Audio recorded at Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 25-minute introduction, Kyabje Rinpoche opens with a fundamental principle: practicing one deity well far surpasses practicing many carelessly. Quality of practice, not quantity, determines spiritual progress — a truth he applies to all serious work. He then establishes the prerequisites for tantric study: genuine renunciation, an awakening heart, and basic understanding of emptiness. The teaching unfolds tantra’s two core stages (generation and completion), distinguishes how the lower tantras approach consort practice through a progression from gazing to embracing, and explains what completion-stage mastery actually means: the ability to redirect subtle energies. The striking measure of such attainment is the power to make fruit fall from a tree and return to it. Pitched at those with foundational Buddhist training.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 1992-09-20 – 1B – Introduction to Tantra – KR.mp3
UUID: 8170b878-7fe5-4379-9b01-e8e3b580112c
Teacher: Kyabje Rinpoche
Collection: Tantra Introduction
Date: 1992-09-20
Recorded at: Tibetan Buddhist Institute, Adelaide
Words: ~834
that will be extremely useful, but only if one is able to practice well. If one practices well one deity, then this can be sufficient to achieve the aims of the practice. On the other hand, if one has many deities and does not practice them well, then one will achieve nothing. So the amount of the number of deities that we are to practice is in accordance with how many we are able to practice well.
Practicing one well is much better than to practice many, not at all, or not well. It’s it’s according to dependence upon the practitioner. So if one can if one can practice many well, many deities well, then that’s that’s that’s excellent. If one practices many, but does not practice them well, then one is not to practice, one will not achieve anything. On the other hand, if one is practicing one well, then one will gain an achievement.
If one does not practice even that one well, then there’s no achievement. So the same would apply to the various work that we do. If one can do lots and lots of work, do them all very poorly, and nothing will be achieved by means of that. One can combine oneself to a single task and will do it very well, In that, one achieves a great deal.
So if one has rough experience of renunciation, just determination to be free, the awakening heart, and a rough view of emptiness, some rough experience of these, reflecting for oneself that I have some rough experience of these. And then one has a great wish to practice and is willing to make effort, and one is a qualified student. So what what what mental realizations would one necessarily have to in order to block the emissions of fluid? Within secret mantra, there are the two stages of generation stage and completion stage.
The generation stage acting as the means by which to achieve the completion stage, and at this point one must have attained the realizations of the generation stage in order to attain the completion stage. So in the three lower levels of tantra, is no embracing of the consort. One generates a joy by means of firstly seeing, gazing upon the consort, then one generates it by holding hands with the consort, and then smiling with the consort. It is only at the fourth level of tantra highest Yoga Tantra that one there is the embrace of the consort. Only highest yoga tantra has these two states.
Only highest yoga tantra has the two stages of generation and completion in the lower three levels of tantra. The levels are with sign and without sign. The realization was that one had to realize the generation stage. There. No. There’s no generation there’s no generation stage in any of the three lower tantras.
So it’s not a question. Yeah. In order to stop the fluid, you have to achieve the completion stage. That’s the realization necessary. You have to achieve the completion stage.
Someone has the ability to block the fluids. Once one has attained that ability then the practitioner will not practice improperly. Having attained that ability the practitioner will not go on to practice it improperly. So one having as a means of attaining the completion stage, having practiced the generation stage, There is at the time of the completion stage practices which would give you practice and develop this ability.
When completion stage, one makes use of syllables in order to block the emission of fluids. If one has not gained appropriate realizations of the completion stage, then one cannot implement this practice whereby to block the emissions of fluids. The realization a measure of that having attained that realization would be The measure of having attained the ability whereby one would be able to block these emissions, which would be commensurate with having gained the realization necessary, be that one, by merely looking at a fruit tree, the fruit falls down, and that one is able to cause the fruit to be replaced back into where it came from, into the tree, then one has attained the ability. That’s that is a powerful attainment. Which the able, the practitioner has achieved, this powerful thing.
So then you’re saying that therefore you wouldn’t attain the embrace? No. Because you couldn’t you you feel you couldn’t attain that? This is this is an easy one, but even non Buddhists can achieve it. Above and above that there are the extraordinary, powerful attainments.
So there are common powerful attainments and supreme powerful attainments. The common are these which are which that are shared with non Buddhists, the supreme is that of Buddhahood, that is abandoning all the various afflictive emotions. We can’t achieve this common powerful thing that if that’s too difficult then we’re not going to be able to achieve the more difficult that is the abandonment of the afflictive emotions.