Initiations Explained
March 26, 2003

Teaching by Venerable Domo Geshe Rinpoche

 

 

I want to talk about the special initiations that I have given along with more mainstream sadhanas. I have been very careful about giving initiations because I do not want my students to feel overwhelmed by multiple commitments. I myself had many many commitments which I did recitations of everyday. I made promises to do the commitments practices and I had to uphold those commitments energetically by the practices. I am little bit addressing those who have had a number of teachings in Tibetan Buddhism already who might have made commitments that they cannot fulfill or simply not have enough hours in their day to do all of the practices that they have promised to do.

Part of the correct initiation process is to make a commitment to accomplish the practice goal. Otherwise you are taking it as a blessing. More and more people are actually taking initiations as a blessing but vowing a commitment because they have kind of an excitement-enthusiasm going. There should be a point in the initiation that says now you must do this sadhana daily or you take so many recitations of the mantra. I have heard that sometimes there is no sadhana available. In that case, someone has taken a commitment without even being able to do any kind of a sadhana or they do not even have the mantra correctly. This is because they are participating in a group event of a teacher who has come to the West and has given a commitment but not given teachings, or just very very short teachings. They have no personal contact with that teacher, yet they feel like that is their guru. No, that is their root guru! This is very interesting because if you have read about Buddhism there is the concept of root guru, your profound guru and the one who is taking care of you. In this way, someone with a little bit of knowledge about Buddhism might attend a teaching or initiation and they decide this is their root guru even though they have no chance for personal contact.

Your root guru is an internal and external guru. Someone receiving an initiation from a very famous lama might choose to have a very famous root guru even though they do not have a personal relationship that includes inner teaching. They do not know their guru and their guru does not know them, but they hope someday to meet them again.

These transliterated Tibetan sadhanas given without any commentary done with enough faith could have some benefit. Also, to the extent that someone has actually received the initiation, to that extent one has benefited. Now, I ask someone who is a very outer kind of person, "Have you received this initiation?" "Yes. I was there, I attended the ceremony." That is not receiving the initiation. What I am saying can be verified by any guru. 

Out of the group of disciples attending an initiation they hope someone will actually receive the initiation. Initiation is not outside permission, that is another level. To receive the profound transmission is to actually receive the initiation. These types of initiations are given in either very very small groups or individually. In that way, how that transmission is done, whether it is done correctly depends upon both the quality of the student and upon the qualities of the initiating guru. These are things I have wanted to say for a long time. 

Should you have actually received the initiation, then you must have close attention paid to you individually so that that transmission can be stabilized, so that you can work with your transmission and so that it has the desired result.

There are many different kinds of teachings and different kinds and levels of transmissions. There are healing transmissions that are not initiations. In these transmissions for the purpose of healing we occasionally even go so far as to change a person's name. In that ceremony we give them another name to confuse their obstacle to believe that person is not there anymore, but under the new name this person is who is not known to the obstacle. We acknowledge that the old person is gone because that is the one associated with the illness and the big difficulty.

Student: Could you clarify the difference between a transmission, an initiation and an empowerment?

An initiation is a general-purpose phrase used in the West. In Tibetan language we have lung, wang and jenang levels of initiation. When we use our words they are very specific. Lung is a permission initiation, which I myself have given. For example, when a group is going to do mantra recitation during a ceremony or as part of a special teaching, I have given a short permission initiation in order to allow them to do that particular mantra such as "Repeat after me: OM A RA PA TSA NA DHI". Otherwise I am remiss. It can also be a transmission by a teacher, not necessarily a guru, by reading quickly a Tibetan language text that might be part of a teaching cycle in the future

Then there is a short jenang that should be an inner-outer initiation. It could take five minutes or it could take an hour. I am famous for doing the short initiation. You have no idea how difficult it has been to create group initiation ceremonies in my new form because that is what people were expecting. I had no idea how I was going to make it long enough so that Americans understood it was a real initiation. Some of them go to initiations full of chanting, monastic music and all of these kinds of things.

