3. Tantra

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Our actual refuge

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

To go for refuge to Dharma

It is not enough to wish to become an enlightened being, we must know how to do it.  Dharma usually has two different non-contradictory meanings.  The first is the Dharma is the set of instructions given by Buddha explaining to us, step by step, how we transform our mind from its current deluded state into that of a Buddha.  It teaches us how to identify within ourselves the states of mind we need to abandon and explains how to do so.  It also reveals to us the inner qualities we need to cultivate and provides methods for doing so.  It is a complete path that connects each and every mind to the final destination of enlightenment without any gaps or obstructions.  Just as all roads lead to Rome, so too all Dharma paths eventually lead to enlightenment.

The second meaning of Dharma is the realizations of the truth of Dharma within our own minds.  In other words, Dharma is not just the instructions for how to gain realizations, but it is also the realizations itself.  Because all our suffering comes from our delusions and negativity, Dharma is our real refuge because it protects us from these things.  If we have a realization of patience, it protects us from the harms of anger.  If we have a realization of love, it protects us from the dangers of self-cherishing.  If we have a realization of our precious human life, it protects us from wasting it on meaningless things.  Tantric realizations protect us from ordinary appearance and ordinary conceptions.  This is our actual refuge, and all other forms of refuge are ultimately aimed at building within our own mind the definitive refuge of our Dharma realizations. 

The root of refuge is understanding the nature of our inner problem.  Doctors say 85% of good medicine is correct diagnosis of the problem.  When the problem is correctly diagnosed, then the treatment becomes obvious.  Our fundamental problem is we are confused about the nature of our problem.  We are convinced our problem is what is happening externally, with some things being good and other things being bad.  So we put all our effort into changing our external circumstance and it seems to us that the Dharma is useless at best since it does nothing to solve what we perceive to be our problem.  Due to not understanding the nature of our problem, we gradually have less time and energy for Dharma because we are absorbed with other things.  But when we are very clear about the nature of our problem, the need to go for refuge to the Dharma becomes obvious.  If our problem is an internal one, it is clear that external things won’t help us solve our problem.  We will then look at different internal solutions, and investigate their different qualities, and eventually we come to see that the Dharma is the solution.  In particular, when we come to understand our problem is our mind is plagued by the wisdom grasping at inherent existence, we realize that only the Dharma can provide us with a solution because only it teaches emptiness.

Since Dharma itself has two meanings, to go for refuge to Dharma, therefore also has two meanings.  The first is to make effort to seek out Dharma instructions and to improve our understanding of what we need to do to actually train our mind.  Fortunately, Geshe-la makes this very easy for us.  He has given us a complete set of books that meticulously go over every stage of the path from our first steps all the way to the final goal.  He has struck the perfect balance of giving us everything we need and nothing we don’t need.  Likewise, he has established for us Dharma centers throughout the world so that we can receive teachings directly.  Having books is great, but having somebody we can go to and receive individually tailored instructions is invaluable.

The second way of going for refuge is to make the pursuit of the inner wealth of Dharma realizations our life purpose.  We see that our problem is our mind and we make effort to actually change our mind in the direction the Dharma teaches.  If what we want out of life is to increase our realizations, then we suddenly develop a genuine equanimity with respect to life’s ups and downs.  It really doesn’t matter what happens because we know how to use everything to train our mind.  Since every situation is equally empty, we realize every circumstance is equally good in terms of the opportunity it affords us to train our mind.  The driving force of business people is making money, and motivated by this wish they work incredibly long hours and devote tremendous energy.  With the same vigor, we pursue the inner wealth of Dharma realizations.  They are our bottom line.  If the pursuit of inner wealth is our life’s purpose, it doesn’t matter if we are young or old, rich or poor, powerful or not, sick or healthy, in every circumstance we can practice.  Nothing can interfere with us doing what we wish.  Because we know we are building for a better future we get something more fulfilling than temporary pleasure, we get inner contentment and confidence knowing we are on the right track.

But we should not fool ourselves.  Training in Dharma is not easy, in fact sometimes it can be very hard.  We have literally aeons worth of bad habits built up, and these do not change over night – they scarcely change even after decades of practice.  But they do change, and because the Dharma presents correct methods, if we never give up, it is guaranteed we will get there in the end.  In sports, we say “no pain, no gain,” meaning if it isn’t hurting, you are probably not making any progress.  It is the same with our Dharma practice.  When we actually try go against the grain of our delusions, in particular our attachment, it can be really difficult, even sometimes painful.  But like a rebel soldier fighting for a good cause, we gladly assume the difficulty because we know it is worth it in the end.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  What does a Buddha see?

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

To go for refuge to Buddha

A Buddha is an enlightened being, somebody who has already completed the path.  Every Buddha was once just like us, an ordinary, ignorant person prone to mistakes and sorrow.  They realized the nature of their problem, put effort into improving themselves, and continued to do so until they became completely free from all delusions and the imprints of their past deluded actions.  Once they attained that state, the duality between them and everyone else (indeed, everything else) disappeared.  They ceased to be a being somehow trapped in just one body repetitively dying and being reborn, and they transcended into a higher state that is simultaneously beyond samsara yet still active to the beings who appear themselves within it.  Because they lack nothing, they give everything continuously. 

They realize that everyone can enjoy the same blissful state and so they work tirelessly to gradually lead everyone to freedom.  When someone we know dies, it feels to us as if they have left this world.  When we die and are reborn, we have no recollection of our past lives and everyone seems a stranger.  For a Buddha, even though their conventional emanations may cease, they never feel as if they die.  They remember their relationships with every living being and work to build upon them.  When somebody dies and is reborn, the Buddha just picks up where they left off with that person, just in a different karmically appearing context.  They can see directly into other’s minds in exactly the same way we currently see into our own.  But unlike us, they don’t judge anybody for their confusion or delusions, rather they realize all these beings are simply confused, indeed deceived by their deluded states of mind.  So they patiently try reveal the paths of wisdom while respecting everyone’s individual choice to follow it or not.  They do not feel as if they are in one place and not another, but they experience themselves as simultaneously being everywhere, equally fully present for each and every living being helping in every way possible every day.

Sadly the Buddha sees (from one perspective at least) that the minds of virtually all beings remain completely closed, and indeed blind to the fact that they are suffering from a schizophrenic hallucination that they believe to be real.  Driven by this confusion, living beings endlessly harm, rape, even kill one another.  They constantly create the causes for their future suffering, creating false divisions and differences between people.  Endlessly, they see beings being chewed up in the meat grinder of samsara, relentlessly without end.

But they also see when practitioners generate Buddhas within their own minds, such as in our sadhanas or Tantric practices, it is like a portal opens up between the infinite ocean of wisdom and compassion of the Buddha’s mind and the mind of the individual practitioner.  Buddha’s blessings spontaneously pour through this opening in the same way water pours through the opening of a dam.  In this way, the Buddha feels as if they are nourishing the minds of living beings.  Gradually, over time, just like a baby growing in the womb of its mother, a living emanation takes root within the minds of some.  Most of the time, the being is closed off to this Buddha within their heart, but some are making sincere efforts to align themselves further and further with the Buddha within them.  They seek to stop identifying with their ordinary body and mind, and instead to start to identify with the Buddha emanating within.  Gradually, the duality between themselves and the emanation ceases, and then the duality between the emanation and the Buddha themselves ceases.  Then, like a magic crystal opening up, the being is able to reflect more and more purely the light and actions of the Buddha in this world. 

Some very rare beings reach the stage where they can do this most of the time, if not all the time, and their every action of body, speech and mind is actually that of the Buddha in this world.  Such a being is known as a “Spiritual Guide.”  A Spiritual Guide is like a sun within the darkness of the world, radiating out in all directions.  Normally we think of the sun as the ball fire in the center of our solar system, but in reality, can we say the rays of sun that reach the earth are separate from the sun itself?  In the same way, the countless emanations of Buddha in this world are not separate from or other than the Buddha himself. 

To go for refuge to Buddha, then, means to turn to this light.  To make effort to open our mind to it so that these blessings may flow down into us.  It is to realize there are immortal enlightened beings standing ready to enter our life and draw us back into their bosom.  It is to be inspired to become an instrument through which they work in this world.  It is to aspire to become just like them.  It is to long to unite inseparably with them for all time.

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Building the body of a Buddha in this world

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

The six commitments of the family of Buddha Vairochana

The practice of the six commitments of the family of Buddha Vairochana function primarily to create the karmic causes to attain the form body of a Buddha.  The form body of a Buddha is a conventionally physical force that, while existing outside of samsara, nonetheless operates within it in a way that is perfectly consistent with virtue.  Its function is to provide a living example of how one acts in a way consistent with the Dharma and to provide living beings with whatever they need to enter, progress along, and complete the path to enlightenment. 

It is a mistake to conceive of the form body of a Buddha as somehow confined to the physical body of a single human being.  It is something much, much larger.  It is informative to use Geshe-la as an example.  Conventionally, we can say that Geshe-la’s body in this world is that of a Tibetan monk.  His speech in this world is the words that come out of his mouth and through his written words.  His mind is what is inside his body thinking about the rest of the world.  From one perspective, this is completely correct.  But from a deeper perspective, we can say his larger body in this world is all our bodies when we try put into practice his teachings with our body, his larger speech in this world is all our speech when we try say things consistent with what he has taught us, and his larger mind is all our own thinking to the extent that it has been influenced by his teachings.  After he passes away, this larger body will continue to exist, grow and function in this world.  Conventionally, we will say that he has died, but in a deeper sense he will live on in a different form.  We are, even now, part of his body, speech, and mind in this world.  Christians have a similar concept of the living Christ.  This is no different than the ways in which our loved ones “live on” through us when we carry forward and embody that which they have transmitted to us.  By extension, we can understand the living Buddha’s form body in this world by seeing the evolution and development of Buddhism in this world, in all its myriad forms, of which the Kadampa tradition is merely one part.  Geshe-la imputes his I on all that.

