LPA34: Transgressing Tantric Vows; Initiations

We have gone through all these vows. Specifically, in terms of tantra, we’ve gone through not only the vows but the so-called close-bonding practices, the samayas or damtsig (dam-tshig). Now we are in the discussion of the causes for giving them up and never letting them weaken. This is with this line in the text: 

Therefore, concerning the close bonds and (tantric) vows that we have acquired at the time when we receive perfectly pure empowerments from a qualified spiritual master, if we never give them up by means of the causes for giving them up and never let them weaken by means of the causes for them to weaken, that would be excellent.

Last time, we were going through the list of seven conjoining factors that must be complete for a downfall from the tantric vows to occur. We went through the various factors that would cause us to weaken these vows and reasons why we would break them and so on. We had this list of seven. They’re found in several places (we have one list by the Drigung Kagyu master Kunkhyen Rigdzin-chodrag). Here, just to review the seven, these need to be complete:

• being motivated by one of the three disturbing emotions,
• not knowing that the action was a fault,
• not restraining the actions of our body and speech, 
• letting more than three hours pass without applying opponent forces, 
• not regretting the action, having known the action to be faulty, 
• rejoicing in the action, 
• and not being of unsound mind or deranged when committing the action. 

We had all of these. Rigdzin-chodrag adds a further stipulation to this, which is:

• letting more than the permissible time pass before openly admitting the transgression to one’s tantric master while he or she is still alive and retaking the vows. 

Kongtrul Rinpoche (Jamgon Kongtrul) puts together two in the list of seven (not regretting and rejoicing) as one factor and then counts this one as his seventh. Whereas Rigdzin-chodrag makes this an extra one, an eighth.

Again, what I was explaining last time was that we tend to have a bit of a legalistic explanation of the various factors that are involved here. Rigdzin-chodrag points out that we need... There are two periods of time which are involved here: 

• One is immediately after transgressing one of these vows, that within three hours if you recognize that “Oops, I transgressed it” and you follow one of the procedures (which could be doing a whole bunch of mantras or Vajrasattva or something like that), then one has, in a sense, made it up [i.e. made amends for it, made up for it], one has purified away whatever damage we might have done or weakening we might have done. Although obviously it’s an open question how much we have actually weakened our vows. Every time that we transgress them — even though we make it up — nevertheless, it’s weaker. The example that’s always used is that if you break your leg, it might heal, you might be able to run again and so on, but it’s never quite as good as if you didn’t break your leg. Similarly, it always is better if we haven’t broken these vows. But that, of course, is very difficult.

• If we have let more than three hours pass without making it up, without recognizing what we’ve done, then we have another chance to make it up. This is by actually openly admitting to our tantric master that we have broken it and then retake the vows. 

I must admit that I had never heard of this stipulation (neither had I heard of this three-hours stipulation) in the Gelug tradition, but obviously in the Kagyu tradition, where this comes from, they have sound scriptural sources for this. Whether or not anybody actually follows this is another question. I don’t really know. Because who would have an opportunity to go to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and say, “I missed meditating on voidness on such and such a date.” That seems highly unlikely, that one would do this. 

I think this is pertaining more to whether or not we are in a close personal relationship with a tantric master. If we are not, then personally — I’m not basing this on any scriptural authority — I would think that what this is referring to is when we retake the initiation with the vows, that you have to retake the vows at initiation or, if you’ve done the retreat, with a self-initiation (bdag-’jug) or a hundred thousand Vajrasattva mantras. That you have to do that within a certain period of time. If not, then — as we’ll find out later — it says here we’re not really qualified to take them again. It’s finished. 

It’s important to purify ourselves if we have broken these vows with all these factors complete, etc. I mean, we’ll get these stipulations here.

Participant: Who’s actually the authority who made the tantric vows? Was it passed down by Vajradhara? Who made them?

Dr. Berzin: Where did these vows come from, the tantric vows? Was it passed down by Vajradhara? They are found in various tantra texts, root tantras. I can’t quote which ones. I don’t really know offhand. I could look it up for you. But then the question of course is: Who’s the source of the tantras? According to tradition, they come from Vajradhara, a manifestation in tantra of Buddha or Dharmakaya [the omniscient mind of a Buddha]. What does that actually mean? That is open to a lot of interpretation. With many of these root tantras, somebody went off to a pure land and brought them back and wrote them down, whatever they could memorize. This was at a certain period of time. That was the case with the Vajrabhairava (Yamantaka) tantras. In other cases, people had visions. Of course, that is not the easiest thing to verify, because obviously you can have a lot of really very disturbed people claiming that they went to a pure land and just making up complete nonsense. Again, there are various criteria for checking whether or not something is a valid means. 

A very, very difficult topic. It really is. It is the case not only with tantra but also with sutra in the Mahayana. Nagarjuna brought the Prajnaparamita Sutras from under the sea, where they were entrusted to the nagas. What in the world does that mean? 

These are not easy topics. But we’ve discussed that before. There’s no need to repeat it.

In the commentary by Rigdzin-chodrag that I looked at, it says that this time period (in which we need to openly admit that we’ve broken this to our tantric master and retake the vows at another initiation) differs according to the qualifications of the tantric master, qualifications in terms of — well, I’ll list them — in terms of what we’ve received from that tantric master. 

