Tantra: What Buddha-Nature Gives Rise To

Sometimes we might find these Buddha-figures a bit unusual, because they have so many faces, arms and legs and there are so many of them. We might think, from our point of view, “Why would I want to attain enlightenment in the form of some figure with six arms, twenty-four arms or thirty-four arms and so on? Why in the world would I want to do that? This is really weird. Do I want to then be a Buddha with twenty-four arms?” 

However, let’s not look at it just from our point of view. Let’s look at it from a point of view of the Buddha. Buddhas can appear in any form whatsoever in order to benefit others. It’s part of the characteristics of Buddha form bodies to appear in any form. Buddhas appear in the form of these Buddha-figures. Why? Because, as I said yesterday, it’s a type of infographic that all their various arms, legs and so on represent the different realizations on the path, all the different parts of the path. Out of compassion, a Buddha will appear in these various forms to suit different people as a method to be able to help them integrate all the parts of the path and attain enlightenment. The only purpose of these Buddha-figures is out of the compassion of a Buddha to help us to attain the state of a Buddha ourselves.

It’s not that we want to become a Buddha and always stand there with twenty-four arms. That’s not the point at all and that’s not what will happen. If we become a Buddha, we can appear in any form. We’re not stuck in this one form of that particular Buddha-figure. I think this is very important to understand when we’re working with these figures. Buddha manifests in this form out of compassion to help us integrate, as the strings on the loom, all the different parts of the path. Therefore, we can use it as a method and we choose whichever type of figure and system appeal to us, in a sense, what fits with our particular stage of development now, in terms of our individual beginingless mental continuum.

Let that sink in for a moment. Look at these Buddha-figures, not from our point of view, but from a point of view of a Buddha, compassionately wanting to help people to put together all the different parts of the path. That’s really a brilliant idea from the part of the Buddha. Infographics. 

[Pause]

The result of thinking like this is that instead of thinking of these Buddha-figures as weird, that they don’t really fit us Westerners and they’re just an Indian trip and stuff like that, instead of this negative attitude towards them, we develop a very positive attitude of respect, that this is incredible that Buddha thought of us. It’s important to respect the type of practice that we’re doing, not thinking of it as being weird, exotic, mystical or magical.

Let’s fill in some more detail. Let’s go back to Buddha-nature. Buddha-nature, as you recall, refers to the various traits of the family of everybody who can become a Buddha. Various features that’s literally what Buddha-nature is referring to, this whole bunch of things. We’ve three types of Buddha-nature factors. 

Evolving Buddha-Nature Factors

We have the evolving ones, the ones that can evolve, develop, etc. to become the various aspects of the Buddha bodies or enlightenment, that are affected by things that change from moment to moment. The nature stays the same, but they change from moment to moment. We’re referring to things like the network of enlightening forms of a Buddha. The nature stays the same, but each moment the Buddha can appear in all sorts of different forms, from moment to moment, it’s changing. For example, a Buddha as a teacher is also going to be different in every moment. He or she does not say the same thing over and over again. Evolving factors are what evolves into that network of enlightening forms. 

What’s going on in the Buddha’s mind, in the mind of an omniscient being, in each moment? Because the objects of a Buddha’s mind are changing due to impermanence every moment, then we have to say that the awareness is changing every moment. Right? All phenomena and all beings are impermanent, changing, moment to moment to moment. Buddha is omniscient, aware of all of these objects. However, because they’re changing from moment to moment, what a Buddha is aware of is changing from moment to moment in accordance with the changes of the objects. Nature stays the same, of course, conventional and deepest nature. These evolving factors are referring to the two networks of positive force and deep awareness, the so-called collection of merit and the collection of insight or wisdom.

