The Magic of Vajrayana

Books and Translations by Ken McLeod

A Trackless Path (2017)

Reflections on Silver River (2014)

An Arrow to the Heart (2007, 2021)

Wake Up to Your Life (2001)

The Great Path of Awakening (1987)

The Magic of Vajrayana

Ken McLeod

Copyright © 2023 Ken McLeod

All rights reserved under International and Pan-­American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

To request permissions, contact the publisher at

[email protected]

Unfettered Mind Media

www.unfetteredmind.org

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023910556

ISBN 979-8-98617-110-4 (hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-9861711-1-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-9861711-2-8 (ebook)

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First edition

Cover photo: Steph Nikora

Book design: VJB/Scribe

Printed by McNaughton & Gunn

to the Dark Lord

who dwells

under the sandalwood tree

with a single trunk

in the Cool Grove

in the south-east

Experience arises like magic.

If you practice like magic

You awaken like magic

Through the power of faith.

—Niguma

Contents

Introduction

1. What is Vajrayana?

2. Guru and Prayer

3. Deity and Power

4. Birth: Becoming the Deity

5. Life: Living as the Deity

6. Death: Dying as the Deity

7. Protector and Balance

8. Living Practice

Postscript

Appendices

The Magic of Faith

Mastery of the Deathless

A Concise Essential Offering Ritual for the Six-Armed Lord

Mountain Burnt-Offering

Chapter Notes

Glossary

Bibliography

About the Author

Acknowledgements and Permissions

Numerous people have contributed to this book: Jon Parmenter, Ruth Gilbert, Donna McLaughlin, Sarah Harding, Ingrid McLeod, Stephen Batchelor, James Shaheen, Hokai Sobol, Majda Jurich, Joan Duncan Oliver, Jim Wilson, Claudia Hansson, Ulrich Küstner, Ann Craig, Rob Schmidt, and Stuart Goodnick.

Some of these people helped to clarify practice points. Others pointed out problems or inaccuracies in the text. Still others provided me with friendship and encouragement. More than a few helped me in all three ways.

Janaki Symon’s editing skills helped shape the manuscript into its final form. A team of proofreaders, Trudy Gold, Bill Butcher, Jitendra Pant, John Munroe, Larry Akey, and Marti Early, ensured that the manuscript was as clean as possible. Nancy Hawekotte kindly applied her editing skills to polish the manuscript. Ann Braun Wheatley’s keen eye found the right cover. Valerie Caldwell designed the book.

To all these people I am deeply grateful.

My thanks, also, to Walter Mosley, who kindly gave permission for the excerpts from his novel The Long Fall, to Steph Nikora for her permission to use her photograph for the cover, and to Sugarcube Studios Ltd. for processing the image.

Ken McLeod

Introduction

About twenty-five hundred years ago, a young prince in a small kingdom in northern India set out on a spiritual quest — how to live at peace in a life shaped by old age, illness, and death. He gave up everything: his family, his position in society, and every form of conventional success. After much training and hardship he found a way. His understanding and what he passed on to those who sought his counsel gave rise to the collection of religions that we know today as Buddhism.

When I set out to seek answers to my own spiritual questions, it was this pragmatic approach that drew me. More by chance than design, I came to study and practice in the Tibetan tradition, rather than Zen or Theravada. In Tibetan Buddhism I found Vajrayana and entered a world that I did not know existed — a world in which magic was and still is widely practiced, a world in which magic is a path to spiritual understanding.

This book is about the magic of Vajrayana. It is about the practice of that magic. It is also about coming to see, experience, and know life directly — free from mediation by the conceptual mind. In other words, it is about a mystical path, the mystical path of Vajrayana.

Vajrayana is not without its challenges. Its forms, practices, and rituals evolved out of the sorcery cults and religions of ancient India, where it originated, and Tibet, where it has been transmitted from generation to generation for over a thousand years. It is complex, multi-faceted, and deeply entwined with those cultures.

The literature of Vajrayana is itself enormous. Hundreds, if not thousands, of volumes of texts and commentaries were brought from India to Tibet in two waves — the first in and about the 8th century, the second in the 11th and 12th centuries. Over the last thousand years, Vajrayana in Tibet has given rise to numerous lineages and traditions, each of them with their own vast collections of empower­ments, practice texts, commentaries, philosophical treatises, and rituals.

