3. Tantra

On Creating Sangha:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Sometimes people can feel like they are isolated from sangha. For example, they may live far from a center or be physically incapable of making it very often – or even at all. Sometimes also, people might be able to go to the center all the time, but feel like they are not accepted or don’t fit in, even if everyone there loves and accepts them fully. This can be very painful for people, leading to a good deal of discouragement and despondency.

Many people leave the Dharma for this reason because we have a legitimate need for spiritual companionship and feel it is not being met, so we go looking elsewhere – searching, but perhaps never finding, leading to ever greater depths of despair. Even spiritual people don’t love us, we are truly worthless.

Knowing there are many people like this, we should make a concerted effort to reach out to those who seem to feel alone or isolated. Everybody welcome is not just a center policy, it is the very essence of the Kadampa way of life. We need to help make everybody feel welcome, accepted as they are without judgment, appreciated for their good qualities, and loved unconditionally.

But what should we do if we ourselves feel this way?

I would say this feeling comes from grasping at sangha existing from their own side in one form or another. We think Sangha are external to us somehow and we wait for them to “do something to us” or “for us.”

This can sometimes come across as harsh, like we are blaming people for their own loneliness or isolation. It can even take on a degree of judgment and callousness like it is your own dumb fault you feel that way, thus feeding the feeling like nobody cares. But this is not correct. Recognizing that our feelings of isolation are created by our own mind means by changing our mind, we can solve our problem. We don’t need others to do anything for us to no longer feel isolated from them. We cease being a victim of what they think and do towards us. We realize the solution lies within.

Whether somebody is a friend, enemy, or stranger depends upon the mind with which we engage with others. We can construct people in any number of ways by adopting different minds towards them. How we relate to others often quickly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, for good or for bad. When we assume somebody is our friend and we relate to them in that way, we tend to be friendly and open and then others respond to us in similar ways. When we assume everybody hates us an is judging us, we relate to them defensively and awkwardly, and they then find us strange or off-putting or somebody to be avoided. We don’t realize that how we view others, the mind with which we engage with them, very much shapes how they view and relate to us.

Sangha are those that inspire us along the path. They encourage us to practice Dharma. We may think, I don’t have anybody in my life like that. Everyone in my life is encouraging me to follow worldly paths and the so-called sangha in my life reject me or don’t make me feel welcome. So what should we do if we find ourselves in such a situation?

Practically, there are some clear things we can do. First, we can make an effort to go to our centers or festivals; or if that is not possible, to try at least stay connected with them on-line. Second, we can accept people as they are, not be disappointed in them that they are not loving and accepting us as much as we would want them to. Third, we can create the karma to have sangha friends by being a good sangha friend ourselves towards others.

More profoundly, we can realize sangha do not exist from their own side. Whether somebody functions for us as sangha depends upon how our mind relates to them. For example, if we see somebody being cruel or deceptive or lazy or whatever, we can view that person as showing us the example of how not to be. Their bad example is teaching us to not be like that and to instead be kind, trustworthy, and hard-working. Because we are relating to them that way, they are encouraging us to practice Dharma, even if that is not remotely their intention. Thus, for us, they are functioning as sangha. Perhaps they are even emanations appearing in this way to teach us these lessons, we don’t know. Actually, as soon as we view them as emanations, they become emanations for us because emanations do not exist from their own side. Nobody is an emanation from their own side, they become one for us through our mind of faith.

More profoundly still, we can cultivate a deep, personal, and very “real” relationship with our supreme sangha, the deities of Dorje Shugden’s vast assembled retinue and the deities of Heruka or Vajrayogini’s body mandala. Even if we never step foot in a Dharma center again, we can be with our supreme sangha every day for the rest of eternity. They are actual beings with minds, not just figments of our imagination who aren’t really there. The only difference between our external sangha friends and our internal sangha friends is whether they are form sources (objects that appear to our sense consciousnesses) or phenomena sources (objects that appear to our mental consciousness). But both are equally beings with whom we can – and should – develop deep, living relationships with.

Like anything else, sangha are created by mind. If we don’t create others as sangha, we will have no sangha in our life. Realizing this, we can let go of thinking we have no sangha in our life or let go of our real or perceived narratives of our sangha not accepting and loving us and start creating our own sangha – both externally and internally – by creating the causes for them to appear in our life. We can use the perceived absence of sangha in our life as a sign from Dorje Shugden encouraging us that now is the time to create such causes.

Then, no problems.

Our Vows Are Promises We Can Train In:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

Their practice is, when confronted with a tendency to break or neglect the promises, reminding ourself why we made these promises and working through the delusions and negative karma that prevent us from keeping them.

Their primary function is to maintain the uninterrupted continuum of our spiritual path until we attain the final goal. The level of the promise – from refuge, to pratimoksha, to bodhisattva, to our tantric vows – determines the speed with which we complete the path, like water moving through an increasingly narrow hose. Their secondary function is to help us overcome all gross distractions, which is the basic foundation of training in concentration. This in turn enables us to successfully meditate on the Dharma and in particular on the wisdom realizing emptiness that purifies our mind of all delusions and their imprints, thus taking us to the cities of liberation and enlightenment.

Our refuge promises are essentially to (1) to make effort to receive Buddha’s blessings, (2) to make effort to put the Dharma into practice, and (3) to make effort to turn to the Sangha for help. Our pratimoksha promise is essentially to refrain from harming living beings, both ourself and others. Our bodhisattva promise essentially is to not stop until we become a Buddha, in particular through the practice of the six perfections. Our tantric promise is essentially to maintain pure view of ourself, others, our environment, and our activities out of compassion for all living beings. More details can be found in Joyful Path, the Bodhisattva Vow, Universal Compassion, and Tantric Grounds and Paths.

Our most important vow is our heart commitment to Dorje Shugden. This maintains the uninterrupted continuum of our finding the uncommon Kadampa path of the Ganden Oral Lineage instructions, the quickest path to enlightenment of them all.

