Archive Result

;;Soundfile 20071008GRGRVAJ8

Speaker Gehlek Rinpoche

Location Garrison

Topic Vajrayana

Section 8 out of 8

Transcriber John Thornton

Date A;pril 17, 2008

Yesterday’s recitation covered the basis of the development stage and we are almost to the point where we say – even the divisions to the practice meaning how does one get to the level and how do I know where I am. There is no point in talking about mantra recitation because each has its own mantra. So we divide into four categories-(1) naming stage, (2) receiving a little wisdom, (3) you are able to have little control over wisdom and (4) perfect control over wisdom. Lama Yeshe says beginner, practitioner with some wisdom, practitioners with some power over wisdom and complete power over wisdom.

So these are the four levels. Now let us focus a little bit, what happens? As we said yesterday the individual practitioner is expected to read, and learn by heart. But Losong Rinpoche said even if you know it by heart, you should read it because you get more benefit. The most important thing is to think about the meaning behind every word: the ground, courtyard, inhabitants, building one on top of the other. Not losing the one before the one you are thinking about is your goal. Of course, at first, we do that. But if you put in the effort, and think this is not a commitment, it is my practice and what I need. Doing it that way and saying and visualizing and building, then your practice is completely different. We do say we have to do it before midnight and we think of it as just a burden. It does make a difference, honestly.

As a kid I had to get up at 430 or 5 in the morning, and if I don’t I get hit on the knees. This is what I used to do, right? We else do we do? We don’t take a shower in Tibet. So what do I do, go to the bathroom and sit down straight away and say your sadanas. Those days you do it in the morning and it is nice. Then I was liberated from the monastery, thanks to the Chinese. So under liberation I get up later, and the commitment goes into the evening. Then it is 12 at night, and then as short as possible. So when you do this it becomes sort of a burden. Now we have a daily commitment and it makes us not to think in one way, just a commitment and get it done. Many of us say, I will sit down and I will be done with it. It is a clear sign it is a burden. So here what we should do is visualize, build and think, on the gross level, such as the mandala and the principle deity. Or if you have at a minimum, five deities, with the exception of the solitary hero, Yamantaka.

In the case of Yamantaka, then you are building up the mandala, the three kaya level, Yamantaka and all of those. One who is able to see the whole mandala along with Yamantaka clearly. At the beginning when you start meditating you may not clearly see the gross level-the mandala and Yamantaka clearly. It is the same thing with Vajrayogini and Cittamani Tara. Then you can see the mandala and the gross deity. Gross deity is not only the physical deity, it you look in your mind. What you get is a picture. If you see a hand and not see other parts, then that is layman’s level. When you suddenly look and you can see the deity and the mandala, but you cannot see all the things you have in the letter form you won’t see, that is called little wisdom. So at the layman’s level you slowly build up and finally you are able to see it. Certainly you can see it. Okay? That is a little wisdom received.

Then when wisdom is controlled, it is not only the gross deity mandala, but you also see the subtle ones. Even the subtle ones are there, the hand implements and everything together without going through sadana, slowly building up. Get it! Suddenly you think about it. You see it all together very clearly. At this level you have both development stage and completion stage. You are training yourself and at this level you have been trained and you get between stages. This means you cover both development and completion as one stage. This is important to notice here what happens. A couple of people who say to me, now I have done a lot of development stage and now I would like to do the completion stage. Whether you get to focus on completion stage or not, it is your own practice that leads you to that. Not the vajra master says so. That is not how it works. It automatically moves into that level, not that someone else tells you. When you reach that level then I believe you don’t have to say your sadana, because sadana is mostly building up the deity, mandala and every activity within that. Now, still it is imaginative, but the moment you focus on, it pops up. It may not be necessary, because Geshe Ling Rinpoche says you may think you have it but it could be a total delusion, so you have to be careful, but that is what it is supposed to be at that point.

The fourth point, the complete control over wisdom is a very high level, very subtle. So this way you can divide into four achievement categories and you see where you are. As individuals, we know where we are. Are you at the layman’s stage or maybe you haven’t even reached the layman’s stage. The words are quite clear, so if you continue to put on effort you will reach layman’s stage. We are probably all in the layman’s stage. Then we are transforming ourselves and it depends on how much you can think and focus. These are the landmarks by which you can measure yourself as to where you are. Their example, is when the bird flies in the air the air has not mark but you can mark on the ground where they are. The mark is what you can do and cannot do, so you can see for yourself. These are stages of development, like in the Lam Rim stages, and you can see how high you are. Some people, crazy people, think I am the highest of all!

