Friends entering Vajrayana Buddhism have told me they don’t want to give up too much of their ordinary, worldly life in order to surrender the causes of their confusion and bewilderment. They’re thinking to use certain experiences [memories] and achievements [habits] to increase their realization, and also, to benefit the doctrine. In other words, while changing their mind, they’re thinking not to change their lifestyle or behavior.
The path of Vajrayana Buddhism is said to be lightning-quick, one of changing the three Vajra spheres of Body, Voice, and Mind, but unless it comes suddenly, in a stable fashion, to one while hearing the pith of the actual, fully Enlightened experience, then it must be achieved through a precise, gradual change of behavior, accompanied by the right meditation and right view. This is practiced until one’s experience of all phenomena is changed from the ordinary to the extraordinary through a purified, transformed perception. To actually accomplish this, one must first find an authentic Guru who can and will teach the short and long of the Buddha’s equally authentic teachings. While taking these precious teachings, one must hear them clearly, remember them accurately, and take to heart their content sincerely. It’s best to think of them as an indispensable manual of instruction on how to get out of the most dire of situations, like a house on fire, making the escape of oneself and others possible.
Concentrating on adopting positive actions, while abandoning negative others, is like the difficult threading of a needle and can be really perturbing. It requires a firm renunciation of deluded sensation, and an authentic refuge in the Guru—who is none other than the Buddha—teaching you a discipline acquired from accomplished Masters and Lineage holders of a school practicing that discipline. Ideally, it takes place within a community of practitioners, in this case, one’s Vajra siblings and, later, the deities of the mandala, or mandalas, one is initiated into, who are then also your Sangha. This change in one’s life, with its incumbent renunciation, is at root motivated by the fear of suffering, clear faith in its resultant cessation, and a proper and compelling motivation of compassion for the rescue of all the suffering beings.
The aim of becoming a Vajrayana Buddhist is precisely to abandon the impure, ordinary vision, while adopting the natural, pure state of all phenomena and entities. This is done through supplication, confession, purification, and the offering, in its entirety, of a pure seat of all existence—the mandala of Mt. Sumeru, the four continents, and the rest of everything one can image as desirable, in a palelucent, clear, and ‘empty’ as possible form. These are the foundational practices preliminary to the practicing of oneself as a perfected Buddha, with all the requisite qualities and characteristics ascribed to Shakyamuni. One achieves much merit this way, while simultaneously realizing the pure, selfless nature of offerer and offering. One’s behavior is key to this, as the net accumulation of merit can hardly take place alongside the accumulation of negative deeds.
Bringing one’s old, defiled self to the practice of Vajrayana, as mentioned above, simply doesn’t work. One should not be confused, as it can seem, in a rationalized way, to mimic the Vajrayana transformation of ‘putting everything on the path’ when the tantric practitioner transforms ordinary, karmic perceptions into one’s personal deity and then offers it to oneself, as that oath bound deity (yi dam) of a pure perception. This accomplishment depends on repeated practice and thorough familiarization of the transformation of ordinary experience into the extraordinary pure perception, during meditation sessions, after, or always, if stabilized, until one actually sees a glorious Buddhist heaven, like Akanishta, replete with celestial mansion on top of Mt. Sumeru, with the appearance of Vajradhara, one’s Gurus, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, Masters of the Noble Assembly, and so forth, signaling the arising of all perceptions free from attachment to a self nature, a cause, and a result. Otherwise, while hanging onto the impure, non-Dharmic aspects of oneself, with everything experienced as usual through the unchanged five aggregates of sense—with all the attendant sufferings that go along with unsatisfactory human existence—the vision and experiences of the meditating yogin will be tainted by obscurations, faults, failings, and downfalls, from this and previous lives, and he or she will meet with many mental and physical obstacles.
There is, however, something right in the thinking of retaining aspects of one’s former personality, its karmic load, when it comes time to renounce one’s non-dharmic lifestyle. As it’s nothing other than the transformation of what and who we thought we were. This requires a disciplined change in one’s lifestyle that binds behavior. The Three Visions (the Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism’s root, exoteric teachings) defines the action as: “To Clarify What Is To Be Accepted and What Is To Be Rejected,” in relation to one’s “Virtuous and Non-virtuous Deeds.” All the Buddhas and accomplished Bodhisattvas are masters of both ‘abandoning’ and ‘adopting’ that which leads to emptiness realization. They are practitioners of the common saying, what to leave in and what to leave out, in an uncommon way.
