Review of the Anuttarayoga Methodology
As yesterday, we should imagine that where we are is not just an ordinary place but is the mandala of Kalachakra, and that we’re all in the form of simple Kalachakra Buddha-figures, and that His Holiness as Kalachakra is here before us, watching and probably smiling!
Also, it’s good to sort of reaffirm our motivation of why we’re listening to this and why we want to get involved in such a practice. Because it’s very easy when you listen to material like this to get a little bit overwhelmed with how complicated it is and how difficult it is, and so one tends to often get a little bit discouraged. That’s a big problem, particularly with Kalachakra studies, because it’s something which is so extensive and sophisticated.
But basically, as in all the Dharma teachings, we realize that we have a lot of problems and that life itself is full of problems, no matter what type of situation we might be in. These problems are no fun, and who wants them and who needs them? These various problems – of disturbing attitudes, or getting sick and so on, of things not working out the way that we want – come from various causes. They’re not just existing there all by themselves, or some nasty spirit up in the sky throwing these hardships down on us, but they have causes in terms of various tendencies, potentials and so forth within ourselves. And that it is possible to get rid of these, and the way that we can get rid of these is to take preventive measures, or follow the Dharma, in the sense of taking various measures that will eliminate the causes for our problems and act as causes for bringing about the result that we wish to achieve, namely to realize our fullest potentials, become a fully enlightened Buddha so that we can benefit everyone. Because everyone has been very kind, everyone is in the same predicament as we are in, and we’re all in it together, so we all have to get out of it together as well. It’s the only thing that’s fair.
When you look at the various methods that are available, there are a lot of different techniques even just within the Buddhist sphere, and the quickest and most powerful methods are in terms of tantra, specifically the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga. This is because in order to get rid of the roots that are causing all our problems, our confusion, our ignorance, our lack of awareness and so forth, we have to be able to see reality and see that there are all these fantasized ways that we imagine things to exist, which don’t exist at all. We have to see their voidness, their absence.
To do this, just seeing it by itself is not powerful enough to cut through all the garbage, all the obscuration on our minds. It’s necessary for that understanding of voidness to have a much stronger force or punch behind it. Thus, if we have as our motivation simply wanting to get rid of our problems ourselves, it doesn’t have as strong a force as if we had this in terms of our heart expanding out to everyone with bodhichitta. When we have our heart expanded out like that, that adds a much stronger amount of energy and force behind it so that our understanding of voidness can cut through all the obscurations.
But, in fact, doing that much only brings us just about to the point of getting rid of the subtlest obscurations to omniscience, but it can’t quite take us all the way through. What we have to do is get down to the subtlest level of mind, because it is like a laser beam, which is going to allow us to really cut through even the subtlest levels of these obscurations preventing us from being omniscient and preventing us from knowing all things so that we can benefit everyone. We have to get down to the clear light subtlest level of mind, and if that’s done in terms of having that mind be a blissful mind that gets down to that level, that adds even more power and intensity to it, so that we get down to that subtlest level more quickly. Also, it becomes a much more powerful tool to cut away the obscurations, like having a diamond-pointed drill. That’s what, on the one hand, we’re aiming to do in terms of deep awareness.
And in terms of method, we’re aiming to try to get a body of a Buddha. We’re trying to aim to accumulate causes for the body of a Buddha, which will bring it about much more quickly. In terms of that, in Kalachakra specifically we’re working with what’s called devoid forms, which are reflections of the clear light mind, or the appearance aspect of it, appearing like an image in a magic mirror.
If we practice a path that has these two together, some sort of level of a blissful clear light mind, which is aware of voidness, here in Kalachakra specifically unchanging great bliss is what it’s called, based on the stacking of these drops, and if we have together with that the mind appearing in the form of a devoid form, that’s really what’s going to bring us to enlightenment. We want to do that because we can’t bear all the sufferings and problems that other people have, and we have assumed the responsibility to help them. Because if we don’t do it, who’s going to do it? If we just sit back and hope and pray for some great hero on a white horse to come and save everybody, that’s really romantic fiction. We need to try to do it ourselves.
In anuttarayoga tantra in general, the method that we’re following to try to get rid of our problems is to use meditations in analogy. What we do is we look at the basis that we want to purify: we want to purify uncontrollably recurring death and rebirth, on both an external level in terms of the universe and internal level in terms of ourselves, and we want to purify that in the sense that we want to stop its continuity, to end it. And what we want to accomplish is a body and mind of a Buddha. These two are analogous to each other: death and rebirth on the one hand, and the body and mind of a Buddha on another. Because both of them are involved with the subtlest level of mind, getting down to clear light when you die and then having appearance out of that as your rebirth, and also getting down to the clear light in terms of having the mind of a Buddha and having an appearance of that in terms of the body of a Buddha.
