Speaker 1 00:00:14 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful some good friends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet House, us to help preserve Tibetan culture. Tibet house is the Dai Lama's cultural center in America. All best wishes have a great day.
Speaker 3 00:00:48 This is episode 316, understanding Tantra Zen and,
Speaker 1 00:01:18 And the Buddha land, of course, is defined as a land where everyone lives for everyone else's liberation and therefore everyone has everybody else going for their liberation minus themselves and therefore everybody is pretty hotly into liberation. So that's a messianic thing. But now based on that, so just as that is based on that the messianic, the two elements, primary elements of the Messianic, Buddhism, Buddhism, Buddhi, Buddhism, R,
Speaker 1 00:01:43 The realization of selflessness that all that the self is empty of an intrinsically established self. That there's no element of myself that is isolated, intrinsically established, separated from relations with the rest of the universe. That is a sort of thing in itself, but everything about me is interconnected with everything else. And I'm empty of any non interconnected essence. So this insight, and not only that, but my habitual orientation to the world of being ego-driven, ego centered, is based on the false assumption I have carried with me from Beginningless time known as ignorance or mis knowledge, which has caused me to assume that there was a center in me that is the most important thing in the universe, which of course is an error, right? So that selflessness is one of the aspects of universal Messianic Buddhism as it is also of individualistic Buddhism. The insight into that selflessness being the true inner freedom that I can achieve.
Speaker 1 00:02:43 And the other aspect is the compassion towards all others. That they themselves should have. All the same realization that since there's nothing in me separated and away from all others, I've interconnected with them totally. Therefore, their realization of that is their greatest release and their greatest happiness. And therefore I should live, I am, you know, their liberation is my liberation in some sense. And that's called compassion. And then it is projected in the Messianic Buddhism because in Messianic Buddhism, the, uh, historical orientation of course reality, what is known as gross or course reality is left intact and therefore it will take me millions of lives to do that, of course, cuz there are millions, infinite numbers of beings. So in a way it's an infinite horizon of positive evolutionary development for me and all beings, which I devote myself to with my boes messianic vow.
Speaker 1 00:03:34 Now, where the apocalyptic vehicle comes in is, doesn't change a single thing except one thing. By being a bodan, by striving to liberate others, by opening myself, also my sensitivity to the degree to which others are suffering, and to the numbers of them who are suffering, thinking about them in the hells thinking about them. My mothers, as it has said, my dearest relatives, all beings as my mother of this life, all beings as my only child, no being even one frying in a hell is sort of some alien who I don't know, they're all my blood relatives. In fact, in some life or another, every being has been my blood relation. Cultivating this kind of vision where we, if you cultivate you very easily begin to see human beings, especially easily other species is more difficult, but you can easily realize the relatedness, the kinship of yourself and all beings.
Speaker 1 00:04:25 It's a very easiest vision to see. And when you see that, and when you then think of them all as suffering horribly as they say in into bed, in all my old mothers, all my kind old mothers are frying in the hells suffering in the animal form Humphrey, the beach whales, my mother, you know, <laugh>, he's f flopping around there, keeps trying, trying to swim into San Francisco, he's actually my mother. Then what happens is you begin to get a little crazed, the bo becomes a little bit impatient while patience to endure injuries inflicted upon him or herself in order to develop patience to develop the Buddha quality of patience, which relates to the Buddha qualities of beauty and imperturbability and steadiness and calm patience to develop beauty is any beauty you have in this life, it is said, comes from your patience in formal life. Any ugliness you have in this life comes from your anger and formal life. It is said very nice one. I like that beauty elixir is patience.
Speaker 1 00:05:25 And uh, so you get a little bit crazed and when you get a little bit crazed, then you say, well what is this about three incalculable aons of lifetimes before I can really help these beings. I can't take that. There must be a better way. There must be a better vehicle. There must be some fast something to accelerate this process. I can't stand sitting here and saying, I'll be able to satisfy and I'll do all these good things for three incalculable aons of lifetimes. That's like that, that expression means something like, if you ever remember the movie that Carl Sagan did on the cosmos, you know that cosmic calendar where he walks up billions of years, you know, up into the human species, you know, the earth first from there sort of western materialist notion of evolution. And he walks up on a 30 days and the human life form is down here in the last two minutes of the 30th day or some kind of thing.
