The Linguistic Joys of Popular Religion

As I have a prominent website dealing with Buddhist mantra, I frequently receive requests for help and advice with phrases in Sanskrit, often for tattoos. I tend not to help with tattoos, but I like to help Buddhists trying to understand what they are chanting. Recently, someone wrote asking about this phrase, suggesting that it was something the Buddha had said:

yad bhavam tad bhavati

This is clearly Sanskrit, a simple relative clause sentence (yad 'what, which'; tad 'that, this'). There is some possible ambiguity because of the lack of diacritics - is it bhavam or bhāvam? The former means 'becoming, being'; the latter 'being, origin'. However, there is some crossover - both can mean 'becoming, existence'. I think bhava is a primary derivation from the root bhū, and bhāva is a secondary derivative (of, or connected to, bhava). Either way, the sentence appears to be a tautology:

'what becomes, that is becoming' or 'what is, is'.

One interpretation might be that bhavam is intended in its special meaning of 'truth' - 'that which is true, that is'. This relies on the double meaning of satya 'true, real'; if something exists then it is both true and real. Now compare this with what it is said to mean on the internet. We begin with an article in the Huffington Post by Stacey Lawson, which is where my correspondent found the phrase:

There is a famous yogic teaching: "Yad Bhavam Tad Bhavati." The most literal translation is: "You become as you think." But the Sanskrit language has many layers of meaning. It can also be interpreted as, "The state of mind and the state of matter are one," or "The light of the mind coalesces as matter." Through delving into this single statement, the yogis were able to apprehend the entire structure of creation through the mind.

I'm already puzzled because of the capitalisation. People do this with mantras as well. You'll often see a mantra like 'oṃ maṇipadme hūṃ' written 'Oṃ Maṇi Padme Hūṃ'. What does capitalisation indicate in this case? Scholars will often use italics for foreign words, which helps the reader take in the difference, but how does this capitalisation help? I think one need only look in the King James Bible to see why we do this:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1.1

We Buddhists do this as well. We capitalise words live nirvāṇa, enlightenment, buddha, to mark them as special, perhaps we might say 'sacred' (though I wouldn't) on the model of a 17th century English Bible, and in defiance of contemporary English conventions. This doesn't occur in Indic scripts since they lack capitals, and all words and letters are special anyway. I think it suggests an inferiority complex when we have to make sure everyone knows our jargon is 'special'.

What do people mean when they say things like, "But the Sanskrit language has many layers of meaning"? Is Sanskrit any more layered than other languages? No it isn't. But vague statements in a spiritual context lend themselves to meaning whatever you want them to mean. We supply the specifics depending on what we want to believe. In effect, the statement can mean almost anything we want it to. So the phrase gets translated as:

You become as you think
as you think so you become
It will transform as you wish
your feelings define your world
as is the feeling, so is the result
as is the feeling, so is the experience
what you intend, that becomes reality
The light of the mind coalesces as matter
The state of mind and the state of matter are one
what you choose to believe becomes your personal truth
Whatever you have in mind will be reflected back to you as a reality

Clearly, many of these statements are not logically connected to each other, or meaningful in any ordinary sense, and none of them seem to derive from the actual Sanskrit words. Which is more or less the same as saying that the Sanskrit phrase can mean anything you want it to (especially if you don't know Sanskrit!). This is a form of linguistic relativism, which presumably goes nicely with the "all is one" style of popular religion. But vagueness in language usually disguises vagueness of thought. As one website translates the phrase: "what you choose to believe becomes your personal truth." Quite. The sad fact is that people simply believe what they want to believe despite what intellect and experience tell them; and that, very often, what we affirm as true, or True, is merely what we believe, merely our opinion. It's like a belief in a creator god: it's just an opinion.

Although my interlocutor thought this was a Buddhist saying, it clearly isn't. Though compare this fake Buddha quote:

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” Buddha quotes (Hindu Prince Gautama Siddharta, the founder of Buddhism, 563-483 B.C.)

