Common Misunderstandings about Tantra

Thinking That Tantra or Dzogchen Are Easy Paths to Enlightenment

There are many misunderstandings about tantra. Often these misunderstandings come because of clever marketing. For whatever reasons, many Tibetan or Western teachers market tantra or dzogchen as being the easy path, the speedy path, the highest path. And because of that marketing, students get the wrong idea and think that tantra or dzogchen really are easy paths.

Why would people be attracted to these practices they think will be quick and easy? As one of my teachers pointed out, it could either be because they’re lazy and so don’t want to put in the hard work required, or they want to find a bargain. It’s like getting enlightenment cheaply, the way that we look for bargains when we go shopping in a store. We often have that mentality when we’re looking at various Dharma methods: “What’s on sale this week?”

The hard facts are that tantra practice and dzogchen are tremendously subtle, difficult practices that require an enormous amount of hard work. As a start, all such practices specify that before even starting, you need to do preliminary practices, ngondro, with 100,000 or more prostrations and so on. That’s not very easy – it could take years!

Thinking That Doing 100,000 Prostrations Will Bring Miracles

Even if we accept that we need to do these preliminary practices such as prostration, it’s a misunderstanding to imagine that we’re going to get miracles from them. This also can be from marketing, or it could just be from our own overestimation of the power of these preliminaries. “I’m so desperate. Just tell me what to do. Okay, throw myself on the ground 100,000 times, repeat some syllables in another language 100,000 times, and then all my problems will go away. Great, I’ll do it.” This is a misunderstanding. But, out of desperation, you do it and expect that at the end some miracle cure is going to happen. And it doesn’t. Then you become completely disillusioned about Dharma practice and drop it.

Now, of course, purification practices can be effective, but not effective when 99.9% of the time your mind is wandering, not focused on what you’re doing, and there’s no feeling or understanding behind it. Or you don’t have a strong, proper motivation. In order for these practices to be effective – and even when they’re effective, they don’t produce miracles – that means doing them properly, with complete concentration, full, proper motivation, a deep sincerely felt sense of putting a safe direction in your life (taking refuge), with a good understanding of what that means, and so on. That’s not easy, is it?

It’s also a mistake to think, after completing 100,000 repetitions, “OK, I’ve paid my dues. Now let’s get on with the good stuff.” In a sense, such an attitude is almost like begrudging these preliminary practices, like having to pay some entrance fee. You just want to get them over with and don’t really see the value that they have, in and of themselves, to purify some negative potentials and build up some positive force – for instance, by over and over again putting the positive safe direction in your life indicated by the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. “This is the direction I’m going in.” Or, over and again, generating bodhichitta. These type of preliminaries are very, very helpful.

Undertaking Ngondro Practices Prematurely, without a Basic Understanding of the Dharma

Also in terms of these ngondro preliminaries, it’s a mistake to do them before having even a basic understanding of Buddhism, and therefore thinking of them simply as a way to cleanse our sins, as it were. Sometimes it happens in the West that you go to a Dharma teacher and immediately, before any teachings or gaining any understanding, you’re told, “Do 100,000 prostrations!” And what's amazing is that some people actually do it!

So you ask yourself, “Why would they do this?” And usually it’s out of desperation, thinking that some miracle will happen from it. Or, like entering a cult, they give up taking responsibility for their lives and just obey a strong teacher, like in the army. That’s a mistake, to think that the relation with the teacher is like the relation with some officer in the army whom you obey unquestioningly.

It’s very important never to lose our critical faculty. His Holiness the Dalai Lama always emphasizes that. Be critical. That doesn’t mean criticizing, although the word sounds the same in English. “Critical” means to examine what’s going on. “Criticize” has the connotation of arrogantly looking down on someone, with an aggressive, negative attitude, and thinking, “I’m so much better, and you’re terrible.” So it’s important if we’re going to do these ngondro practices that we have a good foundation in the basic Buddhist teachings and we understand what we’re doing and why. And that doesn’t mean just knowing the details of a complex visualization, but being clear about the state of mind we are trying to generate and ingrain in ourselves.