The path that we’re going to follow is going to be like a spy, in the sense that it’s also analogous to it, so it can sort of sneak in and get to the heart of both of these, which is the clear light mind itself. This is the path of unchanging great bliss and devoid form, since that too is involved with the dissolution of the winds and getting to the clear light level of subtlest mind. We use that to get down to that level. Because that clear light mind has an understanding of voidness and is an unchanging bliss, it is able to act as an opponent to get rid of the causes for uncontrollably recurring death and rebirth. This is in terms of its being able to get rid of our tendency to want to come out of clear light, to shift, to emit ourselves out of the clear light, which would then, if the winds come out of the clear light, give us a basis to support the grasping for true existence and all our disturbing attitudes.
The path gets rid of that. Being an understanding of voidness, it gets rid of the grasping for true existence itself, and being a devoid form, it adds the potential and force, which would allow it to do this in a most effective and efficient manner. Not only does it get rid of the causes for having death and rebirth, but it also acts as the causes for bringing about the body and mind of a Buddha, because the unchanging great blissful awareness of voidness will become the mind of a Buddha, and the devoid form will become the body of a Buddha.
That’s the basic technique that we adopt in anuttarayoga and in Kalachakra. Although there is a tremendous amount of information and material here, you have to keep in mind that Kalachakra is the most sophisticated system, the most sophisticated meditation in the Buddhist fold, and so it’s not going to be easy. Nobody’s ever going to claim that it’s easy or that it’s simple. It’s very full, and as I quoted Gyaltsab Je, the more extensive the basis for purification, the more extensive the purification itself will be, and so this is the most extensive presentation of all this material. It covers on an external level all the motions of the planets and the laws of astronomy, and the calendar and astrology, and so forth. On an internal level, it covers the various energy-channels and winds and so forth within the body. It also covers the whole basis of language, the Sanskrit alphabet in a very fine sophisticated analysis of the sounds of that language, and correlating the letters of the alphabet with the days of the month, with astrological phenomena, with phenomena of the breaths in the body and so forth. It’s a comprehensive system, which covers a tremendous amount of fields of knowledge.
The fields of knowledge in the Buddhist fold come mostly out of the Kalachakra material, and it’s all woven together very nicely within the material. So, here and there we’re going to come across bits and pieces of all these different factors that are woven together. Obviously, just hearing for the first time, or the second or the third time, about this sophisticated material, it’s not going to all sink in, and it’s not all going to make sense. It’s a bit unrealistic to imagine that it is going to all make sense in the beginning like this, so all you can do at this point is get some general idea of the extensiveness of what’s involved here and some general idea of where it’s proceeding and how it’s proceeding. So, if you’re going to start to get into doing one of the short sadhanas, let’s say this nine-deity sadhana (which is actually a thirteen-deity), you’ll have some idea of where it’s coming from and what it’s being abbreviated from, so that you can understand it within its context. This is what His Holiness advised me to do, so I’m following that. Likewise, it gives you a basis upon which to grow.
It’s like the same process that’s involved in doing a visualization. When you do visualization practice, what Tsongkhapa recommends is to try to get a rough visualization of the entire thing. It doesn’t matter how clear it is; it can be extremely vague. But try to get a picture of the entire thing, and then within that start to work up the details and get it more and more in focus, going on one detail after the other.
If you have the whole picture and work like that, then you have the framework, whereas if you’re just starting on little details without the whole picture, you have no idea where it’s going, or how big it’s going to become, or what you’re actually aiming for. It’s important to have a picture of the goal; that’s the whole philosophy of bodhichitta. With bodhichitta, you’re aimed on enlightenment, so you have some idea of what the goal is that you’re aiming for, so that your heart can expand out to that. Analogous to that, the same thing is done in terms of the visualizations, and the same thing is done here in terms of the presentation of this material, so that one understands what actually is involved in the Kalachakra practice.
Review of the Preliminaries Section and Circle of Protection
Now, we’re going through the sadhana. The sadhana is a method for actualization, literally, and for actualizing oneself as the Kalachakra group of deities – it’s not just the single figure, but on the full level it’s 722 figures. The sadhana itself consists of a preliminary part, which is the circle of protection, and then the actual sadhana itself. That circle of protection involved building up the two networks of positive force and deep awareness, or collections of merit and insight, if you want to call it that. The circle of protection involved both the building up of positive force and deep awareness, and likewise the circle of protection itself.
To build up the positive force and deep awareness, first what we do is we have the lineage prayer to get inspiration from the gurus, and then we’re going to build up positive force and so forth by making the various offerings. We need to consecrate the offerings to make them special, and then in order to do that, we can’t just be in our ordinary form; we have to be in the form of a Buddha-figure.
Thus, we start off generating ourselves as a simple deity couple. Then we consecrate the inner offering, which has a connection with the secret empowerment, so what it’s involved with is laying seeds for getting tummo. Because the whole procedure is that everything in the sadhana, in this generation stage, is going to ripen into a similar type of thing on the complete stage, when you’re actually working with the energies of the body. To be able to develop things like tummo, which develops bliss within the body that one can then use to get the clear light mind, that doesn’t come from nowhere at all.
