Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute talk recorded in 1987, scholar and translator Alex Berzin explains the theoretical underpinnings of tantra practice, particularly Anuttarayoga Tantra, the highest class. He begins with levels of consciousness, from gross visual awareness down to the subtlest, and parallels these with levels of the body—gross flesh and bones versus subtle energy channels and winds. The core teaching concerns how tantra achieves rapid enlightenment by bringing method and wisdom together, not in imagination only but as a unified practice working with subtle energy. He walks through the structure of deity yoga on the generation stage (imaginative practice) and the complete stage (working directly with subtle energies), showing how both mirror the process of death, bardo, and rebirth, which tantra aims to transform. A key advantage of using the subtlest consciousness to realize emptiness is that it automatically bypasses conceptual obscurations and disturbing attitudes, radically shortening the path. He addresses misconceptions about couples in tantra, explaining they symbolize method-wisdom union, not gender roles. Berzin also clarifies three traditions—Maha Yoga, Anu Yoga, and Dzogchen—as emphases within the same system, and outlines why intensive retreat is structured for three years and three phases of a moon. For practitioners with prior Buddhist study.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 07 SP.mp3
UUID: 903f5222-e945-447d-92fb-800c2198fab9
Teacher: Alex Berzin
Collection: Theory of Sadhana practice (Alex Berzin)
Date: 1987 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 44.9 minutes
Words: ~7,001
I use the example of, how I can be aware of you with, visual consciousness. I can see you. That’s gross. I can, think about you. That’s even more subtle.
I can dream about you. That’s subtle again. I can be asleep with no dreams. That’s more subtle. I can be unconscious.
That’s more subtle. I can be under an anesthesia. That’s even more subtle. I can be in a coma. That’s even more subtle.
So, like that, we have more and more subtle levels of consciousness. And we can get down to the subtlest level. And the subtlest level is that level of merely things arising and some engagement with them. Just merely clarity and awareness. I discussed those terms on Friday.
It’s just like the radio being on. The other levels are like the radio being on a station or with some volume. It’s just what’s providing the continuity which would allow us, for instance, to hear the alarm clock when we’re asleep. If the mind is off completely, you couldn’t hear the alarm clock. It has to be some minimum level that’s still going.
Now, with the body, the gross level of the body is the body of flesh and bones. The subtle level is the subtler energy systems that we can’t see. The systems of the chakras and the channels, the winds, also the acupuncture type of systems. There are many different levels of it. The subtlest level is, well, we can get to that in terms of how the gross level is the support for the gross consciousness.
Your eye consciousness is supported by the eyes and so on of the body, the gross body. The mental consciousness, our moods, and so on, conceptual things, are supported by the energy system. When the energy system is going haywire, we’re nervous, we’re upset, anxious, then that produces corresponding types of thoughts feelings and moods. On the subtlest level then, we’re talking about some sort of very subtle energy. It’s called wind or energy.
It’s energy wind, which is the support for the radio being on. So that would be like the electricity or something like that. It’s just the force that’s maintaining it. Now, in the different we can be aware of voidness with different levels of consciousness. Although the voidness itself, the absence of the fantasized ways of existing, is the same, nevertheless you can look at it or focus on it with different levels of consciousness.
What we are using in general tantra, meaning the first three classes, is the same as in Sūtra. So we’re just focusing on it primarily here with mental consciousness, the subtle level, either conceptual or non-conceptual. There’s no difference there. To review, if we speak about Tantra in general, Tantra in general is quicker than Sūtra because we are causes which are much closer to the result of what we want to achieve. So they’re closer analogies in terms of we’re imagining that we have the body of a Buddha, the environment, the way that we enjoy things, our activity, the way that we influence influence others is like that of a Buddha. By using, this body of a Buddha as a method, you know, for achieving, the body of a Buddha, this body of, this Buddha form as the method, then we’re able to get method and wisdom in one package that we’ll be able to get the body and mind of a Buddha more quickly together in one package because we’re able to focus on voidness and then within that aim it at the body of a deity and focus on the voidness of that body of the deity.