Speaker 1 00:06:17 It's a thing like that, you know, three incalculable aons is three progressions up from Precambrian slime for to humanity, from, for an individual, not for species, but for one person through billions of life forms. So it's a long time. And during that time you are mother's, you're, you're unhappy if you're a mother or your only child or whoever is most dear to you, like suffers for an hour or they fall down, break their knee, and they have to lie there and you come home late and then they've been lying there and agony for an hour and you're really unhappy about it. But, but you have to bok in a situation of we're having felt disconnected to all beings cultivating a sense of connectedness, not allowing to be walled off by saying, that's not my relative, that's not my problem, you're not my family, et cetera.
Speaker 1 00:07:02 They can't say, well, it's all coming in due time in history. You know, the sort of conventional wisdom idea. They say, no, I insisted must come now I must change causality. I must change relativity somehow. I'm gonna go nuts and do it now. And such a person in fact would go nuts and not do it now, but lucky for him or her, the Buddha and Buddhas elaborated the tantric vehicle, the apocalyptic vehicle apocalypse in the sense of putting an end to the course flow of time, challenging the equation of time right away and giving one the capability of in fact attaining buddhahood, not just our headship, but Buddhahood all magical, all competent, I don't say all powerful, it smacks too much of monotheism, but all competent, all responsive buddhahood in this one life. Not that it's easy, but it's called easy. And what it's, when it's called the easy path hunter, you might run into it advertised as the easy path. You know, you might think it was the Friday night talk as opposed to the weekend seminar at the open center, but does not mean that kind of easy path, you know, it means easy path in that you can compress into one lifetime the evolution, it would take you millions of lifetimes to accomplish by this high technology.
Speaker 1 00:08:28 And that's, but that means, you know, imagine how that's, that's still, that's then very hard. That's much harder than living a normal sort of lifetime of just sort of going with the flow that's intensely hard to put in millions of lifetimes, millions of death times into one life is no laughing matter, but that is what the va, that's what the apocalyptic vehicle means. Now, how does the apocalyptic vehicle work now? Now, first of all, in, in the, uh, the apocalyptic vehicle is not also only available in the Tantras. There's an expression that the Tibetans use, which they get from India, from the last phase of Indian Buddhism, which is called the integration of sutra and tantra, or the integration of ordinary ma and esoteric mahina. These two things as being integrated and the way people usually understand that is even Tibetans, and I often debate with Tibetans about this, and I've had some really amusing and hot debates, but the way it's usually understood is that the tran is so fantastic and so great that it, it embeds within itself all of the positive aspects of the, and the mak of the individual vehicle and the universal vehicle.
Speaker 1 00:09:39 So that you can sort of just go, really just do the ri you know, if you're smart type of thing. So that because it's integrated in that sense that it incorporates sutra system and they resist very much the idea that integration cannot be one way if Tantras are integrated with sutra. Also su I mean if sutra are integrated with Tantras, tantras are also integrated with sutra. And in fact the Sutra contains, for one who knows how to see it, there, all the method of the tantra. So may is not withholding, in other words, the vision of tundra. When, when in the ve curity female molecular transforms the universe, when he transforms people to being 40,000 leagues tall and, and en thrones them in Lion Thrones and tells 'em about the inconceivable liberation when he feeds them a magical feast with grains of rice from the incense universe and they begin to, they become smell a certain way, right?
Speaker 1 00:10:32 And the smell doesn't go away until they've achieved another stage of enlightenment. He feeds them the sort of magical feast, this elixir of, of enlightenment in a certain way, in a ritual way. You see, this is tantra, this is really kind of initiatory. In fact, both of these elements are very initiatory and mo most importantly the gold vehicle orientation. And this is the first thing I wanna say about what tantra is. There are four things in my view of what tantra means. And the gold vehicle orientation is rather than what is called the cause vehicle orientation, this is the first criteria of tantra. And this exists in the sutra and in this context sutra refers to the exoteric part of the mah, which itself, as I said, incorporates the hiana. So in a way, all of exoteric practice of Buddhism can be called in this context Suri or sutra vehicle. It's just a, it is a way of expressing it, you know, and it means based on kind of the scriptures.
