After a two-week break, we resume our study of this letter of practical advice on sutra and tantra written by Tsongkhapa to one of his disciples, the meditator Konchog-tsultrim.
Review of Previous Sessions
In answer to the request to write some practical advice on how to practice the twofold path, Tsongkhapa — we can just review very briefly — he points out that we have the excellent working basis of the human rebirth, precious human rebirth; we’ve met with the teachings; we have teachers; we have the power of mind and intelligence to discriminate — discern — between what is helpful and to be adopted, what’s harmful and to be rejected.
We have to take advantage of that excellent working basis, and that means to engage ourselves with the teachings. To do that, we have to rely for guidance on someone who knows them, a teacher, but a qualified spiritual teacher who knows what are the pathways of mind we need to develop, what are the ones that we don’t or that we need to get rid of; doesn’t add anything, doesn’t leave anything out; doesn’t mix up the order but knows how to accord it with each disciple’s temperament. Then the teacher himself has to be someone who has gained certainty about all this by having gone through the training himself or herself by their own qualified spiritual master. The course of the study and practice needs to be in harmony with the great classics, the Buddhist classics, and has all the teachings come from them: they’re not contradictory to the practice.
As far how to begin our practice, it is primarily to tame our minds. The body and speech come in accord with our state of mind, so the main thing to work on is our attitude, our minds. For that, what is central is the motivating mental framework. The motivating mental framework is something that we build up (our motivation isn’t going to be totally pure from the very beginning). The motivation here is dealing with, in a Buddhist sense, what we are aiming for and why (what we are going to do with it) and what is the emotional basis that is driving us. The way to develop this, for most people, is in stages, and these stages are covered by the lam-rim, the graded pathways of mind, or graded stages of the path.
First, we work to turn away from our concern just being with this lifetime. We take advantage of the precious human life, realizing that it’s not going to last forever, and we work toward making sure that we continue to have better rebirths in the future — in other words, a precious human body — by following very carefully the ethical discipline of refraining from destructive behavior and having the safe and positive direction of refuge in our lives.
The intermediate level: although we are able to avoid, in this way, the worst states of rebirth, nevertheless any situation that we’re born in, when it’s in a samsaric condition of being brought on by disturbing emotions and karmic impulses, is going to be unsatisfactory, going to bring more and more problems and perpetuate them. Looking at the shortcomings of any type of rebirth that is samsaric, we develop renunciation for that, determination to be free from that, and aim for liberation with this feeling of disgust at samsara (Skt. saṃsāra), and we practice the three higher trainings — ethical discipline, concentration and discriminating awareness.
But then, on the advanced level, we see that everybody else is in the same situation and the only way we can really help them is, on the basis of love and compassion, to develop bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta), to strive to become a Buddha. We have that aim, with the motivation of love and compassion, in order to benefit all beings, and for that we follow — put into practice — the six far-reaching attitudes, or the six perfections.
It’s important to develop these motivating mental frameworks in an uncontrived way. In other words, we need to have them not be artificial. Although we have to work ourselves up to them at the beginning, we need to meditate on them until they become a natural part of our way of thinking and dealing with things. For that we have to know how to meditate (or build them up as a beneficial habit), and Tsongkhapa gives quite a lot of detail about that in terms of knowing, for each state of mind that we want to develop: what it depends on, what are the causes for it, what needs to be there as its basis; what will damage it, what we need to get rid of; and what we would focus on with that state of mind; and how our minds would relate to that focus, how it would take it, and so on. All of these are important to specify specifically the state of mind that we’re trying to develop in our meditation. We need to try to develop these motivating mental frameworks all the time, not just in the beginning of a meditation session, not just during a meditation session, but at all times.
Then, on that basis of... Basically, the sutra practices, if we want to get into the practice of tantra, we need to have an even firmer basis in ethical self-discipline. This is emphasized very, very strongly as his first point… I shouldn’t say it’s the first point. The motivating mental framework is his first point, and then the discipline. For the discipline, ethical discipline, it has three levels, and so we need all three for tantra.
We need a level of the pratimoksha (Skt. prātimokṣa) vows, some level of pratimoksha vow. Pratimoksha means a vow for individual liberation, working for our own liberation in one form or another. Either we do that on the basis of lay vows or novice or full monk or nuns’ vows (there’s also provisional nuns’ vows). There are all these sets, and we’ve covered those.
