What is Vajrayana? The question is often asked by new students.
Many different types of meditation, practice, and service are offered at Emaho to suit the tendencies of different types of sentient beings to engage in spiritual practice. Among these, Vajrayana represents the direct transmission of the most profound teachings of the Buddha.
The Vajrayana tradition, based on Tantra, includes mantras and deity visualizations. Because Emaho is fortunate to have Rinpoche, a qualified lineage master, at its head, we are extremely fortunate to be able to offer the rare teachings of the Vajrayana.
The Vajrayana Path
Of the three paths to enlightenment taught by the Buddha – the Vinayana (or Theravada), the Mahayana, and the Vajrayana – the Vajrayana is the considered to be most direct path to enlightenment. Based on the idea that we all already possess Buddha-nature in ourselves, and that enlightenment is simply the recognition of our true nature, Vajrayana is known as the vehicle of result.
The practices of Vajrayana transform our day-to-day experience, which is often full of confusion and negativity, into the clarity and wisdom of an enlightened being. Engaging in these practices makes it possible to achieve enlightenment in a single lifetime. Vajrayana is unique in its presentation of all opposites as the union of Emptiness/Bliss and rare in its optimism of our becoming enlightened in this one lifetime.
Empowerment
Vajrayana is based on the transmission of the practice from a qualified Tantric master, one who is part of a lineage of transmission that stems from the time of Buddha. The transmission ritual, or empowerment, is a ceremony in which the teacher instructs the student in the right way to do the practice and gives permission to continue the practice regularly.
Rinpoche offers empowerments into various classes of Tantra. Meditations on deities such as Green Tara and Manjushri are held at the center on appropriate days of the lunar cycle. Some of the meditations are open to everyone while others are only open to those who have received the empowerment.
Deity Practices at Emaho
Medicine Buddha Meditation
Everyone is welcome.
"We all have healing, loving, wisdom, and compassion aspects. Each aspect is shown as a deity. These deities are our own aspects," ZaChoeje Rinpoche. With the Medicine Buddha meditation we invoke our own healing power and increase our self confidence so that we can bring healing to ourselves and others.
Green Tara Meditation
Everyone is welcome.
Green Tara is a feminine emanation of enlightened compassion whose activity of fearless wisdom alleviates fear and obstacles that create peril both in a worldly and spiritual sense. Identifying with Green Tara’s extraordinary qualities of transcendent wisdom, omniscient awareness, fearlessness, and love and compassion allows our own aspects of these innate qualities to arise. By practicing Green Tara and learning to evoke these extraordinary qualities within ourselves, many of the obstacles we have created by being afraid and closed melt away. We learn to live happier and fuller lives to benefit ourselves and others.
Manjushri Meditation
Everyone is welcome.
Manjushri represents Buddha's infinite wisdom: the embodiment of all the Buddha's wisdom identified with penetrating insight into the nature of reality and interdependent origination. The great power of the wisdom aspect of the mind's inherent clarity can rescue us from confusion. Identifying with Manjushri's aspects of transcendental wisdom can be used to free ourselves from suffering and the causes of suffering. Invoking the deity Manjushri and accomplishing the related practices produces the relative benefits of sharpened intelligence, and, ultimately, enlightenment.
Chenresig Meditation
Everyone is welcome.
Chenresig is the bodhisattva of great compassion. At the core of compassion is the knowledge of the inseparability of all things. With this understanding we know harm to others brings harm to all, kindness to others fosters kindness, and generosity allows for abundance. Identifying with Chenresig’s extraordinary qualities of love and compassion we allow our own aspects of compassion to arise. By practicing Chenresig we learn to untangle our selves from the greed and aggression that hinder us from reaching our true potential. By identifying with the compassionate aspects of Chenresig we are able to evoke empathy and compassion from which all virtues arise. Chenresig’s mantra, Om mani padme hum, removes our selfish attitudes and invokes the spirit of universal compassion for all sentient beings. Through this practice we are able to live happier and fuller lives to benefit ourselves and others.
Yamantaka Meditation
Open to those who have had the empowerment from ZaChoeje Rinpoche or another lineage master.
Yamantaka belongs to the highest class of Yoga Tantra. The practice of Yamantaka is specifically a practice to help us overcome and transform the delusion of anger. As a wrathful enlightened figure Yamantaka, the Diamond Terrifier, is the wrathful enlightened form of Manjushri. Wrathful meditation practice is a powerful and skillful means to transform destructive habitual patterns. Yamantaka represents the insight that fully understands the changing character of all impermanent phenomena as well as their emptiness nature.