Kalachakra Sadhana: The Various Versions & the Preliminaries Section

Now, what’s a sadhana? A sadhana is literally “a means for actualization,” drub-thab in Tibetan. That’s an actualization of ourselves as a Buddha-figure and of all these points that I discussed from Tsongkhapa’s text of the advantages of the generation stage and what the generation stage accomplishes. It’s a method of actualizing or having this thing happen, and it’s part of the generation stage. The generation stage as I said is generating these things from our imagination, whereas the complete stage is having all things complete so it’s non-artificial. Likewise, another term that’s used for sadhana is self-generation, dag-kye in Tibetan., but kha-kye when referring to it in polite, honorific language. And again, Serkong Rinpoche used to say that it was a self-generation and not a mouth-generation, which the words sound very similar in Tibetan, and when you’re doing the practice, it’s not just a matter of generating things with your mouth in terms of just reading the sadhana, but rather to actually generate yourself in the form of the Buddha-figure and do everything in terms of working on transforming yourself.

As for the preliminaries for this, Tsongkhapa says in this same text, A Lamp for Clarifying the Five Stages, that when you’ve found certainty that the pure empowerments and practice of the close bonds (samayas) and vows is the preliminary for the two stages, then guru-yoga, the hundred-syllable Vajrasattva mantra and mandala offering become an aside type of preliminary. Since if you find certainty only about these latter preliminaries (prostrations, guru-yoga and so on), it can happen that there can be only mere intellectual understanding of the vows and so forth. Therefore, you should put effort into the former.

What Tsongkhapa is saying is that it’s true that the prostrations, mandala offerings, guru-yoga and so forth are preliminaries, and preliminaries are for building up positive force and purifying ourselves of negative things, hindrances and so forth; but most importantly what you do is you build up and purify through planting seeds and through the purifications that occur in the empowerment. Because if the preliminary practice is to build up positive force and eliminate interferences, that is in fact what an empowerment does. Everything in the empowerment plants a seed and purifies various things within us, and likewise the same thing with keeping the close bonds to the practice of the five Buddha-families, keeping the vows and so forth. All of this as well eliminates negative things and builds up positive force.

This is something that is continued throughout the practice, like we continue the regular preliminaries of guru-yoga, prostration, mandala and Vajrasattva as part of our daily practice as a preliminary; it’s part of the sadhana. Likewise, the foundation for it – and Tsongkhapa says even more essential – is to keep all the vows of the pratimoksha, which is first liberation; sometimes it’s translated as individual liberation. Tsongkhapa in this text points out, this same text that His Holiness had taught this spring in Dharamsala, that it doesn’t mean individual, it means first liberation actually: first in the sense of you first are liberated from destructive actions by keeping these restraints of not killing, not stealing and so on. There are those vows, and then the bodhisattva vows and the tantric vows, and all of this is really a very essential preliminary in the true sense of what a preliminary is doing, of building up and purifying, and that as well is kept throughout. In fact, you always renew your vows and renew your commitments in the daily practice. 

This aspect of doing a daily practice is also very important, because whether we’re doing it as a six-session yoga or whatever type of daily practice we’re doing, in Western terms what it does is it develops a great deal of stability and dependability in terms of ourselves. If we’re doing a sadhana practice as a daily commitment, or even if we’re just doing the six-session practice, it builds up this habit that we’re dependable, that we’re reliable. It’s not that we’re just doing something some of the time and then when we don’t feel like it, we don’t do it. It’s sort of a commitment to be consistent, which is very good for developing one’s character, which is after all what we’re trying to do with the Dharma. It also provides a great deal of continuity in life, and no matter where we travel, what we do or what sort of crisis we might go through in life, if we always have a daily practice, even if it’s only five minutes, that’s something that gives us continuity. There’s always sort of a reference point that we come back to at some point during the day. I know in myself it’s something which I find extremely helpful for having continuity and stability.

It also develops perseverance, it develops patience, it develops discipline and so forth by keeping up a daily practice. I think it’s not so good to just have a sadhana as some sort of thing that we do in retreat as a one-time practice or one-time experience, and then not continue it further, because doing it like that sort of makes it into an LSD trip or some sort of weird experience that you have: “Yes, I did that retreat and got into that practice one time back there for a week,” or a month or whatever it was, and then it has no relevance to your daily experience and you never continue it. Although it does have a certain value to do it like that, I think that if one tries to sustain it through a daily practice, which can even just be a minimal thing of visualizing yourself as Kalachakra and doing some mantras, that sustains the effect of it, and it’s not just a dream or an LSD trip.

A sadhana thus is an artificial yoga in which we’re using our imagination to meditate in analogy to death and rebirth as the basis to be purified, and which ripens into the complete stage, and which here in Kalachakra has four parts or four branches:

• The first is called the approximation or the supreme triumphant mandala.
• Then the second is called near actualization, which is also called supreme triumphant actions.
• The third is actualization or drop yoga, the yoga of the drops.
• And the fourth part of the sadhana is called the great actualization or the subtle yoga. 

A sadhana has these four parts and is analogous to the basis that we want to purify, and it ripens into the complete stage. In addition, it has preliminaries and protection wheel practices beforehand, and it has mantra recitation and then concluding practices afterwards. Thus, it’s different from the simple Kalachakra guru-yoga practice. The sadhana is different from that, because the guru-yoga practice is just to build up positive force; it doesn’t have all these parts. And it’s different from the six-session Kalachakra guru-yoga, because the six-session Kalachakra practice, which some people mistakenly call a sadhana, is basically to keep the 19 close bonds to the five Buddha-families; and in the Kalachakra one, it adds certain aspects of the sadhana, like there is an analogy to death and rebirth in it, and there is the recitation of mantras in it. But it doesn’t have all the aspects of the sadhana in terms of these four branches that I mentioned: the approximation, near actualization, actualization and great actualization; or the other set of names for them are the supreme triumphant mandala, supreme triumphant actions, drop yoga and subtle yoga. 

A sadhana is the actual full practice on the generation stage that we do, and it’s done in addition to, not as a substitute for, the six-session practice. Now, as was explained last year about the six-session practices, the Kalachakra one is optional: if you want to do it, fine; if you don’t want to do it, fine also. But you have to do some six-session practice, and it could be sometimes the Kalachakra one and sometimes one of the others, any combination that you like; it’s like a Chinese menu.

But you have to do some six-session practice, and a sadhana is the full practice, which is done in addition to it. One can do a six-session practice in common for all the different Buddha-figures that you’ve received. If you’ve received five or ten different empowerments, including Kalachakra, one of these six-sessions practices will do, whether it’s the Kalachakra or one of the simpler ones, for all the empowerments you’ve received. But one does a separate sadhana practice for each of the individual Buddha-figures. It isn’t as though doing a sadhana of one Buddha-figure works as a sadhana for all the different Buddha-figures; you have to do a specific sadhana for each Buddha-figure.

