Six-Session Yoga: Refuge and Bodhichitta

We have the spiritual teacher in the form of the yidam – let’s say Vajradhara here – and sitting on a throne. The throne is supported by eight lions; they are on the corners of the throne. I mean, each side has two corners, so we have eight. They have one paw up, holding the throne, and one paw down on the floor – from their front paws. They are alive. They’re not paintings, they’re not statues and they’re not stuffed. They are alive, and they are chasing away interferences. On the throne, there is a lotus, and then a flat moon disc in the center of the lotus. Then, on top of the moon disc, a sun – flat sun disc, like cushions. 

In the text Uttaratantra by Maitreya – the Furthest Everlasting Stream – it speaks about the eight qualities of the Buddha, eight qualities of the Dharma and eight qualities of the Sangha. The eight lions represent these sets of eight qualities. Three sets of eight. The lotus, moon and sun represent renunciation, bodhichitta and the understanding of voidness. Or in terms of anuttarayoga tantra, the three seats have another level of meaning – the lotus, moon and sun – they mean the illusory body, clear light and the unified pair of the two. 

Then, if we want to visualize an elaborate form, we can visualize the various Buddhas and bodhisattvas all around the central figure, representing the Sangha refuge. They’re all sitting on the same throne – a very large throne – but everybody has their lotus, moon and sun. Everybody is on their own set of three cushions, and, in elaborate form, all the figures have in front of them a little table, and on top of it, the texts that they have taught or written. That represents the Dharma. 

Alternatively, we can visualize in a simpler form just the guru-yidam as incorporating all Three Gems. The guru’s mind is the Buddha refuge, his speech is the Dharma refuge, and his body is the Sangha refuge. In Lama Chopa (the Guru Puja), we have inside the central figure, all the various parts of the body are the different Dhyani Buddhas and bodhisattvas and so on; that’s also speaking in terms of the body being the Sangha, representing the Sangha. 

It’s very important that we visualize or imagine the guru-yidam in front of us as a live figure. Alive – not stuffed and not a statue – and three-dimensional, but made of transparent clear light. Serkong Rinpoche said if that’s very difficult for us to do – because, I mean, the form is as this Buddha-figure – if that’s a little bit difficult for us to imagine, this Buddha-figure (particularly Kalachakra, with all the arms and so on) being alive, the guru in that form, we could also just picture the guru in his or her actual form, ordinary form. However, that’s only if we can’t do it as the yidam, if that really becomes too artificial or difficult for us. The point is it’s alive, in clear light. Even with the ordinary form, we imagine clear light. 

Then, we start by taking safe direction, putting a safe direction in our lives. In order to sincerely say, “I’m putting that direction in my life,” we need to have the causes for it. We always repeat the refuge formula three times. 

Before we recite it the first time, we imagine that we’ve actually fallen off a cliff into the worst rebirth states and that we are suffering. We think of the qualities of the Three Gems and the safe direction that they offer to get out of it, and so with that motivation, with that emotional state, then we have the motivation. That’s the aim. The aim is: “I’m going to put that direction in my life, to get out of this terrible situation that I’m in.” Then it has meaning. There’s some feeling behind it. I take safe direction. I’m going to take safe direction from the Buddhas, the Dharma and the Highest Assembly (that’s the Sangha). It doesn’t mean to our enlightenment – that’s wrong, the translation – it means to our purified state. It’s talking about the three types of bodhi, about liberation. Till we get liberated, either liberation as a shravaka arhat, pratyekabuddha arhat, or bodhisattva arhat, or Buddha. 

So, the first time: I’m in this terrible state. Or, if it’s difficult to imagine worse rebirth states, just that we’re really in a terrible situation in our life. Our life is going nowhere; it’s just going down and down, and we’re doing more and more negative things. It’s horrible, as we don’t want it to be like this. We really dread it continuing like this. Here the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha offer a direction out of that, so that’s the direction that we want to go in, refuge. That’s common to Hinayana and Mahayana, and it’s not enlightenment; we’re talking about liberation. 

