Quest Magazine

Yoga Tantra, Paths to Magical Feats

By His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Dzong-ka-ba, and Jeffrey Hopkins
Trans. by Jeffrey Hopkins, co-ed. by Kevin A. Vose and Steven N. Weinberger
Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 2005. Paperback, 181 pages.

Tantric literature, like alchemical arid Hermetic, is usually arcane, obscure, and almost impossible for the uninitiated to read. This is because it is not meant for the average reader, but is a cryptic guide to be understood only when there is a guru, one in the know, to initiate and lead you through it. Hence, I approached this book on yoga tantra with some hesitation. My fears were immediately magnified when I discovered that this volume is the third in a series published by Snow Lion Publications that presents The Stages of the Path to a Conqueror and Pervasive Master, a Great Vajradhara: Revealing All Secret Topics, a major work by Dzong-ka-ba, the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century founder of the Geluk school of Tibetan Buddhism. This particular book contains a translation of Dzong-ka-ba's Great Exposition of Secret Mantra: Yoga Tantra. In other words, this work is not really self-contained. It would be, I thought, like trying to read the last section of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason without the benefit of what went before.

Moreover, according to the author Jeffrey Hopkins, this work constantly refers to and subtly reinterprets a number of earlier Indian Tantricists such as Varabodhi, Buddhaguhya, and Anandagarbha as well as the Tibetan Budon; none of whose writings I have easy access to. How could one possibly offermuch insight or evaluation with obstacles such as these?

It was with some pleasure, then, that I discovered that most of my fears were misguided and that the work is not really a whirlwind of obscurity after all. In large part, this is due to both Jeffrey Hopkins, a well-known Tibetan Buddhist expert, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama who offers very clear and readable interpretations of the text. If the main text is read first, though somewhat awkwardly translated at times, it seems reasonably clear and comprehensible.

In effect, Dzong-ka-bas work is a meditation guide. In typical tantric fashion the emphasis is upon the visualization of "deities" or rather Buddhas such as Vairocana who is to be seen as first sitting before you and then eventually as you. Along with the visualization go mudras i.e., hand gestures, that are not only described but also pictured in the text. With the deity visualization goes the equally important visualization of emptiness. All of the steps in this very complicated process are summarized very clearly by Jeffrey Hopkins at the very end of the book.

There is, of course, a great chasm between reading about the process and actually doing what is described. No matter how clear Hopkins and the Dalai Lama are in their descriptions, one must certainly have a guru to adopt the yogic discipline. Whether it is even possible for a twenty-first century American to undertake this process successfully is an open question. Our own world view may preclude the possibility of developing the faith such a yoga demands.

Certainly those of us standing outside will have special difficulty with the magical feats-finding buried treasure, walking on water, flying through the air, etc-which the author promises that the successful tantricist will accomplish. Are these "symbolic" achievements that intimate inner transformations or did Dzong-ka-ba believe that such miracles could actually be performed? To what extent has inner visualization simply replaced good, old-fashioned reality?

No matter what one's attitude toward these feats, most readers will find this an interesting, even compelling book. At the very least it offers a glimpse into a worldview and a spirituality so foreign to modern America that it can jolt and awaken one. For those intent to follow the Path, it may provide a much needed intimation of a way to the highest and deepest levels of enlightenment.

-JAY G. WILLIAMS

July/August 2007

Kindness, Clarity and Insight, the 25th Anniversary Edition

By the Dalai Lama
Snow Lion, Hardback, $19.95, 261 pages.

Although today books on Buddhism by the Dalai Lama can be found in most bookstores throughout the Western world, and several of his titles have even hit the New York Times Bestseller List, his success as a literary figure came slowly. His first title, The Opening of the Third Eye, was published by Quest Books in the early 1960s. Nothing more was to appear from him for almost two decades, when in 1981 Snow Lion in Ithaca, NY, published Kindness, Clarity and Insight, a collection of essays drawn up from his public lectures during his first two tours of North America.
The essays themselves are brilliant, and that 1981 edition went a long way in making the Dalai Lama a household name in America. It introduced the Dalai Lama as the humble Buddhist monk and spiritual teacher that he is, taking the gentle flow of his spoken words to a living audience and molding them into a captivating and inspiring work. For those who thought that the art of essay writing is dead, here is proof that it is alive and well.

The individual essays deal with the fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism, and each has a title reflecting its focus: "The Luminous Nature of Mind," "The Four Noble Truths," "The Medicine of Wisdom and Compassion," "Altruism and the Six Perfections," and so forth. The Dalai Lama treats each subject in depth, and with the basic simplicity that has become the hallmark of his teaching style.

Prof. Jeffrey Hopkins, who was the translator of the oral discourses, along with the editors at Snow Lion who wove the tread of oral teachings into a coherent literary volume, did a wonderful job twenty-five years ago in bringing the Dalai Lama to a modern reading audience. This new edition, however, is not merely a reprint of the old book, which has been out of print for some years. Editorial and printing improvements lift it far above what it had been. Kindness, Clarity and Insight was one of Snow Lion's first titles, and that small but dedicated publishing house has come a long way since that time.

Jeffrey Hopkins' Preface to the new edition does make one claim that strikes me as a bit off. The Dalai Lama first visited the United States in 1979. The rumor for this tardy entrance was that he could not get a visa. Hopkins tells the story of a meeting that he and the Dalai Lama's representative in New York had with Joel McCleary, an advisor to President Jimmy Carter and an old friend and student of Prof. Robert Thurman. Jeffrey suggests that this meeting was the reason the Dalai Lama finally was issued his first American visa.