Now, the next question is, where does this sadhana come from? After the Buddha attained enlightenment, he taught Kalachakra in South India to the first king of Shambhala, who was the main person in the audience, who wrote down the root tantra and the commentary, and he brought them back to Shambhala, and neither of these have survived. After that you had seven kings in Shambhala, and then after the seven kings you had the first “holder of the castes,” whose name was Yashas, who wrote the Abridged Tantra. And his son Pundarika, who was the second holder of the castes, wrote the commentary called Stainless Light, Vimalaprabha in Sanskrit. Both of these have survived, the Abridged Tantra and the commentary Stainless Light. They were brought to India, and they appeared in Sanskrit in the tenth century. Both of these have five chapters; their structure is similar. The first chapter is about the world, the second is about the inner circumstance; so, the first is outer Kalachakra, and the second is inner Kalachakra; the third is the empowerment, the fourth chapter is on the sadhana, and the fifth is on deep awareness, which covers the complete stage and the result. 

Our sadhana comes from chapter four of the Abridged Tantra and the commentary, except for the part on the circle of protection (the protection wheel), which comes from the third chapter, the chapter on the empowerment. 

In India, however, you had different sadhanas which were written from this root material by four different masters, based on different passages. When you look in the Kangyur, in the Tibetan translations, you’ll find about four different Indian sadhanas, which are slightly different, because they pick up from different passages from this root material, all of which can be interpreted in different ways and taken in different ways. All of these were translated into Tibetan, starting in the 11th century.

Thus, you find that different combinations of them appear in the various lineages that we get in Sakya, Kagyu and Gelug. Since it only came to Tibet in the 11th century, it was too late for it to be a Nyingma transmission, since the Nyingma transmissions, the old transmissions, were all earlier than that, so there’s no Nyingma lineage of it although there is a Nyingma set of commentaries and way of interpreting it. Each of these traditions, Sakya, Kagyu and Gelug, has several authors who wrote commentaries to the Abridged Tantra and to Stainless Light, and who wrote various sadhanas, taking points from here and there in the different Indian versions, elaborating them and so forth, but the basics and the structure is fairly similar for all of these. That’s why you’ll get different sadhanas in different traditions, and within each tradition you’ll get different sadhanas, based on the fact that even in India there were four different versions of sadhanas. These sadhanas are not uniform, but you have a diversity of them in terms of differences in some details.

What I’ll explain is the sadhana in the Gelug tradition. It comes from the sadhana lineage of Kedrub Je, who was one of the disciples of Tsongkhapa, as was elaborated by the Seventh Dalai Lama. Kedrub Je wrote the big sadhana, and the Seventh Dalai Lama filled in a few more things to it and wrote the notes in between the lines and so forth. He wrote the extensive or the long body, speech and mind sadhana. Within Kalachakra, as you recall, the mandala is five storeys high, but it’s basically made up of three storeys. It’s a five-storey building, and the bottom floor is called the body mandala, the next floor is called the speech mandala, and the next set of floors is called the mind mandala. Thus, the mind mandala is made up of three floors. And there are 722 Buddha-figures. He wrote the extensive body, speech and mind sadhana, and also the extensive mind sadhana by itself. Because there’s also the practice with just the upper three storeys, and that has 48 figures. And these two, these extensive two versions are what is practiced by His Holiness and by the Namgyal Monastery of His Holiness; that’s specifically the texts by the Seventh Dalai Lama.

But, as the Fourth Panchen Lama points out in one of the sadhanas that he wrote, there are eight levels of abbreviated sadhanas. Thus, we have these long ones by the Seventh Dalai Lama, and there are short ones, and there are eight levels of short ones that can exist.

1. The first is called the co-arising form of Kalachakra, and it is in the form of a simple couple with one face and two arms, as we have in the Kalachakra guru-yoga simple practice here. Also, you’ll find it in the Kagyu sadhanas that were prepared for Kalu Rinpoche’s empowerments by Kongtrul Rinpoche.
2. Then, the second is the solitary hero form, which is the full single deity, with 24 arms and so forth. 
3. Then, there’s a five-deity practice, which is the full couple and the four figures dissolved into the couple, as you have here in the one that I was asked to comment on: you have the Akshobhya couple, Vajrasattva couple and the reverse couples of those, the Prajnaparamita and Vajradhatu Ishvari couple. So, it’s the full couple and four couples dissolved in them. 
4. Then, fourthly, you have the nine-deity practice, which is simply the main couple and the eight ladies around them. That you have, for instance, in the six-session practice that we do, that’s just the nine Buddha-figures. 
5. Then, you have a thirteen-deity practice. What we have here is actually a thirteen-deity practice, because it has those nine figures: the central couple and the eight ladies around them, but then it also has those four couples dissolved into the main figures, so four and nine count as thirteen. 
6. Then, there’s a seventeen-deity practice. It has the nine and the four, so the main couple, the eight ladies around, the four couples that dissolve into them, plus the four other male Buddha couples; so, you get the five dhyani Buddhas in it. That’s the one that the Fourth Panchen Lama wrote on, which I didn’t translate here. 
7. Then, you have a mind mandala abbreviated practice; that’s with 48 figures. 
8. And then, you have an abbreviated practice of the body, speech and mind mandala all together, with 722 figures.

These practices build up like that, and so, if you want to, let’s say, go from the thirteen-deity sadhana to the next level to increase, you don’t have to go all the way, for example, to the mind mandala practice of 48 Buddha-figures. You can just add the other four major male Buddha couples into the thing, and that’s the next step. There are all these graded practices that one can go through.

I asked His Holiness what to teach here, and His Holiness said that it was best to explain the full sadhana – the body, speech and mind one – and then to show how this thirteen-deity practice is abbreviated from it, because then you know the whole context. Because if you only know an abbreviated sadhana and you don’t know where it’s coming from, then you don’t really appreciate what’s going on. But if you have a general idea of the full picture of what’s going on, then you can appreciate that this is just a little piece of it, and in the future, it can be expanded, and you know how the whole thing fits together.

Besides, every commentary is written to the full thing, and nothing is written to any short ones. Thus, His Holiness recommended, and Tsongkhapa himself recommended, doing either the full practice or the mind mandala or, minimum, to do nine deities. Gyaltsab Je said in his commentary that the more extensive the mandala, the more extensive is the purification, since the basis to be purified is more extensive. In other words, if you’re dealing with a more extensive basis in terms of the whole system of what the full mandala is representing – because you have Buddha-figures for all the chakras, all the channels and everything in the body – then since you’re working with a much larger basis, the purification itself will be much more extensive. 

