The four purities and four classes of tantra

• Two truths: conventional and ultimate
• Emptiness as a quality of phenomena
• Four complete purities: practices to overcome ordinary view and ordinary grasping
• Explanation of the different names for tantra
• Four classes of tantra and their differences
• Emptiness, the process to gain realizations

In order to make sure that what we are doing for these next two sessions is as beneficial as possible for ourselves and for others, let’s generate a really positive motivation of bodhichitta: wishing to help all living beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering, and wishing to help all sentient beings find genuine peace, happiness, all the different kinds of happiness, up to the highest happiness of enlightenment, buddhahood. Right now, our ability to help others is limited. We can’t help all living beings. We can only help some.

But we have the potential to become buddha. It’s called our buddha nature. It’s the true nature of our mind, the pure nature of our mind that exists inside of us. It also exists inside every living being. Every living being has this pure nature of their mind. Every living being has the ability, the potential, to become fully enlightened—a buddha. It’s just a question of clearing away the obstacles that are in the way of our buddha nature becoming manifest.

And we can clear away these obstacles. The Buddha found a way to do it. He did it himself. Then he taught the way to do it. And we’re really fortunate that we have the chance to learn these teachings from the Buddha on how to clear away the obstacles in our own mind so our buddha nature can manifest.  And the more we do that, the more we purify our own mind and bring our own mind closer and closer to enlightenment, the more we will be able to help others to do the same. Really try to feel how fortunate you are to have a human life and all the good conditions in your life, and especially that you have a chance to learn the Buddha’s teachings and you want to learn these teachings, you want to practice them. These conditions are extremely fortunate. They’re also extremely rare. Most living beings aren’t in such a good situation. 

So, on behalf of all sentient beings who have all been our mothers in past lives, we have received an enormous amount of kindness from every living being. Now we have the chance to do something to repay their kindness. And this is the best way to repay their kindness: helping them be free of suffering and the causes of suffering, helping them achieve happiness and the causes of happiness, helping them develop their buddha nature. See if you can make that your motivation for participating in these sessions—to bring yourself closer to enlightenment so that you can help all living beings, and to be able to help all living beings as much as you can, even from this moment onwards. 

The two truths

Before I continue, I wanted to say a bit more about the question that came up at the end of the session yesterday. The person had quoted some words from the Heart Sutra about how in emptiness there is no form and so on and so on. And I was thinking that maybe I didn’t explain that as well as I could have. So, I wanted to say a bit more. There’s one topic that comes up in Buddhism called the two truths. I’m sure some of you have heard that, but maybe some of you haven’t. We say that there are actually two truths, two levels of reality. And all phenomena, everything that exists, fits into these two truths, meaning that whatever exists is either one or the other of these two truths. 

When you hear the word truth, it can sound a bit like just some abstract idea, something abstract. Whereas in Buddhism, when we talk about the two truths, the two truths are actually things, including all the material things in the world. There are things that exist—things that we can perceive with our mind. And this is a very difficult topic. It’s very difficult, but I’ll just try to briefly explain it. The two truths are ultimate truth and conventional truth. And again, everything that exists is one or the other. Everything that exists is either an ultimate truth or a conventional truth.  And there are different schools of philosophy in Buddhism that explain the two truths differently, saying what is an ultimate truth and what is a conventional truth. But to keep it simple, we’ll just go with the Madhyamika, which, as I mentioned yesterday, is the one that most Tibetan schools consider the highest, most correct form of philosophy.

According to Madhyamika, the system of Nagarjuna, ultimate truths are emptinesses. Emptiness is an ultimate truth. And I said emptinesses because it’s actually plural. We may think of emptiness as just one thing, but there are actually many emptinesses, multiple emptinesses. Emptiness is the ultimate nature of everything that exists. Whatever exists has emptiness as its real nature—its actual way of existing. I explained a little bit about emptiness yesterday. I won’t go into that again. But anyway, it’s the ultimate truth—the actual way in which everything exists. And we can say that it’s like a quality of things. That might be a helpful way to think about it. It’s a quality of things. So, for example, our body has emptiness as its real way of existing—its ultimate way of existing. It’s the true way in which it exists. This is not something we normally see. You have to study and meditate to be able to understand emptiness and realize emptiness, but it’s there. So, it’s there. It’s the ultimate nature of our body.

And it’s also the ultimate nature of everything that exists—our self, our mind, all the things in the world around us, trees and mountains and rocks and houses and cars and food and so on. All of these things have emptiness as their real nature, their real way of existing. So, there are actually many emptinesses. However many things there are, there are that many emptinesses. Those are ultimate truths. That’s ultimate truth. Ultimate truth is emptiness. And then everything else—everything that’s not emptiness—is conventional truth. Conventional truths include our body, our mind, our self, all the things in the world around us—all the other people and living beings, all the material things in the world, like trees and mountains and cars and houses and so on and so forth. All of these things are conventional truths.

They do exist. Conventional truths exist, but they just don’t exist the way that we normally see them. Take our body, for example: it seems to be inherently existing or independently existing; it seems to be an inherently existing body. When we look at our body or we think about our body, it seems to exist inherently, independently, on its own, objectively, from its own side. And that way of existing is false. It’s like a hallucination. It doesn’t really exist, even though it appears. And the real way that it exists, the true way or the ultimate way that our body exists, is that it’s empty—empty of that way of existing, empty of inherent existence or independent existence.

This is not easy to understand. If you feel confused, it takes time. I know for myself, when I first started hearing teachings about emptiness, I didn’t understand anything. I felt like they were talking in a foreign language that I didn’t understand, like Chinese or Russian or something. “What are they talking about?” And it was only after quite a few years that I felt like I started getting some understanding of it. So, if you find it confusing or puzzling or you don’t understand it, don’t be surprised. It does take time. But don’t give up. It is important. It’s very, very, very important. Because this is actually the tool that enables us to free our minds from all the obstacles, the obscurations, that prevent our mind from becoming enlightened mind, buddha-mind. 

