This morning I had a rare Clear Light wake-up. That is, a pure awareness arising from an undisturbed, primordial consciousness, synced with the accumulation of daylight. Its single-pointedness is hard, clear, and solidly blissful. It could be that after last night’s meditation in which my mind went blank, my head bent, and over an hour passed in a seeming few minutes, that this was a post-meditation restoration of awareness within a mindful setting. After Birwapa’s yoga, much writing followed, as witnessed above, and in truth these two experiences of arising of Clear Light Primordial Wisdom and the Vajra activity of diary keeping are one—except when disturbed (not Akshobya) by ‘a little bit of thinking’ which is both the experience of samsara and the fear while dying. This kind of writing action comes not too much from one’s preferences and conventional self, but from one’s three sets of Dharma vows. At the time it seems as if someone else were present, composing effortlessly—well, almost—for the sake of promoting the welfare of others and oneself so as to purely further the Buddhist doctrine. If ever there were a concrete example, if it’s possible, for Nagarjuna’s description of beings as ‘anonymous vacuity,’ then it would be in this kind of functioning, where a hollow reed channeling of Emptiness crossbreeds into one’s experience.
His Eminence Deshung Rinpoche, Kunga Tenpay Nyima, introduced Vajra Breathing by saying something like this: ‘I know you’re interested in the highest Tantric practices His Holiness will give you in India. But I can teach right now the best one. And it’s very simple.’ The year was 1980. ‘Vajra Breathing’ is how Sonam Tenzin, I believe, translated it. Rinpoche showed us the basic pranayama rounds of ‘three-threes,’ blowing stale air out through our nostrils, left, right, (and together) center. Then he demonstrated breathing in steadily through his nose, instructing us to visualize a white OM. Then he demonstrated retaining that breath, telling us to visualize a red AH. He finished by saying to breathe out measuredly, with a blue HUNG in mind, so as not to rustle even a hair in the nostrils. I don’t remember him saying to imagine our breath going out farther and farther, with each round, as I believe is taught in the Nong Sum. But I’m certain he stre...
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