Now let us talk again through one of the most important points we talked about yesterday-the special obstacles, for the development stage, are ordinary appearance. When we say ordinary perception and ordinary appearance, we are not talking about ordinary seeing in the eye, ear, nose consciousness. We are talking about ordinary appearance in the sixth stanza, the mind. Naturally your eye sees blue and you will see blue. You see cloth, you see cloth. We are not talking about that, but how your mind sees. That is what we are talking about.

How do we handle that? To block ordinary perception, you visualize extraordinary mandala and the yidam in the mind together. The mind that sees ordinary perception has to be defeated. To do that ordinary appearance has to be defeated by meditation on the mandala and the inhabitants and your mind accepting that. Then you have to have pride, of being this pure yidam and that pure yidam. You know like you are pure, naturally empty, everything’s pure, that is what I am, and mind accepting that. Not only am I empty, but I am naturally pure, is a pure being of Yamantaka or Vajrayogini, whatever it is. That is what we call yidam pride. So visualizing the mandala and inhabitants is the direct antidote for mind seeing ordinary appearance, and pride is the mind accepting this. I see the accepting it, and pride.

Out of these two, pride is considered more important than perception. Why? Pride beats up the ordinariness. You know people teach you to think about ordinary things as happening in enlightenment and have extraordinary visions; there is some truth in it. Here in Vajrayana, result practice, we try to see everything as, and functioning as, enlightened. It is not a practical grounded level functioning in vajrayana. In vajrayana we generate lights that goes from your heart and touch all living beings and all beings are transformed and this and that, it is just shear imagination in one way, not reality. On the other hand, because of this capacity of the individual, as well as the power of wisdom, the power of enlightenment and the power of truth, it will materialize and become that way. It is not just imagination. Not only this when you are visualizing with pride and clarity, sometimes you will not see ordinary things. You don’t see the clock or the glass of water. You might be afraid because of that. That is not getting blind., but the mind is so strongly focusing the eye consciousness is not functioning for a few moments, for a very very short period. When you focus so strongly we are not seeing ordinary things. This is not a problem. We are not seeing emptiness; we do not have shamata here yet. It is just normal when it happens, nothing to be afraid of. Later, you see thing in an ordinary way.

By doing the, seeing the mandala and the inhabitants, what happens is by occupying your mind that way, ordinary appearance and acceptance is blocked. When it is blocked, it serves the purpose. At that moment, whatever you are visualizing—even though nothing has actually happened-but when you have that pride and clarity coming up it serves the purpose.

What is happening here? When you are building the clarity, like thinking about the mandala and from the heart comes a seed syllable hung and light nature goes out through your nostrils and gets outside and turn around and you see your true form-the fifty dried sculls, the two horns the third eye, and all this. You are a duplicate outside and you see this or you are inside and seeing the chakras, all of them are within the capability of the analytical meditation. So analyzing and building. For that level analization is more important than concentration, because analyzing meditation gives you what you have to function.

Then you can think about it, physical things, and you can see yourself that way and you see all these things, that is me, and you have pride. At the pride level, analytical meditation is of more importance than concentration meditation.

In order to have clarity it is not necessary for the individual to be able to establish shamata. If you think each and every yidam one by one, it will develop. So you do get clarity, without having shinay (calm abiding), you do get it. However, that is not stable. Without being stable it is not being able to purify. Purify means one cannot block ordinary perception or concepualization. So it is necessary to develop now the shamata. You know up to a level in the Lam Rim and all this we talk of shinay and the shamata as well as wisdom. By now it is a must. And it is much easier, honestly, much easier here. So here it is not necessary at the development stage I think; shinay is not that necessary at the development stage. Although when we say the nine faces is nine teachings, just between that is the period when you train yourself to develop shinay, before the mantra, it is important. At that level you are supposed to. Although it is said really and truly, until you reach a certain level it may not be that necessary.

We have to talk about the way and how to do this. So when you develop shinay over here, shamata over here, now your focal point is on your mandala. It is the environment and the inhabitants of your the mandala. It is not that big one; it has to be developed in miniature. That is where the Milarepa and Rechungpa story comes in. Rechungpa went to India and thought, I am better than my teacher. With the storm coming and Rechungpa couldn’t find any place to hide. And Milarepa suddenly is singing, “Here is a nice place, come in here.” Rechungpa looked everywhere and couldn’t find it. Milarepa was in the horn of a goat. Neither did Milarepa shrink, and nor did the horn become bigger.

