Insight Editions · No. 423
Skillful Grace
Tara practice for our times: Threefold Excellence with commentaries by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche
Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche
A study guide to Skillful Grace: Chokgyur Lingpa's Threefold Excellence, Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche's overview and Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche's commentary, covering the four contemplations, refuge in Tara, love and compassion, the paramitas, shamatha and vipashyana, the four mandalas, retreat, the four empowerments, the four yogas and the twenty-one Taras, with tables, diagrams and practice notes.
A study guide to Skillful Grace: Tara Practice for Our Times by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche, root text by Chokgyur Lingpa, compiled by Marcia Binder Schmidt, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang (Rangjung Yeshe Publications). Shared free for personal reading; not for sale and not endorsed by the publishers. Please read the original book, and practise with proper transmission.
CORE CLAIM
A nine-verse terma, Threefold Excellence, holds the entire Buddhist path as a single Tara practice: renunciation and trust at the beginning, love, compassion and the union of shamatha and vipashyana in the middle, and development and completion stage at the end, all done with Tara as the embodiment of the guru.
SCOPE
The root text by Chokgyur Lingpa from the Zabtik Drölma cycle, with a pithy overview by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche and a long, stepwise commentary by Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche drawing on Jamgön Kongtrül; compiled by Marcia Binder Schmidt, translated by Erik Pema Kunsang (Rangjung Yeshe, preface 2006).
KEY FIGURES
Arya Tara; Chokgyur Lingpa; Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo; Jamgön Kongtrül; Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche; Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche; Samten Gyatso; Tara Bennett-Goleman (foreword); Shantideva, Nagarjuna, Atisha and Saraha as quoted authorities.
BEST FOR
Practitioners who want one complete daily practice joining sutra and tantra, readers curious about how Tara practice is actually structured, and anyone comparing the instantaneous approach of Tulku Urgyen with the gradual approach of Adeu Rinpoche.
The Book on One Page
The book is built like a set of nested boxes: a short root text, a short commentary for people who can take the essence directly, and a long commentary for people who need each step laid out. All three cover the same three excellences, beginning, middle and end.
The Argument in Brief
- Tara is the whole path in one form. Her body is the Sangha, her speech the Dharma, her mind the Buddha, so taking refuge in her covers all Three Jewels.
- The beginning is renunciation. The precious human body, impermanence, the suffering of samsara and karma turn the mind toward liberation; refuge in Tara is the response.
- The middle is the bodhisattva path. Love, compassion and bodhichitta of aspiration and application lead into shamatha and vipashyana, whose union is called the ultimate Mother Tara, Prajñaparamita.
- The end is Secret Mantra. Approach, accomplishment and the innermost guru yoga prepare the four yogas of Anuttara Yoga, which end in self-existing awareness merging with basic space.
- Two teachers, two temperaments. Tulku Urgyen writes for the instantaneous type; Adeu Rinpoche writes for the gradual type, and the compiler insists both are needed.
The root text calls its three parts "excellent, excellent, excellent," the words Tara herself spoke to Chokgyur Lingpa in a vision at dawn.
Map of the Chapters
| No. | Chapter | Payload |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foreword, Preface and Introduction | Why Tara; male and female in enlightenment |
| 2 | The Root Text | Nine verses, three excellences |
| 3 | Tulku Urgyen's Overview: Sutra | Fire pit, tonglen, three spheres, clouds |
| 4 | Tulku Urgyen's Overview: Mantra | Three samadhis, vivid presence, three essences |
| 5 | Adeu's Introduction and History | Devotion; Lotus Crystal Cave |
| 6 | Session Prelims, Freedoms, Impermanence | Posture, stale breath, blind turtle |
| 7 | Suffering and Karma | Hells, pretas, animals; ten actions |
| 8 | Refuge and Medium Capacity | Tara as Three Jewels; three trainings |
| 9 | Love, Compassion, Bodhichitta | Mother kindness; tonglen; the vow |
| 10 | Application and the Paramitas | Six perfections, four means |
| 11 | Shamatha | Sevenfold posture; three spheres; waterfall to ocean |
| 12 | Prajña, Vipashyana and Settling | Objects, mind, nature; the open sky |
| 13 | Approach and Accomplishment | Four mandalas; outer sadhana; recitation |
| 14 | Retreat and Special Preliminaries | Sessions, counts, signs; guru yoga |
| 15 | The Initial Yoga | Three samadhis; attire; pure recollection |
| 16 | Later Yogas, Conclusion, Appendix | Single sphere; vase breath; twenty-one Taras |
How the Book Reads
The voices change a lot. The foreword is personal and scientific, the introduction gathers sayings about women and enlightenment, Tulku Urgyen's overview is spoken and direct, and Adeu Rinpoche's commentary is a methodical manual that names every list. The last third assumes empowerment and the Zabtik Drölma texts, so readers without them will meet visualizations and mantras described rather than taught.
Foreword, Preface and Introduction
Three short pieces explain why this book, why Tara, and why two commentaries. The foreword gives a student's reason, the preface gives the structure of the cycle, and the introduction answers whether gender matters in enlightenment.
A Student's Foreword
Tara Bennett-Goleman first heard these teachings from Adeu Rinpoche on a pilgrimage to Putoshan in China. Shortly afterwards her brother died, and a single line of the practice stayed with her: world and beings, mansion and deity, dissolve into luminous space. She links the visualization of compassion to research showing that compassion activates motor areas of the brain, a readiness to help. She closes with Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche's advice: you have a jewel in your hand; do not let it go to waste.
She describes what deity practice did for her in plain terms. The deity represents the awakened state, and through training ordinary perceptions are gradually transformed: "We lighten up." Supported by the transparent nature of the deity, the habits that hide our authenticity become transparent too. Tara is said to help billions of beings in whatever form they relate to best, and that example awakens our own urge to help. As the sense of separateness dissolves, we see how interdependent all life is, and act more spontaneously for others.
The Preface: One Path, Three Views
Erik Pema Kunsang describes the book as three views woven into a single path:
| Level | Vehicle | Content |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Theravada view | Value of being human; renunciation |
| 2 | Mahayana view | Reducing selfishness; shamatha and vipashyana; ultimate Tara of transcendent knowledge |
| 3 | Vajrayana view | Sadhana: development and completion |
The teaching came from Samantabhadri through Vajra Yogini to Tara, and exists in three lengths. The extensive version belonged to Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo; it was never written down, and only a statue from the Zabbu valley in Shang remains. The medium version is Zabtik Drölma, revealed by Chokgyur Lingpa, with outer, inner and innermost sadhanas; its ritual of the four mandalas is still widely practised. The ultra-short version is Threefold Excellence, named for the words Tara spoke in a vision: "Lekso, lekso, lekso," excellent three times.
The preface also sets the scale. Padmasambhava says there are untold numbers of Tara tantras, all coming from the female dharmakaya buddha Samantabhadri. The whole book, Erik Pema Kunsang writes, starts with how to deal with life as a human being and goes all the way to complete enlightenment in a single lifetime. He closes with a wish that readers receive the empowerment and instructions of Arya Tara and that her blessings saturate everyone they are connected with.
The book holds Tulku Urgyen's pithy overview and Adeu Rinpoche's longer explanation together. One speaks to readers who can take the essence at once, the other to readers who need each step. The compiler states it plainly: for the instantaneous type the gradual is inadequate, and vice versa.
Adeu explains why: oral instructions need an experienced guide who can "take the pulse" of a student. The direct style "will go right over the head" of someone who is not sharp; the gradual style will not click for a quick student.
The Introduction: No Male, No Female
Marcia Binder Schmidt begins with the Vimalakirti Sutra, where a goddess shows that in truth there is neither male nor female. Tara, though, vowed to work for beings in a female body until samsara is emptied. Orgyen Tobgyal adds that Manjushri and Tara have exceedingly great resolve, that Tara protects from eight or sixteen fears, and that each of the four tantra levels has its own Tara practice.
The introduction also collects practical advice. Disbelief is a first step, not an obstacle. You can place a sick person in the mandala of your mind; Dzigar Kongtrül teaches that taking refuge with another person in your visualization benefits them. Nagi Gompa, Tulku Urgyen's hermitage, is known for the power of its nuns' Tara practice.
Schmidt describes Tara as embodying beauty, grace, nurture and protection, and also as a true warrior who vanquishes fear and ignorance, "the earliest known Buddhist feminist." Most of us, she writes, come to the teachings from dissatisfaction, a subtle uneasiness we cannot pinpoint. Ordinary people do not question the accepted version of reality: subdue enemies, cherish friends, measure success by materialism and ambition. Following that unease leads to a genuine teacher, honest self-examination and meditation. You do not have to wait until you are accomplished to help others: in Zabtik Drölma you can place an unhappy or sick person in your mental mandala and send healing wishes, and the blessing goes both ways.
