Tantra: Concepts, Energy-Winds and Lineage

What is an energy-wind? Is it a subtle type of material? 

The problem in your question is, what do we mean by “material”? That’s a difficult word. However, within the categories of different types of non-static phenomena – things that are affected by causes and conditions, and that change – we have forms of physical phenomena (gzugs), ways of being aware of things (shes-pa), and then things that are neither (ldan-min ’du-byed). So, it’s a form of physical phenomenon. Can it be seen with the eye? No, not with the ordinary eye, but neither can sights and sounds that appear in dreams. Those also are forms of physical phenomena, but they’re not perceivable by the eye. So, it’s like that. Nevertheless, anything that is made from these subtle energy-winds, or the chakras, the channels, the drops – creative energy drops – all these things in this system are part of samsara. We don’t have those as a Buddha. Let’s make that a little bit more specific, a Buddha has the subtlest energy-wind, which is the subtlest wind associated with the clear light mind, but a Buddha doesn’t have anything grosser than that. So, a Buddha doesn’t have chakras and these sorts of things. 

For instance, in the Kalachakra system, when we have the stacking of the 21,600 drops of creative energy, creative energy drops within the central channel, all of that disappears and is gone when we actually achieve Buddhahood. They’re not there anymore. That’s something within the Kalachakra system. If we are not familiar with it, don’t worry about it. It’s something that we do within the energy systems, a certain moving of creative sparks (or something like that) of energy. 

When various people with special abilities are able to see auras, or a medium sees past and future lives, is this dealing with the nirvanic level?

No, it’s not. That’s still a samsaric level. Auras, energy – Buddhism doesn’t really speak about auras, as such, but in any case, the subtle energy system with all these channels and so on – that’s samsaric. Auras would be in that same type of category. Being able to see past and future lives, what we see or know is samsaric. These are samsaric levels. 

Now, of course, the question is whether or not we actually are aware of these things with eye consciousness and ear consciousness, or whether it’s mental consciousness that has these extraphysical powers. There’s a list of them, of the extraphysical powers that one can achieve. They’re the byproducts of having a stilled and settled state of mind, shamatha. That’s a perfectly concentrated state of mind with the sense of fitness that goes with that, and one gets these various abilities. As I say, there’s a difference of opinion as to whether those are with eye consciousness, or mental consciousness, or whatever, but they’re all within that list. I believe it’s called the deep awareness eyes, which only a Buddha has. That’s why it’s hard to classify them as a whole. In any case, they are – aside from that – they’re all taking as their object samsaric objects, samsaric things. 

Serkong Rinpoche use to explain this very nicely. That when we buy a bag of rice in the bazaar, it comes in a paper bag – or in a newspaper, or something like that, depending on where we buy it – and although we get the paper bag along with the rice, our purpose of buying it was not to get the paper bag; we wanted to get the rice. Whether we wanted the paper bag or not, we got the paper bag along with it, that it was in. Similarly, what we are aiming for in the shamatha practice is the state of mind of shamatha, this stilled and settled perfectly concentrated state of mind. Whether we want it or not, these extrasensory abilities come with it. 

Now despite that, Atisha, in Lamp to the Path, puts a big emphasis on these extrasensory powers and says that they’re really necessary for being able to help others more than we normally are. Because with these, we can see much further than the ordinary eyes when there is danger, and we can hear when there’s danger. If we’re a little bit aware of past and future lives – usually the emphasis is on past lives – we have a clearer idea of what somebody’s problems might be. If we can read somebody’s mind, who’s not communicative, we can also have a better idea of what their problems are, what their difficulties are. They’re very useful for being able to help others, but one doesn’t aim just for those.

Is there any realistic expectation that in the beginning visualization practices, we’re going to make a difference with our energy-winds? 