Then for Mahayana (Skt. Mahāyāna) we need to take the bodhisattva vows. Bodhisattva vows are listing various actions that would be detrimental for developing ourselves to benefit others fully. We have gone through those, both the primary ones and the secondary ones.
The Fourteen Common Tantric Root Downfalls (continued)
There are the tantric vows, and these concern various detrimental ways of acting that would prevent us from having success in tantra. We have gone through the major ones up until the last one. We have the last one left. There are 14 of these so-called root downfalls, and if we were to commit these, we would fall down from this discipline completely. As you recall, we take the tantric vows when, of the four classes of tantra, we are practicing the two higher classes (yoga tantra and anuttarayoga tantra), according to the classification scheme of the New Translation Period (gsar-ma) in Tibet.
This is what we’ve covered.
[14] Deriding women
Now we are up to the last of the 14 root vows of tantra. What we are promising to avoid here is deriding women. What this is referring to, in order to complete the root downfall, is we have to voice low opinion and contempt directly to a woman, with the intention to deride womanhood, and she understands what we say, then we complete this root downfall.
Why is there this root vow? This is something that we have to examine very well. First of all, tantra is practiced on the basis of sutra. Although there is the tradition of the mahasiddhas (grub-thob chen-po, highly accomplished practitioner), who in general would not be monks and would practice off in forests and cremation grounds and grounds where you chop up bodies and feed them to the vultures and stuff like that — they would not be usually monks and nuns, nevertheless often the background here is thinking in terms of monks (that we’ve seen in our discussion of some of the other vows). Even if it’s not a monk: if we recall, many of the meditation practices in sutra — they are aimed, one portion of them, are aimed at helping us to develop detachment.
Remember in Shantideva’s presentation of his chapter on mental constancy — how to develop a stable state of mind, concentrated state of mind, that is not going emotionally up and down, and not going up and down with mental wandering and so on — the biggest distraction is attachment, and specifically, for most people, it’s sexual attachment or attraction? This can be a major obstacle in developing concentration. There is, therefore, the presentation of the shortcomings of the human body, that one is attracted to… and it’s usually presented in terms of the female human body under the consideration of a monk who would be heterosexual. Obviously, the teachings also apply this description of the ugliness or filth of the human body when we examine on the inside and what it does to any food that you put in your mouth and what comes out the other end and so on, and all the blood and guts and bones, etc. Then we could equally apply that analysis to the body of a man as well as to a woman. But in general, in the literature it’s applied to the body of women. Also, it would be fairly natural that having practiced on that basis, one would have an aversion toward women, especially if one is a monk, and so this is something that one needs to get over.
Also, in the highest class of tantra, the major aim of the whole practice is to gain access to the clear light level of mental activity. This is the most subtle level of mental activity, which goes on from lifetime to lifetime and into Buddhahood as well. From certain points of view of different Buddhist schools and so on, it is also one major aspect of Buddha-nature (what allows us to become a Buddha). Obviously, every sentient being (every limited being) — and every Buddha as well — has an individual continuum of clear light mental activity, or clear light mind (’od-gsal). In some lifetimes we are male, in some lifetimes we are female, in some lifetimes we’re human, in some lifetimes we are mosquitoes or whatever. And that clear light level of mind is there all the time. No one is inherently a man or a woman or a mosquito or whatever. Therefore, if we look down on women, and particularly think in terms of “Women can’t achieve enlightenment” — whether or not they can achieve enlightenment in this lifetime or in general is not the question here — but if we look down on women, then again this is very much against the whole teaching on Buddha-nature and clear light mind, because obviously women have that too. Women have Buddha-nature. In other words, limited beings (or sentient beings) in female rebirths still continue to have the Buddha-nature factors. It’s not that they lack them. That is another angle for why one would not want to put down women. It undermines our whole belief in — our whole confidence in — Buddha-nature.
But what is the point of trying to access this clear light level of mental activity, or clear light mind, is that we want to put it to good use. It is normally not active during most of our life. It’s active naturally at the time of death, in the death period, but normally, unless we have attained access to the clear light mind through meditation, it is inaccessible to us. But that clear light mental activity is the subtlest. It’s more subtle than conceptual cognition. It’s more subtle than any of the disturbing emotions or attitudes. It doesn’t have any grasping for true existence, and it does not make appearances of true existence. It is a state of mind, or level of mind, that is most conducive for gaining the nonconceptual cognition of voidness. What appears to it, which is no appearance of true existence, is similar to what appears to a mind that has nonconceptual cognition of voidness. However, it doesn’t by itself — innately — understand what it is. Just to have an appearance that is the same as the appearance when one understands voidness, doesn’t mean that you understand it, and doesn’t mean that it’s going to rid you of the habits of grasping for true existence.