Also, that taking the body of the deity as the basis for voidness, it has many special features because it doesn’t have any discordant, deceptive appearance because we’ve already understood its voidness when we first started to focus on it. We already understand it has no black lines around it. And it’s something which is not decaying and changing in a gross way so that it forms a more stable object to always go back on. We see it only in our mind’s eye, so it’s more obvious doesn’t exist as something solid and concrete. But the level of consciousness that we’re using to focus on it is the same as its sūtra.
So that summarizes what’s going on in tantra in general. Follow that so far? Mhmm. Right. The method is to imagine that, we have arisen in the form of the body of one of these deities.
By seeing that, you know, there’s an absence of fantasized ways of existing. Looking at the Remember we were talking about the absence of the cup from the table or the absence of monsters from the room. You focus on the absence, not the absence of the body, but the absence of its fantasized ways of existing. The absence of monsters. When we’re doing just ordinary sūtra techniques, you can just focus on that absence.
That’s all that we’re capable of. You can’t see the body at the same time. Although you can’t see the body at the same time, that doesn’t mean that the body’s not there. The example Khensur Rinpoche used to use is if somebody walks by the window here and you see their head walking by, that doesn’t mean that only their head is walking by. Obviously, the rest of their body is walking by also.
He always used to use very amusing examples. It’s just that we are incapable from our perspective, being inside this body and being inside the room and limited. We are limited in terms of what we can see. We can only see the head going by. So that’s what we focus on.
So likewise, as limited beings with limited minds, all we can focus on is the absence of, let’s say, the body existing as monsters. You can’t focus on the body at the same time. To have it like that. But within that absence, so what’s happening is you focus on this absence. When you focus on that absence, you don’t have the appearance of your ordinary body anymore.
You’re not focusing on that. That’s not appearing. Right. Oh, the nobody exists in a fantasized way. You don’t exist with a black line around you.
Right? It didn’t it never existed. It’s never been the case. And so what we’re doing is imagine like there were never monsters in the room. So you’re just focusing on the absence of something which was absent all the time.
It’s not that you’re removing something. You focus on the absence of the black lines. The black lines aren’t there, so all you can focus is on that absence. The regular body is not appearing at that time. Now staying within the context of that absence, now you aim that at having the body of a deity and understanding the absence of it existing with a black line around it.
Now for the highest class of tantra, again, we only have an hour left, so go through this a little bit quickly. For that, again, can cover the same four points. It’s speedier because of closer analogies and because of a closer union of method and wisdom and a special basis for voidness and a special consciousness that’s used for understanding voidness. Now, the analogy here is not only going upwards towards what it is that we want to achieve, but also we have an analogy going downwards with what it is that we’re trying to purify. Purify in the sense of end something, make something stop.
What it is that we’re working with here is uncontrollably recurring death, bardo, that’s the in between state, and rebirth. This happening under the influence of our disturbing attitudes, impulses, and so on, which just gets us into more uncontrollably recurring problems. Now, the way in which that occurs is that when we die, as I was explaining on Friday, we go down to the subtlest level. It’s called the clear light. Down to that.
Then we get a little bit more gross. That’s with the Bardo. That’s the in between state. Then we get even grosser, back to the regular level, in terms of rebirth, when you can be seen by ordinary other people. The structure of that is going down to the subtlest, getting a little bit grosser, and then more gross than that.
It’s the same thing as when we go to sleep. We go down to the subtlest, then you get a little bit grosser with dreams, and then back to more normal gross with waking up. Okay, that’s our structure. Then the same structure is going to be true in terms of achieving the various bodies of Bodies, again, is not the best word. Corpus is a little bit better, although that’s not a very nice word in English.
But a corpus is referring to a collection of things. And so we have the dharmakaya is the, corpus, of, omniscient mind of a Buddha that encompasses everything. Alright? So it’s, the, corpus that encompasses everything that’s the omniscient mind and also the void nature of that omniscient mind. Now to get down to that omniscient mind, the dharmakaya, that corpus that encompasses everything, we have to get down to the subtlest level because it’s that subtlest level which has the capability of encompassing everything.