This book is a distillation of my understanding and experience of spiritual practice in the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition. It is not a philosophical or academic book. It favors practice over theory, the spirit of practice over technical details, and methods over results. It includes practices that I have done for many years, what I came to understand through them, and what I learned from teaching them to others.

In coming to this tradition many of us are confronted with a host of questions. What does it mean to see a living person, your teacher, as buddha? What is the relationship between prayer and meditation? How does a deity bring about ecstasy, insight, compassion, wisdom, or other spiritual qualities? Why all the gods? Why all the rituals? And what does a protector do? These are the kinds of questions I address here.

This book is intended for three groups of people: those currently practicing Vajrayana, those interested in practicing Vajrayana, and those whose lives have cracked open. For the first, I offer my experience and understanding in the hope that it will clarify your own practice. For the second, I give you a taste of what practice in this tradition may involve. For the third, whether you experienced some kind of awakening, your life took an unexpected turn, or you are lost beyond words, another’s path may unveil something that speaks to yours.

Take a moment now to consider what brought you to spiritual practice. Was it a possibility that you sensed or knew when you were quite young, but lost or forgot as life unfolded? Was it a spontaneous awakening, unexpected and unbidden? Was it an existential shock or personal tragedy that stripped conventional life of all meaning? Was it an intimation of mystery — the miracle of love or compassion, for instance — or an experience or insight beyond the conventional order? Was it a wish to answer the deep questions of life, Why am I here? or What is life? Was it a need to meet or comprehend your own struggles, or the struggles of others? Perhaps you came through another discipline — medicine, science, sport, art, or craft — and you saw that it pointed to something beyond the discipline itself. Whatever the reason, keep it in mind and hold it in your heart as you read these pages.

In one respect, mystical practice is no different from any other discipline. You need teachers. Whatever your level of interest, whatever your natural ability, a discipline involves learning and training. You need to learn or be shown what is possible. You need to develop skills and build capabilities. And you need to know when you are stuck, what to do about it, and where the dangers lie. As in other disciplines, you may learn these facets of practice from one person or from various people. You may have a long association with one teacher or a crucial seed may be planted in a single meeting with someone you never meet again. You may find a teacher through your own efforts or a teacher may find you. However the connection comes about, a teacher embodies in some way the essence of mystical practice, a knowing that is unmediated by the conceptual mind. That knowing is the vajra in Vajrayana.

The Meaning of Vajrayana

The original vajra was a lightning bolt, a weapon associated with Indra, the Vedic rain and thunder god. According to tradition, a pernicious titan drove Indra from his heavenly abode. Under the protection of powerful magic, the titan could not be defeated by ordinary weapons. Indra and the other gods prevailed on a deeply virtuous sage, asking him to give up his life and allow them to forge a weapon from his bones. He agreed. The virtue of the sage was such that the weapon so fashioned, the vajra, could destroy anything and return unchanged to the hand that threw it. This original vajra is a fitting metaphor for the empty clear knowing at the heart of Buddhist mystical practice, a non-conceptual illumination of experience that brings an end to reactivity and confusion yet is not impaired or weakened in the process.

The yana in Vajrayana means both path and vehicle — something that conveys you from one place to another. Here it refers to the teachings and practices through which you make the journey from ordinary consciousness to mystical knowing. Vajrayana, then, is a path or a vehicle that brings you to a knowing and experiencing of life undistorted by reactivity or confusion.

Other names for Vajrayana are Mantrayana, Tantrayana, and Secret Mantra. The Sanskrit word mantra means a magic spell and refers to spells that are used in magic and sorcery rituals. It also has a metaphorical meaning — that which protects the mind. In this context, it refers to the various methods used by mystics and magicians to protect their practice and their minds from distraction and disturbance. The word tantra is derived from the word for weft, the continuous thread that weaves back and forth as a carpet or a piece of cloth is woven on a loom. Tantra refers to a continuous thread of awareness, an empty clear knowing, that runs through all human experience. The term secret has two meanings. First, it refers to a way of knowing that is not accessible to ordinary consciousness. Second, it signifies that these instructions and practices are given only to those who are suitable.

Chapter Outline

In the Japanese film After Life, a group of recently deceased people find themselves in a lodge, in what turns out to be a kind of limbo. Other people are there to assist them to move on. These assistants ask them to go back over their life and choose the one memory that was most meaningful to them, the one they wish to retain for eternity. The genius of the film is that the recently deceased do not choose moments of triumph or accomplishment, but moments in which they were one with life. The assistants then reconstruct that memory in a film. As each person watches their film, something is completed and they move on.

