In Exile From the Land of Snows (75 page)

13.
The
Abhidharmakosha
or “Treasury of Knowledge” was written by the Buddhist scholar Vasubandhu approximately nine hundred years after the Buddha’s death. It deals extensively with the various classes of mental and physical phenomena, placing special emphasis on which traits are to be developed and which abandoned in the quest for enlightenment.

14.
The Tibetan term,
lung
(Sans.
prana
), can be translated as air (inner or outer), energy, or wind.

15.
Samadhi
(Tib.
ting-nge-dzin
) means meditative stabilization, specifically one-pointed concentration on an object. There are nine levels leading to a fully qualified state of meditative stabilization called calm abiding (Sans.
shamatha;
Tib.
zhi-gnas
), which can be used as a basis for attaining supernormal or miraculous abilities.

16.
Refuge
refers to the Buddhist practice of “taking refuge” from the sufferings of cyclic existence (Sans.
samsara;
Tib.
khor-wa
) in the Three Jewels: The Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The Buddha or “Awakened One” (Tib.
Sang-gye
) has realized both the ultimate and conventional nature of existence and is therefore a fit source of refuge from it. His teaching, the Dharma (Tib.
chö
), comprises the cessation of suffering as well as the path of inner development sentient beings must follow to obtain liberation. The Sangha or community (Tib.
Ge-dun
) are all those practicing the Dharma. Technically the term denotes any group of four or more fully ordained monks or a Bodhisattva who has obtained the first Bodhisattva stage (Sans.
bhumi;
Tib.
so
) equivalent to the path of seeing.

17.
High status
indicates a high rebirth either as a human or god among the six realms of samsara.
Definite goodness
refers both to a state free of samsara and to Buddhahood.

18.
Specifically cause and effect. Though cause and effect is the foundation of the Buddhist teachings, it is often impossible (with a normal consciousness) to recognize a specific cause or causes for a specific effect.

19.
The
Pramanavarttika
, written by Dharmakirti around A.D. 500, is a compendium of teachings on correct or unmistaken knowledge. The two types of correct
knowledge set forth in the text are correct inference or logic and direct perception. They apply to both conventional and ultimate truths.

20.
Guru yoga entails a set of practices in which one’s own teacher is viewed as the embodiment of the qualities of all the Buddhas. It is done for the purpose of enhancing awareness through mixing one’s consciousness with an exalted object.

21.
Tsong-kha-pa (1357-1419), founder of the Ge-luk-pa Sect, was born in Amdo on what later became the site of Kum Bum Monastery. He wrote over two hundred books of which the
Lam Rim Chen-mo
or
Stages on the Path to Enlightenment
(extensive version) is one of the most widely studied.

22.
See
notes 42
and
40
.

23.
There were numerous oracles in Tibet; they were individuals—often self-proclaimed—who served as mediums for specific gods or spirits. Chief among them were the two State Oracles, Nechung and Ga-dong.

24.
The stage of generation (Tib.
kye-rim
) particular to Annutara or Highest Yoga Tantra (the final and most sophisticated of the four tantric cycles) involves practices through which the meditator, after having realized emptiness, projects or generates this wisdom consciousness into the form of a tutelary deity. During the practice, the full course of cyclic existence is duplicated within the mind of the meditator, i.e., death, intermediate state, and rebirth. (The final one encompasses the actual generation into the deities’ form.) These states both correspond to and devolve from specific types of consciousness. It is the meditator’s goal to gain control over the latter, thereby effecting release from their concomitant conditions. At first, such an endeavor is merely imaginary; a mimicking of the consciousnesses, the states they create and one’s own ascendency over them. The actual achievement of control comes at the conclusion of the following or completion stage (Tib.
dzok-rim
) and is synonymous with Buddhahood. (See
note 32
for detailed explanation.)

