We are studying this letter that Tsongkhapa wrote to his friend and meditator with whom he exchanged teachings, and he answers his friend’s request to write a brief indication of practical advice about how to practice sutra and tantra.
Review of Previous Sessions
Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor
Tsongkhapa says we have the basis for practice (in other words, the precious human rebirth), and we’ve met with the teachings, and we have teachers who are qualified, and we have power of mind to discern what’s to be adopted and what’s to be rejected. We have to engage ourselves with the Buddhist teachings, and in order to do that we need to rely on guidance from a properly qualified spiritual teacher. We have to check the teacher. The teacher must know what are the states of mind that we need to develop, which are the ones we need to get rid of; not add anything, not leave anything out; and know the proper order for developing them. The teacher needs to have gained experience in all this by having studied with his or her own spiritual teacher, and the whole course of study needs to be based on and in accordance with studying the great classical texts.
The Motivating Mental Framework
Then in order to start we need to set up the motivating mental framework. Without that none of the practices make any sense. For this we have the graded levels of development of pathways of mind:
- The initial level is to think in terms of future lives, to work to continue to have a precious human rebirth so that we can continue on the path.
- On the intermediate level, to renounce any of the types of futures lives we might get and to seek liberation instead with a strong sense of renunciation.
- On the advanced level, with compassion to think about how everybody is in that same problem as we are. Develop love, compassion, and the bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta) aim to reach enlightenment to benefit them as fully as possible. We put into practice all the far-reaching attitudes — generosity, ethical discipline, patience, joyful perseverance, mental stability, and discriminating awareness.
How To Meditate
We have to develop these motivating mental frameworks in an uncontrived way, not just an intellectual understanding of them, and to do that we need to meditate on them, which means to build them up as a beneficial habit. For this we need to know how to meditate, which means we need to know how to generate a certain state of mind that we want to accustom ourselves to. We need to know what are all the causes that this state of mind depends on, what are the things that come before it that it relies on. We need to know what are the benefits of this state of mind — what will it produce, what will it get rid of, what are the benefits. We need to also know what that state of mind is focused on, what are all the aspects of it, what are the mental factors that accompany it, how does it focus on that state of mind or on that object that it is aimed at, etc. With all of that very clear then we can generate a desired state of mind and make it a beneficial habit.
We need to be able to maintain this motivating mental framework, which involves what we’re aiming for and what is the emotional drive that brings us to aim for that — we need to maintain that all the time, not just at the beginning of a meditation session, not just during the session, but at all times.
The Ethical Self-Discipline of Keeping Vows
Then for entering tantra practice we need to follow ethical discipline of keeping the vows. We’ve gone through the vows for individual liberation (those are as a layperson or as a monk or a nun), the bodhisattva vows, and also the tantric vows. We have gone through all of those and what are the causes for weakening them, what do we do if we have weakened them, how do we strengthen them again, etc.
We also then need to receive an empowerment in order to practice tantra. This is going to activate the various potentials of Buddha-nature that we have and plant more potentials for reaching enlightenment. At the empowerment, or initiation, we take the vows, and it is imperative that we have at least some level of lay vows. And what is best for practicing tantra is if we have the full monk or nun vows. In fact, monk or nun vows are the best basis for having the bodhisattva vows as well.
Preliminary Practices
Then in terms of the tantra practice, specifically of anuttarayoga tantra, then we have the generation and complete stage. Tsongkhapa doesn’t mention here the ngondro (sngon-’gro), the preliminary practices, but that is mentioned just briefly in this letter in terms of building up the motivating mental framework, that we need to build up positive force or positive potential and cleanse ourselves of negative potential. This is what the preliminary practices do.
It’s very interesting how we formulate these practices. We can call them preliminary, or we can call them preparation. I think if we refer to them as practices for preparation to go on the journey that is much better, because preliminary — by using that sort of word it sometimes gives us the flavor that you can do without it, which of course is not the case. Whereas if we think of preparation — you can’t really make a long journey without preparation. The preparation here is to build up a lot of positive force and try to cleanse ourselves as much as possible of negative force. This will give us the energy to be able to proceed in the practices.
There are many types of preliminaries which can be done. Usually there are a set of practices that are repeated at least a hundred thousand times. Sometimes it’s much more than a hundred thousand times. Sometimes it’s done just until you receive certain signs that it’s been effective. There are many different ways of doing these preliminaries. For building up positive force, there is the offering of a mandala (Skt. maṇḍala). I mean, usually we start out… The most standard one is with cleansing the negative force. That is the most crucial thing. If we build up a lot of positive force but still have strong negative force, it’s not as effective. Although we need to basically do both as much as possible.
So first prostration and then the hundred-syllable mantra of Vajrasattva. These are the most commonly done ones. With prostration we are basically showing respect, as we do in the beginning of the class, to those who have reached enlightenment, to our own future enlightenments that we are aiming to achieve with bodhichitta, and to our own Buddha-natures which will enable us to reach that goal. By making prostration it is not only showing respect, but it is a way of overcoming pride, pride in feeling that “I know best,” etc. It also helps to ground us by literally going down on the ground. Also, it tends to be a very painful type of practice. It requires a great deal of effort. And in this way, it also builds a great deal of strength of character that helps us to overcome laziness, helps us to overcome these negative attitudes that we might have, that “I don’t want to do this. This is too much,” etc. It’s important not to look at such practices as a punishment or a nasty tax that we have to pay in order to be able to go on to the good stuff afterwards, but to also view it in a realistic type of way without being a fanatic about it or being a martyr.
