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Let everything dissolve in vast, open space.

Simply rest in the view, at ease and precisely as is.

Let the sound of the seed mantra Ah resound itself away

into nothingness,

both within and without.

Rest

in the utter silence and simplicity

of the natural state

of just being. If thoughts arise, chant a few lengthy Ahs, following the out-breath. Dissolve a little more each time.

Then again rest in spacious openness and clarity. Alternate this dissolving and resting, at your own pace, in your own natural way.

Dissolving. Resting,

Dissolving. Resting,

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Aha! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh …

VISUALIZATION AND

CONCENTRATION

Many people are drawn to Tibetan Buddhism by its colorful esoteric iconography and the creative visualization practices associated with it. Visualization is a powerful and profound way to use the mind and its brilliant beacon light of awareness. These practices help us transcend our limited self-concepts and identity. We learn to transform ourselves into Buddhas and Bodhisattvas living in the most splendid Buddha world mandala that we could ever imagine. We thereby loosen up the hold our own karmically conditioned, present-lifetime world has over us.

Through visualization practice we see how we continuously project—every single day—the current visualization or self-concepts we maintain of ourselves and our experiences. This practice helps us develop a greater perspective on how we could just as easily reshape our perceptions and our entire life in any number of fulfilling and meaningful ways. Visualization helps us learn that we are not necessarily stuck with who or what we think we are; we could be almost anyone or anything. Therefore, why not exercise our power of choice and the intrinsic wisdom of awareness by manifesting oneself as a radiant, empowering, and protective female Buddha Tara, or as a gentle forgiving Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of love and compassion? Wouldn’t this prove far more satisfying than any negative self-images we may currently hold?

These visualizations are primarily meditations on identity and its transformation—how we create ourselves and our self-image; how we create and recreate our karma and our world. In this way we see how we can achieve mastery over forms and experience instead of feeling like victims subject to circumstances and conditions beyond our control.

Tantric practices involving visualized meditation deities and primordial archetypes remain one of the least-understood aspects of the rich world of Himalayan spiritual practice. They also represent one of the most recondite facets of the Buddhist culture of awakening. Many Westerners have found it difficult, if not impossible, to understand and master these complex techniques that involve constructing and holding an image in one’s mind with one-pointed attention. Sometimes practitioners spend long hours studying these techniques only to find that the inner principles and deeper meaning elude them; then they return to simpler, more basic, and fundamentally conprehensible practices such as breathing, mindfulness meditation, and various forms of self-inquiry.

Actually, it is less important to be able to visualize or graphically imagine the forms and attributes of the deity than it is to viscerally “feel” the presence of the invoked meditational deity, embodying the universal qualities we are learning to cultivate. There are no deities per se in Buddhism. Instead these numinous forms are archetypes embodying the most noble and sublime qualities we can aspire to achieve—mere personifications of spiritual principles like wisdom, compassion, healing power, and so on. People often ask me if these deities exist outside and independent of our own minds. One might just as well wonder whether we too exist in such a way. As I often reply, they are as real, or unreal, as we are.

Two Meditations

CANDLE-FLAME

CONCENTRATION/VISUALIZATION

MEDITATION

This candle-flame meditation helps us look beyond the separation between inside and outside. While doing it we see how easy it is to retain