Now this is impossible, totally against physical law. But the whole mandala with Yamantaka fits in a little drop of light. That little drop of light you are focusing on. You focus on the deity with pride combined together in the mandala entirely in a little drop of light. That little drop of light may be on the tip of your sex organ! If you are Yamantaka, whether you are male or female, you have a male sex organ because you are Yamantaka; whether you are male or female,. If you are Vajrayogini, you are a woman and have a female sex organ. Or here-(at the top of his head).Why? Because it is the upper or lower tip of the central channel, in the center of the pipe of the central channel. Or you can do it at the center of your heart or at the center of your navel. These are the areas they recommend.

You don’t shrink the external one, but it is inside. I did use the word shrink, but you have to think it is very small. If you lose that, you lose the clarity and pride in doing that, there is no point. The external big one becomes the internal small one. That is your focal point.

Here he makes the statement, when you reach the third stage you can do it; not when you are a lay person or receiving a little wisdom, but when you have a little control. But at the beginning you can have little dots. So it is interesting, some of the Hindu gurus talk and say keep on thinking light over here. Hindu gurus sometime say that. I heard that a number of times in India. One of those Hindu gurus kept saying, “Please keep the light over here. Don’t let it fall down.” Probably these are the reasons. Even at the beginning level, now you have light natured dots on those spots-on the upper or lower spots.

So what happens is because of putting that little dot over here, our focus goes there and our air energy goes there and that collects all the energy together. That is why it works at the lower spot, or the heart or navel level is fine because it helps collect all energy there. The difference in the sutrayana level and the vajrayana level of developing shamata is enormous. At the sutra level if you do a lot of analytical meditation it disturbs your concentrated focus. At the vajrayana level analyzing and building does not disturb concentrated focus. On the contrary, it builds the clarity. That is one advantage of doing shamata at this level. You don’t have to put in so much effort the way you used to have to put in before.

Not only that, the focal point is an important point, which is not taught in the lower tantras or in sutrayana at all. That helps not only to develop shamata, but also to develop vajrayana and shamata combined together. The reason is that the nature of the mind at that moment is focusing. Actually the mind is seeing the whole mandala with the deity, but also recognizing the wisdom, the emptiness. And that is why shamata must be first, but it also develops here later. These are a few of the vajrayana secrets that are not available in the sutrayana. It is not available somewhere else. We don’t do that. That is why not available means not available.

That also in vajrayana is different from sutrayana. In sutrayana if you have strong generation of bodhimind, with the influence of that mind you can think about wisdom. Or vice a versa, you can meditate strong wisdom and think about compassion. That is the definition of combination of wisdom and compassion. In vajrayana level that is not the combination of wisdom and method. In vajrayana, mind itself becomes the nature of wisdom and of compassion. The mind itself becomes joy nature and it recognizes wisdom. Mind becoming that is a big difference from sutrayana. Mind itself becomes that, and thereby putting those efforts together individuals will be moving through the four stages. In the fourth stage you are transferred from the development stage and enter the completion stage. Body retreats into vajra body, speech retreats into vajra speech and mind become vajra mind and then clear light, ordinary clear light and ordinary illusion body. Through that, stage one rises into a pure illusion body. That brings pure clear light and that becomes the Vajradhara state.

That is how the states go. If you look at starting with guru devotional practice, embracing human life, seeing samsara and the four noble truths. Then the path is cessation, liberating one from samsara and liberating other people and dedicating oneself to the liberation of all sentient beings. Then bodhimind and the six paramitas leading to initiation and the perfect control over wisdom leading you to the completion stage from the development stage-first in an impure, and then in a pure, level. This is your path to enlightenment, your roadmap.

Way and how you do, you have a whole life to do this, plus many other lives to do it. It is true that to attain enlightenment in one lifetime would be great, but for us this is how gradually we go. Let us pray for the longevity of all beings and peace and harmony. There are too many sufferings in the world. We can dedicate our practice to this.

Sometimes for weeks and months your practice will not be so good. It is okay. Just keep putting your effort in, nicely put your effort in. Constant effort, is what one should do, because we are dealing with reality. I don’t see any reason why all of us will not make it.

Thank you.