Abiding Buddha-Nature Factors

The abiding Buddha-nature factors refer to the nature of the mind basically. In the Gelugpa system, it’s referring to the deepest nature of the mind, voidness. The other traditions will add the conventional nature of the mind as well, which is fine. Because of the void nature of the mind, then we can have the arising of samsara out of the Buddha-nature factors or we can have the rising of enlightenment from them. These Buddha-nature factors are imputations on everybody’s individual mental continuums. Of course, we can get into a detailed discussion of what actually they’re imputed on, but let’s not get into too much detail at once.

Inspiration

Our mental continuum: We have these two networks. Out of them, we can produce either samsaric rebirth or bodies of a Buddha. Because of the abiding nature of the mental continuum of mind (its voidness) and its conventional nature as well, it can give rise to either of them, these networks. These Buddha-nature factors, these networks and so on and the mental continuum on which they’re imputed can be inspired, uplifted and influenced. This specifically refers to not being inspired by the sunset, but being inspired by the great examples of the Buddhas and the teachers, the spiritual teachers.

We have already discussed this Buddha-nature factor. How does it happen that we get the arising of samsara or enlightenment, nirvana, from these Buddha-nature factors, from these two networks? This is important to understand. This brings in the whole discussion of karma and the network of positive force, so-called “merit.”

Karma: Compulsiveness of Our Behavior and Actions

We have two general explanations of karma in the Buddhist teachings, well, actually three, but the Tibetans study just two of them. There’s a third, which is the Theravada explanation of karma, which is different. Within the Tibetan systems, we have a slightly simpler system and a more complex one. The more complex one is the one that we find in the Prasangika system of philosophical tenets, as explained by Tsongkhapa in the Gelug tradition. It’s a variation on, or a development further, from the basic Vaibhashika presentation in the Abhidharmakosha by Vasubandhu. Let’s look at this system.

What does actually constitute the so-called merit, positive force? Well, we can speak in terms of our actions of body and speech and we can also speak in terms of the actions of mind. In terms of our body and speech, the positive force refers also to karma itself. What’s karma? This is a little a bit complex, a little bit subtle. Karma is something compulsive. Remember, this is important to understand: We want to get rid of it. It’s compulsive, under the control of disturbing emotions and unawareness or ignorance.

Although the Tibetan word for “karma” is the colloquial word for “action,” it’s not just equivalent to only actions. If it were equivalent to just actions, then all we would have to do is to stop doing anything or saying anything to get rid of our karma, to just become like a rock. This is not the meaning of karma. Karma is the compulsiveness of our behavior and our actions. Compulsive means “not under our control.” Do you understand what the word “compulsive” means? Compulsive is somebody is going like this, tapping their fingers and moving their legs and so on. Compulsively, they’re not under control of it because of some disturbing state of mind or stress. That’s compulsive. For instance, compulsively eating even if you’re full; basically, you’re in a bad mood so you just compulsively stuff your mouth. Or compulsively saying “no” to everything, always disagreeing, no matter what somebody says. We want our behavior to be generated out of compassion, not compulsively out of our disturbing emotions and ignorance.

In this Prasangika system, the karma in our physical actions refers to the compulsive shape that our actions take. It’s not the actions themselves but their compulsive shape. For example, if there’s an insect, and the shape of our behavior is always that we want to squat it or kill it, there’s a certain shape our actions always take. You know, anything that we don’t like, we want to destroy. In terms of our verbal behavior, it’s the compulsive sound of our voice, compulsively it’s an aggressive sound; it reveals – these are called “revealing forms” – the motivation behind it. That is when it can compulsively reveal either a negative emotion or a positive one mixed with confusion. 

For instance, a positive emotion would be to want to make everything clean and correct. Compulsive is when we become a perfectionist, a fanatic. Somebody who’s over and over again compulsively cleaning their house. It’s never clean enough. The positive emotion that’s revealed behind it – we want everything nice and clean – there’s nothing wrong with that, but there’s this perfectionist behind it that’s very neurotic and also there’s unawareness that it’s impossible for things to be perfectly clean, which reflects impermanence, etc. Or somebody who’s a grammar police, somebody who constantly corrects the grammar of other people, no matter what they say, that’s compulsive. It may be a good motivation, they want people to speak clearly, but there’s something seriously neurotic behind it, that it has to be perfect for them. We have compulsive negative potential, but this is also compulsive positive force. 