In the first repetition, we’ve fallen off the cliff. For the second repetition, we are on the edge of the cliff, about to fall off, losing our balance and about to fall off into a terrible situation. Then, “Ah! Here’s the direction to get out of it.” That’s the second repetition. With the third repetition, we are some distance away from the edge of the cliff, but we are sliding down toward the edge, and we don’t know when we are going to fall off. We don’t know when our death is going to come. We’re heading gradually toward that direction of falling off into a hopeless state, and so again, we use the direction to avoid sliding off the edge. These are very powerful – they’re states of mind – for really getting a sincere feeling of safe direction. It comes out of the Fifth Dalai Lama’s lam-rim. 

With that, we repeat this first line three times: 

I take safe direction, till my purified state, from the Buddhas, the Dharma, and the Highest Assembly.

This fulfills the three bonds for Vairochana, of the three taking safe direction in the Three Jewels. 

Is this related to lower rebirths? 

Yes, that’s in fact what the instructions are talking about. We’ve fallen into a worse rebirth, or we’re about to fall. Or we have the karma to fall, and we’re sliding towards it; we don’t know when it’s going to happen. 

However, worse rebirths are difficult to work with for us. I mean, it has to be real; otherwise, it doesn’t develop any sort of emotional feeling. Just think: “I’ve fallen into some horrible samsaric situation in which I’m compulsively driven by my addiction to worldly things,” whether that’s constantly making money, sex, drugs, or whatever it is. Or “I’m just on the edge, about to fall into that.” Or “I have such strong karma for it,” we’re sliding toward that. “I really want out of that, and this is the direction that I’m taking out.” 

We use our imagination: “I have become an old lonely person who’s very bitter, and my life has been meaningless. I’ve done nothing positive. I’m sick and nobody takes care of me. My mind is just filled with complaining all the time, by negative thoughts, never anything positive going on.” Is that what we want at the end of our lives? This is what we end up with? Imagine we are in that situation, or we are about to fall into that situation. They’re about to send us into an old age home, and there we’re going to just sit and be absolutely miserable, bitter and complaining. Or we have the karma: “My life is heading in that direction. I don’t want that when I’m old. I want to have some positive things that I’m doing, even if I spend my old age saying Om mani padme hum, like Tibetans, doing something positive.” We use our imagination. We make it real, Something that moves our heart. 

The Fifth Dalai Lama wrote that when we meditate about these worse states of rebirth, don’t meditate on it as if we were watching a show: that there are the worse states over there, and we’re meditating by watching them. We imagine them by actually feeling, trying to feel what it would be like to be like that, and how horrible that would be; for example, being a cockroach, and anybody who sees us just wants to step on us. Or a fish in the ocean and all these other fish are around there trying to eat us. It’s horrible and not nice; we don’t want to experience that. 

Then, we refresh the causes for bodhichitta, bodhichitta damtsigs. We imagine that our mother – and if it’s not our mother, it’s somebody that we really love who has been really kind – that our mother has fallen into this worse situation, or she is about to fall into it. Or, the third time, that she’s sliding down; she has the karma to fall into this. I mean, sliding down, we need to have karma for this, so we develop compassion. We really don’t want this to happen to her or to others that we feel about. Everybody is in that situation, not just our mother. Then, we take some responsibility to do something about it, to try to help, and so we need to reach enlightenment to overcome all the obscurations that prevent us from using our Buddha-nature potentials. 

What is the object that we are aiming for with bodhichitta? It’s not enlightenment in general, some sort of enlightenment up in the sky. It’s not the enlightenment of Shakyamuni. The object is our own enlightenment, the enlightenment further down on our mental continuum, our own individual enlightenment. That is the object of focus of bodhichitta. We are moved by compassion and taking responsibility, and that future enlightenment of ours is not just a total myth that can’t happen. We have the strong intention: “I’ve got to get there. I’ve got to reach that state as quickly as possible. I have to become this as quickly as possible so that I can then be of most benefit to everyone.” 

