Circle of Protection
We have been going through the beginning part of the sadhana, which had the circle of protection and then the actual sadhana. The circle of protection had all these preliminaries for building up the two networks of positive force and deep awareness, and then the actual circle of protection. We’ve been going through the part for building up the two networks. That had the lineage prayer; we then transformed into a Buddha-figure in order to be able to consecrate the offerings which are going to be used for building up positive force; then we consecrated the inner offerings; then there was the consecration of the vajra and bell, the consecration of the outer offering, and then a mandala offering, and Vajrasattva purification; and after that comes the actual building up of the two networks, which are likewise omitted from the shorter version here. But in the longer version, they actually come twice, and so here it comes just after the circle of protection in its second place, and so it’s left until then. What we do then is go directly into the actual circle of protection itself.
The circle of protection has three levels of extensiveness in which it’s done, and here in our nine- or thirteen-deity practice we do the shortest version. The full version of it has two parts. One is a protection of oneself, and then for protection of the place there’s the meditation on the circle of protection, it’s called. We have a protection of ourselves and then a circle of protection around us. For the protection of oneself, it has various sections. First, we have a cleansing of body, speech, mind and deep awareness – this foursome cleansing that we always get in terms of the drops and for getting the four bodies.
But before we can do this, since in the abbreviated version we have no build-up of the two networks before, we have to fill in generating ourselves in the form that we would be at the end of that. In other words, since there are a lot of parts that are left out here, in which we change our aspect, then we have to fill in changing our aspect to catch up to where we would be when we start this. When we consecrated the inner and outer offerings, which is all we have in the short one here, we were the simple couple, the simple figure with one face, two arms and a consort. But here, when you build up the two networks, you’re just the simple male figure without the consort. That you’ll find in all the sadhanas for the building up of positive force, for some reason; I don’t know why. You’re just the simple figure without consort. So here, when you start the abbreviated circle of protection, you have to transform into just being the simple deity: one face, two arms, without a consort.
Then we have the cleansing of body, speech, mind and deep awareness, which is done with a mantra, and this mantra does all four of them in general. So that’s
OM AH HUM HO HAM KSHAH
PRAJNOPAYA ATMAKA
The first six syllables are for the six Buddha-families and the six chakras. Prajna‑upaya: that’s method and wisdom; prajna is wisdom, upaya is method. Atmaka: I am that.
KAYA VAK CHITTA JNANA ADHIPATE
Kaya is body, vak is speech, chitta is mind, jnana is deep awareness. Adhipate is “O Lord of body, speech, mind and deep awareness.”
MAMA KAYA VAK CHITTA JNANA VAJRAM
Mama is my, kaya is body, vak is speech, chitta is mind, jnana is deep awareness. “Make my vajras of body, speech, mind and deep awareness…”
VAJRA AMRITA SVABHAVAM KURU KURU
Make them in the nature of vajra nectar, svabhavam – means self-nature, kuru kuru is to do that.
SKANDHA DHATU AYATANAM NIHSVABHAVAM SVAHA
Skandha – my aggregates; dhatu – the cognitive spheres; ayatanam – the cognitive sources; nih svabhavam svaha – are without the nature of being truly existent. It’s a general purification or cleansing this body, speech, mind and deep awareness. It’s saying: “O Lord of body, speech, mind and deep awareness in the nature of method and wisdom, make my vajra body, speech, mind and deep awareness into a nature of vajra nectar. The aggregates, cognitive sources and senses are all without true existence.” It’s a mantra. You just think of the meaning.
At the crown of my head, a VAM transforms to become the disc of a vajra moon in its full sixteen parts.
Then we have at the crown of our head a VAM, the seed syllable for water. It transforms to become the symbolic disc of a vajra moon in its full 16 parts. That’s like bodhichitta. On the external level, the moon grows full in 15 days, and its actual state of being full is considered the 16th part. This is in parallel with the 16 parts of full bliss.
We have like that external, internal and alternative levels of the 16-part full moon, the vajra moon symbolizing the regular moon externally; the bodhichitta, the force of white bodhichitta, semen in a young man; and then the white bodhichitta in terms of the experience of bliss in everyone, in terms of growing full. So:
This purges my body three times from the crown of my head to the tip of my toes, like a snake’s shedding its skin, so that my body turns white like this disc of the moon.
