Tantra

Survey of the Misunderstanding One of the more perplexing and most easily misunderstood aspects of tantra is its imagery suggestive of sex, devil-worship, and violence. Buddha-figures often appear as couples in union and many have demonic faces, stand enveloped in flames, and...

Review We have been speaking about appearances in conceptual and non-conceptual cognition. We got the basic mechanism with the Sautrantika presentation and in the Chittamatra variation on it we had just a few things that were different, specifically concerning the natal...

I think it is important not to cover too much material at one time but to really chew on what we have been discussing and clear up any questions that you might have related to it. Visualizing Ourselves as a Buddha-Figure without Bodhichitta You mentioned something about not...

Three Divisions of the Complete Stage After the generation stage, we go on to the complete stage practices. This is explained in three divisions: The basis, or basic situation that we are dealing with The path to follow The result that is manifest. The Basis The first of...

Questions about Translating Tibetan TextsWhen we are doing the sadhana on our own, we could do it in our own language. But this raises the question of how to translate, how to keep the rhythm in a language that’s totally different, and things like this, and that we need to...

Questions about the Clear Light Mind If the clear light mind is not influenced by causes and circumstances and it's not independently existing, then by what is it influenced? When we speak of clear light mind as being an unaffected or unconditioned phenomenon, we need to...

(1) Closer Analogies The Kalachakra Tantra has many unique features not shared in common with the other anuttarayoga Buddha-figure systems. The upward and downward analogies of general anuttarayoga still pertain to its practice, except that Kalachakra does not entail practice...

The Five Trainings from Developing Pledged Aspiring Bodhichitta The text continues: (8) Even if I have developed merely this resolve, if I lack the habit of the three types of ethical self-discipline, I will be unable to attain a (supreme) purified state. Seeing this well, I...

What Are Impure and Pure Appearances? Now let’s discuss the variable of impure and pure appearances. The variable of pure and impure is applied in terms of whether or not an appearance is adulterated and stained with faults. “Faults” here refers to items that arise from our...

Review We've seen that to be able to practice tantra properly, we need proper preparation. That preparation entails the common preparation of the main aspects of the sutra path and also the uncommon preparation (or preliminaries) which are known as the ngondro – doing a...