Tantra: Strengthening Our Buddha-Nature

In a samsaric situation, these networks give rise to a limited body and limited speech, to happiness and compulsive positive behavior mixed with confusion and not satisfying, both in our speech and in our actions, thinking, and give rise to a so-called polluted environment, stained environment, in which we live. However, as a Buddha, if these networks are motivated by or accompanied by bodhichitta and the understanding of voidness, they give rise to the physical body of a Buddha, speech of a Buddha, blissful mind of a Buddha, the enlightening activities of a Buddha and the pure land of Buddhas. As a way of being able to attain that state of Buddhahood more efficiently, we work with these Buddha-figures in tantra, which are like an infographic representing all the different aspects of the path, all the realizations that we need in order to attain enlightenment. They help us to keep all of that in mind at once, integrated together. 

We now imagine that we have – similar to what we would attain as a Buddha – enlightening body like the deity, that our way of enjoying things is with untainted bliss, which is bliss that isn’t mixed with confusion. We do this when we make offerings to ourselves, imagining that we enjoy this purely. Also, with that blissful mind we understand voidness. We imagine that our activities are like that of a Buddha. We’re visualizing ourselves as the Buddha with blissful awareness of voidness, and that we emanate all these lights and so on that bring happiness or alleviate suffering to all beings, and we recite the mantra. We also imagine we have enlightening speech and the enlightening activity at the same time.

We need to keep in mind all beings and the different aspects of the path that all the arms and legs of a Buddha represent. All these beings are in a pure land in which everything is conducive for attaining enlightenment and that’s presented by the mandala palace. All the architectural features of the building of the palace as well represent different aspects of realization. We could try to imagine all beings around us, an enormous crowd of men and women, people we’re close to and people we normally don’t like and so on, which is not the easiest thing to do. We could also imagine we’re like a sun, just emanating all of this, and that anyone that comes out into the sunshine is going to be positively affected.

We have this parallelism between the basis and what we want to get rid of, which is the samsaric ripening of these Buddha-nature factors, which we renounce. We have bodhichitta, aiming for that enlightened state of a Buddha. We have the Buddha-nature factors giving rise to these Buddha-figures in our imagination to start with. That’s on the generation stage of the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga, or our subtle energy system giving rise to this, which is what happens at the completion stage. They’re all parallel, these three levels.

These visualizations are basically something from our imagination. However, we shouldn’t think visualization just means visual; it’s not just images, but it’s the whole thing in terms of sight, sound, smell, taste and physical sensations, everything. It’s an imagination. What we imagine on the path with tantra is a representation of our own enlightenment, which hasn’t yet happened. This is the focus for our bodhichitta.

Two Aspects of Bodhichitta

Remember, there are two aspects of bodhichitta. We’re not speaking here in terms of aspiring and engaged bodhichitta. That’s another division, in which we aim to attain enlightenment and then we engage in the practices that’ll bring us there. Instead, we are speaking of conventional and deepest bodhichitta. With conventional bodhichitta, we’re aimed at the body, speech and mind of our not-yet-happening enlightenment: Nirmanakaya is body, Sambhogakaya is speech in tantra and Dharmakaya is the deep awareness, the omniscient mind of a Buddha, which is the mind. With conventional bodhichitta we’re aimed at this, and with deepest bodhichitta we’re aimed at the voidness of the body, speech and mind of a Buddha, which is the Nature Body.

With conventional and deepest bodhichitta, we aim at all four bodies of a Buddha, represented as the yidam, the Buddha-figure, and the voidness, at least our understanding of voidness when we’re not yet enlightened.

The conventional bodhichitta is involved with the evolving Buddha-nature factors. The deepest bodhichitta is involved with the abiding Buddha-nature factors. Remember, the two networks, these evolving Buddha-nature factors, are imputations on the mental continuum. If we want to be more technically precise in the Prasangika system, there’re imputations on the conventional “me,” which is an imputation on the five aggregates in general or, more specifically, on the clear-light level of mind and the subtle energy.

