Author: Kadampa Ryan

Making progress when access to a center is difficult:  Motivation for series

Kadampa Ryan Making progress when access to a center is difficult

This series of posts is written for the benefit of all those who, for whatever reason, are unable to have regular access to a Dharma center and Dharma teachings.  I have attempted to gather in one place my own experience and understanding for how it is not only possible to continue to make progress when access to a center is difficult, but it is also possible to spiritually thrive.  This series is additionally written in the hope that those who do have regular access to a Dharma center might be able to better understand, accept and help those who don’t.  It will hopefully also be useful for all practitioners who wish to receive a constant stream of Dharma teachings every day.  This is not to say Dharma centers are not important, rather it is to say our understanding of them is too narrow.  Our Spiritual Guide is providing all of us without exception access to Dharma centers and Dharma teachings every single day, regardless of how the world might conventionally appear to us.

The kindness of our Spiritual Guide in establishing Dharma centers, temples and study programs around the world is unequaled.  Without this basic spiritual infrastructure we would find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to make the journey to enlightenment.  Through his provision of these things, he has created for us magical transporters that connect our home towns to the city of enlightenment.  Gen-la Losang said Dharma centers are like Embassies of the Pure Land in this world.  Dharma centers accomplish two main functions.  First, they provide us with regular access to qualified teachings; and second, they provide a focal point for connecting with and building up pure spiritual communities in this world.  Venerable Tharchin says a Dharma center is not the bricks and mortar, though they of course matter, rather a Dharma center is the “collection of spiritual realizations of its practitioners bound together by their mutual love for one another.”   When we understand the nature of samsara, there is quite literally nothing more precious in this world than this basic spiritual infrastructure.

For a wide variety of reasons, though, not everyone has easy access to a Dharma center and Dharma teachings.  Some people simply live far away from the closest center, some live in countries where Dharma centers are not allowed, some lack the financial means to get to and participate in the center’s activities, some have family or work obligations which make it difficult to come to the center as often as they would like.  Some people have physical constraints which prevent them from coming, such as disabilities, illness or old age.  Some people have mental constraints, such as strong delusions, wrong views, or simply a failure to understand the importance of receiving teachings or being involved with a spiritual community.  Some people may simply lack the karma to be able to make it to the center, others may love the teachings but may have strained relationships with certain members of the Sangha or the institution of the “NKT.”  Some people, sadly, are simply not made to feel welcome at their local Dharma center, even though our Spiritual Guide has made it clear that the sign hanging over the center door reads, “Everybody Welcome.”  Whatever the reasons, it happens that practitioners will sometimes find it difficult to have regular access to Dharma teachings and a Dharma center.

When this happens, it can be a real problem for people.  They can come to view everything in their life that prevents them from making it to the center as an obstacle to their spiritual progress, giving rise to all sorts of anxiety, worry, inner turmoil and family conflict.  They then wrongly conclude that they cannot practice Dharma, and either postpone or even abandon their spiritual life.  It does not help that some of those who do have regular access to a Dharma center, including some teachers, lack the spiritual imagination to see how one can transform such a circumstance into the path.  As a result, those who do lack regular access can feel judged as lacking spiritual commitment or looked down upon as being spiritually lazy.  Since their teachers or spiritual friends are assenting to the view that there is only one way of fully committing oneself to the practice of Dharma, people who cannot live their life in that image continue to grasp at these constraints as inherently being obstacles to their spiritual practice.  Like old people and some other marginalized groups I have written about before, people whose access to a center is difficult “experience many special sorrows.”  In my view, all of this is completely unnecessary.

To understand why, in this series of posts I will first attempt to dispel some wrong views about spiritual life when access to a center is difficult, then I will explain some practical steps we can take to make manifest a Dharma center in our life.  I will then explain how we can receive individualized Dharma teachings through our every experience, and I will conclude by sharing some special advice Geshe-la has given us for how to receive perfectly reliable inner guidance from him every day.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Dedication for entire series

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

This series is by far the biggest series of posts I have ever done.  My goal in doing so was to clarify my own thinking on how to practice the vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism in the context of my modern life.  I have generally neglected my practice of moral discipline, but now I see it as the foundation of everything else.  I can only hope that those reading along have also found something useful.

