Tantra: What Is It All About?

We can see from these two meanings of tantra that this isn’t a beginner practice. It’s an advanced practice, because, obviously, we need to understand what Buddha-nature is. We need to understand how it gives rise to samsara, to enlightenment and so on. That means that we need to have renunciation of samsara. We don’t want our Buddha-nature to give rise to that and we need to have bodhichitta to aim for our Buddha-nature to give rise to enlightenment instead. We need to have the understanding of voidness or emptiness, two words for the same thing, in order to understand how it’s possible for our Buddha-natures to give rise to either samsara or enlightenment.

Often we hear that we need this so-called three-principled path – renunciation, bodhichitta and the understanding of voidness – as basis for practicing tantra, but it’s extremely important to understand why and how that’s the basis for practice. This is a very simple way of presenting it. We don’t want Buddha-nature to give rise to samsara, that’s renunciation: “I don’t want that! That’s suffering, that’s terrible! I want my Buddha-nature to give rise to enlightenment!” That’s bodhichitta: I’m aimed at my own enlightenment, moved by compassion, I want to attain it. How is that possible? It’s only possible in terms of cause and effect. How does cause and effect work? It works on the basis of voidness and emptiness, otherwise cause would be isolated independently by itself, and effect would also be isolated independently by itself, and one couldn’t give rise to the other. That understanding of voidness is very important. However, it’s not too difficult to understand. Obviously, we need to go deeper and see the details of what all of this is referring to, but the basic idea isn’t difficult. It’s not mysterious, it’s understandable.

I think it’s important to start out by really understanding this, which means we take a little while to try to digest it. I’ll review it once more so that we’ll hopefully try to remember. Then, please, you review it for yourselves in your minds: We have Buddha-nature. Obviously, we need to explain what it is, but it’s just simple, we have Buddha-nature. Buddha-nature gives rise to samsara, repeated rebirth of all sorts of suffering. That’s what it does, normally. We don’t want this – and that’s renunciation. If we really put a great deal of effort in Buddha’s path, then instead of Buddha-nature giving rise to samsaric rebirth over and over again, it can give rise to our enlightenment. However, we’ll only be able to attain enlightenment, if that’s what we’re aiming for, and that’s bodhichitta.

How will it be possible to actually attain enlightenment? We have to work on cause-and-effect with these Buddha-figures, putting all the different aspects of the path together. That can only work because of the voidness of cause and effect. Otherwise, cause can’t give rise to an effect. Try to review that to get a basic understanding, then we can fill in the details. Basis, result, the path that we’re transforming; on that basis, we give rise to suffering or we give rise to enlightenment. Renunciation of this suffering, bodhichitta to attain that enlightenment only works on the basis of voidness, the three principal paths.

Is there any guarantee, can we be sure that our implied causes actually bring the result we want instead of some other unwanted result?

That can only bring about the proper result. We’re in tantra practice. We need to have the guidance of a qualified teacher, who has travelled the path, knows how to do it and knows the pitfalls and the dangers. They have to be able to guide us and we need to practice correctly and not just on our own with some wild, crazy ideas of what tantra is all about. If we have this, then we can be assured that we’ll achieve the result, but it will take a great deal of work and a lot of time. It’s not a magic pill.

[Pause]

We just had a short meditation and I would like to say a few comments about that. We often hear the words shamatha and vipashyana, describing two types of meditation that we do in Buddhism. One of the things that I’d like to do is to demystify some of these terms. What’s the difference between these two? Each of them has an understanding, is focused on something with an understanding. Shamatha is focused on something with a rough, general understanding. Vipashyana adds on top of that more detailed understanding. That’s the basic difference. 

When we do the type of meditation that we just did, to try to understand what tantra is all about, what I described and what we were trying to do was a shamatha style. We try to have some object to focus. What could we use here? Buddhism suggests that infographics are very helpful, some sort of mental picture. We want to have something very general here. You can make some charts like a drawing, it doesn’t have to be sophisticated: Here we have Buddha-nature, some sort of circle, and an arrow that goes to samsara and a big “X” through that – as we don’t want that! Instead, we want an arrow going up to another circle over here, enlightenment. That’s bodhichitta. What’ll bring us to get the arrow up is the practice with the Buddha-figures. That’s the circle in the middle. The arrow goes up, maybe it’s dots, which represents voidness, not so solid. It’s very simple. That’s what we want, something simple.

