We are studying A Letter of Practical Advice on Sutra and Tantra, which was written by the great Tibetan master Tsongkhapa in the beginning of the 15th century, something like that. Tsongkhapa was asked by one of his disciples (he also had a teacher-student relation with him, back and forth) to give some practical advice about the combined path of sutra and tantra.
Review of Previous Sessions
Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor
Tsongkhapa answered him in a letter form, saying that we have the excellent working basis of a human rebirth, the freedoms and opportunities to study and practice the Dharma; we have met with the teachings of the Buddhas; and we have excellent spiritual masters; and we have the intelligence to be able to discern between what is proper, what’s improper, what’s to be adopted and what’s to be rejected. Everything depends on actually taking advantage of that situation and involving ourselves with the Buddha’s teachings. To do that, we need to definitely rely on guidance of a qualified spiritual master, someone who knows exactly what are the states of mind that we need to develop, which are the ones we need to get rid of; doesn’t add anything, doesn’t leave anything out; and knows how to apply them to each student and what the proper order is for gaining the various insights and realizations. The teacher has to have gained this understanding based on his or her own experience with their own spiritual master, and the study needs to be based on the great Buddhist classics.
The Motivating Mental Framework
As for how to begin, then, the main point is to tame the mind. In terms of taming the mind, this means to have the proper motivating mental framework to pursue any of the levels of the teaching. Getting this mental framework can be done in many different ways, but the graded way that is the most usual is in terms of the three scopes of motivation. This is motivation for understanding, basically, the four noble truths — the situation of suffering, what the cause of it is, the state in which we are free of suffering, and how to bring that about. It’s not enough to just study that for intellectual knowledge, and it’s not sufficient to just be a nice person, but we need to really apply the teachings to ourselves, and for that we need a motivation.
- The first level of motivation is to continue to try to have a precious human rebirth. The only way that we’re really going to be able to make spiritual progress is with the precious human rebirth, and chances are we will not achieve liberation or enlightenment in this lifetime, so it’s very important to ensure that we continue to have this working basis so that we can continue over many lifetimes. To achieve that we need to refrain from acting in a destructive way. If we refrain, this will stop, at least to a certain level, the causes for a worse rebirth, in terms of the teachings on karma. Initially we take this provisional step of working to improve future lives. That’s not an ultimate goal by any means.
- Then, on an intermediate level, we work to achieve liberation completely from all uncontrollably recurring rebirth states and all the sufferings that are involved with that. On the initial level when we have disturbing emotions, we don’t act them out but exercise self-control (so ethical discipline). On the intermediate level, we work to get rid of the disturbing emotions completely.
- Then, on the advanced level, we think of everybody else and all the problems that they have — they’re in the same situation. We develop love and compassion and the bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta) aim to reach enlightenment to be able to help them as fully as possible. We work toward enlightenment of a Buddha.
These are the graded mental frameworks of the spiritual path that combines sutra and tantra. Tsongkhapa says that we need to not just have an intellectual understanding but really meditate on them, make them part of our whole way of being.
How to Meditate
Then he describes how to meditate, how to build them up, and this involves knowing what the causes are for developing each of these levels of motivation, what it depends on, all the different aspects of it. We need to build up a lot of positive force and cleanse away obstacles. We need to know what would prevent us from developing these states of mind and what would help. We also need to know what we focus on when we’re trying to develop each of these, and all the different aspects of it, and the way that our mind relates to it. Also, the states of mind that we’re trying to develop — we need to know what effect, positive effect, they will have, what are the good qualities that we’ll gain from developing them and what are the negative qualities that we’ll get rid of. If we know all these different aspects of meditation, we’ll be able to develop these motivating mental frameworks in their proper way. Tsongkhapa also says that we need to maintain these motivations steadily and continuously not only throughout our sessions but throughout the day.
The Ethical Self-Discipline of Keeping Vows
That’s the basic sutra level, and then Tsongkhapa starts to speak about the tantra level. He says that the basis for this is ethical discipline. There was the big discussion of the pratimoksha (Skt. prātimokṣa) vows. Those are the vows for individual liberation, either lay vows or monk or nun vows. Then there are the bodhisattva vows and the tantric vows. And there was a big discussion, then, of all these vows. We went through them and what are the factors that cause them to weaken or would cause us to break them and what are the procedures for restoring and revitalizing them.
Then we need to receive empowerment or initiation. The empowerment or initiation is only on the basis of taking the vows. Without vows there’s no empowerment. Tsongkhapa emphasizes that if we have some level of individual liberation vows, that this is the best foundation and it’s absolutely necessary, and of the different levels of these pratimoksha vows, those as a full monk or nun are the best. The basic idea of the empowerment is to activate the Buddha-nature potentials that we have through a conscious experience during the empowerment. It can be an experience of a blissful awareness of voidness. This is what we find in the Gelug presentation. Or it can an awareness of Buddha-nature in some of the other traditions. We activate the Buddha-potential factors that we have already and plant more seeds for gaining realization.
The Proper Order of the Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra
Then there’s a discussion of the two stages of the highest class of practice, generation and complete stage. We were in our discussion of that, what the general theory was, just so you have an idea of what follows in the text. There’s just a very short treatment of the theory — perhaps we’ll be able to finish that today — and then there’s a discussion of how to visualize these various Buddha-figures.
Then the rest of the text is a detailed discussion of voidness. It doesn’t go into the type of detail that we had when we studied Shantideva’s text, but a little bit more general.
This is the structure of the text.
Liberation and Enlightenment through Sutra and Tantra Methods
Last time, we went over — I guess it was the last two times — we went over the theory of the generation stage. With all the various practices, whether we’re aiming for liberation, or we are aiming for the enlightenment of a Buddha, either through the sutra or the tantra methods, the main thing that we need to develop is the understanding of voidness. In other words, when we are working to overcome the true cause of suffering — which is our unawareness of reality and how we exist, how others exist, how everything exists — we need to recognize that our minds project all sorts of impossible ways of existing onto everything and we believe that these correspond to reality, and on the basis of that we get all sorts of disturbing emotions in a rather futile attempt to try to make ourselves and everything secure (either greed, attachment, desire, anger, jealousy, pride, envy, etc.). We need to counter this with the understanding of voidness. That is referring to an absence of impossible ways of existing, that it’s not corresponding to anything real — a real referent is totally absent. That’s what voidness means.
