17/10/24
The famous Nepali Temple, which is uniquely (in ancient Varanasi) decorated with scenes from the Kama Sutra, is arrived at by traveling through the Kashi Temple Corridor to the new tomb-like tourist plaza (with food court!) and then turning left. There you arrive at the juncture of Amrut Bhavan, Somnath Bhavan, and Triyambakeshwar Bhavan—the latter being the rare Nepali Shiva Temple. Across from the temple, toward the Ganga Ji river, there’s a vantage point of the Mani Khani Ghat, which roughly translates, ‘having left a gem on the steps [of the the burning-ghats.’] This suggests the loss of loved ones who are cremated there.
A three thousand year old flame is kept by a family who runs the ghat and that flame they use to ignite the wealthy and Brahmins’ pyres of sandalwood, on the highest platform. They also collect money for a lesser fire wood that’s three to five times cheaper for the lowest cast bodies that are burned on the river’s shore. At the burning ghats in Varanasi, the higher the caste and class you’re in, the higher up you gets ignited. This last time I was there, they were having to combine the two lowest castes in the same area because the river was high.
In 1981, I’d been to the Nepali Temple vantage point of this burning ghat with the Tibetan and Sanskrit translator, Sonam Tenzin (Douglas Rhoton), but at that time we didn’t take an up-close ‘tour’ of it. Forty-three years later, I had that privilege and observed something I’d never seen or heard of. When human flesh is burned off the bone in a properly burning pyre, it crepes up in ash, looking like fabric, and reveals gleaming white bone, pristine as conch, that purifies the mind just to behold—especially if it’s the skull. This is another clue to the appearance of the Shaivist cult Kapalika skull men. This purity and primal beauty is a great wealth in itself, ripe for the taking at any ghat that does a proper cremation. Here at the Mani Khani Ghat, it’s fair to say, in its use of natural substances and Vedic methods in an unbroken three thousand year old tradition, cremation might be done more properly than anywhere else.
I suppose a parallel could be drawn to the one thousand year old Sakya Tibetan Buddhist traditions, like Lamdre (which I’m currently attending), the details and secrets of which are carefully curated and assiduously guarded.
19/10
Having previously taken four lam dre teachings, I started Lamdré Tsogshe, 2024, by attending the last day of the exoteric teachings known as ‘The Three Visions’ (nong sum), at Tharlam Monastery, in Boudhanath. In 1986, I accompanied my root Guru, H.E. Deshung Rinpoche III, and his brother there, transporting a large sum of money concealed in my pants (airport security wasn’t the same then) to help break ground and begin building this now quite prominent Boudhanath gompa. The second day there, I attended the ‘bestowal of bodhicitta vows and acceptance of disciple’ rituals and ceremony. That night, I dreamed of Kyabgon Gongma Trichen Rinpoche. His face was very clear and luminous. He was walking fast and a few of us were following quickly after him. Then he took flight and so did we. We ascended to Vajradhara’s heavenly realm and sat with the assembly of Buddhas and Bodhisattva in a primordial mandala. There I did prostrations and prayers and became immersed in the conate wisdom. Indeed, quite unexpectedly arose these very auspicious beginnings to the present Lamdre. Last night, while practicing the long Hevajra sadhana, again His Holiness’s face became very clear, embodying or containing my meditation. As it says at the sadhana’s beginning: “Hevajra is His Holiness, and His Holiness is none other than Hevajra.” So that point, well made, signals the beginning of my reabsorption into another Lamdre-Hevajra mandala.
In reference to H.H. Kyabgon Gongma Trichen Vajradhara walking faster and faster and then flying as his disciples trailed behind, there is this analogy from a Saraha commentator:
“A sentient being who is bound by the concepts of an ‘I’ and ‘mine’ runs in the ten directions, drifting through samsara's six states of existence. Likewise, the same sentient being, when liberated on the right path, remains in an immovable state completely free from (the problem of] manifoldness (i.e., cognitive proliferation).
The idea is that one then embodies the dharmakaya.
“[Saraha continues:]
Friend, this is like a camel!
This paradox is evident to me. (DKA 41cd)
This means in brief: A camel runs as fast as it can when heavily loaded, and it cannot be held back. The very moment it is free of [any] load, it remains in one place without moving.
Similar to the camel, one's mind rests [when its nature] is directly manifest. Such [a paradox] "is evident to me" refers to the meaning of the simile.”
(‘Spontaneous Songs of Saraha,’ Mathes and Szanto, 2024.)
