Buddhahood, Dzogchen teaching claims, does not depend on practice, merit, causes. stages, or even a path. This presents a problem for many.

On what does buddhahood depend? It depends on discovering the basis of the individual, sometimes referred to as “the primordial state.” Realization of this state is the realization of buddhahood and nonrealization of this state is to be subject to birth and death as a sentient being, governed by affliction and karma. Recognition of this state is called “knowledge” (Skt. vidyā, Tib. rig pa) and nonrecognition is called “ignorance” (Skt. avidyā, Tib. ma rig pa).

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Clear Light, @clearlight365

Buddhist Psychology, @buddhistpsychology

Zen & Mind, @zenmindwisdom

Buddhist Philosophy, @buddhistphilosophy

The UnMind Project, @theunmindproject

The Backyard Buddhist, @thebackyardbuddhist

Mindful News, @mindfulnews

Disciplined Minds, @disciplinedminds

Of course there are more.

You have to wonder why anyone would pass off faux Dharma unless they are just in it for the money.

Another category as popped as well, AI assisted posts. These are hybrid posts where there is some human content and some AI, which I assume means AI massaged for grammar. One example is this post in Dakini Land, @gosiaover:

I wonder which part is human, which part is AI and is the human

Now, much Buddhist writing on Substack and elsewhere is mediocre at best, but some of it is quite good, like Dosho’ Port’s Substack (not that I understand even 10% of koan discourse). But all of it ought to be written by humans and not processed through a plagiarism machine.

If I discern that someone is using AI to write Buddhist posts, I am going to block them. I consider this to be counterfeit Dharma, stolen Dharma, bogus Dharma. Using AI to translate one’s posts into other languages is also a problem. If one cannot read the target language, how can one be sure the “Dharma” one is writing is accurately conveyed?

Sadly, the Buddha predicted this state of affairs before LLM’s were even a twinkle in a software engineer’s eye.

There is a guy who writes a lot on Substack about Buddhism, is very pissed off, and wishes that everyone was in therapy.

His main gripe is about “gurus.” He is another in a long line of people who seem to wish to save Buddhism from Buddhists, and imagines he has the solution for Western Buddhists—involving an intellectual commitment to western psychology and the various therapeutic contortions it has gone through over the past 130 years.

He gives glowing assessments of professional training, and so on, which he imagines will protect students and teachers from unhealthy relationships and ignores the fact that various kinds of therapies have come and gone, and that there is very little or no hard science upon which many psychological theories and treatments are based, from Freud onward.

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We can recall the preciousness of human birth, its impermanence, the faults of samsara, and the inevitability of karma. We can recall the dependently originated nature of phenomena and understand all compounded phenomena arise from causes and conditions. We can recall bodhicitta. We can recall emptiness. All of these contemplations merely serve one purpose: to cause us to have genuine remorse and sadness towards samsara.

We cannot change existence, but we can change our minds. Whether or not we continue taking birth in samsara is our choice.

The world we were born into is the result of our individual karma. All pain and suffering we see and experience is a result of our own nonvirtuous actions in this and previous lives. All happiness and wellbeing we see and experience is a result of our own virtuous actions in this and previous lives. Suffering is not something imposed upon us by external conditions, but is a result of the actions of countless lifetimes we cannot remember at this point in time. Some people are upset by this message. They feel it is victim blaming—but it isn’t. Karma and its ripening are completely impersonal and inconceivable.

It is often said that if we wish to know what is our karma from past lives, look at our present life. If we wish to know what the next world will look like after our aggregates break up and reform in the next life, look at our present actions. Even so, without freeing ourselves from afflictions and karma, we will be like bees trapped in a jar. As Maitreya said, there isn’t a pinpoint of happiness in the three realms of existence.

Since happiness and wellbeing are not permanent states, it is important that we not give in to the temptation to respond with misdeeds to the nonvirtuous actions we witness all around us.

No matter how many sets of preliminary practices one does, no matter how diligently one makes offerings to the Three Jewels and the dharmapālas, no matter how diligent one is in practicing one’s pledged deity (yi dam) sādhana, no matter how many sesshins one sits, koans one solves, Nembutsus, Manis, Rengekyos, Vipassana retreats one has done, no matter how long one can sit in perfect śamatha, no matter how many treatises one has studied, etc., at the end of the day if one has a bad attitude and lacks renunciation, one is not practicing the Dharma.

Many people, teachers and students alike, think they are making great progress in teaching and practicing the Dharma, but in reality, they are just caught in the māra of exhilaration (dga’ byed bdud). Why? Because as Padmasambhava says to Nyan Tingzin Zangpo, they have not sufficiently contemplated impermanence and death, and their practice is not properly grounded in renunciation. They remain distracted by mundane goals.

There is only one way to practice the Dharma: generate remorse towards samsara and its causes—which are nothing other than one’s own afflictions and actions—and generate enthusiasm for liberation, which simply means eliminating the causes of samsara.

Thus, the shoes of the Dharma are nothing more nor less than the weariness and sadness that arises from contemplating the causes and results of samsara. If we put on the shoes of the Dharma, we do not need to cover the world with leather.

Our human life is just one bardo, between birth and death. In it there are four main bardos—childhood, youth, adulthood, old age. And in all of these there are many more. Every year is a bardo, every month, every week, every day, every hour, every minute, and every second.

Relocating is another kind of bardo. Having lived in Massachusetts for most of my life, with brief stints in Vermont, we’ve resettled on the West Coast. Our move was catalyzed by a health crisis last fall. I am fine now. Realizing that as we advance into our elder years, we needed to take the opportunity to move while we were relatively young enough deal with the stress of relocating and downsizing.

We’ve moved from the the gentle, rolling green hills and hardwood forests of western Massachusetts to a perch on the steep slope of a ridge that overlooks a state park with a redwood forest in the rugged valley of Big Sur. Our place is off Highway 1 to the west, two miles up a narrow private road lacking guardrails, with six hundred foot drops around every corner, looking out over the Pacific, which is about a mile away as the crow flies.