Speaker 1 00:11:30 Treana is based on the tantras. Now the tantras are also, which are esoteric, but they are also scriptures strangely, they're also texts and they have a vast literature. Again, people would might wrong think, well tundra means only practice and sutra means sort of literature. But this is wrong. Tundra has a huge literature involved in an, an even huger practically study than the sutra. But what tantra, basically my, you know, people say traditionally it's gloss, it means a continuum. Tantra does, and another go, uh, which the dependence will always say. And then the Sanskrit tradition gives the etymology from Sanskrit of tantra of weaving the verb <unk> means to weave. So the idea of sort of creating something tantra is, and um, the weaving sense is nicely captured by what Tark used to say is that in a way the process of achieving wisdom in a way takes apart the world of ignorance through critical wisdom.
Speaker 1 00:12:31 It sort of takes into pulls to pieces and liberates into emptiness in a way. The whole fabric of the constructed world of ignorance and you break free of it in a way, you sort of destroy the world of ignorance actually. But does that mean you have destroyed everything and you live in a void? No. Then based on the wisdom of selflessness, you create a new world, you build a world of wisdom, in other words, out of wisdom. And the way of building the methodology of building a new world out of wisdom is what is called tantra. It is the weaving of a world out of wisdom, out of pure wisdom having destroyed the world that had been made involuntarily out of ignorance. That's another good way, that's a good way of a sort of a general definition of tantra. But no, I'm coming to, I define tantra as basically involving four points and I have rather technically phrased them.
Speaker 1 00:13:24 You actually brought it in writing today. I'd rather technically phrase them, which because it's good to have a technical thing. It's challenging <laugh>, it's the establishment of a gold vehicle orientation on the foundation of a clear inference of selflessness and the concomitant strong motivation of universal com. Well, motivation of universal compassion through entering the relationship with the vja guru and receiving the consecration, the key reorientation here being the articulation of compassion's passive sensitive mode of anguish into an active, loving universal bliss. That's technical. What that means now see means vehicle orientation or cause vehicle orientation means the following in all of sutra practice, but not quite all because sutra also has gold vehicle. That's why the boundaries are not as neat as one would think. But in most practices, one should and does begin with the notion that I'm ignorant, I am into samsara, I am diluted, I have been doing all these bad habits and I have indulging all these confused ideas and I have to now correct all of that and I have to replace my ignorance with wisdom and I can place my, replace my greed with generosity and detachment, replace my anger with love and tolerance and patience.
Speaker 1 00:14:51 And so one works sort of in an antidotal mode sort of against the place where one is, and in that sense, what one does is the cause of coming into a new mode. It's a means vehicle. One is practicing the means of achieving enlightenment, one is leaving intact initially the concept that one is here in the state of samsara and one has to go there to nirvana or Buddhahood and there's a path to which one must go, you see? And that's called a means in this context that is called a means vehicle or a gold vehicle orientation. Now, I mean, I'm sorry, or a cause vehicle orientation. Now the gold vehicle orientation is different, it's more radical. It questions in, in questioning in a way, in questioning one's knowledge and in in accepting the one's ignorance in a way it accepts it so strongly that it questions even one's perception of one's self as being apart from enlightenment. It questions that one is that there is a, a cause and and effect, a means and a goal.
Speaker 1 00:15:57 It radically sort of leaps away from one's own judgment. Dismissing that as ignorance and adopts the judgment of Buddha. And remember the judgment of Buddhas when his toe is on the ground, as in the vim ur and he re has revealed the world as he sees it, which is a perfection, a place of total perfection where all of time is transcended. And although beings don't themselves feel perfect and in that sense from their point of view are not perfect and have an evolution to go through by seeing all of their future moments simultaneous with their present. One, he sees their potential as actual in a way and therefore sees it as perfect, right? So the gold vehicle orientation says, well, Buddha sees my perfection. I accept that I have perfection then. And I put the tension between, I immediately therefore enter into the tension between what I know by inference to be my reality.
Speaker 1 00:16:56 Because after all, my reality as revealed by wisdom is more real than my reality as revealed by ignorance. If ignorance is ignorant, then that's false reality and I am in fact indivisible from the bude even now. And you know, the whole concept of consecration in times we know you go and take initiation. What initiation means is that through an act of such imagination, one adopts the imaginative stance of being present at the goal, you're initiating to Green Tara, then you would you adopt this, the ability you adopt the, you receive the license in a way to visualize yourself as green Tara. But that doesn't mean, and this is wrong. Wolf often understood and people place too much emphasis on the initiation. They think, oh, it's the big thing, it's the initiation. I knew somebody who's Shian mentioned unnamed who for years I used to meet at a lot of different initiations and once they by accident came into a class of mine and we were discussing old meaning all these things and this person actually interrupted me in public and was so shocked and said, you mean it isn't just the initiation, that's not all you mean that wasn't enough.
