Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Alex Berzin examines the theory and mechanics of sadhana practice within Tibetan Buddhist tantra, explaining how visualization and mantra work as tools for transformation. He begins by clarifying what “blessings” means—not magic but inspiration that uplifts and transforms our faculties through imagining we receive qualities from a Buddha. He then outlines the various vows taken at empowerment: Bodhisattva vows (all classes of tantra), tantric vows (higher classes only), and the nineteen close bonds or samaya. Berzin walks through the six-session guru yoga, a daily practice unique to the Gelug tradition that keeps these bonds alive through repeated recitation at varying lengths. He explains why tantra is speedier than sūtra—four key reasons: closer analogy to the goal, closer union of method and wisdom, special understanding of emptiness, and special consciousness. The heart of his teaching focuses on the four pillars of practice: imagining our body as a Buddha form with a specific positive self-image; living in the deity’s environment (mandala); maintaining clarity and pride of that divine identity; and using mantra to channel subtle energies. Berzin emphasizes that all these forms, faces, and arms are tools to expand awareness simultaneously across multiple details and symbols—practical training for a Buddha’s omniscience. Pitched at practitioners already engaged in or considering Anuttara Yoga tantra.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 05 SP.mp3
UUID: 9886fa12-2c62-40c0-9494-0181da3398cb
Teacher: Alex Berzin
Collection: Theory of Sadhana practice (Alex Berzin)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~6,876
Blessings again is, you know, a rather weird term. It’s not that, you know, the teacher places a magic wand on our body, speech, and mind. The word is, means a brightening what’s the word? Inspiration. The two syllables.
The first syllable is to brighten, so make things brighter about us, uplift in a sense. And the second syllable means to transform. So it’s a type of inspiration, which obviously is something that we can receive from somebody else. You get inspired to inspiration from the physical qualities of a Buddha. The physical faculties, their verbal faculties, their mental faculties.
This is what body, speech, and mind is talking about. The faculties of physical, verbal, and mental faculties. Mental and heart type of faculties as well. And by imagining that we receive the inspiration from that, that brightens us, uplifts us, and so on. This is sort of the process that takes place.
Now, so we have the Bodhisattva vows. That’s in all four classes of tantra, so any type of empowerment, Anuttara Yoga Tantra, subsequent permission, any of them, that’s part of it. Then there’s also the tantric vows. Tantric vows are taken only in the two higher classes of tantra. So it’s not in the first two classes, only in yoga and the highest yoga tantra that we have them.
Tantric vows are there are various levels, not levels, but there are two aspects of it. There’s the Tantric vows, which are in association with all the Buddha families in general, in common, and for These are to restrain from those type of actions which would seriously hamper our success. For instance, if we’re constantly putting down our spiritual teachers, they have a feeling that they don’t know what they’re talking about, they’re complete idiots, then obviously this is going to undermine our being able to have any confidence in what they teach. And if we don’t have confidence in what they teach, then how can we possibly practice it with any confidence and gain anything from it? That’s why it’s so important to have checked out that spiritual teacher beforehand very, very well for a long period of time.
You don’t go to just any spiritual teacher just because they happen to come to, our city. You know, although not that many may come through, nevertheless, we are, you know, even, here. Australia, do have many teachers who do come through, so it’s not as though you’re in some sort of desert. Even if you were in a desert, that doesn’t mean that you just snap at anything that comes along. You have to discriminate.
Do I have a connection with this teacher and so on. Is this teacher really fully qualified? Also, you don’t just take any initiation that happens to be given just because it’s being given or just because your friends are going along to it. Something that you have to check out very well beforehand. Is this something which suited to me?
Is this something which I feel is going to be the type of path that I want to go on? Something that I want to engage in, and so on. Check it out. Ask around. The tantric vows are these things that we would want to restrain from, like not putting down our teacher, once we’ve examined, once we’ve checked out, once we’ve decided and then wholeheartedly commit ourselves to this teacher, we don’t want to put them down.
tantric vows. Then there’s also what’s called the nineteen close bonds. This is the word samaya in Sanskrit. The Tibetan word is damtsig. You hear it quite a bit.
