Tantra

Tantra [Skt.] (Tib. gyü; rgyud). The term’s basic meaning is ‘thread’ or ‘continuity’. In its more specific usages, the term can mean:

• the name given to key texts of the Vajrayana
• one of many synonyms for Vajrayana, as opposed to sutra
• a ‘lineage’, in the sense of a succession of teachers who have held a certain teaching and passed it on to their students, one after another,
• the ‘mental continuum’ which is the continuum of conventional mind (Tib. sem)