I dedicate all of the merit I have collected by writing and sharing these posts so that myself and all living beings are never separated from the joy of moral discipline.  Through our training in moral discipline, may we maintain an uninterrupted continuum in all our future lives of our Buddhist path, our path to liberation, our path to enlightenment, our path of Highest Yoga Tantra, and in particular our path of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  May we all progressively take higher and higher rebirth until we attain the highest of all, full enlightenment.

 

Tomorrow, I land in Taiwan, where I will be posted for four years.  My project while there will be to go through all of Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, and explain how I try to integrate Shantideva’s teachings into a modern life.  It should be about a four year project, one I hope to finish by the time I leave.

 

 

 

 

 

To abandon repulsion when tasting bodhichitta. 

Kadampa Ryan Vows

If we do lose our drops, we should regard them as the secret substance from the union of the Father and Mother Deities and mentally imagine that we taste them and receive the secret empowerment.  When doing so, we should abandon any feelings of repulsion.

Sometimes our drops are called our “bodhichittas.”  The reason for this is because of their central role in fulfilling our bodhichitta wish to become a Buddha.  During the Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment, at an ordinary physical level, there are people who come around and give us all sorts of different substances to eat or drink.  If we don’t know what is going on, it can all seem quite strange.  There is a part in particular where we taste some yogurt.  How are we to understand all of this?

Lama Action Vajra, the deity who grants the empowerment through whatever spiritual guide is in the room in front of us, will explain to you how you should regard these various substances and what visualizations and meditations you should engage in when you consume them.  Our ordinary eyes may see a temple or a giant tarp tent, but our wisdom eyes of our mental awareness should see ourselves in the pure land, at the feet of Lama Action Vajra, and the people who come around giving us substances as empowering deities and offering goddesses.  Just because we cannot see these things with our eyes does not mean they are not there.  There are sounds we cannot hear that dogs can, there are sights we cannot see the infrared goggles can, etc.  In the same way, there are countless different realms of living beings which are like different mental frequencies or channels that only those with the right signal receiver (namely possessing the body and mind of that realm) can perceive.  In addition to the six realms of samsara, there are also countless different pure lands.  These are actual places where beings take rebirth, and where we can go in our Tantric meditations.  As Venerable Tharchin said, “the location of mind is at the object of cognition,” so if the object of our mind is the pure land, our mind will actually to there.

When we receive the “yogurt” we should consider it to be the completely pure red and white drops of Heruka and Vajrayogini, Father and Mother.  When we taste these drops, we should imagine that their completely pure red and white drops enter into our subtle body and purify all of the drops flowing through our central body, bestowing upon our mind all of the blessings we need to attain the illusory body of completion stage and eventually the Enjoyment Body of a Buddha.  We then imagine that we experience great bliss while believing we are receiving these special blessings.

In the same way, whenever through the course of our life we lose our drops, we should mentally regard them as the completely pure red and white drops of Heruka Father and Mother, and we should imagine that we taste them and receive the secret empowerment just like during the actual empowerment.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Masturbation and losing your drops

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

It is worth saying a few words about masturbation.  In the last vow, we were advised to not lose our drops.  In many religious traditions, it is considered a “sin.”  After reading this vow, one could think the same is true in Buddhism and then we wind up imputing all sorts of Western guilt onto the act.  We construct it as this awful thing we must not do, but eventually the strength of our attachment gets the better of us, we do it, then afterwards we proceed to beat ourselves up about what an idiot we are, etc.  We become, in effect, sexual bulimics.  We repress our sexual desires until we can repress them no more, then we binge on them.  Afterwards, we feel guilty, beat ourselves up and feel like we are worthless and spiritually incapable.  All of this is unnecessary.

Does this mean we should have free reign to masturbate all of the time?  Of course not, that would be going to the other extreme. We should proceed naturally and gradually over a long period of time.  If we push beyond our capacity with this, we will quickly become discouraged with one failure after another.  Instead, we should focus our attention on identifying within our own mind the trade-off between losing our drops and our spiritual vitality, especially in meditation.  We should focus our attention on increasing the power of our spiritual wishes and aspirations through our practice of Lamrim.  Then we can proceed from wanting to do it all of the time to wanting to do it less and less.  We are not repressing our desire to do it, we are changing our desires to not wanting to do it.  If we want to do it, but through force of will stop ourselves, we will most likely just repress the desire.  If we change our desires to not wanting to do it, then we are not repressing at all.  Eventually we start to willingly make promises to increase the number of days between doing so more and more.  We keep training in this way until we are only losing our drops with our partner and in our dreams.  When we lose our drops in our dreams, the build up of tension is less and it becomes easier to not masturbate at all in between dreams.  Later, once we gain control over our behavior even in our dreams, we can repeat the process and gradually abandon losing our drops even in our dreams.

