ABSTRACT
One of the most interesting areas of inquiry for the historian of South Asian religions concerns the many ways in which yoga – understood in both its classical and later forms of development – has been adopted and adapted by diverse Tantric traditions.2 The issues of embodiment, freedom, and the nature of the material world are central to both traditions, although Tantrics have typically approached these issues in their own way, and have often used psychosexual ritual practices not found in classical yoga. But it seems clear that problems related to the “body” (physical, yogic, and other) and the material world are of primary importance to many (if not most) of the Yogic and Tantric traditions that we study. This short essay will deal not only with “the what” of my research into Tantric yoga (the description and presentation of Tantric texts, traditions, and personalities) but especially with “the so what?” (articulating the basic issues raised by our studies, connecting them to other areas of inquiry, and suggesting new methodologies for the study of yoga and tantra). I will suggest some new ways of analyzing and understanding the problems of embodiment and the material world in some branches of the Vai‚n. ava Sahajiyå Tantric traditions of medieval Bengal (which flourished during the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries). This methodology has helped me to understand some medieval interpretations of yoga, as well as the structures and processes underlying Vai‚n. ava Sahajiyå ideas of body, world, and transformation. I hope that it might also prove to be of some
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The subject of dehatattva (ideas and practices relating to cosmophysiology) is of major importance in most Tantric Yogic traditions (and certainly so among the medieval Vai‚n. ava Sahajiyås). This technical term refers to a number of yogic concerns, many of them relating to issues of embodiment, freedom, and transformations of the material world. If the basic goal for Tantra is some form of final liberation from the phenomenal world and realization of an underlying unity or state of cosmic consciousness, then the condition of embodiment in the material world may be said to present the basic religious “problem” for Tantrism. Since human beings begin the Tantric quest from this condition of embodiment and materiality, it is the intention of Tantric Yogic traditions first of all to analyze this condition, second to place it in a larger cosmic context or worldview, and finally to prescribe a system of psychophysical ritual practices (sådhana) which will resolve the apparent problem of embodiment and materiality.