To free our mind from all those obstacles—and in that way to free ourselves from suffering and to bring our mind to the state of enlightenment—we have to understand emptiness. We can’t just say, “Oh, that’s too hard. I’m not going to try to learn about that. I don’t understand.” Yes, it’s hard, but it is possible to understand it through familiarity, listening to teachings, reading books about it, discussing it with our friends and teachers. Slowly, slowly, it starts to make more sense. When I started learning Buddhism, I couldn’t even understand it, much less talk about it. I couldn’t even ask questions about it. Now I can actually talk about it and answer questions about it. So, this shows that if we just keep going, if we don’t give up but keep trying, then slowly, slowly, it starts to make more sense. We start to get more of an understanding of it.

So, to go back to that quotation from the Heart Sutra that was made into a question yesterday, the Heart Sutra says, “In emptiness, there’s no form, no feeling, no recognition, no compositional factors, no consciousness, no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue,” and so on and so forth. It goes through all these things. It says they don’t exist, but it’s not literally saying all of those things do not exist at all. All of those things, like form, feeling, eye, ear, nose—all of those things—are conventional truths. Those are conventional truths. They do exist. But they don’t exist the way they normally appear to us. They don’t exist the way we normally think they do. Because we see them as inherently, intrinsically, independently existing. And that way of existing is false. That’s the thing that’s being rejected or negated when we talk about emptiness.

So again, what it’s saying in the Heart Sutra is that when a person realizes emptiness, when they have that wisdom realizing emptiness, then from their point of view, all of those things like form and feelings and eye and ear and nose and so on don’t exist inherently the way they normally appear. They are empty of that way of existing.  It’s helpful, I think, to understand there are these two levels of truth or two levels of reality. There’s a conventional existence, like in our everyday experience—all of these things that we see and touch and interact with and so on. These things are conventional truths; they do exist. But what we want to do is come to understand their real nature, right? We want to go beneath the appearance—how they appear, how they seem to exist—to understand how they really exist.

And that is what we call emptiness or ultimate truth. So anyway, I just wanted to say a little bit more about that question and talk about the two truths, and I hope that that helps whomever asked that question. And if you’re still confused, you can ask another question later.

Quick review of Buddhist systems

Now we’ll continue looking at this topic of tantra. Yesterday we looked at the ways in which tantra or Vajrayana is different from Paramitayana, the other branch of Mahayana. So again, there are these two branches of Mahayana Buddhism, Paramitayana or Sutrayana, and then there’s Vajrayana or tantra. They’re both paths that lead to buddhahood, to enlightenment. And so anyone following those paths needs to do so with the motivation to become a buddha and help all living beings. But there are different ways of practicing in Sutrayana and Vajrayana. That’s what I talked about yesterday. 

Ordinary view and ordinary grasping

And the next point on the outline is the four complete purities. This is a feature of tantra, Vajrayana practice. When we’re doing tantric practice, we need to practice these four complete purities. And the purpose of this is to overcome ordinary view and ordinary grasping. It’s said in Vajrayana philosophy that there are two things that are big obstacles to our attainment of enlightenment or buddhahood. One is called ordinary view. And ordinary view means seeing everything in an ordinary way. For example, I see myself as Sangye Khadro, Buddhist nun. And I have this body, and I’m living in such and such place. And so these are all the ordinary aspects of my life as Sangye Khadro or Kathleen McDonald: my family, my friends, where I live, what clothes I wear, what food I eat, and so on.

This is the ordinary view of me, as I am in this lifetime. I see myself in that way. So, that’s one obstacle: ordinary view. And then there’s ordinary grasping, which means an attitude of grasping at that as if that’s all there is. It’s grasping it as if that’s somehow who I am and what I am. And so you may think, “What’s wrong with that? Isn’t it true that you are Sangye Khadro or Kathleen McDonald?” Well, remember that Buddhism says that we’ve had many, many lifetimes before this one. And in each lifetime, we are a different person. Our mind—this non-physical part of us that thinks and feels and knows—is something that goes from one life to another, again and again and again. Buddhism says our past lives go back so far that they can’t be seen—even Buddha isn’t able to see the beginning of our lives. It’s said that our mind is beginningless, our existence in samsara is beginningless.

And that means the number of lives we’ve had before this one is countless. It’s not only a hundred or a thousand—it’s innumerable. We’ve had so many lifetimes that our mind has gone from one to another. So, that means we’ve been many different people, many different beings. In fact, Buddhism says we have been in all the different realms that there are, not just human. We’ve been animals; we’ve been gods; we’ve been in hell; we’ve been hungry ghosts, and so on and so forth. We’ve been everywhere in samsara.There’s nowhere we haven’t been, nothing we haven’t done. And most people don’t remember their past lives. This is the only one that they know—this present life, this present body, identity, story, family, home. This is the only thing that people know.

And we tend to identify very strongly that “This is me; this is who I am,” as if that’s something that is there forever and will never end. Most people have a sense of permanence, a sense of “This is me, and this is how I always have been, and this is how I always will be. There will never be anything different from this.” But even in this lifetime, we can see that that is not very realistic, because we go through lots of changes. For example, there was a time when we were five years old. Maybe most of us don’t remember, or you might have some vague memories of being five years old, but at that point in time, our body was very different than it is now. It was very small. And our skin was kind of very soft and smooth and not full of wrinkles, like many of us now. And we just spent most of our time playing. We had a very different body and also a very different mind. What we knew, what we understood, what we experienced was very, very different than now. It’s almost like a completely different person than now. 

And as you go through life, changes are happening all the time—changes in our body, changes in our mind, changes in our experience. And if we continue to live longer, our body will get older, more and more wrinkled. And maybe it’ll start to fall apart. We’ll have difficulty walking; we’ll have difficulty hearing; we’ll have difficulty remembering things. We might even get Alzheimer’s or dementia. And then we forget everything we ever knew in this lifetime, and we might not even able to recognize people that we’ve lived with for many years. You’ve probably met people like that. And that’s something that could happen to us—hopefully not, but we never know. We could become a very old person suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s. And again, our body will be completely different at that time, our mind will be completely different at that time, our whole experience of life will be very, very different.