From a Tantric perspective, Buddha’s form body is not something that is somehow limited to just the things we would conventionally call “Buddhist.”  But we can literally “inject” Buddha’s body, speech, and mind into everything that appears to our mind.  Whether the world we inhabit is samsara or the pure land, in the final analysis, depends entirely upon our own mental choices.  One of the unique qualities of a Buddha is wherever you imagine them, they actually go; and wherever they go, they accomplish their function, which is namely to ripen and liberate living beings.  If I view my boss as an emanation, he will function for me as an emanation.  From his own side, he may see himself in a different way, but his view of himself does not limit in any way my view of him.  He can, for me, function as an emanation.  The same is true for everything we encounter, every physical form we come in contact with, every sound we hear, every idea or thought expressed.  Everything can be viewed – validly – as the body, speech, and mind of Buddha in this world.  With such recognitions, we will experience our living reality as everything being the unfolding of enlightenment in this world.

The first three commitments of the family of Buddha Vairochana are to go for refuge to Buddha, to go for refuge to Dharma and to go for refuge to Sangha.  In this post, I will explain in general what it means to go for refuge, and in the subsequent posts I will describe what it means for each one.

When people first encounter Buddhism and they hear the phrase “go for refuge” it sounds quite strange, almost cult-like.  But the true meaning is actually something very practical.  When you have a legal problem, you turn to a lawyer for help; when you have a dental problem, you turn to a dentist for help; when you have a delusion problem, you turn to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.  It starts with the recognition of the nature of our problem, then transitions into an appreciation of how these three can help us with our problem, and it ends with our applying effort to change our own mind and behavior.  The Three Jewels cannot help us fix our car, but they can help us have a better attitude about it breaking down.  The Three Jewels cannot solve our legal or financial problems, but they can help us transform such problems into the path to enlightenment.  As Buddhists we rely upon external help for our external problems just like everybody else, but we also rely upon the Three Jewels for our internal problem of our unhappy, negative, deluded states of mind.  We have two different types of problem (external and internal) and therefore two different types of solution (external and internal).  Our going for refuge to the three jewels is simply our turning towards them to solve our internal problem. 

Vows, commitments, and modern life:  Build the five Buddha families within your mind

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, Vows, commitments and daily life

The nineteen commitments of the five Buddha families

It is very important to keep our Tantric commitments purely.  If we do, and on this basis we practice the generation and completion stages, we can attain Buddhahood in this life; but if we break our vows and commitments we create immense obstacles to our spiritual development.

As was mentioned earlier, our vows and commitments are the essential methods by which we practically bring our own actions in line with our spiritual intentions.  Each vow is like a road sign that points in the direction of enlightenment.  If we follow all the road signs of the refuge vows, we can maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our Buddhist practice in this or our future lives; if we follow all the road signs of the pratimoksha vows, we create the causes to maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our path to liberation; if we follow all the road signs of the bodhisattva vows, we maintain the continuum of our path to enlightenment; and if we follow all the road signs of our tantric vows, we maintain the continuum of our Tantric path and we will swiftly attain enlightenment.  Just as the Dharma books have a “condensed meaning of the text” we can correctly view the vows and commitments as the condensed meaning of the various paths. 

In the Lamrim teachings, it says our chances of finding the Buddhadharma in any given life are about the same as a blind turtle at the bottom of an ocean the size of this world who rises to the surface only once every 100,000 years who manages to put his head right through a golden yoke floating on the surface.  I did the math once, and this is something like once every 640 billion lifetimes.  Finding the Tantric path is rarer still.  It is said only the 4th, 11th and last of the 100 Buddhas of this fortunate aeon will teach Tantra.  If we assume an aeon is 1 million years (I think it is much longer, but this is long enough to illustrate the point), and we assume that the Dharma of any given Buddha lasts about 5,000 years, it means the probability of Tantric teachings even being around when the turtle raises its head is only 1.5%.  This translates into our finding the Tantric path only once every 42.5 trillion lifetimes!  But miraculously we have found it in this lifetime.  If we do not want to wait another 42.5 trillion lifetimes to find it again, it would be advisable to keep our tantric vows purely in this life.  Doing so enables us to beat the odds and maintain the continuum of our tantric practice until we attain the final goal. 

Keeping commitments is the best means to attain success in our generation and completion stage practices.  It is the very life of Tantric practice.  When we keep our Tantric vows and commitments, we plant on our mind the karma which will ripen in the form of Tantric realizations.  Our practice of moral discipline plants the seeds, our actual practice of generation stage and completion stage function to ripen those seeds.  Even knowledge of these vows is like being given the secret code that enables you to unlock the mysteries of the universe.  Nothing is more important, and we should consider ourselves incredibly fortunate to even have the opportunity to know of these, much less have the opportunity to put them into practice.

The 19 commitments of the five Buddha families are the very methods by which we acquire the five completely pure aggregates of a Buddha.  At present we impute our I onto our five contaminated aggregates (form, feeling, discrimination, compositional factors, and consciousness).  These are essentially our contaminated body and mind.  The only reason why we experience the sufferings of a samsaric being is because we impute our I onto samsaric contaminated aggregates.  If instead we imputed our I onto the pure aggregates of a Buddha, we would experience the eternal bliss of enlightenment.  We already have an “I”, but the question is how do we generate qualified five pure aggregates that we can then identify with?  The answer is through our practice of the 19 commitments of the five Buddha families. 

These will now be explained in detail over the next several posts.

It’s Not a Fault to Also Use Dharma to Solve Our External Problems:

Kadampa Ryan 2. Modern Bodhisattva's Way of Life, 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden , , , ,

When people first come into Dharma, they quite naturally think that the source of their problems is their external circumstances. This is what our delusions have been telling us since beginningless time, so of course they think that. Perhaps this was our story as well.

I remember once when I was in Geneva, there was a homeless guy who came to the center and he asked what we were all about and if we could help him. We explained that we can do nothing to help him with his external problem, but we can help him solve his internal problem. He replied, “what good would that do, even if I change my mind, I’m still going to be on the street, so that doesn’t help me.” Then he left. While that may be an extreme example, there are perhaps traces of this logic in many of us. We are convinced our problem is our external circumstance, and so fail to see the value of Dharma, so we never get serious about practicing it.

But when we came to our very first General Program class, we almost certainly received some variant of the teachings on inner peace as the true cause of happiness, how we find happiness from a different source. The logic for this is simple: happiness or suffering are states of mind, therefore their causes must come from within the mind. If we check, when our mind is peaceful, we are happy even if our external circumstance is terrible; and if our mind is not peaceful, we are not happy even if our external circumstance is ideal. This shows that our happiness does not depend upon our external circumstance, but instead depends upon our mind. Therefore, if we want to be happy, we need to train our mind – find happiness from a difference source, from within. Delusions function to destroy our inner peace and virtues function to cultivate it, so the name of the game is abandon all our delusions and cultivate every virtue until eventually we are happy all the time, in this life and in life after life. These teachings likely changed our life and began our Dharma practice.

We also no doubt received the teaching on the distinction between our outer problem and our inner problem with the example of our car breaking down. Normally, when our car breaks down, we think “I have a problem.” Geshe-la explains no, when our car breaks down, our car has a problem. Our problem is our deluded mental reaction to this event. The car breaking down is our outer problem, our mental unhappiness about it is our inner problem. We need a mechanic to solve our outer problem, and we need Dharma to solve our inner problem. All that of course is true, but we can sometimes become extreme with even that teaching. I know I did.

We have also all received the teachings on how it is a misuse of Dharma to use it for worldly purposes, especially the tantric teachings. Like using $500 bills for toilet paper or for lighting a fire. I became a purist with this, thinking it is somehow wrong to use Dharma to solve our external problems – a misuse of the teachings. I thought I just needed to accept the adversity and transform it into the path; and to do otherwise was somehow non-Dharma. I remember there was a time in the early 2000s when a particular very senior teacher was teaching it was wrong, for example, to take medicines or receive normal medical care if we had the ability to transform our sickness or pain into the path. We should push ourselves to our limit. Yeah, we know the teachings on patient acceptance say take the aspirin and then practice acceptance while we wait for it to take effect, but our pride and misunderstanding told us that teaching was for beginners. We are an advanced practitioner, so if we can transform it we should and not take the aspirin. Complete nonsense and in total contradiction with what Venerable Geshe-la teaches.

Those who have been reading my thoughts on line for some time no doubt know that Dorje Shugden is my favorite Buddha. I solve basically all of my delusions with my reliance upon him. My deepest wish genuinely is to make progress along the path. So I request him to arrange whatever conditions are best for my swiftest possible enlightenment. If the difficult situation changes, great; but if it doesn’t, then I accept this is what I need for my path. It may suck for my worldly concerns, but it is what I need for my spiritual progress, so I accept the difficulty as what his omniscient wisdom is arranging for me. Since I know it is perfect for my training, I can be happy with it, even if it is difficult. I see how it is good for my path, so I focus on that. This is wonderful. But it can also be taken to an extreme. I know I did. I started to think it was somehow wrong to change my external circumstances. I just needed to rely on Dorje Shugden, and if he didn’t change the external circumstance, then it must be what I needed, so I thought it was almost a betrayal of my faith in him to try to change my circumstance.