25.
The three bodies of a Buddha are the Dharmakaya (Tib.
chö-ku
) or Truth Body, the Samboghakaya (Tib.
long-ku
) or Complete Enjoyment Body and the Nirmanakaya (Tib.
trul-ku
) or Emanation Body. The Dharmakaya is formless and represents an enlightened being’s undifferentiable union with the all-pervasive sphere of emptiness (not a single dimension or place as such but, as the ultimate reality of all phenomena, that which abides throughout). On the other hand, the two remaining bodies are known as form bodies. The Samboghakaya is a spontaneous projection from the Dharmakaya, produced by a Buddha’s wishes to help sentient beings. It appears to train advanced Bodhisattvas in the higher pure lands and is known as the Complete Enjoyment Body because of its pure nature. Nirmanakaya are lower-level physical forms of a Buddha (sometimes distinguished by thirty-two major and eighty minor marks), which can manifest in the human realm when times are suitable to teach the Dharma. While the Dharmakaya is the direct product of a Buddha’s insight into the ultimate nature of reality—his wisdom—the two form bodies are a result of the altruistic motivation to help others. As a result, they are infinite in number, manifesting throughout time and space whenever and wherever there are beings capable of being led toward liberation. Therefore, though the form bodies are produced by a Buddha’s compassion, their appearance is contingent upon the merit of others.

26.
Trainee means all those who are training in the practices that lead to enlightenment.

27.
Manjushri (Tib.
Jam-pel
) is the Bodhisattva of Infinite Wisdom. Maitreya (Tib.
Jam-pa
) is the next (no. five) of the Thousand Universal or Teaching Buddhas, who will appear during this world’s twenty intermediate aeons of abiding. He is currently dwelling in the Tushita Heaven, where the last historical Buddha—Shakyamuni—left him in charge of teaching the Bodhisattva-host, there assembled.

28.
Tulku
in Tibetan literally means Emanation Body. In general usage it refers to any great saint or sage who, having obtained the ability not to reincarnate, does so voluntarily for the benefit of others. Such a being need not have obtained Buddhahood but must at the least have gained sufficient realization of emptiness to determine the place and circumstances under which he will be reborn. This ability is achieved at the level of the path of seeing, the third of the five paths of spiritual attainment leading to enlightenment.

29.
Shariputra and Maudgalyayana were the Buddha’s two principal disciples.

30.
Clear light (Tib.
o-sel
) is the term used to describe the basic entity of the mind from the viewpoint of the experiencing consciousness. Objectively speaking, clear light is emptiness itself. Subjectively, it is the subtlest consciousness realizing emptiness.

31.
The
vajra
-like
samadhi
of a learner is the final degree of insight prior to obtaining Buddhahood, reached at the end of the tenth Bodhisattva stage.
Vajra
(Tib.
dorjé
) means adamantine or diamondlike and in this context describes that state of a learner (one who has not yet become a Buddha) which cannot be damaged or obstructed.

32.
There are eight principal layers of consciousness that form the subtler levels of a human being’s mind. Ordinarily, we experience all eight on numerous occasions during the day. They pass in such rapid succession, however, that only an advanced practitioner can recognize their existence. The main times of their occurrence—in which they unfold and reemerge from the most coarse to the most subtle degree and back—are on going to sleep, on waking, at the start and finish of individual dreams, while fainting and sneezing, during sexual orgasm, and at death. The most subtle of the eight—the basic nature of the mind itself—is clear light. The most coarse, just underlying our normal waking consciousness, is called miragelike. Taking this as (1) and progressing inwardly to clear light at (8), the others are: (2) smokelike appearance; (3) like fireflies; (4) like the steady flame of a butter lamp; (5) the mind of radiant white appearance; (6) the mind of radiant red or orange increase; (7) the mind of radiant black near-attainment; and finally (8) clear light. The last four are known as the four empties and are those states referred to by the Dalai Lama.
   It is the particular purpose of Annutara or Highest Yoga Tantra to facilitate the meditator’s awareness of and eventual control over all eight states. One endeavors to obtain such control during the stage of completion. (See
note 24
.) Technically, a fully enlightened being or Buddha is someone who can remain in the most fundamental level of consciousness—clear light—without being compelled backward by past karma and mental obscurations (Sans.
klesha;
Tib,
nyon-mong
) into the coarser states. From such a position the Buddha can then emanate forms directly, without having to adopt the less developed states of awareness, which normally give rise to
physical manifestations. The techniques used for becoming aware of and subsequently controlling the eight consciousnesses involve manipulation through various means of the ten inner winds coursing through the seventy-two thousand channels (Sans.
nadis;
Tib.
rtsa
) that regulate the human nervous system. These winds form the physical supports upon which the various states of consciousness are mounted. As they are brought into the central channel (Tib.
u-ma
) the different consciousnesses occur, final liberation being obtained at the conclusion of the completion stage when the four minds of appearance are passed through and the first three do not reoccur. For those who have achieved a good degree of proficiency in such practices, the time of death is looked forward to as a rare opportunity. At that time, there is no need to meditatively induce the eight states, as they occur within the dying person’s awareness one by one on being severed from their physical supports. An advanced yogi can utilize this by remaining forcibly within the clear light when it dawns; he can prevent himself from being cast back into another rebirth and can arise instead in an illusory body.

