tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7358060836136378002024-02-08T03:33:59.217-08:00Reflections on Infinite Spacecomments and feedback on The Visionary Experience of Ever-present Good.Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.comBlogger41125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-28525383546654149472015-02-13T09:58:00.000-08:002015-02-13T09:58:23.073-08:00Verse 3.14 — conclusion<div class="p1">
<i>In this age of strife, these vital instructions for the great mysteries</i></div>
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<i>Are mingled with the authoritative writings of the analytic approach.</i></div>
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<i>Those knowledge holders who are not different from me</i></div>
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<i>Will make my vision clear.</i></div>
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<i></i><br /></div>
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<i>Masters of this teaching, the expression of the awakening beings of the three families, </i></div>
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<i>And those blessed with natural talent, enjoy and make use of it.</i></div>
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An age of strife? This is traditional religious rhetoric, or, to be more accurate, this is the rhetoric of traditional religions, most of which look to the past for models of human behavior and society. The further back in time one goes, the more noble and greater people were. Buddhism is no different. The cosmology of traditional Buddhism is based on a myth of the progressive devolution of human behavior and society. Modern thinking, though it carefully avoids the label “religious”, is based on the equally questionable myth of progressive evolution — to a higher consciousness and an ideal society based on higher consciousness or technology.</div>
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Basically, we are going nowhere, but we seem to be going there faster than ever. </div>
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However, what Jigmé Lingpa says next is important. “These vital instructions for the great mysteries/Are mingled with the authoritative writings of the analytic approach.” </div>
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In earlier verses, Jigmé Lingpa has been clear that the analytic approach is different from direct awareness practices such as Great Completion. Because the analytic approach is inevitably based in concept and language, it cannot bring us into the direct experience of, say, the various kinds of releasing described in the preceding verse. Peter Sloterdijk, in “You Must Change Your Life”, uses the example of throwing a discus.</div>
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“One can only carry out a throw of a discus by throwing it; no amount of chatter about discuses and the right way to throw them can replace the throw itself, and neither the biographies of throwers nor the bibliography of throwing literature will lead a single step further.”</div>
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One can train in the philosophy and reasoning of the analytic approach or one can train in the contemplative practice of direct awareness. They are two different disciplines. One does not necessarily lead to the other, nor is either a necessary pre-condition for the other. In Tibet there were people who trained in one or the other (basically monastic college scholars and the mountain hermits) and there were some who trained in both. One title for such individuals was scholar-master (<span class="s1">མཁས་གྲུབ་</span>), those able both to teach with authority because of their scholastic training and to teach and guide others in practice because of their contemplative experience. These individuals were highly revered and became the models to which most people aspired. While this blend of analytical philosophy and contemplative practice did much to ensure a solid line of transmission through the centuries, it is not without problems, perhaps the most significant being the tendency to rely on definition, analysis and reason for contemplative practice and not one’s own experience, refined and deepened with the guidance of an experienced practitioner.</div>
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Jigmé Lingpa was a self-taught person himself and thus less invested in the analytic approach than his institutionally trained colleagues. If I were to put what he says here in my own words, it would be, “Don’t get caught in this mishmash. Find someone who knows what I’m talking about and work with him or her.” </div>
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In the last two lines, he states explicitly that he is not writing for everyone, but for those who have already mastered such practice and for those who have natural talent. Such a statement goes strongly against the egalitarian anti-elitist sentiments in modern society, but let’s be practical for a moment. While I might learn something at a physics seminar taught by Richard Feynman or Albert Einstein, a fully trained physicist who is conversant with their research is probably going to learn a lot more. There are levels of practice and ability. That is why we train, to improve our understanding, our skills and our abilities. The more we know, the more we can appreciate and the more we can learn. </div>
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The guidance Jigmé Lingpa offers here is not for beginners. Milarepa started with a similar practice, Buddhahood without Meditation. He took the instruction “Do nothing” literally. He didn’t do anything. Fortunately, his dzogchen teacher saw that this practice wasn’t going to work for Milarepa and sent him to Marpa. Under Marpa’s guidance, Milarepa developed the understanding, skills and abilities he needed to practice. In the same way, most of us, if we practice this way without preparation, will end up doing nothing and going nowhere, but in the wrong way. This is why, in traditional contexts, texts such as this one were sealed, to be shown and taught only to those who could benefit from them. </div>
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A few talented people will be able to make immediate use of the instruction Jigmé Lingpa offers here. For most of us, though, the subtlety and depth of these teachings reveal themselves as our understanding and abilities develop and then we can enjoy and engage them.</div>
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Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-3237705446864636652015-02-11T10:18:00.001-08:002015-02-13T10:04:02.431-08:00Verse 3.13 — awakening, buddhahood<div class="p1">
<i>When you open and relax,</i></div>
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<i>There is an emptiness that goes beyond true or false.</i></div>
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<i>Here, if you know arise and release, natural release, and direct release</i></div>
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<i>You are no different from all the awakened ones.</i></div>
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<i>You are awake and no different from me.</i></div>
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It sounds so simple. Just open and relax. But the opening and relaxing to which Jigmé Lingpa refers is not quite what we do when we come home from work and let the cares of the day subside. Nor is it what we do when we go on a vacation. He is talking about the opening and relaxing that takes place when we cease to do anything, when we let go of any effort whatsoever. This is not easy. Our whole being is keyed to striving. Biologically we strive to stay alive. Emotionally we strive for connection and fulfillment. Cognitively we strive to be someone, to have a narrative for what we call “I”.</div>
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Letting go is not something I decide to do. But it can happen, more often by accident than by design, though, as Trungpa once said, the purpose of practice is to make ourselves accident-prone.</div>
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People have described what happens in different ways. We become an empty mirror. Mind and body drop away. We fall into an emptiness that goes beyond true or false. And then, as so often happens, others seize on our words and miss what we are saying. Tomes, great and wonderful tomes, have been written about emptiness, trying to describe it, trying to understand it, trying to explain it. </div>
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Emptiness is not a thing. At the same time it’s not nothing.</div>
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It is a description of an experience, or, possibly, a way of experiencing. It is not a statement about the ground of being or anything like that. </div>
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What is that way of experiencing? Here, ordinary language fails because it relies on and generates conceptual thinking. We can only use the language of metaphor, and there are several — a cathedral, snowflakes on a hot stone, a knotted snake thrown into the air, a thief entering an empty house.</div>
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The first time I went to Yosemite, I was completely and utterly stunned. The sheer cliffs, the mass of rock, the vertical grandeur towering over the tranquil meadows, rivers and lakes of the valley floor — a natural cathedral. My mind just stopped. </div>
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When we look at mind, when we look at nothing and actually see nothing, the same thing happens. All effort disappears and the mind stops. It’s not something you or I make happen, but it happens. This is not just the quiet mind. It is no mind (not literally, of course, but that is how the experience arises). No thinking, no conceptualization — good, bad, true, false — nothing. </div>
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Sometimes, too, when thoughts arise, they vanish in the moment of arising, like snowflakes landing on a hot stone. Beautiful intricate structures in incomprehensible numbers, swirling, dancing and — one by one — they vanish, not even a trace.</div>
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Sometimes it’s as if we are inside a thought as it arises and it unties itself, leaving us in empty space, somewhere over the Grand Canyon or in the Hubble Gap — again, not because of any effort we make.</div>
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Sometimes a thought arises and pokes around for a while. Or perhaps it’s a whole gang. Still, there is nothing for them to connect to, nothing they can take or push against or steal. At some point they just leave and the house is empty again. Good, bad, better, worse — these don’t even enter the picture.</div>
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In all of this, “I” doesn’t do anything. “I” is based in thought, in language. The efforts we have made make it possible to be without engaging the conceptual mind. Other possibilities are now available.</div>
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To experience arising and releasing and not have to react, to know what arises and for it to take care of itself — this is what it means to be awake and free. In more technical language, experience is empty, groundless. It comes and goes but it is not a thing. Yet it is not nothing. It is also knowing — unrestricted, unconfined by concept or conditioning. That unrestricted knowing naturally manifests as compassion, as continual movement in the direction of balance in the totality of experience.</div>
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Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-33575669389826388932015-02-08T14:10:00.000-08:002015-02-08T14:10:00.927-08:00Verse 3.12 — and so it ends<div class="p1">
<i>The great treasure is to be free of thought and thinking.</i></div>
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<i>To know that there is originally no buddha</i></div>
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<i>Is to be where wanting has never been.</i></div>
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<i>With this special teaching that rots the roots of samsara</i></div>
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<i>Wake up from the realm of misery. </i></div>
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And so it ends. </div>
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Experience arises. Because of our conditioning, it’s almost never exactly what we want. We want things to be a little different from what they are — a lot. We push away what we don’t like, cling to what we do like or ignore what we don’t care about. Each of those reactions involves an effort.</div>
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When we discover the possibility of making no effort — no effort whatsoever, the whole edifice of ordinary experience crumbles into dust. It crumbles because ordinary experience rests on these three fundamental emotional reactions: attraction, aversion and indifference. </div>
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Buddha? Full awakening? What’s that? In a certain sense, we discover that we were never asleep to begin with even though it feels as if we have woken up from a bad dream.</div>
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Wanting? What’s that? Where there is nothing to grasp or oppose, wanting doesn’t even enter the picture.</div>
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The great treasure is to be free of thought and thinking. </div>
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This line, like many others, is susceptible to misinterpretation, particularly when taken literally. Perhaps a slightly different take on a much-used metaphor will help. </div>
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Look into the sky. The expanse of the sky does not obstruct the floating white clouds. Nor do the floating white clouds, or even the heavy dark thunderheads, obstruct the expanse of the sky.</div>
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When we take that in, something shifts and there is no more struggle.</div>
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When we know this experientially, that is, when we can be both the sky and the clouds, then, even when we are in great physical or emotional pain, when our world is a complete mess and we don’t know what to do, when nothing makes any sense and we have nowhere to turn, we are no longer dreaming in a realm of misery. We are free and at peace. Samsara has come to an end.</div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-6517996995546419652015-02-07T10:28:00.000-08:002015-02-07T10:28:40.459-08:00Verse 3.11 — another letting go<div class="p1">
<i>All the technicalities of outlook practice, and behavior</i></div>
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<i>Are, in terms of what is natural, just intellectual chaff.</i></div>
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<i>Let correctives based on mindfulness, position and effort subside into space.</i></div>
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<i>With the chosen discipline of not naming wandering or not wandering,</i></div>
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<i>Just let things be — not sending out or drawing in, not keeping or removing.</i></div>
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<i>There’s a space there — free from the complications of effort.</i></div>
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Having set the stage <a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2015/01/verse-310-losing-your-way.html" target="_blank">in the last verse</a>, Jigmé Lingpa takes the next fifteen lines to cut through any kind of effort in practice. </div>
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Mind is how we experience life, how we experience ourselves, how we experience the world. In this sense, there is nothing that is not mind. Obviously, this is quite different from the idealist interpretations of much Mahayana Buddhist teaching, which are textbook examples of what Jigmé Lingpa was decrying in the preceding verse.</div>
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As meditation practice deepens, we become less and less concerned with the what of experience and more and more concerned with the how. This shift is not without its challenges. Because of our physical, emotional and cognitive conditioning, what we experience triggers, elicits or stimulates a wide range of somatic, emotional and cognitive reactions. For those who are drawn or compelled to pursue direct awareness, all those reactions are just stuff and we build an increasing capacity to experience them as movement rather than fact. In the process, we discover a kind of awareness that is always there, that is utterly clear and immediate, that we may have never seen or noticed before. Sometimes we happen on it by accident, sometimes it is pointed out to us, sometimes it arises after years of effort. It doesn’t matter how we come to it. Once we know it and see its implications, <a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2015/01/verse-38-treasure-at-worlds-end.html" target="_blank">life is never the same</a>. </div>
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Now we enter a deep and difficult paradox. On the one hand, if we engage with content in anyway, we lose touch with that awareness — we drop out of it. On the other hand, conversations take place, food is eaten, the tasks of the day are done and our lives unfold — it’s as if life takes place in the awareness and “I”, as a separate entity, is not even in the picture. </div>
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Obviously, this is difficult to talk about. At this point in practice, ideas, explanations, frameworks, techniques, guidelines, etc. have little meaning. If we try to rely or hold on to any of these, we fall back into ordinary conceptual knowing. This is why we find so many analogies, similes and metaphors in the traditional texts. </div>
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Through our training, we have also developed certain abilities that have become second nature to us. We have trained to become acutely aware of wandering and not wandering. In creation phase practice we have trained in expanding the power and scope of attention by imagining that we send out light, deities, dakinis or messengers to every corner of the universe and then draw in the vitality and energy of the universe into the core of our being. In completion phase, we have similarly trained in building, guiding and spreading energy and in dissolving all conceptual experience through expansion or contraction. We have become adept at adjusting, adding a little effort here, resting a bit there, so that attention becomes consistent, clear and stable. Naturally, these patterns from our training are also going to arise. If we try to block them or stop them, we create further problems. </div>