These errors in my thinking transformed my Dharma practice into some form of sado-masochism. The sign I was a good Dharma practitioner was just how much pain I could endure, a modern ascetic. I could even develop forms of pride in my ability to endure so much. It also helped contribute to the martyr complex I developed – I needed to stick around in suffering situations, be willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of supposedly “helping” others. Perhaps this is also your story to an extent.

I don’t want to publicly go into the details, but about a year and a half ago, I realized the first level of my mistake. If there was something I could do externally to change my circumstance so it wasn’t so miserable, I should do so and there is no fault in doing so. Indeed, it became a bodhichitta imperative that I do so. While at one level, this is obvious – Geshe-la does advise us to do so if we can – it was actually quite revolutionary for me to actually do so because I had fallen into the extremes explained above.

But I still thought it was somehow wrong to actually use the Dharma to change my external circumstance. Sure, it is OK to use external means to change my external circumstance, but surely it is a misuse of the Dharma to use it to change my external circumstance. I kept a strict firewall: external methods to solve external problems; Dharma to solve inner problems. But this too is an extreme. The Dharma actually teaches all sorts of methods for solving our external problems. To refrain from using them because we are some purist or we think doing so is for beginners (and our pride thinks we are an advanced practitioner) is just dumb. The teaching say if there is something we can do to change our circumstance, we should do it. It doesn’t just say if there are external things we can do, we should do them; it says if there is anything we can do, we should do so. So there is no fault in also using Dharma methods to solve our external problems.

For example, Venerable Geshe-la teaches various purification practices, like Vajrasattva, to purify our negative karma. So when negative karma is ripening, it’s perfectly OK for us to engage in our Vajrasattva practice to try purify that karma so it is less bad. Likewise, he teaches the practice of the Great Mother for dispelling obstacles. Sure, nothing is inherently an obstacle and with Dorje Shugden’s blessings we can view it as perfect for our spiritual training, but there is also nothing wrong with saying it sure would be better if I didn’t have these difficulties. So dispel away without thinking you are doing something wrong by doing so. Likewise, he teaches all sorts of methods for increasing our merit, such as making mandala offerings. Amitayus practice is all about increasing our merit, lifespan, and realizations. We struggle because we lack merit, so accumulate merit with the hope of improving your circumstance. Look at the dedication prayers in Chapter 10 of Shantideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life. There is no reason we cannot pray in the same way. These are all things we can do to improve our external situation and they are all taught by Venerable Geshe-la. Surely there is no fault in using them. They too are things we can do to change our external circumstance, so we should do them.

Of course we should try do so with increasingly pure Lamrim motivations, and not out of attachment or aversion. There are all sorts of initial scope, intermediate scope, and great scope reasons to improve our external circumstance if we can. So we should strive to do these Dharma methods for changing our external circumstance for increasingly pure Dharma reasons.

Likewise, if after using all of these Dharma methods to try to solve our external problems the external situation remains unchanged, then we can practice patient acceptance, faith in Dorje Shugden trusting whatever is happening is what we need for our path, and so forth. But we should not refrain from using these Dharma methods for solving our external problems thinking it is somehow wrong to do so.

Obvious conclusion you might say? Yes, in many ways that is true. But for some reason, it took me 30 years of Dharma practice before I realized it to be true. I was trying so hard to be the perfect Dharma practitioner who never misused the teachings that I in fact wound up rejecting some of the Dharma Venerable Geshe-la taught us. I share all this in case there are others who have been making similar mistakes as I have. And perhaps also to help others not go down the mistaken roads I have. If there is something you can do about it – externally or internally – DO IT! Without guilt, without shame, and unapologetically, do it. As it says on the tattoo I recently got, “sorry not sorry, namaste bitches.” 🙂

Happy Heruka Day: Enjoying An Ocean of Bliss and Emptiness

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

Today is Heruka Day, which takes place during Heruka and Vajrayogini month (otherwise known as January), and is a special day when his blessings are particularly powerful.  Most of all, on this day we can recall his kindness and make an effort to bring him to life in our world.

Who is Heruka?

Heruka is the manifestation of the compassion of all the Buddhas.  Out of his Truth Body, he emanates himself as a complete path from the deepest hell to the highest enlightenment.  He is Keajra Pure Land, which is not some distant place but rather a different way of looking at our world.  He emanates in this world as Spiritual Guides who in turn introduce us to Keajra Pure Land.  We then begin to connect with it, and as we do, we are guided progressively to purer and purer states of mind.  Geshe-la once said the mind of Lamrim is Akanishta Pure Land – a revealing way of phrasing things, a mind as a place.  Heruka is the principal deity of Akanishta Pure Land.  Our Spiritual Guides first guide us into Lamrim (Akanishta), then conventional Keajra Pure Land through generation stage, then definitive Keajra Pure Land through completion stage.  Finally, we attain union with definitive Heruka, the omniscient mind of great bliss realizing directly and simultaneously the emptiness of all things.  Heruka is not just this final state, he is the entire path to it.  He is the compassion of all the Buddhas manifesting as the quick path to enlightenment.

My favorite description of Heruka is Chakrasambara.  As Geshe-la explains in Essence of Vajrayana:

“Another term for Heruka is ‘Chakrasambara.’  ‘Chakra’ means ‘wheel,’ and in this context refers to the ‘wheel’ of all phenomena.  ‘Sambara’ means the supreme bliss, which is called ‘spontaneous great bliss.’  Together ‘Chakra’ and ‘sambara’ reveal that by practicing Heruka Tantra we gain a profound realization that experiences all phenomena as one nature with our mind of great bliss.  This realization directly removes subtle dualistic appearances from our mind, and due to this we quickly become definitive Heruka.”

This realization is called “meaning clear light,” and Geshe-la explains in Guide to Dakini Land that if we gain this realization, we can attain enlightenment within six months.  This does not mean we can attain enlightenment in six months from the time we start practicing Heruka.  It will take a long time to gain the realization of meaning clear light, but once we do, we can attain enlightenment in six months.  Practicing Heruka is the quickest method for attaining the realization of meaning clear light.  At a minimum, through our sincere practice of Heruka in this life, if we can die with a mind of compassion and faith in Heruka, it is definite we can be reborn in his pure land.  From there, we will be able to quickly attain meaning clear light and then enlightenment.  This is our incredible good fortune. 

Recalling the Kindness of Heruka

The very heart of the sadhana Offering to the Spiritual Guide is the Single-Pointed Request, which can be understood as a prayer to Heruka as Keajra Pure Land. 

You are the Guru, you are the Yidam, you are the Daka and Dharma Protector;

From now until I attain enlightenment I shall seek no refuge other than you.

In this life, in the bardo, and until the end of my lives, please hold me with the hook of your compassion,

Liberate me from the fears of samsara and peace, bestow all the attainments, be my constant companion, and protect me from all obstacles.  

The first line reveals the vastness of Heruka.  Heruka is by nature our Guru and our Guru is Heruka.  All Tantric practices are fundamentally trainings in guru yoga – a special way of viewing the deity and the guru as inseparably one.  Saying Heruka is our Guru and our Guru is Heruka evokes different meanings, and both are true simultaneously.  Heruka is also our Yidam or our personal deity.  He is the Buddha we seek to become and our ultimate role model.  Christians ask, “what would Jesus do,” we ask, “what would Heruka do,” and we seek to do that.  Heruka is also the Daka, which here refers to the Heroes and Heroines of his body mandala.  These deities are his retinue, but also his spiritual limbs.  Heruka is also the Dharma Protector.  He manifests Dorje Shugden as the Protector of the Guru’s words.  Conventionally, Heruka appears as the totality of his Pure Land, from the HUM at his heart to the principal deity (Yidam); to the body mandala deities (Daka); to his celestial mansion, Mount Meru, and the continents (his gross body); to the charnel grounds (his perception of samsara); to Dorje Shugden’s protection circle surrounding it all transforming whatever appears into a perfect condition for the enlightenment of all beings within Heruka’s pure land.

The second line explains how we rely upon Heruka.  It begins with an understanding of both why we go for refuge to him and for how long our commitment to doing so is – namely to attain enlightenment and until we do.  Geshe-la explains Heruka’s power is only unleashed within us in dependence upon our motivation of Bodhichitta, the wish to become a Buddha for the benefit of all. 

The third line makes our reliance upon Heruka pure.  In Joyful Path, Geshe-la explains what makes our spiritual practice pure instead of worldly is whether we are engaging in it for the sake of all of our future lives or the sake of this life.  We rely upon Heruka in this life, in the bardo, and in all of our future lives.  What do we request of him?  That he always hold us with the hook of his compassion.  The ocean of samsara is vast and it is easy to get lost at sea and drown, but out of his compassion for us, he throws us a hook we can grab onto.  If we never let go, he will pull us to safety.  What is this hook and how does it appear in our life?  It primarily appears as our Spiritual Guide, but it also manifests as the Daka and the Dharma Protector. 