In 1977, the Dalai Lama returned to Dharamsala from a visit to Europe. I was asked to edit some of his lectures from the tour for a pamphlet to be published by the Tibetan Library in Dharamsala. During the course of the work, I asked someone in his Private Office why he made so many visits to Europe, but none to America.

"He can't get an American visa," was the reply, which struck me as rather odd, in that all kinds of world leaders visit America regularly. Although there is no doubt that Joel did meet with Hopkins and the Dalai Lama's representative in New York, that meeting was not especially relevant to the visa problem. The solution of the Dalai Lama's visa quandary came from another direction altogether, and required no such high level interference. And that would be a story for another book.

Darkness Visible: Awakening Spiritual Light through Darkness Meditation

By Ross Heaven and Simon Buxton
Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 2005
Paperback, 168 pages.

Early in this fine text, Simon Buxton and Ross Heaven recall the myth of Icarus. They remark:

We might sum up the moral of this tale in this way: "Too much light and your wings may be lost." Yet within the religious traditions of many denominations there is often a largely unbalanced emphasis on embracing light and following a sole trajectory of ascension.

Or, in the lyrics of Buddhist punk musician Stuart Davis: "All ascenders end up sinking... Makes love wonder what fear's thinking ..." ("Easter";What 2006). How many of us have embarked on spiritual paths which point us only toward increasing light, and paint darkness as an image of evil , or more politely, the non-integrated parts of ourselves?

Yet, trees cannot reach upward without deep roots to anchor them, and most spiritual traditions know this. Jesus was buried in the silence of the earth before the resurrection. The Masonic initiate is symbolically killed and buried. However, darkness is not only an initiatory death from which one will rise, but a potent point of entry into divine consciousness which can become an enduring aspect of a balanced spiritual life.

The importance of the mysteries of darkness, death, and the underworld came to the fore in the 1970s with important books such as The Dream and the Underworld by James Hillman, and The Underworld Initiation by R. J. Stewart. More recent times have brought further contributions including Peter Kingsley's revolutionary In the Dark Places of Wisdom, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams' A Ray of Darkness, and esoteric visionary Josephine Dunne's teachings on the Void beyond being and non-being.

Buxton and Heaven write for a more popular audience, and provide a wealth of helpful practices to initiate the newcomer into forms of darkness meditation and related inner work. The book includes many comments and stories from participants in their "Darkness Visible" workshops. This work is weighted toward the psychological effects of working with darkness (in the case of their workshops, spending several days in total darkness, including a burial in the earth), with a personal and emotional tone which is helpful in an introductory work. But, as the authors make clear, as one journeys deeper into the Void, the dark, pure potential, all personal aspects drop away, and one is left simply in Mystery.

-JOHN PLUMMER

May/June 2007

Chartres: Sacred Geometry, Sacred Space

Gordon Strachan 
Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.: Floris Books, 2003. Paperback, $30.00, 111 pages.

Among the many great religious buildings in the world, Chartres Cathedral ranks among the most analyzed and most interpreted. Gordon Strachan joins a host of other professional and amateur writers who try to make sense out of the many mysteries contained in this great Gothic edifice in his book Chartres: Sacred Geometry, Sacred Space.

Unlike Adolf Katzenellenbogen, (The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral, 1959) Strachan does not attempt to describe or interpret the symbolism surrounding the portals of Chartres. He also says little about the famous stained glass windows or about the history of the construction of the church. One is never told, for instance, that while most of the building was built between 1194 and 1220, the north tower was not completed until the sixteenth century. He does not describe what Hans Jonas (High Gothic, 1957) thought was essential for the invention of the Gothic style: the heightened columns of the nave so that there is no gallery above the arcade.

Instead, what Strachen does emphasize is the probable borrowing of the pointed arch from the Muslims. His theory is that the Templars were influenced directly by Sufis in Jerusalem and brought back to Europe aspects of both Islamic mysticism and architecture. Along with the pointed arch, they also imported an emphasis upon geometric proportion to replace the arithmetical proportions of the Romanesque as a way of emphasizing symbolically the mystery of God's transcendence.

In the last chapters, the author turns to the influence of the Christian mystical tradition, as embodied in Dionysius the Areopagite (in his first, third, and fifth century forms) upon the aura and message of Gothic architecture.

This work is relatively brief and clearly written for the general reader and what the author says may be largely true. It is difficult, however, to demonstrate with any degree of assurance that the Templars were ever influenced by Sufis (can we, for instance, name one Sufi who lived in Jerusalem while the Templars were there?) or that the French architects could not have invented the pointed arch on their own. The borrowing of "geometrical proportions" seems perhaps more convincing, though there are, as the authors acknowledges, reputable scholars who cast doubts upon the whole matter. Louis Charpentier, (The Mysteries of Chartres Cathedral, 1975) who also explores the same structure, shows how a wholly different reading of proportions can be developed.

So, like most other books about Chartres, this one is very speculative and by no means definitive. Still it is an interesting, even absorbing, study that, for those interested in Gothic churches, sacred mathematics, or Christian mysticism, deserves a place on the bookshelf. Although I remain unconvinced about many details, I find it a very provocative book.

Jay G. Williams
Hamilton College