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As these impulses or habits of practice arise, we do nothing. We rest in the direct immediate awareness, letting them arise and play themselves out. Strangely, this both deepens the experience in these practices while releasing our investment in them. Again, this is not the same as observing them, which involves taken a stance that is somewhat separate from experience. It’s difficult to describe, but it’s more like being aware while being inside the practice. Sometimes it seems that practice takes place inside the awareness. A common metaphor for mind and awareness is the ocean. We are in the water, we are the water, but we are not just the waves at the surface. Nor are we just the still depths. We are all of it, and we are all of it without thinking that we are all of it. As soon as we think we are all of it, we are back into conceptual experience. </div>
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These are difficult waters to navigate. I won’t pretend that there are easy or even straightforward answers or that everything always turns out for the best. In fact I go further. I no longer feel there is a single path, or even that different paths necessarily converge on a common goal. But I do feel that most of us, through a combination of our own efforts and the guidance of those who have come to their own understanding, can experience what it is to be utterly and completely free of the complications of effort.</div>
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Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-35201566104149291082015-01-31T08:35:00.001-08:002015-01-31T08:35:38.448-08:00Verse 3.10 — losing your way<div class="p1">
<i>Even in this experience of naked presence</i></div>
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<i>In which there is no movement or change,</i></div>
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<i>If you don’t avoid the mire of position-based correctives,</i></div>
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<i>You lose your way in analysis and speculation.</i></div>
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When you watch a flag flapping in the wind, is it the flag that moves, or the wind that moves? One teacher quipped that it was the mind that moved. His quip soon became legend, but, like most legends, it is not exactly true and has led many astray. Mind is not a thing. </div>
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The first two lines of this verse are frequently misunderstood to mean that there is a state in which there is no movement or change. There is. It’s called death, but that’s not what is being referred to here. </div>
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It is possible to watch waves crashing on a beach and have the experience that nothing moves. The waves tumble over each other in a sea of foam, but you do not experience any movement — not outside, not inside, not anywhere. You can experience traffic the same way, but you still have to be careful crossing the street. Not infrequently, athletes and musicians have the same kind of experience. Likewise, it is possible for you to experience thoughts and emotions arising and disappearing like clouds in the sky, yet you experience no movement. The freedom and peace is amazing.</div>
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Just because you experience no movement doesn’t mean that there is no movement. Just because you experience timeless awareness doesn’t mean that there is a timeless awareness. When poetry is taken literally, things tend to go badly, very badly.</div>
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When we put our experience into words to communicate to others, others often hear only the words. They aren’t able to see the moon to which our finger is pointing. It’s as if we tapped out the rhythm of a melody and expected the person listening to be able to identify the melody. Our own enthusiasm just adds conviction to our description. “This is how things really are,” we say, our eyes ablaze, our face lit up by what we have experienced. The listeners, however, form their own idea from what we said and that becomes what they seek.</div>
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Many phrases in the Tibetan tradition are misunderstood this way — no change, no movement (<span class="s1">འཕོ་འགྱུར་མེད་པ</span>), no ground, no origin (<span class="s1">གཞི་མེད་རྩ་བྲལ་</span>), etc. These all refer to experiences and these experiences are so vivid and transformative — simultaneously transcendent and immanent — that they are taken to be true or real. They are taken to be how things really are, and that is where the misunderstanding starts. </div>
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We can never know how things “really are”, but we find it difficult to live with the groundlessness of that not knowing. Thus, more or less from the dawn of history, we, as human beings, have sought to find explanations and understandings for our lives and the world in which we live. Even when we experience immediate and naked presence, questions arise. What makes this possible? How do I return here? What else is possible? It’s a short step to practices and rituals, another short step into the maze of belief and positions and an even shorter step into the quagmire of analysis and speculation.</div>
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The canons of Buddhist teaching are simply <a href="http://www.mensetmanus.net/inspiration/fifteen_minutes_a_day/wheelwright.shtml" target="_blank">the dust</a> left by extraordinary practitioners losing their way. </div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-37762055257000855002015-01-28T09:40:00.002-08:002015-01-28T09:40:31.503-08:00Verse 3.9 — deep into the mystery<div class="p1">
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Whenever conceptual thinking arises,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Don’t look at what arises: know what knows the arising.</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Like an oak peg in hard ground,</span></i></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Stand firm in awareness that knows, and go deep into the mystery.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Here is the genius of the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism. In just four lines, Jigmé Lingpa gives precise instruction on the deepest aspect of meditation practice, connects it with the Heart Drop (<span class="s1">སྙིང་ཐིག་</span>) tradition of dzogchen, differentiates it from other approaches, and provides a vivid simile for practice. What more do you want?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What do you do when a thought arises? This is the central question in virtually all contemplative practice. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">When we have no training or insight, we take our thoughts as real. Soon after we begin meditation practice, we see that, in the words of Henepola Gunaratana, our minds are shrieking, gibbering madhouses, completely out of control. As we progress in practice, we see more and more that the problem is not in what we experience but how we experience. We discover new possibilities, a clear open awareness in which thoughts, feelings and sensations simply come and go. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Different practice traditions take different approaches to the arising of thoughts. Most esoteric traditions agree that thoughts themselves are not the enemy. On the other hand, when we are thinking, awareness is dulled and confused. Some traditions encourage the development of a dispassionate observer, but that simply replaces one problem with another as I wrote about in connection with verse 2.5. The direct awareness traditions of Tibet teach the possibility of an awareness that is not an observer and is not affected by the coming and going of thought, an awareness in which thoughts, feelings and sensations form and dissolve like mist or like clouds in the sky.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet, when thoughts arise, it is all too easy to fall out of such a clear open awareness into the dulled confused state of thinking. The usual approach found in the middle way, mahamudra, dzogchen, and chö traditions, is to look right at the thought as it arises. Kongtrül, for instance, writes in <i>Creation and Completion</i>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Whatever thought arises, when you look right at it</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Without doing anything with it, it releases and becomes your path.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Here, Jigmé Lingpa is suggesting another approach. When a thought arises, don’t look at the thought. Know what knows the arising. In Kongtrül’s words, again from <i>Creation and Completion</i>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Whatever arises, look inwardly, right at what knows the thought.</i></span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What happens when you do this? Basically, nothing, and that’s the point. You end up looking at nothing and, simultaneously, being nothing. Any vestige of an observer evaporates, and along with it, any vestige of conceptual thinking. If your attention is stable (and that’s the challenge for most people in this sort of practice), then, as Jigmé Lingpa writes, you stand in awareness. And just in case you don’t know, he tells you how to stand in awareness — like an oak peg in hard ground.</span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Where this takes you no one can say. It’s been given many names, but that’s a problem. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There is no there there.” People talk endlessly about this nothing. They call it emptiness, the realm of totality or infinite space (dharmadhatu, <span class="s1">ཆོས་དབྱིངས་</span>), pure being or the essence of reality (dharmata, <span class="s1">ཆོས་ཉིད་</span>), buddha nature and so on, but all too easily, they forget that they are talking about an experience. The experience is so powerful, so meaningful, so wonderful and so transformative that it must be real, in some sense of that strange and mysterious word. The language of poetry — the language of metaphor, allusion and awe — gives way to the language of philosophy — definition, distinctions and reason. Then the fixations start. As I wrote in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Arrow-Heart-Commentary-Sutra/dp/1425133770/" target="_blank">An Arrow to the Heart</a></i>, </span></div>
<div class="p2">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>First it was an opening, then a memory, then an idea. Unnoticed, it became a belief and then an ideology. Now it’s a </i>casus belli<i>, and you are ready to wreak havoc on all who disagree.</i></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="p1">
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">When you look at what knows, you enter a mystery. Go into it as far as you </span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">want. It will probably change your life. But please don’t make anything out of it.</span></div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-8454492945361566742015-01-24T11:31:00.000-08:002015-01-24T11:31:01.521-08:00Verse 3.8 — the treasure at the world's end<div class="p1">
<i>Stop all your reactive checking, </i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Managing and goal-seeking.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>This direct knowing, unappreciated and dismissed,</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Stop distorting or altering it. Let it be.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In almost every tradition I’ve studied, there is a story about a person who travels far and wide, searching the world for wisdom or secret treasure. He fails to find it, no matter where he goes, no matter whom he seeks for advice. The last sage he visits tells him to tend to a tree growing in the garden behind his own house. With nowhere else to go, no one else to see, he returns home and finds that the tree is ill. Something is wrong with its roots. Digging in the soil, he uncovers an ancient scroll or a treasure of gold. His search is over. What he was seeking was in his own garden all along.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
This story, and stories like it, I find simultaneously helpful and infuriating. They are helpful because they remind me that what we seek, whether we call it freedom, enlightenment, buddha nature, direct awareness, God or whatever isn’t “out there”. They are infuriating because, even when I feel I understand the story, the story doesn’t tell me what to do. I could never find the tree. I couldn’t see it. I didn’t even know where to look.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
It’s all very well to say, “Stop checking or tracking your experience. Stop managing it. Stop your goal-seeking.” Personally I find it hard to give up those tendencies. They are deeply ingrained. Maybe some people can let these tendencies go through an act of will. I can’t. Any attempt to exert an act of will just puts me back in the box (<a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2015/01/verse-36-end-of-practice.html" target="_blank">verse 3.6 et al</a>). </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
By now, I know that checking my experience, or tracking, analyzing or trying to make sense of it (by appealing to any of the different logic schemes available to us — psychology, sociology, neurology, biology, astrology, etc.) is pointless. Those perspectives may be helpful for problems in other contexts, but for the direct awareness that Jigmé Lingpa is talking about, they are worse than useless. Like the person in the story, I’ve journeyed to the ends of the world trying to find the fabled wisdom and I’ve come up empty. Nevertheless, I still check my experience, track it, analyze it or try to make sense of it. The difference is that now, as soon as I notice that I’m doing any of these, I stop, take a breath, and start again. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
There are two points here. One is that I had to reach the point where I knew that these approaches were fruitless and pointless. The second is that, even with that knowledge, I still have to cut the pattern of checking, again and again. I am practicing a different way of relating to what arises in experience. While on the one hand this new way is utterly natural in that it just lets experience be what it is, in the beginning it is not at all natural. No judgment, no appraisal, no story — it’s a very different way of relating to what arises.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The same holds for managing my experience, the constant and pernicious tendency to want things to be just a little different from what they are. In meditation, I find myself tweaking this here, adjusting that there, and before I know it, I’m completely involved in making my experience conform to my expectations. Again, the same principle holds. As soon as I recognize what I’m doing, I stop, take a breath, and start again.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In some ways, I find goal-seeking the hardest. One would think with all the disappointments and defeats, I wouldn’t pay attention to small victories in the quality of attention, but again and again, the thought pops up, “Ah, I think I’m getting somewhere.” Now, when that thought pops up, a rueful smile of recognition arises too. I stop, take a breath and start again.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
There’s an old joke about fish. One fish asks another fish, “How's the water?" The other fish replies, “What the hell is water?" Like the fish, we swim in water but the water we swim in is a subtle absolutely clear awareness. We don’t notice it, we don’t recognize it and we don’t appreciate it.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Everyone knows the example of the glass of turbid water. The water becomes clear when it is left undisturbed and allowed to become still. What we may overlook in this example is that we are not watching the water. We are the water. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Mind is not a thing we watch. Everything we experience is mind. If we are watching the mind, watching what we experience, we are already one step removed. If we are trying to change our experience, analyze it or track it, we are more than one step removed. Every movement, whether it is checking our experience, managing it or anticipating it (goal-seeking) stirs up the water, along with all the sediment. The treasure is there, but we won’t know it as long as we keep stirring things up.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The natural clarity of the water is unnoticed, unrecognized and unappreciated because it is transparent. We see right through it. We don’t see it. No one has ever seen it. It is often likened to a mirror. The natural clarity of the mirror is transparent. We don’t see it. We never see a mirror. We see only the reflections in the mirror. We take the natural clarity for granted. In the same way, we easily miss this subtle clear awareness. We don’t see it. We see right through it. It’s too ordinary! </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Many of us, it seems, have to take that long journey, work through many, many challenges and endure just as many hardships before we really and truly give up, return home and see for the first time what has been there all along.</div>
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<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-46296740445555700192015-01-22T11:08:00.000-08:002015-01-22T11:08:57.927-08:00Verse 3.7 — letting go of practice<i>How wonderful!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Because these mistakes stop you from going beyond ordinary experience,</i><br />
<i>Be clear that the approach of practice versus not practice</i><br />
<i>Relies on an artificial distinction. Be in what you experience right now, </i><br />
<i>Without trying to reshape it in any way.</i><br />
<br />
This is a tough one! How do you sit without feeling you aren’t practicing, aren’t working at anything at all?<br />
<br />
By the time you reach this stage of practice, you have learned a lot: how to cultivate attention, how to bring that attention to bear on what prevents you from experiencing what arises, how to rest in the often difficult physical and emotional sensations of patterns unfolding and releasing, how to look at and see nothing, how to mix awareness and experience, and so on.<br />
<br />