The fourth line reveals Heruka’s main function; or put another way, the principal benefits of relying upon him.  His aspect of the Guru functions to liberate us from the fears of samsara and peace.  Peace here refers to the solitary peace of individual liberation, which is nice for us but useless for others.  We pray to never get trapped in solitary peace but instead strive to become a Buddha who works until the end of time to free others from their suffering.  His aspect of the Yidam functions to bestow all the attainments.  Bestow is a beautiful word as it implies the giving of something precious.  In truth, we attain enlightenment by the Buddhas bestowing the realizations of their mind upon ours, like a gift.  Of course, we must do certain things from our side to open up our mind to receive these precious gifts, but by nature, our future realizations of the stages of the path are actually by nature aspects of our Yidam’s mind.  His aspect of Daka functions to be our constant companion.  In other words, the deities of the body mandala – Heruka’s retinue – are his companions who not only bless our own channels, drops, and winds, but similarly bless all living beings as they fulfill Heruka’s wishes in this world.  His aspect of Dharma Protector functions to protect ourselves and all the beings inside Heruka’s mandala from all obstacles to our spiritual practice.  Nothing is an obstacle from its own side.  Things only become obstacles when we relate to them in a deluded way.  Dorje Shugden is first and foremost a wisdom Buddha, meaning he grants us the wisdom to be able to see how whatever arises is perfect for our spiritual training.  Since his protection circle envelopes all of Keajra, from the Charnel Grounds to the HUM at Heruka’s heart, he is likewise bestowing similar wisdom blessings on the minds of all living beings.  This is why for Heruka samsara appears as the Charnel Grounds.  In the Charnel Grounds, even though conventionally horrific things appear, they are all understood and seen as powerful Dharma teachings propelling us towards enlightenment.  When we have this wisdom, when others come to us with their difficulties, we fail to even see a problem, we see only spiritual opportunity.  We then share our perspective with others, empowering them to transform their life into a joyful path of good fortune. 

For myself, I recite the Single-Pointed request with these recognitions day and night as I go about my day.  It is my daily mantra, and with every recitation, it draws me closer to Heruka.  In my meditation itself, I try to gain experience for what it feels like to be Heruka in Keajra.

Bringing Heruka to Life in our World

We can sometimes feel like Heruka is not in this world and our attainment of union with him is very far off.  Both of these perceptions are completely wrong.  Heruka is the ultimate nature of everything in this world and attaining union with him is simply one recognition away.  How can we bridge the gap between these two very different views?  Through the practice of the Eight Lines of Praise of the Father.  This is a special method for activating Heruka’s function in this world through us.  On the basis of this feeling we simply recognize ourselves as Heruka.  Through continual training in this practice, the gap between our normal perception and our enlightened perception collapses until eventually, we experience ourselves directly as Heruka in this world performing his enlightened deeds for the benefit of all.   As Geshe-la says in Essence of Vajrayana, “By sincerely reciting these praises we swiftly purify our ordinary appearances and reach Heruka’s Pure Land.”

The Eight Lines of Praise are almost like words of a magical spell, which function to invoke or activate the different functions of Heruka we are praising. 

OM I Prostrate to the Blessed One, Lord of the Heroes HUM HUM PHAT

When we recite this line, we request Heruka’s body to become active in this world.  His body is the form aspect of Keajra Pure Land.  In Keajra, every form that appears is understood as a powerful Dharma teaching by all those who behold it.  Heruka manifests as whatever living beings need to be led to enlightenment.  While Keajra Pure Land is shaped like a mountain, it’s spiritual gradient is more like a funnel.  No matter where you drop something in a funnel, it is eventually guided down into the center of the funnel.  In the same way, no matter where you find yourself in Keajra Pure Land – from the Charnel Grounds to the principal deity’s body – you are inexorably drawn towards the indestructible wind inside Heruka’s heart chakra.  By activating Heruka’s form body in our world, we are “inviting all beings to be our guests” in our Pure Land where we engage in the pleasing supreme practices of enlightenment.  We then strongly believe that whatever forms appear to the minds of any living being, they are by nature emanations of Heruka’s form body, revealing the truth of Dharma and guiding all beings towards his heart. 

In particular, when we recite this line, we can imagine that our body is Heruka’s majestic body.  Our eyes may continue to perceive the body that we normally see, but our mind’s eyes of faith see ourselves as Heruka.  In Essence of Vajrayana, it explains the symbolism of Heruka’s body.  The short version is it reveals all of the essential stages of the path to enlightenment.  Buddhas can manifest their inner realizations as forms.  The main point is we should disregard, even forget, our body that we normally see and believe that through our recitation of this line of the prayer we perceive our body to be Heruka’s body.

OM To you with a brilliance equal to the fire of the great aeon HUM HUM PHAT

When we recite this line, we invoke/activate Heruka’s speech.  In Keajra, every sound is arising from Heruka’s enlightened speech and it functions to reveal the truth of Dharma.  When we recite this, we imagine that every sound, even the rustling of leaves in the wind, is actually vajra songs teaching Dharma.  His speech burns away the ordinary conceptions and ignorance of living beings like a great wisdom fire that radiates out and burns away all delusions.  In particular, we should imagine that from this point forward all of our own speech is actually Heruka’s speech being spoken through us.  Instead of saying whatever comes to our mind, we get out of the way and let him speak through us.  If we are practicing this at the level of completion stage, we can recall that the nature of sound is wind, and so all sounds are actually the whistling of Heruka’s pure winds blowing through the world.

OM To you with an inexhaustible topknot HUM HUM PHAT

With this line we imagine we invoke/activate Heruka’s mind in our world, symbolized by his topknot.  There are two aspects of his mind in particular worth noting.  First, his mind sees all past, present, and future phenomena directly and simultaneously.  He sees everything that has been, everything that is, and everything that will be as one inseparable ocean.  This wisdom knowing the three times is extremely effective for being able to help people because we can see the karmic why they are currently facing the situations they are facing and all of the different possible futures they will experience depending upon how they respond to their present circumstance.  Heruka sees everything as currents and continuums, like spiritual winds blowing through time, not static pictures that seem arbitrary and bewildering.  Second, his mind has the power to bestow the realizations of Chakrasambara on others, in other words, his mind functions to gather and dissolve all phenomena into the ocean of bliss and emptiness.  When impure winds cease to flow, the waves of appearance subside, and the ocean of our mind settles into a blissful clarity.  Heruka’s mind naturally draws all phenomena back into this original source of all purity.  When we recite this line, we feel as if these two powers of his mind are now active.  We start to see the three times as Heruka does and we feel all phenomena settling down into the ocean of our mind of clear light emptiness.

OM To you with a fearsome face and bared fangs HUM HUM PHAT

When we recite this line, we imagine we gain Heruka’s great wisdom knowing clearly and unmistakenly what are the objects to be abandoned and what are the objects to be attained, not only for ourselves, but for all living beings.  Not being clear about this is our fundamental problem and the source of all of our suffering.  In Modern Buddhism, Geshe-la makes a clear distinction between our outer problem and our inner problem.  If our car breaks down, normally we think, “I have a problem.”  No, our car has a problem.  Our problem is our inner problem of relating to this appearance in a deluded way.  We need a mechanic to fix our car, and we need to change our mind to solve our inner problem.  Fixing our outer problem will not solve our inner problem.  If we continue to have our inner problem, we will just project it onto some other external circumstance and think now that needs to be fixed too.  Worldly beings are convinced their problem is what is happening externally, and they expend all of their energy trying to solve all of their outer problems, but no matter how many times they do, they continue to have the same sorts of problems just with different faces or different sets of external appearance.  The reason for this is they have not solved their inner problem.  Heruka’s great wisdom enables us to see clearly that our own and others’ actual problem lies within.  Once we are clear that our problem is our inner problem, then his great wisdom helps us see clearly our delusions as mistaken minds.  It is one thing to identify that we have delusions, but if we do not see why they are wrong or deceptive, we will continue to follow them believing them to be true.  His great wisdom also helps us easily know what is the correct way of looking at things that leaves our mind peaceful and calm.  We not only know the wisdom way of thinking, we actually think that way – or at least believe it to be correct, even if the winds of our mind are blowing in opposite directions. 

When we recite this line, we have this wisdom not only for ourselves but also for others.  When others talk to us, we see clearly the difference between their outer and their inner problem, and with respect to their inner problem, we know and can explain in a way they can understand the objects to be abandoned and the objects to be attained.  Traveling outer paths is accomplished through taking steps, inner paths are traveled through knowing what thoughts to believe.  The great wisdom of knowing the objects to be abandoned and the objects to be attained is like always knowing which paths to travel so that we never get lost.  It is like an inner GPS that is always set for the City of Enlightenment, and no matter where we find ourselves, we always know how to get to where we want to go.

OM To you whose thousand arms blaze with light HUM HUM PHAT

When we recite this line we imagine we invoke/activate countless emanations of Heruka who spontaneously burst forth from his heart of compassion to benefit living beings through acts of loving-kindness.  This line refers to how Heruka is the compassion of all the Buddhas, he is the highest yoga tantra version of thousand-arm Avalokiteshvara.  Some people wonder how Buddhas gain the ability to send out emanations.  The answer is their compassion wishing to protect all living beings from all suffering is so great, emanations naturally burst out of their hearts.  Because they realize emptiness of all phenomena, their compassion is like blowing air into the soap of their realization of emptiness producing countless bubbles of emanations.  Normally, when people come to us for help, we think, “I can’t help all of these people,” and we wish some of them would go away and stop putting so many demands on us.  But a bodhisattva thinks, “I would want to help all of these beings, but right now, unfortunately, I can’t.  That’s why I need to become a Buddha because then I will be able to be with each and every living being every day.”  We imagine that through reciting this line, we gain this ability to send out countless emanations and to be like thousand-arm Avalokiteshvara, able to help living beings in countless ways.

