Vajrayana is not a separate vehicle from Mahayana
The great Indian scholar and highly attained yogi, Lama Atisha, was the crown of the great monastic university in India, Nalanda, which was established almost fifteen hundred years ago. As I mentioned before, Lama Atisha wrote the Lamp for the Path to Enlightenment in Tibet, which contains the essence of the 84,000 teachings taught by Buddha. Of course, it is not everything the Buddha taught sentient beings but it’s the essence. The teachings come in three levels—the lesser vehicle or Hinayana teachings and the great vehicle or Mahayana teachings, which is divided into the Mahayana Paramitayana teachings and the Mahayana Secret Mantra Vajrayana teachings or tantra.
You have to understand that the Mahayana comes in two—one is sutra, one is tantra. It’s OK to think of the Hinayana, the Mahayana Paramitayana and the Mahayana Vajrayana, but if you think there are three separate vehicles—Hinayana, Mahayana and Vajrayana—then you are wrong, totally wrong. That suggests that Vajrayana is not part of the Mahayana, that the Mahayana is only Paramitayana. When you say, “Hinayana teachings, then Mahayana teachings, then Vajrayana teachings,” if you present it like that, you are saying that the Vajrayana is not part of the Mahayana teachings. That’s completely wrong because if you practice the Vajrayana without bodhicitta, it doesn’t become the cause to achieve enlightenment. If you practice Vajrayana without renunciation it doesn’t become the cause to achieve liberation from samsara, liberation from the oceans of samsara and its cause, karma and delusion.
Renunciation has two parts. First, there is the renunciation of this life and next, the renunciation of the future lives’ samsara, seeing that it is only in the nature of suffering. Renunciation of future lives means having no attachment to the future samsaric rebirth, the future samsaric happiness, or the future samsaric wealth and perfections. When we have no attachment to the happiness and pleasure of future lives and we want to be free from that, that is the renunciation of future lives.
Why do we need the renunciation of this life? Without the renunciation of this life, with the attachment clinging to this life, if we practice tantra it doesn’t even become Dharma. I’m not talking about Hindu tantra here but Buddhist tantra, the tantra taught by the Buddha. The name “tantra” is the same but its meaning is different. Whatever the Hindu meaning of tantra is, here it means the Secret Mantra Vajrayana. We must practice Vajrayana with the renunciation of this life. The very first Dharma is the renunciation of this life. It is the totally free, satisfied, healthy mind, the inner peaceful mind, free from attachment grasping to this life. Without this, when there is attachment grasping to this life, that mind is nonvirtuous. It is what causes nonvirtuous actions, disturbing our mental continuum and not allowing us any peace.
If you practice tantra, Secret Mantra Vajrayana, with this attachment, it doesn’t even become Dharma. You have to understand it doesn’t even become Dharma. The Vajrayana practice you are doing, the meditation on chakras, winds and drops—whatever you’re doing—doesn’t even become Dharma, doesn’t even become the cause of happiness of future lives; it doesn’t even become the cause of temporary happiness. To become the cause of a good rebirth and the happiness of future lives, the Secret Mantra Vajrayana you practice has to be Dharma. To do it with attachment, clinging to this life, with worldly concern, your action of practicing Secret Mantra Vajrayana becomes nonvirtue and is the cause of rebirth in the lower realms.
This is illustrated by the story of two meditators in Penpo in Tibet. Maybe they were monks, I’m not sure, but they were doing a Highest Yoga Tantra Yamantaka practice. Yamantaka is the extremely wrathful aspect of Manjushri, the buddha of wisdom, the manifestation of all the buddhas’ holy wisdom. It was a long retreat and one passed away but the other continued doing the retreat. In the evening with this practice you burn tsampa over a fire and make sur offerings, making charity. There’s a prayer where you visualize filling the whole sky with objects of the five desires, and then you make offerings to the Guru, Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and then you make charity to the six realms’ sentient beings. Particularly here, you offer the smell of the burning tsampa because that smell is needed for the smell-eaters, the intermediate state beings.
Since I mentioned this I’ll explain it so you can get an idea in case somebody wants to practice it, to help them. There are numberless intermediate state beings who will come when you burn some tsampa. They come to get the smell. Their suffering is unbelievable, unimaginable, and getting the smell helps them. After you made them satisfied with the smell of the food, which becomes food for them, you give them teachings about bodhicitta, the good heart and about not harming others and so forth—such as, if you benefit others you receive happiness back; if you harm others you receive harm back, things like that. For example, if you plant something hot, like a chili, the result will be hot, but if you plant something sweet, like a raisin, the result will be sweet. Like that, by harming others the result is suffering and you receive harm. And by benefiting others, you receive happiness. You give teachings to them like that to inspire them to practice the good heart and to not harm other sentient beings. There is an unimaginable number of these sentient beings enduring the most unbelievable suffering and it helps them so much if you can give teachings to them like this.
