Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 44-minute session from a 1984 introduction to Tantra course, John Landaw explores how tantric practitioners use visualization and imagination to cultivate enlightened states and how these practices can affect others. He explains the process of generating as a deity through clear light, reciting mantras, and emanating light as enlightening activities, then illustrates with metta meditation — sending waves of compassion outward — and shares an anecdote about healing a sick grandmother in Germany through group meditation. Landaw contextualizes tantra within broader mystical traditions, noting that all major spiritual paths share two core insights: the restrictive nature of ego-bound identity and the transformative power of compassion. He addresses students’ questions about spiritual aspiration versus discouragement, the role of faith and intellect in different practices, and the significance of recognizing one’s spiritual potential even if full attainment lies in future lifetimes. Suitable for newcomers exploring tantra alongside other wisdom traditions.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 10 Intro to Tantra Day 2 no date.mp3
UUID: c845c4f1-a216-49b9-a75e-0ca8787d0522
Teacher: John Landaw
Collection: Introduction to Tantra (John Landaw)
Date: 1984 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~4,653
Takes me makes a connection with its next state of existence and rebirth takes but contact with the next level of its life. And then the mind and the body grow and one is another being, another recognizable being. So using that as an analogy, then the Tantra practitioner in a sense, gets reborn out of the clear space of the clear light, first as a very subtle, complete enjoyment body, and then eventually in the full form of the deity. And then in that full form, during the remainder of the sadhana, then the person may do such things as recite mantras or emanate light. And all of these activities are understood as being enlightening activities, a way of sending out energy that causes or provokes and cultivates transformations in others.
Now, we had a very small taste of it in a meditation that was done forget when it was done earlier anyway in which we generated a feeling of happiness, imagining what it would be like if all our own physical and mental ills were removed, and then spreading that feeling of happiness to our neighbors and eventually encompassing, you know, the whole universe. This type of meditation is sometimes known not by its Sanskrit name, but by its Pali name, indicating that it’s practiced in the traditions that follow the Pali Canon as well, the metta meditation, sending out love metta meaning love. And so in the Tantric practices there are similar cultivations in which positive states of mind are seen as, for instance, rays of light or sound energy of a mantra. And these are sent out and cause transformation in other beings. Now the question arises, well what’s really happening here?
Is anything? You know, is anybody being affected by this? Well it is possible if one already has a strong connection with others and if one’s mind is quite powerful, it is possible that even by doing such meditation as this, to actually affect someone else. It is possible. I remember in one case a whole bunch of us were in Germany at a center there on a farm, and the grandmother who was living at the farm was ill, so one of the people said, well, couldn’t we do some kind of meditation for her?
And so we did something similar to this metta, love meditation. And later on in that day we didn’t tell her that we were doing any of this. She didn’t know we were doing any of this. But later that day, she said that she felt waves of good feeling coming from the people in the course that day, and it really made her feel better. So some kind of connection can be established through these practices.
And so basically, what we’re doing is we’re cultivating the enlightened mind experience for ourselves, and we’re also cultivating our connection with others through these enlightening type of practices. But basically, we’re rehearsing the experience of enlightenment. And eventually a point can be reached where we can maintain this type of enlightened identity, not only when we’re sitting in meditation and practicing our sadhana, that our entire life can become our sadhana, our entire life can become our practice. And then the more we develop the vision of emptiness and so forth, the quicker we can reach the actual goal. So that this rehearsal or this imagination or this fantasy can actually become reality.
So it’s really very, very profound methods that are being used here because they not only use the subtle energies that we’re not usually in contact with in our body, but they also use the full power of the imagination of the mind. Any points of questions? This is quite a lot to swallow all at one go, I realize. But just as an introduction, it might be helpful. Are there any questions coming in?
Some people Yes, definitely. Usually when those people are, you know, taken as examples, the way it’s usually understood is their very existence is a rather potent argument for past and future lives because they are so unusual. Their powers seem so developed already. And so there’s an indication that in the past, there definitely was some kind of spiritual development. It need not be exactly along the lines that I’ve described.
Here I’m describing the Buddhist tantras. There’s many other systems. But all of the systems, all of the so called beneficial valid systems of spiritual development share certain very basic points in common with each other. All of them understand that the self identity that we have at the moment is a restriction. Like this one over there?
