QUESTION
Dear Robina,
I would like to ask you how one should prepare for empowerment.
The opportunity is there to receive Vajrasattva from my lama.
I have received a highest yoga tantra empowerment in the past. During the empowerment, I did not understand what was going on.
I do not know how I should prepare myself for empowerment. My question is: how would empowerment help me understand the nature of mind and gain wisdom?
People are saying how precious this opportunity is, but I don’t actually feel it. Am I not ready for empowerment?
Thank you and best wishes,
K
ANSWER
K, dear one:
We have the sutra teachings and we have the tantric teachings. We can’t get enlightened without tantra, specifically Maha Anuttarayoga Tantra.
As Lama Yeshe says, “Tantra is highly technical.” It’s this incredibly sophisticated presentation of the subtler physical and mental energies and the methods for utilizing these energies so we can get enlightened very quickly.
And why it’s quick is because the bliss that is energized in these practices when combined with concentration gets the mind to its subtlest level of cognition, which is necessary to remove even the subtlest levels of dualistic thought, a level that the sutra techniques of shamatha cannot access.
In Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s book How to Face Death without Fear, published by Wisdom, (which I’m doing an updated version of at the moment), Rinpoche says —
“The practices these yogis do are available to those who have taken a highest tantra initiation. They are the quickest methods for achieving enlightenment in one brief lifetime of this degenerate time. By doing these practices you can collect in just a few years the merit that would otherwise take you three countless great eons to collect on the Mahayana Perfection Vehicle path.
“These practices have a very special arrangement, and doing the sadhana every day—the complete sadhana, not just simply generating yourself as the deity and reciting the mantra, without the mandala; not like that—is a very important preparation for death. You will understand this when you have received the commentaries on the generation stage and the completion stage practices.
“Whether you do the long version of the sadhana of the deity you are committed to do or the middle-length version, they both contain the essence of the generation stage practice: transforming the three experiences of death, intermediate state, and rebirth into the three bodies. Even the short Yamantaka sadhana has these three important points.
“Serkong Tsenshab Rinpoche would emphasize that when it comes to your main deity you must do the more elaborate meditations, as above. If you’re busy, Rinpoche says, you can do your other commitments quickly, but still you must do a little bit of meditation on the three kayas, especially the dharmakaya meditation on divine pride. Even if it’s not elaborate, even if you don’t follow all the procedures, at least meditate on the last point, creating the four qualities of the foundation: having the divine pride, thinking: ‘This is the result-time dharmakaya; this is me.’
“By meditating in this way, you prepare your mental continuum by purifying ordinary death, ordinary intermediate state, and ordinary rebirth, enabling you to actualize the path-time dharmakaya, the path-time sambhogakaya, and the path-time nirmanakaya, thus planting the seeds to achieve the result-time three bodies.
“When you just recite the words, there is of course a positive imprint left on your mind, but you are not strongly preparing your mind as you would if you were to actually meditate.
“And then on the day you die, because you have trained your mind by doing your sadhanas every day, you are able to recognize what’s happening: the twenty-five stages of dissolution, without missing any, just as you had meditated. Because your mind is well trained, you are able to apply the highest tantra methods and recognize the clear light; and during the intermediate state, and at the time of birth as well, you will be able to meditate on, visualize, the deity.
“Practicing the highest tantra path like this—using death as a quick path to enlightenment—is incredible. It is the quickest way to purify the defilements, the dualistic view.
“In other words, having prepared during the generation stage, on the basis of those realizations you then actualize the path-time dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya on the completion stage, first ceasing the intellectually acquired defilements, then the simultaneously born defilements, and finally cutting even the subtle defilements, the dualistic view, and in that moment achieving the result-time three bodies.
“This is how you can enjoy death by using the tantric path, the quickest way to achieve enlightenment.”
Receiving the empowerment from our holy lamas is the doorway to these amazing practices. We receive the incredible blessings from the present lama and all the preceding lamas in the lineage. Amazing!
Of course, there are some of the tantric practices of the kriya tantra class, for example, that we are permitted to do without having received empowerment. Nevertheless, receiving them from our lamas can only be wonderful!
Of course you didn’t understand what was going on during the one you did take because you’re not familiar with it all. But you can learn it.
It’s dealing with the level of reality that is not cognizable by the grosser levels of our conceptual mind that we mainly live with; it’s the subject matter of the subtle mind, which the arya bodhisattvas can access: the holy beings in the form of the sambhogakaya and their subtle environment. We need to learn to imagine them as a prerequisite for achieving them.
But even without understanding, if our heart is open, devoted, we will definitely receive blessings from our lamas!
So: how to prepare yourself?
By doing your preliminaries – refuge, bodhichitta, prostrations and the rest: their function is to prime our mind, to ready it to receive the empowerment, like doing pushups and other exercises to prime our body, to ready us to enter into the practice of tennis: a simple but good analogy. You go to Roger Federer and ask him to show you how to play tennis, with one look he can see you’re not ready so he sends you off to do your preliminaries.
And, crucially, cultivating your confidence that your guru is the buddha and the buddha is the guru: “union oneness” as Lama Yeshe says.
When our heart is open, then the teachings, the empowerments, the blessings, the meanings, can flood in!
What do you think?
Love,
Robina
QUESTION
Dear Robina,
In light of your and Lama Zopa’s kind teachings, I’m taking stock. When I received the earlier empowerment, we were given a copy of a 17-page sadhana. I only occasionally practiced it, but after my first year of studies, I began practicing it every day.
Over the last three years, my experience of the sadhana has changed and is changing, particularly each year after attending teachings. Last year, I received teachings on the root tantra, which has given me a glimpse of what you describe as the working of the subtle body.
I started seeing the profundity of the practice – the meaning of highest yoga tantra – if only a vague outline of it. I now perceive the deity with consort not as a monstrous being with his mistress as he first appeared to me, but as two aspects of some deep essence of purity of mind – beyond concepts. And I realize how my lama embodies the deity.
There’s so much to train my mind in. One question after another, when I try to find answers, they come to me in one way or another, but I know that the answers are only at the level of the current stage of my mind.
In terms of my original question, your and Lama Zopa’s words have pushed me one notch higher, about the meaning of empowerment by a master of direct lineage.
I need to separate the appearance of the events – all the hype, gatherings of people, preparations for rituals, teachers and senior students telling us how precious such an opportunity is… I need to look into my mind and prepare for the event so I can get the most out of it.
Now, I’m looking forward to the experience. It will be different from my first one seven years ago.
Dear Robina, I cannot thank you enough for all your guidance. I’ll attend the next available preliminaries practice as well. It will be different from the last two I have received.
Gratefully,
K
ANSWER
Yes, K, exactly: “separate the appearance of the events – all the hype… I need to look into my mind and prepare for the event so I can get the most out of it.”
Love to you, and much rejoicing!
Robina