Seeing, Recognising & Maintaining One's Enlightening Potential

[Papayapple]

It is a little clearer now to me.

[manitou]

It seems like a Catch 22 to me.  Are the monks in the huts trying to 'earn' something?

 

By staying in no-mind, this is comforting.  To know that this is a dream within a dream is comforting.  I just read in Vispashta's Yoga yesterday that the cosmic consciousness 'dreams' objects perceptible in this life as we dream objects in our dreams at night.

 

All I know, is that by remembering that we are all individual whirlpools in the same ocean, that we are all the same stuff and it is illusive that we are actually separate, that I can love my brother as myself much easier.  To know that person that I originally am making a momentary judgment on is 'me', in fact.  That seems to me to be a worthy mind state to strive for - the universal reality and sameness of one and all, from the largest character to the smallest blade of grass.

 

To spend one's life concentrating on doing virtuous acts for the purpose of earning something seems to be feeding the jiva again - it's still motivated by ego (or our own little illusive whirlpool, which is only temporary movement in the sea of beingness)  That's the Catch 22 of it as well.  Earning for 'self', which isn't the point either.

 

All I know is I don't know.  I just know that I love the connection and the warmth of the heart when I remember daily that 'I am' every other person (or animal) walking around.  I can actually feel my heart soften.   and to treat them accordingly, with the same kindness I would offer myself.

 

Which brings up a whole other subject for those of us who are not used to treating ourselves kindly, for those of us who feel unworthy.  We too are the eternal, and we must remember that daily.

 

Be kind and love.  and remember who you are at all times.

[C T]

It is said that if you do not meditate, you will not gain certainty; If you do, you will. But what sort of certainty? If you meditate with a strong, joyful endeavor, signs will appear showing that you have become used to staying in your nature. The fierce, tight clinging from dualistically experiencing phenomena will gradually loosen up, and your obsession with happiness and suffering, hopes and fears, and so on, will slowly weaken. Your devotion to the teacher and your sincere trust in his instructions will grow.

 

After a time, your tense, dualistic attitudes will evaporate and you will get to the point where gold and pebbles, food and filth, gods and demons, virtue and nonvirtue, are all the same for you - you will be at a loss to choose between paradise and hell! But until you reach that point (while you are still caught in the experiences of dualistic perception), virtue and nonvirtue, buddhafields and hells, happiness and pain, actions and their results – all of these are a reality for you.

 

~ Dudjom Rinpoche

[qicat]

 

It is said that if you do not meditate, you will not gain certainty; If you do, you will. But what sort of certainty? If you meditate with a strong, joyful endeavor, signs will appear showing that you have become used to staying in your nature. The fierce, tight clinging from dualistically experiencing phenomena will gradually loosen up, and your obsession with happiness and suffering, hopes and fears, and so on, will slowly weaken. Your devotion to the teacher and your sincere trust in his instructions will grow.

 

After a time, your tense, dualistic attitudes will evaporate and you will get to the point where gold and pebbles, food and filth, gods and demons, virtue and nonvirtue, are all the same for you - you will be at a loss to choose between paradise and hell! But until you reach that point (while you are still caught in the experiences of dualistic perception), virtue and nonvirtue, buddhafields and hells, happiness and pain, actions and their results – all of these are a reality for you.

 

~ Dudjom Rinpoche

 

 

I'd like to think about it from Krishna's words: just meditate, even if it is 5 seconds in your total lifetime, it will be added to your "collector bill" and eventually you will get there...

 

"On this path no effort is wasted, nor is there any danger of adverse effects.

Even a little practice of this Yoga protects one from great fear."

 

 

Bhagavad Gita: Chapter 2, Verse 40

[C T]

"Whenever and however you meditate, be joyful. Do not neglect the skillful means practices. At the beginning of every meditation session—and even during the practice—invoke goodness thoughts. Again, do not be too forceful. But also do not back away and lose your courage, commitment, and confidence. If you are on a long retreat, during formal practice sessions, increase the strength and stability of your mind by maintaining good, balanced concentration on your object of focus. Then, during post-meditation, do prostrations and circumambulations. Perform meritorious activities such as building stupas or temples. Read books on the teachings, reflect on what you read, and absorb it into your heart. Cultivate love and compassion. All of these are the skillful means practices of the relative truth.

