Unexcelled Yoga Tantras
བླ་མེད་རྒྱུད།
Anuttarayoga / Yoganiruttaratantra
Tantras of the highest class, divided into “non-dual,” “mother,” and “father,” and within the two latter categories into six “families” of principal deities.
The Summary of Empowerment is considered to be the only extant portion of the root text of the Kālacakratantra. According to the Buddhist tantric tradition, the Sekkodeśa was transmitted by the Buddha in his emanation as Kālacakra, to Sucandra, the first king of Śambhala. The text’s 174 verses cover a wide range of topics. After a short introduction to the eleven empowerments that constitute a gradual purification of the aggregates, body, speech, mind, and wisdom, the treatise turns to the so-called “sixfold yoga.” It begins by teaching meditation on emptiness via the contemplation of various signs, such as smoke or fireflies. Following the description of the control of winds and drops within the body’s channels and cakras, along with the signs of death and methods of cheating death, the text goes on to describe the three mudrās—karmamudrā, jñānamudrā, and mahāmudrā. After a concise criticism of cause and effect, the text concludes by describing six kinds of supernatural beings closely related to the Kālacakratantra, along with their respective families.
As its title suggests, this tantra is specifically concerned with the proper interpretation, or “resolution,” of the highly esoteric or “secret” imagery and practices associated with deity yoga in both its development and completion stages as described in the Yoginītantra class of tantras.
Equal to the Sky belongs to a series of texts known as the rali tantras, which are primarily associated with the Cakrasaṃvara system but incorporate themes that are also prominent in the Hevajra and Kālacakra systems. The tantra presents a discourse in which the Buddha addresses three types of ḍākinī, explains their true natures, and correlates them with the practitioner’s physical and subtle body.
The Catuṣpīṭhatantra (“The Tantra in Four Chapters”) is one of the earliest tantras of the yoginīs, a group of scriptures that teaches highly esoteric practices. Its popularity began in the 9th century and we know of at least three commentaries on the text. The main deities are all female, headed by Jñānaḍākinī. The text teaches a rich variety of subjects, both exoteric—a novel way of reckoning time and a system of divination based on it, healing snake-bite, weather control, oblations into fire and water—and esoteric—realizing emptiness, the symbolism of ritual objects, attaining supernatural powers, and the yogic way of dying (the famous practice of Phowa; this is the earliest tantra to teach this subject). Our translation is based on the commentator Bhavabhaṭṭa, an author who was popular at Vikramaśīla Monastery.
Written around the tenth or the eleventh century ce, in the late Mantrayāna period, The Tantra of Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa represents the flowering of the Yoginītantra genre. The tantra offers instructions on how to attain the wisdom state of Buddha Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa through the practice of the four joys.
The Elucidation of the Intention Tantra (sandhivyākaraṇa-nāma-tantra) is an explanatory tantra—questions and answers about the root tantra—for the Guhysamāja tantra, it is said that this explanatory tantra reveals and explains the meaning of the root tantra that is concealed in words that have an indirect meaning and which cannot be interpreted directly. It is said to present a special and unique way of commenting on the Guhyasamāja Tantra.