Vajrasattva is purification. Very specifically it involves openly admitting to the negative things we’ve done in the past, feeling regret not, guilt. Regret is the strong wish that we hadn’t done that, as opposed to guilt, which is identifying what we’ve done is so bad and “I’m so bad” and not letting go. In addition, we need to make the strong resolution that we’re going to try not to repeat the negative action in the future, and then reaffirm the positive direction that we’re going in life in terms of refuge, bodhichitta aim, and then counteract the negative force with positive force of this visualization that we do in recitation of the mantra with Vajrasattva. We imagine in a graphic form that the negative force leaves us. This is also a very good way of helping us to overcome guilt, because the best method of purification of course is to meditate on voidness, voidness of the three spheres involved — myself, what I did, the negative force, etc. — and in that way to let go of clinging so solidly to this image of “I’m so bad and what I did was so terrible.” We do the Vajrasattva practice, and that is extremely important and extremely helpful to do.
Then for building up positive force, we have the mandala offering, which is developing the state of mind in which we are willing to give everything and anything, as represented by giving the whole universe (in whatever way we want to visualize it) to our achievement of enlightenment. It’s not that we are making a bribe to the Buddhas by giving them this mandala offering, but it’s developing this state of mind that “I’ll give anything to be able to really help everybody as much as possible.”
Then there is the guru-yoga, with which we are focusing on the Buddha-qualities of the spiritual teacher and trying to imagine gaining inspiration from that. We gain inspiration by thinking of these qualities — thinking of their benefits, the benefits that I’ve received, etc. — and develop, through visualization and a mantra recitation, the inspiration to achieve these ourselves.
There are many other preliminary practices. In the Gelug tradition, we have several more — offering of a hundred thousand water bowls, offering of little clay statues which you need to make. There’s a practice of Samayavajra, which is similar to Vajrasattva but specifically dealing with any type of break in the close bond with the spiritual teachers. There’s also what’s called Vajradaka, which is another type of practice, in which you burn — a hundred thousand times — some sesame seeds, which is another way of burning off negative forces. The emphasis in all of these is not the actual action that you do but the state of mind that you have of building up positive force and thinking in terms of cleansing or getting rid of these negative forces.
The spiritual teacher can give you either one of these standard preliminaries or, if you have a particularly personal relation with the spiritual teacher, they might give you a more personalized set of preliminaries to do, which might not even be out of the standard list but could be other things, for instance Avalokiteshvara (Skt. Avalokiteśvara) meditation and mantra or Manjushri (Skt. Mañjuśrī) recitation and mantra (for emphasizing compassion and emphasizing discriminating awareness or clarity of mind). There are many, many things that we can do. Doing various tasks for our spiritual teacher. This also can be viewed as a preliminary practice. I certainly viewed all the things that I did for Serkong Rinpoche in that way.
So, we have these preliminaries. Tsongkhapa doesn’t mention it — there are a lot of things that he doesn’t actually mention here in this brief letter — but it’s to be understood.
The Proper Order of the Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra
He then explains about the generation and complete stage, and the emphasis that he placed was the necessity for practicing these in their proper order and it is not at all possible to just jump ahead to complete stage without doing the generation stage. We went through quite a detailed explanation of what the generation stage is all about. It’s the stage where we work with our imaginations to imagine the whole process of death, bardo, and rebirth — this is the central core of the practice — done together with the understanding of voidness, to accustom ourselves, at least in our imaginations, to going down to the most subtle level of mind, with the understanding of voidness in a blissful state, and then to arise in a subtle form, and then to arise in a full form. This is the type of procedure that we have or the structure that we have of the three bodies, the enlightening bodies of a Buddha. And what we want to do is to get the clear-light mind to not generate our ordinary death, bardo, and rebirth — the structure of samsara (Skt. saṃsāra) — because of the unawareness and the habits of unawareness and so on that cloud the clear-light mind, but instead to have the natural functioning of the clear-light mind produce the three Buddha bodies. We discussed that, and we discussed a lot more details about the generation stage.
This is what we have covered so far. Now to go on.
How to Visualize in Tantra Practice
What we do in tantra, of course, is we are trying to build up the causes for a body and mind of a Buddha much more efficiently and simultaneously so that we can achieve the body and mind of a Buddha more easily and more quickly. Although the causes for the mind of a Buddha are basically the same in sutra and tantra, we have all these visualizations in which we imagine all the different insights and realizations represented in graphic form (with all the various arms and legs and faces of these meditation deities and parts of the mandala building) so that we can practice to get it all together in one mind. The understanding of voidness, bodhichitta, etc., is the same.
What is specific to tantra is that we imagine ourselves in the form of a Buddha-figure. This is going to be a much closer cause for achieving a body of a Buddha than in sutra, which is just practicing the various positive things that build up the positive force to achieve the body of a Buddha. When we study the different aspects of a Buddha’s physical body — there’s a list of thirty-two major features and eighty minor features — each of them has a cause in terms of a type of positive practice, and they are similar to those causes but not so similar. A Buddha has a long tongue, and this is a result of taking care of everybody the way that a mother animal would take care of her young by licking them. It doesn’t mean that the Buddha went around licking everybody, but it just represents this type of care and concern by having a long tongue. But in tantra we imagine ourselves in the form of a Buddha-figure with a full understanding of its voidness. The point is: How do we visualize ourselves as these meditational deities?