Big Sur is a dramatic place, its mood changes constantly. The people who live here are friendly and welcoming, perhaps a result of the fact that the main industry here is hospitality. It’s a sensitive place, given the landslides after heavy rain. The local people all maintain it takes a certain kind of person to live here: used to isolation, unfazed by weather, ready to lend a helping hand in a pinch. Given that I’ve lived in rural areas most of my life, and that I spent three years in solitary retreat, I do not think the isolation will be an issue.

Having spent several months in the moving bardo, we are presently flooded with all the projects we had planned before the move and had to put on hold. We are expecting the drafts from the Sound Tantra from our publisher, other manuscripts new and old will occupy our attention, and of course, we will begin the next in our series of translations of the 17 Dzogchen Tantras and their commentaries.

Our new location is perfect for work and practice, with unobstructed views of the sky and a climate moderated by the coolness of the Pacific.

It’s a pretty good perch in samsara, all things told.

A qualified guru understands the job. What is the job? Aiding people to discover their own liberation without making big deal of themselves.

In Dzogchen in particular, realization depends on one’s devotion to a guru. Why? The principle of Dzogchen is not gathering the two accumulations and so on. The principle of Dzogchen is discovering one’s innate potential for liberation, the pristine aspect of consciousness that lies underneath the ordinary aspects of consciousness and is their source. Knowledge (rig pa) of this self-originated pristine consciousness (rang las byung ba’i ye shes) is the essence of the Dzogchen path, and this knowledge depends on one’s relation with a guru, and that requires trust and devotion.

An authentic guru is dangerous in the sense that they have no other goal than assisting us, the devotee, in discovering this knowledge for ourselves. They cannot be cajoled, bribed, or flattered into satisfying our fantasies of liberation. Our fantasies tend to be shipwrecked on the indomitable rock of their presence.

A real guru’s presence reminds one of how ordinary one is. Devotion to an authentic guru is an exercise in humbleness. Our vision of our gurus is always ordinary. We try to convince ourselves that we have pure vision when we see them picking their nose. We gaslight ourselves with Vajrayāna fantasies. But a real guru shows us that the state of Samantabhadra is right there, in front of us, immanent, like a live wire, even when they pick their nose.

One must be careful when picking up a live wire. Likewise, one needs to take care when choosing a guru. When one enters into a genuine relationship with an authentic guru, one cannot hide from oneself. And that’s the point. One is only going to get burnt by an authentic guru when one hides from oneself. If we hide from ourselves, we will never discover that the root guru’s message, the sanctuary of the great bliss of Samantabhadra, is no where else than in ourselves nor far away in a distant place.

The discovery of that place, however, depends on meeting someone who has already been there. That is why we need a guru, someone “heavy in qualities.” And devotion to such a person is a sublime gift.

On the contrary, a necessary condition for the existence of capitalism is the presence of certain kinds of commons. Indeed, without the capacity of capitalists to call upon the mutual aid and class solidarity of other capitalists and to use the communal character of workers to their advantage, capitalism would not have been able survive the shock of class struggle over centuries.

Barbagallo, Camille; Beuret, Nicholas; Harvie, David. Commoning with George Caffentzis and Silvia Federici (p. 209). (Function). Kindle Edition.

It all began with academic journals charging outrageous fees for 5000 word articles to the tune of 35-50$ a pop. And now we are in the midst of the greatest primitive accumulation event in human history. That is all AI is. Anthropic reportedly bought 50,000,000 million books, cut the pages out of them and scanned them through optical character recognition into their database. Knowing how inaccurate OCR can be, is it any wonder that AI is error-filled?

But that is not the main point. Human knowledge is a commons. Now, some dipshit is surely going to be tempted to bring up the long discredited notion called “The Tragedy of the Common.” Save your breath please. Human knowledge belongs to everyone. Not to Google, whose motto is now “Be evil;” not to Anthropic, who just crossed the boundary line from benign actor to existential threat to world civilization with Mythos; to Open AI, which has always been flawed, etc.

Jerry Mander warned us more than three decades ago to be suspicious of technology. The confluence of LLM’s, video, and personal devices is leading us to places we do not understand and are not prepared to cope with. Capital promises everything, and for most people on the globe delivers very little other than war, a polluted environment, rampant illness, and poverty. Don’t believe the hype.

None of the above has anything to do with the Dharma. The experience of positive mental factors has nothing to do with “feeling good.” “Feeling good” generally refers to an absence of worry about negative phenomena, such as illness, aging, and death— everything that goes along with the three kinds of suffering.

To recap, the three kinds of suffering are suffering of suffering, suffering of change, and the suffering of compounded phenomena.

There is a legendary story of someone asking the 16th Karmapa why they didn’t feel better after practicing Buddhism for many years. His reply, apparently was, “Why did you expect samsara to get better?”

Samsara does not get better, ever, anywhere, at any time, for anyone, at all, no exceptions.

Does this mean we must feel miserable? No, only when we feel miserable do we to feel miserable. In fact, knowing that samsara will never feel better should make us happy, for therein lay the seeds of the desire to escape.

From these seeds, we can begin to cultivate the limbs of the path. Path dharmas, such as faith (śraddha), effort, mindfulness, samadhi, and wisdom, while not making us feel better, give us the relief of knowing that we are doing something concrete to address the existential question all Buddhists should realize as essential—how to be free from afflictive birth.

So the next time you feel like life sucks, and it will never get better, cheer up, because it is true, it won’t. But that does not mean you cannot do anything about it. You can. You can hear the Dharma, reflect on the Dharma, and cultivate the Dharma through personal discipline, authentic contemplation practice, and wisdom.

But Buddhists do not wage war, at least, Buddhists who are following the principles of avihimsa, non-harming. Buddhists wage peace. Like any soldier, they go through basic training, adopting personal liberation restraints. They may then move on to advanced training, bodhisatva conduct, and some may even be interested in secret mantra, the special weapons and tactics division of the Buddha’s army. All of this training is dedicated to waging peace.

How does one wage peace? Can one wage peace with an afflicted mind, one filled with rage? No. Anger? No. Peace can only be waged when one’s mind is imbued with the four brahma viharas—loving kindness, compassion, empathy, and most importantly, equanimity. Equanimity (upekṣa) means to be free of partiality and aversion towards allies and enemies, partners and competitors, and so on. It is perhaps the most difficult of the four to apply consistently.