33.
Tibetan medicine recognizes three groups of five humors, which each make up the metabolism of a human body: wind, bile, and phlegm. The five major winds or currents of energy are said to be light, rough, cold, and energetic; the five types of bile are oily, acrid, and hot; the five phlegms: cool, heavy, gentle, and sticky.

34.
Samantabhadra
(Tib.
Kun-tu-sang-po
) literally means “In All Ways Good.” Here it refers not to a particular being but to the basic entity of our minds: clear light.

35.
Chandrakirti was one of the foremost proponents of the Prasangika-Madhyamika School of Mahayana Buddhism.

36.
Conventional truth (Sans.
samvrtisatya;
Tib.
kun-dzop-den-pa
) refers to the relative nature of phenomena. According to the Prasangika-Madhyamika School (herein described), things exist conventionally as dependent-arisings. This is to say that nothing exists in and of itself, under its own power or by its own nature. Rather, entities arise in dependence upon causes and conditions as well as their parts. Relatively then, things do exist, but as they lack independence and are not self-originated they are ultimately nonexistent. Hence, the middle path taught by the Buddha (from which the Madhyamika School derives its name) falls to neither the extreme of existence nor nonexistence, and in so doing goes beyond both to recognize the two truths as one entity.

37.
Dharmata
(Tib.
chö-nyia
) is another term for the ultimate nature of phenomena.

38.
The red and white constituents (Tib.
tig-le-mar-po
and
tig-le-kar-po
) are subtle material essences held (in tantric practice) to be the principal controlling and generative elements of the human form.
Tig-le
in Tibetan means drop (Sans.
bindu
); the name most often given these. The red drop embodies the female components of a person; the white, the male. They originate respectively from one’s mother and father at the time of conception, from which point they form the first stage in the growth of the body in the womb. As the embryo develops, they gradually disengage. In the fully matured form, the red drop occupies a place above the groin; the white at the top of the head. At death the former ascends up the central channel while the latter descends. They reunite in the region of the heart (where the primary mind
dwells), their meeting marking the collapse of the final support between consciousness and the body and the culmination of the death process. At this time secretions will emerge from both nostrils, indicating that the person has died. (In some cases, it can be as long as three days before this occurs.)

39.
Misconceiving that things inherently exist produces both karmic seeds for future misconception (Sans.
kleshavarana
; Tib.
nyon-drib
) as well as an underlying predisposition, or latent tendency (Sans.
jneyavarana
; Tib.
she-drib
) to do so. The actual seeds or causes of misconception are eliminated—along with the afflictive emotions—by the view of emptiness at the level of the eighth Bodhisattva stage. The predispositions or latencies, however, are not. It is these predispositions that give rise to the continued appearance of inherently existent objects, even though the actual conception of them as such has been destroyed. Thus, the view of emptiness needs to be augmented or strengthened to a point where the predispositions are eradicated, permitting one to view both a conventional object and its ultimate state of emptiness at once. Such a view is identical with omniscience. It is the appearance of concrete existence (produced by the predispositions) that obstructs the mind from knowing all things throughout time and space—just as a wall blocks the view behind it.
   There is only one method for overcoming the predisposition to view things as truly existent: compassionate means (Sans.
upaya
; Tib.
thab
). The altruistic motivation, conjoined with its resulting deeds, has the power to boost the view of emptiness so that the obstructions to omniscience are overcome and the two truths cognized simultaneously. Due to this, a Hinayana Arhat may have obtained freedom from cyclic existence (based on a correct view of emptiness), but because he or she lacks the motivation to help others—such as that possessed by a Bodhisattva—they cannot reach the state of Buddhahood. Nevertheless, Mahayanists maintain that such beings will eventually recognize their limitations and commence to train in developing great compassion.