Within the scope of the heart commitment, I would say there are both common and uncommon promises. The common promises are to (1) cherish the Kadam Dharma, (2) to practice the Kadam Dharma purely without mixing it with other traditions, (3) to share the Kadam Dharma purely without mixing it with other traditions, and (4) to make effort to cause the pure Kadam Dharma to flourish throughout the world.

There are two uncommon promises within our heart commitment to Dorje Shugden. The first is to make the promise to attend every major Kadampa festival (Spring, Summer, and Fall) either in person or on-line between now and at least 2099 (but really, for as long as they last). This functions to preserve the NKT globally for generations to come.

The second uncommon promise of our heart commitment is to keep the Kadampa moral discipline of the Internal Rules of the NKT. These are required if we want to be a Resident Teacher or a center administrator, but are also available to any practitioner. VGL has said they are our most important moral discipline. They are the pinnacle of our Kadampa moral discipline and are taken on the foundation of all the other promises.

None of these promises are imposed upon us from the outside, but are taken freely by the practitioner based upon a clear wisdom that understands benefits of keeping these promises and the dangers of breaking them. All of these promises are worked with gradually and have many levels. When we break them, we can purify the downfall and restore them within our mind. We can do this daily.

We are so lucky to even know of these things, much less have the opportunity to train in them. I would say they are true wishfulfilling jewels.

Getting the Most out of Attending the Kadampa Festivals Online

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden, 7. Kadampa meaning of special days

It’s festival time!  Perhaps in the past we were able to go to the festivals, perhaps even all of them, but for whatever reason this time we are not able to make it.  Fortunately, even if we can’t physically make it to the festival, we can now still attend it online.  What follows are my thoughts on how to make the most of our attending the festival online.  If you haven’t signed up yet, it is not too late.  You can do so right now.

Overcoming Guilt About Not Being Able to Attend Physically

First, we need to dispel the guilt of not being able to go physically.  In the past (perhaps even sometimes now), our Resident Teachers and fellow Sangha would sometimes apply some pressure to try get people to go to festivals, and then make people feel guilty if they were not able to do so.  Such hard-pressure tactics are ultimately counter-productive in the long-run and fortunately slowly people are abandoning them.  But even when they do happen, the person using them is usually well-intended.  Our teachers and Sangha friends know the value of going to the festival and they want us to experience the same thing.  They just sometimes use less than skillful means to try encourage us to do so.  That’s OK, nobody is perfect.

But ultimately, we each have different karma.  For some, it is money problems.  For others, it is inability to get off work or family obligations.  It could be due to sickness or old age – or just the sheer physical distance needed to travel there.  It could be due to inner obstructions.  If somebody else misunderstands our karma and makes us feel guilty about not being able to go, that is their problem, not ours.  Guilt closes our mind to be able to receive blessings.  It ignorantly grasps at the view that just because we can’t physically make it to the festival, we can’t still fully participate in the festival.  We then feel bad about ourselves, give up, and don’t bother to attend virtually. 

This is completely wrong. Sometimes we really want to go, but for whatever karmic reason we are not able to do so.  We need to accept that this will happen.  Mentally, we should always maintain the wish to go physically, never thinking it is unimportant.  If we have a sincere wish, but karmically it is not possible, then we can accept not going physically with a clear conscience.  Maintaining the wish to attend physically while attending online basically takes maximum advantage of the opportunity we have to go given our karma.  Gen Tharchin explains that if we take full advantage of the spiritual opportunities we have, it creates the causes for better opportunities in the future; but if we squander the opportunities we have, we burn up the karma that created them and it will be difficult to find similar opportunities in the future.

Make the Determination to Attend Every Festival – For the Rest of Your Life

Geshe-la has said that gathering together at the festivals is the method for maintaining the tradition for generations to come.  This is what he asked us to do – to make a commitment to attend every festival for the rest of our lives.  

In this sense, I’m so grateful for COVID because it enabled the NKT to make the decision to make the festivals available online from anywhere in the world.  I have very difficult karma when it comes to being able to attend the festivals physically.  But being able to attend them digitally was like a huge gush of fresh air to be able to attend all the festivals as I had done in the past.  I was worried that they wouldn’t continue with the policy after COVID, but I think the NKT administrators realized there are just many people who don’t have the karma to be able to physically make it to the festivals but in their speech and minds they really wanted to be there.  COVID-era festivals proved it is possible to transform our personal environment of our home or local center into the festival experience.  So now they are letting it continue.  How wonderful!

Venerable Geshe-la says attending the festivals is the method for carrying forward the lineage for future generations.  How does this work?  Gen Tharchin says every time we engage in a spiritual practice with others, we create the karmic causes to do the same thing again with the same people in the future.  When we interact with each other as Sangha, we create karmic bonds together around common activities.  The festivals bring together the global sangha into one family, one community, one gathering, to receive the same teachings.  This keeps us all on the same page, both in terms of the teachings but also our karma together.  This is equally true whether we attend the festival physically or online.

We need to have deep appreciation for the value of our tradition so we want to keep it alive for future generations.  If we have this wish and we recall how Venerable Geshe-la said the method for doing so is making the commitment to attend all the festivals for the rest of our life, then we will naturally want to make this determination ourselves.  We are pure, 100% Kadampa teachings, without being mixed with anything.  We are the pure deal, the undilluted form, or rather we are a distinct flavor.  The Kadampa teachings include the Ganden Oral Lineage, through which we can attain enlightenment in one lifetime, even three years!  That’s what we are!  That is our instruction.  That is our uncommon characteristic.  Geshe-la’s presentation of the Ganden Oral Lineage already appears directly to millions in this world, and in the future it will appear to billions.  He has made this precious gem from the heart of Je Tsonkghapa available to all the people of the modern world.  Online festivals will emerge as one of the primary methods for doing so for generations to come.

