the shunyata mantra

The main body of the yoga meditation begins with the shunyata mantra, OM SVABHAVA SHUDDHO SARVA DHARMA SVABHAVA SHUDDHO HAM.

First, it's significant that the words of this mantra are the original Sanskrit--just hearing or reciting them imparts great blessings.

Also, this mantra contains a profound explanation of the pure, fundamental nature of both human beings and all other existent phenomena. It means that everything is spontaneously pure--not relatively, of course, but in the absolute sense. From the absolute point of view, the fundamental quality of human beings and the nature of all things is purity.


Thus the shunyata mantra also shows that the self-pity wrong conception that constantly repeats in our mind--"I'm hopeless, I'm impure, I'm a bad person, I'm evil, I can't do anything, I can't help myself, I can't help others"--is completely deluded and an unnatural way to think. In other words, Lord Buddha's philosophy and psychology teach us that we should not believe that we are totally negative or sinful by nature. That's absolutely incorrect. Our fundamental nature is pure. The artificial cloud projected by our ego is not our nature; it's just something fabricated by our intellectual ego. Therefore, we should disregard this wrong view and just be natural, as we are.


Reciting the shunyata mantra helps us cut the conceptions that lead us to misery, such as ideas of permanence and the inherent existence of the self. Such conceptions should be cut. If they are not completely eradicated they just build up; they diminish today and tomorrow recur. We have no control. We suppress something here, it comes out there; we suppress something there, it comes out here. Sublimating problems is no solution.


From the practical point of view, tantric techniques help us gain direct experience of shunyata. The usual way to do this is to first visualize the deity that you are practicing--Maitreya, for example--in space in front of you, seeing this deity as your guru, a buddha or a bodhisattva, depending upon your level of understanding. A laser-like beam of radiant white light emanates from Maitreya's heart and shoots into your heart, transforming all the energy of the self-pity image you have of yourself into radiant white light. This white light image of yourself then gradually dissolves, becoming smaller and smaller until it completely disappears into the space of non- duality. Then, with complete awareness, you concentrate single-pointedly on that.



Lama Yeshe gave this teaching at Tushita Mahayana Meditation Centre, New Delhi, November 1981. Edited from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive by Nicholas Ribush.