The Ultimate Guide to Practice Vajrayana Meditation
Amidst a world where life moves too fast, you tend to lose yourself in the chaos. Power yoga is a great step to begin if you haven’t yet! If you want to acquire strength, clarity, wisdom, serenity, and peace, Vajrayana Meditation is the way.
Not sure, what exactly is Vajrayana Meditation? Vajrayana is also referred to as Tantrayana. This is because Vajrayana is based on tantras. The concept of indivisibility of wisdom and compassion forms the foundation of the tantra system.
Vajrayana & Its Uniqueness
The name ‘Vajrayana’ is derived from the words – ‘vajra’ and ‘yana’. Vajra is nothing but a mythical weapon associated with Lord Indra. It was believed to be indestructible, unbreakable, and extremely powerful. Yana means vehicle. Thus, Vajrayana is also known as the Diamond Vehicle or the Indestructible Vehicle.
You might be wondering what’s the uniqueness of Vajrayana Meditation? Most meditation practices activate your parasympathetic nervous system making you relax, but the practice of ‘Vajrayana’ focuses on activating your sympathetic nervous system. As demonstrated by cognition tests, Vajrayana meditation is powerful enough to immediately and dramatically cause you mental stimulation.
A Complete Guide To Vajrayana Meditation
Are you wondering about how to practice Vajrayana meditation? Read on.
- To get started, relax the muscles in your body & keep your spine straight. Rest effortlessly, with some strength so you can find balance. Sometimes you may feel a little bit of gravity or some sensation. Just be aware and let it be.
- Let your mind be within the body. For a few seconds, you may experience pleasant feelings, joy, bliss, or unpleasant feeling, tightness, pain, or neutral or no feeling. Stay relaxed.
- Now, you can further expand your awareness beyond your body to what surrounds you. There may be some sounds, smells, sensations, room temperature, noise, people chatting, etc. Just recognize the sensations. This way, your awareness becomes all the more open and vast.
- Be aware of any of the phenomena occurring for a few seconds. Expand your attention even further beyond your surroundings. Feel the space around you, above you, and more profoundly. All the phenomena occur, change and dissolve back into space.
- Just like the clouds that come into space, remain in there, & dissolve into space. Now, your awareness can be expanded even further. Go beyond the clouds’ intolerable space, which is boundless, open in all directions, everywhere. Please slowly open your eyes. Be present here. And rest your mind and body.
- This openness and awareness can be practiced with any situation in your activities in daily life, 7days a week, 365 days a year. This is the way with which you can fill your mind with a joyful, peaceful experience while developing your inner love, compassion, and wisdom.
Steps to get started with Vajrayana Meditation
You can follow the sophisticated Vajrayana Meditation by following these simple steps.
The steps listed below make Vajrayana Buddhism for beginners quite easy to begin with. Follow the below steps if you are a beginner:
- Keep your spine straight.
- Close your eyes.
- Relax the muscles in your head, face, upper body, lower body, legs, and feet.
- Bend your neck forward a little bit in such a way that the weight of your head rests on your neck.
- Rest effortlessly in such a way that each part of your body rests on the one below.
- Join your mind and body together.
- Be aware of any sensations or feelings occurring in your body.
- Just be aware, yet stay relaxed.
- Expand your awareness of what surrounds you beyond your body.
- Recognize the sensations you are surrounded by.
- Stay there.
- Now increase your awareness beyond your surroundings to the open space.
- You can slowly open your eyes and be present here.
- Keep your mind calm as well as rest your body.
- Again when you come across thoughts and emotions in your perceptions, be aware for a few seconds.
This chain of awareness and openness arouses in you the feeling of love, serenity, peace, and wisdom. [1]
6 Pros Vajrayana Meditation Offers
When it comes to meditation, there are 10 Health Benefits of Daily Yoga that are assured to you when you practice yoga and meditation regularly. Moreover, according to research carried out in phenomenological studies, it is evident that there’s an existence of enhanced cognitive states, termed flow or peak experiences for limited durations after practicing Vajrayana Meditation. [2]
Furthermore, it also provides you with benefits such as : [3]
- It leads you towards dramatic enhancement in cognitive performance.