So we get down to that subtlest level. Then, sambhogakaya is a corpus of enlightening forms which can make full use. It’s a corpus of full use. It’s a whole collection of bodies, not just one body, which can make full use of the Mahāyāna. Mahāyāna teachings, always teaching Mahāyāna to a circle of ārya bodhisattvas appearing like that in pure realms and teaching like that until the end of saṃsāra of everybody’s uncontrollably recurring existence and it appears in a form which has all the major and minor marks of a Buddha.
It has these five certain features. But in any case, it’s a corpus that makes full use, a whole set of bodies. These are subtle. Gone down to the subtlest. These are a little bit gross, but they can only be seen by highly realized bodhisattvas.
Then that is going to have emanations, which are called corpus of emanations. That’s nirmanakaya. Again, that’s going be a whole bunch of bodies, so a corpus, a collection of them, are going to be grosser and which could be seen by ordinary beings who have the connection to be able to see them. So either an emanation as supreme emanation, which would be like Buddha Śākyamūni, somebody who starts a universal Buddhist religion, and that person as well is gonna have these specific characteristic marks of Buddha. Or it could be as an artist.
There’s certain emanations like a master musician and so on that a Buddha will take in order to, you know, tame or work with specific types of beings. And then there’s just an emanation as a personage, such as as the Dalai Lama or any of the other great masters of the past. So there’s these three different types of corpus of emanations, these emanation bodies. Now, that’s even grosser. What we have is the same structure.
We have going down to the subtlest level, getting a little bit gross, and even grosser with Nirmānakāya. What we want to do then is follow some sort of path that is going to be closer analogous to both of them. The same type of process. In other words, how are we going to arise as a deity? We’re going to arise as a deity by going down to that subtlest level.
Remember, all we had so far was that we have the body of a deity, which is similar to that of a Buddha. So we go down to the subtlest level. That’s to the subtlest consciousness, the clear light, of course, with the understanding of voidness because that’s the general context within which we arise as a deity. But we go down to that subtlest level. And then what we’re going to do is arise out of this subtlest energy of our body.
We’re going to arise in a subtle form that’s called the illusory body. So that’s going to be similar to arising in a dream body or in the body or as sambhogakaya. Then, that is going to emanate or go back, actually. Then, we’re going to have an emanation body that it’ll go back into, which will be a grosser form. In Anuttarayoga Tantra, the highest class of Tantra, we have two stages of practice.
We have what’s called the generation stage, sometimes called development stage, generation is better, in which we generate ourselves as this deity in our imagination. It’s the stage of imagination. Then we have the complete stage. Sometimes that’s called completion stage, but that’s also not so accurate. It’s complete in the sense that it’s not that you’re completing something.
It’s complete in that everything is now complete so that we can generate ourselves in the form of this deity, not just in our imagination, but out of the subtle energies of the body. We can do it for real. Actually make it happen like a rising dream body. It’s By the way, when you were asking about the Maha Anu and Ati Yoga, those are three divisions which cover the same material which are in this Anuttara Yoga system. So if it’s a Maha Yoga practice, all of those three practices are going to include all three of them.
Each of them includes all three. It’s a matter of what has the most emphasis. So in the Maha Yoga practice, it puts the emphasis on the generation stage, although it also has the complete stage practices. In the Anu Yoga, it puts the emphasis on the practices with the subtle energy system as part of the complete stage practice. The other ones will have that.
It’ll have a practice with imagination, have a Dzogchen practice as well, which is the Ati Yoga. But its main emphasis is on the work with the channels and the energies. Ati Yoga is another name for Dzogchen. Dzogchen is the completeness, which is a particular method of meditating on that subtlest clear light level. Once you’ve got worked with the energy systems, because the point of working with the energy systems is to get down to the subtlest level.