If somebody has a tantric master with three qualifications (gsum-ldan-gyi slob-dpon), then the time period is one year. If with two qualifications (gnyis-ldan-gyi slob-dpon), two years. And with only one qualification (gcig-ldan-gyi slob-dpon), three years. 

• A tantric master with one qualification is one from whom we have received merely an empowerment or initiation. With such a person, you have three years to take it again. 

• One with two qualifications is one from whom, in addition to an empowerment, you’ve received an explanation of the tantra. That would be like a discourse on the tantra texts. 

• And one with three qualifications is one from whom, in addition to an empowerment and an explanation of the hidden points of tantra, one has received verbal guidelines concerning a tantric practice. That’s called menngag (man-ngag) in Tibetan. 

What would be the difference between the verbal guidelines and an explanation? Again, I don’t think that the boundary is so clear here. The explanation is probably a discourse on the root tantra text and the various commentaries, these type of things. I don’t know if it would include a commentary on a sadhana practice. I must say I don’t know, because if you talk about verbal guidelines, verbal guidelines (this word menngag) don’t necessarily mean that they are just oral and they’ve never been written down. There are written versions as well. What exactly the defining quality or characteristic is of an explanation or commentary versus a verbal guideline, I must confess I don’t really know, and I don’t think it’s terribly clear. I’m sure that each author has a different way of dividing these things. 

But I think that probably we need to make a differentiation here between someone who gives us a discourse which tons of people go to and someone who gives us really personal instruction in our practice. If the tantric master that we receive the empowerment from also gave us a discourse and also gave us private instruction on the practice, then we need to, if possible, say, “Look, I broke the vows, and I need to take the initiation again,” and receive an initiation again. It doesn’t have to be from that master, as far as I know. But maybe it does. I don’t know. It didn’t say so in the text. As I said, I’ve never come across this particular way of explaining it. Usually, it was just in general — receive an empowerment again from any of your teachers. 

If the teacher has only given us the empowerment and the discourse, then you have two years. If we’ve only received the empowerment from this person, then three years. 

Again, I really don’t know. I think you’d have to get into real legal texts here in terms of… Most of us have received empowerments into many tantric systems and many discourses and so on. When you break the vows — the vows are general for all these practices, so who do you actually go to? Who do you count as your teacher here? This I don’t know. This is not clear in this particular commentary. In my own case, I’ve only received empowerment from some teachers that... I mean, I have all three types of tantric teachers. So, which one? I don’t know.

I think the point is that we need to try to take the vows again as soon as possible. People do that, and the easiest way of doing that is to do the retreat, the mantra retreat, and then be able to do the self-initiation (bdag-’jug), in which you take the vows yourself. The alternative way is doing a hundred thousand repetitions of Vajrasattva, the hundred-syllable mantra, which many people do, because obviously to do the self-initiation requires quite a lot of instruction on how to do it and they’re not simple rituals or practices: they’re very long and complicated.

Are there any questions on that, by the way? Excuse me, my voice is a little bit… not so good. 

Participant: If you have really broken the vow and then you make… I don’t see how you can do the self-initiation at this stage, because you have broken the vows.

Dr. Berzin: That’s an interesting question. If we have really broken the vow — and we’ll have all the possible parameters here of how deeply you break the vow, how strongly you break, fully break the vow or lose the vows, etc. — can you really retake them with a self-initiation? I must say I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve not studied deeply all these what I’ve been calling legalistic aspects in... It’s not Vinaya, but it’s the equivalent in tantra. I mean, that’s an interesting point. That’s an interesting point. If you have broken the vows, can you in fact visualize yourself as the deity and take the self-initiation? I don’t know. I don’t know. But I mean, where would the dividing line be? They always say, “Yes, you can do that when you take the self-initiation.” That’s why people take the self-initiation fairly regularly, serious practitioners. 

If you have fully lost the vows — from the Gelugpa point of view — if all four binding factors are present, then I don’t think you could take the self-initiation. You’d have to go and take another initiation. That to me would make sense. But if you have weakened them, then you would strengthen them again by taking the self-initiation. I would guess that that would be way it’s done. I don’t really know. 

If we go through all these factors, you have to have a pretty negative mind to really lose these vows completely. You think they’re stupid, and you don’t care, and you’re happy about breaking them, you don’t regret it, and you don’t think there’s anything wrong. That’s a pretty negative state of mind about tantra. And if it’s really full… Well, maybe a little bit later you might regret it. But presumably if you have done that, you haven’t continued the practice. If one is doing this type of tantra practice seriously, you do a practice every single day for the rest of your life. It’s not that you take an empowerment and then just sort of put it on the shelf in the back of your mind. Some people do that of course. But if you are a serious practitioner, then — especially if you receive a discourse on the practice — almost always the commitment is that you’re going to do it every day for the rest of your life. And if you’re not interested or willing to do it every day for the rest of your life, why would you want the instructions on how to do it or the discourse? You don’t. 

Now, according to Rigdzin-chodrag, if all seven conjoining factors are complete when transgressing a vow, but the prescribed time has not elapsed before openly admitting the transgression and retaking the vows, then it’s a root downfall (rtsa-ltung). You’re able to retake the vows. So, all seven are complete. Here it’s just saying you have to retake the vows, presumably with the teacher, because it’s talking about openly admitting it to the teacher. Even if all these seven — you think it was stupid, and there was nothing wrong, and you didn’t regret it, and so on — but within a certain number of years, then, you do regret it and you want to take it again, then you can. It was just a downfall. 