Yes, this is a long training.  Work naturally and gradually over a long period of time to change what you desire and you will eventually get there.  Don’t repress the urge, outgrow it.

 

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Is it wrong to have an orgasm?

Kadampa Ryan Vows

Never to release seminal fluid; to rely upon pure behavior. 

We should try not to release our red and white drops.  Releasing our drops interferes with our development of great bliss.

This is another vow that often gives rise to a good deal of doubt, worry and confusion.  Does this mean it is a Tantric downfall to have an orgasm?  The short answer is eventually, yes; but until then, be natural.

First, why does the release of our drops interfere with the development of great bliss?  While the drops of our subtle body and those of our gross body are not the same things, there is close relationship between them.  When we release our gross seminal fluids, it is also like opening up the floodgates and we lose a tremendous amount of our inner energy drops.  The drops of our subtle body are what give our body and mind vitality.  Losing our drops, then, functions to drain us of our vitality.  From the early Gladiators to modern day boxers, this is a fact that is well known.  Such fighters would refrain from losing their drops before their fights because doing so drains them of the strength they will need in the arena.

When we lose our drops, it does not just drain us of our physical vitality, but also our mental vitality.  Even in the early days of our spiritual training, we can notice a big difference in the quality of our meditation and insight between when we have not released our drops for some time and when we just did last night.  This is the experience of all those who have bothered to check if it is true.

Does this mean we should all become ordained, or if not ordained does this mean we should all stop having orgasms?  I asked Venerable Tharchin this question once.  He said (paraphrasing), “it is extremely difficult for those who are not ordained to do this.  Ordination provides special blessings which helps us control such desires.  But even the ordained frequently lose their drops, if not through masturbation (which weakens, though doesn’t break one’s ordination vows) then during their dreams.  Whether we are ordained or not, though, the logic is the same:  at some point our desire for realizations is greater than our desire for an orgasm, and when this happens we naturally desire to lose our drops less and less.  But we shouldn’t worry that this will destroy our sex life, if truth be told – and I speak from experience here as a child of the 60s – it makes it better.”

We should become acutely aware of the relationship between our losing of our drops and the decline in our vitality and ability to meditate effectively.  As we deepen our experience of Dharma, and in particular the lamrim, there will come a point where we start to want realizations more than we want the pleasant feelings of an orgasm.  We will see the trade-off between the two, and from our own side choose to refrain from losing our drops, even if only for a short while.  Over time, we will start to want to refrain for longer and longer, not out of some feeling that losing our drops is some “sin,” but rather we simply want realizations more.  We forgo all sorts of samsaric pleasures for the sake of gaining Dharma realizations, willingly and gladly.  Losing our drops is just one more example.

In my view, the best analogy for understanding the process by which we gradually forgo more and more samsaric pleasures is one of a child outgrowing their toys.  When my first born was a baby, her favorite toy was a Pampers Wipies box.  It was quite fascinating for her.  She could open the lid, put things in, close the lid and everything would disappear.  She could then re-open the lid and they would magically reappear!  She could then take things out and start all over again.  Like all samsaric enjoyments, gradually, though the wonder of it all wore off and she started to become interested in new, better toys like Pet Shop Pets and Barbies.  There was never a point where she felt guilty about playing with her Pampers box like doing so was “wrong,” she rather just naturally left it behind as she moved on to more sophisticated pleasures.  Now, she would never choose to play with a Pampers box for the simple reason of she has outgrown it.  In exactly the same way, as our experience of Dharma increases we gradually and quite naturally outgrow our various samsaric pleasures.  We do not abandon them because we feel guilty about it like they are some sin, rather we simply gradually leave them behind as we move on to more qualified spiritual pleasures.  We spiritually outgrow them, even such things as releasing our drops.