Attending the Festival is Primarily a State of Mind

If we are unable to go physically, we have to keep in mind “being at a festival,” like all things, depends upon our mind.  It is perfectly possible to be physically at the festival, but mentally not; likewise it is possible to mentally be there while physically not being able to go.  Attending a festival is a state of mind, it is a mental recognition.  If we adopt the state of mind of “being at the festival” then we will experience whatever happens to us during festival time as “our festival.” 

During the empowerments, the teacher always encourages us to develop the recognitions that we are in the pure land receiving the empowerment directly from the guru deity.  We can do this from anywhere, including in our imagination.  The same is true during the teachings.  We can “tune in” from anywhere in the world.  If we have faith and a good motivation, it is definite our mind will be blessed exactly as if we were at the festival physically.

Anybody who has been to a festival knows that everyone’s experience is highly personalized.  If we adopt the mental recognition of being at a festival, then our daily life during this time will become our festival.  The only difference between those who are physically there and those who are not will be what appears.  They will see Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Center (or wherever else in the world the festival is taking place), we will see wherever we are at, but both will be receiving constant teachings through whatever is appearing.  Different things will happen to us during festival time, and these will be our special, personalized teachings.  Different delusions will arise during festival time and different lessons will be learned.  This is equally part of the content of our festival, not just the actual teachings.  Dakas and Dakinis can enter into the bodies of all those around us and we can find ourselves surrounded by Sangha through adopting this view.  Each thing everyone does will become part of our teachings.  Buddhas can teach through anything.  If we view everything as our teachings, everything will teach us.  In this way, we can all attend festival teachings and enjoy the full festival experience no matter where we are in the world.

To help strengthen this recognition, every day during the festival we can make special requests and dedications that Dorje Shugden arrange everything that happens to us during festival time, transforming whatever does happen to us into our personal festival.  His job is to arrange all the outer and inner conditions for our practice; of these two, inner conditions are by far the most important.  He can help protect our inner “festival mind,” and enter into whatever appears (work, family, whatever) so that it becomes our powerful teachings and festival experience.  I like to imagine vast protection circles around me and everywhere I go I try to strongly believe that everything that happens inside the protection circle is part of my festival.

Ultimately, the festival is not happening in England or wherever the festival venue happens to be, rather it is happening in the pure land.  Gen Tharchin explains that the location of the mind is at the object of cognition.  If we think of the moon, our mind goes to the moon.  In the same way, if we think of the pure land, our mind actually goes there.  Since the festival is happening in the pure land anyways, we can mentally imagine (both in and out of meditation) that we are in the pure land with all our vajra brothers and sisters.  If we maintain this recognition, we will go there and be with them. 

Why are festivals spiritually powerful?  If each one of us is a candle, we each have a little bit of light.  But if we all put our candles together, then we make a blazing sun that we all benefit from.  When we come together at festival time, it is like the entire Kadampa family bringing their candles together into a single light.  We don’t have to physically be at the festival venue to add our candle.  Since the festival is actually taking place in the pure land, we can join them all there.  Quite simply:  mentally adopt this recognition and it will be true.

Stay in Contact with your Fellow Online Sangha Friends During the Festival

During the festival, it is a good idea to try stay in close contact with your fellow online sangha friends, just as you would attending the festival physically.  Organize calls with your friends, eat meals “together” via Zoom, discuss the teachings in the various Facebook groups, etc. 

In many ways, we can say that the online Dharma community – on Facebook groups, blogs, podcasts, etc. – is like a year-long festival.  Each time we forge a bond with one another through our interactions online, we are bringing sanghas from around the world in closer karmic proximity to one another.  Sharing the pure Kadam Dharma with each other online now makes the pure Kadam Dharma appear in our future.  This is how we find each other again and again in our future lives.  The conversations we have and the bonds we create with each other on Facebook and other platforms are the threads pulling the Kadampa world together into the emerging digital society.  Our online friendships matter for the future of the living beings in our world.  The whole world is moving increasingly into a digital society where people spend more and more of their lives inside the worlds created by technology.

Geshe-la said we need to go to where the people are. The people are moving into the digital world, so as Kadampas we need to go there too.  That’s why I think the Kadampa digital presence is so important.  We need to make our exchanges together feel like a Kadampa community. We are a digital community of Kadampas.  It is the exact same karmic process as attending the festivals physically.  For those of us who find most of our sangha online, attending the festival together online brings us much closer to one another throughout the year.

Rejoice in Those Able to be There Physically

We can recall all the thousands of people who are physically at the festival and rejoice in their incredible good fortune for being able to be there.  Sometimes if we can’t go to the festival we try rationalize it by saying it is not that important.  We should never think like this because it functions to destroy the karma to have the opportunity to go in the future.  Instead, we should recall how incredibly important it is to go physically (without generating attachment to being able to go) and rejoice for those who are there.  This rejoicing will not only create a vast amount of merit, it will also help create the karmic causes for us to be able to go ourselves again physically in the future (perhaps in future lives, we do not know).  At a practical level, this rejoicing will remind us to maintain the “mind of being at a festival,” thus bringing us back to this important recognition.

We can also ask a friend who is able to go physically to dissolve us into their heart and bring us into the temple with them.  If they do, part of us will actually be there.  We should also feel ourselves to be there in their heart.  When they maintain this recognition, there may be points in the teaching where they think, “ah, this is for my friend back home.”  This is your special advice.  We can also ask them to write us, telling us what is happening and what they are learning, and what messages, if any, they are specifically receiving for us.  Even if they are not able to do so each day during the festival, we can take them to lunch or coffee upon their return and ask them about what they learned.

Organize Viewing Parties at your Local Center

If there are other Sangha friends in your community who are also unable to go, you can organize a “viewing party” at your local center.  Everyone can get together watch the videos, meditate on their meanings, and then discuss it afterwards – just like we would if we were at the festival itself. 

