What is Tantra? Setting the Record Straight
By Christopher Wallis
This article first appeared at tantrikstudies.org.
“Tantra” is now a buzzword in the modern Western world. We see it on the covers of popular magazines and books, usually linked suggestively with the notion of superlative sexual experience. Though almost everyone has heard this word, almost no one—including many people claiming to teach something called tantra—knows anything about the historical development of the Indian spiritual tradition that Sanskrit scholars refer to as Tantra. What these academics study as Tantra bears little to no resemblance to what is taught under the same name on the workshop circuit of Western alternative spirituality. It would take a much longer post to explain why that gap is so wide—it’s a deeply complex issue of cultural mediation and strange misunderstandings. However, my book Tantra Illuminated presents a comprehensive overview of the original Indian spiritual tradition that was articulated in Sanskrit scriptures called tantras (which is where the name came from).
Why would this be of interest to modern Westerners? There is one outstanding reason: millions of Westerners are today practicing something called yoga, a practice which, though much altered in form and context, can in many respects be traced back to the classical Tantrik tradition.
Yoga is a living tradition profoundly influenced by Tantra, yet has forgotten much of its own history. There is a new wave of work by scholars who are also practitioners, whose goals are to rediscover and reintegrate some of what has been forgotten, clarify the roots of many ideas and practices that are floating around (thereby grounding them and enhancing their richness), and chart clearly the vast and varied landscape of Indian spiritual thought, with a view to what it can contribute to our lives today. For it is certainly the case that most 20th century teaching and writing on Indian thought was either exciting but incoherent and ungrounded (the practitioner context) or systematic but dry, boring, and insipid (the academic context). It’s time to rectify that; and no Indian tradition has been more misunderstood, relative to its deep influence on global spirituality, than Tantra.
You may wonder what the phrase “classical Tantra“ refers to. It identifies the peak period of the Tantrik movement (800-1200 CE) and distinguishes our subject matter from the later Hindu Tantra and haṭha-yoga traditions (both 1200-1800), and also from modern American neo-Tantra (started around 1905 by Pierre Bernard). The classical Tantra that I treat in my book is associated with a specific religious tradition, the religion of Shiva & Shakti, commonly known as Shaivism. Shaivism was practiced all over what is now India, Nepal, Pakistan, Southeast Asia, and Indonesia, and was the dominant religion of India in the medieval period (600-1200). But there is also the important category of Buddhist Tantra; and many of the practices of Buddhist Tantra were directly adopted from the classical Śaiva Tantra (as Sanderson has shown in “The Śaiva Age”). Furthermore, many of the spiritual teachings of Buddhist Tantra (especially those of Dzogchen and Mahāmudrā) are virtually indistinguishable from the nondual Śaiva Tantrik teachings.
From a recent cutting-edge scholarly publication, we find this important statement opening the work: “Tantric scriptures form the basis of almost all the various theistic schools of theology and ritual in post-Vedic India, as well as of a major strand of Buddhism (Vajrayāna). Among these schools, those centered on the Hindu deities Śiva and Viṣṇu spread well beyond the Indian subcontinent to Kambuja (Cambodia/Laos/Thailand), Champa (Vietnam) and Indonesia, while Buddhist Tantrism quickly became pan-Asian.” (Goodall, Sanderson, and Isaacson)
Something I don’t cover adequately in my book is the fact that there IS a form of original Tantra highly visible today, and that is Tibetan Buddhism. But because Tibetan Buddhism is the only form of original Tantra that most people have come across, they don’t realize that many of its most salient features (mantras, maṇḍalas, mudrās, initiation, deity yoga, guru-yoga, and more) are not actually particular to Buddhism, but were part of the pan-Indian Tantrik movement which affected all the religions that were around at that time (Shaivism, Buddhism, Vaishnavism, Jainism, Saurism, etc.).
Though Tantra was a hugely influential spiritual, religious, and aesthetic movement, some “Tantra triumphalists”, like
(who writes on Elephant Journal, and who has many good things to say), overstate its importance by claiming that it influenced all forms of yoga as well as the Vedas. No professional Sanskrit scholar would agree with this claim. Not all yoga comes from Tantra (since there are many pre-tantrik yogas, such as those seen in the Yoga-sūtra and the Mahābhārata), but it is the case that most of the forms of yoga practiced today can be traced back to Tantra, usually through the intermediary of Haṭha-yoga, the texts of which frequently state their indebtedness to the tantras.Explore the Print and/or Digital Issues of Tarka Journal in our online shop.
