Tantra

My very dear, most precious, most dear, most kind, wish-fulfilling one,
I am so happy to hear that you are enjoying Buddhism more and more. That means that you are a lucky person, so, so, so fortunate. Thank you very much.

In order to make your life most meaningful and beneficial not only for yourself, but for sentient beings, to free them from the oceans of samsaric suffering and bring them to the state of buddhahood—the total cessation of all the obscurations of the mind and completion of all realizations—you need to achieve that state of sang-gye, (the total elimination of all the obscurations and completion of all the qualities.)

In order to quickly achieve that, you need to practice Highest Yoga Tantra. You can achieve enlightenment in one lifetime by practicing the lowest tantra, but to do so you need to practice long life techniques to live for 100,000 years. In Highest Yoga Tantra there is the most skillful method, the extremely subtle wisdom realizing emptiness that is so powerful, the clear light. If you can experience this clear light then you are able to achieve enlightenment in a brief lifetime of degenerate times.

I suggest, from my observation of your karma, that you practice Vajrayogini as your deity. To practice Vajrayogini you need to receive the initiation, and to receive that initiation you need to first receive either Guhyasamaja, Kalachakra or Heruka initiation. The most appropriate initiation is the Heruka initiation. I am supposed to be giving Heruka initiation in Mexico this year, but I can’t say if it will happen or not.

With much love and prayer. Good luck!

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind email.

The way to practice is first to have guru devotion realizations from your heart, so you see your guru as all the buddhas and all the buddhas are your guru, from your own side, not just for a few days, weeks, months or years, but for it to be stable, like that, without effort. Your guru devotion is stable, so that means the guru and the Buddha are oneness, not separate. There is no guru separate [from the Buddha] and there is no Buddha separate from the guru.

Then you should have realization of renunciation of samsara, as if you are in the midst of a fire while being in samsara, continually reincarnating, with these uncontaminated aggregates caused by delusion and karma, not being free from this. It’s like being in the center of a fire, or your naked body sitting on a thorn bush or being in prison when you don’t want to be in prison, even for a second. It’s like this, without effort from your side, feeling like this not just for weeks, months or years, but stable.

Then also like that having bodhicitta, effortless bodhicitta, the thought to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings day and night, effortlessly arising for weeks, months and years.

Then also emptiness—seeing the I as empty because it is dependent arising. The subtle dependent arising I is existing, but at the same time it is empty from its own side. Oneness. Realizing emptiness only helps the doer, the action doing and the object, and karma—cause and effect, virtue or non-virtue—so it should be like that and not contradictory to that. If what you find is contradictory to that, it means what you have been meditating on, that emptiness, is totally wrong.

On the basis of realization of bodhicitta, then do gross generation stage and subtle generation stage meditations. Then on the base of gross and subtle generation stage realizations, that helps for the completion stage realizations. According to Lama Tsongkhapa, this is the way to go. In other sects it might say without gross and subtle generation stage at all, and just do completion stage. It might say that, but I am not sure.

Otherwise I can’t say, if you have these preliminary realizations or not, you can’t just go without the foundation. You can’t just go to pick up the highest path and meditate on that; you can’t do that, just whatever you like. If people try to meditate on bodhicitta without renunciation, then bodhicitta will just be between the lips. There is no basis for strong compassion, because there is no basis for strong renunciation—to see yourself how samsara is suffering. Then you don’t see the deep sufferings of others, so it’s difficult to generate great compassion.

Otherwise there would be enlightened buddhas, but without having bodhicitta or renunciation or emptiness. How is that possible? It’s like the example of putting some rocks in a pot and saying, “I am making tea,” or trying to build a house on an ice mountain or even trying to walk on the icy mountain.

So this is just my initial response. I will read your email again in more depth later and check the texts.

With much love and prayers...

My most dear one,
A billion times thank you very much for your kind letter, it was very heartfelt. I can see through your letter that you are a very, very sincere person doing the practice well. You are not deceiving yourself. That is very good, so please continue. I am very happy with you.

Yes, I will do the initiation you requested. If I don’t give this initiation to you, then who should I give it to? If not you, then who?

With much love and prayers. Please continue your life as much as possible with bodhicitta.

Lama Zopa

P.S. You mentioned in your letter that I am enlightened, but from my side I am just an ordinary being. Of course, from your side it is guru devotion practice to think like this—looking from your side, to think you are looking at a buddha. From my side, sorry, I am not that, but to meditate that way is your business, for your enlightenment.

My most dear, most kind, most precious, wish-fulfilling one,
Thank you for your kind letter. I loved your comment that even if I didn’t say anything but just looked, you would be satisfied. Regarding counting the tonglen practice and missing a day, it’s OK, you don’t have to start counting again from the beginning. It’s OK to add them.