I take great inspiration from the Mormans as a model for how things will likely develop for us.  Every year the Mormons have a “General Council,” which is like their Summer Festival.  There are tens of millions of Mormons around the world now and obviously not all of them are able to make the pilgrimage to Salt Lake City.  As a result, in Mormon temples and prayer halls around the world, they organize “viewing parties” where they watch the videos of the spiritual gathering, then discuss what was taught afterwards.  There is no reason why we can’t do the same.  I would suspect in the future, as we grow in number, we will increasingly do things as the Mormons do. 

Make your Online Festival a Personal Retreat

If we can, take a few days off from work during the festival to be able to attend it like a personal retreat.  If that is not possible and you can’t take off work, make the weekends or your days off special retreat time.  Create retreat boundaries just like you would if you were physically at the festival.

Now that Venerable Geshe-la has passed, how does he continue to appear in this world? As the teacher of every festival. Some people in the future may lament wishing they were able to attend teachings directly with Geshe-la, but I say we all have this opportunity every year for the Spring, Summer, and Fall international festivals.  What appears to our eyes may be this Gen-la or that one, but for us we see it is Venerable Geshe-la teaching the festival through everyone and everything related to the festival (not just the teachings).  This is equally true whether we are physically at the festival or attending it online.

Conclusion 

Attending festivals is one of the most important things we can do for our spiritual life.  The benefits of being at a festival are truly limitless.  But the karma is not always there for us to physically go.  We need to accept this and make the most of it.  By making the most of it, while always maintaining the wish to be able to go again in the future, we create the karmic causes to be able to attend physically later. 

Festival time is a special time regardless of whether we can physically make it to the festival venue itself.  Fortunately, through the power of faith and emptiness, no matter where we may find ourselves in the world, we can all attend the festival with our vajra brothers and sisters every year – just in a different way.  In this way, we can make and keep our commitment to Venerable Geshe-la to attend every festival for the rest of our lives. 

Enjoy!

How to Engage in Vajra Recitation when Reciting Heruka’s Mantras:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

There are three ways of engaging in mantra recitation: verbal, mental, and vajra. Verbal recitation is when we verbally recite the mantras with our mouth and voice. Mental recitation is when we recite the mantras with our mind alone. Vajra recitation is when we imagine our guru is reciting the mantras for us in our mind as a blessing empowerment.

When we recite Heruka’s mantras, we imagine that our four mouths (from the four faces of ourself generated as Guru Heruka) and all the retinue deities (who are purified aspects of our guru’s subtle cannels and drops) recite the mantras like a collective chant as the mantras circle in and out of our central channel according to the visualization.

As they do so, we should imagine that they – who are seen as inseparable with our guru – are collectively reciting the mantras like a healing ceremony or a spiritual surgery by a team of enlightened doctors, bestowing the blessings of the function of each mantra we recite on our mind. We strongly believe this is happening and generate a profound feeling of joy.

We do all of this while maintaining deep faith in Guru Heruka, a bodhichitta motivation, single-pointed concentration, and an understanding that ourself, the mantras, and the guru deities reciting the mantras are all manifestations of emptiness.

We can engage in vajra recitation for the sake of ourself as described above or for the sake of others, imagining that we dissolve those we love into our self-generation, and then we – as Guru Heruka – perform vajra recitation on them, blessing and healing their mind as our guru does to us.

Such amazing spiritual technology!

Realizing Non-Dual Karma and Emptiness:

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

Gross and subtle ordinary appearances and conceptions can be understood from the side of the object and from the side of the mind realizing it.

Overcoming gross ordinary appearances essentially means a direct realization of emptiness in meditative equipoise on emptiness. At such times we perceive directly the mere absence of all the things we normally see. We have attained the first union of non-dual appearance and emptiness – the union of the appearance of clear light and its emptiness. We see the clear light as non-dual with its emptiness. We see the clear light as a manifestation of its emptiness. This is essentially the first profundity. From a sutra perspective, this is realized with a gross mind. From a tantra perspective, this is realized with our very subtle mind of great bliss. In Mirror of Dharma, VGL differentiates the union of non-dual clear light and emptiness and non-dual bliss and emptiness as two different examples of the union of appearance and emptiness. But it is still just the first profundity, just at a deeper level.

But to “complete the practice of clear light” we need to purify our obstructions to omniscience. Just as the conventional nature of the mind is so clear it can know objects, the clear light is to empty it can appear subtle conventional objects as non-dual with emptiness. In Eight Steps to Happiness, VGL explains that subtle conventional truths are not conventional truths, but ultimate truths. They are various things appearing directly as emptiness. An omniscient mind perceives “only emptiness” but it appears in myriad ways, of which the appearance of clear light is merely one. The non-dual appearance of myself as the deity, my car, my computer, my phone, Donald Trump, etc., are others. They are these various things appearing directly as emptiness or, from another angle, only emptiness appearing as various things.

In other words, to directly overcome subtle dualistic appearance – attain a realization of non-dual emptiness and subtle conventional truths (seeing subtle conventional truths directly as ultimate truths, only emptinesses), we need to train in the second, third, and fourth profundities, both in meditation and outside of meditation. We do it inside of meditation by meditating on non-dual profundity and clarity, for example with our self-generation meditation; and we do it outside of meditation by training in subsequent attainment, in particular according to the instructions of training in the meditation break explained in Tantric Grounds and Paths in the section on Isolated Body. This process of realizing the second, third, and fourth profundities itself occurs at two levels: at the level of our gross mind (Sutra) and at the level of our subtle and very subtle minds (Tantra).

