The Amṛtasiddhi: Haṭhayoga’s Tantric Buddhist Source Text

Abstract

Like many of the contributors to this volume, I had the great fortune to have Professor Sanderson as the supervisor of my doctoral thesis, which was a critical edition of an early text on haṭhayoga called the Khecarīvidyā. At the outset of my work on the text, and for several subsequent years, I expected that Sanderson's encyclopedic knowledge of the Śaiva corpus would enable us to find within it forerunners of khecarīmudrā, the haṭhayogic practice central to the Khecarīvidyā. However, notwithstanding a handful of instances of teachings on similar techniques, the fully-fledged practice does not appear to be taught in earlier Śaiva works. In subsequent years, as I read more broadly in the corpus of early texts on haṭhayoga (which, in comparison to the vast Śaiva corpus, is relatively small and thus may easily be read by one individual), I came to the realisation that almost all of the practices which distinguish haṭhayoga from other methods of yoga were unique to it at the time of their codification and are not to be found in the corpus of earlier Śaiva texts, despite repeated assertions in secondary literature that haṭhayoga was a development from Śaivism (or "tantra" more broadly conceived).The texts of the haṭhayoga corpus do, however, couch their teachings in tantric language. The name of the haṭhayogic khecarīmudrā, for example, is also that of an earlier but different Śaiva practice. When I was invited to speak at the symposium in Professor Sanderson's honour held in Toronto in 2015, I decided to try to articulate my rather inchoate thoughts on this subject by presenting a paper entitled "Haṭhayoga's Śaiva Idiom." The inadequacy of my theories was brought home to me some months after the symposium when I started to read, together with two other former students of Sanderson, Péter-Dániel Szántó and Jason Birch,1 a twelfth-century manuscript of the Amṛtasiddhi (AS), the earliest text to teach many of the key principles and practices of

Tracking the Illusory Magical Wheel: Physical Yoga in Tibetan Tantra and Dzogchen

“…Although the Amṛtasiddhi does not teach partnered sexual practices, it maintains that union of the "lunar" male bindu and the "solar" female bindu within the yogic body constitutes the "highest dharma and the best yoga," culminating in supreme and 47 complete awakening (samyaksaṃbodhi). Mallinson (2020) has shown the profound influence that the Amṛtasiddhi has had on subsequent haṭhayoga traditions in India, and its core methodology, building on innovations in the Kālacakra and the Śaivite Kaula Tantras, clearly influenced the development of physical yoga practices in Tibet (ibid. : 415).…”

“…12.) As per the colophon, the manuscript was composed in 1160 by a Tibetan scholar named Padma Özer (Bya ban de Pad ma 'od zer), based on Avadhūtacandra's Sanskrit original (SeeSchaeffer 2002, Mallinson 2020).…”

Introduction

“…The groundbreaking work of James Mallinson, Jason Birch and Mark Singleton has been fundamental in reconstructing the development of haṭhayoga as a yogic method in which physical practices predominate. This haṭha method is worthy of study because "[b]etween the 14th and 18th centuries haṭhayoga was gradually assimilated into several mainstream Indian religious traditions" and this versatility allowed it to be "the source of much of the yoga practised around the world today" (Mallinson 2020a).…”