OM To you who hold an axe, an uplifted noose, a spear, and a khatanga HUM HUM PHAT

With this line, we imagine we gain Heruka’s ability to engage in wrathful actions, and we invoke his wrathful actions pervade the entire universe.  What are wrathful actions?  They are the ability to use force out of compassion.  They are of two types:  outer and inner.  Outer wrathful actions are when somebody is hurting themselves or others and we can stop them through using whatever power we have (physical, our position, our speech, etc.).  We do this not out of anger, but to protect the person they are harming and to protect the person committing the harm from accumulating negative karma.  Our wish is not to harm the other person, but to protect them.  Sometimes outer wrathful actions take the form of telling people the hard truths of their situation, such as they are acting like a jerk or the only reason why they are suffering is that they are jealous or attached to companionship, or whatever.  Whether our outer wrathful actions are effective depends upon whether our mind is truly free from anger and whether the other person has enough faith in us to take well what we are saying.  If either of these two conditions is not met, our wrathful actions will just be anger or they will just be self-defeating.  Inner wrathful actions are the ability to be utterly ruthless with our delusions, but kind to ourselves.  We can only successfully engage in them if we have truly differentiated between ourselves and our delusions and we have realized that renunciation is true self-love or self-compassion.  It is loving or having compassion for our true selves, our pure potential.  Inner wrathful actions of a Buddha are powerful blessings that help people see clearly the error of their ways, sometimes at an epic scale, but without inducing guilt causing the person to beat themselves up.  When we recite this line, we imagine we gain the ability to engage in such wrathful actions and we imagine we invoke Heruka to engage in such wrathful actions through the appearances of this world.

OM To you who wear a tiger-skin garment HUM HUM PHAT

This refers to Heruka’s ability to pacify anger and conflict.  There is no evil greater than anger.  Almost all of the harm in this world is caused by anger.  Hell realms are the nature of anger, and those who remain consumed by anger in life wind up taking rebirth in hell after death because that is the nature of their mind.  Anger prevents us from accepting samsara as it is, making us wish it was different.  It leads to frustrations, great and small, leaving us always internally uncomfortable, agitated, and unhappy.  Guilt is anger directed at ourself and is a major obstacle to our ability to view Dharma as refuge instead of a mirror we perceive to be judging us for all of our failures and shortcomings.  Conflict in the world ranges from large-scale wars to spats between siblings, but it leaves a wake of pain wherever it goes.  In Eight Steps to Happiness, Geshe-la says the mind of cherishing others is like a magic crystal that has the power to heal whole communities.  In Toronto, he said, “love is the real nuclear bomb that destroys all enemies.”  Heruka’s compassion is his magic crystal and his love is his nuclear bomb that ends all conflict.  We imagine by reciting this line, we activate this power and it functions to pacify all anger, all guilt, and all conflict, not only in our own lives but in the whole world.  We feel as if his love radiates out, pulsing peace into the world.  In Transform Your Life Geshe-la says, “without inner peace, outer peace is impossible.”  We imagine through Heruka’s blessings, we bestow inner peace on all living beings, resulting in universal peace for all.

OM I bow to you whose smoke-coloured body dispels obstructions HUM HUM PHAT

In Essence of Vajrayana, Geshe-la explains:

“In the Condensed Root Tantra it is said that just by seeing a sincere Heruka practitioner we purify our negativities and attain liberation; just by hearing or being touched by such a practitioner we receive blessings and are cured of sickness; and just by being in the presence of such a practitioner our unhappiness, mental disturbances, delusions and other obstacles are dispelled.  Why is this?  It is because the actual Deities of Heruka abide within the body of the practitioner and therefore seeing the practitioner is not so different from seeing Heruka himself.”

When we recite this line of the Praise we recall this special quality of Heruka which makes merely being in their presence a cause of liberation for others.  There are two types of obstructions – the obstructions to liberation, or our delusions; and the obstructions to omniscience, or the karmic imprints of our past delusions.  Merely being in Heruka’s presence dispels both of these, just as being exposed to the sun will melt ice cream.  When we recite this line with faith, we imagine that our Heruka body attains these qualities and when others are merely in our presence, it functions as a cause of their enlightenment – even if we are doing nothing other than watching football together.  We further imagine that Heruka’s body pervades all phenomena, and while our ordinary eyes may perceive the things we normally see, our wisdom eyes see Keajra Pure Land, which is nothing other than Heruka’s pure form body.  By being in this world, the two obstructions of all living beings are dispelled away, all ordinary appearances and conceptions dissolve, and all beings awaken into a world of pure wonder. 

Through continuously engaging in the Eight Lines of Praise, we will gradually purify our mind and samsara will gather and absorb into the clear light, like clouds into a clear blue sky.  We will feel Heruka as Keajra Pure Land become increasingly manifest and we will realize it is not far away, but actually the true nature of all things.  Having activated these eight abilities of Heruka and feeling them work through us, we will have no difficulty generating a qualified divine pride thinking we are Heruka.  As our experience with these verses deepens, the duality between ourselves and our Yidam will dissolve away until we experience union with this marvelous being.  In this way, we will fulfill all of our own and others’ pure wishes.

Heruka day is a particularly auspicious day when Heruka’s blessings are especially powerful.  The karma we create familiarizing ourselves with Heruka in our life and drawing closer to him on this day will pay dividends for aeons to come.  If we have not yet memorized the Eight Lines of Praise, today is a perfect day to do so.  Once we have learned it, we can then practice it day and night and swiftly move out of samsara and into Keajra Pure Land! 

Happy Vajrayogini Day: Becoming the Vajra Queen

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Today is Vajrayogini Day, which takes place every year on the first tsog day of Heruka and Vajrayogini Month.  On this day, we can remember her amazing good qualities and try to ripen them within ourselves.  By doing so, we can draw closer to her and eventually become her.

Our Vajra Queen

Within the Kadampa tradition, our highest yoga tantra deities are Heruka and Vajrayogini.  Heruka is great bliss inseparable from emptiness and Vajrayogini is emptiness inseparable from great bliss.  Ultimately, they are the same person, differing only in aspect and emphasis.  Practically, they are our spiritual guide’s truth body inseparable from our own pure potential.  By relying upon Heruka and Vajrayogini, we can quickly ripen our Buddha nature and attain union with their enlightened state.  Our highest yoga tantra deity is also known as our “yidam,” which essentially means it is the actual Buddha we want to become.  Gen Tharchin explains we design our own enlightenment by the specific type of bodhichitta we generate.  In our tradition, we take Heruka and Vajrayogini as our yidam. 

Vajrayogini is known as the Vajra Queen because she is the highest of all the female enlightened deities for us.  Many people, both in movies and in real life, develop tremendous loyalty and respect for their political queen, willing to dedicate their lives to fulfilling the wishes of their noble queen.  How much more respect and devotion should we feel towards our Vajra Queen who leads us beyond samsara?

Understanding our Partner as an Emanation of Heruka and Vajrayogini

Sometimes, people can get confused about viewing their spouse or partner as an emanation of Heruka or Vajrayogini. Does that mean we should do whatever they say? Does that mean we should ignore their appearing faults and harmful behavior, pretending they are not appearing? Does that mean we can never modify or end the relationship if it becomes unhealthy for us or our partner? It means none of these things. Conventionally, we relate to conventional appearances exactly as normal. Emanations that take the form of conventionally normal people should be related to exactly as is conventionally normal. They are appearing in a normal aspect to teach us how to relate to conventionally normal forms in Dharma ways.

But at a deeper level, Heruka or Vajrayogini are our eternal partners. Sometimes they appear as the person we are married to (or are with). Sometimes our relationship with the appearance of our ordinary partner ends, but our relationship with Heruka or Vajrayogini does not end with that. It continues, just in different aspects. It is like before and after Venerable Geshe-la passed away. Prior to his passing, we tended to think our spiritual guide was Venerable Geshe-la, but when he passed he revealed clearly to all of us that our spiritual guide was never the appearance of Venerable Geshe-la, it was Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka all along. He was just temporarily appearing as Venerable Geshe-la so we could develop a relationship with him. But when Venerable Geshe-la passed, we realized we don’t need the appearance of Venerable Geshe-la to preserve our daily living relationship with our spiritual guide because Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka is still with us. In the same way, we thought our partner was the person we married, but in truth our partner has been Heruka or Vajrayogini all along. They appeared temporarily as our partner so we could develop a relationship with them.

Sometimes our relationship with the person we thought was our partner ends (they die, the relationship ends, etc.), but that’s just the karma of that appearance exhausting itself. Our relationship with Heruka or Vajrayogini as our partner continues. It is eternal.  Sometimes it will remanifest as some other ordinary appearance and sometimes it will shift into an internal relationship like the one we now have with Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka. It is hard to say. But the point is Heruka and Vajrayogini have always been and always will be our eternal partner. What that looks like according to conventional appearance and where the locus of our relationship is with them may shift, but this fact is always true. In the end, we will find ourselves with them in Keajra and realize in truth we have been there with them all along – we were just mistakenly seeing what has always been. When we realize this, we will have a great laugh with them and reminisce about all the adventures (both good and bad) we had along the way, but we will see it all as exactly what we needed at different points along our path to Keajra. It’s all good, we just haven’t woken up to it yet, but we’re getting there. 

So even if our relationship with somebody who we thought was an emanation of Vajrayogini for us ends, it doesn’t mean that they weren’t Vajrayogini for us then and it also doesn’t mean they are not still Vajrayogini for us. They still are, but their conventional appearance is pushing us in a different direction. Just as the appearance of Venerable Geshe-la passed, so too the appearance of a specific person as our partner in this life can pass.  But our partner has always been Varjayogini and always will be.  She appeared in the form we needed for the time we were together and now she is appearing in different ways, but she remains an emanation for us – just encouraging us to practice in different ways. The fact that our relationship with them may be over doesn’t mean they weren’t an emanation of Vajrayogini for us.  They brought us to where we are now, and our relationship with Vajrayogini continues, just now in a different form.

