Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire (12 page)

We humans are very proud of our ability to think, yet much of our thinking often makes things incredibly complicated. Look at the way even the wrapping of a simple piece of chocolate is crammed full of information and advertising.

We may feel that this ability to generate a great number of thoughts and ideas about a single object is a sign of our intelligence, but much of what we do with this intelligence is unnatural and totally unnecessary.

Of course our rational mind—the gross mind that is caught up in society’s values—believes in the importance of everything we do. But we should not be fooled into believing that all this complicated thinking is the truth. There may be a lot of things we have to go along with in order to live our daily lives, but we don’t have to believe in them. And when we are being complicated we shouldn’t even believe in ourselves!

Does this mean that everything we do and think is false? No, there is some truth in what is going on. For example, even though the sky is fundamentally clear and pure, there is some truth to the pollution floating around in it. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t believe that our thoughts about this and that are absolutely true. Air pollution may have some truth to it but it is not concrete, self-existent, or ultimately real. Similarly, our thoughts may have a certain amount of truth to them, but it would be a mistake to believe in them ultimately.

What we need to learn, then, is how to maintain clear awareness while cutting off our habitual reaction to things. Ordinarily, our immediate response when something happens—when, for instance, someone gives a piece of chocolate to our friend—is to react dualistically. “Why did she give it to him?

Why didn’t she give it to me? He is so lucky; I’m so unlucky.” Our mind constantly churns out all kinds of dualistic garbage like this and our life reflects the confusion. One result is that our relationships with people and things are fickle and unstable. First we are interested in a new friend; the next day we discard him. One day we desire to own some beautiful new thing, the next day we cannot even stand to look at it. This constant changing of our likes and dislikes is another sign that our ordinary concrete concepts of reality are mistaken and nothing but the projections of a confused and superstitious mind.

There are times both in and out of meditation, however, when this dualistic confusion subsides and we experience the calm clarity of pure awareness. The peace of mind we experience at such times is indescribable and far superior to the fleeting pleasures our senses normally hunger after. But it is not enough to have an experience of this inner peace merely once or twice; this will not lead to any lasting realizations. Instead, we need continuous training so that we can repeatedly cut through our confused dualistic concepts and abide undistractedly in the underlying clarity of our essential mind. If we rely on a valid, well-tested method, such as the practice of tantra, eventually our awareness of the mind’s fundamental clarity will become indestructible and we will no longer be under the control of our dualistic superstitions.

CLARI TY, LOVE, AND P EACE

The deep, peaceful clarity of our essential mind is in the nature of love, and in this calm atmosphere the disturbances of hatred and anger have no place.

While absorbed in this deep state of awareness, there is no chance for a harmful thought to agitate us. It is not a question of consciously deciding to refrain from anger and behave virtuously; this loving, benevolent feeling arises spontaneously and effortlessly, from the depths of our being.

As this feeling of spaciousness grows and as we become closer to the correct view of non-concrete non-self-existence, a sense of unity between ourselves and everything else will arise. Instead of feeling suffocated and oppressed by our surroundings—“It’s me against them”—we will feel as if there is room enough for everything in the world. There is space for everything. Within the clear space of nonduality, everything flows freely in a constant process of coming and going, growing and dying, arising and disappearing. Within this expanse of non-self-existent reality, all things function perfectly without obstructing one another. There is no conflict, no confusion, and no separation. Instead of feeling alienated from our environment, from others or even from ourselves, we share in the experience of universal harmony.

Realizing that our fundamental human quality is clear and pure allows us to cut through all partial, limiting and self-imprisoning concepts. In the clear space of the fully relaxed mind there is no distinction between your fundamental reality and my fundamental reality. One is not better than the other; one is not worse than the other. Ultimately, there is no good and bad, no pure and impure. The whole point of meditation or prayer or whatever we are trying to do is to discover the fundamental principle of human nature, to go into this deep nature, to touch our mind, the fundamental principle of totality, nonduality. The moment we reach this experience there is no room for heavy concepts, heavy emotions or sentimentality. Just be! At the moment of this experience, there are no concepts labeled by the dualistic mind. At such a time there is no Buddha, no God, no heaven or hell. Just being—the great peace, the great satisfaction.

CLARI TY, COLOR, AND BLI SS

Tantra contains powerful methods for awakening the very subtlest level of mind and for directing this blissful, subtle, clear-light consciousness toward the spacious and penetrating vision of nonduality. Yet even before we become highly skilled practitioners of tantra we can make contact with our mind’s natural state of clarity and taste the freedom of the nonduality experience. An easy technique to use in times of confusion is simply to look up into the blue sky. Without focusing on any object, merely gaze out into space with intensive awareness and let go of all ideas about yourself. You are there, the blue infinity of space is there, and nothing else appears. As we fill our consciousness with this experience of the clarity of space, we will naturally come to contemplate the clarity of our mind.