According to Tsongkhapa’s view, the Prasangika (Skt. Prāsaṅgika) view, then the understanding of voidness that’s necessary for achieving liberation or enlightenment either in sutra or tantra is always the same. The difference is the type of mind that we have that understands voidness. Different types of mind will have different levels of energy and power associated with them.
The basis level would be renunciation (nges-’byung, Skt. naishkramya). Renunciation is a Western term coined by I don’t know whom, but the actual Tibetan word and Sanskrit word has the meaning of “definitely getting out,” “definite emergence.” That’s the connotation of the word, and so it means being absolutely determined to be free from samsara (Skt. saṃsāra). Getting out or turning away also has the connotation of turning away or giving up the causes for the suffering as well. Both the suffering and the causes for suffering and definitely wanting to get out. We have this strong determination to be free, and that would be our reason for trying to get the understanding of voidness. With that we gain liberation.
If in addition we focus on bodhichitta and have the mind of bodhichitta as our motivation, then this is a much stronger mind. It’s focused on our future enlightenments, our enlightenments that we have not yet attained but which we can attain, our own individual enlightenments further down on our mental continuum, which we can impute on the basis of our Buddha-nature factors, all the potentials that will allow us to become a Buddha. When we are moved by love and compassion for absolutely everybody, then we have this very strong feeling that not just “I want to get out of suffering because I can’t stand it myself,” but “I need to overcome all the obscurations because everybody else is suffering so terribly and I have to be able to help them.” For the general attainment of enlightenment through sutra methods, we need both renunciation (or the determination to be free) and bodhichitta, a combination of the two, as the mind that understands voidness.
Now, in the highest class of tantra, we have, in addition to that, the subtlest level of mind as the mind that focuses on voidness. That subtlest level of mind underlies every moment of our experience; it continues from lifetime after lifetime and into Buddhahood as well. Understanding voidness with this level of mind has many advantages: It’s automatically nonconceptual because it’s more subtle than a conceptual mind. It does not have disturbing emotions; it’s more subtle than they are. And it is free of all appearance-making of impossible ways of existence. In other words, although it has the habits of unawareness or grasping for impossible ways of existing, nevertheless those habits don’t produce either that grasping for truly established existence or even the appearance-making of truly established existence, but they’re there.
We want to achieve that state of mind, that subtlest state of mind, activate it, and use that with the force of renunciation and bodhichitta in order to reach the enlightened state of a Buddha. In order to achieve that state, that subtlest state, or activate that subtlest state, we need to dissolve the grosser levels of awareness, and there are various ways of doing this. When we speak about levels of mind or awareness, that is one way of looking at an event. Another way of looking at the same thing is from the energy point of view, and that’s talking about the subtle winds or the subtle energies. So, one way of getting to activate the clear-light mind is to work with the subtle energies that flow through the body and bring them all into the central channel and dissolve them. Dissolve them means that the consciousness then withdraws from these elements and these winds as their basis, and we get the subtlest level activated.
Another way of generating this state of mind, this subtlest state of mind, is through generating a blissful awareness. A blissful awareness here is a certain mental state of bliss or happiness generated within the central channel. It’s not talking about some sort of sexual thing. It’s talking about a very-difficult-to-achieve state attained through very-difficult-to-practice yoga methods. That blissful state of mind in the central channel tends to dissolve the winds, tends to make the consciousness get more subtle — that’s its advantage — while we try to generate it.
I explained the theory last time, which is — just in brief — that we have a general process in death, bardo, and rebirth in which the consciousness automatically dissolves — the gross levels of consciousness (the conceptual levels of consciousness, memories, etc.) — and we just get to the clear-light mind of death. Then the energy winds become a little bit more gross, and the mind becomes a little bit more gross, and we get bardo (the in-between state) experiences. Then with conception and rebirth, we get our usual gross state of energy and consciousness. This is a natural sequence that our mental continuum goes through of getting down to the subtlest level, then slightly gross, and fully gross levels. We go through something similar to that when we fall asleep, have dreams, and wake up. There are other situations in which we have something similar as well, but no need to go into detail here.
What we want to do is to understand that that same sequence is what is involved with the three bodies of a Buddha, although the three bodies are achieved simultaneously. Nevertheless, we have Dharmakaya (Skt. Dharmakāya), which is the mind of a Buddha; that’s the subtlest clear-light mind as well. We have the subtle appearances, which are Sambhogakaya (the body of full use, or corpus of full use), and the grosser appearances (the emanation bodies, or Nirmanakayas).
What we want to do is to mimic or imitate in our meditation the same procedure. In other words, what we want to do is achieve in meditation what happens normally at death anyway, but now we achieve it through our own control of going down to the clear-light state, generating a subtle appearance, and then generating a grosser appearance. That we would do on the complete stage, the second stage, when we have actually activated and gained control and are able to work with the subtle energy-system.
On the generation stage we do this in our imaginations. We imagine that we go down to the clear-light state of mind, we imagine we arise in a simple form (like a seed syllable), and then we imagine that we arise in a full Buddha form, in the form of one of these Buddha-figures. By doing that together with all our practice of the basis of this — with ethical discipline, renunciation, and bodhichitta, the understanding of voidness, etc. — then we will be able to apply all of that in meditation on the complete stage when we have actually activated the clear-light level. On the generation stage we do this conceptually in our imaginations.
This is what we covered up until now. I went through this a little bit more slowly this time so that maybe it’s a little bit easier to understand. OK?
The Structure of a Sadhana
Now, the text… We read through it a few times in our previous classes, and so maybe it’s not so necessary to read it again. But Tsongkhapa is making a point here that it is necessary to do the generation and the complete stage in their proper order and not to leave out the generation stage, and the generation stage has many, many advantages, and benefits, and we need to understand that it cannot be left out in our practice. What I wanted to present today are the benefits of the generation-stage practice as Tsongkhapa explained in another text, called An Illuminating Lamp for the Five Stages, which is a commentary on the Guhyasamaja (Skt. Guhyasamāja) tantra complete stage.