Let me read what Tsongkhapa says:
Then, as it is very important to know well how to meditate with absorbed concentration on (ourselves as) the meditational deities during the actual fundamental part (of our sessions), let me say a little about how to do that. It will be easier to develop certainty about how to meditate on this, in fact, if we know (beforehand) what the absorbed concentration is like that we wish to have developed when we have finished accustoming ourselves to meditating on the generation stage.
That means if we want to achieve the type of concentration that we’re aiming for, we have to know what are we aiming for. He continues:
Therefore, if we ask what do we wish to have developed, (it is like this).
By meditating now on (ourselves as having) the bodily colors, hand implements,
That’s the things that you hold in your hands.
jewelry and garb
That’s the clothing.
(of all the deity figures) of the supported (mandala), as well as (having all the details) of the supporting (mandala of the palace and its surroundings) – in short, on (our having all) the aspects of their colors and shapes – then at the conclusion (of our training) we wish to have actualized ourselves appearing clearly (in our meditation) as all of these, in toto and simultaneously, in one state of absorbed concentration. This is the meditation (toward which we need to aspire on the generation stage).
That means what we are aiming to do in the visualization is to visualize everything. We have in these practices a mandala. A mandala is a palace. It is a very, very specific palace with very specific architectural features, with very, very specific measurements for each tiny, tiny little detail of the building. And if one wants to become more proficient, one learns how to draw the thing with all the various measurements and so on, and one would learn how to build it as a three-dimensional building.
When we see a painting or a picture of a mandala — like for instance on that Tibetan thangka on the wall back there — that is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional building. This is very important to understand. Nobody visualizes a two-dimensional drawing. That’s not used. That is a blueprint, like an architect’s blueprint for a building, and if we learn how to read that blueprint, then we would learn quite a bit about all the measurements and so on, because many of the measurements are there in that drawing. One can learn how to draw it.
Serkong Rinpoche, for instance, taught me how to do that, and then he used tsampa (rtsam-pa) — which is like playdough or something like that, barley grain mixed with water — to build the little pieces of the architectural features to show me what they look like. This is a much, much better method in my opinion than having these computer-generated mandalas that sometimes we have now that take all the work out of it. If you just have a computer model of the thing and you can see it… Although, mind you, in the monasteries in Tibet they did have actual buildings, little buildings like doll houses, that were made like this. But I think, at least from my own experience, if you really have to work with it to get all the little pieces and to figure out how it goes together and then to actually work on trying to put it all together and visualize it, it is a far better training of the mind than just looking at a computer and in one second there it is. Doesn’t develop your imagination whatsoever.
I think that part of the Buddhist training — it’s not just think — I am convinced that a strong part of the Buddhist training is that all of this material should be extremely difficult, and because it’s difficult and requires a great deal of effort then it really builds up character: in order to overcome anger and greed and selfishness, these are really difficult to do. It requires a tremendous amount of patience, perseverance, willpower, and so on. How do you develop that? You develop that in terms of these teachings and trying to understand them and trying to put them together. Why would you want to put it together? Why would you want to put in all the effort? The only reason for doing that… I mean, it could be a neurotic reason, that “I want to be perfect,” “I want to please the teacher,” etc. If it’s a proper teacher, the teacher is just going to yell at you all the time and not praise you at all. This is the Tibetan custom. It’s not that you’re going to get a pat on the head. I never got a pat on the head from my teachers. You just do it, and you develop that strong, strong motivation by having to work really, really hard. Look at the examples of Milarepa. Look at the examples of all the great Tibetan masters. It required strong character. And this is, I think, the most important aspect of the Buddhist training, is to develop your character, develop these motivations, to develop these strong states of mind. Sure, you can memorize all the texts, and you could do all this other stuff and be perfect in doing rituals, but that doesn’t really build your character and develop your personality, and that’s really the essence of what we’re trying to do with Buddhism.
All of these visualizations are extremely complicated, extremely difficult. Does it ultimately make a difference whether this part of the building is three and three-quarter units long or three and a half units long? No. Ultimately what difference does it make? We could say that these are arbitrary types of measurements based on some architectural model that they had. But the point is to get it straight, to get it all to fit together, work with it. This, I think, is very important.
We have the building, and for each meditational deity the building is slightly different, not the same building. The general type of building that it is, the general features that are in it, are mostly the same, but the details are different; the measurements are different. We get a lot of variation there. Then there is the outside of the building as well. There are various figures on the outside of the building — various offering goddesses, various other figures — there’s a whole environment around it, with mountains and lakes and trees and all sorts of things, and it’s all specific, and it’s all specified what it is. Then within that mandala, there’s the central figure, sometimes a single figure, sometimes a couple. There can be many, many other figures in the mandala as well. It can go up to hundreds of figures that are in this mandala. And then inside our body, inside the body of the central figure, there can be a lot more figures, various deities that are inside the body as well. Even inside those figures that are in the body, there could be other things. It is unbelievably complicated, spanning the whole spectrum from being the size of the universe down to microscopic.
As Tsongkhapa says here: What are we aiming for? We’re aiming to get all the details of it, all the colors, the things that everybody is holding, all these various things, and their jewelry etc. — all the figures simultaneously in one state of absorbed concentration. The whole thing. OK, is there any big deal that you know what everybody’s holding and so on? Ultimately, no. However, what it does is it acts as a cause for an omniscient mind. We’re trying to hold more and more and more and not be overwhelmed by detail.
