Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire (14 page)

The point of telling this story is to emphasize that an empowerment is not simply a matter of ritual. Far from it. It is a special kind of communication between guru and disciple and therefore depends as much upon the disciple’s openness and level of development as it does on the guru’s realizations. This intimate communication activates our inner nature in such a way that we are empowered to practice uninterruptedly and complete all the attainments along the path to self-fulfillment.

Many people, both Eastern and Western, have mistaken ideas about what happens at a tantric empowerment. They think that all they have to do is attend the initiation and the lama will do the rest. “He is giving something special and as long as I am there I will receive it.” But this is much too passive. True empowerment only occurs when there is active participation by both the disciple and the teacher. It is an act of two consciousnesses sharing the same experience. Only when this happens can it truly be said that empowerment has taken place.

RECEI VI NG I NI TI ATI ON

Receiving an initiation requires more than just bodily participation—coming to a particular place at a particular time to receive something that someone else will be handing out to you—but active mental participation as well. We need the skill to let go and allow the experience to come, rather than being uptight and obsessive. For, you see, the initiation, including all the meditations that make it up, is a method leading us into an experience of totality and this totality is a direct antidote to our fragmented, dissatisfied, fanatical, dualistic mind. Through the inner experience of true initiation all obstacles to the realization of this totality are eliminated—eliminated not through something that you hear about or study, but through something you actually experience.

Why then do we call it an initiation? Because it is the beginning of the experience of meditation, the beginning of somehow activating our concentration, meditation, and penetration into the reality of all things.

Through the power of such an initiation you use the wisdom, skill and great openness of loving-kindness that you already possess. There is an awakening of what already exists.

It is very important to recognize that you already have these qualities of wisdom, skill, and compassion. It is a mistake to think that any of us lack them; it is a mistake to think that through empowerment we receive qualities that are totally alien to what already exists deep within us. The Buddhist teachings in general and the tantric experience in particular stress that there is a limitless resource of profound wisdom and great loving-kindness within each one of us already. What is necessary is that we tap this resource and activate this potential energy for enlightenment.

For an initiation to be effective, both guru and disciple must participate in creating the proper atmosphere. The guru is responsible for conducting the empowerment in such a way that it actually touches the disciples’ minds, and must have the skill and flexibility to mold the initiation to fit the disciples’

aptitudes. And the disciples must know how to generate an open, spacious attitude and leave the mind in such a receptive state. If they are too attached to sensory objects, or are too caught up in self-cherishing, or hold tightly onto the self-existent appearance of things, there will be no room for realizations to enter their minds. But if they have trained sufficiently in renunciation, bodhichitta, and the correct view of emptiness, it will not be difficult to unburden their preconceptions and open to the transmission of insight.

When the guru and disciple are both properly qualified, the empowerment is pervaded by great blissful wisdom. Instead of remaining a requirement that must be fulfilled before you can enter the tantric path, the empowerment embodies the transcendentally blissful experience of the path itself. Many times in the past, in fact, disciples have attained enlightenment during the very process of initiation.

And it is important to remember that for a serious practitioner an initiation is not something that he or she receives only once. It is customary to receive initiation into a particular tantric practice again and again, each time being better able to receive deeper and deeper levels of experience. So we should not be disappointed if at first our meditation stays only at the level of mere imagination rather than true experience. That is still good enough; don’t think that it’s not. Merely to imagine an experience plants seeds in the vast field of your consciousness and eventually these seeds will ripen into the actual experience itself. This is a natural progression. So you should always remain open and relaxed and be satisfied with whatever happens.

TH E FORMAL P RACTI CE OF GURU YOGA

Once we have received an initiation into the practice of a particular meditational deity we may begin our daily practice of that deity’s sadhana, and one of the first meditations of the sadhana is the practice of guru yoga, done in a way similar to the following. Either in front of us or above the crown of our head we visualize the main meditational deity of the tantra we are practicing surrounded by the various gurus of its lineage. These lineage gurus are the successive masters who have passed on the teachings and realizations of that particular practice and include everyone from the first master of the lineage through to our own spiritual guide, the guru from whom we received the empowerment.

We then request the members of this assembly to bestow their inspiration and blessings upon us and, in response to this request, they merge with one another, enter us through the crown of our head in the form of light, descend our central channel (see Chapter 10), and dissolve into our heart center. As this happens, all ordinary dualistic appearances and conceptions dissolve into the clear space of emptiness. We then meditate upon the feeling that our guru, who in essence is identical with the deity, and our own subtle consciousness have become indistinguishably one.

The essence of the guru is wisdom: the perfectly clear and radiant state of mind in which bliss and the realization of emptiness are inseparably unified.

Therefore, when we visualize the guru absorbing into our heart we should feel that an indestructible impression of that wisdom is being made upon our fundamental mind. From this time onward we should try to recall this inner experience of great bliss and nondual wisdom repeatedly, no matter what circumstances we may encounter. If we let our mindfulness of this inner experience deteriorate, we will easily fall under the influence of grosser sensory experiences and the inner bliss of nondual wisdom will eventually vanish completely.

When we visualize our spiritual guide as the meditational deity we should think especially about his or her great kindness and concern for us. Simply speaking, although the guru-deity is not my father, not my mother, not my wife, not my husband, still he is as concerned about me and my situation as if he were. It is as if he exists solely for my sake, so that I might develop a supremely healthy body and mind. This is how we should relate to the visualized guru-deity.

