Kriya Tantra: Six Deities Practice

Before sitting down to do a practice, we do various types of purification. First, we apply a mudra. A mudra is a hand gesture, and these hand gestures are going to be different for the three classes of kriya tantra practice. We have three classes here: the Tathagata or Buddha-family, the lotus family and the vajra family. There are many ways of describing what these families are talking about. When we talk about a Buddha-family, “family” is short for “family trait.” A trait is a characteristic, and what it’s referring to is aspects of Buddha-nature, so we’re working here with three aspects of Buddha-nature. One way of describing it is the Buddha-family as body, the lotus family as speech and the vajra family as mind. We all have body, speech and mind. They can be transformed into a body, speech and mind of a Buddha. If we didn’t have body, speech and mind, we couldn’t attain a body, speech and mind of a Buddha. A rock can’t become a Buddha. 

Thus, we have these three families. The most commonly practiced Buddha-figure in the Tathagata or Buddha-family is Shakyamuni Buddha actually practiced as a Buddha-figure. Manjushri is also in the Tathagata family. The lotus family is where we have Tara and Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig). In the vajra family, the most commonly practiced figures are Akshobhya and Vajrapani. There is a specific mudra for each of these families, and we apply these mudras to five parts of our body: the top of the head, the forehead, the two shoulders and the heart, making like a protection to ward off negative forces. We have more elaborate practices in the higher classes of tantra, and this is the equivalent.

Then we make a preliminary offering, which means that we have to actually set up offerings, whether it’s just water bowls, whether it’s also flowers and incense and so on; we make offerings. Then we take refuge, and that’s safe direction in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. We reaffirm our bodhichitta motivation. Then we need to actually wash ourselves, whether we actually take a shower or just wash our face and hands. That cleanliness is emphasized a great deal here, so before we actually sit down to meditate, we wash. 

Of course, although it is not mentioned here, before we do any of this, we clean the room in which we’re meditating, sweep the floor, dust, and so on. That’s general for any type of meditation. If the room is clean and orderly, that helps our mind to be clean and orderly. If we are inviting the Buddhas and bodhisattvas as our guests, for making offerings to them, we don’t want to invite an honored guest like that to a dirty room. We would clean the room if we actually were inviting the Buddha to our house. Similarly, we clean the place where we are going to meditate. 

Here we actually wash ourselves, and then after washing, we again do the mudras (the five places), and then we sit down to do our meditation. This is a preliminary type of cleansing done on an external level. The kriya tantra deals with the external level as its main emphasis. 

In the practice, of course, there is always, again, refuge and bodhichitta. These are absolutely essential in any of these types of practices. 

Then, we generate ourselves as the Buddha-figure. Now generating ourselves as a Buddha-figure in kriya tantra is done in six steps. In the higher classes of tantra, anuttarayoga tantra, there is a slightly different procedure of steps of how we generate ourselves as the Buddha-figure. 

The Deity as Voidness (Emptiness)

The first step is called the deity (or Buddha-figure) as voidness (emptiness), so the first step is voidness, meditation on voidness. This is very essential. Without this, we cannot have proper tantra practice. Without this, there is no difference between us imagining ourselves as Chenrezig and a schizophrenic or crazy person imagining that they are Napoleon or Cleopatra. We really want to make our practice different from that of a schizophrenic or crazy person and do this properly. Now “voidness” means that, well, literally, it is an absence; it’s an absence of impossible ways of existing. What we need to do in any voidness meditation is to recognize, as Tsongkhapa said, recognize what is our false belief of true existence and the appearance of true existence that our mind is projecting, so identify really what that is. As if, for instance, the simplest level is if everything existed concretely, surrounded by a solid line or encapsulated in plastic as an independently solidly “this” or “that,” establishing its own existence by itself. 

Then, we need to understand the various reasons why this is impossible. Nothing could possibly exist that way. Then, we have to cut off – as His Holiness says, like a big sword of Manjushri – just cut off this belief, and not only the belief but that appearance of true existence and just focus on “no such thing.” That’s not so easy to do, of course. Naturally, it’s not as though, all of a sudden, we don’t see anything. If our eyes are open.... Tibetan meditation is always done with the eyes half open, not staring, unless we’re doing mahamudra or dzogchen meditation, special meditations, but normally, we’re just looking down, it’s not with our eyes closed. 