I doubt that. I think what affects the energy winds a little bit more would be mantra recitation. Because that adds a certain rhythm to the breath, and that affects the rhythm of the energies in the body. I suppose it’s a little bit like – what is it called – alpha wave biofeedback, or something like that, or neuro-feedback, where we generate a certain frequency of brain wave and reinforce it. I think with a mantra, we generate a certain – something similar to that – a certain frequency. This is one of the benefits of the recitations being in such a perfect meter because it also makes a much smoother flow of our energy when we recite it, and that helps to calm the energies within our bodies. 

Is it necessary to recite a mantra with a specific rhythm? 

The mantra has a rhythm to it. I mean, we could sing the mantra differently, you know, OM MANI PADME HUM, OM MANI PADME HUM reciting or OM MANI PADME HUM singing. That’s singing. However, just OM MANI PADME HUM by itself has a certain shaping of the breath, at least this is the theory. 

What is the nature of a mantra, and how do we recite this? 

His Holiness the Dalai Lama always emphasizes the importance of reciting mantras (if we have a choice) according to the Sanskrit pronunciation. Although, of course, we can’t be absolutely positive how it was pronounced in Sanskrit 2000 years ago, but particularly that deals with certain letters that are pronounced differently in different modern dialects. In any case, it’s quite clear from the rules of Sanskrit grammar, whether they’re long syllables, short syllables, and so on, since most of the mantras are made up of Sanskrit words. Then also there are certain, I wouldn’t say nonsense words, but words that are just there for the sound quality, such as ILI DILI SILI MILI, these sorts of words that are in some of the mantras, that actually are codes for various meanings, depending on where the letter that’s in them is in the alphabet, and so on. 

In any case, the Tibetans don’t pronounce the mantras exactly the same way as they would be pronounced in Sanskrit. “Vajra,” for instance, as in Vajrapani – OM VAJRAPANI HUM – the Tibetans would say OM BENZAPANI HUNG. Vajrasattva, they pronounce “benzasato.” This is clearly a different pronunciation. When it goes into other Asian languages – “vajra,” the Mongolians pronounce it “ochir,” and in Chinese, it’s pronounced even more differently, and in Japanese (pronouncing the Chinese characters), it’s pronounced even more differently. 

Then the question is, is it effective to pronounce them in a different way from the original meaning? We’d have to say that it can be. Because, obviously, great Tibetan lamas who pronounce them in the Tibetan way have realizations based on that. So, we can’t say that the power of a mantra is established totally on the side of the sound, on the side of the mantra. It arises dependently on the mental continuum, and the attitude, faith, confidence in them, and so on that the person has. As in the example of the person who brought home a dog’s tooth, and said it was the tooth of the Buddha, to the mother who wanted this from India. It’s really hard to say what is the special value of the sounds of the mantra. Sanskrit is the revered holy language that all the Buddhists respect. However, they do that, I think, based on the system of the Vedas, in which the sound of the Sanskrit language is taken as something very holy, and so the Buddhists inherit that, as well as do the other various other Indian systems. It’s hard to say. 

Can we say the effectiveness and power of the mantra is established by the rhythm, whether we say “benza” or “vajra”? Again, we couldn’t say that it’s established from the side of the sound itself. Does that mean that we could say anything? 

What role does lineage, and the so-called “blessings” of the lineage, have to do with the effectiveness of the mantra, since different lineages will pronounce the same mantra differently? 

We’d have to say that it does have a certain role. Does this involve blessings? “Blessings” is a translation that I don’t particularly like. It’s the word “chinlab” (byin-rlabs), and “adhisthana” in Sanskrit. Adhisthana is to place something in a higher position: “adhi” means higher, and “sthana” is place or situation. It’s an uplifting of the energy of something. The Tibetans translate it as “chingyilab” (byin-gyis rlabs); “lab” is waves, and with “chingyi,” so waves that make something more brilliant. In this sense, inspiring, uplifting, and so on. That’s why I translate it as “inspiration.” 

Now, what type of phenomenon is this chinlab? Is this inspiration? Is it a form of physical matter? Is it a way of being aware of something? That’s a difficult question. That’s a very difficult question. I think it would probably have to be a noncongruent affecting variable (ldan-min ’du-byed), this thing that’s in the “neither” category. That again is something which is imputed on the basis of the various lamas who have recited it, practiced it and achieved attainments with it, and so on, so that we would infer that there is an uplifting of it. 