You just have the white disc go up and down like an elevator through your body three times. It purifies everything, and you become full of white light. That cleanses the body, and
OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHAH SARVA DHARMAH SVABHAVA SHUDDHO ‘HAM
That’s the voidness mantra, which cleanses the mind. In this way, we have all these different cleansings of body, speech, mind and deep awareness.
Chasing Away the Interferences
Then the next three things that happen are not in our short sadhana, but we get a setting out of the six families. This is to turn away harm from ghosts and so on to the three gateways of our body, speech and mind. From seed syllables we get the six Buddhas, only the male ones, at the six chakra places. As I was explaining before, any time that we visualize various Buddha-figures at our chakras, that’s for being able to tap into those chakras so eventually we’re able to dissolve the winds there. We set out the six families by generating the six Buddhas on our six chakras.
Then we get another purification of body, speech, mind and deep awareness. And first, we’re going to make a mudra with our hands: our hands are going to turn into a vajra. What happens is first you wash your hands symbolically, recite a mantra and rub your hands back and forth, and then for making the mudra you generate the 15 short vowels on the left-hand finger joints and the 15 long vowels on the right-hand finger joints. These are associated with the 15 days of the growing full moon and then the 15 phases of the waning moon, the letters associated with the dates of the month.
There’s a whole tremendous level of correlation that goes on in terms of the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, here particularly the vowels, and the dates of the month. In fact, one whole branch of Kalachakra astrology is called “arising from the vowels,” and it’s a whole thing that involves the correlation of vowels with the dates of the month and then with people’s names, the hours of the day and so on, and it’s a whole science. You generate the fifteen vowels on each side, on each of the hands, and then that changes into, with various visualizations – it’s not necessary to go through the whole thing – but eventually it becomes a vajra.
Then it says you brighten or bless all your limbs with a mantra and mudra, which is basically holding the vajra mudra; you touch this to all the different parts of your body while you say a mantra, so it’s another way of protecting oneself with vajra; and then you assume the self-esteem with a mantra and embracing mudra. It’s another way of purifying body, speech and mind by generating your hands as a vajra and having it go on different parts of your body.
Then the next thing that you have is setting out the six limbs, it says, which is arranging sets of syllables on six places of the body: at your heart, head, crown of the head, limbs, eyes and your whole body. And you touch it with another mudra and then do another mantra, and this is a little bit similar to the body armor that you get in Heruka and Vajrayogini. If any of you are familiar with that practice, you also have the setting of syllables in just a layer underneath the skin on the outside of the body at different parts; this is the corresponding thing here in Kalachakra.
Serkong Rinpoche used to point out very well that one thing to keep in mind with all these visualizations is that it should be like a movie, in the sense that don’t let the projector get clogged up with old footage. When the previous scene has finished, just let it go and go on to the next scene. It’s not that we’re accumulating one visualization on top of the other and whatever you had before. If you had the six Buddhas in your chakras, and then afterwards you’re getting syllables in the chakras, the Buddhas are gone, finished, that was the last scene; now you start over again. Although you would keep the basic visualization of the Buddha-figure unless that changes, don’t get clogged up and don’t have things superimposed. You let each scene pass after it’s finished.
Then what we get is the thing that’s here, with all vajras overcoming the maras or the demonic forces. This is in an abbreviated form in our text, and what we do is we have vajras at the six chakras, with the number of spokes of the channels of that chakra plus one for the central channel and spoke. What it says is:
At my forehead, on a white moon disc, from a white OM comes a white vajra with 17 spokes.
That’s because at the forehead chakra, we have 16 channels of that chakra, and we add the 17th for the central channel there in the central spoke.
At my throat, on a red sun disc, from a red AH comes a red vajra with 33 spokes.
