Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Starting from the question of what makes secret mantra faster than the perfection vehicle — enlightenment in one lifetime versus three countless eons — Ven Jampa Gendun uses this 46-minute session to explain deity yoga as tantra’s defining practice. He argues that meditating on selflessness softens rigid self-identity, using the image of dry clay soaked until workable again, enabling a practitioner to arise in meditation as a Buddha-deity, combining compassion with a deliberately expanded sense of who one can be. A Lama Yeshe quotation frames poverty of self-image as the central obstacle tantra aims to dissolve; a lottery-winner analogy illustrates how that identity shift becomes self-reinforcing over time. The session closes with Q&A on receiving empowerment before practicing deity yoga, choosing a deity based on personal affinity, and why Lamrim foundations may be more immediately useful for most practitioners at this stage.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 18 OtE 1992 03 25.mp3
UUID: 033697d2-75e6-4c6d-b051-de0338a31aa6
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: Opening the Eye of New Awareness 1991-1992 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1992-03-25
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 46.2 minutes
Words: ~4,753
The fullest actualization of the potentials of both of these two types of self, experiential and social. On the other hand, the lesser vehicle, the individual vehicle, falls to the extreme of individualism in that the experiential self has been fully actualized. That is to say the foe destroyer, someone who has completed the path of the individual vehicle, has experienced their only inner peace, has fulfilled their own experiential need. But the social aspect of themselves has been left undeveloped, so it’s considered an extreme. So it is to the universal vehicle that both of these aspects are simultaneously being developed to the fullest extreme.
And the way this is done, for example, within the perfection vehicle is by the practice of six perfections. The six perfections, the first three generosity, ethics, and tolerance assisted by effort mainly bring about the full actualization of the social self, that type of self which exists in relationship to others. The latter two are the perfection. Meditative concentration and wisdom assisted, again assisted by joyous efforts are the causes bringing about mainly the actualization of the experiential self or the private self. So those are the means for one’s development with respect to both aspects of oneself.
If we’re talking about what is the distinguishing feature between the perfection vehicle and the vehicle secret mantra? Both have the same goal. There’s no difference in the Buddhahood attained by either method. They both have it as their motivation, the determination to be free and the awakening heart, the altruistic aspiration to achieve highest enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. They both have as their practices the six perfections and the four means of cultivating the minds of the disciples.
So from the point of view of wisdom, there’s no difference. But according to the practice of the perfection vehicle, it takes three countless eons from the moment one enters into the first path until the attainment of Buddhahood. Three countless eons is such that you would not like to wait that long. It’s a long time. You wouldn’t wait for a bus that long.
According to Secret Mantra, one can achieve enlightenment from the point of entering into the path and achieving the goal that is fruit of it in one lifetime, or it is set as little as three years. So there has to be some profound difference, some distinguishing feature which is found in secret mantra which is not found within perfection vehicle. So next week we’ll talk about what that difference no we’ll talk about I’ll tell you. The one distinguishing feature between secret mantra and perfection vehicle which makes the perfection vehicle, secret mantra vehicle so profound and so swift is the practice of deity yoga. There is no practice of deity yoga within the perfection vehicle.
All tantric practices are either deity yoga or emptiness yoga. By emptiness yoga I mean types of practices which seek to help us develop our understanding of emptiness or practices which enhance these two. So all of tantra is being directed towards emptiness yoga and deity yoga. It is through emptiness yoga that we are able to actualize the full potential of our private self. Through Deity Yoga, as this profound means, can swiftly actualize the potential of our social self.
The social self actionized in order to bring about the welfare of others. A Buddha has an experience. Through that experience he experiences only peace. But that peace is as if of no value to anyone else other than the individual who is experiencing it. It’s inaccessible.
As I mentioned before, it cannot be transferred to another. They can’t get an implant. If they could have, we would have by now, but it can’t. So it is necessary that inner peace is simply not enough to be able to benefit others. We need a vehicle in order to express our experience to others in the form of communication.
And this is a form body. We can say it’s almost a communicative body. We are constituted of of a physical embodiment, activities of communication and ways of thinking. This constitutes who we are as individuals. And amongst these it is the communicative aspect which is of most importance.
So a Buddha is purposely going out of her way to create a vehicle, a medium of expression whereby to share her experience for the benefit of others. In the practice of the perfection vehicle, the main causes which bring about this are the practices that was just mentioned, generosity, ethics, and tolerance assisted by effort. Here we not only do that, but we also practice deity yoga. These pictures I can see around, like these four around his holiness, these are all tantric meditation deities. They’re all tantric meditation deities and they are made use of in Both with respect to external phenomena and internal phenomena, with respect to all products whatsoever, there is always a concordance, an agreement between the result and the cause.
