Advanced ‘Walking Through Walls’

The father of the Middle Way Philosophy, Nagarjuna, analyzed reality from a four-point analysis (a tetra lemma) which ultimately suggested things are not as they seem—nor are they otherwise. Also, in his much debated Second Chapter of the Mulamadhyamakakarika, which refutes motion, he states, in karika eighteen: “That motion just is the mover itself/ Is not correct./ Nor is it correct that/ They are completely different.” 

Chandrakirti in his grammatical analysis of Nagarjuna’s refutation of motion, posited an equally challenging, illustrative conundrum concerning a ‘motionless’ mover as being on “a road that is being traveled on, that is being traveled on,” which linguistically ‘moves’ motion to a nonphysical plane. Nagarjuna’s refutation of motion concludes with: “Neither an entity nor a non-entity/ Moves in any of the three ways./ So motion, mover/ And route are non-existent.” 

If that’s not enough of the rug being pulled out from under an ingrained sense of there having to be at least some kind of a self-assuring realism, then there’s this to refute one’s attempt to even argue it: “When an analysis is made through emptiness,/ If someone were to offer a reply,/ That reply will fail, since it will presuppose/ Exactly what is to be proven.” (Fourth Chapter, karika 8, and the above from MMK, translated by Jay Garfield, 1995.) 

This greatly challenges the empirically minded, ego-reified rationalist, and the view of a Naive Realism, as the Empty nature of self and phenomena is not a conventional truth—of the Madhyamaka held Two Truths—but an ultimate one. One’s pride and arrogance eschews this, and that’s why each authentic Buddhist practice begins with Namo, a bowing down to the Teacher, or the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha so as to successfully instill an unconventional, non-self reifying, truth. Further, Vajrayoga experience confirms that to actually go somewhere and nowhere at the ‘same time’ is to experience the mind-in-itself’s most liberating nature of being absolutely unimpeded. Vajrayana discipline, at its highest level, presupposes the prāsaṅgika madhyamaka view of reality and the above translation of Nagarjuna promotes just that.

Further reading restricted to recipients of the Highest Yoga Tantra: 

One of the unique virtues of taking a Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment is that through a series of four consecrations, an experiential example of Vajradhara’s Primordial Wisdom arises upon the recipient during the penultimate consecration. From that, after a fourth consecration and ‘pointing out,’ or pith teaching, on the ultimate nature of that wisdom, one may also discover the child’s or path clear light—the mind’s most subtle nature. 

Also during an empowerment, the Vajramaster bestows, upon the basis of his own Vajra Body, a revelatory transference to disciples, comprised of five mandala chakras, a central and two side veins, plus countless smaller veins extending throughout one’s bodily form. Briefly speaking, these psychophysical veins course with gradations of subtle mind; energy airs from the purified red and white elements of mother and father in the following manner: ascending upward, descending downward, pushing outward, pushing inward, and then returning once again to the central vein and five chakras—out which these and all of one’s physical faculties arose during gestation. The same reabsorption is repeatedly performed in the dissolution of one’s tutelary deity, and other visualized purities, during one’s sadhana practice in the first of two hallmark processes, Uttpadi Krama and Sampanna Krama, of the higher tantras. 

In the first one, often referred to as the generating or creation stage, the practitioner visualizes the vow-bound yidam, a tutelary deity of which the body, voice, and mind experience is given during empowerment by the Guru. Then, after a yogic linkage with it, the recitation of mantras and so forth as it, one successively dissolves it (as oneself) into emptiness, thereby purifying countless lifetimes of karmic deaths and rebirths 

During the second, Sampanna Krama, which some scholars interpret as perfecting stage (as opposed to completion), the yogin manipulates through visualizations, and pranayama yoga, energy airs in the veins and channels of the Vajra Body to facilitate quickly a subtle mind awareness beyond all conceptual disturbance, eventually facilitating the actual clear light’s dawning. 

The diligent yogin, blessed with a powerful flow of pranayama energy throughout the body and its extremities, focuses upon a particular Primordial Buddha, which is none other than one’s own enlightening, transformative nature. Or, one also imagines a transcendent amalgam of visualized colors and shapes, primordial entities and other purities, using various ‘heat’ rising techniques, tumo, which pacifies the eighty disturbing conceptions of the gross mind and reveals experiences of subtle mind. At this time, a ‘katsu’ or ‘lion’s roar,’ is often made by the yogin.

The advanced ‘walking through walls’ of this writing’s title occurs while either in a meditative or post-meditative state after one has relinquished all control to a profound pacification, akin, but more accomplished, than shivasana. At this time, while actually experiencing no time or place, the connate wisdom arises. Then, when thoughts of coming or going arise, the adept may experience a ‘motionless’ moving, totally unrestrained, as one mentally goes wherever. 

Remarkably, when one moves one’s (formerly thought of) substantive bodily form, no experience of having ‘moved’ occurs in this totally unimpeded state. Rather, a vividly real, non-action obtains. It’s stable, beyond ‘stationary and permanent,’ perfectly non-imagined, uncontrived, or self-controlled. 

For example, one might get up off the bed to use an adjacent bathroom. But it’s as if the bathroom arrives at one’s place and not that from one’s place one ‘goes’ to the bathroom. Rather, any ‘route’ there is an infinite succession of places indicative of all ‘progression’ according to the Buddha’s doctrine of dependently arising phenomena. (See, The Rice Seedling Sutra.) Dialectically, it’s just this, from Second Chapter, karika two: “Where there is change,/ there is motion./ Since there is change in the moving,/ And not in the moved or not-moved,/ Motion is in that which is moving.” What was ‘moving’ was a meditative state of the two-in-one, Mind Only experience felt to be motionless. Perhaps this is best expressed as an altered, non-experience, even though one’s mission of ‘going to the bathroom’ was accomplished,

All physical ‘walls’ and ‘barriers’ are breached in just this way, as while one is in the mind of connate wisdom, they are no longer impeding. After just such a breaching of physical limitations, a repeated familiarization will automatically prioritize itself as an essential part of one’s Vajrayoga practice.

[While I first learned the above from my Gurus, and secondly from my practice, all faults, omissions, and disorderly presentation—indicative of the ‘faulty cup—are mine.]