Sādhanā

Traditional Sādhanā (Sanskrit: साधना; Tibetan: སྒྲུབ་ཐབས་, THL: druptap; Chinese: 修行; pinyin: xiūxíng) is an ego-transcending spiritual practice in Indian religions.

[1] It includes a variety of disciplines in Hindu,[2] Buddhist[3] and Jain[4] traditions that are followed in order to achieve various spiritual or ritual objectives.

This approach is typified by some Tantric traditions, in which initiation by a guru is sometimes identified as a specific stage of sādhanā.

Chaitanya Vaishnavas engage in raganuga-sadhana, a meditative practice emulating the spontaneous love of Krishna's close companions.

This form of devotion, while potentially reducing the emphasis on ritual practices, still involves the worship of Krishna's image.

[12] In Vajrayāna Buddhism and the Nalanda tradition, there are fifteen major tantric sādhanās:[citation needed] All of these are available in Tibetan form, many are available in Chinese and some are still extant in ancient Sanskrit manuscripts.

[13][citation needed] Kværne (1975: p. 164) in his extended discussion of sahajā, treats the relationship of sādhanā to mandala thus: [E]xternal ritual and internal sādhanā form an indistinguishable whole, and this unity finds its most pregnant expression in the form of the mandala, the sacred enclosure consisting of concentric squares and circles drawn on the ground and representing that adamantine plane of being on which the aspirant to Buddhahood wishes to establish himself.