Scorning the Dharma of Sutra or Tantra.

If we criticize any teaching of Buddha, claiming that it is not the word of Buddha, and if someone else hears our criticism, we incur a root downfall.  This also teaches that Tantric practitioners must respect Sutra teachings because Sutra is the foundation for all Tantric realizations.

It is unfortunately all too common for different religious traditions to criticize one another.  Human history is replete with wars fought and lives destroyed as a result.  The root of this problem is a lack of understanding of emptiness.  If two religions say contradictory things, and both religions grasp at their being an objective truth, then one of them must be wrong or both of them are wrong, but both can’t be right.  The zealots then get into all sorts of heated discussions about who is right and who is wrong, both claiming to have the monopoly on the truth.  Meanwhile, neutral observers to these religious disputes conclude, “all religious people are nuts!”

If we understand emptiness, all of these problems go away.  Virtue can be arrived at in a variety of different ways depending upon the karmic dispositions of the different followers.  For some, a Christian presentation will work; for others, a Jewish presentation; for others a Muslim presentation, and so forth.  All valid religions point in the same direction, but their presentation and explanation differ.  This difference is not a problem, it is a gift of all of the holy beings.  As a result, different people can be touched by different words that move them.  Someone who doesn’t grasp at objective truth can say, “your teachings work for you, my teachings work for me, and even though they seem contradictory, this is not a problem at all.  You have your bread, I have mine.”

Our heart commitment to Dojre Shugden is to “follow one tradition purely without mixing, while respecting all other traditions as valid for those who follow them.”  On the surface, this can seem like a contradictory statement.  If we are following only one tradition, aren’t we implicitly rejecting all others, and thus becoming sectarian?  No, not at all.  We are not rejecting these other traditions for other people, we are just saying we drink a different cup of tea.  Our choice of one tea does not in any way imply other teas are less good in some universal sense.  Rather it just says, “for me, this is what I like.  You order what you like, and we all can be happy for each other.”

The analogy I like to give is of a burning room.  Imagine you are in a giant burning room, and there are many different doorways out.  What should you do?  You should find the doorway nearest you, and head straight out.  You don’t head towards one door, then another, then another, because then you remain forever in the burning room.  You don’t head towards the average of two doors, because then you bang into the wall.  You don’t head towards all doors simultaneously, because then you will be split in many directions at once.  No, you find the door nearest to you, and you head straight out.  Your choice of one door doesn’t in any way deny the validity of any of the other doors, and if you see your friend closer to a different door, you encourage them to head out the door closest to them.  This is exactly what the flight attendants ask us to do in the event of an emergency.

In exactly the same way, if you find yourself trapped in the burning room of samsara, and there are many different doors (spiritual paths) out, what should you do?  You should find the one that is karmically nearest to you, and head straight out.  The one karmically nearest to you is the one that speaks to you most clearly, the one that moves your heart the most, and the one that seems complete (in other words, it actually leads out).  You don’t follow one path, then another, then another, because then you never get out.  You don’t follow the average of two paths because that doesn’t lead to a door out.  You don’t follow all paths simultaneously because that spiritually splits you into many parts.  No, you find the path that karmically is closest to you and you head straight out.  Your choice of one path doesn’t in any way deny the validity of the other paths. If you see your friend karmically closer to another path, say Christianity, then you encourage them to follow their path sincerely and purely.  We each follow our own path, and even if they seem to be heading in opposite directions, in reality they all lead us out of the same burning room.

It is terribly negative karma to criticize another spiritual tradition.  Why is that?  Because when you do so, you destroy the faith of another person in what is otherwise a perfectly valid path.  If that path works for them, meaning it is helping them become a better person, then to sabotage that is to destroy that person’s spiritual life.  They might wind up losing faith in all paths and reject spirituality altogether.  Crises of faith are extremely painful things, and ultimately our criticism is based solely on our delusion finding fault in something that encourages virtue.  If we were sick with a cold, do we go around and sneeze in other people’s faces?  No, we cover our mouth and turn the other way because we don’t want to get other people sick.  In the same way, if we have a critical attitude towards the spiritual path of another, what gives us the right to go in there and start sneezing our critical attitude in everybody’s faces?  We might self-righteously claim we are protecting these poor innocent people from being misled down wrong paths.  But can we honestly say we know the minds of others to know that this other path is not exactly what they need?  Who made us the spiritual police?  How does our attitude make us any different than Spanish Inquisition?

The correct attitude is to rejoice in the virtue of others, regardless of whether what motivates it is the teachings of our tradition or something else in complete contradiction with our tradition.  Even if it seems a very goofy and esoteric system of belief, if the end result is people acting in more virtuous ways, more loving ways, more compassionate ways, more wise ways, then let people be.  Even when others criticize us, our teachers, our traditions, we should never retaliate in kind.  We should never criticize their spiritual teachings.  We can say, “your teachings work for you, mine work for me, let’s all respect one another and co-exist peacefully and in harmony.”  Conflict comes when everybody has to hold the same view.  Harmony comes when everyone can hold their own view, and nobody tries to impose their view on anybody else.

Giving up aspiring or engaging bodhichitta.

This downfall is the same as the last root downfall of the Bodhisattva vows.  Since bodhichitta is the foundation of all Tantric practice, if we abandon bodhichitta we incur a root Tantric downfall.