Within our sexual relationships, we can begin by saying we will not lose our drops with anybody other than our partner and ourself.  This can combine our refraining from sexual misconduct with this vow.  Then we can start to do it with ourself less and less, while continuing to lose them as normal with our partner.  Eventually we can get to the point where we don’t lose our drops with ourself, except during our dreams.  Over time, even that will become less and less until eventually it stops altogether.  With our partner, we can work to go longer and longer without losing our drops, training to not do so until we can no longer not.  This means longer and often greater pleasure for both you and your partner, and it means making progress with this vow.  Eventually, it is even possible where you could reach the point where you maintain an active sex life with your partner but never lose your drops.  Venerable Tharchin winked, saying, “after I did that, my sex life really took off.”

Vows, commitments and modern life:  How to generate bliss

Kadampa Ryan Vows

To strive mainly for the external and internal methods.

The external method for developing spontaneous great bliss is to rely upon a wisdom or action mudra.  The internal method is to meditate on our channels, drops, and winds.

All of the different meditations on the stages of the path can be divided into three:  those that develop our subject mind, those that are virtuous mental objects, and those that unite the two together.  The vast path develops the subject mind.  The profound path generates virtuous objects.  And the Mahamudra meditations unite the two.  The vast path according to Sutra is the first 20 lamrim meditations, from reliance on the Spiritual Guide through to bodhichitta and including tranquil abiding concentration.  The profound path according to Sutra and the profound path according to Tantra are the same, namely the Prasangika view of emptiness as lack of inherent existence of all things.  Je Tsonkghapa said the union of Sutra and Tantra is quite simply the bliss of tantra and the emptiness of Sutra.  However, when we attain this union, our realization of emptiness transforms from a Sutra-Prasangika view to a Tantra-Prasangika view.  The Sutra-Prasangika view says that all phenomena are mere karmic appearances.  The Tantra-Prasangika view says these appearances are by nature the very subtle mind of great bliss.  More specifically, they are the emptiness of the mind of great bliss appearing in the aspect of these appearances.

Ignorance, quite simply, is believing that an object can exist independent of the mind cognizing it.  We think objects exist out there, waiting to be experienced by mind.  As a result, we think changing our mind changes nothing – the object is still the object.  In reality, mind and its object arise in mutual dependence upon one another.  At a profound level, a single karmic seed pushes up against the fabric of our mind creating a subject-object pair.  If an impure karmic seed ripens, the subject-object pair will be impure; and if a pure karmic seed ripens, the subject-object pair will be pure.

From a practical point of view, however, if we apply effort to change our subject mind it will change the way objects appear to our mind; and if we apply effort to engage pure objects, it will function to make our mind more pure.  If we have an impure mind, it will cause us to see all objects as impure.  If we have a pure mind, we will see all objects as pure.  Likewise, if we engage our mind with an impure object, it will make our mind more impure; and if we engage our mind with a pure object, it will make our mind more pure.

There are two different, mutually supportive, ways of generating great bliss: external and internal.  The external methods are to rely upon a real or an imagined action mudra.  We may wonder, “why is an imagined action mudra considered an external method when the imagined action mudra is generated inside our mind?”  There are two answers.  The first is, as the above discussion indicates, we make a distinction between objects of mind and minds themselves.  All objects of mind are considered to be “external objects” even if the object known is one only known to our mental awareness.  Normally when we refer to external objects our meaning is objects that appear to our sense awareness, but more profoundly it can also include objects that appear only to our mental awareness.  The second answer is external in this context refers to outside our subtle body of channels, drops and winds.  It occurs in the gross deity body, not inside the deity’s subtle body.