Because the throat chakra has 32 channels and one more for the central channel. These are the reverse of what you get in Guhyasamaja. In Guhyasamaja, the forehead has 32, and the throat has 16. Here, the forehead has 16, and the throat 32. And then it goes on:
At my heart, on a black Rahu disc, from a black HUM comes a black vajra with 9 spokes. At my navel, on a yellow Kalagni disc, from a yellow HOH comes a yellow vajra with 65 spokes. At the crown of my head, on a green space disc, from a green HAM comes a green vajra with 5 spokes. At my pubic region, on a blue deep awareness disc, from a blue KSHAH comes a blue vajra with 33 spokes.
We have the different vajras, which are the colors of the Buddha-families that are associated with each of the six chakras. We have elements associated with the chakras, we have Buddha-families associated with the chakras. Symmetry is stupid, so it’s not an exact correlation to that, because the Buddha-families are with the male figures, the elements are with the female figures, so there’s a slight reversal in one place of which is where. But here, it’s in terms of the Buddha-families, which is the most common way that we’ll have. So, we always have white with the forehead chakra, that’s Amitabha; and red at the throat chakra, which is Ratnasambhava; black at the heart chakra, which is Amoghasiddhi; yellow at the navel chakra, which is Vairochana; green at the crown chakra, which is Akshobhya; and blue at the pubic chakra, which is for Vajrasattva. Although they correlate to the elements, there’s one slight difference there.
Here in the short version, that’s all we have: the vajras for the main chakras and the color of the Buddha-families associated with the chakras. But in addition, in the longer ones we’ll have vajras on the 12 joints of our arms and legs. We have three joints on each arm and leg: the shoulder, elbow and wrist, and the corresponding things on the legs, and on those we’re going to have different vajras of the different colors of the different Buddha-families, with the number of spokes of the number of channels of the chakras in the arm and leg joints. Then we’re going to have more vajras on the 12 joints of the fingers and toes: we have three joints on each finger and toe, and again in the different colors with a different number of channels.
There are six sets of two places each for the sense organs: we get vajras with the number of spokes for the number of channels of the chakras of the eyes, of the ears, of the nose, the mouth and so forth. Then we also get five sets of two places for the action organs: we’ll get more vajras for the chakras of the hands, so it’ll be in the palms, and of the legs and of the feet and so forth; it is another set of five vajras. So, you have vajras all over the place.
From these vajras, rays of light, blazing with vajras, emanate out in the ten directions. I come to have a vajra body, and the hordes of demonic forces and hindrances are decisively burnt off. OM AH HUM HRAH PHAT
Then lights go out, it says, from these vajras. Because the purification is not just simply here in the abbreviated sadhana of the main six chakras, but it is of all your chakras. In the full sadhana, you get the whole big number. Again, symmetry is stupid, so you shouldn’t imagine that because you have a white vajra here that white light goes out of that, and a red vajra here so red light goes out of that. It’s not like that.
Rather, you have vajras of all different colors all over your body, in a very precise manner, and out of all of these, black light goes out in the front, in the east; red light goes out to the south, which is to your right (it’s the colors of the mandala); white to your left; yellow goes out behind; green goes up; and blue goes down. In that way, light comes out from all these vajras, which are all over you, inside, representing the purification of the chakras, in correlation with the six elements or the six Buddha-families, and in this way the demonic forces and the hindrances are decisively burnt off, and then you have OM AH HUM HRAH PHAT, which is the burning mantra to burn all of this off. We have a short mantra here; in the long one there’s a much longer mantra.
Protection of the Place
The protection practices had two parts, as you remember. The first was protection of oneself, and the second is the protection of the place with the circle of protection, and that’s left out of the abbreviated one, so you don’t have it here. This is a very extensive practice, the next one, and very long as well. I’ll just give you a brief outline of what’s involved so you have some idea of what’s being left out.
You have first the generation of the supporting environment. What you do is you get five element discs, the mandalas of the five elements: space, wind, fire, water and earth, and these combine, and you get a huge circular building, and then you get two fences. You get an inner three-layer fence at the horizon, and then a five-layer fence, an outer fence at the limit of the world system.
