Tantra

Once we have practiced for a while, trying to maintain this deep awareness of nondual profound and clear – the profound understanding of voidness and the clarity of the visualization – then we practice the four types of mental stability. Not necessarily that we practice all...

Introduction In the first part of this series, we looked at the initial level of motivation where we aim to avoid lower rebirths and gain a higher rebirth. In particular, we want a precious human rebirth so that we can improve in our practice. The intermediate scope is when we...

We can have some questions about the points we’ve just covered and then we can go on. Let’s keep our questions specific to this topic. In the afternoon, we can open it up to more general questions about tantra. Questions and Answers Strengthening Belief in Rebirth You made the...

The Salutation The text begins with the verse of salutation in which a distinction must be made between the eight qualities of Ishvara (dbang-phyug), the king of the gods, and the eight king-of-the-god types of qualities. The former are the qualities of the king of the gods,...

The Sakya Presentation of Inseparable Samsara and Nirvana The pathway level of the continuity is referring to partially purified, partially unpurified, so there’s some stoppings there. To understand how that is an everlasting stream of continuity, I think the most helpful is...

Review We started our discussion of how to make our tantra practice more effective. We saw that the most fundamental thing to start with is to understand what tantra is and what the essential points of tantra practice are – how does it work. Also, we saw that the word “tantra”...

The Tantra Tradition of Mahamudra The text continues, As for the actual basic methods, although there are many ways of asserting mahamudra, there are two when divided according to the sutras and tantras. On the basis of our efforts to eliminate obstacles and build up...

For the remainder of this seminar, I’d like to not follow a strict structure, but just answer questions you might have about tantra and let a wider picture of tantra unfold from that. Can Visualization Help with Dealing with Disturbing Emotions?  When, on a practical...

Preparation for Tantra Practice  The practice of tantra needs to be done within the context of the four noble truths, which is the context of all the teachings of Buddha. It’s the most fundamental thing that Buddha taught. It was the first thing that Buddha taught, these...

All the details of the four points for analyzing the increased efficiency of general tantra pertain to anuttarayoga. Beyond that, however, the same four points may help us to understand why the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga, is even speedier than the other three...