• While Shiva and Shakti are the highest deities in Hindu Tantra, in Buddhist Tantra the Five Wisdom Buddhas are the main deities.
• They symbolize the five main qualities of the Buddha himself. We looked at these Buddhas in a previous class.
• Vairocana is the central Buddha in this configuration, and the four others occupy each of the four directions.
• Amitabha is on the West; he is particularly known in East Asia for presiding over the Sukhavati Pure Land, where the Buddhist faithful can go after death and subsist in a heaven-like environment devoid of sin while they wait to be reborn.
• These deities have the same placement in Mahayana, showing us that Vajrayana (Tantric Buddhism) and Mahayana share the same
underlying cosmic structure.