In these visualizations, often I use the example of opening up the lens of your mind to try to become omniscient, so we try to visualize and imagine more and more. On the one level, you’ll get these absolutely astronomic types of visualizations, like this protection wheel: one fence is at the horizon, and one is at the limit of the world system. Obviously, if you’re trying to do that seriously, you really try to open up your mind and imagine huge spaces. At other times, in the practices here in Kalachakra, we’re going to get absolutely microscopic type of visualizations. Likewise, it’s working with the mind to build up through this practice what’s going to ripen into our being omniscient, to be able to have the mind be aware of huge things, of tiny things, of all sorts of things at the same time. It’s really quite nice.
We get this building and the fences, and then we have a central seat in the middle of this building, and then we have 60 other seats, which are six sets of ten. The ten are in the ten directions: you have seats in the four directions, the four corners, top and bottom; six sets of those. And one set is on the inside of the building, and one is on the outside of the building: that’s two sets. Another set is on the inside of the fence at the horizon and the outside of that fence; and then another set of ten on the inside of the fence at the edge of the world system and at the outside of the edge of the world system. This is where our 60 protectors are, where they will sit.
Then you generate yourself as Vajravega, that’s Diamond-Strong Force, the forceful aspect of Kalachakra, who looks the same as Kalachakra except he has two more arms, and his faces have wrathful expression. You generate from mantras his jewelry, so you go through everything: each piece of jewelry is from a huge mantra, and you generate it; you do the same thing for all his hand implements. All 24 things that he’s holding are each generated individually from a mantra; then his snake ornaments: he has snakes, and those are generated each from a mantra; then you assume the self-dignity of being Vajravega; and then you generate the entourage from syllables at his heart: 60 figures are going to be generated out of his heart.
The entourage is in six groups of ten each, like we had for the seats, and each group of ten is for one of the elements. You’ll have one group of ten for purifying the element of deep awareness, the next one for space, the next one for wind, then fire, then water, then earth. And then, within each group of ten, you’ll have five pairs. The five pairs are going to be emanated out of an orifice of the body that is associated with a particular element. Those figures will be associated with a sub‑element within.
Let’s say, their major element is space, but then with space division, those associated with the subdivision of space will be generated out of the ears, because the ears are the orifice that deal with sound, associated with the element space, because of hearing. Out of the nose, if they’re the wind-element subdivision, because the nose is associated with wind and smell. Out of the eyes for the fire-element subdivision, because the fire (light) element is associated with sight, which is associated with the eyes. Out of the tongue and dent in upper lip under the nose for the water element, since taste is associated with saliva in mouth. Out of anus and tip of vajra (penis) for earth, since physical sensation is associated with earth or solid eliminated through anus.
The seed syllable that they’re generated from is a code for all of this. The seed syllables, the Sanskrit alphabet – this is where you get the whole incredible number that happens with the Sanskrit alphabet – the letters are in groups of letters that are correlated to the elements, and within each group it consists of letters that are also associated with the element. You’ll have going across letters that are, let’s say space, wind, fire, water and so on, and then going vertically, you’ll have again the set of elements with space, wind, fire; so, each letter has a dominant element and a sub‑element that it’s associated with.
And out of the seed syllable that each of these deities is generated from, you have the entire code of which fence they’re going to go to, and which element they are, and out of which orifice they’re going to be sent out of the body, and what color they’re going to be. It’s an absolutely incredible system of code, and everything being correlated like that. You’ll find that throughout the Kalachakra, and that’s why it’s such a broad field of study. Because not only do you get all the astrology, all the math, all the inner sciences of the channels and things like that, but you also get all the grammar as well with this fantastic analysis of the alphabet that goes into it.
After you get all the figures emitted out of the orifices of the body, the gateways of the body, and they take their seats, then you call in the deep awareness beings by another Vajravega at your heart going out and bringing them in. You make offerings; they merge. You call in the empowering deities; you make offerings to them. Then you get the 11 empowerments for all the figures, and it’s done in great detail, each of the eleven individually, like in the big empowerment we had. And then you get a crown sealing ornament on all of them.
Then you do the mantras. And the mantras are huge! The mantra for Vajravega is 16 lines long, and the mantra for the entourage is 72 lines long in Sanskrit. Doing the mantras once will be enough. They’re long Sanskrit sentences, and it helps tremendously to know Sanskrit, because then you know what you’re saying: you recite in Sanskrit all the things that he’s holding, and all the parts of him, and how many necks he has, and arms, and these sorts of things. Then you get the mantra of self-esteem as protection, and then you make offerings and praises, and after that you offer a torma.