It gets down to the mind, basically. If we’re talking about voidness, we’re talking about the voidness of the mind, not voidness of the vase or the pillar. If we transfer this whole discussion into a mahamudra or dzogchen presentation, then we’re speaking about the conventional nature of the mind which can give rise to these appearances, either an impure appearance of samsara or the pure appearance of enlightenment. This is the conventional nature of the mind. And again, the deepest nature of the mind is voidness. It’s just a different way of looking at exactly the same thing – regardless of which system we’re practicing tantra in.

Third Buddha-Nature Factor: Stimulating the Networks

The third Buddha-nature factor is that these networks can be stimulated by the enlightening influence of a Buddha and by our spiritual teachers. If we look at the function of an initiation in tantra, the word literally means an empowerment. During the empowerment, first of all what it’s going to do is activate these Buddha-nature factors, in other words, activate the networks so that they can give rise to these enlightening aspects. It plants more seeds, in other words, it strengthens these networks. In order for the empowerment to actually serve as an empowerment and not just that we’re a neutral observer watching it like a performance in the theatre, we need to have some actual conscious experience during the empowerment. This is described in the commentaries very clearly. 

We need some experience of imagining ourselves in the form of this Buddha-figure and most importantly some experience of bodhichitta and focusing on voidness at whatever level we can with whatever level of blissful mind we can generate. It can be at a very minimum level of this, but at least some conscious experience. This activates the Buddha-nature factors, together with the positive influence and the stimulation of the teacher, so that we can start to go in that direction of giving rise to enlightenment, or the attainment of enlightenment.

Seeing the Teacher as Enlightened Being

The role of the spiritual teacher here, the tantric master, is essential for many reasons. However, one of the reasons, which is emphasized so much, is that we distinguish – “distinguishing” is the right word here, it’s the aggregate of distinguishing – the teacher as Buddha. What does that mean? Buddha in the form of the Buddha-figure? It’s the same thing. We see that on the basis of the Buddha-nature factors there is the teacher’s not-yet-happening enlightenment. He or she is an enlightenment being, but the enlightenment is not yet happening now. We’re not naive to think that our teacher knows, as I often use the silly example, the telephone number of every person on this planet. They’re not omniscient in that sense literally, but that’s irrelevant. We’re thinking in terms of the not-yet-happening enlightenment: The teacher is an enlightened being in that sense. If we can focus on the teacher like that, that inspires us to be able to focus on ourselves like that with the tantra practice. This is a very essential aspect in terms of our relation with the teacher. This is an extension of how we develop the proper attitude towards the teacher in sutra. 

Healthy Relationship to the Teacher

In terms of our attitude, a healthy relation to the teacher has two aspects: First, we focus on the good qualities of the teacher. The teacher might have shortcomings as well. There’s no point in complaining about and focusing on them; instead, we focus on the good qualities with confidence that the teacher actually has them. These have to be actually good qualities, not ones we exaggerate or make up. We should have great admiration and respect for these good qualities. As I said, the teacher serves as a model that we want to become like. The second aspect is being mindful, remembering the kindness of the teacher to actually teach us. We develop a sincere appreciation and gratitude for that kindness. This is a healthy attitude to have with a teacher.

Relying on the Teacher with Trust and Confidence

The word that’s translated as “guru devotion” is a terrible translation. Actually, the word means “to rely on somebody with trust and confidence.” It’s the type of relation we would have with our doctor. We have trust because we’re confident in the good qualities that the person actually has and we’re also confident that they’re kind, they’re going to help us, and we appreciate their kindness. We would have that level of trust and confidence with a doctor, and we should have that with a spiritual teacher. By respecting the good qualities and appreciating the kindness of the teacher, if we can do that, it forms the basis for us to be able to recognize our own good qualities, respecting them and appreciating the kindness that we’ve shown to ourselves. This has allowed us to get a precious human rebirth, meet with the Dharma teachings and have the opportunities to practice. Unless we have this positive attitude towards ourselves, we’re never going to make progress on the path.

Just as practicing, focusing on the good qualities and the kindness of the teacher allows us to appreciate it in ourselves, then in tantra we add on top of that being able to see the not-yet-happening enlightenment of the teacher, which allows us to focus not only on that in the teacher but also in ourselves. The mechanism is exactly the same.

Meditating on the Role of a Teacher and Our Attitude

Digest this for a moment, as it is actually very important and profound.