I’ll give you just an example from my own life. I do an enormous, enormous number of things in terms of the website, all the different languages, all the different aspects of it. Before that I traveled around, I taught in seventy countries, I organized all the trips, kept everything straight and so on. What made that possible for me to be able to do? I would ascribe the cause for that to these types of practices. You have something like Kalachakra — 722 figures inside the mandala. So, another country, another language section, another project to do — whatever; it’s no big deal. It’s just another set of figures inside the mandala over there in that corner or over there in that corner. It’s no big deal. Your mind becomes accustomed to doing more and more and more and not being freaked out by it.
Obviously, you have to know your capacity, and obviously you have to start gradually, and some people might be better able to handle a lot of things than others. But the point is that we’re all capable of becoming a Buddha, all capable of becoming an omniscient Buddha. These are very practical trainings. I think it’s important to see that we’re not just learning through these practices to visualize all these silly, irrelevant things — that this one over there is this color and holds this and that and this and that, and that one over there is holding this and that. Because as I say, ultimately, so what? But it trains the mind, and it builds up character, and it builds up strength to deal with more and more and more things — and no problem. If we really want to be able to help others, we have to be able to multitask, we have to be able to deal with more and more requests, more and more things. Look at how much His Holiness the Dalai Lama does in one day, all the various things that he oversees. If one has an idea, if one knows what he does, it’s utterly astounding. What’s even more amazing is he remembers everything.
What we’re aiming for, then, is a state of absorbed concentration that has this whole thing. And what Tsongkhapa is not mentioning here, but which is very crucial here, is the pride of the deity. Tsongkhapa goes into this a great deal in other texts.
There are two things that we’re trying to do. One is the clarity of the visualization, and the other is the pride of being what we are visualizing. Clarity doesn’t have to do with something being in focus. Although the word could be translated as clarity it doesn’t mean what our Western word clarity means. It means to have something arise. Dawn like the sun is how the word is explained. In other words, to have something going in our imagination. It doesn’t have to be in focus. As Tsongkhapa explains elsewhere: the better our concentration, automatically the focus will come. You don’t have to struggle with focus. It is a function of concentration. The main thing is to have something in our visualization, and Tsongkhapa explains this a few paragraphs down here.
Then the pride of the deity (lha’i nga rgyal). It’s very interesting. He uses the word pride (nga-rgyal) here in the same way as Shantideva uses it in his discussion. Shantideva says there’s two kinds of pride. There’s the pride which is arrogance and there’s the pride which is self-confidence. He says, “I will use pride to overcome pride.” I will use this being self-confident that “I can do it,” and we use that to overcome ordinary arrogance, ordinary pride. I didn’t bring the verses. I’m sorry. I didn’t think to do that.
[I shall triumph over everything
And nothing shall triumph over me!
As a spiritual offspring of the Triumphant Lion,
I shall maintain this pride.
Wandering beings conquered by pride
Are disturbed: they have no pride;
For those having pride don’t fall under the enemy’s power,
But instead, have power over the enemy, pride…
But those who hold on to their pride in order to triumph
over the enemy, pride,
Are the holders of pride, the triumphant heroes.
And those who kill off the enemy, pride,
even though it’s gargantuan,
Bestow then the fruit of triumph in full
on wandering beings, whatever they wish.
Bodhisattvacharyavatara 7:55, 56, 59]
But Tsongkhapa has a lovely discussion of that in several verses. In tantra it’s using the word pride in the same way as Shantideva does. It is a sense of self-confidence, and it is based on mental labeling and voidness.
Remember, bodhichitta is a state of mind which is aimed at our not-yet-happening enlightenment which can happen on the basis of Buddha-nature, all the various Buddha-nature factors — the voidness of the mind, the factors of body, speech, and mind, the factors that we described in the generation stage (that you have the subtlest state of mind and then it automatically has appearances, so a subtle appearance and a gross appearance). All of these are Buddha-nature factors. This is what will allow us to become a Buddha. The natural features of the clear-light mind and energy. Based on that potential, we can infer a not-yet-happening enlightenment. Individual, our own. It’s not happening now. It’s not yet happened, but it can happen, and we need to be convinced that it can happen in order to focus on it and aim to achieve it. And there needs to be a motivation, which is love and compassion. What are we going to do with it? We’re going to benefit everybody. That’s bodhichitta.
When we imagine ourselves in the form of a Buddha-figure, and all these other figures and the mandala and everything like that, that is a representation of our not-yet-happening enlightenment. That’s why bodhichitta is utterly essential for tantra. You couldn’t possibly practice tantra properly without bodhichitta. If we think in terms of our mental continuum, beginningless and endless mental continuum, that is the basis for labeling me. It’s individual. Just as we would label me on when I was a child, we can imagine validly labeling me on the not-yet-happening old man or old woman that I will become in this lifetime (hopefully, if I don’t die young). All of that is a valid basis for labeling me. We extend that to future lives as well, and extend it all the way to enlightenment, and extend it to that not-yet-happening enlightened state with being in the form of a Buddha-figure, because in other lives we’re in the form of a frog or a human or whatever, so likewise we’ll have that kind of body as a Buddha — not-yet-happening — and that type of environment, and all of that. We label me on that, and this is the pride of the deity — with a feeling of actually being that now, although we know that it’s not yet happening. But we imagine being that because it will act as a cause for achieving that. We hold that pride of the deity on the basis of at least something appearing and being generated from our mind, not looking at a picture in a book or on a computer screen. It has to be generated from the mind.
Participant: But it should be together with an understanding of some of these analogies that you talked about.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It should be with an understanding of some of these analogies. It should be with an understanding of voidness, that we’re not there yet. Absolutely. Otherwise, you’re a crazy person thinking you’re Napoleon.