It has been explained extensively in the previous posts how we rely upon wisdom and action mudras.  Here, I would like to say a few words about our channels, drops and winds.  Just as our body has different systems to it, such as the circulatory system and the nervous system, so too our mind has different systems to it, such as our gross minds and our subtle body.  Our subtle body is like the mental skeleton of the body of our gross mind.  It is comprised of a series of channels, drops and winds, all of which are described in detail in Mahamudra Tantra, Clear Light of Bliss, Modern Buddhism and Tantric Grounds and Paths.  Briefly, though, our channels are like the system of veins and arteries of our mind.  The drops are like the blood of our mind.  And the winds are like the currents that flow through the channels carrying the drops.  If our channels are blocked, the winds and drops don’t flow through, they then stagnate and imbalances arise.  From the stagnation and imbalances of this inner energy, mental sickness of delusions and physical sicknesses, including cancer, develop.  When the blockages are removed, the winds can flow freely and the drops can circulate effortlessly.  As the drops move through our different channels, we generate a feeling of bliss.  When the drops flow through our central channel, we generate great bliss.  While not physical objects, the quasi-tactile sensation of the mental drops flowing through the mental channels produces an inner experience of bliss.

In particular, it is important to understand the relationship between our mind and winds.  Our mind is likened to somebody with eyes but no legs to move.  The winds are likened to legs with no eyes to see.  When we mount the eyes of our mind onto the legs of our winds, our mind can go anywhere.  Winds and their mounted minds are inseparable.  This has profound practical implication.  It means wherever we send our winds, our mind will automatically go; and wherever we send our mind, our winds will automatically go.  If we want our winds to gather inside our indestructible drop at our heart, we merely need move our mind there.  If we can gather all of our mind there, all our winds will naturally follow.  Likewise, Venerable Tharchin says, “the location of the mind is at the object of cognition.”  If the object of cognition is the moon, our mind and its corresponding winds actually go there.  If the object of cognition is samara, our mind will remain trapped there.  If the object of cognition is the pure land, our mind will actually go there.  Since we naturally impute our I on our mind, if our mind is in the pure land, “we” will also go to the pure land.  If we can keep our mind absorbed in the pure land forever, we will have taken rebirth there and will never fall again.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Why we rely upon an action mudra

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Never to forsake the two kinds of mudra.

When we are qualified we should accept an action mudra.  Until then we should rely upon a visualized wisdom mudra to help us to develop great bliss.

Once again, as explained in earlier posts, we are qualified to accept an action mudra once we have attained isolated speech of completion stage.  Once we have attained this state, unless we are ordained, we should accept an action mudra.  Our motivation for doing so is not attachment, but rather through the practice of relying upon an action mudra we loosen completely the knots of our central channel at our heart.  We want to do this so that all of our inner winds may gather, dissolve and absorb into the indestructible drop at our heart.  When this happens, we will naturally experience the eight signs of dissolution culminating in the full experience of the clear light of Mahamudra.  Once we have attained this supremely blissful mind, we then meditate on the emptiness of our mind of great bliss.  When the duality between our subject mind of great bliss and our object emptiness dissolves, like water mixing with water, we will have attained the realization of meaning clear light. With this powerful mind, we can quickly purify our mind of all of our delusions and their past imprints.  It is said we can even attain enlightenment in as little as three years, or even three months.  When you consider we have been accumulated deluded karmic imprints since beginningless time, this is attaining enlightenment in nearly an instant.  In one powerful blast, all of our past misdeeds are evaporated and we become a Buddha.  There is no more powerful realization than this.

The eight dissolutions are different appearances that arise as our inner winds gradually gather and dissolve into our indestructible drop.  They are explained in detail in all of our Tantric texts, such as Tantric Grounds and Paths and Mahamudra Tantra.  Normally, when our winds dissolve we lose consciousness or awareness of what is appearing to our mind.  But with training, we can learn to maintain our mindfulness and alertness as the winds absorb.  When we do so, we are, for all practical purposes, clearing away an escape route out of the dark storm clouds of samsara and into the clear light skies beyond.  Even though at present our inner winds are not actually gathering and absorbing into our indestructible drop at our heart, we can nonetheless begin imagining that they are and that we are experiencing each of the eight signs of dissolution.  When we do so, our main task is to keep our mind single pointedly on our realization of the emptiness of our mind to which the signs are appearing.  By training in this way in our imagination, we plant powerful karmic seeds which will one day ripen in our actually being able to maintain our mindfulness of emptiness as our winds actually dissolve, either at the time of death or during our future completion stage meditations.

As explained before, when we engage in union we should mentally generate our partner as a fully qualified action mudra, and while our body consciousness may be aware of one thing, our mental consciousness is aware of the two deity bodies engaging in Tantric union.