Often they don’t translate it. It’s a close bond, B O N D. It’s a type of practice which is going to bond us closely to the five Buddha families. Well, it’s fairly complex. It really isn’t the occasion to explain them, but this is something which is also going to be part of the higher classes of Tantra, specifically now the highest class in Anuttara Yoga.
There are nineteen practices like to bond us closely with the family of Ratnasambhava. There are the four types of giving. To be generous in terms of material things, giving also Dharma teachings, preventive measures to others, giving love to others, which means caring for them, not just going around hugging them, and giving protection from fearful situations. There are practices like these, you know, taking the direction from the three gems, following the three types of ethical self discipline. They’re very general categories of practice.
That’s part of tantric vows as well. It’s not really tantric vows, those are close bonds. When we have the six session yoga, this is a particular feature within the Gelugpa tradition. So although, well, what it is, it was started by the Fourth Pänchen Lama. He was the teacher of the fifth Dalai Lama.
It is a text which you recite and practice, is a commitment from any Anutra Yoga Tantric initiation. Heruka, any of these things that you might encounter in the future, this is definitely one of the commitments of it, to do the six session practice. Now, the six-session practice is a way of keeping these nineteen close bonds. Right? Because in it you recite, you know, in a Well you have to have teaching on it just to notice, to be aware of where in it you’re fulfilling each of these nineteen.
And it also fulfills a lot of other things as well of, you know, always doing mandala offerings and these sort of things. In doing it, you fulfill these nineteen. And It’s a way of being mindful. It’s not just to recite it, blah blah. You should actually feel these sort of things and actually be generous and so on.
That six-session Guru Yoga, by the way, there are various levels of extensiveness of doing it. There’s a very short version, which is only one verse, four lines. Then there’s what’s called a short version, which is about, I don’t know, maybe eight verses or so. Then there’s a longer version, which is a couple pages in which you actually also recite the Bodhisattva vows and the Tantric vows, all of them, which is very helpful for keeping mindful of them. Now, this type of practice is something which you do six times a day.
There’s a way, if you’re doing either the shortest or the abbreviated version, those first two, you just repeat it six times. It’s usually done three in the morning, three at night, although you can do it all six together or space it out six different times during the day or two, two, two, it doesn’t matter. If you’re doing the longest version, then if you are repeating it three times, let’s say in the morning, the first time is the full one and the second and third, there’s a way of abbreviating it, which again, you can be taught if you actually get involved in that. In any case, it’s not something which is a tremendous big deal. It’s not something which takes necessarily amount of time.
As I was saying, with meditation, you don’t want to make it out into, you know, like you’re doing a funeral dirge of, you know, now I arise. I mean, you fall asleep doing that. It’s is something which you should be able to do quickly. Now obviously you work yourself up to that with familiarity, but the point is to get our minds and our feelings and our emotions, things like that, to be able to work instantly. That’s what you do in terms of practice is what practice is.
Learn to practice a piano so that you can play it fluently. Likewise, learn to practice with feelings, practice with attitudes, and so on so that you can generate them instantly in any situation. Somebody falls down, instantly you have the reaction of wanting to help them, to take care of them. We have this six-session practice. It’s not necessary to do always the same length of practice each time.
Some days you don’t have time, you do the shorter ones. Other days you do have time, you do the longer one. Even within one day, you can do a longer one in the morning, a shorter one at night or vice versa. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s done. Now, this six-session practice suffices for any and every Anuttara Yoga initiation.
So it doesn’t matter if you’ve received five, ten different initiations of different deity systems. Six-session practice is only done one set of six times. It suffices for all of them. Whereas a sadhana is a method of actualizing oneself as the deity, as the Buddha formed, and that is a specific one for each practice. So we have this six-session practice.