Participant: The clarity of the mind, the voidness…
Dr. Berzin: The clarity of the mind, voidness, etc. This is why it’s said that in order to receive an empowerment properly, one needs to have confidence in the tantra method, which means that you have to know what it is. And to know what it is would involve Buddha-nature, clarity of mind, this whole process of death, bardo, rebirth, etc. If you know what the tantra method is, and you have confidence that it’s a valid method, and you have a motivation for wanting to practice it, a willingness to take the vows and follow all the procedures, plus a spiritual teacher that inspires you and can instruct you properly, plus a sufficient amount of positive force and purification of negative forces, then you’re ready to do tantra practice. With renunciation. Renunciation is essential.
What is renunciation? It’s the determination to be free. From what? From the ordinary type of junk that is generated from the clear-light mind based on unawareness or ignorance. The ordinary appearances that the mind produces under the influence of confusion are appearances of truly established existence and, within truly established existence, of all sorts of samsaric bodies and situations and so on, on the basis of karma. That’s what we’re renouncing. If we’re going to do a visualization of everything in pure form — which means not just in the form of one of these Buddha-figures and mandala but with an understanding of it not being truly existent (there’s two levels of pure) — then we need to renounce the ordinary appearance-making of the mind. That’s the real, deepest level of renunciation, and that’s not easy by any means.
Renunciation, bodhichitta, understanding of voidness. Tsongkhapa emphasizes over again that is very necessary for tantra practice. Plus of course concentration. And all of this on the basis of refuge of course, safe direction. The far-reaching attitudes. Love and compassion. We have all of these. It’s not a beginner practice.
Now, in the visualization when we hold the pride of the deity — or the dignity of the deity, whatever you want to call it — we are the whole thing. This is very important. In that visualization we are not just the main figure, we are the couple (if it’s a couple), and we are not just the couple… And don’t think of this in terms of the Jungian thing of the union of masculine and feminine, anima-animus. This is a complete projection of Western things onto the Buddhist system. It has nothing to do with masculinity and femininity. When we speak about yab-yum, these are the Tibetan words for mother (yum) and father (yab). Compassion and discriminating awareness or compassion and wisdom are the mother and father that give birth to enlightenment. Don’t mix in these Western ideas of sexuality here and gender.
We are both members of a couple, and we are not just that; we are all the figures in the building as well. And not only that; we are the building as well, and we are the environment as well. Label me on the whole thing. It’s all being generated from the clear-light mind. This is not so preposterous, because if you think about it, we label me... I mean, all these various figures in the mandala represent something. They are a purified form of something. What are they representing? The five aggregates, the elements of the body, the sense bases, the sensors, the sensory objects… There’s a huge list. The various parts of the building are representing different realizations. You recite it in the sadhana (Skt. sādhana), what everything represents. Just as we label me on the skin (which would be like the building) and all the organs and bones and various things inside it, and we label all of that me and feel all of that is me — we’re not just our heart, for example — so similarly it’s not so weird to imagine that we are the entire mandala and all the figures in it. Again, it’s an extension of the mind in terms of how we conceive of ourselves and how we conceive of me, a basis for me. OK? That’s what Tsongkhapa says we are aiming for. I’ll read the sentence again:
By meditating now on (ourselves as having) the bodily colors, hand implements, jewelry and garb (of all the deity figures) of the supported (mandala), as well as (having all the details) of the supporting (mandala of the palace and its surroundings) – in short, by meditating now on (our having all) the aspects of their colors and shapes – then at the conclusion (of our training)
By doing that, at the conclusion of our training — what do we wish to accomplish?
we wish to have actualized ourselves appearing clearly (in our meditation) as all of these, in toto
That means completely.
and simultaneously, in one state of absorbed concentration. This is the meditation (toward which we need to aspire on the generation stage).
Now he explains how to do it, how to train. Are there any questions on that?
Now he goes on:
Therefore, we must train by focusing first on one focal basis (out of this entire visualization). For that, if we train by focusing (first), for instance, on (visualizing ourselves as) the main central figure (of the mandala) and ask how to train, (it is like this).
(Actually,) two traditions for (doing) this appear (in the literature). One is to train from the fine stage (upwards), by focusing (first) on one of the finest details of the body, thereby actualizing its clear appearance (and then building up from there by progressively adding more and more details).
In other words, you would start with, let’s say, the third eye in the middle of the forehead, and then add the two other eyes, and then the nose, and then the whole face, and then add another face, and another face, and… You add the details one by one. That’s one way of doing it.
The second is to train from the gross stage of that body (downwards, by visualizing the entire body roughly from the start and then progressively filling in the details one by one.
This is the method where you start to just have a general visualization of the whole thing, and once you have that, then fill in the details one by one. The first method, you don’t have a whole general thing to start with.
Of these,) the former
That’s referring to the former method, of one by one.
is fit for only a few special individuals, while the latter is, in fact, the more commonly beneficial (method), because it is easier to develop.
This is the way that he’s going to explain how we do it, and this is certainly the recommended way. First you get a rough visualization of the whole thing, and that then forms a very good basis for labeling me. Then you start filling in the details. As your concentration gets better and improves, the focus will come.