Thus, it starts with compassion. To do that, we need to build up the two enlightenment-building networks of positive force and deep awareness. With this in mind, we reaffirm our bodhichitta with the next line: 

By the positive force of my giving and so on, may I actualize Buddhahood to help those who wander.

By the positive force of my giving and so on. That’s saying that by these two enlightenment-building networks, the two collections, by means of this (by giving and so on), we don’t want that just so that we get richer in samsara. “May that act as a cause,” and dedicate to enlightenment. By that, may I reach Buddhahood to help those who wander. That’s another term for sentient beings, those who wander from one rebirth to another, up and down, suffering. 

We repeat this verse three times, this first verse. It’s actually better to repeat the first line of it three times, and then the second line of it three times. However, we do that only for the first repetition if we’re doing three of the six repetitions at a time, which is the usual way of doing it. It’s three times, and for each one: (1) they’ve actually fallen, or (2) about to fall, and (3) have the karma and are sliding down to fall. 

I hope that’s clear. First, with the refuge three times, then the bodhichitta three times. Obviously, we can also do refuge and bodhichitta one time. However, I think it’s more effective if we do each line three times separately. This is the way of practice that Khenzur Rinpoche Ugyen Tseten recommends. In fact, he says that the way that he practices is that, in all these practices where we do all these recitations, he repeats every line three times. Because if we do it just one time, we tend to do it very, very quickly, and just “blah blah blah,” and we go through the whole thing and don’t really have time to get into the state of mind or the proper visualization. Thus, he repeats each line three times and then goes to the next line so that he actually gets into that state of mind. This is his own personal guideline instruction. 

Then, we imagine that a replica of the guru-yidam dissolves into us, and it refreshes our visualization of ourselves as a yidam. We imagine that we do Buddha-activities – lights go out from us, and we transform all beings into Buddhas. We reflect and think, “Why is it that they are not yet Buddhas, and we’re just imagining doing this for them?” It’s because they lack equanimity: they are attracted to some, reject and repel others, and ignore others. 

In this way, we make the transition to the meditation on the four immeasurable attitudes. 

May all beings be parted from clinging and aversion, feeling close to some and distant from others,

That’s immeasurable equanimity. With each of these four immeasurable attitudes, we have four steps. First is the intention: “How wonderful it would be if they were like this.” “How wonderful it would be if they had equanimity so they actually could become Buddhas, not just my imagining it.” The second is the aspiration: “May they become like this,” this is the wish, “May they gain this equanimity.” The third is the exceptional resolve: “I shall bring them to this state. I shall help them to reach this state. I’ll help them.” It’s not that we have the power to just cause them to be like that. We can help them, but obviously, they have to develop themselves, so we take that responsibility. “I’m going to do it.” The fourth one is the request, the fourth step, which is: “O guru-yidam, inspire me to be able to do this.” From this, the object of refuge – the guru-yidam in front of us – we see some lights come and inspire us to do this. 

The second immeasurable attitude: 

May they gain the joy that is specially sublime.

That’s the wish for them to be happy, isn’t it? Also, with this, we do the four steps. This is immeasurable love. “May they be happy.” That’s immeasurable love, so that fulfills the Ratnasambhava bond of giving love. “May they be happy.” Although the text on this is short,  “may they have joy,” that’s happiness, but also the causes for happiness, obviously. That’s giving them: “May you be happy. And I’m going to try to help you, bring you happiness so that you can reach happiness.” Generosity. 

The next line is immeasurable compassion: 

May they find release from the ocean of their unbearable problems.

May they be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. That’s immeasurable compassion, with the four steps. What is it saying? May they gain release from the ocean of samsara, so that is, “May they gain liberation.” 

The fourth one is: 

May they never be parted from liberation’s pure bliss.