As human beings, as soon as we visualize expansive blue light in this way our concrete conceptualizations begin to break down somehow. That is one reason why in tantric art blue is often used to symbolize nonduality, the state wherein the ordinary dualistic concepts of this and that no longer appear and are no longer held onto as real. Many people feel this freedom from conceptuality when gazing out at the vast expanse of the blue sky or the blue ocean. I am not talking about some complex philosophical notion or about something you have to accept on faith because a lama has told you it is true; I am merely relating an actual experience that many people have had and that you may have had as well.

From the tantric point of view, whenever we open our mind and senses to the objective world, our perception is always related to a particular color. And each color that we perceive—blue, red, green, and so on—is directly related to what is happening in our internal world. That is why in the practice of tantra, with its visualization of deities and so forth, color and light play such an important part.

To give an idea of what I mean, let us consider the color blue again. As I said, the particular inner quality of radiant blue light is freedom from fantasy projections. If these projections are very strong—when, for example, we are so caught up in ourselves that we cannot break out of depression—then even on a perfectly clear day we are unable to see the blueness of the sky. All we see is greyness. This definitely happens and, along with the experience of seeing red when angry or being green with jealousy, shows the close relationship between color and states of mind.

To return to what we were discussing, we can achieve temporary freedom from conceptuality by gazing at the rays of the early morning sun or at a calm lake. We merely watch without any discrimination of this and that and at a certain point our mind will experience nothing but its own clarity. Taking such opportunities to experience clarity outwardly and then integrate it inwardly with our consciousness is a powerful and direct way of cutting through the confusion crowding our mind and of experiencing peace.

In addition to peace, whenever we contemplate the clarity of our consciousness we automatically experience a feeling of bliss as well. Normally, our dualistic mind with its confusing chatter and constant judgments about this and that tires us out. Thus it is a welcome relief when these conflicting thoughts and emotions subside and eventually disappear. The resulting clarity is experienced as peaceful, joyful, and extremely pleasurable. Unlike ordinary sensory pleasures, however, the bliss that comes from such an experience brings real satisfaction. Instead of agitating our mind the way sensory pleasures ordinarily do, this bliss actually increases the strength and sharpness of our concentration.

BLI SSFUL ABSORP TI ON I NTO REALI TY

Anyone who has ever tried to meditate knows that one of the biggest hindrances to concentration is the wandering thoughts that keep diverting our attention. We try to focus on a particular object only to discover that our mind has drifted somewhere else. Our attention span is almost as short as a young child’s and we have great difficulty penetrating deeply into any one thing. As a result we find it impossible to gain true realizations. What is the cause of all this mental wandering? It is our overwhelming sense of dissatisfaction. We are continuously searching for something that will satisfy an undefined, inner longing, but this search is never successful. Even when we do find something pleasurable, the satisfaction it gives us is short-lived and soon we are on the lookout for something new. This restlessness is a characteristic of our dualistic mind and becomes all the more obvious when we sit down and try to concentrate in meditation.

The bliss that arises while contemplating the clarity of our consciousness is a powerful antidote to this restlessness. It has the ability to provide a calm and deep satisfaction unmatched by ordinary pleasures. Because you feel fulfilled experiencing this bliss, your mind is not even tempted to wander elsewhere, and your concentration increases effortlessly.

We have all had the experience of being so absorbed in something that we remain oblivious to things that would ordinarily distract or disturb us.

Similarly, if we contemplate deeply and continuously enough upon the formless clarity of our own mind, it is possible to stop perceiving the forms, sounds, smells, and so forth that come to us through the doors of our senses.

As these sensory experiences and our gross conceptual thoughts subside, the gateway to superstition closes and we become aware of an upsurge of ecstatic, blissful energy from within. This tremendous surge of bliss happens spontaneously; we do not have to fabricate it in any way. And the more we experience this deep internal state of bliss, the more profound our absorption into it will become. This opens the way for us to experience expansive, liberated, and all-encompassing states of consciousness that are presently unknown to us.

RI P ENI NG OUR ENLI GH TENED P OTENTI AL

The clear, pure, and blissful state of mind that we have been describing exists within each one of us right now. Yet the fact that we have this fundamentally pure nature does not mean that we are already enlightened. Until we rid ourselves of hatred, greed, jealousy, and all the other symptoms of the false ego shrouding our mind, we are certainly not enlightened. There is no such thing as a buddha with delusions. But beneath the gross levels at which these delusions function there is something more subtle, more basic to our nature.

And it is this essential aspect of our human consciousness that has the potential of becoming fully awakened and everlastingly blissful.

The question, then, is: How can we get in touch with and fulfill the enlightened potential of our essential nature? The practices of tantra are specifically designed to accomplish this extraordinary transformation as quickly as possible but, as we have already mentioned, we cannot jump into these practices unprepared. In other words, we need to ripen ourselves by means of the various preliminaries. The three principal aspects of the path that we have discussed—renunciation, bodhichitta, and emptiness—are the common preliminaries to tantra. In addition, it is important to train in what are sometimes called the uncommon preliminaries. These include such things as receiving the appropriate tantric initiation, or empowerment, and keeping the various commitments of the empowerment, purifying oneself of obstacles to successful practice, accumulating a store of positive energy and, as will be discussed in the next chapter, gaining inspiration through the profound practice of guru yoga.