In weaving this book together, I did not limit myself to one memory. What you find here are the understandings and the experiences that were most meaningful to me in my spiritual journey. The achronological order in which they are presented is intended to further your understanding of Vajrayana and to help you in your own journey.

Chapter 1 is about Vajrayana as a system of practice: its essence, its purpose, how that purpose is realized through practice, and the overall practice framework. The essence of Vajrayana is a clear empty knowing, a way of experiencing life in which awareness and experience are not separated. The purpose of Vajrayana practice is to bring about and stabilize shifts into that knowing. Because Vajra­yana evolved out of ancient traditions of magic and sorcery, it relies on teachers who reveal possibilities, deities who wield and confer powers, and protectors who open paths in the dark. The two principal kinds of practice in Vajrayana are: the path of method, in which you build skills and capabilities, and the path of release in which awareness unfolds. Both are necessary, and when practiced properly they reinforce each other. The chapter concludes with a discussion of ngöndro or groundwork, a set of practices that for many is their gateway into Vajrayana.

Chapter 2 is about teacher-union practice. The chapter opens with an example of a teacher-union practice that makes explicit how faith and devotion, prayer, the union of minds, and direct awareness practice are all connected. It is followed by an experiential description of what it means to say that the mind of the student joins with the mind of the teacher. The chapter goes on to discuss each of these topics separately: what faith and devotion are, what prayer is, how faith and prayer help you to mature spiritually, and how they open a door to such direct awareness practices as mahamudra and dzogchen.

The next four chapters are about deity practice. Deity practice includes a vast array of methods that evolved in a different culture and a different era, namely, the mystical traditions of medieval India. They are complex practices, and many people have difficulty in understanding how to do them. The aim of these chapters is to clarify these methods and make them accessible.

Chapter 3 is about empowerment, the entrance into deity practice. It opens with a story from my teacher that illustrates how this method of practice works. It then takes the reader through an empowerment ritual, making explicit how understanding and experience unfold. The chapter ends with a discussion of ethics in Vajrayana.

Deity practice itself is usually presented in two stages or phases, creation phase and completion phase. Creation phase is about becoming the deity and transforming the experience of life. Completion phase is about letting go of being the deity and transforming the experience of death.

Chapters 4 and 5 cover creation phase practice. In these two chapters your guide is White Tara, a peaceful deity associated with compassion, healing, and longevity. Moving step by step through a traditional practice text for White Tara, you experience the basic elements of creation phase practice, their connection with older rituals of magic, and how they purify or change your relationship with life. In Chapter 4 you take birth as White Tara in her world, her domain of awakening. In Chapter 5, White Tara comes alive in you. As White Tara, you mature into your powers, draw in the inspiration and energy of awakening, and draw on them to free beings from the vicissitudes of samsara. The chapter closes with your death as White Tara, and how you engage the intermediate period between death and birth that is, in the context of deity meditation, your ordinary human life.

Chapter 6 introduces you to a mediated completion phase practice called magical apparition, a practice from the Shangpa Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Here you learn what it means to die as a deity. In this chapter, you take three different paths into the experience of life as a magical apparition, one based on devotion, another based on intention, and the last based on transformation. All these approaches involve the transformation of energy. Because energy practices are inherently dangerous, this chapter concludes with general guidelines for working with energy.

Chapter 7 is about protector practice and balance. Here your guide is the Six-Armed Mahakala, the principal protector in the Shangpa tradition and an important protector in other traditions. A short daily offering ritual for Mahakala takes you through the essential elements of protector practice — ritual, sacrifice, and submission — and how these elements help you to maintain balance in spiritual practice. The chapter concludes with a second ritual, a burnt-offering ritual, that also helps to balance the forces that cause problems in spiritual practice.

Chapter 8 is about living practice. This chapter opens with instances from my own life when I was able to live the practice. Even though higher levels of practice are often described as no meditation, no practice, or nothing to train, actual living practice requires a high level of proficiency in a wide range of practices including mindfulness, awakening mind, taking and sending, creation and completion phase, and direct awareness. The chapter concludes with short summaries of the key points on which I rely to develop and maintain this level of proficiency.

