Chapter 12 - The Association Of The Lake Surface

In Tantric practice, beautiful objects are used as targets for visualization. This enables the practitioner to concentrate on a single object and achieve a transcendence of the mind.

Some people use the sun as the target while others use the moon. Some use stars and others use the blue sky. There are also some who use a red flower or a white flower for their visualization. Many more Tantric practitioners use the solemn image of their Root Guru.

The solemn and dignified images. of many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are also the central objects of visualization of the Tantric practitioners in their practice of the [personal] deity yoga.

Throughout the ages, Tibetan cultivators liked to visualize upon a lake surface. According to what I know, Tibet is a barren land of hills and sands and it is impossible to see the ocean. Thus the most beautiful place is the lake. It is understandable why Tibetans long to see lakes, flowers, and meadows.

Many Tantric practitioners love most to visualize a beautiful lake with white swans swimming and nibbling freely at the grass and flowers. In the center of the lake there is an island with flowers, grass and trees. In the middle of the island, a large white lotus flower grows up and sitting upon it is the practitioner's Root Guru, solemn and dignified. Many practitioners began their training of visualization this way.

There are many pictures of imaginary lakes in the mandala art of Tibet. Water plants are considered to be the loveliest objects, along with water birds which are recreated as alive in the mandala.

In "The Songs of the Sixth Dalai Lama", Dalai Lama wrote the following two poems:

If by just wearing a red and gold monk's robe,

One becomes a lama,

Then the golden yellow wild geese on the lake,

Can they not liberate living beings too?

And:

Water that filled up the canal,

Collected and stored in a pond;

If there is indeed sincerity in your heart,

Please come to draw water from this pond!

From the poems it can be gathered that the objects of "water realm" such as lakes and wild geese are the ideal objects for visualization in Tibetan Tantra.

Thinking of lakes, let us have a look at Lake Sammamish! It is not very far away, I just go out of my bedroom, walk to the sundeck through the living room upstairs, and I can see Lake Sammamish to the east of my house.

I can do deep breathing exercises facing the lake. It is so close, I don't need to "visualize". I don't need to make use of any ''Atharvan¹ magic", "out of body travel", nor any Taoist's "Sky-Star method" to bring it closer. The lake seems to be just under my feet.

This lake is so beautiful. It has layers of rolling mountains, and up on the mountains are clouds and many trees. There is no strange object, yet everything is so novel. It is like a natural and beautiful painting: here is a patch of blue; there is a patch of yellow, and a patch of green. The perfectly rounded unfathomable horizon, the trickling rivulet, the groves of trees on the mountains, and the undulating peaks, all constitute such a wonderful world!

It seems that this "water realm" is awake with awareness every day. Sometimes the parading fog is just like the veil left over on the lake by the dakini who forgets to take it with her when she flies back to Heaven. With the changing of time from early dawn to noon to evening, this Lake Sammamish seems forever changing its attire . . .

Living by the lakeside, there is no need to visualize a lake. No need to close our eyes to contemplate. No need to go through complicated [thinking]. Just open our eyes, and there is a lake.

The transcendent Divine Nature is secretly dwelling in the depths of the lake.

The transcendent Buddha Nature is spreading itself on the sparkling surface of the lake.

Meaningful and real. I have awakened today. I have been reborn today.

What books should I read? My book should be one that is without words, one that is of the lake, of Nature, and of the Self. Although this is an illusory world, I immersed myself into the illusion and then ruptured it. The past is already past, the future is also in my hands and none of it is an accident.

Holy-Red-Crown-Vajra-Master rises sublimely out of the lake. Standing in His transformation body on a red and a white lotus, He radiates holy and sacred lights, and simply and purely returns into One.

Holy-Red-Crown-Vajra-Master, the physical representation of a sage, is perfect and faultless, and bears the characteristic marks as well. The Auspicious Goddess, with sparkles of flumes, also descends from the realm of heavens on the surface of Lake Sammamish.

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