Apart from a spelling mistake and dubious dates, the thing that stands out for me is that the Buddha is described as a Hindu! It may be that the first sentence in this quote is a garbled version of the Pāli verses which begin the Dhammapada, but the phrasing is quite different.

mano pubbaṅgamā dhammā manoseṭṭhā manomayā.
Mind precedes experience, mind is foremost, [experience is] mind-made.

And, in any case, this is an ethical teaching, not an ontological one - it is about how your mental state determines the outcomes of your actions. I've also seen a website where our phrase is associated with Tibetan Buddhism, though the artist/author also says that the statement: "is a truth that transcends religion" . The phrase - yad bhavam, tad bhavati - may simply be a fake Buddha quote. Bodhipakṣa, of Wildmind fame. has been collecting fake Buddha quotes for a while now if anyone is interested in this phenomenon.

Elsewhere, I have seen the phrase attributed to 'the Upaniṣads' and 'The Bhagavadgīta', but not convincingly. The context of the Sanskrit phrase (as opposed to the various translations) always seems to be Hindu, and mostly associated with Sathya Sai Baba, the controversial South Indian 'holy man', not to be confused with Sai Baba of Shirdi (the 19th century saint). Many of the web hits point to a discourse called God is the Indweller, where it is spelt it a little differently:

Yad Bhavam Tad Bhavathi
As you think so you become.

Here bhavati, has become bhavathi, and I'm unsure about what it could be except a spelling mistake. Though he also spells satya as sathya, so it could be a matter of idiosyncratic rather than mistaken spelling. Although the phrase comes in a talk peppered with Sanskrit quotes and translations for which textual sources are cited, no source is given for this particular phrase. He does, however, mention the story of Prahlada (a character from the Puraṇas) and one translation I found suggested that our phrase in the form - "Yad Bhavam tad Bhavati (Whatever you have in mind will be reflected back to you as a reality)" [sic!] - might occur in this connection. I couldn't find any confirmation of this, however.

After a bit of playing around with the Devanāgarī I did find one quote in the form "यद्‌भावम्‌ तद्‌भवती" (i.e., yad bhāvam tad bhavatī) where bhavatī is a spelling mistake for bhavati. Technically, in Sanskrit you'd probably write this यद्भवम्तद्भवति with sandhi and conjuncts obscuring the word breaks. But this did not shed any light on the origins of the phrase.

An email on the subject from Sanskritist Kiran Paranjape, who I often refer people to for tattoo transcriptions, makes me wonder whether Sai Baba hasn't just done a Sanskrit translation of the Spanish/Italian phrase "Que sera, sera" - "What will be, will be." The Sanskrit would be according to Kiran: yad bhāvyam tad bhavati, which is very close to our phrase. I would have gone for something like: 'yad yad bhāvyam tad tad bhaviṣyati', though it lacks the brevity of the original; or perhaps 'yad bhāvyam, bhāvyam' which captures the form but, like the original, is not fully grammatical.

Another possibility is that 'you become what you think' is an example of the so-called Law of Attraction - a form of magical thinking popular in Theosophical circles, and amongst New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra. It forms the basis of the book: Think and Grow Rich. It may be that the phrase has also been picked up on by Sai Baba. It sounds vaguely similar to Hindu religious ideas, so fits in with his rhetoric.

After quite a lot of searching around, I did not find any traditional Indian source - Vedas, major Upaniṣads, Epics and Puraṇas; in either Roman or Devanāgarī. Perhaps I have missed something, but it doesn't seem to be obvious. I should add that the whole thing is redolent of Hindu spirituality, and may well be genuine - the fact that I can't find it may be a failing on my part. The phrase is widely quoted across the internet, and attributed to a range of people or texts. On the face of it, however, the words are a bit of meaningless cant that 'spiritual' people project their ideas onto, the linguistic equivalent of crystals.

