Tantric spiritual practices and rituals thus aim to bring about an inner realization of the truth that " Nothing exists that is not Divine " (), bringing freedom from ignorance and from the cycle of suffering () in the process.

Matangi is one of the Mahavidyas, ten Tantric goddesses and a ferocious aspect of Devi, the Hindu Divine Mother.

Chhinnamasta (,, " She whose head is severed "), often spelled Chinnamasta and also called Chhinnamastika and Prachanda Chandika, is one of the Mahavidyas, ten Tantric goddesses and a ferocious aspect of Devi, the Hindu Divine Mother.

Indologist Heinrich Zimmer was the first Western scholar to interpret Ramakrishna's worship of the Divine Mother as containing specifically Tantric elements.

Tantric Visions of the Divine Feminine: The Ten Mahavidyas.

At the same time Xuanzong exalted the ancient Laozi by granting him grand titles, wrote commentary on the Daoist Laozi, set up a school to prepare candidates for examinations on Daoist scriptures, and called upon the Indian monk Vajrabodhi ( 671 – 741 ) to perform Tantric rites to avert a drought in the year 726.

Although Dattatreya was at first a " Lord of Yoga " exhibiting distinctly Tantric traits, he was adapted and assimilated into the more devotional cults ; while still worshiped by millions of Hindus, he is approached more as a benevolent god than as a teacher of the highest essence of Indian thought.

* Padoux, André The Tantric Guru, in: Tantra in Practice, Ed by David Gordon White, MLBD, New Delhi

According to Tibetan sources, Atiśa was ordained into the Mahasamghika lineage at the age of twenty-eight by the Abbot Śīlarakṣita and studied almost all Buddhist and non-Buddhist schools of his time, including teachings from Vishnu, Shiva, Tantric Hinduism and other beliefs.

In the Samkhya Karika and Tattva Samasa, and hence in Tantric Buddhism, it specifically refers to the acquisition of supernatural powers by psychic or magical means or the supposed faculty so acquired.

*" Breakdown " ( Tantric song ), a 2001 song by rock group Tantric from Tantric

Her devotees, especially Tantric sadhakas, are regarded to have transcend the pollution by offering her left-over or partially eaten food ( Ucchishta ) and thus overcome their ego.

Her individual worship is restricted to heroic, Tantric worship by Tantrikas, yogis and world renouncers.

Her individual worship is restricted to heroic, Tantric worship by Tantrikas ( a type of Tantric practitioners ), yogis and world renouncers.

This idea was summed up in the title of the book, the Tantric metaphor of " Riding the Tiger " which in general practice, consisted of turning things that were considered inhibitory to spiritual progress by mainstream Brahmanical society ( for example, meat, alcohol and in very rare circumstances, sex, were all employed by Tantric practitioners ) into a means of spiritual transcendence.

In Tantric Buddhism ( Vajrayana ) the vajra and ghanta ( bell ) are used in many rites by a lama or any Vajrayana practitioner of sadhanas.

She is taken by the priests to undergo a number of secret Tantric rituals to cleanse her body and spirit of her past experiences.

Supported by royal patronage, the Buddhist school gradually spread to the village level in the next three centuries although Tantric, Mahayana, Brahmanic, and animist practices remained heavily entrenched at all social strata.

The Yogic, Tantric and other systems of India, the Buddhist psychology of Tibet, as well as Chinese ( Taoist alchemy ) and Japanese ( Shingon ) esoterism are examples of doctrines that describe a subtle physiology having a number of focal points ( chakras, acupuncture points ) connected by a series of channels ( nadis, Acupuncture meridians ) that convey life-force ( prana, vayu, ch ' i, ki, lung ).

