Literature to become tantra /x/pert?
What's up with the people wanting to LARP. Go learn from a guru in real life
>>25089701Just make illiterate choices bro? No thank you.
>>25089704Most mantras require a guru to pass them to you and explain the meaning. Not to mention the fact that there is a formal initiation process. You could learn a lot of knowledge from reading, but for the actual spiritual practice a guru is required. This isn't protestantism, you can't just read your Bible and call it a day.
Nothing. decode proto Sino-Tibetan and reconnect with the ancestral voices that turn out to be hanuman sending rape threats
>>25089698The Origins of Yoga and Tantra by Geoffrey Sameul is an excellent book on their origins, basically Dravidian court magicians who were tasked with increasing the kings sexual virility merges with Indo-European mannerbunds to create groups of wandering rapist deviants who bamboozle local villagers into giving up their wives and daughters for sexual debauchery by threat of black magic curses.
>>25089710I understand the transmission part and how even the mantras, rites etcetra can be received via more direct manner than learned textually, by speech. But I'm not guaranteed the best sort of initiation just down the street and hence the need to turn to literature.
>>25089718The practices are based on medieval anatomy where you perform a type of sexual vampirism by sucking up pussy juices with your dick, the fluid then ascends up your spine, and gives your brain magic powers. If you cum it drains the sexual mana fluid from your brain back down your spine and out your dick and you lose the magic powers, unless you eat your own cum, in which case the fluid transcends back up your spine and returns the magic powers to your brain. This is not intended to be an allegory or some detached spirituality, it was created and understood as a scientific theory based on their best contemporary theories of physical anatomy and the function and movement of bodily fluids.
>>25089698Om namah shivayaDoes /lit/ know that today is a very powerful day (in terms of spiritual potency) of mahashivratri?https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maha_Shivaratri
>>25089733Shut up
>>25089698Gavin Flood - Oxford History of HinduismSnellgrove - Indo-Tibetan Buddhism (old academic view, but critical of tantra)Buddhism: A Historical IntroductionUpanishadsBhagavadgitaMulamadhyamakakarikaMajor Mahayana sutrasSome general book about Indian and Buddhist philosophy (one that deals with Sankhya and Yoga schools, for Hinduism; and one that deals with Madhyamaka and Yogacara)Andre Padoux - The Hindu Tantric WordDavid Gray - The Buddhist TantrasJohn Powers - Introduction to Tibetan BuddhismRichard Davidson, both books. Geoffrey Samuel, all books.Everything by David Gordon White until the Patanjali sutra commentary and the Demons Are forever anthology. Karmay - The Great PerfectionKeith Dowman, all books.If more granular Snellgrove - Hevajra Tantra (old academic view)Menon - Hevajra Tantra (new view, don't know if strictly academic)David Gray - Chakrasamvara tantraA Lamp To Illuminate the Five StagesOrnament of Stainless LightDavid Kinsley - Tantric Visions of The Divine FeminineAnything by DyckzowskiAnything by Jaideva Singh about AbhinavaguptaAnything academic about Abhinavagupta>>25089710An Indian scam>Saar>Saar>The uber secret most powerful mantra in the world that will make the lord of the universe won't work unless you pay me in kash and vagene and work for me and clean my feet and let me rape your ass for half your life until I explain what Hrumauh actually meansI'm not a Redditor. Tantra obviously works. But the Jeet guru gatekeeping needs to go. There is within tantra itself a special antagonism between established religious structures and independent adepts who learned from supernatural sources (the mahasiddha tradition, for example; the rogue teachers of Tibet). And the tantric texts both Hindu (Abhinavagupta) and Buddhist (all major tantra commentaries) state that mantra and ritual are for midwits. True chads get everything through awareness exercises (Vajrayana) or remembering one's own innate self (Abhinavagupta's higher form of practice per Tantraloka).
>>25089730..moar
>>25089739Based anon.
>>25089733Are you nepali?
>>25089735>Not making merit on this blessed dayngmi>>25089757That's the prominent shiva temple, no?
>>25089739Based if true.I did wonder why the Buddha wouldn't refer people to effective paths if they are available, ofcourse that's assuming that he didn't directly or indirectly in what we find in the pitaka.