I’ll try to give a general picture of the full body, speech and mind mandala of the Seventh Dalai Lama, which is based on Kedrub Je’s sadhana. And in detail I will give the thirteen-deity sadhana of the Sixth Panchen Lama. I’ll follow the commentaries to Kedrub Je’s full sadhana by Detri Rinpoche, who wrote the abbreviated mind sadhana, and this text I studied with Serkong Rinpoche. I’ll also fill in from the commentary to Stainless Light by Kedrub Norzang Gyatso. He explains many points of the sadhana differently from Kedrub Je. I read this and received extensive answers to my questions on this from His Holiness. And I’ll also fill in from several other commentaries recommended by His Holiness to this sadhana and these points. That gives you an idea of where my explanation is coming from.

Another point that I wanted to make before we get into it is how tantra is taught. The general way in which tantra is taught is that it shouldn’t be presented on a silver platter for people, everything all prepared and prepackaged like a TV dinner. It shouldn’t be like that, that everything is all laid out for you, and you just get on with it. But rather, the tradition of how to teach tantra is that it’s taught only in bits and pieces, and it’s up to the student to put in the effort to organize and to prepare it. That’s why I made these materials here not all readymade for practice. I mean, yes, the purpose has been defeated in terms of typing this up, and it’s helpful for the teaching, but really what one should do – and you’ll have to do it for getting into the other versions – is make the effort yourself to put it all together. All the Tibetan sadhanas are like that: they have little X’s in them of things that are repeated or taken from other texts or other places, and you’re supposed to put it together yourself.

And also, in this sadhana, as some people have pointed out, I put all the names in English of the deities, because the Tibetan will have all the deities in Tibetan, and so if you find the Sanskrit names easier or whatever, change it, put it back into the Sanskrit names. Put whatever is useful for your own practice in terms of vocabulary – Sanskrit, English, put the Tibetan names, whatever you like. Because, as I was saying, the point of sadhanas and all these practices is to build up yourself. You need some perseverance, to put some energy into it, to really work at it.

Also, the tradition is not to explain everything all at once, so that those who are interested will ask for more, and for others just to explain a little bit will be enough. You don’t just dump the whole thing on everybody but just give in brief different points here and there and let people put it together and ask for more if they want more. What you have to do is build up a great deal of positive force, develop enthusiastic perseverance, patience, discipline and so forth, and all of that is built up in working with these tantric materials, putting it together and trying to figure it out. It’s like in teaching math, if you solve all the problems for the students, the students won’t learn how to do it. It’s up to them to learn to solve the problems, so you give them the materials, you give them the methods, and then you let them figure it out themselves, and it develops their understanding and character. This is likewise the approach that’s used in general in Buddhism and quite particularly in tantra. 

The sadhana itself has a preliminary circle of protection, or protection wheel. “Circle of protection” probably is a little bit looser term that could cover all the things that’s in it; and it has its actual sadhana. That preliminary circle of protection has building up the two networks of positive force and deep awareness, so it has that part and also the actual circle of protection. These are the parts that we’re going to find in the sadhana, and for building up the two networks, what we first start with in the long sadhanas is a lineage prayer. All sadhanas start with a lineage prayer. We don’t have it in our short ones, but you go through and have a verse of request to each of the masters of the lineage.

The next thing that we start in all these preliminaries is getting all the offerings ready. In order to build up positive force, we’re going to do a lot of offerings. In order to make the offerings, first you have to purify and consecrate them. And in order to do that, you can’t just do it as whoever you are: you have to do it as a Buddha-figure.

Instantaneously I arise as a Kalachakra (Cycles of Time), with a blue-colored body, one face and two arms, holding vajra and bell, embracing Vishvamata (Mother of Diversity), and standing with my right leg outstretched.

First, you have to generate yourself as a Buddha-figure, and here we have just instantaneous arising. We instantaneously become a Kalachakra, Cycles of Time, with one face and two arms, blue, etc., the way that the simple Kalachakra is: the right leg is outstretched and is red, the left leg is white and bent, and we’re embracing a yellow Vishvamata, our consort.

It starts out with being in a state of voidness. Then you have the four seats that we’re always on: the moon, the sun, Rahu and Kalagni. Rahu is the Growler eclipsing planet; it’s black. Kalagni is the Fire of Time eclipsing planet, and that’s yellow. On a green lotus with a white moon, on top of that a red sun; on top of that a black Rahu; on top of that a yellow Kalagni. Then we arise as a blue HUM. That becomes a blue five-spoked vajra marked with HUM, and then it becomes Kalachakra. In the full form you do it like that, and here in the short form we just do an instantaneous arising as Kalachakra – just zap! – there you are. But you’re on these seats – you’re on a green lotus, and then the four seats. 

Four Types of Offerings

Then we have the four offerings. Offerings are very important, and an awful lot is going on with these offerings, as you can imagine with all this symbolism and the detail of them. In general, we have four types of offerings that are done in tantra: there’s the outer, the inner, the secret and the thusness offerings.

[1] The outer offerings are offering outer, external substances to enjoy, to be enjoyed by our senses. We offer water, flowers, incense and all these things.

[2] Then an inner offering is offering the transformation of inner things within us. Here we have the five nectars, which stand for the five aggregates, and the five meats, which stand for the five elements. You can think of the nectars themselves as being internal substances in terms of blood, urine and feces and these sorts of things, and the meats likewise as being internal substances, like horse meat, elephant meat and so on. But also, you can think of them in terms of what they stand for, being the five nectars are the five aggregates, and the five meats are the five elements. That’s here in mother tantra and Kalachakra. An inner offering is the offering of the transformation of these inner substances.

[3] A secret offering is the offering of the four blisses: there are four blisses of increasing intensity.

[4] And the thusness offering is sometimes spoken of in terms of the offering of voidness, the understanding of voidness, but more usually and fully it’s in terms of the unity of the two truths. Because when you offer the four blisses, it’s in conjunction with voidness anyway, so when the thusness offering is done, it’s in terms of the bliss and voidness on the one side and the form of a Buddha-figure on the other side, so the union of two truths is being offered.

The point of making these offerings is to enjoy them without confusion. They are untainted offerings without confusion. That’s one level of understanding of what is involved, the most general level of what’s involved in the four offerings.

• Outer offering is offering of outer substances to enjoy with the senses.
• Inner is offering the transformation of internal things of ourselves, either the liquids and meats within our body, or the aggregates and elements of our body.
• The secret offering is in terms of the four blisses
• And the thusness offering is in terms of the two truths, voidness and bliss on the one side and body of a Buddha-figure on the other. 

Now, on a deeper level, the four offerings are in connection with the four empowerments.

• The outer offering is in connection with the vase empowerment.
• The inner offering is connected to the secret empowerment.
• The secret offering is in connection with the discriminating deep awareness empowerment. We have a secret offering and a secret empowerment. The inner offering is with the secret empowerment, and the secret offering is with the discriminating deep awareness empowerment. Symmetry is stupid!
• And the thusness offering is in connection with the fourth empowerment, which is called the fourth empowerment. Sometimes it’s called the word empowerment, but most of the time it’s referred to as the fourth empowerment.

