Yidam: extraordinary relational possibilities
A brief introduction to some of the Evolving Ground tantric practices
We hand out these explanations at the beginning of Evolving Ground yidam retreats.
During one that ended just yesterday, we realized they may be intriguing and useful for a wider readership!
What does “yidam” mean?
Yidam practice is traditionally the primary method of Buddhist tantra.
A yidam is a being you can relate to as the embodiment of an extraordinary possibility for interaction. They are usually described as “enlightened.” We mostly avoid that word, though, because traditions have confusingly different ideas about what it means.
“Yidam” is sometimes translated as “meditational deity.” Thinking of them as gods is a decent starting point, but potentially misleading. In traditional cultures, many people do relate to them as actually-existing independent external gods. However, canonical texts make clear that this is a misunderstanding.
What are yidam practices?
There are several quite different ways of relating to yidams. Particular practices are useful depending on where you are and where you want to go.
All involve “visualizing” a yidam. This term covers more than mental imagery. It can be proprioceptive, emotional, and energetic: the felt sense of the yidam’s presence.
In some practices, you visualize the yidam in front of you, and you receive their energy.
In others, you become the yidam yourself, and visualize manifesting their energy.
Some practices involve ritual actions, as support for the visualization. Some involve reciting a sadhana (fixed text). Some involve mantras (magical phrases) and/or mudras (magical gestures).
Other practices involve little or no ritual, text, mantra, or mudra. Omitting these and going directly to the visualization saves time if you don’t need the support.
We tend to recommend the simplest practice that works for your purposes at a particular time. However, the ritual elaborations are also wonderful for their own sake!
Evolving Ground teaches diverse yidam practices
Our community practices many different yidams, including three described here. We practice them for quite different purposes, and with quite different methods.
Vajrasattva
Vajrasattva clears negative rumination on your past mistakes, thereby opening a vast space for new possibilities.
We practice Vajrasattva with front-generation: seeing the yidam in front of (or above) you, separate from yourself.
Avalokiteshvara
We practice this non-binary embodiment of compassion as self-arising: you become Avalokiteshvara.
Avalokiteshvara practice fills you with tenderness and love for all beings, opening the possibility of unbounded kindness in action. We practice in the anuyoga style: direct, unelaborate, ecstatic.
Good King Gesar
Gesar is the warrior-king-sorcerer-god folk hero of Tibetan epic. We take Gesar as inspiration for noble activity: the wise, creative, and just use of power.
Gesar functions as a protector of practice, practitioners, and projects.
Gesar functions as a joyful yidam: celebrating courageous caring competence.
Gesar functions as a wrathful yidam: destroying obstacles, such as conceptual confusions and emotional fixations.
We practice Gesar with a sadhana text. It provides instructions for a structured meditation ritual which you can practice individually or in a group.
Why is yidam the core tantric practice?
Historical explanation
Late Mahayana had the idea that you have Buddha-nature potential (tathagatagarbha) within you. As an aspiring bodhisattva, you’re supposed to actualize that. However, it had no coherent theory of how that could happen.
Yidam practice began as an idea for how to make it happen. “Visualizing your way into Buddhahood” was found to have dramatic positive effects.
Why is it still functional now as a tantric practice?
It works.
Not always, not for everyone. But for many 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?
That depends on what style of yidam practice you are going to engage with. This is related to yana and “view” (theoretical framework). It also depends on your individual propensities.
In general, the result is often described as the union of bliss, clarity, and emptiness:
Ecstatic, sometimes overwhelmingly intense bliss
Vivid, clear perception and understanding
Awareness without conceptual elaboration: emptiness
The practice gives rise to devotion: overwhelming love and respect for life.
You see the world as the yidam sees it:
The scaffolding practice: superimposing the mandala, the elaborate envisioned environment of the yidam, on actuality.
The thing itself: actuality around you arises in perception as sacred space, empty and full of vivid transparent phenomena.
What yidam practice is not: common misunderstandings
Yidams are not actually-existing independent external gods. Many canonical texts state this explicitly.
The practice is not creative imagination. It is not fantasizing about something that you make up.
It is not narrative. Mental stories of interactions with the yidam are not the practice. (They may also be valuable! But they are not this practice.)
Yidam practice is not about you and your psychology. It’s about becoming not-you, and going beyond your psychology into new possibilities.
A yidam is not a Jungian archetype. Yidams are meant to challenge your deep psychology, not to confirm and reinforce it. They are 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.
The yidam practices Evolving Ground teaches are quite different in principle and function from prayer. They are also quite different in principle and function from similar-sounding practices from other cultures, such as loa possession in vodou or invocation in Western ceremonial magic. Relying on analogies from those practices leads to misunderstandings.
Otherness
The alienness of yidams, and of the practice, is important. 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.
In traditional cultures, for a religion to specify a ready-made new shape to step into seems natural. It’s confronting and seems unnatural in our individualist culture. “Who are you to say what I should become?” It is harder to get our heads around, because we take religion as a choice, not as given. We need to establish a degree of trust that the practice will work for us before starting.
Nowadays, many may also balk at the ontological ambiguity: “but do they really exist?” That doesn’t matter for the practice, so it is best to set that question aside.
Is yidam practice necessary?
This is often asked because the practice may seem off-putting and weird and unlikely to work. (That 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 view sutrayana (renunciative, mainstream Buddhism) as establishing the necessary base for tantra; tantra as the path, or collection of methods; and dzogchen as 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. For example, in the four naljors system, the meditation practice called moving awareness gets 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 start it only 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 working with doubt 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. Originally, that was a very big deal. The ritual could be terrifyingly intense, and it came with a set of vows that most people might not now want to take. Getting access to the ritual required years of full-time preparation.
Nowadays, anyone can go to an empowerment. This is a pity, in some ways! “Very big deal” can be a powerful method for personal transformation.
Despite the low effort now required, 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! But an effective empowerment gives you a first taste of what yidam practice is like, and shows you that it can actually do something. If you start solo with instructions from a book, it typically takes a hundred hours of practice to get any results. It’s hard to maintain the motivation for that.
Empowerments vary a lot. Look for a ritual leader whose style resonates for you. Otherwise, they can be excruciatingly boring, or threateningly confrontational.
Evolving Ground offers empowerment rituals on some retreats. They are simple and effective, in accord with the eG style.
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Thank you for this awesome article! I would like to add under the fact that Yidams are not self existing, external deities or entities that most of the teachings make it clear that YOU are not a real self existing entity either. Your ego is just as generated as the Yidam or to put it another way you are not any Realer than the Yidam.
Of course it’s important to define what “you” means here.
Your teachings may vary, of course.
Is yidam practice similar to method acting? It seems compatible with descriptions I've read, but I haven't seen the comparison directly addressed. If yes, then mentioning this would seem to be helpful for westerners to understand the point.