This is not written for the experts who already know everything about secret mantra practice, or the Vajra Guru mantra. My aim here is to encourage the investigative spirit. Indeed, mantra practice does not amount to merely mumbling under your breath some unintelligible Sanskrit syllables. It is not mumbo jumbo. It is a highly evolved form of dialogue through which both partners eventually may discover the indivisible presence—yet total openness, of all there is—in and as all there is.
Successful mantra practice rests on three pillars: desire, trust and exploration. First the desire to practice has to well up from inside, then we need to trust in the process and the one who initiates us into actually proceeding on the path, the outer guru or lama, and finally we also need to explore what we are doing as it relates to and can be expressed through all aspects of our lives. As Tarthang Tulku states,
“To traverse the path, an element of faith is required. This faith is not a blind, uncritical acceptance, but an openness: a willingness to search and to discover for oneself the wisdom that has been maintained and transmitted by a continuous tradition extending back thousands of years.”[1]
Many who are going to read this will not be Tibetan. Only few will have seen images of Padmasambhava in temples and on painted scrolls around them as they grew up, let alone having been exposed to the regular mantra recitation in their families. Very few will have imbibed the mantra’s vibes while still in their mothers’ womb.
Those of us who lack this culturally conditioned early childhood connection have to allow the power and effects of Buddha images and mantras to grow on them over time. Bridges have to appear, may be made of the rainbow light issuing forth from our own honest and dedicated individual investigation and application. There is no denying it, as ‘foreigners’ to the mantra path, we will each have to each carve a way for ourselves and others, which will differ a bit from person to person. As the saying goes, there are as many doors to understanding, as there are people who wish to understand themselves and their life through mantra practice.
The only way of building bridges that I have found not to work (at least not in any deeper transformative sense, and only as a kind of ‘sugar-coating’) is if we as non-Tibetans try to imitate the Tibetan approach to the letter without being steeped in the same field of collective consciousness—and of course, such would only be possible if we moved to Nepal or India and fully immersed ourselves in Tibetan culture, while living in a Tibetan community. And even then, even full immersion as long as it remains forced and contrived from the outside may not succeed fully because of a probable backlash; meaning: our own cultural conditioning will at some point reaffirm itself. Nobody can successfully deny his or her upbringing, or the formative years in their lives—nor their bloodline, the generations who came before them. Therefore it appears to be more effective to let the connection to the essence and message of the mantra grow from the inside rather than donning the cultural trappings around it like an overcoat, let alone armor. This, of course, requires practice—most likely many years of it.
Therefore, in order to encourage an organic experiential approach let us share a bit more about my own exposure to and practice of the Vajra Guru mantra, instead directly going in greater detail into its many-leveled and multi-faceted meaning and the function, according to the way especially the terma or ‘Hidden Treasure’ texts offer detailed explanations. Instead let us elaborate on the many different ways we can emotionally and energetically open to the mantra. Since the mantra is not in our flesh and blood from birth, we have to let it slowly become part of us—thus making it, in a manner of speaking—our own flesh and blood. Only fully embodied participation imparts the benefits that the Vajra Guru mantra can put at our disposal.
My own process of familiarization with the Vajra Guru and his mantra can roughly be explained in three phases.
As was hinted in the introductory article in this series, the first phase was one of fascination and enchantment, inspired by my reading of Lama Anagarika Govinda’s books[2] and by personal exchanges with him, which started in 1975. In the course of the same years, I also had the good fortune of meeting Khamtrul Rinpoche VIII several times and Karmapa XVI[3], and receiving what people later explained to me had been pointing out instructions by both of these wonderful teachers. For those who have never heard about them, ‘pointing out instructions’ establish a direct link to primordial awareness, the liberating knowingness inherent in any situation. Pointing out instructions are most often given to select aspirants with the fourth empowerment in any empowerment ceremony, but a teacher who has realized and thus embodies the higher teachings can spontaneously give them to anyone at any moment. This usually happens in an unplanned fashion when the minds of the teacher and recipient directly meet. However, at the time when I encountered Khamtrul Rinpoche and the Karmapa, I hadn’t heard about ‘pointing out instructions’, yet. For me these meetings were just magical and memorable encounters. I could feel their impact in the instant they happened, and even more so, I could sense that they produced indelible results as they strongly confirmed the nature of mind and what I had chosen as my life’s purpose and path.