Torma means “to dispel something,” so dispel grasping at true existence. Grasping for true existence is the biggest interferer. You have a torma, which could be just some biscuits or whatever, and you consecrate it like the inner offering, and then you call in the main figure and the 60 protectors from their gates in six groups of ten. You do it with a mudra and a visualization that corresponds to the element that they’re purifying, because each of the six groups purifies an element. For example, the earth element is associated with Vairochana; Vairochana is the wheel, so you do a wheel mudra and visualize a wheel on your hands that’s calling in the earth-purifying set of ten.
Like that, everything goes together really nicely. You offer each group a torma, and you make inner offering and praise to them, and then you dissolve each of the six groups of ten into the corresponding one of the six chakras, which corresponds to their element and is marked with the vowel of their element. Again, you’ll have the six chakras, here correlated to the elements, with the seed syllable, the vowel associated with their element, which will hook back to the code syllable out of which they were generated. And you’ll dissolve, let’s say the water element: the group of ten that purifies and protects you from interferences from the water element will be the ten nagas; nagas are associated with water. They’re called with the mudra of a lotus, because they’re Amitabha family; Amitabha family is water, and it’s the lotus family; and they come in, and then they’re going to dissolve into the center at the heart, because the heart chakra is the water element chakra.
All of these ripen into purifying all of these gateways, these orifices, the winds that are associated with them, the chakras, the elements, and ripens into getting them all dissolving nicely in all their different chakras, which is what eventually we want to do. That ends this protection practice, when they dissolve back in. It’s a very elaborate protection dealing with the six elements, the orifices, the chakras, the letters in the Sanskrit alphabet and so on. It’s a very extensive practice, which is about as long as your usual long sadhanas of the other Buddha-figures.
Building Up a Network of Positive Force
Then we move on to building up a network of positive force, or potential. This is getting into the actual sadhana itself. The actual sadhana has three parts. In analogy with building up the karma to affect ahead and then experiencing the clear light of death, building up the two networks is the first part.
We have all these analogies and all the things that are being purified. Everything is going to be analogous to something on the basis: the development of a body, or birth, death, all these sorts of things; or analogous to what we want to achieve in terms of a Buddha; or it’s going to be involved with a purification. It’s not an absolute nice symmetrical thing, that it’s always the case that it’s both analogous to something and purifying something. Sometimes it’s analogous to something without necessarily having to have that thing be purified.
But in any case, first, before you’re going to die, you want to build up some good positive force so that the way that you die is going to turn out good, and your rebirth is going to be good. Analogous to building up positive force for our future life, you have this part here, which is building up the network of positive force. That’s our first one. We want to build up the two networks, of positive force and deep awareness, which is analogous to building up the positive force and deep awareness to affect our future rebirth.
The second part is in analogy with taking birth after dying. Then you have the actual four-branch yoga. Remember, the sadhana was in four parts of the supreme triumphant mandala, supreme triumphant actions, drop yoga and subtle yoga; the second part is going to deal with that. The first part was the two networks; the second part is the actual four-branch yoga; and the third part is, at the conclusion, the request to depart, the mantras and so on.
First of all, we have these two networks, and the first of that is building up a network of positive force, in analogy with building up the good karma that you would want before you die. The second is meditation on the four gateways to liberation, as the network of deep awareness in analogy with the stages of death. So, the first of our two networks that we want to build up, the positive force and deep awareness, is similar to building up good karma before we die, and the second one is similar to what happens when we actually die.
The first of these, building up positive force, is done through the seven-limb practice or the seven-limb puja, this usual thing of prostration, offerings and so on. This is where you get your preliminaries. In the long sadhana, you had this earlier, right after Vajrasattva and before the protection circle practices. There it was in terms of just a general preliminary, and now it’s repeated again. Here in the short one, it only comes this one time.
