13/12/24
The untamed ego is truly insidious, but can be mastered within the continuum of one’s tantric practice. The lam dre nong sum (‘The Three Visions’) counsels isolation and limited social interaction once embarking upon its teachings. And for good reasons. For instance, late last night an old dharma friend, who spends a lot of time on the internet promoting the legitimate dharma, engaged me in vocal text messages after complaining of eye problems. I agreed, reluctantly, as vocal interactions are for me more ‘sticky’—sticking in my consciousness longer. Especially if the conversation carries a lot of baggage, as I knew this one would.
Indeed, consideration laden dreams followed once sleep overtook me. But the one that woke me up was a gift from the Buddhas. While it took place in a usual dreamscape, like a movie set merged with an airport departure lounge—and me only wearing bathing trunks while looking to get paid and then transported somewhere—it moved suddenly to one of several family homes while I was school aged. The house was dark and emptied of its furnishings but I bravely entered through several doors, noticing a curtain replaced one of them. The bedroom doors however were all locked. It signaled to me and a new companion that no reminisces of growing up there would be possible. Further, that such mental actions were no longer necessary. When I awoke, wondering how I even had the nerve to enter that house, it struck me it was a boon to my meditation. That the house was dark and the inner doors locked or ‘blocked’ meant, in a dharma related analysis, that my sense organs were now readily dimmable, facilitating inner-mind meditations on its luminous nature. My companion and I exited the scene with a strong sense of finality. Also, mortality. Conventional life itself—of memories, dreams, and redundant reflections—had just rounded their last corner. Even now, when I recall the image of this emptied, darkened house, it suggests the meditative reflex of isolating sense organs and their outer stimulus to strengthen samadhi. Then I got up, fed my altar, and Zoomed into my Chakrasamvara class. It was on the creation of the cemeteries surrounding the celestial mansion, where the only living beings are yogis, dead to the world, rehearsing their own clear-lighted death and a rescue from the bardo. In conclusion, the dream signaled the house of my childish mind was being abandoned for the luminous mind now being realized.
11/12
The true support is unsupported, unsupportable, as it is also ineffable, and utterly beyond hope and fear. Fed by mantras, or pointed out through conceptual analysis, these causal efforts produce a contiguous reflection (as the first five Paramita are similarly contiguous to the sixth, wisdom) of the supreme emptiness. A blissful singularity, this state focuses upon the ground luminosity of mind. An accomplished sense of wellbeing, a light filled support obtains where sun and moon can also be seen. This cessation of experiencing three existential marks—change, the three sufferings, and soullessness—may be arrived at through a perfect balancing of shamata and vipassana. Perhaps this is what’s known as true calm abiding that is actually a non-abiding; a meditation state stabilized, or continuously experienced—in light of some masters’ remarks—by very few practitioners. Nonetheless, it translates into Mahayana teachings as Buddha nature but is derived at by Mahamudra techniques. Here is Mathes, on the siddha Maitripa, to clarify: “In other words, Mahāmudrā is linked with the view of nonabiding and the practice of becoming mentally disengaged. This means that one refrains from abiding or getting fixed in any conceptually created extreme, such as the inherent existence of locally determined phenomena, by continuously withdrawing one’s attention from such notions. Such an extreme state of non conceptuality can only be sustained by a blissful Mahāmudrā realization of one’s true nature of mind, which is clear from the tantric meaning of amanasikāra as luminous self-empowerment. The resulting bliss can only be stabilized by also realizing its emptiness. Otherwise, it will be reified as an object of desire and become a cause of suffering. This blend of Mahāmudrā and Madhyamaka considerably contributed to integrating the new teachings and practices of the Siddhas into mainstream Buddhism. It is against this background that I call Maitrīpa a Master of Mahāmudrā and Emptiness.” [24. Maitripa: India's Yogi of Nondual Bliss (Lives of the Masters Book 7) Dieter-Mathes, Klaus)]
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