r/vajrayana

By "main deity," I mean the principal deity around whom the entire Atiyoga (Dzogchen) cycle is centered. For example:

- Lama Yangtik has Padmasambhava as its primary deity.

- Longchen Nyingthig, Vima Nyingthig, and Khandro Nyingthig are primarily centered on Samantabhadra, although they also include practices related to Padmasambhava, Yeshe Tsogyal, and other enlightened figures.

I'm looking specifically for Dzogchen/Atiyoga cycles in which Tārā (in any form, such as Green Tārā, White Tārā, or any other) is the principal deity of the cycle, rather than appearing only as one practice within a broader revelation or as a supporting deity.

Hello everyone,

I am trying to clarify a few biographical points about Kyabje Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, and I would be grateful for reliable references rather than speculation.
Most public biographies describe him as the grandson and spiritual heir of Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. A more detailed recent biography says that he was born in Chandigarh in 1967 to Chimed Wangmo, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s daughter. However, I have not been able to find any reliable public source naming his father.

There is also a related question about his monastic status. The same biography says that he received novice ordination at the age of eight and full monastic ordination at the age of twenty. In My Grandfather, My Guru, Rabjam Rinpoche describes a retreat in 1999 during which a rumour circulated that he, “a monk,” had a secret girlfriend.

At the same time, more recent public Shechen-related material appears to refer to Sangyum / Khandro Ugyen Lhamo La, and I have also seen comments saying that Shechen Monastery confirmed that they have been married for many years.

To be clear, I am not asking this as gossip or criticism. I am simply trying to understand the publicly documented chronology.

So my questions are:
Has Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche’s father ever been named in a reliable public source?

Is there any public explanation of when his formal monastic status changed, if it did?

How is Sangyum Ugyen Lhamo understood in the context of his status as a fully ordained monk?

Any reliable references — official biographies, Tibetan-language sources, book citations, interviews, or monastery publications — would be very much appreciated.

I have spent 6 years writing a book interpreting Mula Madhyamaka karika in layman's English. The book is full of examples and discussion flows. If my Dhamma brothers and sisters want, I'll add some text here for preview.

I understand Outer Tantras (Kriya, Charya, Yoga) emphasize external ritual, while Inner Tantras (Mahayoga, Anuyoga, Atiyoga) emphasize visualization.

1. Beyond that, what are the major differences in view, conduct, meditation, and resultant attainment?

2. Are yidams like Tara and Chenrezig practiced across all six, or are certain deities specific to particular tantra classes?

3. Can one receive empowerments for all six levels and attain Buddhahood within a single lifetime?

4. Outer Tantras specify progressively fewer lifetimes—Kriya the most, Charya fewer, Yoga fewest—to reach Buddhahood. Inner Tantras (Mahayoga, Anuyoga, Atiyoga) attain Buddhahood in one lifetime. Given that, what is the difference in the resulting buddhahood among these three Inner Tantras themselves?

Hello all I hope this post finds you all well and happy!

When looking into different schools of Buddhism, I've seen some monks of the theravada sect saying that the concept of bodhisattvas as they are in Mahayana/vajrayana schools are not historically accurate and are just corruptions of mainly Greek deities.

How true/accurate is this claim?

And also in a similar vein,what are some beginner reading materials for somebody looking into vajrayana Buddhism? Is the Pali canon a text found in this school?

And if so why or why not?

I know that all Buddhist sects have in common have the following in common; refuge in the Buddha dhama and sanga,and they teach the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path.

But I can only seek to find reading/commentary from a theravada perspective.

Any and all help is much appreciated

🙏 Thank you all

Hello everyone. In September last year I went through a psychotic episode after having done a Tibetan yoga (Kum nye) retreat with my teacher.
It began with a feeling of utmost bliss and grounding, like I was intensely present in the moment with no thoughts whatsoever and then I went into some sort of delusional thinking for the next few days. I wasn’t sleeping, I had high energy and I was just behaving strangely with people , saying strange things to them etc.
I haven’t really found answers to why this happened and ever since I have been on antipsychotics.
I am wondering if I went through a lung disorder, and if so, if anyone has gone through something similar, I wanted to know how long does it take to recover from something like this.
It has become difficult for me to visualise and meditate. I am currently doing my Ngongdro, vajrasattva visualisations.
I feel like I have lost confidence in myself and my level of awareness seems to have gone really down.
It would be really nice to speak with someone who has gone through some thing similar.
Thank you.

Edited - I forgot to mention earlier that prior to the retreat I also was going through a severe gut issue which wasn’t recovering for about 8months prior, was only eating rice and buttermilk for about 3 months.

Hello friends,

I have been having something on my mind for quite some time. Because this is a somewhat complicated answer, I wrote it in my native language and then translated it. Hence, its grammatical "perfection"

Prāsaṅgika-Madhyamaka holds that all phenomena are merely designated by conceptual consciousness, lacking svabhāva under ultimate analysis. For ordinary objects this is usually explained through a distinction between causal dependence and designative dependence: a phenomenon doesn't need a mind causally present at its arising, only that no intrinsic essence survives analysis.