At a very simple level, our Tantric practice is the logical conclusion of our Sutra practice.  The “quintessential butter” that comes from churning the milk of Sutra is the mind of bodhichitta, the wish to become a Buddha for the benefit of all living beings.  Our Tantric practice explains how, namely by changing the basis of imputation of our “I” from that of an ordinary, samsaric being to that of the completely pure body and mind of our deity.  Then, in completion stage, we purify the subtle body of that self-generated deity, enabling all of our inner winds to gather and dissolve into our central channel at our heart, giving rise to the very subtle mind of great bliss.  We then meditate on the emptiness of that mind, gradually uproot all of our delusions and their imprints, and finally become a Buddha.  In short, Sutra gives us the goal of becoming a Buddha, Tantra gives us the means for accomplishing this goal.  Without bodhichitta, our Tantric practice will still be beneficial, but it won’t be powerful enough to carry us through all of the Tantric grounds and paths.  Without bodhichitta, there is no enlightenment, even if we practice Tantra for many aeons.

Our Tantric practice also greatly reinforces our Sutra practice, and in particular our bodhichitta.  Venerable Tharchin explains the key to generating effort is to see clearly how the practices work to produce their given results.  When we understand the inner mechanism by which the practices work, we generate great confidence in them, and as such, he says, “effort becomes effortless.”  Tantra shows us very clearly how it is actually possible to become a Buddha.  We see exactly what is required and how the practices we have been given will work to take us through all the required steps.  Seeing this, the accomplishment of our bodhichitta wish transforms from being a “wouldn’t that be great if I could become a Buddha” to “if I do XYZ, I can indeed become a Buddha.”  This supercharges our bodhichitta.  In this way, Sutra and Tantra mutually reinforce one another.

Kadam Bjorn said whether we are successful or not in overcoming our delusions depends almost entirely upon whether our desire to be free from our delusion is greater than our desire for the object of our delusion.  He gave the example of a drug addict.  A drug addict will only overcome their addiction when their desire to be free from addiction is greater than their desire for using the drug again.  It is the same with overcoming our addiction to samsara.

In the same way, he said, our ability to transform attachment into the path with our Tantric practice depends almost entirely upon whether our desire to be free from attachment is greater than our desire for indulging in the object of our attachment.  If we lack this, then if we attempt to transform attachment into the path with our Tantric practice, all we will really do is misuse the Dharma for worldly, deluded purposes.  There are many reasons why we might want to become free from our attachment, such as our wish to be happy in this life, our wish to avoid lower rebirth or our wish to escape from samsara.  But the supreme reason for wanting to do so is bodhichitta, our wish to become a Buddha capable of leading all beings to enlightenment.  Attachment to the things of samsara prevents us from leaving it; but once we see through the lies of our attachment, nothing can stop us from walking straight out of samsara, and then leading all others to do the same.  When we consider the fate of all living beings, it becomes easy to see how it is far more important to lead them to freedom than it is to enjoy a couple of moments of contaminated pleasure.

We should never underestimate the power of attachment to kidnap our Tantric practice.  Anyone who received teachings from ex-Gen-la Samden would agree that his teachings were some of the most sublime ever given within the tradition, in particular his teachings on patient acceptance from Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life.  This was a man who had deep experience of Dharma.  Yet even he got fooled by his attachment.  His attachment kidnapped his understanding of Dharma, and led him down a path of misinterpreting the teachings.  It may seem unthinkable how somebody so realized could do something so wrong, but we think that only because we underestimate the cunning power of delusions and the subtle strength of our sexual attachment.  I have said it before, delusions killed the holy being that was Gen-la Samden.  If they can kill him, they can make mince-meat out of us.

But qualified bodhichitta, however, would protect us from making such mistakes.  Obviously breaking our vows and causing others to break their vows does not bring us closer to enlightenment, and it certainly doesn’t help lead others to the same state.  He had the opportunity to be the next guru of the lineage, but he lost it all due to the deceptiveness of delusion.  Being an advanced practitioner will not protect us, only deep and stable realizations of renunciation and bodhichitta will.

Abandoning love for any being.

We incur this downfall by wishing for someone to experience suffering, or by strongly deciding never to help someone.

In daily life, we have countless instances when we wish for others to experience suffering.  For example, we could be happy when our rival co-worker gets in trouble, we could be happy when our business’s competitor goes bankrupt, we could be happy when those who are critical of us gets criticized by somebody else.  Basically, we generally dislike many people, and when samsara’s inevitable sufferings befall them, we become happy.

Venerable Tharchin says when we rejoice in the suffering of others, we create the causes to have that same suffering befall us.  He gives the example of those rejoicing in September 11^th, or those rejoicing when we bomb them back.  He said, even reading the newspaper can be a dangerous pastime if we are not careful with our mind.

Why is wishing for somebody to experience suffering so bad?  For the simple reason it is 100% opposite of our love, compassion and bodhichitta.  It moves in the exact opposite direction.  Love wishes for people to be truly happy all of the time, compassion wishes others were completely free from every trace of suffering, and bodhichitta is a mind that takes personal responsibility for fulfilling the wishes of our love and compassion.  The problem is this:  the tendencies in our mind are overwhelmingly negative.  It is very easy to generate negative thoughts and it takes considerable effort to generate virtuous ones.  Psychological studies have shown that negative opinions spread 10 times easier than positive ones.  Most political campaigns are about assassinating the character of the other candidate, as opposed to laying out a positive platform for the future.  Why?  Because negativity works.  When we allow our mind to indulge in these sorts of negative thoughts, we can say that our mind takes at least 10 steps backwards.  Then, we need 10 genuinely good and virtuous thoughts just to get back where we started.  We see how hard it is to generate virtue, it is foolish to set ourselves back in such a way.