There’s probably some energy involved, but I don’t know. I mean, where is that energy? If it’s an energy, where is the energy of the blessings or the inspiration? Well, it can’t be in the category. We were speaking about categories, the audio category of the sound of OM MANI PADME HUM, that no matter who says it, in whatever voice, it’s still OM MANI PADME HUM. No matter whether they pronounce it, OM MANI PADME HUM in a silly voice or OM MANI PADME HUM in a normal voice, it’s still OM MANI PADME HUM. So, the energy can’t be in the category. Is it in each individual sound that each individual person makes? I don’t know. We’d have to say it’s an imputation. How does it work? Is it on the side of the category? Well, the category is just a mental construct, so how could it be on the side of the category? A category doesn’t exist somewhere up in the sky. Where is it? Is it in the sounds that we individually make? I don’t know. If we didn’t know that there was a lineage of OM MANI PADME HUM, and of people who practiced that, would we still receive the lineage inspiration from reciting it? These would be very interesting questions to debate. I have no idea what the answer would be. What do you think?

You would say yes, and you would say no. So, you have to give a reason for your yes and a reason for your no. Let’s start with the yes answer.

If you are open enough and receptive enough, then you would receive the inspiring energy. 

But where is that energy? Where’s it coming from? You have to say where it is, and where it’s coming from, in order to receive it.

From the person who told it to you.

From anyone? So, the tape recorder? The parrot who says it? Is it in the sound or not in the sound? 

What’s your reasoning for saying no? 

Well, I wouldn’t say it’s on the side of the syllable itself, that the power comes with it. But, rather, with believing that it has a value – that you maybe know about the Buddha-figure that is associated with it, etc. So I could imagine that certain sounds have certain effects. Like we have vowels… Some parts of your breathing system resonate a certain way, and that certainly helps to shape the energies. Different vowel sounds resonate in different areas. 

Right, but you’re talking about – this is something else. 

You could make words up that also have these sounds and that have the same sort of effect. You could have a scientific study on people who know nothing about Buddhism, and give one group this mantra and the other group these made-up mantras. 

Well, your original position was “no,” though. You have just given reasons for why “yes.” I mean, the reason that he gave was that the sound itself would have a certain healing quality, in terms of certain vowels. If we make a certain vowel, the energy’s a little bit more sharp; if we say another vowel – like AAAH, rather than EEEE – it’s more open, and so on, so it would affect our energies, but we’re not talking about this; that was the previous topic of discussion. Because the sound could shape our energy, and, of course, having certain confidence in it would help. We’re talking about so-called “lineage blessings.” 

Now, lineage blessings. If we make up something, let’s say we make up a sadhana. Some of my friends in a more sarcastic mood made up a Colonel Sanders sadhana for Kentucky Fried Chicken, in which we had Colonel Sanders – we imagine ourselves as Colonel Sanders – holding up a fried chicken leg and reciting the mantra, “It’s finger licking good.” We imagined ourselves as the Colonel doing this, and this was the Colonel Sanders sadhana. They were very naughty in those days, very sacrilegious. 

Would that have lineage blessings if I taught it to you, and you taught it to your students? Where do lineage blessings or lineage inspiration, what do they derive from? I’ll give you a hint, from the intention. I had perfectly good – well, maybe we had very sarcastic, naughty intentions with the Colonel Sanders sadhana, but we could have had very good intentions.

