The main thing is to develop the courage to take on the suffering of others, to deal with it – so the courage to become a bodhisattva. It’s quite interesting, in the Tibetan translation of the word bodhisattva, “bodhi” is an enlightened state (either liberation or enlightenment), but “sattva” in Sanskrit just means a “being.” That’s all it means. “Sat” is the word “to be,” and “tva” at the end of it makes it an abstract noun – so “beings.” Tibetans translate it as “sem-pa:” somebody with a limited mind. So, Tibetans bring this aspect into it, which isn’t there in the Sanskrit and then very often that “pa” at the end of “sem-pa” in Tibetan they will spell differently: they will spell it with the word that means “courageous,” and so it’s someone with a courageous but limited mind that’s aiming for enlightenment. They elaborate bodhisattva in that way.
“Bodhi” is the purified state, which can refer to either the liberation of a Shravaka arhat or a Pratyekabuddha arhat – these are Hinayana liberated beings – or it can also refer to the enlightened state of a Buddha. So, there are actually three states of bodhi. The Tibetans make out of “bodhi” – which is basically similar to the word “Buddha, it comes from the root meaning “to be awake” – the Tibetans make it into two syllables, which is “byang-chub.” “Byang” implies purification – purified the negative aspects; and “chub” implies attaining positive aspects. The Tibetans followed this way of translating, which actually they got from the Khotanese in Khotan, which is the area in the north of Tibet – northwest Tibet, in the desert. They had Buddhism before Tibet had it and they translated in this way and that was something which the Tibetans borrowed from them or learned from them.
In any case, doing this practice helps us to develop courage – our minds are becoming courageous to act like a bodhisattva, to deal with the sufferings of others, so that anytime that we are in a situation where we could help others, we do that. Let’s say, you get on the elevator and you’re in a hurry to go up to wherever it is that you’re going, but you see somebody is coming in the door of the building and they also want to use the elevator. Self-cherishing would have us just close the door and go up: “To hell with this other person, they can wait.” But we realize that this is a very negative attitude. It’s not at all helpful to the other person and we invoke that power of Yamantaka to smash it and we hold the door open for the other person to also get into the elevator – this type of thing. Now, these are just everyday examples where we can see self-cherishing and how we act in a really very nasty way based on self-cherishing – a very selfish way – and how we could avoid that. So, we take on the suffering of others and we give them type of happiness. All of this, as it says in the text, is based on overcoming what is underlying the self-cherishing attitude, which is that grasping for a solid “me” – the so-called “true me.”
So that’s our review. A few of you weren’t here last time, so hopefully it was helpful to review it a little bit more thoroughly. This is, obviously, a very large topic and a very full practice and I can’t underline enough that it’s not a practice for beginners or those who are emotionally unstable.
In the beginning, as I said, I think we need to follow a phase of just taking in, because it’s too quick to do it with the breath – in and out, in and out – and then a whole phase of doing it out. So, obviously during this phase we’re both breathing in and breathing out; however, eventually we want to do it in coordination with the breath. Why? Because this then makes for a strong reinforcement of what we want to do in the advanced tantra practices. In tantra what you do is you imagine that you’re a Buddha figure – and this text obviously has tantra influence in it because of speaking about Yamantaka. So, what we do in tantra is you imagine you’re a Buddha figure – voidness and bodhichitta and all of that – and you imagine that light goes out from you, from your heart. In many of the practices, it doesn’t just go directly out of your heart. It goes out with your breath, out of your nostrils and in fact that’s the way it’s done in Yamantaka practice. It goes out and with this light it gives happiness and enlightenment to all beings and offerings (offerings to the Buddhas); and then you bring the light back in. This is not so much in terms of taking back in the sufferings, but the light goes out and the light comes back in. Eventually what you want to do, in the highest class of tantra, anuttarayoga tantra – this is related to the energy winds of the heart chakra – the energies go out from the heart chakra in terms of emanations – because as a Buddha we emanate various forms to help others. Then you want to bring that back in and dissolve it back in, so that the energy winds will dissolve into the central channel. This is one of the aims that we have in the highest class of tantra, in order to reach the clear light level of mind, the subtlest level of mind, which is the most efficient for understanding voidness.