No, there’s another quotation by Einstein. There’s another quotation by Einstein. I see on posters a lot these days that we only use ten percent of our mental capacity like that. But all mystical traditions understand that. That as long as we’re trapped in this feeling of I, me, mine, constantly relating to the world through our gross senses, that we’re just encapsulated in our own prism and we’re not open to our fullest potential.
So all mystical traditions refer to that. Even if they use completely different terminology, they all have that same basic feeling within them. I have not yet seen an exception to that rule in the other traditions I’ve read about. And the second thing that they haven’t contradicted in relationship to each other is that the main energy for breaking out of that prison is some kind of sympathetic concern for others. Know, whether it’s called love or compassion or sympathy or whatever.
So at least those two elements seem to be present in all the so called mystic traditions. And so it definitely would be possible to attain a state of openness, a state of this kind of charisma, this ability to influence a sympathetic vibration through the practice of any of these various spiritual paths. The fortunate thing about the Buddha Dharma is that all of the elements of the path still exist here in the twentieth century. There are other traditions which definitely had them sometime in the past, but for various political and historical reasons, some of the more powerful traditions now have been lost. Christianity, I think.
For example, there are certain monastic traditions which keep up certain isolated practices. The thing is we so, is that there are a lot of very, very enlightened Christians who are now studying meditative techniques with the Hindus and with the Buddhists to help reconstruct the type of meditative tradition that they once had. And this is growing. On courses that I’ve taken with Lama Yeshe and the Dalai Lama, there have been present of trappist monks, Jesuit priests, benedictine abbots, people who are very, very Christian, but who are taking from Buddhism a living tradition, meditation, and reapplying it to the basic Christian symbols and so forth. And within Judaism, we have the Kabbalistic tradition, the Hasidic tradition, which are built on this mystic foundation as well.
Then there’s Sufi traditions, which cut across largely through Muslim lands. There’s there’s very profound Taoist techniques, and one can find it spread throughout the world. But whether they are living traditions, which are well known, or whether they’re very, very secret or decaying traditions, that varies from country to country, place to place. And at the present time, it seems that it’s largely the Buddhists who have the unbroken lineage, and it’s largely the other ones who have, to a greater or less extent, have lost it. So I think what’s happening now is a revitalization of those other those other traditions.
Hopefully, the traditions will be passed on to the next generation before they go. Some lineages have already been lost. It’s true. But all of the major lineages are still there. Well, to give you an example, for instance, this has happened recently.
There was a very high Sera lama. Sera is the monastery from which Lama Yeshe, and a lot of the other Lamas here in Australia come. There’s a very high Sera Lama who passed away in must have passed away in Tibet, rather in India, I think it was that. And his incarnation was found. His parents were Canadian, and both of them together had helped found a center for Kopan in Montreal, I think, the Milarepa Center, not the Milarepa Center, another Mirepa Center.
And so his incarnation was found as a child there. How would I even know where the book be? Well, there was some suspicion on the part of the Lama who was associated in that center that this might be the incarnation. And then when the Dalai Lama came to America for the Kālacakra, and it must have been about eighty one, that he recognized it. He made the official recognition that this is being the incarnation.
And I imagine something like that will happen with Lama Zopa, that someone like Lama Yeshe will be very much a key figure in recognizing the incarnation, and then the recognition will be confirmed by the Dalai Lama or some other very high Lama. Usually what happens is that those incarnate lamas will be given special tutors, special education, and what they usually find is that for those beings, the very highly advanced beings, it will be a matter of remembering what they’ve already learned, so the learning will take place very quickly. So for instance, the Geshe program, for instance, is something which usually takes twenty or twenty five years. For incarnate lamas, it’s not unusual for it to take much, much less because it’s like remembering what they’ve already learned. Well, there really is a benefit in having an understanding of just how full of potential we are, even if it’s something which we feel, well, I’m not going get to this until sometime much later in this life or the next life or something like that.