But if, in addition to the seven factors being complete, the prescribed time has already passed, then it’s a total defeat (pham-pa). It’s another category. This means that one is disqualified from receiving an empowerment and retaking the vows. Then it’s pretty much finished, it says. Again, I’ve not seen people actually following this. Maybe they do, but I don’t really have experience of people following this. But these are the actual procedures. And I would think that even if you took the empowerment after this, that your chances of making any progress would be very, very slim. 

Now if one’s transgression is not parted — the way of phrasing this is not so easy — if one applies the opponents within three hours of committing the transgression, but the first three conjoining factors are present, then it’s something called a thick action (sbom-po). The first three were what? (a) It was motivated by one of the three disturbing emotions, (b) I realize that it was a fault, what I was doing, but (c) I couldn’t restrain myself. If that was the case, but within three hours I purified it, then it’s a thick action it’s called, so it’s just a weakening. 

If the actions of one’s body and speech had merely become careless (bag-med-pa), but the other six conjoining factors are not present, then it’s merely a faulty action (nyes-byas). 

There are these various levels that are explained here. Remember with the Gelugpa instruction about the four binding factors there were also different degrees of how many were present? 

It says… This is a continuation of Tsongkhapa’s text. That last sentence is: 

Therefore, concerning the close bonds and (tantric) vows that we have acquired at the time when we receive perfectly pure empowerments from a qualified spiritual master, if we never give them up by means of the causes for giving them up 

We covered that.

and never let them weaken by means of the causes for them to weaken, 

We’ve done that.

that would be excellent.

Now he continues: 

Otherwise, we (will need to) have received (another) empowerment and thus have restored or revitalized our close bonds and vows and definitely have cleansed ourselves pure of our previous downfalls (from our root vows) and faulty actions (contrary to our secondary vows). 

You have to take another empowerment and take the vows again.

And, having identified well the root (downfalls) and faulty actions (contrary) to the auxiliary (vows and close bonds), 

There’s a whole long list of these close-bonding practices, etc. He says you have to really know them.

we will need to definitely restrain ourselves from ever breaking their continuities again in the future. 

So that’s this strong promise: “I’m really going to try not to break them again.”

And then further, we will need to make effort never to be stained by a downfall from our root (vows again) 

Remember we had these definitions of what’s a downfall, etc.

and, having recognized any further faulty actions that may have arisen, 

We also had our definition of what a faulty action was. That’s coming from being careless.

we will need to thoroughly expiate them (through the four opponent forces).

 Expiate means to purify or make it up [i.e. make amends for it, make up for it]. 

The Four Opponent Forces

So what are the procedures for purifying it? These are primarily applying the four opponent forces (stobs-bzhi), a general way of purifying negativities, after openly admitting our transgressions. You openly admit it and then 

• feel sincere regret,
• a firm decision not to repeat the transgression,
• reaffirming our foundation (which is namely safe direction, or refuge, and the bodhichitta aim), 
• and application of counteracting opponent forces such as repetition of the hundred-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva [Dorje Sempa (Rdo-rje sems-dpa’)] or the mantra of Samayavajra (that’s Damtsig-dorjey (Dam-tshig rdo-rje)). 

Damtsig-dorjey is a green figure you find in the Guhyasamaja entourage. It’s basically a form of Amoghasiddhi and the male counterpart to Tara and is particularly effective in purifying breaks in your close bond with your spiritual teacher. There’s a certain mantra with that, a jenang or empowerment that you can receive with that. And that is also a mantra which is repeated in the preliminary practices, the ngondro (sngon-’gro), in the Gelug tradition. That’s one of them that you do, one of the nine practices — there’s 100,000 of that mantra as well.

Participant: In order to do such practices, one should also receive the empowerment first?

Dr. Berzin: That’s hard to say.

Participant: Is it customary to at least visualize — I mean probably not yourself [as the figure] — that figure without having received such an empowerment, or recite the mantra without even having a transmission of the mantra?

Dr. Berzin: Now, the question is: Is it customary or permissible to do such practices as Samayavajra (or Vajrasattva, in fact) without an empowerment — a subsequent permission is usually what’s done, a jenang — or even without the oral transmission of the mantra? Obviously, one doesn’t... In any case, you don’t visualize yourself as this figure in doing a purification practice. 

I must say it’s certainly much more effective if you receive the oral transmission of the mantra. Whether or not you receive the permission (the jenang) or not… An awful lot of people practice ngondro preliminary practices without them, and it seems to be fairly effective. I’m not quite sure whether or not it’s actually stipulated that you have to receive. Obviously if you do receive, it’s better, but I would say in most cases people don’t. But they do receive oral transmission. They usually go to their spiritual teacher and say, “I’d like to do the preliminaries,” and then the teacher often will give an oral transmission of the text that you recite and the mantras. That’s the most common.

Participant: And with Samayavajra — which tantra class is this? Because Vajrasattva…

Dr. Berzin: Right. Vajrasattva, you find in both kriya tantra (the first class) and anuttarayoga tantra. Samayavajra… I only know the anuttarayoga form with consort. I don’t know if there’s a kriya form without consort.

Participant: This is why I was asking especially about Samayavajra, whether it would be appropriate [to visualize Samayavajra or recite the mantra without having received some sort of empowerment].

