2/4/25
Posted: "An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex." —Aldous Huxley
Sonam Gyatso‘s Comment: “A true yogi is someone who finds knowledge through physical pleasures once the egoism in the experience is relinquished and underlying consciousness reveals itself as primordial wisdom. Since sex is one of the most pleasurable experiences, it's capable of recalling the bliss of primordial wisdom experienced at death, releasing one from perpetual births and deaths promoted exactly by the egoism of conceptual proliferation, especially as generated by intellectualism. The extraordinarily intelligent Sakya Pandita said, “the suffering of Samsara is none other than having all these thoughts.”
7/3
A few days ago, I watched and listen to my spiritual friend ringing a ting-sha at her Tibetan Handicrafts store in Bodhgaya. These are flattened bells without a clapper that are struck together. That night I heard imaginary ting-shas ringing for some time, producing a delightful meditation on emptiness before falling asleep. Two days later an attractive Japanese lady entered said store and drew me into an in depth conversation about the Dharma. After awhile she revealed to me she was there to buy more ting-shas as she regularly does pujas with them. She showed me a video clip of her performing one of these ting-sha pujas at the oldest Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya which is on the road to the Mahakala Caves where Buddha spent 6 weeks fasting and meditating. It’s from there the six-week-starved Shakyamuni crossed the river Naranjan and met Princess Sujata, as some stories tell, who upon seeing his emaciated body fed him rice gruel. At his point, he realized the middle way of no acetic extremes and proceeded to the Bodhi tree to become enlightened after at least forty-nine days of sitting under it. The ting-sha ringing angel later came back to the store with an interesting young man who stayed for weeks and weeks at Mahakumbh. After awhile he wanted to get away and wandered several kilometers from there until found a large water tower with a latter up to the top. He said it took some courage but climbed to top where he found the cover off and another latter going down into the tank’s shallow water. Inside, he found an island in the middle where sat and meditated. When sun began to shine directly into his little oasis, light reflected and danced upon the walls surrounding. It made for a stunning video. I believe there was even a rainbow. Then from deep in his heart and lungs he entwined a long OM sound that resonated magnificently for some time. Earlier he asked my advice about doing a meditation retreat within a particular discipline, like the Mindfulness Movement, Zen, or Vajrayana. He was skeptical when I recommended he take Vajrayana teachings, commenting about its beautifully architected practices he didn’t think he was ready for or perhaps didn’t necessarily need. I sensed his decision hinged on sudden verses gradual paths for attaining Buddha’s Enlightenment. I told him while there is sudden or spontaneous results in the gradual practices of Vajrayana, there was no gradual—or beautifully architected practices, mainly, the processes of creation and completion—within Zen. That like what I experienced in my several years of Zen practice, that nothing sustained me in between sessions. There was no gradual build up or familiarization with Shunyata except while sitting in the Soto Zen prescribed posture.
As my long time Shivaist tantric friend, also American like our water tower climber, recently commented, “If any wrong knowledge, pray thee enlighten me!”
10/3
Gender roles promote ego-reification and gratification by one functioning as a seeming expert according to common wisdom cliches like women are more intuitive and men more decisive, or some such nonsense. Of course these can be reversed as well if the father’s influence on the daughter and the mothers influence on the sin have been overbearing. But these kinds of analyses are tenuous at best as so many qualities and characteristics of mind are at any time always convergent, conglomerate. The significant point about being awoke away from gender roles is one becomes aware of the ego in all its proprietary grasping. Ego delusion and its remedy is a mainstay of meditation. The current repeal on the part of the United States government of so-called awoke legislation in this regard is. from the Buddhist point of view, a denial of one’s constitutional right to practice one’s religion as they see fit. Perhaps the Awoke Movement as such should be tied to Buddhism formerly as a hedge against it persecution by the Trump Administration.
My two main pilgrimages on this my seventh trip to India have been to Mahakumbh, at Prahgya Triveni, and Mahakashapa’s retreat, at Gurpa, or Lin toh (Vietnamese) east of Bodhgaya.
