Tantra edit
I think that this a "B" quality article. Please suggest areas that need expansion or better sources. Please comment on formatting. Suggest directions that the article might go in.
TheRingess (talk) 15:55, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Some comments I made previously Buddhipriya edit
I have not actively worked on this article but I would like to make some general comment about how I think it currently reads. Overall I think the article gives a very limited view of a very broad subject that is difficult to categorize because it includes several major subdivisions that are not articulated in the article. In a nutshell, I think the article could be improved by making a more clear differentiation between the concepts of Tantra, Vamachara, and Shaktism. It also would benefit from more clear separation between modern Western interpretations and original Hindu sources. This need to separate Western from Hindu materials also exists on related articles such as Chakra, Kundalini, and others.
In Hinduism the term "Tantras" covers a huge range of scriptures that in addition to metaphysical material includes things such as guidelines on consecration of public water tanks, laws of inheritance of property, and guidelines for punishment of treason. N.N. Bhattacharya notes the broad sociological issue in this passage:
"(Tantrism) was more than a mere religious system or stream or undercurrent. Its intimate association with the practical aspects of life is proved by the emphasis it attached to the arts of agriculture, metallurgy, manual and technical labour, chemical sciences, physiology, embryology and medicine. The sociological viewpoints expressed in the Tantras were in virtual opposition to those upheld by the Smārta-Puranic tradition." <ref>N.N. Bhattacharya, ''History of the Tantric Religion'' (Delhi: Manohar, 1999), p. 12.</ref>
There is a popular tendency to identify Tantra exclusively with Vamachara, "the left-handed path". However in most of the philosophical and legal Tantras there is no place for Vamachara at all. The Western tendency to interpret Tantra in a highly sexualized way tends to overlook the existence of the practical Tantras as a category and to misrepresent the highly abstract philosophical nature of the philosophical Tantras. I must admit that in saying this I show a personal bias, which is that I think that Western interpretations of tantra are sometimes culturally-insensitive to Hindu traditions, over-emphasizing sexual aspects. The same hyper-sexualization of religious sources is seen in the Western reflex to translate the term "lingam" as meaning only "penis" without being aware of more general meanings such as "sign" or "mark" or "characteristic". Conflict over this issue has shown up on the article for Lingam which now gives both views in a more balanced way.
There is a similar confusion regarding the relation between the Shakta tradition and the Tantra tradition. Douglas Renfrew Books summarizes this point by saying that:
"Goudriaan makes clear that not all Śāktas are Tantrics and that Tantrism, unlike Śāktism, is not restricted to any one Hindu denomination, or even to any single Indian religious tradition."<ref>Douglas Renfrew Brooks, ''The Secret of the Three Cities: An Introduction to Hindu Shakta Tantrism'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 48. ISBN 0-226-07570-2.</ref>
Thus a worshipper of the Goddess is a Shakta but that does not automatically make him or her a Tantric, and vice versa. For example, within denominations such as the Ganapatya there are forms of worship that are classified as Tantric that are not primarily centered on the Goddess, and which have nothing to do with Vamachara. See, for example, Gudrun Bühnemann's book The Worship of Mahāgaṇapati According To The Nityotsava (Institut für Indologie: 1988) ISBN 81-86218-12-2. A similar issue arises within Shaivism, where some of the Agamic literature dealing with Shiva is classified as Tantric. For a table sorting out some of the Tantric traditions in Shaivism and distinguishing them from Shaktism see: Axel Michaels Hinduism, p. 217.
For all of these reasons, even the definition of tantra is problematic and some academics have taken to using a multifactorial approach in which some constellation of traits must be present to classify a text as "tantric" in one way or another. This approach is basically "if it looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, etc." it is probably a duck.
A slow process of expansion could begin to work some of these things in. But it all needs to be very well sourced using solid academic materials. No improvement will come unless multiple editors agree to raise the bar on source quality and draw the line on use of marginal sources. Buddhipriya 18:25, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
- This critique is quite wonderful. Five years later, someone is paying attention to it. Thanks! Jnananetra (talk) 06:44, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
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TheRingess edit
In my opinion, the article does not provide enough of a historical context. I would like to see the following questions answered in the article.
- Where did Tantra originate and when? If there is a disagreement as to where and when then what are the various theories?
- Who wrote the tantras? When did they write them? Are there some scriptures that are considered more important than others? Are there scholarly debates regarding the Tantras?
- Who are the philosophers most closely associated with Tantra? When did they live?
- When did the various schools come into being? We should give a context for understanding why each school developed.
- Are there basic beliefs common to all schools? If so, can we elucidate them further?
- The article mentions that a guru is essential, but doesn't really give the reader any context for understanding why a guru is essential. Can we provide that context? Are there scholars who disagree? If so, what are there opinions.
- A key problem with the mental model is that there is some easily-definable thing called "tantra" which has a consistent history and content. That is in fact false. If the definition of tantra were worked on to make it more clear that it is case of blind people describing an elephant (one grabs the leg and thinks it is a tree, one touches the side and thinks it is a wall, etc.), several of the questions above could then be framed from a multifactorial perspective. Buddhipriya 04:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, I think TheRingess asks some great questions that are answerable, with recent breakthroughs in scholarship in the field. While not easily definable, Tantra now has clear, if complex, historical parameters that can be delineated. Jnananetra (talk) 06:44, 2 March 2012 (UTC)