The nuns of Nagi Gompa are an example. In Nepal each monastery is "branded" with a specialty, and a long line of sponsors asks the Nagi Gompa nuns for Tara recitation. Whether from Tulku Urgyen's blessing or the practice itself, Schmidt notes, "the nuns live comfortably," most are healthy and long-lived, and there are only the usual minor intrigues. Deity practice is a light in a dark passage; the deity's qualities are those of our own buddha nature, fully manifested.
- Adeu Rinpoche's view: in the dharmakaya there is no separateness, while in the rupakaya forms appear distinct, like rainbows. Tara can be seen as a practitioner who progressed or as the tears of Avalokiteshvara.
- Tulku Urgyen's view: enlightenment has no male or female. The Great Dharmakaya Mother Prajñaparamita is "not a literal old lady," and Samantabhadra with consort is not an old blue couple. Experience is the male quality, emptiness the female.
In one story Tara is a practitioner who formed the resolve, progressed on the path and awakened; in the other she arose from Avalokiteshvara's tears. Adeu reconciles them: the first is the relative version told to ordinary people, the second points to the ultimate view, in which buddhas awaken in Akanishtha and appear to awaken in our world. He compares it to the several accounts of the Buddha's enlightenment at different levels of teaching.
Tulku Urgyen's point is that the real subject is the nature of mind. "You can scan every single thing in this whole world and still not find an instruction superior to the one showing you how to recognize the nature of mind." The homage to Prajñaparamita he quotes says transcendent knowledge is beyond thought, word and description, neither arising nor ceasing, like space, and lies in the domain of self-knowing wakefulness. "Domain" means it can be recognized, though not thought of or described. The unity of the experience and empty qualities is Samantabhadra with consort, also called Changeless Light, the indivisible unity of space and awareness.
Schmidt explains the purpose of deity practice in the same spirit: combine recognition of mind essence with the deity. Because we are on the path we are by definition confused, and visualization, recitation and meditation purify obscurations and gather accumulations so we can remain in the natural state. The book is arranged in three parts: the root text, Tulku Urgyen's commentary, and Adeu Rinpoche's explanation, into which Kongtrül's commentary is paraphrased to keep it practical.
Tulku Urgyen taught directly, Adeu Rinpoche progressively. "For the instantaneous type the gradual approach is inadequate, and for the gradual type the instantaneous approach is inadequate." The book keeps both so that each reader finds the door that fits.
The Root Text
Chokgyur Lingpa's terma fits the whole path into about nine hundred words. It names its own structure, three excellences for beginning, middle and end, and lists what a practitioner needs before starting.
The Three Excellences
After homage to Arya Tara, the text lays out its plan.
| Excellence | Vehicle | Quality | Part of practice |
|---|---|---|---|
| First | Gods, humans, shravakas, pratyekas | Trust and renunciation | Beginning: stepping stones |
| Second | Mahayana | Love, compassion, superior resolve | Middle: main practice |
| Third | Secret Mantra | Development, completion, wisdom | End: concluding part |
Requirements: empowerments, key instructions, pure samayas and seclusion.
When dull, focus on a sphere at the forehead; when even, at the heart; when agitated, at the navel. After the body becomes pliable, this is shamatha, the paramita of concentration. Then appearances are seen as personal perception, like dreaming; the mind is not manifold but empty, not one but vividly awake. The union of shamatha and vipashyana is "the ultimate Mother Tara, Prajñaparamita."
- Outer approach: gathers the accumulations.
- Inner accomplishment: brings blessings.
- Innermost: guru yoga, mandala and four empowerments, then the great accomplishment of three samadhis, vivid presence, stable pride and pure recollection, followed by vase breath, vajra recitation, tummo and resting in self-existing awareness.
The root text ends with samaya seals repeated three times. Its later lines refer to a qualified mudra, a practice only for those with empowerment and instruction. Read as a map, it shows how the path fits together; it is not a manual to try alone.
Tulku Urgyen's Overview: Sutra
Tulku Urgyen explains the first two excellences in spoken, vivid images: a fire pit, a bound man watching his mother, a mind riding the wild horse of breath, a cloud that leaves no trace. His aim is to get from renunciation to recognition quickly.
What Kind of Text This Is
Threefold Excellence is a mind treasure, one of several categories of terma (mountain, rock, earth, mind). Its "vajra nada" is not dualistic sound but the sound of the unborn arising from the wisdom wind. Short as it is, it contains all nine vehicles.
He sums up the three parts. The first excellence is the springboard for virtue: purifying obscurations and gathering accumulations. The second covers relative and ultimate bodhichitta with shamatha and vipashyana. The third holds the development and completion stages and also Dzogchen: "by practising the inseparability of space and awareness, the path of rigpa, you accomplish Vajra Tara." "There is nothing left out; it is totally complete."
He defines mindfulness in one line: "the body stays on the seat, the mind stays with the body, and looseness stays with the mind." Samsara's three worlds are a fire pit; seeing that, effort in samsara looks pointless.
Renunciation, in his words, is "to take to heart the futility of conditioned existence." The upper worlds hold the suffering of change and of karmic formation; the lower ones hold all of samsara's defects. Seeing this, it is "completely useless not to strive for the path of liberation."
Love and Compassion
Tonglen rides the breath: send happiness out, take suffering in. For compassion he gives a hard image: imagine being bound and gagged while watching your mother cut open. "Aren't you sad?" That sadness, extended to all beings, is compassion.
The only difference among all the beings who were once your mother is whether they are close or distant in time. Aspiration bodhichitta is the four immeasurables; application is the six paramitas.
Shamatha and the Wild Horse
Spheres at forehead, heart or navel answer dullness, evenness or agitation. "Mind rides the wild horse of breath," so joining mind, eyes and breath tames both. He adds that there is no Tara there and you here: the support dissolves. A pliable body means being able to sit still all day, and he is honest that this comes "after a few years."
He notes that the practice is both with and without focus: first visualize Tara, then rest in natural equipoise free of any object. Holding the breath while joining eyes and attention, described in Kongtrül's commentary, is a way to merge breath and mind inseparably. Keeping the idea of a Tara over there and a you over here is "the ordinary way of practising"; when she dissolves, you remain nonconceptual, cut the pursuit of past, present and future thoughts, and relax without any reference point.
Tulku Urgyen distinguishes individual from shared perception. A dream is individual; the world is shared. At death the shared perception falls apart. A yogi whose perception is unobstructed can, like Milarepa, pass through rock. "Samsara is created by conceptual thought; if it were real, it would be impossible to destroy."
Clouds and Water
Life is conditioned; objects are perceptions; the mind's thoughts are free of ground and root. A thought is like a cloud that leaves no imprint in the sky, or a finger drawing on water.
He explains the chain that keeps us in samsara. "Mind is merely thoughts free from ground and root": one thought moving after another toward the five sense objects. Without an object a thought cannot move. Inside is the mind, outside the five objects, between them the five organs, and the three link in a seamless chain that breaks only with realization of identitylessness. Resolving that perceiver and perceived have no real nature is the twofold identitylessness of persons and phenomena. Our conditioned body, speech and mind obscure the unconditioned three kayas; the vajra body, which is not born, cannot be burned.
He gives his own reading of shunyata: shunya is empty, ta is the present, aware quality. Space allows the elements to exist; emptiness allows experience.
If things were only empty, they would be a blank like physical space, "neither confused nor liberated; mere matter." Buddha nature is unconfined: being unborn is the sign of emptiness, being unhindered the sign of wakefulness. That view saves you from both eternalism and nihilism. He adds a warning: "It is never said that you see the buddha nature by means of intellectual ideas." The three kayas run Samantabhadri or Prajñaparamita (dharmakaya), Vajra Varahi (sambhogakaya), Tara (nirmanakaya).
The union of empty and clear is rangjung yeshe, self-existing wakefulness. Tulku Urgyen treats this as something to recognize, not to construct, which is why his overview moves fast.
Tulku Urgyen's Overview: Mantra
The second half of the overview explains the third excellence: why development stage exists, how the three samadhis work, what vivid presence, stable pride and pure recollection mean, and how relative practice opens into the three changeless essences.
Why Visualize at All
If you can rest in the nature of mind, development stage is complete already. If you cannot, you think "Here is a celestial palace!" and build it.
To develop means to make, but in the ultimate sense appearances already arise from the continuity of emptiness; the lama introduces the innate nature, and while remaining in it you let the mandala unfold. The perceptions of the five senses are what is transformed into development stage. Externally gathering merit is the approach; receiving the deity's blessings is the accomplishment. The practice has four branches: approach, full approach, accomplishment and great accomplishment.
| Samadhi | Tulku Urgyen's gloss |
|---|---|
| Suchness | Pointed out, not created; recognition of mind's nature |
| All-illuminating | Great compassion, natural as water is wet |
| Seed | The syllable from which the mandala unfolds |
Three Qualities of the Deity
- Vivid presence: detail down to pores and eye colour.
