Chapter One

The Difficulty of Finding the Freedoms and Advantages

The main subject of the chapter, the teaching on how difficult it is to find the freedoms and advantages, is preceded by an explanation of the proper way to listen to any spiritual instruction.

I. THE PROPER WAY TO LISTEN TO SPIRITUAL TEACHING

The proper way to listen to the teachings has two aspects: the right attitude and the right conduct.

1. Attitude

The right attitude combines the vast attitude of the bodhicitta, the mind of enlightenment, and the vast skill in means of the Secret Mantrayana.

1.1 THE VAST ATTITUDE OF THE BODHICITTA

There is not a single being in samsara, this immense ocean of suffering, who in the course of time without beginning has never been our father or mother. When they were our parents, these beings’ only thought was to raise us with the greatest possible kindness, protecting us with great love and giving us the very best of their own food and clothing.

   All of these beings, who have been so kind to us, want to be happy, and yet they have no idea how to put into practice what brings about happiness, the ten positive actions. None of them want to suffer, but they do not know how to give up the ten negative actions at the root of all suffering. Their deepest wishes and what they actually do thus contradict each other. Poor beings, lost and confused, like a blind man abandoned in the middle of an empty plain!

   Tell yourself: “It is for their well-being that I am going to listen to the profound Dharma and put it into practice. I will lead all these beings, my parents, tormented by the miseries of the six realms of existence, to the state of omniscient Buddhahood, freeing them from all the karmic phenomena, habitual patterns and sufferings of everyone of the six realms.” It is important to have this attitude each time you listen to teachings or practise them.

   Whenever you do something positive, whether of major or minor importance, it is indispensable to enhance  it with the three supreme methods. Before beginning, arouse the bodhicitta as a skilful means to make sure that the action becomes a source of good for the future. While carrying out the action, avoid getting involved in any conceptualization,* so that the merit cannot be destroyed by circumstances.** At the end, seal the action properly by dedicating the merit, which will ensure that it continually grows ever greater.***

(*For beginners, this means avoiding a materialistic or ambitious attitude to the practice. In fact only realized practititioners can practise with true freedom from concepts, but as one’s practice matures, freedom from grasping comes progressively.)

(**The positive energy of the practice can also be channelled away from enlightenment into other things. There are four circumstances which destroy one’s sources of merit:

1) Not dedicating the action to the attainment of perfect Buddhahood for the sake of others.

2) Anger: one moment of anger is said to be capable of destroying kalpas of positive actions.

3) Regret: regretting the beneficial actions one has done, even partially.

4) Boasting of one’s positive actions to others.

(***Just as when a drop of water becomes part of the ocean it will continue to exist as long as the ocean exists, when the merit of one’s actions is completely dedicated to “the fruit, the ocean of Omniscience,” it will not be lost until one has attained complete Buddhahood.)

   The way you listen to the Dharma is very important. But even more important is the motivation with which you listen to it.

   What makes an action good or bad?
   Not how it looks, nor whether it is big or small,
   But the good or evil motivation behind it.

No matter how many teachings you have heard, to be motivated b ordinary concerns-such as a desire for greatness, fame or whatever-is not the way of the true Dharma. So, first of all, it is most important to turn inwards and change your motivation. If you can correct your attitude, skilful means will permeate your positive actions, and you will have set out on the path of great beings. If you cannot, you might think that you are studying and practising the Dharma but it will be no more than a semblance of the real thing. Therefore, whenever you listen to the teachings and whenever you practise, be it meditating on a deity, doing prostrations and circumambulations, or reciting a mantra – even a single mani – it is always essential to give rise to bodhicitta.

1.2 VAST SKILL IN MEANS: THE ATTITUDE OF THE SECRET MANTRAYANA

The Torch of the Three Methods says of the Secret Mantrayana:

   It has the same goal but is free from all confusion,*
   It is rich in methods and without difficulties.**
   It is for those with sharp faculties.***
   The Mantra Vehicle is sublime.

(*The object of the view of both the sutras and the tantras is the same, i.e. absolute space (Skt: dharmadhatu) But with regard to the view itself, a distinction may be made, as when one speaks of seeing a form ‘clearly’ or of seeing it ‘indistinctly.’ The Vehicle of Characteristics (the sutras) establishes the support, the essence, the absolute truth, great emptiness beyond the eight conceptual extremes, but it is not able to realize that its nature is the inseparable union of space and primordial wisdom. As for what is supported, the phenomena of relative reality, the Vehicle of Characteristics establishes them as being interdependent and like a magical illusion. But it does not go further than this impure magical display, to establish the kayas and wisdoms. The Vehicle of the Secret Mantras, on the other hand, establishes the higher great dharmakaya, the array of kayas and wisdoms which have always been inseparable, the two absolute truths.