This is the karma, these are positive forces, the compulsive shape of our physical actions and the compulsive sound of our verbal actions. In terms of mental, it’s the urge that brings on what we’re thinking. That’s the positive force, in the case of our thinking.

The Role of Revealing Form and Non-Revealing Form

For the revealing form, let’s stick with just the physical and the verbal. When we stop doing something, stop cleaning our house or stop correcting somebody, then that revealing form brings on what’s actually called the positive force. This is an imputation on the mental continuum, both the compulsive shape and sound as a positive force; so, it has a certain form, and then we have this factor which is imputed on the mind, the so-called positive force itself. Then, there’s something else called the “non-revealing form,” which is a very subtle form that’s not made of particles and it doesn’t reveal the motivation. It’s sort of a subtle vibration and it underlies the physical and verbal behavior and continues afterwards on the mental continuum. It continues on the mental continuum until we have very fully decided that we’re no longer going to act in this constructive or destructive way. We decide to give it up completely and then we lose this non-revealing form and, again, it turns into the imputation of a positive potential in the case of a positive non-revealing form.

I know that all of this is rather complicated and very difficult to really digest. Let’s try to make it a little bit simpler. The point being that the network of positive force covers all of this. If we want to know what is a network of positive force, we have to know what it is a network of. To just keep it simple, let’s keep it with our actions of body and speech. What’s this positive force that we have? First of all, it refers to our compulsive positive behavior, and not the behavior itself, but the compulsive shape that it takes and the compulsive sound of our voice. The subtle vibration that’s underlying that is the non-revealing form. I’m sorry to use this New Age terminology of a “vibration,” but it seems to be the closest to what this is talking about.

This is what’s happening at the time of when we’re actually doing or saying something. This has a certain positive force to it. From one point of view we look at it as a positive force, from another point of view we can look at it as a positive potential – something to go on in the future. When we stop acting, afterwards what continues as a positive force is first of all this subtle vibration. It’s sort of there. We can get a sense of it, if we think of an alcoholic. Even when they’re not actually drinking, if we’re sensitive enough, we can sort of feel a vibration about them that they’re an alcoholic, can’t you? There’s something about them that we can feel. That’s about the closest analogy I can think of.

We also have what’s called the “actual karmic force in the nature of a tendency” and that’s an imputation. There are two aspects of it: One is what comes directly from when we stop acting or speaking and another that comes when we lose that vibration. We lose that vibration when as an alcoholic we give up alcohol, go to Alcoholic Anonymous and decide not to drink anymore. When that’s really very strong, then we lose this subtle vibration of being an alcoholic. That’s how we lose these non-revealing forms, but it’s still a potential, a force. We can become an alcoholic again, if we start drinking again.

All these forces from all these various things network together, and so we can impute on them, as an imputation on these forces, there’s a network. We have to remember, when we talk about imputation, we’re not talking about some mental construct. From the Sautrantika point of view this is objective, not something conceptual. Imputation is something that we can see non-conceptually, we can know non-conceptually.

There are a lot of people here, individual people. I can see individual people, but I can also see a group of people. Group is an imputation on the individuals. Is there a group of people here? Yes. Can I see the group of people? Yes. Is the group just something that was made up by my imagination and projected conceptually? No. I can have a concept of a group and then that can terrify me – “Uh, I’m sitting in front of a group of people and talking to a group.” That’s my weird idea of a group. However, objectively, there’s a group of people here. Right? There’s a lot of websites, a lot of URLs. Is there a network, the web, the World Wide Web? Yes. Is it just a concept? No. The World Wide Web is an imputation on all the individual URLs. Similarly, the network of positive force is an imputation on all these individual instances of positive force – every compulsive shape of every action that we’ve done, etc., etc., etc. There’s such a thing. Nobody is refuting that.

