Meditation Practice Must Result in Uprooting of Defllements

Today I realised something about Vajrayana’s deity practice. Although I have practiced it for many years, the method that I have been taught all these years was perhaps wrong. Mostly people are taught to visualise themselves as a deity. We are told to visualise ourselves as emptiness and the deity illusory-like. And then they are to visualise the actual deity come down to them and merge with their own mind. Then you continue with the meditation of generation of deity practices. Because of these wrongly taught practices, I felt that the visualisations did not help me at all in overcoming defilements. I felt that visualisation as deity is a kind of haux, or self-hypnotism. In other words, I believed that the process involve directly or indirectly you are hypnotising yourself into a deity, which is like “brain-washing”. I have brought up this issue with Tibetan teachers but none of them gave me a satisfying answer. I noted that even though we are visualising all the beings around us as Enlightened Beings, we are in fact cheating ourselves, i.e. by adding more delusions and illusions on top of delusions and illusions. How can merely visualising ourselves and others as Enlightened effectively eliminate our deeply rooted greed, anger and ignorance? IT CANNOT AND NEVER WILL. Do you seriously think just by visualising ourselves as Avalokiteshvara we will be able to transform into Avalokiteshvara? Fat hope. Whoever tells you that is lying. The way I see it is visualisation is only a spiritual tool to enable us to treat others better. It is never meant to transform us into somebody we are not. That is not the way to achieve the path and fruition to Nirvana. Keep our focus on that, instead of focusing on becoming a deity, or achieving some particular state (Jhana, Mahamudra, Dzogchen, breaking of Zen kung-an gates, etc). These latter states are only "means" to an "end", they are not the "end" itself.  STOP fantasizing yourself merging your mind with Cakrasamvara, Yamantaka, etc. Without a correct view on these Yidams, you could possibly go towards insanity. There is a warning I have read in a Sadhana text that many tantric practitioners have been reborn into the animal realm by wrongly visualising themselves as wrathful  deities. By visualising yourself with many hands and legs and with a wrathful head, or many heads, it is even possibly, to be reborn as a strange looking demon! Then you will lose whatever Buddhist cultivation you had done before. That will be your greatest regret! 

That explains why perhaps a number of Tibetan teachers still find themselves mired in sexual desires. As a result, we hear of sexual scandals from time to time. To be fair, not just Tibetan Buddhist teachers, but teachers of all traditions. In fact, not just teachers, even normal lay Buddhists are not yet able to effectively uproot the defilements even after many years of “practice”. At most, what Buddhists do are merely “sweeping” these defilements “under the carpet”. Or, merely trimming down, but in all seriousness, the main trunk and roots are still underneath the mind “ground”. Most methods that you hear are only good at “filtering” out these defilements. Even though it is better “filtering” than doing nothing at all, nevertheless we are not pulling out all the roots and ridding of them altogether. It is not so easy to uproot them. Following the Buddha’s teachings is the only way. If we have some knowledge of Abhidhamma, we will know of the workings of consciousnesses, the relationship (or inter-relationship) between nama and rupa (mentality and materiality) and the path of purification that will eventually lead to attainment of fruition (phala and magha).    

Well… the process of how visualisation is done is wrong. If done correctly, it can also effectively uproot defilements. In this respect, I find the Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Maha Satipatthana) very essential as a basis for the generating and arising of the Pure Deity. In this case, I realise that the Pure Deity is NOT some external deity. The Deity is our own true essential nature.  When we have successfully purified our body, feeling and mind through the methods of Body contemplation, Feeling contemplation and Mind contemplation, then our innate “deity” is ready to arise. That is the only TRUE DEITY. Not some deity that comes from outside. There is no deity from outside. If the deity is from outside, do you think the deity’s mind and your mind can merge? Do you want your mind to be taken over by any external deity (such as like in the case of a person in trance)? Finally, by doing the Mental Factors Contemplation, we will be able to start the process of uprooting the defilements and preventing fresh ones from taking root. The ultimate aim of Buddhist meditations is never to attain some fanciful state of consciousness, nor attaining immortality.  

This post is my short take on what I understand from the Vajrayana practice of Generation of Deity (or, yidam practice) and how to generate the TRUE DEITY. There is no true yidam apart from your pure and original mind. If you like this post, try read this one, which to my own surprise, I think it is one of my best book review. This is something on Pema Chodron's revered book – https://buddha-and-me.blogspot.com/2009/10/book-review-places-that-scare-you.html

#yidam #satipatthana #deitymeditation