Speaker 1 00:18:11 All those initiations that did that didn't sound the matter. I have to do something else. They were so freaked out, you know, when, when they, when they realized that initiation, nothing but the doorway, the permission's like getting a driver's license. It's not even buying the car or putting your, turning the ignition, putting foot on the pedal. Initiation is getting the license to go, the learner's permit to go and drive the car. And this person had been collecting all these learner's permits, never got in the car all those years <laugh> poor thing, said she didn't agree with me, of course cuz I'm not a lama. So she stormed out, uh, he stormed out, I said he stormed out in the huff. Half <laugh> never came back. Man's living now in the, in the temple of learner's permits <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:18:59 So, so the initiation is wrongly thought to be, you know, that this act imagination is it. And if some, you know, if some authority tells you you are Buddha or you're green Tara, then you are green Tara. And that's ridiculous, that's totally wrong. If you think that you shouldn't be doing initiation, you don't have that preliminary understanding, that is an absolute prerequisite to practicing tantra. You cannot practice tantra if you do not understand what you are doing. It's like getting in a, in a, in a rocket shot to the moon. You don't know which any of the levers are. It's dangerous. It's not because somebody's withholding it cuz they want to hire more money or something or they didn't do this or pay your dues. It's because it's dangerous to you. Tan is there to be Buddha there and bud is there to share lama to share the tan widely if they help people, but not, but they're dangerous.
Speaker 1 00:19:46 That's why they have them as a tur. And I will explain to you how they're dangerous. Don't get superstitious, don't get upset. I'll explain to you, you can understand easily, precisely why they are dangerous. So the active imagination is only getting then one knows full. Well of course, you know, you've been in this situation, you've decided to be gold vehicle. You can't stand to wait for lifetimes and lifetimes to be able to help other beings. You know, you're becoming the mad, you're taking the mad bud's way, you know the wild bud up way. And so you're going and got initiation and you know damn well, but you're not green Tara and you're not Buddha <unk> and you're not, uh, <unk> whatever it is, you know that you just went and got initiations, blah blah, didn't even know the language mouth some words. In Tibetan, you don't know what it means.
Speaker 1 00:20:26 Very solemn. You go, you don't even know what you're saying. So it's just a, it's just an a magical sort of hologram. You fit, you've had a moment of sharing the hologram of the vision of the teacher. If it's a genuinely qualified teacher of who sees you as potentially enlightened, but you, you clear that you don't still see yourself that way. But the procedure that you adopt is a procedure of questioning your assumption of un enlightenment from the beginning. So that in a way you ritually or imaginatively accept yourself in the state of enlightenment. And then your job is to remove what prevents you from experiencing that. Remove the fact that you don't experience it. Not kidding yourself that just by imaginatively doing it or accepting the word of an authority or a ritual confirmation of kind, not pretending that that has actually changed your feeling, but using that as a tension against your feeling.
Speaker 1 00:21:24 You see, that's what makes it kind of powerful. And in this sense, zen is totally tantra, a hidden, invisible tundra because real tantra couldn't work in East Asia. Really it was not acceptable in East Asia. And the reason real tantra was not acceptable in East Asia excepted a tiny little hidden stream which is there and it's in Shong in Japan was, it was actually more acceptable in Japan than in China. China was really unable to deal with tantra basically. It was sort of hidden just in a couple places in China because in tantra there's a lot of female symbolism cuz enlightenment is personified in a female way in Tantra quite a lot. And then there are these unbelievable things of Buddhas as <unk> you know, male and mother and father in cons. So the Chinese freaked out on this one and they, they couldn't deal with it because the Chinese oppression of their women was much too intense compared to India and therefore just didn't go in China.
Speaker 1 00:22:25 Period. A little trickled into Japan then they did better in Japan cause they're not quite as bad. They weren't in the early period, particularly quite as bad in Japan. Remember Japan's land of Lady Moaki used to be land of lady Moaki before the Shoguns got there and locked them all up, you know, locked up Lady Moaki <laugh>. So, uh, so that's the first thing is this goal orientation. Oh yes, Anden, I wanna come back to Zen because it's, we should say something, but this is really elementary to people. A lot of people have had toyed with zen worry about zen and this and that about Zen. And so we should talk about zen. Zen is in fact therefore, since it couldn't explicitly come into East Asia because women were, the, the idea of women's spirituality was too frightening to the, to the orthodox culture in East Asia.