This vow also advises us to never decide to not help somebody else.  If we are to attain enlightenment, our love and compassion need to be universal, encompassing all living beings without exception.  Every living being was once our kind mother.  Every living being shares the same wish as we do to be happy all of the time.  Every living being suffers from samsara, just like us.  There is no valid basis for treating any of them differently.  Ultimately, every living being is a wave on the ocean of our mind, part of us, and we are part of them.  We are all cells in the body of all living beings.  Understanding this, to not help somebody else is to not help part of ourself.

Life is so much simpler when we just decide we will help everyone in every way we can.  Why hold back?  Why help some and not others?  No need to calculate, no need to manipulate, no need for a quid pro quo, we just help unconditionally.

But we of course need to use our wisdom.  Sometimes the best way we can help somebody else is to not help them, but instead to let them do it on their own.  This is the helping of not helping, but it is still helping the other person.

In particular, we should make a concerted effort to love and help those who harm us.  It is easy to help those who are kind to us, but if we really want to move our mind we need to actively try help those who harm us.  If somebody criticizes us, repay them with a compliment.  If somebody harms us, help them.  Geshe-la says love is the nuclear bomb that destroys all enemies.  It does so both conventionally and ultimately.  Conventionally, when we consistently love people no matter what they do to us, we eventually win them over and they no longer view us as their enemy.  Ultimately, somebody is only an enemy if we impute “enemy” upon them, but when we love them they become an “object of love,” not an enemy.

In short, wish others only the best.

Criticizing our vajra brothers and sisters.

All those who have received a Tantric empowerment from the same Spiritual Guide are varja brothers and sisters, irrespective of whether they received the empowerments at the same time.  If we criticize them with a bad motivation we incur a root downfall.  If, however, our varja brother or sister has broken their Tantric vows and we criticize him or her, we do not incur an actual root downfall.

Within the modern Kadampa tradition, we view all of our empowerments as being granted by Geshe-la, even if it might appear to be some Resident Teacher or Gen-la sitting in front of us.  So even if we received the empowerments from one teacher and somebody else within our tradition received them from somebody else, we are still both receiving them from Geshe-la, and so are Vajra brothers and sisters.  Likewise, if the teacher from whom we receive the empowerment subsequently leaves the tradition or even disrobes in disgrace, it does not matter because Geshe-la hasn’t.  Actually, we go deeper than that.  We view the empowerment as being given by the living guru deity.  The living Guru is the living Je Tsongkhapa, who enters into our teachers to grant the empowerments.  But then Lama Tsongkhapa manifests himself as the deity of whom we are about to receive the empowerment, such as Tara, Vajrasattva, Heruka and Vajrayogini, and so forth.

What distinguishes friends from family is family endures as along as this life.  Someone may cease to be my friend, but my children and parents never cease to be my family.  For this reason, karmically speaking, we can say family is more important than friends.  What distinguishes our normal families from our vajra family is our normal families are for this life alone, our vajra family is forever.  For this reason, karmically speaking, we can say our vajra family is more important than our normal family.  Our vajra family is with us in life after life, for all our future lives.  Our vajra family shares a common project of working for as long as it takes to lead each and every being to the eternal bliss of enlightenment.

Venerable Tharchin says that the realizations of each individual practitioner is like a beacon of light within the darkness of the minds of all living beings.  Though others may not see this light with their ordinary eyes, deep down within their mind they are drawn to it like a fish drawn to light in the depths of the sea.  He said a Dharma center exists on two levels.  The outer level is the physical building, statues, meditation cushions and flyers advertising our programs.  The inner level is the collective realizations of the people who belong to that center.  If we each hold a candle, it illuminates our surroundings, but if we all put our candles together, it forms a blazing sun illuminating all around.  For this reason, he says, the most important thing in any Dharma center is not its financial accounts, but the harmony and mutual love that exists within the Sangha.  It is this harmony and mutual love that puts the light of our realizations together into a blazing spiritual beacon drawing all within our community towards the center.

This also explains why it is so harmful to criticize our vajra brothers and sisters.  When we do so, we create division within the Sangha.  We destroy the harmony and mutual love that exists, re-separating our lights.  It takes just one division to cut the intensity of the light in half.  This harms not only our Sangha, but all those who would otherwise be drawn to the center by the light of our collective realizations.  Even at an ordinary level, if people are bickering within the Sangha, it destroys the joy within the community.  Kadam Lucy said when people come to a Dharma center they should find something that they find nowhere else in the world, namely people who genuinely love, accept and support one another.  Where else in this world can we find this?  But if instead, people come and discover we are just as petty as every other group, they will leave and the door to liberation will be closed to them.

