This blog is another installment in a series of recent conversations between Adi Suyash and one of his disciples on Tantric Buddhism. These conversations are lucid and spontaneous, the questions are asked on the spot, unplanned, and the answers are given without preparation or much elaboration. The aim is not to provide an in-depth, traditional, understanding of every topic, but to offer simple, clear explanations that are sufficient to give the reader a basic understanding and a sense of the subject.

Sadhika: What is the true nature of one’s mind?

Adi Suyash: The true nature of one’s mind… is consciousness, or [in the words of Buddhism] emptiness.

Sadhika: How does one know it?

Adi Suyash: How do you know it? By observing the mind. When you observe the mind, you begin to see what the mind is made of, namely, thoughts, and where those thoughts arise from. What is the mind? Activity. A whirlwind of thoughts. The constant movement of thoughts.

So this activity…the coming and going of thoughts…where does it arise from? Where does this activity actually begin?

Take any one thought. Go to its source. Where did that thought come from? Pick any thought that has arisen in your mind and simply go to its source. Where did it originate?

It wasn’t there a moment ago. Then where did it come from? What was its source?

You will discover that it arose from consciousness, or from emptiness. It arose from nothing. There was nothing there before.

Sadhika: Yes, I mean, the thought just appears all of a sudden.

Adi Suyash: It appears all of a sudden, which means that before it appeared, there was nothing there.

Sadhika: Right. [nods slowly]

Adi Suyash: So it arises from nothing. And the mind itself is the product, the combination, of countless thoughts. And if all those thoughts arise from nothing, then what is the true nature of the mind?

Sadhika: Nothing.

Adi Suyash: Exactly. [nods] Once you realize that, you understand that the thoughts themselves have that very same true nature: nothingness. So all those thoughts are empty. They are shunya.

Then you will realize—

Sadhika: But they’re so… [pauses] so incredibly problematic that—

Adi Suyash: That what?

Sadhika: —they don’t allow us to enter that state of nothingness at all. Perhaps because we have so much attachment—so much rāga—toward those thoughts.

Adi Suyash: First of all, you are taking them to be real. If you regard something as fake, how can you possibly develop attachment to it? Hmm? It is when you take something to be real that attachment arises.

Sadhika: And that’s why we have to regard everything as a dream.

Adi Suyash: Hmm.

Sadhika: So that neither attachment nor aversion arises toward it.

Adi Suyash: Hmm. Suppose someone is pretending to be your partner, acting as though they are in love with you, and you know perfectly well that they’re only acting, that they’re lying. Would you ever become attached to them?

Sadhika: No.

Adi Suyash: Because the moment you genuinely believe, Yes, this person is telling me the truth; they really love me—that’s when attachment arises, isn’t it?

Sadhika: Yes.

Adi Suyash: Have you ever become attached to a movie character?

Sadhika: It happens. Quite often, actually!

Adi Suyash: When you take the character to be very real…

Sadhika: Yes.

Adi Suyash: And how long does that attachment last? A movie character dies, and you feel sad for a while because, for a certain period of time, you had taken that character to be real.

Sadhika: Hmm.

Adi Suyash: But then why does the sadness eventually disappear? When a real person dies, why is the grief so much greater?

Sadhika: Because we’re much more attached to them.

Adi Suyash: Because you take them to be much more real.

Sadhika: Real, yes. And we’ve spent our entire life with them, so for us, they—

Adi Suyash: Exactly. The more real you take something to be, the more suffering it causes you. The more attachment you develop toward it. The less real you take it to be, the less suffering and the less attachment there is.

An actor and an actress may romance each other on a cinema screen, yet they don’t necessarily become attached to one another. Why? Because they know it’s all a lie… a performance. [gestures lightly]

So when you realize that all of this is a performance, that it is artificial, an illusion, a hallucination…will you be afraid?

Sadhika: No.

Adi Suyash: Suppose I throw a rubber snake at you. Would you be afraid?

Sadhika: Ah, because I’m extremely afraid of snakes, my first reaction would absolutely be fear. I’d think it was real. [laughs nervously]

Adi Suyash: Because you would believe it was real. And the moment you realize that it isn’t real, what happens?

Sadhika: The fear disappears.

Adi Suyash: Why? What has changed?