A Tibetan person told me about the time when he was in prison in Tibet. Each day he and the other prisoners got a tiny amount of white flour that was made into dough and steamed. That was all they had to eat each day, so they were unbelievably hungry. They were in prison, they weren’t free, but they could go out into the fields, so they used to do that to look for other people’s kaka. The Chinese who were running the prison ate a lot of beans and the prisoners could find the beans when they opened up the kaka with sticks. If they found any beans, they ate them. They also looked for old bones to chew and these helped sustain the body. The Chinese warders had a kitchen somewhere and the smell from the kitchen was also helpful in sustaining the body.
Because this man had gone through that experience and knew how invaluable the smell of food was in keeping him alive, he never missed doing the sur practice, offering the smell of burning tsampa to the smell-eaters. Those beings suffer hunger that is thirty, forty, fifty times worse than any human could ever experience, it’s much more unbearable, so of course they find the practice very beneficial. But it is also beneficial for us, because when we do the practice it helps us attain a pure land in our next rebirth and helps pacify whatever obstacles we have and assure the success of whatever projects we have. They are the benefits from our side but of course for the smell-eaters, the intermediate state beings, who are numberless, there are the most amazing benefits.
This sur practice was what the surviving meditator in Penpo was doing as part of his Yamantaka practice when one day a hungry ghost appeared, looking a little like Yamantaka, with many arms and heads. When the meditator asked who he was, the hungry ghost explained that he was his friend, the other meditator who was doing the Yamantaka retreat. Although he had done it for many years, because he had done it without the lamrim, which means without bodhicitta, the practice failed to become the cause for enlightenment. There was also no right view, the right view of the Prasangika school, that cuts the root of samsara, that is an antidote to ignorance, and so the practice also failed to become the cause to liberation. And there was no renunciation even for that life, the very beginning of Dharma. Whenever he did the meditation on the deity and chanted mantras he did so with attachment clinging to that life, without any lamrim at all, which is why he was reborn as a hungry ghost.
Lama Atisha explained that you can be learned in tantra but if your practice does not even become Dharma then you will be reborn in the lower realms. It’s not only that your practice fails to be a Mahayana one and is a Hinayana one instead, you will be reborn in the lower realms.
In the teachings by the lineage lamas the example is given of a Tibetan food that is made for special celebrations with powdered cheese and lots of butter and made into a ball that becomes quite hard. It’s white and very delicious. It’s said to be delicious due to the kindness of the butter. I guess cakes and ice cream are delicious due to the kindness of the sugar. The main ingredient in a cake is flour but it is delicious because of the sugar. So it is said that the tantric path becomes rich and meaningful by the kindness of the lamrim, the three principal aspects of the path.
Unlike in places like Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan or I’m not sure, China, in Tibetan communities you never hear people say that Hinayana’s OK but then there is Mahayana and Vajrayana. If you mistakenly think that the Paramitayana path is Mahayana and Vajrayana is something separate then you are very wrong. You have to say Mahayana Vajrayana otherwise it gives people the wrong understanding, that Vajrayana is not Mahayana.
That is why I have emphasized this. If we practice tantra, Secret Mantra Vajrayana, without bodhicitta, it doesn’t become the cause of enlightenment; if we practice it without right view, it doesn’t become the antidote to samsara, the antidote to ignorance. It becomes the cause of samsara; it only causes us to develop ignorance. If it’s done without the renunciation of the next life, it doesn’t become the cause to achieve liberation. And then without the first renunciation of this life, it doesn’t even become Dharma, the cause of the happiness of future lives. That’s why I gave you those stories.
We must practice Secret Mantra Vajrayana, tantra, with a lamrim motivation, with renunciation, bodhicitta and right view. Then we can practice tantra correctly. Only with right view does it become Vajrayana, where our mind is inseparable from method and wisdom. When we visualize ourselves as the deity, even though the aspect of the deity’s holy body appears to us as a real one, existing from its own side, we understand this is not true. Even if we don’t have the actual realization we have the intellectual understanding that this is not true. We have this hallucination, this appearance, but our mind meditating sees that it is not true; it doesn’t exist from its own side. Visualizing the deity’s holy body is the method side and understanding that, looking at it as empty, is the wisdom side. Because this happens in one mind, not two separate ones, this is the inseparability of method and wisdom. Practicing method and wisdom without separation like this, it becomes Vajrayana.