If we’re doing visualizations of something which is similar to it, like the inner offering consecration here, then it builds up a certain habit of mind, of wind causing fire to burn, causing things to melt, causing all sorts of these types of things in terms of getting bliss, and that sets up a pattern of thinking, which then will enable us to actually start to have tummo work.
We consecrated the inner offering, and then in the long sadhana there’s a consecration of the vajra and bell, and then the outer offerings, and then there’s an offering of a mandala and the Vajrasattva meditation. All this is for purification and for preliminaries. Then there was the building up of the network of positive force and deep awareness, which likewise is omitted here in the shorter version.
Then we got to the actual circle of protection, and it had protection of oneself, and in our short one it was simply in terms of having the full moon disc go up and down our bodies and clear out the junk within it in terms of body, speech, mind and deep awareness: we always have these four things, which correlate to the four drops of the waking, dream, deep sleep and fourth occasion or bliss, ecstasy drop, which are the things that we will work with in order to get the four bodies of a Buddha. Then we had a setting up of vajras within ourselves, which correlates to the chakras and the channels within our chakras, and lights going out from that, which again clarifies and purifies the channels, and it protects us within; it’s the self-protection.
Then there’s the protection of the place in terms of the circle of protection, which is omitted in the short one, but that’s a very elaborate practice in terms of generating ourselves as the forceful form of Kalachakra, Vajravega (Diamond-Strong Force); and then emanating out 60 figures in stages outside of us, which are basically correlated to purifying the elements; and doing a lot of elaborate things with them, and mantras and so forth; and then eventually getting them to dissolve back into the six chakras. Because on the complete stage, as we saw, the whole process of getting the winds to dissolve and stacking the drops was a process that involved the six major chakras in the body: the pubic, navel, heart, throat, forehead and crown chakras.
Then the actual sadhana is involved with four parts, which were
- The supreme triumphant mandala
- The supreme triumphant actions
- The drop yoga
- The subtle yoga.
In order to get into that, first we have the building up the two networks again. Here it’s done in analogy with the fact that what we’re going to do in the main part of the sadhana is going to be analogous to death and rebirth, and here the building up of positive force and deep awareness beforehand is analogous to how, before we die, we would want to build up the good karma that would throw us into better situations in future lives. We had this whole building up of a network of positive potential, and that was done in terms of a seven-limb prayer, quite standard, similar to what we do in all our practices. And then the part that was left out in our short sadhana was a basic reviewing of the main points of the sutra path in common, in terms of the restraining from negative actions, disturbing attitudes and so on.
That brings us to where we want to start today. When we finished the building up of positive force, we had:
By this bountiful field for growing a network (of positive force) dissolving into me, I become uplifted and inspired.
We had this small little Kalachakra mandala in front of us, which was the field of positive force, and that dissolves into us. We’re here in the form of a simple single figure, just the male figure, with one face and two arms, and the mandala dissolves into us, and that’s something which gives us bliss. It’s a very blissful thing to have the guru and Buddha-figures now become part of us, and so that builds up a blissful awareness. What we want to get all together is a clear light mind, that being blissful and having an understanding of voidness. So, we’re going to build these up by various different practices, and here at this stage what’s building up the habit for it be blissful is the bliss that one has when the field of positive force dissolves into oneself. This is a common element you’re going to find in a lot of other sadhanas, although the purpose of it may not be so obvious, but that is its purpose when either the guru or the mandala dissolves into you.
The Four Gateways to Liberation
Next, we want to get building up a network of deep awareness. This is going to build up the habit to get the voidness aspect, the realization of voidness. It’s done in terms of meditation on what’s called the four gateways to liberation, and it’s done in analogy with the stages of death. In many of the other practices, you’ll hear the three gateways for liberation. This upside-down pyramid, the reality source that sometimes appears in other practices, with three sides: those three sides usually stand for the three gateways to liberation; and here we have four. They’re gateways to liberation because they’re different types of voidness that will lead us to liberation. And the four gateways here are:
- First of all, things being devoid of a true nature, or inherently findable existence. It’s basic voidness itself of all phenomena.
- The second gateway is called the lack of a true sign, which means that causes are devoid of having an inherently findable existence; so, it’s the voidness of causes.
- The third gateway is a lack of true aspiration or hope, and this lack of true aspiration is in terms of results being devoid of inherently findable existence; so, it’s the voidness of results.
Those are the usual three gateways to liberation: voidness of things in general, voidness of causes and voidness of results.
- The fourth one which comes here (you also have it in some other practices as well) is what’s called a lack of a true affecting action; it’s talking about actions being devoid of inherently findable existence.
Thus, the four gateways are voidness of things in general, voidness of causes, voidness of results and voidness of actions.
