Start with one careful book on deity yoga

One introductory book, read slowly with its context, gives a firmer footing than several summaries that contradict each other. The 1987 edition introduces deity practice in the lower tantra classes, not the highest class this page describes.

Pourquoi ça marche

A single text read with its context lets a reader see how the terms relate to one another: the generation stage, pride of the deity, clear appearance and the empowerment. Scattered summaries often use the same word for different things. The tradition’s technical vocabulary is easy to misread without that context, so one reliable book is a better base than several partial ones.

Comment faire

1. Start with Jeffrey Hopkins’s 1987 edition of Tsongkhapa’s text on deity yoga, presented with the Dalai Lama’s commentary. It introduces deity practice as taught in the Action and Performance tantras, the lower classes, so it does not present the highest-class generation stage described on this page. Read its introduction first.
2. Read the glossary entries for each technical term as you go, and write down any term the book uses that you cannot yet define.
3. Read the book as a study text, not as a set of steps to follow.
4. Take the 2017 second volume of the Great Exposition series later, when you have a teacher or a study group to discuss it with.

Données probantes

This is a reading suggestion based on the books’ own titles and the publisher and library records. It makes no claim about outcomes. (anecdotal)

Check which tantra class each book covers. The 1987 title names the Action and Performance tantras, which are a different class from the highest-class generation stage described in the glossaries.

Sources

• Tsong-kha-pa Blo-bzan-grags-pa, H.H. the Dalai Lama, and Jeffrey Hopkins. Deity Yoga: In Action and Performance Tantra, translated and edited by Jeffrey Hopkins. Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1987 (ISBN 0937938505). First published as The yoga of Tibet, London: Allen & Unwin, 1987.
• H.H. the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tsongkhapa Lobzang Drakpa, and Jeffrey Hopkins (ed.). The Great Exposition of Secret Mantra, Volume 2: Deity Yoga. Snow Lion, 2017 (ISBN 9781611803587).
• Study Buddhism (Berzin Archives). Glossary: yidam.
• Study Buddhism (Berzin Archives). Glossary: deity yoga (lha’i rnal ’byor).

Erreur fréquente

Reading a book on deity yoga as instructions and beginning the visualisation it describes. The tradition expects such texts to be studied alongside a teacher’s instruction.