- Stable pride: the conviction "I am the deity."
- Pure recollection: the symbolism. Two eyes are insight and means; arms and legs the four immeasurables; one face the single sphere.
He defines "accept and reject" so that resting without accepting or rejecting is clear. Vase breath holds the winds; vajra recitation is mental. On the consort practice he states only that for a woman the partner is male, for a man female, and leaves the rest to the teacher.
Rejecting, he says, means thinking, "These thoughts don't belong in the view; I must get rid of them." Accepting means, "I must get this awareness." Drop both and the openness of rigpa appears, identical with the samadhi of suchness. Only when the three qualities of the deity are perfected does one move to the Anu Yoga practices of posture, channels, energies and essences. If you have not recognized rigpa, the second samadhi is produced by thinking of the poor beings who do not understand emptiness; if you have, compassion wells up by itself.
The mantra OM TARE TUTTARE TURE SOHA circles the syllable TAM in the heart. "Through relative practices one realizes the absolute." The visualization is a means, not an end.
The indestructible bindu is not material; it is awareness, the dharmakaya itself. The final practice, bringing the instant of self-existing awareness into basic space, is resting in mingled space and awareness, where the example wisdom points to the coemergent wisdom it illustrates.
The Three Changeless Essences
The nadi, prana and bindu of the body become wisdom channel, wisdom wind and wisdom sphere, which are original wakefulness. Tulku Urgyen's test is simple: whatever moves is thought; what is immovable is rigpa.
Jamgön Kongtrül said a full explanation would take a massive volume, so he wrote at medium length. Tulku Urgyen's overview is about 4,900 words; Adeu Rinpoche's commentary runs to eight times that.
Adeu's Introduction and History
Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche starts slowly on purpose. Before any technique he insists on learning, reflection and application, and above all on devotion. Then he tells how the cycle was concealed, revealed and handed on.
Why Go Step by Step
Teachings not applied are like a medicine bottle you never open. Compassion, devotion and renunciation must be cultivated deliberately at first. A practice without that base is a house built on a frozen lake: it sinks in spring. People who skip to channels and energies end up with "great doubts" and then blame the teachings when their own impatience is at fault.
In old Tibet, he recalls, manuals were taught one part at a time. Students received the first section, went off and practised it, and came back for the next. "No practice, no instructions." Dzogchen or Mahamudra required at the very least the completed preliminaries. The path is progressive for a reason: having taken one step, the next is easier. Skipping ahead is not impossible, but it takes tremendous perseverance, and few who skip are willing to supply it.
Every teaching needs three steps: learning, reflection and application. Learning means hearing it clearly from someone in a living tradition with a true transmission; reflection means gaining conviction and clearing doubts; application means integrating it into life. No one has ever been cured by looking at a bottle of medicine.
- Jigten Sumgön: the sunshine of devotion strikes the snow mountain of the guru's four kayas, and blessings flow like meltwater.
- Dorje Chang Chungma: devotion is the head of meditation.
- Drukpa lineage: liberation through meditation is questionable; through devotion it is certain.
- Padmasambhava: realize the guru and you realize all sugatas; every tertön's terma includes a guru sadhana.
- Saraha: realization of the coemergent comes from clearing veils, creating merit and the master's blessing; know every other method as delusion.
Examine Each Other
Adeu warns both sides. A student who skips examining the teacher drinks poison; a teacher who skips examining the student leads him to a precipice. Some students go "musk hunting," chasing teachers for what they can extract. Since this warning appears in every scripture, Adeu adds dryly, "maybe it is important!" In this practice the guru is seen as Tara, and the guru's kindness is greater because the guru is the one who actually teaches. Adeu received the cycle from Samten Gyatso, Dzongsar Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, Sherab Lobzang and the previous Tsoknyi Rinpoche, and calls it "utterly complete."
Adeu explains his confidence. Both old and new schools have Tara practices at every level of tantra, and there may be a more detailed text, "but I do not know of one." The Lekso has the preliminaries; outer, inner and innermost sadhanas; and the later yogas. You can do the outer sadhana with Tara alone, the inner with the twenty-one Taras who dispel fears, or the innermost with consort. Even yogas mentioned briefly are "still included so that nothing is left out." He ends his introduction by dedicating the merit to all beings, which makes it inexhaustible.
Devotion need not be perfect at first. In the beginning devotion may be artificial, but through opening up you come to see the guru's nature as identical to all the buddhas. With that, you have a firm foundation for Mahamudra or Dzogchen. The root guru gives the pointing-out instruction because "no one else knows how to do it."
How the Cycle Came Down
Jamgön Kongtrül's account: an ocean of Tara tantras existed; Padmasambhava concealed this one; Yeshe Tsogyal departed at Shang Zabbu. Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo tried and failed to reveal it there, revealing Chimey Pagma Nyingtik instead. Chokgyur Lingpa first revealed the Four Deities Dispelling Obstacles (Tara first among them), then Zabtik Drölma.
Kongtrül opens by praising Tara's vow to take female form in every life until awakening, a resolve he calls more wonderful than that of all the buddhas and bodhisattvas, and asks her to protect him until enlightenment. Most of Padmasambhava's Tara teachings were meant for future times and were hidden as mind, earth and sky termas. Chokgyur Lingpa appeared at the end of the Dark Age as "the undisputed tertön", and the vision came at the Lotus Crystal Cave, one of the twenty-five sacred places of eastern Tibet.
| Event | Detail |
|---|---|
| Vision | Lotus Crystal Cave, at dawn; Tara says "Lekso" three times |
| Handover | Chokling gives it one to one to Khyentse, its real owner |
| Practice | Khyentse practises it three years, then gives it to Kongtrül |
| Contents | Empowerment; outer, inner, innermost sadhanas; activities; guardians |
The account of concealment and revelation is told as plain history by lineage holders. Readers outside the tradition can take it as the lineage's own account of authority. Its practical point holds either way: the cycle came with a chain of teachers who practised it.
Session Prelims, Freedoms, Impermanence
Adeu begins the first excellence with how to start every session and the first two of the four contemplations. The tone is practical: sit right, breathe out the poisons, feel the guru's presence, then think about how rare and how brief this life is.
Stepping Stones
The three excellences correspond to beginning, middle and end, and together they lead to "truly high and definite goodness." There are two sets of preliminaries: one for each session and one for the teaching as a whole.
The Session Preliminary
Sit with no "meditation thorns," in a posture of mental ease or the Vairochana posture. Exhale three stale breaths, one for each of the three poisons. Visualize the guru as Tara on a lotus and moon, and recite the five-line supplication asking for blessings, the pacifying of defilements, the dawning of realization and the removal of hindrances.
Adeu suggests comparing your own ordinary traits with the guru's qualities until tears come and hairs stand on end. If real devotion is not there, make a facsimile of devotion each session; it grows into the real thing. Then the guru enters through the crown into a sphere at your heart.
Adeu describes the order found in guru-yoga manuals: first we supplicate, next we expand, then we receive blessings. Once blessings enter, devotion deepens and brings more blessings. The supplication asks the guru, indivisible from Arya Tara, to bless you, pacify every defilement and incorrect thought, let true realization dawn, and remove hindrances to the Mahayana. Repeat it until devotion wells up. The full sequence of visualize, supplicate, dissolve into the heart, dedicate opens every session, and it is repeated before each of the four contemplations.
The Precious Human Body
Citing the White Lotus of Compassion Sutra, Adeu lists the eight unfree states and ten riches, then gives the numbers.
The eight unfree states are birth as a hell being, hungry ghost, animal, long-lived god or barbarian, holding wrong views, birth when no buddha has come, and being physically or mentally impaired. The ten riches are five from oneself (human birth, a central land with Dharma, intact faculties, right livelihood, faith in the right objects) and five from others (a buddha appeared, taught, the teaching survives, is practised purely, and a teacher will nurture you).
| Beings | Comparison |
|---|---|
| Hell beings | As many as atoms |
| Pretas | Snowflakes in a blizzard |
| Animals | Yeast flakes in the brew for chang |
| Higher beings | Dust on a thumbnail |
The blind turtle surfacing once a century, its neck finding a single yoke on the ocean, shows the odds. The human body is a wish-fulfilling jewel for worldly aims, liberation and buddhahood. Shantideva says there is no greater waste than gaining this body and not using it.
Adeu also rejects the comfortable thought "if I don't make it this time, I can try in my next life." There is no guarantee of another human birth, so decide "once and for all" to use this one.
Impermanence
Life is a bubble; each day is a step like a convict walking to the scaffold. Nagarjuna: the circumstances for death are numerous, those for life few. At death you cannot take a single needle; only good and evil go with you.
The Buddha said "all composite things are impermanent," and no one has ever escaped death. Three points follow. Death is certain. Its time is uncertain: there is no fixed lifespan, and people die at birth, from accidents, floods, fires, wild animals, epidemics, the wrong medicine or poisoned food. And at death nothing but Dharma helps: friends, family and employees cannot come along, and the body is "just thrown away."