If we are ordained, we should not take an action mudra, even if we are ready.  The reason for this is simple:  doing so would bring the Sangha and the tantric teachings into disrepute, because conventionally speaking ordained monks and nuns do not engage in union.  While it is true not taking an action mudra may delay our eventual attainment of enlightenment by a few years, the price is small compared to the harm we would do to the tradition if we engaged in union despite being ordained.  Likewise, if we have a committed partner who is not his or herself a qualified action mudra, we should similarly refrain from taking an action mudra because doing so would also bring the tradition into disrepute by creating the impression that it justifies engaging in sexual misconduct.  Remember, our practice of Secret Mantra should not contradict our Pratimoksha vows.  In reality, however, this is a false concern because engaging in union with an imagined action mudra creates the karma for a fully qualified action mudra to appear when we are ready to take one.  It may seem like magic, but in reality it is just karma.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Pleasant feelings are not the problem, attachment is

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Never to lose appreciation for the path of attachment.

Because the beings of this world have very strong attachment we definitely need to practice Secret Mantra, the method for transforming attachment into a cause for generating spontaneous great bliss.  Having found such a wonderful practice we must never lose our appreciation for it.

Attachment is the driving force of this world.  Attachment is a mind that considers certain external objects to be causes of happiness.  From this mind also comes aversion, thinking certain external objects are causes of suffering.  Because it thinks external objects are the causes of happiness, it tries to obtain them; and because it thinks external objects are the causes of suffering, it tries to avoid them.  But no matter how many objects of attachment we obtain, we never find the happiness we seek and we always go looking for new objects of attachment.  No matter how many objects of aversion we avoid, we keep encountering problems, and so there are always new objects of aversion.  If the mind is filled with attachment and aversion it will never be happy because it will keep projecting that we need to obtain and need to avoid yet more things.  This is the experience of everyone, we need only check our own life to confirm its truth.

In reality, both our happiness and suffering are parts of mind.  Therefore, their causes must come from inside the mind.  If we have a mind of contentment, we want for nothing.  If we have a mind of patience, we can accept everything.  Then nothing has the power to disturb our mind.  We can be happy all of the time.  Contentment, quite simply, is the ability to be happy with what we do have, not unhappy about what we don’t have.  Patience, quite simply, is the ability to use any adversity for our spiritual growth and the cultivation of inner peace.  These two minds are the secret to a happy life.  Possessing them makes us truly rich, even if we own nothing.

Once we have reduced our minds of attachment and aversion to more manageable levels by training in contentment and patience, then we are ready to use the instructions of Tantra to transform the residual attachment we experience into the path.  We need to be very clear on this point:  we cannot transform gross, uncontrolled attachment into the path with Tantra.  The reason for this is simple:  delusions function to make our mind uncontrolled, and attachment is nothing other than uncontrolled desire.  If we cannot control our mind, when attachment arises it will seize us and we will become a slave to its desires.  In such a state, it is nearly impossible to recall our Tantric practice, much less engage in it.  If our desire for our objects of attachment is greater than our desire to be free from attachment then it is impossible for us to use Tantra to transform attachment into the path.  This is very clear and there are no exceptions.  So we must first bring our gross attachments under control with the Sutra teachings, in particular those on contentment, renunciation and emptiness.  Once they have been reduced to manageable levels and once our desire to be free from attachment altogether is very strong, we are then ready to transform attachment into the path.  Absent this, what will likely happen is our attachment will kidnap the teachings on Tantra and then use them as an excuse to indulge in our objects of attachment.

In reality, we don’t transform attachment into the path.  Attachment is a delusion, and delusions are objects to be abandoned.  Instead, what we really do is transform pleasant feelings into the path.  There are two types of feelings we can have, pleasant and unpleasant.  We can transform pleasant feelings into the path with Tantra and we can transform unpleasant feelings into the path with the teachings on patient acceptance.  With these two, no matter what we feel, we will always have something to practice.

As explained in earlier posts, we transform pleasant feelings into the path by realizing that the pleasant feeling does not come from the external object, rather it comes from within our mind.  We dissolve the object of attachment into emptiness but retain the pleasant feelings, thus helping us realize clearly happiness comes from within and does not in any way depend upon anything external to us.  In this way, we use the pleasant feelings to dispel the mistaken illusion of external causes of happiness.  In this way, our experience of the pleasant feelings functions to destroy our delusion of attachment.  Such spiritual technology is truly priceless.