>>25089745The primary role of the students is to provide sexual victims for their master, basically a "bring your sister to work" thing where she's served up to the master for sexual vampirism via her vaginal fluid being hoovered up into his brain by his cock and spine. The students get fobbed off with nonsense preparatory rituals whilst the master fucks all the women served up to the group in the rituals proper.Another good work is The Shadow of the Dalai Lama by Victor and Victoria Trimodi (German husband and wife). An English translation has been published online here, Part 1 covers Tantra and sexual practices:http://www.trimondi.de/SDLE/Contents.htm
>>25089764It would take a thousand years before Buddhist students realised the true diamond path to enlightenment was goonmaxxing.
>>25089768The Dakinis were demons of miscarriage and infant mortality: the evil dieties blamed for child deaths. Part of tantric cant is that the uglier and more grotesque the sexual victim is, the greater the magic power you can derive from the act of sexual vampirism upon her. And who could be more grotesque, especially to a naive villager, than the gods of child death. However in practice the Yogi's are not granny fuckers, when they seek out sexual victims they look for young hot women and girls. The ugliness and grostqueness and consorting with daemons cant is there to scare and bamboozle the superstitious villagers into giving up their daughters, lest the magic men curse the village and cause the crops to fail and ox to die.
>>250896981st decide whether you want to research Buddhist Tantra or Hindu tantra first, each has their own vast corpus of scriptures, commentaries and philosophical works, even just counting the stuff that has been published in English translation.To truly become personally acquainted you are supposed to be initiated but there is no harm in self-studying a bit first to prepare yourself.>>25089739> True chads get everything through awareness exercises (Vajrayana) or remembering one's own innate self (Abhinavagupta's higher form of practice per Tantraloka).Yes but you are supposed to have a qualified teacher instruct you in how to properly do this, in Tibetan Buddhism especially its considered necessary for a teacher to give you pointing-out instructions to introduce you to the nature of mind or the ground, its not something you can just pick up a book and teach yourself.
>>25089718This books exemplifies a markedly reductionist tendency that has become all too common in certain modern academic treatments of traditional doctrines. By reducing the origins of Tantra to a crude sociological amalgam of “Dravidian court magicians” and Indo European war bands, and further characterizing its adherents as little more than predatory libertines wielding superstition as a weapon, it substitutes caricature for comprehension. Such an interpretation confines itself to the lowest explanatory plane, that of material and social contingencies, while remaining willfully blind to the principial and metaphysical dimensions that alone render intelligible the existence and persistence of the Tantras. From their earliest strata, the Tantric scriptures are explicitly ordered toward spiritual realization, toward the attainment of siddhi in its highest sense, and ultimately toward liberation. To ignore this teleological orientation is not a minor oversight but a fundamental distortion.One discerns here the characteristic error of modern thought, which, having lost sight of transcendent principles, seeks to explain everything by infra human motives and collective psychologies. The sacred is reinterpreted as the profane in disguise. Ritual becomes a mask for libido, initiation a conspiracy of domination, and symbolism a code for social power. Yet such analyses, for all their pretensions to rigor, merely project contemporary cynicism onto worlds structured by wholly different ontological assumptions. They are incapable of grasping that practices which may appear antinomian or paradoxical are often deliberate means of transcending duality, not expressions of moral anarchy. By confining Tantra to the plane of sexual politics and tribal violence, this reading obscures the metaphysical architecture that situates erotic symbolism within a cosmology of consciousness and liberation. In doing so, it impoverishes not only the tradition it purports to explain, but also the modern intellect itself, which thereby confirms its exile from any authentic understanding of the sacred.
>>25089718>>25089869From the standpoint of the traditional Tantric adept, the ultimate concern is neither social transgression nor the indulgence of desire, but the realization of identity between the individual consciousness and the supreme principle. The rites, disciplines, and symbols of the Tantras are subordinated to this single end, which is liberation through knowledge, transformation, and the awakening of the latent divine power within the human microcosm. Even when employing elements drawn from the sensory or corporeal domain, the intention is sacrificial and transmutative, not hedonistic. To construe such a path as a mere strategy of sexual exploitation is to confuse the accidental with the essential and the shadow with the substance. Once the metaphysical orientation of Tantra is restored to view, these crude sociological fantasies dissolve of themselves, revealing not a conspiracy of deviants, but a rigorous and hieratic science of the spirit directed toward perfection and freedom.
