Shinzen Describes the Vajrayana Practice

So, in being ordained as a monk. I understand you had to undergo 100 day period in Sala Terry.

Um.

Would I would be very interested in hearing. You talk about that experience. That sounds like a significant event to go through. It was pretty intense, especially for someone who is basically scattered wimpy and easily bored I had to.

Every day do 3.

Bhongir inganna rituals and sometimes those would take an hour to sometimes they take up to 5 hours.

And then in between there were many other activities and I only the only human that I communicated with was my teacher.

Where were you I was in isolation up at Mount Koya so I was in I had a room where I would stay where I would sleep at night and then during the day I'd go to the Hall Main Hall of the temple and I would do the 3:00 ceremonies and then every three days. I'd meet with the teacher who would teach me the next step in the ceremony, so it's an initiation process.

And some by the end of 100 days. I had learned all the basic ceremonies of the Japanese Bud Rihanna practice on the surface, they look like?

Making.

Offerings to deities, but in the depths what goes on is that you.

Visualize yourself as the deity so you replace your body image with the image of the deity. You replace your internal talk with the Montreux Video T.

You.

Make gestures with your hands called Moodar's, which impacts the physical body and then you create the feel in the in your body, the emotional quality of the deoti you doing, all these simultaneously. But all at the same time, so you've got the physical body an emotional body.

Helped by the mood rise. Mecca you well. Yeah, that's the point. You've got replace your personal internal talk with the monitor of the DTN plox space. Then you visualize yourself as the DT so you replace your own personal image with the DTS image.

Now, since we identify with body and mind.

Whatever goes into the brain in the place where body and mind experiences processed the brain says this is who I am.

So if you replace the physicality an emotionality of your human self with that of an archetype and you replace your mental images with that of the archetype and you replace your internal talk with that of the archetype you become the archetype your identity shifts.

From your normal human existence to this other thing now. This is not insanity has to be distinguished from 2 states in Saturday and show monic possession. It's neither of those it's a systematic process.

Designed to bring about classical enlightenment, but in a way very different from early Buddhism. In early Buddhism. You would break things down. This part is the physical body. This part is emotional body OK, you break things down into the pieces and then you would see Oh I'm not these pieces.

In Vajrayana, what you do is you work with the same pieces, but you intentionally create mythical versions of them.

Notice that when you do that, you become that and that gives you the exact same insight. In other words, in early Buddhism. You got insight into the arbitrary nature self identification. You would come enlightened enlightened means that your identification processes. Elastic you're nothing particular so you're going to be anything. So you're everything but you're also the nothing that's a source of everything all at the same time.

In early Buddhism, they did that by dividing into pieces and then seeing uh. None of these but in Vajrayana. You create a mythical version of it. Notice that your identity shifts and then when you drop that your identity shifts back to the human but you realize that it must all be arbitrary. So the transition is where the end site comes does it depend on which deity you pick?

I mean, you know it's an actor, you're envisioning other People and you're putting it in your body and you know, but it's not a deity so I imagine? What deity you're picking would affect the experience or is it simply doesn't matter what you're picking it's very interesting how they do it. First they teach you how to do it with a wide variety of deities over that one hundred day period, you get to explore.

Many archetype pick your favorite video well. Not quite but you explore compassionate deities. You explore wrathful deities. You explore avataars of fear, you explore compassion and so forth.

After you've had a chance to explore all these identities.

You get when you complete the training then you get your full initiation.

And at the full initiation, which lasts all night.

They take you blindfolded in front of this giant model that has all the deities of the universe. In it, they give you a flower and you hold the flower and.

You would completely disoriented.

And you drop the flower whatever flower the deity falls on your master calls out the name of that deity.

And that's the deity that is your Easter Dave Attel That's the deity that is going to be the one that has been sort of selected by this process.

Are you allowed to say? What your deity was or is that a secret thing?

We're not allowed to say, but

It's it's a very interesting process yes.