Practising Vajrayana Properly

Nowadays I observe that people who are interested in Tibetan Buddhism just hop, skip and jump their way to practising the Highest Yoga Tantras, without ever doing any ngondros (preliminaries) or realising the Three Principle Aspects of the Path. This is like skipping primary school and secondary (high school) levels and going direct to college/university. It's absurd. They also do not know which initiation to take and just take whatever initiation that happens to come along the way. It is said that it is a lot better to take those initiations associated with your root yidam. This is the second of the three roots I have mentioned. That's why finding your root yidam is also important.

Before we even do self-generating as a deity, we should be able to successfully accomplish the generating on top of the head first. Many people are not even able to visualise the deity clearly on top of the head, and yet they want to proceed to do self-generation. Just what do you mean by "clearly"? It is not commonly explained in the texts. Even when I asked one of my gurus, how clear is "clear"? He just answered, "As clear as you can". However, during one of the sessions, I found out that sometimes I am beginning to feel as if the "someone" is indeed sitting on top of my head. To me that is one of the signs of clarity. When it is clear, I find that I can visualise the light shining from the 4 places to my 4 places is much clearer too. When the lights are clearer, it is said that accomplishments are nearer too. But it is not always clear for me. I am still working on this.

So Buddhists intending to practice tantra must do things properly. Do it step by step. You cannot assume you are a genius and skip the essential "milestones" along the process.