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.

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[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.

Celebrating Our Inborn Wealth of Naturalness

I am flying 35,000 feet above India, in the deep blue, with the thick monsoon cloud blanket in bizarre patterns as infinity of innumerable shades of white, black and grey far under the plane’s belly below.  I am in transit from Goa to the north to conduct some vajrayana or Diamond Path Buddhist ceremonies for friends.  We will do them together as one.  Without investing some high artificial hopes in what we do, we will celebrate peace, abundance and good health for all beings with the help of ancient liturgies.  Through them everything unfolds in a spirit of non-separation, which transcends fear.  We are free of fear because, in some sense, we completely merge with what we do.  There is no room left that fear could exploit.

India has become my home.  I have been living in this country for 20 years.  India may be many different things to many people but for me it will always be the “Land of the Buddha”.  The Buddha walked the earth, here. So did countless siddhas and similarly self-actualized beings in his footsteps.  The teachings and their lifestyle flourished and spread all over the country for 1,500 years until they almost completely vanished 800 years ago.  Yet they still deeply permeate the ground.  They are resurfacing now.  Today, India is experiencing a small renaissance of the Buddha’s ways.

I contribute to the development through mainly two activities: first by sharing traditional teachings of the Buddha and second by exploring the inner energy movements of NadiPrana in small group gatherings.   Doing so, I don’t feel that I am on a mission.  There is no zeal involved, no desire for being right, or proving the teachings right.  It all feels all very natural and down-to-earth, like cooking dinner for friends.  We may sit down and exchange a few words here and there, or prefer sitting silently sharing the tastes and flavors, the basic goodness of the moment—which in essence is the goodness of every moment: the goodness of the five elements; the goodness of our own being, one breath at a time.  Sharing the flavors of a good meal or sharing the teachings, it all unfolds in a similarly straightforward and simple manner.

Despite (or probably because) of all its inconsistencies and contradictions, the world is a good place to be.  What I am saying is that it is beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’. So is life.  Life just IS… everything continues to be interconnected in life and through life.  This is the kind of reality, which is celebrated by vajrayana ceremonies—that of openness and interconnectedness. This is also, what NadiPrana energy movements activate throughout the bodymind: a sense of all-embracing and all-permeating presence.  This can be a deeply healing experience.

But in order to make it happen, we need to activate our ‘connectivity’ sense.  Only then can we feel really imbedded in all of life—our life.  The key to this is in being natural, in feeling fully embodied, fully and naturally present.

Which reminds me of the particular twist of ‘naturalness’ that Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche gave to the Tibetan rendering of the word ‘yoga’.  He explains that the Tibetan equivalent for yoga is naljor, and yogis and yoginis in Tibet are therefore called nalrjorpas and naljormas.  When translated into English, the word is exactly pointing to what the processes of yoga or energy movement, according to the Buddha’s transmission are all about.  Naljor, according to Dzongsar Khyentse therefore means ‘being endowed with a wealth of naturalness’.   Yogis and yoginis by connecting to the movement of their inner, subtle energies are capable of flowing with their inborn ‘wealth of natural goodness’.   We can discover this ‘wealth of naturalness’ for ourselves through NadiPrana energy movements.

We discover how to naturally just BE, and when we do we are opening to an innate treasure that we have been carrying without ever knowing!  In energy movement practices, no artificial goal is to be achieved, nothing fantastically, outlandishly special actualized!  Energy movement is all about being natural.  This naturalness is so grounding that everything is grounded in it.  With it, we are effortlessly in a state meditative stabilization, no matter what we do, or where we are.

In our NadiPrana energy movement retreats we are exploring the wealth of naturalness accessible to us by directly feeling and connecting with body, breath and mind.  We rediscover how to be simple, free of emotional and mental complexities: not guided by our impulses of thoughts and emotions, but guided only by our inborn ground of being—free of doubt and anxiety.  Which is a fantastic way to be.  As long as we live our body breath and mind are there to show us.

Ask yourself, “Do I really feel mostly connected with this basic goodness, my own nature?  Do I feel deeply rooted and grounded, NOW? 

Or do I feel cut off, disconnected?  Do I feel tossed about, pulled in different directions by forever proliferating, contradicting thoughts and emotions?”  What really are the forces and dynamics that shape my life? Do they allow me to just be and savor the moment?  Or do they push me around?”

These are questions worth exploring—may be they are the only issues worthy of our attention.  Other issues lead us away from us.  Exploring body breath and mind leads us back to us.  Through it we can find out what kind of attitudes and actions add more life to our life force and what kind of attitudes and actions steal life force from us. 