When we do that practice, visualizing ourselves as the deity or visualizing the mandala, we stop the ordinary appearance and thought of the place, and we visualize pure appearance and pure thought. This is the pure appearance, the mandala, the celestial mansion, that appears to the deity’s pure wisdom. While our mind is focused on the mandala, that’s the method. Because we are a sentient being it appears to us as truly existent, but at the same time we have the understanding that it’s like a dream, it does not exist from its own side. It’s like when we are dreaming and we recognize the dream as a dream. We have the appearance but at the same time we understand it’s not true; it’s a dream. Whatever appears like this, we don’t hold onto it as true. Similarly, even when we visualize the mandala, we have the appearance of a real mandala, which means existing from its own side, but from our heart we understand it’s not true. That is the wisdom.
Therefore, to say Hinayana, then Mahayana, and then Vajrayana, that is incorrect; it causes big misunderstandings for people. However, if you say Hinayana and then Mahayana, the Paramitayana teaching, and then you say Mahayana Vajrayana, that’s correct. That doesn’t cause misunderstandings.
This is the most important thing, the very first thing in life. In regard to Dharma, this is the first thing to understand, so we don’t cheat ourselves for our whole life, believing we are practicing Dharma but nothing becomes Dharma. For our whole life we have been doing prayers and mantras and this and that and many things, believing we’ve been practicing Dharma, but when we come to understand what is and what is not Dharma, we discover we have not been practicing Dharma. We have been doing many things but nothing has become Dharma. There’s a danger that our whole life has been wasted.
Even living in a cave, in a solitary place, without knowing exactly what Dharma is we can waste our whole life by incorrectly believing we are practicing Dharma. We can live our whole life in a monastery but not know what Dharma is. Even learning very vast subjects, nothing becomes Dharma. So, there’s a great danger that all or most of our actions—listening, reflecting, meditating, whatever we’re doing—becomes nonvirtue. This is the very first thing to understand, the most important thing, to wake the mind up from a deep sleep, the deep sleep of ignorance.
I’ll stop here.
Dedications
[Mandala offering]
Due to all the past, present and future merits collected by me, the three times’ merits collected by all sentient beings and buddhas, may bodhicitta be actualized within my own heart, in the hearts of my family members, the animals and people—in the hearts of anybody who has a connection with me as well as in the hearts of all the students and all the benefactors of this organization and those who have offered service to the organization in the past, are offering service in the present or who will serve in the future, and those whom I promised to pray for, whose names have been given to me, and in the hearts of all the sentient beings.
[Jang chub sem chog rinpoche …]
Due to all the three times’ merits collected by me, the three-time merits collected by all sentient beings and buddhas, may bodhicitta be actualized in the hearts of all the leaders of the world, and especially the leaders in mainland China, then the leaders in the other countries in this world who have so many unbelievable problems. There is no peace in those leaders’ hearts because of a lack of good heart, a lack of compassion and loving kindness, because of their self-cherishing thought, and then many problems happen in their countries. One country has many millions of people who get so much peace and happiness when the leader has a good heart, therefore this prayer, praying to generate bodhicitta in all their hearts, is very important.
War, famine, disease, torture and poverty, as well as the dangers of fire, water, earth and wind, none of these things will happen if everybody generates bodhicitta, the ultimate good heart. Whatever they do only becomes the cause of enlightenment, the highest Dharma, and only the cause of happiness of all sentient beings. Therefore, they don’t create the cause for dangers of fire, water, earthquakes, war, famine, economic problems and so forth. With bodhicitta there’s prosperity and everything is plentiful, without scarcity or inflation. With inner development it becomes very easy to give rise to all the positive thoughts, and then all the realizations happen.
[Jang chub sem chog rinpoche …]
And may the bodhicitta be actualized in the hearts of everybody who follow different religions, then there’s also so much peace and happiness in the world if that happens.
[Jang chub sem chog rinpoche …]
As I mentioned last night, recite the prayer for His Holiness Dalai Lama to have a stable and long life and for all his holy wishes to succeed immediately.
[Long-life prayer for His Holiness the Dalai Lama]
Due all the past, present and future merits collected by me, the three times’ merits collected by others, that which are merely labeled by mind, which do not exist from their own side at all, but are totally empty; may the I, who is also merely labeled by mind, who does not exist from its own side at all, who is totally empty; achieve Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment, which is merely labeled by mind, which does not exist at all from its own side, which is totally empty; and lead all sentient beings, who are merely labeled by the mind, who do not exist from their own side, who are totally empty from their own side; then bring them to Guru Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment, which is merely labeled by mind, which is totally empty from its own side; by myself alone, who is also merely labeled by mind, who does not exist at all from its own side, who is totally empty.
Due to all the three times’ merits collected by me, collected by others, may the stainless teaching of Lama Tsongkhapa, like refined gold, be completely actualized within my own heart, in the hearts of my family members, in the hearts of all of us here, in the hearts of all the students in this organization and the supporters and those who serve the organization, in all their hearts, in the hearts of everybody in this world.