12/3
A little more than half way up the 1700 steep steps at Gurpa Mountain—a nipple shaped protrusion in the state of Bihar, east of Bodhgaya—I began to feel light-headed. After ascending about nine hundred of them, I took an unsteady perch upon a rock seat which I was led to by two local boys who regularly went up and down the temple mount upon which sits a cave in which the Buddha’s only disciple to receive his robes, Mahakashapa, spend 12 years after his master’s passing into parinirvana. Here he waited for the coming of Buddha Maitreya. My light headedness, preceded by the feeling my body was dissolving from the feet up, increased until I lost all control of my physical being. Sliding down to the ground, my two assistants and a friend began to fan me, quickly removing my sweatshirt. Mentation persisted however, but was reduced to two names repeating in my mind. One was that of Mahakashapa and the other that of my closest spiritual friend. There was a third, much dimmer pulsing of thought that was aware of just how toxic my mind-body constituents had become at over seventy-three years old. While the struggle to regain consciousness was completely passive on my part those around me were diligently fanning, massaging, even patting my damp hair to the cooling air reach my scalp. Because my mind was set on pilgrimaging to Kassapa’s place of faith, I was only nominally concerned with not recovering. If I was concerned about anything it was what my closest friend feels about my death if indeed I died. There was also a deep registry of karmic patterning and how it tethers one to just life and death struggle dramas. Seemingly completely unnecessary from my then dire point of view.
After about ten or fifteen minutes I began to re-inhabit my body, a confident flush of blood flow starting from my navel and spreading throughout my limbs. I stood and was refreshed with a renewed vigor throughout, no longer feeling that dissolving weakness in my legs and lower body. Perhaps by being supported by my arm on one side, and pushed from behind at the base of my spine where vertebras have collapsed from years of sitting, the blood was not flowing properly to my head, even as my entire body was ascending stairs at a steady clip. Or—and this is what I want to believe—perhaps it was the strength of Mahakashapa’s wails at night the locals say they hear, as he pleads for Buddha’s return, that brought my own consciousness to a peak like the one that loomed above. I choose to believe the latter, a heady explanation of primordial blessings, only the faithful experience, as they make their way to the Buddha in themselves after acts of supplication, no matter where they physically are. Because, as it is taught within the esoteric vehicle, that all places of pilgrimage exist within our own subtle body.
That being said, many Vajrayanaists were there, Tibetans as well as a few Vietnamese, who were recent converts to the higher vehicle. In fact, despite the unparalleled (in that region) difficult ascent to the caves and stupa—the latter funded by, among several saintly patrons, 16th Gyalwa Karmapa—there were many pilgrims at the top paying homage of Mahakashapa’s supplication sanctuary.
Was this trip necessary, given all the pilgrim places, the 24 pitas (designated by the lopped-off pieces of Sati’s corpse carried by Shiva), the 64 sites of the tantric mothers, the 12 Jyotrilingams of Shiva, and other more purely Buddhist sites, like Buddha’s place of birth, enlightenment, paranirvana, the three turnings of the Dharma wheel sites, the caves of the Mahasiddhas. etc., can be found, according to Lord Saraha and other Buddhist masters, within the luminous ‘limits’ of one’s own body? Yes, and unduly strenuous as it was, one owes it to oneself to stretch one’s Dharma practice in as effective ways as possible, even if technically they may or may not be considered one of the traditional Ten Dharma Activities “that build up positive force and further one's Dharma study and practice: (1) copying scriptures, (2) making offerings to the Three Gems, (3) giving to the poor and sick, (4) listening to teachings, (5) reading scriptures, (6) taking to heart the essence of the teachings through meditating, (7) explaining the teachings, (8) reciting sutras, (9) thinking about the meaning of the texts, and (10) meditating single-pointedly on the meaning of the teachings.” (studybuddhism.com) Further, when one undertakes an isolated Vajrayana retreat, some of thr retreat manuals of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism actually say that one should exert oneself and stay the course for slotted time or number one promises to complete, even if one were to lads away while doing it. For like climbing Mahakashapa’s 1700 steps to the coming of Maitreya, what other situation is more ideal to achieve the moksha of Mahamudra’s making?
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