Lama Yeshe teaching at Istituto Lama Tzong Khapa, Italy, 1979. Photo courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.

Lama Yeshe gave this teaching as part of a commentary on the yoga method of Divine Wisdom Manjushri at Manjushri Institute, England, August 5, 1977. What Lama says about Manjushri is applicable to any deity you practice: 

Making our practice of tantric yoga a transcendent experience depends upon our recognizing that phenomena are nondual, non-self-existent and like magicians’ illusions. Even our visualization of ourselves as Manjushri is an interdependent, relative phenomenon, the cooperative cause being our consciousness manifesting in that way.

Similarly, the emanations that we call Lord Buddha, Manjushri or any other aspect of the enlightened mind are interdependent phenomena. Their cooperative cause is the Dharmakaya; they are transformations, or reflections, of divine wisdom, the everlasting blissful consciousness of all enlightened beings.

Why are there all these different manifestations? Two cooperative causes—Buddha’s wisdom and compassion—see, understand and manifest according to sentient beings’ needs. The moment these things come together, the Dharmakaya spontaneously manifests in the appropriate way—for example, as Manjushri. It’s effortless. The Buddha doesn’t have to force himself in any way to manifest for the benefit of others.

Also, there’s no distinction that our transformation into Manjushri is not real, whereas Buddha’s manifestation as Manjushri is. One’s as real as the other. Both are nondual in nature; they come from the space of nonduality and disappear back into the space of nonduality.

It is very important to understand that Manjushri is a transformation, an emanation. We should not interpret Manjushri as a concrete self-entity. To help us avoid this, therefore, the entire evolutionary process of becoming Manjushri starts from the nonduality of shunyata. In due course, through the power of the experience of meditating on the rainbow body of Manjushri as an illusion, we’ll be able to see all the energy of the entire sense world in the same way. And, if we meditate strongly enough, we might eventually be able to see the actual divine wisdom manifestation of Manjushri. But even if we can’t, we can still see it as an illusion. Actually, that’s enough. Even seeing it in its non-dual nature as an illusion is extremely worthwhile.

Our qualm, of course, is that we think these visualizations are not real. Then I’ll ask you, what’s real? What is real? As long as something functions, has an effect, does that make it real? No, it does not. Everything we do in our daily lives—waking waking up, eating, talking, listening, coming, going—is like a dream. In many ways, there’s no distinction between your experiences and feelings of doing these things while awake and your doing them in a dream.

Every time you come and go, your experience is different. This shows that your coming and going is an entirely dream consciousness experience rather than your physically walking here and there being some kind of reality. In other words, what’s more important is: what is reality for you? The reality of the sky; the reality of matter; vague, abstract questions as to the nature of reality…these things are irrelevant. What is a human being? What are the limitations on your conscious experience? These are the things that are real for you.

Now, because of your negative mind, more questions can arise. You doubt what I’m saying because, “It’s not my experience.” Then I’m going to ask you, “Is your experience limited or not?” You have to agree that it is. Then I’m going to come back with, “Can you put limitations on reality?” Absolutely not. You can’t say that reality is limited. You can’t presume to know reality; you can’t say that your experience covers universal experience, that what’s not your experience can’t possibly exist.

I’m not criticizing your asking questions. What I’m criticizing is your rationalization, your rejection of reality for illogical reasons, your assumptions based on your own limited experience. It’s much better to question things than to accept them blindly.

So, transforming your consciousness into the radiant light body is very important in order to have a transcendent experience. You do have a psychic body. It doesn’t matter whether you believe it or not. The reality is that it’s there. Whether or not you believe you have a nose, there it is, on your face. Similarly, your psychic body is always there. It is your psychic, or conscious, body that you transform into the radiant light body. It is important to practice this at this time.

In order to help them with this visualization, some lamas make a reflection of Manjushri in a mirror. They think that the reflection is somewhere between them and the mirror and contemplate on that point. Then, when their contemplation is good, that Manjushri form sinks into them and they then transform themselves into Manjushri and contemplate on that.

We have such concrete conceptions. One is always one; two is always two; three is always three. Our ideas are fixed in that way. We meditate that two Manjushris manifest from the one; four from the two; hundreds from the four; billions from those. This type of skillful training makes our minds flexible. Then those billions all absorb back into one. This is mind training. It helps eradicate narrow, fixed, limited ideas. You, too, can train in this way. You can use the same methods that Tibetan lamas use.

Edited from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive by Nicholas Ribush. A book of all of Lama Yeshe’s teachings on Manjushri is forthcoming in 2027.

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Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.