 

Relative truth and absolute truth are two aspects of the same nature. On the relative level, there are concepts and there is duality: subject and object, positive and negative, joy and suffering. Do not ignore this. Do not impose your realization of the absolute truth onto the relative truth. At the same time, you should not use the concepts of the relative truth to try to figure out the absolute truth. That is playing games, and the absolute truth is not attainable through concepts. Cultivate wide-open wisdom that is nondual and free of concepts in order to experience the absolute truth. Unite this effortlessly and beautifully with the relative truth, and there will be no conflicts. Blend it all into a single state. This is how we stay focused, discover our innate nature, and benefit ourselves and others."

 

 

~ Venerable Khenpo Rinpoches

    The Nature of Mind

 

Edited March 10, 2017 by C T

[C T]

Also with a mature relationship with a teacher, from the devotional aspect it’s incredibly inspiring but not in a way that puts us down and we’re elevating them that they’re so wonderful. I’ll give an example:

 

Before I came here to Mexico, I was in India for a month with the reincarnation of my teacher Serkong Rinpoche, who’s now seventeen years old. I was there at the time when the attack on New York and Washington took place and I received some emails from people asking Rinpoche to say some prayers.

 

Now, this was the occasion when Rinpoche was preparing for a certain… there’s a certain stage in the monastic education at which you literally demonstrate your debating skills in front of all the assembled monks of the monastery. So you demonstrate that now you are an intellectually full member of the community, that you can debate with everyone. So there’s a certain stage in the education. That meant that he was preparing for a very big debate in front of… one of them was in front of two and a half thousand monks, and one was in front of one thousand three hundred monks.

 

What I found incredibly inspiring was that in this situation, Rinpoche stayed up more than half the night saying various prayers and rituals for peace and for the people who had suffered, and so on. And he could have very easily – I mean, nobody would have known – he could have just said a prayer for five minutes and then gone to sleep, but he didn’t. This was very, very inspiring.  

 

(snipped from a talk by Dr. Alex Berzin)

Edited March 10, 2017 by C T

[C T]

Your mind, the primordial buddha,
Searches elsewhere due to the power of desire.
Doesn’t it notice that it is wandering in samsara?

 

Now that you have obtained this precious human body,
You continuously get carried away by mundane actions.
Don’t you notice that your life is running out?

 

~ Guru Rinpoche ~

[doc benway]

 

 

A Song to Introduce the Unmistaken View of the Great Perfection

Placing my head at the feet of the Dharma King, I offer homage: Bless me that I might see natural luminosity.

Hey, you of great fortune!

Sit without moving,
like a tent peg driven into hard earth!

Gaze with your eyes neither open nor closed,
like the eyes of a deity in a fresco!

And let your mind settle, loose and relaxed,
like a woollen blanket spread out on the ground…

At times like these, while resting in the utter brilliance that is the space beyond thought, which may be likened to a cloudless sky, you will experience unimpeded translucence like a faultless crystal.

This is none other than the view of the ultimate, the luminous Great Perfection. Resting in equipoise within the pure luminosity, vividly clear like the sky, dullness and agitation are naturally voided and do not arise anew – a faultless, brilliantly clear non-conceptual meditation. When thought arises, be it good or bad, it is recognized for what it is and will not disturb. Focus upon this method and view your genuine nature; effortless, it arises by relaxing into the expanse, and thoughts are pacified on their own ground.

When you are able to practice for longer periods, it can be like, for example, when muddy water is stirred up and then allowed to settle – the innate lucidity of the water becomes clearer. Similarly, when myriad appearances arise and are realized to be like reflections, they cause the natural clarity of mind itself to become ever clearer. This in turn leads to the effortless arising of various qualities, such as the various types of clairvoyance and so on.

Should even the Great Master of Oḍḍiyāna appear before you, he’d have nothing greater than this to say on the view of the Great Perfection.