Based upon love and compassion, one then cultivates any of the three types of bodhicitta, aspiration for awakening—the aspiration to become an arhat, pratyekabuddha, or a buddha. Some people mistakenly assert arhats and pratyekabuddhas are selfish, but this is an error. They just do not have the imagination that allows them to think it is possible or desirable to attain complete buddhahood.

The bodhisatva is the frontline warrior in waging peace. But do not think that bodhisatvas are obvious or that one can know them through an overt commitment to Mahāyāna Buddhism. Many bodhisatvas have no knowledge of their past lives, many bodhisatvas are not even Buddhists. Until they reach the pure bhūmis, bodhisatvas forget all their realization and have to start over from the beginning every time. But like any learned skill, in each life time, they run through the stages more quickly, if they are lucky enough to meet the Dharma. Many do not for eons. Nevertheless, having taken bodhisatva vows in past lives, such bodhisatvas are motivated by compassion and aid sentient beings far better than many of us who call ourselves Buddhists. Candrakīrti states that there are no outer signs by which one can discern a bodhisatva. A bodhisatva can only be known through their acts of compassion.

Waging peace has nothing to do with social justice movements, but it could; it has nothing to do with addressing inequality; but it could, and so on. “Waging peace” first and foremost refers to defeating the enemy, self-grasping, which is the source of all misery and suffering in the world. If one cannot defeat self-grasping, one will always be defeated by everything else.

When we have begun to overcome our self-grasping, become free of the poison of the five afflictions, at that point, we can really be benefit to others. Until then, not so much. We need to recognize our limitations, and at the same time not abandon our aspiration to benefit sentient beings.

One of the most effective weapons in the arsenal of the warrior of awakening is generosity. In generosity, there are four types: material generosity, giving protection, giving love, and giving the Dharma. Giving the Dharma is the most effective way to wage peace. We try to understand where any given person is at and we educate them in a Dharma suitable for that person. We will not always succeed, especially in internet spaces. The internet attenuates communication, robs it of context. It’s not easy to wage peace in this medium. Still, no one said waging peace is easy.

There is much more that could be said on this topic. But for now, as Buddhists, let us always try to wage peace, and never war, refraining from violence in word and deed, as best we can. We are not perfect, so we will not always succeed, being subject to afflictions ourselves, but if we always try to do our best, then there is no fault.

In these trying Kali Yuga times, try to not spend that much time being outraged by the afflicted behavior of other sentient beings. Samsara is a madhouse and we should not expect to much, if anything, of others. There is not much point in outrage. It does not stop sentient beings from being sentient beings, i.e., dominated by the five poisons. Expecting other people to observe some defined ethical standard, even in the Buddhist community, is delusional, especially in a world filled with sociopathic leaders, both secular and religious. All we should expect of sentient beings is that they will invariably act out of self-interest, and when that competes with one’s own interests, they will choose themselves first. It is as rare as stars in daytime that sentient beings place the happiness of others before their own. Sadly, it is only when we put the happiness of others before our own that everyone will truly experience happiness. But, this is not possible in a modern, capitalist economy.

We cannot condition others, we can only observe ourselves. A Tibetan proverb holds, “For looking at others, you only need eyes; but for looking at yourself, you need a mirror.” The only way a bodhisatva can be honest is to use the mirror of mindfulness. In the Lojong teachings, there is a slogan, “Of the two judges, heed the principal one.” This means that when confronted with external judgments and self-reflection, heed the latter over the former.

Samsara is an unrelenting battle. It is never satisfactory and there are no satisfactory outcomes for those who wander in samsara. Samsara is the House, and the House always wins.

The warrior of awakening then should try to help sentient beings free themselves from the mire of samsara. It’s endless, but the warrior of awakening is undaunted.

ལྔ་བརྒྱའི་ཐ་མ་རྩོད་དུས་སྙིགས་མ་ལ༔ སེམས་ཅན་ཐམས་ཅད་ཉོན་མོངས་དུག་ལྔ་རགས༔

ཉོན་མོངས་འབྱོལ་ཉོག་དུག་ལྔ་རང་རྒྱུད་སྤྱོད༔ དེ་འདྲའི་དུས་ན་ཁྱེད་འདྲའི་ཐུགས་རྗེས་སྐྱོབས༔

དད་ལྡན་མཐོ་རིས་འདྲེན་པའི་ཐུགས་རྗེ་ཅན༔ ཨོ་རྒྱན་པདྨ་འབྱུང་གནས་ལ་གསོལ་བ་འདེབས༔

བསམ་པ་ལྷུན་གྱིས་འགྲུབ་པར་བྱིན་གྱིས་རློབས༔

In the final 500 years during the degenerate Kāli Yuga,

the five poisonous afflictions of all sentient beings coarsen,

they indulge in the afflictions, and the five poisons consume their minds.

At such a time, protect us with your compassion.

We supplicate Padmasambhava of Oḍḍiyāna,

the compassionate one, who guides the faithful to higher realms—

bless us so that our wishes be effortlessly fulfilled.

Oṃ āḥ hūṃ vajraguru padma siddhi hūṃ

Samuel Johnson remarked, “Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.” We are going to be subjected to jingoism, and every objection to this idiocy will be met with cries of lack of patriotism.

All I can really say is Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ. It’s going to be a long time until the midterms. I can only wish that Americans see through this and recall the last time we became involved in the Middle East, a war we still are paying down in the deficit.

No one wins a war. Everyone loses.

Whoever supports a war winds up in lower realms in their next life, and perhaps, will suffer a shorter life in this one.

Therefore, trust the Three Jewels, and understand that the law of karma is inevitable. Do not lend support to these fools, who spend other people’s lives as if they were pennies on the dollar.

Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.

A subtle consciousness of terror and fear stirs
toward the appearance of external objects.
An accumulation of traces of aversion produce
the coarse beating and slaying of perceived enemies. 
When the result of hatred ripens, 
there is the suffering of hell, boiling and burning.

Through the aspiration of the Buddha, myself,
may all sentient beings of the six realms
in whom strong hatred arises,
leave it aside without accepting and rejecting,
and having mastered rig pa,
attain the pristine consciousness of clarity.

—From the Powerful Aspiration1

These days it is all too common to see people who profess to be Buddhists justifying their anger about the state of the world, encouraging others to be angry.

