If one—figuratively speaking—‘masturbates’ in search of bliss, significance, and satisfaction, focusing on highly differentiated qualities and characteristics of desirable objects, one’s ego is reified by the creation of many expressed ‘selves’. Deluded, sensualist individuals—their colorful palette of experiences likened to a collection of art, an oeuvre of expressed isolated aspects (‘pictures,’ if you will) of serial existences within this and other limitless disparate existences—suffer most from feelings of their own insignificance and uselessness infinitely more than the truly idle.
The inspired example of this not so happy dilemma comes from Martin Scorcesse’s, Life Lessonsentry to the anthology film, ‘New York Stories.’ In it, Nick Nolte, as a talented yet still unrealized painter, obsesses over each (to him) scintillating aspect of Rosanna Arquette’s discrete body parts emphatically shot in macro. As each discrimination pulls his consciousness further outside himself, in an obsessive, grasping jealousy, the torment and distraction mounts, suffocating and thwarting his deeper talents, keeping him from painting his destined masterpieces and becoming a recognized, accomplished artist. Nearing a personal breaking point after a long estrangement from deeper creative resources, while detached from any personally integrated experience (i.e., integrity), his negative emotions—doubt, frustration, and worthlessness—are finally purged and his masterpieces flow out. Phew!
While caught in the whirlpool of such carnal compulsions, one looks out, wantonly, in anticipation of others looking in, lovingly. Whatever transpires interpersonally leaves one further doubting, in an imaginary ‘negative self-worth,’ which becomes increasingly more bankrupt. Phantom ‘external’ reinforcements in the form of engaging entertainments, meaningful and hopeful narratives, are sought. Addiction to sensationalism, flashy expressions, often cheap and tawdry, abound the more individuals and societies become alienated from their centering integrity. And what to say of the squashed, salvic potential of a psychophysical integration, that is our own tathaghat nature.
Seventies and Eighties icon, Cher, during the ascendancy of her career, kept amplifying her sexy provocation, wearing skimpier and skimpier clothing until she eventually appeared almost completely naked. She was, of course, ahead of her time, as today’s internet thrives on spectacle, exaggerated presentations, dramatic portrayals, overblown accounts, lurid depictions, sensationalized reporting and, of late, increasingly more AI ‘faked’ postings. The social roll of all this dubious broadcast is of course to emotionally reinforce and significantly monetize hollowed-out, hyper-consumeristic lives. We especially see it on Instagram, where exhibitionism rages and pornographic habituation—for both viewer and viewed—is normalized. One might ask: What is this doing to us human (“all too human”) humans? We’d need Nietzsche to answer that. But, as the numerous ads promoting their own therapeutic agenda suggest, we are significantly wasting our time by indiscriminately scrolling sites in our now algorithmically determined ‘lives.’ Privation of wisdom and wholesomeness—the above mentioned loss of ‘personal integrity’ and ‘primordial recourse’—is the ultimate cost. This, of course, can be augmented by absorbing oneself in postings of teachings by authentic Gurus. Of which there appear to be many, and become more, the more and longer we view them; this thanks to those same Almighty Algorithms. Conversely, and it hardly needs saying, if you spend your time on self-addicting trash, your addiction—greedily monetized by those sites—will make you more addicted and trashier until you either quit watching or die.
Lacking the skillful means and wisdom of a Bodhisattva—the aspiration and engagement of the well meaning—unaware consumers of a self circumscribing sensorium—similar to that of the self-obsessed, auto eroticized, sexually-fixated masturbator—will struggle painfully with their addiction(s). Caught-up in a realistic similitude, and following the dictates of their urges, the object of an addict’s craving is anything but ‘outside’ of their own mind. Rather, it both exists and non-exists as a projection of one’s consciousness. Thus, the ‘object’ of one’s craving is entirely subjective—an illusion created by sense organs, a mind projected ‘object’, and an ego-aggregating consciousness—ultimately having no substantive existence or location. The trick vision of an ‘externality’ is just one aspect of one’s awareness in its crystal-like multifaceted nature, which is without substantive location or movement. All sensation of ‘motion’ comes from an imagined pervasion of consciousness into objects, and a sensory apprehension of them seemingly ‘outside’ one’s own entity barrier. This barrier or boundary, expands and contracts as determined by one’s hegemonic and self-protective concerns.
“Attraction and aversion to those near and far,” as the Buddhist adapted Brahmin’s Prayer, The Four Immeasurable, alludes is about destructive emotions—a thwarting separation of the craven and the craved—are imagined impure and imprisoning due to their self-inflicting pain by those who cultivate a highly discriminatory sensorium. In truth, these negative judgements about one’s sufferings are also conceptual at root and ultimately don’t exist either.
All of this is quite different, however, if one is an aspiring and engaged Bodhisattva, training in skillful means and instructed in the Buddhas’ wisdom of emptiness—Shakyamuni’s teaching of ‘Her Ladyship’ (the Perfection of Wisdom) on Vulture Peak. As a vow-holding yogin, training one’s mind in the six perfections, the hegemonic ego of infinite selfing, and the craven thoughts distracting one from knowing the ultimate nature of all things, will eventually become serially self-liberating, and experienced as waves of clarity and bliss, popping otherwise self-reifying concepts as if bubbles. By taking Bodhisattva vows, and proceeding on the yogin’s path of experience, ‘masturbation’—syntonic with the desirous stoking and stroking of the worldling’s ordinary perception—ceases to produce mere objects as datum, becoming dharmata whenever meditation and meditator merge. This because one’s primordial tathaghat Buddha nature—its recourse recovered and reintegrated throughout one’s body, feelings, mind, and environment—transforms a life of uselessness into the supremely accomplished, ever increasing experience of bliss and equanimity, referred to in resultant Mahayana as All-Accomplishing Wisdom.
The prolonged familiarization (as if a karmically aware algorithm kept prompting it) to this All-Accomplishing Wisdom yields—once deity creation processes are mastered and completion processes engaged—the experience of Mahamudra. ‘Maha’ generally means ‘great,’ while mudra can mean many things. As one can find fifty-two contextual usages, with several definitions each. For our purpose, the definition of mudra is best limited to tantric practice and its definition pertinent to meditation. That is: sign, symbol, and gesture. Mahamudra, as a metaphor, is perhaps the greatest one of all, as just one of its infinite gestures is ineffability, epitomizing its ‘beyond thought and speech’ conquest.
Its supreme non-presence is felt as a visitation once the Vajrayoga meditator enters a state of profound pacification, and the mind’s ground luminosity arises. Within that luminosity, something else occurs. Something unfathomably energetic. Mahamudra, however, when compared to the mind’s ground luminosity, is untethered and unimpeded in both its expansion and unlimited ‘otherness.’ Its realization, requiring no action other than renunciation of ordinary perception, is a submission to the highest patience and pacification, the ultimate profundity. It’s the ineffable (un-screwupable!) relationship one has with oneself once there is no self.
One should also consult Master Saraha, the Mahayogins and siddhas—and certainly the Kagyu-pas—about the Mahamudra experience, some of whom, yes, can be found on the internet. But still, they’ll all suggest, one way or another, it’s the repeated practice, clear faith in a result, and above all, the pride removing blessings of the Guru, that assist one most in Mahamudra’s singularly surprising gift. So don’t merely masturbate your desire—wasting your precious life and element—authenticate it into the supreme accomplishment, Mahamudra, by becoming an aspiring and engaged Bodhisattva, ardently practicing Vajrayoga.
Comments
Post a Comment