How do I become a Tantric Deity? ~ Highest Yoga Tantra self-generation practice

People are just getting back from this year’s International Kadampa Summer Festival, where a bumper crowd of 3,500 received the Highest Yoga Tantra empowerments of Heruka and Vajrayogini from the NKT’s new General Spiritual Director, Gen-la Jampa.

The essence of transforming ourselves into a Buddha is so-called “self-generation practice”, where, effectively, we change our basis of identification or imputation from something ordinary to something enlightened, So I thought I’d share some comments about this while we’re still in the zone.

In Buddha’s teachings we’re encouraged to change our self-perception or self-image from our very first breathing meditation, basing it first on the peaceful, limitless potential of our Buddha nature as opposed to the “troublemakers” (as Geshe-la called them) of our delusions:

While acknowledging that we have delusions, we should not identify with them, thinking ‘I am a selfish, worthless person’ or ‘I am an angry person.’ Instead, we should identify with our pure potential and develop the wisdom and courage to overcome our delusions. ~ How to Transform Your Life

In the more advanced practice of Tantra, we change our self-perception to the final result of our spiritual practice, full enlightenment – so this initial identification with our Buddha nature is just the start. On this legitimate foundation we can build positive, wise states of mind, all the stages of the path to enlightenment of both Sutra and Tantra, culminating in the bliss and emptiness of Guru Heruka and Vajrayogini. And throughout this training we are gradually identifying with each of these growing good qualities as opposed to our suffering and delusions.

For example, if we experience some patience, we don’t think “I am an angry person but I somehow managed to keep it together this time” so much as “I am a patient person who sometimes struggles with anger.” We impute ourselves on the valid basis of our patience. If we develop renunciation, we don’t think “I am an inherently neurotic being but I yearn for freedom!” so much as “I am a fortunate one bound for liberation.” We impute ourselves on the valid basis of our renunciation.

If from the get-go of our Dharma practice we get into the habit of changing our sense of self based on our growing good qualities, our Tantric self-generation will seem quite natural and easy. If not, it may feel a bit abrupt, perhaps even weird, to switch from an ordinary meaty person into a blissful enlightened Buddha made of light!

Building upon this

In Tantra, our ever-improving sense of self is taken to a transcendent new level: we generate ourselves as a fully enlightened being in dependence upon the correctly imagined mind and body of a Tantric Deity that arises from wisdom. Modern Buddhism says that practitioners

learn to perceive their body and mind as Heruka’s body and mind. Having accomplished this, they then use their imagined Heruka’s body and mind as the basis of imputation for their ‘I’ or ‘self’ and develop the thought ‘I am Buddha Heruka.’

We don’t postpone the results of our spiritual practice by thinking that we’re inherently ordinary and enlightenment is inherently pure, such that the twain shall never meet, or at least not for a few lifetimes or countless great aeons. We don’t wait until later – we’ll never get anywhere that way. Instead we do what’s called “bringing the result into the path:”

Tantra is characterized by bringing the result into the path, that is, identifying with the result of our training right now as a method for accomplishing that result more swiftly. ~ Great Treasury of Merit

Tantric sadhana

“Sadhana” means method of accomplishing (the Deity), and in a Tantric sadhana we dissolve our Guru into our heart-mind to experience blessings and bliss. The only way to omniscience is through omniscience – we cannot practice Tantra without a Spiritual Guide whom we consider to be enlightened.

Then we dissolve our ordinary identity into its emptiness, for example by searching for the self we normally see and failing to find it. Apprehending the mere absence of our self, we mix this emptiness with the bliss, and identify, or impute, our “I” on this valid basis of imputation: “This is me, I am the Truth Body of Vajrayogini.” Then, both in and out of meditation sessions, we become more and more used to this new sense of self until it sticks and we’re an actual Buddha.

Geshe-la explains in Modern Buddhism that this new Deity identity is not a mistaken view because it arises from the wisdom realizing that the inherently existent I does not exist anyway . We are not fixed at all, but depend upon our thoughts, our sense of who we are if you like. Outside of our sense of who we are, we cannot find our self – try finding yourself outside of your sense of self, can you?! Self, me, or I is just an imputation or label; and this means that we’re free to improve our self by labelling our I on increasingly positive states of mind.

In other words, given that we’re already pretty much not other than who we think we are, we can now harness that knowledge to our advantage and start to be more proactive in changing into the person we’d like to be.

It’s obvious, really – before we can become a Buddha, we must completely dismantle our ordinary ego. We meditate deeply and many times on emptiness, realizing that our current identity, physical body, environment, and problems do not exist inherently.

As Geshe-la explains in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra, at the moment we incorrectly identify ourselves as the self we normally see, the one that can be found within the body and mind. However, the correct way to identify ourselves is as mere appearance not other than the emptiness of all phenomena. That appearance does not exist from its own side, it comes from subjective mind; meaning that if our mind is blissful, so naturally are its appearances, because everything is the nature of mind.

Milarepa said:

“You should know that all appearances are the nature of mind, and mind is the nature of emptiness.”