I dissent.

As I have written elsewhere, anger is an afflictive emotion that arises from ignorance— not ignorance as a lack of knowledge of this or that subject, but ignorance of how to escape undesirable conditions, resulting in fear. In classical Buddhist texts, as above, the result of anger is birth in the eighteen hell realms.

Anger traps one in the dualism of self and other. Hostility and anger pyrrhically defeat themselves, being rash and short-sighted. The Buddha has said that a moment of anger destroys eons of merit.

We fuel our own anger; it never comes from outside, it is never foisted upon us by others. In response to the anger of others towards us, the best reply is “This is your anger; you own it; this is not mine.” Likewise, when we are in the throes of anger, that anger is not caused by some external force—it arises from our own afflictions. We own it; it is ours; it belongs to no one else. We must recognize and not allow ourselves to be trapped in our own emotions.

Anger is hard and unyielding. It gives no quarter and reflects everything around it. Its surface is shiny and bright, even glaring. Its nature is to destroy and separate. Anger is a distorted mirror, like those in a “funhouse.”

There is a force trapped in anger, however, called “the mirror-like pristine consciousness.” Mirror-like pristine consciousness too is unyielding, but it is not hard. It is unyielding, just as light never yields before the dark. It too is a mirror, but it is clear and does not distort reflections. If one wants to harness this force, one must look in the mirror and see oneself clearly. Only then will the force trapped in anger manifest its true nature, revealing rather than obscuring.

How does one harness the force of the mirror-like pristine consciousness? First, one must recognize anger, as it arises, as anger, and not allow one’s mind to remain focused on the object of anger. Second, to recognize anger as anger one must recognize that it is a product of ignorance. There is no such thing as “wise anger.” Anger always arises with its justification—I, me, and mine. I am being threatened, this is hurting me, my side is being harmed. One convinces oneself that one’s anger is justified. As long as one does not see through the illusions of self-grasping, one will never overcome subjection to the three poisons.

There is no need to transform anger into mirror-like pristine consciousness, anger’s nature is the mirror-like pristine consciousness. The mirror-like pristine consciousness manifests as anger when one does not see anger as anger, but instead allows anger to keep one distracted. But when we see the real nature of anger, we are confronted with a reflection of ourselves, not the “putative” enemy that we imagine fuels our anger.

When we correctly observe ourselves in a state of anger, at that moment we have an opportunity to free ourselves from anger, before we allow our anger to propel us into afflictive action, a.k.a karma. We have a moment right then and there to take this pure nature of anger—mirror-like pristine consciousness—and use it skillfully. Combined with compassion, we can employ this affliction as the path.

In these fraught times as we move deeper into the age of the five degenerations,2 Buddhists must depend on the teachings of the Dharma, and not give into the modernist tendencies to reframe destructive emotions like anger as “healthy.” Just as there is no wise anger, there is also no healthy anger.

In this degenerate age, it is imperative that Buddhists express compassion and love even towards those who regard us as enemies and heretics, and not succumb to affliction, especially the affliction of anger.

ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པད་མེ་ཧཱུཾ་ཧྲཱི༔

One of the first of these budding dharmapreneurs is Noah Rasheta, whose focus is so-called “Secular Buddhism.” His website, eightfoldpath.com, is trained on his own podcasts, and is accessed by prompting NoahAI, billed as “AI trained on Buddhist wisdom.” Whose Buddhist wisdom? Is Noah Rasheta a wise Buddhist? I guess you have to see for yourself and decide. Eightfoldpath.com has the usual testimonials. Have you ever seen a place that has bad testimonials (Is there a Yelp for Buddhist websites)?

This post is not really about Deepak or Noah, and their AI buddies, Digital Deepak and NoahAI. This post is about a deeper issue which faces the Buddhist community in general, and especially in the West, about the transmission of authentic Buddhist knowledge, that is the authentic reproduction of what is termed technically, pratyatmyavedanajñāna, the gnosis one knows oneself. This means that through the three wisdoms, hearing, reflection, and cultivation, one realizes for oneself the meaning of what one has heard, reflected upon, and cultivated. But it starts with hearing. And hearing begins with setting oneself down in the company of a living, breathing, human being who teaches the Dharma.

Bucar raises this issue in her article, namely:

[S]piritual guidance without accountability isn’t spiritual guidance. It’s a mirror that flatters. And mirrors don’t help you grow. They just show you what you already look like.

What she is talking about here is the LLM mirror effect, which reinforce the narcissism underlying modern trend of thinking we can get along by just googling whatever we want to know about, stating in her article that LLMs generally just tell you what you want to hear. So if one relying on an AI for spiritual guidance, one is foolish. Just check out the example of ChatGPT renaming itself Lumina, and convincing auto mechanic, Travis Tanner, not only was ChatGPT enlightened, but they have shared 11 past lives.

NoahAI has all the same pleasantries and tone that all these LLMs employ. Rasheta has a community page where people can ask him questions directly, but Liz Bucar points out, AIs tend to reinforce people’s narcissism. How can an AI correctly respond to a question about a meditator’s experience? If the AI is confined to Noah Rasheta’s content, how is this Buddhism and not Noahism? The same could be asked of any Buddhist who is creating AI content out of their own talks and lectures. Bucar adds:

This technology isn’t going away. Every wellness personality with a back catalog will be launching their own AI guru within the next years. So the question is whether we’ll be able to see these tools for what they actually are. Franchise models dressed up as wisdom traditions. Revenue engines wrapped in spiritual language. Automated intimacy sold as enlightenment.

Though I would not frame eightfoldpath as a wellness site, it is significant that it appeals to people’s wish for mundane results, with a ready made prompt, “How can Buddhism help in everyday life?” This seems like those people in the ‘80’s in multilevel marketing who used to wear large “ask me about” buttons.

To revisit my primary concern, Buddhism is a tradition which goes from mouth to ear, not in one ear and out the other. Buddha did not teach a trio of “AI Prompt, get meditation instruction from recorded podcast, sit, rinse repeat.” He taught us that we find a teacher, listen to their teachings, reflect on those teachings, and then cultivate those to the best of our ability. In the Dharma, there can be no Digital Buddha or BuddhaAI. Buddhism is living tradition and cannot be reduced to a prompt on a screen or a phone.