The voidness of actions is in the sense that there’s no truly existent action to be done, no truly existent actor and no truly existent act itself: these are the three circles that are involved in any particular activity. There’s the action to be done, the actor and the act itself, and they’re all void.
These are derived from a text by Chandrakirti called the Illuminating Lamp, which is a commentary to Guhyasamaja. In it he explains four different levels of meaning that words can have in the tantra, and these are:
- A literal meaning
- A general meaning
- A hidden meaning
- A final meaning or ultimate meaning.
This is used to explain the various verses and things in the root tantra material.
This particular verse that we’ll have here:
If phenomena (are regarded as totally) non-(existent), (this is) not (correct) meditation.
That actually is found in the second chapter of the Guhyasamaja Tantra. It’s also found in the Kalachakra Tantra. It’s a very famous verse. It’s interpreted here in terms of both the literal meaning of it and also the general meaning of it. The literal meaning of the verse is the one from which we get the fourth gateway, the lack of a true existing affecting action: the action of what we’re involved with in this meditation lacks true existence.
What it’s saying is that if functional phenomena were totally non-existent, that would not be actual meditation; that’s not building up a beneficial habit of the mind.
The second line is:
If meditation (is on phenomena as truly existent), (this is also) not (correct) meditation.
If you meditated on something being truly existent, that’s not meditation either. That’s not proper meditation. What we’re doing is we’re eliminating the extremes.
The third line is saying:
(To meditate on) phenomena (to be) like that (both truly existent and non-existent) is not (correct meditation on the nature of) phenomena.
Functional phenomena to be “like that” means like both of those two, so both non-existent and truly existent; and implicit in that it is neither of the two: that’s also not what phenomena are. Here we’re eliminating the four extremes: that things are either totally non-existent, either truly existent, either both or neither; that’s the literal meaning of the thing.
(Correct) meditation (on voidness) is not to be aimed (at any of the four extremes).
It means not be aimed at the true existence of the three circles of what’s meditated on, the meditator and the meditation. The literal meaning of it that one meditates upon here, or thinks about, is in terms of there is no truly existent action of meditation that’s involved here in terms of what’s meditated upon, the meditator or the meditation itself. None of these are existent in any of the four extremes of totally non-existent, truly existent, both or neither. That’s the literal meaning of this verse, from which we get the fourth gateway to liberation.
The first three gateways to liberation come from the general interpretation of the verse. Line one of it says: “If phenomena (are regarded as totally) non-(existent), (this is) not (correct) meditation.” It’s saying that everything is void by nature, but when all things are void, to cling to that voidness as truly existent, in other words with functional phenomena non-existent, to take this non-existence, this voidness as being something truly existent, as a functional phenomenon in that sense, that’s not the correct meditation. Because everything is void including voidness itself. That’s our first gateway to liberation, the voidness of everything. It’s not to grasp at even voidness itself as being truly existent, but that too is void.
Then line two is: “If meditation (is on phenomena as truly existent), (this is also) not (correct) meditation.” This is a lack of a true sign, in other words a voidness of a cause. Building meditation up on something in terms of it being a cause, as a truly existent cause for something else, is not correct meditation. Thus, to meditate in terms of something being a truly existent cause to accomplish something else is also not the proper meditation.
“(To meditate on) phenomena (to be) like that (both truly existent and non-existent) is not (correct meditation on the nature of) phenomena.” In other words, a result that we’ve aimed at, a functional phenomenon like that cannot become what are functional phenomena: you can’t have a truly existent result coming from all of these, so that’s the third gateway to liberation: the lack of truly existent results.
Therefore, “(Correct) meditation (on voidness) is not to be aimed (at any of the four extremes).” It is not aimed at anything other than everything existing by mental labeling.
What we’re involved with here is the voidness of all things that pass before the mind: that’s the first gateway to liberation, to realize that all things that happen or pass before our mind in terms of the visions that we have as we die and so forth, these don’t have true existence. The second gateway is no truly existent cause, in the sense that we should realize that there’s no truly existent compassion or truly existent wish to help others, which is going to act as a cause for our enlightenment: that’s the second gateway, no truly existent cause. The third: there’s no truly existent result, or no truly existent enlightenment that we’re aspiring for. And the fourth is that there’s no truly existent affecting action of meditation on these yogas here for purifying death: that the practice that we’re doing doesn’t have true existence either.
When we think of this verse, when we read it, those are the things that we think about:
- We think about, in the process of doing this practice as we die, the visions and things that appear don’t have true existence; that’s the first gateway.
- The compassion and motivation that we have for becoming enlightened through this process don’t have true existence as a cause.
- The enlightenment that we’re aiming at through it doesn’t have true existence as a result.
- And the actual practice of meditation that we’re doing in terms of meditator, what’s being meditated upon and the meditation itself don’t have true existence as an action that is involved in it.
