learn something from a tree, then that is the guru as symbolic experience. You could say, “All right, I’ll take support from the tree; I learned something there.” If your wife is giving you a hard time and you learn something from that, your wife is your guru in that situation.
The purpose of guru yoga is to receive the blessings of realization of the root and lineage masters. Recognition and stability in the self-knowing wakefulness of one’s own nature doesn’t take place without direct transmission by a living teacher. Therefore, connecting with a living master and practicing guru yoga is essential.
There is a very good reason the preliminary practices come before the main part of practice. Every single aspect of the preliminary practices is meant to be like a pestle to grind and smash your laziness. Imagine that you are making hot sauce, achaar, with a stone mortar and pestle. When making this Tibetan salsa, you successively add garlic, ginger, chili peppers, and spices, grinding them all together into a smooth sauce. It’s the same with the preliminaries: you smash your laziness first with prostrations, then with Vajrasattva practice, then with mandala offerings and guru yoga, till all the laziness is gone. If you really go through these practices in an effective, thorough way, there is no room for being lazy, for hanging on to personal comfort—none at all.
After we do all the preliminary practices, we find we can sit for one hour, five hours, six hours in meditation, and it really feels like taking time off: “What I went through before was so hard, but this is nothing—I can easily sit and meditate for hours and hours.” This is because the laziness has been totally vanquished.
You might think it would be enough to do only 10,000 repetitions, but our tradition is to do 100,000 of each. With this quantity, there’s no way to be lazy. You’ll never finish unless you really persevere, really push yourself and use a lot of effort. In this way, because you do 100,000 of each practice, the laziness does not dare return. It’ll mutter to itself, “I’m just getting a beating if I stay around here. If I dare to come back, I’ll probably get 100,000 beatings again, so I’m not gonna hang around this guy any longer.” I’m not joking here; it’s really true.
For a practitioner who has already recognized self-knowing wakefulness, doing the preliminaries can totally obliterate all laziness so that none remains. At the same time, these practices also perfect the two accumulations and remove all hindrances. The essence of mind is further and further revealed by the steady process of removing that which obscures it. All this takes place through the practice of the preliminaries.
When we are about to begin Vajrasattva practice it is good to have received empowerment to Vajrayana. This empowers us to realize the three vajras—the fact that body, speech, and mind are by nature the innate three doors. There are four levels of empowerment in Vajrayana: the vase empowerment, the secret empowerment, the wisdom knowledge empowerment, and the precious word empowerment. Once we have received empowerment, utilizing skillful means is like squeezing our body, speech, and mind in such a way that they have no choice but to be realized as the three innate vajras, as the vajra body, speech, and mind. There is no alternative to this; it is inevitable.
There is much to learn in Vajrayana, and many skillful methods. For instance, the five negative emotions are by nature the five wisdoms. These five wisdoms are the buddhas of the five families—that is, if the vital essence of the emotions is recognized. Then it can be truly said that one doesn’t have to suppress or reject the emotions. Rather, they can be realized as being the five types of original wakefulness, the five wisdoms. I will go into more detail about this later.
Vajrayana is something precious and rare. The methods of Secret Mantra are not often given. Of the thousand buddhas to appear during this world period, the Vajrayana teachings are available only during the reign of two of them: Buddha Shakyamuni and the last, who is a manifestation of Buddha Manjugosha. Other than that, Vajrayana doesn’t really happen. Why is this? The methods of Vajrayana appear only during the right time, when emotions are visibly manifest in a very blatant and crude way. Our present era is one of these times.
When the emotions are very strong and rough, the potential intelligence within them is equally strong. Strong emotions create big problems. Whenever there are more problems and turmoil, there is an opportunity for strong insight to take place. This opportunity is available right now. Now is the time when the methods of Vajrayana can be utilized. Based on the very profound and swift methods of Vajrayana, it is possible to attain true and complete enlightenment within this very same body and lifetime. If we don’t do this within this lifetime, it is said that it will occur within three, five, or at most sixteen lives; that is, if one doesn’t break one’s samaya and develop impure perception, turning against the teachings. Thus, Vajrayana practitioners are guaranteed to reach enlightenment within at most sixteen lifetimes.
The general teachings of the buddhas are more a matter of developing a placid, uncomplicated state of mind free of strong emotion. Precisely because of this emphasis, there is no presence of a strong intelligence. This doesn’t provide the opportunity to realize the wisdoms and swiftly attain enlightenment. Using the general methods one must journey along the path for three incalculable eons, which is a very, very long time. This route offers a very gentle, steady journey toward enlightenment that is relatively uncomplicated and certainly safer than Vajrayana.
Right now, however, we have the opportunity, rather than suppressing negative emotions, to realize their natural purity. To apply this, and to truly understand Vajrayana, you must have a strong intelligence, otherwise you cannot pick up the methods. You need a very sharp innate intelligence in order to eliminate or break free of the conceptual frame of mind. Conceptual mind wants to make you stay within the boundaries of concepts.
Vajrayana practitioners should not belittle the emotions. Emotions are like smoke, and if there is smoke, there is also fire. In other words, when you look at somebody who has very strong emotions, that person may also have a lot of wisdom. Who knows? Such a person may perhaps, through skillful methods, be able to realize the original wakefulness within the emotions. Such a person may be able to make tremendous progress on the Vajrayana path. That doesn’t mean that one should get caught up in the emotions, of course. When we are overtaken by emotions, we are exactly the same as an ordinary person: we are not progressing on the path.
Please don’t misunderstand this point. What I just said is that in Vajrayana practice we appreciate the emotions. I don’t mean that you necessarily have to create more emotions. Don’t be thinking, “When I’m in front of my master, I should show some aggression; then maybe he’ll teach me Vajrayana.” Please don’t go looking for trouble!
We don’t have to create emotions at all. Rather, within the naturally arising emotions we find a certain strength, a certain intelligence. That strength can be realized as the fuel of original wakefulness. Imagine the opposite of that—someone who is never angry, never irritated, never depressed, and never delighted; who has no thought of wanting to hurt others and no thought of wanting to help others either. That type of personality is listless and complacent, content with being dull.
We don’t have to worry about becoming like that, because it won’t happen: right now we live in a time of very turbulent emotions. Perhaps in the future this type of emotional placidity will arise again. It’s said that when Buddha Maitreya comes there will be a gradual absence of disease. The human life span will lengthen so that people will experience no worries about being sick or uncomfortable. There will be plenty of food, so that whenever one wants to eat one can just reach out and take some. There will be no need to apply effort to take care of oneself, so there will be no hope and fear about one’s own existence. One can just sit back and relax without having to worry about a thing. Since there won’t be many emotional disturbances, there will also not be anyone who is a suitable vessel for the Vajrayana teachings. Therefore, the Vajrayana teachings will not be given.
We are not at all in this situation nowadays, of course; we are in the opposite situation. Emotions are abundant. As we apply these skillful methods of Vajrayana to eliminate confusion, less and less confusion arises, especially through our having recognized the basic nature of original wakefulness. Some of these methods cut off the ears of confusion; some of them tear off the arms of confusion; some peel off the skin of confusion. Through the use of these methods, fewer and fewer moments