>>25089869>>25089871PBUH!!!
>>25089869well said anon. do you think we’ll ever regain access to the transcendent outside of increasingly isolated and dwindling cultural pockets?
>>25090109>do you think we’ll ever regain access to the transcendent outside of increasingly isolated and dwindling cultural pockets?It’s never been completely lost IMO, traditional spiritual organizations like tantric orders, both Hindu and Buddhist, are still active and practicing the same teachings and initiations in India, Nepal and Tibet that they have for centuries, regardless of the presence of technology and industrialization, you just have to seek out personal instruction or initiation and do the research to make sure the person has the right credentials and connection to a lineage and isn’t some grifter. Non-tantric organizations like Vedantic monastic orders are still active throughout India as well but its really only the tantric schools which are open to westerners joining and being initiated.Vajrayana orders are active in western countries and you dont even need to travel to Asia to be initiated in them.
>25089857>Yes but you are supposed to have a qualified teacher instruct you in how to properly do this>Saar, saar, you need me to show you how to be aware of your basic awareness before thought, emotions, sensation because it's a very hard thing, saarThe cat's out the bag. If you don't like books, you can read Wikipedia articles and see that the essence of Mahamudra and Dzogchen is nothing but awareness of meditation: the non grasping ovservation of thoughts, feeling, sensations in your body/mind. You can achieve the same insights if you learn simple meditation by going to a meditation centre of your choice and then applying it daily. It's all about recognition of pure consciousness. It's the simplest, most basic thing in the life. So basic and obvious and universal that it makes the Indian guru worship the worst blasphemy on Earth and the most profound desecration possible. Nothing comes close in terms of pure scummery to the tantric guru disease.As for Tibetan Buddhism.It was grafted wholesale from medieval India, guru worship included. Davidson Tibetan Renaissance goes into depth on this topic, but for Tibetans after the fall of the Empire, Indian Buddhist tantric teaching acted as social capital and proof of wealth. Some rich farmer gathered enough dosh to travel to Kathmandu valley and pay for authentic saar ancient tantra text from some pandit, then returned back to Tibet and set up his own little religious guild based upon the tantric mandala system with him in the center. The amount and pedigree of the teaching modulated the social prestige. Since he has access to unique India tm teaching, you, as a novice, had to do household chores, offer money, offer your wife, offer your children, offer your boypussy to the farmer now guru. You had to do this until the farmer/guru deemed you worthy enough to divulge the teachings. Out of these roots sprouted the feudal Tibetan Buddhist schools, and the heavy stratified Tibetan society where commoners had to slave for the Buddhst feudal states because monks were enlightened, had access to texts, while they didn't. The whole thing stems from medieval feudal India and the tantric worldview of the guru as being the central deity in a mandala: an organization of space that mirrored in the religious sphere the feudal kingdoms of medieval India. This system isn't based on genuine student mentor relationships as understood in the West, but more on the exploitation of people for the sake of the god-guru - you don't need to make food, clean house, give away money, food, women, and have sex in any other profession but that of the Indian guru student relationship.This is actually reflected in the manifold scandals between gurus, Hindu and Tibetan, and Westerners, who followed the Trungpas, the Songyals, the Muktanandas for get genuine insight but got cajoled into exploitation and abuse. For women, double so.