This is not to say we should pretend everything is OK and not seek to confront and resolve our differences.  Of course we need to do so.  In fact, I would say that the problems and conflicts that exist between the members of any Sangha are in fact emanated by Dorje Shugden to give us an opportunity to work through them.  It is by applying the Dharma we have learned that we can work through our differences and come to mutually love and respect one another.  Some marriages last for many decades, and some only last for a few years or months.  Why the difference?  If you speak with long-standing, successful couples they will all tell you the same thing:  they view working through their differences as an opportunity to draw closer to one another.  Short-lived couples view their differences as sources of frustration and divergence.  A Sangha lasts far longer than a few short decades, it is for eternity.  We would be wise to work diligently to create genuine harmony, free from repressed delusion.

Geshe-la says somebody who cherishes others is like a magic crystal with the power to transform any community.  May we all become such magic crystals within our local centers and within our global vajra family.

Showing contempt for our preceptors.

We incur this downfall by showing contempt for any of the vows that we have taken by thinking ‘I do not need to observe this vow.’

A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.  A dam is only as strong as its weakest point.  In the same way, our moral discipline is only as strong as our weakest commitment.  In the Lamrim, the story is told of the monk who was confronted with the dilemma of drink alcohol or sleep with a woman.  Figuring drinking was less bad, he drank, became drunk and wound up sleeping with the woman anyways.  Shantideva likes to use warfare analogies.  In that vein, in ancient Greece, fighters would form a Phalanx, where each soldier would lock their shields together into a tank like form.  Great King Leonidas said the Phalanx is only as strong as its weakest shield.  In the same way, the different vows each support and reinforce one another, and when practiced as a whole, they create an impenetrable, inter-locking defense within our mind against delusion and negativity.

It is for these reasons that we are told we cannot pick and choose which vows we want to keep, but we should instead work with all of our vows, gradually, but consistently, until one day we can keep them all purely.  Of course, there will be some vows we keep better than others, but we never generate the thought that says, “I am not going to practice that vow.”  This is also not to say it is not good to keep only some of the vows.  It is better to keep some vows than none at all.  But it is better still to maintain the intention to one day keep them all perfectly than to pick and choose.

Sometimes, due to our lack of understanding, we can mistakenly think our vows contradict one another.  For example, the earlier stages of the path encourage us to abandon attachment, whereas our Tantric teachings explain we should use it.  Sometimes people mistakenly think the higher vows trump the lower ones, and so it is OK to violate the lower ones as long as we are keeping the higher ones.  But this view is completely wrong.  We can think of our vows and commitments as like our different lines of defense.  When the enemy of delusion is attacking from the outside, it will probe to find the hole in our defenses.  Once it breaks through in one place, it easily swarms through and destroys everything else.  Our innermost wall of defense is our refuge vows.  Surrounding those are our Pratimoksha vows, surrounding that are our bodhisattva and then finally tantric vows.  It is possible for the outer walls to be breached, but our inner walls remain in tact, but if we break the vows of our inner walls, our entire Kingdom is lost.

Je Tsongkhapa explains how all of our vows can be practiced by a single person in a way that is consistent with all of them.  He said outwardly, we train in the Pratimoksha vows, inwardly we train in the Bodhisattva vows, and secretly we train in the Tantric vows.  “Secret” here does not mean when nobody is looking and you have your internet browser switched to “in private viewing.”  Rather, secret means in the context of the self-generated deity in our meditation practice.  It is on the foundation of our Pratimoksha vows that we train in our bodhisattva vows, and it is upon both of these that we train in our Tantric vows.

This vow is worded to not show contempt for our preceptors, but its explanation is we do so by failing to sincerely practice all our vows.  How do we understand the connection between these two?  First, just as a Buddha is not separate from his emanations, so too a Preceptor is – at a very profound level – not separate from the precepts he gives.  The reason for this is due to the fact that when we take vows, we are making a promise to somebody, namely our spiritual guide.  Therefore, breaking the vow is not only breaking our moral discipline, it is also breaking our promise to our spiritual guide.  Second, karmically speaking, every time we practice an instruction of our spiritual guide, we become karmically closer to him.  In dependence upon this closer karmic connection, his blessings can flow more easily through us.  But when we reject his instructions, we are in effect rejecting him (even if only marginally), and as a result we cut ourselves off to that extent from his blessings.

In short, we should work gradually and consistently with all of the vows we have taken, without rejecting any of them; and we should know that none of them are contradictory, in fact, they are all mutually supporting.

The fourteen root downfalls of the Secret Mantra vows

Abusing or scorning our Spiritual Guide. 

In this context our Spiritual Guide is anyone from whom we have received both the empowerment of our personal Yidam and the commentary to that practice.  If we decide not to rely upon our Spiritual Guide any more we incur a root downfall.  Developing non-faith or anger towards our Spiritual Guide are very heavy negative actions and block Tantric realizations, but are not downfalls.

The reason why abusing or scorning our Spiritual Guide results in such heavy negative karma is clear:  The Spiritual Guide is the synthesis of all of the Buddhas, so any negative action towards the Spiritual Guide is kamrically the same as a negative actions against all of the Buddhas.  Just as you cannot separate the sun from its light, so too you cannot separate the Spiritual Guide from his instructions.  At a very profound level, the light is part of the sun, and the instructions are part of the Spiritual Guide.  To abuse or scorn the Spiritual Guide is to create a particularly horrible karma in the mind that obstructs our ability to appreciate (much less realize) ALL of the instructions of that Spiritual Guide.  In this way, it sabotages everything.

