Vajrayana: the Diamond Vehicle

Vajrayana is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in northern India around the 5th century CE, took root in Tibet in the 7th and 8th centuries, and then spread across the Himalayan region. It is widely known as Tibetan Buddhism though tantric Buddhism is also found in Japan, in the Shingon and Tendai traditions. Vajrayana takes its name from vajra, Sanskrit for “diamond” or “thunderbolt,” suggesting the power of its methods.

Although Vajrayana shares with the Mahayana schools generally the view that we are already perfected and can awaken in a single lifetime, Vajrayana considers itself the fastest way to enlightenment. Its canon consists of texts known as the Kangyur (sutras and tantras considered to be the words of the Buddha) and the Tengyur (commentaries).

Vajrayana, like Mahayana, makes no distinction between samsara and nirvana: passions and aversions alike are embraced as skillful means to awakening. Though Vajrayana upholds the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal, its pantheon of celestial beings is more extensive, including a wealth of fierce protector deities and dakinis (female deities). Deity yoga—whereby a student takes on the identity of a chosen deity who represents enlightened qualities—is a central practice, guided by the guru, or lama, the master who initiates the student into esoteric practices. Ritual is key, including repetition of mantras (sacred syllables and verses), visualization of mandalas (sacred diagrams), sacred hand gestures (mudras), and prostrations. Ngondro, preliminaries, are prerequisites for higher tantric practices. The highest practices involve the symbolic union of the feminine (wisdom) and masculine (compassion) principles. Tantric practices are largely kept secret, to preserve the sanctity of the teachings and protect practitioners from energies they have not yet been trained to handle.

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Of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism, the oldest is the Nyingma, whose founder is held to be the 8th-century Indian master Padmasambhava, also known as Guru Rinpoche. Revered as the second Buddha, he is said to have hidden treasure texts (termas) to be discovered later both physically and in the mindstreams of tertons, or sacred masters. The Sakya school, headed by the Sakya Trizin (a hereditary title) is closely associated with the Hevajra-tantra, a text on nondualism, symbolized by the sacred union of the deity Hevajra and his consort. The Kagyu school traces its origins and practices to the Indian yogi Tilopa, the master Naropa, the translator Marpa, and his disciple Milarepa, Tibet's poet-saint. The Kagyu school introduced the tulku system, the practice of recognizing reincarnations of great masters, thus continuing their lineages. The Gelug, the newest of the major Vajrayana schools, is a monastic sect incorporating elements of earlier schools; its most notable leader is the Dalai Lama.

(From https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/what-is-vajrayana-buddhism/)

Vajrayana, form of Tantric Buddhism that developed in India and neighbouring countries, notably Tibet. Vajrayana, in the history of Buddhism, marks the transition from Mahayana speculative thought to the enactment of Buddhist ideas in individual life. The term vajra (Sanskrit: thunderbolt, or diamond) is used to signify the absolutely real and indestructible in a human being, as opposed to the fictions an individual entertains about himself and his nature; yana is the spiritual pursuit of the ultimately valuable and indestructible.

Other names for this form of Buddhism are Mantrayana (Vehicle of the Mantra), which refers to the use of the mantra to prevent the mind from going astray into the world of its fictions and their attendant verbiage and to remain aware of reality as such; and Guhyamantrayana, in which the word guhya (hidden) refers not to concealment but to the intangibility of the process of becoming aware of reality.

Philosophically speaking, Vajrayana embodies ideas of both the Yogachara discipline, which emphasizes the ultimacy of mind, and the Madhyamika philosophy, which undermines any attempt to posit a relativistic principle as the ultimate. Dealing with inner experiences, the Vajrayana texts use a highly symbolic language that aims at helping the followers of its disciplines to evoke within themselves experiences considered to be the most valuable available to human beings. Vajrayana thus attempts to recapture the enlightenment experience of the historical Buddha.

In the Tantric view, enlightenment arises from the realization that seemingly opposite principles are in truth one. The passive concepts shunyata (emptiness) and prajna (wisdom), for example, must be resolved with the active karuna (compassion) and upaya (skillful means). This fundamental polarity and its resolution are often expressed through symbols of sexuality (see yab-yum).

The historical origin of Vajrayana is unclear, except that it coincided with the spread of the mentalistic schools of Buddhism. It flourished from the 6th to the 11th century and exerted a lasting influence on the neighbouring countries of India. The rich visual arts of Vajrayana reach their culmination in the sacred mandala, a representation of the universe used as an aid for meditation.

(From https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vajrayana)

There is development (utpattikrama) and completion (sampannakrama). They work together. Ritual includes both.

It seems to me that you're looking only at the outer form. In Vajrayana, more than in the lower yanas, one's view is important. You can do guru yoga by going through the motions, trying to pay attention. You can do it as essentially worshipping a god or supplicating a parent. You can do it cultivating devotion/surrender to the guru. You can do it with recognition that the guru is not other than your own buddha mind. Those are all ritual, but only the first is a mere mindfulness practice.

