Sadhana structure

 

Approximate script, with some variations and possible errors, of the Double Dorje episode at the Double Dorje podcast

Hello dear listeners, and welcome. I’m Alex Wilding and this is the Double Dorje podcast.

The episodes in this podcast are generally not in any particular order, but this particular episode does pick up on something I touched on only very lightly in the episode about spooks, demons and helpful spiritual beings, and that is the overall structure of a sadhana practice. I mentioned then, that a lot of us beginning on vajrayana Buddhism in the modern world – and I was one of these – get started off on what are called “daily” practices. These are short sadhanas, just a handful of pages, designed to maintain a connection with a deity with which, traditionally, we would have already got some fairly full experience. At some stage then we might have a full-strength sadhana thrown at us, and we can easily feel that we just don’t know what to do with it. There seems to be one section after another, then perhaps we hop back to something we thought we already done, maybe we have to get up to take a cake or some incense outside, then there’s another bunch of prayers and at first it seems as if one thing is piled on top of another. We can be tempted to think that there is no good reason for this preat pile of stuff. After all, we’ve been doing the short version quite happily so far, haven’t we?

On top of that we have all the business of riffling through the loose-leaf pages, working out whether the new insert is put in on page 32 before skipping to page 51, looking over each other’s shoulders to work out where we are on the Tibetan line, the so-called phonetic line and the translation line, and we can be forgiven for asking ourselves whether this is all worth the candle.

With experience, we realise that the sections do indeed have their own purposes, and are found at proper places in the performance where they do indeed belong. I have heard it compared to a symphony with its fast, slow, bright and sad movements, or a play with its several acts. So this is a revisitation that topic in a bit more detail.

In that other episode I talked about the possibility of understanding the relations with invisible beings in an entirely psychological sense, or trying to look on them as merely symbolic, or even of going all-in on the reality of these spirits. I also tried to suggest that it is possible to reach a deeper understanding based on the principle that inner and outer are not separate, that every move we make is a cause affecting both ourselves and the world outside, and that this is true at an even more intense level under the magnifying power of sadhana practice.

Be that as it may, whichever way you want to take these things, it is a help to have some kind of overview before you get lost in all the ritual details. Not every sadhana includes every one of these sections in exactly the order that I’m about to describe, and for that matter other sections are perfectly possible. In every case we always rely totally on the text that has been transmitted to us and the explanations that our lama has given us. Nevertheless, I hope to give you an impression of what is typical – an overview, and I hope that will help the details to slot into place.

[RING]

So here goes. Taking refuge in the three Jewels is the real start of Buddhist activity on any scale, whether that’s the whole of the rest of your life or whether it’s a ritual meditation practice that you are going to perform this afternoon. Along with that goes the compassionate motivation to attain enlightenment for the sake of all other sentient beings – what we know as bodhicitta. Refuge is the essential foundation for any kind of Buddhism whatsoever, and bodhicitta is the essential foundation of mahayana and vajrayana Buddhism. Once again, let me offer a quick reminder that I’ll include a list of most of the technical terms in this episode in the description on Podbean. Verses, perhaps with visualisations, to activate or refresh these two motivations are certain to occur near the start of a sadhana. In a short sadhanas, they will probably be the very first things, but in the longer one there may be preliminaries that are more preliminary! You can’t get away from preliminaries in this kind of Buddhism, though sometimes the preliminaries to the preliminaries can be skipped!

In other words, refuge and bodhicitta are not necessarily the very first items in a really big sadhana. First of all it’s quite likely that practitioners will “settle in” with prayers to the important teachers in the relevant lineage. What does “relevant” mean here? It can be prominent lamas in the history of the school or tradition being followed, or, perhaps in addition, lamas who have preserved and transmitted the specific practice that is about to start. At some early stage, as I mentioned in the previous episode, there may well be request to the Lords of the ground or land where the practice is about to be done, asking their permission to use the place and offering them a torma cake in recognition. We might be tempted to see a parallel with the declarations I hear made nowadays at the beginning of some presentations, where the speaker informs us that “I am speaking to you from the traditional lands of the XYZ people”, although it’s clear that the XYZ people are not going to be allowed to move back into the studio or otherwise occupy their traditional lands. Well, perhaps there is some value in that – we recognise that our occupancy of any place is temporary, and is contingent on the goodwill of others. On the other hand, you’ll have to decide for yourself whether, unlike the XYZ people, the “Lords of the place” may have some real influence.