Dr. Berzin: With Samayavajra, is it appropriate or not? I don’t know. I can only say I don’t know. I’m trying to remember… In my own case, I did receive the permission, the subsequent permission of that. I never did a hundred thousand of it though. But I don’t know that there would be particular harm in doing it, because you’re not visualizing yourself as the figure. But it would be best to get the oral transmission of the mantra, and that would be from anybody who has received the oral transmission themselves. Doesn’t necessarily mean that they are an accomplished master. The purpose being so that you know how it’s pronounced, I suppose. 

Anything else?

Participant: [in German]

Dr. Berzin: She makes a very good point, and this point is actually discussed by Tsongkhapa a few paragraphs down from here. This is that in the ordained community, the monks and nuns, that they have this uposatha ceremony every fortnight, in which the monks or the nuns get together and they recite the vows. As far as I know (not being a monk or a nun, so I haven’t gone to these), from what my friends have told me, they don’t actually recite all 253 or whatever they are. They just recite the names of the categories of the vows. And if someone has broken it, then they would say that they have broken that. Again, I have not been present. I don’t know if anybody actually stands up and says or you just say it silently to yourself. And then, in general, everybody does certain prayers and so on to purify it. 

What she was saying is that there is a regulatory structure within the monastic community in terms of helping members of the community to keep the vows and to purify any transgressions. Whereas concerning the tantric vows — and you’d have to add here concerning the bodhisattva vows as well — there is no such mechanism. So she’s saying that it’s much less regulated, therefore much more difficult. And Tsongkhapa will go on and say — we’ll get to this maybe later today, this evening — that it’s much better to practice tantra if you are a monk or a nun. It’s much more effective. Perhaps one of the reasons is that there is more control and supportive community — and everybody’s keeping a lot of vows, so here are some more vows to keep. 

But with the anuttarayoga tantra, at least in the Gelug tradition, then the first Panchen Lama made this six-session practice, in which you do recite the vows — the root bodhisattva vows, the root tantric vows, or at least the secondary tantric vows and some of the close-bonding practices — you recite them every day, and you recite them six times (or twice, depending on how you do the practice). Although there are abbreviated forms of these in which you don’t recite them all, certainly it’s recommended that you do the longer form, in which you do recite them. In the Kalachakra six-session you recite even more — the Kalachakra special ones as well. So unless you’re just going “Blah blah blah blah blah,” at top speed without thinking, hopefully you are going through it and examining yourself whether you’ve kept it or not. It’s more of a self-regulatory structure. But Tsongkhapa will say: if you’re a householder trying to practice this, it’s much more difficult. Much more difficult, because you don’t have that type of community support.

Participant: I mean, not wanting to in any way diminish what she said, but on the other hand the problem I think is that especially tantric practice is supposed to be private or hidden, so it’s also a bit of a problem if you make it too public, isn’t it? That would be conflicting with having a similar regulatory mechanism like you have in vinaya.

Dr. Berzin: Right. Christian makes a good point saying that tantra is the hidden vehicle, private vehicle, confidential vehicle, secret — however you want to translate this term — and something to be kept privately and not open. The more open you make it, the less special it becomes. It loses its effectiveness. Therefore, perhaps it is detrimental to have to stand up and say, “I did this,” or “I did that.” That’s true. That’s true. I’m just thinking of tsog pujas that people do together, but in these sorts of things you don’t really recite vows or do purification type of thing. Not every type of tantra practice is done just individually. 

Group retreats, though… that’s pretty much a Western phenomenon. The only time that I’ve seen Tibetans do that is when they first came to India and they were too poor to be able to do it by themselves, because they needed to be able to share food cheaply. A group of them would do retreat together. But other than that, I’ve not heard of group retreats among Tibetans themselves. You’re supposed to develop your own perseverance (your own enthusiasm, your own energy and so on) to practice and not need somebody else to regulate you and shame you into practicing. 

I don’t know. I’ve not been at these pratimoksha ceremonies, so I don’t know how much anybody actually stands up and says. So, it is pretty much private.

Participant: [in German]

Dr. Berzin: Yeah. She’s saying that in these pratimoksha things it is however a closed community of just the ordained, and even within that, the novices are there for part of it and then they have to go out, and then only the full ones, and so on. You just stay within your own homogeneous group. Similarly, if one were to do any tantric practice, in theory, if you do it properly, if you’re doing it with a group, they should only be people who have the empowerment and who are into the practice who should be present and doing it together, certainly not observers. 

Now, you can ask: What about the so-called dancing monks and singing nuns and these others who go around in the West basically performing rituals in theaters, where people pay, in order to make money to support their monastery? Probably Tsongkhapa would not be pleased with such practice. But then nobody has any idea what’s going on (in the audience), and perhaps it is justified in terms of “the necessity overrides the prohibition,” which is one of the guidelines in vinaya. The necessity to be able to feed and support the monastery overrides the prohibition of doing these things in public. They’re certainly not doing it to entertain people, at least in theory they’re not. One can only hope that the motivation is pure, of why they’re doing it.

I guess what we can learn from this whole discussion is that we need to take the vows pretty seriously. Tsongkhapa certainly emphasizes that, and that was one of his main characteristics, because at the time when he wrote, people were not keeping strict discipline very well. 

Retaking the Vows After Doing One Hundred Thousand Vajrasattva Repetitions

If we’ve lost our tantric vows by having incurred a downfall — in other words, we haven’t had a full defeat, we haven’t really lost them (I mean lost them to the point where you can’t take them again) — the counteracting opponent forces include one hundred thousand repetitions of the hundred-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva and then retaking the tantric vows in another empowerment. 