Speaker 1 00:23:10 Not that there wasn't an underground culture, but the Orthodox culture was too frightening. And so zen really is the tre tradition in Asia in a way in East Asia and Zen, without mentioning initiation and without mentioning a lot of these things, has the basic collision and it has the basic gold vehicle orientation and has a lot, a lot of the basic aspects of tundra. For example, when the Roshi, you know, when the, in the famous story about ma and and Jiun where Ji was meditating in the snow and wind and rain and everything, you know, year after, you know, year after year, month after month, like really riveted in there and in his heavy samati in this like ruthless temple up in a mountain eating no food and like macho it up, he was meditating away, like waiting for the universe to transform in himself to disappear into the void or whatever he thought he was, wherever he thought he was going, his master ma used to come and sit next to him, sort of hang out like the old, you know, the old, uh, the old uh, uh, cracker Barrel type and sit there and would pick up a shard from the broken up down grounds of the temple and rub the shard very seriously.
Speaker 1 00:24:18 And he went on for months like this rubbing the shard and really like, like scientifically rubbing it and energetically rubbing it and professionally rub, wearing out claws, rubbing it and rubbing it with grass and rubbing it with moss and, and spitting on it and rubbing it and doing all this stuff with this charge <laugh> and then put it down carefully and come back the next day when wbo, when, when, when by John was in his meditation session and come back and go back to rubbing, you know, and of course by John was saying this idiot guru of mine because zen are into radical anti-authoritarianism as a total antidote to this super authoritarian Chinese culture and family structure. And so he was saying, that's Morhan is doing this thing and I'm not gonna pay attention, I'm gonna show him. And he was like, like this, you know, finally after like six months of rubbing dard, you know, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch, this guy's going like in defat blades guru, he finally did get sick of it.
Speaker 1 00:25:09 And at one point during a break in his meditation, he said, excuse me, but you have really been really carrying on with this shark for quite a long time. And you know, I wouldn't have disturbed my meditation to discuss this with you, but I mean it's, it's so lunatic, it's so foolish if, if, if some other saw you, they'd think you'd really crash front the train. Well, what do you think you're doing thing? The guy looked very offended. Mazu did, he looked like truly hurt. And he said, why? He said, I'm making a mirror, he said, and the guy said, you can't make a mirror out of a sh you can polish it until you dead dead and you'll never be a mirror said. And Martha said, and you can't make a Buddha by meditating <laugh>. And apparently this then he did achieve a very good ator at that time because he was being criticized.
Speaker 1 00:26:00 What was it? It was this powerful symbolic criticism of his means and practice. He was making a big effort to meditate, to break through, to state away from him, apart from him that he was assuming was apart from himself. You see, to get to the goal Buddhahood rather than proceeding in the context of being in the gold and not allowing any interference between himself and the gold to take place, that is how in fact one should be met. That is as Dogan said, for example, one must sit while casting off body and mind as Ur said, you know, you can't sit thinking that you, I'm now I'm gonna get to something in true zen. You cannot, that's not casting off body and mind casting off body mind means being beyond the egocentrically appropriated body and mind. That means being in the state of dharma Kaya.
Speaker 1 00:26:50 And that's the only way to meditate is be in the gold state. That means therefore, for example, the famous phrase, just sitting of tokens doesn't mean meditating. It's completely dozen people go say sitting meditation, but actually that's a misnomer. That's a very bad teaching because just sitting meant just by sitting you were Buddha. That's what Dogan said. He said, nobody's getting to be Buddha. You sit, you adopt the Buddha posture, you are Buddha. That is tantric in the sense that that is a radical forcing of the imaginative shift from not being Buddha to being Buddha. And then dealing with the discrepancy between where one is positing oneself as really being on the basis of faith in the Roshi, faith in the tradition, faith in the patriarchs in the case of zen or faith in the, in the case of tantra as opposed to having the normally misplaced faith in one's own distorted and diluted vision.