The way it’s done is:
Instantaneously, I clearly appear as Kalachakra, a Vanquishing Master Surpassing All,
Again, we’re only the male figure. If we’re doing just the simple practice, we never stop being just the simple male figure, so it stays the same.
with one face and two arms. In my heart, from a PAM comes a lotus,
PAM is the first syllable of padma, which is the Tibetan word for lotus.
red with eight petals,
It’s red to indicate of the four actions the third action of power or influence, to gain influence over the deities. White is pacifying, yellow is increase, red is power or influence, and blue is forceful. And it’s eight petals because it’s at the heart and it’s symbolic of the eight-petalled, the eight-channeled chakra at the heart.
on the seed-head of which,
That’s the center of it.
from AM comes a moon disc, on top of which, from HUM, comes a five-spoked vajra.
The moon is white, and on top of it, we get a white vajra. Here it’s similar to what we have in the empowerment. If you recall, in the Kalachakra empowerment, as in all other anuttarayoga empowerments, you have what’s called “the yoga encompassing everything.”
The yoga encompassing everything was when you generated the two bodhichittas. You had conventional bodhichitta – your heart expanding out to everybody, to reach enlightenment to be able to benefit everybody – and that took the form of a moon disc at your heart. Then the deepest bodhichitta – the mind expanding out to understand the voidness of everything – took the shape of a vajra, a white vajra standing on top of the moon disc. Then you were supposed to generate a strong feeling of the conventional bodhichitta and a strong feeling of the deepest bodhichitta, and then a replica of that was in the heart of the guru‑deity, and a replica came out and dissolved into the one in your heart. This is exactly the same thing in terms of having the white moon disc and white vajra on top of it. You should have some feeling of it as being the two bodhichittas, the conventional and deepest bodhichitta. Then:
From it, light-rays emanate out and invite to the expanse of the space before me all Triumphant Ones, with their spiritual offspring, in the aspect of the mandala world of Kalachakra, the Vanquishing Master Surpassing All.
This is your field of positive force. You call them in. It’s a mandala of Kalachakra: the five-storey building with the elements underneath it, the whole bit, small, and the guru is inseparable from it.
Then you do prostration:
O jewel-like guru, Holder of the Vajras, your kindness heralds in an instant a dawn of great bliss. I bow at your lotus-feet.
That’s the prostration to the guru. And then:
I prostrate to you, Glorious Kalachakra. With a nature of voidness and compassion,
This is a prostration to Kalachakra, and “of voidness and compassion” means that it’s inseparable method and wisdom, voidness and compassion.
That voidness here, a total absence, is either with or without aspect. In other words, without aspect is referring to voidness itself: the absence of true existence; and with aspect is referring to a devoid form: the clear light mind understanding voidness appearing as a Buddha-figure. Compassion is referring to an exalted mind, namely the unchanging great bliss, in which you’ve stopped having changing bliss. Voidness here is both voidness and the devoid form, and the compassion is the unchanging blissful awareness.
you neither take birth in the three planes of existence, nor perish away.
That means you abide neither in the extreme of samsara or nirvana, so you’re not in the compulsive existence or perish away (that’s nirvana).
Your enlightening bodies, as ways of knowing and what are known, possess the same source.
A way of knowing is the unchanging blissful awareness of voidness. What is known is the devoid form, as its appearance. Possess the same source means collected in one – the unchanging bliss that’s a way of knowing, and what is known, the devoid form, which is the appearance of that. That’s a prostration to Kalachakra.
Offering goddesses emanated from my heart present you with offerings.
You do the offerings. You can do that with the mudras. In the long sadhana, you generate these deities first from syllables at your own heart, and then the deities are sent out, and then they make the offerings. I already described what each of these offerings are of.
Then the next verse is for confession, or openly admitting the wrongs that one has done:
I openly admit each and every negative act I have done, caused others to do, or in which I’ve rejoiced, out of attachment, anger or naivety, from beginningless time up until now.
“I have done” is negative things of body; “caused others to do” is of speech; and “in which I’ve rejoiced” is of mind.
Then you have rejoicing:
With manifest joy, I rejoice in the massive store of constructive deeds of the Fully Enlightened Buddhas, bodhisattvas and highly realized aryas, and in everything constructive done by anyone else.