I can’t underline enough how important it is to understand what an imputation is, because the self, the “me,” is an imputation on the aggregates. If we don’t understand that, then we can easily fall to the extreme of nihilism. For instance, we could deny the conventional truth of anything.

All these individual pieces of positive force, all these different types make a network. They constitute a network of positive force. There’s also one of negative force, but that’s not part of Buddha-nature. We have this network of positive force. The next question is what does it give rise to? It all depends on the dedication. If it’s not dedicated to anything, it gives rise to samsara. If it’s dedicated with bodhichitta, it can give rise to enlightenment, but it has to be helped by this network of deep awareness and an understanding of voidness. Remember, that network of deep awareness is referring to how the mind works, how the mind works thinking with confusion or how the mind works with correct understanding of voidness. We want to have it with correct understanding of voidness.

Network of Positive Force Ripening into Samsara

What does this network of positive force ripen into? It ripens into, first of all, the physical form of our rebirth, the physical form in each moment actually, but also the rebirth, the kind of body we’re going to have. That body is a good example of true suffering. It’s impermanent; it’s in the nature of suffering, the suffering of birth, sickness, old age and death. All these sorts of things are going to happen with the body. It gets injured. So big problem, limited body. We can think of how much time we’ve spent being what Shantideva calls “the servant of the body.” We have to feed it, clothe it, wash it, put it to sleep, etc. There is so much that takes up our time, just taking care of this body. We’re the servant, the slave of it. The emotional feeling of renunciation is boring. It is so boring, having to do this over and over again. We’re going to have to brush our teeth a 100,000 times in this lifetime or more. I mean that’s really boring. Buddha doesn’t have to brush his teeth. Sometimes it helps to use silly examples.

Network of Positive Force Ripening into Happiness and into Repeating our Actions

Next thing that this network ripens into is a feeling of happiness. However, that happiness is in the nature of the cause of suffering, the second noble truth, because that happiness is something that we thirst for and don’t want to go away. Of course, it’s going to go away, because it’s impermanent. It never satisfies and so on. Our ordinary type of happiness is a troublemaker. The networks also ripen into repeating a similar type of behavior to what we have done before. Compulsively, the shape of our physical action and the positive sound of our voice repeats. From the side of thinking, it’s the compulsive urge to worry, to have all sorts of crazy ideas and so on. These actions come from similar things we have done before.

Network of Positive Force Ripening into our Environment

Also, what comes from it is the type of environment that we’re going to find ourselves in. The environment is going to support that type of behavior, of certain things happening to us – for example, being in a very violent or very poor country. Here, however, it refers to positive things, so being in a country like I live in Germany, where everything is supposed to be orderly and clean, “alles ist in Ordnung” – everything is under control. That’s an environment which encourages people to be perfectionists. There are all sorts of trouble with this idea of being perfect. It’s an environment that encourages that. That’s the samsaric package that ripens from our network of positive karmic force and it’s supported by our network of deep awareness mixed with confusion. 

Our mind is mixed with this unawareness, confusion about how we exist and how everything exists. That effects this network of positive karmic force that gives rise to nice samsara. Neurotic. The network of positive force, add to it no dedication to bodhichitta, just our worldly aims (we want to get rich, these sort of things), and on the side of the network of deep awareness, whatever wo do our mind is completely filled with confusion and a wrong idea of how we exist and how all exists – the combination of that, along with unawareness and worldly aims, samsaric aims, effect that network of positive force that give rise to samsara, adding more confusion out of that network of deep awareness.

