Vajrayana Buddhism
Vajrayana Buddhism is commonly regarded as one of the three Schools within the Buddhism framework of teachings. It is commonly known as Tantrayana because its teachings are based on a set of texts known as Tantras. These tantric texts first appeared in Northern India during the 3rd century CE. Although Buddhism was first propagated in India through the Theravada School, Vajrayana increasingly became the dominant practice from the 8th century onwards and produced many great realised masters or mahasiddhas, until the 13th century when Buddhism and Hinduism faced surmountable pressure from the rise of Islamic movement.
During the 8th century, Vajrayana teachings were brought into the Himalayan region, in particular Tibet and Bhutan, by Vimalamitra and Padmasambhava, and is known today as “Tibetan Buddhism”.
At around the same time, during the Tang Dynasty, Vajrayana was also brought into China by key buddhist figures such as Vajrabodhi, Amoghavajra and Subhakarasimha. This was subsequently known as “Tang Dynasty Buddhism”, which were propagated to Japan and Korea and became the mainstream Buddhism School there.
Vajrayana teachings are built on the foundation of the Mahayana School; it embodies all the Mahayana teachings, in addition to the unique skilful means adopted to enable a practitioner to attain enlightenment quicker.
There are significant differences between the practice philosophy of Mahayana and Vajrayana. For example, in Mahayana, the “Path of Cause” is adopted, whereby a practitioner is introduced to his innate Buddha Nature and learns to tap into this potential to gain enlightenment. Vajrayana, on the other hand, adopts the “Path of Fruition” whereby a practitioner uses his Buddha Nature as the means of practice.
Mahayana practices emphasise on transcending from samsara towards nirvana. Negative emotions which are the causes for samsaric rebirths are to be transformed into loving kindness, compassion and wisdom through the practice of paramitas. Although the Tantras were developed out of the framework of Mahayana framework of teachings on emptiness and wisdom, in Vajrayana, non-duality of samsara and nirvana is emphasised, and negative emotions are skilfully made used of as a display of wisdom energy.
All the teachings in Mahayana are based on the sutras, a collection of discourses, and are readily available to anyone. In contrast, Vajrayana teachings are esoteric because some of the teaching transmissions take place directly, and most often secretly, from the teacher to the disciple, via empowerment, oral instructions and pith methods.