I suppose this is how legends get started. Someone, for whatever reason, attributes some saying to the Buddha. Later generations take it seriously, but not finding a source for it, must create a plausible context for the fake quote. So we get drift from the words of the master towards the words of fakers (who may have been well intentioned, I'm not suggesting they are necessarily evil). Sometimes it is very difficult to tell the difference, especially if we aren't familiar with a wide range of sources. This is one of the most valuable functions of scholars: to take cant like this and explain why it is inauthentic, to slow the drift towards mumbo-jumbo.

The Four Tantric Rites

In the early days of Jayarava's Raves I did a series of rather impressionistic essays on the tantric rites - though I used a set that had connections with the Five Buddha Maṇḍala. For our celebration of Padmasambhava (the great tantric yogi and magician) this weekend at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre there will be a series of talks on the set of four rites, and I will be speaking about the puṣṭīkarman or rite of prosperity. This post will provide some background about these four rites collectively, especially the associated language and some of the history of the rituals.

The word being translated as 'rite' is in fact karman, which is literally 'action, work'. However here it signifies a ritual action, hence we translate it as 'rite'. This is the first of several clear links with the Vedic sacrificial ritual.

The four rites in Sanskrit [1] are:

śāntikakarman	rite of pacification
vaśyakarman	rite of subjection
puṣṭikarman	rite of prospering
raudrakarman	fierce rite, rite of destruction

In early tantric texts such as Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra the various rites are actually forms of 'homa' (Chinese/Japanese goma) ritual. The word 'homa' means 'the act of making an oblation' and dervies from the root √hu 'sacrifice'. In Vedic ritual this function was carried out by the hotṛ priest [2]. The Buddhist homa ritual involves setting up a sacrificial alter with a fire, and making coloured offerings to the fire. In Vedic times the idea was that the similarity between the microcosm and macrocosm allowed one to be influenced by the other through the ritual (which occupied a kind of intermediate space). In particular fire (agni) transformed the offerings into smoke which then wafted to heaven and induced the deva to respond (this kind of connected thinking underpins tantric sādhana as well). In the homa ritual the correspondence is between the body, speech and mind of the devotee and the Three Mysteries (triguhya) of the Dharmakāya Buddha which also have body, speech and mind aspects: all forms are the body, all sounds the speech, and all mental activity the mind of the Dharmakāya. The ritual conceives of the fire altar as an analogue for both (the altar itself is the body, the hearth is speech, and the fire is the mind), and through the ritual the microcosm of the individual is brought into with the macrocosm of the Dharmakāya. This kind of imagery is also drawing on Vedic models, but Buddhists are always careful to insist that śūnyatā (lack of self-nature) and pratītya-samutpāda (dependent-arising) underpin all their practices - so one is not merging with God, or with a numinous universal principle, but directly realising śūnyatā.

For the early Vedic priests the desired response of the ritual was keeping the natural order by bringing the rains at the proper time and averting disasters, but it was also connected with the health and prosperity of the king. In the tantric rites it is the individual who benefits and if there is a spiritual purpose to them, then it appears to be grafted onto the mundane, rather than the other way around. That is to say that it appears to me that these rites were already being used for mundane purposes when Buddhists began to adapt them for spiritual purposes, and that the mundane, even vulgar, use has been retained. We find mention of some of the rites in Gṛhyasūtras which covered domestic rites in Brahmin households. [3]

