Talk 5: revised version (2001-03-20) of talk given at Order Visualisation Retreat Vajraloka 1998
Today’s talk is again about the practical aspect of visualisation. I reassured you all in my ‘Visualisation Points’ talk that it’s OK if visualisation as such doesn’t comes naturally, and it’s OK to work with other aspects of the form. But how do we do this? How to work with the impression that we have of the Buddha?
1. Bringing the image to life
The first important thing is that the Buddha should be vividly present to you, in whatever form you perceive him. We shouldn’t be satisfied with a vague impression, even though that is fine as a start. That vague impression needs to be coaxed into more vivid life, so that it really is as though the Buddha is present. So your visualised image needs to become more constant as an impression, needs to become more clear as to its form, needs to become more clear in its details.
So look in much more detail at the Buddha’s form, however you perceive it, and at all its secondary aspects – your sense of his aura or clothing, maybe the actual shade of all the colours involved. You can’t do this all the time, because you get scattered over so many objects. But do go into the details from time to time, and try to incorporate more and more detail.
Then, stabilise the image, stay with just the details that have established themselves, and try to make this established ‘core’ of the image really stable.
Then, bring the image to life by making him or her present, like a real person would be. This involves being present yourself, too! There is a kind of connection between your presence and his presence. Anyway, do that for a while, keep that up, until you feel you have done all you can.
Then, move on to another aspect – perhaps to reflect on rupa and sunyata, the vipasyana aspect. Then, perhaps go back to the details of the form. So there can be a sequence to it. I’d suggest: image as form, image as actually present person, image as void. That’s image as form, image as person, image as void.
2. Presence
Getting all three aspects requires application over a long time. You probably can’t expect to perfect it on this retreat, but you do have an opportunity to make some real progress here On this retreat we now have the opportunity to do the sadhana at least twice. But you are not been limited to this. I’d suggest that you find spare moments throughout the day to conjure up again and again the image of your yidam. After all, it only takes a second or two to get that vague impression. You can visualise blue sky and the yidam appearing from it, and passing back into it, in five or ten minutes. I’d suggest doing it that way – out of the blue sky. But you can do this at any odd moment, in your room, or sitting out in the grounds, on a walk, or even in the shrine room. Obviously you only go so far in a short time. But I think this will help.
it’s useful to get used to dissolving as well as building up the visualisation. We talk a lot about getting into meditation but I sometimes think we don’t talk enough about getting out of it. That’s also important. Anyway, practice building up, or instantly manifesting, the image of the Buddha from the voidness, and dissolving it back again. Do that often throughout the day, and I feel sure it will help you to create a more vivid appearance of the Buddha. I would also say, look at people here on the retreat, and understand what it is to be in someone’s presence. What does it feel like, that they are actually present? Ask yourself, then apply that in the visualisation so that both you and the Buddha are actually there.
Don’t be afraid of the Buddha being there. He is certainly not going to do you any harm. It’s important that we trust the practice. If we have any doubts, this is an ideal situation to clarify what they are. It is a rather strong experience, in some ways perhaps even rather confronting, for the Buddha to be present. I said that we have to be present with the Buddha, that it’s no good being a passive spectator, that we must be involved. I think this need to actually involve ourselves with the Buddha can be something of a challenge to our faith. In other meditation practices, we can to some extent do it in the privacy of our own mind. We can interpret it how we like, and so on. But we can’t have this attitude to visualisation. There is a shared dimension; the meditation is no longer completely private.
3. The connection with spiritual rebirth
In the talk on Visualisation Points I mentioned Bhante’s lecture ‘A System of Meditation,’ (part of which is in the Guide to the Buddhist Path). I said that the stages of Concentration and Positive Emotion are together equivalent to stages of sila and samadhi, the basic human and ethical integration we need to sustain the Buddhist Path, and the state of mundane samadhi which can arise on that basis. Then the stage of spiritual death, the stage of vipassana meditation, represents our actual spiritual change, when our old self dies as a consequence of reflection on the reality of things, on really seeing that our self, and all things, actually have these extraordinary, dynamic properties of impermanence and insubstantiality.
Bhante says that it is the next stage, that of spiritual rebirth, which represents the sadhana meditation. But what is the connection between our spiritual rebirth and our visualisation of a Buddha or Bodhisattva? Bhante’s explanation, in the lecture, is that the visualised Buddha represents you – you as you will be when you have gained Enlightenment. So in the visualisation you are contemplating yourself as having been transformed; it is this transformation that constitutes the spiritual rebirth. However, that hasn’t happened yet. We are not yet at the stage of actually having been spiritually reborn. We are practising what the Vajrayana calls the phase of Generation. The stage of spiritual rebirth proper is the Completion stage, when one has actually been transformed, when one has actually taken in the qualities of the Buddha and reached Stream Entry at least.