This is immeasurable joy, it’s called. What that’s referring to is, “May they gain enlightenment.” With immeasurable compassion, may they gain liberation. With this immeasurable joy, may they gain enlightenment. 

Equanimity: may they gain the equanimity that will enable them to progress and eventually become Buddhas. Then happiness: may they be happy. With compassion, may they gain liberation, and with joy, may they gain enlightenment. It’s a progression like that. 

May they gain full enlightenment, that’s this joy. The last one, this immeasurable joy that they gain enlightenment, this is the Ratnasambhava of giving freedom from fear. How is that? Because if they become Buddhas, then they will be free from all fears whatsoever. 

A Buddha has the four states of fearlessness: He’s free from the fear of proclaiming his own realizations and attainments – “I have attained this” – no fear in saying that, that anybody’s going to catch them, that they were lying. Also, there’s no fear in proclaiming that “I’ve gotten rid of all these things, all these shortcomings.” Nobody’s going to be able to catch them, that they still have attachment, that they still have anger. Then, the Buddha has no fear of proclaiming what others must rid themselves of. A Buddha can see that we have to get rid of this type of attachment or this sort of thing. A Buddha has no fear to assert this, to say that; there’s no doubt. The fourth freedom from fear is that a Buddha has no fear in proclaiming the opponent forces that others need to rely on in order to rid themselves of these causes of suffering. For instance, you need to do this; you need to do that, and that will enable you to get rid of this obscuration, this fault, and so on. There’s no fear in saying that, so this is giving them freedom from fear. “May you reach enlightenment” – have immeasurable joy of enlightenment – so that we never have any fear of anything, never have to be afraid of anything. 

Now please bear in mind that in other practices, these four immeasurable attitudes will be in a different order and they’ll be put together in a different way. This is just one way of doing it that appears here. There are many variations, even within Gelug, within these types of practices. In the Kalachakra six-session, these four are in a different order, so don’t be surprised. We had this discussion. “It’s not this. It’s not that. It’s not like it was in this six-session. It’s another one!” We get angry; we criticize. “Argh, this is confusing,” and “Argh, I can’t take it,” and all this sort of stuff. All it simply is, is it’s one way here and it’s another way there. That’s the reality of what it is, no big deal. There are any different ways of putting them together. 

Next, we have the development of aspiring bodhichitta, which is sometimes called the wishing state of bodhichitta. The aspiring state is divided into the mere aspiring state and the pledged state of wishing bodhichitta. 

The mere wishing state, that’s just the next line: 

To free from the fears of samsara and complacent nirvana all wandering beings, I take hold of the mind that wishes to gain an enlightened state

The second half of this verse is the pledged state, and the pledged state of the wishing bodhichitta is the pledge that we’re not going to give it up, never going to give up this wish, this aspiration, so that’s with the second line here, which is: 

And from this moment on, till becoming a Buddha, I shall never forsake it, though my life be at stake.

So, we had the merely aspiring state and the pledged aspiring state of bodhichitta. 

There are five trainings that are involved once we have this pledged state of wishing bodhichitta, and these we need to mention here because various verses that follow will help us to keep this. The first is to be mindful each day. In other words, remember the benefits of developing bodhichitta. The second is to reaffirm our bodhichitta three times each day and three times each night, which we already did in the earlier verse, but we also do it again in the next verse. Then, we work to try to build up the two enlightenment-building networks of positive force and deep awareness (or merit and wisdom), and that, we already said we were going to do by the positive force of giving, and so on. We’ve set our intention to do that already. The fourth one is never to give up on anyone. The fifth is to rid ourselves of the four dark actions and do instead the four noble actions which are the opposite of them. 

The first dark action would be to deceive our gurus, or the Three Gems, or our parents, when we say we’re doing something when we’re not. The noble action that corresponds to that is never to do that. It’s the opposite. 

The next one is being nasty or disparaging to a bodhisattva, saying bad things about a bodhisattva. That’s very difficult because we don’t know who really is a bodhisattva. The opposite of that would be to regard everyone as a teacher. In other words, see everybody with a pure appearance. 