Merely having the acquaintance with this on the mind stream makes a difference. It’s said, for instance, whether we believe it or not, it is said by some high lamas, by all high lamas, that knowing the existence of the Tantric path, having a certain faith in it, even if we don’t practice it, this strengthens our connection so that in future lives we will have the tendency of meeting up with those teachings. But it’s also helpful, even for this present life, just to know that we have this potential treasure within us, that we can gain access to it. You see, when the path is described this way, all the way up to enlightenment, all the aspects of enlightenment, we don’t have to think that, well, if I don’t reach that, then I’m a failure. So why think about it?
Because just take what we’ve done on this weekend. You know, a very, very simple course, but by a very simple person, you know, whose knowledge is basically just intellectual. What I’ve heard from others, not really based on great realizations. But even on the basis of this, there are certain techniques that we have for gaining contact to a deeper level of intuition. Furthering ourselves from the noise and the static of the outside environment of our senses and so forth.
And even on this level, there’s benefit. You know, each person according to their capacity. Sometimes the benefit of a course like this comes after a couple of weeks or a couple of months. Situation is faced and a technique comes back and it’s applied and works. So to have both an idea of the overall path where it eventually can lead, and to see that it’s something potential within us, and at the same time have a few methods which can make our everyday life richer.
Like that. That’s a very good thing to have. That’s that’s very, very helpful. Then we feel that, you know, when our life draws to an end, we learn something kind of basic to our existence. You know, we have a chance to, you know, think, well, it wasn’t totally wasted.
My life wasn’t just the, you know, tons of food I ate or, you know, the number of beautiful colors I saw or the number of beautiful sensations I felt or smells. It’s not just that, but it’s also that I’ve gained some deeper appreciation, you know, the deeper source within myself. Having a feeling that, yes, you know, I have a certain amount of love, certain amount of compassion, a certain amount of wisdom, and these are elements that can actually be cultivated. They’re not accidental. And knowing that, that’s a great inspiration.
We can feel that we’ve made some progress in life. And if that happens, then it’s quite satisfactory. You die and then the street before you drop off, you think, my god, I didn’t crack it. You know, I’ve got five. You shouldn’t that way.
It’s simple. Why concentrate on what you didn’t attain as opposed to concentrating on what you did attain? Well, I mean, I don’t have to say, you know, the realization’s there. I mean, I But what is there some kind of external compulsion making a person feel that way? Why?
I mean Well, all I know is that ever since in my in my life, you know, I’m not trying to break this session up with jokes. That’s okay. I don’t know why it is about the quote the mental quotients of people as they come into existence and how all this crap kinda sit around and laugh. All seem to be manic. Not impressed.
It was the opposite, you know, of happy people. But the fact is that somehow, just beyond people’s any any choice, they have different kind of lives. Mhmm. And that well, I’m not sure it’s not realistic to just see, well, gee, I didn’t crack it. You know, I’m just gonna miss it.
You know, that joke I told you about the tortoise that came to the surface on the Pacific, and there, it was half an inch from the bloody crack that by striving so hard for an unattainable goal, I mean, can it doesn’t really have a positive result. But it does because it has a positive result now. And if you do believe by well, there’s different people in here who had the same experience. They started meditating, and then kind of their lives got observing topsy-turvy. And then, you know, different phenomenon occur.
They come down or they came back or but it’s not it’s not a guarantee that it’s a recipe for a good cake, is it? You know? So it’s very it seems to be risky. It does it does also demand a lot in part of the training. You know, demands one of the things that demands most of is a certain consistency.
You know, not wanting instant results, but, you know, even Dalai Lama says, don’t meditate for such a long time each day, but do something every day, you know, about ten minutes, just to develop a pattern because we’ve got so many I mean, as you’ve said, they have such a store of bad habits, know, of self deprecations and things like that, that we have to inject something new into the formula. And just knowing that the existence of a spiritual path by itself is no magic formula, We actually have to start taking its advice. And if we only take it to the point You know, it’s like Buddha taught four noble truths, suffering, cause, cessation, and the path to cessation. Well, we can study up to the point where we’re quite into the first one, you know, the truth of suffering, and then just get depressed and depressed and depressed, and forget about the other three noble truths. And then say, oh, Buddhism is so pessimistic.