At about the same time, perhaps immediately after this, something will be done to expel or banish any problem or obstacle spirits who might still be lurking. Probably they will be threatened with terrible consequences if they don’t go, and the pungent guggulu incense burnt to smoke them out.

At this stage the place has been cleared, and we can begin. But are we ourselves ready or worthy to begin? It would be nice to think so, but, to make sure, we may want to do some purification and include a performance to ritually accumulate merit. For the purification we might perhaps recite the mantra of Vajrasattva, with which participants will probably be familiar from their ngondro preliminaries, and we may well offer mandalas to all the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. In this context, the word “mandala” does not mean one of those circular palaces you have surely seen painted, but it means visualising the universe, or at least one world system, with Mount Meru at the centre surrounded by oceans, rings of mountains, continents, the sun, the moon and all the rest of it. This too may well be familiar to the participants from their earlier practice of the preliminaries.

This phase of accumulating merit may well also include what we call the “seven branch service”. This is framework that can be filled with liturgy flavoured to match the particular practice and tradition. In short, it consists of prostration, offering, confession of failings, rejoicing in the merit of others, asking the Buddhas to teach, or to “turn the wheel of Dharma”, asking them not to go into the ultimate peace but to remain in the cycle of existence for our benefit, and dedicating the merit of all this to the enlightenment of all. That was seven, wasn’t it? And when I say “differeent flavours”, I could illustrate that with the “confession”. When practising at a simple level, that's pretty much what you might expect. We confess - to oursleves, I should add, it's not like confessing to a Catholic priest – to conventional bad things – stealing, lying, cruelty and so on. In pratice with a different orientation, though, the main confesion may be to failing to recognise our own minds as the Buddha: everything else flows from that.

Charged up with all this nourishing merit we now start to visualise the deity. In a first step, the “samayasattva” is invoked, in front of us in the sky, floating above our head, or indeed as ourselves – the differences between these locations are very important, but depend on the particular practice and on the teachings we have received or are in the process of receiving. This term, samayasattva, refers to the being, the deity, who embodies our own commitment to the practice. In Tibetan, the word is translated as damtsigpa, and I’m afraid this is another case where we have to swallow the fact that we have a number of English translations for a word that is also referred to in Sanskrit and Tibetan forms, and we just can’t get away from that. Damtsigpa, samayasattva, commitment being, vow being – these are all exactly the same thing.

Thinking about what is happening, I found it very helpful to recognise that this process is closely parallel to what happens when a statue is consecrated. The samayasattva is like the statue BEFORE it has been consecrated. We might look at it and admire its parts, make sure that it is very beautiful and that it displays the characteristics of the deity we are invoking, that it is worthy to represent the deity. It’s pretty electric, but it’s still not the real thing until the deity has been invited to make a home in the statue.

So once we have done this visualisation, it is typical for that deity to emanate lights from its bodily centres. Nearly always this is a white light from the head associated with the body, a red light from the throat associated with speech and the blue light from the heart associated with the mind. This pattern is found in many corners of Buddhist liturgy.

In this case, what the light does is first of all to go to whatever celestial realm the deity usually inhabits. This can have a geographical reference, being in the east, perhaps, or the south-west, or the deity may be thought of as, for example, existing in the depths of reality. The so-to-speak “real” deity, known as the jnanasattva or “wisdom being”, is now called in by those lights. “Called in” is, of course, exactly what the word “invoked” says. As with the samayasattva, the Sanskrit-based word jnanasattva, the Tibetan-based word yeshepa, the English “knowledge being” and “wisdom being” are exactly the same thing. Sorry about that! The “jnana” part of this word, translated here as knowledge or wisdom, can in other more philosophical contexts have quite a subtle meaning, but those are not in focus very much in this context of a sadhana. It is often quite fair simply to think of it as the “real” deity, or at any rate as the deity beyond the physical representation in our temple or on our shine.