Not only have we learned these skills and built this capacity of attention, these kinds of efforts have become second nature to us, as they should.<br />
<br />
But we still have the idea of practice, that there is something to do, there is an effort to be made. That idea is deeply embedded in our way of thinking and puts us into the box, the double-bind described in the preceding verse.<br />
<br />
What to do? For this, I go back to one of the instructions in Mind Training in Seven Points, namely, “<a href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/mindtraining/4.php" target="_blank">Let even the remedy release naturally</a>.” One aspect of the genius of these instructions is that, as our experience and abilities evolve, we see how to apply them at ever deeper levels and in different ways.<br />
<br />
We are used to thinking of practice as a remedy, but it’s not at all clear how to let that notion of practice release naturally. In <a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2014/12/verse-32-just-sit-there.html" target="_blank">verse 3.2</a>, I described how to cut through the tendency to conceptualize experience. As soon as you notice any movement into conceptualization, cut the tendency (by taking a breath) and then just sit. This is, essentially, the practice of Chö (cutting, Tib. གཅོད). The same principle applies here. As soon as you feel you are practicing in any way, stop. Take a breath, and open to what you are experiencing, physically, emotionally, cognitively, without, as Jigmé Lingpa says, “trying to reshape it in any way.”<br />
<br />
In the beginning, it’s a bit of a mess. It’s confusing. There’s a lot of second-guessing. I often end up like a dog chasing its own tail, but that’s just the conceptual mind going into overtime because I am not doing anything and it is compensating by revving up its activity. Nevertheless, the same principle applies: when I recognize that I’m chasing my own tail, I stop, breath out, and rest.<br />
<br />
This one principle seems to apply over and over again: as soon as you recognize that you are doing something or that you are lost, stop, and start again. This is what Kalu Rinpoche taught, over and over again, with “just recognize”. This is what Karmapa XVI taught when he visited us in the three-year retreat. “Look,” he said, and the air crackled with the energy of his attention. “As soon as a thought arises, relax.” And a gentle wave of energy flooded the room where we all sat. “Then look again,” he said and lightning again charged the room. His teaching had all the subtlety of someone picking me up by the scruff of my neck and throwing me against the wall over and over again — I don’t know how many times. “This is what I’ve understood from my study and practice in Mahamdura, Dzogchen and Kalacakra,” he concluded, and then he left.<br />
<br />
As I worked with this alternation again and again over many years, the looking and the resting gradually came together and I did less and less in practice. It seemed that there wasn’t anything to do and this not-doing culminated in an understanding that there was absolutely nothing to oppose. It was suddenly clear that I had the potential to experience anything, and thus, there was no longer any need to oppose anything. The very basis for reaction, the need to reshape what arises in experience, crumbled. I could just let things be and there was a peace, or a freedom, that was quite different from any other experience I’d had.<br />
<br />
This understanding has brought me closer to the feeling that I am actually in my life and that, to me at least, is freedom. While my life has been shaped by many influences — my genetic inheritance, my parents and family, school and education, friends and colleagues, work, health, the societies and cultures in which I have lived — my life is just life. It doesn’t belong to anyone or anything, even me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-29935583523763903212015-01-17T10:18:00.000-08:002015-01-17T10:18:30.285-08:00Verse 3.6 — the end of practice<div class="p1">
<i>In general, work and effort only create opposition.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>When you practice, you stir up all sorts of pains and discomforts.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>When you don’t practice, you forget what you are and wander in confusion.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>In either case, you lose touch with what is straightforward and natural.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
This is Jigmé Linpa’s description of the box. Any effort you make brings you into opposition with something. If you don’t make any effort, you just sit there in a dazed confused state. This is the classic double-bind — damned if you do and damned if you don’t — the most reliable way to drive a person insane (or psychotic)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In this section of the poem, Jigmé Lingpa has set out a number of subtle mistakes that we may make in this practice. In verse 3.1 he talks about <a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2014/12/verse-31-cage-of-inventions.html" target="_blank">a cage of inventions</a>. The conceptual mind constructs a framework to interpret and understand experience, but the framework turns out to be a cage that prevents direct, immediate and unrestricted knowing. In verse 3.2 he describes how <a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2014/12/verse-32-just-sit-there.html" target="_blank">even the action of conceptualization</a> keeps us from knowing experience directly. In verse 3.3 he talks about how problems arise when we try <a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2014/12/verse-33-when-reactive-energy-enters.html" target="_blank">to control or force experience</a>. In verse 3.4 he warns about the <a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2015/01/verse-34-you-cannot-see-when-there-is.html" target="_blank">deadening effect of the dullness</a> we easily slip into when we try to be present and do nothing. In verse 3.5 he alerts us to a subtle form of busyness, t<a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2015/01/verse-35-tracking.html" target="_blank">he busyness of tracking</a> what is happening in one’s practice. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In summary, any concern with the content of experience distances us from direct knowing, any effort to force things creates problems and any degradation of the quality of attention leads to dullness and inattention. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
It doesn’t leave much room for maneuvering, does it?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
To touch what is truly straightforward and natural, we have to let go of all the ways of knowing that we are used to. This is no small matter. We do not let go of those ways willingly. Some people, it seems, can do so intentionally, but I am certainly not one of them. Kicking and screaming is what comes to mind, but that assumes we know how to let go of those ways of knowing. Most of us don’t. We do not and cannot see what is possible. For that reason alone, most of us have to be pushed, tricked or tripped into letting go.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In the Zen tradition, a question is put to us, and before we can say anything, the teacher says, “If you say anything, I’ll hit you. If you don’t say anything, I’ll hit you.” How to respond? This is crazy-making, of course, but the point is to push us beyond the ordinary thinking mind. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In the mahamudra and dzogchen traditions, we are given pointing out instructions. These are often interpreted as logic games, but that is not their intent. They, too, are designed to push us beyond ordinary thinking and into direct experience. Like the Zen questions, they only work if we are ready, if all the conditions are present.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Probably the most reliable method, the one that historically has worked for the largest number of people, is devotion. Through practice and prayer, through study and service, or through some other combination of practices and activities, we form a visceral emotional connection with a teacher or historical figure, someone who represents to us the possibility of being completely awake, even if we don’t know what that possibility actually means. That emotional connection enables us to be let go of how we are used to knowing. Again, when the conditions are right, the power of the faith and devotion flows into awareness. It lights up and we see — we know directly. Over the centuries, in tradition after tradition, it has been the most effective path for many, but in the modern world, unfortunately, it is misunderstood, suspect and abused.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In the next section Jigmé Lingpa continues his instruction, but he places this verse here for a definite reason. We cannot make use of what he presents next unless we have utterly and completely exhausted our usual approaches to practice and to knowing.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Texts such as these are quite misleading for the average Western practitioner, because we do not appreciate how condensed they are in terms of time. Each verse assumes months, if not years, of practice. How long does it take for our practice to mature through each of the eight pitfalls outlined in section 1? How long does it take to understand and appreciate the possibilities he describes in section 2? How much practice must we do before we recognize the problems outlined in this third section? How long does it take for us to exhaust the repertoire of tricks we think will get us out of the box? </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Some of us are more stubborn that others. For me, it wasn’t until I experienced viscerally how conceptual understanding is indeed a cage and I simply could not rely on it. It wasn’t until my longing to transcend my limitations had left me bereft and abandoned and I had no place to turn. It wasn’t until every effort I made brought me up against one wall or another and I was left with no path, no door, not even a window. Only then did I begin to recognize what was there all along, the possibility of being straightforward and natural. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
As for living there, well, that seems to be a life’s work.</div>
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<div class="p2">
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Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-85587665466617352602015-01-12T05:09:00.000-08:002015-01-12T07:03:27.509-08:00Verse 3.5 — mulling over footprints<div class="p1">
<i>Some who know that movement and memory are mind</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Mull over the traces as thoughts and feelings ebb and flow</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>And track the arising and fading of thinking. With this meditation</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Even if they practice for a hundred years, they just spin in confusion.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Do nothing. That seems to be what Jigmé Lingpa keeps saying, one way or another. Here he identifies another tendency that pulls us away from doing nothing, a tendency that reflects our insatiable need for engagement of one sort or another.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Do you remember the chair in the center of the room? Ajahn Chah once said, “If you want to practice meditation, put a chair in the center of the room. Sit in the chair. See who comes to visit.”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Some people, when they practice this way, keep a guest book. They can’t just let the visitors come and go. Instead, they look at the signatures and savor what happened while the visitors were there. They note when visitors come and go, or what causes them to come and go.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
At best they forget that the guest book is just another visitor. At worst, they deliberately ignore that fact and indulge their need for engagement.</div>
<div class="p2">
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<div class="p1">
Even when we know and are able to experience thought and feeling as the movement of mind, we all find ways to give certain visitors a privileged status. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
To be honest, I do the same things with waves. When I sit by the ocean and watch the waves roll in, breaking on the beach or crashing against rocks, I find myself noting bigger and smaller waves, which directions the different sets come from, how they combine to become bigger and more powerful, or how they cancel each other out so the ocean is almost calm for a few minutes. When I do this, when I get caught up in the particulars of a wave, I lose the experience of the ocean — the deep underlying roar of the surf along with all the different voices, the regular and unexpected crashes, the long sibilants of rolling waves, the sand and rocks grating against each other, the intermittent peeps and cheeps of different birds, the whoosh and buffeting of the wind. I lose all of that when I follow particular waves and compare them with each other. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
There are many kinds of knowing. Each has its own methodologies and its own uses. The kind of knowing cultivated in dzogchen practice is not about how to do things or how to make things. It is not about how to remedy problems or how to heal wounds. It is not philosophical, theological, or soteriological. It’s about how to experience what arises in life, completely, so completely that there is no sense of a self separate from what is experienced. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
To do that, we have to let go of everything. Each of the mistakes in practice that Jigmé Lingpa has been describing is about one or other form of not letting go. Here, it is about not letting go of our tendency to track our experience, however subtly. To track our experience is to observe it and to observe it is to be separate from it. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Stop watching. Stop tracking. Just be there. </div>
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<div class="p2">
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Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-26979706533598302702015-01-06T10:49:00.002-08:002015-01-06T10:49:46.352-08:00Verse 3.4 — you cannot see when there is no light<i>Some just do not see what is naturally present.</i><br />
<div>
<i>They are very confused. They take as the essence of practice</i></div>
<div>
<i>A feebleness in which words lead them astray</i></div>
<div>
<i>And a dullness that suppresses thoughts and feelings.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
In 2001, I moved into a new office. My assistant pointed to a small painting and asked, “Where do you want to put that?”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“Right above your desk. It will be perfect there. It’s a meditation test and people will or won’t see it.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This particular painting was a minimalist piece consisting of a uniform green-tinged black with a small bit of bare canvas at the bottom left edge. I explained that students would look at the painting but not see it, because they were not able to look at nothing and see. When they actually saw the painting, it was a sign that they could now look at nothing and actually see nothing.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“That’s crazy,” she said. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Four years later, a student who came to see me quite regularly stopped at her desk and asked, “When did you get that painting?” </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I don’t believe it!” she said, leaning back and laughing. The student was utterly confused. I smiled, and let her explain that the painting had been there for four years.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
“I don’t believe it,” he said. “I never saw it there.”</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
That much was true. He hadn’t seen it until that day.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It is one thing to look at nothing. It is another to see nothing. To do so, one has to be open in a certain way. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I remember my teacher pointing out the nature of mind in interviews when I was translating. At first, I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. He would ask certain questions that seemed to have little to do with what the student wanted to talk about. I would just translate the questions and answers as best I could. Gradually, I came to appreciate that he was giving pointing out instructions to virtually everyone who came to see him. Most of the time his efforts went nowhere, but sometimes the conversation became alive in a strange way. Though I was translating, I wasn’t really part of the conversation. My teacher and the person present were communicating at another level and, even thought I was translating, I was the one who was “very confused”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div>
We need to be ready for pointing out instructions. If not, we end up looking at nothing but do not see nothing. We don’t see anything and we think that this weak blank state is meditation. We can’t describe our experience. There's no vitality, no power, no light in it. Thoughts and feelings are dulled, more or less as if they were experienced in a fog but because they don’t disturb us, we think our practice is in good shape. People who are prone to depression easily fall into this state, a dull stasis that goes nowhere except to spiral down into a gradually increasing torpor and immobility. It’s a form of “marmot meditation” and every text on mind nature includes warnings about it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Long periods of dullness in meditation are to be avoided as they reinforce patterns of depression and suppression. It is, generally speaking, better to have an overly active mind than a dull mind. The former, at least, has a degree of energy and possibly wakefulness in it. If you are prone to the latter, practice intensely for short periods (5-10 minutes) and then move around a bit to throw off any dullness. Include walking meditation, if not running meditation. Get regular exercise so that your heart has to pump vigorously everyday. Avoid television and activities that induce stasis. Go for a walk, instead, or go to a movie on a big, big screen. Regularly stimulate your mind, body and emotions so that you aren’t slipping into that dull state. As your body becomes more alive, your mind becomes clearer. You will be able to rest and look without falling into dullness. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When you look at nothing, but have no sense of seeing, then look at what experiences nothing. As Mipham writes in <a href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/a-light-in-the-dark" target="_blank">A Light in the Dark</a>:</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Now, as you experience this vague knowing in which there is no thought or movement, look at what knows that this is happening, look at what is mentally or emotionally inert, and rest there.</i></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is tricky, particularly if you are prone to depression. But if you can do this, there comes a day when you actually see nothing, and everything changes.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-6759690834766722692014-12-31T11:18:00.002-08:002014-12-31T11:18:40.491-08:00Verse 3.3 — when reactive energy enters the life channel<div class="p1">