In the other non-Gelugpa traditions, you do have the keeping of the nineteen close bonds. It’s just that you don’t have a particular ceremony for being mindful of them each day as you do in the Gelugpa tradition. You shouldn’t think they’re missing from the other ones. They’re there. Now, those are the various vows and so on that are taken as part of the empowerment.
So if you ask what is the commitment of any empowerment that you take, it would be the vows and these close bonds if it’s the highest class of tantra. Now, in addition, you see when you ask, it’s always important to know how to ask things to a Tibetan teacher. If you want to know what the recitation commitment is, then you ask, what is the recitation commitment? Ask, what is the commitment? Because obviously there’s the commitment of the vows.
Then the recitation commitment is something which each teacher will give specific to what they feel the audience is like and so on. Often it will be to do a sadhana. Now this is something which is a way of actualizing oneself as the deity. It’s a certain practice. Most often if you do it the Tibetan style, it’s to do it for rest of your life, every day.
Obviously, that’s the only reason why you want to take the empowerment, because you want to do the practice. If you want to do the practice, then you want to do the practice, so you’re going do it every day. Otherwise, why in the world are you getting into this? So there is, in the Tibetan way of doing it, you commit yourself to doing the practice each day. Now that can be a shorter or a longer version.
The long versions are for beginners. Versions are for the more advanced. People think it’s the opposite way around. It’s not that. The short versions are ways of abbreviating the longer one.
If you don’t know the long one and you don’t know what’s being abbreviated, then you can’t do the shorter one. You’re just doing some superficial thing, which is going to seem rather trivial because it only has a few things in it. Whereas if you know the longer one, then you know how to condense it into the shorter one. Can just do it with the visualization. Just do the practice rather than having to recite it.
But in any case, these are things that you build yourself up to. There are ways of getting into it. Sometimes there’s a retreat commitment. That’s not the usual Tibetan style to do it, to have to do the retreat. There’s a bit of danger in just having a, just to do the retreat of the practice and not actually to do the practice each day.
Because if you just do a retreat, a retreat would be Again, the word retreat has been used very sloppily in the West so that we’re having a one day retreat or a weekend retreat. It just means a period of time away from our ordinary activities. It’s used in a very loose sense. Whereas in the Tibetan tradition, maybe we need another word in English, there is approximation. That’s a way of one term which you approximate actually being able to do actualize yourself as the deity which is done prior to being able to actually do it.
Or there’s another term which is called to make oneself flexible with the practice, workable with it. That would involve doing a lot of mantras. Doing the practice several times a day and with that, doing the Let’s say each practice is going have several mantras. Doing them will be specified for each practice, either one hundred thousand or if Tārā, it’s a million or if it’s Avalokiteśvara, it’s six hundred thousand, saying the mantra. Now, again, this doesn’t have to take an unbelievable amount of time.
You can say them pretty quickly. It’s not to be made into an ordeal. But in any case, it’s a specific practice, very intense type of practice, is then completed with a fire puja, which is an offering of substances to be burned in a fire, which is very specific for each practice, quite complex, as a way of sort of building up purifying negativities of mistakes that one had done during this retreat and again building up more positive potential. The actual retreat involves that. Now, the problem of just doing a retreat and not doing a daily practice is that it becomes like an acid trip.
You did it one time, one event in your life, and it has totally no relation whatsoever to the rest of your life. It’s just as if you went on a long acid trip. Although it has its benefits, a retreat is something that you do only after you’re completely familiar with the practice. That’s not the time to figure out and become familiar with the practice. You’ve become familiar with it already.
Then you want to do the very intensive practice of it as an ongoing sort of thing. But a daily practice of keeping a connection now, even if it’s just doing the mantra and visualizing yourself as the deity, is important. There are also pujas. I’m jumping ahead a little bit. There’s also pujas.