Name change in order, from A Buddhist View to One Buddhist View.

For people looking to directly access this substack, you can find it now by going to www.onebuddhistview.com.

Some of you might be thinking, “Isn’t this is just a difference between so-called Sarma and Nyingma,” but it isn’t so. The approach of mahāyoga in both streams is basically the same. Now, there is a caveat here, since much of this presentation depends on what is termed “the basis of purification” and “the purifier,” and in the teachings of Anuyoga and the Great Perfection, the perspective about these two things shifts dramatically.

To begin with, we have to understand what tantra actually refers to. The locus classicus for the Buddhist definition of tantra may be found in Guhyasamāja Uttaratantra:

A tantra is a ‘continuum.’

That continuum changes into three aspects;

distinguished by basis,

its nature and inalienability.

Fundamentally, then, a tantra is a continuum, and this continuum is divided into three parts: the tantra of the basis, the tantra of the path, and the tantra of the result. The tantra of the basis refers the mind stream of a sentient being as the “cause tantra.” It is the basis of purification. The tantra of the path, referred to as the path tantra, is the purifier. The practice of the path leads to the result tantra, the result of purification, termed “inalienable” because once the result has been attained, it can never be lost.

Tantras, like Guhyasamāja, Kālacakra, and the like, are texts that detail the practices connected with the three tantras: cause, path, and result. However, they are not the actual tantra under discussion.

The tantra of the path begins with empowerment (Skt. abhiṣeka; Tib. dbang bskur). One cannot practice creation and completion stages practices successfully without having received empowerment in a proper way. The Mahāmudrātilaka Tantra states:

There are no siddhis without empowerment

just as no oil is produced by pressing sand.

While there is some argument amongst scholars about what truly counts as an empowerment, in general, no one in Vajrayāna seriously takes issue with the notion that empowerment is necessary, and for that a qualified guru is necessary. There are different levels of empowerment for each of the four classes of tantra, broadly speaking. Here, we are confining ourselves to anuttarayoga or the inner tantras. The Mahāmudrātilaka Tantra continues:

One who proudly clarifies the tantras and āgamas

for one who lacks empowerment,

even of siddhi is attained, both ācārya and disciple

will go to hell immediately upon death.

Sounds harsh? Since Vajrayāna is a body-based practice, it involves yogic practices that can cause severe psychosomatic disorders if the practitioner is not careful and systematic. This means that people who try to enter Vajrayāna practice without proper guidance in the creation and completion stages risk blocking their own progress. One needs an experienced guide who has some measure of realization (i.e. experience + understanding). Once one has received the ripening empowerments, one is then ready to receive the liberating instructions.

Each phase of Vajrayāna practice is meant to prepare the way for the next phase, and in particular, forestall obstacles on the path. Delusion is a particular danger, when one is not familiar with the very detailed roadmap by which one can measure one’s practice. This is no different than the standard Mahāyāna Buddhist teaching about the signs that arise on the five paths: accumulation, application, seeing, cultivation, and no more training. Indeed, the Vajrayāna path is structured according to the paths and stages shared with standard Mahāyāna.

Now, a full empowerment into a Vajrayāna cycle, such as Hevajra, and so on, generally requires participation in what is known as a dbang chen, a major empowerment. These generally require two days, and sometimes a third. The first day is the preparation day, where a series of ritual procedures are conducted, all with a view to remove obstacles for the disciple to receiving the four empowerments the following day.

So what are these four empowerments? They are the vase empowerment, which is grounded in yoga tantra, and provides the basis for meditating upon oneself as the pledged deity (Skt. samādāna devatā, Tib. yi dam lha). It is an empowerment where one’s five aggregates are recognized to be the nature of the five buddha families, and also includes the Vajrācarya empowerment, where one receives various vows. The second empowerment is called the secret empowerment, and is related to completion stage practices such as caṇḍlīyoga, and so on. The third empowerment is called the gnosis of the prajñā empowerment and is related to the much misunderstood completion stage practice called karmamudra. The final empowerment is termed the precious word empowerment,1 and consists of a direct introduction through words and symbols to the state of mahāmudrā.2

These four empowerments are taken upon what is known as the body maṇḍala. The cause body maṇḍala is the nāḍīs, the syllables inside the nāḍīs, the bindus which move through the nāḍīs, and the vāyus which move the bindus through the nāḍīs. The creation and completion stage both employ the body maṇḍala as the path.

As I mentioned in my last post on this subject, the purpose of practicing the two stages is to reverse the afflictive process of birth in the three realms. In general, when reversing a process, one must begin at the end, and in our case, we have to understand the process of the formation of the human body. In the Vajrayāna account of the formation of the human body, our consciousness, as the all-basis consciousness merged with a vāyu called the mahāprāṇavāyu, moves through the bardo.

One point to consider is that in Vajrayāna, consciousness is never completely divorced from a connection with the elements. It is said that matter and consciousness are like a flower and its scent. The mahāprāṇavāyu itself has all five of the elemental vāyus within it.

The all-basis consciousness, the vāyu, and the male and female reproductive tissue all merge at the moment of conception and form a bindu, which is serves as basis for the development of the human body. The action of the vāyu divides the bindu into two, then four, and so on. As the zygote grows into a fetus, the vāyu creates passages known as nāḍīs, and forms syllables within those nāḍīs, which govern our perception—in this case, our perception of the human realm. When the body maṇḍala is fully formed at thirty-eight weeks, we are born into the human realm with human realm experiences. There are detailed accounts of what forms when in the accounts of the formation of the human body provided in the tantras.

The process of creation and completion work in reverse. We practice the creation stage connected with the vase empowerment to work with the body nāḍī maṇḍala. Visualizing ourselves as a deity, and visualizing our senses as a maṇḍala of deities has the effect of causing our body nāḍī maṇḍala to soften and become more pliable.3 This is why it is also important to practice yantra yoga (Tib. ‘prul ‘khor rnal ‘byor) right from the beginning. Many people incorrectly associate yantra yoga with the completion stage, as if it is only an enhancement for caṇḍalīyoga, etc. This is an incorrect point of view. It is axiomatic in all yoga traditions that to control the nāḍīs, one must control the body, to control the vāyu, one must control the nāḍīs, to control the mind, one must control the vāyu. In reality, one should begin the practice of yantra right away, as soon as one can learn it from a qualified teacher.

