Buddha on the spot

Entering everyday enlightenment experience: 📺 video, 🧘 retreat, 📑 notes

Stepping into radical otherness — discovering new self-possibilities — seeing as a Buddha — not getting hung up on the metaphysics — time to actually do something — transgressive practices — and:

We’re teaching together on a July 2025 retreat!

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This video is supposed to start at 13:51. If it starts at the beginning instead, skip ahead.

Relating to Buddhas—or as a Buddha

“Yidam practices” are ways of relating to—or as—a Buddha. They are the most prominent methods in Vajrayana Buddhism. We discuss that here for an hour. Then we answer audience questions, on diverse topics, for another hour.

If you’d rather read than watch or listen, our outline for the talk is at the end of this post.

David has also written about yidam practices in “Yidams: a godless approach, naturally!” and “You should be a God-Emperor.”

Our July retreat teaching yidam practices: upcoming!

Vajrasattva, the yidam that clears all regrets. (CC) Wonderlane

We (both of us, Charlie and David) will teach yidam practices in detail, at the Evolving Ground summer Vajra Retreat. That’s July 11-15, at the glorious Drala Mountain Center in Colorado.

The two of us will introduce the practical hows of several different yidams. Then we’ll all practice them together. The retreat will be both challenging (with opportunities for serious practice) and supportive (all sessions optional, and with a cheerful, kind, convivial atmosphere).

The prerequisite for the Vajra Retreat is having attended an Evolving Ground Community Retreat. If you have not previously attended one, there’s a Community Retreat immediately prior, July 7-11.

The prerequisite for attending a Community Retreat is joining the Evolving Ground community platform. It’s free! You can sign up here, if you haven’t already:

There’s currently a 10% early bird discount for reserving retreat spaces. Once you are an Evolving Ground member, you can read more and sign up here:

Payment here is the retreat content fee only; the cost for food and accommodation options will be charged later.

The stupa at Drala Mountain Center

First time in forty years

The video here is from the first time I (David) have taught formally and in person in forty years. The previous time was in 1985, when I was a TA for 6.001, MIT’s introductory computer science course.

Ten years ago, in 2015, I realized, reluctantly, that it was time for me to start teaching. According to Erik Erikson’s adult developmental theory, if you don’t have children, at a certain age you need to do something else to support the growth of the next generation. I’d reached that point. Unfortunately, chaotic external circumstances made it infeasible for me to take up the developmental challenge until last year. Then I taught informally on Zoom, and for small groups in our living room.

Teaching Vajrayana Buddhism publicly, in person last month, was enjoyable and slightly surreal. This was not what I’d intended to teach. And Vajrayana makes an enormous deal out of the role of teachers, who are supposed to be extremely special people. I am utterly unqualified to say anything about it. On the other hand, I feel fully confident that I can teach it accurately (including by making it clear what I don’t know and can’t do). This disjuncture is quite funny! It’s also a bit uncomfortable. However, I suspect that many of the greatest teachers, the heroic figures of our lineage, felt the same way.

Speaking of uncomfortable, I once had a peculiar experience teaching 6.001. I suddenly found myself mid-lecture, in front of the whiteboard, facing a class of bored freshlings, realizing that I had been unconscious for the past couple of minutes. I don’t mean distracted or “on automatic”; I mean zero awareness. This was extremely disconcerting! However, no one else seemed to have noticed. Apparently some part of my brain had continued the lecture normally while “I” was entirely absent. So I picked up where the whiteboard scribblings suggested my brain had left off two seconds before.

I have no idea what to make of this! It occurred to me just while writing this that it might somehow be related to “cessation,” which is a goal of some meditation practices (but not ones I have done). A few years ago, I was talking with Michael Taft, who is one of the founders of the Berkeley Alembic, and said I didn’t understand why anyone would want that. He said (if I understood and remember correctly) that what’s valuable is not the cessation itself. It’s the experience of parts of your brain rebooting, in sequence, as you return.

