Review of Previous Sessions
We are studying this letter that Tsongkhapa wrote, an answer to the request that he received from his student and friend (and also, in certain contexts, his teacher), of certain things in which he was asked to write, in abbreviated form, how to put sutra and tantra practices into practical use. To summarize briefly:
Reliance on a Qualified Spiritual Mentor
Tsongkhapa answers that we have all the circumstances for being able to engage in the teachings: we have the precious human rebirth, and we’ve met the teachings, and we have qualified teachers, and we have the intelligence and power of mind to discern what to adopt and what to reject (we’re not just blind in our approach to the teachings). And so, we need to actually get involved and engage ourselves with these teachings, and for that we have to rely on the spiritual teacher.
The spiritual teacher has to be properly qualified, know what the actual stages are, what we need to practice and what we don’t need to practice, not add anything and not leave anything out, and know how to apply it in its proper order to each of us. The teacher has to have gained experience himself or herself through having gone through this training themselves, training that is based on the scriptures of the Buddha and the Indian commentaries and not something extraneous to that.
The Motivating Mental Framework
To actually get into the teachings, what’s very important is the motivating mental framework. That is usually developed in a graded way, through the three stages of the lam-rim, the graded stages of the pathway minds. We have the initial level, in which we take keen interest in the happiness of future lives, trying to ensure that we have precious human rebirth in all our lives. That is a steppingstone, a provisional goal, for the intermediate level, which is to gain liberation from all uncontrollably recurring rebirth. And that is also provisional, a steppingstone, for the advanced level of motivation, which is to reach enlightenment in order to be able to help everybody else out of this samsaric situation.
How to Meditate
In order to develop these motivating mental frameworks, we need to meditate on them, which means to build them up as beneficial habits. Tsongkhapa explains how you actually do that, and he does that in great detail. For each of these states of mind that we want to develop, we have to understand what are the causes for developing them, support all of this with study of the scriptures that concern it, we have to know what is going to help with our development of them, what is detrimental (what we have to get rid of), we need to know what the function of this state of mind will be once we develop it, and in actually meditating we need to know what to focus on and how our minds need to take or relate to that object that we’re focusing on. And these motivating mental frameworks we need to sustain throughout the entire meditation session and throughout the day.
The Ethical Self-Discipline of Keeping Vows
These are the basic things that we develop on the sutra path. And for getting into tantra, specifically the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga, we need to receive the empowerments and keep the vows. Tsongkhapa speaks quite extensively about the vows. We have pratimoksha (Skt. prātimokṣa) vows for individual liberation, we have bodhisattva vows, and we have tantric vows. Tsongkhapa also speaks about how to keep them purely and, if we have weakened them, how to restore or revitalize them. Then in terms of empowerment, he also stresses the fact that it is optimal if we have monastic vows.
The Proper Order of the Generation and Complete Stages of Anuttarayoga Tantra
Then concerning the practice that we do on the basis of receiving the empowerment or initiation, there’s generation- and complete-stage practices. Tsongkhapa stresses the necessity to practice these in their proper order, which means that we need to do the generation stage first, as the basis for complete-stage practice.
One of the major things that we do — although Tsongkhapa doesn’t mention it — on the generation stage, and we’ve discussed this quite extensively, is practice in a manner which is going to be similar to what we will do on the complete stage. But we do it in our imaginations, and we transform or meditate in a manner which is similar to death, bardo, and rebirth as a way to be able to actually simulate these things with our subtle energy-system on the complete stage to reach the clear-light mind, which will allow us to get a nonconceptual cognition of voidness with a blissful mind as efficiently as it is possible, and through that to be able to attain the bodies of a Buddha.
We also saw that on the generation stage we are working to overcome the emotional and cognitive obscurations. To overcome cognitive obscurations, we’re dealing with how we appear and how everything appears. Normally the cognitive obscuration is that our mind makes things appear as if they were truly existent, and so we try to arise in the context of an understanding of voidness, which will allow us to make an appearance of something which is not truly existent — or at least that’s our understanding, even if it might be implicit that it is not truly existent — and rather than in our ordinary form, we have it in the form of a Buddha-figure, which has many advantages:
- It remains the same. If we’re thinking in terms of the voidness of our ordinary body — our ordinary body is constantly in different positions, we get a pain in our knee, it gets old, gets thirsty, etc., whereas the Buddha-figure is always in the same position, so it’s easier to maintain focus on it.
- And it’s easier to understand the voidness of it, since it’s generated from the imagination.
There are many advantages of working with these Buddha-figures for gaining perfect concentration. Also, as we’ve explained, all these different figures have… their arms and faces represent different aspects of our realization, and so we use them as a method for helping us to be able to keep many, many things in mind.
Having this pure appearance helps us to overcome cognitive obscurations. Generating all of this in terms of voidness also helps us to overcome the emotional obscurations, which are disturbing emotions. And we identify or label the me in terms of this Buddha-figure — that’s called holding the divine pride — as a way of not grasping to a truly existent me but understanding that the me is merely labeled on the basis of this. Anyway, we’ve covered all of this in quite a lot of detail.