Next, after we have gained moderate stability in the creation stage, we next begin to work with the completion stage, in connection with the secret empowerment.4 First we work with the nāḍīgranthi (Tib. yi ge’i rtsa) maṇḍala, the array of knots inside the nadis that have the shapes of syllables. These knots are formed by the latent afflictions influencing the movement of the vāyu during gestation, which influences our impure vision in turn. The practices of prāṇayāma, including caṇḍalīyoga, are connected with purifying both the inner sheath of the ṇāḍīs as well as the syllables or knots.

The next completion practice is connected to the third empowerment, and works with bindu maṇḍala.5 This is the misunderstood practice of working with a partner of the opposite sex, either physically or visualized, to produce a nonconceptual example gnosis based on a fleeting experience of physical bliss. The basis of purification here is formation of the zygote.

Finally, the last maṇḍala one works with in the completion stage is the jñānavāyu mandala.6 The practice here is an extension of the practice found in the third empowerment. However, the basis of purification here is the very moment of conception.

This brief overview is provided so that the reader can have a clearer understanding of the purpose and function of the four empowerments and their relationship to the creation and completion stage. In reality, what is mentioned above is merely the tip of the iceberg. The reason for providing this brief overview is so that people who are considering entering Vajrayāna have a clear view of the purpose of Vajrayāna practice from a traditional perspective, one grounded in thirty-five years of practice and study of original texts in the Tibetan language.

These days it is popular for people to write about their understanding of Vajrayāna on places like Substack and so on. A very few have done anything like a three year retreat, and even then a three year retreat is not enough, nor are two, nor are three. Most of them also have no skills in Sanskrit, or in Tibetan in particular. This means that there is a great deal of uninformed opinion posing as expertise.

At the root of the problem is seeing Vajrayāna Dharma as a set of techniques for personal growth and optimization. This then renders Vajrayāna Dharma ripe for hostile takeover by spiritual influencers of all varieties, who then sell off the parts of Vajrayāna they like, and leave the rest behind. Of course, the neoliberal exploitation of the Dharma is not confined to Vajrayāna; we see it in Zen, Vipassana, and so on, as well as non-Buddhist traditions.

Simply put, it seems to me that many people truly do not understand the two fundamental points of Vajrayāna: (1) sentient beings are under the power of affliction and karma, and without overcoming affliction and karma, they will continue to cycle endlessly in the three realms. (2) The reason for practicing Vajrayāna is because one aspires to benefit all sentient beings by attaining buddhahood through the most rapid means possible and one believes that the teachings of Vajrayāna are the best manner in which to fulfill that aspiration.

If someone does not accept this viewpoint of the cosmos, there is really no point for them to practice the profound practices of the two stages, which lead to the realization of Mahāmudra, let alone enter the practices of the pinnacle of all vehicles, Dzogchen. Without bodhicitta, the aspiration to achieve buddhahood to benefit all sentient beings, no matter how long it takes, there is no actual Vajrayāna. In other words, Vajrayāna is a branch of Mahāyāna. Without a Mahāyāna perspective, Vajrayāna is meaningless. Without the commitment to take rebirth for as long as it takes to attain full buddhahood to benefit sentient beings, Mahāyāna is meaningless.

Secondly, Vajrayāna is grounded in a very specific view of the human body, grounded in the Ayurvedic system of medicine. A stack I was reading this morning made the point that there are all kinds of maps we can apply to the same subject. But one of the interesting things about Tibetan Medicine—an offshoot of Ayurveda adapted by Tibetans to their own climate and available materia medica—is a detailed and empirical understanding of the anatomy and physiology of the human body. The details are not important other than to note that since at least the 10th century CE, and likely long before, Tibetan physicians understood how arteries, blood vessels, the lymphatic system, and nerves functioned in the body, and that physical functions in the human body were controlled by the brain long before these structures were clearly identified in Western medicine.

Why do I mention this? In order to understand Vajrayāna, all tantras state that in order to understand the basis for practicing Vajrayāna in toto, we need to understand how the human body forms. Without this understanding, we have no real hope at all of understanding the reasons and purposes of prāṇayāma yogas like caṇḍalī, a.k.a gtum mo. We can’t even properly understand why we practice the creation stage, since the creation stage specifically targets the afflictions and their traces that cause us to experience the world as a human being who perceives a human realm in the first place.

While of course there is a detailed understanding of the process of gestation of human beings in modern physiology, it will not help us understand the logic and reason we practice the creation and completion stages. Why? Simply put, the map is completely different and has a different goal. The map in Vajrayāna is not actually mapped to arteries, blood vessels, and nerves, though there are correlates recognized by Tibetan physicians, there is a relationship. The discussion of the thirty-eight weeks of the development of the human embryo in the Buddhist tantras is grounded in empirical observation.

So what is the point of the creation and completion stage? Simply put, the point of the creation and completion stage is not to have experiences of bliss, clarity, and nonconceptuality. The fundamental point of the creation stage and completion stage is to reverse the entire process of human gestation from the moment of conception in this life to our birth at 38 weeks by reversing the afflictive processes that drive it. In other words, the purpose of all Vajrayāna practice is to reverse dependent origination and put an end to uncontrolled rebirth in the three realms, just like all other Buddhist traditions.

Just to give a simple example, the purpose of caṇḍalī yoga is not heat. The heat is simply a byproduct of our body flushing due to temporary oxygen deprivation. The genuine purpose of caṇḍalī and other prāṇayāmas is to cause the cessation of the eighty gross prakṛtis— afflictive states associated with a coarse mind—connected with desire, hatred, and ignorance, and likewise, connected with the three processes of dissolution at death—white illumination, red illumination, and black illumination.

This is just one small example. In reality, the creation stage also has profound meaning. For example, merely by meditating on the celestial mansion, one is engaging in the thirty-seven adjuncts of awakening, by focusing on each of its parts. But of course, one must know what those are.