Kongtrül's instruction is to end the contemplation with a resolve: "from this day on" I will practise. The contemplation is not finished until it changes the schedule.
Suffering and Karma
The third and fourth contemplations are the hardest reading in the book: graphic descriptions of the lower worlds, then a strict account of cause and effect that explains how beings get there and how they leave.
The Lower Worlds
Adeu follows the classical lists and does not soften them.
| World | Main sufferings |
|---|---|
| Hot hells | Swamps, molten metal; the eighth is incessant torment |
| Cold hells | Eight, ending in the withered lotus |
| Neighbouring hells | Embers, corpse swamp, path of swords, forest of blades |
| Pretas | 36 kinds; external, inner and food obscurations; 15,000-year lifespans |
| Animals | Ocean currents and eating each other; hunted; loads and slaughter; cannot speak |
The pretas' three obscurations: water dries up as they approach (external); needle mouths and valley-sized bellies, from Nagarjuna's Letter (inner); food that turns to fire (food). Adeu ends by asking whether we are certain we will not go there.
The reflection starts from death: it does not end there. We take rebirth with no direct choice of where, propelled by our own actions. Adeu describes hell beings pushed back down by vicious guardians whenever they surface, and the neighbouring hells as temporary places where relief alternates with torment. Ocean animals have no fixed home, moved by currents, with the larger eating the smaller; domestic animals cannot talk or escape. Honestly, he says, we have no real assurance that these rebirths will not happen to us, and that leaves one choice: practise from now on.
The hells are presented as literal places with lifespans. Many modern teachers read them also as states of mind. The practical use in the text is the same in either reading: fear of consequences motivates renunciation and care with actions.
Karma
From the Sutra of a Hundred Karmas: karma is a seed; it multiplies; it does not vanish unless met by an antidote; and only you experience your own. The Buddha: "You do not meet with what you have not created."
The ten negative actions are three of body, four of speech and three of mind. Their reversals are the virtues: save lives, be generous, be truthful and gentle, reconcile those in conflict. The point of studying karma is not guilt but choice: each action is a seed you are planting now.
He spells out the ten. Body: killing (from desire, anger or stupidity), taking what is not given (by force or deception, including business profit through trickery), and sexual misconduct. Speech: lying, divisive talk, harsh words and idle gossip. Mind: covetousness, ill will and wrong views about karma, truth and the Three Jewels. Virtue in its strongest degree leads to birth as a god, in lesser degree as a human; mixed good and evil brings birth as a demigod. Karma is "a very open-ended topic": hard to define in detail, but every comfortable or uncomfortable state comes from it.
- Certain: good brings happiness, bad brings suffering.
- Growing: small actions multiply.
- Not lost: what is done remains until ripened or purified.
- Not met if not done: no one experiences another's karma.
The four mind-changings "are not merely for us to think and feel bad about." Their purpose is renunciation, the will to be free, which does not come without effort. Ponder them repeatedly, asking "What would it be like in the lower worlds?", and the wish to be free becomes real.
Refuge and Medium Capacity
Refuge is the response to the four contemplations: we cannot free ourselves, so we rely on what can. Adeu then turns to the medium capacity, whose aim is personal liberation from all of samsara, including its pleasant parts.
Why Refuge
Worldly gods such as Brahma and Indra are themselves in samsara. The Great Nirvana Sutra says true refuge is beyond fear. Adeu distinguishes supports of refuge (statues, texts, monks) from qualities: the Buddha as the three kayas, the Dharma as statements and realization, the Sangha as companions. Buddha is the teacher, Dharma the path, Sangha the companions. The Uttaratantra adds that the ultimate refuge is exclusively the Buddha, meaning the awakened state. What sits in front of us is merely a support; we take refuge in the qualities of realization.
Her form is the Sangha, her speech the Dharma, her mind the Buddha. She stands before you with her right hand in the gesture of protection, and you sit beneath her with all beings, reciting the refuge verse 100, 1,000 or 10,000 times. Then Tara melts into you and you rest.
Here Tara is Prajñaparamita in person, and all buddhas and bodhisattvas are included in her single form. Her blessings protect especially from fear of rebirth in the lower worlds. After the count, she melts into light, her blessings enter your stream of being, and you settle free of mental constructs before dedicating. The benefits Adeu names are practical: negative karma gradually diminishes, and refuge forms the support for every advanced practice.
| Refuge training | Avoid | Adopt |
|---|---|---|
| Buddha | Non-Buddhist supports as final refuge | Respect even a tiny statue |
| Dharma | Harming beings | Respect even a single page |
| Sangha | Company of extremists | Respect even a fragment of robe |
| Subsidiary | Offer the first part of food; bow before travel; encourage trust |
Samsara as a Whole
The medium person sees that even the higher worlds are suffering. Humans have eight sufferings: in the womb, a mountain crushing when the mother is full and a precipice when empty; birth like passing a needle's eye; aging in five losses (lustre, shape, strength, senses, enjoyment); sickness; death; guarding possessions; meeting the unwanted, like a capricious local ruler; parting from the loved. Asuras fight and lose. Gods are distracted until five death omens appear: garlands wilt, garments soil, sweat appears, friends flee.
Adeu has the student think through each stage in the first person, as Kongtrül instructs. After birth, even the softest cloth feels like a nest of thorns, and being picked up feels like a hawk's talons. Birth is the basis for all later emotions, a propulsion from one painful state to another. Sickness brings painful medical procedures and the fear of death. Possessions require toil to gain and worry to guard, and the slightest loss brings anguish. Asuras lack trust and interest in Dharma; the gods' long lives give them no impetus to practise, and at the end their whole life "feels no more than a fleeting moment."
Samsara is like sitting on the tip of a needle: no position in it is comfortable for long. Even the dhyana pleasures change. Seeing the three worlds as a pit of burning embers or as death row produces one thought: "I must be free!"
Even neutral sensations are painful in the sense of being conditioned, since the five aggregates are "perpetuating." Nothing in samsara is predictable: place, body, enjoyment, friend and enemy all change, and every birth, sickness and death is undergone alone.
Origin and Liberation
Meritorious actions lead to higher rebirths, and nontransferring actions to the form and formless dhyanas, but both stay inside samsara. Self-cherishing, holding a self as "truly existing, dear and important," is a primary cause: attachment to body, feelings, possessions and "my people" breeds conceit, jealousy and stinginess, and any threat to them breeds hostility and spite. Adeu's advice is to examine your own mind repeatedly for these states. Liberation comes from a chain: insight depends on samadhi, which depends on discipline. Insight looks at impermanence, suffering, emptiness and egolessness. Discipline is the ground, samadhi the stem and insight the fruit; skipping the ground leaves nothing to grow from.
Love, Compassion, Bodhichitta
The second excellence opens the Mahayana. Its entrance is intent: wanting enlightenment for others. Adeu builds that intent through a causal chain that starts with remembering a mother's kindness.
The Causal Chain
Loving Kindness
Start with your present mother: she fed, cleaned and protected you. Extend that feeling to all beings, since each has been your mother, out to billionfold universes. She produced this body at great hardship, gave you life, and loved you more than herself; in countless lives others did the same as parent, friend, lover and companion. Generate love until it is a distinct, clearly felt feeling, then widen it to family, neighbours, country and all six classes of beings, wishing that each be happy and at ease. The Ratnavali says a moment of love is worth more than feeding beings in a myriad ways.
Compassion
Imagine your mother in hell, as a preta, as an animal, or blind at the edge of a cliff. The text In Praise of Avalokiteshvara says that one quality holds all teachings in the palm of the hand: great compassion. Adeu asks you to check how compassionate you actually are, then train in equalizing and exchanging self and others, after Shantideva.
Kongtrül's reasoning for exchange is simple arithmetic: "I want to be happy and don't want to suffer. Every other being has the same wish." Since they are so many more, they matter more. Shantideva: unless you take others' suffering on yourself, you will not attain enlightenment. In the compassion meditation, picture your present mother consumed in flames, frozen in the cold hells, starving as a preta, chained and beaten as an animal, until the feeling becomes almost unbearable, then extend it to all beings with the wish "May I lead all of them out of samsara!"
Kongtrül distinguishes two kinds of liberation. One can become free as a shravaka or pratyekabuddha, but a buddha abandons all selfish interest and shows unconditioned activity for others. That is the aim of the Mahayana's entrance door, training in intent.
- Exhale: send out your virtue and happiness to all beings.
- Inhale: take in their suffering and its causes.
- Begin with your present mother, then widen the circle.