So, even in one lifetime, there are lots of changes that happen in our body and our mind, and in our sense of who we are, and so on. But then, that also changes from one life to another. When this life comes to an end, our mind will leave this body, and go to a new body. And we’ll find ourselves in a completely new body and a completely new environment, with a different family, learning new things, and we’ll develop a whole new identity. For example, maybe in my next lifetime, I’ll be born in a male body, I’ll be a boy. And then maybe I’ll be born in Africa. Maybe I’ll have a black male body, and I’ll learn a different language, and I’ll have a different name, and a different family, maybe there will be different kinds of food that I eat. I’ll develop a completely new identity in that lifetime. But our tendency is to always grasp at whatever present identity we have—our body, our mind, our circumstances—and believe that this is how I am.

That’s the meaning of ordinary view and ordinary grasping: whatever kind of body and mind and circumstances we have in the present, in any given moment, or in any given lifetime, we tend to believe that’s who I am, that’s how I am, as if that is there forever. And from the Buddhist point of view, this is an obstacle to attaining enlightenment, and especially in Vajrayana, because Buddhism says that we have the potential to become an enlightened being, a buddha. And again, that’s like a totally different being than we are now. 

I talked yesterday about the two kayas of a buddha: the Dharmakaya and the Rupakaya. At the time of enlightenment, our mind is the Dharmakaya—we have a totally omniscient, fully purified, and fully perfect and pure state of mind, and it’s very different than our present mind, which is much more limited and still full of a lot of afflictive emotions and ignorance and so forth. But our mind can change; it’s possible for our mind to change and become an enlightened mind. And then the body we have, when we are enlightened, it’s not this kind of body—flesh and blood and bones, subject to aging and sickness and death. We’ll be able to have any body that we like—a buddha’s mind can manifest in any form at all, including bodies made of light that are completely pure, and don’t get sick, and don’t have to die, and so on and so forth. One day, we will be in that situation: we will be enlightened with these two kayas, the Dharmakaya and the Rupakaya. So, if you’re hearing this for the first time, you might think that this sounds like science fiction or fantasy. It’s hard to believe. 

Of course, Buddha said we do need to think about what he taught and check it out for ourselves. And this may take some time. But the Buddha said it’s possible; the Dalai Lama says it’s possible; all our teachers say it’s possible. Many beings from the time of Buddha have practiced his teachings and have been able to do this, have been able to bring themselves to the state of enlightenment. They say, “Yes, it is possible. You can do it, too.” So, we have that ability, we have that potential, to become an enlightened being—a buddha, with an enlightened mind and a pure body. But one of the obstacles to achieving that is if we have this kind of grasping at our ordinary view of ourselves: “This is who I am. This body mind combination is me. And, and I believe very strongly in this, I identify very strongly in this.” And maybe it’s even the sense of permanence, like “I’m going to be like this forever, and I’ll never be able to change.” That’s the meaning of ordinary view and ordinary grasping. And that needs to be overcome in order to reach the state of enlightenment.

Complete purity of environment

So, there are these four practices that are done in Vajrayana to overcome ordinary view and ordinary grasping. The first one is called the complete purity of environment. What that means is when you’re doing Vajrayana practice, you imagine the environment that you’re in as a pure place, like the mandala of the deity. And the mandala can be rather simple. In some practices, it’s not very complicated. For example, some of you may have had the chance to do the Nyungne practice. This is a practice related to Avalokiteshvara, Chenrezig. If you do that practice, there’s Chenrezig in the middle of this celestial mansion—it’s a very beautiful mansion. And there are five other Buddhas there who are sometimes called the five Dhyani buddhas: Akshobhya, Viruchana, Ratnasambhava, Amoghasiddhi, and Amitabha. Amitabha is on the crown of Chenrezig’s head. And the other four Buddhas are in four directions of this celestial mansion. They are kind of sitting around Chenrezig. This is what you visualize when you’re doing the new name practice or when you’re doing Avalokiteshvara practice.

That’s relatively simple, not very complicated. On the other hand, in some tantric practices like Kalachakra, which is not a practice that I do, there are hundreds of different deities that you have to visualize. That’s one reason I don’t do it: it’s too complicated for me. But some of you may have had that initiation or read books or heard about it. But in Kalachakra, I can’t remember the exact number, but there are hundreds of different deities you have to visualize. So, that’s a very complicated visualization. But that’s just to give you some idea of the meaning of a mandala. Mandala is the environment and includes the central deity that you identify yourself as, that you visualize yourself as, and then what the surroundings look like. And they can be more simple or more complicated depending on the particular practice. 

When you’re really practicing tantra, you do this all the time. It’s not just when you’re sitting on your meditation cushion and doing your sadhana, but even when you get up and walk around and do whatever you’re doing—cooking or working or whatever—you’re constantly seeing yourself as the deity and then the surroundings around you as this mandala. It’s difficult. And again, it depends on understanding emptiness. To be able to do this properly requires a good understanding of emptiness, which means that the normal way we see things—ourselves and others in the world and all the things in the world and so on—is not the way they really are. We have to be able to let go of our ordinary appearances of things and dissolve them into emptiness. And then within this understanding of emptiness, we can arise as the deity, and the environment becomes a mandala. So, that’s the complete purity of the environment. 

Complete purity of body

And the second one is complete purity of body. This means your body—the body you have. Again, when you do the sadhana, you dissolve your ordinary appearance of this body that you normally live in. You let that dissolve into emptiness. And then your wisdom understanding emptiness arises in the form of the deity—whatever the deity may be, whether it’s Avalokiteshvara, Kalachakra, or Tara, or whatever. And it’s important to understand that we are not transforming this flesh and blood body that we normally have into the deity body. But rather, we are dissolving that into emptiness, understanding that this ordinary body that I have is empty of inherent existence. We’re letting go of that, and then it’s the wisdom mind—the mind understanding emptiness—that appears in the form of the deity body. So again, that shows how important it is to have an understanding of emptiness or at least some degree of an understanding of emptiness.