Until a few years ago, as I approached seventy and this era’s pandemic woke me up, I only ‘played’ at keeping the five basic Buddhist precepts of abandoning killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and taking intoxicants. These Pratimoksha (‘toward liberation’) Vows are at the core of the more numerous and detailed acceptances monks and nuns vow in compliance with the Buddha’s teachings found in the Vinaya. The five Pratimoksha vows—sometimes extending to seven and ten, including no listening to sensuous music, not sitting on a high chair or dais, and not eating after twelve o’clock—are also frequently taken by the laity in Theravada countries and by those practicing Mahayana Buddhism around the world. They are often kept for one, three, or more days, during Buddhist holidays when spiritual merit is multiplied hundreds-fold. That way, ‘good luck’ and well being are greatly increased, and one’s guilt, which is an inhibiting factor to experiencing pure perception, is assuaged from having committed, various bad behaviors.
Expanding on the core five above, there are three of body, four of voice, and three of mind. If we stop and analyze most of our ordinary defiled behaviors, then we already know what they are. I believe they are best taught, in all their suffering ramifications, in The Three Visions, where they’re given a proper context:
“Within the impure vision all these appearances of happiness and sorrow can be understood to arise from the performance of virtuous and sinful deeds. This impure vision consists of two appearances: the illusory appearance and the karmic appearance. Of these, the illusory appearance, while nonexistent in ultimate reality, is the appearance of subjects and objects (in the relative sphere). The karmic appearance is a particular aspect of the illusory appearance and consists of different appearances of happiness and sorrow, of long and short lives, of much or little wealth, and the like, because these appearances are the individual results of virtuous and sinful deeds.” (Norchen Kunga Lhundrup, trans. Lobsang Dagpa and Jay Goldberg,1991)
A certain degree of faith and renunciation, the giving up of things that cause negative karmic formations, is needed by the time one is secluded in retreat—or committed to a daily practice of two or more sessions of study, reflection, and meditation—as set forth in The Three Visions. These precious teachings, inculcating the ‘excellent unsurpassable enlightenment thought’—the wish to liberate all sentient beings along with yourself— is the heart of all Mahayana teachings. It’s the merit aspect of two heaps to be accumulated along with the wisdom aspect, through an understanding of the doctrines of Interdependent Origination and Emptiness. Attaining the Buddha’s Body, Voice, and Mind, is characterized in the The Three Visions, as “The Ornamental Wheel of the Inexhaustible Enlightened Mind” and is dependent upon accumulating the above ‘two heaps’ of Merit and Wisdom. Attaining full Buddhist Enlightenment depends upon this priceless accumulation, and comes only after, ‘a turning in the deepest seat of consciousness.’ This is the transformation of the five defiled sense aggregates, or skandhas, eliminating all mental obscurations. This too also needs a much further explanation, and, as it involves a detailed explanation of the Five Primordial Buddhas, it’s best done by one’s Guru in the above mentioned extraordinary, purified setting of a traditional Vajrayana teaching, introduced at the right time.
What can be serviceably discussed here, is the Buddha’s teaching from the Rice Seedling Sutra, on Interdependent Origination, that reveals all phenomena as dependently arising and akin to the integral parts, or ingredients, of an illusory magic show. In fact, anything compounded is illusory, despite the notion of a real-seeming, verisimilitude one’s five sense aggregates convey. Think of a fire brand, composed of a single fire, being whirled in rotation until it visually resembles a large fiery circle. So the continuum of a rice seed in all its various growth stages is made of infinite successions until its appearance in full vegetative maturity. Yet the seed remains a seed, not lost in this succession of dependently arising phenomena, as the original seed at any given moment is morphing imperceptibly into a plant, and then also produces more of itself in other seeds. Buddha also likened dependent orientations to the upward motion of a scale’s arm indicating infinite valuation—the very ceaselessness of all phenomena—along its path. Having a cognitive understanding of this, one is ready to meditate on the Buddhist doctrine of Emptiness.
At this time of meditation, one enters, according The Three Visions, the second vision, the experience of the practicing yogin. Then it’s up to the student to marshal all of his or her resources to attain a single-pointed concentration, utilizing the “Three Universally Honored Vajras of Body, Voice, and Mind” as prescribed in the The Three Visions. This requires isolation and the full force of virtuous actions as set forth in the teaching on the Six Paramitas. Having made offerings and supplication to the Guru, the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, one is then directed, or led by example, along this path by the Guru. Now one has fully made the transition to Vajrayana, and can rightfully call oneself a chö pa or ngong pa—a Dharma practitioner of the inner experience.
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