Doing a hundred thousand Vajrasattvas is done not just as a preliminary, as a ngondro, but also as a very effective counteracting force if we’ve broken our vows. That’s something which needs, of course, to be accompanied by the four opponent forces — feeling regret, and I’m not going to break them again (or at least try not to), and reaffirming safe direction and bodhichitta, and seeing this as a counteracting force. In any case, it’s very helpful to do this hundred thousand Vajrasattvas in general and to do a continuing practice of that, at least a certain number of them. The usual recommended number is twenty-one each day, of the repetition of the mantra. 

Doing a hundred thousand, by the way, is not such a big deal. It’s not such a large amount actually. If you do three hundred a day — that’s three rounds on the rosary — in one year you’ve done it. If you put it in that perspective, it’s not something which is utterly impossible or has to take so much time every day. Because once your mouth gets used to saying it, it doesn’t take that long to say three hundred of them. And they don’t have to be done all at once. Obviously if we are doing this to purify vows, the sooner you get it all done the better. 

But some people are very good at this. I remember with the young Serkong Rinpoche: He did one of these retreats. It wasn’t a hundred thousand repetitions of the hundred-syllable mantra. It was a shorter mantra. But he told me he did the whole hundred thousand in three days. Just sat down and did it. Didn’t do anything else. I’m sure that’s the way that His Holiness the Dalai Lama does these retreats as well. Because His Holiness gives the largest number of empowerments, and for every one of them he has to have done the retreat before, which means at least a hundred thousand of one mantra, and often there’s many others and how much free time does His Holiness have for retreats? Not very much. I’m sure he just sits down and does it in a day or two, this type of thing. So, perseverance, concentration.

Participant: But I thought that you couldn’t keep doing it for twenty-four hours.

Dr. Berzin: Not twenty-four hours. Not twenty-four hours, but you could certainly do fourteen. You could certainly do fourteen or sixteen. Fourteen. Or twelve (let’s take it a little bit easier). But you could do that if you had concentration and perseverance and the proper motivation. We are capable, and obviously there are people who are able to do that. 

How much mental wandering you have during that time is another question. But presumably also just to do a hundred thousand of a repetition while your mind is wandering all over the place is not terribly effective. One needs to be concentrated and focused, and that’s often the reason why you don’t do too many at a time, so that the mind stays relatively fresh and concentrated, but that’s really not easy. Nobody ever said this was easy.

Participant: I thought sadhanas are also important.

Dr. Berzin: Sadhana is important. The Vajrasattva one is very, very, very small. Somebody who’s used to it, it wouldn’t take more than two minutes. Five minutes at the most, if you’re slow. 

Participant: I’m thinking of other practices.

Dr. Berzin: Of other practices? Tibetans do things incredibly quickly. It’s the Westerners and people who aren’t so familiar who do it very slowly. See, this is a fault — not a fault (I shouldn’t be so judgmental) — but this is a weakness of the approach to retreats, which is “Well, do the retreat, and in the retreat, you’ll become familiar with the practice.” That’s not the way Tibetans would do it. You should be totally familiar with the practice already so that when you do the retreat you have no questions whatsoever, and you can do it quickly because you’re used to doing the practice. Then you do the retreat. Then it’s not such a big deal to go through the sadhana, and it doesn’t take forever. But if you’re going to have to become familiar with the practice in the retreat, then it could take very, very long to do a hundred thousand. 

But my point is that once you have done a hundred thousand of some mantras, and done that a few times, then it no longer is frightening. You see it’s not such a big deal. It really isn’t. Even doing a million — like for the Tara retreat you have to do a million of them — it’s not such a big deal. Doesn’t take that long if you pace yourself. 

I mean, what I always did was... I tend to be fascinated with numbers and mathematics, and so I just calculate: there’s such a period of time, so many mantras, do the long division — how many to do in a day. Time yourself, see how long it takes to do — when you’re familiar with it — how long it takes to do a certain number, and then you arrange your schedule accordingly if it’s feasible. If it’s not feasible — well, then it’s going to be a little bit longer. But if you have a clear idea of how much you need to do each day and that will take a certain period of time, it’s no longer very frightening. It’s not an unknown, horribly big number. It’s not such a big deal. It really isn’t. 

And there are many ways of doing retreat. One way is that you just take a certain period of time off, and you do four sessions a day — that’s the traditional number of sessions a day — and you don’t do anything else. You make a certain area around that you’re not going to go outside of and a list of people who you are allowed to see, and so on. I mean, that’s a standard way of doing it. A little torma (gtor-ma, offering cake) to chase away the interferences, which you put on the outside of the perimeter, and so on. OK. Do that. Very good. 

Another way of doing it is that you just do one or two sessions a day — early morning, late at night — and you go about your ordinary work, and you don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. That’s the way that an awful lot of lamas do it. I was advised to do my practices, my retreats, like that. I did many retreats. All of them I did like that. You just do it. It’s no big deal. Instead of watching a video at night, instead of whatever. That’s what you do. You do it in such a way that “OK, two hours in the morning, two hours in the evening. It’s not such a big deal.” 

Anyway, hundred thousand Vajrasattvas and then retake the tantric vows in another empowerment. 