Now, there’s no time to go into all the detail, but again, to go back to what I explained before of the method in tantra, now you should put it together; these are the pieces. The offerings are in connection with these empowerments, so you have to put it together with the explanation of the four empowerments in Guhyasamaja of what they’re purifying and what type of seeds they’re planting to know it in general anuttarayoga tantra. And then go into the specific explanation of the empowerment in Kalachakra of what the vase, secret, discriminating deep awareness and fourth empowerments – which are the higher and highest empowerments – what seeds they’re planting and what stages on the complete stage they’re ripening into, in order to start to put together how each of those offerings is in conjunction with each of those empowerments, and to see what they purify and what they ripen into. 

But in general, if you put a little bit of it together, the vase empowerment purifies stains of the body, so we can have a pure body, place, enjoyment and actions. In analogy to the basis, which is our basis level of enjoying sense objects, and in analogy to the resultant level of the pure enjoyment of objects, like a Buddha has pure enjoyment of everything without any confusion, we have a pathway of making outer offerings that is similar to both the basis and what we want to achieve. We have a pathway of making outer offerings, which are seen as the nature of clear light, voidness, bliss, etc., so that it purifies the basis and ripens into the result.

In other words, we want to get rid of just enjoying things completely mixed with confusion and so forth on a basis level, and we want to be able to enjoy things without confusion like a Buddha does, so we practice the path of making outer offerings and imagining that we’re enjoying them without confusion, and imagining that it’s pure and there’s no limit to them, and they never run out and things like that, so we get over the confusion aspect of miserliness, and it acts to purify the basis, our regular enjoyment, our ordinary enjoyment of things, and ripens into the resultant one of how a Buddha enjoys things. 

Inner offerings are in connection with the secret empowerment. The secret empowerment is to purify the speech in general, and specifically to purify the energy-winds, channels and drops. As you recall, with the secret empowerment, you taste the drops of bodhichittas, and through their taste it purifies the speech because you’re working with the throat. And since you’re working with the drops of bodhichitta, then through experiencing the bliss throughout the energy-channels in the body, it purifies that whole system and plants seeds to be able to work with that system.

Also, it has a specific connection with tummo, the inner heat generated at the navel to melt the bodhichitta drops to get the four blisses at the various chakras. The parts of the complete stage that the secret empowerment plants seeds for are those parts that are dealing with tummo. You have tummo in Kalachakra, the inner heat practice. The inner heat is generated at the navel to melt the bodhichitta drop. This isn’t one of the 21,600 drops. You would think that that was enough drops, but in fact there are plenty more besides that, and so it’s not talking about those; it’s talking about melting other bodhichitta drops. It’s the process before you start stacking the 21,600 in order to get all the winds to dissolve and to get the full clear light mind and the full bliss. You have the tummo practices to generate the blisses and to get the bodhichitta to start melting, so that you experience the blisses at the various chakras.

Remember, we wanted to get in one package the subtlest clear light mind, great blissful awareness and deep awareness of voidness – the subtlest mind, voidness and bliss. The tummo helps us to get the bliss factor, and the bliss factor is very helpful for getting down to the subtlest level. The visualizations here in the inner offering are all designed to ripen into the actual tummo practice on the complete stage. Because as I was saying, the thing that’ll really get you into the sadhanas is to realize what everything is ripening into. What the inner offering is ripening into is the tummo practice, which is the deepest significance of saying that the inner offering is in conjunction with the secret empowerment, the second empowerment, because that plants the seeds for that part of the complete stage which is dealing with tummo in Kalachakra. 

The Inner Offerings

You start with consecrating the inner offering:

OM AH HUM HO HAM KSHAH.

You flick the inner offering. You have an inner offering cup. It’s important to have it if you’re in a stable place and you can do it. If you’re not on the road, you can have a cup with some tea in it. A blessing pill will make it even better, but even if that’s not available, at least have a cup of tea or of something like that. That forms an actual basis. Again, Serkong Rinpoche used to point out that you shouldn’t always have your offerings and everything just totally in your imagination: you should have some sort of actual referent basis for the visualization that you’re transforming and so on; it makes it much more alive.

You flick it with your fourth finger and thumb of your left hand, OM AH HUM HO HAM KSHAH. That’s the seed syllables of the six families, which are found on the six chakras. Remember, we wanted to get all the winds to dissolve into the six chakras, and these are the seed syllables of the six Buddha-families associated with the six chakras, and often these six syllables will be located on the six chakras within us. So, it’s our most basic mantra that we’re working with. And again, you start to get the idea I think of why absolutely everything is meaningful on many different levels. You’re always working with this mantra because it’s starting to connect you with these six chakras.

You emit dakinis of the six Buddha-families. You know their six colors: the black, red, white, yellow, green and blue. So, you emit dakinis of the six families to chase away interferences. In the full version, we have a longer vajra dakini mantra, but here we use the six syllables OM AH HUM HO HAM KSHAH.

OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHAH, SARVA DHARMAH SVABHAVA SHUDDHO ‘HAM.

Everything becomes devoid.

This is purifying everything into voidness, which is what you always start out with if you’re going to transform something. First, we get down to voidness, the absence of all fantasized ways about it, and then rebuild from that. That’s the same process that we’re using in terms of all this transformation and purification – to get down to the basic level of clear light with voidness and then regenerate out of that. We do that here, and then: “Everything becomes utterly devoid of fantasized ways of existing.”

Within a state of voidness, from YAM, comes a disc of wind, black, with a shape like a bow, marked with victory banners. 

YAM is the seed syllable for wind. There’s a tremendous whole level of things going on in Kalachakra, in the sadhana and in all the commentaries, with seed syllables, letters and the Sanskrit alphabet. There’s no real chance to go into it here. That would become quite complicated. But in any case, YAM is for wind, and it’s black, with the shape of a bow. That’s a semicircle; the flat side faces towards you, and the round side faces away from you, and it’s marked with victory banners on the sides.

On top of it, from RAM, comes a disc of fire, red, triangular, 

RAM is the seed syllable for fire. The disc of fire is on top of the wind. The wind is a half-moon with the flat side facing you. The fire is a triangle with one point facing you on top of that, and it’s

marked with blazing flames. On this, from AH, comes a grate of three moist human heads, on top of which, from OM, comes a skullcup with a single fissure,

That means one crack. And it’s

white on the outside, red on the inside,

That’s for method and wisdom: the white standing for method, the red for wisdom.

in the middle of which, on a lotus, red with eight petals, from A I RI U LI and LII UU RII II AA, come the five nectars and the five types of flesh, marked with these letters once more.