By this I mean there’s always a similarity of class, a similarity of type. From an apple seed, apple trees grow. You don’t get orange trees. There’s some continuity of primary characteristics from the cause to the result. We find this throughout nature with respect to our inner world and our outer world.
So we want to create purposefully an embodiment of communication whereby to be able to carry on activities benefiting others. This is called a form body, Rūpakāya. Even if we have achieved omniscience, we have to be able to find some medium of communicating, of acting in the world. It’s not enough simply to have achieved that and remain in a passive isolation. We have to find some way to enact it, to give it expression, to communicate what we have found, what we have experienced.
This is the form body. So what tantra does through the practice of the yoga is make use of the similarity between cause and result and provide extremely efficient causes to achieve the desired result. And these efficient causes are that we take a similitude of the result that we’re trying to achieve. That is to say these are types of results that we’re trying to achieve. These are form bodies of the Buddha.
The topmost one is Green Tārā. To my right is Mañjuśrī. To my left is four arm Chenrezig. And the bottom figure is white Tārā.
Green Tārā was one of the first radical feminists, as some of you might know. She was a Bodhisattva traveling the path, and she was very close to being enlightened to achieving Buddhahood, And many monks came to her and said, know, next life you take rebirth as a male, no problem, you’re in. And she kind of poo poos. Said there’s enough male Buddhas running around. What we needed was more female Buddhas.
So she vowed that she would achieve Buddhahood in the aspect of a female and that she would continually work with that aspect benefiting beings. That she was something of a radical feminist. Anyway, manifestation, that aspect, this green body of this particular deity, tantric deity, that is a form body of a Buddha. These other three also are back in these various kinds. They’re also form bodies.
These are the types of results that we’re trying to achieve as far as physical embodiment. So what we do is rather than seeing enlightenment as something far in the distance, is the attitude which is taken in the vehicle, the perfection vehicle, that by creating causes and I work hard I’m going to achieve the goal out there of Buddha someday. We take the result, the actual embodiment of the Buddha. We take the result and we bring it into the present. That is to say, in my meditation, I imagine myself to have already achieved awakening.
I already am a Buddha. I don’t have to wait three countless eons. I did it today. I am a Buddha, and I visualize myself as having this particular embodiment, one of these various deities which personifications of archetypical potentialities in terms of compassion, wisdom, power, activity. That I have already achieved that in, and I identify as if I have.
I am a Buddha, and my speech is the speech of a Buddha. The thoughts that run around in my mind are the thoughts of a Buddha. Now, this is very delicate, obviously. We could have tremendous problems with the delusions of grandeur unless we begin, unless it’s approached very properly and with the correct context and the correct understanding and the correct motivation. Now the motivation is compassion.
One is doing this not for one’s own engrandizement, but for the benefit of others. But even more, one arises out of emptiness as the deity. And by this I mean one meditates on, we have meditated on selflessness. That I have no fixed identity. That there is no unchanging, singular, independent self.
Having meditated on that, one arises, you know, induces a state of fluidity within the context of our identity. We are not holding so tightly to a particular identity. This is the way I am. This is the way I’ve always been. We loosen up.
There’s a flux, a possibility of change. There’s a fluidity, like we’ve softened the clay. One kind of image that I use is if you’re making a clay bust and if it’s dry, there’s very little changes. You can file it down, you can sand it down, chip it away, but there’s very little change you can make. You can make cosmetic changes as it works.
But if you take that brush before it’s too hard and you it in, you soak it in water, and soak it for a couple days, and the clay becomes workable again. And you can make dramatic, you can do a whole plastic surgery business, cosmetic surgery, put on different noses and ears. So the water softens, that rigidness. The water is the understanding of selflessness. Our identity becomes fluid, it’s workable, it’s changeable within the context of selflessness.
Out of this I arise in this fluid open state, I arise out of that as a full fledged Buddha in one of these particular aspects. The Buddhist path which leads to seeing one’s situation as a mandala begins with taking refuge. We take refuge in the Three Jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. This can happen on various levels. There is the ordinary physical level of just repeating the formula, but this also involves a process happening within us.
Regarding this inner level, have the instruction. We have the instruction to take refuge in something which is abiding, something which can actually offer refuge. We can only take refuge in something certain. Otherwise, taking refuge would be a pure fiction. It would not provide the security we want.