<i>Some people cut off the ebb and flow of thoughts and feelings</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>And construct an emptiness practice infected with goal-seeking.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Their forced and constricted practice wears them out.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Serious problems develop when reactive energy enters the life channel.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In the three-year retreat, it didn’t take long for me to appreciate that one of the essential abilities for mahamudra practice is the ability to rest. That became a big problem, because I simply couldn’t rest. I couldn’t rest physically and I couldn’t rest mentally or emotionally.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
I became quite ill. By the end of the second retreat, there was no possibility of my continuing into a third retreat. My body had quit, utterly and completely, and I was pretty shaky emotionally. The illness took physical form, but it wasn’t physically based — a fact that I was more than a little resistant to accepting. I had had dreams during the retreat that indicated it was a karmic illness, a category of illness in the Tibetan tradition that cannot be cured by conventional treatments. Other dreams indicated a karmic block — again, a category of block that is not amenable to treatment, even ritual treatment. Nevertheless, after the retreat I continued to look for treatments of one form or another, all to no avail.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In retrospect, one way to describe my illness is that it was due to the stagnation of energy, energy that developed through practice but was not able to circulate smoothly. In energy transformation practice, it is important both to refine energy so it is not carrying a reactive charge and to open the channels through which energy flows so it can circulate smoothly. Energy transformation practices, if practiced effectively, bring unresolved emotional material to the surface. Often we do not know what emotional material is stored in us — we do not know what darkness lurks within. If not worked through (using methods such as <a href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/five-step-mindfulness-practice" target="_blank">Seeing From the Inside</a>), the emotional reactivity creates imbalances that manifest as physical and emotional disturbances. I now know the emotional blocks that prevented me from understanding the messages that my body was giving me and inhibited me from taking appropriate steps. At the time, I just kept trying to make my experience conform to my expectations — a forced and constricted practice, to use Jigmé Lingpa’s words. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The quality of resting is important for three reasons. It helps to create the conditions in which emotional reactivity can resolve itself — leading to a refinement of energy in the whole system. Resting also allows energy channels to open so that energy can circulate smoothly. And it makes it possible for us to listen to our whole system and sense imbalances before they become serious problems. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
In both mahamudra and dzogchen, we are essentially allowing energy imbalances in mind and body to resolve themselves at progressively deeper levels. To do so requires high levels of stability (resting) and clarity (insight), both of which depend on the level of energy in our attention. As those imbalances resolve, the energy locked in those blocks becomes available to us. We experience greater depth and breadth in awareness and we are also able to work at yet deeper levels. But if we carry fixed notions about how things are meant to be, we can, as I did, run into serious problems. It was only when I was ground into the dust that I began to see that my problems were in those fixed notions. Even then, it took over twenty years of slow and patient work to recover, with many setbacks along the way. I learned a lot about energy, about how it is generated in practice and about how important it is for it to circulate naturally in the mind-body system, particularly when engaging deep and powerful awareness practices such as mahamudra or dzogchen.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Two of my teachers, Kalu Rinpoche and Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, took considerable pains to impress on me that, in Nyoshull Khenpo’s words, “Mahamudra and dzogchen are two names for the same person.” They each had their own way of pointing this out to me, and they did a good job. Their message has stayed with me. Nevertheless, there is a subtle difference in emphasis. In mahamudra, the emphasis is on no distraction. In dzogchen, the emphasis is on relaxing and opening. Both are essential, but part of the difference in flavor between the two is this difference in emphasis. Thus, in dzogchen resting is, if anything, more important and an inability to rest is even more of a problem.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Is resting the key to everything? Probably not. After decades of teaching and working with students from different backgrounds and with different capabilities, I’ve come to the conclusion that each person’s path is unique. While there are important principles that apply in most situations, each person needs to find the appropriate way to work with those principles. Some people need to learn how to develop and focus attention. Others need to learn how to relax and open. Some need to learn how to stand in the face of their patterns and cut. Others need to learn how to let things unfold on their own. A good teacher doesn’t teach in just one way, but guides the student according to his or her needs and abilities.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
For additional thoughts and information on these topics, please look at:</div>
<div class="p1">
<a href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-box.html" target="_blank">The Box</a></div>
<div class="p1">
<a href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/when-energy-runs-wild" target="_blank">When Energy Runs Wild </a>and </div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
<a href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/a-way-of-freedom" target="_blank">A Way of Freedom</a></div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-2871402320528366032014-12-28T10:28:00.000-08:002015-01-04T13:10:35.406-08:00Verse 3.2 — how to get rid of an elephant<br />
<div class="p1">
<i>Pure being has no foundation. It has no essence.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>When you make it a concept, a knowing without beginning or end,</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>It’s as if you turned the formless into form and</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>You lose track of natural resting. How reactive you become! </i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
There is something wonderfully tenacious about the human proclivity to name an experience and then make a thing out of the name. An academic word for this tendency is “reification” but it has been known since ancient times. The opening lines of the <i>Tao Te Ching</i> point to it in this way:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>A way that becomes the way is not the way.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>A name that becomes the name is not the name.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Pure being is such a name. As soon as it solidifies into a concept, it ceases to function as the pointer it was intended to be. Pure being cannot be labeled as this or that. In particular, it cannot be labeled as something that has no beginning or end. Again, as I’ve said before, one fares better taking these line “Pure being has no foundation. It has no essence” as poetic expression, not philosophical statement. At the very least, you will get into fewer arguments.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
When we are present, deeply present, in our own experience, we don’t experience any thing: no ground, no core, no color, no shape, no movement, no absence of movement — nothing. But we don’t experience just nothing, either. There is a knowing, but we can’t put any words to it. It’s just there, like the light in a room. The “nothing” is like the space in the room. The knowing is like the light. We can’t say where the light comes from or what it is made of any more than we can say where the space come from or what it is made of. Neither the space nor the light have a beginning or an end. They are just there and because they are we see everything that there is to see. Our vision in unrestricted. In the same way, that empty knowing is unrestricted. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
We find we can function just as before, but not exactly just as before. Now we know that the content of experience is not solid, ultimate or determined. Thoughts, feelings or sensations, they all just come and go, seeming to come from nowhere and go nowhere. It is really quite miraculous.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
This experience is so vivid and so illuminating that it shatters our ordinary way of understanding and our world. It frees us from the prison of our own projections and, most important of all, it frees us from the need to react. Other possibilities, extraordinary possibilities, open up. Naturally, we want to tell others that such a shift is possible, so we give words to our experience. We might say, “There is a knowing that has no beginning or end.” </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
As soon as others hear those words, they form an idea. Once they have that idea, they carry it with them and constantly check their experience against the words. Agh! What a curse! Once we hear about that possibility, we can never rest. Never! And we are so stubborn, too. Once the idea has taken hold, we won’t let go. There is a knowing that has no beginning or end, and I’m going to know it! That’s how I took it, and that is how I’ve seen others take it, one after another. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The more we try to know it, the more we tie ourselves up in knots and the more reactive we become.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The idea gives us a goal, but it’s rather like the carrot and the donkey. It gets us moving. While that’s probably a good thing, somehow the carrot always stays just out of reach. We keep trying. We build up strength and stamina and abilities, we learn methods and skills, but the carrot is still dangling in front of us and we are no nearer than when we started. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
It’s hard to let go of words and concepts. It’s hard to let go of ideas. If you try to let go of an idea consciously, it imprisons you. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Don’t think of an elephant. Now, how do you get rid of the elephant?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The only thing to do is to stop. To do that, we have to let go of everything, especially the tendency to relate to experience through concepts. It comes down to this:</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
As soon as you find yourself conceptualizing your experience, stop. Take a breath. Let it out. And just sit there. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
As soon as you notice that you are explaining or describing what you are experiencing, stop. Take a breath. Let it out. And just sit there. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
When you find yourself hoping or fearing or dreading anything, past, present or future, stop. Take a breath. Let it out. And just sit there. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
If you think you see, understand, feel or know something, stop. Take a breath. Let it out. And just sit there. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Whenever you notice that you are bored, elated, depressed or flooded with well-being, stop. Take a breath. Let it out. And just sit there.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
And if you ask, “Where does this go?”, stop. Take a breath. Let it out. And just sit there.</div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-8018842385481167332014-12-19T10:58:00.000-08:002014-12-19T10:58:20.873-08:00Verse 3.1 — a cage of inventions<i>Wonder of wonders!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Thus, awakening mind — nothing to remove or attain,</i><br />
<i>Buddha nature — awareness and peace,</i><br />
<i>Is present in you. Still, it is stuck in a cage of inventions.</i><br />
<i>Any notion of practice clouds the heart of the matter.</i><br />
<br />
In this verse, the instruction is in the last line: any notion of practice clouds or distorts the heart of the matter.<br />
<br />
The heart of the matter is buddha nature, of course — the potential for awareness, peace, freedom, presence, whatever you want to call it. Buddha nature has been a contentious idea for a long time. Witness Joshu when he was asked whether a dog has buddha nature. His <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/gateless-gate/1.html" target="_blank">"Mu!"</a> has echoed down the corridors of time for centuries.<br />
<br />
It’s easy to develop an abstract idea of buddha nature as something that is present in all beings. That interpretation has repeatedly provoked a refutation of buddha nature, namely, that it implies a self, a soul, some kind of concrete entity that negates the notion of non-self. “You Mahayana essentialist!” is an epithet that has been hurled at me on more than one occasion. Such problems arise only because a poetic expression is taken literally and everyone engaged has lost touch with the experience that the original expression is pointing to. Buddha nature, though it has evolved into a philosophical or theological concept, refers, first and foremost to an experience.<br />
<br />
Instead of positing a potential for awakening (a position that all too easily leads to the rigidity of belief), I find it more fruitful to start with what I’m feeling, what I’m sensing and what I’m thinking. And just sit.<br />
<br />
I sit because there is a longing in my heart. Whether I call that a longing for freedom, for peace or for knowing, it doesn’t matter. It’s there. it’s a felt sense. I can try to put it into words, but the words always fall short.<br />
<br />
Further, the longing is often paradoxical. It takes me to places that I would not necessarily choose to go. One person wrote to me describing how it was now possible for her to feel a pain that she hadn’t known was there. She didn’t understand the pain but it seemed to want to be felt. When she just let herself feel it, she felt both more complete and more at peace, despite the intensity of the pain. Others have told me that they discover a peace, a freedom, that is different from anything they imagined and anything that they felt worthy of.<br />
<br />
This is what I mean by paradoxical. Where that longing takes us may be radically different from where we think we should be going, where we want to be going or how we are used to being.<br />
<br />
If we have any notion of practice, we inevitably have an agenda: this is what I’m going to do and this is what is meant to happen. That agenda prevents us from from listening deeply and letting that longing resolve itself it its own way, in its own time. Its resolution may be no resolution, but that is still its resolution.<br />
<br />
This takes us back to the box, of course, though here Jigmé Lingpa calls it “a cage of inventions”.<br />
<br />
When I sit, quite often I’ll notice that I’ve been following a train of thought, thinking about something. When I recognize that, I come back. If the distraction is insistent, it’s usually because I’m not feeling something in my body. I reconnect with my body and, lo and behold, there it is — something that I didn’t want to feel. Sometimes I experience a deepening peace and clarity. Hope often springs up, hope for some kind of insight or transcendent experience. I now know those hopes are just thoughts, and they don’t have the power they once had. The same holds for fear, the fear that all my efforts are pointless. Sometimes I experience nothing special at all. Sometimes my body is uncomfortable and it’s difficult to sit for the whole period. Even so, I don’t think in terms of good days or bad days, just, “that’s what happened today”.<br />
<br />
How is it possible to practice this way? “Absolute confidence in our fundamental nature,” says Suzuki Roshi. I don’t for a minute think he means that we have a fundamental nature. That, again, is an example of how a poetic expression is taken literally.<br />
<br />
When I read Suzuki Roshi’s words, or say them to myself, my body straightens, I feel a strength and determination that seems to come from inside but it’s not certain that it does. My mind clears and I have a direction — though it may be hard to put it into words. I practice from there. Where does this capacity come from? That is buddha nature.<br />
<br />
Where does it lead? Mu! I have no idea. The heart has its longings. This way is a response. The rest is not my business.Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-6408390761895088872014-12-14T09:58:00.002-08:002014-12-14T09:58:35.606-08:00Verse 2.8 and 2.9 — nothing to do, nowhere to go<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Practice or not practice - place attention past that.</em><span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Do or not do - these decisions fade away.</em><span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Empty or not empty - awakening mind is beyond.</em><span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Am or am not - there’s a space where these differences fall away.</em></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></em></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Awareness - not a word, not a thought, no description at all.</em></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Its axis - no corrective, no holding a position.</em><span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Bare, steady, fresh and constantly unfolding, </em><span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">A vastness free from effort and complication.</em><span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> </span></div>
