Vajra Comments, ‘Trusting Mantrayana’

Here are three observations and recommendations about advanced Vajrayana practice once one has completed their yidam retreat or retreats. 1) Continue practicing a large number of mantras, each day, especially from the practices one knows by heart. Mantrayana functions at different levels for those of high, middling, and low ability at difference stages in the lifetime of one’s practice. It becomes increasing productive of good results, as one diligently repeats them, and encourages the   effortless Mahamudra experience. 2) Recognize there is sharp drop-off from one’s wellbeing and mental stability if you damage your samayas. The admonition that one will experience suffering, and turned downward, one will experience the hells, should be taken as an absolute due to the infallibility of deeds and their results. 3) Become versed in doing drup chods (longer sadhanas facilitating pujas with self-initiation, torma and feast offerings) to complement and stabilize one’s more ambitious accumulation of deity mantras and their accompanying siddhis. These three things are efficiently interconnected. Buddhist tantras promise the initiate supreme results in a single lifetime to those who supremely apply themselves. To those of lesser abilities, the Supreme Yoga Tantra offers superior support to one’s refuge in the Triple Gem by developing the necessary wisdom, compassion, and power to rescue oneself and all suffering beings from the anguish of samsara—karmic formations, constant change, and the suffering of suffering—in the quickest possible way. 

Concerning, the first recommendation, currently circulating among longtime Vajrayana adherents is the curious notion, from a very high source, that one shouldn’t say “a bunch of mantras.” That somehow the mantra vehicle is flawed and one should be careful. Perhaps this was meant for beginning students? Or, taken out of context, that one shouldn’t say a lot of mantras without the proper motivation. If one has completed any of the required retreats, following a major initiation, and experienced the ordinary and extraordinary siddhis, so beneficial to one’s being, after some ripening time, then it’s easy to deduce that, as Vajra Masters say, continue to do your mantras after finishing a retreat, as it continues developing the two processes of creation and completion, which eventually produced both stable visualizations and experiences of nondual clarity and bliss. 

As for the second recommendation, this regards renunciation and the adoption and abandoning of behavior conducive to accomplishing the goal of all three vows: Pratimoksha’s liberation, Bodhisattva’s heroic compassionate being, and Vajrayana’s lightening quick attainment. One should always keep in mind one could die at any time, and that if one is not yet properly developed by the Dharma, one’s death will be unbearable suffering and the precious opportunity to attain Enlightenment for the sake of oneself and others will be lost—and for how long, only the Buddhas know. As one’s karmic deeds only ripen on oneself, and not others, as Śākyaśrībhadrahis reminds us, in his Nine Syllables of Precious Instructions, this should promote in a practitioner more than just anxiety, or it’s denial, but a sufficient renunciation and reapplication to one’s virtuous perfection of their Dharma practice. 

Finally, number three, is that advanced practices, such as a Drupchö or Drupchen (Both are elaborate way of doing a particular Vajrayana practice over several days, three to eight. But unlike a Drubchen, a Drubchö is not a 24hr practice and is done only during the day.) Self Initiations is another. These are all a natural progression and evolution to one’s Vajrayana practice. While not always practical or possible, try to do them with many other Vajra siblings, as the merit and wisdom is greatly increased. Dilgo Khentze Rinpoche, who did years of long retreats when he was young, settled into holding and participating in constant Drubcho’s when he was older. I was fortunate enough to attend the blessings of H.E. Deshung Rinpoche III’s new Tharlam Monastery in Boudhanath Nepal in 1986, where he was present. For ten days, one hundred of us, almost entirely monks, recited the Aspiration Prayers of Samantabhadra (kun bzang smon lam) for ten days, one hundred times a day. These one hundred thousand recitations had, we pray,  boundless merit for all beings in all directions and occasioned, not long after, one of the first translations of the kun bzang smon lam prayer into English, by Ven. Khenpo Kalsang of Tsechen Kunchab Ling in Walden New York—the Sakya seat in North America.