Sadhika: Because I realize it can’t harm me. It’s not real.

Adi Suyash: Exactly. Your thoughts will stop harming you, or appear capable of doing so, once you realize that they aren’t real. They are shunya.

The moment you realize that they are empty, that they aren’t real, your attachment to those thoughts disappears, and your aversion toward them disappears. Then they stop harming you. Their effect on you comes to an end.

Now the second step is that you will realize that these very thoughts are creating the world you experience. And then you will understand that the world, too, has the same essence, the same svabhāva, as those thoughts, that is, emptiness.

Then the world will also cease to have the same power over you, because you will see that the world, too, is simply a dance of emptiness.

Sadhika: And all of this wisdom, does it develop only by actually experiencing emptiness? Not before that?

Adi Suyash: Yes. Know emptiness as the source of everything, and as the true nature of everything.

Because, it actually is… whatever is the source of something is also its true nature. [Pointing to a building] If I ask, “What is the source of all this that has been created?”—earth. It arose from earth. From earth, bricks were made, and from bricks, this house was built.

Sadhika: Hmm.

Adi Suyash: So what is the source of this house?

Sadhika: Earth.

Adi Suyash: And therefore, what is its true nature?

Sadhika: Earth.

Adi Suyash: Exactly. [nods] Isn’t it? Whatever the source of something is, that is also its true nature.

So what is the source of this world?

Sadhika: Consciousness.

Adi Suyash: And what is its true nature?

Sadhika: Consciousness.

Adi Suyash: Right, you are.

Sadhika: Next question.

Adi Suyash: Next question.

Sadhika: What are secret tantric offerings and transmissions or empowerments?

Adi Suyash: Secret tantric transmissions are secret. [smiles]

Sadhika: Alright, but what are they?

Adi Suyash: [Jokingly] They’re not told to you without the secret empowerment…

Sadhika: [Puzzled] So shall we leave this question?

Adi Suyash: [Laughs] If something is secret, then most probably it is secret precisely because the ordinary person isn’t capable of understanding it. Ordinary people’s prejudices and judgments can corrupt it through their own interpretations.

That’s why it is kept secret, so that it doesn’t reach people who would judge it without understanding it.

To understand it, you need a prerequisite. You need a certain capacity, a certain cleanliness of mind, a certain purity. Only then will you be capable of understanding it.

Otherwise, through the lens of your impure mind, you will make even that teaching impure. Because some of these practices involve things that are considered impure from the ordinary person’s perspective.

For example…

Sadhika: Sex.

Adi Suyash: Yes. It is something related to sex.

Take, for example, the secret offering made to the guru. When you imagine the offering… see, there are four kinds of offerings.

The first is that you offer the entire world to the guru. In Tibetan Buddhism, there are four continents. You offer all four continents, all the mountains, all—

Sadhika: How do you offer them?

Adi Suyash: By imagining them. You visualize the entire world, and then you imagine offering all of it to the guru.

Sadhika: Like what we do in your Guru Pooja…where we offer certain things, five things, to the guru…

Adi Suyash: Yes, but those five things are actually the Pancha Mahabhutas [earth, water, fire, air & space], the five great elements. The entire world is composed of those five elements, so technically, you are offering the entire world to the guru.

Sadhika: Okay.

Adi Suyash: So what you do is, first, you visualize the entire world: all the trees and plants, all the rivers, all the oceans, all the continents. And then you imagine offering all of it at the guru’s feet.

“We offer our entire world to you.”

The second kind of offering is your body and all your possessions, everything that constitutes your world. The first time, you offered the entire world. Now you offer the world that exists for you personally…your body—

Sadhika: Personal stuff.

Adi Suyash: Yes. Anything to which you are deeply attached…your possessions, your wife or husband, your parents, your brothers and sisters, anything you feel responsible for, anything to which you are strongly attached, anything you regard as mine.

Anything toward which your sense of mine-ness and I-ness is particularly strong. Anything you feel responsible for, or anything you feel has some responsibility toward you—you surrender all of that to the guru.

That is the second type of teaching, the second type of offering.

The third or secret offering is to offer a sexual partner—a female deity, a yogini, or even the self—as a sexual offering to the guru. That is what is called the secret offering, the one that is not disclosed to ordinary people: offering a sexual partner, a consort.