Speaker 1 00:27:52 Do you follow me? I think it's clear, but it's funny, isn't it? People say, I'm gonna go do some sitting meditation. Haha, Togan would kick them, he would freak out. You can't do sitting meditation if you really sit. You can only be Buddha, which is being in the center of a kind of invisible mandala in, in East Asia and there's more. And then the relationship therefore with the guru is all powerful in that context. Just as in the tundra, the relationship with the Vara guru is all powerful. You cannot receive a tan initiation unless the guru is perceived by you as a total Buddha, not just, but a real total Buddha. Now that doesn't mean this is very sophisticated. That doesn't mean the guru has to be a total Buddha. The guru could be a schmo, although if the brewer was a schmo, he or she, it would make it very hard for you to visualize them as a total Buddha because they'd keep sch mowing out and distracting you. That's why Tibetans have a proverb. The best large guru is one who lives, uh, three valleys away, at least <laugh>. So you see them when they come out all dressed up and all ornaments in the mandolin. You don't see them in the daily sch mowing this, you know, sch mowing over to the outhouse and so on. Uh oh. You know, you don't, you don't get familiarity. You know, it doesn't get a chance to breed contempt, you see?
Speaker 1 00:29:20 And uh, so anyway, that's one of the things. So the gold vehicle orientation, now I say in here that you see through entering the relationship that the re key reorientation being the, the articulation of compassion, passive sense, sensitive mode of anguish into active loving, universal play say that's very important because in the su, the pair that is taken causally to lead to the fruition in Buddhahood is the pair of wisdom and compassion. Wisdom corresponds to ultimate reality, compassion to relative reality. Wisdom gives issue in the body of truth of buddhahood the diah compassion gives issue in the body of form all the emanation bodies in the beatific bodies of a Buddha. And, and compassion fulfills the aims of others. And wi and wisdom fulfills one's own name and one's own need. And so that's the pair. Wisdom and compassion. Indivisible is the methodology of sore.
Speaker 1 00:30:11 Now what compassion is remember basically is sensitivity to the suffering of others and willing that they become free of that suffering. Right? Now, again, if that's pushed, if you push that will to another is being free of suffering. What is that? Actually you push it, it is of course a will to their happiness, which in Buddhism is called love and in will to their happiness. If you push that and you keep willing that someone is happy, you keep willing that someone is happy, is it effective to sit there agonizingly willing that they be happy? Did you ever have some person totally misery person saying, be happy, be happy, be happy to you. Did it help much? It made you more tense, <laugh>.
Speaker 1 00:30:51 So when that will to others', happiness intensifies and intensifies, it becomes when you finally it dawns on you, your wisdom is such that dawns on you that, well, if I really want them to be happy, how do I make them happy? Then you realize that the only way that I can really effectively make them happy is to be happy myself only from an overflow of my own happiness. Can I effectively make them happy? Could you ever make anybody happy when you were not happy, it was an overflow of your happiness that made another happy. When you are happy, you easily make other people happy, right? As spontaneously do crack a joke, do this, do that. You sort of know you have a different kind of relation like that. So to expand that to extreme case, like Buddhahood Buddha, therefore is an engine of happiness. A Buddha's compassion, therefore has become more practically motorized to become an energy of universal bliss have called.
Speaker 1 00:31:45 So for the, for the tantra, the cultivation is not, it is com it's still wisdom, compassion, indivisible, but compassion now has been more energized to become great bliss. It is bliss, wisdom, indivisible. It is bliss, void, indivisible. It is called in the ttra, it is the subjectivity of bliss that in fact is what the lineage of compassion continues in. So that's a very key reorientation, very, very important in tantra is getting at bliss, it's a more powerful energy and it's essential in the case of the imagination. Imagination won't work well under agony, but under bliss it will for that is why, for example, in the ve ur, a non tantric document, but in the tantric initiation in a way into the inconceivable liberation in the ve ur that you read, he sat people up on 30,000 mile high chairs. You know, he made them feel majestic and magnificent and huge and vast and confident and royal because from that position of sort of a royal confidence and majesty and glory, then they could begin to conceive of the, the planet in a mustard sea of accomplishing more beings.