How to Visualize in Tantra Practice (continued)
Then Tsongkhapa began his discussion of how to actually visualize. He explained that there are two traditions for visualizing ourselves as a Buddha-figure. One is to start with the fine details and focus on… Let me read what Tsongkhapa himself wrote:
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). 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. Of these,) the former 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 method that Tsongkhapa recommends, that we try to have a general appearance, a vague appearance of the whole thing — that then allows us to have a basis for labeling me, the basis of this Buddha-figure — and within that, start to focus on one detail and then add more. 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).
That’s a very useful bit of advice here. What he’s saying is that we try to get a rough image or feeling of the whole figure. Now we’re working with ourselves as this Buddha-figure. These instructions also pertain if we’re visualizing in sutra a Buddha in front of us and using that as an object for gaining shamatha (Skt. śamatha), a stilled and settled state of mind, or if we’re doing the simple form of Vajrasattva purification and visualizing Vajrasattva on our heads. It’s the exact same thing. You just want to get a rough feeling of the thing there. And as we explained, we’re not using our eyes here; we’re using our minds. To visualize ourselves in the form of a figure — well, you don’t really see that. We don’t see the outside of our body, in any case, and we don’t see it from a viewpoint of something else.
Where Is Our Viewpoint When We Visualize a Mandala?
Now this becomes very interesting, because when we visualize… (Tsongkhapa will go on here.) A lot of these mandalas in these Buddha systems have a lot of figures in them, and they will have a main couple, the mother and the father. That’s the terms that are used. Yab and yum means father and mother; it doesn’t mean male and female. The emphasis is not on masculinity and femininity — that’s a complete Western projection onto it — but mother and father, method and wisdom, are required to give birth to oneself as a Buddha.
In any case, then there are various figures around. And the question is: Where is our perspective when you imagine… You do, let’s say, the mantra of the main figure. OK. Well, that’s fairly easy. That’s your point of view. But if you do the mantra, let’s say, of the female partner, the mother — well, what do you do when you’re doing that? Do you switch and feel that you are the partner now and have the visualization from the point of view of the partner? Then what about the various figures? That’s incorrect. You don’t switch your point of view. This is very tricky and it’s not very easy. We are not just the main figure. (Tsongkhapa will get into this later on.) We’re not just the main figure; we’re everything. We’re the whole group of figures in the mandala (Skt. maṇḍala), plus the building, plus the environment. We’re everything. Now, do you have a point of view in this? That’s a debatable question, from the questions that I’ve asked to various teachers. In a sense, you’re labeling me on the whole thing.
What about when we label me on our ordinary body? Where is our point of view from? Is it from our feet? Is it from our hands? Is it from our heart? Where is it from? Please answer.
Participant: It varies depending on the situation, I think.
Dr. Berzin: Does it? Varies from what to what?
Participant: If your hand is hurting at that moment, you tend to identify more with this. You show the doctor, and you’re feeling like “this is me.” But usually you point to yourself, like this.
Dr. Berzin: You point to yourself where? You just pointed at your heart.
Participant: That’s very common, I think. But also, I usually tend to think of my head. I learned this culturally.
Dr. Berzin: To a certain extent it is cultural. But I think, at least in my experience, that the point of view is from your head, usually from your eyes (if you’re not blind). What do you think?
Participant: It’s hard to say. It is like you said. I think with a lot of people, their automatic instinct is to say “me” and the focus goes towards the heart.
Dr. Berzin: Towards the heart. But do you experience things from the heart?
Participant: You could.
Dr. Berzin: Do you? We can feel — I can feel my hand. I can feel my stomach. But when we experience the world, where’s your point of view?
Participant: I think knowledge and wisdom isn’t always perceived as cerebral, in the head, but as an intuition that comes from the body more. I mean, that’s the way… Maybe it’s the difference between male and female perception. But when we think of the mind as being somehow connected to the heart too… I don’t know. I think it’s difficult to say. You seem to feel that you would identify more with the head area when you think “me.”
Dr. Berzin: To just repeat (I’m sorry, I didn’t repeat for the recording): She’s saying that it’s cultural. What you said is that at different times it can be different places, that sometimes… if you hurt your hand, you think in terms of me identifying with the hand, or it could be the stomach, or very often when you say, “me. I’m here,” and then you point to the heart. And then Zina was saying that she also identifies more with feelings and more with the body, with the heart, not so much with the head, and maybe that is more of a female way of experiencing things.
But maybe I’m not being clear here about what I’m talking about. You’re visualizing a mandala. OK, we’re visualizing this room. I mean, you’re sitting along the walls; I’m sitting more towards the center. If you think in terms of being this whole room — “We are the class. I am the class” — where is your perspective? This is what I’m asking, because this is relevant to…
Participant: I think where our confusion came was when you said, “When you think of in your body, where is me?” that’s a limited scope, and so we think “Ooh.” But what you’re saying now is different. Now that means when you think of a class, then of course your mind is expanding to think all this. This is coming from here. And that’s more what you’re talking about. It’s different when you are doing a mandala visualization, and you must open your mind to comprehend all this. It must come from something coming from up here. Then it expands.
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is what I’m saying, so let me repeat (there are several things here, so let me repeat for the recording): She’s saying that when I ask in terms of if we were to think of me as the whole class in this room (the walls as well, but let’s just try the class), then naturally it’s coming more from the point of view of the head because we’re expanding the mind. Whereas if we think just in terms of the body, then it could be variable.
