The Vajra Guru Mantra is the mantra of Guru Padmasambhava, who in Tibet is commonly referred to as the ‘most precious Guru’, or Guru Rinpoche. In present day literature, these names are used interchangeably. As the mantra is so tied up with Padmasambhava, when we consider making the Vajra Guru Mantra our continuous practice, we may therefore first want to know a little more about the phenomenon behind it. We would want to know more about Guru Rinpoche.
Who is he? Or was he? Is he a presence? Or was he a legend of the past?
Even though we cannot grasp the meaning of the mantra intellectually, or fully comprehend, let alone integrate its range of miracle-like effects by hearing about its history, nevertheless such background information will provide a fertile ground, on which our practice of the mantra and the direct recognition of its effects and inherent energy can grow over time. Always, our inner urge to practice any spiritual path or practice needs some outer confirmation. It needs fuel to fan the fire of practice. One way of adding fuel to the fire of the Vajra Guru mantra is by telling stories about Guru Rinpoche or by discovering more of the history that surrounds him. Through such telling legend and history create a different than our ordinary emotionally charged inner landscape in us. They become palpable, thus changing the way we perceive and live.
Many books about Guru Rinpoche or when mentioning him in passing begin by stating that he was the accomplished siddha who served as the main source of subtle power, which helped to establish Buddhism from India in Tibet in the 8th and 9th centuries C.E. When we follow this approach the main focus is thus put on his activities in the Land of Snows. Depending on which textual sources we go by, Padmasambhava’s stay in Tibet covered the only last twenty-five to one hundred-fifty years of his sojourn in our world—which constitutes a relatively short part of his long life. If we are to trust the traditional sources, the Great Guru is said to have lived for seventeen hundred and some odd years among us.
How do we arrive at such—to all appearances that is—fantasy figure of a lifespan of more than one and a half millennia? This certainly cannot be possible in the real world! Let us unravel the seeming impossibility bit by bit, and how it came about. The first bit is tied to the dating of Shakyamuni Buddha’s own life.
According to the most popular sources, Siddhartha Gautama was born in the 6th century B.C.E and, as the Buddha, entered parinirvana in the 5th century B.C.E. However, according to Dudjom Rinpoche and other Tibetan sources (as well as according to an early Chinese calculation), Shakyamuni came into this world much earlier, namely in the 10th century B.C.E. and left it in the 9th century B.C.E. The more popular dates are based on Indian sources favored by western scholars, the older dates are of Tibetan and Chinese provenance. However the case may be, as a practitioner in the Tersar lineage of Dudjom Rinpoche, I trust the lineage guru’s assessment, which also tallies with Padmasambhava’s lifespan as put forth in the scriptures.[1]
What do the dates of the Buddha’s birth and parinirvana have to do with Guru Rinpoche’s lifespan? Very simple: they do because of the prediction that the Buddha himself made at the end of his life. According to the Mahayana Parinirvana Sutra the Buddha predicted that, twenty years after his passing a second even more powerful Buddha would appear in this world. Or as it states in the Tantra of the Perfect Embodiment of the Unexcelled Nature, also in the Buddha’s own words:
“Eight years after I pass into nirvana, I will reappear in the country of Uddiyana bearing the name Padmasambhava. I will become the lord of the teachings of Secret Mantra.”[2]
Therefore, as the Buddha himself stated, his and Padmasambhava’s appearances in this world are indeed inseparably intertwined.
Furthermore, if we calculate the number of years Padmasambhava lived visibly among us based on these figures, roughly from around 880 B.C.E. to the beginning or mid-9th century C.E., we come to more than seventeen hundred years. Most of these years were spent in India, the surrounding areas, as well as in places outside the scope of human perception.
Why should fully remembering this point regarding Padmasambhava’s lifespan be regarded as important for practicing the Vajra Guru Mantra? Very simple: it establishes context. And the context is miraculous.