Speaker 1 00:32:57 Ames and magic and creativity and beauty, which is the vehicle, the bliss. Bliss means beauty. Bliss means the art of actually creating the beauty that actually makes other beings happy of a, of lead of the beauty that is liberating to them. The beauty that opens doorways to liberation. So that's the first reorientation. Second is called. Then once you're in that gold vehicle orientation, and once you're under that pressure, you see, when you understand initiation again, you realize, for example, the great master atisha, the great Bengali master who was the greatest benefactor of the second great benefactor of Tibet from the Buddhist history point of view, Parma samba being the first, artisha being the second who came through 400 years later. He said, when I was a monk, when I became a monk, I was the best practitioner of my vows. I had excellent discipline, I had almost rarely had any kind of infraction, and I immediately repaired it when I did and I was really strong in my ethical practice. When I then took the <unk> vows, I began to get bit shotty and I began to like lose them a lot and then have to repair and, and it was like very difficult, much more difficult.
Speaker 1 00:34:07 You know, the tar, some of the Tibetan lamas who are more courageous and critical and therefore will be critical with Western people are funny. They laugh about how western people always want to come and take Bova vows and then they, he says, well, how about a little monks vow? Hold on. No, not that. See, and in fact it's much easier to be a man nu than, than be <unk> is incredibly difficult. Imagine taking the vow to save old beings. That means you can never dismiss any being that you ever relate to, ever even a cockroach, even a spider poisonous snake. You can never, or much less a nasty person who you really dislike, you can never dismiss. Even Hitler, Stalin, you can never dismiss the most evil being check the ripper.
Speaker 1 00:35:00 I once had a student reading female security we came up against that, lost his family in uh, in uh, Auschwitz. No way. I will not think about sea to it. That whatever piddling, reincarnation Hitler is now experiencing is gonna move on to Buddhahood. And I'll see to it that it does. I'll never take such a mile from this guy. March down drove 700 miles on my away from my class. It's one guy switched to different religion. Sorry. Al has this magnificent scope, an uncompromising attitude of universality, of its love and compassion, no exception. You break the motorcycle vow, which is very bad for you if you've taken it better never to take it, you break it. If you just, if you get so mad with anybody ever subsequently that you say that one, no, no nirvana, I cut off my care for that one. That doesn't mean that you couldn't kick somebody in the behind, but you have to do it wanting them to obtain Buddha.
Speaker 1 00:36:07 I give you this kick now in the future, I will kick you through the door to Buddhahood. Have to remember that, not to do it with totally destructive wrath, in other words. And then on top of that, the VNA vow is so much more difficult because in the vare vow wanted to take a vowel to transform control, transmute even more subtle areas of the mind. Again, people say Vare is the easy way there couldn't have a difficult vow. No, it has a much more difficult vow. If VNA vow is really binding the unconscious may an vow is binding the surface. Emotions I'll never hate and so forth. The vow, and I'll have this incredible tireless energy bo vow, but VRE vow, tre vow is binding the unconscious. I'll see to it that my unconscious is transformed in a certain way. It can be infraction by the unconscious, by the instincts going in what might be thought of as a normal way.
Speaker 1 00:37:03 Then the vow is changing the instincts was more difficult. So Aisha said, once I took the tre vows, I really was up a creek <laugh> the great master atia. So the second step is what is called the imaginative purification of the ordinariness of perception through systematic visualization of emptiness, reti emptiness slash relativity as exquisite aesthetic perfection. And now this is the what is called the creation stage, at least in certain tantras. And then it is in whatever it's called. It is the creation stage. It is this, the action, the practices of visualization, of the mobilizing, of the imagination, of trans, of vision. Imagining the wisdom of emptiness in the form of buildings, in the form of a different body, in the form of chakra systems, in the form of, uh, of deities and a divine universe and so forth. Seeing this house as a diamond palace rather than a brick place and so forth.
Speaker 1 00:37:57 Seeing this city as a pure land, et cetera, an an incredible task and enterprise, which is what all that, that making of all those powder mandolas is about. The powder mandola thing is a trigger to the imagination. To in to empower the imagination, to really re-envision the whole world that way through your own. I mean, it's nothing but a beginning, a template. The real mandola is what you learn to visualize in your mind, which glows and glistens in your own mind. The real medium of the mandala is the vision of your mind, of pure jewel environment that you envision. And it's consi. Once you have visioned that once you learn that it is said that, you know, the powder mandala painting of a mandala, the, you know, the most expensive, most fantastic 13th century art artwork, whatever it may be, is considered shoddy Tibetan masters don't care about tokas and things.
