The refuge commitments lay the foundation for all the realizations of the stages of the path.  Realizing this, we should not regard them as a burden, but practice them joyfully and sincerely.  The principal function of our refuge vows is to maintain the continuum of our Buddhist path without interruption between now and our eventual enlightenment.  In other words, by training in the refuge vows we will create the karma necessary to maintain this uninterrupted continuum of our practice all the way.  It is like we enter into a karmic slip stream which carries us to our final destination. 

The second main benefit of keeping our refuge vows is we open our mind to receive the blessings and help from the three jewels.  On our own, we lack the necessary power to complete the path.  We lack not only the necessary horsepower, we lack even the gasoline.  Our effort plants the gasoline of karmic seeds on our mind, and the blessings activate these seeds and give our spiritual journey horsepower.  With them, there is nothing we can’t accomplish.  Without them, there is almost nothing we can accomplish.  Ultimately, we can learn to rely upon the three jewels for all our actions, from giving teachings at a festival all the way to flossing our teeth.  We can eventually learn how to have our every action of body, speech and mind be the three jewels working through us.  For more on the benefits of the refuge vows, please see Joyful Path of Good Fortune.

Some people mistakenly think we only focus on our refuge vows at the beginning of our practice.  No, our refuge vows remain the foundation of all our other practices all the way until the very end of the path.  There is never a time when we do not need to maintain this basic foundation.

The refuge vows will now be explained:

Not to go for refuge to teachers who contradict Buddha’s view or to samsaric gods. 

This vow means we should not go for ultimate refuge to anyone who contradicts Buddha’s view.  Ultimate refuge roughly means here “who has the final say.”  Throughout our lives we will be exposed to countless different ideas, each of which will have their own degree of validity.  But, if we are keeping this vow, we consider the definitive word to be that of Buddha.  There is a good reason for this.  Only Buddha explains the radical view of the Prasangikas, which explains (in fact proves) that everything is a karmic dream.  Only this view is free from all ignorance.  Any view short of this will be contaminated, even if only marginally, with a wrong understanding and therefore will not provide us with the final word on any given subject.  This vow does not mean that we can’t still receive ordinary help for ordinary things from others, such as a lawyer or a dentist. 

Samsaric gods in this context has two meanings.  The first is literal, meaning we don’t turn to beings who themselves are still in samsara for help in getting out.  A drowning person cannot save another drowning person.  Of course, we can still turn to beings within samsara for help with things in samsara, but they can’t provide us ultimate refuge for getting out.  The second meaning is metaphoric.  Our true samsaric gods that we are willing to sacrifice everything to are the eight worldly concerns.  In simple terms, this refers to attachment to pleasant feelings, praise, a good reputation, etc.  Everything we generally do in life is aimed at securing these things or freeing ourselves from their opposites.  These are the gods we follow.

We most frequently break this vow by mixing Buddha’s teachings with non-Buddhist ideas.  We can most easily keep this vow by making a clear distinction between our outer problem and our inner problem.  If our car breaks, it is not our problem, it is our car’s problem.  Our problem is the unpleasant feeling in our mind that comes from our delusions.  To fix that problem we turn to the three jewels.  As long as we make this distinction in any given situation, there is little risk of us going in the opposite direction of this vow. 

To regard any image of a Buddha as an actual Buddha. 

This vow means whenever we see a statue of Buddha we should see it as an actual Buddha, regardless of its quality of craftsmanship.  We should make offerings, prostrations and go for refuge to it.  For those with a Christian background, this vow usually raises some serious eyebrows about idolatry.  Of course, it would be foolish to pray to a piece of metal.  Metal can’t do anything for us.  That is not the meaning here.  The meaning is we should not believe the ordinary appearance of seeing the metal, but instead we should “see beyond it” and imagine that there is actually a living Buddha there.  This is a correct imagination because Buddhas pervade everywhere and the ultimate nature of all things is a Buddha.  So we don’t view the metal as a Buddha, rather seeing the metal reminds us to see with our wisdom eyes a living Buddha actually sitting there.

Each time we see an image of Buddha, it plants an pure – or uncontaminated – karmic seed on our mind that can never be destroyed and that functions to take us out of samsara.  There are three types of karmic seed:  negative, virtuous, and pure.  Negative seeds ripen in the form of rebirth in the lower realms, virtuous seeds ripen in the form of rebirth in the upper realms of samsara, and pure karma ripens in the form of rebirth outside of samsara.  Geshe-la said one of the primary reasons for building temples around the world is busloads of children and vacationers come and see, and each Buddha image they see plants the karma on their mind to find the path of Dharma in the future and eventually take rebirth outside of samsara.  The more Buddha images we see, the more such pure karma we create.