So the Ati Yoga will be that practice which puts the emphasis on that, you know, second half aspect of the complete stage. So it’s, you know, just a matter of emphasis what’s going on there. Now, in structure then, what we’re talking about on the complete stage and I’m sorry if this is going fairly quickly. But, on the complete stage, what you wanna do is you work with the energy subtle energy systems, in order to get down to the subtlest level. Alright?
When you get down to that subtlest level, that’s like going down to you know, it’s going to the clear light. That’s analogous to going down to the clear light of death or going down to the clear light of sleep or going upwards. It’s analogous to going down to dharmakaya. Then, when you arise from that, you’re going to arise in a slightly subtle form, more gross than the clear light. So analogous to downwards arising in the dream or in the bardo or upwards in Sambhogakāya, we arise in illusory body.
That’s making a body out of the subtle energy system the subtlest energy, rather. Then, analogous to waking up or being reborn or appearing in a nirmanakaya, an emanation form, we would arise then in what’s also called an emanation body on the complete stage, which would be a form which people, more ordinary people, can see us or relate to us. Is the technique. Now, that’s on the complete stage where it’s actually happening with the energy system. Generation stage is done in imagination.
So what you’re doing, this is what you do in the sadhana, that you imagine in your imagination that you have all the appearances and so on that go down towards the clear light of death. You imagine something similar to that with the understanding of voidness, etcetera. Then we arise in a slightly gross form, which would be as a seed syllable or as a more simple deity, or as a dot, a drop. There are many different ways in which it’s done. Then we arise in the full form of the deity.
All of this now is analogous. There’s analogies all along. On the generation stage, it’s done with imagination. Go down to the subtlest. It’s getting down to clear light.
It’s sort of how are we going to arise as the deity? It’s not just everything is void within the context of voidness. I arise as the deity. It’s I go down to the subtlest level. So all the visualizations that are involved with that, you imagine that you’re on the subtlest level.
Then with the understanding of the absence of the black lines and so on, then within that context, we arise as a subtle form, so like a seed syllable, and then as a grosser form, the full body of the deity. That’s going to be analogous to what we’re the whole process of death, bardo, and rebirth, and what we’re wanting to achieve. It’s going in the same type of movement of energy. We’re doing these mental judo. We’re flipping the energy, taking the way the energy normally flows and flipping it to do it in a more pure way.
Right? Purifying it and then having it happen in a pure way like in achieving the state of a Buddha. Follow that? That’s the main thing of what’s going on in the Anuttarayoga Sadhana. In addition to all the features that we’ve spoken about before, there’s a whole complex thing of how you actually arise as the deity which is going to be similar to death, bardo, and rebirth which is what we want to purify and similar to what we want to achieve, achieving dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya.
It’s quite profound. It’s very profound, actually. Where are we? For method and wisdom, being closer together, we wanted method and wisdom to be together in one package. Now, we can put two things together in one package, which normally aren’t in one package.
Right? You put an apple and an orange in a package, and they come together in one package, but normally they’re not there. Focusing on the form of a deity and focusing on the voidness of that Buddha form, they’re not normally together in one package. We put them together in one package. But if we can, as the two things that are going to provide the causes for the body and mind of a Buddha.
Now, put together in one if we could focus on something which already was in one package to start with, which naturally came together in one package, then we would have something much closer to the results. So what we’re focusing on here is like two sides of a coin. We’re going to have the mind of a Buddha is going to be made out of the, understanding of voidness with the subtlest level of consciousness. Alright? And the body of a Buddha, what we’re going to do is make it out of the subtlest energy.
Alright? The subtlest energy is the electricity for the radio being on. It comes in one package. It’s two sides of the same coin. Right?
So if out of that subtlest consciousness, we can make the mind of a Buddha, and out of that subtlest energy, make the body of the Buddha. Then we’re working with something that order already is together, you know, in one package all the time. It’s two sides of the same coin. And that way, we’ll have method and wisdom much closer together. Follow that?
