Golden Flower Study

[deci belle]

In response to a bum's PM asking about study of the Cleary translation of the Secret of the Golden Flower…❤

 

Just read through the book innumerable times without ever needing to understand it. There is much in it that refers to the inconceivable which you can only experience for yourself— it is not that anyone can ever understand these things.

 

Other than trying to penetrate the underlying meaning of passages in the text, which I will try to discuss in terms of application in ordinary situations, your queries should be grounded in how the teaching applies to potential.

 

Work toward articulating your queries based on your involvement in ordinary situations by stripping it of physical, emotional and psychological content because this is how we apply the reversal of the light to creative evolution as it occurs in our lives. We do this in order to absorb its uncreated potential to further the evolution of enlightening being.

 

"A grain and then another grain, from vagueness to clarity."

 

Creative evolution is karmic awareness; the world as you know it and see it. This is the matrix of the attributable. The light is the light of your own everyday ordinary awareness, which is unattributable. This is Unborn, selfless open aware consciousness underlying and comprising creation. It is uncreated, nonoriginated impersonal knowledge, serene and unperturbable, solid, complete, miraculously aware space without inside or outside.

 

The light of karmic awareness and the light of the unborn is the same light. Ordinary people follow the normal flow of the light of consciousness and enlightening beings follow it in reverse.

 

Those who turn the light around are enlightening beings within nonpsychological awareness.

 

 

 

"Negative energy stops" because the exercise of turning the light around vitiates (debases) the power of conditioned thought habits. ~page 110, note #11.

 

 

So we use the power of nonpsychological awareness to take over the habit-energy of psychological awareness.

 

In turning around one's own light, the relationships in and to any given situation are attended to personally, yet one's inner relationship with the world is abstracted. So we are learning to deal with nonpsychological energy. The more we work within the nonpsychological, the more we work outside of creation because we are working with the unattributable light itself.

 

This is the spiritual work and subtle operation of immortals, buddhas and enlightening beings.

 

So in turning the light around, we are just being honest and genuine with ourselves and others in ordinary situations without going along with the created energy that is the form and consciousness of the cycle of the event, situation, relationship we are involved in at any given time. This is because we are working with uncreated potential in terms of the situation itself, which only occurs because of karmic momentum and our enlightening being functioning independently from within it. Genuine function is completely outside of conventional mores.

 

So if it weren't for the false, there would be no way to see the real. Enlightening being uses ordinary situations to refine potential instead of gratifying self-reflective ego desires.

 

In so doing, we pick the real out of the false and hide it away in secrecy. This is the work of spiritual immortalism, the alchemy producing the body of the embryo of sagehood, which is the body outside the body, coeval with reality before the dichotomization of the two things.

 

There are levels of the Golden Flower practice for inner work in the volume, but I work directly with the unattributable to start with and this is the whole point of the teaching as originally transmitted and subsequently translated by Thomas Cleary.

 

If you can just work with your own ordinary light of conscious awareness and see through your involvements in ordinary situations without attachment speculating in emotional outcomes and without avoiding responsibilities to the clear responses required of you in the moment, this is the gist of turning the light around and entry into the inconceivability of the Great Vehicle.

 

If you do this for a long time, the inner processes will occur in and of themselves without any effort, contrivance or deliberate intention whatsoever on your part.

[Clarity]

Thank you, this is very succinct, very clear.

[johndoe2012]

.

Edited August 18, 2013 by chris d

[deci belle]

Thank you Clarity and chris❤

 

In reversing the light of awareness there is no east or west, easy or difficult in everyday ordinary situations.

 

I myself do not practice a "Golden Flower" teaching, but looking back from the perspective of subtle operation, the Golden Flower teaching is a direct entry into the real without intermediary, which is the whole point of the transmission.

 

The light of awareness is unattributable, so those who can awaken to its functional aspect in ordinary circumstances already have the development and the affinity with its source to see it in the course of events without clinging to psychological reifications.

[thelerner]

deci belle, if you couldn't use the word light, what word or phrase would you substitute in your explanation? How off base would the substitute 'Focus' be?

[deci belle]

Let me see, thelerner… the term light, signifies the ineffable, which is unattributable.

 

So… if by focus, we could indicate that the impersonal focus is 360˚ objectless pervasion of spontaneous insight relative to any given situation at any given time, then yes, focus could definitely be an effective substitute for the term light~ ahhahahaa!!❤❤

 

I'm being silly, but sure~ whatever term can work for people to see awareness itself having no point of reference relative to individuals is the reversal of the light itself shining back on its source— which is inconceivable reality in everyday ordinary events. This is, btw, the working definition of enlightening being.

 

I'm glad you mentioned it (I came online to invite chris to please discuss the books he mentioned in more detail), thelerner.

 

If people would exercise focusless focus in terms of insight without habitually referencing self-reflective orientation, this would be what is meant by "turning the focus around". So the focus at any given time has no point or source other than the entire situation relative to itself wherever you are.

