PACIFIC WORLD - The Institute of Buddhist Studies

136Pacific Worldthe initial and then continuous practice of realizing the emptiness ofinherent existence, the meditator realizes that the person is merely designatedin dependence upon pure mind and body and is not analyticallyfindable among or separate from those bases of designation. Thereby,divine pride itself serves as a means for eliminating exaggerated conceptionsof the status of phenomena including the person; this is how itprevents afflicted ego-inflation.With success at deity yoga, the practitioner has the factors of wisdomand compassionate method in one consciousness at one time. The “ascertainmentfactor” 36 of this consciousness realizes the emptiness of inherentexistence at the same time as the “appearance factor” 37 appears in ideal,compassionate form acting to help beings. This is said to be superior to theSutra version of the union of method and wisdom in which method(cultivation of compassion) merely affects wisdom with its force and inwhich wisdom (realization of emptiness) merely affects compassionateactivities with its force, the two not actually being manifest at one time. Intantra the presence of compassionate method and wisdom in one consciousnessis said to quicken progress toward Buddhahood—a state ofnon-dual realization of the nature of phenomena within spontaneousdualistic appearance for the benefit of others.A profound development has occurred when a practitioner becomescapable of deity yoga. After realizing emptiness, appearances are no longerjust allowed to re-emerge within understanding that there is a conflictbetween how they appear to exist in their own right and their actual lackof such concreteness; rather, one’s own mind realizing emptiness andunderstanding that one’s own and a deity’s final nature are the samebecomes the stuff out of which phenomena appear. The relation betweenemptiness and appearance, the gap between an experience of unfindabilityand re-emergence, is bridged.THE PARADIGM CHANGE: PERSONAL REFLECTIONSIs the progression from the Sutra to the Mantra model of relation withappearance a smooth transition, a harmonious, incremental putting togetherof two models, or could it also be fraught with tension? ‚zong-kaflaand his followers present the Perfection and Mantra Vehicles as anintegrated progression; the very foundations of Perfection Vehicle practice,altruism and wisdom, are reformulated in the Mantra Vehicle in thepractice of deity yoga. He stresses the continuity between the two vehicles,two models or paradigms of the relation of the fundamental emptiness (orthe wisdom realizing emptiness) with appearance.In preparing for a Buddhist-Christian Encounter conference in Hawaiiin 1984 in which Hans Küng’s adaptation of theology of Thomas Kuhn’s