Perhaps a new conventional emanation will appear as our partner or perhaps our relationship with her will become primarily internal like it is with Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka, we don’t know our karma. We learned so much being with our partner and that is all due to the blessings of Vajrayogini.  The fact that our partnership with the mistaken appearance of the conventionally appearing emanation may have ended doesn’t change who has always been and who always will be our partner – namely Vajrayogini. 

And the deeper truth is this: Vajrayogini has come for us, even if we haven’t recognized her yet. She came for us the first time we received the empowerment. In Guide to Dakini Land, Venerable Geshe-la describes how after having engaged in extensive mantra recitation and having received certain signs, we can put sindhura powder on our forehead and go out in the world until the powder transfers to some woman, who we should then have no doubt is an emanation of Vajrayogini who has come for us. That’s one way it can happen. For me, and this is a true story, I was sitting in a Panda Express eating my Beijing Beef and I was suddenly hit with an unmistakeable feeling that Vajrayogini had come for me, right then, right there. I felt her in everything around me, even the Chinese noodles. I started crying with release and joy. There was this six year old kid staring at me wondering why this middle-aged man was crying in the corner eating his lunch! Ever since that day, I have had the feeling that Vajrayogini is with me. She appears in various ways in my life, but I feel her presence daily – not just externally, but internally. I’m learning to allow her to take me by the hand and escort me home to Keajra where we will always be together, sharing our great bliss with all living beings, guiding them home.

Heruka and Vajrayogini’s love for one another is eternal. They are not an ordinary couple. They can enter into any couple and love each other through the field of their karma. When two pure Kadampas who share the same lineage, empowerments, and view come together, Heruka and Vajrayogini’s love for one another can flow very powerfully and we get a sense of what it means that enlightenment can be attained in one lifetime through the Ganden Oral Lineage instructions. Our job is simple: get out of the way and let them love each other through us. There will be hiccups along the way, but that is due to our negative or contaminated karma interfering with the natural flow of love between them. But we don’t need to worry, their love can heal it all. We just need unwavering faith, a pure bodhichitta motivation, and a qualified understanding of pure view. Pure view does not try say that everything the other person does is somehow perfect from the side of the object. No, that is grasping at inherently existent pure view. Pure view exists on the side of the mind. It knows how to receive perfect benefit from whatever the other person does. Even when they seem to act in deluded ways, it serves as a powerful teaching or opportunity for us to identify the delusions within our own mind and work on them. Wonderful. We can then say that the person is an emanation of Vajrayogini appearing in seemingly deluded ways to give us an opportunity to train in the Lamrim of Sutra and Tantra. Then, there are no problems.

Vajrayogini’s Uncommon Qualities

Vajrayogini practice has many uncommon qualities that surpass even Heruka practice.  First, her three-OM mantra is the king of all mantras.  Geshe-la explains in Guide to Dakini Land:

“By reciting this mantra we can help others to fulfill their wishes and gain peace, good health, long life, and prosperity. We gain the ability to avert others’ diseases, such as cancer, strokes, and paralysis, as well as all physical pain and dangers from fire, water, earth, and wind.  Some practitioners who have a strong karmic link with Vajrayogini, through their daily practice or by merely reciting this mantra attain outer Dakini Land before their death, sometimes even without engaging in close retreats or intense meditation. Some attain Dakini Land in the bardo by remembering as if in a dream their daily recitation of the mantra, thereby enabling Vajrayogini to lead them to her Pure Land. In Dakini Land these practitioners are cared for by Heruka and Vajrayogini and, without ever having to undergo uncontrolled death again, they attain enlightenment during that life. It is for these reasons that the three-OM mantra of Vajrayogini is called the `king of all mantras’.”

Vajrayogini’s body mandala is also unequaled.  Again, Geshe-la explains in Guide to Dakini Land:

“In the practice of Heruka’s body mandala, Deities are generated at the outer tips of the twenty-four channels, at the twenty-four inner places. In Vajrayogini’s body mandala, however, the Deities are generated at the inner tips of the twenty-four channels, inside the central channel at the heart channel wheel. This is the main reason why Vajrayogini’s body mandala is more profound than those of other Yidams.”

Finally, Vajrayogini practice has an uncommon yoga of inconceivability, which is the most profound practice of self-powa in existence, enabling us to transfer our consciousness to the pure land where we can complete our spiritual training without ever having to take another samsaric rebirth.  Through this practice, Geshe-la explains:

“The uncommon yoga of inconceivability is a special method, unique to the practice of Vajrayogini, whereby we can attain Pure Dakini Land within this life without abandoning our present body.”

By contemplating these incredible benefits of Vajrayogini practice, we can generate a strong faithful wish to rely upon her in this and all our future lives.

How we can activate Vajrayogini’s good qualities in our life

We do not consider the good qualities of Vajrayogini to simply think how amazing she is, the goal is for us to generate wishing faith, wishing to acquire these good qualities ourselves.  At first, it can seem like her good qualities are so far away that knowledge of them is more academic than anything else.  But there is a method for activating her good qualities within us right now, where we quite literally start to become her and fulfill her function in the world.  How?  Through faithful recitation of the Eight Lines of Praise to the Mother.

Becoming Vajrayogini is not like an on-off switch but is rather like a volume knob – the more we rely upon her, the more we come to embody her good qualities until eventually we gradually become her.  In our practice of divine pride, we train in imputing our “I” onto Vajrayogini, thinking, “I am Vajrayogini.”  If we impute “I am Vajrayogini” onto our ordinary samsaric body and mind, this is not only a mistaken imputation, it might land us in a psychiatric hospital!  For an imputation to be valid, the basis of imputation must be valid.  For an imputation to be valid, the name, aspect, and function must all be in alignment.  A tennis racket may be used to strain spaghetti noodles, but we would not call it a strainer.  In the context of Vajrayogini practice, her aspect is the beautiful red Dakini, her function is to bestow the qualities of her mind, and her name is Vajrayogini.  If we impute our I onto these three – her name, aspect, and function – we can validly say we are Vajrayogini.

Oftentimes, especially in our early years of Vajrayogini practice, we tend to place primary emphasis on the “aspect” of Vajrayogini, imputing our “I” onto this mere image.  But this rarely works to generate much feeling of actually being Vajrayogini.  In contrast, when we feel like this aspect is performing the function of Vajrayogini in our mind, then when we impute our I onto Vajrayogini engaging in her enlightened deeds, it is very easy to generate a qualified feeling of divine pride being Vajrayogini leading all beings to freedom. 

For me at least, the supreme method for generating a feeling of Vajrayogini accomplishing her function is using the Eight Lines of Praise as an invocation for her to accomplish her special function through us.  When we do this, we will feel her enter us and accomplish these eight special functions through us; and on this basis, it is easy to generate a qualified divine pride.

We can understand how to do this as follows:

OM I prostrate to Vajravarahi, the Blessed Mother HUM HUM PHAT

To prostrate means to wish to become, it is a form of wishing faith.  Vajravarahi refers to her function of destroying ignorance, recognizing her as the essence of the perfection of wisdom that destroys ignorance.  Blessed Mother means she is the mother of all the Buddhas, both in the sense of all Buddhas are born from bliss and emptiness (definitive Vajrayogini), but also in the sense of the actual mother of all the Buddhas in that they arise from her.  In this sense, she is simply the highest yoga tantra version of Mother Tara.  When we recite this line, we imagine we invoke this power to destroy the ignorance of all living beings and give birth to all the Buddhas, requesting that this function be accomplished within our mind.

OM To the Superior and powerful Knowledge Lady unconquered by the three realms HUM HUM PHAT

Superior means she can see directly the ultimate nature of all phenomena; powerful Knowledge Lady means she has the power to bestow great bliss; and unconquered by the three realms means she has the power to overcome all delusions of the desire, form, and formless realm.  When we recite this line, we imagine we invoke her to bestow bliss on ourselves and all living beings, which bestows a direct realization of emptiness on the minds of all, enabling them to completely abandon all the delusions of the three realms.  We feel as if this is actually happening inside our mind.

OM To you who destroy all fears of evil spirits with your great vajra HUM HUM PHAT

Nobody is an evil spirit from their own side, they only become evil spirits for us if we relate to them in deluded ways.  It is our delusions that create all evil spirits in our life, and we can say from one perspective all evil spirits are really just our delusions so condense that they take on a life or personality of their own and function like they are an “evil spirit.”  But through Vajrayogini’s blessings, we can come to experience all beings and all phenomena as manifestations of her mind of bliss and emptiness.  In this way, what was previously experienced as an evil spirit in our life is now experienced as the dance of bliss and emptiness.  Instead of harming us, we receive blessings.  All fear is destroyed because they are now seen as bliss and emptiness, and indeed we can say all “evil spirits” themselves are destroyed, not in the sense of they are killed, but in the sense that there is no longer a valid basis for imputing “evil spirit.”  When we recite this line, we imagine that we come to see all phenomena as manifestations of bliss and emptiness, and so we fear nothing and nobody has the power to harm us in any way.  We strongly believe our view of everything has changed and now we fear nothing because we experience it all as great bliss.

OM To you with controlling eyes who remain as the vajra seat unconquered by others HUM HUM PHAT

Vajra seat here means she is always in union with Heruka who is eternally filling her with great bliss as she bestows the realization of emptiness on his mind.  Her controlling eyes can subdue negative behavior simply by looking at others, much in the way a mother’s firm stare brings her children in line without saying a word.   When we recite this verse, we imagine that while in union with Heruka – being filled with bliss and bestowing upon him the realization of emptiness – we can look out onto all living beings subduing all of their negative behavior in an instant.  We feel this compassionate power coursing through us and that this function is actually being accomplished.