That’s the meditation on the four gateways to liberation, and it builds up a network of deep awareness. It’s sophisticated, but it’s straightforward really.
Meditation on Dissolution in Analogy with What Happens at the Time of Death
Now, how do we do the meditation of what follows from here, the actual meditation of there being an analogy with death? In Kalachakra, we have a presentation of the external, internal and alternative cycles of time, and these are all analogous to each other. The point isn’t really to set up nice arrangements of symmetrical lists, but to know that the outer environment and inner sentient beings are the basis for purification, to know these very extensively, so that we can purify ourselves of all potentials for them by means of the path. If we know extensively the external and the internal situations, we can work to purify it more easily.
In other words, under the control of ignorance, we have attachment and hostility. This builds up karma, or various impulses, and as a comprehensive result of the common karma, we get the world of the external environment, and as the ripened result of individual karma, we have the individual internal body. These are uncontrollably recurring phenomena, or samsara. Since a root for all of this is grasping for true existence and the potentials for the confusion of discordant appearance-making, which are laid by this grasping, the two paths purify this.
This discordant appearance-making is a very interesting thing. It’s usually discussed in terms of dual appearances, appearance of duality; guess that’s the most usual translation. “Duality” is not terribly great because that gives the connotation that there are actually two things, whereas there aren’t. “Discordant” I think is better, because a discordant appearance means that it’s discordant with what actually exists. It’s not that there are two things there. It’s discordant in the sense that it is an appearance of true existence as opposed to non-true existence. But if you think just in terms of discordant appearances or dual appearances, it sounds like that’s something external, like these dual appearances are out there somewhere, existing by themselves, and you’re working to get rid of them.
But in fact, the approach is more in terms of the mind or the type of consciousness that makes things appear discordantly from the way that they actually exist. Like many things in Buddhism, they can be discussed from the point of view of either being an object or from the point of view of being a consciousness, or subject. Likewise, these discordant appearances can be discussed in terms of both an object or a subject, a mind, and here I’m referring to it as “discordant appearance-making”: it’s this process that we have in our mind to make things appear discordantly. Because if you approach it that way, you have some sort of basis to work with to get rid of it, because you can affect your mind. You can’t affect external phenomena, especially if you conceive of them as existing inherently by themselves out there; but you can work on your mind.
Now, meditation on the path is analogous to these things that we want to get rid of, and we’re working in the sense of this whole process I’ve explained already, of how we meditate on analogies. Here we speak specifically in analogy with the death and birth of humans of the Southern Continent with six constituent elements; it always refers to them. In Guhyasamaja, there are three constituent elements of sperm, which are bone, marrow, and sperm itself; and three that come from the speck of blood, which are the skin, flesh and blood.
But Kalachakra has a different list of these: the three constituent elements that come from the sperm side are water, wind and space; and the three from the speck of blood side are earth, fire and deep awareness. This is our list of the six elements. So much in Kalachakra is done in terms of the six elements; it’s a very major dominant theme. And the reason why we’re working with the death and birth of humans with these six constituent elements that come from the sperm side and the speck of blood side is that it’s only on that basis that one can achieve enlightenment in one lifetime through the path of using these sperm and speck of blood energies to generate great bliss, and from generating great bliss, generating the great blissful deep awareness of voidness. Likewise, it’s the humans from the Southern Continent, which is the land of action, where one can experience the results of one’s actions in one’s own lifetime. We want to meditate in analogy with the death and birth of such types of human beings.
Now, Kalachakra speaks a tremendous amount about atoms. These are the atoms of the five elements – the elements of earth, water, fire, wind and space. These atoms are usually stuck together, and when the universe ends, what happens is that they come apart, so that you have them abiding with space in between them. This is different from the abhidharma presentation, in which everything disappears, and you’re left only with potentials in the period in between eons. Here it’s a little bit more similar I think to Western science, that in a sense it becomes sort of a plasma: everything, the energies that hold the atoms together sort of dissipate so that the tiny subatomic particles are sort of just in an uncoagulated form of fluid plasma perhaps. That’s what happens when the universe ends.
Space atoms, according to Detri Rinpoche, the one who wrote one of the commentaries that I’m following here, are the tiny subatomic spaces in between the parts of atoms. It’s the most minute thing that the mind can separate out, and it appears only to mental consciousness, and it has an appearance like the clear dawn sky. So, it appears like our old friend clear light. Space atoms is a topic that absolutely fascinates His Holiness, and he discusses it with Western scientists. That’s one definition of it.
According to Kedrup Norzang Gyatso, who wrote the other commentary that we’re following, he says that “space atoms” is the name that is given to the condition when the atoms are not cohesively together, and it’s like the space that they occupy. You can see that it’s approaching the same thing from two sides: from one point of view, it’s the tiny subatomic spaces in between the atoms, and from the other, it’s that space when they’re not together. When the universe ends, we have atoms fragmenting, not abiding together, and this is called space atoms, he says. Also, they’re not an object of eye consciousness and so forth, similar to what Detri Rinpoche was saying.