• First, you start in the center. You have the syllable A, which is in the nature of Akshobhya, and it becomes semen. That’s in the center here. Aside from the fact that Akshobhya is in the center, which he usually is, semen is very important because it’s standing for the bodhichitta drops that are being stacked, so that’s thrown in the center.
• Then in the east, which is the front of the cup, facing towards you, and there, from a syllable I, that’s the letter I, comes marrow; that’s in the nature of Amoghasiddhi.
• In the south (so you can figure out the directions: if east is in front, is the part that’s facing in front of you, then south is the one on your left, since you face the thing), from a syllable RI (that’s the short vowel RI in Sanskrit, you have like in Krishna), you have blood, in the nature of Ratnasambhava.
• In the north, from the short vowel U, comes urine, which is in the nature of Amitabha. 
• And in the back, in the west, from a short syllable LI (that’s again the vowel LI), comes feces, and that’s in the nature of Vairochana. 
• Then in the wind corner (here everything is codenames, and again it’s designed for you to have to keep an awful lot in mind and to keep yourself very alert; so, the wind corner is the northwest corner), from a long vowel LII, comes an elephant. It’s elephant flesh, which is basically the form of an elephant stuffed with chopped elephant meat; it is in the nature of Lochana, one of the consorts.
• In the powerful corner (that’s the northeast), from a long vowel UU, comes bull, and bull is in the nature of Mamaki.
• Then in the truthless corner (that’s the southwest), from a long vowel RII, comes horse, horse meat, in the nature of Pandara.
• In the fire corner (the fire corner is the southeast), from a long vowel II, comes dog meat, in the nature of Tara.
• And then back in the center, from a long syllable AA, comes a human, and that’s in the nature of Vajradhatu Ishvari.

Now you can put it together yourselves, draw it and figure out where everything is, and then it’ll become clear. The nectars then are from the short vowels. The short vowels are the male Buddhas; they’re the seed syllables for the male Buddhas, and they stand for the aggregates. The meats come from the long vowels. The long vowels are the seed syllables of the female Buddhas. That’s how you know that they stand for these various male and female Buddhas, because the letters that they’re generated from are the seed syllables of the male and female Buddhas. 

That’s why I’m saying, now you can start to figure everything out and put everything together, because once you become familiar with whose seed syllable is this and that and what they stand for, then as you go through the sadhana, you start to recognize what’s going on: “Oh, this is generated from the short syllables, short vowels, that’s why,” that’s a confirmation or a sign of when it says in the commentary that they’re in the nature of the male Buddhas. They are, because they’re coming from the vowels of it, their seed syllables. So, the nectars appear from the short vowels, which are the male Buddhas and the aggregates, and the meats are from the long vowels, which are the female Buddhas and the elements. And each of these is marked with those letters again, so it’s sort of like a brand name in them. 

The light-rays of the HUM at my heart rouse the wind to blow, the fire to blaze, the ingredients in the skullcup to melt and boil.

You have a black syllable HUM at your heart, and the wind starts to move, and this wind mandala underneath gets the fire to burn, and then that gets the things in the skullcup to melt and to boil; so, they become reddish. Then what’s left out here but in the longer one is that above all of this, next you get a white syllable HUM, which becomes a white vajra, and this falls into the cup and stirs it, goes around three times, and it changes it into the color of the melted moon, so white.

Then it says:

On the palms of my left, then my right, then both hands in common and then in their center, resting on a moon, then a sun, then a Rahu, then Kalagni, are an OM, then an AH, then a HUM, then a HO, from which light-rays emanate out.

What’s going on here is that we’re talking about four sequential things that are happening. This is the abbreviated version. There are four sequences. Each sequence has several parts: the hand, the planet, the syllable, and then what it brings back, and then what it does; so, it has five parts to it. Because it says here, “On the palm of my left,” and then it has all these other things: resting on a moon, then all this other stuff, are an OM, then all this other stuff, from which light-rays emanate out, and they bring back from the hearts of diamond-strong enlightening Body, then Speech, then Mind, and so on.

So first, from the left hand on a moon is a syllable OM, and then lights go out and bring back the enlightening Body, and that does something to the mixture. What’s being abbreviated here is that you have four sequences, and each has five steps. You’re saying the first step for all four sequences, and the first step for all four sequences is: on the palms of my left, then my right, then both hands in common, and then in their center (that’s the first step of four sequences), then on a moon, a sun, a Growler Rahu, and a Kalagni Fire of Time (that’s the second step of the four sequences), are a syllable OM, then an AH, then a HUM, then a HO (that’s the third step of the four sequences). 

You have to take this apart. The first of the four sequences is “on the palm of my left hand.” Here you have four “hands”: left, right, both in common and their center, so take the first one of this set for your first. Then you have four planets, so take the first planet. Then you have four syllables, so take the first syllable. 

From the hearts of every Vajra Body, then Vajra Speech, Vajra Mind and then Vajra Deep Awareness, they hook back in deep awareness nectars which,

Then you have the hearts of diamond-strong enlightening Body, Speech, Mind and Deep Awareness, so four of them. You take the first of that, the body one, and it hooks back these nectars and

by merging into one with these nectars for bonding me closely, cleanse them of their stains, increase them to abundance, endowing them with a tantalizing flavor, make them blaze with radiance and then transform them into untainted deep awareness nectars.

They do four things: cleanse them of their stains, that’s number one; increase them to abundance, endowing them with a tantalizing flavor, that’s number two; then make them blaze with radiance, that’s number three; and four, transform them into untainted deep awareness nectars. There are four functions. So, you take first, it’s the first hand, planet, syllable, set of Buddha-figures and function; then it’s the second hand, planet, syllable, Buddha-figure and set of functions; and it goes like that. That’s how it’s abbreviated here.

[1] You start off with your left hand, and on your left hand you have a white moon; on top of it, a syllable OM (syllables are practically always standing up, so the OM is standing up). It’s white; light goes out from it, brings back the nectars from the hearts of every diamond-strong enlightening Body. It’s a set of Buddha-figures called enlightening Body figures: white, couple, the male is white with three heads and six arms; so, it brings back the deep awareness nectars, and it does the first of these functions: it purifies them of their stains. It purifies these nectars; it merges into them.

[2] The second is from the right hand: on a sun, there’s a red syllable AH, and lights go out, and it brings back the nectars from the heart of enlightening Speech. Sun is associated with the speech. There are all sorts of levels of correlation of why these things go together, but the sun and the syllable AH are the symbols for speech so that goes together, and it brings that back, and it does the second of these functions: it increases them to abundance, endowing them with a tantalizing flavor.

Increasing them to abundance is a very important function, because what it does is you imagine that the thing can’t run out, that no matter how much you offer, it will never run out, which is very helpful for overcoming miserliness. If you had, let’s say, a pile of ten-pound notes that you were handing out to people, if you knew that it was just a limited pile of ten-pound notes, you’d get a little bit hesitant about giving too much to one or not having enough for yourself. But if you knew that it was infinite and it would never run out, then it would never enter your mind to be stingy. You’d just be able to give and give and give. One develops this sort of thing by having this feeling with all these offerings, that they can never run out. It increases it to abundance; very helpful. 

[3] Then the third one is on both hands in common, which means in the palm of the hands, in the middle of the palms together, you have a black Rahu disc, and then the syllable HUM for mind, which always goes with a black disc of Rahu, and then it goes and brings back the nectars from enlightening Mind, and it does the third of these things, which is to make them blaze with radiance.