OM To you whose wrathful fierce form desiccates Brahma HUM HUM PHAT

This refers to Vajrayogini’s ability to subdue the pride of all living beings, even the highest gods.  Geshe-la explains that pride is the death of all spiritual learning.  If we are free from pride, we can use the Dharma to overcome all our other faults; but if we are consumed by pride, we cannot overcome any of our faults.  Subduing our pride is, in this sense, a prerequisite for all spiritual progress.  Vajrayogini does not merely subdue our pride, she desiccates it, which means to drain of emotional or intellectual vitality.  We generate pride when we observe some uncommon characteristic we have and then think that somehow makes us better than others.  Perhaps a candle in a dark room provides some light but standing next to the blazing of the sun its luminescence is humbled.  In the same way, we may think we are special in some way, but standing before the Vajra Queen we are stripped away of all pretension and are drained of any emotional or intellectual basis for thinking we are special in any way.  Vajrayogini’s mere presence has this humbling effect on all living beings, opening their mind to generate faith in the spiritual path.  When we recite this line, we feel as if the pride of ourselves and all living beings has been thoroughly desiccated and everyone now bows down with humble faith in her magnificence, ready to learn from her.

OM To you who terrify and dry up demons, conquering those in other directions HUM HUM PHAT

This refers to the ability of her wisdom blessings to burn up the inner demons of ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions of all living beings.  According to Sutra, the root of samsara is self-grasping ignorance, but according to Tantra, the root is ordinary appearances and conceptions.  Ordinary appearances are, essentially, the things that we normally see – all of which appear to exist from their own side, independent of our mind.  They appear to have some objective existence that we believe our mind merely observes accurately.  Ordinary conceptions are believing these appearances to be true.  We think everything really does exist in the way that it appears.  Due to ordinary appearances and ordinary conceptions, we remain trapped in the nightmare of samsara, and the same is true for all other living beings.  The fire of Vajrayogini’s wisdom blessings has the power to burn through all ordinary appearances and conceptions like the fire at the end of the aeon, stripping away samsara from everyone and enabling them to see directly pure worlds.  Samsara is nothing more than a dream that need not be.  Vajrayogini has the power to burn it all away.  When we recite this verse, we imagine we invoke the fire of her wisdom blessings to radiate out like a spherical burst in all directions stripping away the ordinary appearances and conceptions of all living beings, and then we strongly believe that as a result of this enlightened action all beings are now able to see directly her pure world, Keajra Pure Land.

OM To you who conquer all those who make us dull, rigid, and confused HUM HUM PHAT

This refers to her ability to protect us from evil spirits who would interfere with our spiritual practice by making our minds dull, rigid, or confused.  There are countless evil spirits who would interfere with our practice, and we have all experienced the effects of their interference in our practice.  Vajrayogini can subdue these spirits in four ways, the first of which was already explained above by viewing them as manifestations of bliss and emptiness.  The second is just as would-be attackers are deterred through knowing they are outmatched, so too evil spirits know they stand no chance against Vajrayogini and so they keep their distance.  The third is through the wisdom fire of her protection circle, the basis for any negativity is burned away as it approaches, and thus cannot even enter like a magical shield that disarms all those who would enter her realm.  Negativity simply can’t get through.  The fourth way is through the power of her love and compassion for evil spirits who would do harm.  Just as Buddha Shakyamuni under the Bodhi tree defeated all the spirits through the power of his love, so too Vajrayogini’s unconditional love defeats the evil intentions of all those who would interfere with our practice.  As Geshe-la famously said, love is the real nuclear bomb that destroys all enemies.  When we recite this verse, we imagine we invoke Vajrayogini to dispel all interference from evil spirits in these four ways, and strongly believe as a result all interference is permanently subdued.

OM I bow to Vajravarahi, the Great Mother, the Dakini consort who fulfills all desires HUM HUM PHAT

This refers to Vajrayogini’s ability to fulfill all the pure wishes of living beings.  Buddhas do not fulfill our worldly wishes – nothing can since samsara is by nature contaminated.  But they can fulfill all our pure wishes.  Like a loving mother who helps fulfill all the pure wishes of her children, Vajrayogini works tirelessly to fulfill all the pure wishes of all living beings.  What are pure wishes?  They are spiritual wishes, such as wishing to abandon lower rebirth, escape from samsara, and gain the ability to lead all beings to enlightenment.  They also include any wish to overcome our delusions, purify our negative karma, or gain any of the realizations of the stages of the path.  Vajrayogini is the real wish-fulfilling jewel who possesses the power to fulfill all the pure wishes of all living beings.  When we recite this verse, we strongly imagine that she does so in an instant and everyone is spontaneously born into the pure land. 

We can recite these Eight Verses anytime, both in meditation and out of meditation.  We can also recite specific lines of the eight verses as targeted prayers for specific situations we find ourselves in.  The effectiveness of our recitations depends primarily upon the purity of our motivation, the depth of our faith, the degree of our single-pointed concentration, and the extent of our realization of emptiness of all phenomena.  The more we improve these four conditions, the more we will begin to feel Vajraygoini entering into us and accomplishing her function through us in the world.  With deeper experience, it will almost feel like she takes on a life of her own inside of us, spontaneously accomplishing her function in this world.  Once we have a taste of this experience, generating qualified divine pride both in and out of meditation is easy.

May we all come under Vajrayogini’s loving care and behold her sublime face.  May we become empty vessels through which she may accomplish her enlightened deeds in this world, bringing benefit and happiness to ourselves and all living beings in the process.  May she burn away all ordinary appearance and conception until we see ourselves directly as the Vajra Queen.

My Understanding of the Synthesis of the Kadam Lamrim of Sutra and Tantra:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra , , , ,

My understanding is there is one activity on the path, changing the basis of imputation of our I from the contaminated aggregates of a samsaric being to the completely purified aggregates of the guru-deity. There are two reasons why we do this – for our own sake (renunciation) and for the sake of others (bodhichitta). There is one thing that makes it possible – emptiness, in particular the emptiness of the I. There are two levels at which we do this: gross (generation stage) and subtle (completion stage). The Kadam Lamrim of Tantra has three core spiritual technologies: divine pride, which purifies ordinary conceptions; clear appearance, which purifies ordinary appearance; and correct imagination which wears away at all pure conceptions until we have direct pure experience. In this way we can understand the Kadampa path has five main aspects: renunciation, bodhichitta, the correct view of emptiness, generation stage and completion stage. The result of the Kadampa path is to attain union of no more learning, whose nature is to realize that the Guru, the deity, the five wisdoms, and myself are neither one, nor many. They are non-dual appearance and emptiness—inseparable.

I will now attempt to unpack this:

There is one activity on the path: changing the basis of imputation of our I from the contaminated aggregates of a samsaric being to the completely purified aggregates of the guru-deity.

This single activity is the path. It encapsulates the essence of all Lamrim instructions. All our practices—whether contemplating the sufferings of samsara or meditating on the clear light of bliss—serve to accomplish this single transformation of identity. In Tantric Grounds and Paths, Geshe-la explains that this transformation occurs through divine pride and clear appearance, which are sustained by correct imagination.

There are two reasons why we do this—renunciation and bodhichitta.

This is the heart motivation of all Kadampa Dharma. In Joyful Path, Geshe-la explains that renunciation is the wish to be released from samsara, and bodhichitta is the wish to release all beings. These two minds fuel our transformation, making it swift and meaningful.

One thing makes this possible: emptiness, particularly the emptiness of the I.

All transformation hinges upon seeing the I as empty of inherent existence. In Heart of Wisdom and Modern Buddhism, Geshe-la teaches that because the I is empty, we can designate it newly upon the purified aggregates of the deity. Without this, all deity yoga becomes merely imagination. But with it, imagination becomes the truth path to reality.

There are two levels at which we do this: gross (generation stage) and subtle (completion stage).

Generation stage creates the causes, and completion stage reveals the results. As Geshe-la says in Essence of Vajrayana, these two stages are not separate practices but one continuum—the path of clear appearance ripening into the experience of union.

The three core spiritual technologies of the Kadam Lamrim of Tantra: divine pride, clear appearance, and correct imagination.

For me, these the three transformative methods of generation stage and completion stage practice, just at different levels. These correspond to the antidotes to the three mistaken appearances: ordinary conception (divine pride), ordinary appearance (clear appearance), and mistaken grasping (correct imagination).

In this way we can understand the Kadampa path as five main aspects: renunciation, bodhichitta, correct view of emptiness, generation stage, and completion stage.

This is a condensation of the entire path. These five are the five great Mahayana paths adorned by Highest Yoga Tantra. They are also the essence of the Lord of All Lineages Prayer, which Geshe-la says we should recite daily to gain realizations of the whole Kadam Lamrim of Sutra and Tantra.

The result of the Kadampa path is to attain union of no more learning, whose nature is to realize that the Guru, the deity, the five wisdoms, and myself are neither one, nor many. They are non-dual appearance and emptiness—inseparable.

This is my understanding of the final result: enlightenment. In Tantric Grounds and Paths, Geshe-la says that at Buddhahood, all dualistic appearances have ceased. The appearance of Guru Sumati Buddha Heruka is the final appearance of our own potential—the perfect non-dual union of bliss and emptiness, of method and wisdom, of our mind and the body of a Buddha.

