The following text is an edited excerpt from a talk given by Patrick Sweeney at a meditation program entitled "Yoga & Meditation", on November 15, 2002, in Ojai, California.

Hatha Yoga in Tantric Buddhist Practice
Our style of practice is very much informed by the tantric tradition. To understand this,we can look at the Tibetan word for buddha, which is sanje. San means purify. Je means fully blossomed. To achieve the state of buddha, we have to do two things. We have to purify confusion and we have to get out of the way so that the wisdom qualities can blossom. Buddha means simply someone who is awake, who is not dwelling in confusion, who is not taking refuge in depression. So how do we purify and allow the wisdom qualities to emerge?

Creation Stage and Completion Stage
In the tantric method there are two phases to our practice, the creation (or generation) stage and the completion stage. In the generation stage, we create an environment whereby we can deal honestly with our confusion and dispel obstacles. On an outer level we work to purify our attachment to confusion through visualization, and on an inner level we work to purify the energetic aspect of our being through hatha yoga. In the completion stage, the secret level, we rest our minds in the result of the purification through sitting meditation.

The way we work with our practice within this context is that we go back and forth between doing something and resting in the result. In hatha yoga, we actively take on different shapes and forms, and are confronted with our reaction to taking these shapes and forms. After we have done that we completely relax our minds and allow whatever qualities, insights, or feelings that arise to simply be there and we look directly at them. The combination of these two aspects of our practice is what allows this alchemical transformation of our confusion to occur.

The Five Elements
Hatha yoga discipline is representative of tantric practice in that it works to facilitate moving from a confused relationship with the elements and the basic constituents of our being, to a liberated, unconfused one. There are five basic principles of hatha yoga which correspond to the five elements of space, earth, water, fire and wind. The following paragraphs are a discussion of these five principles.

The Element Space: Drishti
The first and probably the most important aspect of the yoga practice in this context is referred to as drishti. Drishti means gaze or view, and it refers to the quality of directed attention. On its ultimate level it has the connotation of complete freedom, a quality of mind which is completely free, like space. At a path level, the most important aspect of how you hold your mind is referred to as non-judgmental bare attention, or unconditional friendliness. This is the quality of mind that gives you the capacity to completely embrace your experience without being hard on yourself. So when you are doing a yoga posture that is difficult for you, it is simply a reflection of where you are. It is not an insult. It is not something to be overcome with force. Rather, you approach the difficulty with the element of space, which is the attitude of all pervasive accommodation. So what is it that creates the space of accommodation? It is the quality of our attention in the practice. If we bring a quality of attention which is aggressive or greedy, the practice deludes us. If we bring a quality of attention which is patient, friendly and non-aggressive, the practice starts to come to us.

The Element Earth: Asana
The second aspect of our hatha yoga practice, which corresponds to the element of earth, is the practice of asana. Asana means seat or ground. It has to do with the yoga postures and the qualities of firmness and stability. The description of asana in one of the seminal texts on yoga, The Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali, is that it should be steady and relaxed.

The first principle of asana is alignment. If your body is out of balance, then you have to use your conceptual mind to compensate for the imbalance with muscular holding and contraction. In a sense you are struggling with gravity. You are trying to defeat gravity with your conceptual and muscular mind. And if you haven't noticed, gravity always wins sooner or later. So the trick of the asana practice is to stop fighting with gravity by finding the optimal position or alignment within a given asana.

The second principle of asana is relaxation. Once proper alignment is discovered you relax with that alignment. If the bones of the body are aligned in relation to gravity properly, the mind and the muscular structure can relax.

The third principle of asana is dynamic resilience. Sometimes as Buddhists we have the notion that asana means we are going to sit perfectly still for five hours and not move. But when you are truly aligned and you are resting with ease in the posture, then there are very subtle, dynamic adjustments that the body makes spontaneously. The idea is not to override those with the mind.

The Water Element: Vinyasa
The third principle of hatha yoga is vinyasa, which corresponds to the element of water. Vinyasa is the linking movements within and between postures. If you want to move your arms from your sides to above your head, you can just throw them up there, or you can move them in a consistent, balanced way, linking the various positions of the arm in a flowing manner that makes sense energetically and does not create distortion. In fact moving in this way starts to undo the distortion. Similarly, there is a linking movement between each posture. The idea is we don't go to sleep. We actually work to link our movements with intention and synchronization. The key element in this synchronization is allowing the breath and the mind to give the body permission to move naturally. If your movements are creating distortion, the breath and the mind will reflect that. There will be a quality of discursiveness in your mind and your breath will be ragged. If the movements are synchronized, then breath-body-mind move as one unit. This is the purpose of vinyasa: to train so that one reaches that level of synchronization.

The Fire Element: Bandha
The fourth principle, the principle of fire, is the energy of transformation. We access our inner energetic body through bandha, or energetic lock. One bandha in particular connects all the other energetic locks. It is called uddiyana bandha. Uddiyana literally means flying up. It is a form of energetic lock where the two main energetic supports for our being are brought into intimate contact with each other right below the navel and they are given an environment whereby they can completely renew themselves and be distributed properly throughout the energetic system. This use of bandha is really the classic bridge between outer work with the asana and the inner work with breathing control and meditation. In the style of yoga I have studied, we bring the energetic body into our asana practice right from the beginning, through the use of bandha.

The Wind Element: Pranayama
The fifth principle, which corresponds with the principle of wind, or air, is pranayama. Prana means life force and yama means restraint or control. The breath becomes an extremely useful mirror where we can experience the workings of the mind. As we systematically slow down, soften, smooth and make the breath effortless, we find that the mind similarly starts to relax. When pranayama is happening properly it brings about a spontaneous stilling of the mind. This spontaneous stilling and resting of the mind is then the basis upon which our meditation practice can really build.

Conclusion
In tantric practice,we work simultaneously with all different levels of our being: body, energy, breath and mind. In order to bring attention to them we break them down. Each of these aspects of the practice are given a certain amount of attention, and we start to understand how the whole thing fits together into a dynamic whole. This is the tandem style of creation and completion practice of the tantric yogi. The creation side is hatha yoga, and the completion side is sitting meditation practice.