We get space atoms when the universe ends, which is this condition of the space in between atoms or the parts of the atoms not being cohesively together. Then by the force of collective karma, they start to come together again. When this plasma starts to come together again, you get wind atoms. Then from the friction of wind atoms rubbing against each other, you get lightning – some sort of static lightning – and that’s the creation of fire atoms, fire element; and from wind and lightning together, you get rain, so that’s water atoms. Then from wind, lightning and water all together you get rainbows. That’s how form, or earth atoms start to come about. That’s the explanation of how the universe ends and then is formed again. You can see this is not such a terribly far-fetched scheme that it comes up with; not at all.
On an individual level, when you die, the atoms and the elements are dispersing within the body and are not working together as a whole. This is how the death process is described in Kalachakra: similar to the way that the universe dies, the atoms of the body start to come apart; the forces holding them together cease to function. Unlike in Guhyasamaja, where the process is described in terms of the consciousness withdrawing from the elements of the body as its basis, which is the whole way it’s described in Guhyasamaja and then, of course, in Yamantaka, Heruka, Vajrayogini and so forth, instead of that in Kalachakra the dissolution that happens in stages is the dissolution of the discordant appearance-making mind. In other words, rather than the consciousness withdrawing from the elements, the consciousness itself, which makes these elements appear in a discordant way, is starting to disappear. It’s a slightly different way of conceiving of it. The process is described in terms of, as it says here:
The water element in my body dampens the fire. Earth, parted from fire, dissolves into water. The water is dried up by wind. Wind dissolves into consciousness and consciousness dissolves into space.
This whole process of water putting out fire, then without fire earth dissolves into water, and then water is dried out by the wind, and then wind goes into consciousness, and consciousness goes into space – this describes the process of the breaking up of the conglomerate atoms which were the basis for making up discordant appearances. In other words, it’s as if you have a black line around them. When they’re conglomerated together, when the atoms are all together and functioning, then the consciousness makes them appear as if they had a black line around them, as if they were inherently solid and findable from their own side. As the atoms break up, as this whole incorrect appearance of the things being solid breaks up, then the consciousness itself, which would make that appear as if they were solid, sort of disappears. That’s the process that’s happening.
As the atoms break up, you get to the point where wind goes into consciousness, as it says here: wind dissolves into consciousness, and it’s at that point that you no longer have sense consciousness cognizing objects. In other words, it stops making earth look as though it’s appearing truly existent; it stops making earth, water, fire and wind appear as if they were solid. That’s the sense consciousnesses, and it ceases at that point. Then you only have mental consciousness, and this mental consciousness, this consciousness-wind – because the wind has gone into consciousness now – starts to enter the central channel and dissolve there. As it gets subtler and subtler, you have no conceptual consciousnesses at all, and that’s what is described in terms of consciousness dissolving into space.
So, water dampens the fire, earth parted from fire dissolves into water, water is dried up by wind, wind dissolves into consciousness. That means that all the sense consciousnesses, which were involved with these elements, dissolve in, so the wind goes into the consciousness, and then you have only mental consciousness. Then consciousness dissolves into space, which means that the consciousness-wind, which is the basis for conceptual minds, then dissolves into space, in the sense that it goes into the central channel, dissolves into the various chakras and so forth, and you get down to the clear light mind.
Now, this subtlest-level clear light mind of death is non-conceptual. It has an aspect of a similar shape to a straightforward cognition of voidness, since discordant appearance-making minds have set. That’s an important point; it’s not so easy to state it in words, but that consciousness has a similar shape, or it’s a similar thing to a bare cognition of voidness. That’s not saying that it is a bare cognition of voidness. It’s saying that it’s similar to a bare cognition of voidness. Why? Because the conceptual minds and the grosser minds, which would cognize things in a discordant manner and make things appear truly existent, have set. They’ve dissolved; set like the sun. They are not there. You only get down to this laser beam of a mind, laser-beam consciousness. It’s of similar shape to a straightforward or bare cognition of voidness, since discordant appearance-making minds have set.
Now, what’s the object of that mind? The object of that mind is atoms of space. It’s atoms of space, meaning the state of atoms being broken up by not conglomerated or coagulated. As we recall, atoms of space were something that only the mind could see, could conceive of; they can’t be known by the senses; and atoms of space also have this usual clear light, like dawn, appearance. And it’s like an empty eon when the universe has disintegrated. The implication of this, according to Kedrup Norzang Gyatso, is that devoid forms appear to such a consciousness, the clear light of death, and also that such a consciousness has an aspect of bliss. It’s the bliss of being separated from discordant appearance-making mind. This is similar to the Sakya position. Kedrup Norzang Gyatso studied with a great Sakya master Tagtsang Lotsawa.