Then he says:
Therefore, out of the two aspects of, for instance, the main figure, namely the gross (whole body) and its fine (details), we (first) need to visualize (ourselves) as the complete (deity), from the head to the feet, in merely the roughest form. When (this) has appeared, we need to have held (our attention) on just that, without mental wandering. If the general form of the body was clear, we need to have held that; and if the general (form) was unclear but a few of its parts were clear, we need to have held (our attention) on whatever was clear. If those (few parts of the body) have faded as well, we need to visualize the (entire) general (rough form once more) and have held that. If some aspect has arisen that was totally extraneous to what we have been meditating on, we need to have held our minds (only) on the main focal (object) without having followed out (any spurious ones).
OK. He’s explaining how to do it. What do we do? We try to visualize the whole thing all at once. Here he’s explaining in terms of ourselves as the main figure, but these instructions are valid as well for the visualizations that we do in sutra (which come in tantra as well) of something in front of us.
The usual way of developing single-minded concentration in the Tibetan tradition, Mahayana (Skt. Mahāyāna) tradition, is to visualize a small Buddha in front of us about maybe two or three centimeters high, at the level of our eyebrows — of our eyes I should say, level of our eyes — and it needs to be three dimensional, alive (but not squirming around, obviously), sitting there nicely about an arm length away from us. When we imagine that — this is why the word visualize is a little bit misleading (it’s not that we’re looking at it) — you look down toward the floor and imagine something at the level of your eyes or your forehead (actually it’s the forehead). Don’t look at it. We’re training the mind; we’re not training the eyes. Because if we’re visualizing ourselves as a Buddha-figure, your eyes are totally irrelevant. You’re certainly not seeing yourself.
Then we also have visualizations of a figure on our head, like in Vajrasattva practice. The same method would apply for doing any visualization.
Participant: I have a question about actually seeing yourself when you visualize yourself. When I’m in a normal form, I don’t visualize; I just feel. I can feel my head, but I can’t see the two eyes. I have a certain sense of my posture, but I don’t see my posture. If you visualize yourself as a deity, standing or sitting or whatever, how can you visualize yourself? Or is it more to get a feeling?
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is very good. She’s saying that normally when we think of ourselves, we can have a feeling of our body, but we don’t actually visualize or see our body. It’s very hard actually to imagine what our face looks like on the outside of our head. Here are we talking about more a feeling? That’s exactly what we’re talking about. That’s what comes into this package called the pride of the deity. It’s actually feeling that we are like that.
I was going to do a few exercises. We can do like this. Can you feel your whole body? I’m sorry. I’m starting as if you already have training in this. Usually, the way that people train is that they start with one part of the body and work up from that. Can you feel your head? You’re aware of your head, of having a head. Then arms (and don’t lose the head while you’re aware of your arms). And the body. And the legs. There’s a feeling of being a whole body. Now can you be aware that you have eyes and a nose and a mouth? You can be aware of that.
Your eyes are irrelevant. If we’re going to be a whole building and all the figures in it, where are your eyes? What is the perspective? There is no perspective, visual perspective, of it. There is no visual perspective. You’re not seeing it from any angle. This is not very easy, of course.
Can you be aware that we are in a room? And there are four walls in the room? Can you be aware that there’s a wall behind you? Can you be aware that you have a back of a head? Sure, you can be aware of that. You’re not actually seeing it. Visualization… the better word is imagination, because it’s not just visual — it’s hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling physical sensations, everything. If you’re sitting in meditation, we can also be imagining that we are a standing figure, a standing couple. This is not easy. One has to get beyond just... well, there’s renunciation of ordinary appearance.
Obviously, these are practices that require a tremendous amount of practice. They’re not so simple to do. But the mind becomes very, very flexible. That actually is the word that’s used. In the West, people use the word retreat, and they use it in a very trivial way to just mean a weekend course in which maybe they don’t sleep at home. They call that a retreat. But when you do an intensive practice of one of these Buddha-figures in which you do the sadhana four times a day, have four sessions, and do hundreds of thousands of mantras and so on, with lots of visualizations and so on, what is that called in Tibetan? It’s called layrung (las-rung). Rung means “prepared” or “able.” Lay (las) — “to function,” “to do the activities.” It’s making the mind flexible so that it is now usable for doing all sorts of activities and actions. We gain this tremendous flexibility by working with these visualizations by overcoming our ordinary identification with this gross body.
So, a general feeling. Now, these are not easy. These are not easy. Can you imagine the color of your skin on the outside of your face? What are you doing? How do you do that?
Participant: I find it just happens.
Dr. Berzin: It just happens. Do you see it?
Participant: Both feel it and see it.
Dr. Berzin: Both feel it and see it. Where do you see it? In front of you? Around you? Where do you see it?
Participant: Somewhere hazily.
Dr. Berzin: Somewhere hazily, as if your eyes are looking at it in front of you?
Participant: But also just feeling it. Just knowing it.
Dr. Berzin: Knowing it. That’s the point. Knowing it. Knowing it. Serkong Rinpoche used to say that — I mean in terms of having a partner, visualizing yourself as a couple — he says it’s like clothing: it’s just there all the time with you when you’re dressed. Are you aware of what your clothing looks like? You know that you’re wearing pants or a shirt or a dress or whatever it is that you’re wearing. A very strong part of it is knowing it. You know what it looks like, but you don’t have to actually see it.
Participant: How would you go about visualizing yourself as a couple, or the whole mandala, while you are involved in activity? Is it like you are multitasking and you split it off from what you are dealing with on the ordinary level?
Dr. Berzin: This is a very good question. Serkong Rinpoche had a lovely answer for that. The question was: How do you visualize yourself as this Buddha-figure, and the couple, and the whole mandala, while you’re going about your daily activities? And he said that you’re not like a robot that is stuck in one position and just sort of WRRRRR hovers up a few meters and then BZZZZZ, like some sort of Japanese robot or something like that. That’s not how you go about the whole day. Yamantaka (Skt. Yamāntaka), for example, this strong form of Manjushri, is normally standing. He said, “He can sit down, he can lie down, and do various things — walk, etc., wash the dishes.”