Then we focus on the infographic, drawing, etc. and try to keep our attention on that with an understanding of what information is there, in other words, what this represents. Maybe we have to recite what it represents to start off with. That’s ok. However, we don’t have to keep on reciting it like a mantra. We just focus with understanding. If the understanding gets weak, then, maybe, recite again what the different pieces stand for. Of course, if our attention goes away in mental wandering, we try to bring it back. If we become sleepy, we try to wake ourselves up. These standard type of things. However, even being able to concentrate on this with understanding for a very short period of time makes an impression on our mind, an understanding starts to sink in. Very simply, that’s shamatha. If we do that, even if for a very, very short period of time, thirty seconds, however long we can do it before we do any tantra practice, then we remind ourselves what it’s all about. Otherwise, it just becomes a meaningless ritual; it is very easy to degenerate into that.

Vipashyana just adds all the details into this process. We’ll get to some of that detail that has to do with karma, what actually Buddha-nature is, how it works and so on. That’s all the details that come on top of that general shamatha. When we are able to focus on all the details, that’s vipashyana.

I find it very, very helpful to have a very basic understanding of what are all of these things that we hear about in the Buddhist teachings. Basically, what they’re really referring to on a practical level and how they are actually done. Because, if we don’t know how to do it, then it’s like being thrown into a swimming pool and not knowing how to swim. Maybe we’ll figure it out, but it’s going to be a struggle.

Let’s try again for just a minute this shamatha style of what’s tantra all about: Buddha-nature, not wanting to give rise to samsara – crossing that out. We want to give rise to enlightenment, that’s bodhichitta. These Buddha-figures integrating like on a loom weaving all the parts of the path together will get us there, because of voidness of cause and effect. This is what mindfulness is all about.

We hear this word “mindfulness” all the time. It’s the same word as “to remember,” “to keep something in mind.” What do we want to remain mindful of? It’s understanding. We have to remain mindful of our understanding of what we’re doing. We do that, don’t we, in other areas? For instance, I understand what I’m doing when I‘m working, cooking, driving or doing anything. I understand what I’m doing. I understand how I tie my shoes. What does understanding mean? What does it mean to understand something? It’s an important question. Do we really understand it? What’s the definition? The definition is a state of mind that’s both accurate and decisive. The fact that I understand how to tie my shoes is accurate. I don’t make a mistake and it’s decisive, it’s not that I’m unsure how I’ll do it, it’s not like that. Do I have to recite in my mind how to tie my shoe when I tie my shoes? No. However, if I didn’t understand how to tie my shoes, I couldn’t tie my shoes. When we tie our shoes, we have to remain mindful, don’t we? We have to pay attention, otherwise it doesn’t work. And we have to remember how to tie our shoes, but we don’t have to recite it. That level of understanding and mindfulness is what we want to bring to any Dharma practice that we’re doing, but especially to tantra, because it’s so easy for it to become what I call a Buddhist Disneyland. Just think about this for a moment. This is what we’re aiming for. Always understanding and then integrating it into our whole way of being.

Remember, Buddha said that the root of all our troubles is ignorance, not knowing and not understanding, understanding incorrectly. The opposite, the antidote to that, is having correct understanding and being accurate and decisive, which is what we aim for. Tantra practice with understanding of what we’re doing is fantastic. Tantra practice with no understanding of what we’re doing, or an incorrect understanding, leads to disaster. We go off into our own fantasyland of unreality and weirdness. We don’t want that. Take a moment to let this sink in.

Remember, shamatha is general understanding. Vispashana is detailed, added on top of the general understanding. Both have perfect concentration. Perfect concentration is no big deal. It’s difficult but it’s not exclusively Buddhist. An athlete has perfect concentration. Perfect concentration with an understanding of the Buddhist teachings, that’s something else. We want to understand, be awake. That’s what the word “Buddha” implies – completely awake.

