Once we encounter the actual practices, there are many variations, so I will outline here a basic yogin practice derived from the Nyingma sect.
The word yana means a practice, or a path. Thus it is also employed for a large range of extensions of this basic meaning.
Within Buddhism, what is called the Third Turning of the Wheel, was the arrival of Tantra. Tantra is a path of utilising the world in specialised ways to achieve enlightenment in one lifetime. So these practices come within the Tantric tradition, and are practised by yogins who may or may not exist within the formal structures of Tibetan Buddhism.
The first concept to understand is what they call a yidam. Yogins of the ‘old school’ have a personal yidam and/or a series of them for different purposes. The yidam is a meditational diety.
As Buddhism does not in essence acknowledge the gods, or rather, they acknowledge them but dismiss them as futile for the purposes of achieving ‘liberation’, due to the fact that they see the gods themselves as trapped in samsara as humans are. So there is no point in asking them for help or even worshipping them. But over time, as Buddhism spread and evolved as a popular religion, it was natural that the gods found their way into Buddhism.
But Tantra remember, is all about utilising the world, and so the use of deities is no problem for them. More than that, it is essential.
All Tibetan Buddhist practice follows two phases: the Development and the Completion. In the Development, aspects, devises, and forms of all kinds used in spiritual practice are first developed to a level of definiteness and power. Then the process is Completed by the complete disintegration of the object - especially in the realisation of the non-reality of the very forms that have been so carefully built. Thus the Tantric practices which use the world and its items, do so only temporarily as an aid, or a tool, after which they are ‘seen through’ for what they really are, illusions, and then dismantled, discarded and returned to the raw unstructured storehouse of possibilities.
The same applies to the yidam.
I will try to explain a little of the place of a yidam in the practice of yogins. When people from Western countries meditate, they don’t normally associate their practice with any religious diety. So you could assume that the yidam is not a central practice of Western culture meditators. But if you look a little closer, you will find that most people, even in Western cultures, have around them images of certain deities, or they have a ‘personal attraction’ for one or another deity, be it god or Bodhisattva. This is only natural, as we are attracted to the qualities we see in certain deities even though we may not consider it a serious matter. In an informal way, this is very close to the practice of yidam. There is something intrinsic to our humanity which warms to the thought of a deity who espouses archetypal qualities we admire or which have special meaning to us.
Two central foundations to Tibetan Buddhist Tantra:
1. The whole point of Tantra is that the world can be used. Thus you have many in that tradition who are scathing of those who ‘sit doing nothing’. Tantra is about applying oneself to practices, skilfully using the world in specialised ways to produce the outcome of liberation.
I have this image, in my own terms, of what happened when Tantra began in Tibetan Buddhism. This is not historic, and yet I sense there is much truth in it.
At the first Turning of the Wheel, Buddha experienced, and then taught others a method which was very single-minded and direct. Essentially a method for some who are prepared to leave the world. At the Second Turning of the Wheel, his people realised their place in the larger scheme. They also realised the staggering consequences of his teachings. Then came the Third Turning of the Wheel. It happened like this:
One day the grand monks were sitting around feeling very pleased with themselves - they had it all down neat and pat, and they were respectable. In through the door came a shaman. He derided the monks for their complacency, and their happiness to wait many lifetimes for Buddhahood. This shaman changed the course of Buddhism. He bridged the ancient tradition to the new. Years later monks asked those grand monks, how did they know this man was what he claimed?
The grand old monks said, “Because he carried a ladder. And it stretched all the way to the hole in the universe!”
The shaman demonstrated such power and effectiveness that the grand monks could not refuse his legitimacy. “What are we to do?” they asked each other. “I know said one old clever monk, we’ll give him and his ladder a new name. That way no one will know from where he comes, and we will retain some respectability. Let’s call his method Tantra!”
And that my children is how it came to pass. As shamanism demanded entrance, this ancient tradition caused such a commotion, that they named it the Third Turning of the Wheel.
The ladder is the critical thing. That an item of the world could be used to escape the world, was an enigma which caught the imagination of the most daring yogins. They soon developed many clever techniques of body and mind, upon which they climbed to the hole in the universe.
2. One of these techniques, was to utilise a most auspicious item of the world - the body of the Buddha. The Divine Simulacrum.
The principle at the heart of this whole practice became the task of creating in the mind, a direct replica of the Buddha’s body, energetically. They, through the practices I will describe next, created inside themselves the Buddha himself. This is similar to the whole practice of using a yidam - again an inner replica of a deity. So too the inner body of the Buddha is created, and at last, discarded.
Tantra however is dangerous. Using the world to defeat the world is a concept and practice riddled with dangerous pitfalls. Not least of which is the inner body of the Buddha - what if one really began to believe one was the Buddha with all his powers? Isn’t that exactly what the practitioner is supposed to be doing? This path is tempting the ego like none other, and in the confusion between Divine pride and egoistic pride, who can say what will emerge?
But worse, Tantra utilises items that are taboo. The trap of sinking into pure indulgence is immense. This is then a slippery slide right into damnation - this path has no side-rails. Thus one man referred to Tantra as ‘the kiss of a beautiful woman with teeth like fangs of a snake’. Thus in Tibetan Buddhism, some semblance of guide rails are devised, but remember, Tantra is practised by more than monks within an Order. Yogins tend to be a breed apart.
One guide rail is devotion to one’s teacher who teaches and initiates only when the pupil demonstrates readiness. Another guide is the yidam itself, who acts as an inner Protector of the path. And another guide rail is secrecy. It is paramount that the yogin never speaks of his practice to anyone except his teacher, and then later his peers. Lastly, Tantra is embedded within the View - the Sutric foundations.
The Nine Yanas.
These are divided into three by three layers, not necessarily practised sequentially.
The first three yanas are the ways of the Arhat, the Hearer, and the Bodhisattva. The yogin focuses his meditational attention on the fundamental Sutric propositions of Buddhism: impermanence, craving, love, compassion and emptiness.
Next three yanas, called the Three Lower Tantras: Kriyatantra, Caryatantra and Yogatantra. These are known as the outer tantras: action in visualisation, worship and devotion of the chosen deity, the yidam. Prostrations, preparation of offerings, setting up and maintaining a shrine and altar. Complex visualisations of the deity’s arrival, devotion, placation, offerings, blessings and the return to source. The yogin eventually begins to identify as the yidam, and with the deeper meanings of all the yidam’s characteristics. This set of yanas is called the causal vehicle, as it is directly related to attainment of Enlightenment.
The last three yanas, the resultant vehicles, or inner tantras: Mahayoga, Anuyoga, and Atiyoga. These refer to visualisations within the energy/prana channels of the body. Roughly, two streams coming from the nostrils that rise and fall to the lower abdomen, where they form a third stream which rises up through the chakras to the crown of the head.
In meditation a bright drop of light (a tigle) is created which is moved through the prana streams. At each nodal point, it radiates light out into sub-channels which distribute the energy throughout the whole body. In Mahayoga, the imagery is created, in Anuyoga the channels and drops of light are meditated on through to the void state, and in Atiyoga one seeks to simply reside in emptiness. Always the two stages are employed, of Development, where the images and feelings are built up, and Completion, where all returns to suchness, emptiness and the Clear Light.
