Rinpoche, you gave the Chenrezig empowerment here in San Francisco last night. Can you give us some general explanations about empowerments?
Rinpoche: Gampopa taught about empowerment. At the time and even now, there were discussions about the two kinds of teachings–monastic or sutra teachings, and tantric teachings. Empowerment is definitely a tantric practice.
There are two Sanskrit words for empowerment: abhishinca and abhisheka, so let’s start from there. The translation for both is either empowerment or initiation. Abhisheka or abhishinca literally means to sprinkle and pour. So “sprinkling” here means to purify or remove, and “pouring” means to add something. In this case, it means purifying the negativities or the five poisons and adding or pouring the five wisdoms into the five gates of the receiver. The five gates are body, speech, mind, quality, and secret place. Physically they are related to the forehead, throat, heart, navel, and the secret place, which is four fingers above the signs of gender. The five gates are the chakra locations.
So we are receiving five wisdoms into the five gates and purifying five poisons?
Yes. The five wisdoms are the enlightened transformation of the five poisons or negative emotions. The five poisons are quite obvious: greed, anger (particularly anger with hate, deep anger), ignorance, arrogance and jealousy. Ignorance, in this case, has a specific meaning; it is not just not knowing things but not knowing selflessness. It is believing that there is a single, solid, independent, true soul, or I. This is ego-clinging. I think that for the West the word arrogance is a little more accurate than the word pride. It is closer in meaning, more negative.
So abhisheka is the Sanskrit term that Tibetans translated as wang or wangkur. I think the English word empowerment has some Tibetan translation influence. Wang means power and wangkur means to give the power, therefore to give empowerment, to empower. So when you receive abhisheka, you are empowered to visualize the deity, bodhisattva or buddha. You are empowered to recite the mantra. In many cases you are empowered to visualize yourself as inseparable from the deity, depending on the level of tantra. Sometimes you visualize a deity separate from yourself, sometimes as inseparable from yourself. You are empowered with the blessing and qualities of the deity in order to be more efficient in your practice of helping others and to ripen the buddha nature or wisdom in you that we all have.
The word initiation is also good, because you initiate the power, ability or capacity we have to be enlightened. We initiate our buddha nature.
Like applying a catalyst or fertilizer.
Right. Because receiving an empowerment is like entering through the central gateway into a celestial mansion. That is why for vajrayana practice you cannot do without it. You must have empowerments to do the practice.
Can you explain more about how empowerment works in vajrayana?
They are necessary to enter into the actual practice. In one way you may be confused about whether you are a vajrayana practitioner just because you have received some empowerments. In reality you are not in the actual vajrayana practice. You may be hearing some teachings or doing practices that are taught by vajrayana masters, but you are not necessarily inside the vajrayana practice until you receive the practice completely, until you go through the sadhana, the visualization of the deity and so on. Just receiving the empowerment alone is not enough. You must receive detailed practice instructions along with explanations of the profound meaning.
Many vajrayana masters teach all three levels from the different yanas or paths. They don’t just teach vajrayana alone. They teach the hinayana and mahayana, and only then the vajrayana teachings. They teach the earlier paths as the foundation for the later ones. That makes the practice safe. In this way you can fully enter Buddhist tantric practice by gradually being introduced properly, step by step.
Tantric teachings are a great tool, but it is very important that you have compassion and an understanding of emptiness. Then vajrayana is a skillful practice. If you have only a mere concept of this idea of emptiness and you do not develop compassion and just jump into tantric practice, it could be very dangerous. You may not have the right motivation.
Can you explain what you mean by dangerous?
Tantric practices are very powerful. It is like electricity. If you don’t know how to deal with it, if you are not trained, then you can get a shock. But if you know how to use it, it is very practical. Your light bulb becomes bright, overcoming darkness. In this way, tantric practice provides skillful means that are beneficial. But if you have a bad motivation with tantric practice, this is a problem.
Like a wish for power or material things? What would you say would be bad motivation?
Bad motivation means you really want to harm others. That is bad motivation. Impure motivation, however, is not necessarily to harm others. You want to get good results, but not necessarily enlightenment or to get out of the suffering of samsara. You want to gain material benefit in return—that is impure motivation. That is not so bad, but you are not getting the real benefit. The real benefit is enlightenment—getting out of samsara.
So with impure motivation, you stay trapped in samsara. You just want to be wealthy, stronger, or more powerful.
Yes. You will get results, but you will have to wait a very long time, and you won’t be happy until you actually see the result. I often say that waiting is a pain. Bodhisattvas don’t expect much from giving. The Buddha taught that the result of giving is wealth or gain. But if you give something to somebody thinking that it will make you rich, then you won’t be happy until you become rich, until you feel that it actually produces this wealth. But a bodhisattva’s expectation is just to make others happy. The aim of giving is that the receiver receives it and they are happy and it is helpful for this person. It is quite simple. You can see immediately that they are satisfied and that they are happy.
