Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire (17 page)

BARDO AND SAMBH OGAKAYA

For ordinary people, once the clear light is finished, the mind experiences the visions of the dharmakaya experience just described but in a reverse order, from the darkness of unconsciousness to the mirage-like vision. With the beginning of this reverse process, our mind departs from our body and death actually occurs. Immediately thereafter we enter the intermediate state, the bardo, and here again our mind is completely out of control. With the speed of thought we are propelled from one situation to another, as in a dream. But this dream is more often a nightmare. Sometimes terrifying visions, arising from the imprint of our past delusions and negative actions, appear and cause us to run away in fear. At other times alluring visions arise and we run after them with intense craving, only to be disappointed. This is what happened, after all, when we were still alive and possessed an ordinary physical body; our life was spent in a constant search for security, running away from this and after that.

But now our situation is even more extreme. Because our insubstantial bardo body is made of nothing but subtle wind energy, it can pass through matter without any obstruction and therefore we enter without hindrance into whatever situation our fearful, craving mind throws us.

This is the ordinary bardo experience, but once again, trained practitioners can transform it into the path to enlightenment. Well-versed in the practices of the rainbow-like illusory body, once the clear light of death comes to an end, they assume a clear, radiant body of light instead of the deluded bardo body. In this way they transform the ordinary bardo into the enlightened sambhogakaya, or enjoyment body, experience.

REBI RTH AND NI RMANAKAYA

Just as the ordinary process of death and bardo are uncontrolled, compelled by the force of our deluded grasping, so too is our ordinary rebirth. We are eventually blown by the winds of our deluded actions (karma) to where our future parents lie in sexual embrace. There, with our mind experiencing a confused mixture of longing desire and repulsion, we faint and are thereafter conceived in our mother’s womb. From this impure beginning a life full of impurity and suffering follows. Our body—deriving from the sperm and egg of our parents—is subject to the miseries of birth, sickness, aging, and eventually death, while our mind—as a stream flowing from our previous life —continues under the compulsion of insecure craving, repulsion, and ignorance to create the causes for further dissatisfaction and suffering.

This ordinary rebirth experience can be transformed by the skilled practitioner in the same way that death and bardo were transformed. Instead of moving from the bardo to the next life under the force of insecurity and grasping, ignorantly falling into unconsciousness, the well-trained followers of tantra can choose their rebirth consciously. Having trained themselves in the practice of overcoming ordinary appearances, they can see their future parents as male and female deities and themselves as a deity as well. Depending on their level of control and the type of training they have completed, they may even take rebirth in a pure land: a state of existence in which everything is conducive to the attainment of enlightenment. Even if they are born on this earth they can choose a situation suitable to spiritual development so that they can continue to practice until the totality of enlightenment is reached. With such full awareness and complete control over their next life, ordinary rebirth can be transformed into the enlightened experience of the nirmanakaya, or emanation body.

This has been only a brief account of the way the tantric practitioners can transform ordinary death, bardo, and rebirth into the three bodies of an enlightened being, but it is enough to give us a clear idea of what lies at the heart of the highest tantric practice. Up until now we have been overwhelmed by the forces of ignorance, karma, and our many delusions with the result that we have been going around in a circle of birth, death, and rebirth without choice or control over and over again. Until we replace our ignorance with wisdom and transform these three recurring events into the enlightened experience of a buddha, we will continue going around in this vicious circle forever, searching for happiness but finding only disappointment.

CUTTI NG REBI RTH

It is not difficult to understand how ordinary death, bardo, and rebirth experiences are the root of our difficulties. Because we live, die, and are reborn with an uncontrolled mind and body, we have to experience the many mental and physical sufferings of ordinary life. Stated simply, if we were not born in the first place there would be no way for these problems to arise! Through the practice of highest tantra, we can avoid such a birth, and all its problems, completely.

Some people might be confused when hearing that the proper practice of tantra can cut rebirth. “What is the point of this? Why should I give up the chance to return to the world? Is this what the path is leading me to: total nonexistence? If so, I am not interested!”

To avoid this confusion we should realize that “cutting rebirth” has a very specific meaning: namely, to free ourselves from having to experience uncontrolled rebirth again and again. We can practice tantra successfully and still return to this world. In fact, our compassionate bodhichitta motivation makes it unthinkable that we would abandon others; it pledges us to return for their sake. Shakyamuni Buddha himself did so and his birth, far from being a problem, was the source of limitless benefit. At the moment, however, our rebirths take place without control and merely perpetuate the beginningless cycle of misery. This is what needs to be cut. The same is true for death and bardo; it is the uncontrolled experience of these events that must be eliminated and transformed.

Our uncontrolled life, in which the three poisons of attachment, anger, and ignorance play such a big part, leads inevitably to an uncontrolled death, during which these same delusions give rise to even greater confusion. Our mind is overwhelmed by the hallucinations associated with the dissolution of the various bodily elements and we enter the intermediate state with tremendous fear and longing. There, because we possess a body of consciousness rather than one of gross physical form, our superstitions have an even stronger effect upon us. Each delusion that surfaces in our mind immediately throws us into a correspondingly deluded situation. This is an extremely frightening condition and eventually, when we perceive the vision of our future parents, our longing for security propels us to take rebirth—and the cycle begins again. Nowhere is there any rest or peace as the security and happiness we seek always elude us. This is the symptom of our ordinary samsaric existence.