A puja is a an honoring ceremony. It’s a way of I mean, that’s what it literally means. It’s not a sadhana. You shouldn’t confuse the two. puja is an honoring ceremony.
It’s a way of showing honor or respect to spiritual teachers as the Guru Puja or each specific specific deity system is gonna have its own puja as well. A way of, building up more positive potential, showing respect and honor to, what it is that we want to achieve. Okay. So we have all of that. Now I think that’s all on that topic.
Anyhow, to go on, once we’ve, received the, empowerment and we, are involved doing the practice, then it’s important to Oh yeah, there’s one other thing I wanted to say about empowerments. There are certain empowerments which are, usually it’s given from a drawn mandala on a piece of cloth, just printed. Or it can be done from a powder mandala, which is made out of powdered rock. It’s built up three dimensionally. Or it can be done from a well, there’s also a concentration mandala where it’s just out of the concentration visualization of the teacher.
That’s fairly rare. Or it can be done from a body mandala. A body mandala, by the way, is a world system, symbolic world system. So it’s the symbolic world system of the deity, you know, the whole environment that they live in, the building specifically. And there are certain practices which are done with a body mandala in which the body is generated into all these different parts of the building.
Different parts of the body are generated into different deities. That’s for being able to work more easily with the energy systems in the body. But in any case, when a practice is done like that now, are only some deity systems that have an empowerment or an initiation from a body mandala. But if there is one, like Vajrayoginī is like that, Chittamani Tārā is like that, within Heruka, there are lots of Heruka lineages. There’s one called the body mandala.
Those are given and also within the Hevajra, there’s a body mandala initiation. When those are given, they cannot be given unless you have received an initiation beforehand into a system that has the initiation from a powdered mandala or a drawn mandala. It has to be from one that has a building. Have so that you’ve actually entered into one of these buildings of one of these deity systems. Only if you’ve had that can you then receive initiation or empowerment that’s done from the body mandala.
That’s why it’s necessary before Vajrayoginī, for instance, to have had an initiation into either a Heruka. This would be not the body mandala Heruka, but the five deity one, which is the one I believe that Lama Zopa gives. There’s also Luipa, which is the more commonly practiced one. Then you have, it could be from Guhyasamāja, Yamāntaka, Kālacakra. These are your standard ones that are done in the Gelugpa tradition.
There’s that sort of procedure as well. That’s the reason for it. Now, when we’re actually involved in the practice of tantra now, the question is, well, why is it a speedier path? Why do we want to get involved with it? And what really is going on with it?
Now for this, we have to understand what we’re aiming at. What we’re aiming at is to achieve the body and mind of a Buddha. We want to do that in order to be able to benefit everyone. Causes for this are building up these two collections. Positive potential and the deep awareness.
The positive potential or merit builds up, acts as the main cause for achieving a body of a Buddha, but that has to be helped with deep awareness. Otherwise, you’re just out there doing goody goody type of things with either a martyr complex how wonderful I am that I’m doing this, or, looking down, you know, I’m gonna help you pitiful souls type of, attitude. I mean, it has to be accompanied by some deep awareness of the reality of this, you know, no big black line around me, how wonderful I am, or big black line around you, you poor slob, I’ll help you. But, you know, it has to be helped with this deep awareness. That acts as the cause for a body of a Buddha.
And for the mind of a Buddha, the main cause is, this store of deep awareness, but it has to be helped by positive potential. It’s not just an intellectual trip in school out of curiosity, figuring out what voidness is talking about. It has to be helped with positive potential, doing this to help others and so on. These are our two causes. Well, I should give the outline first.
I’m sorry. I’ve skipped ahead again. In order to understand how this is faster, how tantra is faster, I’ll speak about it from the point of view of first general tantra and then go quickly into the highest class of tantra so you have some idea of what’s involved there. Basically, it’s four points. It’s faster because they’re closer.
