– Bokar Rinpoche
(Bokar Rinpoche from the Karma-Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, apart from being a master of various Siddhis that I have personally experienced, is also a great scholar and currently the chief lineage holder for the Kālacakra tradition.)
The doctrine of Emptiness is the operative that remains as the underlying principle of the Buddhist Tantric approach to deities or dēvatās. This Tantric practice of deity yoga (dēvatā yōga), which culminates in identification and merging with the envisioned deity, dispels any view of the deities as concrete entities essentially separate or different from the practitioner. The emptiness of the deities, like the concept of emptiness itself, is a nuanced metaphysical view that easily lends itself to misinterpretation. This subtle teaching regarding the impermanence and interdependence of all phenomena is commonly mistaken for Nihilism, a denial of any existence whatsoever. Thus, some western thinkers conclude that the deities are unreal or nonexistent in an absolute sense, interpreting their emptiness as non-reality. According to this misconstrued view, the deities do not exist in any sense, except as human inventions or useful tools for spiritual development.
However, deities are not illusions produced by the human mind; though human envisionments of deities are mental fabrications that do not correspond precisely to the forms of these deities. In that sense, a deity can be said to be a creation of the human psyche. This illusory status, however, holds true only of the human concept and image of a deity, not of the deity himself or herself. The deities are realities that transcend this world and spontaneously assume various forms to benefit beings. Religious practice is an interaction between deity and devotee that invokes protection, assistance, blessings, and eventually the revelation of the deity.
Human envisionments of deity, as in the practice of deity yoga, offer a means to approach the deity and eventually to attain a direct vision of the deity’s divine form in all its glory and living reality. When deity and practitioner merge in the culmination of deity yoga, and their identities dissolve into one, it is not because the deity was unreal all along but because the practitioner has entered the radiant, blissful realm of non-dual awareness the deity inhabits. Moreover, the practitioner comes to recognize that the qualities of the deity were already present in a dormant state in his or her own being, waiting to be awakened.
The Buddhist perspective is that the deities are not simply the products of human intellect and imagination, although their appearance is molded in accordance with human aesthetic preferences, conceptual categories, and spiritual capacities. Rather, the deities are spiritually advanced and enlightened beings who command an array of super-normal abilities and insights into reality that they employ in order to liberate others. Further, these deities are not merely symbols of the qualities they embody, nor are they inventions of human imagination or convenient fictions or tools for human spiritual growth. The powers they grant, the protection they offer, and the blessings they bestow are tangibly real. The practices associated with them – mantras, ritual, meditation, deity yoga – are genuinely efficacious and transformative.
It is also not enough simply to concede that deities are “just as real as humans”, for deities are supernal beings of immense temporal duration whose existence is not subject to the ordinary laws of cause and effect. They will themselves into existence and operate from transcendent planes of bliss and awareness for as long as their presence may benefit living beings. Thus, there is a sense in which the deities are “more real” than humans, for the illusions and suffering that characterize human life are ephemeral phenomena, whereas the wisdom and compassion impelling the deities are irreducible elements of reality.