Sometimes the process of this inquiry or exploration is described as transformative, in the sense of promoting positive change.  However, what we call transformation, in actual fact is more akin to re-discovery.  Transformation when genuine reveals nothing new and nothing special.  It rather lets us feel, appreciate and connect with what has always been there.  In genuine transformation we are not changing into someone or something that we are not.  We are merely rediscovering our own basic goodness.  We connect with our own being, be it through ceremonies or be it through energy movement—in the case of the latter through the alchemy of directly feeling and being with our own body, breath and mind.  And when we finally open to being in this way, we can directly taste how ‘alchemical’ it is.

Indeed, there are parallels between ancient vajrayana liturgies and the energy movements triggered by NadiPrana.  Which is why I like to share both.  Energy work or movement may often feel like a deeply touching ceremony; like a prayer or celebration of body, breath and mind.  It touches us, moves us—into stillness and into equanimity beyond even stillness.  Energy yoga is the body’s very own and very intimate song of equanimity.  It is the body celebrating it’s own energies, its own unfathomable vastness.  It feels like divine energy in moving action.

In energy movement we touch upon the ungraspable, invisible layers of physical existence, without which there would be no physical existence—as it is the invisible that produces the visible.  Likewise, in vajrayana liturgies or ceremonies we call upon invisible beings and their reality, which informs our ordinary reality with magic and power.

As the saying goes, the body is sometimes called the temple of the divine.  May be it is more accurate to say, ‘the body itself is the divine’ albeit not in the ordinary sense of a divinity that we create in our heads as an artificial mental image—to be feared or cherished.  The body is the divine because when really felt and understood it is as unfathomable as space.

One famous Tibetan yogini nailed it as she stated, “When you don’t understand the body, you won’t understand enlightenment.”  Through energy movement we can gradually learn to listen and understand this body of freedom, so different from our ordinary way of seeing it as a vessel of bondage and limitation—manifesting sickness, old age and death.

Similarly, when we do not understand and fail to celebrate all of life through ceremonies and teachings, we fail to understand our own life’s sacredness. 

It feels so much richer and more rewarding to understand the body and to celebrate life.  It is, however, important to understand this as a path working naturally with the situation.  For this, the path itself becomes the working basis, rather than the attainment of a goal.  What we do inspires us, rather than, as Chogyam Trungpa states, “In the style of the carrot and the donkey, promises about certain achievements that lie ahead of us.”  We are more focused on noticing and doing, rather than on getting something specific out of it.  “The goal exists in every moment of our life situation, in every moment of our spiritual journey.”

News from the Goa Dharma Home

Happy Saga Dawa everyone, everywhere!

This auspicious day is such a joyous and befitting occasion to share some of what is happening (and has been happening since January) at our home, which still is just a dharma home and probably will never be turned into a dharma center. 

The fact that ours is not a dharma center (and the lack of ambition, prevalent from the very beginning, to create such a one) somehow goes back to the way Lama Dawa taught me and others here in India around me:  He taught us from his home in Kathmandu, the house that now his wife Kalsang and his daughter Rigzin own.  Or he taught us from our own home, in Goa, whenever he was staying with us, which was often. 

When in Nepal and India Lama Dawa did not take on the role of a ‘Center Lama’.  He much preferred to remain a home-based yogi, and the most powerful transmissions I ever received from him happened at his or at my home, not in the context of some officially announced event.  To meet him, you went to his room to see him and talk to him in private, with respect but without artificial boundaries.  No outside interference or made-up protocol created hurdles.  This way the teachings always just flowed as if of its own accord.  Naturally, the age-old, time-tested way of promulgating, hearing and receiving the teachings in a more intimate setting deeply impacted me and formed my own attitude toward teaching.  Officially announced events, of course have a role to play, but they can never replace the teaching at and from home—like restaurant food cannot really replace home cooking. 

Of course, when restricted to the home level everything stays small, but as E.F. Schumacher coined the phrase: Small is beautiful!  Besides, as far as we know the founding yogis of our tradition here in pre-1199 CE India, clearly preferred privacy and small size over big size and the institutionalized approach as well.  Only monasteries were big.  And monasteries are a different story altogether.  They are irreplaceable for other reasons.

Therefore, what we have here in Goa is a nameless dharma home not a big-name dharma center.  Between 2012 and 2016 Lama Dawa came to visit every year and blessed this home with his presence and by giving many teachings.  He never suggested that we should change the status from ‘home’ to ‘center’.  Now, after his passing we continue along the same lines.