Complete purity of resources

And then number three is the complete purity of resources. This means all the things that we use, all the things that we enjoy—for example, the food that we eat, and whatever drinks we drink, and the clothes that we wear, and so on. It’s all our belongings and enjoyments. When we are utilizing those, we also see those as pure. It’s not ordinary food, for example, but we see it as ambrosia, as nectar, and the nature of which is blissful wisdom, bliss and emptiness. So again, one needs to have some understanding of emptiness, and also how ordinary experiences like desire can be transformed and can help us have a deeper understanding of emptiness and an experience of bliss. All that comes when you study tantra—when you receive an initiation and then you get teachings, instructions on how to do the practice. All of that is explained. But then, again, if you’re really doing a full time practice of tantra, then whenever you eat or drink, you’re seeing the food and drinks as not ordinary but as the nature of bliss and emptiness and enhancing your experience of bliss and emptiness. 

Complete purity of activities

And the fourth complete purity is complete purity of activities. This refers to what you do when you’re a buddha. What do you do when you’re Chenrezig, or you’re Kalachakra? How do you spend your time? What are your activities? What’s your job? The activities are done for the benefit of sentient beings. When you’re doing a sadhana, there’s always a part in the sadhana—or several parts maybe—where you imagine sending light out from your heart, from your body, to all sentient beings in the universe, not just human beings but beings in other realms as well. You imagine sending the  light out to them. And sometimes you send emanations of yourself, like tiny Chenrezigs, or tiny Kalachakras. You send them everywhere in the universe to all the sentient beings. And you imagine helping them be free of their suffering and their causes of suffering and helping them develop their buddhanature. 

And you can do it instantly. Sometimes it’s done instantly. You send out these emanations and light to all sentient beings, and they instantly transform into the deity as well. They all become Chenrezigs, or they all become Taras or Kalachakras or whatever. Or you can do it in a more gradual way. You imagine teaching them the Dharma and leading them along the path until they reach enlightenment. But anyway, those are the activities that you do as a buddha: you help sentient beings to become free of suffering and help them reach enlightenment as well. This becomes more clear when you receive an initiation, and then you get instructions on how to do the practice, how to do the sadhana. And some practices are more simple while others are more complex.

Some of you may already know about the book, Introduction to Tantra, by Lama Yeshe.If you do want to know more about tantra, you can read that. And also, another thing you could do would be to study this subject called “Grounds and Paths of Tantra,” where it goes into all the details about tantra. That’s something else you could look into if you really want to have a better understanding of all these details of tantra. This is just an introductory course on teaching some of the basics.

Different names for tantra

The next point on the outline is different names for tantra. This could be useful because there are different synonyms for tantra. And if you come across these in books or in teachings, it’s good to know they’re just different names for the same thing. The first one is Tantrayana. The term yana means vehicle, but we shouldn’t think it means like a car or a truck. A vehicle is actually a state of mind, a realization, a wisdom. The function of an ordinary vehicle is to get from one place to another. Most people have cars, and they use their cars to travel to the supermarket or to go and visit their friends and their relatives, to go to work and so on. So, a vehicle is a means for getting from one place to another. When we use that term in Buddhism, it means a process whereby our mind transforms to help us get from where we are now in an unenlightened state to an enlightened state. So, it’s like a mental vehicle to get to enlightenment. That’s the meaning of yana.

And then the word tantra in Tibetan—gyu—has the meaning of continuum. Here we can think of it as the mind is continuing from here to enlightenment. It’s probably has other meanings as well, but that’s just to keep it simple. Another term for tantra is resultant vehicle. That’s number two on the list. And I mentioned that yesterday, because when we’re doing tantric practice, we are taking the result, the enlightened state that we wish to achieve, and bringing it into the present and making it part of the path. They sometimes talk about taking the result into the path. And that is done when—like with those four purities we just went through—you imagine you are already a buddha; you imagine already having this form of an enlightened being, like Avalokiteshvara or Kalachakra. And your environment, all the things around you, are the mandala of the deity, the environment of the deity. 

And the things you use and enjoy—the food you eat, and drinks that you drink, clothes that you wear, and so on—is not ordinary food and drinks, but divine and blissful and enhancing your experience of bliss and purity and so on and so forth. And then the activities that you do are the activities of a deity, helping sentient beings to wake up to their buddha nature, helping them to become buddhas as well. When we’re doing tantric practice, we’re imagining we’re already there—we’re already in that state that we aspire to attain. We’re visualizing the result of our practice and bringing that into the present, into the path. And that kind of practice is not found in Paramitayana, in the Sutrayana. Practitioners who are only following that path would not be doing such practices, would not be imagining themselves already enlightened, and so on. 

Sutrayana is called the causal vehicle, because it focuses on creating the causes for enlightenment. You see yourself as on the way to enlightenment, as creating causes for enlightenment that will happen sometime in the future, but you’re not bringing the result into the path. And then the third name for tantra on this list is secret; it’s called the secret vehicle or secret mantra—Mantrayana. You might sometimes encounter that term Mantrayana. Oh no, sorry, that’s number four. Number three is secret. It’s said to be important to keep your practice secret and not advertise when you’re practicing tantra, when you’re practicing Vajrayana. You’re really not supposed to tell people about this, except fellow practitioners—other people who are also practicing tantra. You can let them know. You can talk about it with them. 

But it’s not something you’re supposed to talk about with even your family and your friends and so on who don’t know about tantra and are not practicing tantra. With them, you should try to keep it hidden. And the reason for that is because otherwise, there’s the danger of losing one’s energy, losing one’s realizations. When you’re practicing tantra, you build up a certain kind of energy, a certain kind of experience. And if you talk about that too widely or let people know what you’re doing, it’s possible this energy could be lost. Don’t ask me to explain how that works. I don’t know how that works. But that’s what they say. And they say it’s a little bit like if you have some money or you have some jewels—some precious things—then normally, you don’t leave them out in the open, right? You don’t leave them sitting on top of your table where people coming to your house would see them and then possibly think about stealing them and where thieves, if they break into your house, would steal them.