Because our world, our self, our enjoyments, and our activities are the nature of our mind, when our mind is impure they are impure, and when our mind becomes pure … they become pure.” ~ Modern Buddhism

Remind me why we’re doing this?!

I was about to walk in front of a car today in the mistaken notion that the traffic would be coming from the opposite direction; but a stranger on a bicycle yelled at me in time. (I love him!) At some point in the not too distant future, all the minds + appearances of this life will dissolve away forever in the few hours or minutes it takes for us to die. This is inevitable, and none of this is coming back. The problem is, we’ll then take rebirth in a new contaminated body and world, with the next installment of impure samsaric minds + appearances giving rise to yet more horror and pain.

In Tantric self-generation practice, we imagine strongly that we are going through the death process right now, but that this time we are controlling this so that the appearances are dissolving into the clear light of bliss of our Guru’s mind mixed with ours. From that mind, only pure, blissful appearances can arise.

Before we embark on self-generation, it’s a good idea to contemplate impermanence – the fact that, like it or not, we are going to be dying soon anyway, the door slamming shut forever on all the things we know of this life. But this time, rather than an ordinary death leading to an ordinary rebirth, we are transforming this process so that we never have to come back to the realms of samsara. We need to recall renunciation and compassion, believing that we are about to leave the ordinary, self-limited lives of samsara forever and travel to the Pure Land of the Dakinis.

Bringing death into the path of the Truth Body

If we’re practicing the first bringing a little more extensively, we can spend some time dissolving all the minds and appearances of this life into the clear light of bliss, like this for example:

All worlds and their beings melt into light, which then dissolves into me. My body gradually melts into light simultaneously from below and above, gradually becoming smaller and smaller until it dissolves into the blue letter HUM at my heart. The letter HUM then gradually dissolves from the bottom up into the nada. Finally, even the nada disappears, dissolving into clear light emptiness. ~ Clear Light of Bliss

(We can also do all this while experiencing the same signs of our usual death process, such as the mirage like appearance etc, which you can read about in Clear Light of Bliss). We experience our mind as endless, open, spacious clear light, simulating the experience of the clear light of death.

Our very subtle mind of clear light mixed with our Guru’s mind perceives only emptiness, and we recognize this emptiness as the mere absence of all the things we normally see. We impute “I” or “me” on this union of great bliss and emptiness as our main basis of imputation – the Truth Body or Dharmakaya of the Deity – and feel very happy. We’ve made it!

I experience the clear light of death, which in nature is great bliss. My mind, the clear light of bliss, becomes inseparably one with emptiness, the mere absence of all the things that I normally see. I perceive nothing other than emptiness, ultimate truth. I am Truth Body Heruka. ~ Essence of Vajrayana

At this point, we’re never going back to samsara! It’s as if we’ve switched channels from samsara to Keajra – what could possibly tempt us to switch back? There’s nothing on the samsara channel! Only endless reruns, utterly tedious, frustrating, dissatisfying, and painful.

Start where we are

Within that Dharmakaya, we possess all the good qualities of enlightenment, such as patience, bodhichitta, faith, and so on. These are also all our basis of imputation, and represented by the features of our Deity body. In fact, we only arise as the Form Body of Heruka or Vajrayogini – like the empty sky now appearing as blue – because we have compassion for all beings and want to appear in a form they can see and relate to. That’s what the second and third bringings are for.

With this in mind, including in daily life, whenever a positive mind arises we can also skillfully use this as our basis of imputation (as explained in this article, Practicing Tantra is not as hard as you may think.) As with Sutra explained above, we can start where we are, but now basing our enlightened sense of self on any familiar happy mind and/or genuinely virtuous experience. For example, let’s say you generate some renunciation, you can take this as your basis of imputation and think, “I am Vajrayogini, the very embodiment of renunciation (represented by my curved knife).” Same for bodhichitta, feeling the Spiritual Guide in our heart, compassion for someone, or anything else — whatever we love about Dharma, we can start there, using it as our basis for the divine pride, “This is me; I am Vajrayogini.”

Transforming enjoyments

By the way, we do something similar when transforming enjoyments, too. The pleasure from this cool breeze on a hot day is reminding me that the breeze doesn’t exist from its own side and the bliss is actually coming from my own mind. I am reminded of the union of great bliss and emptiness, upon which I impute “I am Guru Vajrayogini (enjoying this breeze for the benefit of all beings).”

Shimmying up a chimney

It’s a bit like shimmying up a chimney, if you’ve ever done that, which I haven’t. Generating a peaceful mind, we place our left foot a little way up the chimney. Then we identify with that experience – “I am a peaceful person” – and move our right foot up. From that foothold, we generate, say, a mind of love, moving our left foot higher. Identifying with that – “I am a loving person” – is the basis for moving the right foot higher. In this way, experience and identity reinforce each other in a virtuous cycle, taking us all the way to generating great bliss and emptiness and identifying with that: “This is me, Truth Body Vajrayogini. Very blissful.”

This is, as Geshe-la says, “the scientific method to attain enlightenment very quickly” = it won’t take long to become Vajrayogini if we follow this enlightened psychology.

That’s probably enough for now. Please enjoy these lovely Festival photos, all courtesy of Jules Bryant.