So on the inner level, taking refuge means surrendering to those forces which we ourselves are, so to speak, the last transformation. These forces have, in a way, become frozen in us. Taking refuge thus means to commit ourselves to a process of unfreezing so that life’s energy or whatever we want to call those forces that operate through us and somehow get blocked can flow freely. So we can look at this from many levels and it’s quite I can only offer some possible perhaps superficial interpretation to gain some accessibility. But you know in terms of, for example, the psyche, that which constitutes the entirety of being with all its various potentialities.
It is as if we have demarcated a corner of it and identified this is I. This is Ryan. Poor little me. And we draw a heavy line around that to gain some kind of sense of security. These reoccurring patterns that we’ve come to identify as the real me.
This is who I am. And this precludes the possibility of access, of taking recourse to this whole potentiality of who we in fact are. This is one of the workings of, you know, with the Jungian psychology of, archetypical psychology, seeking to bring in archetypical psychology these potentialities are personified and are supposed to be integrated into this little thing over here. Which is quite a difficult job because it’s got this heavy bound, this skin encapsulated ego. And it’s pretty tough material to try to break through.
But with the understanding of selflessness, then that membrane becomes slightly more permeable. And it becomes, there’s a flux and a movement back and forth. And we can arise as a tremendously compassionate being. And for a moment we were drawing upon the possibility of potentialities within our own psyche. You know we’re not trying to become Napoleon, we can’t become Napoleon.
And he was someone who lived many hundreds of years ago. But we can become a Chenrezig. We can become Mañjuśrī. We can become Tārā. These are our potentialities.
We can become who we are. Tantra is nothing new. Tantra is another name for secret mantra. It’s something that we’ve been practicing all our lives. It’s simply that we’ve been using rather miserable deities to meditate on.
Low grade, poor grade C at best, deities. And this is the story that we’ve told ourselves. We’re having a conversation about who I am. Tantra simply says let’s have another conversation. Let’s perturb the system.
Make up a new story about who you are. If this is true as the one you’re telling yourself now, it’s a hell of a lot better way of qualitative life. This is a quotation by Lama Yeshe. The tantra, main problem. What is the problem?
It is ordinary recognition that I am poor man, poor woman. Do you Perceiving holding as poor one, poor object, poor quality and perceiving also as such poor, acting ugly, having lower opinion of our body, lower opinion of quality, that is the worst symptom, obstacle to being healthy, to be liberated. That is the main dealing to eradicate, to cut. As long as you decided, have preconception that I am the self pitying one, you decided. You decided already that you are the bad guy.
You already decided. So when you decide you are a bad guy, you do always bad actions. Anyway, I’m worthless. I’m a bad guy so I do bad ones. Of course that’s the way it’s true.
That is psychology, psychological reality. Mean obviously Lama Yeshe is trying to get to something and I think it’s quite valid in terms of who we conceive our limitations are those we acknowledge. What we have acknowledged is quite limited. In that context without breaking through that it becomes very difficult to change. So somehow we have to make use of deity yoga to expand our story about who we are.
And then thereby actually begin to actualize who we are in fact. So we identify with the meditation on deity, a similitude of this form body. And we can give up grasping and clinging. And we can develop divine pride. This is extremely important in Tantra to acknowledge.
Is as if someone comes to you and says, I’m sorry, this has been a mistake. The parents who you think you are, you have, they actually took the wrong baby. The queen was visiting town and she had her baby in the hospital and it was a switch mix up and you are actually royalty. We’re sorry this happened, but we’re going to make it right for you. We’re going to have an enthronement.
You’re going to be recognized as the next heir to the throne. You are actually royal blood. I didn’t know that. I thought I was just an ordinary person all this time. So it’s this kind of change in mentality that we’re seeking to induce about thinking of ourselves in a more positive fashion at least.
We can begin to notice that we will not cease to be we cease to be our particular present identity. And then we have this tremendous fear that if I’m not this, then I’m not going to do anything. I’ll disappear. I’m going to go out of existence. It’s tremendous resistance to change because we don’t know what the change is going to be.
There’s no way that you can predict. Better to be this poor me than not to be at all. So we can practice being somebody else. And we get the sense that I don’t to be, I don’t cease being when I’m not being, you know, poor mediocre, insufficient person. I still I still am being even though I’m not being that.