At a practical level, the only way we can gain any realization of any Dharma subject is through receiving the blessings of all of the Buddhas.  But it is through our relationship with the Spiritual Guide that we can receive these blessings.  He introduced us to them, he gave us empowerments into them, he explained to us how to practice them.  By abusing or scorning the Spiritual Guide, we cut off our mind to being able to receive these blessings.  The sun of Dharma stops shining anew in our mind, and it is just a question of time before all of its light has passed us by and we are replunged into a world of spiritual darkness.

To publicly abuse or scorn the Spiritual Guide is even worse negative karma, because our actions function to destroy the mind of faith in a holy object, we cause others to abandon their path, and often they just wind up turned off from all spiritual paths. But as with all the vows, we need to be careful.  In many of the Tibetan traditions, they strongly emphasize this concept of “samaya.”  Its practical interpretation can be downright abusive.  It often is interpreted to mean once you have taken an empowerment from somebody, they own you and you have to do everything they say for the rest of your life, otherwise you will burn in hell forever.  It makes people feel trapped, like some form of spiritual enslavement from which there is no escape.  Such an interpretation is ridiculous and spiritually abusive.

Within the Kadampa tradition, we have regrettably had quite a few high profile teachers who, through the force of delusion, broke their spiritual vows.  This created a good deal of confusion for people.  What do I do if the person who has granted my Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment winds up disrobing in disgrace?  Since they broke their commitments to their Spiritual Guide and I am “bound” to them due to having received empowerments from them, should I follow them?  Do I go to hell with them?  Are my empowerments still in tact?  And what do I do if I decide this person or this tradition is no longer for me?  If my karma draws me to another path, am I going to burn in hell if I follow my karma?  Am I trapped in some commitment I didn’t even realize I was taking when I signed up for that festival?  This sort of tight grasping at a wrong understanding can and has led to extreme inner turmoil in many people.

Within the context of the modern Kadampa Tradition, we have a very elegant, and yet subtle, solution to this problem.  Geshe-la explains that when we receive teachings or empowerments, we should view that the living Je Tsongkhapa enters into the vessel of our teacher, and it is our actual Guru Je Tsongkhapa who gives the teachings and empowerments through our teacher.  Geshe-la said we should do this even with him.  Our actual Spiritual Guide is the living Je Tsongkhapa.  He enters into our different teachers, gives us instructions, empowerments, blessings and so forth.  Our “guru commitment” is not made to the appearance of the human being of our teacher, but rather to Lama Tsongkhapa (or Lama Action Vajra as the case may be) at his or her heart.  Since there is no danger of Lama Tsongkhapa ever breaking his vows, even if the human appearance of our teacher does, there is no problem for us.

Likewise, some people’s karma may take them to another tradition.  But if they likewise view Je Tsongkhapa entering their new teacher, then in reality they have the same spiritual guide, just speaking through somebody else.  Because they have never abused or scorned Je Tsongkhapa, they have never abused or scorned their Spiritual Guide, and so therefore they are protected against creating this particularly heavy negative karma.

Venerable Tharchin said, “we must be clear, our ultimate refuge is in the Dharma, not the person.”  He explains, if our ultimate refuge is in the person, then if that person does something stupid, then we will be plunged into a crisis of faith and possibly lose everything.  Instead, if we are clear our ultimate refuge is in the Dharma, then if our teacher does something stupid, it serves for us as yet another Dharma teaching – teaching us what not to do, teaching us the power and deceptiveness of delusions, etc.  We are protected.  It is for this reason that during the empowerments, our actual commitment is not to the person, but is instead a commitment to engage in certain practices.  Our actual commitment is, “to strive our best to one day keep all of our commitments purely.”

The only way we break this commitment is if we say, “no, I will no longer try become a better person.  I reject Lama Tsongkhapa and his teachings, they are wrong and deceptive.”  So even if we go to another tradition, if we never lose our intention to try become a better person by putting into practice Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings, we have not broken our commitments.  We need not feel trapped. This modern Kadampa special view of the relationship between the Spiritual Guide and the student has many advantages, but the main one is it preserves the central importance of our commitment to the spiritual guide while at the same time protecting us against the spiritually abusive interpretations of “samaya” found in so many other traditions.  If you check Geshe-la’s works, he never uses this term.  We reject spiritual abuse, we embrace a commitment to relying upon the living Je Tsongkhapa.

To strive to maintain purely all the vows we have taken.

We fulfil this commitment by reminding ourself that we need to keep to the best of our ability all the vows and commitments we have taken.

In total, there are more than 240 different vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism.  This series of posts has been going on for close to a year now, and there are still many more vows to go.  When we first start practicing Dharma, we have countless aeons worth of bad habits within our mind.  It is completely unrealistic to think just because we have learned the vows and commitments, attending a few classes, received a few empowerments, that we will somehow be able to keep all of our vows and commitments purely.  Geshe-la advises us we need to work gradually with all of our vows, trying to identify the circumstances where we are likely to break them, and develop plans for how to avoid doing so.

The vows are, in effect, a synthesis of all of the teachings.  By putting our practice of our vows and commitments as something central to our practice, rather than the usual afterthought, we will gradually and surely be lead to our final destination of enlightenment.  The vows are like road signs that always point in the direction of enlightenment.  No matter how lost we might become, all we need do is revisit our vows and commitments, reflect on the different ways in which we might be acting in contradiction with them, and then gradually adjust course to live our life in a way consistent with them.  They will never deceive us, they will never lead us astray.  There is never a time where it is appropriate to set our commitments aside.  This does not mean we do not need to interpret them skillfully given the different circumstances we find ourselves in, but we never set them aside.

