Passionate Enlightenment

Passionate Enlightenment is a scholarly presentation of Buddhism's teachings about proper
deference toward religiously advanced, spiritually powerful women.   Professor Shaw's
comprehensive review of core ancient texts reveals an original foundation of reverence for
woman as spiritual teacher-partner-lover, in the early Tantric Buddhist tradition, in
contrast to the later distortions of patriarchal influences in Yoga and Tantra.

These inspiring excerpts were compiled by M. White.


Spiritual companionship between men and woman and sexual union is
seen as a vehicle of religious transformation p15

Goal for women; to discover accomplished women of the past, to savor words they had
written, and to be nourished by inspiring understandings of female embodiment. p 17

Tantric Buddhism insists that enlightenment is attainable within one lifetime. Tantra prides
itself on being a path for intense, passionate people. Therefore, the Tantric path is not
without pitfalls, because passion becomes an obstacle for one who does not have purity of
heart and mind. p24

The goal of this journey is not only freedom from suffering but an
expanded capacity for creativity and joy.   p25

Anger is transformed into mirror like wisdom, arrogance becomes the wisdom of equality,
desire becomes discriminating awareness, jealousy turns into all accompanying wisdom and
ignorance becomes the panoramic wisdom of all encompassing space. p27

Wrath and anger, are not totally eliminated on the spiritual path because it may be
necessary to wield the appearance of wrath in order to rescue, liberate or protect someone.
p31

Buddhas do not reify the experience if union, approach it selfishly, or
allow it to create neurotic attachment, for their passion is transposed to
a higher octave by the realization of emptiness. p31

The spirit of carefree joyousness and festivity surrounding the companionship of men and
women is the antithesis of the ponderous mood of male domination attributed to much
literature of this tradition. p38

Training themselves to see woman as female Buddhas gave men a chance to deconstruct
unenlightened thought patterns, most notably gender pride and prejudice. p70

Women would tend to select as companions men who would mirror their
own sense of dignity and empowerment, and this selection process
could well have been a factor in determining the constituency of Tantric
circles and formation of Tantric partnerships. p 71

In response to the initiative of the Tantric yogini, the yogis respected women in order to bring
their own vision into alignment with the ontological reality of women’s divinity and to
become capable of the kind of relationships required for success on the Tantric path. p72

the triumphal tone of this material suggests that the men’s respect was not a gratuitous or
grudging concession but a genuine admiration for the talent, energy, and passion for
enlightenment of their female companions and teachers. p73

A woman who attains this state undergoes no transition between formal
meditation sessions and daily life, for the heightens clarity that is sought
through meditation has become an integral part of ongoing, everyday
consciousness. p89

When a woman (person) recognizes that the objects of waking consciousness are simply the
products of individual and collective imagination, she becomes less absorbed in them. p91

There was no area of Tantric Buddhism in which women did not participate and attain
mastery, including magical techniques and incantations, the performance of rituals, the
visualization of deities and mandalas, advanced techniques of inner yoga, and the loftier
realms of pure contemplation and philosophical reflection. p99

A woman can tap a never ending stream of energy within herself and
choose to direct that energy to her own liberation and the liberation of
her students. p 112

"Your face shines with a full moon splendor. Your eyes like Lotus petals, are exquisitely
tapered. Fragrant and white as a snowy conch shell, you hold a glistening rosary of
immaculate pearls. You are adorned by the beauteous blush of dawn Like Lotus lake, your
hands exude nectar. Youthful one, white as an autumn cloud, many jewels cascade from
your shoulders. The palms of your hands are tender and fresh as delicate leaves. Your navel
is soft as a Lotus petal. Source of eternal bliss, you cure old age and sickness." p129

One principal of their selectivity is clearly gender. One reads of men of noteworthy
attainments but when one looks more deeply at the history one realizes that these men
were surrounded and trained by women. Although men are celebrated in the biographical
anthologies, their religious lives are embedded in a female matrix that determines and even
defines their lives. p137