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With the proper attitude towards the teacher and the proper distinguishing of the not-yet-happening enlightenment of the teacher, which stimulates our ability to see that in ourselves and stimulates these networks within ourselves to also give rise to the enlightenment – the attainment of enlightenment, to be more specific.

The second reason why the teacher is so essential is because we receive from the teacher during the empowerment the bodhisattva vows for all classes of tantra and the tantric vows for the two highest classes of tantra, yoga tantra and anuttarayoga tantra. For practicing dzogchen, we have these in the maha-, anu- and atiyoga practices vows.

Bodhisattva Vows

Why are the vows so important? Why do we say, “I’m not going to give them up at the cost of my life”? That’s said so often in the texts. Naturally, we should wonder why is that so stressed in the texts. It’s pretty heavy – “I’m not going to give them up at the cost of my life!” 

We have to go back to the discussion of beginningless rebirth, beginningless mental continuum. Given beginningless time, we have undoubtedly developed bodhichitta many, many times. The analysis of developing bodhichitta like this is derived from the question, “How is it that we have an explanation in the Jataka stories, for example, of Buddha developing bodhichitta for the first time. Then one wonders, given beginningless time, how can there be a first time? This is the question of the analysis, “What is it that they’re actually talking about?”

This is the beauty of the Dharma, there’s so many unanswered or unclear questions that one can ask. And if we really want to, one can go deeper and deeper into the Dharma. However, we have to tackle these questions, doing analytical meditation to try to figure them out. We tried to figure them out: I made an analysis by myself and came up with a hypothesis and then I presented it to my class in Berlin. Rather than us debating in the standard Tibetan form, we discussed and worked it out as a class together, which is a wonderful thing to do by the way. That’s real Dharma work to try to figure it out. We helped each other with that. One of my Dharma students pointed out that given beginningless time, then it follows that not only have we developed bodhichitta countless times, we’ve also given up bodhichitta countless times. Thus, the question isn’t really how to develop bodhichitta for the first time. It is how to develop bodhichitta for the first time and not give it up, because the first time that we do that, we’ll attain enlightenment. I have to thank one of my students for analyzing and coming up with that, as it’s correct. 

What does it mean to not give up bodhichitta? It means to keep the bodhisattva vows. We don’t want to give them up and lose them, because it’s going to take an unbelievable number of eons before we’re going to develop bodhichitta again. For that reason, we really don’t want to give them up, these bodhisattva vows that keep us focused on enlightenment. We lose them when we say, “This is stupid, I don’t want to attain enlightenment. This is impossible. I don’t care if everybody goes to hell. I’m not interested anymore.” If we think that, the description is that we fall to hellish rebirth, because then our life has no meaning, no direction; everything is stupid and what we’re left with isn’t very much. It’ll take an awful long time to overcome that. We don’t want to give this up, because it’s our life. This is what it means. We lose the tantric vows as well, if we give up bodhichitta. They’re very important, the bodhisattva vows. 

Taking Vows with Conscious Decision

After we recite the verses that reaffirm and strengthen our taking of the vows and all the tantric practices, we say, “Now my life has become really meaningful. How wonderful. Now I’m really not going to give this up. After such an unbelievable amount of time, I’m not going to yet again take them and give them up.” It’s said very clearly in the texts: We don’t receive an empowerment unless we consciously take the vows. To just be there and just blindly “blah blah blah” repeat the verses for taking the vows, but we don’t actually consciously feel we’ve taken the vows, making a conscious decision, then we really haven’t taken the vows.

Taking the vows has to be a very conscious decision. Remember, we were speaking in terms of karma, nonrevealing forms, this subtle vibration, which is a form imputed on the mental continuum. Vows are the same type of phenomenon, it’s a nonrevealing form. Like these nonrevealing forms of karma, that stays there until you say, “I’m no longer going to act like this; this is stupid; I give it up.” Likewise, the nonrevealing form of the bodhisattva vows and the tantric vows stay on the mental continuum until we give them up. We can weaken them, but if we’ve given them up, they’re no longer there. 