Each of the rites is associated with a colour and here too the rites tell us of their Vedic origins because the colours are: white, red, yellow and black. These are the colours associated in the Vedic tradition with the four varṇa or classes. [4] In fact varṇa more literally means 'colour'. So the brahmaṇa was associated with white symbolising their purity and the śudra with black symbolising their impurity (as I mentioned in A Pāli Pun). The kṣatriya were symbolised by red, and vaiṣya by yellow. The functions of the rites relate to some extent to the classes as well. Brahmins were concerned with rites and rituals, and ritual purity; kṣatriyas with ruling and conquering; vaiṣyas with agriculture and commerce; and śudras were serfs forced to labour. So we get these correspondences:

rite	colour	varṇa	function
śāntikarman	white	brahmaṇa	pacification
vaśyakarman	red	kṣatriya	subjugation
puṣṭikarman	yellow	vaiṣya	prosperity
raudrakarman	black	śudra	destruction

Why śudra and destruction? It may be that the impurity of the śudras threatened the makers of the original system; or that the were perceived as barbarous. Rudra, from which raudra ("connected with Rudra", "destruction") derives, is the name of a Vedic god who by this time was associated with Śiva who is also known as 'the destroyer' because his role in the Hindu trinity of gods is to preside over the destruction phase at the end of each time cosmic epoch (Brahmā is the creator, and Viṣṇu the sustainer). Perhaps some of the śudras worshipped Śiva?

These rites were absorbed into the Buddhist tradition at the time of the great synthesis and renewal which we call 'Tantra'. [5] Since they appear in the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra we know that they must have been incorporated near the beginning of the process since this text is the earliest systematic tantra, and is thought to have been composed sometime in the 640's CE. In this text each of the rites consists of a pūjā which involves a series of preparatory practices in which one visualises oneself as a Buddha, the creation of maṇḍala with a fire place in the middle, an invocation to the deva Agni, and then the offering of appropriated coloured offerings accompanied by mantras. Some time much later the various functions were incorporated into mantras of White Tārā and I have written about some of these on my other website: visiblemantra.org - White Tārā. See especially the section: Other forms of the mantra.

Such rituals are still regularly carried out by both Tibetan and Japanese Vajrayāna practitioners, as well as some Hindu devotees. The goals of such rituals vary. I think on the whole they are used for spiritual purposes in the present day. But Stephen Beyer notes some mundane uses of such rites: So for instance he records:

"...and within my experience [Kurukullā's rite of subjugation] has been called upon by at least one Tibetan refugee group to coerce the Indian government. Tibetan traders seeking profit and Tibetan lovers seeking satisfaction followed upon the the ritual tracks established by their Indian processors." [The Cult of Tara: Magic and Ritual in Tibet, p. 302]

It may be this kind of behaviour which lead David Snellgrove to comment:

"So far as the verbal expression is concerned the most suitable English word for all these Sanskrit [synonyms for mantra] is undoubtedly 'spell.' One attracts by a spell, one binds by a spell, one releases by a spell... whether one likes it or not, the greater part of the tantras were concerned precisely with vulgar magic..." [Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, p.143]

So these rites began as popular adaptations of the larger and more complex Vedic fire rituals, and from there were adapted by Buddhists, and to some extent they retained their 'vulgar' purposes. Martin Willson's introductory notes on the Tārā Tantra suggest caution with respect to the rites as found in the texts:

But someone has been playing a practical joke on Tibetan would-be magicians for the last eight centuries - the mantras have been shuffled. Anyone who thought he was summoning a woman with the rite of Chapter 16 was actually driving her away... At best the arrangement of the other mantras is uncertain. [In Praise of Tara: Songs to the Saviouress, p.48]

As I say there is a living tradition, dating back to the mid 7th century, of performing these rites in a bona fide spiritual context in both Tibetan and Japanese vajrayāna circles - and while the Tārā Tantra may be muddled the Mahāvairocana Abhisaṃbodhi Tantra does not appear to be. Magic they may be, but the vulgar tag doesn't apply generally, and Snellgrove appears to have overstated his case.