What do you do with all the things that you’re holding? Again, there’s a whole joke about that. Somebody said, “Oh, I can’t do that, because of all the things that I’m holding.” This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. You don’t think about that. It’s like wearing a ring.
Participant: Can you imagine putting the vajra down?
Dr. Berzin: You don’t imagine putting the vajra down. It’s irrelevant.
There are many different levels of visualization. You have a lovely type of visualization in one of the Nyingma mandala practices, in which you imagine that — talking about the walls of the building — that from one point of view, the walls have five layers, like plywood. That’s the whole wall but in five layers of thickness that are all different colors. But then on another level, it has three of something else. And it’s all superimposed. We can have many things superimposed.
Participant: That was the question basically — whether you overlay these two levels and they don’t touch each other, or whether you act with Yamantaka’s hands when you wash the dishes.
Dr. Berzin: OK. Do you overlay these things or are you actually doing it with Yamantaka’s hands? In another teaching it says that on the generation stage… Now we’re talking about the generation stage. Because the question really is: If you’re visualizing yourself as a Buddha-figure all day long, how do you prevent yourself from being hit by a car? If you’re seeing everything as a mandala and everything as a pure land and so on, you’d be hit by a car, right? With your eyes you see the ordinary things around you. The mind conceptualizes it in terms of the mandala and the deities. This is generation stage.
Participant: How do you label this car?
Dr. Berzin: As a car.
Participant: As a car. But how does it fit in the mandala?
Dr. Berzin: The best explanation for this is in Sakya. Pardon me for mixing things, but I find that very helpful. Sakya has the whole explanation of inseparable samsara and nirvana (Skt. nirvāṇa), that the clear-light mind generates various quantum levels. They’re like quantum levels, that they’re all, in a sense, present, and so you’re just seeing different quantum levels.
Participant: It’s also seeing the relative and the absolute, that they’re the same thing.
Dr. Berzin: Relative and absolute... Let’s not go there, because that is going to confuse things in terms of the reality of what we’re talking about. Let’s not go there. That’s not the issue here. We’re talking about appearances. The reality of everything is the same. Everything is devoid of truly established existence. We’re just talking about the appearance.
Participant: You’re looking through Vajrayogini’s eyes and you see a car, but you know you’re in the mandala.
Dr. Berzin: Right. You’re looking through Vajrayogini’s eyes and you see a car, but you know you’re in a mandala. Yes.
Participant: The car is in the mandala.
Dr. Berzin: The car is in the mandala? No. The car is part of a mandala? No. There’s just different quantum levels. There’s this quantum level and there’s another quantum level. One isn’t inside the other.
Participant: That would really be like the five and three layers.
Dr. Berzin: Like the five and the three layers.
Participant: It’s just like simultaneous…
Dr. Berzin: Simultaneous.
Participant: But then these are not separate. If they’re simultaneous, they’re not necessarily separate.
Dr. Berzin: They’re simultaneous, but they’re not... Come on, your arms and your legs are simultaneous. That doesn’t make your arms your legs.
Participant: I can’t figure out what you mean with the car.
Dr. Berzin: Serkong Rinpoche used this example: You’re wearing clothes. You bought it in France, and you know how much it costs, but when you see it, you just see the appearance of the clothes. Conceptually — you conceptualize “Oh, that’s French and it costs so many euros.” But those are simultaneous. They’re not the same thing.
Participant: What would be the non-conceptual and a non-ordinary conceptualization of…
Dr. Berzin: The non-ordinary conceptualization? Can you… Now I’m asking you to visualize a mandala. How can I ask you to do this if you don’t know what it looks like? How to do that… We’re looking at this room, or you look at somebody in the room. Can you also, at the same time, visualize your mother or your father or whatever — somebody that you can very easily picture in your mind?
Participant: Yeah, but…
Dr. Berzin: They’re just two different dimensions. One doesn’t block the other. I mean, that’s why you practice visualizing with your eyes open. It’s an understanding. An understanding of everything being pure on one level. It’s not that the ordinary appearance doesn’t exist. The ordinary appearance exists.
Participant: The difficult point for me seems to be that — I mean, I’ve obviously never really worked with that process — but you seem to replace in your conceptualization also the outer appearance of things.
Dr. Berzin: You replace the outer appearance of things? Hmmm. I don’t know. I think the easier one is with yourself — that you walk around and, OK, I know what I look like, but in my mind, I could imagine myself looking like something else. We do that all the time actually. We usually ignore our actual, ordinary appearance and imagine ourselves being some sort of Hollywood movie star (or monster, depending on which direction we go). “I’m so attractive” — when you see somebody that you would like to be attracted to you. We have quite a visualization of ourselves. Do you see it? No. I think that’s good example actually.
Participant: Inside, you can hold on to this feeling of being the Buddha-figure. I think that’s easier. But how do you integrate all of the outside?
Dr. Berzin: To integrate the outside? As I say, it’s not negating the outside.
Participant: Like what you said about replacing. There’s a Kagyu teaching in which you visualize yourself as the yidam but you also conceptualize that the car is a chariot bringing something in a pure land that will bring enlightenment. Or a tree — you see the tree, but you see it as a nectar-giving tree.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s not just in Kagyu. You have this in general. That you see a car, and you could see it… I doubt that Buddha said, “If you see a car, then you...” But you transform whatever. You see a tree, and you imagine it a wish-granting tree.