Undertaking Tantric Practices Prematurely

This is indicative of a larger misunderstanding, which is engaging in tantra practice prematurely, even if we start it with doing a ngondro. For example, in traditions that present strong emphasis on ngondro, these preliminary practices, there’s a shared or common ngondro, which are the four thoughts that turn the mind to the Dharma. This basically covers the same material as found in the lam-rim material (the graded stage material). Only after that, comes the uncommon, unshared preliminaries, which are the prostrations and so on. Skipping over, or trivializing, or minimizing these shared preliminaries (the basic lam-rim teachings) and just jumping immediately to prostrations and so on often leads to a very unrealistic attitude toward the prostrations, the 100-syllable mantra recitations, etc. After a while, you start to question, “Why in the world am I doing this? What’s the point?” Whereas if beforehand you have, at least to a certain level, a clear understanding of the importance of building up positive force, eliminating negative potentials (or at least minimizing them), because you want to achieve this and this type of spiritual goal, then the preliminaries made some sort of sense.

The problem here is not just getting into ngondro practice prematurely, but getting into tantra prematurely. Why does this happen so frequently? It could be because we ask visiting lamas to give initiations, even if our group isn’t ready for being able to practice them. Or the visiting lamas themselves offer initiations, even when the audience is mostly unprepared. So we are not totally responsible for this misunderstanding of the overemphasis on tantra and its practice being presented prematurely for most people.

Why would we ask for an initiation? There can be many reasons. We might think because it’s so high. It’s the real stuff. It’s exotic. Or the people who run the Dharma center might think it will attract more people, which means that they will collect more money, so that they can actually pay for the visiting teacher and support the center. So it could be for financial reasons; which is most unfortunate that that happens.

The teachers themselves could be motivated by thinking, “Okay, they’re not going to practice, but it will plant seeds for their future lives.” Well, most Westerners don’t believe in future lives, so that’s a misunderstanding. Or teachers themselves don’t really understand that the Westerners don’t have the background to be able to practice tantra effectively. Or they could be pressured to raise money to support their monasteries and the monks back home.

There can be many reasons for asking for initiations or for a teacher to suggest offering initiations. But what’s always advised is that if there’s a visiting teacher, to ask them for the basic teachings. And if it’s more advanced teachings that we want, then ask for advanced sutra teachings on bodhichitta or voidness (emptiness).

Thinking That If We Have Received a Tantric Initiation Prematurely, We Are Stuck with Having to Do the Practice

The fact is that many people receive tantric initiations before they are sufficiently prepared to engage in the practice. But some feel that if they were to give up the practice, they would be bad Buddhists and go to some hell. So they try to maintain the practice, but with almost no understanding of what they are doing or why, and soon they develop a hostile attitude toward their practice. It’s a mistake, however, to think that the only alternatives are torturous practice or torture in hell.

Serkong Rinpoche gave very helpful advice for such people. He said that, in such cases, you should regard your having taken the initiation as having planted seeds for the future on your mental continuum. If, after honestly examined yourself, you find that you’re not yet ready to engage in the practices, then in your imagination place the practices on a high shelf in your mind. Do that, however, with full respect and the sincere intention that you will take them down from the shelf and practice when you are better prepared.

Thinking We Can Gain Liberation or Enlightenment without Overcoming Biology, Specifically Our Sex Drive

It’s a misunderstanding to think we can gain liberation or enlightenment without having to overcome biology, specifically our sex drive. This is a particularly difficult point. Despite the fact that in tantra it’s possible, on advanced stages, to use desire and sexual energy in order to get rid of desire and sexual energy, this is only when we are on extremely advanced stages and have control over our subtle energy system. It’s a serious mistake to consider tantra as a method for having exotic sex. We are aiming to gain liberation. Liberation means liberation from this type of samsaric physical body with all its biological drives and so on. We’re aiming to have the type of body of a liberated or enlightened being: made of light and not subject to these biological limitations. Often, however, we’re looking for a bargain in our Buddhist practice. We want to gain liberation and enlightenment cheaply, without having to give up bodily pleasures. This is a big misunderstanding.

Thinking That the Most Important Part of Tantra Practice Is Visualizing All the Details Correctly

Also when involved with tantra and wanting instructions on how to practice, it’s a misunderstanding to think that the main emphasis in the practice is the visualization and so to worry so much about getting all the little details correctly. My teacher Serkong Rinpoche used to use an example for this Western misunderstanding, “People are coming to me and asking does Yamantaka or Vajrayogini have a bellybutton? This is ridiculous. They’re missing the important points in these practices.”

