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Tantric Techniques: Divine Pride and Human Hubris, Interview with Jeffrey Hopkins
Jeffrey Hopkins's new book Tantric Techniques provides essential and step-by-step guidance unavailable elsewhere—as far as we know—for practitioners of any form of deity yoga, and is based on extensive private teachings he received from His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
Christi Cox: Let’s say you're a regular Joe and you are trying to imagine that you're a divine figure. Why does it make sense to do a practice such as Deity Yoga?
Jeffrey Hopkins: Are you referring to Joe Six-Pack? [laughs]
CC: Perhaps Joe the Buddhist...
JH: Deity Yoga combines the practices of realizing emptiness and developing compassion in one practice. It is said to be a speedier practice because not only are you in some sense mimicking the mind of a buddha, you're mimicking the body of a buddha also. So by imagining both a buddha's mind and buddha's body—to some extent—you are progressing faster toward to actually having both buddha mind and body.
CC: What are the mechanics? In doing such a practice are you actually creating a subtle-level deity form for yourself, or are you tapping into an existent deity form that exists under its own steam?
JH: I think it's both. In Gelug, the emphasis is on creating a buddha’s mind and body based on elements that already exist within us. Those elements—in Highest Yoga Tantra—are the fundamental innate mind of clear light and the wind on which that mind rides. Eventually a buddha’s body will be created from that energy and the buddha’s mind from the fundamental mind of clear light that we have. In Nyingma, it's more like exposing what’s already there. So by mimicking the state of buddhahood you are helping to uncover buddha mind and body that are already there.
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CC: In either case, the dangers of psychological inflation—wrongly identifying the ego with the deity form—are there, as you point out so well in Tantric Techniques. Have you seen students go off the rails into such an inflation?
JH: Oh yes, without a question.
CC: You make clear in your book the dangers of doing deity yoga unprepared. What exactly are these dangers?
JH: The basic dangers are not understanding the crucial place of compassion yoga and emptiness yoga in deity yoga.
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Jeffrey Hopkins
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CC: How do those lacks of understanding manifest psychologically?
JH: Hubris. Hubris is what Jung would call positive inflation. The misuse of deity yoga can lead to exaggerating the sense of inherent existence of oneself and thereby one's self-importance such that, far from becoming more helpful to others, one becomes insufferable. And creates trouble for one's friends, family, community, job—on whatever level one is operating.
CC: And what about negative inflation?
JH: If one misunderstands the doctrine of emptiness and deprecates conventional phenomena this can bring about excessive withdrawal, a lack of appreciation of interaction with others, and even a disruptiveneness that could manifest towards others—and towards oneself.
CC: People sometimes spontaneously have an experience of emptiness; without preparation and a framework it can be extremely disorienting.
JH: No matter how much one knows verbally, one is repeatedly being thrust into extreme misconceptions. You sort of get it right and then it starts going wrong!
CC: So what helps one get back on track?
JH: Some checks and balances are found right in the community itself. For instance, when monastics become inflated with their own sense of holiness their compatriots will start kidding them. I've seen that in the temple in Dharamsala, just sitting with the higher ups, so to speak—they'll be kidding someone in their midst. This is group correction.
CC: Having "divine pride" as a deity is an integral part of tantra. Because of inflation and so on, holding this correctly can be a bit of a razor's edge.
JH: It's interesting that tantra uses the term "pride," because pride is ordinarily considered an afflictive emotion. Some translators will translate it entirely differently as "divine dignity," for example. I think the reason for using "pride" is that meditators have to be willing to think themselves, and assert themselves, and feel themselves as having pure mind and body in the face of the analytical unfindability that they have understood through the practice of realizing emptiness.
The term "pride" suggests: go ahead and have the willingness to see yourself as pure. As HH the Dalai Lama says, pride here is not afflictive—it is quite the opposite—because you are a pure being that is merely designated in dependence upon a purely appearing mind and body.
CC: And this is the other side of that razor, guarding against the dangers of negative inflation. It's just because the processes of tantra need to be quite precise in order to be effective and safe that Tantric Techniques is so invaluable. It goes through—and spells out explicitly—the steps that are common to deity yoga sadhanas of all types and all schools.
JH: Without understanding things well enough, deity yoga practitioners can create much more trouble for themselves than they had before beginning such a misguided practice. The vocabulary itself of the practices requires a great deal of nuance. And that's why within the sample sadhana in the book I have inserted the material that a practitioner is expected to bring over from explications either in sutra or in tantra.
CC: Tantric Techniques provides a wonderful tool kit for figuring out—and filling out—sadhana practice. So often students receive initiation from a visiting lama—and there's little opportunity for the necessary follow-up. Your explanations are like talking with a kind teacher who fills in the details one didn't even know one was missing.
JH: That's why I did it! And I tried to make the prose accessible. In doing tantra, a great deal of nuance is needed—and this book is aimed at providing a lot of that nuance. I explain in detail what is going on in each of the steps. Then by interweaving the material and challenges from Jung I'm seeking to highlight the significance of many of the steps.
CC: Why Jung?
JH: When I was studying at Harvard I was fascinated with Jung's presentation of autonomous complexes—splinter psyches, so to speak, that operate under their own power and impinge on consciousness in often impish ways. Simultaneously I began studying Tibetan Buddhism and practicing. And there's a great deal in Tibetan Buddhism on granting autonomy to mental states and objects and so forth—an autonomy that they don't have. So the two came together very nicely for me.
Later, when H.H. the Dalai Lama asked me to translate Tsong Khapa's Great Exposition of Secret Mantra, and he taught me the various tantric systems, I could see all the more the connection with Jung.
CC: These were private teachings from His Holiness?
JH: Personal. He wanted several books to be done. So he privately taught me the material, some of which eventually became Tantra in Tibet and Deity Yoga and Yoga Tantra.
CC: Going back to "divine pride." What do you suppose it is in itself, unattached to the deity form?
JH: It's interesting; in Action Tantra, the first deity in a six-step process is the deity of emptiness. So knowing that just as my nature is emptiness of inherent existence, so the nature of the deity is emptiness of inherent existence creates an equation that for me is very fertile. It means I have the basic substance already of turning into a deity. And so what little I know about emptiness becomes a call to realizing that I have the full potential to become a deity.
Perhaps in its most basic form, divine pride is understanding emptiness coupled with equating one's own final nature and the deity's final nature, and thus yielding a sense of incredible potential.
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More about the book . . .
Deity yoga is the meditative practice of imagining oneself as an ideal being fully endowed with compassion, wisdom, and their resultant altruistic activities. The idea is that by imagining being a Buddha, one gets closer to actually achieving Buddhahood. Tantric Techniques will give the reader a dynamic sense of the potential of the human mind for self-transformation through step-by-step use of the imagination.
The book offers a complete system of Tantric meditation, comparing the views of three seminal Tibetan authors on deity yoga, and on issues such as how to safeguard against psychological inflation and how to use negative emotions on the path.
"Jeffrey Hopkins has made a major contribution to deepening understanding of Tibetan Buddhism, had access to some of the greatest contemporary Tibetan teachers, but—most important of all—he has, over the years, steadily tried to put what he has learned into practice."—H.H. the Dalai Lama
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More about the author . . .
Jeffrey Hopkins Jeffrey Hopkins has published forty books in a total of twenty-two languages.
Books and Teachings by Jeffrey Hopkins
© 2009 Snow Lion: The Buddhist Magazine & Catalog
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