Yes? Now making the body of a a Buddha out of the subtlest energy is not the only method which is used in the Anuttara Yoga. There’s also a further method which is used. And the method here is you always hear about it in terms of inseparable voidness and bliss. That’s the usual expression.
Now, inseparable voidness and bliss, what’s that talking about? We’re talking about blissful awareness. Bliss is not just bliss. It’s a blissful awareness. Voidness, we’re talking about the awareness of voidness, of the absence of fantasized ways of existing.
Now, it’s like you want to shoot an arrow into a target. We want to get the understanding of voidness. Now, we can have a lot of different arrows that we can shoot into it. Which arrow are we going to shoot? Ah, here’s the arrow called a blissful awareness.
If I use that as the arrow for gaining the understanding of voidness, then I have what would be called inseparable voidness and bliss. It’s we’re using one to be the other. We’re using a blissful awareness as the type of mind which is going to be aware of voidness. That’s what it means when it says it’s inseparable. Blissful awareness is a type of awareness that we’re using for voidness.
Now, what is the advantage of this? Why would we want to do that? We would want to do that because a blissful awareness is something which is very, very intense. Your mind isn’t wandering all over the place when you’re having a blissful type of awareness. It’s more intense, and it tends to be more non conceptual and to be more subtle.
See, because what we’re aiming for is this subtlest level of consciousness, the laser beam type of mind. By using a blissful awareness to get the understanding of voidness, it’s tending down to being more non conceptual, more intense, and more subtle. So that’s its advantage why you want to have that. So this is an additional closer together of having method and wisdom in one package. Alright?
Now, by the way, this is what’s symbolized by having a couple. In Anuttara Yoga, you always have couples. Or you always have couples, but often you have couples. With these couples, you shouldn’t get hung up with our ordinary body and our ordinary sex role or gender. We’re not talking at all about the union of male female energy.
That’s a Western trip which has been copped on to these Tibetan things. It’s not there. What it’s talking about is, of all, we are both. We are both members of the couple. It’s not that we’re one and you have to have all these problems of, well, I’m ordinary male or ordinarily I’m female and how can I identify with one or the other in this couple?
We’re both. So there’s no problem with that. That’s an irrelevant problem. We’re trying to do is do what is symbolized by this. What’s symbolized is the union of method and wisdom here.
Blissful awareness being the awareness of voidness, the body and the mind of a deity. These sort of things with a blissful awareness, which is what is symbolized by this couple being together like that. This principle of being the couple is something which is not only true with the couple, but in the mandala, in the building, there’s going to be, in some of the deity systems, several other deities as well. We are all of them. It’s not that you’re just the central couple.
You’re all of them. Not only are you all of them, we are the building as well. We’re everything. So it’s an awareness of many, many parts, like where our arms and legs and head and mind and feelings and all these other things. So it’s an awareness of the whole thing.
So we can save ourselves an awful lot of grief and trouble if we realize that from the beginning, that it’s not we’re one gender or another gender. We’re a couple. Besides, we want to get rid of these fantasized ways of existing with which I put a big black line around my gender. Am a man or I am a woman, which, likewise, you you can get into very heavy trips, either macho type of trips or feminist type of trips of, you know, feeling very hostile towards the other sex and, you know, This is the most important thing in the world is what gender you are, which when we think in terms of rebirth, obviously we’ve been both sexes an infinite number of times, that really it’s not so crucial what gender we are at this moment. In terms of the tantric teachings, in many of the Anutra Yoga texts, it says very explicitly that one can achieve enlightenment either as a male or a female.
There’s no difference there. You have male and female meditational deities. You have all sorts of practices. There’s no problem here. So again, let’s not get hung up by that.
That’s the closer method and wisdom. Then, the special basis for voidness here, we’re not only using an imagined body of a deity. We’re using the body of a deity which is made out of the subtlest energy. That’s even more special because that subtlest energy is with the subtlest consciousness which is present in every moment. It’s sort of like the radio being on underneath.