We want to gain access to this clear light mind, this clear light level, and use it in meditation to focus on voidness. Then out of the subtlest energies that are the physical counterpart, the flip side, of this subtlest level — like a rider and a horse or two sides of a coin — it is from that subtlest energy that one gets the various physical bodies, or form bodies, this corpus of various types of forms that a Buddha has.
OK. How do we access it? To access this level of mind, there are a number of different approaches. One is an approach of working with the various winds or subtle energies, working through yogic means to centralize them — bring them into the central channel — and eventually dissolve them into usually the heart chakra, although there are different practices for different chakras. That’s one method. That’s the method emphasized in father tantra (there’s father tantra (pha-rgyud) and mother tantra (ma-rgyud), depending on what type of emphasis they have in the practice).
Another way of accessing this clear light level of mind is through working with increasingly strong levels of blissful awareness (bde-ba). Naturally when we achieve shamatha (Skt. śamatha), or zhinay (zhi-gnas) in Tibetan, a stilled and settled state of mind, then we have an exhilarating blissful feeling of body and mind. In addition, when we gain nonconceptual cognition of voidness, there’s an additional blissful awareness that comes from being free of various stains and so on, a feeling of great relief. There are different levels of blissful awareness that we would experience already by the time we have shamatha and vipashyana (lhag-mthong) — at those times — vipashyana (Skt. vipaśyanā) on voidness, this exceptionally perceptive state of mind. This is already going to be there when we get seriously involved with the tantra practice, when we get involved with the level in which we actually are working with bliss, not just in our imagination. In other words, the time when we are actually practicing the direct methods to get this clear light level of mind.
Anyway, the more blissful the mind is, the more refined it becomes. If we can work with generating different levels of blissful awareness with mental consciousness — we’re not talking about sensory consciousness — within the central channel, which is incredibly difficult to do, then that helps for the winds to centralize within that channel and to dissolve in the heart chakra. We’re talking about an unbelievable [level] of tantra practice, [the complete stage (rdzogs-rim), in contrast to] the generation stage or development stage (bskyed-rim) (translated different ways by different people).
One way of enhancing that level of blissful awareness is with a partner. There are different levels of being with a partner in such a way that it generates a blissful awareness. I think the easiest way… I mean, here we’re not under the influence of disturbing emotions. At this stage when we do this, we’re no longer under great influence of the disturbing emotions, and so the more exhilarated and turned on the mind becomes, the more subtle it becomes, and what it does is it, in a sense, greases the pathways for the winds to dissolve (it doesn’t automatically bring you this subtlest [level] and all this sort of stuff). If you have a very negative attitude toward that, then that’s going to be detrimental for developing this blissful state of awareness.
In fact we have the inner offering in the highest class of tantra as well, in which we imagine feces and urine and blood and semen, and these sort of things, the chopped-up innards of different animals and so on, and practices and so on where you don’t see a woman as ordinary — we’re absolutely not dealing with seeing a woman as ordinary here — but also a purification practice in terms of understanding of voidness and regeneration as a Buddha-figure.
OK. What we want to avoid here is this negative attitude toward women. There’s no similar vow in terms of [men]. The question is: Why can’t it be added? His Holiness said that basically one doesn’t change vinaya. Vinaya was given by the Buddha, and that’s not something which can be changed. What are we talking about here? His Holiness says yes, that would be detrimental, to put down men, but it is not actually the vow. It’s not actually the vow, to put themselves down, in terms of their own ability to achieve enlightenment, in terms of taking too seriously — not too seriously but being overly fanatic and upset about the teachings of the filth of the female body, because it applies to men’s bodies as well. That’s one level, thinking about the ugliness and filth of the things inside the body and thoughts that we can have on them. OK?
Participant: Which are the traditional reasons that are given for this?
Dr. Berzin: The traditional reasons given for this is what I explained. One needs to rely on a female partner in order to generate these blissful states, and we need to have a pure vision of these, in terms of voidness, in terms of so many different levels. It is quite natural, especially, as I said in the very beginning of this discussion, if the primary audience in most of these Dharma discussions and presentations is monks. There are many monks, from their training, etc., who have quite an aversion to women (you’re not supposed to be alone in the same room with a woman). That’s something that we must] pay attention to in general, and specifically in the practice of tantra.
[The remaining part of the recording is corrupted.]