When we practice the generation stage... I don’t want to go into tremendous detail here, since I don’t think many of you are actually involved in doing this type of practice, but just to get the general appreciation of what’s involved. Once you have an empowerment in tantra — here we’re talking about the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga — then what we practice is a sadhana (sgrub-thabs). Sadhana. That’s a Sanskrit word and it means a method of accomplishment of how we accomplish or transform ourselves into a Buddha-figure. This is like a grand opera of visualization (visualization doesn’t mean just visual; it means generating things in our imagination). It is like an opera: We have a script which we recite. It is usually written in meter, and so it’s very beautiful, very nice, very rhythmic to recite. And in that we put together many, many of the practices that we have in sutra.
The typical structure will be that we start with a form having to do with the guru. The guru is the basis. And we go through the lineage: we have verses for each of the spiritual masters in the lineage, we visual them, and we visual inspiration coming from all of them into us.
Then we arise immediately just in the form of a Buddha-figure, simple Buddha-figure, and we have various types of offerings that we make. First, we purify these offerings; we make the... First you purify the offerings, and you offer them to some various figures for protection so that we don’t have interference in the practice. Whenever we make offerings, we imagine that those who receive them experience them with a blissful understanding of their voidness. At other parts in the practice, we will imagine making the offerings to ourselves and that we enjoy them with a blissful understanding of their voidness so that we have no confusion in the way that we enjoy them.
Then we do some Vajrasattva purification. We retake the vows. We imagine — and usually it’s a quick process — that we receive the empowerments again. We make more offerings.
Then we have the heart of the practice, which is imagining that our consciousness dissolves. All the various levels dissolve, similar to the eight-step procedure that happens when we die. Quite meaningful visualizations that we imagine, and not just visualizing something visually but with various levels of understanding.
There is then a meditation on voidness that we have. Depending on the practice, it will be either before we make the dissolution or after we’ve made the dissolution.
Then we imagine we arise in a simple figure. Then we generate the mandala (Skt. maṇḍala) palace, which is very complex, and each part represents different realizations. Then we generate ourselves as the Buddha-figure, and that Buddha-figure may on some occasions be a single figure, but in many of the practices, probably most of the practices, there are many, many figures. And we are the whole thing. We are not just the central figure. We are not just the central couple, if there is a couple. We are all the figures in the building, plus we are the building as well. Just as we have skin and we have the insides of our body, likewise there is the building, which is like the skin, and all the various figures, which are like the various aggregates and elements and parts of the body. We work with the voidness of that. When you get further and deeper into the theory and understanding, it becomes very, very profound.
Then all the mantra recitation. While doing the mantra recitation, you imagine various lights going out to all beings with love and compassion alleviating them of suffering. Lights also go out to the Buddhas and make offerings, and many, many complicated visualizations occur there.
Then there are more offerings. There is usually inviting some protector figure into the mandala and asking the protector figure to go out and chase away interferences. As my teacher explained, these protector figures are like a very large dog. We are the master of the house, and although we could stand outside at the gate and chase away thieves, why bother to do that when you can get a large dog to do that? So, the protector is like the dog that you set outside to chase away interference.
Then there’s again another dissolution of everything and we arise in a simple form. Then there is usually a long prayer in which we have verses that outline each step of the path according to this tantra system, and then it ends with verses of auspiciousness: may everything be auspicious and wonderful for accomplishing the practice.
That is the basic outline of a sadhana (Skt. sādhana). Each of the sadhanas has a very long form. The long form is the full practice — it could be easily more than a hundred pages long — that normally you promise to recite every day of your life. There are more abbreviated forms of these. As my teacher Serkong Rinpoche used to say — His Holiness as well — the long forms are for beginners; the short forms are for the advanced practitioners. It’s not the other way around. You don’t start with the short form, although almost everybody does. The long form gives you all the detail. When you are familiar with all the detail, then you can recite the shorter, abbreviated form and fill it all in from memory in a more abbreviated form without having to recite all the words.
When you recite the words, you’re reciting, often several times, what every figure looks like, what the mandala looks like, all the different parts, etc. It is a method to help us to train the memory to be like a Buddha, to have everything in our consciousness simultaneously. This is the whole idea. When we have a Buddha-figure with many arms and faces and legs, they all represent, on many levels, many different realizations. The aim is not to be able to visualize twenty-four arms and twenty-four objects — big deal! — that is not the point. The point is to hold in our mind what they represent and to have those simultaneous. It is much easier though to have twenty-four things represented graphically in our consciousness simultaneously than to just try to do it abstractly. There’s a definite purpose to all these arms and legs and faces and things that various figures are holding. We shouldn’t consider it just something very weird and culturally specific to the Indians and then to the Tibetans.
That’s the general idea of the generation stage of a sadhana.
The Benefits of Generation-Stage Practice
Now the benefits according to Tsongkhapa in this text An Illuminating Lamp for the Five Stages.
1. Everything in the generation stage has a causal relationship with the various points in the complete stage
First, he says that each point of the generation stage has a profound dependent-arising relation of being similar with and giving rise to a realization on the complete stage. That means that in order to have success on the complete stage, whatever we’re doing on the generation stage is going to be a causal factor for that. For example, we visualize the various chakras, we visualize various seed syllables in the chakras, we visualize on a very microscopic level various things within the body, and this is very essential for being able to actually access that subtle energy-system and move the energies and winds in it into the central channel. If you can’t visualize with great precision the whole energy-system, or at least the main features of the energy system, you’re never going to be able to work with it and move the energies in it. We need microscopic visualization, like a laser beam, to be able to move these energies.
When we make the offerings, we offer them with a blissful state of mind that has an understanding of voidness. We’re doing that in our imagination with whatever level of understanding of voidness and whatever level of happy mind we can generate. But that acts as a cause for being able to actually generate a blissful awareness within the central channel with an understanding of voidness. By visualizing the stages of dissolution of the energy winds and the consciousness, we’re able to actually achieve that.
