Kriya Tantra: The Four Types of Mental Stability

The first one that we do is the mental stability on the four types of recitation, recitation of the mantra. This is when we do the mantra recitation, and the four types of recitation that we do of the mantra are with the focus on:

• Ourselves as the deity, let’s say Avalokiteshvara (Chenrezig).
• Avalokiteshvara in front of us and doing the visualizations of the mantra as if they were coming from in front of us.
• Avalokiteshvara in our heart, so ourselves as the Buddha-figure, Avalokiteshvara, and then sitting in our heart, Avalokiteshvara, and the mantra coming from there. When we say the mantra, then there are also the lights going out, and so on.
• The letters in the hearts of these various figures, so either just ourselves as Avalokiteshvara, and then a moon disc, and then the syllables of the letters of the mantra on the moon disc, going out (the sound) as we recite the mantra (in all of this we imagine that we’re making the sound of the mantra). Or in the heart of the Avalokiteshvara in front of us, that we have a moon disc and the syllables, and we’re focusing on that as we say the mantra. Or ourselves as Avalokiteshvara, in our heart another Avalokiteshvara, smaller, and in his heart, a moon disc with the syllables.

It’s a matter of what are we focusing on while we are reciting the mantra. 

We don’t have to do the four in a particular sequence, and we don’t have to do all four, but there are four different things that one can practice. It’s good to have variations like that, because when we’re doing, for instance, a retreat… It is a serviceability retreat, is what it’s called, to make the layrung (las-rung), in Tibetan. It’s to make the mind serviceable, which means that it can do what we want it to do with the practices, that we are familiar enough with the practice, and with reciting 100,000 mantras or a million mantras (it’s different in each of the practices). 

The standard way in which we follow this is that if the mantra has less than 15 syllables, then we recite 100,000 times for each syllable. To do the serviceability retreat, the layrung, of Avalokiteshvara, we have to recite the mantra 600,000 times. If we’re doing it of Tara (OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA), that’s ten syllables, so we have to recite it a million times. 

It’s easy to keep count. Let’s say we’re going to do 1,000 mantras in a session. Then, we have a pile of ten marbles (or rice or whatever it is), and then when we’ve done 100 – you know, a rosary – we move the rice, one of the rice grains, to the side. When we’ve done 1,000, we’ve moved all ten, so that’s 1,000. If we’ve got to do more than 1,000, we have another pile of rice and we move one of those once we have done 1,000. It’s not so difficult to keep count. A rosary has 108 beads, so that counts as 100. It’s not so difficult.

When one is doing this type of retreat (serviceability), it’s to make the mind serviceable. After that, the mind can serve to do all the actions of the more advanced actions of a practice, which would be to do the fire puja, which is a purification thing that we do after this type of retreat, and the consecration of the vase, and general consecrations and the self-initiation, and when we become qualified enough, giving the initiation to others. The mind becomes serviceable to do all of that by doing all this mantra recitation, and it’s nice to have a variety of different visualizations so that we don’t get bored. It would be incredibly boring if we had to do the same visualization for the whole process, so it’s good to have many different visualizations. We’re making offerings to the Buddhas and bodhisattvas with some of the recitations. Lights are going out, and we’re helping different beings in the different realms; we can have each of those realms as a different visualization. There are lots of different things that we can do to add a little bit of variety while we’re doing this recitation.

In reciting the mantra like this, there are two ways of reciting. Again, we can alternate, or just do one or just do the other, whatever we like. One is called the verbal recitation, in which we recite out loud. Usually, it’s not recommended to shout the mantra; that’s going to disturb our winds and breath very much. We recite it softly, and then there is what’s called the whispered recitation. The whispered recitation is what we normally would call, in the West, just reciting it in our head, and that we usually do while holding our breath. These are the two types of mantra recitation that one can do. This is the initial practice that we do when we do the sadhana. 

Of course, while doing all of this, the big emphasis is on what Avalokiteshvara represents, which is, of course, compassion. We would have compassion as a state of mind accompanying any type of practice that we do, but especially if it’s Avalokiteshvara. It’s important to have that.