I can think how the blessings of lineage are a dependent arising phenomenon because you need a basis for labeling them as a correct lineage. That means that there should be an unbroken lineage from Buddha Shakyamuni, and the masters should have realizations. But, on top of that, you have to believe there’s a good connection between these masters. Then you have to generate belief…

Very good, you win the prize. Very good. It arises dependently, the lineage inspiration (or blessings) arises dependently on the fact that there’s an unbroken line of succession of practitioners going all the way back to the Buddha – or somebody who had a vision of Vajradhara, or whatever, of a Buddha – and these various masters have gained the realizations based on this practice. It’s not just that they recited the Colonel Sanders sadhana going back to somebody for two centuries, or a hundred centuries, or whatever, but that it actually worked. Then there needs to be confidence in it, whether we know it or not, that every single being – and we can recite their names – got the realizations. However, we do that in the sadhana practices. We recite the whole lineage and ask for inspiration from each individual person in the lineage. That’s part of the long sadhanas, and that there is light coming down from each of these – there’s usually like a big long line of them going up from the top of our head, and they each dissolve into each other, and so on, and then they dissolve into us. So we imagine that the inspiration of the lineage comes into us, but it has to be based on the fact that people actually did gain realizations from it.

It’s a dependently arising phenomenon, so we need to bring in the whole understanding of voidness of cause and effect, of how something like this can affect us. As you said, there needs to be a proper basis for labeling a lineage. Then, based on that, we can label onto the lineage, inspiration from the lineage, in terms of an effect that comes from it, understanding that inspiration doesn’t exist in an unmanifest form. 

Now, remember, go back to Shantideva, the voidness of cause and effect. The result, the inspiration, doesn’t exist sitting inside the cause waiting for it to come out, and it isn’t that the cause and the result are totally unrelated to each other, either. Or that the result is already existing at the time of the cause, or that it’s totally nonexistent at the time of the cause. So, one always has to bring in this factor. What makes for a mantra to have a certain power from a lineage inspiration is that it comes from a valid source, and it has been effective over time. 

Do you have to know that there is a lineage, and have confidence, and so on? If you just gave this mantra to a random group of people who have no familiarity with Buddhism, would it have the same effect?

No. Because also, part of the factors that will affect the result, the dependent arising of the result, will also be confidence, knowledge of the masters. The more that we know the biographies, the liberating biographies, “namtar” (rnam-thar) is the Tibetan word for biography, and namtar means liberating. It’s from the word “tarpa” (thar-pa), which means liberation, so it’s a liberating thing. When we know about that, we gain inspiration, even more inspiration. If we know about these lineage masters – you know, I have familiarity with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and his late teachers, and I know what they practiced, and they achieved their attainments based on this kind of practice, so they must have been doing something right – it gives us more inspiration, more confidence in the practice. If we know the biographies going all the way back, that gives us even more confidence. This is certainly going to have an effect, but somebody just giving it to a random group of people to recite, they’re not going to have that factor in the causal mixture of things that bring about the result. 

What is an unbroken lineage? It can’t be that nothing has been changed. Because the mantra OM MANI PEME HUNG, that changed from OM MANI PADME HUM. So is that now a broken lineage? 

This is a very crucial question. What does it mean, an unbroken lineage? Because if the Indians pronounce it, OM MANI PADME HUM and the Tibetans pronounce it OM MANI PEME HUNG, so there’s been a change, is the lineage broken or unbroken? 

Well, this is the crucial issue when it comes to reviving the bhikshuni ordination lineage, which is a very serious topic that the Tibetans are addressing themselves too, at least His Holiness the Dalai Lama is, and under his pushing the abbots and so on, they have to consider it as well. There’s the eighth big conference on it in Hamburg just before His Holiness’s teachings. They’re doing a lot of serious research on it. The bhikshuni (that’s the full nun’s ordination) lineage within the Tibetan line, it was broken, and so they want to revive it. Can you revive it? Is it a broken lineage? Is it an unbroken lineage? What do you do? They don’t seem to have come up with a very clear answer to this, so it’s not a simple issue. 

There was a practice that Guru Rinpoche did – this is a great Indian master who brought tantra systems to Tibet for the first time – and the times were not ripe, and he buried them, hid them away. Then centuries later, they were found again. Is that a broken lineage? That there are many centuries that passed when nobody was practicing it, and now it’s revived again. Does it have an unbroken lineage or a broken lineage? I don’t know how to answer that question. Obviously, the Tibetans don’t consider that a broken lineage. 