The Kadam Lamrim of Sutra and Tantra are Essentially All Self-Generation Meditations:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life , , , ,

I would say the whole path of Kadam Lamrim of Sutra and Tantra is, from one perspective, a series of self-generation meditations. In Sutra, we self-generate as a “Kadampa” or a fortunate modern Kadampa disciple. In Tantra, in virtually all generation and completion stage meditations, we self-generate as the guru deity with different levels of our mind. With gross generation stage, we self-generate as the deity’s gross body with our gross mind. With the body mandala meditations, we self-generate as the deity’s subtle body which is the nature of our purified channels, drops and winds. With the completion stage meditation of the indestructible wind and mind, we self-generate as the deity’s very subtle body which is the nature of our purified very subtle indestructible wind, in the aspect of the HUM. Even with the meditation on the clear light, we self-generate as the guru-deity’s very subtle mind which is the nature of our purified very subtle mind. These are all self-generation meditations, just at different levels.

All self-generation meditations have the same core elements: what appears, what is felt, what is understood, the mind that holds the object, and the divine pride of being the guru deity on this basis. What appears is the nature of the form aggregate, what is felt is the nature of the aggregate of feeling, what is understood is the nature of the aggregate of discrimination, the mind that holds the object is the nature of aggregate of compositional factors, and the divine pride is the nature of our aggregate of consciousness. When we become a Buddha, these transform into the five completely purified aggregates of a Buddha, otherwise known as the five omniscient wisdoms.

Understanding this, we can see that the progression of Sutra to gross generation stage, to the body mandala, to the completion stage meditations, to the meditation on the clear light are actually all different self-generation meditations with increasingly subtle levels of our mind that function to transform our five contaminated aggregates into the five omniscient wisdoms of a Buddha through the same spiritual technology of changing the basis of imputation of our I to something increasingly subtle and increasingly pure – in other words, through self-generation meditations.

What appears changes at each level. In Sutra, what appears is our samsaric self, in my case Kadampa Ryan. In gross generation stage, what appears is ourself as the gross deity body. In body mandala meditations, what appears is ourself as the deities of the body mandala. In the early completion stage meditations, what appears is ourself as the seed letter, such as the HUM. In the completion stage meditations on the clear light, what appears is ourself as the clear light Dharmakaya.

The next three core elements or parts are the same at each level. What is felt is great bliss, which is the nature of the mind of love. What is understood is not ourself or ourself or the deity we normally see (at each level of mind), but the emptiness of ourself or the deity we normally see. Our self and the deity we normally see do not exist and are mistaken appearances, but the emptiness of ourself or the deity we normally see do exist as manifestations of emptiness appearing in the aspect of whichever level of self-generation we are doing. The mind that holds all this is the perfection of concentration – a perfectly concentrated mind motivated by conventional bodhichitta. The neutral mental factors come together as pure concentration and the virtuous mental factors come together as bodhichitta, the quintessential butter that comes from churning the milk of Dharma.

The specific divine prides we generate vary at each level – I am a Kadampa at the Sutra level, I am Heruka at the gross level, I am the body mandala at the subtle level, I am the completely purified indestructible wind and mind at the very subtle level, I am definitive Heruka at the level of the clear light. But they are all the nature of guru yoga. We don’t just see ourselves as the deity, but as the guru-deity. Here we bring in all of our faith in our guru, not only in the sense of being in his living presence, but of actually being him – the duality between ourself and him dissolves away completely. Our whole mind transforms into the feeling that we are now the guru deity.

In this way, we can easily see how the Lamrim of Sutra and the Lamrim of Tantra are all equally the Lamrim, just practiced at different levels of mind via a self-generation meditation. At the grossest level, we train in Lamrim in the form of the 15 or 21 Lamrim meditations from Mirror of Dharma or the New Meditation Handbook. In Tantra, at the gross self-generation, the body mandala, the completion stage, and the clear light meditations we likewise have the entire Lamrim contained within these five core parts of each self-generation meditation (what is seen, what is felt, what is understood, the mind that holds it, and the divine pride of being the guru deity). Same Lamrim, just at increasingly subtle levels of mind all brought together into a self-generation meditation.

The Dharma we have been given is indescribably profound and elegant. We are beyond fortunate to have found such a path. May I dedicate my life to realizing the Kadam Lamrim at these increasingly subtle levels of mind.

Cherishing Only Others with Wisdom:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life , , , ,

Once we make the decision to cherish only others, the question then becomes how do we do so with wisdom. There are many common traps we can fall into along the way.

Venerable Geshe-la famously explained in New Eight Steps to Happiness that, “the path to enlightenment is really very simple – all we need to do is stop cherishing ourself and learn to cherish others. All other spiritual realizations will naturally follow from this.”

The whole reason why we attain enlightenment is to help others more effectively. Attaining enlightenment itself depends upon generating bodhichitta, the actual wish to attain enlightenment for the sake of others. Bodhichitta depends upon great compassion, a mind that cannot bear the suffering of others trapped in samsara and strongly wishes to protect others from samsara’s sufferings. Great compassion depends upon cherishing others, considering their happiness and freedom to be something important to us. We develop this mind primarily by developing a feeling of gratitude for others kindness, realizing how self-cherishing is the cause of all our suffering, and clearly understanding that cherishing others is the actual root of our enlightenment (the solution to all of our own and others problems) since all other realizations of the path flow naturally from this. All this leads to the conclusion we need to cherish only others.

But once we have made this decision, it is very easy for us to fall into a wide variety of traps and mistakes. In particular, I want to highlight five mistakes that I have made in the hope others might be able to avoid them. It is not enough to just cherish only others, we need to learn to do so with wisdom.

One mistake we make is developing a savior complex. We think it is our job to save others, that we are responsible for both their suffering and for saving them from it. Such an approach, while well-intended, winds up creating dependency in others where they become incapable of helping themselves, they wait for the messiah, and think they can’t be happy or escape from their suffering without us doing something. In effect, this disempowers them to save themselves.

A related mistake is cherishing others with a martyr complex. Here, we wind up sacrificing ourself – destroying our own capacity to help – in the name of cherishing others. This can take many forms, such as taking on more than we can handle, pushing ourselves beyond our limits, leading to some form of burnout. Or it can take the form of sacrificing our own practice of Dharma because we are so busy “cherishing others” we don’t have time to properly invest in our practice, or maybe others resent our practice and so we think to cherish them we need to abandon it, even if only on the margin. This can also lead to resentment of those we are supposedly cherishing. We know our cherishing of them is leading to our burnout, destroying our capacity, or causing us to sacrifice our practice and then we start to resent others for not realizing what they are doing to us – we do so much for them and they just take, take, take, and don’t give a damn about how it is destroying us.

A mistake that has many, many levels to it is cherishing others mixed with attachment. The common denominator of all these levels is us being OK depends upon them being OK. When they do down, we go down with them. Our happiness depends upon them being OK. Nobody is OK in samsara, we are all drowning, so if we confuse our cherishing love with attachment to them being happy, then instead of it leading to enlightenment, our cherishing others makes the whole world’s problem our problem, and all the suffering of the world our suffering. We can quickly become despondent, discouraged, and give in to despair. It’s true, we need to “feel” other’s suffering as acutely as our own, but this doesn’t mean we should make everybody’s suffering our own. We care about their suffering as much as our own, but we don’t experience it. It’s not our suffering. This is a crucial distinction.

Another common mistake is helping too much, this often flows out of the savior complex, but can also come from just a lack of wisdom understanding what is more beneficial. We all know the saying of it is more helpful to teach a man to fish than give him one. The answer, of course, is give him a fish while you are teaching him how to do so so he doesn’t starve before he learns how to fish for himself. When we help too much – doing things for others that they can do for themselves – they never learn how to actually do things on their own and remain forever dependent. Breaking this cycle can be very difficult, especially if we have been carrying others too much for a long time. It puts us in these terrible dilemmas where either we step in to help or they crash and burn, perhaps losing everything they have been working for their whole life. But if we take a gradual approach, it can be done. It’s also like teaching a toddler how to walk. At first, they hold your finger but at some point they need to let go and walk on their own.

An additional common mistake we can make is assuming cherishing others means giving them whatever they want. Most people are completely controlled by their delusions, so what they want is what their delusions want. If we give others what their delusions want, we just feed their delusions which actually harms them. Sometimes, we have to say no – we could give them what they want, but we refuse to do so because we know it is not what is in their best interests. Or sometimes we have to speak some hard truths to them – give them some tough love, things they need to hear but don’t want to hear. They may even hate us for doing or saying these things, cut off communication with us, blame us for all their problems, start a smear campaign against us with anybody and everybody they speak with, including those we know. It can get real ugly. They may resort to all sorts of emotional blackmail or guilt trip us about being a bad Buddhist for not doing what their delusions want us to do for them. But we sometimes need to love others enough to do or say things that they will hate us for. This is a hard one.

Each one of these mistakes has many levels and we should request blessings to identify how we are making them. Then, we gradually purify our cherishing of others of them. At the same time or subsequently, we can then start informing our cherishing of others with the wisdom realizing emptiness, understanding that the others in our life are actually mere karmic projections of our mind. Realizing this without falling into the extreme of solipsism is a whole other topic worth exploring. Once we have some experience of the union of cherishing others and the wisdom realizing emptiness, then our tantric practice of pure view of others, the power of prayers to help them, etc., all take on much deeper meaning and develop significantly more power. But again, that is another very large topic.

The point is, while it is true all other realizations naturally follow from the decision to cherish only others, actually doing so skillfully and with wisdom is a vast practice. But slowly, slowly we purify our cherishing love of these mistakes and learn how to deepen it with emptiness and the tantric teachings, and eventually it carries us all the way through compassion, to bodhichitta, to full enlightenment, to the real reason why we did all this in the first place – to be able to help others find everlasting peace and happiness.

Happy trails!