That nonrevealing form, subtle vibration, is going to stay as an imputation on the mental continuum even if we’re reborn as an insect. It’s still there, we haven’t given it up. In another lifetime, if we become a human, it’s still there and can be reactivated.

It’s not like the pratimoksha vows, which we take just for this lifetime. When we take the bodhisattva and tantric vows, we say, “From now until my attainment of enlightenment…” It’s there, the nonrevealing form is an imputation on the mental continuum all the way until enlightenment, unless we give it up, lose it and say, “The hell with that, it’s stupid.”

Meditating on the Importance of Vows

Focus for a moment on the importance of these vows.

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The vows in a sense shape our behavior. They set the boundaries beyond which we’re not going to go.

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Staying within the boundaries of these vows, we act in a way as we would as the Buddha.

Keeping Vows with Constructive Behavior

We need to have one more thing here. What’s a constructive behavior? This is what we derive this network of positive force from. There are two levels of it: “The nearly constructive behavior” is to refrain from destructive behavior. It’s a restraint. It’s not simply not hunting and fishing – as in “I don’t hunt and I don’t fish anyway. I’ve no interest in hunting or fishing.” That’s not keeping the vow of not killing, not taking life. We keep the vow when there’s a mosquito or a fly buzzing around our face and we feel like swatting and killing it, but we discriminate that would be destructive and would lead to all sorts of building up a habit of wanting to kill and destroy anything that we don’t like. Basically, we refrain from acting out that feeling. That’s keeping the vow and constructive behavior. It’s refraining from doing something when we feel like doing it, especially something destructive. Destructive means under the influence of disturbing emotions.

“The distinguished constructive behavior” is instead of killing we do something to support the life of others, help them in some way, give them food or save their life. Or if there’s a fly drowning in the toilet, we try to save its life.

Difference Between Vows and Close-Bonding Practices

What’s a vow? A vow is this nonrevealing form, but what’s it actually a form of? It’s the form of a restraint. The vows are always formulated in terms of what would cause a downfall from the vows. Giving up bodhichitta – the vow is not to give up bodhichitta, it’s a restraint from something.

We also have a term called samaya in Sanskrit and damtsig in Tibetan. This is translated in all sorts of different ways. Literally it means a “close bond,” a “close connection.” As opposed to a vow, which is a restraint from something negative, this is the promise or bond to do something positive and constructive, in this distinguished constructive way. Always to make offerings, develop love etc., these kinds of things. The vow would be not to give up love to anybody and the close bond would be to have love for everybody. The vow and close-bonding practices are in the same structure as the merely constructive and the distinguished constructive types of behavior, right?

Now, let’s talk about Buddha-nature, this network of positive force. Just merely doing constructive actions and distinguished constructive actions mixed with confusion etc. gives rise to samsara, nice samsara. However, if we – in addition to bodhichitta and the understanding of voidness – have the vows and these close-bonding practices, they give much more strength to that network of positive force. That’s what we want to do – we want to give an even stronger boost to these networks so that they really will give rise to enlightenment.

Weaving All Different Aspects of the Dharma

If we think of this third aspect of Buddha-nature, that these networks can be stimulated to grow, then we understand the role of the teacher, the enlightening influence, the model that the teacher serves as on many, many different levels, and the vows as well. These are things that will strengthen our two networks, together with bodhichitta and the understanding of voidness. They can be influenced like that because of their deepest nature; they are devoid of existing as frozen, independent, not being able to be influenced by anything.

Like this, we’ve woven together all these different aspects of the Dharma in order to be able to understand tantra. We brought together the Buddha-nature and bodhichitta, as well as the understanding of voidness, enlightenment, vows, the guru, empowerment and initiations. Everything fits together very well. When we understand that, then we’re able to put our hearts into the tantra practice with the confidence that this is an incredible method that really can be very effective, if we persevere with patience; however, it’s not easy, but we work on it. It’s very effective, but in any case we proceed slowly and gradually; as is the nature of samsara, it goes up and down. It’s not going to get better every day.