Retaking the Vows as Part of the Self-Initiation of Your Practice

You can also do this as a part of performing the self-initiation of the Buddha-form of our practice. But we can only take the self-initiation if we’ve previously completed what’s called the serviceability retreat, the layrung (las-rung), of that Buddha-form (yi-dam), during which we’ve repeated the relevant mantra at least a hundred thousand times and followed this by the appropriate fire puja (sbying-sreg) — “burnt offering” literally. 

So there is what’s called an approximating retreat (bsnyen-chen). That’s usually a three-year retreat. 

In the Sakya, Kagyu, and Nyingma traditions, they have a three-year retreat which is — if I can use the word — a smorgasbord of doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. They do actually these serviceability retreats, these little retreats, for each of the major figures of their practice, together with the ngondro (the preliminary practices) at the beginning. Some of them they do a little bit of tonglen, and they do a little bit of sutra practice. Some of them they do a little bit of the exercises that are preliminaries for the complete stage. There are many variants that are done. But it’s a smorgasbord, that they do a little bit of this followed by a little bit of that, a few months of this, a few months of that, for three years. They learn to play the musical instruments for pujas and so on. And in the end, traditionally they would become something like a village priest, a village ritual performer that goes around the village and does various pujas for people. Wonderful. Very good training. 

In the Gelug tradition they don’t have that. You do these layrung, these serviceability retreats, of a hundred thousand mantras whenever you can fit it in — for a month, or a few weeks, a couple of months, depending on what practice it might be. If you do a three-year retreat, it’s a three-year retreat of only one practice that you do for three years. Tens of millions of millions of mantras and tons and tons of fire pujas, basically, what you’re doing during this three-year retreat. In the non-Gelug traditions, they do that after they’ve done the sort of sampler three-year retreat. 

So the layrung, the serviceability retreat, you do the sadhana — presumably the long sadhana, although some people might do it with a shortened version — and you’ve had all the instructions; you’re familiar with it. You do the mantras, and there could be a lot of mantras. The main mantra, depending on the number of syllables, you might have to do six hundred thousand or a million times. The mantras of all the surrounding deities, ten thousand each, usually. And then there’s an extra mantra that’s done at the end for ten thousand times. 

Then you need to do a fire puja (sbyin-sreg, Skt. homa), which is basically coming from the Hindu tradition. There’s an awful lot in common here in Buddhist tantra and Hindu tantra. You have a fire, and there are all sorts of offering substances you need to put into the fire while reciting various mantras. You visualize Agni (which is the Hindu god of fire) in the fire, and inside of Agni is the deity that you’re doing the practice with, and you offer to make up for, basically, any mistakes that you made during the retreat. That’s a very powerful ritual to do, actually. It’s not something that you could possibly do by yourself. You need somebody to hand you the things, and you need the proper instruments and stuff. It’s not an easy thing to do. You have to recite a certain text. And you’re not allowed to move your arms outside of where your knees are, and so somebody has to always hand you the various things to offer into the fire. It’s not so easy. Some of them are very, very complicated and take a very long time, many hours, because you have to recite many mantras and offer all sorts of things. In any case, you have this type of practice. 

There’s one thing — I think it’s really funny — there’s a certain type of grass that you can get in India, and you have to offer pairs of these grass, ten thousand of them, in one of these retreats, the Tara retreat, and offer each one with a mantra. You have to do it in one sitting, aside from everything else, so you’d better be able to say the mantra quite quickly and do it quickly; otherwise, you will be there all day. It was really funny, because when I did this, the monk who helped me prepare didn’t get the right number of pieces of grass. We were short. And Serkong Rinpoche made me do the whole thing all over again. That was actually very good, that he was that strict. If you’re going to do it, do it correctly. It was very, very helpful. Very kind of him, actually. 

Anyway, then when you have done that, then you are qualified to do the self-initiation. Self-initiation — there are many variants of how it’s done, depending on the deity system, but basically you have to do everything that is required to give an empowerment. To give an empowerment you have a whole big, long practice of generating the vase. The vase is what you use for sprinkling and purification. There’s a huge practice. You have to do that. You have to also do the generation of the figure in front from whom you receive the empowerment, the self-generation, and then the actual empowerment. Self-initiation is actually a four-part process, each of which is very, very long and requires all sorts of ritual paraphernalia. You have to know how to do it. You have to get instruction on that, then you can do the self-empowerment. 

Remember when Tsongkhapa did this incredible retreat in which he did one hundred thousand prostrations to each of the thirty-five confession Buddhas? Every day he also did the Yamantaka self-initiation as well. Or when he was teaching the — what was it? — seventeen texts at the same time. Also, in addition to that, he did the self-initiation every day. There are people who do that. And obviously if you’re doing it that frequently you can do it fairly quickly. If you’re not familiar with it, it could take all day. One needs to be a little bit speedier with that. 

But this is what, for instance, His Holiness the Dalai Lama has to do before giving the Kalachakra initiation. Every day he has to do that, in addition to the many hours of his other practice that His Holiness does. They start at five o’clock in the morning, and it generally takes till a little bit before noon to do the self-initiation of Kalachakra. It’s the longest ritual. Then, after lunch, His Holiness has to go through the whole empowerment on top of that. That’s why it’s incredibly demanding to give a Kalachakra initiation and not that many people can really do it. And of course, all the Namgyal monks from the monastery and His Holiness know the whole seven-hour ritual (which they recite at super top speed) completely by heart. 