The next dark action would be to cause others to regret the constructive things that they’ve done, even if it’s not something that’s our own personal choice. Somebody is, let’s say, practicing some other form of Buddhism than what we follow, or going to church, or something like that. It’s basically constructive. We don’t cause them to regret that. “Oh, you shouldn’t do that. That was no good.” This type of thing. 

Let’s say somebody was going to a misleading teacher or an unqualified Buddhist teacher. We wouldn’t say, “Well, that was really bad, what you did. You shouldn’t have done that.” They would regret that and feel that they were really stupid. That’s not helpful. We can help them to go further and just look at what they did as, well, this was a first step. Now maybe it’s time for a second step. Don’t make them feel bad for what they did. If they learn something constructive from it, well, then there was something constructive in it. It was their entrance, and maybe it wasn’t perfect, but now go further. It was basically a constructive thing. 

Then, the noble action that corresponds to that is to encourage others to the Mahayana path – if they are receptive; it doesn’t mean go and be a missionary. This obviously was originally intended in terms of this whole Hinayana/Mahayana thing, that if somebody follows Hinayana that’s certainly not by any means destructive; it’s a constructive thing. We shouldn’t go as a Mahayanist and say, “No, that was bad. Now you must become Mahayana,” and make them think that following Hinayana was wrong. 

The fourth one – the dark action – is to be pretentious, which means to pretend to have qualities that we don’t have and to be hypocritical, which means to hide the faults that we do have. In other words, to have as our motivating thought something different from the exceptional resolve – which is that we want to take responsibility to try to help others, not to deceive them. The opposite would be – the noble action – would be to have as our motivation in our interaction with others this exceptional resolve (I’m going to try to help you) and to be honest in terms of our capabilities. 

When we have this pledged state of wishing bodhichitta – once we say, “I’m not going to turn back. Not going to give up my bodhichitta,” this wish – these practices will help us to maintain that direction of bodhichitta. It’s not yet the bodhisattva vows. It’s the basis, the first training, and on that basis, we are ready to take bodhisattva vows. 

The next verse is generating the engaged state of bodhichitta, which is actually taking the bodhisattva vows. This means avoiding the 18 root downfalls and the 46 faulty actions. Those 46 are divided into different sections. We have one section for each of the paramitas, the far-reaching attitudes. These are things we want to avoid because they would hinder our development of these far-reaching attitudes. Then, there is a final section of them, of some of these vows, that we want to avoid things that would prevent us from helping others in general. 

When we have this verse to reaffirm our bodhichitta from the pledged state, we both reaffirm our wishing state that we did earlier, and here we reaffirm our engaged state, our bodhisattva vows. This verse is: 

Gurus, the Triumphant, and your spiritual offspring, please pay me heed: Just as the Blissfully Gone Buddhas of the past reaffirmed their bodhichitta aim and lived by the stages of bodhisattva training, I too reaffirm my bodhichitta aim, to help those who wander, and shall train in the stages of bodhisattva training.

The Triumphant refers to the Buddhas. They’re triumphant because they have triumphed over all the obscurations. 

Then, bodhisattvas. They often use this term “spiritual offspring” – sometimes that’s translated as “spiritual sons,” but that’s a bit gender-biased. They are born from the Buddhas, not in the sense that they’re actual biological children, but bodhisattvas come from the example of Buddhas, so we want to become a Buddha ourselves. They are “born” from that example of a Buddha, and they will grow up spiritually to become Buddhas. That’s why they’re called the spiritual offspring of the Buddhas. 

“Sugata” is another epithet of a Buddha, and it means Blissfully Gone One, or Blissfully Progressed One. They’ve progressed or gone through the paths. In other words, by following practices that bring blissful awareness of voidness, they have attained Buddhahood. We can understand “blissful” here in just a sutra sense of freeing themselves from suffering. Or in a tantra sense, speaking of blissful awareness. They, at the end, have progressed or gone to the highest blissful state.