Then, if we are quite skilled in this first level of mental stability, on the four types of recitation, we can go on to the next one. That’s mental stability – that’s what I am translating from the word “dhyana,” actually – the mental stability that comes from abiding or dwelling on the flames, it’s called, staying with flames, you know, from fire. Here we imagine that the letters of the mantra standing up on the moon in our heart – either just ourselves as Avalokiteshvara or inside the heart of the Avalokiteshvara in our heart (which is always better to do it like that) – then the syllables are actually flames in the shape of the syllables. We imagine that the flames are making the sound of the letters. It’s not that we, as Avalokiteshvara, are making the sound of the letters, but we imagine that the flames are making the sound. That takes quite a while to be able to actually imagine that. You know, it’s not like we imagine it coming out of our mouth, that we are saying it. The flames are making the sound, and again, we try to get concentration on that. 

The third mental stability is the mental stability from abiding on the sound, and here we imagine just hearing the sound of the mantra in our heart, like an inner voice. That also is quite delicate to be able to imagine that. It’s just like the sound is being produced, and it’s like hearing it. 

So, like this, when we combine this practice with the understanding of voidness – which, of course, we’re always doing – then the first type of mental stability goes together very nicely with understanding the voidness of the person making the sound. That’s us as the Buddha-figure, and then the abiding on the flame is the voidness of the mind as the origin of the sound. There the flames are just making the sound, so that represents the voidness of the mind making the sound. Then, the third is the voidness of the sound itself. You know, just the arising of the sound, which is like the nature of the mind; it just gives rise to mental holograms. In this way, we get to the nature of the mind. It can be combined with a mahamudra type of practice, and so on. 

At the end of all of this, when we have mastered this third level of mental stability, abiding on the sound, then we have achieved combined shamatha and vipashyana. Shamatha is a fully concentrated mind, stilled and settled, and vipashyana is an exceptionally perceptive state of mind, which comes from understanding the voidness of the person making the mantra and the mind producing the mantra, and the whole process of the voidness of the sound and the arising of mantras, and so on. That’s the procedure that is followed in kriya tantra for achieving of the five pathway minds leading to enlightenment – the first. When we have completed this, when we have achieved combined shamatha and vipashyana, that is the final attainment of the building-up pathway of mind (tshogs-lam), what’s called the path of accumulation by some translators. 

Then, we’re ready to go to the fourth mental stability, which is the mental stability on the ultimate nature of sound that brings liberation. The mental stability on the ultimate nature of sound that brings liberation. Here we are focusing on the self, us, making the sound, the hearing of the sound of mantra, the sound itself and the voidness of all of this. The difference here, what makes this a different level, is that now we are doing this with combined shamatha and vipashyana, and that’s called the yoga without signs (mtshan-med-kyi rnal-’byor). The first three are the yoga with signs (mtshan-bcas-kyi rnal-’byor). 

When we do this yoga without signs with a conceptual mind on all of this – of the voidness and the sound of the mantra, and so on – that would be the second of the five pathway minds, the applying pathway mind (sbyor-lam), or the path of preparation, many people translate it. When it becomes nonconceptual, then it’s the seeing pathway mind (mthong-lam), the path of seeing. Then, from there, we go on with the accustoming pathway mind (sgom-lam), and that’s the path of meditation. Then finally, the pathway mind needing no more learning (mi-slob lam) when we actually achieve enlightenment. 

That is basically the outline of the kriya tantra path and how we actually would proceed on the basis of the kriya tantra practice to reaching enlightenment. 

What is the difference between mantra and prayer? 

Prayer in Buddhism has two forms. One is called an aspiration or wishing prayer (smon-lam) in which, basically, it’s a strong wish to be able to benefit everybody, to have a clearer mind so that we can benefit them better, to have a long life so that we can help others throughout a long life, help them more, and so on. It is not that we are praying to somebody; although one can make requests, it’s called, like: “Please inspire me to be able to do this, and through the interaction of your inspiration and my wish, plus all the positive force that I’ve built up (or merit) from positive things that I am doing in practices, may I be able to achieve this.” It’s not that we are praying to someone. It’s a strong directing of our intention, a wish to achieve something. 