So Tantra is a spiritual movement that influenced the development of most Asian religions. But what is the essence of Tantra, you might ask? How do I know it when I see it? Scholars have debated that question and settled on a list of features (which you can see on p. 33 of my book) rather than a single essence. However, I want to single out one of those features for special mention, since it is this feature that makes Tantra different from all other yogic paths: it is fundamentally world-embracing rather than world-denying, focused on the immanent rather than the transcendent, integrated with everyday life rather than renouncing it . . . in other words life-affirming rather than life-negating.
All other forms of yoga are transcendentalist and renunciatory in character, except where they are influenced by Tantra itself.
“Transcendentalist” means holding the view that the Divine is beyond what we can contact with our senses, and that therefore one must achieve “higher states of consciousness” to unite with Divine essence. By contrast, nondual Tantra teaches that though the Divine is more than meets the eye, it is also everything the eye can meet (or the ear can hear, etc.). Therefore we don’t seek “higher” states of consciousness, but a more complete awareness of the totality of being here and now, a deeper sense of the miracle of life revealed in every form, feeling, and creature.
That was an attempt to articulate the distinctive essence of Tantra in terms of view, but what about practice? What is the distinguishing mark of the practice? As far as the original tradition was concerned, if you’re not propitiating a Tantrik mantra-deity regularly, you’re not a tāntrika.
To learn more, please read my book! It is the very first introduction to the philosophy and history of classical Tantra written for a general audience.*
*I will substantiate this claim with reference to the three books that might appear to challenge it. Georg Feuerstein’s Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy presents us with an overview, not of the unique philosophical system of classical Tantra, but rather of those elements of Tantra that were incorporated into mainstream Hinduism. Thus his book may be seen as a good introduction to the post-classical Hindu Tantra of the 13th century onward. The classical Tantrik philosophy presented in my book is related, but considerably different. The second book I am thinking of is Kamalakar Mishra’s Kashmir Shaivism: The Central Philosophy of Tantrism. This covers much classical Tantrik philosophy but does not cover the history and social context of the religion which gave rise to it. Mishra perpetuates the now almost century-old misunderstanding that this tradition was a phenomenon of the region of Kashmīr, whereas in fact, it was a pan-Indian (and eventually pan-Asian) spiritual movement. Thirdly, we have Lama Yeshe’s classic Introduction to Tantra. This lovely little book gives the reader a good sense of the values and worldview and aesthetics of the Tantrik movement, but contains very little in the way of specificity, either of historical development or of the details of practice.
Thank you for reading!
If you’re interested in diving deeper into the traditions of Tantra, you might like to join our upcoming Sādhana School — a year-long programme combining theory, textual study, and practice in the non-dual Śākta–Śaiva traditions.
The new term of Sādhana School begins on Wednesday, the 22nd of October 2025. You can find out more below.
Thanks to Christopher Wallis for an excellent article on classical Tantra, its history, and its influence in Southeast Asia and the worlds of yoga, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I agree with most of what he writes, except, naturally, parts of this paragraph in which he refers to me: “Though Tantra was a hugely influential spiritual, religious, and aesthetic movement, some ‘Tantra triumphalists’, like Roar Ramesh Bjonnes (who writes on Elephant Journal, and who has many good things to say), overstate its importance by claiming that it influenced all forms of yoga as well as the Vedas. No professional Sanskrit scholar would agree with this claim.”
To understand why I differ with Wallis, we must consider the history of yoga and Tantra in a broader context. Moreover, we need to remain open to the reality that there are several compelling yet conflicting versions of this history.
Regardless of what constitutes a “professional Sanskrit scholar” and their credentials in writing about the history of yoga and Tantra, I respectfully disagree. There are indeed Sanskrit scholars—and more importantly, Indologists, scholar-practitioners, and gurus of Tantra—who agree with my viewpoint. The history of yoga and Tantra is complex and often difficult to trace. Like all history, it largely depends on who tells the story.
Suppose the narrative comes from a Western scholar-practitioner such as Wallis, who has studied with the eminent Prof. Alexis Sanderson and thus favors a certain textual understanding of yoga and Tantra’s history. In that case, the antiquity of yoga is generally denied beyond the Śramaṇa movement and the time of the Buddha (ca. 500 BCE). From Jim Mallinson and Mark Singleton as well as other scholars in this camp, yoga’s origins are placed around this era.
In contrast, if the account is told by an Indologist like Justin Hewitson, who investigates other sources such as the writings of the Tantra guru Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, who claims that the Shaiva tradition of ancient India is the true source of yoga and Tantra—which he considers essentially the same intuitional sciences expressed in different terms—then a different history emerges.
Similarly, one could argue that yoga is both a goal (samādhi, mokṣa, nirvikalpa) and a practice encompassing posture and philosophy. All these perspectives are valid. One can also claim that Tantra is at once a science, a system, a loom, and also Mantrasāstra, which N.N. Bhattacarya writes is fundamentally Tantric and as ancient as the mantras themselves—at least 5000 years old according to Anandamurti, who adds that Tantric yogis refined its alphabet.