It talks about suffering. Well, it is suffering. There’s more suffering than I ever imagined, and the more I study, the more I suffer. Like that. But that’s completely ridiculous, because the Buddha, in that sermon, talked about the four noble truths, not just the first one.
This was for the purposes of diagnosis, that he talked about suffering and its cause, And for the purpose of cure, then he talked about cessation and the path. So he never reached the point that we never were actually practicing the path, but we’re only bumming ourselves out about the disease. And sure, Buddhism isn’t helpful. No division’s helpful. None of it’s helpful.
Medicine. If all medicine were were a description of disease, then we’d have a name for our ailments. But see, mean, you walk or you if somebody’s in a bit of difficulty, you say, all kind of teaching meditation, you’d be right then. Calm down. Everything’s okay.
That might be all this day. K? Well, it’s a whole thing, and yet, you know, there’s some kind of it’s a very difficult area, isn’t it? Yeah. No one ever said meditation or Dharma is like, what do they call it, a panacea, cure all.
It’s something that has to be applied to it. Now within the Dharma, there are certain techniques which require a lot more perseverance, a lot more intelligence. There are other methods that require a lot more faith. Even within Buddhism, there are different ones. There is a type, a style Buddhist practice called Pure Land Buddhism, very similar to Christianity, in the sense that the goal is to be reborn in a Pure Land, a little bit like a Heaven, in which all experiences are conducive for progressing along the spiritual path.
And the basis of that type of path is not so much wisdom as it is strong faith, like faith in the guru, faith in the deity, faith in Jesus, whatever happens within. Then there are other paths which are not built on so much faith, but a very kind of penetrating intellect. But most of the paths are some kind of combination of the both. So we have to see. We have to see if we’re we’re of a character that has a lot more faith than than this kind of penetrating intelligence, then maybe we should gravitate more towards the practices that emphasize faith.
Know, and maybe put the other type in a very kind of analytical mind, then stay away from those techniques or not emphasize the ones that have faith and let the faith grow once we start experiencing the food. See, mean, if you develop if if by helping other people, you develop good karma anyway, Sure. To a very large extent. Certainly. Look at all that energy, the positive energy it gives them up.
But a person who would do that, do you think that after ten or twenty years they’d still feel terrible about themselves? They’re such a jerk and so limited and stuff like that. They’d obviously feel the benefits of it. They wouldn’t feel that they’d missed a vote because they didn’t attain enlightenment in that lifetime, or they weren’t a great practitioner, they had a sense well it’s like Lama Yeshe said to Lama Zopa before he passed away. It was printed on a card.
He said, I’ve been able to use my life in the service for others, and that’s enough. That’s enough. You might have been told him now? Yeah. But I think all of his actions that I’ve been able to see are as a symbol for other people, you know, an inspiration for other people.
I think what he was saying was, if one has the feeling that one’s life is, in somehow or another, a cultivation of good qualities, especially in terms of using oneself for the benefit of others, then you don’t have to worry that I didn’t attain that or I only attained this. That itself will be the positive energy that makes life worthwhile and also allows death to be negotiated without all that intense fear and so forth that can accompany the death process. And then there’s good hopes that the path can be continued in a future state of existence. But I think we have to kind of take heart in what we can actually how to say it? Take inspiration from what we can actually accomplish.
And in a sense, be satisfied with it, and at the same time, also, have an aspiration to be able to do more. Those are those pursuits, but what about the pursuits of of people who well, just to take take Wendy as a good example. She’s not here. You know, someone who, while she’s here in Adelaide, irrespective of what she might do in relation to Buddha House and the energy she puts in here, seems like one of things she tries to do is to be available just as a listening ear to people who are undergoing trauma, you know, like domestic violence and junk like that. Even if she were never to say anything terribly helpful to anyone else, The fact that she’s giving up her time and energy to be a companion to those people, an incredible benefit.
Now should she berate herself because she’s not Carl Jung or Carl Rogers or Freud or some great, you know, psychologist of worldwide fame? Or should she just take comfort in the fact that by the everyday actions that she’s doing, she’s bringing some measure of comfort to people who need comfort? Mean, society, in fact, is not going to be Carl Jung. Society is quite happy for her to be with you, I think. Well, I mean, if look at the way everybody gives permission to anybody with any kind of status or success, I mean, the whole Western world is geared up only to listen to experts or famous people, and the little people of life are there just to be walked across.