Then, there is a dedication prayer (bsngo-ba), in which we have built up a certain amount of positive force from a constructive action, whether it’s meditation, or helping somebody, or whatever it might be. We direct that positive force toward achieving a goal, like what we would just simply wish for in the aspiration type of prayer or wishing type of prayer. It’s a little bit like… The way I describe it is saving a document that we have created on a word processor on a computer, saving it into some sort of folder; we’ve built up some positive force, and we want to save it, direct it toward a goal. If we don’t save it, it will automatically go into the goal of improving samsara, and so we don’t want it to just improve samsara, to make it that we can… We’ve meditated on voidness, and now we can have an interesting, entertaining conversation with somebody about it. It’s not like that. We want to actually save it, either in the liberation folder or the enlightenment folder: “May this go toward achieving liberation or may it go toward achieving enlightenment.” 

So, this is prayer, and a prayer can be either in a standard form, the way that some great master wrote it – and some of the prayers are extremely beautiful, like the tenth chapter of Shantideva’s text, Engaging in the Bodhisattva Behavior, which has a beautiful, long dedication – or it can also be something that is in our own words. However, we don’t want it to just be a recitation of words without any meaning and nothing going on in our mind. 

The mantras are something else. A mantra is a set of syllables, which often are Tibetan words – not Tibetan words, I’m sorry – which often are Sanskrit words. Sometimes Tibetan sentences or words are thrown in. These are called peltsig (spel-tshig) in Tibetan; they’re something which are “thrown in.” So, we say a certain mantra, like Tara mantra, and then at a certain point in the mantra, we might add a Tibetan sentence of “May this increase my deep awareness and merit” and so on. Sometimes the words are added in Sanskrit, sometimes they’re added in Tibetan. 

In any case, a mantra is a set of syllables. They’re often words, and in some cases, they are just seed syllables that represent the body or speech or mind of a Buddha. Other times, they are words that seem like nonsense words, like KILI KILI SILI SILI HILI HILI, this sort of thing, which also in the commentaries will have a meaning, based often on where in the Sanskrit alphabet the first letter of it appears and then what that represents. There are meanings to these seemingly nonsense syllables, and they are recited in order to protect the mind. This is the explanation of the word “mantra,” something to protect the mind. 

What we want to do is to, on one level, perform a type of mental judo. If the mind is racing with verbal thoughts, mental wandering – which is a very unharmonious type of energy, so it goes together with our energy also being nervous and not at peace, not calm – then to protect the mind from that we, rather than try to just stop the mind from doing this (which is quite difficult to do unless we have tremendous discipline), then in a sense, we use that verbal energy and flip it, like we would flip someone in judo; we use that energy to recite a mantra instead. This, personally, I found is the best method to use when we have a song going through our head that we can’t stop, which happens to me. One of the reasons why I really don’t listen to music very much is because then I sing it in my head for the next week, and that drives me crazy. Because then I feel like a cricket or some sort of insect, that when the sun goes down to a certain level, then automatically I start making this noise. I find that utterly stupid and unacceptable, and the only way that I have learned to be able to stop that is to recite a mantra in your head instead. It protects our mind from that, and we have to be quite forceful in terms of reciting the mantra and staying with it. 

It can protect the mind also from… If we have negative thoughts, then recite the mantra, because each of the mantras, if it’s with the… I mean, it goes together with the Buddha-figure, and each of the Buddha-figures represents the full enlightenment of a Buddha but also represents a certain feature as its main emphasis, so Avalokiteshvara would be compassion. If we feel annoyed with somebody, or something like that, then we recite OM MANI PEME HUM and remember compassion. If the mind is very dull, then we might remember Manjushri and have the feeling of having clarity of mind. This is very, very helpful. I always do this when I am stuck in trying to understand something, or to explain something clearly when I am trying to write, or how to formulate it. If I am blocked, then I stop and do the Manjushri mantra. 

What if you are afraid of a situation? 

