23/8/24
My inner second root Guru hadn’t shown up for quite awhile until I engaged in a particularly, for me, transgressive act. Then he appeared before my mind’s eye clearly with demonstrable dissatisfaction. But, as I was engulfed in a desirous feeling while searching for something as a practice aid to my yoga, it didn’t curtail me right away. When I resumed usual activities, I was filled with sharp remorse and refocused on his blessings, as well as his mainstay of moral rectitude as my preceptor. It struck me later how the root Guru as moral preceptor is also a fierce protector and guide. On the other (left) hand, do I yet desire enough? To echo the late great, bad boy, Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi Roshi—you don’t desire big enough!
In agreement, for the time being, with the usage of coemergence (Herbert V. Guenther’s definition of sahaja) for the Fourth Consecration result (used by the translators of the recently published ‘Saraha’s Spontaneous Songs,’also known as the People’s Dohas) recognizing the clear light within or without this (ultimate or penultimate) consecration, one can appreciate whatever opens up as waves, cum clear light, gathering in strength without ceasing, as long as one simply does nothing.
Concerning a recent reading of the ‘Shiva Sutras,’ a text included in the sub-discipline, Kashmiri Tantra, I now better understand something I previously commented on having to do with the way Indians communicate, especially while in groups. Before I was thinking they were over-involved in how something should be done, i.e., process, each participant having to add their opinion. Now, understanding a little more about Hinduism’s popular discipline, Shaivism, Indian group transactions take on a new profundity. Let me explain. In The Shiva Sutras, chapter two, second sutra, it says, “The mind tends to separate, to divide. It sees separate forms, separate individuals. It creates beliefs that reinforce the sense of separateness. The belief that we are the body causes bondage.” I believe this notion, germane to both Kashmiri Tantric Shaivism and, much more broadly, to Advaita Vedantism—the philosophy of the Upanishads—is generally known and in their DNA. This wisdom of oneness that counters the deluded need for separation causes a doubling down of individual assertion during interpersonal transactions. Culturally, perhaps inherently, they’re aware of and even experiencing this oneness—a unifying oversoul—by themselves and when they’re with others. So in order to get an individual point of view heard, amplification is required. It’s precisely this amplification of expression, in reaction to an awareness of spiritual oneness, mimicking a communal group-think-and-act context, that caught my attention as a unique cultural modality.
27/8
Giuseppe Tucci (Italian orientalist, 1894 to 2084) was onto something when he speculated the Four Joys were connected to the Four Sleep states found in Vedic literature.
That’s suggests to me three mandalas of bliss akin to the ‘three circles’ found in the practice of Chakrasamvara. Out of this one can interpolate the following determinations—
Body:
Deep sleep (no awareness) — Joy
Dreaming sleep (a little awareness) — Joy of Joy
Waking sleep (awake in delusion) — Joy of cessation
Fully awakened (no delusion) — Supreme Joy (sahaja, coemergent complementariness)
Voice:
Expression of a vajra body mandala
(First Consecration)
Expression of a mantra being
(Second Consecration)
Expression of a mind being (Third Consecration or Vajradhara)
Expression of a Fully Enlightened Being gone beyond (Fourth and Fifth Consecrations)
Mind:
Single-pointedness
Freedom from elaboration
Single taste
No more meditation
(I.e., the Four Stages of Mahamudra)
Kayas:
Deep sleep is the Dharmakaya
Dreaming sleep the Sambhogakaya
Fully awakened the Nirmanakaya
Awakened in all three the Svabhavakaya
28/8
Last night I had two dreams, some time apart that, that were of an identical wakeful quality. The first arose after having lengthy sexual intercourse in a dream setting so murky it can hardly be recalled. But then the dream suddenly takes on a more awakened, realistic look and feel when the sex reaches climax. It’s then I find myself separated from the consort—almost as if on a video call—and experiencing the orgasm interiorly, as if I had changed sexes. In the second dream, goats are on my bed and a baby one eats the guru and consort beads of my mala. I’m most concerned about the consort bead which is a rare 6-in-1 ‘Buddhacitta’ seed from Nepal that is irreplaceable. More so, that seed embodies my precious meditation consort, the Buddha Dagmema (Nairatmya Yogini). So quickly I stick my fingers into the kid’s mouth, and then down its throat in search of the precious Buddhacitta seed. I come up with half of it and think I can at least reattach that portion to my mala.
