Introduction to Tantra: The Transformation of Desire

“THEN THE SWIRLING OCEAN OF TANTRA is crossed through the kindness of the navigator, the vajra holder. Bless me to cherish more than my life the vows and commitments—the root of attainments.” With these inspiring words the First Panchen Lama introduces the practice of tantra in his monumental work,
The Lama Chopa (Offering to the Spiritual Guide)
, clearly showing with what high esteem the
Vajrayana
(the “Diamond Vehicle,” in which the practices of tantra are taught) was regarded by the great masters of Tibetan Buddhism.

Though these words were written nearly four hundred years ago, this high regard for the practice of tantra remains to this day.

The great Tibetan diaspora is recent history, having begun with the Chinese invasion of Tibet in the early ’50s. In the decades that followed, the arrival in the West of many, many living masters of Tibetan Buddhism turned the tragedy of Tibet into an unexpected and spectacular windfall for Western devotees of spiritual discipline.

Tantra was at that time not entirely unknown. The encyclopedic works of Sir Arthur Avalon (
The Serpent Power
and
Tantra
) offered highly technical descriptions of the Bengali system of this meditation practice. These works came complete with colorful drawings of the required visualizations. In addition, numerous books on Kundalini yoga by an equally large number of Hindu teachers and yogis could also be found. There were translations as well of the Chinese Taoist work
The Secret of the Golden Flower,
an apparently parallel meditation practice. However, to the novice meditators of the early ’70s (and virtually everyone was a novice in the early ’70s), these texts raised far more questions than they answered.

It was only with the arrival of the Tibetan lamas, tulkus, and rinpoches in the early ’70s that, finally, this first generation of Western practitioners found actual tantric meditators and qualified teachers in their midst. For the Vajrayana is, in fact, the living tradition of the Buddhist tantric system. It was immediately clear that, far from being a theoretical or speculative science, it was a practice clearly, precisely, and completely embodied by these teachers.

They would be the “navigators” who would help these young, eager students cross “the swirling ocean of tantra.” The words of the First Panchen Lama were not poetry. For these new practitioners they were prophecy.

Lama Yeshe’s
Introduction to Tantra
did not actually appear until 1987. It seems that the first wave of Tibetan teachers (all trained in the monasteries of “old” Tibet) held off for some time before making the subject of tantra publicly available. Perhaps there was some hesitation on their part to offer such a powerful and profound instruction before their Western students had acquired a basic grasp of the more conventional Sutrayana system. This, of course, would be most natural, since instruction in renunciation (the determination to be free),
bodhicitta
(love, compassion), and emptiness (wisdom) traditionally precede initiation into the Vajrayana. And so it was with that first generation of American and European students. When Lama Yeshe’s
Introduction
finally appeared, it was like an illumination, a vision both brilliant and generous, for which many people had spent years waiting and preparing.

Re-reading it again today, I am thrilled, as if for the first time, by the clarity and directness of his thought. His descriptions of foundation practices and subsequent stages are both essential and complete. I know of no work on tantra that has improved on this one as an entry to the subject.

Over the years I have given away countless copies of this book to interested friends, until, during those times it was not in stock, it could be quite scarce.

Now, with this new edition, I will no longer have to search through used and rare bookstores to find a prized copy. And a new generation of practitioners will discover and benefit from the skillful teaching of Lama Yeshe.

Though I knew Lama Yeshe’s work and teachings while he was still alive, it was not my good luck to have known him in the flesh. What a marvelous experience that would have been! Still, thanks to this new edition, his words are still part of our world. To me they ring as clear and true today as they did when I first encountered them more than fifteen years ago. A wonderful legacy for the present and for the future!

Philip Glass

June 2001

Pre f a c e

THE MATERIAL THAT MAKES UP this introduction to the often mis understood world of Buddhist tantra was compiled from teachings given between 1975 and 1983 by the late Tibetan monk Thubten Yeshe, known affectionately to his many students around the world as Lama Yeshe.

Lama Yeshe was born near Lhasa at Tölung in 1935 and from the age of six attended Sera Je Monastery, where he received an extensive spiritual and academic education. After the Chinese takeover of Tibet in 1959, he completed his education at the Buxaduar refugee camp in northeast India and eventually settled near the Boudhanath stupa outside Kathmandu, Nepal.

It was in Nepal that his contact with Westerners began in earnest, and by 1971 Lama Yeshe and Zopa Rinpoche had founded the Nepalese Mahayana Centre Gompa on Kopan hill, the site of yearly meditation courses that have attracted an ever-growing number of students. These students were eventually to establish numerous centers where Buddhism could be studied and practiced in the West, and Lama Yeshe spent the last ten years of his life traveling to these and other centers providing teachings, organizational leadership, and, perhaps most importantly, the inspiration of his own tireless example of benefiting others. Finally, on March 3, 1984 in the Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles—at dawn on the morning of the Tibetan New Year—he succumbed to a serious heart ailment that had been threatening his life for more than twelve years.

The idea for this book arose as early as 1981, when Lama Yeshe said he felt there was a need for a work that would introduce Buddhist tantra to the West in a non-technical, easy-to-understand way. Even though tantra is considered by the various Tibetan traditions to be the most profound and advanced of all Buddhist teachings, he felt its central message to be simple and clear, and extremely relevant to twentieth century life. As he said on many occasions, the West has discovered how to tap so many powerful sources of energy in nature but still remains largely unaware of the tremendous force, even more powerful than nuclear energy, contained within each one of us. As long as this powerful internal energy lies undiscovered, our life is doomed to remain fragmented and purposeless, and we will continue to fall victim to the mental and emotional pressures so characteristic of our age. The practice of tantra, which is designed to take advantage of this hidden inner resource and utilize it to the maximum extent, offers us the best opportunity to overcome these pressures and transform our lives into the meaningful, integrated whole that we all desire.

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