For this and other reasons, it is a good idea to always be in the presence of a Buddha image to serve as a constant reminder.  For myself, I have on my desk at work a 3-fold picture frame that has images of my guru, yidam, and protector.  When I work, I occasionally look up from my computer and see them.  At home, I have an image next to my bed, and of course there is my shrine for my daily meditations.  I knew this one woman who quite literally wall papered her entire room with different images of Buddhas!  While this may not quite be “remaining natural while changing our aspiration,” it is frankly not that bad of an idea!

Most of us know the teachings Geshe-la has given on the correct attitude to have towards our vows and commitments, but sadly we don’t ever seem to really believe him when he explains it.  We still tend to think of them in absolutist, black and white terms, when in reality each vows has many, many different levels at which we can keep it.  We think in terms of our ability to “keep” our vows instead of viewing them as trainings we progressively engage in over the course of our lives.  When we go to the gym, there are all sorts of different exercise machines.  Each one works out a different muscle, and each person who uses the machine uses it at a different level (different amounts of weight, different number of repetitions, etc.).  But everyone in the gym uses the same equipment.  It is exactly the same with our vows.  Each vow is something we train in, not something we are already expected to be able to do perfectly at the maximum.  Each vow focus on strengthening different mental muscles, but doing all them strengthens the whole of our mind.  We each train in the vow at different levels according to our capacity, but we know the more we train the more our capacity will grow.  Everyone in the spiritual gym trains with the same vows regardless of our level.  In almost every way, the correct attitude towards a physical exercise regimen is exactly the same attitude we should cultivate towards our spiritual exercise regimen of our vows and commitments.  I often find it helpful to read the sports training literature, especially that of long-distance tri-athletes.  Our journey is very long and will require almost unthinkable stamina, but we must recall every Iron Man Champion was once a baby who couldn’t even lift their head. 

Geshe-la explains there are four main causes of the degeneration of our vows and commitments.  These are known as the ‘four doors of receiving downfalls.’  He says to close these doors we should practice as follows:

1. Closing the door of not knowing what the downfalls are.  We should learn what the downfalls are by committing them to memory.  We should learn how they are incurred.  We should make plans to avoid such situations.  In this series of posts, I will try explain all these things for each vow.
2. Closing the door of lack of respect for Buddha’s instructions.  We can protect ourselves from this primarily by training in the refuge vows.  Refuge is not a difficult concept.  When we have a toothache, what do we do?  We turn to the dentist.  When we have a legal problem, what do we do?  We turn to a lawyer.  When we have an internal problem with our mind, what do we do?  We turn to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.  Dentists can fix our teeth and lawyers can solve our legal problems, but only the three jewels can help us with our inner mental problems.  Geshe-la said we should contemplate as follows:

“Since Buddha is omniscient, knowing all past, present, and future phenomena simultaneously and directly, and since he has great compassion for all living beings without exception, there is no valid reason for developing disrespect towards his teachings.  It is only due to ignorance that I sometimes disbelieve them.”

3. Closing the third door of strong delusions. For our Pratimoksha, and Bodhisattva vows, we should principally try to overcome our delusions by practicing Lamrim.  If by practicing Lamrim we are always able to maintain a good intention, there will be no basis for incurring Pratimoksha or Bodhisattva downfalls.  At the end of the day, our Pratimoksha vows come down to one simple concept:  do no harm (to ourself or to others).  Likewise, our bodhisattva vows come down to one simple concept:  put others first.  If we do these two – do no harm and put others first – then we will be directly or indirectly practicing all our Pratimoksha and Bodhisattva vows.  For our tantric vows, if by practicing generation stage and completions stage we overcome ordinary appearance and ordinary conceptions, there will be no basis for incurring Tantric downfalls.  Again, to keep things simple, what does this mean:  It means we ask ourselves one simple question, “what would Heruka do?”  Heruka sees everyone and everything as pure, not because they objectively are pure but because maintaining this view functions to draw out the purity in everything until eventually it becomes our living reality. 
4. Closing the fourth door of non-conscientiousness.  We should repeatedly bring to mind the disadvantages of incurring downfalls, and the advantages of pure moral discipline.  These have been explained in the previous post, and the specific karmic benefits of each vow will be explained in the explanation of each vow.

In brief, Geshe-la explains, we prevent our vows from degenerating by practicing the Dharma of renunciation, bodhichitta, correct view, generation stage, and completion stage. 