If you are afraid of a situation? Tara. Tara protects from fear. Or the name mantra of our guru, of our spiritual teacher. There are also guru name mantras, in which we take the Tibetan name, let’s say – if it’s a Tibetan teacher – and translate that back into Sanskrit because the Tibetan names are all translations of Sanskrit words. If we don’t know Sanskrit, we have to be told what it is, for the teacher, and what their full name is, which usually we don’t know because if they are Rinpoches, they just use the title of the Rinpoche; they don’t use the actual name. We recite that. That’s very good for protection. Like the name mantra of His Holiness the Dalai Lama is very good.

Thus, the mantra is to protect the mind, and on a deeper level, the mantra shapes the wind, the breath. It shapes the breath, the energy-winds, and in shaping the energy-winds, it allows us to then gain control over the energy-winds because we have given it a particular form; it’s in a more harmonious vibration, in a sense. 

Then, there are very advanced practices which, on the basis of the breath being shaped into a mantra, specifically OM AH HUM, that it enables us to bring those breaths into the central channel. The purpose for that is to reach the subtlest level of mind, what’s called the clear light (’od-gsal), which is the most efficient for understanding voidness. It’s only that level of mind, that a… I mean, a Buddha has only that level of mind, not the grosser levels of our usual type of mind. 

So, mantra has many, many levels of meanings; it’s not just a prayer. 

Do you need to know the meaning of the mantra? 

It’s nice to know the meaning of the mantra, but I think it’s not absolutely essential to know the meaning of the mantra, of each word of the mantra. Rather, what’s more important is to know what is it that our mind is generating while we’re reciting the mantra: compassion, or clarity of mind, or energy, or not being afraid, or the strong ability to deal with any situation, these sorts of factors that are associated with the Buddha-figure in the mantra. To know the actual meaning of the words is helpful, but not, I don’t think, absolutely necessary. I would think that most Tibetans don’t know the meaning of each word of what they’re reciting in a mantra. After all, it’s in Sanskrit; it’s not in Tibetan. Okay?

If we’ve received both anuttarayoga tantra empowerments or initiations, the highest class of tantra, and also these kriya practices of Tara or Chenrezig, how do we put them together in our practice? 

Well, first of all, Tsongkhapa himself, in a work in which he described the stages of his own spiritual development, said that unless we really have some experience of the three lower classes of tantra, we can’t really appreciate how much more effective the highest class of tantra is. Mind you, Tsongkhapa practiced and knew everything. It’s not bad to know something about the lower classes of tantra, and hardly anybody practices the second and third classes of tantra; they are incredibly complicated, especially the third class, yoga tantra. Usually, it’s kriya tantra and anuttarayoga tantra that most people have experience with. 

Now, we can, in our daily practice, do a little bit of both, of course. That’s not a problem. In terms of when we are going to emphasize one thing or another… Well, for instance, I was advised by my teacher as part of the preliminaries – you know, this ngondro (sngon-’gro), the type of preliminaries that we do before really getting into more intensive practice – one of the two things in the preliminaries that I was instructed to do was the 600,000 of Avalokiteshvara and the 600,000 of Manjushri, recitations of the mantra, in order to try to build up more positive force for the compassion side and the wisdom side (discriminating awareness side), so I did that. That’s quite useful to do in the early stages of one’s practice definitely. 

Then another aspect, regardless of what type of practice we’re doing of anuttarayoga, is at some point, if we really are serious in our practice, we want to have a long life to be able to make as much progress in this life on the spiritual path, use this precious human rebirth and benefit others as much as possible, so for that the White Tara retreat – the Long Life White Tara retreat – is very important. That requires reciting the Tara mantra a million times. 

The fire puja to conclude the Long-life White Tara retreat is particularly difficult to do. Fire pujas come, basically, from a Vedic ritual; it’s not specifically Buddhist as a ritual itself. We imagine the fire in the form of Agni, the fire deity, which is a perfectly Indian part of the Hindu pantheon, and then in Agni’s heart is the Buddhist deity that we’re practicing. We offer various substances into a fire with appropriate visualizations and motivation, and so on. It’s quite an elaborate, difficult ritual to do because it requires things like not only different types of grains, but there’s a certain type of grass that grows in India, which is not so easy to get here. We have to collect these pieces of grass and they’re fairly long, about maybe, I don’t know centimeters, let’s say 30 centimeters long, something like that, or a foot long in Western measurement. We throw pairs of it, two of them together, into the fire. 