So, such consciousness has an aspect of bliss. It’s not the bliss of bodhichittas melting in the central channel, but it’s a bliss of being separated from discordant appearance-making mind – a type of mind that would make things appear to be truly existent. At the clear light of death, we have a clear light which is of similar shape to a bare cognition of voidness, because it has no discordant appearance-making. It has space atoms appearing to it. It has devoid forms appearing to it, because it’s a type of mind in which the winds have entered into the central channel. And it has a blissful aspect, the bliss of being separated from these discordant appearance-making minds. And it has an aspect of being like a bare cognition of voidness already, because the discordant appearance-making minds are set.
If we can make that into an actual realization of voidness, then we’ve really gotten something. And if we can make the blissful awareness of being separate from this discordant appearances be the unchanging bliss that’s derived first from melting the bodhichitta through tummo and then stacking the drops, and through that depleting the atoms of the body – because you remember the whole process of becoming enlightened through the devoid form was after the stacking of the 21,600 drops, the atoms of the body come apart, which is similar to death and similar to the end of the universe – if we can do that, if we can make the aspect of that mind which is similar to a bare cognition of voidness be an actual bare cognition of voidness; and if we can make the blissful aspect of that mind become an actual unchanging bliss through the stacking of the drops and so forth, then it acts as an actual opponent for grasping for true existence and its propensities, which would have given the impure external environment and internal sentient beings; then it acts as a cause for Dharmakaya, for the mind of a Buddha.
If we get down to the death clear light, it already has certain aspects that are very similar to what we want to get: it is similar to a bare cognition of voidness; it has a certain aspect of bliss to it already. If we can substitute it and make that aspect that is like a bare cognition of voidness actually be a bare cognition of voidness, and that aspect of bliss actually be a blissful awareness from the stacking of the drops, then that will actually get rid of its tendency to create impure birth or environment and instead give rise to the mind and body of a Buddha.
We get various reflections and things in the clear light of death, which naturally happen, and if we can make that into appearing as the devoid form, what’s called the mahamudra couple, the couple of Kalachakra, rather than just being a vase, or a pillar, or a piece of cloth (those are the examples that are used in the text), then it acts as a cause for the Form Body of a Buddha. This clear light mind of death as described in Kalachakra, particularly in the commentaries of Kedrup Norzang Gyatso, has all these features, which make it most conducive. If we make its aspect like a bare cognition of voidness be the bare cognition of voidness, if we make its blissful aspect be the unchanging bliss of the stacking of the drops, if we make the devoid forms that appear to it be the devoid-form Kalachakra couple, then we’ve got it made.
On the complete stage, unchanging blissful realization of voidness and the devoid forms are analogous to the disintegration of the world and death and are the causes of the Dharmakaya and the Form Bodies of a Buddha, which is the resultant stage. They’re also analogous to the basis to be purified. That’s on the complete stage. The unchanging bliss and the devoid form are similar to what we want to purify: birth and death; and similar to the mind and body of a Buddha. And the generation stage is analogous with it, and it ripens into the complete stage, which actually does the purification.
What’s the meditation on the generation stage? It’s as follows. In the other tantras, Guhyasamaja and so forth, there’s a description of eight signs that you get of the elements dissolving. It’s not necessary to go into that because we’re not discussing Guhyasamaja here. But rather than eight, there are ten signs in Kalachakra, and these are called the four signs of night and the six of day.
The four of night are:
- Smoke-like appearance
- Mirage-like appearance
- Sparks in the sky, like little flitters of sparks
- Butter lamp, like a very still flame, sometimes described like a flame at the bottom of a well.
This is the exact opposite of the way it is in Guhyasamaja – Guhyasamaja has mirage first and then smoke, and in Kalachakra it’s smoke first and then mirage. Those four derive from the Guhyasamaja.
Then there are the six of day:
- The first one is called blazing, which is a yellow appearance like Kalagni, the Fire of Time disc.
- Then the next is moon, so it’s a white appearance.
- Then the next is sun, which is a red appearance.
- Then the next is Rahu, which is a black appearance. Here it’s a little bit reminiscent of Guhyasamaja, where you have the white, red and black appearances, although it’s not exactly the same.
- Then you have lightning, flash of lightning.
- And then you have the tenth one, which is a blue dot.
These ten signs arise when the wind starts to go into the central channel; all ten, in sequence. So, the four signs of night are smoke, mirage, sparks in the sky and butter lamp, and the six signs of day are blazing, which is yellow like Kalagni, moon, sun, Rahu, lightning and a blue drop.