Many copes are used for this - that it's part of the teaching, that the sacred is amoral and doesn't make any difference between crooks and normal people - but the actual answer, I think, is very simple - it's an outdated medieval Indian tradition that doesn't fit into the modern world. Like I said, I'm no euphoric Redditor. The nonduality is real. The awareness meditations work. The kundalini/tummo is real. Some form of sexual ecstasy as catalyst to entering awareness also is sound. The fact these things work is what makes people willing to try awareness meditation and sexual techniques. But that doesn't mean that you must swallow the whole Jeet born rigmarole - guru, mantras, semen drinking, human sacrifice, skull diddling, cow dung manipulations - with it. You can accept Abhinavagupta insight into your inner nature as splendour of Shiva without accepting his views how cows are goddesses. People are quick to bash Christianity and Islam for being irrational and backwards but close their eyes toward the obvious irrationality and backwardness of Eastern Religions, especially Indian and Tibetan which are the only religions on Earth that have avoided any modernization attempts - essentially medieval derelicts in the information age. I don't want to go into private details, but my intuition is that nonduality states are universal (that there's no difference between a Christian and a Japanese when experiencing these states except the linguistic and symbolic: what idioms they use to describe it), that they aren't that rare (my suspicion is that everyone with a non traumatic childhood had experience moments of nonduality), and you don't need to have your life destroyed by a Tibetan or Jeet, or any guru, for that matter, to experience them (because it's something that can't be taught; the most honest answer that can be given is that you meditate constantly, and by meditating I mean just sitting and observing your thoughts and emotions and sensations without really expecting anything, just sitting there, and that you'll know when it will happen)
>>25090196>The cat's out the bag. If you don't like books, you can read Wikipedia articles and see that the essence of Mahamudra and Dzogchen is nothing but awareness of meditation: the non grasping ovservation of thoughts, feeling, sensations in your body/mind.Dzogchen and Mahamudra are not just basic mindfulness self-help crap you dummy, they are referring to a very specific and subtle type of consciousness which is non-conceptual, you cannot grasp it by forming concepts about it based on what you read in a book but it requires an experiential introduction which uses symbolism and various related means to cut through conceptualization and reveal it experientially, and these are guarded and kept secret via tantric vows and are not extensively detailed in books. It has almost nothing to do with “awareness of meditation”.>You can achieve the same insights if you learn simple meditation by going to a meditation centre of your choicelaughable pseud nonsense, just stop posting before you embarrass yourself further>This system isn't based on genuine student mentor relationships as understood in the West, but more on the exploitation of people for the sake of the god-guru This is factually untrue, both in monasteries and in people who join tantric orders while remaining laypeople there is no strict requirement of providing services to a guru, it’s not any kind of a norm.>This is actually reflected in the manifold scandals between gurus, Hindu and Tibetan, and Westerners,Yes, abuse scandals are a very real issue as in any religion, but when that has happens those people have typically had their credentials revoked by their associated lineages, if they ever had any authentic connection to any real lineage to begin with.If you keep returning to reddit-tier reductionist sociological explanations it really shows that you simply just don’t get it at the end of the day. You may be an unironic hylic, you honestly sound like one.
>>25089739Based
The claim that the essence of Mahamudra and Dzogchen is “nothing but awareness of meditation” and that one can achieve the same realization by attending a generic meditation center is not just imprecise. It is factually wrong and rooted in a distinctly modern misunderstanding of Buddhist contemplative traditions.First, Mahamudra and Dzogchen are not reducible to “non grasping observation of thoughts and sensations.” That description more closely matches basic mindfulness practices such as shamatha or early vipashyana training. In contrast, both Mahamudra and Dzogchen are concerned with the direct recognition of the nature of mind itself, not merely the contents of mind. The distinction is foundational. Observing thoughts without grasping is still operating within dualistic cognition. Mahamudra and Dzogchen aim at the collapse of that duality through recognition of mind’s empty and luminous nature.In the Kagyu lineage, Mahamudra is embedded within tantric Buddhism, especially within systems transmitted through figures such as Tilopa, Naropa, and Milarepa. In the Nyingma lineage, Dzogchen is transmitted through masters such as Padmasambhava and systematized by scholars like Longchenpa. In both cases, realization is inseparable from transmission, empowerment, and instruction within a lineage. These traditions do not treat realization as the automatic byproduct of relaxed observation. They insist on the necessity of direct introduction to the nature of mind by a qualified master.Why is “pointing out” considered necessary? Because what is to be recognized is not an experience among other experiences. It is the ground of experience itself. Ordinary awareness, even when calm and non grasping, remains conditioned by ignorance. In Mahamudra and Dzogchen, the teacher introduces the student to rigpa or non dual awareness in a way that cuts through subtle conceptual overlay. Without that introduction, practitioners reliably mistake altered states, blankness, tranquility, or heightened clarity for realization. The traditions explicitly warn against these confusions. They catalog them in detail. This is not accidental. It reflects centuries of contemplative phenomenology.
