Varis wrote: ↑Thu Jan 17, 2019 6:16 pm
Regardless, the point still stands; if Hindu tantra is wrong how did Minapa attain Buddhahood if his guru was Shiva and he presumably would have practiced Saiva tantra?
The Tibetan text of Mīnapa's story begins by stating that his caste was fisherfolk, his guru was Mahādeva, and his siddhis were mundane siddhis. When you read the story carefully, though it is said he eventually traversed the paths and stages, it does not say that he does so with respect to the instructions he received from Mahādeva. The story is basically charming in its elements. A fisherman gets pulled into the water by a huge fish, and swallowed. Meanwhile, Umadevi is requesting a Dharma teaching from Mahādeva (who as we know, is by now a Buddhist, having been converted by Avalokiteśvara in the Karandavyuha Sūtra, etc. and tamed by Cakrasamvara). Mahādeva says he has a very secret teaching, but it should taught under the ocean, so no on can hear. They repair to their house in the depths of ocean, meanwhile, the fish that has swallowed the fisherman has come to rest below this house, and therefor, the fisherman can hear all that Mahādeva is teaching to Umadevi, who unfortunately falls asleep during the teaching. When Mahādeva realizes that Umadevi was sleeping through the teaching, he looks with the clairvoyance and understands that in the belly of the fish below his house, there is a man. He confers empowerment upon the fish [to empower the man inside it], and the man practices for 12 years in the belly of the fish. The fish is eventually caught, the fisherman is released, and everyone is amazed. The name of the teaching is not mentioned. It is stated Mīnapa, aka Vajrapāda, aka Acinta, works for the benefit of beings for five hundred years.
In the empowerment text composed by one of the Drukchen's on the basis of the empowerment text by Tārānātha, when Mīnapa, aka Acinta, teaches Gorakṣanātha, the name of a text is mentioned, and it is the text
Amṛtasiddhi, which was composed by Brahmin Virupa, who in turn is a disciple of Lakṣminkara. According to Mallinson,
Amṛtasiddhi is the
Buddhist source text upon which
all Hathayoga manuals depend.
So, all we really can know, from the earliest text we have on the 84 mahāsiddhas, is that Mīnapa achieved mundane siddhis under the tutelage of Mahādeva, and he eventually attained the state of Khecari, and that according to Tārānātha, the text he taught Gorakṣa is the Buddhist ancestor of Hathayoga.
I should add, there are other instances of Buddhist Vajrayāna traditions that are attributed to Shiva, in Lamdre, for example, where it is clarified that Mahādeva is a disciple of Vajradhara in one specific instructional cycle.