I would also add even this explanation is not sufficient. We need to realize Nagarjuna’s intention according to the Ganden Oral Lineage. VGL explained this in his oral commentary to Mirror of Dharma and through the Gen-la’s in Arizona. The difference between the explanation from the perspective of the four profundities and from the perspective of Nagarjuna’s intention is we realize not only the union of appearance and emptiness (four profundities), but the union of karma and emptiness (Nagarjuna’s intention). We realize not just the union of appearance and emptiness, but the union of KARMIC appearance and emptiness. This is like the difference between realizing a static picture (four profundities of the non-dual Toyota and emptiness) and a dynamic karmic movie (seeing the Toyota driving down the street as the unfolding of karma inseparable from emptiness, seeing it as a manifestation of emptiness, seeing it as only emptiness appearing as a karmic unfolding appearing in this way). Realizing non-dual karma and emptiness is even deeper than the mere realization of non-dual appearance and emptiness of the four profundities according to highest yoga tantra. I think only when we realize non-dual karma and emptiness with our very subtle mind of great bliss do we actually remove the last traces of obstructions to omniscience and realize Nagarjuna’s (and Buddha’s) ultimate intention and attain full enlightenment.

Tantric Fractals – Living Life at Different Levels of Purity:

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Gen Rabten once said our Tantric training is like fractals. Fractals are patterns that repeat themselves at different levels. Fundamentally, Tantric practice is about learning to meditate on Lamrim at increasingly subtle levels of mind. The fractal pattern is always Lamrim, but it appears in different ways at increasingly subtle levels of mind.

Our starting point is the world of our grossest levels of mind, the world we normally see or perceive. Here, we train in Lamrim of our daily life, go to Dharma centers, attend teachings, etc.

The next level is the world of our guru yoga practice, from going for refuge up to dissolving the guru into our heart. Here we are no longer in the world we normally see, but not yet in the pure land. I like to think this takes place in the charnel grounds, which is like a way station en route for Keajra.

The next level is gross generation stage. According to New Essence of Vajrayana, we can view this as our gross deity body is the celestial mansion, Mount Meru, the four continents and elements, and so forth.

The next level is the body mandala. This is like a half-way point between gross generation stage and completion stage. Our completely purified channels and drops appear as the deities of the body mandala.

The next level is the mantras. The mantras are by nature our completely purified inner winds. Since all minds are mounted on inner winds, we can almost say the flow of mantras is like the body mandala meditation of our body mandala meditations. In other words, just as the body mandala is our channels and drops appearing as their completely purified nature in the aspect of the deities of the body mandala, the deities of the body mandala appear in their completely purified nature in the aspect of the mantras.

The next level is the seed letter of the guru deity at our heart, the principal object of our completion stage meditation. This is the completely purified nature of the mantras and thus everything that came before them. It is by nature our very subtle wind and mind, our continuously residing wind and mind.

The next level is inside that we find the clear light Dharmakaya of our Mahamudra meditations. Just as all rivers empty into the ocean, all Dharma minds empty into the ocean of the Dharmakaya.

Inside that we find the union of appearance and emptiness, or full enlightenment.

The more time we spend at each of these levels, the more they start to feel like actual places – actual lands or worlds within our mind – each inside the other like Kadampa Russian dolls with increasing levels of subtlety and purity. In the beginning, we spend most of our mental time at the grossest levels, but with training we move more and more into the subtler and subtler levels of mind.

I think we can say when we reach the world of gross generation stage we have attained outer Keajra. Keajra itself has many layers up to the inner pure land of the Dharmakaya and finally definitive Keajra or the mind of full enlightenment.

When I do my three year retreat, I plan on spending a certain number of months in each of these worlds. The first six months will be mostly in the gross deity body. The next six months will be mostly in the body mandala. The next six months will be mostly in the mantras. The next six months will be at the level of seed letter. The next six months after that will be at the level of the Dharmakaya of Vajrayana Mahamudra, and the next six months after that will emphasize the union of appearance and emptiness. All throughout, I will try to integrate the full Lamrim into each world, so while what appears will be the different appearances of that world, what is understood is the full Kadam Lamrim.

In this way, we can gain lived experience in these different worlds, at these increasingly subtle levels of purity. In effect, we are forging our path within our mind from the world we normally see to the enligthened worlds, with all the stops in between. By training in this way, when we die, the path is made and we follow it to the pure land and beyond. It may take several lifetimes of doing this, but eventually we will have built the entire path within our mind.

Heruka Tantra is sometimes called “the main gateway for those seeking liberation.” I think quite literally Guru Heruka is not just the final result, but the entire path from where we start to the final destination. When we train in this way, we not only build our own pathway to enlightenment, we create an infrastructure that other beings can likewise travel on to the same destination. If we check, this is what Venerable Geshe-la has done for us, now we can do it for others.

How wonderful!

Accepting We Live in Degenerate Times

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra, 4. Practicing in Daily Life, 5. Reliance upon Dorje Shugden

From a spiritual perspective, we as modern day Kadampas live in increasing times. That means spiritually things are getting better and better. But the world we live in is one of degenerating times, meaning things will continue to get worse and worse and will likely continue to do so until Maitreya comes. This is a difficult nut for people to swallow.

We tend to think it is good to be “optimistic” and believe that things will get better, but this is a trap for two reasons. First, it grasps onto things getting better externally as a necessary precondition for our happiness. This too shall pass. Brighter days lie ahead. Tomorrow will be better. OK, if that is the case, then I can accept my present circumstances. But what happens if tomorrow isn’t better? What do we do if each day things get worse externally? If we are always basing our happiness on things getting better externally, we remain attached.

Attachment is an object to be abandoned, even attachment to the hope of things getting better. Perhaps the last few hundred years have been increasing times, but now we are in degenerate times. Tomorrow will be worse than today and this will continue to be the case for likely a very long time. If we don’t shed this attachment to things getting better externally, we will suffer more and more from it, life will beat us down further and further, we will grow more and more depressed. This path leads to suicidal hopelessness.

The second reason why this is a trap is it is a form of self-torture. When we tell ourselves things are going to get better externally and they don’t, then we get crushed, our hopes drained, and our life becomes one of constant disappointment. Where does the disappointment come from? It comes from our unrealistic expectations about the external world. The truth is actually staring us right in the face. We are all doomed – we will all get sick, get old (if we are lucky), and die. And this process is going to repeat itself again and again. Life in samsara is one of perpetual, self-replicating doom. It is not going to get better, indeed it is on track to get much, much worse. We are enjoying but a brief relatively pleasant furlough in the human world.