In my previous Tibetan monk form in New York I just bypassed all of that by giving the actual initiation. It is also very important for me now that people are able to participate in the initiation process. I created student copies of the initiation so you could follow along and do some of the recitations in English. For the most part, the initiations are in English. It has been a real challenge to balance these various needs because I have always considered the ceremony to be purely the outer trappings of an inner process. I wanted to be careful that there was not a lot of fascination in the outer process so that one receives the initiation inside. That is where the initiation actually occurs.

Tibetan Buddhism has been in the West for decades and some Western people are knowledgeable about the initiation process. However, initiations are given in the Tibetan language. In that case, what difference does it make how long I chant if you cannot understand Tibetan? For your benefit I took the actual initiation and translated it into English so you can hear what is going on, for the most part. This allows you to participate as fully as you are able.

Wang is the extensive process. His Holiness the Dalai Lama is famous for giving initiations that last ten days. In the old days inside Tibet there used to be initiations that would last this long. The actual inner initiation was the same as in jenang with the exception that a lot more benefactors were involved in the process. So they had enough money to hire cooks and make fancy costumes and have huge mandalas constructed. The mandala construction is a very important part of wang. A certain kind of wang must be made of colored powders and others are based upon the mandala house or upon a thangka of the mandala. The mandala must be present. The mandala of colored powders is the one I am talking about. This is not easy to organize and it requires a number of people and a huge amount of preparation. 

This type of highly ceremonial wang must be done according to the ancient tradition or serious consequences are incurred. This is the kind of long ceremony with many steps and they all have to be done correctly. It requires a huge amount of outlay and particularly, it requires a lot of money. These types of wang are given very rarely. They also are a time for the lay community to gather together in a huge party-like atmosphere with children in tow and food passed around. The serious ones are usually already practitioners of that initiation deity.

Empowerment and initiation mean the same thing. You cannot receive an initiation unless you are a holder of refuge, which means a holder of refuge in your heart. There are those who will go to initiations and they are just repeating. They do not know what is going on and they have no idea what they have said. They have said the refuge formula but in their mind they have not taken refuge because they do not know what was said. All they know is that they have participated in a ceremony.

For those who are being guided, I am happy for you. I am grateful that your guru is taking care of you. This is my main point. If you give initiations, empowerments, inner and outer teachings, whatever you are doing, take care of your students. If you cannot take care of your students do not go around giving initiations indiscriminately. Take care of your students. This is a very very hard thing for me to understand because it is not the way it was in Tibet. They might say, "we are planting a seed," but from my viewpoint of my previous that is not the full story. This is very much like a Christian evangelist coming to town and getting people all stirred up. Sometimes it comes more for the collection place than it does for the glory of Jesus in these evangelicals. I am not saying this across the board, but I know it happens and I know it has been a cause for concern for all gurus who are actually taking care of their students.

Taking care of students from the guru's side means giving my heart to my students, truly. That is what comes in transmission - I give you my heart and I share with you my very being. In some kinds of ceremonial initiations that is not what is happening. Almost all are observing and only few are actually participating, meaning those who actually have that teacher as their root guru because they have that connection. They are the ones who are getting personal instructions and have actually received the heart and caring of their root guru. Should you have that profound experience you better find a way to be as close to your root guru as possible. If you are really serious you better act like a student who has a root guru.

Transmission occurs on many different levels. I am shy to talk about it, but I have offered my early students the highest transmission. I have given the kind of transmission that has been the exclusive right of the highest levels of traditional gurus only for each other. That is what I have given to you and I will continue to do. Those who came to me had nothing or hardly any experience in Buddhism except that they were wonderful, intelligent people with capacity. I called my early students to me and I am calling my students to me now only for the purpose that they can become enlightened. I give many kinds of transmission according to the need of the student.

