The elements of Vajrayana practice

Note: Students were not recorded.

Ken: Today we’re going to talk about a couple of different things, not necessarily in this order, but we’ll get through them one way or another. One is moving into this practice of what is usually called visualization, which is an unfortunate term, because it’s been a source of frustration, anxiety, and difficulty for many people. But let’s see if we can approach it in a good way.

A second area that I want to look at briefly is the structure of tantra. There’s a lot of misconception about that. There’s also the outer and inner interpretations of structure. Probably both those topics with questions will cover most of today.

We will have the empowerment ceremony tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow morning I plan to go through the empowerment ceremony so you know what it is, so you know how to behave. That was a joke. And then tomorrow afternoon, I plan to go through the actual practice together so that you have that very clear in mind. It’d be good to do that more than once, but we’ll see how time goes.

So, as usual, I’ll begin quite off topic:

A stream, from its source in far-off mountains, passing through every kind and description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.

It was convinced, however, that its destiny was to cross this desert, and yet there was no way. Now a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered, “The wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream.”

The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand and only getting absorbed; that the wind could fly, and this is why it could cross a desert.

“By hurtling in your own accustomed way, you cannot get across. You’ll either disappear or become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over to your destination.”

But how could this happen? “By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind.”

This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality. And, once having lost it, how was one to know that it could ever be regained?

(Striking any chords?)

“The wind,” said the sand, “performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river.”

“How can I know that this is true?” asked the stream.

“It is so, and if you do not believe it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years; and it is certainly not the same as being a stream.”

“But can I not remain the same stream that I am today?”

“You cannot in either case remain so,” the whisper said. “Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You are called what you are even today because you do not know which part of you is the essential one.”

When he heard this, certain echoes began to rise in the thoughts of the stream. Dimly, he remembered a state in which he—or some part of him, was it?— had been held in the arms of a wind. He also remembered—or did he?—that this was the real thing, not necessarily the obvious thing to do.

And the stream raised his vapor into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upwards and along, letting it fall softly as soon as they reached the roof of a mountain many, many miles away. And because he had had his doubts, the stream was able to remember and record more strongly in his mind the details of the experience. He reflected, “Yes, now I have learned my true identity.”

The stream was learning, but the sands whispered, “We know, because we see it happen day after day. And because we, the sands, extend in the riverside all the way to the mountains.”

And that is why it is said that the way in which the Stream of Life is to continue on its journey is written in the sands.

The Tale of the Sands, Tales of the Dervishes, Idries Shah, p. 12

It’s my favorite book these days. Tales of the Dervishes. See, they aren’t all horrible stories. [Unrecorded] Well, I’ll let you figure out the implications.

I want to start with visualization. Vajrayana practice is composed of three elements. You usually find Vajrayana described as having two elements, but one of them has two parts. I find it more useful to think of it as three. This is a little different from the traditional version.

The first is deity practice. I think the most accepted translation now is creation phase. And you’ll also see the older translation, which I think has been largely discarded. You’ll see it in many texts as the development phase or development stage. In this form of practice, you create the experience of being an expression of awakened mind. This aspect of Vajrayana practice is derived directly from sorcery techniques and uses ways that I’ve mentioned before. One can go on much more elaborate description than that.

The second element is called completion phase. And traditionally, this is described as having two parts: completion phase with characteristics, completion phase without characteristics. This is where I split and make it into three. So you have creation phase, then completion phase, which largely consists of various high-level energy transformation practices. The intention of which is to complete the experience of being an expression of awakened mind with the experience of emptiness.

[Unrecorded] Of being the deity, the expression of awakened mind, with the experience of emptiness. Have the experience of being the deity, but it’s not complete. That’s the purpose of the completion phase.

And then you have what is traditionally, classically, called completion phase without characteristics, which I prefer to call direct awareness. This is things like mahamudra and dzogchen, or you can also call it the practice of presence. [Unrecorded] Mahamudra, dzogchen, practice of presence, this all comprises the third category, direct awareness methods. Having said that, all these three elements over the course of time have been extraordinarily interwoven so that they really functioned, and have for many centuries, as a complete system. This wasn’t always the case.