This is something which is always available. We can always focus on it. It’s always there. That that makes it an easier basis, even more stable basis for voidness. The point which is really the distinguishing feature of why Anuttarayoga Tantra is so speedy because with the first three classes of Tantra, they say that with Tantra they say you can achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, not just you don’t have to wait three zillion eons.
The whole point of getting into Tantra is that we can’t wait three zillion eons. It’s going to take too long and other people, their problems are too pressing. We can’t say, Well, tough luck. See you in three zillion. We need to do it more quickly.
The first three classes, we can achieve enlightenment with one lifetime, but the way that it’s done is by extending our lifetime and so in the course of a very, very long lifetime you can achieve enlightenment. However, with Anuttara Yoga, it’s possible to achieve enlightenment within one and even within a period of three years and three phases of the moon. Now, don’t count on it happening. That period of time is chosen as an auspicious period of time. You have in the Kālacakra Tantra teachings, the clear Tantra has explanations of many, many different things.
There is a shifting of the breath. During the course of a day, you breathe either predominantly through one nostril or the other nostril, and it shifts back and forth twelve times during the course of a day. You just take a moment to focus on how you’re breathing. Unless your nose is stuffed, it is more through one nostril than another, isn’t it? So it shifts back and forth.
There are twenty one thousand six hundred breaths in each day, which isn’t such a fantastic number. It works out to about one every four seconds, which is accurate. Now, in the course of going back and forth, when it shifts, there’s going to be a brief period of time when that breath is actually going through the central channel. That comes to six fifty in the course of the day. Now, if you look at the average lifespan of a one hundred year lifespan, the amount of those are called deep awareness breaths, by the way, the ones that go through the central channel.
If you calculate the number of breaths that would go through the central channel in a one hundred year lifetime at a rate of six fifty per day, and you take that number and you make that into how many days would pass if that were the only type of breath you had at twenty one thousand six hundred a day. It would work out to three years and three phases of a moon. A phase of a moon is a period from waxing to waning moon or waning to waxing moon, So it’s half a month. That’s how you get the period three years and three phases of a moon. It’s not that there’s something magical about it.
Retreats are often done for that length of time, just as an auspicious amount period of time to spend. But not that everybody’s going become enlightened after that. Doing a three year retreat, by the way, is just to point out, there’s a difference in the Gelugpa and non Gelugpa traditions. In the non Gelugpa traditions, you do three year retreats, which are basically a smorgasbord. You go through a lot of different practices of many different deities and you do short retreats back to back of each of them to cover a period of three years and three phases of the moon. Three weeks or there’s different ways of interpreting that.
Accurately, it should be three years and three phases of the month, three phases of the moon. In the Gelugpa tradition, what you do is each of those individual ones that you would do back to back in a non Gelugpa retreat, a three year retreat, you would do separately. You would do them individually when you have the time. It’s again this whole stylistic thing in the Gelugpa of not making a big event out of things. The advantage of making an event out of it is that you build up a tremendous amount of momentum, a tremendous amount of inertia.
It’s very positive. The Gelugpa style doesn’t do it that way. However, in the Gelugpa style, you do have three year retreats. That’s when you do an intensive practice of just one deity system after you’ve done all the shorter ones, which again, in the non Gelug systems, do anyway. Terms of after you’ve done this three year retreat, then you would spend a more intensive period of time on just one practice.
As I say, we shouldn’t feel superstitiously that you’ve done a three year retreat and therefore although in some systems people will use the name Lama after that, that doesn’t mean that you’re an enlightened being and that really you’re a high spiritual teacher. Because anybody can do a three year retreat out of neurotic reasons. I mean if you’re neurotic enough, compulsive enough, and macho enough, you’re not going to give up and you’re going to sit there and do it for three years. That doesn’t make you a lama. We shouldn’t be too superstitious about these titles.
In any case, we have the let’s see. Let me trace it back. Notice, point to this. Retreat the breaths. Talking about the subtlest level and why Anuttarayoga Tantra is so quick.