It is important to be skilful in our approach to the vows.  We should not have unrealistic expectations or make promises we cannot keep.  It will happen to all us in the early stages of our Dharma practice that when we are at some festival and feeling very inspired, we make these outlandish vows that we (at the time) intend to keep our whole life.  Then we get home, try at first, but eventually are forced to abandon the vow.  Venerable Tharchin says when making promises, we should ask ourselves, “what can I do on my absolute worst day?”  We promise only to do that.  On any given day we will most likely do better than our promise, but then we won’t actually break it.  It is a bad habit to make spiritual promises which we later break.  We will all make all sorts of what I call “beginner’s errors” with this one.  It doesn’t matter.  When you break the promise, realize your mistake, recalibrate your promise and try again.  Eventually you will get the right balance. 

We should adopt the vows gradually, as each can be kept on many levels.  In this way, we can gradually deepen the level we are able to keep the vows.  If we are a teacher, we should explain the vows well and not encourage our students to promise to keep them all perfectly from the start.  Getting the correct attitude towards our vows is well over half the battle.  But keeping the vows gradually does not mean that we can temporarily put to one side the vows that we do not like.  We have to work with all the vows, gradually improving the way we observe them.

Finally, Geshe-la says we should begin to practice all the vows as soon as we have taken them.  Then we practice them to the best of our ability.  Geshe-la says we should never lose the determination to keep the vows perfectly in the future.  He says by keeping the intention to keep them purely in the future we keep our commitments, even if along the way we repeatedly fall short.  I can’t remember who, but some wise person once said, “the day you can keep all your vows and commitments perfectly is the day you will no longer need them.  It is because you can’t keep your vows and commitments perfectly that we do need them.”  This is useful to always keep in mind.

Normally we think of our vows and commitments as an afterthought at best or as chains at worst.  We have all taken our vows many times when we received empowerments or when we engage in our daily practice, but many of us still have not started to take our practice of them seriously.  We swing from either the extreme of not even giving our vows a second thought to the extreme of beating ourselves up with them out of guilt for all the different ways we fall short.  We swing from the extreme of over-interpreting the words “do your best” to mean “don’t even bother trying” to the extreme of thinking in absolutist terms about what they mean and imply.  We quite often view them as rules or restrictions imposed from the outside, or we view them as constraints on our having any fun in life.  To us, vows and commitments often seem to restrict our freedom, but we accept we have to take them because we want to go to a given empowerment.  But the reality is most of the time we don’t even think about them, and we make almost no effort whatsoever to train in them.

This series of posts will attempt to reverse our attitude towards our vows and commitments.  Instead of viewing them as restrictions on our freedom and fun, we can come to view them as an internal GPS guiding our way to the blissful city of enlightenment where the party never stops.  If we want to go to a particular city, we program our GPS, hit go, and start driving.  We happily follow the directions without feeling like we are being deprived of all the wonders on the side streets we could be exploring.  When we miss a turn, we usually say a curse word, but then the GPS plans a new route, and we happily continue on our way.  When we arrive at our destination, we think to ourselves, “man, this thing is great.  How did I ever get around without one?”  It is exactly the same with our vows.  We want to go to the city of enlightenment (our good motivation), the vows and commitments are like the directions the GPS gives us along the way to keep us on our chosen route, and if we follow them happily but persistently, they will definitely deliver us to our final destination.  If we get lost or take a wrong turn, we don’t need to worry, because the GPS gives us new directions that we then follow.  No matter how lost we become, no matter how many wrong turns we make, we always know if we just keep following the directions it gives us, we will eventually get there.  It may take longer than what was originally planned (wrong turns), or there may be unexpected traffic (negative karma we need to purify), but if we just keep at it, we will get there. 

I know some people think their GPS gets upset at them when they make wrong turns.  But this is just our own anger at ourselves projecting our frustration onto the GPS voice.  But nowadays, we can program our GPS with all sorts of different voices to choose one more pleasant.  I actually know somebody whose GPS has the option of choosing the voice of a Porn Star (turn right, baby…)!  In the same way, we need to make an effort of giving our vows and commitments “the right voice” within our mind.  When we remember them or but up against them, we need to have them speak to us with the loving, understanding voice of our Spiritual Guide.  We need to hear him chuckle and say, “don’t worry, be happy, just try.”  The chuckle is important.  The sign that we have proper renunciation is we are able to have a good laugh at ourselves and our delusions.  It’s OK and it’s normal that we make a hash out of it.  When we make mistakes, we learn from them and move on.  We think beating ourselves up with guilt motivates us to do better, but it doesn’t.  Guilt is anger directed against ourselves.  It destroys all joy in our training, and when we lose the joy, we lose our effort (effort is taking delight in engaging in our practices).  Without effort, we have nothing.  We might do our practice every day for aeons, but if we don’t enjoy ourselves while trying, we actually have no effort and will therefore experience no results.  If we want, we can give the vows and commitments the seductive voice of Vajrayogini calling us to join her at her place! 

