Tantric Techniques (10 page)

The Fifth Dalai Lama stresses this point:

Also, it is known that a lion manifested by a magician does not exist in fact, but through having manifestly seen an illusory lion kill an illusory elephant, utter certainty that an illusory lion killed an illusory elephant is induced. Just so, a person, who does not inherently exist but appears [to exist inherently] like an illusion, accumulates wholesome and unwholesome actions
a
and experiences their fruition. My lama said that inducement of deep conviction about this is a distinguishing feature of this [Middle Way] doctrine.

When inherently existent horses and elephants are refuted by reasoning, for such a conventional consciousness the apprehension of horses and elephants as being established as their own reality is mistaken, like apprehending illusory horses and elephants [as real]. However, from the viewpoint of a worldly consciousness, a consciousness that apprehends horses and elephants as established as [their own] reality is nonmistaken, and a consciousness that apprehends illusory horses and elephants is mistaken. It is with such fine distinctions that the example of magician’s illusions is drawn.

If, having thought that horses and elephants are not inherently existent, you take horses and elephants and illusory horses and elephants to be similar even conventionally, then you would contradict the meaning of Chandrak
ī
rti
Supplement
which says:
b

Those objects realized by the world

And apprehended with the six unimpaired senses Are true from [the viewpoint of ] just the world.

You would be deprecating conventionalities.

Mañjushr
ī
told the Foremost Lama [Tsong-kha-pa] that it was necessary to value the varieties of appearances. His thought was based on a qualm that in the future trainees who did not understand such an essential would fall into a view of nihilism. Thus, many modes of establishing the existence of appearances are [presented] in Tsong-kha-pa’s

a
las, karma
.

b
VI.25abc.

42
Tantric Techniques

great and small expositions of the
Stages of the Path
and in his commentaries on N
ā
g
ā
rjuna’s
Treatise on the Middle
and Chandrak
ī
rti’s
Supplement
. However, the lion of proponents, the translator Tak-tsang
a
[criticizes Tsong-kha-pa] saying, “Upon analyzing with many forms of reasoning, he asserts that impure mistaken appearances are validly established.” [This criticism] is seen to arise from the same source of er-ror.

The change from the historically earlier model of merely refuting self without emphasizing the distinction between a self that validly and effectively exists to refuting a meaning of self that is explicitly limited to a reification of inherent existence with a validly established effective self left over is justified in moral terms. For delimit-ing the object of negation in emptiness allows for a basis for agency of deeds and a continuity of experience of their fruitions within a context, not just of worldly renown, but of valid establishment. The change is also given the authority of the god of wisdom, Mañjushr
ī
, who is said to have been Tsong-kha-pa’s supra-human teacher and who advised him to maintain valid establishment of appearances.
b
That the physical manifestation of the wisdom of all Buddhas prompted this move in Tsong-kha-pa’s thought makes the point that this shift of emphasis is a return to a basic undying truth and not a new creation.

The S
ū
tra model of meditation on selflessness and subsequent relation with appearance is built around an analytical search for the seemingly concrete existence of an object, such as oneself, the existence of which has hitherto been largely uncontested. Though the mode of search is analytical, the examination of the object is intensely emotional since emotions such as desire and hatred are built on a perceived status of objects that is now being challenged. The analysis is neither cold nor superficially intellectual but

a
stag tshang shes rab rin chen
, born 1405. For his criticisms of Tsong-kha-pa and Ge-luk-pa responses, see Jeffrey Hopkins,
Maps of the Profound: Jam-yang-shay-ba’s Great Exposition of Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Views on the Nature of Reality
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 2003), 527-694.

b
Despite the oft-repeated claim of relying
only
on reasoning, the Ge-luk-pa order makes frequent claims of divine authorization.

S
ū
tra Mode of Meditation
43

an expression of the intellect in the midst of the clatter of emotional rearrangement and unreasoned re-assertion of the concrete findability of the object. The analysis is by no means a rote run-through of a prescribed ritual, nor is it merely aimed at refuting other philosophical systems; rather, it is aimed at the heart of one’s emotional and intellectual life, at the ideational underpinnings of our self-conceptions, our relations with others, our conceptions of subject and object, and our ideologies.