There’s a certain… inner offering (nang-mchod) it’s called. An inner offering is where we imagine transforming the various factors of the body — the aggregates, the elements, and so on — which normally might be considered as dirty. We get that in the sutra practice to overcome attachment to the body. But here we transform them, because the point is we want to use our body, specifically the subtle energy-system, to be able to achieve enlightenment. You have to be able to use the gross body in a beneficial way, but we can only do that on the basis of having overcome attachment and desire for the body first. But nevertheless, in these visualizations for purifying what’s known as the inner offering, the structure of the visualization is almost exactly like the structure that we use in a practice called tummo (gtum-mo) on the complete stage. Tummo is an inner heat which is generated within the central channel for generating a blissful awareness within that channel. Very difficult, very advanced practice. We shouldn’t think that it’s just a simple practice that yogis use to be able to meditate in the winter in a cave. This is silly. This is trivializing it. It’s a very profound and difficult practice for getting the energies to melt and move and generate in a blissful way within the central channel. We visualize things on the generation stage with the inner offering that are very similar to what we would work with in the central channel.
So, like that, every point within the sadhana, which will include, by the way, all the ngondro (sngon-’gro) practices: you have prostration, you have the seven-part practice (like we do before class), you have Vajrasattva, you have guru-yoga, and you have a mandala offering. All the preliminaries are done there as well, so that you always do a little bit each day. A full sadhana has a very full practice as a part of it.
This is the first point Tsongkhapa makes, that everything in the generation stage has a causal relationship with the various points on the complete stage.
2. We receive the brightening inspiration of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas on our mental continuum
The second point that Tsongkhapa makes is that we receive the brightening inspiration (byin-gyis rlabs) of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas on our mental continuum. That’s the word that sometimes I just translate as inspiration. Often, it’s just translated as blessings, which again I think trivializes what it’s talking about. We imagine, as I said, in the beginning of the practice, the whole lineage, and you imagine one generation melting into the next generation, into the next generation, the next generation… then into us. We imagine that we gain this inspiration. We imagine that we are brightened by that, filled with light and energy, and this goes out to others. It is a super form of guru-yoga. What we do with a simple guru-yoga as a preliminary, we do in a much fuller way here on the generation stage, and as a result we get filled more and more with the inspiration of the teachers.
3. We’re taken care of by these Buddha-figures in all our lives
The third point is that we’re taken care of by these Buddha-figures in all our lives. What does that mean? That means that throughout all our lives, the foundation is going to be present there of working with these Buddha-figures, because by visualizing ourselves in these forms every day — and in fullest practice, we’re supposed to visualize ourselves in this form all day long, which is of course extremely difficult to do, but at least during the sadhana to do it — it makes a very strong impression on our mental continuum, and that impression is present so that it continues in future lives so that we continue to have that connection.
This is very important not only in terms of these Buddha-figures but in terms of Buddha, refuge, the spiritual teachers, etc. This has a very calming effect on us — that rather than having nightmares of a big spider coming to eat us from a strong connection with insect life, we have images of Buddhas in our mind, which are something which are very helpful. We can notice this in terms of the strong impressions that we have in our dreams, that manifest in dreams — that rather than having nightmares of horrible things chasing us, we dream of these various Buddha-figures, Buddha lands, and so on, which then is very conducive for further practice in our dreams.
4. We are never separate from continual mindfulness of the Buddhas
The fourth point that Tsongkhapa makes is that we are never separate from continual mindfulness of the Buddhas. Again, by doing the sadhana practice every day, we are always mindful of the Buddhas, of refuge, so we never feel lost.
Also this is very helpful — I don’t think Tsongkhapa mentioned it — very, very helpful for bodhichitta, because with bodhichitta — I mean, aside from love and compassion (and that of course we practice on the generation stage when we emanate various lights helping others) — bodhichitta is aimed at our not-yet-attained enlightenment, our individual enlightenment which we have not yet attained but which we can attain on the basis of all the potentials of Buddha-nature that we have on our mental continuum. We are representing that not-yet-attained enlightenment in the form of this Buddha-figure that we are imagining. And so by focusing on ourselves in this form — with the understanding of voidness, with the understanding that we aren’t there yet and that it doesn’t have truly established existence — but by focusing on ourselves in that form, labeling me on that, that keeps us focused on our not-yet-attained enlightenment, which is the focal aim of bodhichitta. It’s very, very helpful for that.
We have continual mindfulness of the Buddhas, so we never feel lost.
5. We are easily able to complete the networks of positive force and deep awareness through making offerings and praise
Then it says the fifth benefit. We are easily able to complete the networks of positive force and deep awareness through making offerings and praise. Throughout the sadhana, in many, many places in the sadhana, we’re making offerings. We imagine offering all sorts of things. We can offer the usual offerings of the various types of water to... Like when you invite a guest — remember we used to do this in more detail in our class — you invite a guest, like you invite these Buddha-figures, you invite the gurus, and you offer them water to rinse their mouth, water to wash their feet, water to take a shower, water to drink, so that they are comfortable after a long journey. Then we offer a nice meal with flowers and incense and cologne water, food, music, etc., butter lamps, candles, all these things — a beautiful offering. We imagine that we offer this to not only the Buddhas but offer it to everybody. We also offer them beautiful sense objects and the pleasure that comes from having beautiful things to see, hear, smell, taste, and clothing for tactile sensations. There are many, many things that we offer — very, very elaborate. This is a very, very helpful practice for building up positive force.
Through understanding the voidness of the person who’s making the offering, the person to whom we are making the offering, and the offering objects — by understanding the voidness of the three, we build up also the network of deep awareness. We have to understand that all three depend on each other: you can’t have someone making an offering unless there is an offering and unless there’s someone to give the offering to. They arise dependently on each other. None of them exist independently on their own; they’re relative.
That’s the fifth advantage.