It’s so speedy because it can be done in as short a time as three years and three phases of the moon. Now, what is the reason why it’s so speedy? Why it can be done in this period of time? Although for most cases, it’s going to take obviously much longer. The reason why it’s so speedy is because of the special consciousness which is used for understanding voidness or the absence of the fantasized.
Because what we’re doing is we’re going to use the subtlest level, this laser beam mind. And if we can get the understanding of voidness with this laser beam mind, then we’ve got really the most powerful tool. Now, there are many reasons for that. First of all, that subtlest mind is automatically non conceptual by definition. It’s a subtle level that’s conceptual.
This is more subtle than non conceptual. So, for instance, if you were trying to save rabbit from, being attacked by wolves, if you put that rabbit inside a fence and the wolves are outside the fence, well, that rabbit is safe. However, those wolves could always break in. So likewise, if we get a non conceptual understanding of voidness, just on the subtle level, our ordinary mental consciousness, then, although it could be non conceptual, nevertheless, the conceptual level, conceptual minds, are at the same level, and so they could break in at any time. Whereas, if we if that rabbit goes down into a hole, then those wolves can’t follow.
It’s on a more subtle level. It’s on a deeper level than where the wolves are. So, if we can get the understanding of voidness on the subtlest level, it’s more subtle than the level that the conceptual minds are at. And therefore, there’s no danger that it can become conceptual, that the conceptual minds will come in. Therefore, it doesn’t take a zillion eons to get the non conceptual understanding of voidness.
It took one zillion eons to get that in the usual methods. If we can get down to the subtlest level of consciousness and utilize that for understanding voidness, then we’ve got it. It’s already automatically non conceptual. So, first zillion eons is taken care of. Now, the disturbing attitudes, remember we were talking about you get rid of ideologically based and automatically arising disturbing attitudes.
These disturbing attitudes are on this conceptual level. Likewise, if we get down the subtlest level, it’s going to be more subtle than these grosser, disturbing types of attitudes. Also, it’s going to tend to not distort things in the way that the grosser level is going to distort things. For instance, if you look at a picture on the wall with a what do you call it here? A torch.
If you look at it with a torch, then that could tend to distort it or a flaming torch. But if you look at it with a laser beam, it’s not going to distort it. It’s not going to make it weird looking or shimmering around. Likewise, if we can use the subtlest level, it’s going to be subtler than the grosser disturbing attitudes. It’s not going to have this gross distortion of things.
That takes care of our second zillion eons, which was required to get to that, to get to the point where we don’t have any of the disturbing attitudes and we’re down to not with this gross, deceptive way of things appearing. The second zillion eons is taken care of. How do we get to the subtlest level? That’s in the complete stage practices of working with the subtle energy system and getting the to become more and more centralized, the grosser energies to become more and more centralized, and to dissolve, as it were. By dissolving these grosser levels then you’re left with that subtlest level.
It’s very difficult. I mean nobody none of this is easy by the way. Nobody said it was easy but yeah that’s the technique which is done. So there’s and well actually there’s two techniques to be you know to give you the full picture there’s the technique which is used in the Nyingma tradition and the technique which is used in the Nyingma is the old tradition and the techniques which is used in the new translation traditions is sarma, which covers the Kagyu, Sakya, and Gelugpa. Now, in the new translation technique, what you have to do is dissolve the grosser levels of energy.
Working with the energy systems, the central channel, all this sort of business, dissolve them so that you can get that subtlest level to be operative and get down to that. In the Nyingma technique, which is the Dzogchen technique, the Great Completeness technique, you don’t have to actually dissolve those grosser energies. Now, you have to have trained with these subtle energies and the subtle energy system. You have to have done an Anu Yoga practice, Maha Anu Yoga practices. But, when it comes down to actually making that subtlest level manifest and operative, at that point, you don’t necessarily work on manipulations of the subtle energy system.
It’s a matter of trying to see that subtlest level underneath or in the spaces in between each moment of consciousness or awareness. It’s very subtle, very difficult to do. But that’s the approach that’s used there, the technique. Now, even using that technique, you can identify that subtlest mind, that clear light mind I mean, don’t call it that. And Dzogchen has different terminology, primordial mind, all this sort of business.