In the early stages of the development of tantra in India, you had one deity practice, which would have a certain completion phase practice connected with it, and then you’d have another one over here. There are all these kinds of things, and they weren’t very well integrated. As these things were practiced, they mixed and joined, and all of these things began to become interwoven. And that’s a process that, as far as I can tell, took a few centuries, but we benefit from the results.

Interestingly, we have a similar kind of thing going on in America and largely the West today, because of the mixing or interaction not only among the various traditions of Buddhism, in a way that has not ever happened before, but also other of the major spiritual traditions of the world: Taoism, Hinduism, Sufism, Christianity, Judaism.

Along with all of that, what each of these various traditional disciplines brings to the table, in terms of an understanding of the body, and the relationship of the body to spiritual practice, new understanding of music, all these very different elements. There’s an awful lot of interaction, and everything that’s known as New Age, but it’s not really fair, because there’s some very substantial stuff scattered through this. It’s going to take 50-100 years for the real jewels to emerge as integrated systems, but it’s going to be pretty interesting.

It’s a very interesting time, because you’ve got all of these different things. One of the things I’ve become aware of is that there’s a whole bunch of middle-level techniques of working with energy and with the body, which are completely left out of this, at least in Tibetan tradition. You got some really low-end stuff and really high-end stuff and nothing in the middle. Whereas in Taoism, you have totally gradual transition, from very low-end to very high-end with all kinds of things taking place. That’s just a little aside.

The purpose of deity practice

Ken: The purpose of identifying with a manifestation of awakened mind, which is generally known as a yidam or deity, is to shift the basis of the organization of our personality from habituated reactive patterns to this expression of open, clear awareness, which is the unity of compassion and emptiness. All of the deities are the union of compassion and emptiness. Chenrezi is explicitly so, all of the other ones just have different manifestations of that. Sometimes very wrathful manifestations, sometimes very peaceful.

So, that’s the purpose. Now, why would you do this? On occasion, Rinpoche was asked this question. He said, “There was once a man who was extremely wealthy, and he was very attached to his wealth. He recognized that this attachment was a significant impediment to his spiritual development. So he went to a wise man and said, ‘What should I do? I can’t give it up. I know this is a problem.’ And the wise man looked at him and said, ‘Invest in white stones, convert all your assets into white stones.’

So, the very wealthy man started liquidating his assets and buying white stones. He had to buy a large tract and property because he was very wealthy and he needed a place to put all of these white stones. He converted one business to liquid cash and went around buying white stone. He shipped them from all over the world, and there was this huge mountain of white stones on this property. It took him many years; he was very wealthy. Imagine Bill Gates converting everything to white stones.

When he’d finished, he went back to the wise man and said, ‘Okay, all my wealth is now in white stones.’ ‘Good,’ said the wise man, ‘Who needs white stones?'”

So that’s what you’re doing. [Unrecorded] It has a very definite point. Or as Trungpa Rinpoche liked to say, “If you’re going to use crutches, you might as well make them of gold.”

The fact is we’re very identified with being this psycho-organic being. We have biological, environmental, cultural, familial, social conditioning, and it’s in deep, as most of you know. What the creation phase practice insists on is transforming the experience of all of that into expression of awakened mind. There’s no mystery to this transformation. Countless people do visualization practice. They’re waiting for the building to turn to marble, silk garlands, rainbows, and everybody to manifest as deities, and literally change.

But this is a relatively naive understanding. The other day, I asked you if you feel as deeply as you’re able to, that you are the expression of awakened compassion, Chenrezi, what does the world look like? What does your body look like? And all of you described how it changed with this identification. Remember that? That’s the transformation.

When you do it like that, it’s good for five seconds, 10 seconds, and then the old, very reliable, totally mechanical reactive patterns start up again—enough of this nonsense and let’s get back to the real world. The purpose of this form of practice is to stabilize that transformation, which comes about by stabilizing that identification, i.e., you practice so that you feel you are the expression of awakened compassion, the embodiment of awakened compassion. And your world, everything in it changes.