In some sadhanas there is a section in which one simply sits in samadhi, that is, supposedly, the transcendental samadhi of the Completion stage. It is a kind of dramatic rehearsal of one’s state of Enlightenment, when we have been imbued permanently with the Enlightened qualities of the Buddha. One perhaps sits on after the practice, in a state of concentrated receptivity, just to allow the effect of the practice to sink in. That would be the completion stage (Dzogrim), if that was where we were at.
However, since we aren’t really at the stage of Completion, we have to view Bhante’s idea of spiritual rebirth in terms of the Generation process (Kyerim). Our contemplation of ourselves as we will be when we have completed the process is a dramatic anticipation. We are playing at it (just as children play at being adults, and actors play out mythic drama so that we can reflect upon life). In fact, it’s quite clear that we haven’t got beyond the stage of spiritual death either– we haven’t yet completely let go our attachment to the old view of self. Moreover, we haven’t even completed the other stages either – we aren’t perfect in our practice of sila and samadhi. In other words, we are not fully integrated; nor are we consistently emotionally positive. And none of this should really surprise or depress us. After all, we won’t be fully integrated, or fully emotionally positive, or fully freed from false self view, until we have been completely spiritually reborn, and reached Stream Entry at least.
So we sit there contemplating the Buddha’s qualities, and also, within that space, contemplate the fact that we are becoming like that through our practice. This is an important preliminary to communication. When you communicate with someone normally, if you are actually entering into communication, what happens is that both parties try to see the other person’s point of view. There is a mutual letting go of self-clinging. There is a mutual attempt to see things as the other sees them. When you try to see someone else’s angle on things, you enter more into harmony with them. And this is what you do when you contemplate the Buddha. To a an extent – and it can only happen to a limited extent of course, because you are unenlightened – you let go of your present idea of yourself and try to see things more from an Enlightened point of view.
This preliminary to communication having been established, there arises the possibility, at least, of an actual communication between you and the Enlightened being you are contemplating. The Buddha is actually there, after all. Communication can take place because the Buddha is actually present. Perhaps you doubt this. Enlightenment has been gained by all the Buddhas… therefore, those Buddhas are there! Actually, if we think about it, this is a basic premise of Buddhism. If we did not believe that Enlightenment has been gained, Going for Refuge would be impossible. So since Enlightenment has been gained, therefore there are Enlightened beings present – present somehow, in a manner we cannot expect to understand, present in the medium of mind, whatever that is. If their presence is accessible by any means, the most likely way would seem to be through meditation (as, indeed, tradition seems to affirm through the notion of the Sambhogakaya).
Symbolically, sitting before the Buddha figure in meditation symbolises the fact that Enlightenment is always present to us as a potentiality of the mind. But how should we view this without slipping into a wrong view of seeing ourselves as somehow already enlightened? Well, as we’ve seen, according at least to the Yogachara viewpoint, the world all around us is the world of our mind, whatever that really is. What we see all around us is a reflection of the Alayavijnana, it is the direct or indirect result of our accumulation of becoming; it is the fruition of our deeds since beginningless time.
Notice, though, that this idea of beginningless time is rather tricky: beginningless time is not the same thing as a very long time. In fact, the idea of beginningless time completely transcends time. So if our Alayavijnana has its origins in beginningless time, it is obviously is not something we can pin down at all easily. At a certain point our grasp of it must break down. At a certain point our notion of ourselves, and of our individual past, loses the clear boundary that it has in a context simply of history. With the notion of beginningless time, even the boundaries between my Alayavijnana and your Alayavijnana start to break down. So this means that our potential for enlightenment is not really ‘ours’, just as nothing else, not our history or even our own body, can really be said to be our possession. It is simply a reality that, like everything, cannot adequately be described.
When we say Enlightenment is a potential for us, it means that Enlightenment isn’t yet an actual fact, for us. However Buddhism insists that Enlightenment definitely is a potential. With a certain amount of effort you could become as wise and compassionate as Bhante, or even a Buddha. The potentiality is real, like the oak tree is a real potentiality for an acorn. So in sadhana, this potentiality is an aspect of the contemplation, and it is this potentiality that forms the link between you and the Buddha. You both share Buddha Nature – the difference is that he has actualised it, and you are learning to actualise it – but you definitely have that in common, so there is a true basis for your communication with the Buddha.
So let me summarise now. First, you need to apply yourself now to the visualised image, making it more vivid and present. Also to make it more constant and established as an image. You can put all your energy into the practice if you switch modes from time to time, concentrating now on the image as form, now on the image as person, and now on the image as sunyata. So you’ll be like the proverbial Bodhisattva elephant plunging into one lotus pool after another.
And on that point of the image as a person, I want to stress that the meditation is an actual communication which leads to growth, in the same manner that kalyanamitrata leads to growth. That growth is possible because one has that potentiality for growth towards Enlightenment. And it is especially in the presence of the Buddha, that our seed of potentiality has ideal conditions: conditions in which to produce flowers, and eventually to come completely to fruition.