Participant: Or you go to a shop — you’re purchasing things for everybody.
Dr. Berzin: Right. You’re purchasing... Well, come on, it’s the same thing with all the offerings: you transform them and imagine them as nectar and all of this sort of things.
Participant: The escalator in the subway is taking you…
Dr. Berzin: Yeah. The point is that you need to be able to function in the world. If one takes all of this literally and totally negates the ordinary world, then you become quite psychotic and dysfunctional.
Let’s use the example: Something negative happens to you. You lose your wallet. Your wallet gets stolen, whatever. How do you conceptualize it? You can conceptualize it as a horrible tragedy and get very angry and so on. You can conceptualize it as “May whoever stole it enjoy it. It’s a gift.” You could conceptualize as it’s burning off negative karma. You can conceptualize it in all sorts of ways that would be beneficial for not getting angry with the whole thing. That doesn’t negate the fact that you lost your wallet, and you have to go, and you have to get new credit cards, and you have to cancel your bank card, and all of that. You see the reality of it, plus you have a purer way of looking at it.
Similarly, we see the car, we see all the junk around us, but by understanding it in a purer way, you don’t get angry with it. Do you have to feed the horse? When you see a car, do you have to feed the horse that pulls the chariot? No, obviously not. Does the chariot need petrol in it? No, of course not. But nevertheless, if you don’t put petrol into it, it’s not going to go.
I mean for me, just from my own experience, just different quantum levels and so on... If you can remember — who in the world remembers this, to remember that you’re in the form of one these figures and that everything is pure? I think what is easier to apply and what seems more immediate to apply is in terms of just yourself as the Buddha-figure. And it’s not so relevant that I have three faces or nine faces or eight faces or four faces. That’s not the point. The point is “Well, nine faces. That’s the nine scriptural categories and the…” — what they represent. That’s OK. But the point is that in a situation in which you start to have low self-esteem, or you start to have pride, or you start to have anger, or these sort of things, you catch yourself and you say, “No! I am this or that,” in terms of the Buddha-figure.
Now, each of these Buddha-figures, although they represent the full enlightenment of a Buddha, all of them equally, nevertheless each one has a certain specialty that it embodies. These are very, very useful, especially when you are doing the mantra thousands and thousands of times, to generate compassion with Avalokiteshvara, generate clarity of mind, and all the various visualizations — clarity of mind for understanding, for being able to understand quickly, for being able to understand profoundly, deeply, etc. Tons of visualizations and practices that you can do with that. But when I’m acting like an idiot — “No!” and then the pride of the deity: “Manjushri wouldn’t act like that. Vajrayogini (Skt. Vajrayoginī) wouldn’t act like that. This is ridiculous.”
The point is not what you look like, although that helps in terms of ordinary appearance, grasping for ordinary appearance. The point is what it represents — the whole gestalt, the whole thing.
Participant: Bodhisattvas can take any form anyway, so…
Dr. Berzin: Buddhas can take any form anyway, so they could look like a bridge, they could look like a pig. We can look like this or that.
However, we’re just explaining this. For many of you perhaps this is the first time that you’ve heard all of this. Don’t expect to be able to just do it instantly. This is not easy stuff. What the point is, in terms of learning about it now, is to have some appreciation for what it is, an appreciation for the method. Things appear one way, but they can also appear in a very different way as well.
Kagyu explains it in terms of their explanation of the two truths — that regular, conventional truth is how things appear to an ordinary mind, whereas the deepest truth is how it appears to an enlightened mind. Non-enlightened mind versus an enlightened mind. That’s one way of explaining it.
Participant: It’s like it’s the middle way. It’s neither this nor that: it’s both.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s both. They’re inseparable.
Participant: Samsara is nirvana.
Dr. Berzin: Samsara… Well, yeah. Although I am mixing systems, in each system let’s stay faithful to the explanation of that one system.
There are many ways of looking at it. Something is valid from one point of view and valid from another point of view. But what you don’t want is the disturbing emotions. We can see what’s happening in the world around us and deal with it. But in our minds we are, in a sense, in a pure land, so that we have all the qualities of a pure land, of a mind in a pure land: we are not disturbed by anything, we have all the qualities and aspects represented by these various Buddha-figures, and we are totally integrated.
This is what I love about these complex systems. We are all these figures, whether we talk about thirty-two in Guhyasamaja (Skt. Guhyasamāja) or sixty-two in Chakrasamvara (Skt. Cakrasaṃvara) or whatever. We’re the whole thing integrated. And because we’re the whole thing integrated, then we deal with everything in an integrated type of way, rather than… normally we’re so fragmented and untogether. Just this pride of feeling that I am integrated, and everything is functioning together is a very helpful state of mind. Even though we’re only imagining it, it acts as a cause for being able to actually achieve it. But one has to not be overconfident. If you’re overconfident: “Yes, I can walk into the lion’s cage, and just by sending out good, peaceful vibes I will pacify the lion.” This is being overconfident. This is being an idiot. Idiot tantra. That’s why the not-yet-happening enlightenment — it’s not yet happening. I’m imagining it now to act as a cause to help bring about a presently-happening enlightenment.
OK. That brings us well past our time, but we will continue this discussion. But as you can see, Tsongkhapa really jumps into the heart of all of this — which is really very, very nice — in this text.
Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever positive force, whatever understanding has come, may it go deeper and deeper and act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.