That’s going from the reactive patterns, or experiencing the world as the manifestation of reactive patterns, which is where we are now, to experiencing the world and ourselves as the expression of awakened mind. But being as consistent and reliable as they are, the reactive patterns say, “Okay, this is fine. We can take this world as real too.”

And you’re still locked into subject-object perception. This is where the completion phase practice takes root, or is applied, through various energy-transformation practices, and there’s quite a variety. One raises the level of attention so that the experience of subject-object duality of the solidity of appearances is penetrated, or that projection is dissolved.

Fall into being awake

Ken: What actually happens is one generates a similitude. A similitude is something that is almost like the thing itself, very similar, of being awake and present. And the similitude is generated because of the high-energy states. The idea being that this loosens those very tenacious habituated patterns of subject-object, perception and projection of solidity, etc. So that one can fall into being awake, just being awake, present.

It’s said that Vajrayana is for people with very sharp, very astute minds, but you could look at it another way. It’s for those people who are so screwed up that they can’t fall into it just like that. Maybe that’s why they have such astute minds. In any event, anywhere along this path, one can find oneself falling into just being present.

In the summer retreat we did in Santa Fe, taking and sending, which was totally focused on Sūtrayāna practice, there were a number of people who were doing taking and sending, and the bottom just fell out of their practice, and they were right there. These are very profound methods. But because awakening is our nature, or being awake is our nature, the brush, the debris, the obscurations can disperse at any time. We’re just right there. So you don’t have to have the idea that you got to slog all through this. It’s always there.

And what you’re doing—as I’ve said before, in all of these practice—is creating the conditions in which that awakening can arise. It’s done differently in other traditions, but the underlying point is the same. It isn’t about creating, or developing, or building some new kind of understanding. It’s very much about dropping into what we actually are originally.

Creation phase practice

Ken: I’m going to teach you the principles of the creation phase practice, and one of those is visualization. I’m also going to teach you a simple energy transformation technique that is connected with the mantra recitation. And all of you have had some exposure to direct-awareness methods, and I will talk about how those methods apply or arise in this context. We’ll cover all of those topics one way or another.

Let’s turn to the first, the section Bokar Rinpoche has here on visualization, which is pages 66-68. This is a very sound, low-key practical guidance. I encourage you to read that and take it to heart.

I remember, Dezhung Rinpoche, one of my teachers, was visiting Vancouver, and we were talking about this, and he would say, “Oh, creation phase practice, it’s so hard! You sit there saying your mantra, visualizing the head, you get the head clear. So you move to the body, and then the head gets unclear. Then you get to the arms, and you can’t remember what’s in that arm. So you try, and then there’s that arm, you can’t remember what’s in that arm and you just keep going, going. Then you get a headache.”

A very important element here also is, don’t be discouraged. Saraha is one of the great Kagyu masters or mahamudra masters, Kagyu-traditioned, Indian master, somewhere around the fourth, fifth century, a long way back. His deity practice was Vajrayogini, and he practiced very, very diligently every day for 12 years, reciting her mantra during the practice. And it’s a relatively involved practice, it’s much more elaborate than what we’re doing with Chenrezi.

After 12 years he was fed up, he hadn’t had so much as a good dream. He said, “This is not working.” And he took his rosary, which, in Vajrayana traditions of India, is an extraordinarily sacred object. Really important, you never let anybody touch your rosary, got all of the sorcery-cult stuff going on with it, your vehicle to power. So, very important. And he threw it down a latrine, which, in Indian culture, you just don’t do with sacred objects.

And he said, “The hell with this, I’m done!”

He went to sleep, and Vajrayogini appeared in the dream, holding his rosary and said, “You haven’t been doing it the right way. You’ve been clinging to duality. Meditate without duality.” So, after that, things went a little better. [Unrecorded] No, he got it, it was given to him.