Also, you can give a whole level of explanation of how these four functions are connected with body, speech and mind. Purifying the stains is connected with body, increasing them to abundance is with speech, and so on.

[4] Then on the top of the hands, on the opposite side of the palms, you get a yellow Kalagni disc, and from that and on top of it is a syllable HO, which is always what you find on a Kalagni disc. Lights go out and bring back from Deep Awareness – because you always have these four functions: body, speech, mind and deep awareness, which are associated with OM, AH, HUM, HO, which are associated with the four major drops, which I haven’t explained yet, but you have four drops of the waking time, the dream time, the deep sleep time and the fourth occasion of bliss. These lights from a yellow HO on a yellow Kalagni disc bring back the nectars from vajra Deep Awareness. The diamond-strong enlightening Body, those were white Buddha-figures; Speech were red figures; Mind were black figures; Deep Awareness was yellow figures. And it does the fourth of these, which is transform them into the nectars of deep awareness unassociated with any confusion.

It’s not coming out of you. You’re not involved in this at all; you’re just the one who’s consecrating it from your hands; it’s going to the hands. You have a white moon with a white OM; lights go out from that to the white Vajra Body deities, bring back from their heart the wisdom nectars of vajra body, which would be white, and that goes into the cup. It doesn’t go into you. Then from your right hand, where you have a sun disc and a red AH, red lights go out from that to these red deities out there, Vajra speech deities, and bring back the red nectars from them, and that goes into the cup and increases it. And then, on both hands you have a black disc with a black HUM; black lights go out and bring back the black nectars from the black deities, and that goes into the cup and makes it blaze; so for mind. And then from the back of your hands, a yellow disc, a yellow planet with a yellow syllable HO, and yellow lights go out and bring back yellow nectars from yellow deities; that goes into the cup and does the last thing, the final transformation into deep awareness.  Now, we have these nectars of deep awareness. Those are wisdom nectars, which are to hook back in and merge with the nectars that are here to bond us close. You very often have this; it’s translated in a lot of different ways. You have the symbolic beings and the wisdom beings – that’s the usual way of translating – or the commitment beings and the wisdom beings. Here you have the commitment nectar and the wisdom nectar. Commitment actually means to bond you close, to make a close bond with it, and so the ones that you’re visualizing here in front of you are the ones to bond you close. It makes a strong commitment with it by always visualizing it.

And the ones of deep awareness are the actual ones that you’re bringing from the Buddha-fields or from the hearts of these deities, and by merging into it, it sort of makes it more activated or more real, rather than just in your imagination. It has a lot of other symbolism, which I’ll get to later on in the sadhana. But you shouldn’t think that the commitment ones, the ones to bond you close, are totally unreal, and the wisdom ones are the totally real ones, because in fact when it says that on the great of the great stages of the building-up pathway mind (path of accumulation) you reach a point where you receive teachings of Dharma from all different statues and things like that.

Serkong Rinpoche pointed out that what that is referring to is that you can receive teachings at that point from both the visualized things and the awareness ones, so you shouldn’t think that one is totally absurd and the other one is totally real; that’s not the best way of thinking of them. Rather, the commitment ones are the ones that you practice with initially to make a close bond with it, and then the deep awareness ones that you call in allow you to go deeper into it and gain more awareness and insight and so on through it.

The Symbolism of the Inner Offerings

What’s the symbolism here? That’s the symbolism of tummo. What we’re doing is not just a nice visualization from a Walt Disney cartoon, but rather all of this is to ripen into tummo. And the way it ripens is that we have the wind mandala underneath, and the wind mandala causes the fire to burn, and the fire causes the things in the cup to melt. In tummo, the downward-voiding and the life-sustaining winds are drawn to the navel. By drawing them to the navel, you get the fire at the navel to blaze: the tummo heat. By the wind mandala blowing and the fire mandala catching on fire, that’s ripening into the winds coming to the navel and that causing the fire at the navel to ignite. That causes the ten winds of the aggregates and elements to cease coursing in an ordinary way.

Thus, on one level, you have the meats and the nectars. On another level, they stand for the aggregates and the elements of the body. Because remember, this morning we were talking about how you want to get the six winds, the winds of the aggregates and the winds of the elements, to enter into the central channel and to dissolve into the six chakras. That’s done through tummo. Sometimes you speak of six and six, or you can speak of five and five. Here we’re speaking in this symbolism of the inner offering of five and five: the ten winds of the aggregates and the elements are represented when they’re going through their ordinary way through the side channels and so forth. That’s in their impure aspect, so that’s represented by these so‑called dirty substances of the feces, urine, blood, semen, marrow and so forth. What we’re doing is having them melt and become nectar, which is symbolizing that they’re no longer going in their ordinary way, but becoming nectar in the sense that they’re going into the central channel through tummo.

Then, the part that’s left out in the shorter version is that you get this white HUM, which becomes a white vajra, which melts, which goes into the nectar and changes it to white; and that symbolizes the bodhichitta melting from the practice of tummo. Because in tummo the fire is lit at the navel; the fire goes up the central channel; the white bodhichitta drop at the top of the head, here symbolized by the white vajra, then melts and goes down. So, here the white vajra goes into the cup.

Then in terms of the devoid form that you get at this stage of tummo on the complete stage, you have the deep awareness aspects merge with the ones to bond us close. It’s working with the devoid form that you get at this stage (you get devoid forms at all these stages in the complete stage), and it is described in terms of having that become more real, as it were. Then you do this whole purification with the body, the increase with speech, blazing with the mind and transformation with deep awareness – these four functions, which are likewise in conjunction with this devoid form. We are working with the body, speech, mind and deep awareness aspect of that. 

When you’re doing it, it’s in conjunction with ripening into this whole process of:

• Tummo blazing, bodhichitta melting, the winds of the elements and the aggregates represented by these substances in the cup melting, transforming (meaning going into the central channel)
• Out of it, getting the devoid form as a reflection of the winds going in and whatever level of clear light you get at that time, or understanding of voidness that you get at that time, having as a reflection of that a devoid form
• And then the deep awareness ones merging with that, with its aspects of body, speech, mind and deep awareness. 

And the body, speech, mind and deep awareness are in association with these four drops of the four occasions. Because we always speak of body, speech, mind and deep awareness in Kalachakra rather than just body, speech and mind as we have in the other tantras. The four drops are:

• The waking drop at the forehead, which is also called the body drop
• The dream drop at the throat, which is also called the speech drop
• The deep sleep drop at the heart, which is the mind drop
• And the fourth occasion drop, or the drop of sexual climax, at the navel, which is for deep awareness.