Let’s start to fill in a little bit of detail, slowly. Buddha-nature, what’s that? There are three aspects of Buddha-nature. First of all, there isn’t a word in Sanskrit or Tibetan that actually means “Buddha-nature.” These are the characteristics of the family of everybody who can become a Buddha. It’s referring to family traits or characteristics of the Buddha-family. We’re all part of the Buddha-family. The first type of Buddha-nature factors are the evolving traits. These are the traits that can evolve, that can grow. Then there are the abiding traits, which always remain the same. They basically explain how things can grow. Then there’s the fact that these evolving traits can be inspired to grow, they can be influenced. Things that evolve, that can grow. What makes it possible for them to grow? The nature that makes it possible for them to grow and the fact that they can be stimulated to grow; very simple scheme.

What are the evolving factors? They’re what’s usually translated as the “two collections,” what I usually like to translate as the “two networks,” because they’re the networks of many different things, not a collection of stamps. We have a network of positive force that’s usually called “collection of merit.” The word “merit” – I don’t know about the Russian word for it, but in English it’s pretty strange and doesn’t quite give the correct meaning. What we’re talking about is the positive force of our constructive behavior. That positive force accesses a positive potential to give rise to results, as the whole topic of karma. We do something nice, with a nice motivation, and there’s a positive force, which is generated by that, it’s continuous on our mental continuum and there’s the potential for us to be nice again, to put it in very simple words. We do a lot of nice things. It’s not that each little lump of positive force sits there somewhere and accumulates like a collection of stamps, or interacts and strengthens each other and so on. That’s why I call it a network. If you are familiar with system theory, of how the different aspects within a system work together to produce various results, it’s a whole system of positive force. It’s affected by many that happen in each moment. It grows and can get stronger and weaker, depending on how we behave, how we do things. Of course, we also have a network of negative force, negative potential, but that’s not usually referred to as a network or collection, but surely the mechanism is the same.

The second network is the network of deep awareness. It’s sometimes called “collection of wisdom.” It’s deep awareness, deep in two senses: One is that it’s the very depth, deepest of the most primordial, basic way in which the mind works, even in insects. It can also be deep in the sense of being profound. Thus, it has two meanings, which are relevant here in terms of this network of deep awareness.

How does the mind work? Basically, we take in information. We’re able to see the equality of things. We’re able to put this white thing and that white thing next to it together as both being flowers. We can see that they’re related to each other, that they’re basically equal. We can see the individuality of things: This flower isn’t that flower. It’s this one over here; we can tell the difference between these two. We know what to do, to do something with it – to put it in water, or something. We know if we want to go over there, we have to walk to go over there. We basically know what things are. The worm has that as well. It takes in information. It sees two items as both being food; it can tell one from another. It knows what it is and to do with it, eat it. It might not have a word “food,” but it knows “food.”

That’s how the mind works. Obviously, it can be very limited or it could be unlimited like that of a Buddha. We have to develop these features. We all have them. Everybody has a network of deep awareness and a network of positive force. How do we know that we have a network of positive force? Because one of the things that it brings about, or the technical word is “ripens into,” is happiness. If we’ve ever had a moment of happiness in our entire life, it demonstrates that we have a network of positive force. This positive force is very uplifting. It makes us happy.

This is very fundamental to understand – as it’s accurate and decisive: Yes, we have these two factors, these two networks, and so does everybody, even a mosquito. The mosquito bites, gets some blood, eats, is full and feels happy. Why not? That’s the evolving Buddha-nature factors, two networks. They can give rise to very limited type of experience or an unlimited type of experience as a Buddha. A limited type of experience is when they’re mixed with confusion we get samsara. Samsara, uncontrollably recurring rebirth, is what we’re talking about. The abiding factors, what allows for them to either give rise to samsara or, when it’s free of confusion and has the force of bodhichitta behind it, to give rise to enlightenment. The abiding factor is the voidness of the mind, the mental continuum.