What about Asian Hinayanists? 

Asian Hinayanists are not practicing tantra, so it doesn’t matter what they think concerning the lineage. Could it matter on an overall thing? Well, we have to go back to Shantideva. Shantideva was very clear. He said that any reason that you use for refuting the authenticity of the Mahayana scriptures would apply equally well to disputing the authenticity of your Hinayana scriptures, so that’s not a valid argument. None of the Hinayana scriptures were written down. They were all passed on by word of mouth, which assumes that everybody had perfect memory for 400 years and got every word correct. The Mahayana took a little bit longer before they wrote them down, but what’s the difference? There is no difference in terms of using that argument to try to refute the authenticity of the texts, so that’s hard to say what actually an unbroken lineage is. I don’t know. 

Unbroken lineage, does that mean… I don’t know. I can’t give an answer. I’m sorry. Obviously, that’s an important issue from the Tibetan point of view. That’s why they always have oral transmission (lung) because they want the unbroken lineage. The oral transmission of a text or practice does not require – now here’s an interesting point – that doesn’t require any realization. Is it the same with the tantra practice? Probably. 

Do we get the blessings? I don’t know. Are there different levels of blessings? However, I think I told you the example of this text by Tsongkhapa, The Essence of Excellent Explanation of Interpretable and Definitive Meanings (Drang-nges legs-bshad snying-po), which is Tsongkhapa’s most complicated text on the Chittamatra and Madhyamaka explanations of voidness, the most complicated and the most difficult. There’s the lineage of it that goes back to Tsongkhapa, and then there’s a special lineage that the old Serkong Rinpoche’s father had, because he had a vision of Tsongkhapa who gave him another transmission of it. The old Serkong Rinpoche had this transmission, this oral lineage, and he hesitated and waited and didn’t give it to His Holiness because he wanted to be able to explain something new to His Holiness that nobody had explained to him before. For some reason, he didn’t give the oral lineage to His Holiness, and then he died. 

Then the young Serkong Rinpoche (the reincarnation) comes along, and he would like that transmission. Try as we may, we could not find any Tibetan who had the oral transmission of that, but I had it. Serkong Rinpoche had given it to me and a couple of other Westerners, but the young Serkong Rinpoche had the strong connection with me, so he wanted it from me. I had never even read the text, let alone studied it, but I heard the old Serkong Rinpoche recite it. Not only did he recite it, he recited it from memory, about 250 pages long, and he recited it from memory at super speed. It’s a very special oral transmission, really in the tradition of ancient India, which is where this custom comes from, that nothing was written down, and people recited the text from memory. I asked His Holiness, “Young Serkong Rinpoche wants this oral transmission from me. I’ve never read the text, let alone studied it. Am I qualified to give it?” His Holiness said, “yes.” I heard it from the old Serkong Rinpoche, and so I practiced and practiced saying it out loud, reading it out loud, until I could do it in a not so embarrassing way. Then I went to India, and I gave it to him, read it out loud to him. 

How often did you hear it from Serkong Rinpoche? 

Once. I heard it from Serkong Rinpoche once. 

And could you catch the content? 

No. My eyes could not go quickly enough over the Tibetan text to keep up with the speed at which he recited from memory, and he had his attendant test him to see whether or not he made any mistakes, and in 250 pages, I think he made two words that were out of order or something like that. He recited this every day as part of his daily practice, in addition to everything else that he did. It is the most difficult, complicated text that Tsongkhapa wrote, about the different philosophical views within Madhyamaka concerning voidness. The most complicated, difficult text that he wrote. 

