In brief on-list response to the topic of Tantra, I've uploaded the wonderful intro. to _Masters of Enchantment_: the biographies and sadhanas of the 84 Mahasiddhas of Tibetan and Hindu tantra. It's intro. is one of the best I have read. It also includes the artists (Robert Beer) intro which briefly details his own enlightenment. If you have some interest in these siddhas, you'll surely enjoy this brief and wonderfully accurate glimpse from my brother Keith Dowman.
http://homepage.mac.com/vajranatha/Downloads/FileSharing4.html Prem and Ashirvad, Vaj Some excerpts: "The exemplors of the new Buddhism, the high priests of Tantra, were called siddhas. In the beginning, in eighth century India, they represented a pure and purifying spirituality arising from the grass roots of society. Alienated from the dead forms of the social and religious establishment, equating society with life's confusion, renunciation was a prerequisite to spiritual attainment. The ethos of their pure mysticism made them antiestablishment, unorthodox and antischolastic. They stressed the simple and free life rather than institutional discipline. Militating against empty ritual, charlatanism, specious philosophizing, the caste system and Brahminical ritual purity they were iconoclastic rebels. They taught existential involvement rather than metaphysical speculation. Many siddhas were musicians and poets who sang their realization in wonderful mystical songs in vernacular languages, using metaphors of home and family, farming and crafts, love and sex. The siddhas were never to compromise their radical attitudes to orthodoxy, and they maintained their ideal of existential freedom at all cost." -- "Who were these spiritual adventurers? What did they teach? What was their practice? In answering these questions it would be useful to define several Sanskrit words that remain untranslated throughout this work because they have no English equivalents. The first is the word "siddha." Siddhas are practitioners of Tantra who are successful in attaining the goal of their meditation. This achievement is known as siddhi. It is twofold in that it confers both magical power (mundane) and enlightenment itself (supreme). The word "siddha" could be rendered "saint," "magus," "magician," or "adept." But even this is not sufficient, because "siddha" evokes an entire life style, a unique mode of being, and a very particular form of aspiration. For uninitiated Indians, the emphasis of their associations with siddhas is on magical power. If a yogin or yogini can walk through walls, fly in the sky, heal the sick, turn water into wine, levitate, or read minds, they may gain the title "siddha." If those same practitioners have a crazy glint in their eyes, cover themselves in ashes, bring tears to the eyes with their songs, calm street mongrels by their very presence, induce faithful women to leave their families, wear vajras in their yard-long hair knots, eat out of skull bowls, talk with the birds, cry when they see a spastic child, sleep with lepers, fearlessly upbraid powerful officials for moral laxity, or perform with conviction any act contrary to convention while demonstrating a "higher" reality, then they are doubly siddhas." To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
