By reading historical books and historical documents and reading "Dunhuang Sexual Culture" records, there is a sect in Buddhism called Tantra, which, contrary to other sects, advocates sexual cultivation. Esoteric Buddhism was introduced to China in the Tang Dynasty, and the most prosperous area was Tibet, China. Tibet fully accepted the entire content of Indian Tantric Buddhism after the 7th century. In the Tang Dynasty, , Tantric Buddhism was combined with the local animistic belief in Tibet, the Bon Religion, and evolved into Lamaism, which was quickly spread to China.
Esoteric Buddhism is very special. Most of its Buddha statues are in the form of men and women having sex, commonly known as "Happy Buddha" or "Happy Heaven". Buddhism originally abstained from sexual immorality, but " Mahavairocana " says: "Bodhicitta is the cause, great compassion is the foundation, and convenience is the ultimate." "Ultimate" can be understood as thoroughness and extremeness, which is the purpose; and "expediency" is many. Understood as convenient and skillful, it is the use of means. In other words, in order to achieve the goal of becoming a Buddha, one may not be bound by certain Buddhist precepts under special circumstances. For example, Tantric Buddhism can use women as partners in practicing Buddhism (commonly known as " Ming Fei "). The images of Happy Buddha are varied, common ones include Vajra, Mingwang, Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva, etc. Most of them embrace the "Mingfei" in the posture of making love.
Thangka: Happy Buddha (Qing Dynasty)
Happy Buddha has two types: single and twin. In addition to expressing great anger, great victory, and great joy, both single and double bodies are naked, symbolizing escape from the world of dirt. In the two-body embrace, the man represents method and the woman represents wisdom, which is the so-called method and wisdom. There is also another implication that the "Happy Heaven" is the "Desire Heaven" and the "God of Love" in Buddhism, and the double embrace is the "combined practice" and "double cultivation" of men and women through sexual intercourse.
Bronze Sculpture: Happy Buddha (Qing Dynasty)
According to historical research, there was no intersection of yin and yang in Tantric Buddhism at first. However, because Buddhism originally promoted celibacy and regarded female sex as unclean, people in many areas of Tibet worshiped the Buddha too much. They are pious, no one is close to women, and the population is decreasing day by day. The people in power (religious leaders) were worried about this, so they invented the joyful Buddha with yin and yang intersecting, and advocated that even gods and Buddhas were unavoidable in having sex, let alone mortals, in order to encourage population reproduction, so various Tantric Buddha statues full of sexual connotations were produced.