People usually keep their valuable things in a safe. Some people have safes in their houses, or you put them in the bank. You have a safe vault in the bank, or at least you hide them. You put them in a cupboard, or you put them in a drawer rather than leaving them out in the open in a very obvious place. Most people do that, right? Because otherwise, there’s a danger of them being stolen. And so it’s a little bit similar but not exactly, because the energy that we create to our practice of Tantra—the insights, the realizations—are not physical things that anybody can steal from us. They’re just things in our mind. But somehow, it’s possible that that energy could be lost if we are too open about our practice.

And another problem that can happen is that people who don’t know about tantra might generate misconceptions—mistaken ideas about it—if you’re too open about it. Something like this happened when I was living in Singapore. In Singapore, the majority population is Chinese. And most Chinese are Buddhist but different forms of Buddhism. Some of them follow Theravada Buddhism. Some of them follow Paramitayana Buddhism. Chinese Buddhism, I think, is exclusively Mahayana—paramitayana. So, they don’t have Vajrayana. Vajrayana is relatively new in Singapore. And I knew a student there who was coming to our center and had taken initiation and was doing Vajrayana practice. She had a friend who was not practicing tantra, who was practicing Paramitayana, Sutrayana. And this student who was practicing Vajrayana showed a picture of a tantric deity to her friend who was not a practitioner of tantra. And this friend got kind of freaked out. She got really upset when seeing this tantric deity. I can’t remember if it was a wrathful deity, like Yamantaka, or if it was something like Kalachakra—showing male and female in concert. 

But anyway, it was shocking. The picture of this deity was shocking to this other woman who had been going to a Chinese Mahayana temple. And so the student realized, “Oh, I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have shown this picture to my friend. And now she thinks I’m doing something really weird, really bizarre.” That just shows how people can get misunderstandings and possibly even negative reactions if we reveal aspects of our practice to them. So, those are reasons why it’s better not to display pictures or thangkas or statues of Tantric deities in a place where anybody could see them. It’s better to keep them in a cupboard or to have a cloth hanging over your thangkas. Even in Tibet where probably most people did tantric practice, they would still keep it kind of secret. They say that some monks didn’t openly display their tantric implements, like the vajra and bell. Those are used in tantric practice. They kept them hidden. And it was only after the person passed away and then people were going through their things that they found the vajra and bell. Only then did the other teachers or other monks know that that person was practicing tantra. They say that’s the ideal thing: to keep things hidden rather than openly displayed. And then when it comes to talking a lot about your tantric practice, that should only be done with other people who are doing tantric practice, not just generally. 

Guided meditation

I know some of this material is quite difficult and maybe abstract, difficult to understand. Let’s do a little bit of meditation on one of the things that I talked about earlier: how tantra says that ordinary view and ordinary grasping are obstacles to our practice and how, especially in tantra, we try to practice seeing ourselves as already buddhas, already enlightened beings. Let’s just see if we can get in touch with what is meant by ordinary view and ordinary grasping. So, close your eyes and sit comfortably. Let your mind settle down. Put aside thoughts about the past or the future. Just let your mind be right here in the present moment and the present place.

Now see if you can get a sense of your own sense of self, your sense of I—who I am, what I am, how I exist. It’s natural that we identify with the body that we have in this lifetime. This body has been existing for many years already, maybe many decades for some of us, and it’s the only body that we know. Our mind has been connected with this body for many years, many decades, 24 hours a day, every minute, every second. So, it’s only natural that we have this strong identification with this body. But ask yourself, “Is this really who I am? Is it even something permanent? Is it who I am for all of time?” Tthink about what I mentioned before: that according to Buddhism, before this life began, our mind was existing in another body, a very different body than this one. It may have been a body of a different gender. If you’re male this lifetime, maybe in your past life you were female, or vice versa. If you’re female this lifetime, maybe in your last life you were male. Just consider that possibility, see how that affects your mind. 

Then looking in the other direction, to the future: we’ll continue living in this body for some period of time, maybe a number of years but maybe not. We don’t really know. It could only be a number of months and days. But at some point, this body will come to the end of its time, and it will die. Death will happen to this body. It’s definitely not going to last forever. And when this body does die, our mind, our consciousness, our awareness, will separate from this body. It will go and find a new body, connect with a new body. We don’t know what kind of body that will be. We don’t even know if we’ll be human. It could be some other kind of being. But even if we are born as human, which is a good rebirth, a good situation, we may have a very different body than we have now. Again, we may be a different gender than we do this time, maybe a different race, different color of eyes, hair, skin, different language we learn from our parents, different environment. Just try to imagine that. Just try to get a sense of how in your next life things could be very different than what you know in this life.

And because we have a different body in the next life, and a different environment, different family, different people around us, probably a different language that we learn, different customs that we learn, and so on, then our mind will also be different. We’ll have different kinds of thoughts, different kinds of feelings, emotions, perceptions; we’ll have a different sense of identity—who I am. The point is to get a sense that we do not have a fixed permanent identity with regard to the body that we have, the environment we live in, our relationships with other people, our thoughts, feelings, memories. There’s nothing permanent or fixed about any of these things. 

So then ask yourself, “Does it make sense to cling to the present situation—present body, present identity, present environment—as if this is who I am, this is how I am, this is how I’m going to be forever and ever?” 

And if we continue following the path, life after life, learning Buddhist teachings, practicing Buddhist teachings, especially Vajrayana teachings, then at some point in the future, our mind will become enlightened mind, buddha’s mind. And at that point in time, our experience will be very different—unimaginable. The mind will be omniscient: seeing everything, knowing everything, understanding everything. We’ll feel unconditional love and compassion for every living being. There’ll be no anger, no aversion, no partiality. And we’ll be constantly—every minute, every second—concerned about helping other sentient beings. There will be no more thoughts about me and doing things for myself, my needs, my wishes. We’ve gone beyond that. So, all our time, all our energy, can go into helping others. 

