The Art of Sounding and Chanting – Sacred Sādhana Study Workshop
O diamond warrior, purify my karma, meet me as we transcend time and space. Honour my potential, and bless me with your purifying, glistening healing nectar of white light. Restores us to our true home and our true nature.
Radiance. Shunyata. White Fire.
An experience of coming home so pure and true as to echo through eternity. Dynamite vajra prince, smash my selfishness asunder, heal me of my greed and my foolishness. Hero fight by my side as I face down all demons. Lend me your gaze of white fire. Let me sit with you in boundless pure light.
Great Protector, Love me passionately. May your diamond blaze melt all that stands between me and the truth. I dissolve into you, bond sealed across space and time.
Vajrasattva nature pure like the sun, shining scintillating rainbows through the universal fields, helping lotuses everywhere grow and bloom.
Let us stand nowhere, striving side by side beyond space and time to release all beings from their suffering, so that all that lives may be free.
Although this is a Buddhist practice (both a Vajrayana sadhana to be precise, or a foundation yoga in various Tibetan systems of meditation) if you are reading this and are in recovery or of a different faith, you could try this practice by switching Vajrasattva for a Higher Power, God, or Spirit, or whatever spiritual beings you are attracted to. I wrote last year about Vajrasattva and the steps .
The key element is to get in touch with our innate purity, and visualise white healing light dissolving or smashing out all of your imperfections, all your defects, all resentments, hurts, hates, jealousies, pride, and so on. There is the possibility of entreating Vajrasattva, or God if you believe, to help you in this, to remove all that would obstruct you from being a pure hearted servant of life, to clear away all that would obstruct your bright heart of loving kindness.
Thus, this practice is a perfect prayer for many of the twelve steps, or for general healing work. There are aspects to suit any stage of the path. Whether you are starting out in the process of forgiving and loving yourself, or are decades in and struggling with various personal demons or defects, I would suggest this beautiful practice will be of immeasurable benefit.
I forget, sometimes, how beautiful, how stirring, how wonderful that connecting with one’s highest aspirations can be. Direct experience of the vow to serve others, the wish to liberate all life, can transport the meditator to purity, to bliss, to ecstatic tears.
One feels so beautiful, or so in touch with Beauty, in an aspiration so fresh, innocent, tender, perhaps nascent, as one is ready to dissolve into the boundless realms of love. The vow to serve life, to give, to cultivate wisdom and compassion so that one may further benefit others, is profoundly moving, childlike in its innocence, perfect as a reason for being in this world.
Although purification is not Vajrasattva’s only power, or attribute, it is one of the ones for which he is best known. So his practice and mantra are a part of the foundation yogas of tibetan buddhism, for purification of ethics and motives are very important. Without this kind of positive resolve, near perfect ethics, and pure intent, genuine spiritual attainment is very difficult.
So it doesn’t matter if you are in a dark place or are experiencing a degree of brightness in your life right now, this meditation will always be of benefit, until of course, you are Vajrasattva, but whether or not this might happen in this lifetime is determined only by you.
It is too easy to be sceptical, to think oneself beyond such fluff, one’s constructed identity may not like it, but who and what you think you are is almost undoubtedly merely a construction, a structure by which you relate to the world. Allow it to crumble and fall, leaving you free to open, to blossom and grow, let your lotus emerge from the mud.
In many ways it doesn’t matter if you believe that the power in this practice is an externally existent entity, a God, a Buddha, or merely an aspect of your own psyche like a higher self or soul – all you have to do is conceive of something higher than your everyday stained consciousness (stained by desire/aversion/delusion – stained by the centrality of self)
Reciting the is a way of visualising your innate purity, seeing the gap between your present self and primordial nature, and invoking Vajrasattva to help you close that gap. First he stands beside you, protector, then fiercely loving and blessing you as you become more and more in touch with his energy. As you are united with your highest self, with your bright unstained nature beyond space and time, you are bonded.