Then the next one is the request to teach Vajrayana:
For beings tormented by the disease of disturbing emotions, I request you to set flow rounds of Dharma transmission of the nectars of Vajrayana, to heal them into blissful awareness.
Then the sixth is beseeching the gurus not to pass away in nirvana:
I beseech you to rid yourself, please, of the wish to pass beyond sorrow,
That’s nirvana.
because of (others’ still bringing upon themselves) recurring samsaric sufferings from lack of realization,
In other words, don’t go away because you’re fed up with the fact that we can’t realize anything and so we still cause ourselves problems.
and to remain with us instead, for endless eons, in a manner that will bring them to make their bewilderment extinct and to purify themselves of whatever uncontrollably recurs.
To purify themselves of samsara.
Then we have a dedication, and the dedication starts with causes for the dedication, in other words taking safe direction and offering oneself. It says:
From the Buddhas and masters from whom I’ve received the highest empowerments,
That’s the Kalachakra empowerment.
the Dharma of inseparable method and wisdom they show,
That’s the Dharma of both the teachings and the realizations.
and both Sangha divisions abiding in it, I clearheadedly take safe direction.
The two divisions are with and without further training: you have the aryas, the highly realized beings who still have further training to go on the paths, that’s the ones with learning; and then there are the ones who don’t need any further training, but who have reached their goal. These form the two divisions of the intent community, or Sangha.
There are many commentaries to the text, and each commentary is going to interpret it differently. Sometimes you’ll hear the two divisions of the Sangha are the Hinayana and the Mahayana. Sometimes you may hear that they are those who have had direct realization of voidness and those who haven’t. According to the commentary of Detri Rinpoche, which is the main commentary that I’m following here, it is in terms of those with and without learning. It doesn’t matter really. It has many different levels of interpretation; it means all of them.
To my sublime gurus and Buddhas, together with your spiritual offspring, I offer myself in every aspect and request you safeguard me as your attendant and servant, O hallowed objects for oblation.
Now we’ve done as a cause for the dedication having a safe direction and offering oneself as attendant and servant to the hallowed objects for oblation; so, we will devote ourselves entirely to them. Then we say:
May my constructive acts throughout the three times, never tainting them with my selfish aims’ stains, act as a cause for all limited beings of samsara’s three planes,
That’s sentient beings of the three realms.
without an exception, to attain Buddhahood.
That’s enlightenment.
From this moment on, till my purified state, I reaffirm my bodhichitta aim,
That’s generating bodhichitta.
heighten my pure resolve and get rid of grasping for “me” and “myself, the possessor.”
Here, pure resolve means the four immeasurables. The four immeasurables are immeasurable equanimity, love, compassion and joy. Here it’s referring really to pure thoughts. At other times where this verse comes, it’s commented on as meaning the actual pure resolve, which is the selfless wish to take the responsibility to help everyone; but in this context, it’s commented on as meaning the four immeasurables. And to get rid of grasping for “me” and “myself, the possessor” is in terms of grasping for true existence of “me” (the self) and “mine,” which would be the aggregates, namely all phenomena. You get the two voidnesses, the voidnesses of self and of all phenomena, covered by grasping for “me” and “myself, the possessor.”
Then in the long sadhana what we add is a method for a wholehearted commitment to the common path. These are the verses found in section “A-X” of the Kalachakra Six-Session Guru-Yoga.
[See: Kalachakra Six-Session Guru-Yoga]
I won’t go into it, but what you’re doing is being mindful of the entire path in terms of
- The three roots
- The three networks
- The four fastidious firm abodes, or Brahma abodes (that’s another term for four immeasurables)
- The four ways of influencing others, or gathering disciples
- Abandoning the ten destructive actions
- Abandoning the five obscurations
- Abandoning the four disturbing attitudes
- Abandoning the four types of being associated with confusion
- Meditating on the four gateways to liberation.
These are verses that cover these various aspects of the common path, and by going through them we review it. That’s left out here.
And then it says:
By this bountiful field for growing a network (of positive force) dissolving into me, I become uplifted and inspired.