Overall, throughout phase one, I followed a freewheeling approach, taking teachings less like instructions in the ‘letter-of-the-law’ sense, but more like an inspiration, which encouraged many inner processes and some outer changes. In terms of the ‘relationship’ with the Vajra Guru, throughout phase one I regarded and experienced Padmasambhava as separate from myself, almost like a god. You could say that I mostly remained stuck in the style of the lower tantras, which conceive of the deity as separate and above or in front of oneself.
In the actual chanting of the Vajra Guru or any other mantra, however, there often arose the palpable sense of ‘no separation’—only the presence of the mantra, rising from inside and echoing through the forest. Through the chanting the inner and outer landscape sometimes was magically transformed into pure lands of enchantment. The forest turned into a magical forest, the fields became open plains of realization, and the occasional wild apple tree along the meadow banks provided fruits of immortality—at least they tasted like that; no comparison to the tasteless cultivated apples bought at a supermarket.
The second phase was more about working for and with the dharma in the capacities of an administrator and translator (albeit not from the Tibetan) and overlaps roughly with my time and involvement at and with the Tibetan Center Hamburg and Tarthang Tulku’s Nyingma organizations in Berkeley, California. Except for some group sessions at the Institute and my private intermittent practice as well as my teaching activity in Germany in the mid-1980s, the Vajra Guru mantra so to speak took more of a backseat. Unfortunately, again with the exception of group sessions, even individual practice took a back seat. I became more involved with and concerned about the politics of the center than actual practice. This was a bad choice, but probably necessary as a personal development stage.
The romance with the dharma had thus given way to the illusion of being ‘real’ with it, when in some other sense I had become less—real with it, that is. In a way I had become less real with all that is as well as less real even with myself. I had donned the robe of ‘Vice President’ and ‘important translator’, not really noticing just yet how absolutely meaningless the ‘emperor’s clothes’ are when he remains essentially naked.
The third phase is still ongoing. It started with meeting the late Lama Dawa, to the world also known as Acharya Dawa Chhodak Rinpoche, an accomplished tsalung yogi and siddha of several Nyingma as well as of his father’s Kagyu family lineage that goes back all the way to Milarepa’s ‘moon-like’ student Rechungpa. In this third phase my mantra practice became more structured and I also started sharing with others again, after a hiatus of twelve years. The disease of wanting to get involved Buddhist center politics also was shed for good.
In terms of my journey with the Vajra Guru mantra, after the first two, three years of enchantment (1974-1976), there came a lull. The long hours of chanting while walking in the forest stopped, as they had served their purpose of reaffirming a deep bond of love and unbreakable connectedness. In April 1976, I left the village and moved to the city.
These things have to happen. Life simply doesn’t allow us to hang on to anything beyond the point when its purpose has been served. At least not, when we are somehow able to listen to life’s messages. Even if we can’t see it, the dakinis and protectors are nudging us along, sometimes even pushing us. As a result, my unfolding connection to the dharma started to manifest in less romanticizing forms.
In the late 1970s I acted as Vice President of the Tibetan Center Hamburg, and my main focus there was on administrative duties, and in general on caring for Jangchup Choeling (as the Dalai Lama had named it) in whatever form required. In terms of my own spiritual orientation within the vajrayana tradition, this created an interesting situation. I did not feel any deep affinity with the place and its Gelugpa resident lama, the late Geshe Thubten Ngawang. Sure, I felt good about what I did and what was being accomplished, but there was nothing that pulled me really in—no heart calling. This monkish and learned Geshe business simply wasn’t along my lines. Nevertheless, I served the place well and did a lot for helping it coming off the ground—basically full time while also attending some classes at the seminar for Indian and Tibetan Studies at the University of Hamburg.
