorporated
both monastic and tantric modes, the one focused on control or re-
straint of the senses and the other on working with sensory stimuli in
the practice of self-transformation.
The first record of Buddhism in Tibet is of a legendary royal
family who revered Buddhist texts but did not know what they meant.
According to traditional Tibetan history, the Beginning of the Holy
Doctrine 5 took place during the reign of King Lha Thotori Nyentsen
(twenty-eighth in the line of Tibetan kings beginning with Nyatri
Tsenpo), when a casket mysteriously fell from the sky onto the roof
of the palace. It contained Buddhist texts dedicated to the celestial
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara and a golden st¨pa. Although the king
could not read them and had no idea what they contained, he felt
they were auspicious and worshipped them, calling them, the Awe-
some Secret. 6 Tibetan historians like Gos Lotsawa and Bu-ston con-
sider this event a point of demarcation between the religion of the
old kings, dominated by priests called Bön, and the new religion
represented by the miraculous appearance on the roof of the palace.7
Traditional records relating to King Lha Thotori Nyentsen also tell
us that the advent of Buddhism in Tibet was foreshadowed by a
dream in which the king is told that five generations after him there
will be one who will understand the meaning of the texts.8 This
prophecy is considered to have been fulfilled in the reign of King
Songtsen Gampo, the fifth monarch after Thotori and the first Ti-
betan king to formally accept Buddhism.
CONFLICT AND COMPETITION
A distinctively Tibetan Buddhist worldview emerged from the inter-
play between adopted Buddhist ideals, tantric practices, and the pre-
Buddhist indigenous shamanic culture. In Tibet, Buddhist authority
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