French Indologist and Tantric practitioner Alain Danielou and Indian Tantra historian N.N. Bhattacarya both argue that Tantra and its cultural tradition, Shaivism, predate the approximately thousand-year-old Kashmir Tantra, which Wallis terms classical Tantra.
Indologist and Sanskrit scholar Edwin Bryant, in several works, traces the origins of yoga to ancient seals found at Indus Valley sites (ca. 3000–1900 BCE), depicting figures seated in clear yogic postures. Art historian Thomas McEvilley identifies one such yogic posture as a “Tantric bandha.” If this is valid, it implies the existence of yogis practicing various Tantric body postures alongside internal Tantric meditations.
Tantra itself teaches that valid knowledge arises from three sources: direct observation, the guru, and scripture. Thus, what holds greater importance: the sayings of an ancient scripture, its age, or a guru’s teaching that may contradict scriptural authority? How do we weigh the oral tradition, which passes knowledge through a guru’s testimony, or different scriptures such as various Puranas, repositories of stories, practices, and genealogies—texts often overlooked by many Sanskrit scholars and younger Western yoga scholars?
My point is this: there are multiple versions of yoga and Tantra history, even among Sanskrit scholars, and certainly among scholars, gurus, and practitioners—what one might term the emic sources and culture outside formal academic scholarship.
One example: In the 1960s and ’70s, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti, a Tantric guru and prolific Sanskrit scholar who authored Ananda Sutram, a set of Tantric Sutras on par with Abhinava Gupta and Ksemaraja—not a “professional Sanskrit scholar” by Wallis’s definition but unquestionably a profound author and siddha—claimed that the Vedic Aryans arrived in India much earlier than traditionally held by Hindu and Western scholars, as early as 5000 BCE. That was some 3000 years earlier than most Western academic thought at the time. Not to speak of Hindu nationalist Hindutva followers who assert that the Aryans are indigenous to India and that all yoga and thus Tantra derive from the Vedas.
Recent genetic studies on human migration support early Aryan migration to India dating from 5000 BCE forward, reinforcing the view of India’s cultural nurturing by two streams—the ritualistic Vedic priestly tradition and an indigenous shamanic yogic/Tantric lineage. Since Anandamurtii’s claim of the origin of the Aryan migration has been verified by genetic science, we might as well be open to his claim of an early yogic origin in Shaiva Tantra, rather than categorically deny its possibility.
Today, at least three main theories exist on yoga’s origins, each reflecting different cultural and spiritual lineages in early Indian civilization. Some scholars and practitioners generally see these not as mutually exclusive but as phases or streams merging over millennia:
1. Vedic Origins: Yoga originated as Vedic ritual (~1500–1000 BCE), emphasizing chanting and sacrifice. Upanishads (800–500 BCE) internalized these into meditation (dhyāna), shifting focus from yajña (ritual) to inward self-knowledge. This view is supported by Georg Feuerstein, David Frawley (also an ardent Hindutva follower) as well as most Hindus.
Śramaṇa Origins: Around 600–400 BCE, ascetic and meditative yoga arose outside Brahmanical order in Śramaṇa tradition. Emphasized renunciation, meditation, celibacy, fasting, breath awareness—foundations of many yogic practices today. Among these we saw clear Tantric movements such as Kapalikas, Pashupatas, all the so-called adivikas, those outside Vedic Brahmanism. Buddha walked among them and learned from them.
Shaiva–Tantric Origins: Pre-Vedic and ancient Shaiva/Tantric traditions (~2500 BCE) traced archaeologically in Indus Valley, spiritually and religiously in Shaivism, centered on Śiva as Ādi Yogi, teaching breath control, mantra, subtle-body practices and as Bryant points out, flourished outside and in contrast to Vedic civilization. Many Hindu scholars support the idea that Indian civilization from the beginning consisted of Vedika and Tantrika paths, each influencing the other, while the practical yoga originated with the Shaiva Tantrika path.
When I claim that all yoga comes from Tantra, one might just as well argue that all Tantra comes from yoga. Their interwoven centuries-long relationship has been so intimate that distinguishing one from the other is difficult. If that makes me a Tantric Triumphalist, I embrace the title with pride.That said, I do of course support the idea that Kashmir Tantra is crucially important in the history of Tantra, and that its texts are unparallelled gems.
Ultimately, however, whether Wallis is right or wrong to call me out is less important than the practice and philosophy Tantra has and will continue to have in human history—a sublime, embodied, integral spiritual path of which Mr. Wallis remains one of our most eminent scholars and practitioners.