Context and Structure

Though the last to be written, this book is the second in a trilogy on the practice of Buddhism in the Tibetan tradition. It assumes a knowledge and familiarity with Mahayana Buddhism as it is presented in the Tibetan tradition and how it might be practiced in today’s world. This is precisely the subject matter of the first book in the trilogy, Reflections on Silver River, a translation and commentary of Tokmé Zongpo’s The 37 Practices of a Bodhisattva. The present book, The Magic of Vajrayana, draws on several practice texts, each of them presenting a different method of practice. Together, they take you through the mountains and valleys of the profound purification practices of Vajrayana. The third book, A Trackless Path, is a celebration of the non-practice practice of dzogchen. It draws on a poem by the Dzogchen mystic Jigmé Lingpa and introduces the reader to the vast expanses of timeless awareness.

The aim of this book is to give you an actual taste of Vajrayana. To do so, I relied on practices and texts from my own training. They include practice elements from both the first wave of translations (the Nyingma) and the second wave, notably the Shangpa and Karma Kagyu lineages. My hope is that you find these examples helpful in your own practice, whatever tradition you follow, whatever deity you engage in practice, whatever practice text you use.

The main body of this book is instruction based on my understanding and experience. To focus attention on practice and avoid digressions, notes on background and historical context are placed in chapter notes at the end of the book. In addition, for those already familiar with Vajrayana, I compiled a glossary of terms with alternative translations.

How to Read This Book

The approaches I suggest here are based on how my own practice evolved after I left the three-year retreat. It is how I practiced within the complexities of life in a major American city, and it is how I taught others to practice in the same context.

If you are new to Buddhism or new to Vajrayana, read the book straight through without consulting the chapter notes or glossary. I suggest you read only a few pages at a time to give yourself a chance to assimilate the ideas and the practices. If the book does speak to you, you will probably read it again, and that will be the time to consult the notes and glossary.

If you are already familiar with Vajrayana, I still suggest you read the book straight through at first. Find the sections that speak to you and study them. Where applicable, incorporate the instructions into your own practices. In a second reading, spend additional time with the sections that speak to you, consult the notes, and apply what resonates with you to your own practice.

Conclusion

This book is about my experience with the practices that I received from my teachers. While I often delved into the history of a practice or a tradition in order to understand it better, I never succumbed to the conceit that what I practiced or what I taught was what Buddha Shakyamuni taught over twenty-five hundred years ago.

Many of the instructions I received were unknown in the time of Buddha Shakyamuni. To my mind, that makes them no less valid. One aspect of Buddhism’s genius is that the experience of contemporary masters has the same authority as that of the original texts, be they sutras or tantras. As a consequence, practices have been able to evolve over the centuries, refined through changing times and changing cultures by the experience of the mystics and masters of their day. This book is a small contribution to the refinement of these practices for our times and our culture.

I practiced what my teachers taught me, trusting their training and experience. That trust enabled me to let go enough to give the practices a chance to work on me, rather than me work on them. Even so, at some point I had to take what I had learned and forge a way without knowing where it might lead. Here, timing is crucial. Too soon, and you may not have enough understanding and experience. Too late, and you may have settled into a way of practice that does not serve you.

The masters of the past and the masters of today sought exactly what you and I are seeking: a way of freedom. Yet it is not a case of following exactly in their footsteps. Like the young prince who became Buddha Shakyamuni, a master shows us a path. Through studying and learning from such masters, you and I may also find a path. That is my wish for this book, and that is my wish for you.

Chapter 1

What is Vajrayana?

What is life? Even if you have pondered this question before, take a moment right now and ask it again. What is life?

What happens? For a brief moment, thinking stops. You are quiet, clear, and aware — clearer, perhaps, than usual. And everything is okay, even if it is not. The moment does not last long. You start thinking again soon enough. Even so, you have glimpsed another possibility, another way of being. What is that?

In 2019 I visited a Tibetan teacher, Kilung Rinpoche, at his center on Whidbey Island, off the coast of Washington State. Sixteen years earlier I had participated in a three-week retreat he had taught. While we chatted over tea, I asked him, What is the essence of Vajrayana? He was silent for a moment, and then replied, in Tibetan, Dag nang.

Empty experience, I thought to myself, a way of experiencing life and all its possibilities that is empty of self and empty of the projections of thought and feeling. Empty does not mean everything disappears. It means that the gap between you and what you