So these two dreams are both about losing a consort. The first is a karma mudra who suddenly becomes inaccessible and seemingly unnecessary. The second is about losing a priceless ritual item—with the personal value of a relic—that is functionally the same as the mediation deity. This consort, an oath bound meditation deity, is so necessary even a representation of her—and she is really just a figment of my imagination—must be recovered, even if deep inside the birth canal-like throat passage of a young goat. That these dreams seemed more real than the ones coming before or after them is because they are consequential.
Consorts (think ‘consorting’) by their very nature are consequential, and to dream of them pushes one’s sleep toward awaking. For out of the consort, from deep inside her bagha—vagina or womb—comes other incarnate beings; or self-arisen knowledge holders (vidyadharas) who’ve visualized themselves as Buddhas in lotus lands emanating from there. Both precious human birth and its ultimate fulfillment are at a premium. For in the worldly vision of suffering, the bardo is filled with disembodied continuums desperate for rebirth; and among those born, the most fortunate are the ones possessed of the aspiring bodhisattvas’ wish to one day be a fully realized Buddha for the sake of delivering all beings, imprisoned in their karmic continuums, from the immense suffering and perennial dissatisfaction of conditioned existence.
30/8
So enjoyment of life is predicated upon denial of death which is certain. Death is normally unappetizing—unless one delights in its putrescence. That essence then triggers transcendence. Sex upon a corpse would be even more transcendent and of course one must be dressed right for the occasion. Smeared cremation ashes and decked out with bone ornaments. Hence the Kapalikas skull men, with a female adherent or two amongst them. So were the practices of this cult mostly a way to trick one’s aversion to death, furthering a natural tendency toward delusion. Or were those practices genuinely efficacious engendering Buddhist wisdom and insights? It’s impossible to imagine ’skull men’ in Theravada Cambodia. Just one trip to Wat Preah Prom Rath in Siem Reap, prominently located by the river (a true tirta pilgrimage site) will prove my point. It’s appointed with an austere sleeping Buddha (story below) in the garbhagriha, and a diorama of gorey statuary—vultures eating entrails of a once powerful person—promoting renunciation, at the entrance.
As you enter the eastern gate, the blue plaque announces THE VIRTUE OF PREAH ANG CHONG HAN HOY, and says about that sleeping Buddha: “In 1900 B.E. or 1500 A.D., a colossal statue of reclining Buddha was built and placed inside the main temple (Preah Vihear building) of WAT PREAH PROHM RATH. What caused our then Buddhists to build the statue was that there was a story that in the year 1500 A.D there was a Buddhist monk who always traveled by boat to ask for food at Long Vek, the ancient capital of Cambodia, which is situated near the capital city of Phnom Penh. It is a long way from here to the ancient capital. But whenever he returned to this place from Long Vek, the rice in his pot was still fresh and so people nicknamed him "Preah Ang Chong Han Hoy" which means "monk with freshly cooked rice in his pot." One day, while he was traveling in his boat some sharks attacked the boat and the boat broke into two pieces. Instead of sinking into the lake, one piece of the boat floated to Wat Boribo in Kompong Chang province's Boribo district. The Buddhists there built a standing statue. The other piece, the prow part, brought him back here safely. It was going with great speed that the water could not flow into it. Because of this wonderful event, our Buddhist decided to build the statue of reclining Buddha made of the wooden piece of the boat which has been kept in the Preah Vihear building. And it has been subsiding deeper and deeper because the ground is growing thicker. Besides, the statue has been kept in the Preah Vihear building for over half a millennium. If you visitors wish to see the statue, please enter the Preah Vihear building and salute the statue with respect and you will achieve true happiness and merit at any time. As for the golden boat in front of the Preah Vihear building was built by Venerable Cheakaro Tong Teourm. It is a memorial for the future generations and they can know the date of building of the pagoda and the statue. (BE = Buddhist Era, AD = Anno Domini.)”