That’s quite advanced and if you haven’t heard anything about this before, don’t worry about it. But these practices here with tonglen on a sutra level are helping to familiarize ourselves with practices that we will do in general tantra of just light going out and coming back in of helping others. That would then prepare the way for the highest class of tantra practice, anuttarayoga tantra practice, where actually the energy is going out and the energy is coming back in, so that that helps us to dissolve all the energies in the heart chakra, the central channel. With this, we can access the most subtle level of mind, which is the most efficient for breaking through self-cherishing and all the obstacles. This then leads to, as a Buddha, being able to emanate out all sorts of forms and draw them back in. All of it is connected step by step. In tantra, in the tantra texts, there are various so-called vajra words – these are the words of the tantra texts, and they have many levels of meaning, the same words. There’s usually one level of meaning which is referring to practices that are done in common between sutra and tantra. This is a good example of that – that basically lights, or energy, or other things going out and coming back in – here it’s specifically in and out in the tonglen practice. This is done in common in sutra and in tantra and in each of these levels it has a slightly different significance and purpose.
Eventually you want to do this with the breath because the breath is the same as energy. In the Buddhist context, when we talk about energy it’s called the energy-wind and that is associated with the breath. The breath is the grossest form of that. There are a lot of practices done with the breath – shaping the breath with mantras, basically – so that then, if you shape the breath, you shape the energy; and if you shape the energy, then you can gain control over it. That’s the ultimate purpose of mantras. The ultimate, deepest purpose of mantras is to shape your breath, which then gives a shape to your energy; and if the energy has a shape and is not just chaotic, then you can work with that energy and dissolve it and use that energy. Mantras are very powerful. Serkong Rinpoche always used to say that there are three powerful things in the world, in the universe: there is medicine, technology and mantras. Mantras refer to the prajnaparamita mantra in the Heart Sutra, “gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha,” which refers to the path to liberation and enlightenment.
What I think is very important is not to trivialize the tonglen practice into just, “Black light in, white light out, la-di-da,” and not take other people’s suffering seriously. If you think that, you’re not really doing anything. The question is, does the other person that we’re doing this for, do they feel better? Do they get healed? In 99.999 percent of the time, they feel nothing. That’s why I was saying that you have to have a super strong connection with the person and really bodhichitta, really no self-cherishing, really perfect concentration and so on. In most cases it’s not going to work. That’s why you don’t tell anybody that you’re doing this for them. You don’t tell them. If you tell, you make a fool out of yourself. People don’t go around laying on their hands over the aura and stuff like that. That’s not Tibetan.
The main aim of the practice is that actually it helps you to develop the courage of a bodhisattva and to overcome your self-cherishing. If it helps the other person – wonderful. In most cases don’t expect it to actually help. That’s a very odd thing. Do things actually help that you do for somebody else? I remember, my favorite uncle was dying of brain cancer – this was many years ago when I was first in India in the 1970s – and he didn’t believe in Buddhism or anything like that. Basically, he didn’t have any religion. I was in Bodh Gaya and at the stupa in Bodh Gaya I lit a whole bunch of candles and things like that and said prayers for his benefit. It was very funny because then he sent me a letter asking if did something, because he felt something at that time. So, I think sometimes some sort of practice, especially if done with the energy of a place like Bodh Gaya, can have some effect. Things arise dependently, depend on many, many causes. I mean, obviously he died a few month after that. He was quite terminal. But sometimes you can have an effect on other people through a meditation practice. There are practices to help in the bardo – in the in-between period – but again, you have to be super well connected with the person and really have bodhichitta and voidness and concentration and all these things. But you can add something into the karmic mixture in terms of what type of rebirth will ripen next for this person and affect the next rebirth. That’s quite clear. How effective is it actually? How do you know? There is no way of knowing, is there? But the texts say that it is possible.