Another story, not quite as dramatic. In the three-year retreat we were doing about four or five elaborate, heavy-duty deity practices—five deities, 10 deities, things like that. The rituals are relatively complicated. You’ve got to read through all the stuff and get it all set up for the visualization, quite complex. When you get it all set up, then you got to be there, and you sang the mantras, you got all stuff flying around all over the place, mantras going here and here.

We did one, and we were sort of grinding through that. Then we did another one and grind through that, another. We get to the fourth one, this individual, he said, “The hell with it, I’m not doing this anymore, I hate this!” And every meditation session he would read through the liturgy—and he’s very good at Tibetan so he just skimmed through it very quickly—closed the book, and he meditated in a meditation box, he’d just sit there. And he didn’t say one mantra, didn’t do one bit of visualization on this particular deity, he just sat there. After the retreat, he said, “It’s interesting, I felt more connection to that deity than any of the others.”

Both of these stories point to a very important aspect here. Relax. Very important. It’s one of the things I really appreciated about Bokar Rinpoche’s comments because he says this also. Slightly different words: Take it easy.

Another person in the three-year retreat, a young Greek, just had to be the best at everything. But Vajrayana is a very gentle tradition. Whatever emotional fixations that you have, it helps you to see them very, very clearly. It does this by fueling them. So he would start doing his deity practice and he would go faster, faster, faster faster, faster, faster. And he literally burned himself out. Very gentle tradition.

You’re going to find this when you do this: ambition, perfectionism, all of these things will come out into visualization practice in this wonderful way. Any failure issues will come out, “not good enough.” They get totally blown out of proportion so you can’t miss them. It’s right in your face. Of course, it takes a little while to recognize them, but you either recognize them or you’re burned out. So it’s your choice. Take it easy.

Bokar Rinpoche likens this to a child playing: plays with this, gets tired of that toy, plays with this. Creation phase is all about toys. As visualization practices go, Chenrezi’s only got a few toys. If you’re Vajrabairava, you’ve got 32 toys to play with. But here you have four.

The form of the deity

Ken: Start with what we started in this retreat, “I’m awakened compassion.” That’s what Chenrezi is, awakened compassion. As I said, the form is not the deity, the form is not the yidam. Awakened compassion is the yidam. As I talked yesterday, we started to work on your practice. The form is a way to the principle of awakened mind, in this case, awakened compassion.

The form of the deity is an expression of and also a vehicle to experiencing being awakened compassion. So, start with feeling that you are Chenrezi, awakened compassion, however you want to describe it to yourself. And then, just as we talked about yesterday, when you do that, when you really feel that, you feel light, clear, and radiant. And you give that feeling form. White body, radiant with light.

Another of my colleagues in the three-year retreat at a certain point had quite a deep experience. He went, “I really wish I’d put more attention into all that radiating white business, that would have been helpful.” And this has been confirmed to me by a number of other teachers. Mind is empty, or the nature of mind is emptiness and clarity. The emptiness aspect is known through resting. The emptiness aspect comes to be known or experienced through resting deeply.

The clarity aspect comes to be known through this quality of wakefulness. And in the creation phase practice, there is all manner of lights going all over in every which way. But it’s to bring out this wakefulness, this clarity aspect. So, it’s actually very important.

The rule of thumb here, if no image arises, don’t worry about it. Feel it. So if you can’t imagine light streaming from your body, that doesn’t matter. Feel that light is streaming from your body. You can all do that. And one face is smiling gently. And one face is expression of the one nature of all experience. The gentle smile is what arises naturally. And compassion is in your heart.

You have the four arms, and you just feel that you have four arms. It’s a little odd at first but you get used to it. The two are joined at the heart, they hold a jewel. And as I said yesterday, this jewel is the jewel of compassion. So just actually feel that you’re holding the jewel of compassion in your hands. Something happens, doesn’t it? Just imagining that.

The emotional quality that comes with each of these aspects of the form is really crucial to this. This is what makes the practice alive. What’s it like to hold the jewel of compassion in your hands?