Even though this has been quite fast and there are a lot of different pieces here put together, nevertheless, what we can take from this is just some sort of feeling of confidence that actually everything does fit together and tantra practice isn’t something magical and mysterious, that it can be can understood, makes perfect sense and it fits absolutely consistently with all the sutra teachings as well. To just focus on how it fits together is the general understanding. Remember, we discussed the difference between shamatha-style and vipashyana-style meditation. With general understanding it fits all together. Then, within that, we can eventually fit in the details of how it fits together and what all the pieces are. However, this confidence, that it all makes sense and fits together, gives us the self-confidence to be able to practice. It’s not something crazy.

Meditating on the Confidence that All Fits Together

Just focus on that confidence that: “Yes, it all fits altogether and it all makes sense. Eventually, I’ll be able to fit in all the details, but it does fit together.”

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Remember, understanding means accurate and decisive.

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What’s your attitude to rituals and what if, for instance, we do some rituals but we’re not sure what it means? However, we need to understand the process, because sometimes we don’t have like one hundred percent clear understanding of the meaning, but we have to do something or maybe the teacher is saying something. What’s your attitude, what would you recommend, do we need to do it or not?

Ritual serves many purposes. Ritual gives us a form into which all the pieces fit, some sort of way of expressing all the various aspects that we’re trying to develop. Like the ritual of doing prostration is a way of expressing our respect and appreciation for the Three Jewels. Ritual also connects us with a long tradition, so that we don’t feel isolated; we feel the support of lineage and tradition, which is very helpful. When we do rituals together with other people, it strengthens the positive force of it, giving it more energy. If anything, it at least helps us to develop the discipline of doing the ritual, especially if we do it every day. 

There are many positive things to be gained from the ritual. However, the real question is our motivation of why we’re doing it. If we’re doing it just because we think it’s some magic and we’re going to get some magic powers from this, it isn’t going to be very helpful. Alternatively, if we do it out of guilt, because we told our teacher we’re going to do it, and if we don’t, we feel guilty, this is also not very helpful. As we have in a mind training text, there are the five forces, and one of them is the intention; so, we want to have the strong intention before doing the rituals. This is the motivation, and we also want to have the dedication to enlightenment at the end. At least, we can try to add this to the ritual. Then, we habituate ourselves to that, having the white seed – to build up this positive force from it, and eliminate all at once. We can apply these five forces from the mind training text to our practice without having some deep understanding of everything we’re doing. As we’ve been explaining, some general idea of what’s going on is enough. We don’t have to fill in all the details yet. Some general idea and not just “I’m doing this like a young child pretending to be a mother with a doll and a little carriage.” It’s not child’s play; it’s not a game.

Can we say that preliminary practices make us get rid of our compulsiveness, our compulsive emotions and actions? Is there any connection with tantra?

There are ways in tantra to transform disturbing emotions, to use the energy behind them in a more positive way. This is similar to what we have in the mind training texts. We always speak of changing adverse circumstances into circumstances conducive to the path. This is same principle. We need to analyze a little bit more deeply. Let’s say, we have a disturbing emotion, such as anger or greed. What it triggers is what ripens from karma, from the karmic force; it would be that we feel like doing something based on anger or aggression or based on greed. For instance, we feel like yelling at this person or like keeping everything to ourselves, being selfish, greedy, taking more and more. Through various meditation practices, something done with the breath to calm and quiet down, then we start to see that there’s a space between when we feel like acting out our aggression and actually compulsively doing it. It’s during that space that we can use our discriminating awareness to decide: “No, I’m not going to do it.” Then we refrain from acting out what we actually feel like doing. That’s the constructive karma, constructive form of our behavior.

It is very important to be able to recognize that space between what we feel like doing when we compulsively act it out and when we refrain from acting on the basis of these destructive emotions. Even if we’re able to refrain from acting them out, still, because of the force of habit and tendencies, disturbing emotions are still going to come up and we are still going to feel like yelling at somebody; however, we don’t do it.

If we want to engage in practices to transform these disturbing emotions, we need to have already reached the stage in which we don’t act on the basis of them. In other words, we’re at the stage where we think, “OK, I’m not going to yell at people. I’m not going to hit them. I’m not going to act out my feelings of desire, attachment. I’m not going to cling to anybody or force myself on anybody sexually.” All of that. However, even if we would never act that out, still disturbing emotions are going to arise, of wanting to feel like that. This is what we can work with to transform.