What’s the difference between whether these networks give rise to uncontrollable recurring rebirth, not just moment-to-moment existence, but continuing from one lifetime to another? What’s the difference between that positive force giving rise to happy samsara, which never satisfies, is never enough and so it’s problematic, or to enlightenment? The difference is bodhichitta. In other words, if we do something positive, we’re nice to somebody, and we don’t have any dedication to that at the end of that positive force, then it just contributes to making a nice samsara; it’s our samsara-building network of positive force.

You know, I’m nice to you, I say, “I love you,” I’m so kind to you and as the result from that positive force then, maybe it’s not this exact person, but in the future, someone else will say to us, “I love you,” and be nice to us. We all know that somebody saying, “I love you,” to us once is never enough, is it? We want to hear it again and again and again. That’s not very satisfying, is it? They say, “I love you,” and at best it makes us feel good for a little while. However, it could be mixed with confusion: “You don’t really mean that, do you? You are just saying that.” We don’t even get the enjoyment from somebody saying, “I love you.” Our mother says, “I love you,” but that doesn’t really count, because I want my girlfriend or my boyfriend or my husband or my wife to say, “I love you.” Mother loves me? Yeah, so what. This is samsara, as it’s never satisfying. That’s what happens when we don’t have any dedication of the positive force. Things are nice, but not very satisfying. Think of Facebook, it’s a wonderful example. For instance, we have enough likes, and we don’t need any more likes on our Facebook page. No! We always want more, don’t we? And we’re checking all the time how many we have. That’s suffering, isn’t it? It’s a very good example of how much enjoyment we get from these likes and how much frustration we get from them, because we want more. 

Bodhichitta is in our minds. We aim that that positive force contributes to our enlightenment to the benefit of everyone. This makes the difference. Then it becomes an enlightenment-building network. For it really to be an enlightenment-building network, it has to be with what’s called unlabored bodhichitta. Unlabored means that we don’t have to work at it, or build it up through these methods, such as the seven-point cause and effect meditation or equalizing and exchanging self with others, thinking that everybody has been our mother, they’ve been so kind – all this sort of stuff. We don’t have to go through this in order to generate bodhichitta. It’s just “bang!” and we have it. That’s unlabored bodhichitta. However, even if we don’t have that, if we have just our ordinary level of bodhichitta, at least something is there, then it’s called “facsimile.” It works in that direction. It’s not yet the real thing, but it contributes in that direction. It’s fine and good enough.

Whether that network of positive force gives rise to samsaric continuation or it contributes to enlightenment, because of having bodhichitta as the force behind it, in either case it can only work on the basis of voidness of cause and effect. That’s the abiding nature. Understanding of voidness, of course, isn’t terribly simple. However, if we think just on a simple level of interdependence: For example, something is only a cause of something else, if there’s a result. If there’s no result, it can’t be a cause. A result can’t be a result unless there’s a cause. That’s right, isn’t it? Someone can’t be a child unless there’s a parent and someone isn’t a parent unless there’s a child. The two depend on each other, they’re relative to each other.

Neither of these are – now, here’s a technical term – self-established. They don’t establish themselves. What does that mean? A cause doesn’t make itself into a cause. It’s only made into a cause, because it depends on there being a result. It’s called “dependent arising.” Result doesn’t make itself to be a result. It can only be a result, because it depends on the cause. This is what voidness is all about. Things don’t establish themselves, they don’t make themselves into themselves just by something inside them. For example, something inside me makes me a child. No! It’s only in relation to parents that I’m a child. Nothing inside me by itself makes me a child, does it? Nothing makes this a right hand by itself. It’s only right because there’s a left hand, otherwise, it would just be a hand. It’s only a right hand because there’s a left hand. Things depend on each other, which is what voidness means. It’s an absence of things established themselves by their own power. Cause (Buddha-nature) and result (either samsara or enlightenment) only works because of voidness. That’s the abiding Buddha-nature, its voidness, this absence of something impossible – that they’re just a cause by themselves without there being a result.