You see, you have two things here. One is in terms of the body... No. Let’s start with the whole class. With the whole class, it seems to be coming from our head. But the perspective of being the whole class is from ourselves, from our body — from being the central one, in a sense. When I think of being the whole class, is my perspective — and even if I do that with my eyes closed, which you’re not recommended to do with the tantra practice (your eyes should just be focused down, looking at the floor, loosely focused) — but if we try that, or even with our eyes closed, feeling that we’re the whole thing, there seems to be a center of a point of view, doesn’t there?
Participant: But you can’t have a sensation of that if the mind hasn’t, in a sense… For lack of any better way of describing it, you have to feel a sense of opening of your mind.
Dr. Berzin: OK. She says you have to have a feeling of an opening of the mind to be able to do that. Definitely.
Participant: It’s a symbiotic process. If your mind is tight and it’s not open, then how can it get to what’s the core of what you’re talking about?
Dr. Berzin: If your mind is not opened, she says, then you won’t be able to get to the core of what we’re talking about, and that’s very true.
Within this context… I mean, first let’s just establish that we… Where is your perspective or feeling of me in all of this? It’s hard to have it diffused completely over the whole thing. We could think of it as diffused over the whole thing, but there seems to be a point of view conventionally from the middle, in a sense.
With the body in these tantric visualizations, at minimum you’re going to have some sort of disc at the heart — whether it’s a moon or a sun or many discs on top of each other, that’s irrelevant — and some seed syllable on it, and usually a mantra around that disc. And very often what you’ll have is, in your heart, another Buddha-figure, a much smaller one, and in that Buddha-figure — and it could be a couple, and in that part of both of them… There’s going to be discs and syllables and mantras in everybody’s heart in the visualization. But in that figure, there’s going to be — the one that is the main figure — there’s going to be another figure inside his heart or her heart, and inside the heart of the central figure of that is going to be a disc and so on. It could get far more microscopic and get further and further: inside everybody’s heart something else, something else, something else… Plus you have all sorts of other figures, usually, in many of these practices, at other parts of your body as well. You’re all of that.
When you send out rays of light or various figures while you do the mantras, it’s coming from the heart. Where it exits you, whether through the nose or whatever — that varies in different practices, so that’s a bit irrelevant. But it’s coming from the heart and coming back to the heart as a way to build up as a cause for the winds eventually to dissolve in the heart chakra. So it’s significant that it’s coming from the heart.
Where’s your perspective, then, for visualizing the whole thing? I find it not so easy — since we tend to identify so much with the eyes (at least if you’re not blind) and the head — to have as your center of focus the heart without a feeling of that being down below my point of view, at least in my experience. That is something that you have to work on. I don’t know if any of you have experience.
Participant: I can’t say I’ve experienced it that way.
Dr. Berzin: How do you experience it?
Participant: Sort of like what we were saying. I mean, I feel the point of view is more centered either in one of the central chakras — the heart — or occasionally in the body, but usually in the heart. It could be either cultural differences or it could be different constitutions of different people, the way they perceive things. It could be male or female differences, which are real. It could be a number of other different things.
Dr. Berzin: She doesn’t experience it that way; she experiences things more from the heart area or the central part of the body area. This could be individual differences, cultural differences — certainly Japanese are more towards the heart — and could be male-female differences. Obviously, there are many variables that would affect that.
But what is at stake here, what is the issue here, is a basic problem in voidness meditation, and that basic problem in voidness meditation is to think that what is being labeled is identical with the basis for labeling it. If you have the problem that I have described, which is feeling that the perspective of the me is not at the same place where the winds are…
Let me say that again. I’m sorry, my mind was jumping ahead, and my mouth put two things together which I didn’t mean to. If the perspective of me — that thing which is what the label refers to, me — if you get the feeling that it is there by your eyes or in your head but you want to be able to label it, in a sense, more centered at the heart, at the heart chakra, then you’re thinking too strongly of the me being identical with the basis for labeling. You have to move it and then the me has to be there. This is a bit too concrete.
Participant: It’s a symptom.
Dr. Berzin: It’s a symptom of a… In other words, the way to solve it is not so much visualization mechanics but a better understanding of voidness.
Participant: It’s not a question of what to do.
Dr. Berzin: Right.
Participant: I mean, in terms of visualization mechanics, it’s not a question of how do I shift this around. It’s a question of why this is not being understood.
Dr. Berzin: Right. She says that it’s not a question of visualization mechanics and it’s a matter of shifting our understanding.
This was a very interesting question that I remember. There was a discourse by His Holiness the Dalai Lama on the six yogas of Naropa (Skt. Nāropa), and in it His Holiness was explaining one type of process whereby you… Since the mind rides on the winds, when you bring the winds down to a certain chakra, in a sense you imagine your mind going down and riding on it. And Serkong Rinpoche, the old Serkong Rinpoche, who was one of the few people who could actually criticize and correct His Holiness, said: “No, that’s too concrete. The mind is not something which is physical and requires having to move. You just shift it instantly, without having to imagine that it’s actually going on a ride down an elevator.” Which is very interesting. It’s very interesting. I mean, how do you shift? Is it like “It goes down in an elevator, and there it is”? Or is it just shifted instantaneously?
Participant: Like beaming.
Dr. Berzin: Yes, like beaming.
Participant: You have to shift the label, the labeling?
