ABSTRACT
I want very briefly to present three conclusions. Firstly, something about the supposed antinomianism of the tantric scriptures. The scriptures contain two ideals —one is the antinomian saint who observes no rules and is liberated here and now, the divine madman. The other is the learned, courteous teacher who realizes that all is non-dual and that rules are merely conventional, yet continues to act as if the distinctions they are
based on are real because he feels such compassion for suffering creatures that he wants to lead them on the right path. The existence of this latter ideal shows that Tantric Buddhism was routinized, to use Max Weber’s term, at a relatively early period. That is to say, institutionalized Tantric Buddhism like that of the Newars is very old. Newar Buddhism is a genuine inheritor, and not a deformation, of a type of Buddhism which is at least 8 or 900 years old.
