Five Tantras' Deities

Introduction

The Five Tantras’ Deities could be considered the major deity practice in the Shangpa lineage. Khyungpo Naljor first received each tantra separately from Vairocanarakṣita and all together, “in a single mandala,” from Vajrāsana [Puṇyākaragupta], as he reports:

I met Vairocanarakṣita in the charnel ground Kośala in the South. He was teaching the dharma from a thatched hut with his entourage of thirteen paṇḍitas. There, he conferred empowerment and blessing by means of the five deities—the thirty-two-deity Guhyasamāja, thirteen-deity Hevajra, thirteen-deity Cakrasaṃvara, five-deity Mahāmāya, and thirteen-deity Vajrabhairava. . . . From the great Vajrāsana in the Vajra Seat I received the empowerment conferral in a single great mandala of all five tantras. This was based on the root and explanatory tantras of Jewel Ocean and what was contained at the library of glorious Dhānyakāṭaka.

Later, he received the empowerments, sādhanas, and instructions from Niguma, including the empowerments of the emanated nine-deity He - vajra and thirteen-deity Hevajra With Weapons. Finally, he received them all again, both in a single mandala and individually as complete fourfold empowerments, as well as the absorption empowerment, from a mysterious ācārya (i.e., Indian) who came to Tibet while Khyungpo Naljor was living in Penyul. This hidden yogin is generally identified as Lama Rāhula.

So Jamgön Kongtrul is careful to point out that the tradition of practicing all five of these important highest yoga tantras together in a single mandala is not something that was made up later for convenience but has authentic ancient origins.

Khyungpo Naljor practiced this instruction and reached the highest level of realization, fully actualizing the five tantric deities in the five chakras of his own body. His close disciple Mokchokpa Rinchen Tsöndru even witnessed him in the company of those deities. So the practice became known as the five culminations (mthar thug pa lnga) or the five culminating teachers. Tāranātha and Jamgön Kongtrul both favored relating the five tantras to Niguma’s Six Dharmas. In Kongtrul’s commentary in this section, Letting In the Light, he explains:

In particular, [Khyungpo Naljor] received the following: (1) The culminating teacher of fierce inner heat as Hevajra With Weapons and the nine-deity Hevajra With Skulls in the tradition of the great adepts Ḍombipa and Padmavajra; (2) the culminating teacher of action mudra as the sixty-two-deity Cakrasaṃvara in the tradition of Lūhipa; (3) the culminating teacher of illusory body as the five-deity Mahāmāya in the tradition of Kukuripa; (4) the culminating teacher of lucid clarity as the thirty-threedeity Guhyasamāja Akṣobhyavajra in the tradition of noble [Nāgārjuna], father and son; and (5) the culminating teacher of direct action as the thirteen-deity Great Vajrabhairava in the tradition of Lalītavajra.

These and many other Indian names are found in various places in the literature of the tradition, not always exactly matching. One version is in the first text here, Tāranātha’s Five Tantras’ Deities Lineage Supplication in the Shangpa Tradition. He traces the lineage of each of the five tantras, which may be quite different from the way they are in other traditions of the same tantras. In the last verse, here called the direct or short lineage (nye brgyud), one can see three lineages obliquely in the three occurrences of Buddha Vajradhara, the source of them all. Jamgön Kongtrul has parsed this into the long succession from the ultimate textual source, the Jewel Ocean Tantra; the direct lineage; and the very direct lineage. In Kongtrul’s Record of Teachings Received, he has also added the name Abhaya at the end of the Guhyasamāja, Cakrasaṃvara, and Vajrabhairava (Yamāntaka) lineages. This is presumably Abhayākaragupta (fl. 11th–12th centuries), another “Vajrāsana,” which simply means abbot of Bodhgaya, of which there have been many. Two of them appear in some of our lineage supplications, and it is sometimes difficult to know who is meant each time.

