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.
Preparatory Practices
We start the practice – start our morning practice – like any practice by cleaning the meditation room. Sweep. Dust. Make it orderly, not a messy room, because if our environment is messy, out of order and dirty, that affects very much the state of the mind; the mind is going to be disorderly. Also, when we clean, this is showing respect. If we have an honored guest coming, like the Buddhas, then we want to have the place clean. Similarly, it is showing respect for what we are doing by making things clean and having everything in order.
Atisha – when he was old, his attendant said, “Atisha, please. You’re too old. You don’t have to clean your meditation room. I’ll clean it for you.” Atisha said, “And am I supposed to ask you to eat for me as well?” From eating, we get nourishment ourselves. From cleaning the room, we get a certain state of mind ourselves, not when we have somebody else do it for us.
Then, we set up the altar. We’re not talking about an altar that we sacrifice a lamb on, but a place for making offerings. It’s just a shelf, the top of our dresser, the top of a bookcase, something like that is quite sufficient. Usually, we put a nice piece of cloth on it and some sort of representation of the Three Jewels – whether it is a statue, a picture, a painting, whatever. I mean, we can do this obviously much more elaborately, but just something to represent the Three Jewels. More elaborately, we could have something to represent the body of a Buddha – so, like a statue – a book to represent the Dharma, and a stupa to represent the Sangha. Or body, in terms of the statue; speech, in terms of the book; a stupa, in terms of mind, but that’s more elaborate. Just all in one is perfectly fine; some sort of Buddha representation is sufficient.
Then, we make some sort of offerings. This is very important if we can do it. What’s quite sufficient is just a bowl of water. It doesn’t even have to be the seven offering bowls. Just a bowl of water, a glass of water, a cup of water is sufficient. Obviously, we can do more elaborately; that’s very nice. However, at least offer something, even just a symbolic offering. This is Atisha’s advice: at least offer some water.
Then, we sit on a proper meditation seat, having a proper posture. Again, depending on what type of posture we use, different types or sizes of cushions are more comfortable. If we’re sitting cross-legged, what is going to help prevent our legs from falling asleep is if we have our backside slightly raised. There’s no need to go into all the details. Tibetans, following the Indian style, sit cross-legged. So, we’ve arranged the seat.
Next, we do like we do at the beginning of a class: We quiet down by focusing on the breath. We reaffirm the motivation. What are we aiming for? Usually, we make three prostrations and then sit down. What we do in the beginning of the class is also helpful, in terms of making the conscious decision that during this meditation, we’re going to try to concentrate. If our mind wanders, we’re going to try to bring it back. If we get sleepy, we’re going to try to wake ourselves up. Otherwise, we just rush into the meditation and then have a period of mental wandering rather than a period of meditation.
Then, we start the practice. All of this is preliminary.
Reaffirming our Understanding of Voidness
It is essential before starting our practice to also reaffirm our understanding of voidness. Everything in tantra practice has to be done within the understanding of voidness, so that means to clear out our concepts and appearances of ourselves in our ordinary form of: “Oh, I’m tired. My legs hurt. My back hurts. I have a cold,” all this sort of stuff. All our daily thoughts. “I have to do so much work today,” all this sort of junk that we identify with. Clear that all out. This is not our true identity. There is no such thing as these things as truly existent and that there’s a “me” that is identified with this. It’s not that we have another, true identity, and this is the wrong one. There is no such thing. There are no such things as true identities. We don’t want to truly identify with being the Buddha-figure either. If we identify with a Buddha-figure as our truly existent identity, then it’s no different from a crazy person thinking that they are Napoleon or Cleopatra.
Being Mindful of Pure Appearances
So clear all of that out and stay with the understanding that there’s no such thing as true existence, true identities. Within that, reestablish the visualization of ourselves as the yidam that we are practicing, the Buddha-figure that we’re practicing. We are trying to maintain this visualization – this feeling of ourselves as this Buddha-figure – all the time, all day long. That’s one of the most difficult aspects of tantra practice, to remain mindful of that. Not always think of ourselves in terms of our ordinary appearance, with wrinkles, gray hair, and pain in the lower back. In other words, we’re keeping our focus all day long on our Buddha-nature, not on our ordinary samsaric form. We re-establish this visualization, particularly if we didn’t instantly think of that when we woke up in the morning.
We visualize the place around us as a pure land, which means a smooth flat plane, made of blue beryl. Beryl is – that’s usually translated as lapis lazuli, but actually it is a different stone – but it is blue, dark blue, spotted with gold flakes. Don’t imagine this as cheap linoleum on the kitchen floor. Blue is for dharmadhatu, the blue sphere of reality. It’s spotted with gold within that sphere of reality of the clear light mind; it has all the good qualities, complete, and it’s smooth of all faults and obscurations. This represents the state of mind that we are in, and that is the environment. This environment represents the environment of the state of mind that we’re in. We’re not just talking about going to Buddhist Disneyland and doing our visualization there, like at a smooth roller-skating rink. It’s a state of mind.