Well, for the Tara retreat, we have to do that; we have to throw in 10,000 of these, reciting a mantra with each one, and, of course, we can’t get up. We have to do it in one sitting, along with all the other things that are part of that fire puja. In my own case, when I did this, it turned out that I did not have enough. I didn’t have enough for 10,000. It was short of 10,000, and so Serkong Rinpoche made me do the whole fire puja over again, which was very good, very kind of him, I must say, very kind. So, that’s the Long-life Tara practice, and that’s very helpful to do.

How important is it to get these special materials from India? 

For the fire puja, the various grains can be bought in the West. The different types of grass, it’s basically a grass that has sections in it, and there are grasses like that that grow in other parts of the world, not necessarily in India. We have to find them. In India, it’s easier because usually, we don’t have to do it ourselves. We can give an offering to some monk who knows where it grows and goes and collects it for us, which is what I did. If we had no idea where to find it, it could take us an awfully long time to find the thing. 

Also, we need people who are experienced because the fire has to be built in a certain way. We have to have a fairly simple but not that simple, a colored powder mandala underneath the fire. We have to have certain sticks, and they’re called “yam-shing,” which are a specific length depending on the type of fire puja that we’re doing. It has to be a certain thickness and a certain length, and that’s all specified for the type of fire puja that we do. It’s quite complicated. It’s helpful to have – if we really want to know what we’re doing – to have studied the thing before doing it, and Tsongkhapa wrote quite a nice text on fire pujas. 

It is possible to get the materials in the West, to a certain extent. Kusha grass, we have to have some sort of kusha grass – this stuff that’s passed out in initiations – which is a type of reed. It grows in India; they make brooms out of it, but there might be something similar to that here. I don’t know. Whenever initiations are given here in the West, and we’re supposed to pass out kusha grass to everybody – to put a long piece and a short piece underneath the mattress and pillow after the first day to examine our dreams – they always import it from India. 

It’s not so easy in the West. Also, we can’t just build a fire in the middle of Berlin to do a fire puja. We also need a special place to do it. In most places, it’s not allowed. And we need an assistant; we need somebody to hand us the things when we do the fire puja. We have to sit there, and it’s very hot because we have to be close enough to be able to put things in the fire, and pour melted butter onto the fire, and stuff like that. We are not allowed to move our hands beyond where our crossed knees are, so somebody has to give us the various items and so on. It’s very complicated.

Sometimes when people in the West do group retreats (which is a very much Western thing; Tibetans don’t usually do things in groups), when the Westerners don’t know how to do the fire puja and don’t know the language – and the rituals certainly aren’t translated – then they will sort of sit around and watch somebody else do it and imagine that they’re doing it. Or somebody will actually do it for them, but they’ll help put some things in the fire, and so on. That’s not as effective as if we ourselves actually put the things in the fire, obviously, and make the offerings ourselves. It requires quite a bit of study.

If we do any of these retreats, whether we’re doing the preliminary practices of 100,000 prostrations or we’re doing one of these serviceability retreats, it can be done either for four sessions a day (we’re not doing anything else), or it could be done with one session in the morning and one session at night, and during the day, we do whatever; or it could be just one session in the morning or just one session at night. If we’re doing four sessions, just that, then we set up a perimeter, and we are not allowed outside of that during the retreat. If we are doing it just one session in the morning, or one at night, or both, then we don’t do that; we can go out. If we’re doing it isolated like that, then we imagine and in our mind give permission to whoever it is that could come into the circle – like our doctor, for example, if we get sick, people who bring us food, this type of thing. 