The second right hand holds a crystal rosary, and is actually counting. And as Chenrezi, there’s such power in fully awakened compassion, that just by drawing that rosary through your hands, you’re drawing all beings out of their confusion. What does that feel like?

In the second left hand you hold a lotus, the stem comes up, flowers are right there. Lotuses are like orchids. They’re very showy flowers. But here you have this beautiful flower, wonderfully delicate but with very strong colors. They are perfectly formed, and they grow out of muck. This is a metaphor. In the very muck of our reactive patterns, we find clarity and opening. It’s extraordinary, but that’s how it is, and that’s what this represents.

And you feel the softness of that deer’s pelt over your shoulder. Many of you know what it’s like to wear silk, very soft. It’s both warm and cool at the same time. This is what he’s clothed in. And you can feel that fluttering in the breeze if you wish. And jewelry: rings, armlet, bracelet, armlets, necklace, pendant—all wrought with fine gold and beautiful stones. What is it like when you wear fine jewelry? You feel ennobled; you feel rich. That’s the feeling.

Your feet are crossed in vajra posture. Those of you who know of vajra posture, and those of you who don’t, you know how unstable ordinary sitting can be. Vajra posture, you’re just right there, totally still. And that’s the base of our experience, aware of the fusion of compassion and emptiness, of means and wisdom, provides what we sit for.

At the back, this moon, which is completely full. You had the full moon this morning above the mountain. What’s it like to have that on his back? Very full. Crown of jewels, sitting right above his head—right up here, very small—Buddha Amitabha. Red, his hands in meditation posture, bowl filled with long-life things. You’re sitting on another moon which in turn is resting on a lotus, big lotus. All has a certain feel to it, doesn’t it? Deerskin over the shoulder, I think I mentioned that. Just radiant with light.

Relax in the confidence that you are the deity

Ken: Let your mind relax in the confidence that you are awakened compassion. It’s where you start. And then let the form manifest in the ways that we’ve just described. Don’t try to see it. Don’t try to see it at all. That’s why I don’t like the term visualization. Feel that you are this, and that’s different.

Gary? [Unrecorded] Oh yes, absolutely. Following this description, study the form. Get it clearly in your mind. That’s why there are pictures. But what I’m trying to do here is give you a feeling for it.

When you do this, when you feel yourself straining to hold on to some aspect or other, don’t strain. Let it go. Put your attention on another aspect if you wish, or just go back to the feeling, I am awakened compassion. Or recite the mantra: I am awakened compassion, om mani padme hūm.

But always come from the feeling, I am awakened compassion. And you create the feeling of being this. And as that feeling deepens in you, you will find that the form manifests for you. Just be there and—very important—this is your form; this is how you are arising.

Another thing that I found in my own practice, and I practiced quite a lot. I remember I did a one-month retreat back in the early 70s on Chenrezi. And I couldn’t get the smile, I just couldn’t get that smile. It was many years later that I found that smile. And you may find there are certain things that just won’t come. My experience is that if there’s an aspect to the visualization or form that doesn’t arise, doesn’t come, you probably have a little emotional block against whatever that is representing. It’s been my experience.

When that happens, you think of the smile, you think of the four arms, you think of holding the jewel of compassion, and it doesn’t come, then just imagine holding the jewel. Note what discomfort arises in you. There will be some, it may be very subtle in the beginning because it tries to hide. Work with that as awakened compassion. “Oh, there’s that discomfort,” which isn’t to say, “We’ll get rid of you so I can do this visualization.” That’s what’s there.

[Unrecorded] Imagine an apple in my hand. Can you do that? That’s it. And it’s very good that you asked that, because that’s all there is to it. It’s easy to do for a few seconds. The problem with the word visualization is everybody tries to see something, and they’re sitting there like … and you get this headache. I have found that just feeling that you are this, and putting the emphasis there, is far more fruitful.

There are a couple of people I’ve worked with, I remember one woman when I first came to LA, she could visualize like that. I gave her a much more complicated visualization. In one instance, totally clear to her, and no feeling whatsoever. Some people have that kind of visual ability, but it’s not the point. The point is really feeling that you are awakened compassion. The form is an assistance to that. Not an end in itself.