And we’ll have lots of abilities to help others—one of which is being able to manifest different forms, different emanations, different bodies, to go out and help sentient beings, wherever they are. So, we can manifest, for example, bodies made of light, beautiful ladies like Tara or Manjushri. The idea in Vajrayana practice is to imagine we’re already there, we’re already in that state of enlightenment—in an enlightened mind and in a pure body that’s beautiful, blissful, made of light—and totally dedicated to helping other sentient beings, continuously, every minute, every second. 

Names for tantra, continued

I thought it might help to think about some of these ideas that we’re talking about. And they’re very profound, difficult, challenging. But if you learn more about them, if you think more about them, they slowly make more sense. And also, I think you can probably see how tantra really is a very advanced practice. And it’s recommended that we first really learn the basic teachings, like the Lamrim, and get very familiar with them. The more we do that, the more our mind can open up to and understand tantra. I was going through these different terms or different names for tantra. And number four on the list is Mantrayana. That’s another term that’s synonymous with tantra. The term mantra, you’ve probably heard that before.

Mantra literally means protecting the mind. And what we want to protect our mind from is ordinary appearances, ordinary concepts, ordinary grasping—like I mentioned before, this tendency to hold on to our present identity, our body, our mind, our environment, and feel this is all there is, this is who I am, as if it’s how things will be forever and ever and ever. That way of thinking, that way of seeing things, that way of identifying with things, holds us back from being able to reach enlightenment, and even being able to fully practice. People often identify themselves with their present body and their present mind—their personality, their problems, and so on. People sometimes feel, “I’m hopeless. I cannot change. Other people can do things that I can’t do.” Lama Yeshe, in the book Introduction to Tantra, talks a lot about that. We tend to limit ourselves when we do identify with our present body, and mind, and circumstances, and feel “This is who I am; this is how I always will be, and I cannot change.”

By thinking that way, we are limiting ourselves and not able to bring out our full potential. I really recommend reading his book. He talks a lot about this. He’d been teaching Western disciples for a long time, and I think you can really see this in us. You can see that Western people do tend to have these self-limiting ideas, and attitudes, and emotions. Sometimes we don’t even recognize it ourselves. It’s the only thing we know, the only way we know how to be. He was a very, very skillful teacher in helping us recognize these sort of faults and ideas that we have.

And then the last term on the list is Vajrayana. The word vajra is sometimes translated as diamond, but that’s not an accurate translation. Vajra doesn’t mean diamond. The term vajra refers to something held in the hand of one of the Hindu gods—Indra, I think—who was in a very lofty position, a ruler. And rulers, kings, and so on will sometimes have an object that they hold in their hand as a symbol of their leadership. So, Indra holds this vajra in his hand to symbolize his leadership. That’s the real meaning of vajra. And it also has the meaning of indestructible or inseparable. The vajra is one of the implements that’s used in tantric practice. Some of you probably know that. Some of you probably have a vajra. It’s kind of hard to describe.

But anyway, it’s something you hold in your hand. And in the other hand, you hold a bell. When you’re doing tantric practices, you hold a vajra and a bell, and you use those, for example, when making offerings. And when you hold the vajra and bell, those two implements represent the two main qualities of mind that we are trying to develop. I mentioned this yesterday about method and wisdom. If we want to reach enlightenment, if we want to become a buddha, those are the two main things we need to develop: method and wisdom. Method can refer to compassion, loving kindness, bodhicitta, altruism, the first five perfections, generosity, and so forth. And then wisdom refers to the understanding of emptiness.

Those are the two main things. If we synthesize the whole path to enlightenment, we can synthesize it into those method and wisdom. And in Paramitayana or Sutrayana practice, those two, method and wisdom, are practiced alternately at different times, although they do affect each other. But they cannot be practiced simultaneously at the same moment. And that’s one of the special features of tantra: that it’s possible to practice method and wisdom at the same time, simultaneously, with a single mind, a single consciousness. They’ve put a lot of emphasis on that. And that’s why tantra is said to be so powerful and speedy, enabling us to reach enlightenment more quickly than in Sutrayana. So, the vajra and the bell symbolize method and wisdom. The bell symbolizes wisdom, and the vajra symbolizes method.

When holding the vajra and bell, you’re supposed to remember their meaning and the importance of cultivating and practicing those two together in a united way, in a single state of mind. So, those are different terms, different names, for tantra. 

Working with desire

And then there are four different classes of tantra. And there are a number of differences between them. But one difference is in terms of practitioners’ ability to utilize desire in the path. I talked about that yesterday: the general idea of taking desire into the path, which again is a unique feature of tantra. Instead of thinking, “I have to get rid of my desire”—although ultimately, we do have to get rid of desire—it’s possible to use the desire to help us in our practice, help us reach enlightenment more quickly. Again, you need to be quite an advanced practitioner to be able to do this, because ordinary people, as soon as desire arises in the mind, tend to just follow the old pattern of getting caught up in the desire and increasing the desire, feeding the desire. 

The mind has lots of thoughts: “Oh, if only I could have that object, that would be so wonderful, that would make me so happy. What can I do to get that object?” And it also has a lot of exaggeration—building up the object so that it seems much more wonderful than it really is, not seeing any faults—thinking, “Oh, it’s wonderful; it’s perfect; it’s going to bring me happiness forever and ever and ever. “

When I was teaching a course many years ago, one woman who came to this course told me a sad story that really illustrates how desire works. She had been married, and I guess her husband was very handsome, and she kind of thought her husband was like a Greek god. She just adored him, idolized him, and thought he was just so wonderful, so great, so perfect. And he himself knew that she was exaggerating and would try to say so. He would say, “You know, I’m not really like that.” But she didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to listen to what he said. She wanted to believe in her fantasies about how wonderful her husband was. But then at some point the bubble burst, and she saw him as an ordinary person—the way he really was—and then she realized she didn’t really like him anymore. She didn’t want to stay with him. 

