Mahabodhi Mind Treasure 16

One should constantly back up from thinking’s dogma and allow instead the last thought to win. Expressing itself naturally, the just-as-it-is arises. As long as we believe even the tiniest bit of experience is not dependently arisen emptiness, the sufferings of existence elaborate as seemingly real. Then the causes for death are many and those of life few. Unprepared, all too soon we drown again, and swooning from the unbearable, again we awake unaware in another senseless round. So adopt acceptances today—abandoning and realizing—by coming clean in your life with an authentic Guru. Then practice the effortless as prescribed above. This is how the deathless state is won and how the Buddha’s Dharma rolls.

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Vajra Teachings: OM, AH, HUNG Vajra Breathing

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...

Vajra Comment: William Blake—A Tantric Retrospective

Online Buddha dharma communications signal many things, both positive and negative, like the nature of karma itself. One thing that alarms me is how it totally socializes the teachings, contextualizing them in dependency upon others’ views, mores, and habits, conventionalizing the Buddha’s speech and one’s hearing of it to the extend one’s own insights are drowned-out. To wit, comments are often just cookie-cutter (emojis) on Dharma posting sights. So is it a great leveler, making teachings more available? Or a constant invitation just to relax efforts in traditional practice—like isolated retreats—and forestall more genuinely advanced attainments? Virtual reality is ostensibly another ‘sealing off,’ a phrase the Romantic artist-poet, William Blake, used to describe the alienating effects of the Industrial Revolution (with its soulless, ‘satanic mills’) on society. Notably, from his revelatory fourfold, heavily anagogical, vision of the new...

Vajra Diaries: Effort is to Strength as Wisdom is to Wealth

30/4/25 The very late Pope Francis said he wanted a poor church. This sentiment reminds me of a sweet but unfortunate feeling I get from interacting with the people of Bihar, India’s poorest state. Spending most of my time in Bodh Gaya, especially in and around the Mahabodhi Temple, I’ve also made a majority of the following other Buddhist pilgrimages there: Pragbodhi, Barabar Caves, Champanagar, Dona Stupa, Ghosrawan, Gurpa, Hajipur, Kesaria Stupa, Nalanda University, Nalanda Archaeological Museum, Rajgir, and Vaishali. As one might detect, most of these are significant places of Buddhist pilgrimage. Poverty, per se, having less than what is required to sustain a baseline of renunciation toward a worldly, sensuous absorption, is not a particularly positive virtue in Vajrayana culture. Poverty seems a poor take on reality’s plenitude and a bad place to start. Trungpa Rinpoche, who in the 1970’s transferred this culture to the Westerner...

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