Our vows are like are best spiritual friends who always give us good advice.  There is little more valuable in this world than somebody we can turn to who will always give us good advice.  Our vows are such a friend.  Like any true friend, our vows might not always be gentle with us.  It might sometimes be painful to look into the mirror of Dharma because we don’t want to confront our own wrong behavior.  But in reality, the mirror of Dharma never judges us.  It merely points the way without judgment.  If we allow it to, it will protect us from all mistakes and gradually transform all of our behavior into correct behavior.

In their simplest form, the essential meaning of the refuge vows is to solve your inner problem of delusions by relying upon Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.  The essential meaning of the Pratimoksha vows is do no harm, to yourself or to others.  The essential meaning of the Bodhisattva vows is to put others first.  The essential meaning of the Tantric vows is maintain pure view out of compassion.  We may not be able to remember all 240+ vows, but we can remember their essential meanings.  We cannot commit to keeping all of our vows purely, but we can commit to never giving up trying our best to do so.

It is said that the cause of higher rebirth is the practice of moral discipline.  Every time the tendencies within our mind push us in the direction of committing some negative deed, if we recall our vows, we recall the karmic consequences of negativity and the advantages of virtue, and then we decide to not engage in that negative action we are practicing the “moral discipline of restraint.”  Each time we do this, we create the karma for another precious human life.  If we have 50 such negative tendencies ripen in a day, and we resist 50 times, in one single day we create the causes for 50 future precious human lives.  Each vow is like a lottery ticket that wins every time.  It never loses.

The two commitments of the family of Buddha Amoghasiddhi

The two commitments of the family of Buddha Amaghasiddhi function to purify our aggregate of compositional factors and transform it into the wisdom of accomplishing activities.  When we have cultivated this aggregate within our mind, then all of our mental factors transform into the completely pure mental factors of a Buddha.  We literally have within our mind a Buddha’s mental factors.

To make offerings to our Spiritual Guide. 

This commitment is to make outer, inner, secret, and thatness offerings to our Spiritual Guide.

I remember when I first started practicing, I had a lot of difficulty with this whole idea of offering.  It seemed very cult-like, and very strange.  It seemed like it could easily be abused for the self-enrichment of the “guru.”  I think the fact that I have a lot of imprints of miserliness probably didn’t help either.  So I asked a lot of questions until I became comfortable with it all.  Now, every day, I wholeheartedly and without reservation offer, “my body, my mind, my time, my family, everything I own, my friends, my work, my tradition” to my guru, yidam and protector requesting them to “use these things for the swiftest possible enlightenment of all.”

The key point to resolving all of our doubts about offerings is from their side, the Buddhas need nothing.  They already have everything (indeed, they already are everything).  So we don’t make offerings to Buddhas because they need anything, rather we do so because we need to create the karma of making offerings.  The Buddhas are delighted to receive our offerings not because they like receiving things, but rather because they are happy for us because they know the good karma we are creating.  Everytime we give, we create the cause to receive.  Giving different things creates different types of karma.  When we make offerings to the Spiritual Guide, all of the countless Buddhas enter into his body and receive our offerings.  In this way, it multiplies the power of our offering by the number of Buddhas (which is countless).

We normally say there are four different types of offerings:  outer, inner, secret and thatness offerings.  Outer offerings can be divided into two types, normal material offerings and the traditional outer offerings of our practice.  Normal material offerings includes, for example, anytime we give something (like a vacuum cleaner, or new towels, or whatever) to our center, or when we give money for the International Temples Project, or when we give money to help send somebody to a festival.  Our normal material offerings function to create the karma to be able to have all of the outer conditions necessary to be able to practice in the future.  This is fairly easy to understand, by making the Dharma more easily accessible to others today, we create the causes to more easily access the Dharma ourselves in the future.

Traditional outer offerings of our practice include various types of water, food, incense, light and so forth.  Generally speaking, these create the causes to have good health, long life and that we find it easy to gain realizations in the future.  Within the context of our practice, we are not just offering the physical bowls of water, etc., rather within our mind we imagine we fill the entire universe with these offerings and we offer them to the Buddhas before us.  In this way, we can infinitely multiply the power of our giving.  Within our Tantric practices, we likewise engage in a special way of making outer offerings by imagining that all forms, sounds, smells, tastes and objects of touch transform into infinite offering goddesses holding special objects, which we then offer to the visualized guru deity in front of us.  This is an extremely powerful practice that functions to enable us in the future to experience all objects of the senses as nectar giving rise to the realization of great bliss and emptiness within our mind.  In the context of our Tantric practice, outer offerings function to give us the merit we need to complete the path of generation stage.

Inner offerings are where we imagine we transform the impure substances of our body into a completely pure nectar which we then offer to our Spiritual Guide.  There are outer aspects of this practice with nectar pills, and the like, but the real inner offering is an internal one.  First we purify, transform and increase the contaminated substances into pure ones, and then we offer them to the guru deity.  Doing so creates the karma to purify completely our contaminated aggregates and transform them into the pure aggregates of the deity.  In the context of our Tantric practice, inner offerings function to give us the merit we need to complete the path of illusory body.