Sometimes we can be afraid of Tantra.  We know how strong our attachment is and we know how easy it is for our attachment to kidnap our knowledge of Tantra and use it to justify not ever abandoning our attachment.  So we are reluctant to even try.  This is an extreme, and an example of this downfall.  The way we protect ourselves against this extreme is to say, “I do not need to seek out objects of attachment to transform, rather as I go about my life I will naturally encounter them.  When I do so, even if I don’t succeed in actually transforming the pleasant feelings into the path, I will nonetheless try to do so.  With enough experience born from sincere effort, I will get better and better at doing so until eventually I can do so with any and all objects of attachment.”  This is a balanced way of practicing.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  The emptiness of sex

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

While in union, not to be separated from the view of emptiness.

By maintaining the view of emptiness while in union with a consort we shall experience the bliss of union in a meaningful way, we shall prevent it from causing our delusions to increase, and our act will be a cause for developing and increasing the realizations of Tantra.

Bliss, quite simply, is what emptiness feels like.  When our mind correctly cognizes emptiness, a feeling of qualified bliss naturally arises within our mind.  Qualified bliss is quite different from ordinary bliss arising from attachment.  Ordinary bliss, or the pleasant feelings that sometimes arise when we engage with our objects of attachment, is a grasping mind that looks to something outside of oneself to feel good.  In the Lamrim, indulging in attachment is likened to licking honey off or a razor blade.  You cannot get the honey without being cut.  You may not feel the cut at the time you are licking the honey, but later equally proportionate mental pain is sure to follow in one form or another.  We all have experience of mental pain due to our relationships with our objects of attachment.  If we allow ourselves to become attached to these pleasant feelings, it is certain we will later experience equally painful mental feelings.

When people practice Sutra alone, it is fairly easy to misunderstand the conclusion of the teachings on attachment to think it is somehow a downfall to be happy or to enjoy anything.  They can then fall into some form of the extreme of aestheticism.  I knew a practitioner once who, driven by this misunderstanding, made himself quite miserable.  He thought it was a fault to be happy, and anytime somebody around him was happy he felt it was his duty to rob them of that happiness by judgmentally condemning the person as just indulging in their attachment.  Not only did he kill the joy of his own practice, he wound up deterring people from wanting to take up the spiritual path.  Why would anybody want to become a Buddhist if it makes one that miserable?

While such thinking is a misunderstanding even according to Sutra, it is completely misplaced in Tantra.  The miracle of Tantra is it gives us methods to, as they say in French, “prendre plaisir sans saisir” (take pleasure without grasping).  It makes a clear distinction between pleasant feelings and the external objects we mistakenly think are their cause.  This enables us to enjoy everything without generating delusion.

The way Tantra works is quite simple:  first we generate a spiritual motivation wishing to overcome our delusion of attachment.  Then, when we experience some object of attachment (we do not need to seek out objects of attachment, rather we transform our experience of them when they naturally occur), we generate some pleasant feeling.  Then, we consider how the pleasant feeling is an inner mental feeling, part of the mind.  It is only our ignorance which mistakenly thinks the pleasant feeling comes from the external object when in reality it comes from inside our mind.  We then meditate on the emptiness of the external object of attachment, dissolving it into emptiness, but while doing so we retain the inner pleasant feelings.  When we do this, we will gradually disentangle the pleasant feelings from what mistakenly appears to be their cause (the external object of attachment).  We are then able to maintain the pleasant feelings without depending upon an external object of attachment.  We recognize the pleasant feelings as a similitude of qualified bliss coming from our mind while at the same time meditating on the emptiness of the object of our attachment – realizing that nothing was ever there to begin with.  We then hold this union of bliss and emptiness for as long as possible.