I am so pleased at how well some of my students have done by using the transmission to make the necessary transformation in their own minds. Some have made breakthroughs in their understanding and their levels of understanding reality. Are they finished? I am not going to say that word finished. I will not acknowledge that there is an end to this process. I know this is not the usual way to say this. We Tibetans say that there is a complete and total enlightenment and I agree but then I say then, let them perform the activities of enlightened beings for a very, very, very long time. That is because the need is so great, let there be many who are dedicated.

I want those who are doing sadhanas in Tibetan who also can speak Tibetan to go on and do them. In the future, I would like to see more and more sadhanas in English. The White Tara sadhana is one that I have worked on:

Instantly there appears within my heart center a perfect lotus covered by a white moon disk cushion. Inseparable from the nature of love and compassion of all the enlightened beings is seated wish-fulfilling Guru Dolkar

This is my very sadhana that I have given to people and then told them, "Please do not do it very often. Do it once in awhile but please do not do it very often." I cannot spend all of my teaching time talking about white lotus disks. I go on:

On lotus and moon cushion, white in color with one face and two arms, peaceful and smiling, her long hair is half bound up. Youthful and radiant with seven eyes, her right hand grants boons, her left hand is at her heart holding a white utpala lotus in the mudra of showing the Three Jewels. She is beautifully dressed in silks and precious adornments and sits in full lotus posture with a full moon as a backrest.

I want you to know that this has a very good feeling. It has a feeling of a god-like being so loving, so magical and so otherworldly that it can instantly come alive. You want to paint her! You want to have her image because this is something connected to a new kind of reality. Yet from your background it very well could come as science fiction, isn't it so? I want you to have authentic and rapid entry into the enlightened state. You want you to achieve liberation and I want you to do it quickly. Why dawdle in fantastic interplays with your own mind?

From the Tibetan side, we are permeated with this type of terminology. I have had centuries and centuries and centuries of this type of entry into the enlightened state with deity practice. I hope those who are true practitioners are participating in reality. There are not as many as I thought there would be at this point in human evolution. I am not looking at this only from the viewpoint of the old guy Domo Geshe born in 1937 but me as the really old guy with a long, long history.

I want you to know that the type of words I have given you here in the English sadhana are words close to my heart. These are cues and clues for states of mind that practitioners have received extensive training. From time immemorial we have used clues like this. Now I am giving you clues in the Blue Light Sadhana that have more to do with the training, education and experiences you have already had.

We will never lose our authentic connections with Tibetan Buddhism. We will continue to have these sadhanas, some prayers in Tibetan, and ceremonies. The ordained will continue to participate in ceremonies and everything we do is exactly in accordance with Tibetan Buddhism. I have not lost the connection nor have I have done anything unusual. The only thing I have done is to take 'perfect lotus covered by a white moon disk cushion' and I have communicated to you the teachings, commentaries and meanings according to your own education. Even from the Tibetan side, communication between the guru and disciple is more important than the fancy trappings this has become.

Student: When you were talking about transmission, initiation and empowerment, specifically transmission, you were implying that you yourself do not give initiation without some form of transmission. Is that correct?

The only purpose of giving initiations is to give transmission. What kind of transmission? It is hard to say. I will always work carefully with those who demonstrate enthusiasm to practice. I think initiation without transmission is foolishness. It is like going to the theater.

In the 1970's and 80's Western people would literally go to theaters and watch monks doing prayers. They would sit there and some would meditate and some got a good feeling. Their fascination with the trappings of Tibetan Buddhism had been satisfied. These are not transmissions or initiations that were given. Perhaps there were some who have an authentic connection with Tibetan Buddhism. Since there was little or nothing offered beyond the performance, I hope they were not too much satisfied and hope they will come to receive teachings in their own language.

Deep transmission itself is not possible to explain. In the future I may reveal more about the Tibetan process that allows ordinary or semi-ordinary humans to become high level practitioners. This is so much treasured by those that received this kind of transmission that it was considered to be the most valuable treasure of the man receiving it. It was given very rarely as it was considered to be wasted on lesser practitioners. This is known by Tibetans but very little understood in the West. 

I have given this very transmission to my students, male and female and will continue to do so as long as the student is serious.