Like, for instance, we could use an example. Let’s say we are looking for some chocolate in the house, and we look everywhere for where it could be, and after we’ve done a thorough investigation, we realize there is no chocolate. So, how do we focus on “there is no chocolate?” That’s what we’re doing here, but chocolate is something that exists. “Impossible ways of existing” don’t exist. But when we really focus on “there isn’t any” – that’s our main focus – we still see the floor in front of us, but we don’t pay attention to that. The more we absorb ourselves into “there is no such… there is no chocolate,” the less our focus is on the floor that we’re seeing. This is sort of how we start getting into the focus on voidness. 

To imagine that all of a sudden, the screen goes blank is not so easy because, then, what are we doing? We’re visualizing a blank screen. If we’re doing that with our eyes open, we’re still seeing things, so this becomes rather complicated. Voidness meditation is a whole different topic. However, the thing to bear in mind here is that during our sadhana practice, that’s not really the time to do the analytical meditation and go through, in great detail, voidness meditation. If we’re doing the sadhana correctly, we have already done a great deal of voidness meditation, and we’re very familiar with it. 

In the actual sadhana, we just need to go through, like there’s a Sanskrit line “OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHA: SARVA DHARMA: SVABHAVA SHUDDHO ’HAM.” It has to do with the nature of things. Anyway, no need to go through the specifics of the Sanskrit sentence that we say, but it’s just a matter of reminding ourselves of the understanding of voidness. To remind ourselves with some words implies that we have familiarity with it and that we can actually recall our understanding of voidness. If we have no understanding of voidness, reciting the words isn’t going to do anything. Naturally, if we have not done extensive meditation on voidness… okay, perhaps we can do some meditation here, but that’s not the proper way of practicing because, in fact, then we lose our focus on the sadhana. Then, we go do some separate meditation. Maybe one might practice in that way if we don’t have familiarity with voidness, and we haven’t really spent a great deal of time with voidness meditation, but don’t think that that’s the proper way of practicing the sadhana. But at least it might give us the circumstance of doing that meditation. 

However, when we generate bodhichitta in the meditation as well, in the sadhana, it’s not that at that point, we go through the whole seven-part cause and effect process of generating bodhichitta. We should have enough familiarity with bodhichitta to be able to just generate it. By reciting the words, we recall bodhichitta; it comes back up to mindfulness. Again, if we took time out in the sadhana to go through the seven-part and actually generate bodhichitta, that would not be the proper way of doing the sadhana. It would distract us from the sadhana because then we have to start doing all sorts of other visualizations: everybody having been our mother, and so on. That’s why tantra is very advanced. In tantra, through the recitation of the various things that we’re doing in the sadhana, we are just using that as a cue to recollect the insight and the level of the type of mind that we have already practiced before, that we’re familiar with in our sutra practice. Otherwise, we’re just reciting words, which might be very nice because, in Tibetan, it’s in a nice rhythm, but it’s not going to bring us great spiritual progress. 

So, the first step is voidness, that we don’t exist in these impossible ways, fixed as a samsaric being, the way that we are. These deities don’t exist in some solid way. We understand that dependent arising… that with sufficient causes and conditions, based on Buddha-nature, that it is possible that we actually manifest this form. We can think in terms of the inseparable samsaric and nirvana levels that we were discussing yesterday. There are many, many different ways of meditating on voidness or recollecting voidness. In each of the sadhanas – I haven’t seen this explained so much in kriya tantra, but certainly in anuttarayoga tantra – there is a specific line of reasoning and way of meditating on voidness that we have in each of the different Buddha-figure systems. That actually is quite helpful if we’re doing many different sadhanas together where, as in Kalachakra, we think of the voidness of ourselves, the person that’s doing the practice and the voidness of the causes for achieving the result; then the voidness of the result that we are aiming to achieve, and then the voidness of the three circles that are involved (the person doing it, what we’re aiming to achieve and the process of achieving it). That’s one way of doing it. 

In other practices, one emphasizes slightly different things. Like, in Chakrasamvara, the voidness of the aggregates, then of what we’re experiencing, then the voidness of the person imputed on the aggregates, then the voidness of the voidness of the person imputed on the aggregates, and then the nonconceptual level of that. There are different lines that we can go through in each of these sadhanas, and if we have teachings on that and know how to do that, it is very helpful.

The Deity as Letters

The second step is the deity as letters or syllables, and these are the syllables of the mantra; we imagine a moon disc. The discs are always like a full moon, flat and horizontal. We are not talking about a ball here; we are talking about like a round cushion. Standing on this cushion, the syllables of the mantra are always standing up; they’re not lying down. Standing up, we have the seed syllable of the deity – or the mantra, whatever it might be – standing in the middle, facing out. Then, we have the syllables of the mantra standing around it, around the edge of the moon disc. Now, of course, the question always arises of how to visualize these. In anuttarayoga tantra, there’s a difference between whether they’re going clockwise or counterclockwise or facing in or facing out. That has to do with the specific subclass within that tradition, within that deity system, so let’s not worry about that; that’s a specific detail. 