Bodhichitta of Aspiration
Kongtrül defines it as the thought of attaining enlightenment for others. The Sutra Requested by Resplendent Generosity says its merit, if it had physical form, would fill space. Its main rule is never forsake beings. That means never thinking you cannot attain enlightenment (which leads to giving up the Mahayana), never thinking "May I never meet you again" toward anyone, and never harming even a louse. The four negative acts include fooling with weights and scales in business.
| Four negative acts | Four virtuous acts |
|---|---|
| Deceive the venerable | Never lie, even to save your life |
| Cause regret where none is due | Inspire others toward the Mahayana |
| Disparage a bodhisattva | Regard bodhisattvas as the Buddha |
| Deceive beings | Keep sincere intent |
Adeu's repeated advice is to test the feeling honestly instead of assuming you already have it. The chain works only if each link is real.
Application and the Paramitas
Bodhichitta of application turns intent into conduct: the six paramitas for your own ripening and the four means of magnetizing for others. Adeu sorts them by training, purpose and accumulation.
The Vow and Its Seal
The vow is taken in front of Tara with a verse beginning "HO." The relative vow is then sealed with the ultimate: rest in its empty nature. Take the vow before a master or a sacred object, then repeat it daily, three times or up to a hundred thousand, with Tara and all buddhas as witness. The verse pledges to refrain from misdeeds, gather virtue and always generate bodhichitta. At the end, dispense with any idea of an enlightenment to reach, a person vowing and an act of vowing. The Lotus Mound text lists the four means: a fan of generosity, pleasant words, meaningful action, and consistent advice (practising what you teach).
Sorting the Paramitas
| Paramita | Training (Atisha, Ornament of Sutras) | Purpose | Accumulation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Generosity | Discipline | Exalted rebirth | Merit |
| Discipline | Discipline | Higher rebirth | Merit |
| Patience | Discipline | Retinue | Both |
| Diligence | All three | Definite goodness | Both |
| Concentration | Samadhi | Both | |
| Insight | Insight | Wisdom |
The Subahu Sutra advises beginning with the easy ones first. The Compendium gives the image: the first five are blind, led by insight, which has eyes, to the city of enlightenment.
The first five paramitas must be embraced by the sixth, an insight that does not conceptualize the three spheres of giver, gift and recipient. Without that, they are not causes of enlightenment; with it, they become truly "transcendent." The pledge is to practise each one with right intention, practice and conclusion, embraced by the two accumulations, and with "the continuous understanding that all is like a magical illusion."
Each Perfection
- Generosity: material gifts, fearlessness (protection), and truth, which includes reading the words of the buddhas aloud for spirits.
- Discipline: refraining (natural and pledged vows: six pratimoksha, two bodhichitta, samayas), gathering virtue, benefiting beings.
- Patience: tolerance of harm, acceptance of hardship, and open-minded trust in the profound.
- Diligence: armour-like, constant, and not turning back.
Adeu adds detail to each. Material giving should be done with pure intent and without clinging; giving fearlessness includes relieving people on dangerous roads and in prison; teaching Dharma must be without regard for honour, fame or benefit. Patience means not retaliating when beaten, robbed or abused, and cultivating love instead; and not losing courage when hot, cold, hungry or tired in practice. Armour-like diligence refuses both "This small virtue doesn't matter" and "That great practice is beyond me." The diligence of not turning back keeps going even when there are no immediate signs.
Patience with the profound matters because emptiness can shock. Some arhats fainted on hearing it taught. The Buddha described 500 inferior and superior rebirths, and Adeu's advice for hearing something you cannot accept is to think, "Hey, maybe it was something very good." Open-minded trust is patience applied to ideas.
Generosity and discipline gather merit; insight gathers wisdom; the other three gather both. A path with only merit stays in samsara's better parts; a path with only wisdom lacks the means to help others.
Shamatha
Concentration is shamatha, and Adeu treats it as a craft: where to sit, how to hold the body, what to look at, what to do when dull or agitated, and how to know it is working. It ends with calm without any support.
Solitude and Posture
A gompa means a remote place, but solitude is useless if you stay busy. Distractions include children, spouse, friends and followers, and food, wealth, honour, praise and reputation: anything that pulls attention away whenever you try to sit calmly. Staying in a quiet place while pursuing pointless activity is "just giving another name to being in a distracted state." Adeu lists the twenty shortcomings of diversions and names the three dhyanas: abiding in this life, producing qualities, and the welfare of beings.
| Vairochana's sevenfold posture | |
|---|---|
| Legs | Vajra posture |
| Spine | Straight as a pillar |
| Shoulders | Spread like vulture wings |
| Neck | Slightly bent like a hook |
| Tongue | Touching the palate |
| Lips and teeth | Slightly parted |
| Gaze | About 45 degrees down past the nose tip |
The reason: the body has five major and 21,600 minor currents. Body straight, channels straight; channels straight, currents free; currents free, mind natural. In time the currents become wisdom winds. There is also an effortless posture of mental ease for those who need it. These postures are basically the same in Mahamudra and Dzogchen: the effortless one leaves the legs loosely crossed with hands resting on the knees, neither too tight nor too relaxed. The five major currents are upward-moving, downward-clearing, equalizing, life-sustaining and pervading, and the posture's deepest purpose, Adeu says, is the rainbow body, the dispersal of the physical body into light.
- Solitude of body: posture lets the energy currents flow freely.
- Solitude of speech: silence with free-flowing breath.
- Solitude of mind: the karma winds settle, and with them concepts of good and evil, hope and fear; the mind eases into naturalness.
With a Support
Use a Tara image with correct proportions: emerald green, right hand in supreme giving on the knee, left holding a blue lotus at the ear, jewel braids and ornaments, right leg extended. This is not yet a visualization with its three principles, just a support. Kongtrül says not to worry whether it is vivid or dull. Drop hope and fear about whether the mind rests or not; keep mindfulness on guard against wandering. If you have no image, visualizing her is fine.
Join mind, eyes and breath like threading a needle. Practise in short periods, many times. When you notice you have wandered, come back and rest again. When attention is caught, stay there relaxed and natural for as long as it lasts. At the end, the image melts into light and dissolves into you, so the guru, Tara's mind and your mind are one taste.
Without a Support
Interrupt the session three times, then simply do not modify the present. Adjusting the gaze is allowed, and sights and sounds can serve as support. When restless, let attention go to one thing, without jumping to a second or third. The main point is "to remain undistracted without doing anything else": do not dwell on the past, plan the future, or improve, modify or adjust the present. Train often, but so you do not grow tired of it. As practice matures, you swing less between too tight and too loose and find a balanced way of sustaining awareness.
| Stage | Image |
|---|---|
| First | A waterfall: thoughts seem to increase |
| Second | A peaceful river |
| Third | An ocean without waves |
At first meditators ask, "Do I actually get so occupied?" Seeing how many thoughts there are is the first sign that shamatha is working, not that it is failing. The stream was there all along; meditation only makes you aware of it.
The second dhyana produces qualities: emancipations, subjugations, spheres of perception and totalities. The third works for the welfare of beings through clairvoyance and the superknowledges. Adeu calls this planting roots.
Prajña, Vipashyana and Settling
Insight is the eye that leads the other paramitas. Adeu follows Atisha's approach: inquire into objects, mind and nature, establish certainty in the view, then settle like a clear, wide-open sky.
What Prajña Means
Prajña is the same as the awakened state; Shantideva says all the teachings are for prajña. Its intent has three aims: ultimate, relative, and benefit to beings. Its application is personal identitylessness, identitylessness of phenomena, and emptiness with a heart of compassion. The ultimate knowledge is realization of emptiness; the relative is understanding causes, effects and dependent origination; the third is the intelligence to benefit beings through the four means. All the great treatises teach this same thing, called "establishing certainty in the view."
Three Inquiries
| Inquiry | Source | Finding |
|---|---|---|
| Outer objects | Lankavatara; Avatamsaka | Mind churned by habit appears as objects; "three worlds are only mind"; the dream example |
| Inner mind | Kashyapa Sutra | Not inside, outside or between; thoughts arise and vanish like clouds; a moment of knowing clung to as "I" |
| Nature | Prajñaparamita; Saraha | Not a void; luminous wakefulness |
Clinging to things as concrete is like an ox; clinging to them as inconcrete is more foolish still. Labelling mind "inconcrete" is just a new label. The Prajñaparamita says mind does not exist as mind; its nature is luminous wakefulness.
@@pair Neither one nor many, again.Adeu draws out the dream example. In a dream we see mountains, houses, people, horses and cattle, feel joy, sorrow and fear, yet nothing there is real; because we do not know it is a dream, the emotions are experienced as real. Waking perceptions are similarly unreal, and the whole falsehood of relative delusion collapses once all appearances are recognized as your own mind. Then the mind itself: the Kashyapa Sutra says it has never been seen, is not seen and will never be seen, even by all the buddhas. What we call mind is a thought that appears and vanishes, and the sudden arising of a moment of knowing is clung to as "I." Adeu asks for certainty "decisively and from deep within your heart" that there is no real personal identity.