Now, unlike Guhyasamaja, there’s no correlation of first one element dissolves and then you get the first sign. In Guhyasamaja, earth dissolves, meaning the consciousness withdraws from earth, and you get mirage, and then it withdraws from water and you get smoke. It’s not like that. Our old friend, our old thing of symmetry is stupid: there’s no correlation like that. In general, what we imagine with water puts out fire and so on is simply that the water element in our body dampens the fire. What we imagine is simply that the atoms of the elements of the body are breaking apart, so that discordant appearance-making mind aimed at them sets or dissolves in stages. This mind that has the black crayon in its hand putting big lines around things, since the atoms are falling apart, that ceases. Since what it’s being aimed at is falling apart, it sort of loses its black crayon, to put it in simple terms, and dissolves in stages.
Then when wind goes into consciousness, you start to get the ten signs; you don’t get the ten signs earlier. And then as consciousness goes into space, the mind becomes subtler and subtler, and all the rough discordant appearance-making minds cease. You get the signs progressively, as the rough discordant appearance-making minds, the minds with the black crayon, are setting more and more and more.
Then as a reflection of such a mind – not its object that it’s aimed at but rather its reflection, and that makes a big difference in the way that you meditate by the way – you have these devoid-form ten signs. These ten signs themselves are devoid forms. That was never explained clearly in the other tantras, but here it’s explained clearly: these ten signs themselves are devoid forms. They are not objects that the mind is aimed at in this dissolution process, but it’s rather just the appearance, the reflection of those minds as the mind gets more and more subtle. At the end of it, you have the blue dot – the tenth sign. In the blue dot, you have a very fine black line, like a hair line, and inside that black hair line you have a Kalachakra couple, in the blue dot.
These are the appearances that the mind appears as, or reflects as, as it’s getting more and more subtle. Because as you get down to the subtlest one, you have devoid forms of the three realms, they say. Devoid forms of the three realms mean that devoid forms can be anything; they can appear as anything. Did you ever wonder what it meant, “All appearances of samsara and nirvana, all phenomena of samsara and nirvana”? Well, all phenomena of nirvana are starting to get into these sorts of clear reflections of the clear light mind when it’s parted from these various stains. Rather than it appearing as a vase or a pillar, we aim to try to get it appearing as the Kalachakra couple.
But throughout all of this, the main aim of the mind is voidness. When you’re meditating on it, on this dissolution, you don’t meditate, “Now I see this, now I see that.” These devoid forms, these ten appearances, are not the object of the mind that the mind is aimed at. Rather, what you’re aimed at is voidness, the voidness of inherent existence of these four gateways for liberation, in the sense that there’s no true three circles of this meditation in terms of who’s meditating, what you’re meditating on and the meditation itself. None of the objects that pass before the mind in this meditation have true existence. There’s no inherently existent cause involved here in terms of bodhichitta or compassion of why you’re doing this meditation; and there’s no inherently existent result that you’re aiming for, with a truly existent enlightenment that you’re aiming for from this. It’s aimed at the voidness of these things, of these four. And it’s a blissful awareness because it started off with the Kalachakra mandala dissolving into you, so your guru and everyone dissolving into you. It’s a blissful mind having the aim at voidness. As it gets subtler and subtler, it has these signs as its reflection, and eventually it gets down to the blue dot with the Kalachakra couple inside the hair line in the blue dot.
You end with again holding the self-esteem of the Dharmakaya with the four mantras. Here, in the short one, you sort of reaffirm the voidness at the end of these things, because it says:
Having totally stilled, like this, all mental fabrications, leaving out none, that make the environment and its inhabitants, built up from subtle particles, appear discordantly,
That’s our discordant appearance-making. So, the atoms have dispersed.
I come to inseparable voidness as the object and deep awareness as its object-taker as the essential nature of the four gateways to liberation. OM SHUNYATA JNANA VAJRA SVABHAVA ATMAKO ‘HAM
You sort of reaffirm voidness. Although you started off the meditation with voidness by this verse: “If phenomena (are regarded as totally) non-(existent),” and so forth, and then you only have one mantra here, but in fact in the longer ones you have four mantras, one for each of the four gateways to liberation.
In Detri Rinpoche’s commentary he has no mention of a devoid form meditation here. He only has meditation on Dharmakaya, without having a Kalachakra couple appear in a blue dot. But according to Kedrup Norzang Gyatso, you do have a devoid form meditation here as well, although the emphasis is on voidness and the Dharmakaya. His Holiness says that it’s better for us to follow Kedrup Norzang Gyatso here and do meditate on having a devoid form appearance of this clear light mind, which is both blissful and understanding of voidness.
You should also note that it doesn’t use the terminology that we find in Guhyasamaja of taking death as a pathway for Dharmakaya and birth as a pathway for Nirmanakaya. Although it’s talking about a similar process, it doesn’t call it by the same names. It doesn’t talk about taking death as a pathway for Dharmakaya and birth as a pathway for Nirmanakaya, which then allows us, of course, to have the devoid form here in the Dharmakaya meditation. Also, you don’t have the nine mixings which you have in Guhyasamaja. If you don’t know what they are, then forget about it; but if you do, it’s not here.