Regarding your comment about not taking the Highest Yoga Tantra initiation—until you have realized renunciation, bodhicitta and wisdom realizing emptiness, yes you are right, but this may take time. All three realizations may not happen in this life or in a few years or a few months etc, therefore it’s better to take the Highest Yoga Tantra [initiation] before having the realizations, to make preparation for quick enlightenment. This plants the seed of tantra, at least to have effortful [experience of] renunciation, bodhicitta and emptiness, the correct understanding of emptiness, then it will be OK. Even if there is no realization, but you just generate effortful experience, that will be OK, otherwise you will miss out.

The four continents are the East, West, South and North. The human continent, where we are, is the Southern Continent. This is the only continent that has tantra and not only that, it is not all the time—just at this moment it exists and soon it’s going to end. Even bodhisattvas who are born in a pure land pray to be reborn in the Southern Continent in order to be able to meet tantra.

Regarding your comment about not visualizing the guru as Tara during the initiation—even though you didn’t visualize him in the form of Tara, if you thought of him as Tara then that’s OK, you have received the initiation. If you did not visualize him in the form of Tara, but you just thought of Tara, that is completely OK. However, you would have done some visualization during the initiation.

Please continue your life every day with a good heart and bodhicitta. In this way, your life is most beneficial to numberless hell beings, numberless hungry ghosts and numberless animals—all the animals in the ocean, each type, so they are numberless; every small insect that you can only see with a microscope, but can’t see with the eye; all the animals that are large like mountains, and those on the ground—when you walk on the grass, so many times insects are jumping, trying to escape—and all those in the sky. Even when there is animal dung, there are so many small flies there, so [generate bodhicitta] for all of them; and for all of those who come alive in the summer due to the sunshine; and those that when you look at the sunbeam, actually there are so many insects, but when there is no sunbeam you can’t see them; and all the animals in the sky. So when you do something, generate bodhicitta for all sentient beings. When you do something with bodhicitta, then you can see not one sentient being is left out—not one person, not one hell being or animal, not one insect, not one bat is left out. Include all the billions of mackerel fish, so not one sentient being is left out.

With much love and prayers...

Yi means mind, dam means seal – two things not to be separated. Something sealed means not to be separated. Yi is your mind. With what is it sealed? With the deity that you’re going to become one with in the future. Your body, speech, and mind will become one with the deity’s holy body, holy speech, and holy mind, and then you will achieve enlightenment. So, the quick way to achieve that is through tantra.

In everyday life you visualize yourself as the deity, not just only the deity but the guru. One has the understanding that the deity and guru are oneness, one thing. When you visualize yourself as the deity it means the guru. This way, not only when you practice the sadhana, but when you get dressed or when you eat, drink, or sleep, during all these activities, sense enjoyments, etc., think of yourself as the guru-deity. It is good to have the awareness of the deity, but the main thing is the guru. When one experiences sense enjoyments or other things, all of this becomes an offering to the guru and one collects the most extensive merit. If you just think of yourself as the deity then it becomes merit, but not the most merit. The main awareness is of the guru. Your form is the deity but the awareness is of the guru.

In your daily life, you visualize yourself as one with that, especially in tantra. This is what you are going to become in the future. You have to visualize that now, that it actually happened, that you are the result-time deity. This is the whole entire sadhana, from beginning to end, it all is like this. You do everything as if you are the result-time deity, as if you are already the enlightened deity.

The path of the three kayas is the main one that removes the defilements, the dualistic view, and the concept. It purifies ordinary death, ordinary birth, and the ordinary intermediate state. When the obscurations are purified at this time, then through the clear light you achieve the pure illusory body. That becomes the antidote to the subtle defilements, then you achieve enlightenment. You achieve the unification of those two, clear light and illusory body, so that unification becomes a cause of unification of no more learning – that’s the Vajradhara state, the holy body and mind. That’s enlightenment with the seven qualities, seven branches, translated as seven kisses. The Vajradhara father and mother take that form, embracing, with seven qualities, always abiding in great bliss, without the slightest effort manifesting numberless forms according to the needs and karma of sentient beings, until every sentient being, every hell being, animal, human being, sura, asura, and intermediate state being, is brought to enlightenment. That’s one important quality of Buddha, whereas arhats and bodhisattvas have skies of qualities.

In day-to-day life, if you visualize being oneness, even when you’re eating or sleeping, that becomes the highest, quick path to achieving enlightenment. When you do that it collects unbelievable and extensive merits in such a short time. By visualizing the four complete purities that you achieve in the future happening now – a completely purified body of the deity, the completely purified place of the mandala, the completely purified enlightened action, then beams emit, and with each beam, even in one second, an unimaginable number of sentient beings are liberated from suffering and its causes.

In the sadhana, where you’re being the syllable, send out beams to purify sentient beings and they become enlightened. Also make offerings to all the buddhas and bodhisattvas. After that, they all absorb into you and you become the deity. As the deity, you send out beams, purifying. That is the holy action. Think that when you are enlightened, what you’re doing at that time is the holy action you are doing now.