I don't have experience with a great number of practices, but I do find that each has effects that I wasn't aware of starting out. Even shamatha has unexpected effects, such as developing equanimity by releasing identification with mental events. I'd venture to say that if you think you're killing time waiting for the good stuff then you don't understand the practice.

There's also the aspect of accumulation of merit, which reduces obstacles. Simply doing inspiring chants can help condition the mind for meditation and clear neurotic emotions. Doing any practice instead of going to the beach is a practice of renunciation. Your whole life is the practice.

Do you also know about the 2 paths? There's path of means and path of liberation. Both are considered to be complete paths but are usually done together. Sampannakrama is completion practice on the latter path while tantra is completion practice on the former path. However, most people don't seem to be much interested in sampannakrama. Many mistake it as being merely shamatha; lackey practice. Jamgon Kongtrul the Great clearly said that if one recognizes with pointing out, then nothing else is necessary. But if the true nature is not unerringly revealed then... it's better to tread the gradual path.

The story of Milarepa's student Bardarbom is an example of someone doing mainly sampannakrama from the start. In that story, Milarepa clearly states that a layperson can attain buddhahood with no special requirements. Yet the majority of Milarepa's students practice tantra. (The translator Robin Kornman said that the Bardarbom story is actually a public storage vessel for esoteric Mahamudra teachings.)

So there are different ways to go. You can practice formless with form as adjunct practice, or vice versa. You can find a Soto Zen teacher and perhaps just do shikantaza. You can find a Dzogchen teacher who puts the formless path first. It's up to you. But I think it's mistaken to view form practices as kiddie coffee while formless practice is rgarded as the real stuff, for grownups.

However, there is an issue of people wanting kiddie coffee. I've known a number of people who are not serious practitioners and haven't even taken refuge, but who were given Green Tara practice by a visiting lama. Those people have no understanding of the practice and no preparation, so naturally they're essentially praying to their fairy godmother. (One of those people said as much to me.) Others collect empowerments as though they were steps in realization. Maybe that's all those people wanted and maybe it will be helpful practice for them, like Christians who regard Jesus as a parent and try to be well behaved children. But you do need to recognize the difference. If you're with a teacher who's giving you Medicine Buddha or Green Tara, or if your sangha's practice entails chanting sadhanas in Tibetan without understanding the practice, then you are performing peasant rituals. In that case you might want to look for another teacher. The practice will not do you. You need to understand it and apply yourself, no matter what the practice is.

(By Mayayana)

How to find a spot? That doesn't sound like Vajrayana. Skillful means and wisdom are already in union. Besides that's non-referential. Meaning that you can't point it out. Why? Because it's all over, everywhere. Not just at a certain spot. That's a partial and mistaken view.

I see the ritual, the sadhana, as a useful way of training the mind. You're loading up your mind with symbols, which are energized by the master and the lineage through the empowerment. Later, while wandering around, the images from the visualization may pop into your mind, and bring with them the energy from the empowerment. Instead of seeing things in a normal way, we can see other beings as divine form, as the deity.

I wandered past one of the last Dead shows just to check it out. There were a bunch of drugged-out hippies without tickets twirling and dancing outside Oracle Park. I thought, They look really stupid. Then I thought, I'm really an asshole for thinking that. I'm harshing their buzz.

I tried applying the emptiness dzogchen-style technique. Those are just thoughts. They flash and vanish. Just let them go. That let each particular thought go, but it didn't fix the negative energy, whether it was negativity towards them or negativity towards myself. The negative charge was still there. New negative thoughts kept coming.

What fixed the negativity was that the visualization from my sadhana popped into my mind. Just a flash. It wasn't a thought about it. It wasn't something I intended to do. Just - they have wings and extra arms. Their dance is mudra. I wasn't trying to paint over the world with some happy sanitized alternative reality. It wasn't intentional. Just a flash - I didn't try to sustain it. It just popped into my mind and disrupted the negativity. That wouldn't have happened without practice, without doing sadhana (and without the wang) so those images were BURNED into my subconscious.

You know how they say the first opportunity for liberation in the bardo is dharmata? That's like me seeing the thoughts as emptiness. And the second opportunity is the peaceful and wrathful deities? That's like flashing on the visualization.

Do you see my point? We do the sadhana to burn the symbols into our subconscious so they can arise when we need them.

One more point. You're thinking of this in binary, form and emptiness. It's actually tri-nary. There are three kayas. There's vast open emptiness. There's the compassionate manifestation of form. But what connects them, the sambhogakaya, is the awareness, the energy, the love, the sparkle, the creativity. Dharmakaya is the sun. Nirmanakaya is what is illuminated. Sambhogakaya is the rays.

We take refuge in all three kayas. In tsa, lung, and thigle. The lung, the chi, the energy is what we work with in tantra. Seems to me.

Does that make any sense?

Sadhana practice is mindfulness meditation; the recitations, visualizations, mudras & other physical aspects are nothing more than means to occupy the practitioner’s body/speech/mind in virtuous activity & plant seeds of our future Buddhahood.