Dr. Berzin: Do you have to shift the labeling? The labeling is the whole thing. This is the tricky thing. Me is being labeled on the whole thing, but where is your perspective? There is a conventional me that has a perspective in terms of your visualization.
Participant: But the more you’re thinking about it, the less you’re getting to it. The more you are thinking “How do I make it go from here to there,” you’re cutting off the process.
Dr. Berzin: Right. The more you’re thinking… It’s difficult. But let’s say you are visualizing the entire room and all the figures around you, not only in front of you but to the side and behind you. Is there a perspective? Is there a feeling of something in front and something behind?
Participant: Of course. You don’t need to look at each part of it to have the perception.
Dr. Berzin: Right. You don’t need to look at each part to have the perception. But there is, in a sense, a center of perspective, at least in my experience.
Participant: As long as we’re sitting here as human beings in these forms — yeah, there would be.
Dr. Berzin: Right, there is. I mean, it’s like visualizing while you’re… How do you visualize? Let’s say you’re dying, at the time of death, and it is recommended that you do certain visualizations. If you’re going to try to visualize yourself as a Buddha-figure that’s standing up and you are lying down, how do you do that? For some people that’s a big problem.
Participant: I do think there are some cultural differences. For example, if you are raised in a culture with visualization as being something that you need to talk and learn about because it’s an accepted norm — I mean, not only cultural but certain other spiritual or religious practices where you learn such things from the time you’re born — you just do these things. Then I don’t think you’d think much about it. I do think there is…
Participant: You just play a video game. That helps you already. What would be so strange about them standing up while you’re sitting? It’s very normal if you’re [used to] playing a video game.
Dr. Berzin: That you imagine you’re standing up? What she’s saying again is bringing in the cultural aspect, that many people are raised in cultures or in families in which visualization, imagination — let me just repeat for the recording — is part of the upbringing, so it’s perfectly natural, so then there’s no problem with imagining yourself in a different posture from the way that your body is. And Jorge’s saying that those who have been raised on video games wouldn’t have much difficulty with this either.
I’m just pointing out some of the difficulties that people have with this process. It’s not such an easy thing to do. When you’re doing it, various people are going to have various obstacles, and what do you do if you are experiencing this obstacle? This is what I’m discussing. I’m not saying that it has to be one way or another, that you have to experience this obstacle, but these things happen if you’re trying to be the whole thing.
What is really crucial here is the understanding of the mental-labeling process — that is where the crux of the matter is — in terms of labeling me on the whole thing and relating that to a conventional me that does have a perspective. That’s what I’m trying to differentiate. There is a conventionally existent me, and that conventionally existent me — if we are experiencing things in terms of that, there’s a certain perspective, a certain feeling of me. How do we extend this? How do we deal with… Is there a little me that’s sitting… People ask these questions.
I’m visualizing myself as, say, Yamantaka (Skt. Yamāntaka), but then there’s Manjushri (Skt. Mañjuśrī) in the heart, and then there’s a little disc in his heart and a syllable. Am I imagining things from the point of view of Manjushri and I feel that there’s this body outside of me, on the outside? Do I feel that I’m this syllable inside the heart of Manjushri, and that’s… Where is the perspective of me? Am I imagining that I’m the syllable HUM and rays of light are coming out of me? Or do I imagine that I’m Manjushri, and then in my heart — that’s where it’s coming out? Or is it… Where’s the perspective? These are the questions that people ask when they’re trying to do these meditations. It’s not such a simple process.
Participant: I think you could maybe, to try to cross — to bridge — a way of understanding those sorts of questions… It’s like we’ve got kidneys and a liver and a stomach and intestines. We know we have these things in us, but do we need to see them to actually be aware of it? No. We know that we’ve got all these parts in us. How is that any different than a Manjushri here and a Vajrasattva there? It’s a matter of perception that’s different.
We’re raised in this Western world of rationality and logical thinking and scientifically proving everything, so we can say, “OK, we know that we have these organs inside of us. We know we have cells. We know we have atoms and molecules and these things that make us up.” Do we need to see each and every one? Not necessarily.
Dr. Berzin: OK. Let me repeat. She’s saying that we have various organs in our body, the kidneys, the liver, the stomach, etc. And this is the analogy, by the way, that I use for the fact that we can be all these figures in the mandala and the building is like the skin. That’s fine. But then she asks the question or points out that we don’t have to actually be able to visualize or think of all these things. We know that we are all of these, and we don’t have to actually see it all the time.
That’s relevant for when we’re walking around all day, the question of “If I’m a couple and I’m supposed to visualize myself as a couple, what in the world am I… How do you do that while you’re walking around or going for whatever, lying down, going to the toilet, whatever you’re doing?” And then what you say is that you just sort of know this, but it doesn’t have to be so graphic. Let me just finish, and then you can continue.
However, here when we’re doing the visualization, you want to get the clarity of everything. It’s not that “I know I have Manjushri here and Vajrasattva there and Avalokiteshvara (Skt. Avalokiteśvara) there and Vajrapani (Skt. Vajrapāṇi) there in all these different figures.” In some practices there’s sixty-two figures inside you. In some there’s thirty-two. But in the practice, you’re supposed to be able to visualize all of them completely clearly, plus discs in their hearts and mantras. There’s a purpose to it. And the purpose to it is to be able to then, on the complete stage, be able to draw the energy winds that are in those places in the body to the heart chakra — into the central channel, into the heart chakra — and be able to move them. If you can’t visualize all these places precisely with laser-like precise visualization, you’re never going to be able to move the winds in the channels which are there. There’s a purpose to it.