The aim of tantric practice is to free ourselves from these recurring difficulties by helping us to break out of this vicious circle. By training our mind to overcome the tyranny of ordinary, deluded appearances and by preparing beforehand for what we must eventually encounter as one life draws to an end and another begins, we are generating the ability to substitute the enlightened experience of the three bodies of a buddha for the usual confusion of death, bardo, and rebirth.

Heruka

A rising a s a De ity

FROM SELF-P I TY TO DI VI NE SELF-EMANATI ON

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING about tantric practice is to get a taste, an actual experience, of something that has meaning for you. It doesn’t matter how small the piece of chocolate you get is; you taste it and you are satisfied.

That is all. So those people who get something really clear in their mind and then, the minute they understand it, put it directly into their heart—these are the people who are truly practicing. They are the ones who are getting the chocolate.

Our normal dualistic mind—our so-called realistic mind—always interprets that something is not right, something is not complete, about me and my surroundings. It is always criticizing. That is the symptom of the dualistic mind: something is always wrong. Our dualistic mind is either placing extra qualities onto what exists or else is underestimating it; such a nervous, dissatisfied mind never follows the middle way. Whether consciously or not, it feels, “My nature is impure. I was born with impurities, right now I am impure, I am going to die with impurities and end up in hell!” It doesn’t matter if we call ourselves religious or nonreligious, philosophical or atheistic; as long as we are out of touch with basic reality we remain under the influence of such deluded, self-defeating views. If we want to be free of all diseases of body and mind it is extremely important to rid ourselves of all such mistaken, self-pitying concepts.

What is our problem? It is that we feel, “I am the worst kind of person: impure, full of hatred, ignorant, and greedy. I am so bad!” This kind of thinking—holding such a low opinion of ourselves, even if we do not express it in words—is completely negative. This is what we need to purify.

Tantra says that human beings have a truly divine quality. The nucleus of each human being, each person’s essential nature, is something divine, something pure. To realize this, and to make this realization an integral part of our life and not a mere intellectualization, it is necessary, as we have already discussed, to emanate strongly as a deity.

Emanating yourself as a deity has nothing to do with a particular culture or a particular set of beliefs. You are already emanating. When you emanate your self-pity image you do not think that you are involved with a particular culture; you just do it. So stop following this ignorant habit; cultivate strong divine pride and emanate yourself as a deity instead. Begin to live up to your tremendous potential.

The best, most precise way to practice emanating as a deity is to do the three-kaya meditation. The great tantric masters of the past, such as Lama Tsongkhapa, have emphasized that there is nothing more essential than this practice.

DI SSOLUTI ON

The sadhana of the deity we are practicing may contain an elaborate description of the three-kaya practice, but it is sufficient to do an abbreviated version such as the following. We start by reminding ourselves of the refuge we have taken in the Three Jewels and cultivating the heartfelt bodhichitta motivation to achieve enlightenment in order to benefit others. Then we engage in guru yoga, the root of the tantric path. We visualize our tantric master before us and see him or her as the embodiment of all the enlightened qualities we wish to realize within ourselves. We imagine that the guru comes to the top of our head, dissolves into light, and descends into our heart. As the guru sinks into us in this way, we visualize that we are experiencing the various visions of death that lead up to the dawning of the very subtle clear light consciousness. In this way we meditate upon the unification of our guru’s blissful wisdom with our own very subtle mind. Drawing upon our memory of the initiations we have received and upon our contact with the guru’s clarity and compassion, we should imagine this unification to be as blissful as possible. The more we are able to experience bliss, the better it will be for the process of transformation.

This subtle, blissful experience of union is beyond any of our ordinary dualistic concepts. As all our ordinary appearances dissolve into the empty space of nondual wisdom and simultaneous great bliss, we concentrate upon this dissolution as single-pointedly as possible. We should think, “This is the enlightened truth body and this is who I really am.” By identifying ourselves as completely as possible with the dharmakaya, we transform the ordinary death experience into the path to enlightenment.

As we meditate upon the dharmakaya in this way, the self-concepts we have been holding onto will break down somewhat; this is good enough to qualify as an actual emptiness experience. Don’t become discouraged and think, “I don’t have any realization of emptiness. I don’t even understand the word emptiness or how to practice anything!” Don’t think this way; it is only a hindrance. After all, to some extent we do already have some experience of the clear light. We have died many times in the past and tantra explains that the process of dying automatically involves the discovery of the clear light and the nondual nature of totality. Not only while dying but during sleep and orgasm as well we get a taste of this clear light totality. To a certain extent these experiences break down the concrete concepts of the self-pitying mind, softening them somehow. So do not worry about how profound your understanding of emptiness should be; it is enough for the moment that you are no longer involved with the concrete concepts of this and that. Just let go and allow all your grasping to dissolve into clear spaciousness.