<div>
<em style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Rest there, with no movement in past, present or future.</em></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Cambria, Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In
these two verses, Jigmé Lingpa eloquently describes just how radical
Great Completion practice is. They remind me of a Nasrudin story. </span><div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif; margin-left: 30px;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif; margin-left: 30px;">
On
this occasion, Nasrudin is a magistrate. A man, dressed only in
underwear, enters his courtroom. He says he is a tourist and that his
clothes have been stolen by someone in the village. He demands that
Nasrudin search the village, arrest the miscreant and restore his
clothing. <br /><br />Nasrudin looks at him carefully and then asks, “You are still wearing your underwear, aren’t you?<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif; margin-left: 30px;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif; margin-left: 30px;">
“Yes,” says the tourist.<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif; margin-left: 30px;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif; margin-left: 30px;">
“Well,” says Nasrudin, “it wasn’t someone from our village. We do things thoroughly around here.”</div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
The
first verse here is all about letting go, letting go completely. If we
are going to do this, we do it thoroughly. We don’t leave the underwear,
either. </div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
Forget about practice. And forget about not practicing, too. (Note what happens when you read these last two sentences.) </div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
Decisions and judgements reverberate, of course, but they fade away if we don’t feed them.</div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
What
is emptiness? What is empty? What is not empty? We don’t need to engage
these questions. They don’t go anywhere. An instruction from <em>Mind Training in Seven Points</em> covers this -- <a _mce_href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/mindtraining/4.php" _mce_style="color: #0000ff ! important; text-decoration: none ! important;" href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/mindtraining/4.php" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important; text-decoration: none !important;" target="_blank" track="on">let even the remedy release naturally</a>. Just look, and poof! We return. </div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
Other
ideas come, too. Do I exist? Do I not exist? We don’t need to engage
any debate here either, nor analysis, nor speculation. All that can be
left to the philosophers, the psychologists and the neuroscientists. We
just rest in the space in which these questions arise, and they fall
away (again, if we don’t feed them).</div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
When you let go so completely, what's left?</div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
What’s
left is a particular kind of awareness, a knowing that cannot be
understood or described, a knowing that needs no correcting or
balancing. If we don’t do anything with it or to it (and that’s the hard
part), it is there, almost spartan in its simplicity, constant in its
presence, vivid and awake, revealing and refreshing itself moment to
moment. It seems both extraordinary and absurd that anything could be so
simple, so effortless, so wonderful and so immediately at hand, right
under our noses, so to speak. One just has to shake one’s head at how
obvious all this is when we happen upon it.</div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
Here
is a peace, a freedom, that goes beyond anything in our ordinary lives.
It is extraordinary, yes. People have built whole philosophies out of
it. Others worship it. Others ritualize the practices associated with
it. And all to no end.</div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
The point is to know it. Nothing more, nothing less. And to do that, we let go, completely.</div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
<br /></div>
<span class=""></span><br />
<div _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
Here
Jigmé Lingpa concludes the second section of this poem, which he calls a
description of the natural freedom of Great Completion.</div>
</div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-63503622326676984792014-11-26T11:56:00.002-08:002014-11-26T11:56:45.552-08:00Verse 2.7 — outlook, practice, behavior and result<div class="p1">
<i>Therefore, don’t let hope and fear tie you up in knots.</i></div>
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<i>Let go and forget about outlook’s razor-like edge.</i></div>
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<i>Leave and forget about deep practice’s cozy cocoon.</i></div>
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<i>Destroy and forget about behavior’s pretentious enmeshments.</i></div>
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<i>Cast aside and forget about result’s grand expectations.</i></div>
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Up to this point, Jigmé Lingpa has been describing the ground, the basis for practice. Now he talks about the practice itself, which consists of the refinement of the fine art of doing nothing — absolutely nothing.</div>
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When I began meditation practice many many years ago, resting with the breath felt like I was doing nothing. And I couldn’t stand it. It wasn’t restful. I was far too agitated in my body to have any sense of resting. I didn’t see how it accomplished anything. It wasn’t productive. I quickly gave up and kept asking my teacher for something I could do. Eventually, he said, “Okay, do a hundred thousand prostrations.” And I did. That was something I could do, but I had to do that several times before I could even begin to think about resting.</div>
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In the three-year retreat, when we started direct awareness practice — mahamudra, it quickly became clear that I was going to go nowhere if I couldn’t rest deeply. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t rest at all, and I soon became completely tied up in the knots of hope and fear. It was more than frustrating. Any movement I made pulled the knots tighter. Whenever I thought I had untied a knot, I found that I had created several more. I didn’t know which way to turn, which was just as well as the knots were so tight that I couldn’t turn anyway.</div>
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In short, learning how to do nothing did not come easily.</div>
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Outlook has always made sense to me. It is a direct pointing to the utter groundlessness of experience. When you connect with this way of looking at the world, you can cut through all kinds of projections and confusion. Of course, a lot of people just do it conceptually, labeling everything as empty, which doesn’t cut anything at all. I always found that there was some relief, some release, when I remembered and returned to the direct knowing that what I was experiencing, no matter how painful or confusing, no matter how intense or banal, was just that, an experience that comes and goes. It was a like a razor that cut through the solidity of my own projections and that was a relief. </div>
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As for practice’s cozy cocoon, I’ve certainly worked with students who related to practice this way, particularly people who have trained in the janas (the four levels of attention practiced in the Theravadan tradition). I have less ability here, but there is still a certain appeal in resting deeply. Mind and body are refreshed in a way that a nap or even a good night’s sleep doesn’t do. The experience itself is usually quite pleasant, if not blissful. And you have the satisfaction of feeling that you are meditating deeply. </div>
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As for behavior, there are so many guidelines and, like it or not, they rub off on you. You may absorb them or you may reject them, but they still affect you, even if only by defining the context in which you practice. In my case, I tend to conform to expectations, whether my own (coming from the practices I aspired to) or from others (what is deemed “socially acceptable” behavior). What I noticed, over time, was that the constant conforming lead to subtle forms of suppression. My idealism and efforts to be responsive, not reactive, to others ending up freezing me from the inside out: I became an emotional iceberg. </div>
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As for result, at this point, I really don’t know what the result of practice is or what it is meant to be. The lofty descriptions in the sutras and tantras are beautiful poetry, but I can’t relate to them in my own experience, even when I regard them as metaphor. At the same time, it’s a little hard to accept T.S. Eliot’s:</div>
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<i>And the end of all our exploring</i></div>
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<i>Will be to arrive where we started</i></div>
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<i>And know the place for the first time.</i></div>
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But maybe that’s because I’m not there yet. I don’t know.</div>
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When I read these lines in Jigmé Lingpa’s poem, I’m struck by how they describe a subtle way to move in the direction of balance. I’m always going to be cutting through my own projections. That way of approaching experience has just become part of me. But I can cut too much, and that’s when I need to let go and forget about cutting. </div>
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I enjoy the experience of resting deeply in practice. Why not? But I can grow too comfortable, and that’s when I need to interrupt my “deep meditation”, forget about it and just sit there. </div>
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I know I’m unlikely to be free of that conforming habit of mine. When I notice the pattern running, I need to forget about any notion of “right conduct” or “right action” and just rest in the experience of what’s running the show. </div>
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And I still live with expectations, even though I’m not sure what they are about. When they catch me, it’s time to cast aside any sense of achievement, now or in the future, and just relate to what’s happening now. </div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-52983026235646465312014-11-22T10:53:00.001-08:002014-11-22T10:53:23.715-08:00Verse 2.6 — a light goes on<span _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;">
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<em>My nature is universal presence:</em> </div>
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<em>How could seeing come through paths and levels?</em><br /></div>
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You are in a dark room. You can just see the outlines of a few objects, but there isn’t enough light for you to see things clearly. You stumble around, bumping into stuff, knocking things over. After a while, you figure out that all you can do is to sit or stand quietly, let your eyes adjust to the darkness and move slowly and carefully, relying on the subtle play of shadow that you can just detect at the limit of your vision. Then a light goes on. At first, you can’t see anything. All you experience is light — bright, bright light. It has no inside, no outside. It’s just light. You are surprised, shocked, perhaps exhilarated, perhaps afraid. Then your eyes begin to adjust. Now everything in the room is brilliantly clear — no more vague shadows and barely discernible differentiations of murky grays and blacks. You see color, shape and form. It’s a completely different world, yet it’s the same room you have been in all along. You are also aware of the space in the room, which was always there, but you did not know it because you couldn’t see clearly. Your vision is clear and vivid now, even though you have the same eyes. And there is no restriction on what you can see. Everything is bright and full of life, and you can navigate the room much more easily. You feel you can do anything!</div>
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The last three couplets are descriptions — not instructions — descriptions of a profound shift that takes place when you stumble upon this way of experiencing life. You feel free, awake and at peace — free from groping around in the dark and bumping into things you couldn’t see or didn’t know were there, awake because you now understand that you lived in the dark, and at peace because you know where you are, perhaps for the first time. </div>
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When this shift takes place, good and evil don’t mean the same as they did before, but that doesn’t mean you are free from karma — you can’t walk through things and you still bump into them if you don’t look where you are going. Your new ability isn’t something you developed — your eyes are the same as they were before the light went on. Your new sight enables you to see things more clearly now, but not because your vision improved. </div>
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All that has happened is that, somehow, a light went on. You didn’t turn it on, but it happened.</div>
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It’s tempting, very tempting, to generalize our experience and say, “This is how it is.” We immediately want to describe how it is to others, in the hope that our description will help them experience a similar shift. That’s how compassion operates. When people don’t “get it”, we tend to describe our experience, the result of the shift, as if that would help them. All too often, we end up saying the same thing over and over again, sometimes more loudly, sometimes more insistently and sometimes more slowly, just as William James described in <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i> over a century ago. But it doesn’t help.</div>
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Explanations are often counterproductive, I feel. They fail to communicate because they rely on the conceptual mind, an ineffective method when it comes to communicating non-conceptual experience. Further, they lead to in-groups, those who “get it”, the “awakened”, etc. — a problem that goes back right to the formation of the first council after Shakyamuni died. </div>
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I feel the same way about descriptions of results. People often take our descriptions of the result as instruction and can’t understand why their efforts in practice go nowhere. Again, this problem goes far back in history. It is clear to me now that much of what I’ve read in various sutras is a description of results, and one has to dig deep and pay close attention to find the few nuggets of actual instruction.</div>
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Further, the people who are inspired by such descriptions often cling to their conceptual understanding even when the light has turned on. What was originally open and free now becomes an achievement and a credential. Thus it is said, when you meet the buddha on the road, kill him.</div>
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When I read verses such as these three couplets, I don’t try to understand them. Instead, I let them work inside me. I read them with a quiet open mind and when something shifts inside, I put the book down and rest right there, if only for a moment or two. When I sit down to practice, I may recall that shift and rest right there. I don’t think about the lines. That is just distraction. I rest in the experience or the memory of the shift. In this way, I let these lines lead me into unknown territory and new possibilities.</div>
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</span>Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-62489026974388692482014-11-16T10:12:00.001-08:002014-11-16T10:28:13.754-08:00Verse 2.5 — deity practice revisited<div class="p1">
<i>What are deities, mantras, and absorptions meant to do?</i></div>
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<i>I am not a wakefulness that comes from practice.</i></div>
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In these two lines, Jigmé Lingpa seeks to wean the reader away from the idea that the wakefulness (buddha) he is describing is something that we control, not to mention the superstition and magical thinking that surrounds deity practice. </div>
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I’m reminded of the Zen story of the monk who was sitting in the courtyard. When his teacher saw the monk, he asked, “What are you doing?” </div>
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“I am meditating to attain enlightenment,” the monk replied.</div>
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The teacher sat down beside him, picked up a stone and started to rub it with his robe.</div>
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After several hours, the monk turned to his teacher and asked him, “What are you doing?”</div>
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“I’m polishing this stone to make a tile,” was the reply.</div>
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“You can’t make a tile by polishing a stone,” said the monk.</div>
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“Nor can you attain enlightenment by meditating,” said the teacher.</div>
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Jigmé Lingpa does not see wakefulness (buddha) as something that can be made, that can be conjured into experience or generated by energy transformation practice. The wakefulness that Ever-present Good represents does not come about through methods aimed at control or transcendence. It is just there.</div>
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Does this mean that such the deity practices of vajrayana are pointless? Not at all, at least, not in my own experience.</div>