Such then is the great compassion of His Holiness the Gongma Trichen, especially when loaded down with many eager disciples during Lamdre, that like the camel heavily loaded, He cannot be held back either to deliver those chela (lopon) to the door of great awakening the Previous Teachings provide.
6/10/24
Dissatisfied people of the ancient world, after a thunderbolt cracked the lingam—shifting the world on its axis once again—releasing secrets from the ultimately hard, that it was ultimately soft—but then, not necessarily, either, began to embrace Buddha’s lightening quick path, the Vajrayana. At that time, Shiva’s shaft, both beginningless and endless, suddenly became pointless as well after its logical pervasion of 84,000 tenets of Buddha’s doctrine. It’s then Vajrapani and his 500 Vajra wagging ganabroke up the Hindu Puranas party on Mt. Kailash (or so the STTS tantra fables.)
Two realities seen side by side cancels out each other’s primacy. A blue void context, all-encompassing becomes one’s new orientation. (The giant blue pancake that fell on Trungpa Rinpoche’s head?) The dependent arising of phenomena—expressed objects—and the dependent arising of one’s conventional reality—personal expression—are equally illusory. Gross mind focuses one on its expressed objects and objections; subtle mind, on the nature of one’s expressiveness. One’s expression in general ties one to the intermediate (bliss/torture) state where all things can be imagined. Therefore, embrace with due diligence the process of imagining the support and supported—the purity of deities, celestial mansions and such—as well as the completion ‘heat’ practices that dissolve all into a nonattached emptiness.
11/10
To know what it is that most others don’t know is the purpose of this life. But how to tell them afterward? The poet Sarah simply says, “Hey, fool!”
The cessation of emotive obscurations produces an absence of suffering. But this small bus transport is just a platform for launching into the greater bus of ‘great bliss.’ Ultimate bodhicitta of objectless compassion begins there with the accumulation of that wisdom. Thus the Sugatas are, among other epithets, called the ‘bliss gone ones.’
Disturbing and destructive conceptions are observed properly after mindfulness of body and feelings. Within a mandala of purities, supporting and supported, limbed and limbless, colored forms queuing impure associations—cognitive crumbs of negatively felt image-ideas—arise. Seen side by side within another equally ‘real’ reality, their bubble bursts and attachment to them is destroyed.
The expression of ‘the one and the many,’ understood as two equally self-supporting propositions, undercuts their differences and establishes a mutual dependency. So can mental forms ‘pure’ and ‘impure,’ once laid side-by-side, be seen as mutually dependent. Samsara and Nirvana experienced arising together, bulldozes conceptuality’s sway. The natural state, mind-in-itself, holds forth. Relaxed within this new ontological context, no one is ‘experiencing’ anything, though it may ‘register’ in the beings of the Guru’s pith-disciples as an entity-less ‘other,’ none the less.
The machine that explicates what the Buddha’s words mean, while fortuitous, is also an intoxicant possessed of many faults. Teacher and student may quickly fall through the cracks and find themselves in a hell of pride. Blinded by auxiliary lights, luminaries forsake the process stated above, the path of vajra yoga, what to say of Buddhavacana (literal felicity).
The second diligence occurs when the sadhana plays on its own within the practitioner's continuum. Concepts then burst like bubbles in a child’s gleeful bath. Attachment to one’s practice is purely negative, like bragging about its hardships, unless one is Milarepa boasting of his monkey’s butt to uphold the primacy of a mega-practice to a disciple.
The yoking of things and their elements is the conquering concomitance in the Buddha’s doctrine of Dependent Origination. Sarva Yoga then is key to realizing the empty nature of all beings and phenomena. Add to this the Bodhisattva’s pledge, peerless diligence, and one becomes fully Enlightened.
20/10
A mind ceaselessly expressing; not one continuously leaving residual objects in the wake of attachment, reticence, and fear. One that doesn’t rate beauty but keeps enhancing it. A supra-discriminate wisdom nondual with molten bliss.
“Saraha says [of]:
The cluster of lotuses
[in the vajra body),
the lotus petals, the lotus fragrance,
the filaments, and the beautiful stalk
-324 (DKA 47ab)
Abandon [the visualization of the parts of a lotus [described] in this example! [Your nature] is not like the cluster of individual elements, such as the cluster of lotuses, their flowers, petals, leaves, and fragrant pollen, and the beautiful, superior stalks. Likewise:
Hey, you fools, do not torment
yourselves with false notions!
You must abandon such
distinctions! 526 (DK, 47cd)”
(‘Spontaneous Songs of Saraha,’ Mathes and Szanto, 2024.)
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