Now what were you going to say?
Participant: You say: How do we visualize these maybe sixty different things? That’s why it’s called a practice, because you must practice certain things to be able to master that. It doesn’t just come automatically. Just as a small child really doesn’t know where their liver or where their kidney is, as you get through high school, and you take your biology class, and you learn these things… and many times adults don’t even know where their liver is or something.
There are plenty of comparisons to use in the body-organs analogy. Because then if you choose to go further in understanding to use the analogy of what’s inside of your body — well, then you might practice medicine. But that’s a practice, just as these spiritual practices are a practice. It’s a process of learning. You don’t just automatically have these things. Part of it is acceptance that they exist, and that’s a big part of it. The major part of it is the actual practice. You have to learn these things. If you don’t learn these things, you don’t know it.
Of course, how can somebody master the visualization of these sixty various things simultaneously while you’re walking down the street or whatever? You can, you certainly can, if you practice, just like a doctor can certainly know where every organ in the body is more than a child can, but didn’t that come from somewhere?
Dr. Berzin: OK. Let me summarize what you’ve said for the recording. She’s saying that basically in order to be able to do this, you have to practice, which is exactly of course what one does. That’s called meditation. You have to first… the power of hearing, you have to learn where these things are. Then you have to think about it so that it makes sense. As you were saying, just as we have various organs in the body, likewise we can have these various things which are representing these organs and channels and winds and stuff like that. And you have to practice, just as when you become familiar with where your liver is and so on, then you might go on and become a doctor, etc. It requires a lot of practice.
Of course. None of these practices are simple. It is not an overwhelming thing to say that I’m going to practice this every day for the rest of my life, because it probably will take the rest of your life before you can actually do it — they’re extremely difficult — if you even manage to be able to do it by the end of your life. This is why Tsongkhapa says very nicely, “Just get a rough visualization going. Don’t worry about the details.” If you try to start with details and fine visualization, you’re going to get so frustrated that you’re going to give it up.
Participant: Just as a child is learning the very fundamentals of where the things in the body are, we have to accept, whether we like it or not, that in this sense we are at a child’s level of understanding.
Dr. Berzin: Right. Just as a child has to learn to accept that they are a child, they have to learn and have to accept that there are various organs in their body and so on, likewise we have to go through a similar process. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.
Participant: In a spiritual sense — though we are in adult human bodies, in a spiritual sense we’re really just like children.
Dr. Berzin: Right. In a spiritual sense, she says, we are just like children. That’s absolutely correct, especially with these practices.
To continue what I was saying: Perspective is quite important here. Because then I was asking my teachers: OK, we’re doing a practice with various deities, let’s say thirty-two or sixty-two, in this mandala (let alone seven hundred and twenty-two of Kalachakra), and now we are reciting the mantra of each of them. And let’s say you’re doing a retreat, the serviceability retreat, the actual initial retreat, in which you do, let’s say — typically you would do a hundred thousand mantras of the main figure and ten thousand of each of the other figures. OK, so now I’m doing ten thousand mantras of that figure over there in the corner. What’s my perspective while I am doing it? Also visualizing that there is something in this figure’s heart, a moon disc or a sun disc and a mantra and a seed syllable, and lights are going out from that. What’s my perspective? That’s the question. That’s where it’s very relevant.
Am I all of a sudden this figure? Of course “I’m this figure,” but is my perspective now that I’m no longer the main figure and now I’m this other figure and I am viewing the mandala from, in a sense, that corner? No. Tsongkhapa will say this further on, that he says you add the various other figures but without ever losing the main figure, the central figure. Although we are not exclusively the central figure, the perspective is from the central figure, despite the fact that it’s not visual.
So the sense of me — although it’s the whole thing, conventional me has some sort of point of view. It’s not findable there — it’s not findable at the heart chakra, as if it were sitting there. But from a practical point of view, you have to have a conventional viewpoint. Do you follow what I’m talking about?
Participant: It means that you don’t look in the mandala when you visualize… There’s a certain Buddha behind his ear, or something like that. You just face them from your reference point, which is the center. Which means if I look at the Buddha there, I don’t visualize this… I just see the image but not behind him. Is it that?
Dr. Berzin: No. Now you’re talking about if you’re visualizing… You’re saying that if I’m looking at this Buddha up in front, I don’t visualize what’s behind that Buddha. No. You are aware of everything. Everything is made of transparent light, so there’s no problem of seeing things behind other things or inside other things. Everything is light and transparent — that is another thing I guess that wasn’t mentioned — everything is like that.
And everything is three-dimensional. Everything is alive. They’re not statues. That is also an important point. Very often when one visualizes, let’s say… For regular shamatha meditation, stilled and settled mind meditation, you visualize a figure, a little Buddha-figure, in front of you the size of your thumb (a couple centimeters) at an arm length away from you at the level of your forehead. That’s the instructions. A lot of people somehow get the weird idea either that it’s two-dimensional, which is absurd — it’s three-dimensional — and that it’s a statue. It’s not a statue. It’s alive. It’s not moving, it’s not scratching its knee or head, but it’s alive. That’s also a challenge for a lot of people, because it’s easier to… When you’re dealing with a figure that’s always in the same position, it’s very easy to, in a sense, unconsciously think of it as a statue, since we see statues of Buddhas.