This meditation is an extremely powerful method for quickly overcoming our attachment.  In the Tantric teachings, it is likened to using the wood of attachment to light that fire that burns the attachment completely.  If we do the meditation correctly, when we dissolve the object of attachment into emptiness our pleasant feelings should actually increase.  It does not become more intense, rather it becomes more sublime.  It feels as if the coarseness of the pleasant feelings subside into an extremely pleasant suppleness.  Instead of becoming more agitated, as often occurs when we indulge in objects with our attachment, our mind becomes more peaceful.  Qualified bliss is, quite simply, the feeling of inner peace fully refined.  Our mind becomes so peaceful, so supple, that it feels blissful.  When we are experiencing objects with our attachment, the pleasant feelings within our mind feel fragile like we can lose them quickly and at any time.  When we are experiencing objects with our wisdom realizing emptiness, the pleasant feelings of inner peace feel stable, like everything has settled down into its natural resting place.

When we engage in union with somebody, we have a choice.  We can try enjoy the union with a mind of attachment or we can try enjoy the union with a mind of emptiness.  When we enjoy the union with a mind of attachment, the mind is more agitated and selfish, seeking one’s own pleasure.  The pleasurable feelings are good, but it is devoid of love because we are using the other person for our own purposes.  In much pornography, the participants look angry and they act like crazed animals.  The intention is to make it seem like their primal passions have been unleashed, but all it actually shows is how the mind of attachment destroys the joy even from the act.  Most of us don’t act in such ways, but within ourselves part of our mind is trying to use the other person in this way.  Our goal when engaging in union should be to become a Tantric deity, not a rabid dog.

When we enjoy the union with a mind of emptiness, we naturally become more loving, affectionate, and attentive.  The more we meditate on the emptiness of ourself, our partner and our union, the more it feels as if the barriers between ourself, our partner and indeed the whole world melt away.  As these barriers dissolve, it feels as if we are releasing sublime inner peace into the world as a gift of love.  All agitation subsides, all duality dissolves away.  It is not only more spiritual, it is far more enjoyable for ourself and our partner.  Our delusions subside and our wisdom and feelings of closeness increase.  Tantra is call the Vajrayana path.  Vajra, in this context, means indestructible, inseparable, immovable, unchanging, unshakable inner peace.  When centered within the union of bliss and emptiness, it feels as if we – our mind – are undefilable because we are simply beyond the reach of anything in samsara.  It feels completely unbreakable, not because it can’t be bent but because there is nothing there to bend or break.  It is a completely spacious feeling that is nonetheless a completely immutable foundation.  It feels like an inner radiance vibrantly glowing purely from within without fluctuation.  We feel as if we have tapped into an inexhaustible inner source of joy where we want for nothing, but instead overflow with an abundance of love generously pouring out in all directions.

Vows, commitments and modern life:  Who you live with matters

Kadampa Ryan Vows, commitments and daily life

Staying seven days in the home of someone who rejects the Vajrayana.

We incur this downfall if without a good reason we stay for more than seven days in the home of a person who is critical of the Vajrayana.

The logic behind this is fairly straightforward.  We are by nature social creatures, and so we naturally become socialized into the views of those around us.  This happens almost automatically, as if by osmosis.  Of course, if we are mindful, it is possible to avoid this affect, but most of us are rarely sufficiently mindful.  Because of this socialization effect, we are advised to avoid those who are critical of the Dharma, in particular the Vajrayana path, and to instead choose to spend as much time as we can with those who embrace the path.  In this way we protect ourselves from sub-consciously taking on board their critical views and assumptions, and instead willingly socialize ourselves into a Dharma way of looking at the world.

The second reason why we want to avoid this is to protect those who are critical.  It can happen that people are so adverse to our practice that our very presence is a constant reminder of it.  In such a situation, every time they see us – even if they say nothing to our face – they create an endless series of negative karma of rejecting the Dharma by our being around.  In order to protect them from creating such karma we try not to stay too long.

Sometimes this can pose a problem for us when we go home to visit our family during the holidays, for example, if they are hostile to our practice.  If we do find ourselves in such a situation and it would be karmically inappropriate for us to not visit our family, we should just strive to be mindful when we are home.  If we are seen to be avoiding them, and they are aware it is because of our practice, then even our absence is a form of presence and we incur a similar downfall.  For example, if we are normally there for Thanksgiving in the U.S., but then we are not because of our practice, even though we are not there our mere absence itself will be seen, and that absence will be understood as “it is because they have gone off and joined some cult, and now they don’t even come home.”  So we need to be skillful.  Normally, though, if we do not flaunt our practice and rub our relatives noses in it, they are unlikely to actively oppose it and we should be OK.