We are involved in Vajrayana. We go much further in our practice than this thinking about nature and this going around in circles and this logic and this theory and this philosophy. We go further than that. We actually engage in practices in which one generates oneself as a pure consciousness form, which is the deity or the particular Buddha that you generate yourself as when you do your practice.
Let’s say that you generate yourself as Chenrezig. Chenrezig is a pure consciousness form. He displays and demonstrates all the pure qualities and activities associated with the deity. The emphasis associated with Chenrezig is indicated by his posture, his color and the things that he’s holding in his hands. In generating ourselves as this pure deity form, we have in our hearts the seed syllable surrounded by the mantra. The seed syllable, the mantra and the deity all emerge spontaneously out of shunyata, or the void.
We do this in Vajrayana to indicate something that is a very important aspect of this teaching and of our practice. First, it is important to understand the philosophy and the logic associated with the Buddha’s teaching because [then] one can knock down the dependency on the perception that defines self and other. One can break up a good deal of the rigidity associated with the automatic involvement in these extensions and exaggerations of perception. One can break up the experience of perception itself through meditating and contemplating on the illusory quality of self-nature. One can meditate on emptiness and try to find self in every object in the world and, perhaps when one is finished, one can lay down the game in a sense. After doing all this, one would have attained a certain degree of awareness of emptiness and also an awareness of the emptiness of self-nature, and an awareness of the emptiness of the nature of phenomena. Then one’s mind could become stable in that it would not be so automatically involved in the processes that are functions of the assumption of self. Yet, is that the same as supreme realization? Is that as far as it goes? Do you break down things, and after you’ve broken them down, sort of sit there with them?
Perhaps we can come to understand that, in Vajrayana, we are given something else, and that something else is very hard to describe. It is recommended that we do the above process, but it’s also recommended that we meditate on shunyata. It’s recommended that from that meditation on shunyata we arise spontaneously as this pure form. What is a pure form? A pure form is actually a form that is an illusory image of a self, an entity, which is based on the assumption of emptiness. It is not based on the assumption of self. You are based on the assumption of self. Everything about you is based on the assumption of self. All your karma is based on the assumption of self. Everything you see, everything you feel is based on the assumption of self. But this pure deity form arises from shunyata and arises as the seed syllable, as the mantra and as the form itself, bearing all the pure qualities, all the pure attributes and all the pure activities of an illusory, gossamer-thin form that arises based on the assumption of emptiness.
So we do not stop with the assumption of emptiness or with breaking up the ordinary view and perceptions; but rather, we, in generating ourselves as the deity, have an even more profound experience of emptiness. Because the deity arises from the voidness, shunyata, you should meditate on emptiness before you generate yourself as the deity. The seed syllable that is the first birth is the condensation of the body, speech and mind of such a pure form. It is based on the assumption of emptiness. It has in it all the qualities that arise spontaneously from that awakened state, condensed into the seed syllable. The mantra is the same, having all the activities and qualities that arise spontaneously from this empty state, from shunyata. So from that, we are led to believe that one should not stop merely at breaking things down so that the game no longer computes, but that there is a more profound state. There is a more profound awareness that allows for miraculous birth. It allows for a miraculous birth in order to bring about miraculous activity, in order to demonstrate miraculous qualities such as compassion, which is completely consistent with emptiness, the same as emptiness, united with emptiness, inseparable from emptiness. Through this practice, through this miraculous birth, we actually purify our perception. Not through breaking down the game alone, but through actually utilizing these condensed manifestations of emptiness, one’s perception is purified to realize the illusory quality of all phenomena, to realize the union, the sameness of formless and form, to realize the spontaneity of experience and to realize also the infallibility of pure view.
You should then practice every single practice that you do, and examine for yourself and contemplate and meditate as you have been instructed, with the understanding that in every generation, in every accumulation of any kind, you should try to realize the profound, incredible opportunity, if you will, to go beyond that into the astonishing pure view and to realize for yourself that the generation of the deity is the same as emptiness.The deity arises from emptiness, it indicates the assumption of emptiness and that you also arise from emptiness. Yet the mistake that you make is the assumption of self. Every compulsion comes from that. Every perception comes from that. Every experience that you have and all experiences that you have had are artificial constructions that come from that. Every piece of your lives, your experience, your consciousness, even the senses, if you think this way, cannot be trusted, because they are based on a false assumption.
This is why you have the opportunity to generate yourself as the deity and to practice this profound method. It is so you can view the sameness, the suchness, the purity, the pristine luminosity that is the nature of all phenomena, as well as of the self. It is so you can view the indistinguishability between the two based on the assumption of emptiness.
An excerpt from a teaching by Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo called “Perception”
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