In all we endeavor, context matters. Whatever we do, our efforts are necessarily embedded in a much larger (some would say vast or even ‘infinite’) field of interrelations—which provides the context. For this very reason using and communicating via social media can easily turn a person into an intellectual and spiritual dimwit. Just like the 20-second sound bites on TV, social media statements and exchanges are usually so short that all context falls by the wayside. Context, however, is paramount in historical evaluations. Context equally makes or breaks science. Even if we want to just better understand another human being, we can only do so by taking into consideration the context of their experiences and actions, or the totality of their lives.
Likewise, in mantra and in general in all spiritual practice, we first need to allow the context of our own way of being (our personal history and characteristics) to gently merge and integrate with the context of the practice—before we can cut through intellectualizing too much about it all, and finally allow the ungraspable to gradually reveal itself. We need to understand where we are coming from and where we are trying to reach. We also need to understand what we are using as skillful means for achieving our goal, and understand them within their context.
To return to Padmasambhava’s life and mantra: when we practice the latter, we connect with a being who defies all intellectual definitions and characterizations—as illustrated by his lifespan and the many extraordinary feats he accomplished while roaming through India and Tibet. Padmasambhava’s incredible life story vividly demonstrates the inexhaustible power and wisdom source that energizes the Vajra Guru Mantra—making it effective.
However, from Padmasambhava’s life story we can also see that he is not in the least devoted to worldly goals. Rather, his life is one is one of complete renunciation of all outer and inner referencing. When you read these stories there is not one speck of worldliness detectable, not one trace of attachment, aversion or ignorance in the Great Guru or in his actions for the benefit of beings. As mundane as it may sound, the total lack of emotional and conceptual obscurations in Padmasambhava is an important point, as it sheds light on the correct motivation for us to practice the Vajra Guru mantra.
It helps, if we are personally touched or moved inside when we hear about Guru Rinpoche. Actually feeling deep inner yearning is a must. May be we long for freedom, the kind of inner and outer freedom from attachment that Padmasambhava displayed throughout? Sometimes this longing rages so intensely inside that we have to do something about it by following our inner voice. Our inner voice then guides us to listen to an outer inspiration that mirrors this longing without staining it. Ideally we would then follow this outer voice according to the intention of our source of inspiration—or our inner voice. Inner and outer have to resonate with each other.
Most authentic spiritual teachers like to reiterate that spiritual practice solely makes sense for those who can accept the law of karma (i.e.: that actions have consequences that do not end with our death), and that thus consciousness is a continuum within the context of many—even innumerable—lifetimes; in other words: a much larger context. If such is not our understanding, if we maintain that our life started with our birth and will end with our death we should just enjoy our lives with all our senses and forget about spirituality. Better go surfing or take a massage.
Which doesn’t exclude us as practitioners from going surfing or enjoying a massage at all. In the lineage of Guru Rinpoche we are permitted to enjoy our senses and the experiences they afford us—but in the context or the wider perspective of the continuity of consciousness.
Contexts can both be imprisoning, or liberating in their effect on us. When they remain unconscious they will imprison us. When we become aware of them they can potentially liberate us. The aim of the spiritual path therefore, can only be to emancipate or extricate oneself from the conditioning and imprisoning aspects of the accumulated contexts that define ‘I”, ‘me’ and ‘mine’.
When we practice the Vajra Guru mantra we are openly expressing that we wish to follow in Padmasambhava’s footsteps. We state that we wish to become like him and/or discover in what manner we already now are like him—in the seeding stage or in totality. We don’t practice the mantra in order to get rich, or famous, or attractive, or physically invulnerable. We practice the mantra in order to be as free and empowered as Padmasambhava was as depicted in his biographies.
The historical background thus provides the context for the outer origin of the mantra and, as a result, will help us to translate Padmasambhava’s way of being into our own life situation.
The name Padmasambhava also gives us a clue to the inner context. Translated into English it means: “Born from a Lotus”. Padmasambhava is the “Lotus-Born Guru”. He acts in this world but is not from this world. He appeared neither through a womb, nor through an egg, nor by moisture. His birth, like his entire life, exemplifies an ongoing and unending miracle.