This made sense, because I faint quite often. Returning is fascinating and wonderful! Awareness without experience; experience without a subject; subject without sight; vision without concept; concept without agenda. This gives unique insight into mind’s normal operation. And, in the Tibetan tradition, fainting is considered an exceptional opportunity for “finding the natural state,” which is a goal. However, in a faint I’m out on the floor, whereas on this occasion I was still standing in front of the whiteboard, marker in hand. So, who knows!

The Berkeley Alembic

Our talk last month, in the video above, was at the Berkeley Alembic. That is a wonderful nonprofit event space and community center:

You can think of the Alembic as an awareness gym, or a metamodern mutation lab, or a transformational festival without the dust.

Similarly to Evolving Ground, our Vajrayana practice community:

Against the rigid leanings and groupthink of many spiritual and wellness communities, the Alembic is fostering an organic and diverse community of open-minded and open-hearted practitioners committed to curiosity, discernment, mutual discovery, and play.

The Alembic puts huge numbers of free videos online. They are worth supporting! You can donate here.

Our notes

We didn’t follow this prepared outline closely, so this includes some points we didn’t get to in the video, and vice versa.

Background and welcome

• We’ll open for discussion soon, and we’re happy to include any topic you are interested in, and to answer any questions you have

• To get started, we’ll say a little about yidam practice

• Why? Because it’s the core tantric practice

• Ask: Who has experience of practicing yidam?

• Ask: Who has no experience of that at all?

• Ask: Who actively wants to practice it, versus just being curious at this point?

• It’s OK to interrupt with relevant questions as we go along!

What does “yidam” mean?

• “Yidam” is sometimes translated as “meditational deity”

• Thinking of yidams as gods is potentially misleading, but a decent starting point

• A yidam is a person who you are able to relate to as an ideal of intention and interaction

• We try to avoid the E-word (stage whisper: “enlightenment”) because traditions have confusingly different ideas about what it means

• Imaginary people, such as gods, may be easier to see as ideals than real ones

What are yidam practices?

• Several quite different ways of relating to yidams

• Different practices are useful depending on where you are and where you want to go

• All involve “visualizing” a yidam—but this is not just mental imagery, it is also proprioceptive, emotional, and energetic: the felt sense of the yidam’s presence

• In some practices, you visualize the yidam in front of you, externally, and you receive their energy

• In other practices, you become the yidam yourself, and visualize manifesting their energy

• Some practices involve more or less elaborate ritual, as support for the visualization

• Some practices involve reciting a fixed text (“sadhana”)

• Some practices involve a mantra (magical phrase) and/or mudra (magical gestures)

• Other practices involve little or no ritual, little or no text, and may omit mantra and mudra

• Simplicity, omitting these accessories and going directly to the visualization, saves time if you don’t need the support

• We tend to recommend the simplest practice that works

• Although the ritual elaborations are also wonderful for their own sake

In Evolving Ground, we have several different yidam practices

• We have yidams now with quite different methods and quite different purposes

• Styles of yidam practice relate to the different tantric yanas

• Two different Vajrasattva practices

  • These are front-arising—seeing the yidam in front of you, as separate from yourself

  • Vajrasattva clears negative rumination on your past mistakes, thereby opening a vast space for new possibilities

• Avalokiteshvara

  • We practice this non-binary deity of compassion as self-arising—you become Avalokiteshvara

  • Avalokiteshvara practice fills you with tenderness and love for all beings

  • Avalokiteshvara practice opens the possibility of unbounded kindness in action

  • Charlie will teach the Evolving Ground Avalokiteshvara yidam practice here tomorrow, along with three other eG practices

• The practice of a wrathful yidam is quite different again: its purpose is to destroy obstacles, such as counter-productive emotional fixations

Why is yidam the core tantric practice?

• Historical approach

  • Late Mahayana has the idea that you have the seed of Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) within you. As an aspiring bodhisattva, you’re supposed to actualize that

  • But there wasn’t a coherent idea about how that was supposed to happen

  • Yidam practice began as an idea for how you make that happen

  • “Fake it until you make it”: imagining your way into Buddhahood

  • That doesn’t sound very promising, but it was found to have dramatic positive effects

• Why is it still functional now as a tantric practice?

  • It works.

