Dalai Lama Toulouse 2011, Part Three

Here is more of what I heard of His Holiness' excellent teachings.

There is always both appearance and reality; the whole purpose of education is to reduce the gap between perceived appearance and reality. The tantrayāna, or vehicle of the text, is seen by some to stray far from its origins - the teachings of the Buddha - and even to have been created by demons. But there are both a conventional meaning and an ultimate meaning of the teachings, which correspond respectively to the appearance of things, and the reality of things.

The Sanskrit tradition is very literal, and makes use of logic. Sanskrit texts are the backbone of the entire Buddhist tradition, and without them, something essential would be missing. Śakyamuni's first - and most concrete - turning of the wheel of the dharma, at the deer park in Sarnath (near Varanasi), centred on the Four Noble Truths, which correspond to the conventional meaning, and which henceforth became the basis of all forms of Buddhism.

The second time the Buddha turned the wheel of the dharma, he did not teach to everyone indiscriminately. His concern here was with the notion of pervasive emptiness, which is so easily misunderstood and requires a certain amount of insight and/or training to comprehend.

The third turning was to teach the tantrayāna approach to consciousness: using the clear light of wisdom or the nature of the pureness of mind to attain wakefulness for all beings. Imagine that the Buddha had started here with the ultimate meaning of the teaching, or given it to someone with no background knowledge: what kind of a practice would emerge for this person? I am guessing it would resemble a new-age melting pot of bliss-seeking, without regard for the quality or purpose of bliss in a wider context. This sort of practice certainly does exist today, but its ultimate value is questionable.

Between Hindu tantrayāna and Buddhist tantrayāna there are many similarities; for example, among the two traditions there are common deities, and the common notion of kundalini energy. In fact, Buddhist tantrayāna has been criticized as being the same thing as Hindu tantrayāna, not improving on or adding to the ancient system, simply touting it as Buddhism's own. One of the main differences between them, though, is the development of bodhicitta, which serves to put Buddhist tantrayāna in a league of its own.