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I found deity practice more than a little difficult. The approaches and methods described in the texts didn’t work very well for me, so what follows isn’t in any way authoritative. It’s just how I work with these practices. </div>
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When I imagine myself as a deity, be it Chenrezi, Tara, or any of the many other deities that I’ve practiced, my efforts to visualize the form clearly usually leave me with a headache. I find it works better to feel as deeply as possible that I am the embodiment of the awakened principle the deity embodies, e.g., compassion in the case of Chenrezi or the power to destroy emotional disturbances in the case of Hayagriva. As I rest in that feeling, a sense of the form of the deity arises, and also what the form expresses through its symbolism. I don’t think much about the form or the symbolism, for thinking just leads to distraction. I keep a sense of the deity present in my mind. In other words, the feeling of being the deity is a place for me to come back to, and I let that feeling grow and evolve on its own. The symbolism, which I have usually learnt from study, begins to speak in its own language, directly, bypassing the intellect.</div>
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Mantra works a little differently. As it says in the texts, you recite mantra when you have run out of juice for deity practice. It’s a way of resting and refreshing your energy. While I repeat the mantra, thoughts come up and distract my attention. When I recognize what has happened, I go back to the mantra. Gradually, the mantra replaces the subconscious gossip (to use Trungpa Rinpoche’s phrase) that is the basis of distraction. When the mantra has completely replaced the subconscious gossip and repeats itself, my mind is quiet and the mantra just echoes on its own.</div>
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For samadhi or absorption, I bring attention to the personality of the deity, feeling what it’s like to be the deity not just in form but how that would be in the world, in interacting with others. The method of practice (sadhana) for the deity provides a way of acting that out. Again, I don’t think about it. I just feel it as I go through the various dramatic elements of the practice. Parts of me resonate with being the embodiment of compassion — the infinite strength, ability and resilience to help others. Those parts wake up and come to life. Other parts are relieved and relax. And other parts, those that have a problem with that way of being, go into rebellion. Practice consists of coming back again and again to the sense of just being the deity and seeing and appreciating that all those different parts are also expressions of the deity. In doing so, I meet my own emotional material over and over again, not as something to oppose or possess but as something to experience as completely as possible. Approached this way, it can be experienced it in all its intensity or banality without my being carried away by it. </div>
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When you experience emotional reactions without being carried away by them, the energy of those reactions is transformed and becomes available as a higher level of attention. This transformation is not something you notice happening. It’s not something you do. It just happens.</div>
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As all that confusion, the nagging, sulking, furious, outraged, relieved, frightened, critical, joyful, proud, angry, open, confident, greedy voices seize and squabble over the microphone, along with their associated bodily sensations and all the confused thinking and projections that arise, I keep coming back to being the deity, in form, mantra and presence, and gradually find a way to be in the whole mess. </div>
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Bit by bit, it becomes clear that everything that I experience —everything, the deity, the symbolism, the emotional confusion, etc. — is mind. At the same time, it is clear that there is nothing that is mind, nothing whatsoever. </div>
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Jamgön Kongtrul, the great 19th century master, put it this way:</div>
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<i>When the deity’s form is clear, the clear appearance is your own mind.</i></div>
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<i>Acceptance that it is not clear is your own mind.</i></div>
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<i>While you want it to be clear, what works at meditation is your own mind.</i></div>
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<i>Your mind is also timeless awareness, guru and deity.</i></div>
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<i>Everything is the arising of mind, yet mind itself is not something made.</i></div>
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<i>The beauty of this crucial point of the two phases is how conclusive it is:</i></div>
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<i>No matter how many different creation phase practices you do,</i></div>
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<i>If you make awareness clear and just keep it from wandering,</i></div>
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<i>Clarity arises as clarity-emptiness and disturbance arises as disturbance-emptiness. </i></div>
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(You can find these verses in Creation and Completion, pg. 49. The above is my own translation. See this note to for a brief explanation of the two phases.)</div>
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In other words, you discover how to be awake right in your own experience. This wakefulness is completely different from the idea of wakefulness as the ability to observe thoughts and feelings come and go without being caught by them. That wakefulness is like a person sitting on the banks of a river, watching the water tumble over rocks, swell in waves and swirl in eddies. The wakefulness Jigmé Lingpa is pointing to is more like a person in a kayak, right in the river, tumbling over the rapids, pausing for a split second here or there to balance and set direction, then back into the flow, the swirling eddies and swelling waves, moving in and with the water but not swept away or capsized.</div>
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Vajrayana practice is about being awake in the thick of life, which is why it is so challenging and so intriguing.</div>
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Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-7167119389863513102014-11-13T12:30:00.002-08:002014-11-16T10:27:20.960-08:00An overview of vajrayana<div class="p1">
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Here is a somewhat non-traditional overview of vajrayana based on what I’ve come to understand through my own study and practice.</div>
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The origins of vajrayana are far from clear. My own view is that it originated in esoteric cults in early medieval India, as I describe here. Practitioners in these cults were not concerned with conventional lives. They followed the Indian renunciate tradition, lived apart from society and sought powers and transcendent experiences through the practice of sorcery and energy transformation. </div>
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Many of these practitioners felt that the deity, itself, was the source of power. They invoked their deities through ritual and supplication, praying to the deity to exercise its power on their behalf. Spells (mantras) composed of sacred syllables were also held to embody power and were used to invoke the deity, to protect the practitioner and those close to him or her, to heal, to exercise magical powers and to destroy enemies. They also felt that power came through high levels of attention (samadhi). One reads about sorcerers entering a water samadhi, say, and bringing about rain, floods, hail or drought. The practice of sorcery was fueled by devotion and intense loyalty to both the teacher and the deity. These were, after all, secret cults.</div>
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Over time practitioners applied these methods to spiritual attainments, seeking to develop spiritual insights and qualities through the same sorcery techniques. Their whole approach was based on the premise that we can control what happens in our lives and we can control what arises in our experience. That changed when direct awareness methods (which probably came from central Asia) entered the mix.</div>
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Vajrayana has three components that have no <i>a priori</i> connection but were brilliantly crafted together by the practitioners of early medieval esoteric Buddhism in India. Outside the mainstream of monastic and conventional Buddhism, in typical Indian fashion, these practitioners assembled bits and pieces from a vast range of practices, forging them into systems of practice that matured over hundreds of years into such collections as <i>The Eight Deities</i>, <i>The Five Tantric Deities</i>, <i>The Six Yogas of Naropa</i>, etc., and culminated in such elaborate systems as the <i>Kalacakra</i> tantra.</div>
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First, there are all the deity practices, which are largely derived from sorcery cults. In sorcery, focused attention and creative imagination are used to charge objects or people with energy. This energy in turn is used to generate transcendent or shamanic experiences, develop special power and abilities or to heal or manipulate others. When you perform the sometimes very elaborate rituals associated with deities and protectors, the sorcery elements are very clear. You invite the deity, invoke his or her power, and generate powers (siddhis) in yourself — using spells (mantras), visualization, empowerments, fire ceremonies and other rituals to focus the energies and realize their potential. The essence of sorcery is the ability to transform energy to the point that you experience the world differently and are able to induce similar experiences in others. </div>
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This component forms the basis for creation phase practice in vajrayana, a set of practices in which you aim to experience yourself and the world as the expression of an aspect of timeless awareness. In effect, you are substituting a transcendent identity for an ordinary identity. This replacement loosens up the hold of your conventional identity and conditioning and opens up other possibilities.</div>
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The second component consists of a set of high level energy transformation practices. Some are based on or derived from kundalini-type practices. In all these practices, you transform basic energies — the energy in sensory experience, the energy in breathing, sexual energy, emotional energy, etc. — into higher levels of energy and attention. In the sorcery cults, these abilities were first used to enhance the basic sorcery abilities.<br />
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Many of the practices view the body as a basis for energy transformation, using natural energies (prana), energy centers (cakra) and the channels through which energy flows. The transformed energy and attention can be used to generate powerful experiences, similitudes of timeless awareness, intense bliss, and profound clarity, including lucid dreaming and other experiences. At first, different practices were associated with different deities, but over the centuries, they were combined into groups of more or less related practices.The possibly unintended consequence was that the solidity of the transcendent identity developed in creation phase is necessarily called into question, and with it, the solidity of ordinary identity. I imagine that the early practitioners were surprised, intrigued and possibly frightened by the possibilities that then opened up. </div>
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This component is called completion phase because you complete the experiences generated by creation phase by letting them go.</div>
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Both creation and completion phase practices, because they involve explicit energy transformation, are inherently dangerous, like any powerful tool such as a scalpel, chain saw, or car, etc. If the energies developed are not in balance, you become ill and ordinary medical treatment will not help. In particular, if you are unwilling, unable or don’t know how to experience what arises as conventional conditioning opens up and starts to fall apart, the energies you develop flow into old patterns of conditioning and you fall into obsessions with food, sex, power or money. If you are unwilling, unable or don’t know how to let go of identity, then you become a megalomaniac, convinced that you have transcended ordinary human experience and are no longer bound by social conventions or biology. The warnings for energy practice traditionally include death, paralysis or insanity. Sadly, I have seen all three. </div>
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The dissolution of identity opens up completely new possibilities that differ from the aims of conventional sorcery and transcendent experiences. Those new possibilities led naturally to the incorporation of creation and completion phase practices with the third component, direct awareness methods. Placed in the context of Mahayana Buddhism, the experience and understanding of compassion is similarly enhanced. Awareness came to be viewed as a unity of three aspects: empty in essence, clear in nature and compassionate in its unrestricted expression.<br />
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Mahamudra and dzogchen are the best known of these practices, but there are a number of others in the Tibetan tradition. These practices consist of letting your mind (your way of experiencing life) resolve itself. You establish a base of relaxed open undistracted attention, and then you let things take care of themselves. This requires great resolve, great trust, great determination and great patience. Through all this, one develops a quiet resting mind that is able to see (shamatha and vipashyana, to use the Sanskrit terms). One of the differences in vajrayana practice is that shamatha and vipashyana are results, not methods, as they are in mahayana practice.</div>
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The higher levels of attention and energy developed in creation and completion phase practices increase your capacity to experience the often conflicting and intense experiences locked up in biological, psychological and social conditioning. They can also be used to deepen and extend the experience of not being a thing, of freedom, of peace or of timeless awareness in a number of ways. However, they are not absolutely necessary. You can practice direct awareness methods without creation and completion phase practices. The path may be longer and less dramatic, but it is a lot safer.</div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-83604954428953353722014-11-09T10:15:00.000-08:002014-11-09T10:15:07.565-08:00Verse 2.4 — freedom from karma<span _mce_style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;" style="font-family: Cambria,Georgia,Times New Roman,serif;"><em>Because I am free from the thinking that distorts experience,<br />The evolution of good and evil ends completely.<br /><br /></em>Karma
describes how good and evil actions (thoughts, words and deeds) evolve
into experienced results. Part of the Indian cultural influence on
Buddhism was that you stopped creating karma when you were free from the
cycle (samsara) of endless birth and rebirth. From this point of view,
it was reasonable to consider that enlightened beings are free of karma
or, at least have a different relationship with it. This notion has been
an important theological question and source of confusion and debate
for Buddhists for thousands of years. <em> </em><a _mce_href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2010/12/eight-talks-on-baizhangs-fox-koan.html" _mce_style="color: #0000ff; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2010/12/eight-talks-on-baizhangs-fox-koan.html" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important; font-style: italic;" target="_blank" track="on">Hyakujo and a Fox </a><a _mce_href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2010/12/eight-talks-on-baizhangs-fox-koan.html" _mce_style="color: #0000ff; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2010/12/eight-talks-on-baizhangs-fox-koan.html" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important;" target="_blank" track="on">or</a><a _mce_href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2010/12/eight-talks-on-baizhangs-fox-koan.html" _mce_style="color: #0000ff; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/monkeymind/2010/12/eight-talks-on-baizhangs-fox-koan.html" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important; font-style: italic;" target="_blank" track="on"> The Fox Koan</a><em> </em> confronts this confusion head on. The fact that it is the second koan in <em>The Gateless Gate</em> indicates that this was an important topic. <br /><br />In
modern times, this notion, like most bad ideas, has generated more than
a little suffering -- from harm and abuse that has arisen in
teacher-student relationships, for example. On the one hand, some
teachers claim that their actions should not be judged by ordinary
standards because they are beyond karma. On the other hand, some
students hold their teachers in such high esteem that a student sees the
teacher's behavior as beyond karma and acts accordingly. The
combination has created situations in which teacher or student or both
are unable to acknowledge or accept that biological, psychological or
social conditioning simply took over. <br /><br />To claim that one is free
of karma is equivalent to the claim that one is free of gravity. In
outer space, perhaps, but on this planet, if you step off a building,
you hit the ground hard. As long as you are alive in this world, your
thoughts, words and deeds shape how you experience yourself, the world
and life, no matter who you are or what you may have experienced.<br /><br />Karma
is not some magical force. It is the way earlier cultures described the
process of growth and evolution of patterns of behavior. It is not
cause and effect, at least not in the ordinary Western sense of these
terms. My own teacher always used the metaphor of a tree. A seed doesn't
cause a tree. A seed grows and matures into a tree, which then bears
fruit. In <em>Wake Up to Your Life</em>, I describe how this metaphor
applies to reactive patterns, using contemporary lines of thinking from
the theory of evolution and complex adaptive systems. See WUTYL pg.