6. We will not be harmed by interferers
The sixth advantage is that we will not be harmed by interferers. In other words, there are various protection practices that we do. We imagine a protected space around us when we do the sadhana. It’s quite an elaborate visualization. We imagine protectors coming in and then sending them out to chase away interferences. Whether you believe in any of this literally or not is not so important. I think the thing is that if you have a mind that is convinced in a very strong way of the ability to chase away interferences then that gives you strength: “I am not going to be overcome by this.” It’s like what Shantideva says in Bodhicharyavatara (Skt. Bodhicaryāvatāra): “I will be the victor. I will gain the victory over the disturbing emotions. The disturbing emotions are not going to gain the victory over me.”
Working with these protectors — what are they protecting us against? It’s not that they’re going to protect us against nuclear attack. They are protecting us against the attacks of our disturbing emotions and also external interferences. But we need to understand this on many levels. Also, we’re protected from interference in the sense that we are trying to always be aware of voidness with a blissful state of mind. And the main interference is grasping for impossible ways of existing, and when we understand that it doesn’t refer to anything real, that is our best protection.
7. We’re able to achieve the actual attainments of pacifying and so forth in this lifetime
The next advantage is that we’re able to achieve the actual attainments of pacifying and so forth in this lifetime.
When we recite the mantra and imagine lights and things going out from us as the Buddha-figure, we not only imagine the lights making offerings, but we imagine that we are enacting the four types of activity of a Buddha. The enlightening influence (’phrin-las) of a Buddha, to be more precise. It’s the influence. A Buddha doesn’t have to do anything. Just by the way that a Buddha is, that has this enlightening influence on everything around. That’s why we visualize it in terms of lights going out [i.e. going forth, radiating], that we have this influence; it’s like vibrations going out.
- One activity is to be able to quiet down things, to pacify things. When people are very upset or a situation is very upset, to be able to calm everybody just by our way of being (our “calm vibrations” we would say in New Age language).
- Then the next one is to increase. This means to stimulate. Just by our very way of being, we stimulate others and inspire others to be more alert, to understand more, to be more compassionate. Just our very way of being causes this to grow; it stimulates it in others. You see this with the great lamas, that they’re able to engender this in the people around.
- The third one is influence which has to do with being able to get everything literally under your control or in control. That would be like the German word Alles in Ordnung. We’re able to get everything in order, so when there is chaos and so on around, we’re able to get everybody to cooperate and get everything to function smoothly. Just by your very way of being, everything gets clear and organized.
- Then the fourth way of influencing others is a very forceful way and a forceful way of stopping harm. Again, by our very strong manner, the harm will just stop.
We imagine this in the generation stage with our visualizations and this acts as a cause for being able to actually achieve this in our lifetime, it says.
8. The generation stage acts to overcome ordinary appearances and grasping at them to exist as such
The next advantage, Tsongkhapa says, is that the generation stage acts to overcome ordinary appearances and grasping at them to exist as such. When we work with these visualizations, we have pure and impure appearances. Each of these can be understood on two levels. One is in terms of the appearance of how things exist. The other is the actual appearance of what they look like. We ordinarily think of things in a very ordinary way. Often actually we don’t even see them correctly. Like looking at yourself in the mirror and projecting ugly, fat, or whatever, and we grasp at that as being solidly truly existent. It’s impure on two levels — what it looks like and how it exists. Pure appearance has to do with generating in a pure form as a Buddha-figure (you don’t have all these negative associations with it) and having the understanding of the pure way in which it exists (devoid of truly established existence). By working with these pure appearances, both in terms of the appearance of a Buddha-figure and it lacking truly established existence, it helps us to overcome, in our ordinary life, grasping for things to exist in these distorted, impure ways.
9. We have a special way of developing shamatha in the anuttarayoga tantra practices
The last advantage that Tsongkhapa mentions in this text is that we have a special way of developing shamatha (Skt. śamatha) in anuttarayoga tantra practices. Shamatha, or shinay (zhi-gnas) in Tibetan, is a stilled and settled state of mind, a mind that is stilled of all mental dullness and flightiness and settled single-pointedly on an object or a state of mind. In addition, it has the blissful aspect of an exhilarating feeling of fitness, physical and mental fitness: you can focus on anything forever. Well, in sutra we have many ways of developing shamatha, many different types of objects: we can do it on the breath, we can do it on the sensations in the body, we can do it on the opponents for disturbing emotions (like on a state of love), we can do it on visualizations of a Buddha. There’s a whole long list of objects that we can use for gaining perfect concentration.
Then on top of that we get vipashyana (lhag-mthong). Vipashyana is an exceptionally perceptive state of mind which, in addition to being stilled and settled, has a second sense of fitness of being able to perceive everything in a very deep analytical way of understanding. That’s often generated in terms of understanding of voidness, or lack of a true self, etc., etc.
In tantra, anuttarayoga tantra, we have a very different way of generating shamatha and vipashyana (Skt. vipaśyanā), and we have it in terms of visualization. Shamatha, the stilled and settled state of mind, is gained on ourselves as a Buddha-figure, and not just on ourselves but the whole mandala — all the figures in the mandala, and the mandala itself, the building, and everything that’s outside the building as well (there’s a lot more than just the building).
We have what’s called the lion gaze type of analytical practice, in which you focus on the central thing and then further out, further out, further out — bring your attention out and in, so that eventually you get the whole thing simultaneously. That helps in the vipashyana practice as well to become more exceptionally perceptive.
But what is really the specialty is the subtle generation stage. You have the gross (bskyed-rim rags-pa) and the subtle generation stage (bskyed-rim phra-mo). (Please excuse me if I’m just throwing out a tremendous amount of material here, but I don’t want to spend too much time on this section, because most of you aren’t doing this type of practice anyway. Just giving the general idea so that we can go on to the later sections of the text.) There’s a rough and a subtle generation stage. The rough generation stage is visualizing just the mandala with all the figures. When we are able to achieve shamatha on that visualization — which means four hours of perfect concentration and no dullness, no flightiness of mind, which is quite an attainment — then we have achieved the rough or gross generation stage.
