On the union of emptiness and bliss: Buddhist thought and tantric practice

Tibetan Buddhism was established and developed in a period when tantric Buddhism had become the new orthodoxy in the great Mahayana centers of northern India. The philosophical "schools" of Madhyamaka and Yogacara were being synthesized with the tantric practice lineages of the siddha traditions associated with the "Highest Yoga Tantras." Tibetan yogi/scholars were the recipients of this rich collection of Mahayana sutras and sastras as well as tantras and the teachings of the siddhas. By the fourteenth century, Tibetans began to create doctrinal systems that sought to unify and reconcile Madhyamaka, Yogacara, and tantric texts as well as the seemingly divergent lines of interpretation according to a scholastic analytical approach and an experiential one. By deploying long-established hermeneutical structures Tibetan scholars created grand syntheses that negotiated and sometimes unified the relationship between Mahayana thought and tantric praxis, culminating in the unifying categories of emptiness of other and Great Madhyamaka.