Either before you sit or once settled, recollect where you do lack, frankly assess your spiritual condition, and the faults you exhibit, the sufferings you cause self and other. If you are in recovery, the chances are there may be any of the following karma’s to purify: anger, shame, guilt, resentment, self-pity, self-centredness, conceit, self-hatred, craving, hatred, anxiety, delusions, or depression. There are always levels of ego, always unskilful elements in one’s life or behaviour, in one’s relationships there is always room for improvement.
It may be that you wish to work on a defect of character, a demon, a habit which you cannot seem to rise above. Invoking Vajrasattva is to summon a transcendental diamond hero to fight by your side, to help you rise, to help you along, to help you back to purity. There is no demon or defect he cannot purify. His purifying fire descends into all chakras, opening channels of connection, healing wounds and imperfections, absolving us of any negative karma.
Although we may have become impure, although we may have learned bad habits or wrong views, in a sense Vajrasattva represents the part of us so elevated as to be untouched by sin and world. In a sense, the transcendental is above and beyond any fault we might inherit or learn or commit. In a sense, by practising, we are taking flight to that dimension.
As we meditate, as we work to purify our body speech and mind, we are making progress back to the highest realm of reality, that represented by Buddhas and bodhisattvas, that to which we are both separate and not separate.
So we acknowledge our shortcomings, and the more we can bring to the table the more that this practise will integrate and absorb. The more of us, the darker reaches of our consciousness and unconscious, will gradually be brought under the white fire of Vajrasattvas purifying love. There is nothing that cannot be transformed and made bright by that love.
The Meditation Practice
So to start with, it is good to sit quietly, to be in your whole body, calming gently with the breath, and establishing a positive intention.
Then we allow all to dissolve into a blue sky, the infinite clarity of empty space. Freedom stretches in all directions, chains of hope and fear all vanish into the bright blue. In that boundless sky, that limitless living awareness, anything can happen.
Then, above our heads, a warm light slowly becomes a dazzling light, like sunshine on snow, slowly brightening into glistening perfection. There sits Vajrasattva on a lotus and a moon mat, all crystalline and light. He holds the vajra, made of light, made of mind. In his other hand he holds the vajra bell, and his body is surrounded by the rainbow aura of the five buddhas. He is the complete embodiment of their wisdoms. His smile transforms our universe.
We regret our faults and our actions, we regret the harms done and the suffering caused to self and other. We lay this before the beauty and strength of Vajrasattva, which is at once our very own. We confess, we ask for help to evolve.
At his heart, the seed syllable hum sits on its own lotus throne, surrounded by the hundred syllable mantra. On this hum, drops of bright nectar gather and begin to fall into us, quickening into a rain of soothing, cooling, healing purity. As it falls through the crown of our head through our channels and meridians, we feel refreshed by that which we now know we have always sought.
This stream of light, these blessings, flow into us, filling us with their beautiful healing light. All sin, all karma, all negativity is outshone, is washed away, is cleared and even the darkest corners are cleaned and brightened, leaving no darkness anywhere in us. All our foolishness, selfishness, greed, craving, pride, delusion, hatred and ill will, all defect and habit is washed clear and brightened to be reintegrated into our innate purity, our original perfection.
And you can entreat the adi-buddha to help you, to remove all that obstructs your progress along the path. Let him help you, so that nothing obstructs your ability to benefit beings, to pass on the gift of the dharma, the blessings of recovery and healing, to serve what is transcendental.
Let him open your channels of your each chakra to connection with the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, or to your God. Let his fire blast away mental patterns that do not serve us, purifying your mindstreams and brightening your heart from beyond space and time. Each chakra like a sun, let his fire blast away all that crusts and obscures that sunshine.
The letters of the mantra turn at his heart, slowly transforming us, making us as bright and clear as Vajrasattva. We become lighter, brighter, no more bound to form. We become unbound, free to fly and dance in the infinite sky,
We are clear, beyond shame and guilt, totally able to serve the light with compassion and fearless spontaneity. Suffering will no longer impede our work to release others, to shine so brightly our lamp in the darkness.
We then imagine all beings brightened in the same way, wish that they too can benefit from this practice. We see that we are now free to work for the benefit of others, to serve life, and for this we reverently bow to all that is.