It’s closer according to analogies. The practice is closer. Well, I’ll explain that as we get in there. Closer analogies. The second point is that there’s a closer union of method and wisdom.
The third point is that there’s special basis of voidness, or for this absence. And the fourth point is that there’s a special consciousness that understands voidness. So now in terms of the first one, then there’s this discussion, the closer analogies. In Sūtra, the causes for the body and mind of a Buddha are these two great stores. Now, although they can bring about the body and mind of a Buddha, they’re not so similar to them.
They’re not so close. It’s a little bit close. So, you have, for instance, the discussion of the, thirty two characteristic marks of the body of a Buddha. And, for that, there is, each of them has a specific cause. So for instance, the Buddha has a very long tongue.
What’s the cause for that? The cause for that is that, when a Buddha was practicing his bodhisattva, he, or she took care of, others in the same way as a mother animal would take care of her young by licking them. So to symbolize that type of caring, concern, and love for others, a Buddha has a long tongue. Now, very nice, and these things are very interesting to study and to learn about, but it’s not so close to the result. It’s a little bit remote.
Whereas in Tantra, the cause is much closer to the result. In fact, it’s called the resultant vehicle. What you’re doing is practicing now similar to what it is that we want to achieve, similar to the result. What it is, is a little bit like a dress rehearsal. We want to be able to dance in a ballet, for instance.
To dance in a ballet, it’s necessary, of course, to learn how to dance first, obviously. You learn how to dance in terms of all the sūtra practices that’s having this direction in life, the determination to be free, heart expanding out to all others, understanding of the understanding of the absence of the fantasized, getting concentration. All these sort of things are part and parcel of learning how to dance. Then, what’s actually going to bring us to that final performance is going to be the final dress rehearsal. This is what Tantra is.
Tantra is basically doing a dress rehearsal of what it is that we want to achieve. For that, we use the imagination. Imagination is going to be the major tool that we’re going to involve ourselves with in Tantra. The imagination is very, very powerful. We can use it for many, many different things.
Now, what we do is we imagine that our body is like that of a Buddha, an enlightening being. Our environment is, you know, pure like that of a Buddha, that, we’re able to enjoy things the way that a Buddha does, and that we’re able to act in the way that a Buddha does. It’s these four things. And so to, imagine, you know, to work to I’m sorry. Imagine that we have the body of a Buddha already is this first aspect.
So that’s why we imagine that, our body is like that of one of these Buddha forms, these Buddha figures. So it’s not a body which is made out of flesh and bone and is solid and gets tired and all those sort of things. It gets sick but rather that we have a body made of clear light, it’s transparent, completely light, can go anywhere and do anything to be able to help others. Now, these Buddha forms are things which are, you know, there are many, many different aspects of them and each of them is involved with a certain type of self image. Now, you know, it talks about how we should have clarity of ourselves as a deity and then also the pride of the deity.
The pride of the deity or dignity is involving having a certain self image. It’s a feeling of being this Buddha form. Now, the mechanism behind this is that mechanism behind this is that, we all have various types of self images of our self. This is, like what I was talking before in terms of grasping for an identity. We have a self image.
And, this self image, and it’s very, helpful sometimes to sit and, you know, try to become aware of what exactly our self image of our self is. But this self image very often tends to be quite negative. You know, I’m short, fat, and ugly. Ugly. Nobody loves me.
I’m God’s gift to the world. I’m this. I’m that. The technique in Tantra is one that I like to refer to as mental judo, which is that instead of trying to repress or block this type of tendency of the mind of projecting a negative self, projecting a self image, which obviously is involved with the imagination. That’s where your self image comes from.
If that’s the tendency of the mind, then rather than blocking it, why not flip it? Flip it in the sense of if you’re going to project a self image anyway, why project a negative one? You might as well project a positive one. Excuse me. So each of these Buddha forms is involved with a different type of positive self image.