This large, gorgeous wat is just across the River from where I wrote this entry and several others at Temple Coffee‘n Bakery. Here there is cushy seating that’s much like a bed and often I recline and take a nap after writing or studying K’mai language. It has an extensive menu and I know of no other place in the world that is so comfortable, except home. All this in contradistinction to the austerity of the beautiful Wat Preah Prom Rath across the street.
2/9
The Guru’s trident becomes a fork
As one feeds off all phenomena
And the vajra drops at Ground Zero
There’s nothing to fear as it’s all here
Three jewels the three-in-one wheels
Like an ant deterred from its mission
Into a ball it becomes its continuum
Singular from harm it hovers above
As sun comes up drops go down
Vital airs spreading the all around
The sky appears enlightened
So you are such and rest in peace
Have I ever been inside you?
Through countless lives it must be so
Enjoying joy beyond the joylessness
Coming together not to come
This is how concepts are killed
A stroke at a time up to ten thousand
Then once the mind clears fear not
You will be mine again in endlessness
So go the bliss-gone ones so go we
Think differently when ill-advised
Just say no it isn’t and it’s up to you
Take it from me
your true Penelope
3/9/24
Once one truly learns forbearance, with semen arrested in the vibrating jewel head, then truly the Buddha is in hand. Vajrapani and his five hundred, vajra wagging, knowledge-holders do attest.
Also, from Saraha, this:
The sun of suffering sets,
and the leader of stars, the semen, appears.
Abiding in this emanating [meditation, the yogin]
emanates the circle of the mandala.
(DKA 96)
“When the sun of the summer season of suffering sets, a real cooling sets in; the leader of the multitude of stars, the moon
-that is, l the semen-comes forth. In such a way, meditation on the circle of the mandala and the like (i.e., the moon and the stars) is performed, whereby I the yogin] abiding in the emanating meditation performs an emanation of the entire world following the convention that [sentient beings] are buddhas. The circle of the mandala, [too, it should be known, has the nature of this [semen]. This is the idea.” (Saraha’s Spontaneous Songs, 2024.)
5/9
Dagmema and I just engaged in a prolonged ecstatic episode, manifesting Hevajra with consort, while sending joy to beings, just after performing the marginalist’s morning rituals. Our shower together was sheer heaven. I say this not to broast but promote the Vajrayana; especially its creation stage fruition. Pride of the deity is on the third level of faith, after blind and clear, where promoting one’s experience coming out of religious practices binds other beings—ultimately, anonymous vacuities—to those same practices fulfilling one’s bodhisattva vows and eventually producing the path of seeing.
For my sister, sensing—and perhaps wishing—a great harm coming to Donald Trump. He is just a personification of all our deluded thinking and therefore the best argument for us all to engage in mind training in order to be nothing like him by transforming our circular continuums into continuous ones. In the meantime, remember to wish no harm. At the time of fulfillment of the Buddhas’ path, not only will we wish no harm, we won’t see it, hear it, nor think it. If one is afraid to be that monkey then imagine oneself as Hanuman instead.
7/9
It’s the processes of mind, formation of idea-images from sense objects, and the ego’s appropriation of them in order to compensate for too much pain or pleasure, that one has to detach themselves. This is in fact the meaning and significance of practicing ‘detachment’ according to the 84,000 articles of Buddhist doctrine. Depth Psychology only scans the surface, while Vajrayoga scrubs the pans. The two obscurations, emotive and cognitive, are detached from one’s predisposition and destroyed by clear light familiarizations. Stabilizing ground luminosity of mind is arrived at only after regular practice of the following: preliminaries of ego-shrinking prostrations, confessions which target the idea-images formations and their ego-appropriation, supplication to the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and tutelary deities (a transcendent function) and then, finally, a cleanup of one’s mentation by reciting Vajrasattva’s hundred syllable mantra; whereupon mind’s ground luminosity is tapped and clear light can arise.
After receiving the four consecrations, including the four Buddha kayas, one can in the yidam’s form receive the fifth consecration of coemergence complementariness and go beyond all sufferings. Until that time, one stays strapped-in on mentation’s roller coaster ride.