The question is, of course, do we visualize these in the ancient Indian script? Do we visualize them in the modern Indian script (which is different)? Do we visualize them in the Tibetan script? Do we visualize them in Chinese characters? Do we visualize them in our Roman alphabet? How do we visualize them? That’s not an easy question. Serkong Rinpoche basically said it doesn’t matter; we can visualize them with any type of alphabet. Although in certain practices, not here in kriya tantra, we have parts of the letters dissolving into each other, and that’s quite specific. Now it doesn’t matter what part dissolves into what part, but we need something equivalent to that in order to be able to use these syllables in the fullest way in anuttarayoga tantra. So, this depends on each of us, whether we are familiar with these other alphabets or not; that’s basically our choice. Actually, the thing to keep in mind is that the original scripts are very complicated scripts in Indian; they’re not the modern Devanagari script that’s used for Sanskrit – although that might be a very convenient way of visualizing these syllables if we know Sanskrit and Indian languages. In any case, visualize the moon disc with the syllable and the letters around it. 

Now with these visualizations, it’s very important to not just have what’s called the clarity of the visualization. Clarity just means a mental hologram, a feeling; it doesn’t have to be one hundred percent in focus. The main thing, in addition to that, and what needs to have the greater emphasis, is the pride of the deity, which means labeling the conventional “me” on the mind that is generating this. Of course, the mind that is generating it is inseparable from what it’s generating. This is not something which is crazy, because all these appearances as an enlightened being are something that can be generated for real (we can use that word loosely) later on, on our mental continuum, based on Buddha-nature, if we want to look at it that way, or we can look at it as these inseparable two levels of samsara and nirvana. Two ways of looking at it. I mean, we can put those two together in terms of that, and eventually, it will be dominantly the nirvana thing. 

It’s like, for instance, when we meditate on bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is focused on our own individual enlightenment, enlightened stage, that we can achieve in the future, but we haven’t achieved it yet. We can achieve it on the basis of Buddha-nature. How do we focus on our future enlightenment? Well, we can represent it by a Buddha, a Buddha-figure, or something like that. Especially when we are visualizing ourselves as a Buddha-figure, it represents what we are aspiring to, what we are achieving, but it is not something that is crazy. We know that we can achieve it if we put enough work into the practice, on the basis of Buddha-nature with the inspiration of a teacher. Therefore, when we do these visualizations here, of the syllables on the moon disc, we hold the pride of being that. Conventional “me,” not a solidly existent “me;” our mental continuum can create this. 

The Deity as Sound

The next step, the third step, is the deity as the sound. This is the sound of the syllables. Some practices, we have it in this order; in other practices, the sound comes first, and then the appearance of the syllables. We find variations on that in different practices. We imagine that there is the making of the sound of this. OM MANI PADME HUM, for example, if it’s a practice of Chenrezig. Likewise, we hold the pride of that, that the mind, our mind, can give rise to this in a pure form, like a pure mantra, the pure speech of a Buddha. 

The Deity as Form

Then we imagine, that from this moon disc and these syllables that are giving forth the sound, that lights go out, make offerings, and so on, to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and all beings, and then come back in, and it transforms into the form of the Buddha-figure. Of course, various Buddha-figures are sitting on various things and so on, and that is specific to each practice. Now, this is the deity as form, so we imagine that we are now the full appearance of the Buddha-figure. We basically dealt with mind when we were dealing with the understanding of voidness. We are dealing with speech when we’re dealing with the syllables. Now we are dealing with body in terms of the appearance. 

The Deity as Mudras

Then, there is the deity as mudras. Mudras are these hand gestures. Again, we apply the mudra to the five parts of the body, and there is some type of purification and that can indicate activity as well. 

The Deity as Signs

Then, the sixth deity here (it’s called the six-deity practice) is the deity as signs, it’s called. That is referring to the rest of the sadhana practice. Okay? So, we have the deity as voidness, the deity as the letters or syllables, the deity as sound, the deity as form, the deity as mudras and the deity as signs. That is the way in which we generate ourselves as the Buddha-figure, and the rest of the practice is going to include various prayers, strong wishes. We find this very much in the Chenrezig practice, for example, “May I be able to benefit all beings,” this sort of thing.

