New Translations of Guhyasamaja Related Tantras

A Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages: Teachings on Guhyasamaja Tantra (Library of Tibetan Classics) [Hardcover]
Tsongkhapa (Author), Thupten Jinpa Ph.D. (Editor), Gavin Kilty (Translator) published in 2013

Tsongkhapa’s Lamp to Illuminate the Five Stages (1419) is a comprehensive presentation of the highest yoga class of Buddhist tantra, especially the key practices—the so-called five stages (pancakrama)—of the advanced phase of Guyhasamaja tantra. Beginning with a thorough examination of the Indian sources, Tsongkhapa draws particularly from the writings of Nagarjuna, Aryadeva, Candrakirti, and Naropa to develop a definitive understanding of the Vajrayana completion stage.

Vajra Rosary Tantra Translated by David R. Kittay. Columbia University Press. Forthcoming due May 2013.

This is a study and the first complete English translation of the Vajramala tantra, one of the key explanatory tantras of the Guhyasamaja and other tantric systems. The text describes how, after the prerequisite preparations and realizations of the bodhisattva path, through further intense, lengthy, and subtle practices of meditation and other activities, one can become a completely enlightened Buddha.

Brilliant Illumination of the Lamp of the Five Stages: Practical Instructions in the King of Trantras, The Glorious Esoteric Community (Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences) [Hardcover]
Robert Thurman (Author) published in 2011

The Extremely Brilliant Lamp ( Shin tu gsal ba’I sgorn me) is Tsong Khapa’s most important commentary on the perfection stage practices of the Esoteric Community, the Tantra he considered fundamental for the practice of the “Father Tantra” class of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras.

Aryadeva’s Lamp that Integrates the Practices (Caryamelapakapradipa): The Gradual Path of Vajrayana Buddhism according to the Esoteric Community Noble Tradition [Hardcover]
Christian K. Wedemeyer (Author) published in 2008

The Lamp that Integrates the Practices is a systematic and comprehensive exposition of the most advanced yogas of the Esoteric Community (Guhyasamaja) Tantra as espoused by the Noble Tradition, an influential school of interpretation within the Mahayoga traditions of Indian Buddhist esoterism. Equal in authority to Nagarjuna’s famous Five Stages (Pañcakrama), Aryadeva’s work is perhaps the earliest prose example of the “stages of the mantra path” genre in Sanskrit. Its studied gradualism exerted immense influence on later Indian and Tibetan tradition, and it is widely cited by masters from all four major lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.

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What is Engaged Buddhism?

Here’s the link to my article in the Washington Post On Faith section with some thoughts about what it means to be an engaged Buddhist in the 21st century. Or really, what does it mean to be Buddhist? Can you call yourself Buddhist if you are not out there serving your community?

Please feel free to share your comments.

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Who is Guhyasamaja, Part 2

In Part 1 of this article, I discussed the importance of Guhyasamaja. Part 2 below presents different facets of  a complex subject, what is highest yoga tantra?

The distinguishing characteristic of Vajrayana Buddhism is the promise that practitioners can attain Enlightenment in this very lifetime. In the Continuation of the Guhyasamaja Tantra, we find this explanation of highest yoga tantra:

Tantra denotes continuousness.
It is composed of three aspects:
Ground, nature, and inalienableness.
When distinguised in this way,
The nature aspect is the cause;
The ground aspect refers to the method;
And inalienableness, the result.
These three contain tantra’s meaning.

Jamgon Kungtrul, in his Systems of Buddhist Tantra (page 143) explains this passage as indicating that Tantra is the ever-present mind of awakening. All sentient beings possess beginingless mind and tantra as a path can be seen from different perspectives as being the fundamental cause for awakening, the contributory condition for awakening and the resultant continuum.

Lama Yeshe in his Introduction to Tantra explains highest yoga tantra as meditation techniques that help us reveal our most subtle vajra body – a clear, conscious body of light that is ordinarily hidden from us by our gross physical form. Our subtle mind rides on the thousands of winds that flow through energy channels in the vajra body. By channeling our subtle winds into the central channel, we experience the union of great bliss and emptiness and attain Buddhahood.

Through the Highest Yoga tantra practices, we can remove the latent dualisms of the minds of white appearance, red increase and black near-attainment. Without doing so, Enlightenment can not be achieved. The lower tantric practices do not have the power to purify these obscurations.  

Khensur Rinpoche Losang Tsephel in his Path and Grounds of Guhyasamaja According to Arya Nagarjuna writes, “Unless one meditates on the meaning clear light which naturally integrates bliss and emptiness, one will never achieve the Truth Body for the simple reason that without this clear light the obstructions to omniscience cannot be abandoned completely. And for the same reason, one will not achieve the Form Body of an enlightened being as it has to arise from an illusory body purified by the meaning clear light.”

Highest Yoga Tantra is special because through its practice one realizes emptiness and also appears in the form body of the Buddha that one will become upon Enlightenment.  Daniel Cozort in his book Highest Yoga Tantra writes, “This compassionate appearance of the mind that realizes emptiness, in the form of a Buddha deity, actually develops into the Form Body of a Buddha while the mind itself develops into the Truth Body of a Buddha.”

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