Luminosity, he explains, is "the naked quality that is able to know": empty, yet with an unimpeded ability to know. Mind has no form, shape or colour, but there is a knowing that forms the basis for all experience of samsara and nirvana.
:: Not many | All experiences share one taste ;; Not one | Many experiences still arise
Settling
Recall Shantideva: when no concept remains, there is nothing to hold. Take the posture, rest like a clear, wide-open sky. Vipashyana is nonfabrication. Through shamatha you already have ease, freedom from concepts and lucidity; now there is nothing to establish or exclude. Divest yourself of every opinion, speculate about nothing, and allow attention to be as it is. In shamatha the mind is calm; in vipashyana there is a seeing that neither perceiver nor perceived really exists. It is not some insight you try to keep. During composure nothing is cultivated, yet you are not distracted for even an instant. Adeu cites Longchenpa's Precious Treasury of Nonarising. In postmeditation, see things as illusion and dream with compassion indivisible from emptiness. The beings who believe appearances are real are your own parents, and compassion for them arises spontaneous and unfabricated from within emptiness. In this way "you meet the real Tara." That union is what the root text calls the ultimate Tara, Prajñaparamita.
Some teachers say you must retain a subtle idea of emptiness, or vipashyana collapses into shamatha without support. Adeu's opinion: once realized, the idea is not needed in composure, but in postmeditation it helps to bring to mind that things are illusion.
Approach and Accomplishment
The third excellence begins with the two outer layers of Secret Mantra. Approach is the widely practised ritual of the four mandalas; accomplishment is the outer sadhana of Tara with its protection circle, palace, empowerment and mantra.
Three Layers of Mantra
| Layer | Tantra class | Function |
|---|---|---|
| Approach | Kriya and Charya | Accumulations; outer |
| Accomplishment | Yoga tantra | Blessings; inner |
| Innermost | Anuttara Yoga | Four empowerments; the body of the path |
Outer and inner are the limbs; Anuttara is the body. The Subsequent Compendium speaks of twofold stages, and the Compendium promises three kayas in this lifetime.
Adeu frames the shift plainly: through the Mahayana you meet Tara; through Vajrayana you become Tara in actuality. The nine vehicles are taught in order because each one prepares the stream of being for the next; the Mahayana's view of emptiness is the root on which the mantra practices grow. Development stage purifies the clinging to world and beings as ordinary; completion stage binds winds and mind in the indestructible sphere to reach the unity of bliss and emptiness. Both unfold within the view of nonarising emptiness.
The Ritual of Four Mandalas
Set one mandala on the shrine and offer three more during the text. Clean the room, wash the five extremities, and avoid meat, alcohol, onion and garlic; take the three whites. After refuge, bodhichitta and the seven branches, arise as Tara from TAM and invite her from the pure land Arrayed in Turquoise Petals with her twenty manifestations. Offer the mandala with the twenty-one praises three times, receive nectar from her right hand of protection, repeat seven times, dissolve, and recite the ten-syllable mantra. Done for three or seven days, it pacifies obstacles. The prelude includes renunciation and compassion as motivation, not only cleanliness. At the first offering, two waters and the sense pleasures are presented; at the second, you pray under her protecting hand with all beings to be relieved of every fear; at the third, a stream of nectar from Tara and the twenty Taras of her retinue fills your body with the blessings of body, speech and mind. Finally she and her retinue dissolve into you, and you rest in the natural state where deity and mind are indivisible before dedication and verses of auspiciousness. It also fulfils virtuous wishes.
Tulku Urgyen's uncle Samten Gyatso used five mandalas: a brocade-draped tripod and four plates replenished through the ritual. Adeu contrasts this with people who ring bells instead of cymbals, a "tendency to want the easy way." The ritual spread from Amdo to the West, though its missing colophon left many unsure who composed it.
"If that is how we let the tradition go, everything gets watered down. Samten Gyatso never allowed that tendency at all. He wanted to be precise. Nobody was allowed to skip anything."
The Outer Sadhana
The protection circle is so firm that a cosmic storm cannot penetrate it.
Adeu describes it in physical detail. The vajra ground begins as one immense vajra cross reaching the ends of the universe, with smaller crosses filling the gaps down to less than a mustard seed, until the surface is smooth as polished silver on top. The vajra fence is like a herdsman's night shelter of upright bamboo: giant five- and nine-pronged vajras side by side, smooth inside. The vajra dome is ring upon ring of vajras, with a lattice for a canopy within. "There is not even a single opening."
Inside it rise the mandalas of wind, fire, water and earth (crescent, triangle, circle, square) with Mount Sumeru on top. DHRUNG becomes a square palace of jewelled light with four gates and an eightfold portal; if you do not know the specific design, use the general mandala temple of Vajrasattva of the Nyingma. The palace's proportions come from the deity's shape, and since Tara is a single figure, it has one storey. In its centre stands an eight-petalled multicoloured lotus with a moon disc whose edges bend up a little, unlike most paintings.
TAM descends onto the moon, becomes a green utpala marked with TAM, sends out light that purifies all worlds, and transforms into you as Tara, with the thirteen sambhogakaya garments and ornaments and the thirty-two major and eighty minor marks: "able to be seen yet intangible, like a rainbow." From the TAM in your heart, eight more TAMs go to the lotus petals, pacify the sixteen fears, and become eight Taras, the first called "Tara who protects against the eight fears." Eight offering goddesses stand on the corners of the platform and four gate goddesses at the doors: in all, the mandala of twenty-one forms of Tara. The deities are bliss and emptiness, like illusions. OM AH HUNG mark the three places; the wisdom deities are invited with DZA HUNG BAM HO and dissolve into the samaya deity. Empowerment deities of the five families confer empowerment, leaving Amitabha on the crown. Eight offering goddesses make offerings and the Royal Tantra of Praises is recited. In more elaborate sadhanas the protection circle and palace are also invited and each part dissolves into its counterpart, which is called "sealing." The empowering nectar fills every inch of the body, and its overflow becomes Amitabha in nirmanakaya attire on your crown. The goddesses' offerings and praises can be repeated "until you get tired of it", which clarifies the whole mandala.
Refresh the vividness from the bottom up and the top down until weary, as Sakya, Chakrasamvara and Mahakala practitioners do. The detail is not decoration: it is the method by which ordinary perception is replaced.
Before reciting, the original tradition is to pause and recall every feature in order: protection circle, pure land, palace, deities, throne, central figure, seed syllable, then back out again; then bottom to top, from the vajra cross through the elements, Meru, palace and throne to the legs, torso and head and Amitabha on the crown, then top to bottom. Do this "in a very serene and unperturbed way" as long as you enjoy it. It belongs to the body aspect and includes vivid features, stable pride and pure symbolism. Some skip it, but "that does not negate the fact that it is meant to be practised in this fashion."
Recitation
The mantra garland circles TAM clockwise, emerald in colour. Light goes out, Taras fill space doing the twelve deeds, and you gain confidence in the four activities, ten great siddhis and supreme Mahamudra, all the self-display of emptiness. A request verse begins "Bhagavati Arya Tara." The retinue mantra guards against eight outer fears (fire, water and so on) and eight inner ones (the five poisons, stinginess, doubt and wrong views).
While reciting, Adeu insists on one point above the rest: nothing in the visualization or recitation is other than the natural expression of the emptiness of your own mind. "You never part from the view" that your nature is cognizant emptiness. After the recitation come offerings, praises, the request for siddhis, taking the nectar of accomplishment, mantras to make up for faults, the departure of the wisdom beings and dissolution into luminous wakefulness, then reemergence as an illusory body of Tara and dedication. In an extended sadhana a front visualization exchanges blessings and light with you, offerings are more lavish, and empowerment is received from the front mandala at the end.
- 1,000,000 recitations of the main mantra.
- 40,000 of the retinue mantra.
- Three weeks of practice to dispel hindrances.
- Complete the full recitation retreat before taking up the condensed daily form.
Retreat and Special Preliminaries
Adeu gives a retreat manual in miniature: when to begin, how to divide the day, what counts as a session, how many recitations are needed, and what signs mean. Then the special preliminaries of the innermost practice: purification and guru yoga.
Sessions and Timing
Begin on a waning moon at the end of the day, and refresh the empowerment first.
| Session | Time | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Dawn | Before sunrise | Full preliminaries |
| Morning | Sunrise to midday | |
| Afternoon | Midday to sunset | Protector petition at its end, not after sunset |
| Dusk | Evening | Can be dropped for three sessions |
Avoid exact midnight, noon, sunrise and sunset, when negative forces roam (the same rule applies to tummo). Fix a number per session. If you become drowsy a quarter through a rosary, restart the rosary; if distracted, restart. Divide each session into thirds: body, speech and mind recitation.
| Third | What you do while reciting |
|---|---|
| Body recitation | Recall the mandala and deity in detail: vivid presence, stable pride, pure symbolism |
| Speech recitation | Imagine what the text describes happening: light rays, siddhis, benefit to beings |
| Mind recitation | Sustain the continuity of original wakefulness, the deity's mind; recite within rigpa |
The count per session is fixed in advance: not more today "because it is interesting" and less tomorrow because you are busy. Sessions within a day may differ, but each day follows the same pattern, as in the Drukpa Kagyü rule for Yamantaka and guru yoga. Restarting a rosary after drowsiness or wandering is, Adeu says, "a skillful instruction" because it keeps you with the practice. If you missed the practice since your empowerment, samayas may be damaged, which is why it is renewed first. The dawn session goes through all the reflections in order; later sessions can go through them quickly or begin at refuge.