Then you’re ready to go on to the subtle generation stage, and there are many variations of this. The simplest one is you imagine a little drop on the tip of your nose, or it could be where the third eye is, or it could be at other places. It could be a drop. It could be a vajra. There are many variations on this. You focus on that, and then you focus on “one produces two,” and so you have one and, in the next row, two. And then you have a third row, of four, and then a fourth row, of eight, and then sixteen, then thirty-two, sixty-four, etc. You imagine that multiplying like this and coming back. By doing this at specific points (where you have the end of the central channel), in addition to achieving shamatha with that, you achieve vipashyana as well, this exceptionally perceptive state of mind, and in addition it acts as a help and a cause to bring the winds into the central channel, because you are doing that at the tips of the central channel. That’s the beginning stage of the subtle generation stage.
You can also visualize inside each drop a deity, the Buddha-figure. You can visualize inside each drop the full mandala palace with all the figures in it, down to the details of the black and white of their eyes, it says, and then have one complete mandala like that in each drop. Supposedly there are people who can actually do that. When you’re able to do that and focus on just one of these dots with a full mandala in it — with all the figures, perfect detail, four hours, with perfect concentration — then you have completed the generation stage, and then you’re ready to go on to the complete stage. Those who think that you can practice the complete stage just like that, with no preparation, are really fooling themselves. Now, there are practices which are little bit similar to complete stage practices that are done in some tantra systems earlier, while on the generation stage, but they’re not the real thing. They’re just visualizations of imagining things similar to the complete stage.
All of this is a long process, not easy, and we shouldn’t expect spectacular results. That’s why it is not a problem doing the same sadhana every day for the rest of your life. Because it is so complicated, has so many parts, is so difficult to do, that there’s always room for improvement. There’s always a new feature on it that you can work on and emphasize. As the practice goes on over the years, you’re able to do it more and more quickly. But it’s a method for putting together all the different pieces of sutra and put them all together in a way which will act as a cause for success on the complete stage, which is what actually is the stage that brings you to enlightenment.
You had a question?
Participant: No.
Dr. Berzin: No? Good. Alles klar. Everything clear.
Yogas for Eating, Sleeping, and Waking
Now let me do the last paragraph of this section, and then I think that will complete our discussion of this procedure, if I’m not mistaken, then we can go on to how to visualize, which I think has a little bit more practical application. Tsongkhapa says here:
Also, on this (stage) we must perform the actions for building up the networks (of positive force and deep awareness, such as the yogas for eating, sleeping and waking),
Let me just explain that much. Remember I said that Tsongkhapa said that one of the advantages is that it builds up these networks of positive force and deep awareness, and so there are many yogas that we do in addition to the sadhana practice each day — and in some practices, by the way… in the Sakya tradition of Hevajra, you promise to do the sadhana twice a day (it’s not just once) — yogas for eating, sleeping and waking.
When you eat, you can imagine various figures inside you and you’re making an offering. There’s something called a fire puja (Skt. pūjā), in which you imagine making offerings to Buddha-figures in a fire — it’s very similar to what you find in the Hindu Vedas (it comes out of that tradition, in common with Buddhism) — and you can imagine the digestive fire. All sorts of various practices you can do in connection with eating.
There’s sleeping yoga, in which you try to imagine… just as we had this practice in meditation similar to death, bardo, and rebirth, you could practice and learn to do that with falling asleep, with dreaming, and with waking. I mean, if you become really very sensitive, you can start to notice the process of falling asleep and the stages of falling asleep. That’s difficult to do and still accomplish falling asleep. But you can start to notice that whole process. If you combine that with an understanding of voidness, you can get to something similar to a very subtle state of mind, with an understanding of voidness as you fall asleep.
Dream yoga is primarily to be able to recognize when you’re dreaming that it is a dream, like when you’re awake and “Everything is like an illusion.” “This is like an illusion,” and that’s very difficult to do without waking up. You recognize that “I’m dreaming,” and usually wake up. That’s not what you want. You want to be able to then control the dream to do a sadhana practice in your dream and meditation in the dream, because the dream state is the most conducive state for concentration. You have no distraction from the senses while you’re dreaming, so you can get really excellent visualization and concentration in a dream. That can only happen if you have extreme familiarity with the sadhana while you’re awake so that you can remember it in your dream and do it in your dream. Again, we shouldn’t think that dream yoga is just some fancy New Age thing, and you fly and have all sorts of adventures. That’s not it at all.
And when waking up, likewise we wake up and instantly arise as the Buddha-figure — to combine the waking stage with the stage of arising as a Buddha-figure.
All of these are ways of building up more and more positive force.
Viewing Everything in a Pure Form in between Sessions
Tsongkhapa says:
and in between sessions be mindful of (viewing everything in a) pure (form, such as ourselves and all others as meditational deities,
As these Buddha-figures.
our surroundings as a mandala palace, and so forth.
We already discussed that, that we try to overcome our attachment and grasping to ordinary appearances and ordinary ways in which things exist by imagining everything in a pure form.
Reciting Mantras and Making Offerings
Likewise, we must) recite the (pertinent) mantras, make offerings, and perform the rituals of the torma offering cake.
There’s a lot of mantras that you recite. If you’re doing a retreat, there’s usually at least a hundred thousand repetitions of each mantra. Sometimes it’s more, like for Tara (Skt. Tārā) it’s a million repetitions of the mantra. These are the short retreats. Long retreats are ten million of these. The point is not so much the mantra recitation — that’s when you relax, in a sense, and do the visualizations — the point is to gain the familiarity of the visualization and overcoming ordinary appearance and ordinary grasping.
At the end of a retreat… I mean, this is what a retreat actually is. Just having a weekend in which you stay at the Dharma center — that’s absurd to call that a retreat. But, anyway, this is what a retreat is; it’s to make the mind serviceable with the figure. Then you have a fire puja, this offering of various substances to a fire and visualizing things in it, to make up for any discrepancies or shortcomings in the practice. Then you can do the self-initiation, which is imagining now a dual thing of yourself as the Buddha-figure and yourself as the one giving the empowerment and then giving empowerment to yourself, a very, very long, complicated procedure in which you renew your vows and strengthen the whole thing. There are many, many practices.
