Tantra Practice -
Yesterday, we spoke about the meaning of tantra, a stream of continuity that goes on forever. There is a basis level – our mental continuum with the Buddha-nature factors. These include our networks of positive force and deep awareness, and the relative and deepest natures of our mind. On the basis level, they give rise to our uncontrollably recurring rebirth, samsara. On the pathway level, these Buddha-nature factors no longer give rise to samsaric rebirth and the samsaric experiences of our ordinary lives. Instead, they give rise to those things that are similar to the result that we want to achieve and that will help us achieve that result. These are the Buddha-figures, or yidams, for example, and our understanding of voidness. Then, on the resultant level, these Buddha-nature factors will transform and give rise to the Enlightening Bodies of a Buddha. Tantra means this continuity of our Buddha-nature factors on each of these three levels.
Tantra also has this connotation of a loom on which we weave together all the different insights and understandings that we’ve developed in the sutra path. On the sutra path, we are working with emphasis on the causes that will bring about the Bodies of a Buddha, whereas in tantra we are working on something similar to the result – the so-called “purities.” This entails imagining ourselves already in the form of these Buddha-figures having all the qualities of a Buddha, such as the enlightening influence to be able to benefit all beings. Our speech is in an enlightening form as represented by mantras. Our environment is pure like that of mandalas. Our minds are pure in terms of understanding voidness and having bodhichitta. Our way of enjoying things is pure, without any disturbances of attachment, clinging and so on.
We have all these purities that we imagine in our tantra practice. Imagining that we have them now is very much in accordance with bodhichitta, with which we are focusing on our own individual enlightenments that have not yet happened, but which can happen based on these Buddha-nature factors. So, we want to renounce the basis level of our body, speech, mind, environment, activities, and ways of enjoying and turn to the pure level of the result through the pathway level. The voidness or emptiness of our minds, as well as its conventional nature, allow for this transformation.
All these points we’ve been discussing fit together and tantra is a way of weaving them very nicely with each other so that they all combine in one package that we generate in one state of mind in one moment. This is what we are aiming to be able to do with the attainment of enlightenment.