Adding Bodhichitta

Let’s add to the pot here, to our formula, bodhichitta, some understanding of voidness and what comes out of this network of positive force. Instead of a limited body, we get the physical body of a Buddha, all the form bodies of a Buddha. Instead of our happiness, which is mixed with confusion and never satisfies and so on, we get a blissful mind of a Buddha. Instead of compulsive behavior, we get the enlightening activity of a Buddha, always helping others. Instead of an environment, which just encourages compulsive, samsaric behavior, we get an environment of a pure land, in which everything is conducive for everybody to become enlightened. All these so-called four purities: of body, enjoyment (that’s bliss), behavior (that’s Buddha-activity), and the environment, those parallel what ripens from karma. Exactly the same structure as what ripens from karma is what comes in terms of these Buddha-nature factors that give rise to enlightenment. The only difference is whether or not there’s bodhichitta and an understanding of voidness. Of course, with renunciation, we don’t want to give rise to samsara. Further, with bodhichitta, we want to give rise to enlightenment.

Tantra: Rehearsing the Result

As a method for bringing us to that enlightened state from our Buddha-nature factors, we imagine now that we have something similar to what we would have as a Buddha. We imagine we have a body of a Buddha, this Buddha-figure. We imagine that we enjoy the offerings and so on with a blissful mind, not mixed with confusion. We imagine that we have this enlightening activity and with that we benefit all beings, imagining around us a pure land of a mandala. This is the essence of what this tantra practice is all about. We’re practicing now something similar to the result in terms of body, enjoyment, activity and environment. Like a rehearsal, it will bring us closer to the result. Why? Because we can use the Buddha-figure to integrate bodhichitta, renunciation, voidness, the four immeasurables and all the different things of the path.

We have to understand what bodhichitta is so that we understand how it fits in everything that we’ve just discussed. Bodhichitta isn’t the same as love and compassion. Love and compassion bring on bodhichitta, but they’re not the same. With bodhichitta, because of our love and compassion, we want everybody to be happy, not to be unhappy, and we want to do something about it. We have the the so-called “exceptional resolve” in which we now make the firm decision, “I’m definitely going to do something about it!” Then, bodhichitta comes after that.

Our Own Enlightenment Imputed on Buddha-Nature Factors

Bodhichitta is aimed at our own individual enlightenments, which have not yet happened. It’s like the fact that next year or tomorrow has not yet happened, but there’s such a thing as tomorrow or next year. However, tomorrow isn’t happening today. Similarly, our own individual enlightenments are not happening now. It’s something, though, that we can think about, like we can think about tomorrow; we can aim for it, like we’re aiming to do something tomorrow.

That not-yet-happening of our enlightenment is imputed on Buddha-nature factors. These factors have one aspect that can give rise to that enlightenment, when all the other contributing factors are complete. That’s the potential, that’s why it’s called potential. Think about it: We have this network, which is like the World Wide Web. It has the potential to give rise to a website of pornography or violence or it has the potential to give rise to some beautiful enlightened Buddhist teaching. It has both potentials. Our network of positive force can give rise to samsara – for example, we would be a good perfectionist – or it can give rise to enlightenment. It has both potentials, and it all depends on bodhichitta, voidness and renunciation.

Basically, we want to focus on something that’s not yet happening. We want to focus on tomorrow. Tomorrow isn’t happening yet, but tomorrow I’m going to take an airplane back to Berlin. I can picture that in my mind: Going to the airport, sitting on the plane and so on. This represents the not-yet-happening of my airplane ride to Berlin. I have to prepare for the trip, such as packing my bag, etc. Similarly, how do we represent our not-yet-happening enlightenment, so that we can aim for and focus on it with bodhichitta? We do this by imagining that we’re already in the form of the Buddha-figure, that we already enjoy things without confusion – such as these offerings in the practice; further, that we engage in enlightening activity – with all these lights going out from us and we’re helping everybody; that our voice is in the form of mantras; the environment around us is a pure land, and that everybody is practicing Dharma and so on. We imagine all of that. They represent our not-yet-happening enlightenment, and with bodhichitta we focus on that. This is what we want to attain.