We recite mantras. You can have mantras going through your head all day long. You can imagine hearing things in the form of mantras. There’s combining mantras with the breath, in terms of shaping the breath. There are many, many mantra practices.
Offerings we described.
Making rituals of the torma offering cake. A torma is a cake which is made of barley grain and water and butter. It has various things on it. It represents the Buddha-figure. It is transformed and visualized in the form of the Buddha-figure. It is an offering, basically. The word tor (gtor) of torma (gtor-ma) means “to sweep away,” “to chase away interferences.” You have tormas which are offered to protectors, you have tormas which are offered to Buddha-figures, tormas offered to ourselves. It’s another form of offering.
Remaining Mindful of the Various Points and Rejoicing in the Practice
Tsongkhapa goes on:
Since we need to build up (the impressions of) all these, in fact, on our mental continuums at their appropriate occasions, while remaining ever mindful of the meanings of this (point) and that, without letting ourselves just merely recite the words (of the ritual texts and mantras mindlessly), then I beg you, please, why not take pleasure (in so doing)?
Tsongkhapa says that we need to do all of this in the generation practice. We need to not just go “Blah blah blah” with the words, which is very easy to do, especially when we don’t have time, then you rush through the practice and just “Blah blah blah” recite the text, and the same thing with the mantras. So not to do that, but to try to have the meaning in mind, to be mindful of it (mindful, you remember, is the mental glue not to let go of what we’re focusing on). And if we’re doing all that, why not take pleasure in so doing, which means to rejoice at the possibility of being able to do this type of practice, because we understand what it’s doing, what its purpose is, what the purpose is for every part of it, how it’s going to lead us further on the path. Shantideva after all mentioned that the strongest factor of perseverance is to take joy in what we’re doing, to enjoy it, especially since throughout the practice we’re trying to have a blissful awareness of voidness. (That’s repeated constantly in the practice: “Now I have a blissful understanding of voidness.”) We try to do that.
That in brief, and admittedly a bit hurried, is the practice of the generation stage.
Participant: Now we’re going to do it for four hours.
Dr. Berzin: Now we’re not going to do it for four hours. It’s not easy. But Tsongkhapa is very, very kind in this text, because now he’s going into how you actually visualize all these complicated visualizations, and these are very helpful instructions. We’ll start on that next time.
Are there questions?
Further Points about Sadhanas
Each of the sadhana — I always think of more to say — each of the sadhana practices is of course a full and complete practice. But there are many different deity systems, Buddha-figure systems, and each of the Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, will transmit a different set of these Buddha-figures and their practices. Many of them will appear in many of the traditions, like Vajrayogini (Skt. Vajrayoginī) or Chakrasamvara (Skt. Cakrasaṃvara). Some of them will be less prominent in one tradition and more prominent in another tradition.
Each one is a complete practice. However, within each practice of one system — with a generation stage, complete stage, the offerings, the whole bit — within that, there will be more detail on one aspect of the practice than another, and so those who are really advanced do many sadhana practices. Specifically in the Gelug tradition, what Tsongkhapa is coming from, he has the combined practice of three figures. Guhyasamaja, Vajrabhairava, and Chakrasamvara are their names. Each one is an extremely long, complicated practice. But in the tantric colleges that were founded by Tsongkhapa’s disciples, this is the main thing that they do, is the combined practice of these three, in which you do the generation stage in full of all three, but on the complete stage you combine the specialty of each of them and put it together in that way. You may have a fuller practice in terms of — in one of them, in terms of the blissful awarenesses; in another one, it may have more complete practice in terms of dissolution of the various aspects of the subtle body. Each one will have more detail of one or another practice. Those who are able will practice several systems each day. It takes a lot of time. It’s a big commitment of time, particularly in the beginning until you get familiar with all of it.
There was a statement… I forgot who it was. Maybe it was Atisha (Skt. Atiśa). Atisha said, “You people in Tibet practice a hundred deities and don’t accomplish any of them. In India we practice one and we accomplish them all.” It is not at all recommended to just go and collect initiations. “Real Thing” initiations given to the monastic community always entail, or almost always entail, a practice commitment. Often when these empowerments are given to larger crowds, or particularly in the West, they’re often not given with a practice commitment.
In the Gelug tradition, if you take the anuttarayoga tantra level of empowerment, there is… at least minimum commitment is the six-session practice, which is a practice that helps us to keep and remain mindful of the nineteen close-bonding practices to the five Buddha-families (we went through them earlier in this course). It’s a way of helping you to keep the vows: you recite the vows so that you remember them, you become mindful of them. That’s a minimum requirement.
In general, what I try to do if I have a sadhana commitment — I do it, never miss it. There are many empowerments of lesser classes of tantra, and with these especially… I’ll give you my experience. I’m a translator, so I translated lots of these empowerments, and to maintain a connection with all of them, I recite at least once the mantra of every figure every day just to maintain a connection. You try to remember the figure and recite the mantra once or three times. Something like that I would certainly recommend if you received lot of empowerments.
The point is: don’t receive a lot of empowerments and don’t get a lot of commitments unless you can keep them. Don’t take empowerments just because they’re being given, especially if you have no idea who the teacher is, you don’t know their qualifications, you’ve never met the teacher. The teacher has a big name, but that doesn’t mean anything. You have to have a connection that you feel, and you have to be convinced that this person is qualified. To receive an empowerment, it’s very important to understand the theory of tantra so that you have confidence in it, have some idea of how it works, and are really interested and motivated to practice it. The only reason for taking an empowerment is because you really want to do the practice. Otherwise, why in the world are you there? Just to be cool and to get high and so on? This is an extremely non-Dharmic reason for taking an empowerment.