173ff and 176ff and <a _mce_href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/category/basics-podcaststranscripts/awakening-from-belief-basics-podcaststranscripts" _mce_style="color: #0000ff; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/category/basics-podcaststranscripts/awakening-from-belief-basics-podcaststranscripts" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important; font-style: italic;" target="_blank" track="on">these podcast-transcripts</a>.<br /><br />What then, are we to make of Jigmé Lingpa's statement "The evolution of good and evil ends completely"? <br /><br />Here are two thoughts on this. <br /><br />First, if you look at <em>The Fox Koan,</em> one of the turning points is when the Hyakujō says, "Be one with karma." Other translations simply give "Do not ignore karma". <br /><br />While
I don't know Japanese or Chinese, I find the first rendering more
useful. To me, it means to live precisely in balance with the forces and
processes that shape the world we live in, becoming aware of imbalance
as it arises and moving in the direction of balance. To be one with
karma is to know and respond to the different pulls and pushes we
experience in our lives, moment to moment. It is an intimate dance and
we evolve, but we cease to evolve as a separate entity. We certainly do
not ignore the evolution of action and result that is the essence of
karma. <br /><br />The second thought is similar, but in different words. We
consistently want things to be different from what they are and we
attempt to control, manipulate or ignore what is problematic for us.
This oppositional stance constantly reinforces the sense of being a
separate entity. From there, it’s a short step to the development of the
concepts of good and evil. When we are free of the thinking that
distorts experience, attraction, aversion and indifference lose their
influence. We simply experience what arises and let go of wanting it to
be different. We do what is possible and accept what is not. Good and
evil as concepts don’t arise, and we are able to experience life as it
unfolds in all it’s wondrous complexity.</span>Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-18121295253235274072014-10-31T11:18:00.001-07:002014-10-31T11:19:59.425-07:00Verse 2.3 — you can't wake up a person who is pretending to sleep<div class="p1">
<i>To say “it is not” does not make it empty.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>To say “it is” does not make it solid.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>It is a realm beyond mind — natural, nothing held, nothing dispelled.</i></div>
<i>It is space free from the complications of thought and object.</i><br />
<br />
You can’t wake up a person who is pretending to sleep. I can’t remember
when I first came across this Navajo proverb, but it has served me well as a
constant reminder that you can’t make something into what it already is.<br />
<br />
Here Jigmé Lingpa goes into more detail about <a _mce_href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2014/10/verse-22-awakening-mind.html" _mce_style="color: #0000ff ! important; text-decoration: underline ! important;" href="http://reflectionsoninfinitespace.blogspot.com/2014/10/verse-22-awakening-mind.html" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important;" target="_blank" track="on">awakening mind</a>,
which he described in the last verse. Again, I want to emphasize that
he is describing experience. To read these lines as philosophy will tie
you up into knots. My perspective here is probably due to the influence
of Ludwig Wittgenstein as I have found that way of approaching life
tremendously helpful in translation, in my work with students and in my
own practice. Rather than view words as representations of reality,
Wittgenstein proposes that the meaning of a word simply lies in its use,
so it is important to pay attention to how words are used (or misused).<br />
<br />
In
this spirit, Jigmé Lingpa begins by making clear that the experience of
awakening mind cannot be reduced to any philosophical category. <br />
<br />
When
you fall into a profound experience of groundlessness, you are
naturally inclined to say, “There is nothing there.” But those words
don’t carry any meaning if they are regarded as representing something,
emptiness, say. You don’t make something empty just by saying there is
nothing there. On the other hand, when you say, “There is nothing
there,” using these words to give expression to your experience (note:
when you say them to give expression to your experience, you will use a
very different tone in your voice), they come alive and the experience
comes alive in others. In the same way, when you are stunned by the
extraordinary clarity and vividness of life, you might say, “It's just
there!” but you aren’t making anything into a thing, either. (And if
someone asked you, “What is there?”, you’d be hard put to answer.) <br />
<br />
The experience of awakening mind, groundless and vivid, is beyond words, beyond description, beyond conceptualization. <br />
<br />
Don't
try to understand what Jigmé Lingpa is describing here. Any such effort
is not only fruitless but counterproductive. Understanding is like
quicksand. The more you struggle, the deeper you sink (into conceptual
thinking).<br />
<br />
A person I met recently in Europe suggested that to
enter or engage the unknown, you have to be very precise in your
method, and use that method to enter the unknown. The conversation was
about the creative process in art, but it makes sense to me in this
context, too. Here, we need a method, a practice, that brings us right
into what we are experiencing, neither holding onto what arises not
trying to dispel it. That’s tough! And that's why meditation instruction
is often so very explicit. We need to be precise in our efforts.<br />
<br />
In
the end, it comes down to what Suzuki Roshi said about Zen practice:
absolute confidence in our fundamental nature. Like Jigmé Lingpa, Suzuki
Roshi is not making philosophical statements about the existence of a
fundamental nature. Rather, he is expressing in poetical language how to
practice. <br />
<br />
Meet what arises, open to it completely, look into it
until you see and receive what is there. Do this without any thought of
anything else. And then do it again, and again, and again, until you
know, yourself, what Jigmé Lingpa is pointing to.Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-14696403144240517772014-10-26T16:58:00.001-07:002014-10-26T16:58:25.718-07:00Verse 2.2 — awakening mind
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind is the nature of all experience.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind is the heart of all awakened ones.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind is the life-force of all beings.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind has no apparent or ultimate.</i></div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
What is awakening mind? It is an experience of such clarity and vitality that all conceptual interpretations of experience fall by the wayside. You are left with the utter absence of any ground to life, despite all its richness. Yet this groundless peace takes expression in the most heartfelt yearning that others know the same freedom. These two do not stand in opposition to each other. Rather, they are not separate, not in the slightest, and this is one aspect of the mystery of being.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
This verse is pure poetry, a celebration of awakening mind (Skt. <i>bodhicitta</i>, Tib. <span class="s1">བྱང་ཆུབ་སེམས་</span>). The best way to read these lines is to put aside the philosophical implications and focus on what effect each line has on me as I read it. Trying to understand it is like trying to fly with my feet stuck in clay. It’s poetry, and the aim of poetry is to move, so I try to let it move me.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind is the nature of all experience. </i></div>
<div class="p1">
When I read this sentence, there’s a shift. I move from a preoccupation with whatever I happen to be experiencing to the fact that everything I experience arises in some kind of space, though I would be hard put to say what that space is. The shift reminds me of Idries Shah’s <i>The Book of the Book</i>. It includes a short story in which a person says, “When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.” </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
What is the container for human experience? When I ask myself that question, everything stops.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
(Unfortunately <i>The Book of the Book</i> is now out of print. You can pick up a copy on Amazon for about $100, but do so at your own risk: this is a book like no other.)</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind is the heart of all awakened ones.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
Perhaps I’m being too punctilious in my efforts to render this poem in English. “Awakened ones”, of course, are buddhas, but I wanted to avoid the preconceptions that come with that word. When I read this line, it reminds me that without compassion, all the insight or wisdom in the world is useless. Again, it brings to mind what Jamgön Kongtrül wrote at the beginning of <i>The Great Path of Awakening</i>, “Even when you attain buddhahood, there is nothing to do but work for the welfare of beings with non-referential compassion.” In other words, compassion is the core of the whole enterprise. I value these blunt reminders because it is so easy to get lost in the descriptions of insight, awareness, wisdom, etc.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind is the life-force of all beings.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
Another potent reminder. This is probably the one article of faith in Buddhism, namely, that, at bottom, we care about each other. Numerous philosophers and theologians, biologists and neuroscientists, psychologists and sociologists have sought to prove through the logic of their respective disciplines that, despite the atrocities of which humanity is all too capable, our being is fundamentally based in compassion. I have always had a problem with such “proofs”. They seek to impose an ontological certainty, a straight-jacket, on human experience. </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Human experience is too varied, too diverse. Far more moving and inspiring is that even John Le Carré, as disillusioned an author as you are likely to find, makes the same point in <i>The Secret Pilgrim</i> when he puts these words into the mouth of the master spy George Smiley, “If you allow this institution, or any other, to steal your compassion away, wait and see what you become.” </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
The implication is that absent compassion we cease to be human.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
These lines are not laying out a philosophy or an argument. It’s a mistake, I feel, to read them as categorical statements. Rather, they are an expression of Jigmé Lingpa’s joy and awe in the possibilities that are opened up by the experience called awakening mind. What possibilities does it open up?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
<i>Awakening mind has no apparent or ultimate.</i></div>
<div class="p1">
A hint is contained in this last line. When we see through the confusion of life, on the one hand, we know viscerally the utter groundlessness of experience. On the other, we are awed to the point of overwhelm at the fullness of life. There is no way to put into words this dichotomy which is not a dichotomy,.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
These two aspects evolved or calcified into the notion of the two truths: what is ultimately true and what is apparently true (also translated as absolute truth and relative truth). Jigmé Lingpa, however, is not fooled by such formulations. He simply points out that in the actual experience of awakening mind, such notions don’t even begin to arise. They are after-the-fact interpretations as I discussed in an earlier newsletter.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="p1">
Again, rather than try to understand this last line, just read it and let it go to work in you. See how everything falls away, if only for a moment, and then rest in that moment. </div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-27096003177231585152014-10-20T09:12:00.001-07:002014-10-20T09:12:38.562-07:00The two truths are not truthsImagine you are looking at a tree on a windy day. You feel the gusts against your cheeks. You see the leaves shaking and flashing as they twist and turn. You see the branches swaying back and forth. You hear the leaves rustling and the tree creaking. And you are so clear and open that there is no movement, not inside, not outside, not anywhere. Nothing moves.<br />
<br />
Case 29 from The Gateless Gate:<br />
<br />
<i>Two monks were watching a flag flapping in the wind. </i><br />
<i>One said to the other, "The flag is moving."</i><br />
<i>The other replied, "The wind is moving."</i><br />
<i>Over-hearing this exchange, Hui-neng said, "Neither flag nor wind is moving; mind is moving."</i><br />
<br />
But Hui-neng is wrong here. Nothing moves.<br />
<br />
Now imagine that you could experience your thoughts and feelings the same way. They come and they go, but for you there is no movement, none at all. It doesn't matter what arises - love, anger, need, pride, grief, joy - you experience it, you experience it all, you know it, and yet, nothing moves, nothing whatsoever.<br />
<br />
It is possible to experience life this way and when you do, words are utterly useless. This way of experiencing is indivisibly immediate, unfathomably profound, unthinkably simple, and unimaginably ennobling. It must be true!<br />
<br />
And thus is born the notion of ultimate truth.<br />
<br />
Stay with that experience for a few moments. Inside you are as quiet as a pond that lies in the center of a deep forest, a pond that, protected by the trees around it, has been undisturbed by even the slightest breeze for a thousand years. Feel the stillness, the infinitely deep stillness, within you.<br />
<br />
Because of that stillness, you hear everything. You hear the cry of a baby when it first comes into the world. You hear a young woman's gasp of disbelief and despair when her boyfriend breaks things off. You hear the sobs of fear of a woman stricken by breast cancer. And you hear the rasping breath of those whose time in the world has come to an end. You hear the sufferings and struggles of those brought low by misfortune, bad luck or their own folly. You hear the cries of pain and hurt of those who are oppressed, exploited or abused. You hear the pain in the voices of those who have to oppress, exploit or abuse others. You hear the suffering of the world.<br />
<br />
You see and hear others struggle, locked in beliefs, flooded by emotions, or burnt to ashes by their worries, their concerns, their obsessions. And it's all so unnecessary. They don't know that there is another way. You see that and know that. It must be true!<br />
<br />
And thus is born the notion of relative truth.<br />
<br />
Profound, transformative, and liberating experiences are frequently recast as higher or deeper truths. As human beings, we struggle with life, and when we find a way of experiencing life that ends all struggle and suffering, we grasp, we hold, we cling. Nothing is more important. We now know that something else is possible. We are different because of it. We want others to know it, too. But how do you tell them?<br />
