We have to open ourselves to wisdom without surrendering our discernment, and apply our discernment without closing ourselves to wisdom.
If Vajrayana Buddhism were a video game, you would start out as a rather feckless hero. A couple of abilities, like running and jumping, maybe a weak weapon or two, not much energy. Your task would be to gradually build your skills, develop your strength, and eventually fly freely through the world, helping other characters gain their own powers.
This isn’t far from how I learned Vajrayana Buddhism.
My teacher, Segyu Rinpoche, often spoke of it this way—without the video game reference! He would show a series of graphics of a person sitting in meditation on the spiritual path. At the beginning, they are quite faint, almost invisible. As they progress, they become more vivid, stronger, and more vibrant. Eventually, they are sitting in a field of luminous energy, a beacon of strength, warmth, and wisdom.
Segyu Rinpoche calls this our spiritual trajectory.
This is different from our worldly trajectory. On our worldly trajectory, we are born, pass through life’s stages, and hopefully enjoy much love, laughter, and fun along the way.
The worldly and the spiritual trajectories are deeply interconnected. The brighter we are inwardly, the more we have to give, share, and enjoy outwardly. By the same token, worldly life is the setting for testing and shaping our inner life.
Each trajectory requires different capabilities. On the worldly trajectory, we must learn how to survive and thrive in the time we live in.
The spiritual trajectory requires different resources. It is subtler and harder to access directly. We can’t just tell ourselves to be more peaceful or more joyful. We need a system that speaks to our inner world. Vajrayana Buddhism is one such system.
Rooted in the Buddhist traditions of ancient India, Vajrayana Buddhism has helped generations of practitioners traverse the spiritual trajectory. It has many schools and practice traditions, all of which, to my knowledge, share a common structure: a lineage of wisdom on one side, and a collection of methods on the other.
Let’s start with lineage. Then I’ll touch briefly on the methods, which the rest of the site explores in depth.
A lineage holds the energy and wisdom of a tradition. Think of it as a root system: a deep network of insight and energy that spans the ages. The lineage I follow dates back to early India and the work of masters such as the Buddha and Nāgārjuna. In Tibet, it passed through the teacher and reformer Je Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), whose work gave rise to the Gelug school, one of the major traditions of Tibetan Buddhism.
We connect to a lineage through individuals already connected to it. These go by different names, like teacher, guru, lineage holder, yogi, or even a capable practitioner. Cultivating that relationship is a practice unto itself. It’s how we tap into that root system.
The first book Segyu Rinpoche gave me, not long after we met, was on this topic. It was Alexander Berzin’s Relating to a Spiritual Teacher: Building a Healthy Relationship. One lesson it taught me was the importance of staying open to a teacher while applying our discernment.
We don’t just throw ourselves at the feet of a teacher or tradition and follow their every word. Spiritual insight rarely comes pure. It is almost always embedded in the language, culture, and symbols of another time. To hear it, we have to look through the words and forms to see where they point. That requires discernment.
On the other hand, if we rely only on our own views and never open ourselves to the insight of others, it’s hard to develop and expand our inner world.
In short, we have to open ourselves to wisdom without surrendering our discernment, and apply our discernment without closing ourselves to wisdom. It’s a balance.
In Vajrayana Buddhism, and in many spiritual traditions, connection to a lineage of insight elevates our efforts from a technical methodology to a relationship that grounds and strengthens us. Like a tree in a forest, we draw nourishment from an intricate ecosystem that lets us stand tall.
If you’re wondering how we cultivate this kind of connection, there is no formula. It is a movement of the heart. It starts with a feeling of connection to something that might help us grow, and we take it from there.
Hillary and I cultivate this connection every day. Each morning, we clean the little altar we have at home, place fresh flowers, and mentally connect with our teachers and lineage.
Now let’s briefly turn to the methods.
If the lineage connects us to a source of wisdom, the methods give us ways to integrate and embody that wisdom. I organized Meditation with Friends around those methods. Everyday Mind works with the patterns that shape our experience. The Middle Way examines the nature of mind, self, and reality. Deity Yoga guides us to imagine new possibilities for how we understand ourselves and encounter the world.
Connecting with a source of wisdom and engaging its ideas and methods are the foundation of Vajrayana Buddhism. We don’t have to force either one. We can simply relax, explore the ideas, and maybe try its practices.
You never know where this might lead. Like the feckless hero in our video game, we might just find ourselves cultivating the strength and freedom to soar, and eventually helping others do the same.
Source: Alexander Berzin, Relating to a Spiritual Teacher: Building a Healthy Relationship (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 2000).