Practicing the Vajra Guru Mantra Part 1

Chanting the Vajra Guru Mantra is one of the most effective vajrayana practices for our times. 

If to prove effective, mantra has to be felt and experienced by doing, rather than intellectually interpreted and understood by thinking.

Which is why mantras are never translated from their original language.  Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese and other Asian forms of Buddhism had their texts translated from Sanskrit, Prakrit, Pali and other Indian vernaculars into their own languages—but they kept the mantras in Sanskrit, albeit pronounced according to the phonetics of their mother tongue.  We do the same today.  The power of mantra is more elemental than mental.  It is based on energy (and also projects and transforms energy).  It is not based on concepts, and does not support clinging to them.  Mantra creates an energy environment, in and through which we are empowered to live differently and more aware than we appear to be living now. 

The Vajra Guru Mantra is related to Padmasambhava.  It evokes Guru Rinpoche’s powerful enlightened presence as reflecting our inborn awareness—we could say our own inner and inborn Guru Rinpoche—in which we may participate, at any given moment so to speak, using the mantra as key.  According to Padmasambhava’s own explanations and predictions, the Vajra Guru Mantra can prove very helpful and uplifting during the dark times of now, this present dharma-ending epoch, when all human and divine values are denigrated and trampled under foot by the demons of materialism and spiritual materialism.  Only if we shut our eyes and ears willfully will be able to deny that we are living through such dark times of degeneration, in the world right now.

The most important prerequisite for practicing the Vajra Guru Mantra, in a manner that yields results in the sense of deepened (sharpened) awareness and a more encompassing sense of embodied presence, is that we feel and notice how we are drawn to it.  How the mantra calls us.  How Guru Rinpoche and inborn awareness both call us.  We really need to feel a connection—love for Guru Rinpoche and what he means or conveys to us. 

You may call it devotion (not to the outer form of the vajra guru but to what is shining through, and definitely not slavish submission).  You may call it love.  To feel this kind of love flowing through and out of you has a greater impact than your understanding of the role of the mantra within the teachings, its particular applications and benefits.  Love is always a good beginning.  It sets the tone.  But of course, eventually, knowing the meaning, applications and benefits of the mantra can also reinforce the love that is spontaneously welling up.  However, such understanding comes later.  Longing and love come first.

As the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa stated,

“Generally when a yogi or yogini recite a mantra, he or she does not think out intellectually the meanings of the Sanskrit syllables… You just feel the sounds… It is the same with colors.  When you see a color, that color means something spiritually.  When you see a rock that also means something spiritually as well as physically.  This kind of direct link, this direct feeling with nature, also takes place with sounds.”[1]

Mantra practice bypasses the intellect.  It evokes and actualizes layers of consciousness that allow us to touch and feel and taste ‘enlightenment’ and the ‘compassion’ and ‘wisdom’ that automatically go along, more directly, sometimes even quite viscerally.

For example, when I started practicing the Vajra Guru Mantra in my early twenties, I was not doing so in order to achieve anything in particular.  I had no fixed goal in mind except for the vague notion of wanting to be like ‘him’—like ‘Guru Rinpoche.  I was following an inner calling and a pre-existing, yet at that time still tenuous connection, which I myself could not fully explain.  But I could feel the yearning, the longing.  And I trusted that longing and yearning.  There were days when I would roam for several hours through the forests alone near the small town of Marburg in Germany, where I was a student, chanting the Vajra Guru Mantra out loud and to different tunes that welled up spontaneously—in rain and fog as much as in sunshine, in dark November days as much as in bright May.  These mantra walks in the woods were very precious,.

And somehow, over time, the connection was reaffirmed.  Padmasambhava began to take care of my life, took it over in a way—not like an outside force, but from inside.  He and I had become the same, although we never have been and never will be ‘same’ in any literal understanding of the word.  But Guru Rinpoche and whatever he may represent has acted as the guiding force in my life ever since.

When you can let mantra work its miracles, they will be great indeed.