There is no way to modernize these teachings. Vajrayāna may be a swift path, but it requires diligence and learning. So please, if you are interested in Vajrayāna teachings, do not choose a teacher who is not educated in the traditional system. There is no way to improve Vajrayāna. It was taught by sambhogakāyas to mahāsiddhas, realized by yogis, commented upon by paṇḍitas, and brought to Tibet by translators like Vairocana and Rinchen Zangpo.

Don’t sell yourself short. Find an authentic guru.

It isn’t fair. Other people get to honor their heritage with Black, Asian, Latino (though there are problems with this appellation as well), etc. We people of European ancestry get lumped together into a region we never came from. I would much prefer it if I were allowed to choose “Northern European” as my demographic category, rather than white or caucasian, since these two terms are loaded with the racist history and colonial disenfranchisement, genocide, and displacement of Native people beginning in 1492 and the exploitation of Africans in the slave trade of the American colonies, beginning in 1619.

For example, I am of Highland Scottish, English, Dutch, Norwegian and Sami Descent, with a dash of Northern Italian in there—and a Mayflower descendant (Richard Warren). I think “pink” is a better term than “white,” since I am definitely more pink than white in my complexion. The Dutch and Mayflower connection makes my heritage OG settler-colonialist stock. My Scottish heritage is a result of the genocidal Highland Clearances and wholesale suppression of Gaelic and Scottish culture in the Highlands following the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the battle of Culloden in 1745. My folks were displaced to Canada, where they were involved in displacing earlier French colonialists and also First People. My Scandinavian heritage is mid-19th century, when the West was basically stolen from the Original People to make room for an influx of European settlers.

The point is, I am not a caucasian, I never was, and I never will be. “White” is also a ridiculous term. Light-skinned, maybe; but white-skinned, no. I have never seen anyone who looked white other than some Chinese and Japanese women who take extreme care never to expose themselves to the sun.

The American project is founded upon racism and racist categories. It is founded on ethnic essentialism. Until this is broadly recognized by all, we shall keep returning to the racist violence that is again being perpetrated by the US Govt. Humans come in all shades. But shades do not define us and never have.

Historians of authoritarianism always point out that in addition to the military and the police, there is also a secret police, accountable to no-one. It’s been clear since day one that the Patriot Act created the condition for a modern, repressive police state to rise in the USA. The only thing to wonder about is why it took so long. I guess we were distracted by foreign terrorists. Now that we have dealt with them, destroying and destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan in the process, the State has turned its attention to the “enemy” within, “We the people.”

As a Buddhist observer, and someone whose political sentiment have always been aligned with the left—especially with deep ecologists like Arne Naess, Gary Snyder, (but not the racist Edward Abbey) and so on, and modern anarchists like Graeber, Wallis, Bookchin, and so on—I am not surprised by the backlash. It’s been building since 1965 and the Great Society initiatives passed under Johnson. Nixon and the Southern Strategy was the first evidence of backlash—but even before that were the systematic attempts by business interests in the United States to oppose and then undermine Social Security.

There has never been a valid danger of left wing authoritarianism happening in the United States, despite the absurd rhetoric of modern Republicans demonizing rightwing Democrats as radical left lunatics. What we are witnessing now is the rise of virulent right-wing authoritarianism in the United States and not much more needs to be said. Either you are against it or you are for it—at this point there is no middle way. The only option forward is either the consolidation of a fascist, white ethnostate or a diverse, multicultural society. The present attempt to literally Whitewash America is going to end in blood everywhere. Not only are innocent undocumented immigrants to the US being summarily deported without due process, and executed if they resist, American citizens, who supposedly have rights, are also being executed. Renee Good was not the first, she just happened to be “white.” All of this is upsetting.

I am not allowing myself to give into anger over these issues—anger clouds the mind and mirrors the impotence of the white supremacists, whose personal feelings of inadequacy and fear of others has led them to enlisting in ICE and violating American laws. Anger exhausts one emotionally. I prefer to cultivate compassion for everyone. Compassion is a choice, so is anger. We have good examples for this. The Buddha states in the Udanāvarga:

Hostility never pacifies the hostile,

those without hostility pacify hostility.

Since animus harms living beings,

the wise do not engage in hostility.

The commentary by Prajñāvarmin expands on this and points out that hostility is only pacified by the absence of hostility, through patience, loving kindness, and compassion. The fault of not removing animus from one’s mind is injuring living beings. It is inevitable. As I wrote the other day, the commitment of refuge in the Dharma is to not harm other living beings.

Gandhi stated:

A satyagrahi [one who holds the truth] will always try to overcome evil by good, anger by love, untruth by truth, himsa by ahimsa. There is no other way of purging the world of evil.

Martin Luther King wrote in his autobiography:

“You must not harbor anger,” I admonished myself. “You must be willing to suffer the anger of the opponent, and yet not return anger. You must not become bitter. No matter how emotional your opponents are, you must be calm.”

Does this commitment to nonviolence or not harming other beings end at being passive? No. If we can prevent harm to other beings, people, animals, and so on, we must. We have an ethical obligation, a categorical imperative in Kantian terms. We do not even have to frame this in bodhisattva vow terms. The categorical imperative is more fundamental than bodhisattva vows.

First, we must recognize that anger is a toxic mental factor, driven by ignorance, and not allow it to flourish in our minds. We must meet anger with patience. Only then will we be able to exercise patience with the burgeoning police state.

In Vajrayāna terms, the fundamental energy of anger is the mirror-like pristine consciousness. Anger, resentment, and hostility lead to a hall of mirrors where every where one looks, one sees distorted images of oneself and others. But when anger, resentment, and hostility are pacified, the hall of mirrors vanishes, and the mind itself becomes a simple mirror that reflects without distortion.

We cannot control the anger of others, and we cannot condition others to agree with the Buddhist perspective. But we can observe ourselves and we can bring peaceful minds to this conflict, and hopefully, our focus on nonviolence, along with the other nonviolent traditions, will help derail forces of oppression, as has happened so many times before. Anger, resentment, and hostility will only lead to more anger, resentment, and hostility.

If one is going to stand in the street and protest, first cultivate loving kindness, compassion, and faith. When the crowd is being gassed, help others around you (and not by washing their eyes with water or milk, it only makes it worse). If you are not healthy enough to protest in the streets, you can write your representatives and lodge your objections. The Republic isn’t lost yet.