And the fourth offering is the ultimate offering, the supreme offering: to realize that the one making the offering, the one to whom the offering is being made, and the offering itself are all one.

And all three are empty.

So this secret transmission is essentially a diksha, an empowerment that enables you to understand and undertake secret practices. It is a form of initiation, one of the four empowerments or transmissions.

And after that, you—

Sadhika: So does that mean you receive the initiation from the guru only after making those four offerings to the guru?

Adi Suyash: No. What I said is that the third offering, the nature of it, is revealed to you only after you receive the secret transmission.

After receiving the secret transmission, you become capable of understanding the role of sexual practices. Only then are you sufficiently qualified, sufficiently capable…an adhikari…for that knowledge.

The secret transmission makes you capable of understanding it. After that, whatever secret practices there are—whether the secret offering or anything else—will be taught to you, and you may be instructed to perform them. You become qualified to undertake them.

Sadhika: So is there some eligibility requirement? To understand the third and fourth offering, do you first have to become established in emptiness, and then…?

Adi Suyash: The ultimate offering can only be performed once you understand what emptiness is.

Sadhika: The fourth one, of course.

Adi Suyash: Exactly. Only then can you understand that the one making the offering, the one receiving it, and the offering are all one, that all three are empty.

And that, essentially, can only be done by an enlightened being.

As for the offering preceding that, you would have to enter Vamachara. If you want to understand this in Hindu tantric terminology, then you would first have to become qualified for Vamachara or Kaulachara. Only then can you understand why the secret offering is being made.

Otherwise, before that, impurities and biases will take over your mind.

So what we call initiation into Vamachara, roughly speaking, if we map the concepts across traditions, is what they refer to as a secret empowerment. Precisely the third The Knowledge-Wisdom Empowerment of the Nyingma Tradition. 

[There are traditionally four empowerments in Tibetan Tantrayana Buddhism, in sequence they are: Vase empowerment, Secret empowerment, Knowledge-wisdom empowerment, and the Fourth empowerment. The Knowledge-Wisdom Empowerment is directly associated in some systems with consort practice (karmamudrā), either involving an actual consort or a visualized consort, and with the experience of bliss and emptiness. For example, Nyingma sources describe the third empowerment as authorizing practices involving a consort.]

There are, of course, certain differences depending on the particular community, but broadly speaking, that’s what it is.

Next question.

Sadhika: Next question: When does a practitioner encounter worldly dakinis or wisdom dakinis? What is the eligibility for such an encounter?

Adi Suyash: It can happen at any time.

Sadhika: What should a practitioner do for that to happen…?

Adi Suyash: It can happen at any time, and it isn’t in your hands. It’s in their hands—when they wish to encounter you.

Sadhika: And generally, when do they do that? Is anything like that mentioned?

Adi Suyash: When you need them. When they feel that you need their help on your spiritual journey.

Or perhaps there is something that is meant to happen through you, something that could spiritually elevate people in the future, and you aren’t doing it, or you aren’t moving in that direction. Then they may appear to you and put you on that path.

Or when you require enlightenment, or when you are unable to understand something on your spiritual journey, they may come to help you understand it.

Sadhika: But if we’re already practicing under a guru who is enlightened, why would a dakini come at all? If they feel that we already have someone enlightened to guide us, why would they need to intervene?

Adi Suyash: Because getting a guru alone isn’t enough.

There are three things that are necessary in Tantra according to Tantric Buddhism, according to Vajrayana Buddhism. The three jewels are necessary to transcend samsara.

To rise beyond samsara, you need three jewels: first, the guru; second, the Yidam, or Ishta; and third, the dakini.

So the dakini has just as significant a role as the guru or the Ishta. In Vajrayana, the Ishta is called the Yidam.

All three are necessary.

Sometimes the guru may not be enough to guide you. At that moment, the dakini comes to guide you.

Or perhaps the guru isn’t there. After all, a guru is still a human being, and human beings have limitations. They cannot reach everywhere.

If you aren’t physically there, or if there is something you’re not telling your guru, or you’re misinterpreting his instructions—how can the guru help you there?

That is where the dakini comes in.

Sometimes a dakini can help you through means that a guru simply cannot.