When you can get to that, identify it, stay with it, the grosser levels are going to dissolve anyway. Especially since we’ve worked with them and made them more flexible and usable in prior practice. So whether you use one side or the other, you do. The grocer do accomplish the fact that the grosser energy is no longer operating, being dissolved, and you get down to the subtlest level. Okay.
Now, as I say, to do this, you have to have perfect concentration, obviously. You gain perfect concentration by working with the imagination. I mean, that’s, again, the reason why we want to work with the imagination. Because the imagination is something which is a very, very powerful technique. In order to work with these subtle energy systems, nothing’s going to happen with them unless you can imagine them, unless you can visualize them, and unless you can absolutely pinpoint your concentration one hundred percent in them to tap into that energy system.
Nothing’s gonna happen. So that’s why you have these very elaborate visualizations on the generation stage. You know, you have, two you have two levels of the generation stage. The coarse level is accomplished when you can focus on the entire visualization. That’s the deity, all the deities in the system, the mandala, all its details perfectly.
Yeah. Right. Right. When you can focus on all of that perfectly for four hours, you know, with no dullness, no flightiness of mind, no nothing, just perfect concentration, then you’ve achieved the course level. When you can visualize all of that in a tiny drop at the tip of your nose or in between the brows, there’s different systems will have it done in different ways.
But when you can focus on the entire mandala in a little drop at the tip of your nose with every deity, every detail, perfect focus down to the difference between the black and the white of everybody’s eyes, and you can do that perfectly for four hours, then you’ve got the subtle level. Then, now you have the tool to be able to actually get into the complete stage properly and have things start to happen. Right? Because then the mind is perfectly focused on a tiny little pinpoint, and then you can focus it within the subtle energy system and actually get the energies to move and to dissolve. So we’re talking about a difficult process.
Pardon? Yeah. The practice of big and small. You want to be able to visualize both on an astronomical scale and on a microscopic scale. All of that’s done with the the generation stage to train the imagination.
You want to train the imagination so that you can actually get into the subtle energy system. Want to get into that so you can dissolve the energies, get down to the subtlest level. So as I said, the subtlest level, if you get the understanding of voidness, it’s not going to take the first zillion eons because it’s already non conceptual. It’s not going to take the second zillion eons because it’s more subtle than the disturbing, the level of the disturbing attitudes, and it doesn’t tend to make things appear in a gross, distorted way. For the third zillion eons, you see, it’s going to take the third zillion eons to be able to get to the two levels appearing at the same time.
That’s the deepest level, it’s voidness, and the apparent level of things, which is the normal appearance of things. Usually that’s translated as relative and ultimate. Ultimate or absolute truth, that’s a bit misleading because it sounds like something up in the sky. Removed from everything. It’s the deepest level.
The deepest fact about things. The deepest fact about things is that they exist devoid of fantasized ways of existing. The apparent level, which is the level that conceals this deeper fact, is just its relative actual appearance. To get the two of those simultaneous in one mind, you can only do that when you’re a Buddha. It takes a third zillion eons to be able to do that.
If we can get down to that subtlest consciousness, that’s the level at which it can occur. It’s only that subtlest level that’s capable of seeing the two simultaneously. And so it’s not going to take our third zillion eons to be able to do it. That’s why, by the way, although it says you can achieve enlightenment through the sūtra ways, with bodhicitta and so on, technically speaking, at the very final stages, the sūtra methods is not going to be sufficient. In other words, we want to get the understanding of voidness.
What do we want to do? For that understanding of voidness to be able to cut through all the different levels of the obscurations with the determination to be free it could cut through the first level. Attitudes. With bodhicitta, remember I was saying cut through if the heart is expanding out to everybody, it has enough energy behind it to cut through the second level. All these projections and so on, the obstacles preventing omniscience.
But not the subtlest forms of that. In order to get rid of the subtlest