It is important to remember that the true motto of the United States is not “In God We Trust.” This unfortunate slogan has only been the motto of the United States since 1956. Prior to this, it was E Pluribus Unum, “One out of many” This should be the unity cry at protests against ICE. Five powerful syllables.

The police state is not inevitable. Resistance is and has always been an option. Black and Native people have been resisting the police state arrayed against them since the beginning of the Republic and before. Also immigrant workers have always felt the brunt of the police state. But, as the chant goes, “We shall Overcome.” There are far more of us than there are of them. They may have guns on their side, but we have rights and moral certitude on our side. They are afraid and hide behind masks, we have the courage of our convictions, and our faces are exposed.

E Pluribus Unum.

Trigger Warning: If you are not a Tibetan Buddhist, all of what follows will seem very strange to you.

Pre-buddhist Tibetans have a useful concept called bla, pronounced la. Generally, bla is mistranslated as soul, but is it not a soul in the theistic sense. La is often considered to be a support for life force. The thing about la that distinguishes it from the theistic soul is that one’s la can be stolen, it can wander, and it can be impacted, especially by shocking things. La can be lost, it can wander away, be stolen, or weakened, but the la can also be summoned back or retrieved (bla ‘gugs) or in the case of its being stolen by formless nonhuman beings, the la can be ransomed (bla bslu). The la can be hidden away as well. Often the la of the ancient kings of Tibet would be hidden in a rare piece of turquoise call a la stone (bla rdo). Such items would be then carefully hidden and protected. To this day, in many apotropaic Tibetan Buddhist rites, the symbolic use of la stones continues.

The symptoms of the loss of la are very marked: weakness that cannot be attributed to a physical condition, chronic fatigue, listlessness, dissociation, and so on are all symptoms associated with loss of la. Loss of la only responds to ritual remediation.

My teacher of Tibetan Medicine, Gen Phuntsog Wangmo, once related a story to us about a woman who had lost her la. During the Cultural Revolution, she witnessed a relative being shot to death in front of her. The resulting trauma manifested as a loss of la. With the application of the proper procedures for summoning her la, some of which involved walking around with her and calling her name, she eventually recovered.

When I saw yesterday the video of the extrajudicial murder of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, I immediately thought of the story above. The thought occurred, “America has lost its la.”

There is no doubt that the world, the entire world, has fallen into the hands of banal, evil men and women. Truthfully, the Dharma view is that this is result of our collective lack of merit. Our society, for many reasons, has become increasingly unvirtuous.

Our lack of merit, in my opinion, begins with American adventurism into the Buddhist countries of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, as well as our abandonment of Tibet by Nixon. I am of the generation that watched Cronkite report on the Vietnam War every night, body counts and all.

The la of the American people has wandered away, stolen by the dön demons of unfettered greed, avarice, and malice. And now we are ruled by a venal, vain, pompous, arrogant, and ignorant demon king, an actual enemy of living beings, one who makes Dasgriva, the ancient rakṣasa king of Śṛī Lanka, look like an amateurish imposter.

Watching the murder of Renee Nicole Good caused me to realize that we Dharma practitioners have something we must do, especially those of us who follow Vajrayāna Dharma with its myriad skillful means. Of course, if we like we can add our voices in dissent to the actions of this cruel regime. But such dissent, while necessary, easily slips into verbal nonvirtues. We see it all the time. I chuckle almost every time I read Jeff Tiedrich, for I am only human, and the schadenfreude is sweet. But we all must admit, it appeals to our anger and frustration.

If Dharma practitioners do not purify their minds, they will not generate merit. If they do not generate merit, they will never be able to assist the world to be free of the evil of this regime or any other. If we do not have compassion for the human beings who are inflicting this evil upon the world, our minds will never be pure. So we must have compassion for the man who murdered Renee Nicole Good. He has lost his way. He has lost his la. His la has been stolen.

So how do we summon America’s la back? We practice. Especially, we Vajrayānīs need to apply ourselves to Dharmapāla practices and other appropriate abhicāra rites. Even if we are not qualified to perform such rites, we can recite the Praise to 21 Tārās, practice Vajrakīlaya, Guru Drakpo, and other wrathful manifestations in order to protect all the people in the world at risk of harm in this time. We can also do sang offerings, offer serkyems, and we can call America’s la back. We can, through our practice, remind America of who she imagined she was, and frankly, has never been, and maybe in time, she will get there.

We can exhaust ourselves in anger and frustration, or we can increase our merit and compassion. We cannot do both. There is no such thing as compassionate anger or angry compassion. Anger, frustration, and so on are all negative mental factors that dissipate and destroy compassion. We must instead increase our faith, conscientiousness, and so on and, most important of all, our wisdom. If we do this, if we try to create a field of merit in our own way, perhaps we can see our way together through these terrible times, this time of famine, illness, and weapons.

I will leave you with the famed supplication of Removing Obstacles from the Path, Barchey Lamsel:

དུས་གསུམ་སངས་རྒྱས་གུ་རུ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ༔

dü sum sangye guru rinpoche

Buddha of the three times, Guru Rinpoche,

དངོས་གྲུབ་ཀུན་བདག་བདེ་བ་ཆེན་པོའི་ཞབས༔

ngödrub kün dak dewa chenpö zhab

lord of all siddhis, venerable one of Great Bliss,

བར་ཆད་ཀུན་སེལ་བདུད་འདུལ་དྲག་པོ་རྩལ༔

barché kün sel düdul drakpo tsal

remover of all obstacles. Powerful, Fierce Tamer of Māra,

གསོལ་བ་འདེབས་སོ་བྱིན་གྱིས་བརླབ་ཏུ་གསོལ༔

solwa deb so jingyi lab tu sol

I supplicate you, please grant your blessings.

ཕྱི་ནང་གསང་བའི་བར་ཆད་ཞི་བ་དང༌༔

chi nang sangwé barché zhiwa dang

Pacify outer, inner, and secret obstacles,

བསམ་པ་ལྷུན་གྱིས་འགྲུབ་པར་བྱིན་གྱིས་རློབས༔

sampa lhün gyi drubpar jingyi lob

and bless me that my wishes are effortlessly accomplished.