Secret offerings are where we imagine offering the guru deity in the aspect of the Yidam a consort, and in dependence upon that the guru deity generates a mind of great bliss.  In the context of our Tantric practice, this creates the karma for us to be able to complete the training in meaning clear light.

Thatness offerings are where we imagine that, in dependence upon the bliss generated from the secretness offering, the guru deity realizes the non-duality between his mind of great bliss, the emptiness of his mind of great bliss, and all phenomena (including his emanation bodies).  This creates the karma for us to be able to attain the union of illusory body and clear light, and ultimately enlightenment.

One way to think of this is how different kinds of vehicles need different kinds of fuel.  Cars use regular gasoline, planes use jet fuel, rockets use rocket fuel, and The Starship Enterprise uses dilithium crystals.  In the same way, in our “Trek” to enlightenment, we need different kinds of merit to power us along the different stages of the path, from our daily practice, through generation stage, illusory body, meaning clear light, and finally full enlightenment.  Making outer, inner, secret and thatness offerings gives us this fuel.

To rely upon the teachings of the two higher classes of Tantra. 

In general, our practice of Tantra usually has two phases.  In the first phase, we have not yet received a highest yoga tantra empowerment of Heruka and Vajrayogini.  During this phase, we will usually receive some lower tantra empowerments, such as Tara, Amitayus, Vajrasattva, and so forth.  During this phase, we can begin to have a daily practice of Tantra in the context of the corresponding deity sadhana.  Our main focus at this time should be to gain some initial experience of self-generation, and in particular we should start to consider deeply the relationship between our Lamrim practice and our Tantric practice.  The second phase of our Tantric practice begins after we have received the highest yoga tantra empowerments.

Once we receive our highest yoga tantra empowerments, we generally try follow Atisha’s advice to the Translator Richen Sangpo to integrate all our Deity practices into our practice of our personal Yidam by recognizing they are all the same nature and dissolving them into our Yidam (Yidam means personal deity, in this context it means Heruka or Vajrayogini).  Practically speaking, what this means is when we practice Heruka or Vajrayogini directly, we mentally understand we are practicing all of the other deities we have ever received empowerments into indirectly.  This is most easily accomplished by recalling that our Yidam is actually an emanation of our guru in the aspect of our Yidam, and our Guru is the synthesis of all the Buddhas.  By practicing in this way, every time we receive the empowerment of any deity, we seek to incorporate the essential meaning of the instructions we receive into our main practice of Heruka or Vajrayogini.  This does not mean we can’t practice the other deities directly.  We can of course do so when it feels like the right thing to do, but generally we deepen our practice of our principal deity.

The practice of Highest Yoga Tantra has two main stages, generation stage and completion stage.  Generation stage is when we change the basis of imputation of our I from our ordinary body and mind to the completely pure gross body, speech and mind of our Yidam.  Completion stage practice is when we change the basis of imputation of our I from the gross deity body to the completely pure subtle (and indeed very subtle) body, speech and mind of the deity.

For simplicity, we can view the entire path of Sutra and Tantra as gradually drawing our winds inward into our central channel at our heart.  We begin our training as an ordinary being.  We then meditate on the Lamrim and generate the sincere wish to become a Buddha.  Our identity has shifted to that of a Bodhisattva, and our inner energy winds have gathered into such a being.  Then we train in generation stage where we draw our identity and winds into the pure body, speech and mind of the Yidam.  Then we train in the body mandala meditations, which is like a bridge between generation stage and completion stage.  Then, we train in drawing our identity and winds into the different mantras of our Yidam.  The mantra of each deity of the body mandala is like the condensed meaning, or inner essence, of each deity.  Body mandala meditations and recitation of mantras function to purify the gross levels of our deity’s subtle body, and draw our identity and winds into it.  Then we begin completion stage.  First we train in bringing our identity and winds into our central channel at our heart.  Then into our indestructible drop at our heart.  Then into the seed letter of the deity inside the indestructible drop.  This seed letter is like the condensed meaning of all of the deities of the body mandala.  It is also the same nature as our very subtle body.  This body never dies and it travels from life to life.  If we can center ourselves within it, we will become a deathless being.  Then we seek to draw into our very subtle mind of great bliss inside the seed letter.  Then we seek to draw ourselves into the emptiness of our very subtle mind of great bliss.  Finally, we seek to realize the non-duality of our very subtle mind of great bliss and the emptiness of that mind.  When we have realized this directly, we attain the realization of meaning clear light and we are very close to enlightenment.  In dependence upon the realization of meaning clear light, we purify our very subtle mind of all past delusions and contaminated karmic imprints.  When we have completely done so, we become a Buddha.

All of these practices are explained in detail in Guide to Dakini Land, Essence of Vajrayana, Tantric Grounds and Paths, Clear Light of Bliss, Mahamudra Tantra and Modern Buddhism.  When we have even a glimmer of an appreciation of the power of these practices, then we will effortlessly realize there is nothing more important we can do with our life than train in these two tantric stages.