With this desire, specifically this desire for sense objects, beautiful sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, or it could be in a sexual sense with a partner, we can use that desire of this attraction to these objects. We don’t act on our desire, but we can imagine it and it helps us to generate a blissful state of mind, a very happy state of mind, which we then use to focus on voidness with the aim of bodhichitta. That’s a transformation of the desire. We use that desire, in a sense, like kick-starting the car if it’s stuck and it won’t start, to generate, at least in our imagination, a blissful state of mind of imagining something. Not pornographic, but imagining something that gives us a more blissful state of mind, and we don’t just sit there and bliss that out, thinking “I’m so happy,” but we use that to focus on voidness. This is the transformation that’s done in tantra. It’s very sophisticated actually.

For instance, I particularly have a great deal of desire and attachment to food. I like good food. Rather than going out and gorging myself on all sorts of delicious food all the time, I can imagine, like in these offerings, to use that desire for food to imagine enjoying wonderful food; that’s one of the offerings that we make, the offering of taste. Wonderful, we feel, “Oh, this is really great!” and use that elevated state of mind. This blissful state of mind is the movement of the winds, of the energy; it’s more concentrated. If it’s mixed with grasping for true existence and all that, then it’s very disturbed. Without that, it’s very concentrated, and we use that to focus on voidness of “me” who’s tasting the food, etc.

What we’re actually working with is the energy of the disturbing emotion. The energy of that desire is something which can then be molded, not being out of control as it’s in the karmic situation, but it can be used to concentrate and elevate our mind, our awareness, into a blissful way.

We’re working with the energy, the subtle energy of the disturbing emotion, rather than that energy going wild and leading to compulsive behavior. We want to harness that energy and use it because it goes in the direction of concentrating the mind in a state of blissful awareness, great happiness, because we get something that we like. This we use for focusing on voidness. It’s more focused in the sense that the energy is more intense. Similarly, aggression: We don’t act out aggression, but we imagine ourselves in the form of these really forceful figures, you know Yamantaka with all the flames, etc. What are we stamping on? We’re stamping on our selfishness. We harness the energy of that aggression to direct it toward stop acting like a baby, like an idiot, getting it together and trying to act like a Buddha, but without the anger of, “I’m such a sinner, I’m so horrible.” Without that, it’s with the understanding of voidness.

What’s called “transforming the disturbing emotions into a path” is really very advanced and requires all these steps beforehand. We’re not going to act out disturbing emotions, we’re very sensitive to our energy, and we have some understanding of voidness, bodhichitta, etc.

In India, we have the development of tantra both in the Shaiva forms – general word is Hinduism – and we also have it in Buddhism. Particularly, we find this in Buddhism in terms of the yogini tantras or mother tantras, another name for it. And we have something similar in the Shaiva tantras. Is there an influence from one to the other?

It’s very true that there are many things which are shared in common between the two systems of tantra. Many things, too many to start listing. Even more interesting, we find in the list of mahasiddhas, there are many of the same names in both lineages of Shaiva tantra and Buddhist tantra. However, to be able to say that one was the source and an influence to the other, historically, is impossible to prove one way or the other. All we can say is that there was this common set of beliefs and practices and both sides influenced each other back and forth. There was dialogue; they shared experiences and practices. If we look at what is the most significant difference between the two, then it comes down to the fact that Shaiva practices are done on the basis of, assertion of an atman and there are many different assertions within the different schools. However, the Buddhist practices are an assertion of anatman – a not truly existing self. That’s the significant difference. 

Other than that, there’s a tremendous amount in common. In the Buddhist tradition, with bodhichitta, we’re aiming for enlightenment as defined in Buddhism and in the Shaiva systems, the aim is for moksha, liberation, as defined in its system. Those are the differences. Depending on which system we’re practicing, we need to be aware of what’s the most significant thing. This is either the understanding of atman, getting rid of the ignorance of that and aiming for moksha on the one side, or bodhichitta and the understanding of voidness on the other side. These are the things that are most essential. All the rest are tools, a common toolkit.

We end with a dedication: We think that whatever understanding, whatever positive force come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for everyone to attain enlightened state of a Buddha for the benefit of all.