We repeat this verse three times for the first of these repetitions, and then after that only once. 

After we’ve taken the bodhisattva vows or reaffirmed our bodhisattva vows, then we remind ourselves of the benefits and advantages of having developed bodhichitta. It was one of the five trainings from the pledged bodhichitta, the pledged state of wishing bodhichitta. We remember the benefits; that gives us more encouragement to go on. We remember all the benefits of – that it gives great strength to our practice, and all these sorts of things. There’s no need to list them; there’s a whole first chapter of the Bodhicharyavatara about that. 

The verse reads: 

Now my life’s become fruitful, for having wonderfully attained a human existence, today I’ve awakened my Buddha-nature and now have become a Buddha’s spiritual child

That’s how it’s usually translated: “I’ve been born into the Buddha-families.” What that means is, “born” is also the same term as “awakened” – it’s not that we weren’t in a Buddha-family before – we have awakened. Buddha-family, remember, means Buddha-nature. Now, we’ve really activated that Buddha-nature that we all have – become a Buddha. 

And now have become a Buddha’s spiritual child. Again, a Buddha’s spiritual child is, as we explained before, a bodhisattva. 

One can take this verse in a very literal way – of being born in the family – but a much deeper level of understanding this is that we’ve awakened Buddha-nature, and now as a bodhisattva can really work to be a Buddha. 

The verse continues: 

Now, in whatever way possible I shall undertake actions that accord with its traits, and never defile this impeccable nature that lacks any flaw.

By keeping the translation in terms of family, the way it’s translated here – that we will undertake actions that accord with this family, and never defile this family that lacks any flaw – that becomes rather sociological. Of course, somebody could understand it in that way because the word is the same, but really it’s talking about Buddha-nature. We’re always going to act in accord with this Buddha-nature, these qualities that allow us to become a Buddha. That Buddha-nature is something which is impeccable. It doesn’t have any flaws. It’s completely pure, so we’re not going to act in a way that’s going to cloud that. This is what it is talking about. 

Please keep in mind, by the way, that this word that is translated as “family” is actually the Sanskrit word for “caste.” It’s not specifically “family.” It’s the word for “caste,” and that’s the word that’s used for Buddha-nature. It’s not just our mother and father, but a very Indian way of expressing things. There is something sociological behind it, that we are no longer in one of the typical Indian castes, that now we’ve joined the Buddha caste – so there’s no caste, in a sense; no caste differences. We’re all in one caste, and now this is a different caste, and in that caste, we can become Buddhas. There is that level of understanding of the way of expressing it. 

Further, there’s that level of meaning and then Buddha-nature level of meaning. As we’ve seen in many of our studies here, the teachings always have several levels of meaning. I think for us Westerners to understand this verse in terms of caste, it’s not so relevant. Understanding it more in terms of Buddha-nature, I think, is much better. If we only understand it in terms of family, then we can get into clan warfare and all this sort of irrelevant stuff. The Buddha-nature level of understanding, then, I find much more relevant. 

Now, the preliminary steps within the six-session practice – that’s basically the safe direction, the four immeasurables and bodhichitta; we have something similar to that at the beginning of most practices. 

We need to dissolve the objects of safe direction, objects of refuge. If our guru has passed away, has already died, then we imagine the visualization of the guru-yidam dissolves like a rainbow into voidness. Alternatively, particularly if the guru is still alive, then we can do one of three different visualizations. I mean, we can also do this if the guru has died as well, but they make this distinction when explaining it. 

We can either imagine that the visualization returns to the actual pure lands. Or that it rises above and then, when we do the next visualization, it dissolves into that next visualization – because we’re going to do another visualization that’s almost identical, in terms of the spiritual teacher. Or we could imagine that this visualization of the guru-yidam gets smaller and smaller – comes towards us and gets smaller and smaller – turns into a tiny ball of light, and that ball of light enters us in the middle of our brow and goes down the central channel to our heart chakra and dissolves into us. We do the same thing, by the way, in the Lama Chopa, the Guru Puja, in the equivalent place. 