- It enables you to perform your best during competition or states of urgency.
- It guides you in increasing your brain performance at times of need.
- It influences human physiology and behavior by producing arousal responses.
- It offers you a significant temporary boost in focused attention.
- It raises sympathetic activation and phasic alertness.
A Look Through The Course Of Techniques
Since it is an ancient form of meditation, Vajrayana meditation techniques include rehearsing mantras, chants of dharanis, symbolic hand gesture mudras, circular mandalas representing the universe, and the visualization of the divine Gods and Goddesses and Buddhas.
The multiple tools used primarily are Devata Yoga, Karma Yoga, and Bhakti Yoga, including visualization and dissolving back. Here, we look into our own Buddha nature through the three Vajras – body, mind, and speech. When acting, we contemplate the three Roots – Guru, Ishtadevata, and Dharmapala for wisdom and insight within the three Jewels – Buddha, Dharma, Sangha- for further purification of intention and action and speech.
The technicalities involved have made it clear that the Vajrayana meditation requires dedication and years of practice from the student under a teacher’s guidance perspective. Although effects can be immediate, as soon as the first meditation session, it requires a long-term commitment.
FAQs
How is Vajrayana practiced?
Vajrayana is a Buddhist Meditation form. To practice Vajrayana, you need to sit while maintaining a proper and comfortable posture. It is then followed by rehearsing tantric mantras and diving deep into a state where you’re aware of the sensations happening inside you and in the outer world as well. By combining the physical and spiritual worlds, the most sacred space is being generated inside the mind of the individual practicing Vajrayana Meditation.
How do you practice Buddha meditation?
Steps to practice Buddha meditation are:
- Pick up a convenient time to meditate.
- Maintain a correct and comfortable posture.
- Focus on each of your inhalation and exhalation.
- Recognize the thoughts entering and let them go.
- Focus on the feeling.
- Keep your mind calm.
- Rest your body.
- Slowly open your eyes.
What is tonglen practice?
Tonglen is also a form of Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice. The word tong means “giving or sending”, and len means “receiving or taking”. Tonglen practice involves the concept of taking in the pain and suffering of yourself and others during inhalation and giving space, compassion and healing to yourself and others during exhalation. It can be practiced during your difficult phases in life to overcome them and cultivate a deeper sense of generosity.
How do you do a calm-abiding meditation?
Calm abiding is the backbone of Buddhist Meditation. It can be practiced in three different ways.
- Placing the mind using support – here, we focus on an object in the same way that is related to the image of the Buddha, a dharma text, etc.
- Placing the mind without using support – Here, we focus inwards to mind an image of the Buddha.
- Placing the mind on the essential nature itself – Here our mind is undisturbed by any concept that might arise and we meditate free of concepts. This is the highest level of calm-abiding meditation practice.
How do you meditate properly?
You can meditate properly by sitting that feels calm and quiet at your own suitable time. Fix the duration of your meditation. During the practice of meditation, notice your body, be relaxed and feel your breath. Pay attention to what your mind has wandered and returned to focusing on your breath.
Wrapping Up
Radical enhancements in brain performance can be observed from even a single session of Vajrayana meditation. However, it requires patience and dedication to achieve the best possible results.
We recommend you practice Vajrayana meditation because this is indeed a unique concept of meditation, with its outcomes much more robust when compared to other forms of meditation. Awareness is indeed the most terrific agent for the change to occur.
References
- Ido Amihai. “The Influence of Buddhist Meditation Traditions on the Autonomic System and Attention”. Biomed Res Int (2015)
- National Library of Medicine. “Enhancing Human Cognition Through Vajrayana Practices”. National Center for Biotechnology Information
- Alex Hankey. “Studies of Advanced Stages of Meditation in the Tibetan Buddhist and Vedic Traditions. I: A Comparison of General Changes”. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med vol 3(4) (2006): 513-521