These are hard truths to accept. Shattering, actually. But that doesn’t make them any less true. Until we come to grips with them, we remain on samsaric paths. Accepting them is when the path to liberation begins. This isn’t fire and brimstone manipulation. Buddha is very clear – we are in degenerate times. We better get used to it. Letting go of hope that this world will get better and that our external situation will get better is the starting point of the path to liberation. You should know sufferings.

So how can we happily accept these hard truths? How can accepting these truths not crush us and trigger a mental breakdown? How can we hear these things and not become suicidally hopeless?

First, we need to internalize these truths gradually. Start with the small stuff. Gain some experience of transforming slight adversities into the path of spiritual growth. When we can do that, we get a taste that it is possible. If we can do it with the small stuff, we gain the confidence and capacity to do it with slightly bigger stuff, and so on until eventually we can do it with any adversity. Venerable Geshe-la explains in How to Solve our Human Problems that there is no adversity so great that it cannot be transformed into the path. Indeed, with experience, the more things go badly externally the more we are propelled along the spiritual path internally. Instead of being beaten down by samsara, we become ejected by it – literally expelled out of it.

Second, we do not abandon hope, we simply change both its object and its expected timeline. Yes, we need to give up hope completely in samsara. It will never get better, it is irreparably broken. Doing more samsara will never create less samsara. Doubling down on samsaric methods will just double our suffering in it. But that doesn’t mean we are hopeless. Quite the opposite, we have a pure potential that can never be harmed by samsara no matter how awful it gets. We can reliably place our hope in our pure potential. We can reliably place our faith in the Dharma we have been taught as the method for ripening this potential. From the mud emerges the beautiful lotus. But we need to be realistic about how long this is going to take. It could take aeons. But that’s OK because we know with a pure potential and perfectly reliable methods the final outcome is assured. This is the mind of definite emergence and it is a joyful mind that knows we are bound for freedom and the only thing that can stop us is giving up trying. If we never give up, not only are we assured of getting out, we will eventually be able to lead everyone else to freedom. We can and will empty samsara. Buddha is also very clear about this. And it may happen much quicker than that – we have, after all, found the Ganden Oral Lineage through which it is possible to attain enlightenment in one short life. Maybe we won’t make it in this life, but if we give it our all, we will be able to pick up where we left off in our last life and it won’t be long before we find ourselves scaling Mount Meru in Keajra and eventually centering ourselves within the HUM at Guru Heruka’s heart inside his celestial mansion.

Third, we should remember that our samsaric world we normally see does not actually exist – at all. It is just a deluded hallucination. We are trippin’, as they say. It’s a bad trip, but it is not real. It is a bad dream, but it is not real. No matter what happens in the dream, it can never hurt us unless we believe it is real. We need to get to the point with our samsara that it becomes like a movie that is so bad, so absurd, it is funny. Samsara makes me laugh. The sky is never harmed, no matter how violent the storm raging in it. Be the sky. When we connect with the emptiness of an appearance, we purify the karma giving rise to it and it gradually subsides back into emptiness. By realizing the emptiness of our mind itself, we can cause all appearances to our mind to likewise subside into emptiness. We quite literally end the dream in such a way that it never arises again. You should attain cessations.

Fourth, we should trust in Dorje Shugden. One of my former students was a guy named Taro. Some of you may know him. He suffered terribly from psychotic minds, even towards the three jewels, and lived for close to a decade in a psychiatric hospital. His body may have been in the human realm, but his mind was often in hell. But he had vajra-like faith in Dorje Shugden. After he heard Gen Tharchin teach that we design our own enlightenment based upon the specific bodhichitta we generate, Taro said he wished to become a Buddha for extremely degenerate times – when everyone has a mind like he had now. His faith in Dorje Shugden enabled him to look at his torturous mind and view it as giving him the opportunity to gain the realizations he needed to fulfill his specific bodhichitta wish. He also once told me, “stop telling your spiritual guide how big your problems are and start telling your problems how big your spiritual guide is.” His bodhichitta later evolved into wishing to become part of Dorje Shugden’s mandala. He has since passed away, but I have no doubt he is now part of Dorje Shugden’s vast assembled retinue. Perhaps he always was, actually. He bought for the center in Geneva a temple-sized Dorje Shugden statue. It’s bigger than our Buddha Shayamuni statue was! It was (and is) glorious, as was he. Indeed, it is wrong for me to say he was one of my students. He was rather one of my teachers – really, he was a teacher of us all. When they write the biographies of the early modern Kadampas, he will be listed as one of our modern Kadampa Mahasiddhas. Of this I have no doubt. If faith in Dorje Shugden can transform Taro’s tormented mind into a cause of enlightenment, then it can easily do so for the rest of us.

As a practical matter, accepting that samsara is hopeless and our lives within it are doomed does not mean we don’t still try make things better where possible. We still need to live our modern lives exactly as normal – working, exercising, taking care of our families, saving for retirement, caring for the sick, contributing to society, etc. If we can make our lives better, there is no fault in doing so. We just don’t place our hope in these things and we accept it when our life falls apart – as it will, many times.

And the ultimate irony is it is by accepting that we live in degenerate times, that samsara is irreparably broken, and indeed that we (or at least who we currently think we are) are doomed that we can actually be happy not just in our future lives, but in this life. It’s simple expectations management. If we expect (and accept) that things will go badly, then when it does we are not surprised or disappointed. But if it winds up going better than the worst we expected, we are pleasantly surprised. Either way, we keep our inner peace. By placing our hope in our pure potential and expanding our timeline, we get the same benefits of a hopeful mind but in something that actually will come to fruition. Samsara is doomed, but we are not. It’s good that samsara is doomed because then we can let go of chasing its rainbows and false promises. We stop wasting our time on what has no hope of working and we joyfully plunge into the divine pool of the clear light. We develop not only the joyful mind of definite emergence, we know that – in the end – we will guide all those that we love who currently suffer so to permanent freedom from all suffering. And nothing can stop us as long as we never give up trying. The final outcome is assured. So then, like Taro, we can happily accept our present adversity as forging us into the Buddha we need to become. We can then, as Gen Tharchin explained, take our place in Geshe-la’s holy mandala.