I venture to say, because everything is kept within a relatively small family, beautiful developments are encouraged to unfold.  People come and do retreats not as if going to a place outside but as if coming home.  Like, in December and January Naira from Australia was here to do her first Guru retreat (after completing dakini recitations in 2015). The retreat turned out not to be so easy for her at all, and we had to work hard, to keep everything on the right track, by addressing and removing obstacles.  Yet, in the end her efforts and steadfastness showed clear and good results.  After two months she left inspired, highly motivated for more practice and for a more harmonious way of everyday living, and of course, empowered.

Toward the end of January, I flew to Kathmandu to visit Kalsang for one week, and to Chandigarh to give some more instructions, upon Bodhivajra’s and Subhadra’s request.  They were in need for more support for their preliminary practices, and generally just wished to reconnect.  I really enjoyed seeing them.  When in Kathmandu I was able to give some and to arrange for further funds for one of the eight stupas hand-carved from rock, to be erected at Lama Dawa’s birthplace.  Of course, it was good to connect with Kalsang and to meet for the first time Lama Chhodak, who has done divinations for us personally, and for our little dharma family since the time when Lama Dawa had stopped doing mirror readings.

In February Vajratara arrived.  She was to do her first dakini retreat, and she was also the first student who had not yet received the Yeshe Tsogyal empowerment from Lama Dawa, but was to receive this empowerment here in the way that Lama had taught me just before his passing.  When the day came, neither she nor I doubted that the necessary transmission would take place.  Eventually, the dreams and signs during and after the retreat, as well as the continuing shift in attitude toward self and others until now and into the future prove that our trust in the lineage and Lama’s transmission was well founded.  Of course, Vajratara also had received other empowerments from Lama Dawa, but had been guided beginning with refuge through many vicissitudes of everyday life and the preliminary practices mostly by me, starting in 2009.  She was very happy, of course that ten years of efforts finally could culminate in her first solitary retreat, with strict retreat boundaries.  And indeed all turned out beautiful, with some difficulties.  In the end she left with tears of happiness streaming from her eyes.

During Vajratara’s retreat,  Maitrivirya (who in ordinary life is her husband) went to Bodhgaya for one week to do some more prostrations (although he had completed his first 100.000 over two years ago), and to also to read out loud as many times as he could manage the Aspiration Prayer of Samantabhadra.  Especially, the reading of the aspiration prayer was the correct medicine for the moment as, by repeatedly reciting it, it cleared away many misunderstandings.

In May and part of June, Rinchen and I set up a boundary for own retreat.  This was the

first time that she and I went into retreat together, which was made possible through Tony Rodriguez’ total support.  He cared for everything, not just at home but also at Rinchen’s clinic.  What a gift to enjoy love and backing such as given to us, by Tony!  But the retreat, although flowing nicely, was not without challenges (mostly coming from the outside), for example as the roof of our house was redone during that time, for one week with ample noise in daytime.  Then one day, Varjasaraswati showed up in tears in front of our door.  I had sent her to do Vajrasattva preliminary practices retreat in a different place, but for many reasons, the location proved unsuitable.  She could not stay there.  We had to open the boundary to let her settle in our bedroom to continue with her own practice, while we stayed in the retreat room to continue with ours.  But again, everything immediately settled in its own natural flow.  The blessings of the Dudjom lineage are indeed immense!

As we were in retreat in Goa, Karunavajra stayed for one whole month in Bodhgaya, enjoying the sweltering heat of 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Farenheit), but still doing prostrations under the Bodhi Tree from 5:00 to 7:00 AM and in the course of the day, many Vajrasattva 100-syllables in his air-conditioned hotel room.  He says his stay taught him a lot, energized him a lot and deepened his connection to dharma.  Actually it may have been a blessing in disguise that he went at the wrong time of the year: at least there were much fewer visitors, as in pilgrimage season (October through March) the place becomes hopelessly crowded.

So, these were most of the activities by and through the people connected to our little dharma home, which happened during the first half of 2019.  Sharing them (even if only very few readers will be interested in such trifles) warms my heart.  By writing about them in the way I do, I don’t want to prove other approaches wrong.  Every genuine approach to dharma is helpful.  And sometimes when I do puja at home in the morning or evening, I feel the presence of all the people around the world who recite the Seven Line Prayer or play the bell and damaru like I do, dedicated to the welfare of all, no matter how imperfect my practice actually is.  It is so wonderful to know and even feel that we are all connected through the bond of our motivation and practice, no matter how much our views might differ in other regards.