Antonio de Montserrat - The Silk Road and the Secret Paths of Tantra

Abstract

This article presents the biography of Antonio de Montserrat with the aim of situating him within Buddhist critical thought as the first Westerner initiated into tantric philosophy and a key figure in its introduction to the West through the Society of Jesus. To this end, a historical overview is first provided, focusing on how Buddhism was displaced from India and found refuge among the peoples of Central Asia, such as the Uyghurs in present-day Turkestan, and how it was adopted by Chinese emperors and spread along the Silk Road. The fusion of Indian Buddhism with Western influences (Greco-Buddhism) gave rise to various Buddhist schools in Central Asia and China. The esoteric form of Buddhism (tantra) is then briefly characterised, which consolidated as Vajrayana (tantric) Buddhism in Tibet in the 8th century. This is the form of Buddhism adopted by rulers, promoting full social and gender equality, the idea of the subject as a cultural construct, and the notion of metaphorical deities—useful for modelling character but entirely non-existent—alongside the Buddhist principle of relative truth. This non-theistic—or transtheistic, as Gómez prefers to call it—vision was reflected in the absolute religious tolerance of the Chinese, Uyghur, and Mongol empires, which ensured safety and free exchange along the Silk Road. It is this vision of subjects not divided by caste or bloodline that amazed de Montserrat when he noted that Tibetans "have no kings among themselves" and inspired those who, based on his writings, travelled specifically to receive initiation into Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, such as the Jesuits Antonio de Andrade and John de Brito. The third section is dedicated entirely to the biography of Antonio de Montserrat and his connection with tantra.