It’s very important with all these practices to maintain the understanding of voidness. When we have meditation on voidness, there are two phases of it. There is the total absorption (mnyam-bzhag) and then the subsequent realization (rjes-thob), sometimes called post-meditation, but we are still meditating. I mean, either we could still be meditating or not meditating, but it’s not always that we’re not meditating. Certainly, in the practice, we’re still meditating, so it’s what’s subsequent to the total absorption. 

With the total absorption, we are totally focused on voidness. That is what we explicitly focus on. “Explicitly” means there is an appearance, the mental hologram, of voidness, and implicitly – in other words, without it appearing – we are not focusing on anything. As I said, we might still see the floor, but we’re not paying attention to that. That’s not part of that mind, that state of mind, I should say. In other words, there is no appearance of the basis of voidness in the total absorption. We are not focusing on “me,” the appearance of “me” being void. However, on the subsequent attainment, then explicitly, we have the basis for voidness, which would be the moon disc with the syllables, or the sound, or the appearance of ourselves as the Buddha-figure. That’s what actually appears; that’s what is explicitly known. Implicitly – which means that it’s not actually a mental hologram of it – is the understanding of the voidness of that figure, that it is like an illusion; it seems to appear solidly existent, but it’s not. 

In general, when we talk about – in general tantra (this would be the case here in kriya tantra) – that we want to practice method and wisdom together in one state of mind, one state of mind means both of them explicitly. We don’t have them both explicitly here, meaning the hologram of both. The way that it’s done in general tantra is that the mind, the state of mind, is focused on voidness in the total absorption. That’s what is explicitly there, and that mind doesn’t exist by itself; there is a body as well. There is a body as the basis, and the body is a body of a Buddha-figure, even though it doesn’t appear. That’s the way the two are put together. We have a body; we have a body as a Buddha-figure. It’s that body with a mind that has the explicit focus on voidness, even though the body is not appearing. Here this is for general tantra. In anuttarayoga tantra, we get more sophisticated ways of putting them together in one moment of one state of mind. 

Thus, we maintain an understanding of voidness throughout, here, at least implicitly, that all of this is like an illusion.

The main practice, then – after we have done all the prayers and the offerings and things like this – is the maintaining of the deep awareness of what’s called nondual profound and clear. “Profound” is the understanding of voidness, and “clear” is the appearance, the mental hologram. We want to maintain that. This is done in two steps, and the steps here are first a stabilizing meditation of the visualization. We are visualizing ourselves as this Buddha-figure, Chenrezig, for instance, Avalokiteshvara, with one face, four arms, sitting, holding a jewel with the two hands in the middle, and in the right hand a rosary, and in the left hand a lotus (the upper arms holding them). What we would do with the stabilizing visualization, we also have in the more elaborate practices in a mandala, so the building.

In the sadhana practice, now we’ve done the offerings, we’ve done the prayers, and after we have generated ourselves as the Buddha-figure through the six-deities practice, we want to use our kriya practice as a method for gaining a stilled and settled state of mind, shamatha (zhi-gnas). We gain this state through single-minded concentration on the visualization of ourselves as this Buddha-figure. What we are focusing on is first the vague visualization. Then we fill in, for instance, the eyes, and get the eyes in focus. Then, we might fill in the rest of the face and then get the arms more clearly and the rest of the body. Then, what we are holding, so we add them progressively. Then, if we want to really get complicated, the jewelry that we’re wearing, and then the mandala palace around us. So, like this, we practice adding more and more detail if we can do it. If we can’t do it, we do as much as we are capable of doing. It’s a training; it’s a practice. This is the first stage for the stabilizing meditation of the visualization. 

The second stage for stabilizing concentration on the visualization, once we are able to have this visualization clear with its detail, is maintaining the visualization while holding our breath. We do this with a practice called the vase breathing, which is basically an elaborate yoga way of holding our breath. There’s no need to go into the details of how to do it. In kriya tantra, this vase breathing – holding the breath, basically, in our belly – is a way for gaining concentration. If you try just for a moment to hold your breath, breathe in deeply and hold your breath. Observe your state of mind while you’re holding your breath. You find that it’s steady, it’s quiet. 

Holding the breath, then, is a method used for gaining single-minded concentration in kriya tantra because the breath is connected with the energies, and the energies are the energies of conceptual thoughts and so on. If we hold the breath, we hold the energies, and it’s very difficult to have a lot of conceptual, verbal thinking at that same time, so we hold the visualization with that.