Participant: It sounds like a lot if someone is spending something like three years in a retreat. But we as Westerners go for such a long time to school that we take it for granted how much we have to learn, how many pages of books.

Dr. Berzin: Right. A three-year retreat is... What he’s saying is that if we put it into the perspective of four years of university then it’s not so daunting. But mind you, people have done twenty years of education in the monasteries, and then on top of that do a three-year retreat. There’s a lot. 

With a three-year retreat, if you’re doing that then you don’t have any contact with the outside world. That’s certainly not the case when we go to university. It’s a bit different. Also, if you do it very strictly, then you’re not allowed to lie down during the three years, and so you have to sleep sitting up, which takes quite a while to get used to, because you’re in a little box, basically, and you better not have problems with your knees. 

Participant: What is the reason for that?

Dr. Berzin: What is the reason for not lying down? I have no idea. I’m sure it has something to do with the energy systems, but I really don’t know specifically why. Then there are some people who never really lie down. I think Lama Zopa always sleeps sitting up, for example. I mean the one hour that he sort of nods off at night. 

Participant: But then these lamas…

Dr. Berzin: Yes, then they usually ruin their knees if they sit like that for so long, and they’re not able to walk when they’re old. That I’ve seen over and over again. Not the best for your health. But then their objectives are different. 

OK. So we’ve covered that.

I should say something about initiations or empowerments. I don’t want to go into too much detail. There’s a lot of detail that could be said about them. In Sanskrit it means — abhishekha is a “sprinkling,” so a sprinkling of seeds and then sprinkling of nourishment to make the seeds grow. In Tibetan the word is wang (dbang), which means “to empower.” That’s why I call it empowerment. I don’t like the word initiation, because it means to initiate, to start something, and neither the Sanskrit or the Tibetan has that meaning. 

What it is intended to do, in theory, is that we have various aspects of Buddha-nature, various factors which will enable us to become a Buddha, and an empowerment activates them, empowers them. We have certain factors which are there basically all the time, from beginningless time. And then in the empowerment, you need to not only take the vows — there’s no empowerment without taking vows — but also you need to have some sort of conscious experience. The conscious experience doesn’t have to be deep and profound with rainbows and French horns in the background, but just something. In the Gelug tradition it’s usually a blissful awareness of voidness. At various times it says, “Now imagine that you have a blissful awareness of voidness,” which just means that we need to have some understanding of voidness, whatever level we have, and while thinking of it, be happy. That’s enough. In the non-Gelug traditions, it’s usually “think in terms of Buddha-nature.” Whatever it is, something has to be there conscious. And that, with the circumstance of the ambiance of the place, and the teacher, and the visualizations, whatever we’re trying to do — although if you’ve never received an empowerment, you couldn’t possibly do the visualizations; they’re much too complicated (that’s why you have to take them over and over again) — but that whole ambiance, plus some sort of conscious experience, whatever level it might be, plants further seeds. That’s the sprinkling of seeds. It’s the watering of the seeds that are there, activating them, sprinkling some more seeds of Buddha-nature type of things that will grow into what becomes the Buddha bodies, the bodies of a Buddha. That’s what empowerment is all about. 

When you talk about the blessings (byin-gyis rlabs, Skt. adhishthana) — that word I translate as inspiration, it’s an uplifting type of thing. Sometimes that’s another word that’s used, an uplifting. So that’s what’s going on. It’s not that there’s some sort of magical type of thing. 

That’s what empowerment is. We need to get more and more… gives more power to the seeds for them to grow, to be able to get more easily the realizations. Without that empowerment, then, it’s said that well, you haven’t really activated these factors fully or properly. That’s why you need empowerment. It’s not so much that you’re entering a secret club, like an initiation into some mystery religion in ancient Greece. We’re not talking about that. OK? This is what an empowerment is. 

Then the subsequent permission, the jenang (rjes-snang), is, as Serkong Rinpoche said, “to sharpen the sword.” You’re given the “sword” at the empowerment, and this is to sharpen it. Here is where you have more... you think in terms of the qualities of the body, speech, mind, and then all together of the Buddha-figure, and you imagine a reinforcement, an uplifting of energy in terms of these qualities. That’s the subsequent permission. OK? 

Then there’s also something, which is given very, very rarely, which is called a ngagtu (sngags-btus), which is a collection or putting together of the mantra, in which there is a grid of letters in the Sanskrit alphabet and vowels, and each letter of the mantra is specified in terms of this grid. The third consonant in the second row with the fourth vowel. This type of thing. You take some powder from the grid and you draw the letters (I mean the attendant of the lama does that). And the point of that is to gain tremendous confidence that this is the correct mantra, and this is the way that it’s spelled, because it is very easy that corruptions come in in the mantra and in the spelling of the mantra. This ritual or ceremony was as a safeguard that the mantra would be kept correctly. But it’s done very, very, very rarely. Actually, I’ve never heard of it, except Serkong Rinpoche did it twice. I’ve never heard of any other lama actually doing it. But it is there. I mean, His Holiness hasn’t, as far as I know, done that publicly. Even when Serkong Rinpoche did it, it was only… we were, I think, about three of us, three or four of us. 

OK. That’s empowerment. Any questions about that?

Participant: How important is it to spell the mantra correctly?