  • Not always, not for everyone, perhaps never completely? But for most people, it’s the most effective tantric practice

  • Many people, regular Westerners who take up yidam practice sincerely, report dramatic positive effects

What is it like to practice yidam?

• Depends on what style of yidam practice you are going to engage with

• It also depends on your individual propensities

• This is related to yana

• In general, the result often described as the union of bliss, clarity, and emptiness

  • It is often ecstatic, sometimes overwhelmingly intense (the blissful aspect)

  • Vivid, clear perception and understanding

  • Direct recognition of as-it-is-ness without conceptual elaboration (the emptiness aspect)

• Gives rise to devotion—a scary word, but it means overwhelming love and respect for how things are

• Seeing the world as the yidam sees it

  • Scaffolding: superimposing the mandala, the environment of the yidam; as illustrated schematically in a thangka, for example

  • The thing itself: the world around you arises in perception as sacred space, empty and full of vivid empty phenomena

What yidam practice is not: common misunderstandings

• In traditional cultures, many people may relate to yidams as actually-existing independent external gods. However, canonical texts make clear that this is an error, and it’s an obstacle to the practice

• Not creative imagination; not fantasizing about something that you make up

• Not narrative; mental stories of interactions with the yidam is not the practice. (That may also be valuable, but it is not this practice.)

• Yidam practice is not about you and your psychology. It’s about not-you, and going beyond your psychology into new possibilities

• Not a Jungian archetype. Meant to challenge your deep psychology, not to confirm and reinforce it. Highly specific and weird

• You can’t invent your own yidam—not because it’s not allowed, but because their being alien to you is critical to their function (we’ll come back to this)

• Dissimilar to all practices from other cultures involving relating to gods. Relying on analogies from those practices leads to misunderstandings. (We could address particulars in Q&A if it’s of interest.)

Otherness

• The alien-ness of yidams, and of the practice, is important—why?

• The unfamiliarity is key: you practice in order to discover radical new possibilities, not to fix up your current psychology

• You’re stepping into a differentness that is provided externally, not coming from “deep within” you

• Traditionally, the idea that your context or religious world provides the shape that you step in to would not have been such a big deal

  • Natural thing to do in that context, but it’s not the natural thing for us to do in our society

  • Harder for us to get our head around because we don’t take religion as given, but as a choice

  • We don’t take yidams to be independently existing concrete beings, as traditional people may have, so we balk at the ontological ambiguity, and get hung up on “but do they really exist?” That is irrelevant to the practice; it doesn’t matter

ls yidam practice necessary?

• This is often asked because the practice may seem off-putting and weird and unlikely to work. (This is part of how it does work!)

• Buddhist systems are described in terms of the base, or prerequisites; the path (or methods); and the result (or goal).

• In this framework one can see sutrayana (mainstream Buddhism) as establishing the necessary base for tantra; tantra is the path, or collection of methods; and Dzogchen is the result.

• “Dzogchen” means finding that you are already fully liberated (and always have been). This is not obvious!

• It’s possible to get to the result while skipping tantra. There’s a bypass, the four naljors, that get the effect of tantra without yidam.

• Also, direct energy practice (tsa lung) could be a bypass. This is the other core tantric practice. It’s usual to only start it after you have significant experience with yidam.

• These bypasses are not easier; they are more difficult (for most people).

• And yidam practice is great once you get into it! So it’s worth overcoming the initial revulsion and giving it a try (if you want to explore Vajrayana)

Is empowerment necessary?

• Traditionally, before starting to practice yidam, you were required to undergo an “empowerment” ritual

• In the good old days, that was a very big deal

• Getting access to the ritual required years of full-time preparation

• The ritual could be hair-raisingly intense, and it came a set of vows that most people might not want to take

• In practice, nowadays, anyone can go to an empowerment, and in practice you aren’t expected to take the vows seriously

• This is a pity, in some ways!

• However, many people still resist empowerment. They ask “Do I really have to do this? Why? I don’t believe it is magic, and I don’t want anyone’s permission. Can’t I just start the practice?”

• Maybe! On the other hand, empowerment does still have important functions, even if they are not the same as they were historically.

• It doesn’t hurt to get one

• We can address this further in the Q&A