There are many people that go — and His Holiness the Dalai Lama explains as well — if you want to go and plant seeds, instincts for future lives or for later in this lifetime, or if you just want to go for inspiration, that’s fine, as long as it’s clear in your mind. Don’t think that you really have received it fully unless you take the vows and keep the vows, minimum. No taking of vows: no initiation. That’s said over again in the various texts. And to take the vows, you have to know what you’re doing and consciously take them. Not just recite “Blah blah blah” in Tibetan, having no idea what you’re saying, and then later somebody tells you that “Oh, by the way, you took the vows.” That doesn’t count. That wasn’t taking the vows.
People take empowerments over and over again. There’s no way that you can follow the procedure in visualization the first time. It’s much too complicated. You need familiarity to be able to actually do the visualizations. It doesn’t matter in the beginning if you don’t have a perfect visualization. You’re not going to have a perfect visualization. You’re not even going to have an imperfect visualization. You’re going to have something very, very vague. That’s OK. The important thing with all the visualizations — and Tsongkhapa will emphasize this — is to have a feeling of it actually being there, and a feeling of actually being the Buddha-figure, and the feeling of the teacher actually being the Buddha-figure, which all has to do with the understanding of voidness and mental labeling. Without the understanding of voidness and mental labeling, the whole thing is just too confusing, too weird, to be able to deal with. We’re working with potentials, Buddha-natures, mentally labeling things on the basis of what has not yet happened, but which can happen and will happen if we put in the effort to become Buddhas. OK?
Questions and Answers
Participant: I have a question.
Dr. Berzin: You have a question. Thank goodness, at least one question. What is your question?
Participant: Does this explanation that you gave now also apply in other systems, like Nyingma etc.?
Dr. Berzin: Does the explanation I gave now also apply in Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya, these other systems? Yes. The sadhanas are almost exactly the same. They have all these different parts.
The taking death, bardo, and rebirth as a path of purification — it’s very interesting. The Gelug tradition regards that in terms of the not-yet-happened death, bardo, and rebirth (purifying that in the future). Sakya does this in terms of purification of death, bardo, and rebirth of this lifetime that’s already happened (the death, bardo, and birth that preceded this lifetime). Then there’s a big debate as to why you would do that, since it’s already happened.
Then in Kagyu and Nyingma, particularly in Nyingma, you have not so much the… Let me start the sentence again. When we speak in terms of these three things — (a) death, (b) bardo, and (c) rebirth; (a) getting down to the subtlest level, then (b) a slight movement of the winds with a subtle appearance, and then (c) gross appearance — that can also be understood in terms of mahamudra (Skt. mahāmudrā) and the nature of the mind. Exactly the same. We can focus on the clarity of the mind — in dzogchen you don’t have dissolution, because of a different procedure that they have — so just instantly to the rigpa, to the pure state of the mind. Then the subtle movement of energy is given the name “compassion” (thugs-rje), but actually what it means is the subtle energy going out to relate to others. And then the generation of an appearance which spontaneously accomplishes all things (lhun-grub) it’s called. You have the same structure of subtle, slight movement of energy, full appearance.
In Kagyu you speak of the clarity aspect of the mind, the appearance-making aspect of the mind (which means making an appearance), and then the appearance aspect itself as the three that are parallel to the three bodies, parallel to death, bardo, and rebirth, and so on.
You have the same structure of purifying a basis to achieve a result by means of a path in which all three are parallel to each other. That you have the same in all of them, but it’s done slightly, slightly differently.
Participant: The system is different to get to this clear-light level?
Dr. Berzin: In the complete stage, the system to get to the clear-light level is only different in dzogchen. All the systems use either working with the winds and dissolving them or working with more subtle levels of blissful awareness. Father tantra tends to emphasize the wind yogas, and mother tantra the bliss yogas.
Dzogchen… You practice mahayoga (Skt. mahāyoga), anuyoga, and atiyoga. Anuyoga and atiyoga are equivalent to two parts of the complete stage; mahayoga is more generation stage. I should say that a mahayoga, anuyoga, and atiyoga practice will have all of these; it’s just a matter of what gets the most emphasis. In mahayoga the emphasis will be on the generation stage, the visualization. In anuyoga the emphasis will be with working with the channels and the winds. Atiyoga, which is also called dzogchen, is like the later stages of the complete stage, and at that point you don’t work with the winds but just recognize rigpa underlying each moment. However, when you recognize it, the winds will automatically dissolve, and that will only happen if you have practiced an anuyoga practice beforehand to, in a sense, grease the system so that it will work better. When you actually achieve rigpa you’re not actually working on dissolving the winds consciously.
In the end it all comes to the same thing. Slightly different methods, slightly different emphasis on which parallel to this basic structure of subtlest, subtle, and gross you’re going to use. It’s all working on the same theory.
Participant: Since you brought it up, one last question: You mentioned mahamudra and dzogchen. Can you speak about the apparent paradox that they are to be suggesting to, as soon as possible, recognize the essence of mind but they seem to dispense with the visualizations and the mantras? Isn’t that a contradiction?
Dr. Berzin: OK. He’s saying: What about the seeming paradox that we find in some Kagyu and Nyingma presentations, that it says to just go directly to recognizing the essence of the mind and no need to do the visualizations and other types of practices? His Holiness the Dalai Lama calls that “Buddhist propaganda.” He says that that’s not really the proper, traditional presentation of the material. One needs to wonder why it’s presented that way. There is no tradition that does not insist that you do a ngondro with all the visualization practices that are there. There is no... I mean, all of them have empowerments, all of them have initiations, all of them have the monasteries filled with the monks doing all the sadhana practices and the rituals.
Participant: It seems like so many people have the idea you could [snaps fingers] just do that.
Dr. Berzin: That idea that you can just go to the final point is trivializing the system and making it sound easy, whereas in fact it is not in the slightest bit easy. Not in the slightest bit easy. One has to be careful not to get fooled by the advertisement.
Participant: There’s so many books where they only emphasize that.
Dr. Berzin: I know. I know. It doesn’t make sense that this is emphasized so much in the West, Western presentation, this mentality of instant enlightenment, instant everything. One has to be very cautious of this. Maybe there are some that might be ready, based on some previous life practices, but the majority? Big problem. Big, big problem.
OK. Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever understanding has come from this, whatever positive force, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause to reach enlightenment for the benefit of all.