At the end of successful analysis, what is experienced is merely a non-finding—a void, a vacuity—of the object in which one originally so intensely believed. That very object, in all of its seeming concreteness, has literally disappeared from mind; the very type of awareness that believed in it has now sought for it according to rules of analysis that have been seen to be not just appropriate but binding. It has not found this object, even though so many emotions have been built in dependence on its seemingly verifiable sta-tus. The experience of not finding this previously reliable underpinning is earth-shattering.

The meditator does not immediately rush back to perception of appearances but remains with this vacuity, a mere absence of such an inherently existent object, appreciating its implications, letting the ramifications of the analytical unfindability of object affect her mind, letting it undermine the emotional frameworks of countless lives in a round of suffering induced by ignorance of this fact. After such immersion, the meditator again returns to the world of appearance, at which point objects dawn as like a magician’s illusions, seeming to exist in their own right but known to be empty of such concrete existence. The world—oneself, others, and objects such as chairs and tables—is seen in a new way, falsely seeming to have a status that it actually does not have, but now unmasked.

But what do objects appear from? What is their substance? What is its relation to one’s own mind? These are issues that the tantric model of meditation goes on to face, not so much through conceptual presentation but through a mode of experiencing objects after realizing emptiness that bridges the gap between emptiness and appearance in an even more vivid way. Let us turn to the Mantra model of meditating on emptiness and subsequent relation with appearance.

2. The Tantric Mode of Meditation

Deity yoga, as is made clear in Tsong-kha-pa’s lengthy treatment of the difference between S
ū
tra and Mantra in his
Great Exposition of Secret Mantra
,
a
is the distinctive essence of tantric meditation. It provides a unique combination of method (compassion) and wis-dom (realization of selflessness) in one consciousness and thus an additional mode of meditating on selflessness. Let us consider the process of cultivating deity yoga in meditation through the example of Action Tantra as presented by Tsong-kha-pa’s students, Dül-dzin-drak-pa-gyel-tsen and Ke-drup Ge-lek-pel-sang.
b
The process is structured around successively more profound stages of meditative stabilizations of exalted body, speech, and mind. Our concern in this chapter is with the first.

a
See H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-kha-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins,
Tantra in Tibet
(Lon-don: George Allen and Unwin, 1977; reprint Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1987), 81-169. A condensed version of this chapter and the next has appeared in my article “The Ultimate Deity in Action Tantra and Jung’s Warning Against Identifying with the Deity,”
Buddhist-Christian Studies
5 (1985):
159-172
.

b
For exposition of the procedure of meditation on selflessness and on appearance in Tantra I shall use short explanations of Action Tantra yoga by two of Tsong-kha-pa’s students, Dül-dzin-drak-pa-gyel-tsen (
’dul ’dzin grags pa rgyal mtshan,
1374-1434) in his
Presentation of the General Rites of Action and Performance Tantra and Their Application to the Three Lineages, Set Down by Dül-dzin According to the Foremost [Tsong-kha-pa’s] Practice
(
bya spyod kyi spyi’i cho ga’i rnam par bzhag pa rigs gsum la sbyor tshul rje’i phyag bzhes bzhin ’dul ba ’dzin pas bkod pa
), Collected Works of Rje Tso
ṅ
-kha-pa Blo-bza
ṅ
-grags-pa, vol. 17 (
na
), 437-449.6, and by Ke-drup Ge-lek-pel-sang (
mkhas grub dge legs dpal bzang
, 1385-1438) in his
Extensive Explanation of the Format of the General Tantra Sets
(
rgyud sde spyi’i rnam par gzhag pa rgyas par brjod pa
). With respect to the latter, the edition used is that published by Ferdinand D. Lessing and Alex Wayman in their
Mkhas Grub Rje’s Fundamentals of the Buddhist Tantras
(The Hague: Mouton, 1968), 158-163; see the same pages for their translation. Tsong-kha-pa’s own exposition of the difference between S
ū
tra and Mantra in general (found in his
Great Exposition of Secret Mantra
which I have translated in H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-kha-pa, and Hopkins,
Tantra in Tibet
) and the procedure of Action Tantra in particular (found in H.H. the Dalai Lama, Tsong-kha-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins,
The Yoga of Tibet
[London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981; reprinted as
Deity Yoga
with minor corrections, Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1987]) are very much the foundation even if not cited.

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Tantric Techniques