This yeshepa may first be given offerings and praise, or in a simple case it may simply merge directly with the damtsigpa of the initial visualisation.

Now we are cooking with gas. Praises and offerings may turn up at almost any point, but round about now we’ll start reciting the mantra of the deity, while at the same time, usually, visualising something such as lights being radiated and absorbed. Again this is something whose details are critical, but must be learnt in the context of being given the specific practice.

By the way, it might seem a bit beside the point to be going on and on here about general things and then telling you that you have to get the details from another source, which is to say from your teacher. I have a feeling, however, that if we have a general grasp of the structure first of all, as I certainly did NOT when I began, the details will make much more sense when we start to fill them in.

In a more elaborate sadhana there may be several phases of mantra recitation, with different visualisations for each phase, and possibly even with different mantras. This is especially true if there is a section for the “four activities”, in which the mantra may have four different suffixes, one for pacifying, one for enriching, one for magnetising or controlling, and one for destroying.

After what may be a fairly long period of mantra recitation, the deity is most often dissolved into emptiness. Most often it reappears again soon afterwards, at which point the emphasis may be on the presence of the deity, it’s mantra and its mind in everything we see, hear and think.

This particular phase, involving dissolution and reappearance, is related to an extremely important topic, that of the “two phases”. These are the creating phase, also called the developing phase, and the perfecting or completing phase. In personal practice, or in retreat, the completing phase can involve elaborate yogic exercises, but in the sort of group practice we are picturing here it is quite likely that this dissolution and reappearance will be done quite quickly.

Having identified ourselves with the deity and re-emerged, we then carry on, much as I just mentioned, with all that appears being the body of the deity, all sounds being its mantra and all thoughts being the mind of the deity.

 It’s now time to wrap up. (“At last”, did you say? You’ll get used to it!) Offerings to protectors are likely to come in at this stage. There can be quite a number of these since, as the tradition continues, nobody likes to drop off the practice of a protector that has been done in the past – it seems like an unnecessary risk – but lamas often like to add on their own special favourite protectors, so the liturgy has tendency to grow like ivy, slowly but almost irresistibly. The protector practice will – and I hope that this is unsurprising by now – involve praises and the offering of torma cakes. This closing stage may also involve “fulfilment” prayers, where the protector is asked to actually protect our practice, which also means helping to overcome relatively straightforward obstacles in our life that make the practice difficult.

Finally, of course, the merit of the whole business has to be dedicated to the happiness and enlightenment of all sentient beings, and since Tibetan Buddhists just LOVE sitting there chanting, there will also likely be auspicious prayers, good wishing prayers and so forth.

What I’m hoping is that if you are coming to this for the first time, you won’t be too confused by the details, things like getting permission from the Lords of the place, banishing the obstructing spirits by giving them a little cake. When we look at the whole thing we can see that it is taking refuge and developing compassion for all sentient beings that is the absolute foundation, the reinforced concrete, the driven piles on which the whole practice is based. On that basis we build something through which we come to see the world quite differently and come to contact the enlightened mind within our own being, to which we have been introduced through the empowerment for the practice. We accumulate the blessings that flow from that, mainly by reciting possibly very large numbers of mantras, but we also recognise that this is all an illusory creation. It is the play of the pure, radiant, buddha-mind itself. We dedicate merit, so that if after this rather special time we fall back into stupid greed and aggression, the benefit is not completely lost. All the other parts of the practice are the little cogs and levers that fit together to make this sadhana machine run like clockwork.

In the episode to which this present one is, loosely speaking, a part two, I referred to the practice of tsog feasts. These too are very important as they help repair broken vows, and serious practitioners (whoever they are) will most likely perform at least one tsok every lunar month, more likely two, and quite possibly one a day. I was going to include them in this description of the structure, but frankly, looking at them now might muddy the crystal-clear water I have offered you! Perhaps I will talk about them again in some other episode.

 

So that’s it for today. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, share, tell your friends, whatever – and remember that your own mind is, was and always will be the enlightened mind of the Buddha – don’t let it down!