Review
The six-session yoga practice is a way of helping us to fulfill our commitments from the anuttarayoga tantra initiation, by reminding us of the vows that we’ve taken and also the 19 closely bonding practices, or damtsig (dam-tshig), to make a close connection with the five Buddha-families.
Just to recite these bonding practices – these damtsigs – to recite something that falls in that category is not sufficient. As my teacher Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey always used to say, that if we’re standing out in the rain and we say, “I take refuge in this cave,” but we don’t actually go into the cave, just saying, “I take refuge in the cave,” doesn’t prevent us from getting wet; it doesn’t help. Like that, we need to actually do in our daily lives what we say that we are doing in this recitation. For instance, being generous, practicing the four types of giving, at least having the willingness to give. Remember, Shantideva explained that the perfection or far-reaching state of generosity is not the actual act because, if that were so, then Buddha hadn’t perfected it because there are still people in need, people who are poor. What’s important is the willingness to give, but not simply the willingness to give; if we actually have something that can be helpful to others, we give.
These 19 closely bonding practices help us to purify the obscurations from the five different aspects of our Buddha-nature. Remember, samaya (close bonding practice) is to actually do something, and a vow is to restrain from doing something, to restrain from doing something. It’s not so convenient to call a samaya a vow; that confuses the two. So that’s the difference, the classification.
We can discuss these Buddha-nature factors in terms of body, speech, mind, good qualities and activities. We can also speak just in terms of mind, and then we have the five types of deep awareness. We also have a correspondence with the five aggregates, and when these get confused – or mixed together with grasping for inherent existence and self-cherishing – then we get the five types of disturbing emotions and disturbing attitudes.
There are certain practices that we can do that will help us to overcome these disturbing emotions. For instance, the four types of generosity to overcome being miserly and being arrogant: “I am better than everybody, so I don’t want to share or give anything to anyone.” This type of practice helps us to overcome that, so that we can use the full potential of this aspect of Buddha-nature that underlies it, which would be the equalizing awareness, to see that we are all equal, “I am not better than anybody else.” That allows us to be equally compassionate and loving toward everyone, to help all beings, not just some.
These 19 practices, which are emphasized very much in the six-session practice, are not just an arbitrary list of things, but they are very important practices on the path to enlightenment – to enable us to use our full potentials of Buddha-nature.
When we think of the so-called dhyani Buddhas – these five Buddhas: Vairochana, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, Amoghasiddhi and Akshobhya – it is important to realize that they represent all these aspects of Buddha-nature that we’ve been talking about. They’re not just talking about a group of Buddhas that have come into the mandala and are hanging out there. It’s not an arbitrary thing at all. They are very significant, and they represent many, many different levels of aspects that we are working with.