If we’re doing this last visualization – dissolving into our heart chakra – we feel more inspired, and again, we reaffirm the visualization of ourselves as Buddha-figures, as yidams, and in our hearts, we have a flat moon disc and an upright blue syllable HUM standing on it. 

Now comes the interesting question. What alphabet do we use for the HUM? If we look at the Sanskrit language, the Indian alphabets for Sanskrit have changed over time. The alphabet that is used now, Devanagari, was not the alphabet that was used a thousand years ago. It wasn’t the alphabet that the Tibetans encountered when they first came across these Indian practices. The Sanskrit alphabet of the time when they received tantra, the alphabet that Sanskrit was written at that time, Tibetans call it Lantsa script, which is actually the Sanskrit word Lanja (i.e., Ranja or Ranjana script). The Lanja script was used in Nepal, Kathmandu Valley, at the time when the Tibetans came in contact with tantra. 

In Tibetan monasteries, when they decorate the monastery, then up by the ceiling – just below the ceiling – they write mantras. Those mantras are also written in this same Lantsa script. We also find this script used in the powder mandala of Kalachakra, to represent the main deities in the charnel grounds around the palace. The Tibetans use the original script that they got these mantras in only for these purposes. In their meditation practices, Tibetans visualize mantras in their own Tibetan alphabet. Obviously, the Tibetans were able to practice successfully, visualizing in their own alphabet; therefore, we can conclude, what? That it doesn’t depend so much on the alphabet that we use; it’s just a symbol.

This is a general principle that is followed from the monastic tradition, the way the Tibetans follow it. My own teacher Serkong Rinpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama are very strong on this point, which is that we figure things out by logic. Logically, we can conclude that – and this, Serkong Rinpoche said quite explicitly – that we can also visualize in our own Western alphabets. It doesn’t make any huge difference, especially if it’s very difficult for us to visualize in these other alphabets when we don’t know the language. 

This means, of course, that when we have practices in which parts of a syllable dissolve into each other and so on, that we need to be inventive, not just make it up ourselves. That learned masters in the West figure out some sort of equivalent way of practicing because, again, it’s representing a dissolution, stages of dissolving. Often, there’s going to be the more complex practices: within the syllable, there is maybe a dot on top, and inside that dot is another syllable, and inside the dot of that tiny one is yet another syllable. I mean, there’s a lot of practices to get our mind microscopic. This also could be done by adapting it to the Western alphabet. There’s nothing sacred about an alphabet.

Serkong Rinpoche gave this guideline, that obviously, the alphabets have changed. It has not really been worked out. I don’t think Western teachers have really – or Tibetan teachers – have really given it a great deal of thought. We’re just talking here in principle, that if we cannot manage to visualize with the Tibetan syllable, don’t get hung up by it. That’s the point, particularly if we’re trying to visualize the hundred syllable mantra going around in a circle. Well, that’s quite difficult if it’s in an alphabet you don’t know. Probably it would make far more sense if it were vertical – with the H, and then the U underneath, and the M underneath because that makes it easier for dissolution. 

People now do it in the Tibetan alphabet; if we can manage that, very good. It’s standard. It’s pointless thinking in terms of the future historical development of Western Buddhism. It doesn’t follow the historical model that it would stay in the script of the donor language. It’s changed, but the Tibetan alphabet is very weird, in any case, for transcribing Sanskrit, because there are many Sanskrit letters that are not in Tibetan, so they write certain Tibetan letters backwards, and so on. That’s very strange as well. One can argue that, well, it’s better to visualize in the present-day Sanskrit alphabet, Devanagari. I know both Sanskrit and Tibetan. For me, it’s much easier, actually, to visualize the Sanskrit alphabet, especially for long mantras, but that is an individual matter.