So, do we have to have had an unbroken lineage of realization from it? Well, I think there are probably different levels of transmission. In Nyingma, they talk about lineage transmission of recognizing the nature of the mind. That, I don’t think just is based on hearing somebody say, you know, “Jan, here’s your mind,” and then Jan says, “Jorge, here’s your mind. Jorge, meet your mind. Mind, meet Jorge.” It’s not like that. In that case, I think it’s based on some realization. However, for an oral transmission, and to have the unbroken lineage of that, that’s just based on having heard the words, and it comes from the Indian custom that nothing was written down. Before somebody could memorize it, the only way they could memorize it was by hearing somebody else recite it, so they had to be sure that the other person remembered it correctly. 

This topic of lineage and inspiration, and so on, is a very difficult topic, a very difficult topic. Probably there are different levels of it. So, can that be unbroken? Or can an oral transmission be broken? His Holiness often says that there are certain texts that there is no oral transmission anymore. His Holiness could read it, but that’s not going to restore the oral transmission lineage. 

Anyway, let us not spend further time on this topic, but we can see that even within tantra, there’s a great deal of material that could be debated. In the tantra colleges, at least in the Gelugpa tradition, they debate various topics – I don’t know if they debate this specific topic – but they debate various topics in order to try to understand what’s going on. Not only do they learn the rituals, not only do they learn the technical aspects of making powdered mandalas, and doing all of this sort of stuff, and studying the texts, but they also debate the content of them so that they can really understand. I think this gives us a little bit of a taste of how open to interpretation and not clear many of these topics are. 

I think transmission, and lineage, and so on, is one of those. It’s a very difficult point, but one which is emphasized very much by the Tibetans, and is part of the whole larger topic of the relation to the spiritual teacher. Because the main purpose of the relation with the spiritual teacher is inspiration. In tantra – to get back to our main topic here – the role of the spiritual teacher is emphasized even greater than in any other aspect of the Buddhist practice. That there’s no way that we can practice tantra successfully without the proper relationship with the tantric master. 

So, what is the role of the tantric master? The role of any spiritual mentor (we can use that term) is, first of all, to transmit vows. Now, we saw in our discussion of lineage and referencing this to the bhikshuni vows, we saw that an unbroken lineage of the vows – in the case of nuns, the full nun’s ordination – is very important. Similarly, it’s important in tantra practice. This is one of the reasons why, before giving a tantric initiation, the tantric master has to have done the full retreat, not necessarily the three-year retreat, but the full retreat of that Buddha-figure, having done the fire puja ritual at the end of it to make up for any mistakes, and then done (each time before they give the initiation) the self-initiation, which is a certain ritual practice in which they imagine, basically, giving the initiation to themselves. Of course, there are various variations on how that’s done, but they receive the initiation and renew their tantric vows. They imagine that they’ve renewed their tantric vows so that they can give them purely, a half-hour later, to the disciples. That’s absolutely essential. We can’t just sit down and give an initiation; there’s all of this preparation that we have to do beforehand.

The tantric master gives vows, gives an initiation. So, what is an initiation? “Initiation” is a translation, not a very good one, of the Sanskrit word “abhishekha.” Abhishekha comes from the verb “to sprinkle,” so it’s sprinkling seeds, like we put seeds into the ground. We sprinkle seeds in the ground, or we sprinkle water on them, in order to help them to grow. The Tibetans translate it with the word “wang” (dbang), which means “empower,” to give power to something.

Again, we have to go back to our initial discussion of basis, path and result. The basis level, another aspect of this that we didn’t mention, we just spoke about the samsaric and nirvanic levels of appearance, basis, path and result, but we can also speak about this whole topic of basis, path and result in the context of Buddha-nature (sangs-rgyas-kyi rigs). Buddha-nature are those factors that will allow us – anybody, any limited being – to become a Buddha. There are many divisions of that. There are the evolving Buddha-nature factors (rgyas-’gyur-gyi rigs), which are things that will grow and grow and transform into the various bodies of a Buddha: the physical appearance, the mind of a Buddha, the speech of a Buddha, and so on, the compassion of a Buddha, etc. These are evolving Buddha factors. There are the abiding Buddha-nature factors (rang-bzhin gnas-rigs), which is the voidness of a Buddha’s mind that allows for transformation to take place. Then there’s a third type of Buddha-nature, which is the fact that a mental continuum can be affected by inspiration, by this word “blessings.” It can be uplifted. Remember, adhisthana means uplifting. The word for blessing can be “inspired.” Its energy level can be uplifted or influenced by other factors. The sources of inspiration, the Three Jewels of Refuge, the gurus, so that’s looking from above our position. Or suffering sentient beings – looking in the other direction – that can inspire us to develop more and more compassion. “I have to achieve enlightenment in order to help them.” We’re inspired by them. 