Things can get better or things can get worse. Why? Because things aren’t stuck just by themselves. Everything is relative, everything can be affected by something else. Growth is possible, which is a very important thing to be confident of. It’s possible to grow, because things aren’t stuck, as if they’re just one aspect. How can they grow? What really helps is that they can be stimulated, for instance, like the sun can stimulate seeds to grow. That’s the third type of Buddha-nature. We have inspiration, sometimes it’s translated as “blessing,” but it brings in a mysterious aspect, which we don’t really need here. We can be inspired. This is the role of a teacher, by a good example. We know from child-bearing methods that it’s very important for the child to have a model: “This is someone I like to be when I’m grown up.” If we don’t have a model, then – in many ways – there’s no hope, because we don’t really know what we’re aiming for or if it is even possible. The model of the teacher – now we’re talking about a well-qualified teacher, not just anybody that calls themselves a teacher, but somebody who is qualified – can be very inspiring. The fact that we can be inspired is this third factor of Buddha-nature. Not every teacher is going to inspire everybody. We have to find a good fit. There will be somebody who inspires us. We need to look for this person. It can be many people; it doesn’t even have to be a Buddhist teacher. 

With this combination of these working factors, the networks of positive force and deep awareness, that this positive force can give rise to either samsara or enlightenment, and that deep awareness can be either mixed with confusion or clarity – that’s the dividing line, the understanding of voidness of how the mind works. This is all possible because of voidness of cause and effect and because there can be inspiration, that we can be inspired.

Then, we use these Buddha-figures with all their arms, legs, all their detail and so on as an infographic, to weave together all the different aspects of the path, all the understandings, the insights, the practices, etc., so that we can make that transformation on the basis of Buddha-nature, the two networks, voidness, inspiration and guidance of the teacher. And then we have tantra – that’s tantra.

That, I think, is enough for the first level of filling in detail. Let’s go back to our basic infographic. Now, what we have, instead of just the bubble of Buddha-nature, we have the two networks – positive force from the constructive, nice things we do, and deep awareness of how the mind works. However, without bodhichitta it’s just going to give rise to nice samsara, which is boring and we don’t want that! Nice, but it never satisfies and is never enough. Instead, we want to work on the path, put it altogether with the Buddha-figures, for these networks to give rise to enlightenment with bodhichitta, with the sunshine of the teacher, the tantric teacher, inspiring this growth, this transformation up to enlightenment. Then, we try to stabilize this understanding: “This is what I’m doing with my tantra practice. Not just doing a ritual and playing here with the vajra and bell and thinking that I’m so high and I’m so great. I’m actually doing something that makes sense.”

Let this sink in for a moment: Two networks, not samsara. Instead, Buddha-figures, sun shining down and inspiring it, enlightenment and bodhichitta to reach it. It’s more effective to have even just thirty seconds of good concentration with understanding on that than twenty minutes of mental wandering and not being able to sustain any of this and struggle. While doing tantra practice, if it starts to become meaningless, give another few seconds of understanding of what we’re doing. That’s mindfulness. Remember, mindfulness equals “remember,” which is what mindfulness means.

Are there some signs that would allow us to know that our practice is developing in a correct direction and is an authentic practice rather than we’re getting stuck in a Buddhist Disneyland?

First of all, any type of Buddhist practice is going to go up and down; it’s the nature of samsara. Some days our practice will go well, and some days it won’t. This is just the nature of samsara. We have to accept this and not to get discouraged. We need perseverance: It doesn’t matter, we do it anyway. I think, in general, we need to use the same criteria for measuring success in tantra as we do measuring success in any Buddhist practice. Remember, the aim of tantra isn’t to get the Olympic medal of visualizing, but rather to use the practices to integrate, as I said like a loom, all the basic sutra practices. We have to look over a long period of time, several years, and see how do we handle difficult situations, are we calmer and is our mind clearer? In general, the way it’s mentioned in the mind training texts: Do we have less self-cherishing and do we think more of others? This how we measure our progress.