Should even Longchen Rabjam appear before you, he’d have nothing greater to teach you on the practice of taking thought as the path.

Should even the twenty-five exalted disciples appear before you, they’d have nothing greater to say concerning this practice.

As for myself, a yogin, this is my practice, and I have no greater meditation instruction to offer you.

You may analyze meticulously, but when a wind blows it naturally disperses the clouds and the sky can be seen. Endeavour to see empty clarity, mind itself, in the same way – there is nothing greater than this understanding. If you don’t stir up the silt, the water will remain clear; as such, don’t analyze. Simply rest without contrivance and you will come to see the emptiness of mind itself. There is nothing greater to see than this!

There are many views, but that of the emptiness of mind itself, devoid of all grasping, is the unmistaken view of the Great Perfection. When death comes to yogis of this method they are able to seize the clear light of death.

Hearing about it is beneficial, but I pray the actual experience of clear light will become evident.

Written by the old ignoramus, Gangshar Wangpo. May it prove meaningful!
Translated by Sean Price, 2015

[C T]

~ DZONGSAR JAMYANG KHYENTSE RINPOCHE ~

 

It occurred to me today that I will have to work much, much harder if I am ever even to get close to this thing called ‘enlightenment’—especially when I think of the strange dream I had recently.

 

I was in some kind of a restaurant and drinking coke from a classic coca cola bottle. As often happens in dreams, the ‘absolutely impossible’ suddenly became all too real, and I found myself—my entire body—being sucked into the bottle! And because I’m so attached to my ‘normal’ terms of reference, I really hated being stuck in that bottle. It felt completely wrong! I was furious about not being able to push my head out of its narrow neck, and as there were no hooks to grab hold of, I kept slipping further and further into the belly of the bottle.

 

Then I thought about how absurd and bizarre my situation was. The idea that I’d been sucked into the bottle in the first place defied all logic, so why was I trying to apply logic to get myself out? And I realized that the fact my familiar tool ‘logic’ didn’t work was what I hated most of all!

 

Children are far less fettered by reason and logic than adults. I’m constantly amazed by how carefree they are, and am reminded of something Claudia’s daughter, Sachiko, once did. She was playing with her Barbie doll one day, and as she really liked the doll’s skirt, she decided she wanted to wear it herself. So, completely unselfconsciously, she undressed the doll, convinced that the pretty skirt would fit her.

 

For myself, I can see how tightly bound I am to logic, and if I needed any further proof about just how far from enlightenment I really am, I just have to look at my inability to accept the death of my devoted attendant Karma Lodro. That he was too young to die is a foolish notion, actually, because it suggests that the death of someone older is somehow more acceptable. But this is the dichotomy I’m left with… along with my tremendous gratitude to Karma Lodro.

[blue eyed snake]

yes...

being sucked into a bottle,

 

trying to rationalize myself out..

[C T]

~ KYABGÖN PHAKCHOK RINPOCHE ~

 

I'm going to say a few things candidly...

Your beliefs don’t make you a better person, your behaviour does. 
Your mind training doesn’t matter when you don’t have compassion.
Your meditation doesn’t matter when you don’t see your own faults.
Dharma practice doesn’t matter when you don’t have devotion. 
Obstacles don't matter when you have the blessings.

[C T]

[manitou]

 

~ DZONGSAR JAMYANG KHYENTSE RINPOCHE ~

 

It occurred to me today that I will have to work much, much harder if I am ever even to get close to this thing called ‘enlightenment’—especially when I think of the strange dream I had recently.

 

I was in some kind of a restaurant and drinking coke from a classic coca cola bottle. As often happens in dreams, the ‘absolutely impossible’ suddenly became all too real, and I found myself—my entire body—being sucked into the bottle! And because I’m so attached to my ‘normal’ terms of reference, I really hated being stuck in that bottle. It felt completely wrong! I was furious about not being able to push my head out of its narrow neck, and as there were no hooks to grab hold of, I kept slipping further and further into the belly of the bottle.

