Blissful Experience Through Tantra Sadhana

The Foundation Must Be Bliss in Tantra Sadhana

"Naropa, look deep into the mirror of mind!

There dwell joy and bliss, eternal delight -

The secret abode of the Dakini!" Tilopa

      Making bliss the foundation of all that you do is the most intimate secret that Tantra and esoteric Buddhism teach. This leads to an immensely fulfilling contentment in whatever you attempt. The foundation has to be bliss or Ananda. It leads to self-liberation and gives one the master key to ultimate attainment. It is the very heart of the Mahasiddha teachings.

Blissfulness in Tantra

      And how do you feel blissful? You feel blissful by being grateful. You feel blissful by feeling courageous. You feel blissful by having the determination overcome all challenges. If you have this attitude, then you have gone into the essence of what the Tantras teach, the Buddhist texts teach, even the Upanishads and Vedas teach. It is the very heart of spirituality and mysticism: making Ananda the foundation of all your worldly endeavours. Then only can you move into a situation within which you so calm, so available to life, so full of joy that the spiritual doors of perception open. And when that happens, true satisfaction is gained within you. True happiness occurs within you.

Non-Tenseness

      The problem with us human beings is that the mind keeps functioning in a very tense manner. Very few people have made bliss and calmness the foundation of their work. Just look around you: most people feel miserable while doing their work. They feel tense about achieving targets, meeting goals, and so on. It's become a burden on us, our work. The secret of making work not a burden but a joy is this very utterly simple secret: bliss needs to be the foundation. Then all greater things are revealed within you. Your greater qualities come to the fore, and you are able to reach the point where you feel satisfied.

      Insecurity is all around us. Life is unpredictable. But while we do have moments to live with relative fulfilment, we must make them joyful, make them blissful. That brings you closer and closer not only to the achievement of your own potentiality, but brings about a great dynamism within your relationships as well. People feel the presence of your dynamism simply because you spread bliss to them. Also, you spread your whole quality of inner relaxedness, your inner joy to them! And thereby you become charismatic.

      So, all things within you become greatly joyful as a result of making bliss the foundation, as an attitude. Then you are able to be empathetic, able to be compassionate. You become a blessing to others. What is the dynamic. leader? A dynamic leader is one who can be a blessing to others. That is positive leadership! And that is the kind of leadership which spirituality has professed over thousands of years. That is the kind of leadership which India stood for: which Bhishma has taught Yudhisthira the Pandav. That is the kind of leadership which the boy-sage Rishi Ashtavakra talked about to King Janak in the Ashtavakra Gita! Be blissful! Drop the misery. Happiness is waiting for you. It is a very short distance from you to happiness. It's simply a question of attitude. Just see very clearly within your mind and repeat to yourself that you must be blissful, come what may. This itself creates a great consciousness within you, a deep awareness of the higher factots of life, and you feel your ego disappearing. You feel yourself becoming one with the universal mind, the cosmic mind. You go beyond the limitations of your own mind, and find yourself taking part in the whole existence in a much more vital, alive, and intimate way.

      Hence, the very essence is for you to be able to find such bliss within yourself that you feel truly blessed. You feel intoxicated! Every cell of your being feels energized, rejuvenated, blessed, and grateful. And when you do that, what else is needed in life? That is true happiness: feeling this great energy of joy within you. That is the very foundation of happiness itself: feeling the great harmony of life. That is brilliant because it gives birth to all the brilliance of your own self-possibilities!

      Be joyous, sing and dance from within, no matter where you are or what you are doing! That power of being blissful is ever within you. That is the state of the sage. That is the state of the Rishi, that is the state of the Buddha, that is the state of the Tirthankaras! And it is a beautiful state, because it makes you feel king-like within yourself. It makes you feel that all things are available to you.

      Feeling like a king of a queen in one's arena of awareness and consciousness is what this blissful foundation results in. A feeling that nothing is lacking, that the sword of your consciousness is absolutely ready to meet whatever circumstance has come its way. That is the very essence of happy living. And it requires a movement from the heart to the head, where the heart suggests bliss and the mind follows! So the heartfelt way is the way to happiness. It provokes the feelings of the heart, and from there you act! Let this come naturally to you, Let this become the very breath of your being. Let this become the permanent state of tranquillity that you are in! The whole future of your life depends upon how you take this decision: whether to be blissful today or miserable today. It is all in your own hands! That way, ancient Hinduism and Buddhism have both given great dignity to mankind. Because it says that we are ultimately the creators of our own destiny. There is no need to blame an outer god, we create our own karma! And the best karma is created when the person is in a blissful state. Then, whatever the person touches brings about an actualization of ecstasy. It brings about an actualization of harmony and fulfillment in all faculties of life.

Ananda

      The very essence of God is blissfulness or Ananda in Tantra. That is the whole definition of God. It is the ultimate state of being. It is a cosmic truth and a fundamental law as far as Tantra cosmology and Buddhist theology goes. Hence, the idea is not to be acting with one part miserable and one part blissful: you can create even misery into bliss, with the right attitude. That is the alchemy which Tantra talks about. Circumstances are sometimes troublesome to us, but it is the indication about how we function that really determines the course of our lives.

      Remember that your soul is infinite, the spiritual part of yourself is infinite. The very realization of this brings about the feeling that you can transcend all limited things. That you can look beyond all limits of things. Rest your consciousness in the state of infinity. When you rest your consciousness in the of infinity, it automatically gets you established in a state of bliss. Because the mind is then able to see beyond its immediate problems. It's able to go beyond its usual patterns of thinking.

      Our usual patterns of thinking create the bondage of the mind. They create an imprisonment of ourselves. They stop us from feeling blissful, because there is so much to worry about! We may tall ill. We may have to move on from old relationships. We may face any kind of problem in life. But no matter what, the person of bliss is able to move forward, just through the conception and awareness that the spiritual side of herself or himself is so infinite and so vast, that nothing can stop its vibration of sheer blissfulness and joy. With this attitude, move on in life! And you'll find that you are able to sing your song, you are able to find your own beauty of energy within yourself. You are able to synthesize all your strengths, and able to make even your material work into something spiritual, something which has a quality of the beyond! Something which is truly mindful and joyful.

      The state of bliss is the opposite to the state of aggressiveness. One way of working in the world is working with aggressiveness. The other way is of working with dynamism. Aggressiveness implies non-blissful state because the attitude is always to take something from the other, whereas dynamism implies an empathetic yet fearless approach! The dynamic person is more fearless than the aggressive person, because the motivations are noble. The person is established in a state of peace within, and not in a continuous anxiety continuous anxiety or tension. The aggressive person is continuously established in a state of tension and anxiety, and that is not the way to fulfilled living. That is not the way to truly successful living.

True Success

      What is success in life? Success implies the ability to find balance within yourself. Balance is what leads to happiness. And the most balancing factor in life is the faculty of bliss within us. Hence, find your own balance. Disappear into this feeling. Dissolve yourself into this feeling: that you are the very vibration of bliss which powers the universe! Then you find that you are not the same person any longer. Then you find that you are very vast, that you have the essence of the Divine within you. And knowing that, you come to a situation where your whole energy becomes transformed into great joy, great happiness, great blissfulness! And this is the secret of all mystic paths in the world - be it the Bhagavad Gita, the Tantras, Vedanta, be it the teachings of Buddha, Jesus, a Mahavira, Zarathustra, Or the Zen masters and Taoist masters! All echo the same truth, which has been established in mystic culture for thousands of years.