>>25090276The assertion that “it’s all about recognition of pure consciousness” is also philosophically inaccurate. Dzogchen and Mahamudra do not posit a metaphysical pure consciousness as an enduring entity. The recognition involved is of emptiness inseparable from luminosity, not of a substantial consciousness. To frame it as “pure consciousness” imports modern perennialist and neo Vedantic language that distorts Buddhist ontology. It risks reifying exactly what these traditions seek to deconstruct.The idea that one can achieve the same realization by attending a Western meditation center ignores the structural role of tantric initiation. In Vajrayana contexts, empowerment is not symbolic decoration. It establishes the practitioner’s relationship to the yidam, the mandala, and the teacher, and it authorizes engagement with specific methods. In both Mahamudra and Dzogchen, realization is supported by vows, samaya commitments, and specific contemplative frameworks. To strip away empowerment and instruction while claiming the same result is like claiming surgical competence after watching a few instructional videos. The outer similarity of tools does not confer mastery of the discipline.Furthermore, these traditions make a crucial distinction between recognizing the nature of mind momentarily and stabilizing that recognition until it becomes irreversible. The latter is what is meant by realization of dharmakaya. It requires systematic training, often years of preliminary practices, purification, and accumulation. To suggest that this can be replicated by generic mindfulness practice is to ignore the internal architecture of the path as laid out in authoritative texts and living lineages.
>>25090280The modernist belief underpinning the claim is that all religions share a single experiential core that can be extracted from its cultural container and democratized through simplified technique. This assumption emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries under the influence of Western universalism and Protestant models of individual spiritual access. It flattens doctrinal distinctions and treats lineage as optional ornamentation rather than constitutive structure. It also assumes that experience is self interpreting, that if one has a certain state of awareness one will automatically understand its significance. Traditional Buddhist epistemology rejects that premise. Correct view is indispensable.Finally, it is deeply arrogant to assume that centuries of lineage masters insisted on initiation and transmission out of mere ritualism or institutional control. These were practitioners who devoted their lives to realization. They were acutely aware of self deception, spiritual inflation, and the mind’s capacity to co opt insight. To dismiss their insistence on pointing out as unnecessary is to presume superior understanding without having undergone the discipline they prescribe.In short, reducing Mahamudra and Dzogchen to “simple awareness meditation” is not a harmless simplification. It is a categorical error. It conflates preliminary mindfulness with non dual realization, substitutes modern metaphysical language for precise Buddhist analysis, and ignores the indispensable role of lineage transmission. Someone without proper training, initiation, and sustained guidance is extraordinarily unlikely to recognize, let alone stabilize, Mahamudra or dharmakaya. The traditions themselves say so repeatedly. To pretend otherwise is not humility. It is a symptom of the very ignorance these paths are designed to expose.
This is a list of all Kashmir Shaivism primary source texts that I’m aware of which have had English translations published that you can still purchase online or find pdfs of:Malinivijottara Tantra Siva Sutras with Bhaskara’s commentaryVijnanabharaivaVirupaksapancasikaAbhinavagupta:Tantraloka with the commentary of Jayaratha (Mark D’s multi-volume translation has the commentary)TantrasaraBhagavad-Gita commentaryParamarthasara with the commentary of YogarajaVivarana commentary on para-trimsikaVimarsini commentary on Utpaladeva’s Isvarapratyabhijna-karikasA compendium of 13 minor works translated by MaheshvaranandaKsemeraja:Spanda-Nirnaya commentary on the Spanda-KarikasPratyabhijnahyrdyamStavacintamani of Bhatta Narayana with commentary of KsemerajaSiva Sutras with commentary of KsemerajaUtpaladeva:Chapters 1-4 of his commentary on Somananda’a Sivadrsti (published as The Ubiquitous Siva, vol. 1 & 2)SivastotravaliVritti auto-commentary on his Isvarapratyabhijna-karikas
>>25089739Doesn't Vajrayana include both rituals and mantras?