To rely upon the teachings of the two lower classes of Tantra

According to Sutra, the root of samsara is self-grasping ignorance.  According to Tantra, the root of samsara is ordinary appearance and ordinary conception.  Ordinary appearance is an object appearing to us as ordinary (meaning, existing from its own side, and all of its characteristics likewise appear to exist from their own side).  Ordinary conception is when we assent to ordinary appearances as being true.  We will continue to have ordinary appearances until we become a Buddha, but we can abandon our ordinary conceptions along the way.  Practically speaking, by abandoning ordinary conceptions we cut the power of ordinary appearances to generate delusions within our mind.  By abandoning delusions, we stop planting new contaminated karmic seeds on our mind, which will gradually weaken the preponderance of contaminated karma ripening.  But it is not until we completely abandon ordinary appearance that we attain the omniscient wisdom of a Buddha.

The actual method for overcoming our ordinary appearance is to remove from our very subtle mind the karmic imprints of all of our past delusion.  We do this by realizing the emptiness of our very subtle mind.  Realizing the emptiness of one object – our very subtle mind – functions to uproot all of the contaminated karma we have accumulated since beginningless time.  We can understand this by considering the analogy of a wheel.  A wheel has a hub and many spokes.  If you shined a light inside any individual spoke, it would illuminate that spoke.  But if you could shine a light inside the hub of the wheel, it would illuminate all of the spokes directly and simultaneously.  It is the same with our realization of the emptiness of our very subtle mind.  If we realize the emptiness of a single object, it is like illuminating light in a single spoke; but since all karma is stored on our very subtle mind, by realizing the emptiness of our very subtle mind, it is like shining light in the hub, which illuminates all of the spokes of our karma.

With this background, all of the tantric path can be divided into two main parts.  The first part is making manifest our very subtle mind, and the second part is realizing the emptiness of our very subtle mind.  It is impossible to realize the emptiness of an object you do not cognize.  So if you don’t first realize your very subtle mind, you can never realize its emptiness.  Without realizing the emptiness of the very subtle mind, you can never attain enlightenment.

The very subtle mind in Sutra is sometimes referred to as our “root mind” or as “our Buddha nature.”  In Tantra, it is known as our “mind of great bliss.”  There is a good deal of misunderstanding concerning what Tantric bliss is all about.  There all sorts of “classes” people take on “Tantra” where the only requirement is you wear loose fitting shorts.  You know the rest.  In reality, this is just people misusing Buddha’s teachings for the sake of worldly pleasures.  This is like using $100 bills for toilet paper, a complete waste.  Worse, it leads to the degeneration of the pure Buddhadharma in this world.  The negative karma from this is beyond measure.

Tantric bliss, properly understood, is the feeling of inner peace taken to its ultimate fruition.  It is so peaceful, it is blissful.  Our very subtle mind, when manifest, is naturally blissful.  Put another way, when our aggregate of discrimination is perceiving our very subtle mind, our aggregate of feeling is experiencing great bliss.  Once this mind becomes manifest, we then meditate on its emptiness.  When we realize its emptiness directly, the duality between our subject mind of great bliss and its object, emptiness, dissolve completely like water mixing with water.  This is the mind of meaning clear light, the union of bliss and emptiness.  Once we attain this realization, it is said we can attain enlightenment in 3 years, and even in 3 months.  Of course, to get to this mind may take many lifetimes, but once there, we are very close.

So the question becomes, how do we make manifest our very subtle mind of great bliss?  The answer is by causing our inner energy winds to gather and dissolve into our central channel at our heart.  Our central channel at our heart is like a purifying bath for our inner winds.  When our winds are pure, all of the minds mounted on these winds are likewise pure.  Practically speaking, there are many methods for generating the mind of great bliss.  The four classes of Tantra (action tantra, performance tantra, yoga tantra and highest yoga tantra) are simply increasingly profound methods for doing so.

The way all four tantras work is the same:  we observe an object that would otherwise normally give rise to attachment.  When that occurs, we usually generate some sort of pleasant feeling in our mind.  We then consider how the pleasant feeling does not come from the object, but rather comes from inside our mind.  We then try to dissolve the object which gave rise to our attachment into emptiness while preserving the pleasant feeling.  When we do this, the pleasant feeling transforms into a pure feeling that is a similitude of the mind of great bliss (pure inner peace).  We then hold that mind for as long as we can, trying to stabilize it.  Once stabilized, we can then turn our attention to meditating on the emptiness of this mind of great bliss.

In all tantras, we first generate ourselves as the deity we are going to practice.  It is inappropriate to maintain our ordinary body and mind when engaging in Tantric practice, so we do so as the self-generated deity.  In action tantra, we imagine we look upon a beautiful deity.  In performance tantra, we imagine that she is looking at us in an enticing, seductive way.  In yoga tantra, we touch, kiss, etc., the deity.  And in highest yoga tantra, we engage in union with the deity.  Each of these is a higher level of attachment, and so therefore a stronger feeling of bliss, which we then realize the emptiness of in the way just described.  We cannot engage in qualified highest yoga tantra without first being able to do qualified yoga tantra.  We cannot do qualified yoga tantra without first being able to do qualified performance tantra, and so forth.  But we can’t do any of these without first being able to generate ourselves as the deity in a qualified way.  Our ability to generate ourselves in a qualified way depends upon (1) a motivation of bodhichitta, in other words a solid practice of Lamrim, (2) a solid foundation of moral discipline, in other words training in all of our vows and commitments, and (3) a clear understanding of emptiness.  So our focus at this stage should not be on trying different methods for generating bliss, rather our focus should be on Lamrim, moral discipline, the wisdom realizing emptiness, and self-generation practice.