These are very, very useful self images to have of ourself. For instance, Chenrezig, or Avalokiteśvara, is a self image of being a very compassionate, sympathetic, kind, warm person. So rather than, you know, I’m shy, I can’t really help anybody, I can’t, you know, feel for anybody, I have no feelings type of thing, then, you know, no. I am somebody that, you know, I do have a warmth. I do have the ability to relate to others, to feel for others, and so on.
Mañjuśrī is the self image of having clarity of mind. You know? Of course, we can have this negative one, I’m a dummy, can’t understand anything, and then we don’t even try. If we say, No, I do have a mind. I am capable of understanding.
I do have clarity of mind, then that gives us the self confidence to be able to understand things a little bit more easily. It’s very helpful. Or vajrapani is the self image of having powerful abilities. I do have the ability to do things. Not that I’m a clumsy oaf and I can’t do anything, but that I do have abilities, I’m capable, I’m competent, and so on.
Obviously a very beneficial self image to have of ourself. A very positive one. That’s vajrapani. Then there’s Tārā, and Tārā is the self image of the vitality of life. Right?
The energy of life. Tārā is able to give that energy of life, that vitality to others in terms of healing, in terms of long life, these sort of things as opposed to no energy, just down, depressed in the dumps all the time. So that’s, you know, the whole Tārā self image. Vajrasattva is the image of, the self image of, being purified. Right?
That, I’ve gotten over my negativity. Is this sort of thing rather than one of, you know, a heavy self image of guilt. I’m the sinner. I’m no good, sort of thing. Again, very helpful self image.
You have, with the, you know, Anuttara Yoga deities, each of them also has their self image associated with them. Heruka is, for instance, the self image of being able to dissolve, becoming transparent, which is a very helpful type of image. You know, how we often tend to, you know, we’re very clumsy, we tend to bang into things, you know, of being diplomatic in any type of situation. We just, you know, go very bluntly, you know, right into it, bang your head against it, and get into a lot of trouble. Whereas this Heruka is one of being able to dissolve, just sort of transparent, fit in the space in between things.
It’s it’s very helpful. It’s the Heruka self image. There’s Vajrayoginī as the self image of being able to give joy to others, very joyful to stimulate them in the sort of way. Yamāntaka, some people pronounce it Yamāntaka. Yamāntaka is the correct pronunciation, is the self image of cut out the bullshit.
You know, we tend to really pamper baby ourselves with moods, being cranky, indulging ourselves with this or that type of, negative emotion. And, Yamāntaka is cut out the bullshit, you know, just straight up and down, stop babying yourself, just be clear, sharp, feet on the ground type of thing. It’s the forceful aspect of Mañjuśrī, of clarity of mind. Each of the the systems has a different self image, as I was saying. Guhyasamāja is one of diversity, of being able to be different things to different people in different situations.
Or Kālacakra is one of being able to handle an immense variety of things, immense complexity of things, and being able to handle it all. Nothing is too much for you. Nothing is too complex. Everything fits together. Everything is integrated.
Extremely helpful self image, particularly in our complicated Western type of lives. So each of these systems has its own self image, each of the deities. These are things which are helpful for having even a variety of them. In different situations during our day, different images can be called for. A certain time, you need to be more warm, Chenrezig.
Other times, you need clarity of mind, Mañjuśrī, and so on. Your energy is low. You need Tārā. Or others around you, the energy is low. You need Tārā to give this vitality to them.
So we have that. Yeah. Feel it. Feel it. That’s what I was saying, what meditation is all about, seeing it and feeling it.
Feeling that, well, I mean, it’s we’ll get into how you do that, you know, in terms of the process of generating ourselves as this, figure. But it’s basically to feel it. Now, the clarity of the deity, you know, ourselves as this Buddha form, is not the important thing to start with. The important thing is this feeling. Get a general rough idea of ourselves as the figure, but don’t worry about the details.