That that the ground of the ground of being is more fundamental than the ground of ego. So one doesn’t have to hold so tightly to one’s ego identity that who one conceives oneself to be. One can begin to let and that I can open up to the possibility of allowing myself to change. Again, Lama Yeshe. So using the skillful method, it is possible life becomes transcendental experience.
Life becomes enlightened experience. That is, isn’t it? I don’t know. Maybe I cannot use that word. I think that is enlightened experience.
One way is that, tantrayana, yana means the vehicle, the vehicle of tantra or secret mantra. Tantrayāna having one, having comprehension or recognition that I am Tārā, I am Tārā, I am Buddha. Tantra, you become rather rather than disappear. So you emanate as a body of Tārā, for example. And your consciousness, your pure body is transforming and manifesting as the total pure complete body of Tārā.
The reason perhaps is this way. Each of us, we do have a psyche or conscious or physical body. We have this body, this physical body, this gross body born this body, we’re not transforming. Basically my body become Tārā, no, no. But my consciousness, my psyche can transform.
Perhaps you could say that one of my psychic aspects is power. Represents psychic potentiality. And we’re giving them the imaginative space whereby to find expression. For example, our life each day, each month we manifest different. Sometimes wrathful manifestation when anger comes out, sometimes like Chenrezig, loving kindness.
Try to keep all body, speech and mind on others. But you can see entirely different persons. So we’re completely emanating different deities. Some are wrathful deities. Some are loving deities.
That we know according to our life, we know. We check up, we know. Our dear friends sometimes become so good like Chenrezig and sometimes so wrathful, hurt, broke heart. So by re identifying, motivated by compassion, within the state of openness, the fluidity of emptiness, of understanding of selflessness, we arise as a deity. We perform various enlightened actions, the actions of a Buddha, helping others.
We make offerings for ourselves because we are a divine being. We develop divine pride. We identify with the personified qualities of that being, compassion. You know I’m tremendously compassionate. We feel compassion.
We allow ourselves to feel that compassion. We don’t feel as if I shouldn’t be feeling this compassion because I’m not a compassionate person. I shouldn’t have all this wisdom because I’m kind of mediocre, of intelligent person. We don’t limit what we allow ourselves to experience because this is completely open. This is the full potential actually for identifying.
Anything could happen, we don’t know. But this is what it feels like to be light awakened. We allow what is in us to find blossom, to grow. We begin to see sparks of enlightenment. We become mindful of when we are tremendously compassionate.
We become mindful of when we have all the wisdom of the Buddha. The spark of an awakening occurring over the course of the day. Usually, they don’t fit in with our identity. They don’t fit in with our predominant pattern that we focus upon. Therefore, they go they go unnoticed.
There’s a tremendous amount that goes on that we filter out because it doesn’t fit. It would be in conflict with how we conceive of ourselves. So we discount it. Doesn’t exist for us. But because we’re practicing being compassionate, practicing being wise, practicing being perfect, practicing all of these awakening activities and imaginative, we begin to notice sparks of compassion, awakening activity in the course of our lives.
Because it’s no longer quite so contradictory to our conception about who we are. Because we have it from time to time allowed ourselves to identify as having these qualities. So you know we become, they aren’t filtered out as often. They aren’t discounted. They become more noted and we begin to change.
We find an appropriate way of relating, a new way of relating. And we continue that way of relating. This is what tantra means. Tantra means continuity. We find a more satisfying way of relating and we seek to continue that way of relating, relating in terms of the awakened quality.
The one thing that the situation becomes very much like someone who just won the cross-lotto. You know poor person, they just won the cross-lotto. They got their pockets full of money, but they still initially, they still had the mentality of poverty. When they go walking down the street, street, they see everything out of a context of poverty stricken mentality. Even though their pockets are full of stuff for the money.
But slowly, they go, why am I thinking like this? I could buy that, I’m a rich person. And they relate, begin to relate with their reality slightly differently. Thereby they experience their reality slightly differently. And this experience in reality slightly differently increases their awareness that in fact they are rich.
And that awareness increasing they relate slightly differently. And it becomes a new feedback loop, a new system that’s being developed and it becomes a positive reinforcement. We begin to take a tangent and create change. With this awareness that I am a rich person, I relate differently. Relating differently, I experience differently.
This feeds back to my awareness. I become increasingly aware of how rich I am And finally I lose my mentality of poverty and develop the mentality of a rich person. Some rich people are generous. Some rich people are stingy, miserly. Some rich people are noble.