Sitting on the lotus was a child of beautiful face, a delight to the eyes; a child one would consider to be eight years old. The color of his body was like the purple of shells, and the king marveled, “E MA HO! Miraculous admirable child.”[3]
This is how Padmasambhava appeared in this world—spontaneously, and in a way out of his own wish, without outer causes or conditions that would have pushed him into appearance. The force of karma does not apply in his case. And thus the Vajra Guru mantra is an anti-dote, dissolving and transforming the forces of karma.
Padmasambhava arose from a lotus. His being born from a lotus already points to his mission. As his birth from a lotus suggests, he manifested to the eyes of the world out of unconditional compassion—and with the motivation to teach by embodying the same impartial love throughout his presence.
Like all symbols the lotus has many meanings. Words work through linearity. Depending on the context they usually mean one things at a time. Symbols are much more many-faceted. They can reflect and refer to many different realities or levels of understanding at once. For one, as we have seen above, the lotus stands for unconditional compassion. But the lotus also represents the dharmadhatu: the zero-point reality, forever ungraspable and unreachable to intellectual processing.
Dharmadhatu is an impossible riddle for the mind to crack. It cannot be pigeonholed by thought. It is the ultimate of reality—but not in the sense of ‘nothing’ versus ‘something’. Tarthang Tulku describes this ‘secret realm’ of non-established thought poetically, yet precisely, in present day terms:
“When we abide in unestablished thought [dharmadhatu], we enter a space from which knowledge has not been foreclosed. No longer inhabiting conventional space, we have nowhere to go and no path to follow. Without departing from the known, we are free to be any way at all. We discover an inner ease that nourishes us and awakens capacities. Relaxing into a reality available on its own terms, we can recover a knowledgaeability that has been foreclosed since before the beginning of time.”[4]
In a common interpretation the lotus stands for purity and beauty rising from impure mud. The fact of Padmasambhava being born from a lotus therefore tells us that right from the beginning he has risen above the slime of contradicting emotions and concepts. He does not need to liberate himself from them through practice in the course of his life, like us. He appears in this world already liberated. His appearance is co-emergent with liberation—a fact that underlines his purpose for coming into this world.
He clearly states the nature of his origin and this very purpose in his first interaction, as when King Indrabhuti of Uddiyana upon discovering him asks him:
“Little boy, who is your father and who your mother?
What is your caste and what your country?
What food do you live on and what is your purpose?”
The eight-year old ‘newborn’ Padmasambhava answers:
“My father is Spontaneous Awareness-Wisdom.
My mother is Original-Spaciousness.
My caste is Space-Awareness Indivisible.
My country is unborn Dharmadhatu.
I feed on any and all concepts of duality.
My purpose is to kill the fetters of emotionality.”[5]
All outer, inner and secret aspects of Padmasambhava—and thus all outer inner and secret aspects of the Vajra Guru mantra—are expressed in these six short lines, very much spot on.
When we practice the Vajra Guru mantra, we thereby implicitly state that we make Padmasambhava’s purpose in life our own purpose and that thus our own outer lives are to be modeled somewhat according to his example; that we live in the same pure visionary inner reality; and that his secret father and mother (secret because inconceivable to the ordinary mind), are likewise our own secret original father and mother.
[1] For the dating of Buddha’s life see also: Tarthang Tulku ed., Light of Liberation—A History of Buddhism in India, Berkeley, 1992, p. XX-XXV
[2] Yeshe Tsogyal/Rang Ral Nyima Ozer, The Lotus Born—The Life Story of Padmasambhava, Hong Kong, 1993
[3] Yeshe Tsogyal, The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, Emeryville, 1978, p. 95
[4] Tarthang Tulku, Dynamics of Time and Space-Transcending Limits of Knowledge, Berkeley, 1994, p. 58
[5] The passages in italics are my own free rendering. See also; Yeshe Tsogyal/Rang Ral Nyima Oeser, The Lotus Born—The Life Story of Padmasambhava, Hong Kong, 1993, p. 34; Keith Dowman Translator, Guru Pema Here & Now—The Mythology of the Lotus Born; Kathmandu, 2015, p. 64; and Yeshe Tsogyal, The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, Emeryville, 1978, p. 95
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