That must have been very, very painful for both her and for him. But then from the Buddhist point of view, the story had a good ending because she left her husband and then met Buddhism and became a nun. And I’ve heard she’s doing very well in her practice. But anyway, that’s just such a clear example of what happens with ordinary desire: how our mind exaggerates, fantasizes, has all kinds of expectations about the object. And it’s way over the top. It’s just not realistic at all. That’s what happens to most people when desire arises in mind. They just get totally caught up in it, carried away, like a tsunami—the tsunami of desire just takes over your mind and carries you away.

A tantric practitioner is able to notice desire as soon as it starts to arise in their mind. And instead of getting carried away by the tsunami of desire, they remember emptiness, because they already have an understanding of emptiness. So they bring that to mind and meditate on that and contemplate that emptiness of the “I,” the emptiness of the object, the emptiness of desire—the emptiness of everything. They meditate on emptiness. And I’m not talking from experience but just from what I’ve heard, but it sounds like there’s still a tiny bit of desire left. And it brings a blissful feeling. There’s this kind of blissful feeling with the desire. And because of that blissful feeling, they’re able to stay absorbed in the meditation on emptiness and go very deep. So, in that way, the desire kind of helps or enhances the understanding of emptiness, the wisdom of emptiness. And they say it’s like using desire to increase their understanding of emptiness.

And then the understanding of emptiness itself is the antidote to desire, is the thing that will eliminate desire, free the mind from desire. That’s a brief explanation of how desire can be taken into the path. But this is a very difficult thing to do. You have to have a very strong, a very good, understanding of emptiness and very strong mindfulness so that you can notice desire as soon as it arises. For most people, they’re already carried away on a tsunami wave before they realize they have desire. So, one needs to be quite accomplished to be able to do this. And they also say there are different levels of desire that can arise. Some desire arises just by seeing an attractive object like a person. And then a stronger form of desire will arise if you’re actually kind of talking to that person, looking at each other, smiling at each other—the desire is even stronger at that point in time, and so on.

Different classes of tantra

So, different classes of tantra are arranged according to the level of desire that a practitioner is able to use and take into the path. The first class of tantra is called Action or Kriya Tantra. And practitioners of this level of tantra are able to use the desire that arises just by looking at an attractive person. When you look at some attractive person and there’s a certain amount of desire that can come up, a Kriya Tantra practitioner can use that desire in the path without losing control and getting carried away by the desire. 

And the second class of tantra, in Sanskrit it’s Charya Tantra, which means Performance Tantra. At this level, a practitioner is able to utilize the desire that can arise from actually interacting with the other person—looking, exchanging glances, and maybe smiling at each other, talking with each other, laughing with each other. There the desire is stronger than in the first case; it’s a stronger level of desire. But still, a practitioner of this level is able to utilize that desire in the path without getting under the control of the desire.

And the third class of tantra is called Yoga Tantra. A practitioner of this level is able to utilize the desire that comes from having some physical interaction, like just touching, holding hands with the other person. There’s actually some physical contact between you and the other person, and it’s the kind of desire that can arise from that level of interaction with an attractive person. This practitioner is able to use that level of desire without losing control. You can see that the desire, as you go through these different levels of the tantra, is a stronger and more powerful level of desire.

Then the fourth kind of tantra is Highest Yoga Tantra. In Sanskrit it’s called Maha Anuttarayayoga, Highest Yoga Tantra. Here a practitioner is able to use the desire that comes from actual sexual union. That’s the strongest kind of desire that there is. But a practitioner is able to have control over that desire, so that they don’t get carried away by it. And they’re able to use that kind of desire to meditate on emptiness and enhance their experience of emptiness. Now, this doesn’t mean that the practitioners of these four classes of Tantra are actually engaging in these activities, that they’re going around and looking at attractive people and smiling and laughing. As far as I understand, it’s part of the sadhanas when you’re doing a tantric sadhana. 

For example, take Nyungne that I mentioned earlier—that’s a practice involving Avalokiteshvara. And it’s the first level of tantra, Action Tantra or Kriya Tantra. When you’re doing that practice, you’re visualizing yourself as Avalokiteshvara in the celestial mansion. And you have the other four buddhas sitting around you inside the celestial mansion. And then at certain points, you’re making offerings. You make offerings and you imagine beautiful offering goddesses emanating from your heart, coming out from your heart, and holding beautiful offerings of food and drink and flowers and so on. And then you’re making these offerings either to the Buddha, or also sometimes you’re making the offerings to yourself. But you’re visualizing these beautiful goddesses. And that gives you the opportunity to utilize desire that might arise and bring that into the path. I think that’s the way in which you would use desire in the path.

That happens during the sadhana itself. And another difference between these four classes of tantra is in terms of what kind of practices are emphasized more—whether they are external practices or internal practices. The first class of tantra, Kriya Tantra or Action Tantra, is said to emphasize more external actions, external rituals. When you’re practicing a sadhana according to Kriya Tantra, you’re supposed to be very clean. You’re supposed to keep your body clean. And with regard to the food you eat, you’re supposed to eat vegetarian food and avoid eating what are called the black foods—things like meat, eggs, onion, garlic, radishes. So, your body, your diet, and your environment, you’re supposed to keep it very, very clean. And also, there are a lot more kind of physical actions or activities involved in Kriya Tantra. The emphasis is more on the external actions and activities.

And then with the next one, Charya Tantra or Performance Tantra, there’s an equal emphasis on external activities and internal activities. I don’t know an example of that. Actually, in my experience with Tibetan Buddhism, all the initiations and practices that I’ve ever encountered have been either Kriya Tantra/Action Tantra or Highest Yoga Tantra. They don’t seem to do the middle two—Charya Tantra amd Yoga Tantra. I’m sure they exist, but they just don’t seem very common. When you take initiations from Tibetan lamas, most of the time it seems to be either Kriya Tantra or Highest Yoga Tantra.