Of course, reading about Padmasambhava also helped, but only because of the intensity of raw feeling—the sense of love and yearning that was its own fulfillment.  Like speaking, singing or reciting the mantra out loud, reading about the Dharma in general and about Padmasambhava and his life and students in particular, was not something that I had an option to do, but more like an existential necessity.   It was something I was compelled to do by inner impetus.  

I remember reading a short history over Padmasambhava’s activities in this world, for example about the incidents when Padmasambhava first met the King of Tibet, Trisong Detsen:

“Since you are King, your lungs swell.

Great is your power, your liver is well satisfied.

Scepter in hand you stand high and haughty.

But I, Sire, will not greet you!

And yet, in accordance with my conjoined vows,

Having come to the heart of Tibet, here I stay.

Great King, witness, have I come?”

“He spoke, turned his hands and, springing up from his finger, a miraculous flame seared the King’s garments.  King, ministers and courtiers could not withstand him.  Bowing in unison, they gave greeting as though swept by a scythe.”[2] 

What impressed me most about stories such as this is that that they demonstrate vividly how practicing dharma trumps karma; how spiritual realization surpasses worldly ability or rank.  A yogi in tattered robes, when well grounded in his own discipline, has more up his sleeves than the King in his layers of silk brocades.  Realization does not depend on social standing.  It comes from inside, and we all can achieve it, provided we make the effort.  We can indeed be free, and this freedom has more power than anything coming from the outside.  Padmasambhava’s mantra both reflects and evokes this very freedom, first inside and then permeating all of life, beginning with your personal life and the life of those close to you.

OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM

What is being said?

In the most general explanations of the mantra we can state, with OM form appears.  OM represents the manifestation of form, and of embodiment.  With AH sound appears; it represents the manifestation of speech and of multi-leveled, ongoing communication.  Pure form is imbued with wonderment, as AH is usually the first sound that a baby utters.  HUM expresses the presence of mind: an awareness or intelligence that can penetrate and pierce and simultaneously encompass everything, including the ungraspable.  In brief, OM, AH, HUM, together allude to and activate enlightened embodiment, speech and mind.

VAJRA means indestructible, adamantine.  The VAJRA GURU is the indestructible diamond-like teacher.  He/she can appear as superior being like a real guru, as equal to us or our spiritual friend, or as a life situation that is teaching us something we need to learn.  Anything can act as the VAJRA GURU.  As Tarthang Tulku so beautifully elucidates about Padmasambhava’s emanations that have appeared and will continue to appear in our world after his departure from Tibet in the ninth century C.E.:

“Completely compassionate, the Unoriginated Selfless One, Padmasambhava appears in this earthly world as a Bodhisattva, a Dakini, a Wrathful Deity, as mantra and as art, as teacher and as Buddha.  The many names and legends that surround him are inexhaustible.  From now until the end of all suffering, his manifestations labor effortlessly that all beings may finally rejoice in the ultimate realization of Buddhahood.[3]

The guru, the spiritual friend, a piece of art, a life situation—they all can act as the ‘indestructible teacher’.  And with uttering the syllables VAJRA GURU in the mantra, we invite whatever may serve as a stepping-stone to wakefulness into our lives.

PADMA means ‘lotus’ in Sanskrit and symbolizes compassion—which is neither ’bloodless’ nor without passion.  PADMA evokes a certain quality of ‘warmth’.  It is not imposing a particular view or agenda.  It is like inviting the possibilities, of love, of open communication, much in the same manner as a lotus blossom is unfolding to full bloom.  As Chogyam Trungpa explains:

“In that way you are able to help other people to help themselves.  Compassion is inspiring other people as well as helping them.  If you inspire them, then they will be helped, either physically or psychologically.”[4]

With uttering the two syllables of PADMA, we invite the power of compassion into our lives and, in the footsteps of Guru Rinpoche, just like him, effortlessly strive to apply it, in whatever form a particular situation may require.