Thanking Vajrasattva, with love, he is pleased, and dissolves into light, which then enters our body. He is in us, always, a source of confidence, a source of brightness, his blessings will shine through us and benefit others through our actions and our words.
My Experience of Vajrasattva Practice
This is an extract from my meditation journal about this practice, and I offer it in the hope it may inspire – it may or may not be useful.
I was working on a Vajrasattva sadhana; purifying, resolving, opening, brightening, cleansing, energising, transporting and emptying. As his bright white light filled my body and drove out all impurity and negativity, I was transported.
From deep in my guts to my unbounded mind, all moved, choked with the awed emotion one feels when face to face with the transcendental in all its glory. Tears came, and goosebumps, as I drifted into the realms of innate purity, into the realms of the bodhicitta. As my resolve to attain enlightenment strengthens, as I vow to attain it so beings can be liberated from suffering, so they can be led to enlightenment. Rather than there be a ‘me’ teaching, there is a wonderful dissolving, my vow and my care falling open into infinite love. Love that has no location or no source, no object or subject, simply pure and everywhere, as if a beautiful part of the very fabric of the universe, woven into space and time like a glistening golden thread of light.
The ineffable beauty of the path, the transcendental union of self and universe, the shattering awe. I wish I could describe it better, I wish there were words, just a feeling so pure, so sublime, so beautiful, and an overwhelming love and gratitude, a reverence for the teachers, for the buddhas, for Vajrasattva, for Kurukulle and tara whose mantras I was floating to.
A diamond resolve, lightning flashing through my veins, that I will teach the path, I will show the way. Nothing else matters.
Heart-mind is blown apart, wide open and filled with universes. Dancing and flying through the dimensions with Red Tara, showing me the endless realms of suffering beings, the limitless worlds and the vastness of it all. As I approach the infinite, as my being slips into formlessness and vastness, as it becomes one with that golden light, my physical body is choking, weeping, and fizzing with bliss and emptiness.
Experiences of this magnitude, of this degree of beauty are gold. One almost doesn’t know what to do with them, with the blissful residue, one wants to shout it out, to share and talk about them, but with whom? They are rare, they remind one why one practices, why it is that the mysteries and the mundane must be melded in practice, why one makes effort day by day, why one serves and works to help spread the dharma. Maybe its chance, maybe its doing the right meditation at the right time, or maybe there is simply something ready to erupt, to manifest, to transform and grow.
They remind me why all that matters is the spiritual life, why one wishes to spread the gold, to show the way. It is one of those experinces, feelings, that if one could loan them out to others, they would make the effort in a heartbeat, if it could be shown all earthly pursuits and false refuges would be dropped, all chasing, except spiritual seeking would have to fall away. There is no earthly delight to compare, there is no reward to be found in the material that even hints at the rapture of transcendental bliss. Like a long slow orgasm of the soul, as if making sweet love with the infinite.
Nothing to cling to, nothing to make mine, simply beauty. And yet there is the desire to sing about it, to use it, to perhaps share it so others may find motivation? The gold is in the inspiration, such experiences should be recorded, even if it is only so that one can return to them and find ones own true heart, ones purity of motive.
The lingering sense of beauty and elevation is something to look after very tenderly, something to honour and try to hold without ego appropriation, so that perhaps a memory may form, like a memory of a dream, elusive, gossamer, but there I hope whenever one needs to remember.
Whenever one wants to approach the buddhas again, perhaps, and this would be truly wonderful, a neural pathway has formed to the infinite. Perhaps with practise it will form, and one can indeed access this level at will. Perhaps this mantra will now become the conduit, memories do seem to attach themselves to pieces of music..
If only one could show this wonder to the man who is still seeking his happiness in a drink, a drug, sex or fame or money. If only we taught our children the secrets to happiness beyond happiness instead of useless facts and shallow self-centred ambitions. Friends please give up this kind of activity, this kind of motive, for this life is precious, and this life is short, but oh how well it can be used, how beautiful we might yet become.
But be empty, be open, be receptive. Inspiration is in all the books, to be found in all the meditation halls, in countless hearts across this world and perhaps beyond it. All I can promise is that if this path is walked, if these practices are practised then the skyless sky is the limitless limit.
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