9/9
Not being impressed with much is a siddhi. Money is poison to the real yogi. This Post Kampuchea writer experiences the significant conclusion of all karmic circumstances while at Ground Zero (a martial arts facility in Siem Reap) where all is result on the resultant stage.
Surely in this luminous clash of horses and men there is joined together great hatred and desire, permeated all about with the sharpened dullness of not knowing; have we just lost our way or won it?
If there is no giver and no gift it remains then who is making this meaningless effort so meaningfully?
It’s not about the money, this terrible lack. It’s about wasted time—of which there is not much left.
Regrets? I’ve had a few too many.
17/9
In my dream last night I made a met friend, somewhere on Broadway, up around Columbia University. Then someone else came along and I started talking to them. Soon we went somewhere else together that turned out to be a movie set. Once at the new location, my first new friend turned up and she told me to go on set and do makeup on the principal actors. It turned out she was actually my boss, the producer of a movie I’d been hired onto. I quickly went to get my makeup kit I thought I’d stashed off set among equipment covered with tarps. Not finding it there, I then remembered it was back where I’d met the producer, some ways away. Thinking what a hassle, then I remembered I was retired and didn’t have to do makeup any more. It’s then I knew I was in a dream and woke myself up. Curiously, since the dream had seemed so real, I wondered if that producer in the dream would be angered and miffed, also wondering, where did he go? It seemed plausible then, and still does now, even though I’m feeling wide awake.
Why I’m so concerned about my sudden disappearance from a silly dream maybe because I’m worried someone in my life also just disappeared. She hasn’t gotten back to me in a couple of days and that’s unusual. Recently, another friend reappeared after losing contact for over a year. Seemed she got a new phone and couldn’t use the app that was our sole means of contact. Perhaps it was an excuse and she spaced out somewhere as she has some slight mental problems from time to time.
These sudden disappearances and reappearances, in both waking life and sleeping life, point out something from a larger point of view. It’s that dreaming, and what I call wakeful dreaming (one’s conventional waking life), are virtually the same. The only difference being that, while I’m supposedly awake, there’s seemingly more nuanced control of all the situations. But then not really because, in life as in a dream, people do suddenly disappear, disappoint, and die, leaving one forlorn or devastated. This is what the Buddha called impermanence, one of three suffering conditions that distinguish our existential situation once born into this world. The other two are dissatisfaction and soullessness. All three of these naturally occur in dreams, where they seem blunted, but also in our ‘wakeful sleeping’ lives where they are acute.
Why I call being awake wakeful sleeping is because the Buddha’s wisdom perspective is wholly awakened while ours is just semi-awakened. So just like in my dream this morning, there is a release button from the hold samsara has upon us, and it’s to simply to wakeup. In dream yoga, before we fall asleep, we plant the conscious seed to awake within a dream. Similarly, so does the Buddha’s Dharma with its 84000 doctrines possess the conscious reminders to fully awaken us from the delusions of this life and our wakeful dream sleeping.
P.D. Ouspensky (‘The Strange Life of Ivan Osakan’), who was Gurjeif’s (‘Meetings with Remarkable Men’) physics wizard and sidekick, put it this way: “What the world needs is a better alarm clock.” Awareness that self and phenomena are both projections of mind is like an alarm clock one can use to awaken by practicing the four mindfulnesses of body, feelings, phenomena, and mind itself. These are the very basis for any Buddhist meditation, and perhaps all other forms of meditation. Traditionally, ‘Seven Point Mind Training’ is a widely practiced means to become fully awakened. It entails the following causes and results: “Mindfulness (sati), Keen investigation of the dhamma (dhammavicaya), Energy (viriya), Rapture or happiness (piti), Calm (passaddhi), Concentration (samadhi), and Equanimity (upekkha).” (accesstoinsight.org)
So good morning to all and don’t forget to set your mindfulness alarm clock!
19/9
Rinpoche just whispered, “The wiser heir is never inside the circle of death.”