(**In the Vehicle of Characteristics it is not taught that one can attain Enlightenment without abandoning the five objects of desire. But here (in the Resultant Vehicle) one deals with the mind quickly and easily, taking it on the paths in which one does not abandon these five objects, and one can attain the level of Union, the level of Vajradhara, in one life and one body.)

(***Beings with sharp faculties are those who are “intelligent enough to be able to realize the profound view of the Adamantine Vehicle of Secret Mantras and who possess sufficient confidence not to be afraid of vast and powerful actions.)

The Mantrayana can be entered by many routes. It contains many methods for accumulating merit and wisdom, and profound skilful means to make the potential within us manifest* without our having to undergo great hardships. The basis for these methods is the way we direct our aspirations:

   Everything is circumstantial
   And depends entirely on one’s aspiration.

(*According to the Secret Mantrayana one does not create or develop anything by following the path. One is simply making visible something which is already present one’s own Buddha-nature.)

Do not consider the place where the Dharma is being taught, the teacher, the teachings and so on as ordinary and impure. As you listen, keep the five perfections clearly in mind:

   The perfect place is the citadel of the absolute expanse, called Akanistha, “the Unexcelled.” The perfect teacher is Samantabhadra, the dharmakaya. The perfect assembly consists of the male and female Bodhisattvas and deities* of the mind lineage of the Conquerors and of the symbol lineage of the Vidyadharas.

(*One should not see them as ordinary or extremely subtle beings. All in the assembly, whether they realize it or not, are pervaded by the Buddha nature just as sesame seeds are pervaded by oil… So all sentient beings are Buddhas, their utterly pure nature is that of Buddhahood, their primordial essence is that of Buddhahood and their spontaneously present qualities are those of Buddhahood… they are truly Buddhas, visualized as dakas and dakinis of the appropriate family. If both teacher and retinue are Buddhas, their Buddhafield is also pure and should be visualized as Akanistha or another pure land.)

   Or you can think that the place where the Dharma is being taught is the Lotus-Light Palace of the Glorious Copper-coloured Mountain, the teacher who teaches is Padmasambhava of Oddiyana, and we, the audience, are the Eight Vidyadharas, the Twenty-five Disciples, and the dakas and dakinis.

   Or consider that this perfect place is the Eastern Buddhafield, Manifest Joy, where the perfect teacher Vajrasattva, the perfect sambhogakaya, is teaching the assembly of the divinities of the Vajra Family and male and female Bodhisattvas.

   Equally well, the perfect place where the Dharma is being taught can be the Western Buddhafield, the Blissful, the perfect teacher the Buddha Amitabha, and the assembly the male and female Bodhisattvas and deities of the Lotus family.

   Whatever the case, the teaching is that of the Great Vehicle and the time is the ever-revolving wheel of eternity.

These visualizations* are to help us understand how things are in reality. It is not that we are temporarily creating something that does not really exist.

(*Visualize, but also to bring to mind, to have clearly in one’s mind, to refresh one’s memory. “Visualizing in this way does not mean telling oneself that a donkey is a horse or that a piece of coal is gold; it means having vividly in one’s mind what has always been so from the beginning, that appearances and beings spring from the primal ground, which is the state of Buddhahood.”)

   The teacher embodies the essence of all Buddhas throughout the three times. He is the union of the Three Jewels: his body is the Sangha, his speech the Dharma, his mind the Buddha. He is the union of the Three Roots: his body is the teacher, his speech the yidam, his mind the dakini, He is the union of the three kayas: his body is the nirmanakaya, his speech the sambhogakaya, his mind the dharmakaya, He is the embodiment of all the Buddhas of the past, source of all the Buddhas of the future and the representative of all the Buddhas of the present. Since he takes as his disciples degenerate beings like us, whom none of the thousand Buddhas of the Good Kalpa* could help, his compassion and bounty exceed that of all Buddhas.

(*In this kalpa a thousand Buddhas are to appear. However, we have not met those Buddhas who have already come – or if we did meet them they did not succeed in bringing us to liberation. As for the Buddhas of the future, it is still too soon for us to meet them. So without our spiritual teachers we would have no one to help us.)

   The teacher is the Buddha, the teacher is the Dharma,
   The teacher is also the Sangha.
   The teacher is the one who accomplishes everything.
   The teacher is Glorious Vajradhara.

We, as the assembly gathered to listen to the teachings, use the basis of our own Buddha-nature, the support of our precious human life, the circumstance of having a spiritual friend and the method of following his advice, to become the Buddhas of the future. As the Hevajra Tantra says:

   All beings are Buddhas,
   But this is concealed by adventitious stains.
   When their stains are purified, their Buddhahood is revealed.