Some rich people are miserly. But they all have within this context a different particularity, the mentality of being wealthy rich. They come with that mindset to whatever they are relating to. And then their particular idiosyncrasies will relate to that situation very differently. But they all carry some sort of mentality of richness about them.
So we all have a richness which we can bring to situations which we’re trying to develop. This we developed through the practice of deity yoga, this ability of being able to benefit. This unlimited open potentiality that we have in terms of our love and compassion, our wisdom and our energy and possibilities for enlightened activity. So through the practice of tantra we are made rich and this richness is expressed as a form body. This wealth, the wealth of our Buddha nature.
So this way, this becomes a way of a style. It’s a lifestyle. Way of relating. So awakening becomes a way of life rather than something far off in the future. So that’s the practice of secret mantras.
I’ve given that very haphazardly in my own kind of confused manner fashion. Anybody have any questions? I would say that traditionally, first you must be enthroned. You must be enthroned. Before the enthronement ceremony, though you might be of royal lineage, it has not been officially recognized.
And this recognition goes beyond intellect. It awakens some kind of seed of that particular potentiality. There’s an actual ceremony of enthronement and initiation. That’s what I’m talking about. So generally it is said before one can visualize oneself as even a Buddha or any of these various meditation deities.
One should have initiation. It has some kind of psychic effect that one actually goes through a ceremony of being recognized, of royal lineage and you are introduced to who in fact you are. A formal introduction to yourself. Prior to that, it’s not advisable to meditate on oneself as a deity. So I guess that would be a very traditional way.
I mean Yeah, I would say for one thing, one can receive empowerment on the basis of having some even, I mean the more understanding and utilization that you have the better, but even on the basis of an intellectual understanding of the three principles, three fundamentals of the path. Determination, renunciation, the awakening heart, the awakening mind. Having that intellectual basis one can set it as a minimal suitable basis for receiving empowerment or initiation. So one can do that and I’m sure you have that minimal qualification. Also I think, really think that this is my own personal opinion, that this is very profound practice.
And I think for most of us, and I include very sincerely myself in this, that there are perhaps more relevant practices for us right now. And just for example, the practices of the graduated path, practice of mindfulness and breathing, practice with the, especially for example, exchanging oneself with others. I think with our limited time that we have and limited energy that we put into our practice, it may be more relevant and useful and functional for us. That’s my own question too. Then perhaps we can evolve out of that and sometime in the future it might be more relevant to practice deity yoga.
But I mean if one was interested like from time to time gives empowerment, gave empowerment last Saturday into Vajrapāni, which is a Buddha associated with power, the removal of obstacles. So one, you’re more than welcome to attend those. As an adjunct to one’s practice, would be useful. Keeping with, I would say, at present at least, the main part of one’s practice, the three fundamentals of the path, especially cultivating compassion, cultivating the discipline and the clarity of mindfulness of being and developing that ability to be with oneself and focus and concentrate. Then I think grounding oneself.
And then otherwise, could be an exotic side trip and maybe not so much use. So as an adjunct, if you have enough time, that would be great. Seriously, think about that. And Visualizing yourself as a Buddha or a deity is part of tantric practice. But when you take on the sufferings of others generally, take it upon yourself from sentient beings, not self-cherishing.
And therefore, I mean a Buddha wouldn’t have, that might not be quite appropriate. No, I’m sure, no, I don’t want to make it sound mysterious or anything. Can use your good technique. Yeah, you don’t know the balance. Also don’t know, for example, before becoming a monk or a nun you don’t know the balance either.
So that’s the theory that you’d never do it if you found out beforehand. Well theoretically at least you had to have such motivation that you wanted to be liberated from cyclic existence that you’re willing to do anything. Yeah, mean you can talk to cancer, if you say. They could advise you. Various deities are associated with different things. Chenrezig is associated with the practice of compassion, Mañjuśrī is associated with the practice of wisdom, Tārā is associated with the practice of more active expression of helping others.
So depending upon what you might have an affinity with, what you feel need work on, you might make use of that particular deity. But you really choose it yourself. Yeah. There are four levels of tantra and there are four sects of Buddhism within Tibetan tradition and within these different sects, certain deities, certain deities are more central to the practice within that particular sect. Those who are studying that sect would be inclined to take those empowerments and use those particular deities because they’re teaching and their fellow students would probably be practicing them.
So there’s a lot of reasons why it might get channeled into one particular May we dedicate the positive energy, the creative potential that we accumulated. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual teacher and lead each and every sentient being to the enlightened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakening heart that has not arisen arise and grow. May that which has arisen never diminish, but increase more and more.