Well, to provide the famous people with an audience Well, then then I get the issue with it? So the the whole whole criteria for success and self worth is something that now we have to listen to society, you know, this kind of vague thing. Well, I mean, I’m just saying that’s how it is. I I kinda feel like seeing through it collectively. That’s almost how it is.
I mean, even in our own group, you know, If you tell us that the to paint the comparable pink, we will probably have a menu short. He knows four lovers. I’m still not exactly sure how to resist the whole thing of self worth and feeling satisfied with one’s spiritual path. Oh, well, I mean Isn’t that more of an internal feeling? I mean, if you if there’s someone who badly needs something and you’re there to give it to that person and that person thanks you, or even if the person doesn’t thank you, if you just see the person is is now happy, that’s a real transaction.
Something real has happened. I’m not talking about ultimate reality, but something on a very deep level has happened. Energy has been thrown into the system which has brought about some measure of happiness. There’s there’s great comfort to be taking that, it seems to me. There was a film once, which showed the house or showed Wall Street, And said that all her life, she’d been looking for something exciting.
And she used to ski, and she used to take a helicopter to the top of a mountain and ski down a mountain with thousands of people. And she used to give her a little. And since she became a nun, she said that she her meditation has been far more exciting. And it’s the most exciting thing that she’d ever done. And I think my own small practice and meditation, I’ve uncovered parts of myself, which I can now deal with and couldn’t deal with before because I didn’t have the techniques.
And I find it exciting. I think now So personally, myself, I wouldn’t mind if we didn’t have I mean, one thing that can be helpful, though, is it’s it’s even more difficult than silence is while speaking, observe speech. That’s that’s that’s even harder than silent because, you know, good well, anywhere between seventy and ninety percent of what we say is, it doesn’t really have so much meaning, so much value. Hoo. Not the other.
Yes. I mean, not really, especially if there is a body of material that we could be working on or relating to each other. Like one of the things that I did find that I myself found very interesting here during the break times is that a number of things that people have said have been views from other traditions which help support some of the basic insights from the Tantra tradition. And that I find very valuable, myself, to where people relate experiences they’ve had or teachings that they’ve had from other areas that help in the understanding of this one. Because anything that is more on an experiential level that takes it out of the theoretical level is helpful.
You know, and it’s hard for us here to have the experiential level on the level of Tantra because it’s such an advanced subject, but but different elements of it can be found in other traditions. That kind of conversation, I think, that kind of sharing is extremely important, but a lot of the other things that we engage in are really not so helpful. And the thing is, we’ve got all the rest of our life for that kind of conversation, whereas it’s kind of rare even for those of us engaged in the dharma center, you know, to have some hours in which we have people who are willing to talk about things that are real. And all you have to do is go to visit a friend’s or a relative’s house and see what passes the conversation and try to bring up something real, and you become an outcast. It is irritated.
You know? No one wants to speak to you anymore. So you have to talk about things which don’t have any great essence and hopefully try to interject something in it, you know, learn something through it, how other people’s minds work. But here, we’re kind of fortunate because there’s nine or ten of us, you know, who are pretty happy to talk about something that’s that’s meaningful, and that’s that’s a bit rare. That’s hard.
That’s a bit rare. It’s hard to do you’re not you don’t really learn who you might want. One of the things I’ve discovered though is that in so called dharma groups, when they get together within the frame of trying to understand dharma, is that people have the kind of conversations with each other, which normally you don’t buy back until after a couple of months or a couple of years of meeting people. Because certain barriers are let down. We’re not so much trying to impress each other.
You know? And because that’s not there, then people are willing to trade experiences or trade things a lot more quickly than they would in other circumstances. Generally, I find that the case. For everyone, So then, sort of, we become each other’s refuge in a sense. And a Sangha refuge to me is very important.
We all become Sangha to some extent, just in the sense that we provide an environment in which this discussion of these things is not considered strange. And that’s a very important Sangha contribution to each other. Okay. We’ll have about a, excuse me, about a fifteen or twenty minute break until a little bit after five thirty, and then we can do about a half an hour meditation.