Tantra

The Five Systems of Five Buddha-Families  We’ve seen that when we speak about the five Buddha-families, if we look at it from the dimension of what will develop into all the aspects of a Buddha, we have this one set of five: mental activity, good qualities, verbal expression,...

The Role of the Winds of Karma If the Mental Holograms of the Four Occasions Are Basis-Level Devoid Forms The role that the winds of karma play with regard to the mental holograms of the four occasions is much more difficult to ascertain. Let us explore two hypotheses and,...

Review I’d like to continue our discussion, but before I begin, there is a piece of advice that a very wise woman once gave me, which I think is relevant here. If you have a group and you want to lead it into a destructive action, like into battle, then you instruct them at...

Review  We were speaking about gaining conviction in the efficiency of the tantra path so that we can engage in it with our full hearts. In order to gain that conviction, it’s necessary to understand why tantra is more efficient than sutra and how it actually works so that we...

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...

Except for the following variations in assertions, the non-Gelug traditions of Tibetan Buddhism – Sakya, Kagyu, and Nyingma – agree with Gelug on the various reasons why general tantra is more efficient than sutra. (1) Closer Analogies Buddha-Nature and Positive Self-Images...

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,...

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...

Review We were discussing the various methods used in Buddhism to strengthen the evolving Buddha-nature factor that we identified within the network of good qualities, namely our innate joy, our ability to experience things with happiness. As you recall, in order to strengthen...

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...