What is Vajrayana? | Buddhism A

Vajrayana is one of the terms for an esoteric tradition of Buddhism that is also known as Buddhist Tantra or Mantrayana. Yana is a Sanskrit word meaning vehicle or path. While all of these terms identify the same tradition, each emphasizes something slightly different about it.

Use of the term tantra, or tantrayana, emphasizes the use of yogic practices, visualization, chanting, and other forms of esoteric practice as means of gaining realization.

While Mantra, in its most basic meaning, refers to a sacred utterance chanted in a ritual setting, its deeper meaning is sacred speech that protects the mind from being distracted into samsara. Mantra protects the mind from the tendency to jump away from the present moment.

By contrast, use of the term Vajrayana is best understood in the context of this tradition’s way of viewing the path to enlightenment in terms of a three-yana journey.

The Three Yanas

The three yanas are to be understood as stages in an entire path within the tradition of Vajrayana — not descriptions of different schools of Buddhism. There are many ways to classify the yanas to illustrate stages on the path to enlightenment and the methods appropriate to the stages. The stages are not strictly progressive, in the sense that one does not abandon the disciplines of the “lower” stages as one enters into later stages. One very common system presents the vehicles in this way:

The Shravakayana, or vehicle of hearers
The Mahayana, or the great vehicle
The Vajrayana, or the indestructible vehicle

Shravakayana

The Shravakayana, or Foundational Vehicle, is presented from the conventional perspective: that the world is real and substantial, existing independently of our experience.

The core teaching of this yana is the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering; the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path leading to cessation. The basic motivation in the Shravakayana is one’s own individual liberation, which is achieved by realizing personal selflessness, or egolessness. A quintessential instruction of this yana is,

Abandon non-virtue;
Take up virtue;
Train your mind;
This is the teaching of the Buddha.

In the Tibetan tradition, the term Hinayana, or lesser or narrow vehicle, has often been used to refer to this vehicle. Because it has a negative connotation, and Buddhist schools never use it to refer to themselves, the term Foundational Vehicle is preferable.

Mahayana

The Mahayana, or Bodhisattvayana, or Paramitayana, is presented from the perspective of the wisdom of emptiness teachings.

The core teachings of this yana are that all phenomena lack permanent independent existence, all phenomena dependently arise (i.e., they emerge in an interdependent web of relationship with all other phenomena), and the practice of the paramitas (transcendent, virtuous conduct of the bodhisattvas) will lead to realization. The basic motivation in the Mahayana is bodhichitta, the desire to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. This is achieved by realizing two-fold selflessness: personal selflessness and phenomenal selflessness (that what we see, hear, etc., lacks an ongoing permanent existence that we can cling to).

Vajrayana

The Vajrayana is presented from the perspective that all beings possess buddhanature, self-existing, original wisdom.

The core teachings of this yana are the skillful methods used to reveal this wisdom under the guidance of a qualified teacher or teachers. These methods are the practices of the “creation stage” of deity meditation, and the “completion stage” of dissolving the visualization into emptiness, as well as direct investigations into the nature of mind. The basic motivation in Vajrayana is to recognize our own buddhanature, the true nature of our own minds, and the true nature of the environment and all beings.