Dr. Berzin: How important is it to spell the mantra correctly? That’s a very good question. It is important in terms of when you are visualizing the mantra arranged around a disk at your heart. It’s very good to know how it’s spelled, because then you know how it looks to be able to visualize it. There are certain practices in which you visualize the mantra, and you visualize the mantra giving off its sound without you, as a separate person, saying the sound. This is mostly in kriya tantra, the first class of tantra. In that situation it is good to know how it’s spelled. 

The question is of course: Which script do you visualize it in? Because even if you do it in the Devanagari, the modern Sanskrit script, which was not the script at the time of Buddha or at the time when tantra practice was done by these mahasiddhas. They had a different script. So, what script do you use? That’s hard to say. Those who are more liberal say you could use even the Western alphabet. Tibetans — most of them will use Tibetan alphabet. Some may use Sanskrit Devanagari. Some may use Lantsa, which is an older Indian script. Ranjana, I think is the full Sanskrit name. The Tibetans call it Lantsa.

Participant: If you take the same initiation from different masters then you have different mantras.

Dr. Berzin: If you take the initiation from different masters… If you take the same initiation from the different masters, the mantra will be the same. We were talking about spelling. 

If you talk about how it’s pronounced, then we get into a different problematic area. Because first of all, one could argue: How was it originally pronounced in India? For instance, what we would call the v sound — “vajra.” There are a lot of people that say in ancient India it wasn’t pronounced like a v, it was pronounced like a w, “wa” — “wajra.” So, it is wajra or vajra? Even in India pronunciations. 

Participant: And then “benza.”

Dr. Berzin: Then the Tibetans transform it into “benza,” and that’s because… The j sound they got from Kashmir, which then became a z sound, because apparently the Kashmiris pronounced it that way, so you get “benza.” And then in Mongolian it’s pronounced “ochir.” Same, same. Chinese will transform it even further, and the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters will be even further away. 

Then the question is: Is it effective or not to pronounce it in any old way? Some will say, “As long as your teacher pronounced it that way, then it’s OK.” But then I’m always reminded of people in Spain speaking with a lisp — unoth, doth, treth, cuatroth — because one of the Kings had a lisp. So what really is effective? That’s hard to say. 

There’s this wonderful story of a monk at the time of a famine who was very worried that his mother was starving, so he went to his mother… I forget the exact mantra, I’m sorry, but the mother was fit, and so the son said, “Well, how are you able to be fit and not starve?” And she said, “Oh, somebody taught me a mantra with which I could boil rocks, and it would make it into a soup, a food I could eat.” The son asked, “What is the mantra?” And she said, “It is…” — now pardon me if I remember it incorrectly — “OM BALI BOLI BULI SOHA.” And the monk said, “Oh mother, you’ve been saying the mantra incorrectly all the time. It’s not that. It’s ZALI ZOLI ZULI SOHA,” or something like that. So, the mother… Now, there are two versions to the story. There’s the light version and the heavy version. The light version is that the mother tried the son’s mantra, and it wouldn’t work, and so then she went back to her mantra, and it did work, because she had faith in it. His Holiness’s version of the story, which is much heavier, is that the mother tried the son’s mantra, and it didn’t work, and she went back to her old mantra, but because she was confused and had doubts that didn’t work either, and she starved to death. Therefore, the moral of the story is: if someone has faith in something and it works, don’t disturb them; don’t shatter their faith. It’s a good story. Good story. Makes its point. 

So I don’t know. His Holiness always recommends that it is better to pronounce things as in Sanskrit. But there is, as I say, a bit of disagreement as to how it was actually pronounced in Sanskrit. Again, India’s a big place, and so there are many different dialects and people pronounce things differently in different places, and who knows how it was said at the time of the Buddha or at the time of the mahasiddhas?

Participant: When you have Western books and they list Vajrasattva mantra and they give an approximate spelling in Western writing, you have so many combinations.

Dr. Berzin: So, he’s saying: In Western books when you have the Vajrasattva hundred-syllable mantra written, you have different versions. 

There are two variants of different versions. One variant is that — one parameter, I should say — is how you transcribe just the straight Vajrasattva mantra. If you transcribe it the way it’s spelled, there is only one way, that’s it, from the spelling. But there are many people who do not transcribe it according to the spelling but transcribe it according to way the Tibetans pronounce it, and that’s different. OM VAJRA-SATTVA becomes OM BENZA-SATO. It depends on: are you going to transcribe the spelling (transliterate the spelling) or transcribe the way that it’s pronounced. That’s one thing. 

But then there’s another set of variants, which is the OM VAJRA-SATTVA SAMAYA way of starting it. That is in accordance with the Guhyasamaja system. There’s also OM YAMANTAKA SAMAYA MANU-PALAYA, which is in the Vajrabhairava version of it. There’s OM VAJRA HERUKA SAMAYA MANU-PALAYA in the Heruka tradition. There’s PADMA SAMAYA in the Hayagriva and Guru Rinpoche variant of it. There are different variants of the hundred-syllable mantra as well, depending on which tantra system it’s done in conjunction with. But Guhyasamaja is considered the king of tantra, the most standard one, and there it’s Vajrasattva himself. OK? Good.

What time does that bring us to? That brings us to the end of the class. Good. That brings us to pretty much the end of that section. Then Tsongkhapa goes on to speak about this point that you raised of the difference between practicing tantra as a householder or a monk or nun and so on. We’ll do that next time. Next week there won’t be class. We’ll have class the week after. I’ll be away.

We end with the dedication. Whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come from this, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.