Multifunctional Characteristics of Prāṇāyāṃa in the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras

In the body of literature belonging to the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, the contexts in which the six-phased yoga is practiced include the practices of sevā, the haṭha-yoga, and the stage of completion. In each of these practices, the prāṇāyāma takes different forms that have corresponding results—some being temporary and others ultimate—including the five types of meditative experience, a valid cognition, the purification of the six psychophysical aggregates, and other bodily constituents, praises by bodhisattvas, and the attainment of the deities, such as Amoghasiddhi and others. To speak of the role of prāṇāyāma in the six-phased yoga of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, one must uncover its relation to other phases of the six-phased yoga and to a broader, conceptual and practical framework of the given tantra. This presentation intends to do exactly this, and to disclosinge certain commonalities and differences among the practices of prāṇāyāma in the Kālacakratantra and the Guhyasamājatantra.