By visualizing in this way and thinking of the personal kindness shown to you by your guru, a powerful connection is established. Instead of being some vague, impersonal image, the deity is seen as being inseparable in essence from your own immeasurably kind spiritual guide. In this way a feeling of incredible closeness develops. Because of this feeling of intimacy and because the deity is visualized as a radiantly beautiful being of light, inspiration can come to you very quickly. Your visualization magnetically attracts such inspiration, such blessing, and this enables you to develop clear realizations.

This, after all, is the entire point of the guru yoga practice. The purpose for seeing the guru in an exalted aspect has nothing to do with benefiting the guru—a true guru has no use of such homage—but is solely to speed your own spiritual evolution.

CONTI NUOUS RECOGNI TI ON OF UNI TY

Seeing the underlying unity of our guru, the deity, and ourselves is not something we do only during formal meditational practice. We need to practice guru yoga—identifying ourselves with the guru’s essential buddha nature— during every moment of our life. Instead of always thinking about our miserable, dissatisfied mind, we should cultivate the recognition of our fundamental unity with the absolute guru residing within. Even if our most egotistical mind is arising, instead of adding fuel to it by identifying strongly with this deluded state, we should try to recognize that very mind as the enlightened totality of the guru-buddha nature: the so-called
dharmakaya
experience (see Chapter 10). Then suddenly even this deluded mental energy can be utilized and transformed in such a way that it is digested into great wisdom.

This is the outstanding teaching of tantra.

To be able to accomplish such a profound transformation, however, we must practice guru yoga continuously. We must become intimately familiar with the essential oneness of the guru, the deity, and our own innermost nature. In
Offering to the Spiritual Master,
it is said, “You are the guru, you are the deity, you are the daka/ dakini, you are the Dharma protector.” To interpret this we can borrow an image from Catholicism, a spiritual tradition based on the existence of one God, one absolute reality. Although God manifests in the three aspects of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is essentially one: the principle of totality. Similarly, although tantra speaks about many different deities,
dakas, dakinis,
protectors, and so forth, at a certain point all these apparently different entities are to be seen as a unity, one all-embracing totality. That is the fundamental concern of tantra. When you develop yourself fully so that your entire inner potential is realized, then you yourself become a deity, you yourself become a buddha. This is the ultimate aim of guru yoga.

TOUCH I NG TH E H EART WI TH I NSP I RATI ON

A common problem for all of us is that our knowledge of so-called spiritual matters is often just in our head, not in our heart. We are proud of how much we have studied and learned about the world’s religions and may even have mastered the vocabulary of their philosophy and meditational practices, yet still we remain basically unsubdued and deluded. We Tibetans often say: “Although butter is used to soften leather, the leather container in which the butter is stored remains stiff and inflexible.” Despite the fact that spiritual understanding is meant to soften our concrete, limiting preconceptions and subdue our delusions, it is nevertheless possible to contain a lot of intellectual knowledge about religion while remaining unchanged by it. A dry, intellectual approach to spiritual matters leaves our heart untouched and unaffected.

What is lacking is the proper inspiration, or blessing, in our mind. We have to be convinced by some kind of heartfelt, living experience of the existence and effectiveness of a potent spiritual reality both inside and outside ourselves. Otherwise our wisdom-eye remains closed and we are incapable of perceiving this profound reality no matter how much we might have studied.

As we have discussed, it is the guru who provides this necessary inspiration, this link between our consciousness and the actual experience of transcendence. In the behavior of our own guru we can see for ourselves the beneficial effects of training the mind in love and wisdom. By thinking of our guru’s lifetime devotion to others and his or her lack of self-cherishing, as well as upon the many other excellent qualities our guru embodies, and then by dissolving and absorbing the entire lineage of gurus into our heart, we are enabling these enlightened qualities to take root deep within us. It has been the experience of generations of gurus and disciples that the repeated practice of such visualizations, done in conjunction with the letting go of our concrete conceptions of self, has a profound effect on the mind and can transform dry, intellectual knowledge into an organic experience of insight.

While engaged in the practices of guru devotion we should be patient and proceed gradually. It is extremely important not to force ourselves, to do what does not feel right out of some misplaced sense of obligation; I am thinking particularly of the practice of seeing the guru as inseparable from the meditational deity. In truth, we cannot see their essential unity until we have developed some measure of the deity’s qualities within ourselves. So we should not push. It would be a great shame if our practice of these profound tantric techniques were to degenerate into a custom we felt somehow obliged to follow, the way many church-goers attend religious services merely because it is something they think society expects them to do. To avoid this, we should allow our practices to develop at their own pace. Eventually, as we grow more and more familiar with the fundamental nature of our own mind as well as with the good qualities of the guru and the positive effects of meditating upon the deity of light, we will come to appreciate the profundity of these guru yoga practices more and more completely.

BREAKI NG TH E H ABI T OF ORDI NARY EX P ERI ENCES

The various practices of tantra are designed to help us overcome not only our vain dependence upon ordinary pleasures but also our habitual acceptance of ordinary appearances and conceptions. From beginningless time we have been brainwashed into believing in the ultimate reality of the world shown to us by our five extremely limited and dualistic senses, and now we are trying to break this deeply ingrained habit. This is not easy to do; our baby wisdom of emptiness is easily overwhelmed by our gross sense consciousnesses. We are like the scientist who knows from investigation and reasoning that a table, for instance, is nothing more than a momentary configuration of ceaseless energy yet still has great trouble seeing it as anything but a solid, static object. That is why we have to train again and again in those visualization practices that dissolve our false notion of concrete self-existence and strengthen our understanding and experience of nonduality.