You know, that’ll come with concentration. The important thing is to feel the self image. Obviously, the deepest level, the self image of all of them, their identity is voidness and bliss, the ultimate. All these sort of things, I’ll get into what that means later. But on a conventional level, we have this sort of self image.
Now, in terms of the actual form of that deity, of this figure. It’s something which involves an awful lot of arms and faces and legs and these sort of things. We can often object as Westerners and say, Hey, what’s going on here? This is pretty weird, and why don’t we just have some Western images instead? But that’s missing the point.
What do we want to do? We want to be able to open up our minds and become omniscient. We want to be able to be aware of a great many things simultaneously. Now, with all these arms and faces and so on, it is a, first of all, each each of these features are symbolic, and they have many, many different levels of symbolism of what it’s standing for. What we want to do is to try to be aware of all of them simultaneously.
If we try to be aware of twenty four things abstractly, that’s very difficult to do. But if we can have some sort of graphic form for it, like twenty four arms, then that makes it much easier for us to be mindful of all of them at the same time, plus then be mindful of all the different levels of what they stand for. This is the reason for the multiple faces, arms, and legs. It’s not that for Indian or Tibetan people, this is normal. They don’t have nine or eleven heads, just as we don’t have eleven heads, but it is a way of opening up the lens of the mind, like a lens of a camera, so that it can be aware of more and more things simultaneously.
Yeah? Is that a question? Just holding your hand. So these are, that’s the reason for all these, arms and legs, different colors of the deities and so on also are symbolic. So it’s a way of being aware of many things at the same time.
To, imagine ourselves as a deity is, again, not that difficult to do. Or, to have all these, arms and faces is not so difficult to do. It’s a matter of, first of all, you want to be aware. Let’s say if we’re trying to imagine that we have four faces around our head, first of all, try to be aware of your face, what your face looks like. Now that’s not so easy to be aware of what our face looks like, but we could at least be aware of the fact that we have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
Well, just as we have two eyes, you can imagine you have three eyes as well. I mean, that’s not so difficult. But in any case, we can be aware of the face on the front of our head. Try that. You can be aware of the face on the front of your head, can’t you?
Now, you can also be aware of the back of your head and the two sides of your head. Just as you have a face on the front of your head, you can also imagine you have a face on the back and the two sides. Difficult, is it? Now, just as we’re aware of our head, we can also be aware of that we have a body. We can be aware of our arms and legs.
We can be aware of our hands and our feet, our fingers and toes. A visualization of our self as a deity is one of being aware of all the parts of our body. Now, with multiple arms, that’s not so difficult either. It’s like a time exposure picture. You could have two hands in front of you, then two more to the side, two more to the side, and so on.
Like in a time exposure picture, you can be aware of having all those arms like that, can’t you? It’s not so difficult. There’s a great benefit. Even though we’re not being aware, let’s say, of our actual physical body like this, but a visualized one, there are many benefits to this of a total body awareness. Because again, we tend to be so out of tune with our body, out of tune with the totality of our body, but by being aware of head, arms, legs, body, all these sort of things, it helps us very much to be more in tune with a harmonious integration of body, speech, and mind.
All these sort of things. It’s very beneficial. Again, you shouldn’t get put off with all the jewelry and all the doodahs that these deities have all over them. Because again, the more detail that you have, the more things that your mind is aware of simultaneously. It’s to sharpen the mind to get things more and more in focus through the vehicle of the imagination so that we can open the lens of our mind more and more.
Right. That’s exactly the point. So that as a Buddha or someone working towards becoming a Buddha, the point of wanting to expand our minds like this is expanding our heart as well so that you can be involved in helping thousands and thousands and thousands of others, and it’s not too much. And you can stay mindful of all their conditions, all their situations, all the details of their lives, what they need, and so on. It’s obviously a skill that is essential for being able to help large numbers of people.
