Free Tantric Techniques by Jeffrey Hopkins Page B

others for the sake of control, and so forth. It also may be that this process in ordinary life is so out of control that one emanates forms that destroy one’s own welfare, much like dream be-ings that pursue us or a paranoiac’s attackers.
    In this transmutory practice, after the enactment of such compassionate activity, the rays and deities return with actualized (not just potential) compassion to dissolve with all their power and experience into the moon, letters, and hand-symbol which turn into the deity. The meditator now could not view the deity as just a neutral appearance of light in a certain form but must see and feel it as an active expression of compassion and wisdom. Ke-drup says:
    Then, from those letters innumerable rays of light are emitted, at the points of which innumerable aspects of the body of just that deity being meditated are emitted. These purify all ill deeds, obstructions, and sufferings of all sentient beings and delight all the Buddhas as well as their children [that is, Bodhisattvas] with offerings. Then the rays of light together with the deities again gather, dissolving into the letters, due to which the moon together

    accordance with the stages of full purification of Bodhisattvas in their last lifetime.
    See H.H the Dalai Lama, Tsong-kha-pa, and Jeffrey Hopkins, Yoga Tantra: Paths to Magical Feats (Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 2005), 76.
    a Mirage, smoke, fireflies, flame of a butter lamp, mind of vivid white appearance, mind of vivid red or orange increase, mind of vivid black near attainment, and mind of clear light. See Lati Rinbochay and Jeffrey Hopkins, Death, Intermediate State, and Rebirth in Tibetan Buddhism (London: Rider/Hutchinson, 1980; Ithaca, N.Y.: Snow Lion Publications, 1980), 15-19 and 32-46.
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    with the letters thoroughly transforms into the body of whatever deity is being meditated. Observation of the full generation of this divine body is the form deity. When doing approximation upon cultivating self-generation, ex-cept for just the principal [figure] it is not necessary to meditate on the surrounding [figures], inestimable mansion, and so forth.
    The rays of light emitted from the moon, which itself is a manifestation of the mind realizing the ultimate deity, are endowed with compassionate potential for appearance in forms working the weal of sentient beings. One has appeared in divine form, the essence of which is the wisdom of emptiness and active compassion.
    Still, self-generation is not complete. The imagined deity must be further enhanced.
    Seal deity. Enhancement is accomplished through uttering mantra at the same time as physically touching important places on one’s imagined divine body with a hand-gesture called a seal. a Dül-dzin- drak-pa-gyel-tsen says:
    The seal deity is to construct the pledge seal of the particular lineage and to bless into a magnificent state the heart, point between the brows, the neck, and the shoulders through touching them with the seal and repeating the pledge mantra.
    The one pledge seal of the particular lineage may be used or individual seals for each of the places may be used. Ke-drup speaks of touching not five (counting the shoulders as two) but nine places:
    Then, touch the crown protrusion, hair-treasury [a single coiled hair in the middle of the brow], eyes, the two shoulders, neck, heart, and navel with the individual mantras and seals if you know them. If you do not know that much, do it with the single mantra and seal of whatever the general lineage is from among the three lineages [One-Gone- Thus, b lotus, and vajra lineages]. Touching and blessing those places into a magnificence is the seal deity. It is the equivalent of blessing the [six] sense spheres [that is, sense

    a phyag rgya , mudr ā .
    b de bzhin gshegs pa .
    58 Tantric Techniques

    organs] in the higher tantras.
    The word for “blessing” a means to transform into a magnificent state. Thus, with each mantra and