Making a Mantra: Tantric Ritual and Renunciation on the Jain Path to Liberation

Description

Jainism originated in India and shares some features with Buddhism and Hinduism, but it is a distinct tradition with its own key texts, art, rituals, beliefs, and history. One important way it has often been distinguished from Buddhism and Hinduism is through the highly contested category of Tantra: Jainism, unlike the others, does not contain a tantric path to liberation. But in Making a Mantra, historian of religions Ellen Gough refines and challenges our understanding of Tantra by looking at the development over two millennia of a Jain incantation, or mantra, that evolved from an auspicious invocation in a second-century text into a key component of mendicant initiations and meditations that continue to this day. Typically, Jainism is characterized as a celibate, ascetic path to liberation in which one destroys karma through austerities, while the tantric path to liberation is characterized as embracing the pleasures of the material world, requiring the ritual use of mantras to destroy karma. Gough, however, argues that asceticism and Tantra should not be viewed in opposition to one another. She does so by showing that Jains perform “tantric” rituals of initiation and meditation on mantras and maṇḍalas. Jainism includes kinds of tantric practices, Gough provocatively argues, because tantric practices are a logical extension of the ascetic path to liberation. Contents A Note on Transliteration and Translation List of Abbreviations Preface Part One: Setting the Scene Introduction: Tantra, Asceticism, and the Life of a Mantra 1. From Mangala to Mantra: Destroying Karma with Sound Part Two: The Tantricization of Mendicant Initiation 2. Mandalas and Mantras: The Jina's Preaching Assembly as a Tantric Initiation Diagram 3. Sects and Secrecy: Comparing the Mantras of the Levels of Initiation Part Three: The Tantricization of Daily Worship 4. Tantric Meditation as a Means of Liberation 5. The Tantric Rituals of Modern Monks Conclusion: The Past Lives of Modern Mantras Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index