As times become ever more impure,
Your power and blessings ever increase,
And you care for us quickly, as swift as thought;
O Chakrasambara Father and Mother, to you I prostrate.

How to make our sadhana practice qualified and powerful

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Much of our training in meditation is actually sadhana practice, so it is important to know how to do it well.  

The literal translation of sadhana is “method for receiving attainments.”  By engaging in the sadhanas purely and sincerely, with a good motivation and an understanding of emptiness, we will receive attainments within our mind.  Essentially, this means that we will realize directly by personal experience the benefits of the practice.  

When Venerable Geshe-la introduces any meditation, he first begins by explaining the benefits of engaging in that meditation.  This inspires us to do so.  Ultimately, since we are desire realm beings, we do what we want.  Right now, we want samsaric happiness.  But by contemplating the benefits of Dharma in general and sadhana practice in particular, we can change what we want to be spiritual attainments.  When we want spiritual attainments and we recognize that our sadhanas are methods for receiving them, we will be very motivated to engage in the practices purely and sincerely.  

Practically speaking, sadhanas are guided meditations that we take ourselves through.  The sadhanas themselves were written by our lineage gurus.  They give us these sadhanas so we can then train in them throughout our entire life, gaining deeper and deeper experience of them.  They lay out a sequence of minds we should generate and, when we do, we forge a path within our mind from our current state to the final state promised by the sadhana. One shortcut for knowing the main benefits and final destination of any sadhana is look at the dedication prayers. They explain the principal function of the sadhana and then we dedicate our engage in that practice towards the attainment of those goals. 

To make our sadhana practice qualified, it is important that we make every word count.  I have found practically this has two dimensions:  what we focus our visualization on and what is conceived by that appearance.  In this way, we unite three things:  the words, the meaning, and the appearance.  And we do this for every word of the sadhana.  As we recite each word of the sadhana, we focus on an aspect of the visualization that corresponds to it and then generate in our heart the realization implied by the meaning of the word.  It is important to not just do this intellectually understanding the meaning, but instead we generate the meaning of each word in our heart so the words are the song expressing the feelings in our heart and spontaneously appearing as the aspect of the visualization that corresponds to those words.

The power of our sadhana practice – well really the power of any of our Dharma practices – depends upon four things.  First, the degree of our faith in both the deity of the sadhana and the sadhana itself.  We can view each word of the sadhana as a subtle emanation of our guru’s mind coursing through our mind mixed inseparably with our inner winds, purifying them at a very deep level.  Since our spiritual guide is the synthesis of all Buddhas, by viewing both the deity and the sadhana as an emanation of our spiritual guide, all the Buddhas will enter into our practice, multiplying the power of the blessings by the number of Buddhas, which is countless.

Second, the power of our practice depends upon the purity of our motivation in reciting the sadhana, ideally bodhichitta.  When we engage in practices for the sake of ourself, the practice has a power of one.  But when we engage in our practices for the sake of others, the power of our practice is multiplied by the number of beings on whose behalf we engage in the practice.  If we engage in our practices with a bodhichitta motivation, it multiplies the power of our practice by infinity since there are infinite living beings.  Bodhichitta is the true quick path to enlightenment.

Third, the power of our practice depends upon the extent of our single-pointed concentration as we recite the sadhana.  If our mind is wandering everywhere, there will be little power because our mind is only fleetingly engaging with it.  But if we have single pointed concentration, bringing the full force and attention of our mind into each word, then it is like gathering all the lights of the sun into a single powerful laser that cuts through the darkness of our mind.  According to Sutra, we try engage in our practices with a mind of tranquil abiding.  But since that is a very high attainment, we do our best to gradually train in the different stages of tranquil abiding.  Simply reaching the fourth mental abiding is also a stupendous attainment which will bring great power to our practice.  According to Tantra, we try engage in the practice with our very subtle mind of great bliss.  The mind of great bliss is many, many times more powerful than the mind of tranquil abiding, primarily because it is a subtle mind and thus closer to our root mind and because it is blissful, so it is naturally free from distractions.  Once again, it is an extremely high attainment to generate the very subtle mind of great bliss, so in the beginning it is enough to correctly imagine we are meditating with the mind of great bliss.  Like all meditations on correct imagination, the more we engage in it, the closer we become to it being our reality.

And fourth, the power of our practice depends upon the thoroughness with which we combine all of this with an understanding of emptiness.  Emptiness makes everything possible.  We understand that all living beings are aspects of our mind.  We understand that the deity is not separate from our mind.  We eliminate the duality between our mind and its object.  Emptiness makes everything subtle and a delicate dance.  It is naturally blissful.  In particular, we train in the union of appearance and emptiness with every word of the sadhana.  Instead of seeing the deities and mandala we normally see, we imagine we see everything directly as emptiness in the aspect of the different visualizations.  I sometimes find it helpful to imagine there is basically only the clear light, but it is refracted along the contours of the visualized object like seeing the outline of things that are invisible to others.  We see the dance of emptiness.  We perceive only emptiness, but it is in motion according to the visualizations of the sadhana.

In other words, by training in these four aspects, we bring the entire Lamrim into each word of our sadhana practice – faith, bodhichitta, pure concentration, and the wisdom realizing emptiness.  

How deeply our sadhana practice goes depends upon at what level we are engaging in it.  In the teachings on mantra recitation, it explains there are three main ways we engage in mantra recitation – verbal, mental, and vajra. Roughly speaking, we can say that verbal recitation purifies our gross inner winds, mental recitation purifies our subtle inner winds, and vajra recitation purifies our very subtle inner winds. Vajra recitation is supreme. Here, we imagine our guru is reciting the mantra in our mind for us, like performing some sort of spiritual surgery on us, and we are basically hearing him do so. We take everything we know about relying upon the guru’s mind alone and activating the inner spiritual guide and bring that into our mantra recitation.

