Secret sadhanas

Sadhanas are meditation practices, mainly found in the Mahayana (particularly Tibetan Buddhism), that involve the visualisation of a Buddha or bodhisattva figure with prescribed features, in a prescribed way and order, and usually accompanied by the chanting of a mantra. For example there is a sadhana of the Buddha, known in the Mahayana as Shakyamuni, or there is a sadhana of Green or White Tara. The overall goal of such a meditation practice is to help to develop the enlightened qualities of the visualised being in oneself. Sometimes, some practitioners visualise themselves as the being, in order to aid this process.

As a practice, this seems to have the same disadvantages as the general tendency in Buddhism to focus on enlightenment as an end result. That is, the various figures are supposed to represent the qualities of a state of enlightenment, not the process of getting there or the process of moving from one’s present state to a higher state. To practise a sadhana is almost inevitably to dwell on the fixed metaphysical idea of enlightenment, rather than an experiential symbolisation of how to get there.

But of course, we are not actually capable of experiencing visual qualities that are beyond our experience, and there are marked limits to how far visual images can really support dogmas. The artistic images on which sadhanas are based can appeal greatly to our experience. For a while, as a member of the Western Buddhist Order, I visualised the Blue Buddha Akshobhya. The imaginative links made between the colour and the many other particular symbolic associations with Akshobhya (e.g. with elephants) I found fascinating. But surely this was a set of associations set up in my imagination? It had nothing to do with enlightenment, nor did it even particularly symbolise spiritual progress for me. The Five-Buddha mandala, of which Aksobhya forms a part, could symbolise spiritual progress through the integration of the different colours and qualities of the different Buddhas, and thus relate more directly and positively to my experience, but I was told that there was no traditional sadhana practice of visualising the whole mandala.

Another way of seeing positive benefits in the practice might be of imitating someone’s posture and expression who is in a better state than oneself. By repeatedly visualising someone happier, for example, one might become happier. So, the visualisation of a positive figure might have that good effect – however, again this has nothing to do with them being enlightened, and it might be better just to visualise a photograph of someone you know exhibiting a positive quality you’d like to imitate.

There may be many more benefits of sadhanas than I can explore in this short section, or be aware of given my limited experience of practising one, but they will all uniformly gain their value by a relationship to experience rather than enlightenment. It may well be that these positive effects outweigh the possible negative effects of dwelling constantly on the idea of enlightenment.

The secrecy surrounding sadhanas, however, does not seem to support the likelihood of them being treated as practices that relate to one’s experience. Traditionally, at least in Tibetan Buddhism, one needs to be initiated into a sadhana practice by a guru, and people who have not received this initiation should not do the practice. This secrecy is in any case becoming increasingly irrelevant when many sadhanas can be read about in books, but the larger point is that it increases the revelatory authority of guru and tradition, when in fact it is an individual who freely chooses to take up (or give up) a sadhana practice.

There is also nothing secret about sadhanas that should stop them being more widely taught for those who wish to learn them, or them being individually modified from the particular strict instructions traditionally given. These are individual meditation practices done for the benefit of an individual, so they should be under that individual’s control, not another source of power for traditional pseudo-priesthoods guarding supposed sacred mysteries. The sacredness and specialness of the sadhana, like that of anything else, are found in the experience of the individual, where it is individual imaginative associations that the individual might choose to guard, not the sadhana tradition as a whole.

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