Four Aspects of Recitation
The king's and queen's emissaries carry out the four activities.
- Approach, "moon with a garland of stars": rest the mind on the seed syllable with the mantra around it.
- Full approach, "revolving firebrand": the garland spins, like a burning stick swung at night.
- Accomplishment, "the king's messenger": light rays go out; with a couple, the garland passes between the consorts' hearts and mouths.
- Great accomplishment, "a beehive breaking open": all syllables resound at once and deities emanate everywhere, filling the universe.
Time, Number, Sign
- Time: about six months.
- Number: at least 400,000 to 700,000; traditionally syllables × 100,000, multiplied by four in the age of strife (about 4 million).
- Mending: add one tenth; recite the Ali-Kali and Essence of Causation three times, and the hundred-syllable mantra three times.
- Sign: in actuality, vision or dream.
When a sign appears, take the nectar immediately, or a spirit may steal it. Finish with a pacifying fire puja of one tenth. Friends can pool their counts when practising together. The set number cannot be changed during retreat; the fire puja's one-tenth is done after you come out. Signs in dreams may be honoured by taking the nectar the next morning, and doing so many times is "even better."
Special Preliminaries
For the innermost practice, Amoghasiddhi (the guru), green with sword and bell and Samaya Tara on his crown, replaces Vajrasattva for purification: 100,000 recitations and the confession "Protector, through my ignorance." You sit in ordinary form; on your crown, the guru as Amoghasiddhi in union with Samaya Tara, adorned with silks, jewels and bone ornaments. From the HA in his heart, ringed by his mantra, light makes offerings and returns as nectar that fills your body, purifying illness, evil influences, negative karma and obscurations and increasing the wakefulness of great bliss. Recite until the count is done or a sign of purification appears, then he melts into you and you rest in the natural state.
Guru Yoga and Four Empowerments
From AH in the sky the guru appears as green Tara, the single embodiment of the Three Precious Ones. Offer the mandala of 7 or 37 heaps and supplicate "Kye kye Lama Jetsünma" 100 or 1,000 times. The mandala verse offers "the three worlds, vessel and contents, glory and riches, my body, luxuries and all virtues" to the lords of compassion. The supplication means: "Hear me, guru Arya Tara. From my heart I call upon you. Bestow your blessings, dispel obstacles, and give me the four empowerments and all the siddhis."
| Syllable | Place | Empowerment | Purifies | Authorizes | Kaya |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OM white | Forehead | Vase | Body karma | Development stage | Nirmanakaya |
| AH red | Throat | Secret | Voice | Channels and energies | Sambhogakaya |
| HUNG blue | Heart | Wisdom-knowledge | Mind obscurations | Consort path | Dharmakaya |
| All three | Fourth | Defilement of wisdom | Great Perfection | Svabhavikakaya |
The guru dissolves into you and you rest in one taste. Every later yoga in the innermost practice depends on this empowerment, received from a real teacher first and renewed in meditation.
The Initial Yoga
The main part of the innermost practice has four yogas: Initial, Subsequent, Exquisite and Great. The Initial Yoga is the full development stage: three samadhis, a palace, Samaya Tara with her attire and consort, her retinue, and the three qualities that make a visualization authentic.
The Four Yogas
| Yoga | Content |
|---|---|
| Initial | Visualization, recitation, completion |
| Subsequent | The single sphere in the heart |
| Exquisite | Vajra recitation, vase breath, enhancement |
| Great | Nonthought vast as the sky |
Causal and Resultant Samadhis
The suchness samadhi is great emptiness like space; illumination is the compassion of "How incredibly sad!", seen as illusion; the seed is TAM like a rainbow. Then wisdom fire, wind and water burn, blow and flush away ordinary perception. The vajra ground, fence, dome and lattice arise with wisdom fire; DHRUNG becomes the palace; a sun-moon seat; TAM on an utpala. You become Samaya Tara: green, left hand in supreme giving, right in protection holding an utpala at the ear, right leg extended.
These three samadhis were not taught at the lower levels of sadhana; their presence is one of the main differences of Anuttara Yoga. The causal samadhis are the "opening", and the mandala and deities are the resultant practice. The palace is made of five kinds of jewels, its ornaments symbolizing the thirty-seven aspects of the path; moon discs rest on the four cardinal petals and sun discs at the four gates. In the centre, a moon curving upward and a sun below form a closed sphere, into which TAM descends. You appear peacefully smiling, black hair half tied up with a wish-fulfilling jewel, and on your lap is the consort Dorje Tachok, a form of Amoghasiddhi with a slightly wrathful and passionate expression, holding sword and bell.
Attire and Retinue
- Five silks: shawl, red leggings, rainbow skirt and others.
- Eight jewel ornaments: a crown of five jewels, earrings, choker, long necklace, longest to the navel, belt, armlets and bracelets, anklets.
- Hair: in three segments with red bands and a jewel; a bone latticework in two oral traditions.
- Consort: Supreme Vajra Steed.
- Why bone ornaments now: they are left out when Vajrasattva is first taught "to make it easier for beginners", but at this level the deity wears them.
- Retinue: from TAM DHRUNG HRIH HUNG, four Taras (east is Vajra Tara, blue), and four gatekeepers from DZA HUNG BAM HO: Hook (white), Shackle (yellow), Chain (red), Bell (green).
| Retinue Tara | Direction | Colour | Expression | Emblem |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vajra Tara | East | Blue | Peaceful | Blue lotus with vajra |
| Ratna Tara | South | Yellow | Playful | Yellow utpala with jewel |
| Padma Tara | West | Red | Passionate | Red lotus with hook |
| Karma Tara | North | Black | Wrathful | Black utpala with sword |
The four family Taras sit; the four gate Taras dance, one leg straight and one raised, smiling yet wrathful. All carry OM AH HUNG at forehead, throat and heart, indivisible from the three vajras of all buddhas.
Vivid Presence and Stable Pride
The basis for purification is the ordinary world. Visualize from the top of the head to the throne, from outside in or inside out. Do not merely read the words aloud. Bring forth the face, hands, colour, ornaments and expression, then the retinue, palace, pure land and protection circle with its flames. Begin with short periods, many times, and extend them until each feature appears as clearly as a reflection in a clean mirror, where many images can show at once, yet without concrete nature, like the moon in water. Stable pride is the thought, not artificial: "I am in actuality, from the beginning, Samaya Tara, mother who gives birth to all buddhas." It holds whether or not the visualization is clear, and it overcomes clinging to a self based on aggregates, elements or a personal name. Train in it until it becomes totally sincere.
Pure Recollection
| Feature | Meaning |
|---|---|
| One face | One taste of suchness |
| Two arms | Means and knowledge |
| Right leg extended | Not dwelling in passive nirvana |
| Left leg bent | Transcending samsara |
| Green | The all-accomplishing family |
| Supreme giving / protection | Siddhi / fearlessness |
| Silks / jewels | Freed from emotions / wisdoms without rejecting sense pleasures |
| Six bone ornaments | Six paramitas |
| Four goddesses / gate Taras | Four wisdoms / four activities |
| Palace / vajra enclosure | 37 factors of enlightenment / uninterrupted by thoughts |
| Outer fire | Habitual tendencies defeated |
| Union with consort | Means as great bliss, indivisible from unchanging wisdom |
If you cannot recall every feature, the oral tradition says at least remember their meaning one by one, then gather it all into one attitude: the whole mandala is the dharmakaya wisdom of all buddhas, appearing out of wondrous compassion. For a beginner, that devotion "will suffice as a resemblance" of true pure recollection.
Adeu warns against thinking the deity is "something better" than you, which would just be new clinging. True purity is "my empty mind appears as the deity." It matches the Heart Sutra: "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form." He also names four measures of clarity and four of stability, standards that only a teacher can check in a student.