Elizabeth. [Unrecorded]. Adam. [Unrecorded] Oh yeah, you are this. You don’t look at your own form. “Am I me today?”

There’s a Nasrudin story about this. Nasrudin is feeling a little bit confused. So, he walks into a shop and says, “Am I me standing before you?”

And the shopkeeper says, “Yes.”

“How do you know it’s me?”

We don’t think of ourselves looking at ourselves as I think, and this is very much about feeling that you are. Any other questions? [Unrecorded] Not like anybody else here, right?

Discomfort with visualization

Ken: The same kind of discomfort you have with the elements—those particular elements—1,700 years ago there were people in India who were experiencing exactly the same kinds of discomfort to various elements in the visualizations. That’s how this works. Every one of those discomforts is a place where there’s something between [unclear] and understanding.

In the three-year retreat, we did this practice called the White Mahakala. There’s the Black Mahakala, and mahakala means great black one. It’s a fierce deity, actually an expression of Chenrezi. That’s kind of a neat practice. And then you have this White Mahakala who’s very explicitly a wealth deity. It takes all of this business about jewels, and riches, and drives it completely over the top. Instead of snakes on his things, he has gaudy huge gold bracelets, and his jewels are falling out of him everywhere. And he stands on these two mongooses. And as you recite the mantras, what does he do? He jumps up and down on them, and they spew jewels throughout the universe.

Rinpoche wrote this particular thing called summoning wealth. And it’s just outrageous. It’s the white Mahakala, whose light waves go out all through the universe. Get the finest rice from this country, and the finest tea from this country, and the finest silk from this country. And you are just suffocated in wealth and richness, and it just makes you sick.

[Unrecorded] This is a very deep question. Historically, when Vajrayana went to Tibet, they didn’t change the visualizations, and it lasted. In China, they did change them into Chinese nobility, and Vajrayana died out. And that’s the only historical evidence we have. Yes, absolutely, this is based on Gandharvan princes and princesses. It’s very clear because you look at paintings from that period, it’s exactly how they did it.

But I think that one has to, at least for a while, consider that there may be some deeper principles involved. Therefore, a lot of the forms do have this cultural quality that actually is less of a problem than initially it seems to be. After a relatively short time, you find the real problem is what’s inside. It’s not a form. But this is very difficult. We worked for a while in retreat coming up with a new deity called Vajra Paperwork. [Unrecorded] Actually, the edge is a typewriter, but now it’d be a computer in the palm of this hand, a cell phone, and a pager.

[Unrecorded] I tried to bring this up. Maybe I didn’t do a very good job. You have all of the stuff written in the book and, as April says, these are the answers written in the book. But at the same time, if you just forget about those things and imagine having four arms for instance, it shifts something. You imagine wearing this very beautiful crown—something shifts. Even if you don’t know the symbolism, still something shifts.

What shifts is the stories you tell about yourself. Creation phase practice is all about undoing all of those stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. There are strong cultural elements, which are foreign, I appreciate that. And yet, even so, there’s something else, based to my own experience, that at work. [Unrecorded]

Chenrezi is this very interesting figure. Avalokiteshvara started off as male, and with both of them, but Chenrezi in particular, it is somewhat ambiguous. He is definitely regarded as he in India and Tibet. Then he came to China and became known as Kuan Yin. Over the centuries he moved from male to androgynous to female. In Japan, he is known as Kannon, which is unambiguously female. [Unrecorded] I thought Kannon was female.

But anyway, you don’t need to focus on it. You might say asexual in that sense. And it makes no difference whether you meditate on Chenrezi, or White Tara, in this respect. It’s not about masculinity versus femininity, in a way that’s usually understood in the Western culture, because women meditated on male deities, men meditated on female deities, and it just went back and forth all over the place. And it wasn’t to get in touch with the feminine side or to get in touch with the masculine side. This is what undid the stories.