Jamgön Kongtrul’s supplement to Tāranātha’s supplication, A Garland of Sapphires, continues where that one left off—with the lineage of Tibetan masters beginning with Khyungpo Naljor and the five (of the seven) original successors in the one-to-one lineage, who are called the Seven Jewels. The lineage here includes Kongtrul himself and ends with Lama Norbu Döndrup (1880–1954), a teacher of Kyapje Kalu Rinpoche (1905–1989) and Kongtrul’s successor as retreat master at Palpung Monastery. So clearly it has been updated since the first printing of The Treasury.

The final supplication is Harmonious Sound of the Divine Drum by the fourteenth Karmapa, Tekchok Dorje (1797–1867). In this, he calls upon previous incarnations whom Tibetan masters identified with Jamgön Kongtrul. The story of these various recognition incidents, along with prophecies of them from scriptural sources, are recounted with every attempt at humility in Kongtrul’s Autobiography, in the chapter “The Mirage of Nectar.”

It might seem convenient to practice all five tantras at once, but a quick glance at the means of accomplishment, Five Tantras’ Mandala Sādhana, would dissuade any but the most ambitious meditator. There, we find almost every element of a full-blown tantric liturgical practice and then some. Of course there are the preliminaries—going for refuge, arousing awakening mind, Vajrasattva purification practice, then visualizing oneself as two armed Hevajra, generating the protection circle, confessing negative acts, and taking lots of vows—before even beginning the practice. That consists of visualizing a minutely detailed multidimensional mandala, or celestial palace, with elaborate features and deities. Then one’s own mind appears in its center as Hevajra with eight faces of various colors, twenty-four eyes, sixteen hands holding sixteen different things, and four legs. But he is not alone: his partner is the goddess Nairātmya, and there are twelve other goddesses to visualize in detail.

That visualization is more or less repeated within you-as-Hevajra’s heart chakra, where there is another Hevajra (holding different things), surrounded by the usual deities. Similarly, the full Guhyasamāja mandala is in your crown chakra, Mahāmāya mandala in the throat chakra, Cakrasaṃvara mandala in the navel chakra, and Vajrabhairava mandala in the lower chakra. While holding that in mind, you can proceed to the invocation, offerings, praises, and finally the recitation of all their quite complex mantras, which should occupy most of the time in a sādhana practice. After that, one continues with torma offerings, receiving empowerments from the deities, singing vajra songs, and on to concluding prayers. In fact, this sadhāna by the great master Tāranātha is a beautiful illustration of the way the tantras are enacted in a ritualized meditation practice—the very epitome of Vajrayāna Buddhism.

Elucidating the Meaning of the Glorious Five Tantras’ Mandala Ritual is actually the instruction and liturgy for the empowerment. It too was composed by Jonang Tāranātha but “fixed” by Jamgön Kongtrul, according to an added note in the colophon. He specifies that he included liturgical quotations and adjusted the outline. That outline is quite complex but very helpful, so it has been extracted and added to the beginning of the translation.

Similarly, the next short text labeled Required Purification and Cleansing of the Mandala Visualized in Front seems like it was added to the previous one by Jamgön Kongtrul, though it has no colophon. It contains mostly liturgies for the torma, various purifications, and instructions for the bathing ritual, but without the full liturgies.

Finally, Letting In the Light: A Complementary Text for the Empowerment into the Great Mandala of the Five Tantras in the Shangpa Tradition is owned fully by Kongtrul, and its intention is clear from the subtitle. It consists of additions and explanations of certain sections of the liturgy for Tāranātha’s empowerment text, which was already incredibly complicated. It draws on sections of both the sadhāna and mandala (that is, empowerment) texts but does not provide the full quotations or specific locations. There is no clarifying outline, but an attempt has been made (by the translator) to connect to the relevant sections of the empowerment outline. A tantric ritual master (rdo rje slob dpon) who is very familiar with the process of initiation, as well as with the Five Tantras’ Deities practice in particular, would still need to pore over all of these texts for a while in order to confer the empowerment correctly. That is perhaps the point. Empowerments—and tantric practices in general—are not meant to be easily accessible to just anybody. The translation of the title as Letting In the Light has a nice ring to it but is hardly descriptive. Jamgön Kongtrul said he was eighty-seven years old when he composed it; he may have been seeing other lights.