Participant: Doesn’t it help more, though, to understand that what you’re seeing… You see, maybe visualization is a misleading word.
Dr. Berzin: It is. I have said that all along. Visualization is a misleading word; imagination is better.
Participant: I don’t even know about imagination. It’s getting closer, but wouldn’t it help more to understand that what you’re seeing… really, you’re cutting through a dimension of this flat dimension we see before us. I mean, to understand that there are other dimensions, which after certain lengthy meditation, years of meditation, you can see other things in other dimensions. And what you are actually seeing — you say it’s alive, these figures (they’re not just little statues) — you are actually seeing what really exists, just not in this very limited dimension that we normally see things as we’re seeing it here today. Do you understand what I’m saying?
Dr. Berzin: No, I don’t, because I don’t know what you’re referring to by… She’s saying that if we can see other dimensions, then we wouldn’t have a problem in terms of seeing things alive. Are you talking about the eleven dimensions and twenty-one dimensions, this thing in quantum theory (you know, the tiny rolled-up dimensions)? Is that what you’re talking about? Or are you using it in a more colloquial sense?
Participant: No, no. I’m not only using it in a colloquial sense, but there are… Humans have the ability to see things which, if they develop their mind, they can see. There are many things happening right here in this empty room as we’re sitting here. OK, they’re alive — they’re really there — just as these Buddha figures are living figures. They’re not concepts, they’re not Jungian archetypes, they’re not analogous things to psychology. Do you understand what I’m saying? But this isn’t visualization so much as seeing what is real. Do you see what I’m saying?
Dr. Berzin: Yes. Let me summarize. She’s saying that what we’re doing here is seeing what is real (we’re not just visualizing), because we are able to see many — see we’re using here not in a visual sense, but to perceive — many other things.
Yes. However — here we add a however — there’s the generation stage and there is the complete stage. Generation stage, it’s on the level of imagination. Then eventually you’re able to actually perceive this. Now what we are talking about when you say, “In actuality it’s not a visualization, it’s not an imagination, it’s not a concept,” and so on…
Participant: It’s not a fantasy.
Dr. Berzin: Not a fantasy. That’s true. Here we get to the… Sakya has the nicest explanation of this, in terms of inseparable samsara (Skt. saṃsāra) and nirvana (Skt. nirvāṇa), which is basically when you… Let me not bring in that. That just complicates it.
Let’s start the sentence again: There are both samsaric and nirvanic levels of energy in everything simultaneously. It’s like two different quantum levels that the energy is vibrating at if we can use that as an analogy. On one level we are vibrating and appearing in our ordinary form, but on another level — which ordinarily we’re not aware of and we don’t perceive — we are also, as a quantum state, in the form of these various figures, and so is everything around us. And that is inseparable. It’s just a matter of what do we become aware of and what do we put our major focus on.
It’s not a concept, it’s not a visualization, it’s not something that we make up, but it is an actuality that we become aware of. Fine. And you have this presented in different forms in different schools. The Jonangpas have their own view of this, which is similar, in terms of certain forms being part of Buddha-nature itself.
Now, how to get back to our point here of perspective? We don’t change our perspective when we increase the visualization to these various other figures. This is — to get back to the text — all of this is coming out from the point of… He says:
If the general form of the body was clear…
We’d start with the general thing. With all these various parts and all these various other figures — whether it’s around us, whether it’s inside us, etc. — to just have a gross form of the thing, rough. It’s a basis for labeling. We want to hold the pride on that. The pride of the deity means that we have the mental label of me in terms of that. That’s also not an easy thing to understand.
What does it mean to have the pride of the deity? Does it mean a perspective? Does it mean… What does it mean? Here, as I have mentioned, it’s a little bit like the way that Shantideva used it in Engaging in Bodhisattva Behavior, that I will use pride (in the sense of self-confidence) to overcome the disturbing emotion of pride. It is a labeling of me with the sense of actually being it, not just pretending. And what I just explained about inseparable samsara and nirvana helps us to understand that this is not just a game, not just make-believe, but we are dealing with something that is an actuality, which is important; otherwise, you think it’s just a game and you don’t take it terribly seriously.
Which is also one of the reasons why, from the very beginning — I mean, Tsongkhapa doesn’t say it here in this letter, but elsewhere it’s mentioned — that to take an empowerment, an initiation, one of the things that is a prerequisite is to have some understanding of the tantric path and the tantra method (which is why His Holiness the Dalai Lama always explains it in great detail before giving an initiation) and to have confidence and understand what is actually involved here, and have confidence that it is a valid path and how it works. Then you take it seriously. Otherwise, it’s just some weird game. Very weird actually — with all the colors and the arms and the legs and all the figures and so on. I mean, it’s pretty weird if we look at it objectively from a non-Buddhist point of view.
All right. So we have the vague thing, a feeling of “OK, this is me.” There’s going to be a perspective but not a solid me. Everything has to be within the understanding of voidness, so that’s going to affect very strongly the sense of me and the sense of perspective in the visualization. This is where it becomes very delicate. Without a proper understanding of voidness, various problems are going to come up just trying to do a visualization by itself. “Where am I in this visualization with all these figures?” for example. That’s why I bring all of this up, because these are very common problems that come up, that people experience when trying to do all of this. OK.