Recitation and Completion
"Fan the fire-like development stage with the wind-like recitation." Five kinds: body (Samaya Tara, then Vajra Varahi as wisdom being with curved knife and skull, then TAM as samadhi being) purifies; speech showers blessings; mind incites great bliss, the mantra moving through the consorts' mouths like a firebrand; qualities fill the mandala with replicas like dust motes in a sunbeam; activity sends four colours to pacify the eight and sixteen fears. Completion dissolves everything outer to inner, to bindu, to nada, dispelling the view of permanence.
| Recitation | Purpose | Count |
|---|---|---|
| Body | Purifies defilements, like sunrise on crystal | 100,000 |
| Speech | Showers down blessings | 100,000 |
| Mind | Incites great bliss | 100,000 |
| Qualities | Perfects the mandala | 400,000 |
| Activity | Fulfils the four activities | 40,000 |
The mantra deity arises from recitation, and the wisdom deity results from accomplishing the mantra. In the dissolution, the universe dissolves into the flames, the enclosure, the palace, the retinue, then the consort into Tara, Tara from the extremities inward to TAM, TAM from the bottom up to the subtle nada, and that into luminous wakefulness. Then you reappear in an instant as the illusory deity, and all sights, sounds and thoughts are the play of the three mandalas of body, speech and mind.
Later Yogas, Conclusion, Appendix
The last three yogas move from visualization to the subtle body to nothing at all. Kongtrül's conclusion explains why he wrote, and the appendix gives Tara's life story and the twenty-one Taras who protect against specific harms.
Subsequent Yoga
A tantra says: "Abiding always in your heart is a changeless single sphere." With AH and HUNG at the two ends of the central channel, visualize a sphere of five pure essences, the size of a mustard seed or a pea. Then drop the shape and rest. This yoga is for someone who already has vivid presence in the Initial Yoga. Sit in vajra posture with fists on the thighs, bind the five sense faculties, and keep attention exclusively on the sphere in the heart, the centre of the dharmachakra. Signs of progress, starting with the smoke-like sign, appear one after another. Then remain without accepting or rejecting, without hope or fear, without any mental activity, for as long as you can.
Exquisite Yoga
This involves counted vajra recitation, the four-part vase breath, the four chakras, and the path of the consort. Adeu is explicit: today the usual way is with your own body, visualizing the consort. Practice with another's body comes only after stability, and only if the consort is qualified and has been taught. If warmth is lacking, tummo serves as enhancement; the signs are bliss, warmth and nonthought. Before any of it, Adeu requires stability in the earlier samadhis and some experience of original wakefulness; the wind practices exist to make channels and winds pliable. The tantras' intent is that the threefold wisdom of bliss, warmth and nonthought ripens into the unity of the three kayas.
The subtle-body and consort practices are among the most restricted in Vajrayana. The book describes them only in outline, and both commentators require empowerment, instruction and stability first. A summary like this one is no permission to attempt them.
Great Yoga
Recite HUNG, rest in nonthought vast as the sky, beyond centre and edge, and drop the prana. This is "the fourth part without the three", the original ground of liberation, where the root text's self-existing awareness merges with basic space.
Kongtrül's Conclusion
Kongtrül compares the teaching to a casket of gems and a wish-fulfilling jewel on a victory banner. He received it from Dorje Ziji Tsal (Khyentse) with a statue indivisible from Tara, waited, and wrote it at age 78 at medium length.
Kongtrül calls the whole sequence the gradual path that perfects the four empowerments. With devotion, perseverance and pure samaya, the indicating example wisdom leads before long to the indicated ultimate wisdom of intrinsic great bliss. Tara is discriminating wisdom and the heroine who swiftly carries out the activities of all buddhas, perfecting the twenty-five attributes of fruition, five each for body, speech, mind, qualities and activities. He delayed because the root text joins sutra and tantra in very concise words: a full explanation would be too long, a brief one hardly useful. He wrote at the retreat Dzongshö Deshek Düpa, signing as "the old kusulu Lodrö Taye."
The Appendix
In a past eon, in the world Myriad Lights, the princess Wisdom Moon formed the resolve for enlightenment before the buddha Drum Thunder, vowing to work for beings in a woman's form until samsara is emptied. She came to liberate a hundred billion beings in a day and was named Arya Tara, the Sublime Savioress. Later she vowed before Amoghasiddhi to protect beings from fear, and acted as Avalokiteshvara's wisdom. Because she is the activity of all buddhas in one form, her blessings are said to be swifter than any other deity's.
Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo's list of Tara's forms pairs outer dangers with inner emotions:
| Tara | Outer harm | Inner cause |
|---|---|---|
| White Pacifying | Decline, sickness, curses | Conceptual thinking |
| Earth (Vajra Tara) | Earthquake, avalanche | Pride |
| Water (Red) | Flood, drowning | Desire |
| Fire | Wildfire, arson | Anger |
| Wind | Storms | Jealousy |
| Yellow Enriching | Poverty of wealth and intelligence | |
| Weapons, tyrants, bandits | War, prison, robbery | Anger, conceit, greed |
| Elephants, lions, snakes | Fierce and poisonous animals | Arrogance, craving, wrong views |
| Death, poverty, failure | Lost livelihood, failed projects | Miserliness, worry, indecision |
Adeu Rinpoche recommends Taranatha's detailed biography of Tara for readers who want the full story of her resolve, incarnations and awakening.
Master Takeaways
Skillful Grace shows a single deity carrying the whole Buddhist path, from counting the odds of a human birth to resting in basic space. These are the points that last.
Twenty Takeaways
- One Tara practice can hold all nine vehicles.
- Excellent, excellent, excellent: beginning, middle and end.
- Her form is Sangha, speech Dharma, mind Buddha.
- Instantaneous and gradual students need different books; this one has both.
- Enlightenment is neither male nor female, and Tara chose a female form anyway.
- Supplication, devotion, blessings, realization: Adeu's chain.
- A facsimile of devotion each session grows into the real thing.
- A house on a frozen lake sinks in spring: build foundations.
- Higher beings are dust on a thumbnail; do not waste the body.
- Circumstances for death are many, for life few.
- You do not meet what you have not created.
- Samsara is a needle's tip: no comfortable position.
- Discipline, samadhi, insight: ground, stem, fruit.
- Love starts with one mother and widens to all.
- Check your compassion instead of assuming it.
- Insight has eyes; the other paramitas are blind without it.
- Body straight, channels straight, mind natural.
- The waterfall of thoughts is the first sign of progress.
- Concrete is an ox; inconcrete is more foolish.
- Fan the fire of development with the wind of recitation.
- My empty mind appears as the deity: not something better.
- Whatever moves is thought; what is immovable is rigpa.
Frameworks in the Text
| Framework | Content | Chapter |
|---|---|---|
| Three excellences | Renunciation, Mahayana, Mantra | 2 |
| Three lengths of the cycle | Extensive, Zabtik Drölma, Threefold Excellence | 1 |
| Three spheres | Forehead, heart, navel | 3, 11 |
| Three samadhis | Suchness, illumination, seed | 4, 15 |
| Vivid presence, stable pride, pure recollection | Qualities of the deity | 4, 15 |
| Four contemplations | Freedoms, impermanence, suffering, karma | 6–7 |
| Four laws of karma | Certain, growing, not lost, not met | 7 |
| Six paramitas and four means | Self and others | 10 |
| Sevenfold posture | Vairochana | 11 |
| Three inquiries | Objects, mind, nature | 12 |
| Approach, accomplishment, innermost | Three layers of mantra | 13 |
| Time, number, sign | Measures of retreat | 14 |
| Four empowerments | Vase, secret, wisdom, fourth | 14 |
| Four yogas | Initial, Subsequent, Exquisite, Great | 15–16 |
| Twenty-one Taras | Outer harms, inner emotions | 16 |
Skillful Grace is two books in one cover. The first two excellences, renunciation, compassion, shamatha and vipashyana, are open to any reader and can be tested in ordinary practice. The third excellence is a liturgical commentary for initiates, full of numbers, syllables and subtle-body practices that make sense only with the Zabtik Drölma texts and empowerment. The tradition's literal claims about hells, siddhis and protection from lightning are given without argument. The structure, though, is the book's lasting gift: a clear view of how sutra and tantra fit into one daily session.
Who's Who
| Name | Role |
|---|---|
| Arya Tara | The deity; female buddha of activity |
| Chokgyur Lingpa | Tertön of Threefold Excellence and Zabtik Drölma |
| Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo | Owner of the cycle; author on the twenty-one Taras |
| Jamgön Kongtrül | Author of the commentary Adeu draws on |
| Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche | Author of the Overview |
| Trulshik Adeu Rinpoche | Author of the long commentary |
| Samten Gyatso | Tulku Urgyen's uncle; Adeu's teacher; five mandalas |
| Marcia Binder Schmidt | Compiler; introduction |
| Erik Pema Kunsang | Translator; preface |
| Tara Bennett-Goleman | Foreword |
| Fifteenth Karmapa | Description of Tara |
| Taranatha | Biographer of Tara |
| Shantideva, Nagarjuna, Atisha, Saraha | Quoted authorities |
Connect It
Repeating the Words of the Buddha gives Tulku Urgyen's version of the four mind changings for a general audience, and Vajra Heart shows the same three samadhis and recitation intents applied to the Barchey Künsel sadhana. Vajra Speech has his short form of "not one, not many".