Speaker 1 00:38:43 I dunno if you've ever notice, oh yeah, that's nice, toka, oh yes, they make their man, then they sweep it huk and all this. That's because they have actually practiced visualizing. And if you enter into the imagination realm, the hologram, the holographic mandala that is there in your, in your vision, it's much more beautiful. No, nothing made of earthly substances of any sort can possibly convey it. It's truly a shining, brilliant, magnificent thing. And it's not just that the human being can innately do it. That's also true. Human beings can nationally visualize magnificent things and if they develop ability of one point in us, they can do it even better, as they say, where they can paint with the fine brush of samati on the, the mid, the jeweled wall of the, of the calm unruffled mind. You know, they have these wonderful expressions. Make a fre like making frescos, you know, in the mind, you know, in entering and through the initiation into the tradition of thousands of years of cultivated imaginations, there's this mind to mind hologram so that there is the mandala existing there in the mind space in some way. You see it's existing there in the Buddha mind now, you see, so then one enters into it so that when one goes, although it's in a mental thing of one's own imagination, when one does it through the connection to the tradition, then that one's own imagination becomes a kind of vessel for the one of the Buddha's imagination, which is still made of imagination stuff. <laugh>,
Speaker 1 00:40:11 Divine jewels, heavenly jewels, which can be, I mean, in heaven they can have like, you know, because heaven is like something like, you know, the heart of a red star or heart of a sort of, of a, of a new galaxy or something like that. It's like just pure energy, you know, pure jewel energy. So you can just, with your imagination, you can just go into like this giant like vat infinite va of pure energy and just like shape of beam of diamond, 46 yards long, you know, and shaped in fre code with dragons and crocodile snouts and pearls hanging from it. And then just fit that on the framework of the ruby plinth and then top of the emerald pillar, et cetera right now. But you not en crusted with diamonds like a piece of plaster wood, it's just solid liquid, you know, crystallized warm fing, vibrated self luminous diamond that's there from heaven in heavens.
Speaker 1 00:41:04 The gods have also such materials. They say they have such a lumberyard in the tuhi de heaven and in the, in the various arts in the other heavens of the desire and especially the form realm. So the second aspect of tundra is this imaginative purification of the ordinariness of perception through the systematic visualization of emptiness relativity as exquisite perfection. And of course the key there is emptiness relativity that for requisite to this, entering into this gold vehicle, it must be an initial inference of selflessness. Anyone who considers that they can be initiated into the tantra without having the clear inferential understanding of selflessness plus the <unk> motivation. It is incorrect. It is mistake of teacher and student to enter into the country practice and don't, I mean the inferential, you all understand inferential realization of selfness, I'm sure by now clearly you, you better or I will feel really disappointed.
Speaker 1 00:42:05 It's very simple. All things are purely relative. Therefore, I am empty of any non-relative essence. That's just so clear. That's really easy, isn't it? It's like inferential clear, I mean everything is relative then therefore they're a relative things, a relative nexus of things cannot contain a non-relative thing. I mean, is that difficult? Is it, does anybody not understand that? That means anytime I'm feeling sort of absolute, you know, like sort of like I'm rising up out of the world, you know, because I'm in such a towering fury or such a, such an overwhelming lust or such a magnificent arrogance or such a fantastic intense envy or such a total confusion that I'm somehow withdrawing into some sort of total towering isolation. Although I can feel that way, I know by entrance, by clear reasoning that that's impossible. That I really am this isolated thing that I'm beginning to feel like because I wouldn't feel it if I am feeling it. It's relating to me, to me being my, maybe my solar plexus or my nerves or my, my, the words in my brain are the synapses or the neurons and that those, if those things are feeling it, then they are related to the atoms and the air and the water and the moisture in the air and the ground and the gravity and the electricity and it's all interconnected. It's a buzzing blooming bunch of, of quirks.
Speaker 1 00:43:38 Cause I'm feeling that way. It cannot be such an isolated, essential, intrinsically real un empty self, right? So that's the, that is the power of the inference. If I'm in such a terror, for example, I'm dying and the whole world is closing in on me and I'm casting for air and I'm choking and freaking out and it's like there's this me and then everything else is crashing down that can, I can recognize that this feeling of being sort of an isolated, hunted essence that is maybe gonna lose its hold, can be controlled by the reasoning that if something is like a rat being caged inside my solar plexus trying to get out, trying to escape being crushed by collapsing walls, then that's, I'm feeling that if I'm feeling that it is not isolated, it is not alienated, it is part of the process. It is a relative thing. I can't be really dying as an eye that was different and separated because I must be a relative thing. I am. Therefore part death is me too.
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