These drops aren’t involved in the 21,600 drops. They’re not involved in the drops of bodhichitta melting with tummo. It’s yet another classification and discussion of drops. They are places where you have winds that are normally collected in them. These are the winds upon which you have the instincts for the deceptive appearances of these four occasions. When the energy collects at the drop at the forehead, then it sort of activates that, so you get all the deceptive appearances and grasping of when you’re awake. When it gathers at the throat, you get all the appearances and grasping in the dream state; at the heart, the appearances of when you’re in deep sleep; and at the navel, the appearances and so forth when you’re in a state of ecstasy, of climax.

But on the basis of those four drops and of the dissolutions that are occurring not specifically at the drops but in conjunction with these four drops (the dissolution is at the six chakras, so it gets a little bit complicated), you can generate the four bodies of a Buddha from dissolving the winds and focusing on clear light, in terms of these four drops.

• In conjunction with the drop of the body, which is at the forehead, the clear light that one gets in terms of that drop can appear in the form of Nirmanakaya.
• The clear light that’s experienced in terms of the drop at the throat can appear in the form of Sambhogakaya, so that’s where the Sambhogakaya comes from.
• The clear light experienced in conjunction with the heart gives rise to the Dharmakaya, which would be the omniscient mind of a Buddha.
• The clear light experienced in terms of the navel drop, the bliss drop of the fourth occasion, would give rise to the Svabhavakaya, the Nature Body.

The Svabhavakaya in Kalachakra is not talking about the voidness of the mind, as you have in the other systems, but it’s talking about the bliss of the mind. Being the bliss of the mind, it’s a nonstatic phenomenon, so it’s different from the other tantras. It’s an affected phenomenon, a conditioned phenomenon. 

You have an awful lot that’s going to repeat throughout the sadhana, of dealing with the four: either the four places of the forehead, throat, heart and navel; or the OM, AH, HUM, HO, always placing those four syllables on everybody, instead of just three. That’s for purifying those four drops of those four occasions, so that out of them you can get vajra body, speech, mind and deep awareness, being the four bodies of a Buddha. That’s why you have all these things here: from enlightening Body this comes, from enlightening Speech this comes, from enlightening Mind and enlightening Deep Awareness this comes, and with those four syllables and so on. Again, it will ripen into being able to purify what’s going on with these drops, so that, based on the clear light that one experiences with those drops, one gets the four bodies of a Buddha.

By the way, those four drops go away. There’s nothing special about those drops. When it was mentioned that the body – the corporeal matter, the rough matter of the body – dissolves when one becomes a Buddha, included in that, what dissolves is your 21,600 drops. They all dissolve, they don’t stay in Buddhahood, and these four drops of the four occasions go as well. All you’re left with is the devoid form itself; that’s the body of a Buddha. They’re part of a path: the clear light is part of the path that one can get from these four drops, but the drops themselves aren’t part of a path; the drops are just neutral.

Is it a different clear light for each drop?

No. It depends. Voidness is different; the basis of voidness is different, so in one sense one can say they’re different. The basis for the location of what one is focusing on or what one is working with to get the clear light may be different, but it’s clear light appearing as the Nirmanakaya, clear light appearing as the Sambhogakaya, clear light itself as the omniscient mind, and clear light itself as being the blissful aspect.

The inner offering is really quite profound, because it’s dealing with all these different levels of symbolism and ripening into all these different things, if you’re aware of what’s going on with the thing. It’s like making tummo when you dissolve the five aggregate and five element winds, make the bodhichitta melt so that you get bliss with the vajra falling into it, get a devoid form, and have the body, speech, mind and deep awareness aspects activated within it, so that one can then work to get the four bodies of a Buddha. 

Consecration of the Vajra and Bell

Next thing that you have in the longer versions is the consecration of the vajra and bell. We don’t have it here in our short version. In other anuttarayoga tantras, it’s with being mindful of the significance of the vajra and the bell. Here in Kalachakra, we generate the vajra and the bell into Buddha-figures. The vajra is generated as blue Vajrasattva. In Kalachakra, Vajrasattva is blue, with three faces, six arms, with his green consort. The bell is generated as blue Prajnaparamita, a female figure, also three faces, six arms, with her male consort, who’s green. And they’re generated in these Buddha-figures – into voidness, then as the Buddha-figures; then you bring the deep awareness beings into them; you bring the empowering deities; they get empowerment; you make offerings to them; and then they transform back into the vajra and the bell; and then you’re mindful of their significance. The vajra is the deep awareness of great bliss, so it’s the blissful awareness, and the bell is the discriminating awareness of voidness.

The Outer Offerings

Then we have the consecrating of the outer offering. That we have in our short version. The outer offerings are made to the self-generation. We’re going to have offerings that are made to ourselves and offerings that are going to be made to guests that are going to be brought in later. The ones to us are called the offerings to the self-generation, and ones to the front-generation would be to the deities that are going to be brought in later. 

When we consecrate these outer offerings, here we do it for both sets together. The visualization for it is quite similar. We have OM AH HUM HO HAM KSHAH, so it’s the same bit with the six syllables, the six chakras, the six dhyani Buddhas; dakinis go out, chase away interferences; then there’s the voidness mantra, then everything is void.

Within a state of voidness, from SPHAM’s, come bowls of precious crystal,

SPHAM is the first syllable of the Sanskrit word spharana, which means crystal, which is what the bowls are made of, and so this is very clever: what it’s doing is generating the bowls from the first initial of the Sanskrit name for them, and that indicates that everything exists by mental labeling. Everything exists in terms of names, concepts and labels, and that’s signified by them arising out of the first syllable of their name.

broad and expansive, inside of which, from the melting of the initial syllable of their names, 

Again, like argham would come from A, and gandham would come from GA, so again indicating everything exists by mental labeling.

adorned with a nasal suffix-dot, 

A nasal suffix-dot is the way that it’s written in Sanskrit and also in Tibetan. The study of Kalachakra, by the way, involves the whole study of grammar as well, and many points from Sanskrit grammar come up in it. At the end of syllables, you can sometimes have a dot on top, which indicates that it ends with a nasal sound, like HUM: it’s not just HUM, since the sound “m” is a nasal sound, so it’s close to HUNG, as Tibetans write it. It refers to any of this sort of “m” with a dot at the end of things. That’s not written as a separate letter in Tibetan or in Sanskrit; it’s just written as a dot on the top.

Other times, you’ll have what I call here an aspirated suffix-colon. The colon is two dots, like a colon in English punctuation, which is put at the end of a word. Usually, it’s transliterated as “h” with a dot underneath it. I transliterate it here by actually putting a colon, because that’s the way that it appears.

So, one is with one dot on top, and the other is with two dots to the side, and that has a tremendous amount of symbolism: one dot as opposed to two dots, odd numbers and even numbers, vowels and consonants, method and wisdom. If you just leave it as “m” with a dot and “h” with a dot underneath it, you lose that whole level of symbolism of what’s going on from the point of view of grammar.