You had the Kalachakra mandala in front of you, which was here as the field of positive force for all of this, and it dissolves into you – simply just dissolves into you – and you become inspired; it makes you joyful.
Summary
Just a very quick review. What we want to do is achieve enlightenment. We want to achieve it very quickly in order to get rid of the various problems that we have. To get rid of them, we have to get rid of the causes of those problems. We want to achieve enlightenment by following a path.
The path that we’re going to follow here in anuttarayoga is one that is going to work to overcome our problems by meditating in analogy: acting as a spy to imitate what we want to get rid of, in order to get to its weak point and then stop that foundation from generating what we want to get rid of and have it generate instead the state of enlightenment that we want to achieve. This is the basic method that we’re using here in anuttarayoga tantra.
And the main things that are going to do it are the complete-stage practices of unchanging bliss and a devoid form, because they’re going to get down to the clear light mind level. When we get down there, we want to eliminate the causes within that, the stains on it, which would generate all these compulsive cycles of time on both an external and an internal level, causing death and rebirth in terms of the universe and in terms of individuals. Instead, by getting rid of these stains from the clear light, we want to have that clear light itself become the omniscient mind of a Buddha and have its reflection be the body of a Buddha. In order to get the complete-stage practices happening, which are going to actually bring this about, we have to build up some causes that are going to ripen into that happening. Because the complete stage is when it’s actually happening with the energy system.
On the generation stage, which is what the sadhana is involved with, we do it with our imagination by all these visualizations, and each point will ripen into something on the complete stage that we want to have happen. By constantly imagining, let’s say with an inner offering, that wind gathers together and causes a fire to burn, which causes elements and things to dissolve, and a white vajra falls into it and makes it white, that builds up a whole habit or pattern of mind, which will then help us to develop this whole thing of tummo, of the winds gathering at the navel, the fire burning there, that causing the winds to stop from the right and left channels and the bodhichitta to fall in the main channel, the central channel, to induce the various blisses, which will give us this instrument of a blissful awareness, which we want to use for getting down to the clear light mind and understanding voidness. All these parts of the sadhana are involved with that and work on that type of level.
First, we get as a preliminary the circle of protection, and that has building up the two networks and the actual circle of protection. To build up the positive force, first we have the lineage gurus. Then we have to generate ourselves as a Buddha-figure in order to consecrate the offerings in order to be able to offer them to build up positive force, so we ourselves become a Buddha-figure. We consecrate the offerings, the inner offering, the vajra and bell, the outer offering, we make a mandala offering, we do Vajrasattva, all these sorts of purification practices, and build up the two networks, which is left out here, but it’s when we do this the first time, this last part that we just had, that builds up all the positive force as a preliminary.
Then you do the circle of protection, which involves a self-protection and a protection of the place. The self-protection is the visualization of first purifying the body, speech, mind and deep awareness with the moon going up and down, like getting the full moon, and purifying by having vajras, having your hands make various gestures and put dhyani Buddhas in your chakras, purify like external armor setting syllables around yourself, and then having these vajras.
Then in the sadhana there is protection of the place in terms of the circle of protection, or purification of the environment. It was with setting up the building and all these fences going out to the end of the universe. It is done in the context of generating oneself as a forceful Vajravega, generating out of his body the 60 figures with this fantastic code of the Sanskrit alphabet out of the various orifices of the body, everything correlating to the elements, and doing a long mantra practice with them, and a torma offering to them, and having them dissolve back into the six chakras. That eliminates interferences and protects you in terms of your six elements on an internal level, and on an external level – the six elements of the universe. Then everything gets dissolved back into the chakras, which is where eventually we want everything to land up in any case.
That takes care of the protection, and then after that, when you get into the actual sadhana, first you want to be able to build up the karma in analogy to building up the karma for a good rebirth and having a good experience of death. You have first this building up of positive force with the practices of the seven-limb puja, as I just explained.
The next thing that we’ll have is, in analogy to dying, building up the network of deep awareness. That gets into the whole meditation in terms of the process of the dissolution of the elements and then the generation of the mandala and so forth. That will get us into the very main part of the sadhana, which is the four yogas of the supreme triumphant mandala, supreme triumphant actions, the drop yoga and the subtle yoga.