Having completed the merits you receive the purest enjoyments, like the sky. When you are visualizing this now, that collects inconceivable merits and incredible purification. That’s how it becomes the quick path to enlightenment. You are able to achieve enlightenment in one life, whereas in the sutra path you have to collect merits for three great eons in order to achieve enlightenment. It makes it so quick to achieve enlightenment in one life, even in degenerate times, especially through Highest Yoga Tantra, based on this practice, with the four purified results and the purified result-time. It’s as if that has happened now. That’s the same for all tantra.

Highest Yoga Tantra is the quickest method. In one brief lifetime you can achieve enlightenment. This is the greatest skill in the world. The transcendental wisdom of non-dual bliss voidness, the extremely subtle mind, is like an atomic bomb – the quickest way to purify the mind; it is unbelievable powerful.

Collecting merits takes 300 eons in the sutra and Prajnaparamita path, even in lower tantra it takes one life. That means you achieve immortality for 1,000 years, then you achieve enlightenment. With tantra it is a within a fewer number of years, you collect extensive merits, purify the defilements, and finish in such a short time. It is the quickest path to enlightenment.

Yi is your mind, dam is seal. Your mind is sealed with the deity’s holy mind. The mind is the main one, then the speech and body are always in the deity. What you visualize every day becomes the path to achieve enlightenment, to actually achieving the deity’s holy body, speech, and mind. So: yi.dam – mind-sealed deity. That has great meaning. Your mind is sealed with the deity’s holy mind. Visualize them as one. The deity’s holy body, holy speech, and holy mind become the quickest path to enlightenment. With that, while you are washing, walking, working, eating, going to the bathroom, experiencing any sense enjoyments, then everything becomes practice and you collect the most extensive merit, and there is very powerful purification in a very short time. Everything becomes the path to enlightenment.

You should do more meditation on whichever is your main deity. If you have more time, you can do brief meditations on the other deities. The most important key to meditating is three things: the dharmakaya, then sambhogakaya, then nirmanakaya. In the sadhana, even if you have no time to meditate, these three things are the heart of the generation stage.

Other practices you should do are as follows. It is good to practice Vajrasattva before going to bed. The important thing is that if you don’t purify that day’s negative karma, it increases and doubles the next day. The second day it becomes four times the amount, and the third day it increases eight times, then 16. If you recite Vajrasattva, it stops increasing and multiplying. This is an unbelievable help. Not only that, it purifies today’s negative karma and past negative karma. So, it has a lot of benefits. Otherwise, even a small negative karma by multiplying for weeks and years becomes the size of a mountain. With Vajrasattva practice, when one dies, the negative karma is very light. Otherwise, each negative karma made in one’s life is so heavy, and also in the next life, leading to the lower realms.

Also, in the morning, practice the Thirty-Five Buddhas. When you first wake up, think of the motivation of bodhicitta for your whole life. Feel happy that you didn’t die. Then think of the nature of life, bodhicitta. Then you can do the practice for blessing your speech, blessing your mala and so forth. Then, recite the Thirty-Five Buddhas’ names with prostrations. Do whatever number you want to do. Recite the last part, the prayer, just one time, then make the general confession, sit down and do six-session guru yoga. It’s good to include a lamrim prayer as well. That’s extremely good. Practice the Foundation of All Good Qualities within that. That’s very important, because Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga has nine benefits and is very special. Also, you will have less harm from spirits. It also makes whatever you do – listening, prayer, meditation, Dharma practice – effective. The special advantage is that you develop wisdom, and the even more special advantage is that it enables you to meet Lama Tsongkhapa’s teachings in future lives. That is most important and rare. At the time of death you will go to Tushita Pure Land.

So, definitely recite the Foundation of All Good Qualities. Each time you recite it, you get closer to lamrim realizations and enlightenment. That’s great. You can do the Three Purifications in the evening, because it has Vajrasattva included in it.

If you’re doing further lamrim practice, you can do this either with the Foundation of All Good Qualities, or when you finish, before the guru absorbs into you, then you can do a more elaborate lamrim meditation. For example, in one morning you can cover the perfect human rebirth, and divide the lamrim into three parts: the graduated path of the higher, middle, and lower capable being. Start with the lower capable being. You can do both at that time or later; it doesn’t matter. You can do them first thing in the morning or at some other time during the same day, at your convenience. That’s very good.

Also, please recite the Heart Sutra and/or the Samantabhadra prayer. At the end of the day, dedicate all the merits using the King of Prayers. There are eight prayers you can use; you can do a different prayer each night.

Between sessions, you can practice the lamrim, with whatever you are doing, practice bodhicitta and the seven point mind transformation, as I have explained. You can practice these while walking. This makes your exercise useful.

We were talking last night about how much a meditator who just completed a three-year retreat has changed. He used to get quite angry, now he is becoming soft like cotton. He is a very good practitioner. I wish all people who did retreat changed like that, from doing all those prayers.

If you don’t purify in emptiness when you generate as the deity, then the ordinary body becomes a wrathful one. If you don’t know how to generate as the deity correctly, then your physical body changes.

There was a man in Hong Kong who worked on ships, and he had a meditation room in the ship. Years ago he received the Yamantaka initiation. He didn’t know how to practice, did millions and millions of mantras, and his eyes became big, very big.