 

Then I thought about how absurd and bizarre my situation was. The idea that I’d been sucked into the bottle in the first place defied all logic, so why was I trying to apply logic to get myself out? And I realized that the fact my familiar tool ‘logic’ didn’t work was what I hated most of all!

 

Children are far less fettered by reason and logic than adults. I’m constantly amazed by how carefree they are, and am reminded of something Claudia’s daughter, Sachiko, once did. She was playing with her Barbie doll one day, and as she really liked the doll’s skirt, she decided she wanted to wear it herself. So, completely unselfconsciously, she undressed the doll, convinced that the pretty skirt would fit her.

 

For myself, I can see how tightly bound I am to logic, and if I needed any further proof about just how far from enlightenment I really am, I just have to look at my inability to accept the death of my devoted attendant Karma Lodro. That he was too young to die is a foolish notion, actually, because it suggests that the death of someone older is somehow more acceptable. But this is the dichotomy I’m left with… along with my tremendous gratitude to Karma Lodro.

 

 

How absolutely telling this dream is - especially since it was a Classic coke bottle.  It's as though the Rinpoche had an awareness that his classic thoughts and the teachings of his prior gurus no longer fit him, that he had to figure out where in the universe he specifically stood - beyond anything that a teacher could give him.  He outgrew the teachings of others and had to get to the moon on his own.

 

and how wonderful the Buddhist Science of the Mind clip was.  Thank you, CT.  As a metaphysician, the whole concept of Science of Mind has been with me since being hauled off to Christian Science meetings as a young child, and seeing what the mind can do.  And yet, late in my spiritual career, I have taken to Buddhism like a hand to a glove - because of the compassion and the humanity of the idea behind it.  I had no idea - and I certainly don't profess to being a Buddhist because I followed no traditional Buddhist path at all.  However, I think it is impossible to not​ run into Buddhism if one is a true seeker.

 

My Christian aunt and uncle scoff at Buddhism because they are of the opinion that Buddhist 'worship' Buddha, much as they worship Jesus.  I've tried to explain otherwise, but their minds are set in that Christian type of arrogance that is convinced that only Christianity is the true path, and will lead them to eternal life.  They were confused when I ask them if they've ever considered that eternity runs in both directions.

 

It is as though reading all the metaphysics has great benefit, but it's not until it is put into practice in a Buddhist sense of compassion and seeking self understanding in order to See the reality of life.  And I too am trying to loosen my bonds to logic - the tendency to see only in the way I was conditioned to accept what others have called reality.  I have much work to do, and I know nothing.

Edited March 29, 2017 by manitou

[manitou]

(An excerpt from Vasistha's Yoga, translated by Swami Venkatesenanda)

 

VISISTHA continued (speaking to Rama)

 

The illusory notion of the existence of the mind, etc., persists only as long as the sublime realization of the truth is not experienced through the company of the wise, who are totally unattached, and as long as wickedness has not been weakened.  As long as the experience of this world as a reality has not been shaken by the energy derived from the clear perception of the truth, so long the existence of the mind etc., seems to be self-evident.  Such a notion continues as long as there is blind dependence, on account of craving for objective experience, and as long as there are wickedness and delusion as a consequence.

 

But in the case of one who is not attracted by pleasure, whose heart is cool because of its purity and who has shattered the cage of desires, cravings and hopes, the deluded notion of the existence of the mind ceases to be.  When he sees even his body as the deluded experience of a non-entity, how can a mind arise in him?  He who has the vision of the infinite and into whose heart the world-appearance has merged, does not entertain the deluded notion of a jiva, etc.

 

(P.S.  I have gotten through my first reading of this 725 page tome.  This I will read and reread again - it is one of those books that is seen through different eyes, different things are seen upon each reading - as consciousness is at a higher level every time the book is finished).  Metaphysics at its very best.

Edited March 29, 2017 by manitou

[C T]

Chatral Rinpoche offers no-frills advice on a simple and very doable formula

       to bring forth one's innate buddha mind:

 

No matter where you stay, be it a busy place or a solitary retreat, the only things that you need to conquer are your mind's five poisons, and your own true enemies, the eight worldly concerns - nothing else.