I immediately took that to mean they are always in the enjoyment body. But this is still only ‘dreaming’ in an intermediate state. More likely he wants me to fully awaken and realize the glorious Vajradhara, as he himself is now Ngwang Kunga Tenpay Nyima Dorje Chang, residing in the seventh Bhumi, or beyond. But to speak of these things unrealized is perhaps unwise, tethering one to the realm of forms.
21/9
With a naturally gifted subitism (sudden enlightenment) one taps true memory and one’s ’through-line’ embedded in the subtle mind. This endowment, from a positive karma accumulation, engenders clear light naps and a radiant physical beauty. There’s no better argument for building up one’s merit than the resultant wisdom it occasions. Though concerning the nature of merit and wisdom—one is one and the other other—because they are same and yet not, it benefits one to try and behave well. As the great yogi-scholar, Jetsun Drakpa Gyaltsen, put behavior ahead of meditation and view in the tripartite dictum that is necessary to Buddhist realization, so can we, just by simply observing our awareness in all appearance as inseparable from its objects.
24/9
They say it can’t be said, but at times I can’t accept this.
The four joys (whether cessation is the ultimate or penultimate in their ascension), expressed within a continuum of absolute sleep to absolute awakening, is the basis of our birthright to great bliss. Body, Genitals, and Mind within the four modes of being provides infinite opportunities to arise the joy of simultaneous complementariness. This sahaja is mind’s stainless nature, experienced merging with our karmic suffering one, in blend of unimpededness. So yes, as Saraha suggests, eat, drink, and be merrily Kapalika as there’s nothing to be done once everything has been done to arise it. It leads us, as a child in darkness, round in circles. These are the four joys. “Tire your actors out as much as possible in take after take,” advised a clever director, holding forth in a guru’s pith. “It’s then their real makebelieve character emerges.” This is exactly sahaja’s great mudra; a continuous make believing in ultimate good faith, followed after nothing but itself. It’s because we really are what can’t be conceptualized. Call it for now, Great Bliss.
It’s Pchum Ben
Our hungry long-dead relatives
Come out as ghosts to greet us
But where are we?
Downstairs the children
are off from school
making loud noises
Across the street
adult men drinking beer
do the same
I hear from that wat near
monks chanting about
just this
men like children
while drinking
one day becoming
the Hungary Ghosts today
they should be feeding
In a beer frenzy
louder still the unruly become
Their elements stirred
to the point of incontinence
I hear them pissing here and there
My elements however
gathered together by yoga
are still inside
A nectar for my inner
gods to imbibe
make me more ecstatic
than those just drunk
With this poem
I cast a cold eye
on Khmer life and death
Let it feed all hungry ghosts
so I might pass peacefully by
another Pchum Ben
24/9
Rather than being ruled by the ego, one’s bodily entity should be ‘owned’ by great bliss and not some selfish ‘I’, me, or mine, agency. Why? One’s ego, unchecked, exercising self-reflexive protection, accrues negative karma eventually leading one to the hells or similar suffering states. Great bliss, however, which cannot be conceptualized and is outside the ego’s preview, eventually leads to the accomplishment of great compassion. In that way, having not come under the sway of the three poisons,
which may eventually land one in hell, one is transported instead to the Sugatas’ realm of the ‘bliss gone ones.’ The true nature of our bodily entity is the essence of all the Buddha’s teachings, where one’s senses collapse the impure vision of separate objects into purities of a co-emerged, unified mind, accomplishing one’s Bodhisattva aspirations of achieving ultimate bodhicitta. Having then joined ranks with other sarva yogins, all one’s actions or inactions are of the greatest gesture and example, saving countless sentient beings throughout the illusory three worlds.
So there you have it.
Renunciation is in leu of Buddha’s salvation but not of it.
30/9
What are people, trapped in their selfhood and looking to escape, always going on about? On the van to Phnom Penh to fly to India, of course the only person talking, and wall-to-wall at that, is sitting right next me. A perfect occasion to practice the perfection of patience! Incessant talking is at base driven by this: “With a self, there is the concept of other. From the distinction between self and other, attachment and hatred [arise]. All faults arise closely connected to these two (i.e., attachment and hatred).” (PV II.219c-220b124)
1/10
Never started, never stayed, never stopped nor strayed. Reality’s continuum that’s like cash in the pocket you forgot you had. But as it’s catch as catch can—abandonment and realization—there is no ‘comfortable’ Buddha’s dharma. There’s only its resultant coemergence—a molten confluence of bliss and appearance. Sarva yoga. It’s a ‘calling’ unsung but by very few. Training starts in the Dharma’s mail room: Letters from Gotama; it ends with Royal Dohas from Sararouha.
