Essence of Vajrayana. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

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СКАЧАТЬ and serenity are expressed by my long almond-shaped eyes, my wide-open eyes, and my looking at the Mother from the corner of my eyes.

      I wear a lower garment of a tiger skin, and a long necklace of fifty shrunken moist human heads strung together with human entrails. I am adorned with six bone ornaments: a crown ornament, ear ornaments, a necklace, bracelets and anklets, a heart ornament, and ashes of human bone smeared over my entire body. My hair is woven through the eight spokes of the crown ornament and gathered into a topknot, which is surmounted by a a nine-faceted jewel. The necklace, bracelets and anklets are made of fragments of human bone embossed with vajras. I wear my heart ornament, the seraka, just below my Brahmin’s thread, a three-knotted string hanging over my left shoulder. The front and back of the seraka consist of bone squares embossed with vajras, which are connected by strings of bone that go over the shoulders and under the arms.

      The Father is embracing the Blessed Mother Vajravarahi, who has a red-coloured body, one face, two hands and three eyes. She is naked with freely hanging hair and wears a lower garment made from fragments of skull. Her left hand, embracing the Father’s neck, holds a skullcup brimming with the blood of the four maras. Her right hand in the threatening mudra brandishes a curved knife, opposing the malignant forces of the ten directions. Her body shines with a brilliance like that of the fire at the end of the aeon. Her two legs are clasped around the Father’s thighs. She is the nature of blissful great compassion. Adorned with five mudras, she wears a crown of five shrunken human skulls and a necklace of fifty shrunken human skulls. Father and Mother abide in the centre of a fiercely blazing fire of exalted wisdom.

      THE SYMBOLISM OF HERUKA’S BODY

      Heruka’s body, a manifestation of his omniscient wisdom, reveals all the phenomena of the basis that we need to abandon, the path that we need to practise, and the result that we need to accomplish. The dark-blue colour of his body symbolizes the Wisdom Truth Body, the head of Brahma the Nature Body, the skulls the Enjoyment Body, and the crossed vajra of various colours the Emanation Body. Thus, these features of Heruka’s body teach the phenomena of the result, showing that Heruka has attained the four bodies of a Buddha and that we should strive to do the same. For this we need to abandon all objects to be abandoned, the phenomena of the basis, and practise all the stages of the path to enlightenment, the phenomena of the path.

      Heruka’s twelve arms teach us to abandon the cycle of twelve dependent-related links, samsara; the elephant skin to abandon the ignorance of self-grasping; and the lower garment of a tiger skin to abandon hatred. The axe teaches us to abandon all faults of body, speech and mind; the curved knife to abandon conceptions grasping at extremes; and the three-pointed spear to abandon all imprints of the delusions of the three realms. The long necklace of fifty human heads teaches us to abandon ordinary appearances and conceptions by purifying the fifty inner winds; and the bared fangs teach us to overcome the four maras. Heruka’s changing facial expressions teach us to turn away from wrong views and adopt correct views; and his treading on Bhairawa and Kalarati teaches us to abandon the two extremes of existence and non-existence, and the two extremes of samsara and solitary peace. Encouraging us to abandon the extreme of solitary peace implicitly teaches us to attain great compassion and practise the stages of the Mahayana path. Indeed, Heruka himself is the embodiment of Buddha’s compassion. His six mudra-ornaments teach us to train in the six perfections, and his four faces teach us to realize emptiness by meditating on the four doors of perfect liberation – emptiness, signlessness, wishlessness and non-production. Emptiness, in this context, refers to the emptiness of the nature of all functioning things, signlessness to the emptiness of their causes, wishlessness to the emptiness of their effects, and non-production to the emptiness of all non-produced phenomena.

      It is not enough simply to realize emptiness; we need to realize emptiness with a mind of spontaneous great bliss. This is symbolized by the skullcup brimming with blood. The blood symbolizes great bliss and the skullcup emptiness; together they symbolize the union of the two. The half moon on the left side of Heruka’s crown symbolizes the white bodhichitta in the crown melting and descending through the central channel, giving rise to the experience of the great bliss of the four joys. The ashes smeared all over his body symbolize this bliss pervading his entire body. To complete our training in great bliss, we need to meditate with a consort, first with a visualized wisdom mudra and then with an actual action mudra; and this is symbolized by Heruka embracing Vajravarahi. Buddha’s omniscient mind is the indivisible union of bliss and emptiness – his bliss appears as Heruka and his wisdom of emptiness as Vajravarahi. Heruka and Vajravarahi, therefore, are the same nature, and not two different people. Heruka holds a vajra symbolizing method and a bell symbolizing wisdom; together these teach us that we need to accomplish the union of method and wisdom.

      In general, attachment is the source of our daily problems and thus an object to be abandoned, but in Highest Yoga Tantra, instead of abandoning it straightaway we transform it through the power of meditation. Therefore, Heruka wears an elephant skin teaching us to abandon ignorance and a tiger skin teaching us to abandon hatred, but there is nothing on his body teaching us to abandon attachment. We need some slight attachment in order to develop great bliss. When we develop bliss we mix this bliss with emptiness and use this mind to abandon all delusions, including attachment. If with a pure motivation we train sincerely in Highest Yoga Tantra, the power of our meditation will be stronger than the power of our attachment, and so even though we do not abandon attachment right away, it will have no power to cause us problems.

      We all have the seed of Herukahood, but without receiving the blessings of the Buddhas we will not be able to ripen this seed. The sound of the damaru invokes all the Buddhas so that we can receive their blessings. The damaru itself symbolizes the blazing of the inner fire, and is played at the level of the navel; whereas the bell symbolizes clear light, and is played at the level of the heart.

      The vajra noose teaches us that our mind should always be bound by bliss, and the khatanga teaches us to recognize that the ultimate bodhichitta of inseparable bliss and emptiness appears as Heruka’s mandala and Deities. Whenever we practise Heruka generation stage meditation, we should always remember that everything is the nature of bliss and emptiness. In this way our meditation becomes an actual antidote to self-grasping.

      Heruka’s hair tied up in a topknot teaches us that the realizations of generation stage and completion stage, and all other good qualities, are accomplished gradually; we should not hope to gain all these realizations immediately. By training continually and sincerely, cherishing even our smallest insights, we will gradually accomplish all realizations. Eventually we will attain all Heruka’s good qualities, such as his omniscient wisdom knowing all objects of the three times, symbolized by his three eyes, and his five exalted wisdoms, symbolized by the rosaries of five-pronged vajras.

      By contemplating the symbolism of the features of Heruka’s body, we should strive to improve our divine pride and clear appearance of ourself as Heruka. In the auspicious prayers in the sadhana it says: ‘In the precious celestial mansions as extensive as the three thousand worlds’. This means that we should visualize the celestial mansion of Heruka as large as the entire universe, therefore it is without measurement. However, when we are drawing or building the mandala of Heruka we need to make it a specific size. This commentary explains how to accomplish the outer and inner mandala of Heruka through meditating on generation and completion stage, but it does not explain how to draw and build the mandala of Heruka.

      Ghantapa

      Generating the Mandala and Deities of the Body Mandala

      Generating the mandala and Deities of the body mandala has two parts:

      1 A preliminary explanation

      2 The explanation of the actual practice

      A СКАЧАТЬ