What Serkong Rinpoche said is most important is that the first session, we only recite three mantras, don’t recite any more. Or with prostration, we only do three prostrations, no more. Because that will be the minimum number that we have to do every day in order to maintain the retreat. We have to do something every single day in order to maintain it. If we miss a day, we have to start all over again. If we are sick, we can at least say the mantra three times, it’s not a big deal, or the prostrations three times, or even just one time. Then, we’re able to maintain the continuity. 

If we do it really strictly, it should always be done in the same place. I mean, obviously, if we are doing it four sessions a day, it’s only in the same place. But if we’re doing it only in the morning or only in the evening, the proper thing is that it should only be in one place, but there can be exceptions. There are always exceptions. I was doing a retreat once, and I was asked by His Holiness’s private office to translate an initiation and teaching that His Holiness was giving in another place. I was doing this in Dharamsala; His Holiness was doing this in Manali. I was in the middle of a retreat, and I got that request to do this translation, so I asked Serkong Rinpoche, and he said, “Don’t be silly. Of course, you go to translate for His Holiness. Just do your basic minimum of the practice each day.” So, there are exceptions, like that. 

Therefore, in the discussion of the various rules of discipline in the vinaya, they always indicate when the necessity overrides the prohibition. In other words, there are always lists of situations in which we don’t have to follow the prohibition – you know, what we are not supposed to do – because necessity calls for something else. A monk is not supposed to touch a woman, but if a woman is drowning, a monk doesn’t just stand there with hands folded and say, “Oh, what a shame!” The monk would take hold of the woman and try to rescue her. That’s the classic example that’s given.

How do you choose a main tantra practice? 

Some people ask their spiritual teacher, and they throw the dice or whatever, or they have special powers and they’re able to tell. That’s one way, of course, but that requires a really special teacher that actually is able to do this. It’s always best if it comes a little bit from our own side, and so that would be indicated by what we have a strong inclination towards. “Inclination” means automatically we’re drawn to a certain Buddha-figure. We see all these paintings, and things like that, and there is one that especially catches our eye and one that we really feel very comfortable with. It’s not something that we have to force ourselves to do, so that gives a little bit of an indication. Then, we have to try and also, everything depends upon what’s available. Of course, if we have dreams of various Buddha-figures and visions and so on, that obviously is a strong indication as well, but it’s not so easy actually to really decide what is the main Buddha-figure practice that we are going to do. In the beginning, we practice many of them – I mean, the way that Tibetans do. 

Of course, there’s the saying that in India, they practice one deity, and they achieved attainments, all the attainments, and the Tibetans practice all the deities and achieved nothing. There is that statement as well. Putting that aside, most Tibetans practice many of these figures and, as His Holiness says, it’s only when we are willing and able to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, doing tantra practice, when we have reached that stage, we’re going to do it for the rest of our life, that then we have to focus on just one practice. 

What practice to do at the time of death? 

That’s not an easy question to answer. Obviously, if we’re going to do the death meditation and visualizations and so on that are recommended in anuttarayoga tantra practice, we have to have one deity system so that in the bardo, we imagine that we arise in this figure or that figure. However, what I found really very interesting was what His Holiness has explained. He said that actually, although theoretically, these tantric practices and so on at the time of death are obviously the most effective thing, that it’s not very practical. He said that at the time of death, it’s such a difficult period in our life, when we’re actually dying, and these tantric visualizations and practices are so complicated that it runs the danger that if we try to do them as we’re dying, we’re going get very confused, very frustrated; our energy is not so strong, obviously, and we’ll die in a very confused, frustrated, annoyed state of mind. That’s not good. 

He said, far more effective when we’re dying… I mean, it’s okay, we’ve built up all the habits while we were alive, of doing this practice, that’s enough. However, at the time of death, we want to do something much simpler so that we can actually maintain as we’re dying. The best thing is bodhichitta. The aim is to be able to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all and continue to have a precious human rebirth and connection with spiritual teachers, and so on, so we can continue and reach enlightenment for the benefit of all. That’s the best thing to keep in mind when we’re actually at the time of death. Don’t try to do something really complicated; we’ll just get frustrated and confused. This, I thought, was wonderful practical advice and amazingly honest, and we can’t get a better source than His Holiness the Dalai Lama.