2/10
Garab Dorje (c. 665) (Tibetan: དགའ་རབ་རྡོ་རྗེ་, Wylie: dga’ rab rdo rje)[1] was the first human to receive the complete direct transmission teachings of Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen. The circumstances of his birth are shrouded in different interpretations, with some accounts describing a miraculous birth by a virgin daughter of the king of Uddiyana. (wiki.org)
“Dungsey Garab Dorje Rinpoche was born in Peka, eastern Bhutan. His father was the most famous and great nyingmapa master Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. His grandfather was head of the Nyingmapa lineage the second Dudjom Rinpoche. His maternal grand father was the famous tantric yogi Sonam Zangpo Rinpoche, one of chief disciples of the most renowned Sakya Shri (a great yogi of the Drupa Kagyud lineage). Emanation of Bodhisattva Manjushri, the Tibetan King Trisong Deutsen’s human-deva blood lineage transmitted through the second Dudjom Rinpoche to Thinley Norbu Rinpoche is now transmitted to Garab Dorje Rinpoche. Thus this blood lineage transmitted through father and son is unbroken, pure and untainted and has the most powerful blessing.” (pramodavajra.org)
Was it in this era one of the Garab Dorje Rinpoches said the Buddhas’ Dharma must be stolen? Those seeking Enlightenment would then be as a thief of master pieces. Understanding the Buddha’s pith as a most famous masterpiece, one sneaks past all the alarms, bells and whistles—hindrances from the lesser gurus—one cuts the canvas from its frame and escapes undetected. Next, a thief must find a ‘fence’ to sell the masterpiece to but this is even trickier as cash is traceable back to the thief and his crime. So taking the Three Jewels as reward becomes a shrewd alternative as, once having taken refuge in them, they are same as a Wish Fulfilling Tree. As the thief ponders what to wish for, if they are indeed fortunate, then they become a lover as well as an alchemist, meaning they become a yogin who transmutes base experience into golden transcendence after exerting great efforts of the effortless. More fortunate is the being who simply hears the Master Sararouha poetry praising the Guru’s pith. The Master’s message is it must be realized on one’s own. Like the thief having fenced the stolen masterpiece for the Three Precious Jewels, both kinds of recipients, mediocre and supreme, realize through a dematerializing sarva yoga that all appearance—this apparent phenomena—are supremely nondual with all the many things devoured through the five sense gluttons. What of the lowest practitioners of this sarva yoga? Having the least astute mentation, and perhaps far less proliferation of disturbing conceptions, through blind faith arises experience that gradually clarifies, perhaps over eons until they too realized the molten stream of emptiness and clarity into the ultimately blissful coemergent. Once in this state, all three have gone beyond any karmic instance, or crime, as is the case of the present era’s yogi-thief.
3/10
I told Khenpo-la I would try to make the online Vajrayogini fire puja, knowing that it might be difficult, as then I’d be just returning to Bodhgaya, India. So, as promised, on the anointed morning, I woke-up dutifully at 4a and set up an altar where I could expiate my sins by tossing sesame seeds into a plate of burning tea candles in the shape of a dharmodya (upside down triangle). On Khenpo’s side of the Zoom call, all necessary preparations had been made before we called-in. He taught some about the fire puja, then together we did the Vajrayogini sadhana. Just before we began the actual ritual, however, I perceived the burning plate brightening and sensed its fire had spread to other parts of the room. I actually looked around, even over my shoulder, before realizing the fire’s increased light was all inside my skull, which I then took to be ground luminosity of mind. It seemed the puja’s fulfillment had already taken place. It was just then my Indian data ran out and the Zoom connection was lost. When I was finally able to rejoin, the fire puja had finished. So I joined the torma offerings in progress and was equally thankful with those who’d completed it.
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