The initiation or empowerment is intended to activate and energize, through inspiration as one of the factors, these Buddha-nature factors. That is the point of the empowerment, and so in the empowerment there needs to be the lineage, the inspiration of the lineage. There’s the whole environment within which it’s done, so that gives a certain type of inspiration. We are visualizing ourselves in the form of various aspects, pure aspects: the place we visualize as a mandala; gurus visualizing themselves as Buddha-figures; we’re visualizing the guru as a Buddha-figure. 

We need to have (within the Gelugpa system) some level of conscious experience of participating in this, trying our best to do some of the visualizations – so we have to be a little bit familiar already with the ritual – and a conscious experience of voidness with a blissful state of mind, to whatever level of capacity we have. Things don’t exist in some impossible way. Like the enlightenment of the guru is up there, and we could never become like that, or we’re this poor miserable creature down here; it’s when we realize that this is absurd, that there’s no such thing as that. That’s the very simple understanding of voidness. We feel happy about that. That’s enough. 

We need some conscious experience, and that’s from our side. From the side of the teacher, the teacher has some sort of conscious experience of what they’re doing, and as a result, there is what is called the “planting of more seeds.” That’s the sprinkling of seeds from newer experiences, and a strengthening of what’s there already in terms of Buddha-nature. That, together with taking vows, is the essence of an initiation. No vows, there’s no initiation, and no conscious experience, there’s no initiation. So, just sitting there, we get – some people call it a “blessing” initiation – we get some inspiration, perhaps, just from being there, but it’s not really affecting our Buddha-nature qualities. 

The point of the initiation is to strengthen, awaken, fortify these Buddha-nature qualities through this inspiration, which is what we were talking about with lineage, unbroken inspiration. It’s a very important topic, actually, within tantra. This gets back to seeing the good qualities and not complaining about the bad qualities of the teacher, and that means seeing the teacher as a Buddha, having examined very well the qualifications of the teacher. If we’re always seeing, visualizing, the teacher as a Buddha, with only good qualities, without stupidly denying the ordinary level of the teacher, with the shortcomings or whatever, but if we’re able to focus on that with a teacher, then that enables us to realize, “Hey, I can focus on that with myself. I can focus on that with everybody.” 

Then the doubt comes up of what about the practice at Nalanda university in India, where the manner of receiving teachings was for the disciples to imagine that the teacher was a Buddha – they were receiving the teachings from Buddha – and they were arya bodhisattvas receiving these teachings in a pure land. Is this a tantra practice? No, this is a sutra practice to build up some sort of connection for receiving teachings from Sambhoghakaya forms of a Buddha in pure lands, and so on. I don’t believe that this is based on the Buddha-nature teachings because the explanations that I’ve heard of this was that the Dharma teachings come from Buddha; therefore, when we receive these teachings from our teacher, we’re receiving the teachings of Buddha. Therefore in that context, when the teacher is on the teaching throne teaching, since we’re hearing the words of a Buddha, we imagine that we’re hearing them from Buddha himself. The teacher is just the instrument. I think this is quite different from seeing the teacher as a Buddha, in the ways in which we’ve been discussing it so far, in terms of the inseparability of samsaric and nirvanic appearances, and Buddha-nature, and seeing only good qualities in the teacher, and so on. That’s a bit of a different level of practice. It’s out of respect for the teachings that one imagines that one is receiving them actually from a Buddha, and we are fully qualified as arya bodhisattvas to really receive them and practice them.