A Practitioner's Guide to the Tools

by Evelyn Ruut

Evelyn Ruut was a Vajrayana Buddhist practitioner who posted extensively to the Buddhist newsgroups in the early-to-mid 2000s. Her posts consistently combined personal practice experience with practical instruction and a clear-eyed willingness to address difficult questions about teachers, authority, and the nature of the practices themselves.

This post, from November 2003, is one of her most complete practitioner-level explanations of Tibetan Buddhism: what each tool is for, why it works, and — crucially — what happens when practitioners mistake the tools for the goal. She addresses visualizations, mantras, ritual, meditation, the intellect, the teacher relationship, and koans in turn, then concludes with the core Buddhist insight that all the forms — deities, teachers, mantras, merit — are practices for oneself and ultimately dissolve into emptiness.

The section on teachers and samaya (spiritual commitment) is especially frank: samaya is a commitment to oneself, not to an external authority, and an abusive or power-seeking teacher has broken their samaya first. The freedom at the heart of Buddhism, she argues, is enormous and sometimes frightening — and the forms exist to help practitioners find the courage to stand in it.

Tibetan Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism, with all its icons, intricacies and trimmings, as formed many years ago in Tibet, is a wonderful, rich, satisfying practice for both the educated, highly practised monk, through to the most uneducated and illiterate among the population. It is said that Buddha taught 84,000 dharmas. This means that there is an effective method for everyone among them.

All the forms of Buddhism use various means or "tools" for working with the human mind. Some use one method, some many. All the forms of Buddhism are capable of bringing one to enlightenment. I believe that the Tibetan form of Buddhism maps the way most efficiently of all due to its great diversity of practices.

Vajrayana Buddhism uses every "tool" in the box.

Visualizations

We use visualizations of advanced beings, which help us align our attitudes and empathies with Buddha-like values and attitudes. These are mentally generated images with a purpose and the purpose is to help us attain enlightenment by having us engender or "practice" enlightened attitudes and thought patterns. These deities are envisioned, experienced for a time during meditation, then dissolved by the meditator at the end.

These are not to be seen as Gods or Goddesses in the way Christian or other religious beings are seen, with existence or power of their own. They are mentally generated images, usually based on real people, who became enlightened in their own practices in the past.

You may hear Tibetan practitioners referring to these deities as though they were real, and you may wonder why is that? We believe in two aspects of reality, ultimate and relative realities. These beings exist to us in relative reality, just like your "self," subject to causes and conditions. Ultimately, like your "self" it is a different story, and neither one has existence of their own.

Mantras

We use mantras, and repeat them over and over. Those mantras focus the mind on bodhicitta, and benefitting other beings, taking the focus off ones self. Are the mantras themselves magical? No, not at all. The mantras are just a tool. There are some who use only mantra as their practice. For some it is satisfying, and yes, it works.

There are many Buddhist stories about less educated practitioners who through some ignorance pronounced mantras incorrectly or even used meaningless and even ridiculous phrases, and still achieved enlightened states in doing so! It is the mental focus, not the words that count.

Ritual

We use ritual, also a tool. Human beings tend to go onto "auto-pilot" when doing things, automatically moving along while the mind free-associates, thinking of and doing other things while we potter about. Ritual makes us think, makes us take the time to really focus on what we are doing. Ritual grabs the consciousness and while we do these rituals, we are focusing our mind again on bodhicitta, on benefitting living beings, again negating thoughts of self.

Meditation

We use meditation to stop the constant chatter and roaming about that happens within our minds. All the traditions realize what an incredible, powerful tool it is for that purpose. In all its variations, meditation calms the mind, helps us focus on one subject rather than free-associating, and teaches us to dwell in the present instead of roaming about exploring the past, which we cannot change, or the future, which we cannot yet experience. The present moment becomes ours in meditation, and we learn to control our minds and attitudes.

The Intellect

We also use the tool of the intellect as we do here on this newsgroup, and in reading dharma books and studying. Hearing dharma talks, debating, learning the principles. But it is a limited tool and cannot stand alone. It can easily degrade into silly rationalizations and ego-driven motives, not to "lose" the argument, while leaving the experiential side out altogether. Nonetheless, it has its value.