Then he says:
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.
OK. What does that mean? First you get a rough form. It’s not going to be in focus. Serkong Rinpoche always used to say, and His Holiness as well: “Don’t worry about the clarity of the detail. Get the general figure. And even if it’s not clear as a general figure, have it rough.”
OK, so now what happens when you are visualizing… Let’s say you’re just dealing with a single figure, and you’re not worrying about the mandala, you’re not worrying about the building or anything like that. I mean, if we were doing that. Actually, you’d try to do the whole thing all at once. But dealing just with the simple figure — well, it’s the whole thing, isn’t it?
You’re sitting here. What are you aware of in your body? Normally — although if I wanted to, I could simultaneously have awareness of my feet and my arms and my legs and my head and the whole body — normally I think we’re not so aware of the entire body, are we? Unless you have a pain somewhere or an itch somewhere, how much of your body are you aware of? Obviously, that’s going to differ from person to person and culturally, and even within one person at different times, but seriously speaking are you aware of every piece of your body? You can be, can’t you? Try that. I mean, you can. Can you? I’m not talking about inside. We’re talking about the rough form. Itay, can you? No?
Participant: Not really.
Dr. Berzin: Not really. Can you feel your feet?
Participant: A bit. Yes.
Dr. Berzin: A bit. A bit is roughly. And at the same time feel your hands?
Participant: I don’t know what it means to feel.
Dr. Berzin: Ah, he doesn’t know what it means to feel. You should ask. To be aware of it. Feel is a very general, vague word, that’s true.
Participant: You can’t really describe it in words.
Dr. Berzin: Can’t really describe it with words? I think it is an awareness. Can anybody describe it?
Participant: An awareness as if you’re aware of your entire body.
Dr. Berzin: You’re aware of the entire body.
Participant: Let us consider that people think that we only have generally five senses, but actually there are other senses too, and that’s considered one of the extra senses, is a perception of the body. There’s a perception. If you close your eyes, you know where your hand is. If you close your eyes, you know where your feet are.
Dr. Berzin: Right. She’s saying that when we talk about the various senses, there are more senses besides our ordinarily listed five, and one of them is a sense of the body. For instance, when we close our eyes, we can still have a sense of where our hands are, or our feet are. I mean, I don’t know if we would technically put that on the level of a physical sensation, but…
Participant: Temperature is a sense too.
Dr. Berzin: Temperature. No, no. Wait, wait a second. In the Buddhist classification of forms of physical phenomena under the category of physical sensations, it’s not just touch that’s known by the body sensors. The body sensors are the cells of the body, all of them, so that could be a feeling of touch, but it also includes a physical sensation of hot and cold, also a physical sensation of motion. Maybe a physical sensation without motion? I don’t know. Anyway, it doesn’t matter what we call it.
Participant: You have a mental model of how you are positioned. I don’t think this is a perception like in the sense that the eyes are perceiving light and this interaction with the light sensors that enable it. The feeling of where your body is when you close your eyes is not an interaction. I think it’s a mental model of what you think you are doing.
Dr. Berzin: Right. I think you are correct here, that a feeling of where your body is and so on is a mental model. That’s exactly the case when people have an amputated leg and then have a feeling of a phantom leg, a phantom limb. It’s a mental model. In any case, this is what we’re talking about.
Participant: [in German]
Dr. Berzin: Right. Rainer is pointing out an experiment that was done in which they used various cameras and different devices to change people’s perception. They were mechanically able to induce a sensation of being outside of the body and perceiving things from outside of the body.
Participant: But it still doesn’t prove that it’s a sense, because all senses can be fooled.
Dr. Berzin: Right. All senses can be fooled. But let’s get back… Let’s not now talk about physics but let us get back to our discussion of being aware of the whole body. What Tsongkhapa is saying… Do you have any better sense now of what we’re talking about, Itay?
Participant: A little bit.
Participant: One other thing: dancers and athletes definitely have a very clear idea of their body, where everything is, where it works, how it works. Pianists have a very clear idea. If people are very intellectual, they tend not have a very clear idea. So yeah, there are people who have a very clear total awareness of their body.
Dr. Berzin: Right. There are more people that have total awareness of the body, an athlete or dancer or martial artist or stuff like that. Yeah. But often that becomes very automatic.
Participant: Right, it does. The more cerebral we tend to be, the less…
Dr. Berzin: The more cerebral… and so on. I mean, I find this in… I go to a fitness club. I do these classes for spine and back strengthening. And the teacher is pointing out “This part of your back should be like this. And be careful that your arms are like this” — every little piece of the body he’s orchestrating, and you’re supposed to be aware of every little piece of how you’re holding it. Yes, that’s there. That’s there. And it is a different kind of awareness.
I mean, to get in any sort of training, if you are more intellectually inclined, to get your arms to go in one way and your legs to go in another way and doing different things is very difficult to do. Whereas a drummer, for instance, is able to do so many different rhythms with each arm and each leg, which is extraordinary if you’re not trained to do something like that. Yes, we’re able to do… Let’s not get into that. Let’s stick to our topic.
Participant: Just sticking to the topic — this is what this is about, directing your attention?