 

Focus works for me!❤

 

Then people may ask, But why?

 

I say neither good or bad, reality is the basis of enlightened qualities inherent in oneself. There is no thing inside or outside. Why not find out for oneself what this no thing is? Ultimately, it is a solitary vision of impersonal unity, selfless desire unknowing, boundless and free, subsuming within sameness. It's the party raging within your own skull before your parents were born.

 

Turning your focus around is itself enacting inherent enlightening qualities outside of self and other unbeknownst to anyone. The situation itself determines, is complicit within and without, the focus never having been focused before this instant.

 

This is spontaneity. How free is that?

[deci belle]

Thank you, viator— it's a good thing thelerner made that suggestion.❤

[deci belle]

haha!!❤ Yay!!

[thelerner]

deci belle, if you couldn't use the word light, what word or phrase would you substitute in your explanation? How off base would the substitute 'Focus' be?

I was reminded of this line from Ajahn Brahms excellent book 'Simply This Moment' -

"I should mention that the so called samadhi nimmitta is not a light but that is the

closest description the mind can give to this experience. It is an object of mind

consciousness, not an object eye consciousness. However, because of its intensity it

very often appears as a light. However it is perceived, it is something very pleasant

and appealing. The mind has to be able to hold its attention on the nimmitta without

moving and to do that it has to be very passive. Because any action of the mind to

interfere, to control, to do; to order. to make, will disturb that tranquillity of the mind

and the samadhi nimmitta will disappear. You will be back on the breath or you will

go way back to the beginning of your meditation.

 

The samadhi nimmitta is like a gateway into the mind. Because you have just come

from the realm of the five senses, the kamaloka, you interpret the samadhi nimmitta

with the language of the five senses. That is why it appears to be a light. As you

maintain your attention on the samadhi nimmitta, if you go further from the world of

the five senses, the perception of the samadhi nimmitta changes.

 

The perception of light disappears and you go to the heart that is just a very pleasant

experience which we call pitisukha. You do not need to think, “What does pitisukha mean?”

“What is piti, what is sukha?” You cannot know the answer to those questions by looking at

the suttas. The only way to know what pitisukha means, as it appears in the first

jhana, is to gain that first jhana and know that at this stage it is the object of the mind.

It is the object of mind consciousness, the one thing the mind is aware of. Because

pitisukha is extremely pleasant, peaceful, and satisfying, the mind finds it very easy to

find contentment in that one mental image; so the mind does the work at this stage."

p. 14.

 

Ajahn is a great writer and teacher. Its a free book. Google it if interested.

Edited April 4, 2013 by thelerner

[LCH]

I have now read both the Wilhelm version and the Cleary version, and I have realized "Lost in Translation" is not only a movie starring Bill Murry. :-).

 

I take nothing away from the Wilhelm version with the accompanying Jungian analysis, but the Cleary version doesn't even need the occidental explanation of a psycho-analyst to justify it. Not to mention, Cleary's version oozes of transcendence in that it does not concentrate on specific "energy work", but a holistic approach to "life", or more appropriately, "self"less-realization.

 

This book, as Deci said, is worth experiencing again and again. Proving, to those who can recognize, that longer and more detailed does not always provide more clarity.

Edited April 4, 2013 by LCH

[deci belle]

I find that, in the overall scheme of things, the essential operation in terms of turning the light around consistently in the midst of situations is advancing the fire according to the timing of situations and withdrawing in secrecy when sufficiency is reached.

 

I would recommend students to study the Kuei ku tzu, or "The Master of Demon Valley". It is the first part of Thomas Cleary's Thunder in the Sky. It discusses terms like "opening and closing, "hooking and clamping" and "holding the pivot".

 

Those who are autonomous yet humane in daily life and are familiar with the seamless application of the Sun Tzu in everyday affairs ought to be ready to learn the usage of the Kuei ku tzu in becoming adept in turning the light around.

 

Creation is constantly providing the situations for us to enter profound abstraction in the midst of ordinary situations.

 

Arrow-points meeting and mutual response isn't right or wrong, good or bad. It's real. When one advances the fire by hooking and clamping at the critical juncture of an affair is to invite exceedingly unrefined energies. This is precisely the time to satisfy the face-value of karmic potential being wielded by other. Then we can go along with desire subject to the full consequences. Therein is the power inherent in everyday ordinary situations. One must become dangerously vulnerable.

 

The requirement is to go along with desire without stepping over the line. Desire is another name for unrefined potential.

 

We engage desire by hooking and clamping (for instance) yet do nothing with it. It's like riding a wild tiger. You go along without deciding anything. That you will get your fair share of abuse in the interim goes without saying.

 

This is the time of hiding one's light in secrecy when nonpsychological awareness comes to the fore.

 

Mother nature (karmic evolution) does not like to be fooled, but you do it anyway— in order to steal potential.