The Teacher

We also utilize the principle of the teacher. We revere them, and promise to follow their suggestions and instructions diligently. Teachers are necessary to help us learn the most effective method of getting from point A to point B in the most efficient way. A teacher sees you from outside yourself. A teacher prevents you from getting into bad habits, from doing it "wrong" so long that you reinforce, rather than eliminate the obscuring factors from your inner sight and understanding.

We owe our teachers great respect and allegiance, but we must never lose sight of the fact that they are there to help us. If they foster dependency, or do not seem to be helping us, we need a new teacher. Moving on is not necessarily breaking samaya (spiritual commitment).

In fact, to the contrary it would be breaking samaya to continue with an abusive or harmful teacher. If a teacher began to use his position to make us tools for his or her own ego, such as political or power agendas or in a sexual way, that would be an example of an incorrect way to relate, and in that case, it would be that teacher who has broken their samaya with us.

Koans

In Zen practice koans are used, which are brief questions or phrases which have no rational answer. The intense focus applied to a seemingly "unanswerable" question tends to max out the rational mind, and cast one into the realm of the intuitive.

The Tools Are Not the Goal

All of these methods are valid and wonderful tools to work with the human consciousness, the human mind. It is important not to raise these tools up as anything above or "outside" of ourselves. That is the main flaw in Christianity that I see, which is envisioning powerful beings as having separate motivation and power.

In Buddhism, all those kinds of external beings are seen as projections and the interplay of our own thoughts. One of the things I have always loved about Buddhism is that fact. We are not seen as "powerless sinners," seeking outside beings for forgiveness for our innate rottenness, but instead as Buddhas inside, seeking to get in touch with that part of ourselves, seeking our own inner clarity that we have overlaid with things we think are important but really are not.

So to conclude: such promises or samayas are really to ourselves, not our teachers, although we say them to our teachers and we mean it that way at the time we say them. The practices done are to ourselves, not the deities or the teachers. The practices and deities, and mantras, and meditations, and the teachers and teachings — all are to help us become enlightened. We must never lose sight of that fact. Punishment, or karmic repercussions are likewise brought about by ourselves to ourselves, as simple cause and effect, not the punishment of some outside deity or being.

I see this as one of the best and finest things about Vajrayana, and one of the things that drew me most. As we dissolve our ego and our obscurations and negative thought patterns we eventually even dissolve ourselves. That is what it is all about.

I know that there will be some who take issue with what I have said here. Some see the practices differently, some see the tools as being more important, some see the teachers and the visualized deities as replacements for God and Jesus and as continuations of the stuff they learned as whatever their previous religion taught them. But as you begin to understand more, you will realize this is not the case.

Some simply cannot deal with the enormous and scary freedom that the real truth implies, and they like having a practice in which they are governed by and subject to outside forces. They enjoy seeing these things as "real."

It takes enormous courage to stand on the top of a mountain — a speck in the vastness of the universe — and not have a thing to cling to. No god, no anything. It is a kind of courage that all are not really ready to own just yet.

It is important to find the strength to let others be, and let them have what they need. In our Vajrayana practices we promise to give beings what they need, not what we believe is true, or what we want for ourselves, but what they need in a truly selfless way.

Whether it is "ethical" to allow beings to use Buddhist icons as real rather than any other kind, should be irrelevant. Not all people are ready to handle that aloneness and that responsibility. Those of us who don't understand it should try to see it as one of those needs of living beings that we daily pray to help satisfy.

We should pray for the elimination of ignorance and the spiritual growth and strength, which allows the real truth to be seen. It takes great patience. Ultimately all we envision, think, and aspire to is dissolved into the clear light of emptiness at the end of each practice by the meditator.

Colophon

Posted by Evelyn Ruut to alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, talk.religion.buddhism, and alt.religion.buddhism on 18 November 2003. Evelyn Ruut was a Vajrayana Buddhist practitioner and longtime participant in the Buddhist Usenet newsgroups. Her posts combined genuine practice experience with clear, accessible explanation and a frank willingness to address difficult questions about teachers, authority, and the institutional pressures that can distort Buddhist practice.

This post is notable for its systematic treatment of the full range of Vajrayana "tools," and especially for its insistence that none of them — not deities, not teachers, not mantras, not ritual — have reality apart from the practitioners who use them. The courage required to genuinely internalize this teaching is, she argues, one of the great demands and gifts of the tradition.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

🌲