Universal Line, by John Paolucci
You can learn the general philosophy, but a lot of actual, genuine tantric practices haven't yet been written about or may never be written about. It really is a case of finding an authentic lineage and learning from someone, whether thats Shaivism or Tibetan Buddhism/Vajrayana.I completed a round of Ngondro, and got pointing out instructions in basic Dozgchen teachings (trekcho and thogal) and also got introduced to some elements of Mahamudra (there are a lot of different Mahamudra practices, a lot) and I originally started out trying to learn on my own, which in retrospect was a complete waste of time. Save yourself the pain and just find a legitimate teacher.I don't practice it anymore because I had increasing questions about the validity and truth of it all which undercut my practice severely, but it does seem to genuinely improve a lot of people's lives in a significant way.>>25090196>>25090199There are PLENTY of legitimate critiques of Tibetan Buddhism, but you hit almost none of them and just made some shit up because you seem very pissed for some reason.A lot of the philosophy for example is definitely influenced by general tantrism from India and Nalanda, but most of the major practices can actually have their influence traced back to interactions with China and the silk road. Take Dzogchen for example. Tibetans all believe it originated in India, and will deny this, but the Dunhuang manuscripts make it pretty clear that Dzogchen is a syncratized form of Chan (Zen) Buddhism that intermingled with Bon practices. They don't say this exactly, but Chan monks had traveled to and worked with Tibetan Bon shamans prior to anyone from Tibet going to India and bringing teachings back.Tibetans as a whole were quite prideful about their interactions with Chan Monks before Buddhism became a state religion, and originally claim they kicked out Chan Buddhists, but the manuscripts prove the opposite in reality, showing that chan buddhism stuck around for a while
>>25090280>The idea that one can achieve the same realization by attending a Western meditation center ignores the structural role of tantric initiation. In Vajrayana contexts, empowerment is not symbolic decoration. It establishes the practitioner’s relationship to the yidam, the mandala, and the teacher, and it authorizes engagement with specific methods. In both Mahamudra and Dzogchen, realization is supported by vows, samaya commitments, and specific contemplative frameworks. To strip away empowerment and instruction while claiming the same result is like claiming surgical competence after watching a few instructional videos. The outer similarity of tools does not confer mastery of the discipline.Bro, it's just an excuse to provide cheap (free) labour for the monestry to function as an economic unit, and to provide human networks for the procurement (think sisters, daughters, wives) of women to satisfy the sexual interests of the masters. Sex and Violence in Tibetan Buddhism: The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche is an excellent case example of the actual practice of master-student relationship, ow the enterprise of teaching is actually conducted, and how dogma is the handmaiden of an exploitative model that rests on threats of magic curses and reincarnation in hell-worlds if the sexual appetite of the master is not satiated.
>>25090452> Bro, it's just an excuse to provide cheap (free) labour for the monestry to function as an economic unit, and to provide human networks for the procurement (think sisters, daughters, wives) of women to satisfy the sexual interests of the mastersThat’s an immensely foolish thing to say and it isn’t even superficially plausible. For starters, Tibetan large monasteries often owned serfs or peasants who farmed for them and so they didnt need monks for that, they also employed local peasants as workers on the temple or monastery grounds, the schedule of monks prioritized study, prayer, debate, meditation etc with some basic duties to help maintain the monastery being squeezed in as an afterthought. And sexual tantric practices were the rare exception and not the rule, and the heads of religious institutions were under greater scrutiny and expected to uphold greater moral standards as a result. Moreover, the same importance of the guru-student relation is emphasized to the same degree even when Tibetan lineages are active in the west and initiating western students but without asking for any labor in exchange.> The Rise and Fall of Sogyal Rinpoche is an excellent case example of the actual practice of master-student relationshipThe opposite is true, that’s not typical at all but his abuse occurred during his interactions with western students and touring the west as some kind of quasi spiritual celebrity. In a traditional monastic centers authorities are held to certain standards and their teachings and interactions are expected to follow a certain structure. There are still instances of abusive behavior that occurs in traditional temples and monastic centers but the example of Sogyal was atypical and does not reflect the norms of Tibetan temples today or in the pre-modern era. What facilitated his abusive behaviors was being surrounded by clueless westerners who, compared to monks in traditional Tibetan centers, had much less understanding of the proper boundaries and expectations and what clear transgressions would be.I can’t tell if you are just very ignorant and confused or if you are arguing in bad faith.
Nothing Buddhist is genuine