The way I saw and explained the oddity of the situation with the Gelugpa center to myself in retrospect was that I owed it or the teachers connected with it a few years of my time and the President (who together with his wife had become close personal friends) my loyal friendship and support. Eventually, when the time was up the moment the center had become more established, circumstances conspired to create a conflict and a rift in the personal friendship. I tended my resignation, and left to never return.
Again, this is only natural. Sometimes, we have to fulfill obligations that we owe from a distant past that we cannot even remember. The Tibetans call it Lenchak. These are debts that were not accrued in this present life, but are maturing to be honored. As I was to learn later, we can likewise repay them and transform this kind of karma by doing fire pujas and other kinds of offering ceremonies.
During the Hamburg years I also went to California and attended my first retreats at the Nyingma Insitute in Berkeley. The ‘Vajra Guru’ bug was definitely still humming in my heart, actually ever more forcefully so. Furthermore, from my point of view Tarthang Tulku stood out as the teacher whose books I liked most, and had begun to translate into German, as early as in 1976.
At the Institute, of course, the Vajra Guru mantra was omnipresent. It was chanted in Kum Nye sessions as the main mantra. It was chanted on every full moon night for two hours uninterruptedly. Sometimes, especially after I had moved to live there full time, in February 1981, I wondered if this was not too much chanting, basically with only the most general of explanations being given. However, it felt still so wonderful every time, to do just that: chant and feel the mantra, resonating inside, reverberating throughout the group, ebbing and flowing, radiating outward into known and unknown spaces. One time, in a group retreat, we were sitting on a meadow in the shade, and with my inner eye I could clearly see Padmasambhava dancing a dance of unspeakable blessings. For me this was a true vision, which I kept to myself. Essentially, such experiences are nothing more but dreams within dreams and therefore not very important. Nevertheless, they inspire us to continue.
In the basement of the Nyingma Institute, in its very belly so to speak, located between the kitchen wing and the class rooms under the main wing of the building, there was a small room with hardly any light that hosted one huge electricity powered prayer wheel. It was my favorite spot in the entire Institute. I retreated there often to do vase breathing practices and also Vajra Guru mantras. The whirring sound of the continuously circling prayer wheel further empowered the inner energy circulation, or the mantra recitation. This hidden chamber acted as the outer protective space for my secret inner battery charger.
In essence, even though I appeared to have become more ‘professional’ and thus more emotionally aloof in my attitude toward dharma and was projecting this superimposed new self-image to the world of ‘being cool’, fortunately the romance, or more precisely—the heart connection—continued to be alive and well. To the discerning eye that can look through outer appearances, it was even growing.
It was even silently under the surface growing during what I refer to as the ‘cocoon years’ of my life between 1987 and 1994, when I hardly practiced any formal dharma and was not visibly connected to any teacher or teaching. I was then living partially in a small town in southwestern Bavaria and somewhere in the Upper Westside of New York City, but not really belonging to either place.
Even in those years of ‘no-dharma’ or revolt against dharma, the Vajra Guru Mantra sometimes broke through and started chanting itself (i.e.: making me chant it), especially at night, or at odd moments sitting in the regional train between Munich and Kempten or in the New York subway, or while in a bar watching the crowd doing what people do when in a bar. During those years I was not connecting to anyone or anything. I wasn’t even ‘here’. In a way I owe an apology to many of the people I met during this period, especially to my lady-friends, as I was never really with them. I never opened. I was living in self-imposed isolation, which however wasn’t splendid at all. But the Vajra Guru continued to interact with me through his mantra. And Tarthang Tulku still sometimes appeared to me in dreams. And even though I don’t remember any of these dreams, they were full of meaning to me, and every time it happened was a pointer and a relief.
In July and August 1998, I met Lama Dawa for the first few times in Oregon and California. These encounters elevated the Vajra Guru connection to ‘a whole new level’, as a popular phrase would have it.