Finally, SIDDHI refers to ‘miraculous powers’ and ‘energy’—over both of which Padmasambhava commanded freely.  But ‘siddhi’ does not infer that we need to or even need to want to accomplish seemingly impossible feats or spectacular miracles, right away.  ‘Siddhi’ also can simply mean ‘readiness to welcome spontaneously arising favorable circumstances’.  To recognize an opportunity as it arises and grab it right then and there, is a ‘siddhi’ of sorts; favorable coincidences in themselves are.  You could say, reading about the Vajra Guru Mantra here on these pages, and feeling inspired enough about it to begin exploring, represents in itself a ‘siddhi’.  In other words, “a Siddhi is a miracle in the sense of the sudden coming together of situations, assuming the guise of ‘accident’.”[5]  You may care to reflect on how many such ‘siddhis’ have manifested in the course of your life already.  How many favorable circumstances were offered to you unexpectedly? You are definitely not without them.  You definitely have already had ‘siddhis’ manifest in your life.

Although the HUM that concludes the mantra looks the same as the HUM in the beginning, it has a slightly different function.  Whereas the HUM in the beginning calls into presence the inseparability of our own and Padmasambhava’s ‘enlightened mind’, the HUM at the end bundles the mantra’s energy and cuts right through the layers of ignorance and duality that prevent the actualization of the mantra’s power of intention.  The HUM just cuts right through it all.  It is like Padmasambhava’s seal of realization, free of doubt.

Thus in a very free rendering we could read the Vajra Guru Mantra as a prayer of spontaneous realization:

OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM

“May this enlightened body, speech and mind being not different from Padmasambhava’s body speech and mind, and therefore the ‘indestructible guru’ himself: may it actualize the miracle of compassionate action, cutting through all ignorance in this very moment.”

Stating this, we need to remember what we said in the beginning, that mantras are never really translated, that their power is grounded in the very fact of their inscrutability or multi-dimensional applicability and adaptability.  It is therefore much more advisable to explore the mantra by recitation, rather than trying to pinpoint its meaning intellectually.  The intellect can always only on one aspect at a time, one meaning at a time.  The Vajra Guru Mantra is vaster than this.  It cannot be limited.

One of my root gurus who passed in 2010 had one main consort who is still alive, today.  When in Kathmandu, I sometimes go and see her.  In the course of her lifetime, she has completed more than thirty million Vajra Guru Mantra recitations (and of course many other practices, too).   And she most certainly would never even have thought about grasping the meaning of the mantra through the intellect. 

She is just doing it, open to receive blessings.  Being over eighty years old, she can hardly walk and is physically challenged in other ways, too, suffering from many aches and pains.  But mostly she sits in her room joyfully, and fearless of death.  For her, the gurus, the peaceful and wrathful deities and the dakinis are visible.  They appear to her.  They surround her.  They are always with her.  And often she bursts out laughing, for apparently no reason.  In her case, this is not a sign old age dementia but a sign of realization by virtue of her Vajra Guru Mantra practice.  Who would not burst out laughing when living life as a dreamlike magical display, permeated by bliss—in wonderment!

As the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the blessings of the Vajra Guru Mantra are in reciting it as many times as possible—preferably in a state of wakefulness and with feeling.  But there is no harm in some mechanical repetitions in-between either.  Very few of us have reached the stage of unbroken awareness. After all, we are not siddhas or Buddhas yet, but human beings endowed with Buddha nature. 

The Vajra Guru Mantra invites us and gives us the means to bring to the fore this inborn nature of ours—right here, in this very moment.  That’s the main point.

---

[1] Chogyam Trungpa, “Explanation of the Vajra Guru Mantra” in Collected Works Volume V, Boston, 2004, p 321

[2] Tarthang Tulku, Ed., “The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava”, in Crystal Mirror IV, Emeryville, 1975, p 28

[3] Tarthang Tulku Ed., ibid., p. 33

[4] Chogyam Trungpa, ibid., p. 323

[5] Chogyam Trungpa, ibid.