Apart from women there will not be bliss. p143

Practice with a human partner, or KARMAMUDRA, is intended for a more highly qualified
person, while practice with an imagined partner, JNANAMUDRA, is intended for those less
qualified. Meditation in union with a human partner is deemed to offer a significant
advantage over solitary meditation. The partners energy also heightens the intensity and
power of the meditation. p146

Tantric Buddhism hinges on the belief that negative emotional and cognitive patterns
become lodged in the psychic body in the form of knots and blocks in the subtle psychic
channels (nadi). The purpose of the inner yoga is to "untie the knots:" and bring all the
energy that is released by this process into the central channel that traverses the body
vertically. This energy can then be used to untangle the karmic knots. Ultimately, since the
heart is the site of the deepest fears, hatreds, and self centered distortions of reality, the
openness, mutual transparency, and total trust required by the yoga of union make it an
ideal discipline to bring the negative emotions to awareness and transform their poison into
the ambrosia of enlightened awareness. p147

The man cultivates pure vision by seeing the woman as a deity, her
sexual organ as the throne of enlightenment, and her sexual fluid as
divine nectar. The poetic and symbolic terms for the sexual anatomy
and for the stages of union shape the attitudes, meditations, and
experience of both a woman and a man engaging in these disciplines.
What is sought in the yoga of union is a quality of relationship into which
each partner enters fully in order that both may be liberated
simultaneously. p168

The texts testify that women as well as men developed their minds and bodies on the Tantric
path by engaging in mental disciplines, learning stylized bodily movements (yoga and
mudra) for communication and self transformation, and using their bliss and passion as a
basis for attaining enlightenment through the sublime yoga of Tantric union. 172

The practice of union, at least as it was originally designed, was not inherently meant to be
an exploitative process from which one person-the man- derived unreciprocated benefit. By
the time a practitioner had attained readiness for this practice, which is a highly esoteric
inner yoga, he or she would be aware of the broader context in which the practice occurs.
The process ultimately is reciprocal and is meant for the benefit of both, on many levels.
Both partners should be similarly motivated and committed to Tantric practice, and both
engage in the practice intending to progress toward enlightenment. 173

The language used to describe Tantric union is not the vocabulary of
domination or exploitation. It is a language of symmetry,
complimentarity, and interdependence. 173

Tantric union has explicit intellectual, emotional, meditative, and visualized content that
cannot be circumvented. If the prescribed attitude is not present, the activity becomes
ordinary sexuality masquerading as religion, a form of hypocrisy that can be spiritually
disastrous..Acts undertaken in the wrong spirit can never bear spiritual fruit. in order to be
transformative, a practice must me undertaken with the requisite content as well as the
proper ritual form. The requisite content is reciprocity, intimacy, and mutual aspiration to
attain enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. p176 &7

Buddhism already offered an array of techniques for the solitary and monastic pursuit of
liberation. Tantra introduced a method that could be pursued in the context of intimacy
with another person. 179

The five senses is engaged and satisfied; sight by gazing, hearing by
sweet words, smell by perfume, touch by rubbing with scent and
embracing, and taste by kissing. 185

If exploitative dynamics were interjected at any point in the history of the tradition, as some
have conjectured, it is important to investigate what social, institutional, and doctrinal
configurations then accomplished the abuse of women by means of practice they originally
helped to develop. Any degeneration that can be documented will have to be
acknowledged as a betrayal of the original spirit of the practices as women designed them.
194

One of the main symbols of enlightenment in Tantric Buddhism is that of a Buddha couple,
or male and female Buddha in union. This maithuna symbol is an image of unity and blissful
concord between the sexes, a state of equilibrium the interdependence. This symbol
powerfully evokes a state of primordial wholeness and completeness of being. The perennial
appeal of this motif is not that it commemorates a successful seduction or cosmic
manipulation but rather that it offers a vision of authentic humanity in which women and
men are restored to wholeness through a delicately balanced, joyous state of harmony.
p200.