Other than Lama Govinda who acted more like a mentor than a guru, or Tarthang Tulku who may have waited for my opening to him before fully engaging me (which as a result never happened due to my not providing this opening), Lama Dawa from the very beginning made it quite clear—through actions and gestures rather than by word—that he was more than willing and ready to work with me as a student. This started right away in the first one-on-one meetings we had. The second time I drove up from the Lake District in Northern California to meet him in the redwoods of Humboldt County, he had copied for me by his own hand a short text on the practice of one of the eight manifestations of Guru Rinpoche, together with the mantra. He said that I should keep it with me, always. Naturally I still have this sadhana text in his handwriting.
Lama Dawa, in his understated, and often non-verbal communications demonstrated that I had every right to consider myself as belonging to the Vajra Guru family, rather than as outsider who is trying to become part of it. Being ‘part of the family’, however, in this case does not infer that one belongs to an elite club of the select few. It feels more like accessing a larger energy field, rooted in compassion and impartiality. Exclusivity is not the idea, omnipresent inclusivity is. Love and compassion need to flow; wisdom commands to be demonstrated in action. No guru worth his or her salt tolerates spiritual arrogance for too long.
Many things changed in the way I practiced mantra, after I had met Lama. For example, for almost twenty-five years (1974 to 1998), I had done Vajra Guru mantra recitations without counting. No one had ever told me to do so. Even after I had bought my first mala (prayer beads) while in Bodh Gaya in 1975, I only used it to help me concentrate, but not to count how many mantras I was doing.
Lama Dawa did not even have to suggest that I buy one again (as at the time of meeting him I had none). I saw him using a mala, and so I got myself one and started using it. I saw him keeping track of his mantra count with the help of counters attached to the mala. So, I did that, too. In terms of Vajra Guru mantra practice the first thing he recommended was that I do 1.300.000 of them—in India we call this thirteen lakhs (13 times one-hundred thousand). It took me roughly one and half years to complete them.
The times were wonderful. I could live in a world of dharma magic again, this time in South India (but with a better sense of being grounded than in the initial phase of the 1970s). Work flowed easy. I was coauthoring books, also doing the occasional translation into German, plus some manuscript editing. I started sharing in small groups again, mostly on word of mouth basis. There hasn’t been any marketing so far—no dharma business just yet, and maybe such will never materialize. Although I love to share my life experience and my forty-five years of experience with the Vajra Guru mantra, I am still shying away from creating an organization. I have seen where this may lead.
For the past two, three years a new, fourth, phase has set in. I have not fully comprehended its message and direction of purpose. So I cannot say much beyond the fact that the process seems to go ever deeper and—in an immaterial way—also wider.
What have these forty-five years yielded, you ay ask? What is the fruit?
Let me answer this question with the introductory invocation Thinley Norbu wrote for his book Magic Dance:
I bow to my own Wisdom Mind,
which is my best wisdom teacher,
the source of all visible and invisible qualities.
Sentient beings are always in time and place.
If sentient beings are in time,
my wisdom teacher dances magically in time.
If sentient beings are in place,
my wisdom teacher dances magically in place.
If really examined you never remain anywhere.
You are only display.
To whatever never remains,
to you, my best wisdom teacher, I bow.[4]
Through the love, compassion and blessings of the teachers in the flesh that I have been fortunate to meet the Vajra Guru mantra provided a key to me to meet this best of wisdom teachers. It didn’t happen over night, but it happened.
And this is by no means the end of the story.
[1] Yeshe Tsogyal, Tarthang Tulku ed., Padmasambhava Comes to Tibet, Berkeley, 2009, p. 203
[2] See: Lama Anagarika Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, London & New York, 1960; and Lama Anagarika Govinda, The Way of the White Clouds, London & New York, 1966
[3] I refrain from adding ‘His Eminence [H.E.] or His Holiness [H.H.] or even only ‘Venerable’ [Ven.] to the names of these extraordinary beings and others like them, doing so actually as a sign of my respect. It could just be that deep respect requires less formality than is ordinarily assumed and instead more heart, and more action.
[4] Thinley Norbu, Magic Dance—The Display of the Self Nature of the Five Wisdom Dakinis, Boston, 1998
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