Sadhika: For example?

Adi Suyash: Perhaps she creates a certain situation…

Sadhika: Such as?

Adi Suyash: A situation through which you discover the right path for yourself.

The guru doesn’t necessarily have control over the circumstances of your life, does he? He isn’t the one creating every situation you encounter.

Sadhika: Okay.

Adi Suyash: Hmm. And the dakinis are themselves the energies of the Ishta. The Yidam you worship, the different expressions or energies of that very Yidam are the dakinis.

Sadhika: So if I’ve been a devotee of Shiva for a very long time, could the dakini be an energy of Shiva himself, guiding me further?

Adi Suyash: A dakini is always the energy of Shiva…or whoever you consider your Ishta.

Shiva and Shakti are one, and the different forms of Shakti are the yoginis, the beings whom Buddhism calls dakinis.

They are different expansions of that same reality manifesting in different directions.

Sadhika: So can we say that if someone is walking very deeply on the path of dharma, but their life begins to become extremely chaotic, and eventually they encounter an enlightened being who guides them further into tantric practices and all of that, can we assume that this is the blessing of a dakini, that she created those circumstances?

Adi Suyash: It could be. Not in every case, but it could be.

If they encounter an enlightened being, many things could be responsible. It could be their prarabdha karma. It could be that they received shaktipat, which propelled them to search for and find an enlightened being.

Many things are possible.

But could the influence of a dakini also be involved?

Yes. Absolutely.

Sadhika: Next question?

Adi Suyash: Hmm.

Sadhika: If an enlightened master gives a curse to someone, does he create an impression and become bound by Maya Shakti again, or can he consciously give a curse without creating an impression?

Adi Suyash: Generally, when enlightened beings give a curse, it isn’t really a curse. It is a blessing in disguise.

Because cursing someone is not in their nature. If someone is genuinely cursing out of anger or hatred, then most probably, they aren’t enlightened.

Sadhika: So can we say that the gurus described during the time of the Ramayana or Mahabharata, who were often extremely wrathful and cursed many people, were therefore not enlightened?

Adi Suyash: No. If you look at their curses carefully, you’ll see that they ultimately became blessings in disguise.

For example, a sage once cursed Vishnu, saying that he would take birth as a Human.

Now tell me, does that sound like a curse?

It was a blessing in disguise for humanity. He came as Rama, and that is precisely how Ravana’s end came about. And through Rama, humanity was shown what an ideal human looks like.

And when Sage Durvasa cursed Harishchandra, what was that? Was it really a curse?

No. It was a blessing in disguise. He set him upon a certain path.

So when an enlightened being gives what appears to be a curse, it is not because they want the other person to suffer. It isn’t because they want to cause them pain, nor is it motivated by revenge—“You wronged me, so I will hurt you.”

No.

If the feeling of revenge arises, or the desire that the other person should suffer arises, that means I have not yet recognized that person as one with myself.

Only then could I even think of causing them suffering.

Sadhika: I’m in duality, then, aren’t I?

Adi Suyash: Yes.

Would I ever deliberately cause suffering to myself? If I wouldn’t cause suffering to myself, why would I cause it to another?

That means I’m seeing that person as separate from myself.

And if causing them suffering gives me pleasure, then it means I still haven’t truly realized that they and I are one.

Otherwise, how could I possibly experience pleasure while they are suffering?

Hmm?

I am failing to recognize their suffering as my own.

So an enlightened being never truly curses someone. If it appears that they are doing so, then it is a blessing in disguise, a form of suffering intended, in some way, to push that person beyond their comfort zone, so that they can realize their potential and ultimately move toward something better.

Sadhika: Then what about Karna? He was cursed that at the moment of his greatest need, during the war, he would forget all the knowledge and skills he had learned. How was that a blessing for him?

He died, didn’t he?

Adi Suyash: His death was necessary for him. If he had won, he might never have realized that he was walking the path of adharma.

In the end, he was able to realize it, wasn’t he?

Otherwise, he would have remained trapped forever in his pride, in his—

Sadhika: Ego. [nods] He would have remained in his ego, believing in his own power and abilities… Yes, he had already become quite arrogant.

Adi Suyash: Hmm. Next?

Sadhika: [Smiles] That’s all I had…