It’s not just being simultaneously aware of the names of all the insects in the world. It’s a helpful skill integrated with our body and to feel a certain positive self image that we can use about ourselves in terms of our working with others. It’s a very practical thing. Even if you’re not doing a big detailed practice, just to imagine ourselves as the deity is very helpful and to do the mantra. Now, a mantra is again a type of mental judo.
We tend to have an awful lot of verbal energy in our minds. And so, you know, during the day we’re constantly chattering to ourself, you know, like a radio commentary. Oh, that’s a good looking ugly one. Let’s do this. What should I do now?
We just go on and on talking. Or we sing songs all day long. Or even worse, we could be repeating advertising jingles in our mind. Then you become really like a cricket. You have no control.
It just goes off in your head, to use this kind of soap suds or that type of, detergent. Now, it’s a type of mental judo. So it’s saying that instead of trying to block that energy, which is very difficult to do, flip it. To have it be in a more constructive, positive type of way of doing a mantra. Now, a mantra will have many advantages to it.
It’s a way of staying mindful of the self image of the particular deity that you’re doing. Each one is associated with a particular Buddha figure and it’s a way of staying mindful with that. It’s more than that. It also has a certain vibrational quality to it, which is helpful. Either very sharp vibration for clarity of mind or a smoother one, a more even one, and so on.
Many different qualities of that. That’s why you certainly wouldn’t want to translate. I mean, you can translate mantras, but you wouldn’t want to recite the translation of the mantra. It’s kept in the Sanskrit and the original for the vibrational quality of it. Also, there’s a much deeper purpose for it.
What we want to do is work with the subtle energies and so on of the body. We’ll get into that a little bit later. Channelize them, centralize them, get some sort of handle on it. The way that you can get a handle on the energy of the body is through the breath. Breath is associated with the energy.
You’re breathing very quickly or in a very uneven way. The energy is affected with that. The way to shape the breath is through mantras. If you can shape the breath through the mantra, that gives you a handle for being able to shape the energy in the body and eventually be able to channelize and control that energy to be able to get down to more and more subtle levels so that we can use these more subtle levels for gaining the insight into reality more easily, more readily. So there are many very profound purposes for mantras.
It’s not that we’re all witches and wizards reciting magic formulas. It’s not like that at all. Not dealing with magic here. Okay. So we have, Buddha form and, the, mantra.
All of this is involved in having, you know, imagining ourselves as having the body of a deity. And that will act as a much quicker cause. It’s like a dress rehearsal for actually being able to achieve that. It’s done through the imagination. Then we also imagine that we are living in the environment of a Buddha, of an enlightened being.
I’m just waiting for him to turn over his tea. We imagine that we live in the environment of an enlightened being or a mandala. A mandala is basically the residence of this meditational figure. It’s the house that they live in. It’s a three-dimensional palace.
What we see as a two dimensional drawing, as a painting of a mandala, is just exactly that. It’s an architect’s blueprint. It’s a two dimensional representation of a three-dimensional building. When you learn how to be able to read it, then you can read all the architectural the dimensions, and so on from the blueprint. You have the floor plan, then you slice the walls down in the corners, lay the walls out flat, and then you have the archways and doorways laid out flat beyond that.
Sort of various parts are superimposed. But it’s, as I say, an architect’s blueprint. Nobody, a visualizer, works with a two dimensional thing. It’s always a three-dimensional thing. We imagine that we are inside this building.
Now again, that’s not so difficult to do. You can be aware that we’re in a room here, can’t you? That there’s a wall in front of you and to the sides and a wall behind you. You don’t have to actually see it, do you? It’s just a feeling that there’s walls around you.
So, like that, it is possible to be aware of and to visualize and work with being inside a building and having it all around you. Now, in that building, there’s going to be a great many very detailed architectural features. Really detailed, everything’s specified. All of that as well is symbolic. Each little part has many levels of meaning.
And again, it’s within this general framework of opening up the mind to be aware of more and more things.