Tantra

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...

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...

Questions about Visualizing Ourselves and Others as Deities If we are practicing tantra and one of the tantra practices is to try to view everything in a pure way – in other words, all beings as Buddhas and all environment as mandalas, and so on – isn’t that an obstacle to...

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...

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...

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...

(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...

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...

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...