The practice of Heruka-Vajrasattva holds a special place within the FPMT family. It was the first tantric practice taught by Lama Yeshe to his western students, and he continually encour-aged them to practice it throughout his life and left explicit instructions for it to be practiced continuously for a year after his passing.

As a gift for his students he composed the beautiful text of the tsog offering to Heruka Vajrasattva, this being the practice held every Saturday morning at Buddha House, and which has been continuously practiced at BH virtually since its beginning.
Vajrasattva embodies the wisdom, compassion and power of all buddhas, specifically the power to purify all our mistaken attitudes and the actions that follow, seemingly uninterrupted, from them.

Vajrasattva also represents our own innate fundamental purity and our own potential to perfect our love and wisdom.

The effectiveness of Vajrasattva only comes from a deep faith in the three jewels and the strongest love and compassion that we can gather. A strong faith in the three jewels is there-fore an absolute prerequisite, as well as a measure of bodhichitta and some degree of understanding of emptiness. It is also essential that we have strong faith and respect for Geshe-la also, as he will be the one giving the teaching.

The receiving of empowerment does not occur with out these attitudes, but we also need to understand that it is taking our level of commitment to the teachings and to our teachers to another level.

On top of this we need to be prepared to receive and undertake the commitments that follow with the practice. Therefore we need to understand that this is not a small thing that we can abandon after a few weeks when we aren't interested anymore. We should be taking the empowerment to deepen our commitment to the teachings and to our teacher and not just because it seems everyone else is or that it seems more special and 'sacred' than Geshe-la's teachings on Tuesday nights for example. So please give it lots of consideration before undergoing the empowerment.

An empowerment is another teaching. It begins with preliminary teachings on the lam-rim for us to adjust our motivation, and the taking of bodhis-attva vows. After this is the elaborate (or brief, we must always be prepared for the brief!) guided meditation on Vajrasattva and the mantra.

After the empowerment we will have pledged to do a number of mantras per day, so we need to have a strong sense of commitment to do the practice daily. We will also have taken the Bodhisattva vows, so we need to be prepared for this and committed to furthering our understanding of Bodhichitta and the vows.

In Summary, the practice of Vajrasattva is extremely precious and beautiful, reminding us of our innate purity, and also extremely powerful. Therefore, we should attend if we feel we have some proficiency with the three principal paths, we have strong faith in our wonderful and kind teacher, Geshe-la, and we are prepared to practice this for the long haul.

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