When you want to develop single-pointed concentration through tantra visualization practice, you certainly need all the details, but that’s not what you focus on or emphasize in the beginning. What you need to focus on is a basic understanding of what Tsongkhapa calls “the three principle aspects of the path,” and how they relate to the tantra practice of visualizing yourself in the form of a Buddha-figure, such as Chenrezig or Tara.

• Renunciation – the determination to be free – giving up clinging to our ordinary appearance and our believing that we and everything has true, self-established existence.
• Bodhichitta – we’re aiming to achieve enlightenment. These Buddha-figures represent our own future enlightenments that we are aiming to achieve. So to help achieve that more quickly, we imagine that we’re there now. Without bodhichitta, why would you imagine yourself in this form and imagine doing all the activities of benefiting others? We want to be like this in order to benefit others.
• Voidness (emptiness) – we understand that we don’t exist truly like this now, but we have the potentials to become Buddhas, like what these figures represent. But we also realize that to attain enlightenment, we need to put in the effort. In other words, we understand how voidness and the functionality of cause and effect, and dependent arising, go together. We don’t deceive ourselves into thinking we actually are Tara – or Cleopatra, for that matter.

So if we’re going to ask for teachings on tantra, be sure that they’re on this type of level. This is what we need to emphasize: what the point of all this tantra practice is and what we’re trying to do with it. That’s why we need all the preparation beforehand and not just worry about all the tiny little visualization details: what does the jewelry look like, and stuff like that. Although there are the instructions of what it looks like, don’t emphasize that, particularly not in the beginning.

It’s interesting that at the Kalachakra initiation in Toronto, Canada, in 2004, His Holiness the Dalai Lama gave as a preliminary three days of teachings on one of Nagarjuna’s texts on voidness, Root Verses on the Middle Way, Called “Discriminating Awareness.” After that, he gave the initiation. It was very noticeable that many more people were there for the initiation than were there for the teachings on voidness. His Holiness told the assembly that he really appreciated those people who came only for the teachings of Nagarjuna and didn’t stay for the initiation, rather than the people who did the opposite – who skipped these initial basic teachings, and just came for the initiation. That tells us a lot.

Thinking of the Buddha-Figures as Saints to Whom We Pray for Blessings

It’s a further misunderstanding of tantra to look at the Buddha-figures, the yidams, like saints that we pray to for help: Saint Tara, Saint Chenrezig, and so on, and worshiping them. This misunderstanding is not limited to just Westerners. Many traditional Buddhists think like that too, though not in the analogy of Christian saints. These Buddha-figures may inspire us, as can Buddhas and the lineage gurus, but we need to do the work ourselves to become enlightened.

Some of this misunderstanding comes from a translation issue when we make requests to the various gurus and Buddha-figures in the prayers of request. First of all, the word “prayer” to us carries the connotation of praying to God: “God, grant my prayers.” Or it connotes praying to a saint to act as an intermediary to God, so that God will grant me something. This is an interpolation from Christianity, and not appropriate.

What we request for in these so-called “prayers” is what is called in Tibetan chin-gi-lab (byin-gyis rlabs) and that’s usually translated as “blessings.” We request in translation, “Bless me to be able to do this. Bless me to be able to do that,” as if all that we need is for these figures to come and bless us and, all of a sudden, we get all our realizations. This is not Buddhism.

Translating with the word “blessings” gives a completely different and misleading connotation than what the term actually means. The Tibetan term literally means to uplift and brighten. The original Sanskrit term, adhisthana, means to put someone or something in a higher position, to uplift. I prefer to translate the term as “inspire.” We request the Buddha, the gurus, the Buddha-figures to inspire us to achieve this or that realization. But these figures, from their own sides, by their own power, can’t grant us our wishes and do everything for us and that all we have to do is submit to them. That again is an interpolation, projecting a Western idea or concept onto Buddhism. The main emphasis is always that we need to do the work ourselves. The Buddhas, the gurus, can inspire us, they can teach us, they can guide us, but they can’t do the work for us. We have to understand, ourselves.