 

Five poisons: Ignorance, attachment, aversion, pride, jealousy.

 

Eight worldy concerns: Hope for happiness and fear of suffering. Hope for fame and fear of insignificance. Hope for praise and fear of blame. Hope for gain and fear of loss.

 

 

 

 

 

There are four (types of) persons: those who from light, end up in light; those who from darkness, end up in darkness; those who from light, end up in darkness; and those who from darkness, end up in light. Be like the first of these. ~ Nagarjuna (Letter to a Friend)

Edited March 29, 2017 by C T

[manitou]

How can one be like the first if one started from darkness?  Is that anything we have control over in this lifetime?  Or am I reading this wrong?

[C T]

How can one be like the first if one started from darkness?  Is that anything we have control over in this lifetime?  Or am I reading this wrong?

Maybe you would like to share the reason/s why you think one begins from darkness? 

[Jeff]

How can one be like the first if one started from darkness?  Is that anything we have control over in this lifetime?  Or am I reading this wrong?

Here is the Christian version of the same concept, from the Gospel of Thomas...

 

50. Jesus said, "If they say to you, 'Where have you come from?' say to them, 'We have come from the light, from the place where the light came into being by itself, established [itself], and appeared in their image.' If they say to you, 'Is it you?' say, 'We are its children, and we are the chosen of the living Father.' If they ask you, 'What is the evidence of your Father in you?' say to them, 'It is motion and rest.'"

 

The "darkness" is not about personal difficulty in one's life. The darkness is more like the issues and fears of the world. It is kind of like saying our primordial state is "clear light".

[blue eyed snake]

There are four (types of) persons: those who from light, end up in light; those who from darkness, end up in darkness; those who from light, end up in darkness; and those who from darkness, end up in light. Be like the first of these. ~ Nagarjuna (Letter to a Friend)

 

 

yes Jeff, I get what you say and that's what I thought myself.

 

But how to reconcile that with those who from darkness end up either in light or in darkness?

[Jeff]

 

There are four (types of) persons: those who from light, end up in light; those who from darkness, end up in darkness; those who from light, end up in darkness; and those who from darkness, end up in light. Be like the first of these. ~ Nagarjuna (Letter to a Friend)

 

 

yes Jeff, I get what you say and that's what I thought myself.

 

But how to reconcile that with those who from darkness end up either in light or in darkness?

 

 

 

Here is how I would translate those four types...

 

those who from light, end up in light 

- those who realize their primordial basis/beginning and return to it (know where they come from).

 

those who from darkness, end up in darkness 

- those who are obscured (caught up in issues and fears) and stay that way.  Could also be described as focused on the world.

 

those who from light, end up in darkness 

- those who realize (or have a taste), but cannot (or don't want to) move beyond the worldly stuff.

 

those who from darkness, end up in light

- if you believe that you come from darkness (obscured world) and end up in the light, then it is a "false" light, as one has not realized their primordial purity. This is sort of saying that one does not "rise up", but more clears away stuff.

[rex]

With reincarnation in mind, Light may refer to the higher realms of existence while Darkness to the lower three realms of existence.

[C T]

Light here, reflecting on Mahayana notes, refers to 'rangjung yeshe' (self-existing wakefulness), and darkness is a reference to 'marigpa' (ignorance, also 'unawareness' or 'not being able to see'). As per same notes, it is said that all beings possess this self-existing wakeful quality although very often this is shrouded over by habits accrued from grasping/aversive tendencies, which arise and subside according to circumstances. 

Edited March 30, 2017 by C T

[C T]

really serious advice. Take heed please 

 

[C T]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbhf4HTeHn4

[manitou]

CT - I see where everyone is coming from.  And I do remember the light of love at the beginning of this incarnation - before all the darkness started, the pain, the alcoholism.  I see it more today as a lotus rising up from the mud to the pond surface.

 

But yes, I do see where there is a return to light.  I just needed reminding.  I guess I was just putting it into too personal a context.

Edited March 31, 2017 by manitou