My question is about truths that seem to hold with a different kind of necessity than ordinary conventional designation. Mathematical theorems and the formal structure of physical law appear true independent of any act of designation — a Pythagorean relation doesn't wait on convention to hold, unlike the boundary between "mountain" and "hill," which clearly does depend on conceptual imputation.

The same question seems to apply to karmic law. Not the individual karmic events themselves, but the lawlike regularity that specific causes ripen into specific effects — that regularity seems to hold from its own side, independent of being conceptually posited. This case feels sharper than physics, since karma is internal to the tradition rather than an external import.

So: how does Prāsaṅgika account for this category of lawlike necessity — mathematical, physical, and karmic — if at all?

The truth of a²+b²=c² is expressed through symbols and apprehended by a mind, but the relation itself does not appear to depend on being designated in order to hold. Mathematical and physical laws are not, in this sense, mentally designated — they are mentally known or apprehended (a different relation than 'dogs pa, conceptual imputation), but their holding does not appear to require a mind imputing them.

One might try to avoid this by positing some prior process — a "law-generating" mechanism, multiversal or otherwise — that produces these laws. But this only pushes the problem back a level: the laws governing that generating process would themselves need to either be mentally designated (regress) or hold independently of designation (conceding the point one level up).

There is also a fine-tuning problem regarding the laws that govern the universe. From the Prāsaṅgika point of view, even these laws should be produced through dependent origination, with conceptual mind as a necessary condition for their existence as determinate phenomena. But this raises a difficult question: if these laws are produced — or constituted — through the intervention of mind, whose mind is it?

It cannot be the mind of any individual sentient being. So is it a collective mind? But a collective mind is, presumably, nothing over and above the aggregate of individual minds — did they somehow collectively converge on positing exactly the right constants, down to the relevant decimal places, with zero margin for error? A small deviation in any of these constants and the universe could not support the conditions for stars, chemistry, or life to arise at all — including, presumably, the very minds supposedly doing the positing. Is it some kind of universal or cosmic mind, prior to and independent of individual continua? If so, this starts to look less like Prāsaṅgika's prajñaptimātra and more like some form of idealism with a transcendent or universal consciousness doing the constituting — a position quite far from anything Candrakīrti or Tsongkhapa would want to commit to.

And if no mind was needed for these laws to be fine-tuned and operative prior to any sentient being's existence, then it seems the laws held — and were already exquisitely precise — entirely independent of mental designation, which is the conclusion Prāsaṅgika denies in principle for any phenomenon whatsoever.

every being suffers immeasurably from beginningless time

i've suffered and continue to suffer

minute after minute, hour after hour

from all the loss i've experienced,

all the loved ones i've lost,

all the things i've done in failed efforts to benefit others,

which have been crushed and destroyed,

all the things i've done in a fake hope of being a bodhisattva who could actually help others,

all that has ended in failure.

even so, for every being wallowing in suffering,

every being i have even had a random glimpse of,

a random hearing of,

even those most think would be dirty,

the beings i've seen fucking from my insatiable lust for porn,

the beings i've seen displaying themselves for fame and wealth...

and now i'm rambling and it's not from the heart,

because i'm not enlightened and have no realization to speak of.

what i do want to speak of is the desire to free every single sentient being from suffering,

no matter how long it takes,

no matter how much they harm me,

no matter how difficult they are,

no matter how long it takes, because it will take so long.

until the end of time,

may I remain, no matter how much it makes me suffer,

until not a single shred of suffering remains for any single sentient being.

How are there iconography different ?

How is there practice different ?

And is there some hierarchy?

And both are essentially Tara herself?

Where is this written or something similar to it?

I heard a Buddhist Vajrayana practitioner mention this somewhere but I can't find it anymore, I also can't find the text it comes from.

He said that whoever does bad things, even wishing bad things for a Vajrayana Practitioner will become "cursed" for many of his/her next lifes.

Is this true, is this written somewhere?

Why in so many texts and practices, do very enlightened beings refer to teachers and students as males?

I'm reading Words of my Perfect Teacher, and Patrul Rinpoche refers to spiritual friends as males. Such as, "Anyone who first examines his teacher skilfully, then follows him skilfully, and finally emulates his realization and actions skilfully will always be on the authentic path, come what may."

Many texts and practices do the same.

Is this a translation thing? Or in the Tibetan language do they also have similar pronouns to English, and they are referencing males in Tibetan as well?

Were the teachers just using short hand? Like, "We'll refer to the teachers and students as males, but we assume the reader will know it's not just that"

Or, has there been a view in this tradition that men are the primary beings capable of realization, of beings lamas, of even being students? Is this something cultural, where men were the ones who practiced and it was very uncommon for women?

How can one be enlightened and hold that view? Maybe my view that this tradition should be more gender-inclusive is distorted? (I don't believe so, but I guess it feels valid to ask).

I know I asked a lot of questions in here, but I'd value other's perspectives and how practitioners have grappled with this aspect of the tradition.

I need to purchase a new practice dorje. I would like one that is fairly high quality, good craftsmanship and handmade. Can anyone recommend a good source?

If I could find one that has already been blessed by a lama that would be nice since I don't get see my lama in person very often. It would also be a plus if it would help support a Nyingma or Kagyu dharma center, but that's not super important. Thank you. 🙏