Dr. Berzin: Directing your attention? Sure, that is part of the whole thing. That is a mental factor. That is the mental factor of attention. And where do you pay attention to? That is exactly what is involved here. How much of the basis are we involved with? Tsongkhapa is saying: Get the gross basis going. If you lose part of it, don’t worry; hold it on what you have. If you lose too much of it, then reset it to the whole thing, but don’t be a fanatic, that every time you lose — “Oh, I lost the nose,” and now you have to go back and do the whole thing. You’re going to drive yourself crazy. Because, let’s face it, in the beginning you won’t be able to maintain the whole thing, awareness of the whole thing, just as... my analogy was: Can you maintain awareness of your whole body?
Participant: I think it’s the same analogy Tsongkhapa gave that the trainer gave you in the gym class. Of course, he maybe wants you to move certain muscles or be aware of it, but you can’t because you don’t have that precision in training, but after a while, if you train hard, it will come. I think that’s the same.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It’s exactly the same thing with the physical training. After a while you don’t even have to think about it; your body is going through… the whole thing. The same thing as a ballet dancer. I mean, once they are trained and they can do the ballet, if you try to be conscious of where your foot is and your leg is, you can’t possibly dance it in a flowing manner.
The same thing with these visualizations. The same thing. It gets back to what you said. You have to do it over and over and over again. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that if you take an empowerment, it’s because you’re serious about doing the practice, because you’re convinced that it will work, and you are motivated to do it. Therefore, it is not a punishment to promise that I’m going to do this every day for the rest of my life, because it will require that.
Participant: Otherwise, it would be like signing up for the Juilliard School when you really only had a passing interest in music.
Dr. Berzin: Right. It would be like signing up for the Juilliard School, which is the top school for music training in the United States, without really being serious or committed.
Participant: Since we have New Year, I can share a little story. On the 31st of December at nine p.m. I was on a train and I saw a ballet class which was full and they trained. And I thought “Wow.”
Dr. Berzin: You saw this on a train?
Participant: Yes. I passed on the train. I saw a classroom, passing by. I saw a whole class, maybe twelve people or something, and they trained at that time. And I thought “Wow, what a discipline.” So, if you compare yourself, you take a little dancing class or something, don’t go on that road if you don’t want to train. That’s the point of commitment.
Dr. Berzin: Right. This is what Manuel is saying, that on New Year’s Eve at nine o’clock in the morning, he was on a…
Participant: Nine o’clock in the evening.
Dr. Berzin: Nine o’clock in the evening. I’m sorry. I meant that, but my mouth said something different. That happens at my age. He was in a train and passed by a building which had a ballet class, and he saw that all the people there were in the class training at nine o’clock at night on New Year’s Eve. So this is an illustration of strong commitment to training and practice.
Sure, it’s the same thing. If it’s New Year’s Eve or whatever, you still have your daily practice, meditation practice, that you do. You might want to do it before you go out rather than when you come back before you go to sleep. That’s something else. One needs to be flexible with a daily practice. Although in doing a daily practice, it is very beneficial to really make it a habit that it is done at a certain time of day every day, and usually people do something in the morning when they wake up and something before they go to sleep. It depends very much on individuals whether you want to do half and half, whether you are really a morning person and want to do most of it in the morning, or most of it at night — up to individuals. But if you have a regular schedule, then it becomes like brushing your teeth: it is inconceivable that you wouldn’t do it. It has many, many benefits in terms of giving something stable in your life, particularly if your life is very chaotic and you’re traveling a lot, like I used to do (I still do, to a certain extent). If there’s something that stays stable every day, it grounds you. I could be in a different city every day, but my morning practice was always the same.
Participant: Another thing: if you do it every day, at the moment of your death you’re able to do it, because you’ve done it.
Dr. Berzin: Right. If you’ve done it all the time, then at the moment of death it becomes automatic, more likely. But it depends on which practice it is. His Holiness said, “Regardless of how much tantra practice and visualization you’ve done, if you’re just going to get confused and worry that you’re not getting it right at the time of death, don’t try to do it then. Stick with bodhichitta (Skt. bodhicitta). Stick with love and compassion. Stick with something simple that you can do.”
Participant: But you try to develop these things every day.
Dr. Berzin: But develop those every day so then it comes automatically.
Participant: Even if it’s doing OM MANI PADME HUM.
Dr. Berzin: Even if it is doing OM MANI PADME HUM, whatever. At the time of death, it’s going to be difficult enough even being conscious, let alone…
Participant: Some practice has to be there to grab onto.
Dr. Berzin: Some practice. That is a beneficial habit. That is what meditation means, literally, building up a beneficial habit.
To sum up, because we have to end the class, what he’s saying in terms of the visualization is — though he doesn’t say it in very many words — is very significant. In terms of the general thing, if you lose part of it — you are going to lose part of it, let’s not fool ourselves, but don’t be a fanatic and try to correct it the instant that you lose some of the parts of this thing, because then you’re constantly… The important thing is to keep the major thing, have the major thing, and only when really a lot of it is lost, reset the whole thing. OK?
That is our class for today, and we’ll continue with this. What I want to get into eventually, hopefully by next class, will be all the various teachings on how to gain concentration, shamatha, which is what we’re trying to do here on the basis of these visualizations (as opposed to focusing on the breath or whatever). All right?
Let’s end with the dedication. We think whatever understanding, whatever positive force has built up from this, may it act as a cause for reaching enlightenment for the benefit of all.