“ A few months before the session of the Surat Congress, Suranath traveled in the guise of a Tantric priest all over Bengal (…) preaching sedition … went Calcutta and stayed there for a month at the Sandhya office … He then formed a central committee (…), Mokshada, Shyamsundar Chakravarti, Arabinda Ghose, Tara Khepa, Annada Kaviraj and others as members .” A few days before the publication of the Yugantar, at Benares, Preonath with Hrishikesh and Suranath “ convened a public meeting as well as a meeting of the pundits wherein it was settled by quotations from the Hindu Astrology and Astronomy and announced firmly that the sinful Iron Age was now over …”

The murti at the Tara Ma mandir in the village of Tarapith, a highly important Tantric site for Bengali Shaktas ( and highly contested as to whether or not it is truly a Shakti Pitha ; scholarly evidence points towards no ), is mostly covered by Garlands of flowers.

The Drukpa Lineage was founded in western Tibet by Drogon Tsangpa Gyare Yeshe Dorje ( 1161 – 1211 ), a student of Ling Repa who mastered the Tantric Buddhism practices of the mahamudra and six yogas of Naropa at an early age.

They are thought to have been influenced by the Hindu tantric sect of the Kartabhajas, as well as Tantric Vaishnava schools like the Vaishnava-Sahajiya.

* White, David Gordon, Kiss of the Yogini: " Tantric Sex " in its South Asian Contexts, The University of Chicago Press ( Chicago, 2003 ).

In < i > Iranian Themes in Tibetan Tantric Culture: The Ḍākinī < i >, David Templeman points out the links between dakinis as found in Tibetan Buddhism and Urgyen which is in what is now Northern Pakistan.

Tantric practice is said to eventually transform all experience into bliss.

Eastern variants of Gupta called Nāgarī are first attested from the 8th century CE ; from c. 1200 CE these gradually replaced Siddham, which survived as a vehicle for Tantric Buddhism in East Asia, and Sharada, which remained in parallel use in Kashmir.

The religious historian Mircea Eliade speaks of a desire to transcend old age and death and achieve a state of nirvana in the Hindu practice of Tantric yoga.

In Tantric yoga the same emphasis is placed on the retention and absorption of vital liquids and Sanskrit texts describe how semen must not be emitted if the yogi is to avoid falling under the law of time and death.

Labyrinths appear in Indian manuscripts and Tantric texts from the 17th century onward.

The idea of spinning mantras relates to numerous Tantric practices whereby the Tantric practitioner visualizes mantras revolving around the nadis and especially around the meridian chakras such as the heart and crown.

Therefore, prayer wheels are a visual aid for developing one's capacity for these types of Tantric visualizations.

On rare occasions, advanced Tantric practitioners such as Senge Dongma, the Lion-Faced Dakini, spin prayer wheels counterclockwise to manifest a more wrathful protective energy.

The word " Tāntrika " is used for followers of the Tantras in Shaivism, but Buddhist practices based on the Tantras do not use the word Tantric to refer to themselves.

The historical significance of the Tantric method lies in the fact that it impacted every major Indian religion extant in the early medieval period ( c. 500-1200 CE ): thus the Hindu sects of Shaivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism, as well as Buddhism and Jainism all developed a well-documented body of Tantric practices and related doctrines.

Tantric ideas and practices spread far outside of India, into Tibet, Nepal, China, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

Today, it is Tibetan Buddhism and various forms of Hinduism that show the strongest Tantric influence, as well as the international postural yoga movement and most forms of American alternative spirituality grouped under the New Age rubric.

Defined primarily as a technique-rich style of spiritual practice, Tantra has no single coherent doctrine ; rather, it developed different teachings in connection with the different religions that adopted the Tantric method.

The practical consequence of this view was that not only could householders aspire to spiritual liberation in the Tantric system, they were the type of practitioner that most Tantric manuals had in mind.

Tantric meditations do not serve the function of training or practicing extra beliefs or unnatural ways.

Rather, the Tantric dimension of each South Asian religion had its own name.

For example, what scholars call Tantric Shaivism was known to its practitioners as the, Tantric Buddhism has the indigenous name of the Vajrayana, and Tantric Vaishnavism was known as the.