I don’t have any experience at all with number two and number three. I’ve learned about them, but I haven’t had initiations or practices related to them. And then with the third one, Yoga Tantra, there’s still some emphasis on external activities, but the emphasis is becoming more on internal actions, which means your mental activities, your visualizations, your thoughts, and so on and so forth. That’s emphasized more than the external. 

And then the Highest Yoga Tantra puts complete emphasis on the internal actions, the activities of your mind. And, in particular, I think all four classes of tantra, do talk about the internal channels and winds and chakras—the psychic body. Sometimes it’s called the subtle body within us. I think all classes of Tantra have certain practices related to that. But this reaches its peak with Highest Yoga Tantra. So, it’s in Highest Yoga Tantra that you find the greatest amount of material about the channels, the chakras, the winds, the energies, and working with those. That’s the main emphasis in Highest Yoga Tantra: working on that level of the subtle body. And the goal in Highest Yoga Tantra is to activate the clear light mind. 

I think I mentioned that already the other day; it’s the most subtle level of mind, which normally in our normal life is not manifest, except in certain moments. But most people are not aware of it. The goal in Highest Yoga Tantra is to make the clear light mind manifest, and then use that mind to meditate on emptiness. If you can make your very subtle clear light mind manifest and then meditate on emptiness, have a direct realization of emptiness with that very subtle clear light mind, then that’s like a nuclear bomb. That state of mind is like a nuclear bomb for our afflictions, our obscurations—the obscurations in our mind that prevent our mind from being enlightened.

That very subtle clear light mind realizing emptiness wipes out our afflictive emotions and our obscurations that are preventing enlightenment. And that’s the thing that enables enlightenment to happen very quickly. But not easy to do. And the way of activating this clear light mind is by working with the winds and the channels in the body. So, Highest Yoga Tantra mainly emphasizes that—working with the internal situation and not so much the external. There isn’t so much emphasis on cleanliness. You can be a dirty yogi who lives in a cave and never takes a bath, and you can eat whatever. It doesn’t matter. That’s not going to affect you, because you have very powerful practice of working with your inner situation.

So, that’s just a little bit about the differences in the different classes of tantra. And again, if you have a chance to study the topic of “Grounds and Paths of Tantra,” it’s very, very helpful, because then you go through the different classes of tantra and learn about the main features of each of these. 

Q &A

Audience: [Inaudible]

Venerable Sangye Khadro (VSK): Well, again, I haven’t yet reached that realization of emptiness. But they say that to get an actual experience of emptiness, we have to go through a process of reasoning. And there are a number of different reasonings that can be used. For example, one is called four-point analysis. That’s the one that’s usually taught in Lamrim. There are four points. First, you identify the object to be negated—for example, the sense of I that is inherently existing, independently existing. You need to get a sense of that. You need to get a picture of that, an experience of that: “What is this I that seems to be so real, so existing from its own side?” And they say it can take a long time just to be able to recognize that, because it’s so much part of us. It’s with us constantly. And it’s been with us our whole life, and also our past lives as well.

So, we’re just so totally glued to this false sense of I. It’s difficult to step back from it and be able to see it, to identify it. But that’s the first thing you have to do. You have to see this seemingly real, inherently existing I that we believe in, that we grasp onto. And then the second step is using logic. And the logical point is to say, “If this I does exist, if it really does exist, then it has to be either one with my aggregates of body and mind, or separate from my aggregates of body and mind.” In simple language, that just means “If this I does exist, we should be able to find it.”

It should be findable. And there are only two places where we can look for it. It’s either somewhere within this mass of physical and mental components, within my body and mind—I should be able to find it somewhere in here—or it’s outside of this body and mind. It’s somewhere else: the next room, on the floor, anywhere other than here. So, the second point is to realize that there are only those two places where you can look, where you can find the I. There’s no third possibility. There’s no other possibility besides those two. You have to be really convinced of that: there are only those two possibilities. 

And then the third and the fourth steps are looking for the I in those two places. You start with the obvious place; we feel I in here. So, we start by looking within our own body and mind. We try to see if we can find something in our body and mind that corresponds to that sense of a real I: “Is it my brain? Is it my nose? Is it my mental consciousness?” You look through your body and mind and try to find it. And if you do it right, you won’t be able to find it because it’s not there.  And then the fourth step is to examine the other possibility, which is that it exists outside—somewhere out there. “Can I find my I out there, this real, seemingly solid, inherently existing I? Can I find it outside of my body and mind, separate from my body and mind?” And again, if you do it well, you won’t be able to find it. 

If you’re doing this process properly, you’ll get an actual experience of emptiness, a realization of emptiness. Now, this isn’t yet the direct realization of emptiness; it’s still a conceptual one. But it’s a real experience of emptiness, not just, “Oh, I understand what emptiness means. It means blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” That’s not so difficult. But that doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve actually realized it, that we’ve grasped it. We have to go through a process like this four-point analysis and do it again and again. The first time we do it probably won’t work, so we have to do it many times. And then, at some point, we will get this conceptual understand. And in the philosophical terminology, it’s called an inferential realization. 

It’s good to study the topic of mind and mental factors. You learn about all the different types of mind that there is. One type of mind is called an inferential realization. And that’s a realization that you have by using logic and reasoning. So, that’s the first realization of emptiness you have. And it is a very, very powerful realization. But it’s still not a direct realization. So then you need to continue meditating to make your mind familiar with that more and more and more. Also, you need to develop shamatha, calm abiding. Somewhere along the way, you have to develop calm abiding. And then at some point you’ll be able to combine calm abiding with your conceptual realization of emptiness. And that’s what we call the union of calm abiding and special insight. And then you continue meditating more and more and more. And at some point, that realization turns into a direct realization of emptiness.

This is a long process. And you also need to accumulate merit, positive energy, which is sort of like a booster or fuel for your mind to be able to make this sort of progress in its development. So, that’s one method. But there are other reasonings as well. There are five main reasonings that are used, and one of those is actually dependent arising: contemplating that everything that exists is dependent on other things, that nothing is independently existing. That’s another route to get the realization of emptiness. That’s how it’s explained. But I still haven’t achieved this. I hope to one day.