<br />
You put your experience into words, whatever words you can. You come up with ways to explain why this is possible, how it comes about, why it is so important. But these words, these explanations, are, in the end, as relevant as proofs of the existence of God. You can debate and argue all you want -- and people have for centuries -- but these explanations, these systematic conceptualizations, are beside the point. If they don't help to bring out something of that experience in others, they are, at best, a waste of time, and, at worst, a rope with which people tie themselves into knots.<br />
<br />
There is no ultimate truth. There is no relative truth. These are just notions, ideas. You have not touched cosmic consciousness, the one true reality, the ultimate, the infinite, the totality pure. Those words don't refer to anything. They are poetry, but people forget that. You've experienced something, something profound, and it has changed you.<br />
<br />
Good!<br />
<br />
But for heaven's sake, don't make a religion out of it.Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-73259472900217673812014-10-19T11:58:00.000-07:002014-10-19T20:15:57.718-07:00Line 6: Complete -- all guidelines end in no do's or don't's.<div _mce_style="font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the same way that all paths of practice end in making no effort, all
guidelines for behavior end in no do’s or don’t’s. However, this journey
takes place in the richness and messiness of daily life. For that
reason, it’s a bit more difficult than meditation practice.</span></div>
<br />
Guidelines for behavior inevitably bring us into the domain of morality. In the <em>Tao Te Ching</em>, stanza 18 (from <a _mce_href="http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Lao-Tzu/dp/0872202321" _mce_style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Tao-Te-Ching-Lao-Tzu/dp/0872202321" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important;" target="_blank" track="on">Addis and Lombardo's translation</a>) reads:<br />
<br />
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Great Tao rejected:</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Benevolence and righteousness appear.</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Learning and knowledge professed:</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Great hypocrites spring up.</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Family relations forgotten:</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Filial piety and affection arise.</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>The nation disordered:</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Patriots come forth.</em></div>
<br />
From this perspective, moral guidelines are expressions of a
disconnection from the mystery and immediacy of life. They arise to
counter imbalances, but they generate imbalances of their own. <br />
<br />
<div _mce_style="font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;" style="font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
<strong>Right and Wrong</strong></div>
Gone are the days of traditional societies, at least in most parts of
the world, when everyone held the same over-arching worldview and
consensus about right and wrong. Many people in modern societies would
like to return to an absolute standard, a wish that often takes
expression in various forms of fundamentalism, in set beliefs or in what
are claimed to be universal truths. In a pluralist society, we rely on
our own personal values. Our sense of right and wrong are frequently
defined by context and perspective. Ironically, we are more likely to be
dogmatic and strident in the advocacy and defense of these personal
values than we are of generally accepted values. We seek to validate our
stance and persuade (if not coerce) others to adopt it. <br />
<br />
<div _mce_style="font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;" style="font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
<strong>Group Cohesion</strong></div>
This leads to a second function of morality: it provides groups with
cohesion - a set of shared values and priorities that determine with
whom we do or do not connect. This function is also intimately connected
with reputation, with what other people think of us. In the world of
social interaction and especially in the worlds of social media, our
reputation, our “personal brand,” determines to a large extent which
groups we belong to and which deem us worthy of consideration or
respect. The cohesive function inevitably leads members of a given group
to diminish (or dismiss) the values and priorities of other groups.
Conflicting ideas about right and wrong and about what is true become
the seeds of tension and conflict - conflicts that are resolved or
fought out in the political, economic and social spheres. Hence, as the
Korean monk Manhae wrote in <a _mce_href="http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Yearned-For-Manhaes-Longing/dp/086171489X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413743504&sr=8-1&keywords=everything+yearned+for" _mce_style="color: #0000ff; font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.amazon.com/Everything-Yearned-For-Manhaes-Longing/dp/086171489X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413743504&sr=8-1&keywords=everything+yearned+for" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important; font-style: italic;" target="_blank" track="on">Everything Yearned For</a>: <br />
<br />
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Yes, I understand ethics, morality, law</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>are nothing but the smoke worshipping the sword and gold.</em></div>
<br />
This function of morality with its attendant concern for belonging and
reputation is in stark contrast to the morality and ethics of, say,
Mahayana Buddhism, in which we find such guidelines as this one from <em><a _mce_href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/mind-training-eight-verses" _mce_style="color: #0000ff; text-decoration: underline;" href="http://www.unfetteredmind.org/mind-training-eight-verses" linktype="1" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255) !important;" target="_blank" track="on">Mind Training in Eight Verses</a></em>:<br />
<br />
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>When scorn and insult become my lot,</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>Expressions of some jealousy,</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>I alone accept defeat</em></div>
<div _mce_style="margin-left: 30px;" style="margin-left: 30px;">
<em>And award the other victory.</em></div>
<div _mce_style="font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;" style="font-family: Calibri,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;">
<strong><br /></strong>
<strong>Expression of Practice</strong></div>
This and similar guidelines serve a third and very different function.
They describe how the qualities and understandings one is seeking to
develop through practice take expression in life. They are descriptions,
not prescriptions. They are not about right and wrong <em>per se</em>,
though they are often interpreted that way. Nor are they about the
values of a group or community, though they have often been corrupted
for that purpose. <br />
<br />
In the context of direct awareness, this third function inevitably takes the form of “no do’s or don’t’s”. <br />
<br />
Most
of what I say and do is shaped by emotional and biological
conditioning. Like the tectonic plates that make up the surface of the
world, reactive patterns shift and move inside me in ways that I can
neither control nor predict. These movements may open fissures in my
personality into which I tumble out of control. They may cause massive
earthquakes that shake me to my core as different patterns collide and
fracture. The notion that “I” exist as a seamlessly integrated
personality is a Platonic pipe dream. <br />
<br />
When I follow my teacher’s
favorite pith instruction, “Just recognize and rest,” a clarity arises.
I cannot say what that clarity is. It is not something that I can point
to and say, “It is this.” That clarity is, simultaneously, a knowing.
My effort in life consists in living that knowing. I do not know where
it leads, and it has led to some very difficult, painful and dark
places. Despite the difficulties, there was always a sense of where the
balance might be and I found a way through. I have also learned that
when I depart from that knowing, problems arise and things go seriously
wrong. (This leads quite naturally into the role of protectors and protector practice, a topic that I will take up later.)<br />
<br />
Thus, my effort in life is simply to keep moving in the direction of
balance. Any other aim seems arbitrary, contrived and self-serving.<br />
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In this approach to life, I cannot ignore what arises or what I
encounter, nor can I shut out what is inconvenient. I cannot manipulate
what I experience nor control what happens or doesn't happen. All I
can do is meet what does arise, open and stand in not knowing until a
way is clear. There is no guarantee that things won't turn out badly.
When they do, I learn, and I learn at a level that makes a similar
occurrence unlikely.<br />
<br />
If I adopt or accept a set of guidelines that tells
me what to do, I’m no longer living that clarity. I’m just following
guidelines. <br />
<br />
Why do I choose to live this way? Rilke, perhaps, said it best in <em>Letters to a Young Poet</em>: it’s not a matter of choice.Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-735806083613637800.post-5063502806434711822014-10-10T01:30:00.000-07:002014-10-10T01:30:41.971-07:00The Box<div class="p1">
You cannot decide not to hold a position, if for no other reason that to decide to not hold a position is, in itself, a position, and you are back in the holding mindset again — an example of both an ancient and a post-modern dilemma.</div>
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You are in a box. If you take the box apart, it remakes itself as you do so and you are back in it. If you step out of it, you somehow end up back in it, too, like Alice in <i>Through the Looking Glass</i>. If you make an effort to understand it, you are in the world it defines and you are still in it. If you try to ignore it, you live in the world it defines and you never leave. If you try to change it, it restricts your movement and confines you. If you try to rise above it, you find that you are tied to it. If you analyze it, you may work through an intricate maze but the maze leads you right back to where you started from — the box. </div>
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The box consumes you. It's all you experience. You want to get out but there is no door, no window, no exit of any kind.</div>
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What do you do?</div>
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Start from where you are. You are in the box. Open to the experience of the box as best you can. This is usually the last thing you want to do, but that is all you can do. Don't try to change or control your experience, because that just reinforces the box.</div>
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Take care to distinguish between resignation and acceptance. Resignation is a form of ignoring: you remain confined and defined by the box. Acceptance is opening to what you are experiencing without trying to change it. </div>
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When you open to the experience of the box, you are usually overwhelmed and fall out of attention. You lose awareness and you are back in the box, and you aren't even aware that you are. </div>
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The trick is to open to the experience without being overwhelmed. Open a little, for a short period of time, even just a moment, and then stop. Then do it again, for a moment or two, and stop again. Gradually build capacity.</div>
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Two qualities are essential in this practice: resting and looking. Resting is how you stabilize attention. Looking is how you bring out the clarity that enables you to see. You can start with resting or looking, but most people, by far, find it better to start with resting. When you can rest, then look. Learn how to look in the resting. When you can look a bit, then rest in the the looking.</div>
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What is looking? When you rest, pose the question "What rests?" Don't try to answer the question. Just ask it. A shift in your awareness takes place, right then. It may last only for a half a second, but that shift is the shift into looking. What do you see? Nothing, of course, and that's the hard part. You see nothing and you panic. A subtle agitation in the body triggers a thought, a question, and bang, you are back in the box. Let your mind and body rest again, then pose the question, and look. Little by little, you are able to rest in seeing nothing. Do this for very short periods, because the mind can also slip into a subtle dullness that is not helpful.</div>
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When you can look and rest in the looking, you can also ask "What looks?" Again, don't try to answer. Just rest in the shift.</div>
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As you do this, you experience the box more and more vividly, more and more clearly, and that is where things begin to change. But as soon as you entertain the wish for the box to change, bang, you are back in it. Whatever you experience, just recognize it and rest.</div>
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When you practice this way, a certain kind of seeing develops. It is a non-conceptual direct clear awareness that doesn't involve language or explanation. This is the seeing to which the verse refers. That seeing holds no position, not even wanting to change the box. And in that experience of the box, awake, vivid, clear and open, things change, in their own time and in their own way. Primarily, what changes is how you experience the box, and that changes everything else in your life. Thus, change comes about indirectly. It is not something you decide or control. T.S. Eliot writes about this practice in <i>Four Quartets</i>:</div>
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<i>I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope</i></div>
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<i>For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,</i></div>
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<i>For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith</i></div>
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<i>But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.</i></div>
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<i>Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:</i></div>
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<i>So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.</i></div>
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and</div>
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<i>For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.</i></div>
Ken McLeodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15876529036315470763noreply@blogger.com2