Deity Yoga - Yidam (1/3)

 

What is deity yoga in Vajrayana Buddhism? 

Deity yoga is a practice found in Tibetan Buddhism involving visualisations that have the normative goal of “becoming one” with a supernatural being. During the practice, practitioners report experiencing that their own body transforms into the body of the deity.

Deity yoga engages creative visualisation as a skillful means of personal transformation through which the practitioner (sadhaka) visualises a chosen deity (Yidam) as part of a mandala or refuge tree in order to transform their experience of the appearance aspect of reality. 

The fundamental practice of Vajrayana and Tibetan tantra is deity yoga (devatayoga), meditation on a chosen deity or "cherished divinity" (Tibetan: Yidam), which involves the recitation of mantras, prayers, and visualisation of the deity, the associated mandala of the deity's Buddha field, along with consorts and attendant Buddhas and bodhisattvas. According to the Tibetan scholars, deity yoga is what separates Tantra from Sutra practice. 

In the Unsurpassed Yoga Tantras, the most widespread tantric form in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, this method is divided into two stages: 

In Vajrayana, there appear to be many different types and stages of mediation as well. One form is called "generation stage meditation,"  also known as utpattikrama. What exactly is "generation stage meditation" and how is it practiced?

1) The generation stage (utpatti-krama) 

In the generation stage, one dissolves one's reality into emptiness and meditates on the deity-mandala, resulting in identification with this divine reality. 

What is the generation stage in Vajrayana Buddhism?

The generation stage or creation phase (Tibetan : bskyed rim) (Sanskrit : utpatti-krama), also known as "the phase of imagination" and "the yoga of fabrications," the first phase of tantric deity yoga in the Unsurpassed Yoga Tantra of the later schools of Tibetan Buddhism. It also equates to the Mahayoga of the Nyingma school.

2) The completion stage (nispanna-krama).

In the completion stage, the divine image and the subtle body are applied to the realisation of luminous emptiness.

What is the completion stage in Vajrayana Buddhism?

The completion stage Then look directly at the meditating mind. All that is meditated upon will vanish into emptiness. The second part, the completion stage, is as follows: by looking directly at the mind that is meditating, all that was previously visualized dissolves into emptiness.

What is the completion stage with marks?

Completion stage with marks' means yogic practices such as tummo, inner heat.

What is the completion stage without marks?

The completion stage without marks' is the practice of Dzogchen and Mahamudra.

*Footnote

For those who have received the empowerment of this Tantric practise, you are reminded not to intentionally or unintentionally disclose the mantra to the public or anyone who may not have the empowerment or permission to practise, and disclosing the mantra intentionally or unintentionally is a form of breaking your Tantric Samaya vows to the lineage masters and Dharma protectors.

Please consult your Guru or a qualified lineage master for Vajrayana practise! Should a devotee even want to start studying and contemplating the Vajrayana practise, then it is truly necessary to first have completed the preliminaries and to be certain that Bodhicitta has arisen and developed in one’s mind. 

Vajrayana features countless skillful and powerful methods that, if practised in the proper way, can make the process of accumulation and purification incredibly swift and direct. It is absolutely necessary to have pure motivation and to know that Vajrayana practise is not carried out to increase one’s own ego, power, or self-interest.  

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Aspiration For Bodhichitta

For those in whom the precious Bodhichitta has not arisen

May it arise and not decrease.

But increase further and further.

 

Dedication of Merit

By this merit, may we then obtain omniscience then.

Having defeated the enemies wrongdoings

May we liberate migratory from the ocean of existence.

With its stormy waves of birth, old age, sickness, and death.

 

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