So with compassion as the basis, you have good motivation for practice.
Yes, when you have compassion you will have good motivation. Then with a little bit of wisdom, you will have pure motivation. Not only good, but pure.
So the first important thing is compassion and the second is wisdom. With these two, one can travel on the right path toward realization. Chandrakirti, a great Buddhist scholar and realized being, wrote many famous madhayamaka texts. He said that compassion will produce merit, and wisdom will bring enlightenment or realization. They are like the two wings of a bird. A bird cannot fly with one wing, but with two wings, it can fly. Some people think that you accumulate merit through compassion first and then later you meditate to generate wisdom. But that is not the best way. The best way is to develop them simultaneously. So receive teachings, contemplate them, and try to see how true they are in one’s own life. This is the wisdom part. Then use what you learn in real life and try to understand others’ suffering—this is compassion.
One of the biggest obstacles for us is thinking that some people are not deserving because they have done bad things. But we need to think in a different way. Are they in need? Do they want happiness? Do they want to be comfortable? Do they want to be loved? Focusing more on this perspective will break down this barrier. Then, slowly, we will generate compassion. We may find that it does not really feel genuine at first because we have to try hard and think to generate compassion, but that is okay. Every practice needs effort at the beginning. Effort might not seem genuine or like it is coming from the inside because it is produced from thought.
So we should not be concerned with our initial awkwardness in generating compassion.
Exactly. It is like a sailboat. When it is at the shore you need effort to push the boat and then row it out. After some initial effort it just sails by itself with the wind. Then you don’t need effort. Practice is the same way. Eventually, compassion becomes spontaneous, which means you don’t calculate what you will gain, what the result may be, or the good it will bring. You don’t even think about whether that other person has done you benefit or harm in the past. You don’t even think about it. You just do it—you just give what is needed. Compassion then becomes spontaneous.
So first, compassion is the foundation and support for all our practice. Without compassion, you can just forget about making progress on the path. To generate compassion, you need a teacher or guide, because sometimes we think we are compassionate but maybe we are unknowingly hurting others. Compassion does not just mean a smiling face. This is not necessarily helpful. People may take advantage of you. One has to be very prudent. Whereas helping others is a good thing—it is an act of compassion— you need wisdom also. You have to think, “Am I in a position to help this person? Or instead, if I associate with them, might they be a negative influence?” This is important to know, because if they bring you down this makes things worse. But, the bottom line is to help others, so even if you know it is not the right time, if you are not capable to help right now, never give up the aspiration to help others. Think: Maybe not today, not this time, but I will help them in the future.
What can we do if we find ourselves in a position where it wouldn’t be smart to help someone in the way they want?
Then one can think about helping indirectly, through other people—asking others to help. Maintaining good intentions towards others and making wishes for them is smart. Always check to see that you do not have any negative thoughts about this person, especially if he or she is not listening or not accepting your advice. Sometimes we have very high expectations; and when we don’t reach them, we either get disappointed or give up hope. That is a negative thing. So it is very important to check our mind and maintain courage, because helping does not necessarily mean only today. It is important to have this commitment all the time. Even if you cannot help directly right now, then you must realize that you have to work harder on yourself in order to be able to help others more in the future.
So you have to grow in your own capacity to help more beings all the time.
Yes, this is very important in order to help more beings and in order not to get discouraged when it is not successful. This wisdom, knowing whether it is the right time or not, actually strengthens compassion. Some people think that wisdom and compassion do not really work well together. They think that wisdom comes from the brain and compassion comes from the heart. But actually, they work very well when you understand what wisdom really means.
The goal is for beings to realize themselves, who they are. This is not something people can usually do immediately or in just one life. But with tantric practice, it takes a much shorter time. You gain the result in a shorter time because there are methods that stimulate our energies, our capacity, and our body—and work skillfully with the mind. For example, when you learn how to drive, if you just drive for a long way on a straight road, you don’t learn that quickly. But if you learn to drive on a rough road with curves and hills, and if you try to stop, park, drive, stop, park, and drive, you learn faster. Your skills become sharper in a shorter period of time. In vajrayana, instead of visualizing one thing you have many details to visualize, e.g., bodhisattvas with ornaments, with many hands and eyes. This is an important part of the method. With Naropa’s six yogas, for example, instead of only working with the mind you also work with the body. Although realization comes from the mind, right now body and mind are together. So when you have good health and are physically fit, you have a better chance of becoming realized. Therefore, taking care of your body is an important part of your practice.
With compassion and wisdom, tantric or vajrayana practice will be even more efficient, more controlled. Every Buddhist practice has the same goal: liberating oneself and sentient beings from suffering. The focus of Buddhism is actually on sentient beings, on our present condition, not on some otherworldly state. So practice starts here, not somewhere else. The goal is right here from the beginning: to liberate from suffering and for sentient beings to understand the truth.