Later the rituals were adapted to better fit the Five Buddha Maṇḍala with colours matching them: white, blue, yellow, red, and green with a surrounding aura of a special colour known in Tibet as chenka (it is said to be indescribable, but something like amethyst). [6] The function of the rites are then modified to better fit the functions of the five Buddhas. Subjugation for instance, becomes more like 'fascination' to fit with Amitābha's pratyavekṣana-jñāna or wisdom of discrimination, and his compassion. The rite of destruction is no longer for killing people, but for overcoming hindrances to practice and so on. It was this more wholesome set that I wrote about in my original essays on the rites.

The tantric rites are a good example of the eclecticism of tantra and of Indian religion generally. I've commented on this before, but it is worth saying again that in the Indian context this is far from unusual: in fact it is the norm. It is only from the point of view of strict monotheism that such borrowings look odd. This is not quite the same thing as saying all religions are the same, or that one can put together any religious elements and have a viable spiritual path. However it does mean that practices from another faith might be employed in Buddhism, although there is usually a thorough re-contextualisation of any new material, and at the same time religion (including monotheism) can be and often is subverted for mundane and vulgar purposes.

Sangharakshita has presented tantric material to the Triratna movement in terms of it's symbolism, for instance in his book Creative Symbols of Tantric Buddhism (which discusses the four rites in the section on colour symbolism), without directly passing on tantric teachings he received from his Tibetan teachers. Although we make use of tantric symbolism - somewhat naïvely I would argue - we are not a tantric movement. A few members of our Order who take tantra more seriously - notably Vessantara and Prakaśa - have sought abhiṣekha with Tibetan teachers. On the other hand Sangharakshita has written polemically about the breakdown of the proper guru/disciple relationship in Tibetan Buddhism and is scathing about people who collect initiations, and teachers who give them to anyone who asks or is willing to pay the fee. (Whereas I would argue that the function of giving of initiations has naturally shifted in the displaced Tibetan community and that this hardly represents a degradation but is a cultural adaptation to very difficult circumstances, and is in any case less radical than Sangharakshita's own de-contextualisation of tantra.)

My earlier essays on the rites: white, blue, yellow, red, green.

Another good source of info relevant to the Triratna Order's approach to the Tantric rites is Subhuti's talks on Kalyana Mitrata, published by Padmaloka and still on sale for £4.50. Unfortunately when these talks were republished as Buddhism and Friendship, the Tantric Rites sections were omitted.

Notes

1. The Tibetan equivalents are: śāntikarma: zhi-ba’i ‘phrin-las; puṣṭikarma: rgyas-pa’i phrin-las; vaiṣyakarma: dbang gi phrin-las; raudrakarma: drag-po’i phrin-las.
2. The hotṛ was one of four types of priest: three each associated with the three vedas, and a fourth, the brāhmaṇa, who was an overseer and put right any errors. The word hotṛ is the root hu with the -tṛ suffix making it an agent noun, and so means 'the sacrificer'.
   
3. The Gobhila-Gṛhyasūtra for instance mentions the puṣṭikarma. It is also found in the Kausikapaddhati which is an 11th century commentary on the Atharvaveda. The śāntikarma is mentioned in the Āśvalāyana-Gr̥hyasūtra. There are several mentions in the Mahābharata.
   
4. I use class to translation varṇa even though many scholars use caste. This is because caste more properly relates to jāti (the word is the same in historic Sanskrit, and in present day North Indian languages). While there are only four varṇa, there are now thousands of jāti. The division of society in terms of jāti was well in place by the time tantra began to develop. Indeed later tantra specifically negates Brahmanical class purity boundaries by contact with and ingesting of ritual impure substances.
   
5. In fact some of the rituals described in the Suvarṇabhāsottama (Golden Light) Sūtra resemble Hindu rituals to some extent as well, which indicates that some intermixing may have occurred earlier without necessarily implying that Tantric Buddhism predates the 7th century.
6. I recall reading about this somewhere but now that I come to reference it, I cannot find a single source. So either I made it up, or my recollection of the spelling is hopelessly out.
   

Image: a Shingon monk performing the homa ritual.