“Me,” as an imputation on the whole sequence of events, can also be imputed on that not-yet-happening enlightenment. The easiest example to understand this is to think of a series of photos of ourselves, from when we were a baby through our childhood, teenage and adult years – every few years all the way up to now. They are all us, but they look completely different. The body is different, but still it’s “me”; “me” is an imputation on all of these photos. Likewise, we could have photos of what we think we might look like as a really old person, photos from past lifetimes and from future lifetimes, as an enlightened Buddha. All of them are just a larger series of photographs, aren’t they?

“Me” is an imputation on that entire stream of continuity – all of samsara and into enlightenment as well. It’s a valid imputation of “me” on that Buddha-figure, on that enlightenment as represented by the Buddha-figure, but it’s not yet happening. That’s true because of the voidness of the self. There’s nothing inside each of these photographs that make them “me.” It’s not that our name is written on the back of the photograph and that makes it “me.” There’s nothing on the side of that. Nevertheless, it’s correct, it’s “me.”

We’ve covered a lot. Let’s review it in a very simple form. We have these two evolving factors, the two networks of positive force and deep awareness. That positive force from the shape of our actions, the sound of our voice, all these subtle vibrations and so on, worldly aims and no understanding of voidness, confusion – all of that gives rise to ordinary body, ordinary happiness, ordinary erratic behavior and ordinary environment that supports erratic behavior. That’s samsara, over and over and over again.

We’re just filling in a little bit detail from that general visualization that we had yesterday. Remember, we had a ball and the networks that gave rise to another ball, which was samsara. We didn’t want that and instead it goes up to the ball up here, which is enlightenment through the ball of the Buddha-figures. Now, we fill in some detail: This ball of these two enlightening networks, what is it made of, what is it giving rise to in samsara? We see that it gives rise to a body, happiness, compulsive behavior and a difficult environment. 

Add bodhichitta and the understanding of voidness to the formula, and they give rise to up here in this bubble: We have a body of the Buddha, bliss of the Buddha, activity of the Buddha and environment of the Buddha, the pure land. And here, in the bubble of our practice, the path, we have something that represents what we want to achieve: The body of a Buddha-figure, our imagination of blissful understanding without confusion of offerings and so on, enlightening activity, all these lights going out and helping everybody, and a pure environment, mandala. All these are parallel: Ordinary body, sickness, old age, death, etc. – the body of a Buddha-figure and physical body of a Buddha. Ordinary speech, we don’t know what we’re saying, nobody understands us – and mantra, enlightening speech of a Buddha. Our ordinary happiness, never lasts, doesn’t satisfy – and our imagination of pure happiness of enjoying the offerings and blissful mind of a Buddha. Our compulsive behavior – our imagining that we’re helping all beings and the enlightening activity of a Buddha. Our ordinary polluted environment – our imagination of a pure mandala and so on and a pure land of a Buddha. Our confusion, unawareness of how things exist – our conceptual or non-conceptual cognition of voidness and then the full simultaneous cognition of the two truths, the omniscient mind of the Buddha. It’s all parallel, and this parallelism is very important to understand.

Instead of these Buddha-nature factors giving rise to this basis level, which is samsara, terrible and boring, we want to give rise to the resulting level, and to do that, because the resultant level isn’t yet happening, the Buddhahood isn’t yet happening, we imagine something similar. This is the path and the tantra practice. Practicing now similar to what we’ll attain in the future is a more efficient way of attaining that result, like a rehearsal for a drama in the theater.

Take a moment to try to just appreciate the parallel that is here between the basis, path and result. 

[Pause]

We’re always working with Buddha-nature; it’s two networks. We want to strengthen them more and more. It can be influenced, stimulated through the inspiration of the teacher, the Buddhas, the Three Jewels of refuge and so on.

We end with a little dedication: Whatever positive force, whatever understanding comes from this discussion, may it get deeper and deeper and act as a cause for us being able to attain the enlightened state of a Buddha for the benefit of all.