Thus, it’s a suffix-dot, so it’s like SPHA, which would be the first syllable of spharana, and it has a dot on top of it: SPHAM. 

come the items for offering and the divine offering maidens. By self-nature, they are voidness and a great blissful awareness, in aspect, items for offering and divine offering maidens; their function, as objects enjoyed by the six sensors, is to enhance a special untainted blissful awareness.

OM ARGHAM AH HUM SVAHA OM PADYAM AH HUM SVAHA OM PROKSHANAM AH HUM SVAHA OM ANCHAMANAM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA GANDHAM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA PUSHPAM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA DHUPAM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA DIPAM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA AKSHATAM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA NAIVIDYAM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA LASYEM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA HASYEM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA VADYEM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA NRITYEM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA GITYEM AH HUM SVAHA OM VAJRA KAMEM AH HUM SVAHA

You have generated the deity, an offering goddess, and she’s holding the object that she’s offering. Here we generate them. There’s no time for me to go through the mudras; that you can learn from geshe-la or later on. Argham is water to drink, padyam is water to wash the feet with, prokshanam is water to shower with, sort of refresh oneself, to sprinkle with, and anchamanam is water to rinse the mouth with. That’s the custom that when an Indian guest would come, you would give them water: first give them something to drink, then they’d take off their shoes, let them wash their feet, give them a shower, then you give them something to rinse their mouth before they would start to eat; the sort of hospitality that one would show in an Indian home. We do the same thing, because all of this, after all, was introduced in India. And it’s not clear in any of the commentaries what color those offering goddesses are, so I don’t know.

Then the next two you have gandham and pushpam. Those are black goddesses associated with the wind element, and gandham is perfume, and pushpam is flowers, a flower garland. I’ll just explain it here for the first one, and then you can get the picture from that. It’s the wind element, and wind is associated with the smell, so you have perfume and also flowers, the smell of flowers.

Then dhupam and dipam are the next pair. Those are red, the element of fire, and dhupam is incense, it’s burning, and dipam is butter lamp, for light.

Then the next pair is akshatam and naividyam: they’re white, so the element is water, and akshatam is fruit, and naividyam is food, a bowl of nectar.

Then lasyem and hasyem are yellow: the element of earth, and lasyem is flirting – she makes all sorts of gestures and stuff to flirt with you as an offering of that – and hasyem smiles, she’s the one who smiles, an offering of smiling. They’re yellow with the element of earth.

Then you have vadyem and nrityem: those are green for the element of space, and vadyem is actually cymbals, so it’s a type of instrumental music, and nrityem is dance, she does a dance.

The last pair is gityem and kamem: they’re blue, for the element of deep awareness, and gityem is a song, so she sings, it’s the offering of song, and kamem is to embrace.

All these offerings are associated with the atoms as well. Everything is made up of atoms of the six elements, which then will correlate with the six chakras, the winds of these elements and so on, and everything always has the colors of these elements. That’s why our twelve offering goddesses are divided into pairs for each of the elements. In the longer sadhana, you’ll also have six more ladies who are generated – offerings of pushpe, dhupe, aloke, gandhe, naividya and shabda, the ones that we usually get in all the other anuttarayoga practices as well. So, it’s an additional offering of pushpe, flowers; dhupe is incense; aloke is again light; gandhe is perfume; naividya is food; and shabda is music. You get that in addition.

Vajrasattva Practice

After that, in the longer version what you get is a Vajrasattva meditation for purification after you’ve consecrated the offerings. We’ve consecrated the inner offering, consecrated the vajra and bell, consecrated the outer offering, and now we do Vajrasattva; and that’s preceded by a mandala offering, for which you call forth the sources of safe direction in order to make a mandala offering to it. You call forth a full mandala of Kalachakra, with the guru inseparable from the Buddha-figures in it, and you offer a mandala. Because, as I was saying with the preliminaries, we always do all the preliminaries as part of the sadhana, so here we’re doing mandala and Vajrasattva. You offer the mandala to the Kalachakra mandala, the guru‑deity in front of you, and the mandala is of the world system of Kalachakra as described in the first chapter of the root tantra. It’s not exactly the same as the world system in the abhidharma. And again, there’s no time to describe that, but it’s slightly different how the continents are arranged, and although it has Mount Meru and the continents, it’s a little bit different. Then you do the Vajrasattva meditation, and that you’re all familiar with. The only difference here is that Vajrasattva is blue, not white, with three faces, six arms, and he has a green consort.

When we do Vajrasattva meditation, can we visualize ourselves as Kalachakra?

Here we’re still the simple couple that we started in the beginning as, but whenever you do Vajrasattva meditation you’re supposed to loosen the pride, or the feeling that you’re the deity. Usually in Vajrasattva practice, you just visualize yourselves in your ordinary form, because you’re not an actual pure deity. If you were a pure deity, you don’t need any purification.

If it’s part of a sadhana and you’ve been visualizing yourself as the deity, at that point you loosen the feeling of really being the deity so that you can do the whole purification practice. Although you may imagine that you’re a deity, you don’t really feel that you’re a pure deity. If you felt that you were a pure deity, you don’t need purification. The point is, don’t emphasize the visualization of yourself as the Buddha-figure; that’s not the important point here. The important point is to purify yourself.

It’s the same Vajrasattva practice, except that Vajrasattva isn’t white and doesn’t have one face and two arms; he’s blue and has three faces and six arms and has a green consort. Aside from that, it’s the same. Every sadhana has Vajrasattva, done with every single figure. Whether you’re Guhyasamaja, Yamantaka, Tara, Vajrayogini, Kalachakra, whoever you are, you have Vajrasattva as part of the sadhana in the preliminaries here. 

You have all of these as part of the sadhana. All the sadhanas are the same, basically: lineage prayer, generate yourself as a Buddha-figure, consecrate the inner offering, do the vajra and bell (although usually the vajra and bell comes before the inner offering, but the order doesn’t really matter), the inner offering, then there’s the consecration of the outer offering, mandala, Vajrasattva; it’s the same. 

Dissolution of the Mandala at the End

Then, at the end of this Vajrasattva practice, in the long version, since the next thing that you have is the building up of the two networks, the source of safe direction is either dissolved into you or is kept there. The source of safe direction is the Kalachakra mandala that we did the mandala offering to, and that’s our refuge in front of us while we do Vajrasattva.

And for the building up of the two networks that comes next, that refuge mandala in front of us will then dissolve into the bountiful field that we put in front of us, the tree, sometimes called the field. Since for building up the two networks you have a field of positive force in front of you, which is another Kalachakra mandala, either the one from the Vajrasattva dissolves into you and then you get a new one, or the one from Vajrasattva just goes up, the new one comes in, and the two merge. It can be done either way.

But here, in the nine-deity practice, it’s all omitted, so where it would occur again, the circle of protection suffices. In other words, we’ll get something similar to it later on, but here in the brief one, all of this is left out. All we had in the brief one was the self-generation, the consecrating of the inner offering and the consecration of the outer offering, and we’ll go directly to the circle of protection.