In exactly the same way, we can engage in our sadhana practices at these same three levels – verbal, mental, and vajra.  Verbal recitation occurs when we verbally sing the sadhana.  Mental recitation occurs when we recite the sadhana within our mind.  This is why it is helpful to memorize the sadhana.  Vajra recitation is when we imagine that our guru is engaging in the sadhana for us in our mind and we are allowing him to carry us along its current to enlightenment.  Vajra recitation of sadhanas is supreme.

Finally, we can also increase the power of our sadhana practice by engaging in it as all living beings.  Our “I” is just a label that we can impute on anything.  If we impute our I onto all living beings and then engage in our practice, we will feel like we are the entire universe of living beings engaging in the practice.  Alternatively, we can dissolve all living beings into our heart and then, as them, engage in all the practices strongly believing that by doing so they are receiving the same karmic benefit as if they were engaging in the practices themselves.  This way of practicing is extremely powerful for not only multiplying the power of our practice by the number of beings we are imagining we are, but also in terms of creating a very, very close karmic connection between ourself, the deity, the practice, and all living beings.  This functions to ripen their karma to find, enter into, progress along, and ultimately complete the path.  

Taken together, when we engage in our sadhana practices, we should imagine that we are all living beings, engaging in vajra recitation of the sadhana, with deep faith in our guru, a pure bodhichitta motivation, single pointed blissful concentration, all conjoined with a realization of emptiness of ourself, the practice, all the Buddhas, and all living beings.  If we bring these recognitions into each word of our practice, it will be like rocket fuel powering us quickly to the final goal.  It takes training, but with familiarity, it can become entirely natural. 

How Samsara Ends

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Gen Tharchin says each step we take towards enlightenment, we bring all beings with us in proportion to their karmic connection to us. So we need to do two things: take steps towards enlightenment and forge close karmic bonds with others. This works because everything and everyone is empty. Unobservable compassion.

The beings we bring along with us then start to do the same for the beings karmically close to them. The most powerful method for doing this is imagining all living beings are all engaging in our tantric practices with us. This correct imagination karmically reconstructs the beings of our empty dream into tantric bodhisattvas and spiritual guides doing the same for others.

This is how we empty samsara and populate our pure land. This is how we create a force of spirtual gravity that counters the karmic gravitational pull of hell being exerted on all beings.

The more beings we bring into our pure land, the stronger the pure spiritual gravity grows until eventually it becomes so powerful, it sucks all beings out of samsara almost in an instant and into the eternal peace of universal enlightenment.

Then, atop Mount Meru and in all the pure continents of our pure land, we party, feasting on samsara’s carcass with our inner, torma, and tsog offerings and enjoying magnificent delights as we all sing and dance to the Song of the Spring Queen.

Making our Mantra Recitation Powerful

Kadampa Ryan 3. Tantra

Making our mantra recitation powerfully primarily comes down to a mental recognition that the nature of the mantras is our inner winds. When we engage in body mandala meditations, we recognize each of the deities as being by nature our subtle channels and drops appearing in the aspect of the deities of the body mandala. Just as gold appears as coins, our channels and drops appear as the deities of the body mandala. This recognition functions to cause the deities to mix into our channels and drops which purifies them. Wherever you imagine a Buddha, a Buddha actually goes and performs their function.

In exactly the same way, we mentally recognize the mantras as by nature our inner winds. Mantras are subtle emanations of Buddhas. Wherever you imagine a Buddha, a Buddha actually goes and performs their function. By maintaining this recognition, subtle emanations become one with our inner winds just as happens in our body mandala meditations, and this functions to purify them at a very deep level.

How deeply this purification goes depends upon at what level we are engaging in the mantra recitation. There are three main ways we engage in mantra recitation – verbal, mental, and vajra. Roughly speaking, we can say that verbal recitation purifies our gross inner winds, mental recitation purifies our subtle inner winds, and vajra recitation purifies our very subtle inner winds. Vajra recitation is supreme. Here, we imagine our guru is reciting the mantra in our mind for us, like performing some sort of spiritual surgery on us, and we are basically hearing him do so. We take everything we know about relying upon the guru’s mind alone and activating the inner spiritual guide and bring that into our mantra recitation.

The important thing to know about winds is winds are the mounts for minds. If the winds are impure, the minds will be impure; if the winds are pure, the minds will be pure. If we purify our root and branch winds, we purify all our minds.

Most of our tantric practices are fundamentally about gaining control of our inner winds, with the goal of being able to gather them into our indestructible drop, absorb them into the seed letter/our root mind in the center of that, and ultimately dissolve them into the clear light. When we do, all the waves of samsara subside and we are left with the completely still, clear, and empty ocean of the Dharmakaya. This is the foundation for all Mahamudra meditations and ultimately all transfers of consciousness (of ourself or others) to the pure land.

The power of our mantra recitation – well really the power of any of our Dharma practices – depends upon four things. First, the degree of our faith that the mantras are subtle emanations of the deity coursing through our mind mixed inseparably with our inner winds, purifying them at a very deep level. Second, the purity of our motivation in reciting the mantra, ideally bodhichitta. Third, the extent of our single-pointed concentration as we recite the mantra. And fourth, the thoroughness with which we combine all of this with an understanding of emptiness. In other words, we bring the entire Lamrim into our mantra recitation.

We can also do all of this for the benefit of others, such as our family or loved ones, imagining that the mantras are entering into their inner winds, purifying them, etc.

We can read more about all of this in Tantric Grounds and Paths. There is a very extensive section on inner winds, mantras, etc., which explains everything. When doing mantra counting retreats or even in our daily practice of mantra recitation, that section is our root text.