Our conception of freedom is completely wrong.  Freedom is the ability to choose.  But being a slave to every whim of our delusions is not freedom, it is bondage of an eternal order.  True freedom is the ability to choose to pursue what we know is actually good for us.  Our vows and commitments run in exactly opposite the direction our delusions want to go.  Since we are still fooled by the lies of our delusions, we think if we follow them, they will lead us to happiness.  The reality is all delusions share the same final destination – the deepest hell.  They all eventually lead us to the same place, but they trick us by painting an image of an illusory paradise just over the horizon.  Duped again and again, we run towards suffering and away from true freedom. 

There are three main reasons why we should train in the moral discipline of our vows and commitments.  First, doing so creates the karmic causes to maintain the continuum of our Dharma practice without interruption between now and our eventual enlightenment.  Second, doing so strengthens the power of our mindfulness and alertness, which are the two most important muscles for strong concentration.  And third, moral discipline is the substantial cause of higher rebirth.  We seek the highest rebirth of all – enlightenment – but getting there is often like climbing many, many flights of stairs.  But it is a joyful climb, because the higher we go the more blissful we feel.  And it is certainly better than the alternative of falling down the stairs…

In this series of posts, I will attempt to go through each of the vows and commitments of Kadampa Buddhism.  I will first explain what each vow is, then I will discuss some instances in our modern lives where these vows come into play, and finally I will discuss some strategies for how to keep the vow with a joyful mind.  My hope by explaining all this is I might myself finally start training in my vows and commitments with all the spiritual fruit that flows from this.  If others are also able to benefit from these explanations, then it is all the better.

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

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

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

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

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

 

Never to forsake the two kinds of mudra.

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

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

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

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

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

Never to lose appreciation for the path of attachment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To abandon union with those unqualified.

When the time comes for us to rely upon an action mudra we need to do so with someone who practices the same practices and who has a good nature and loving kindness.  If we rely upon an unqualified consort solely out of attachment we shall experience great obstacles to our daily practice.

Many people read this vow and then develop all sorts of doubts and worries because their partner is not a qualified action mudra.  They then start to think remaining with this person is somehow a tantric downfall, and it introduces all sorts of doubts and unnecessary problems into the relationship.  They then become attached to their partner becoming a practitioner as well, and of course the more they push this, the more they cause their partner to reject the Dharma because nobody likes being pushed into anything, and we naturally resist when we are.  This resistance and rejection of the Dharma then reinforces the doubts and worries, and the process starts all over again in a vicious cycle.

How do we avoid such worries?

First, this doubt arises purely from a misunderstanding.  We can know this because this misinterpretation of the vow is in effect divisive speech, harming a relationship.  None of our tantric vows are in any way in contradiction with any of our other vows, including the vow to abandon divisive speech.  If we have interpreted the vows as being in contradiction with one another, it is a definite sign we have misunderstood.   All practices, especially Tantric ones, function to dissolve the divisions between ourself and others, not erect new ones.

Second, the key condition for this vows is “when the time comes for us to rely upon an action mudra.” As explained before, this occurs only after we have attained isolated speech of completion stage.  If we have not yet attained this state, then we have nothing to worry about.

Third, the downfall only occurs when we engage in union solely out of attachment.  But this is true whether we are a Tantric practitioner or not.  Think of all the problems that exist in this world when people relate to sexual activity solely out of attachment.  It was explained in earlier posts the myriad ways we can engage in sexual activity with a spiritual motivation, starting with a love wishing to make the other person happy to generating ourself and our partner as deities and mentally imagining generating the four joys.

Fourth, our partner does not inherently exist.  They are a mere karmic appearance of mind.  If you change your view of your partner, viewing them as Vajrayogini or Heruka, then you create new karma, which will create a new appearance.  Every being in this world has been karmically created by our ignorance and self-cherishing into a suffering sentient being.  Every being in the pure land is karmically created by our wisdom and compassion into a fully enlightened deity.  Our tantric practice functions to karmically reconstruct our world from a world of suffering into a world of purity.  If we practice sincerely the instructions we have been given there is no doubt that by the time we are ready to take an action mudra our partner will vividly appear to us to be a fully qualified action mudra.

Nothing more need be said.