Working with these Buddha-figures, if we avoid the two extremes of “Poor me, I’m so horrible,” or this arrogant “I’m so cool, I’m doing this tantra practice: I’m so wonderful,” then we’ve accomplished something and we’re getting somewhere. Particularly, it’s helpful to look at the difficult relationships that we have in our life. The people who can annoy us most, whether it’s family members, people at work, our neighbors, the other people in the traffic, etc. – how do we handle that? Are we able to keep calm with no self-cherishing, not cursing these people and thinking, “Oh, I don’t want to be with them, they’re so horrible”? It’s easy to be OK with our friends. It’s much more challenging to be with people that are difficult for us. That’s how we measure our progress. If our practice isn’t helping us to improve our daily life and our daily interactions with someone, we are doing something wrong. The whole point of Buddhist practice is to apply it to our life. It’s not something extra that we do as a hobby on the side that has no relation to our life.

At the beginning when you explained mindfulness, you gave an example with tying our shoes. When we tie our shoes, we don’t need to think and we don’t need to be so much, maybe, conscious or aware of what we’re doing, because we do it automatically. We know how we do it and we do it without thinking. But if we do Buddhist practice that also implies ample repetitions, like for instance prostrations in ngondro (preliminary practices), I would think that we don’t need to do it just automatically, just as a mere repetition, but instead we should try to be as much aware as we can to each prostration, for instance.

That’s true. The confusion here is our understanding of what “automatically” means. When we tie our shoes automatically, it’s with understanding. “Automatically” doesn’t equal “no understanding.” “Automatically” means that it’s so integrated that we don’t have to think about it. For instance, compassion and helping others should be so automatic that we don’t have to think about it. Of course, we are going to help somebody else when he or she needs help. That’s different from being mechanical. “Mechanical” has no meaning, no understanding. We don’t want prostrations to become mechanical, but the understanding that goes with prostration – of objects of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha, the meaning of what we’re reciting – everything there should be automatic. We don’t have to think, “Oh, what’s this?” and all of that. It’s just there.

The question is about our relationships with difficult people, because naturally it’s actually quite difficult. We start to think, “Maybe we need to find some other people, someone who’s better and easier to deal with.” How do we understand that it’s enough, that’s our limit and we need to cut off some difficult connections? It might be helpful to check on our progress while dealing with difficult people, but then to which extent do we go with these people?

If we look at the eight-verse mind training text, it says difficult people are like precious gems, they’re our teacher. It has three verses like that about how wonderful difficult people are for us to be able to develop patience, positive qualities and so on. If our interaction with this difficult person just causes them to develop more anger, more negative things, then it might be wiser to have a distance and not spend so much time with this person. However, the important thing is to not give up wishing for the other person to be happy. They’re difficult either because we have difficulty with them, so it’s something on our side, or they’re acting in a horrible way because they’re basically unhappy. We wish they would become happy, so they stop acting so terribly. Love is the antidote there and even if we do need to keep a distance, at least we wish them well.

Let me share a personal example with you. I have a stalker who’s been stalking me for the last eight years or so. This is a woman who’s seriously schizophrenic and has all sorts of really terrifying disillusions and thinks, “I’m some sort of god.” I mean she’s really very, very disturbed. I tried to help her in the beginning, but I realized that this is way beyond my ability to help her. She needs professional help. She absolutely refuses to get professional help or sees that anything is wrong. She continues to call me. She calls me in the middle of the night, at 3 am in the morning, etc. and has completely no concept that I’m never going to speak to her. As soon as she calls and I hear her voice on the phone, I just hang up. I went through that whole phase, “Please stop calling me. I can’t help you, you need professional help, it’s beyond my ability.” However, I don’t get angry when she wakes me up in the middle of the night. I wish her well, that she could get better, but I don’t engage with her anymore, as that would be absolutely pointless. It’s beyond my ability. Sometimes I joke that at least my stalker loves me. Anyway, I don’t recommend to get a stalker, it’s really creepy. Especially when she shows up at your door.

Let’s end with the dedication: Whatever understanding, whatever positive force that has come from this discussion, we wish that it may act as a cause for everybody – this is an important point, not just for ourselves but for everybody – to be able to attain enlightenment for the benefit of all.