22/11
Last night I had such physical distress and mental duress I thought I might die. Every arising thought, unless it was a vision of the yidam bestowing nectar or the consecrating deities pouring soothing bodhicitta from a vase, was poison and halted my breathing. Heart, lung, and digestive systems were malfunctioning. It seems from doing mantras and the four consecration practice that had yielded breakthrough yogic results, a bubble of scalding air and vibrating energy had been trapped at first at my throat, freeze-burning it like I’d eaten very cold ice cream. Then it began to slowly move with the downward clearing air. As my stomach was bloated from arrested digestion, I was desperate to speed up the downward clearing air and be physically empty. Not too long before, there’d been Great Bliss from upward moving airs while doing mantras and visualizations, yielding visions of deities and the proffering of vats to all of the purest bodhicitta. The ball of discomfort moved from my throat down to my heart, creating some panic. It seemed imperative to then separate from that ball the two major airs, downward clearing and upward ascending, allowing them to do, simultaneously or one at a time, what they’re naturally meant to do.
Out of all this air movement, many strange thoughts and experiences would rise up and fall away, as I squirmed and changed positions to relieve my stomach and relax the nervousness now at my heart. I started feeling something like what I’ve imagined a heart attack might feel like. But as this drama was mostly taking place within the confines of an inner yogic body, there was no real fear of one. However, the confines on my thinking and breathing were most unpleasant and kept me from relaxing, sleeping, or meditating.
It then occurred to me I should drink hot water and so made myself a cup. This helped relieve the digestive problems. Then I returned to saying mantras. As it neared dawn, I began to feel some relief. Many things I’d written earlier in the day swirled in my mind. One of them concerned people, how they understood themselves, and what they perceived as all figments of the false imagination, a Buddhist logic term distinguishing direct perception and valid cognition from self-related, bigoted, opinions. This idea I’d written about started to really bother me as it was not well-founded. And people closest to me I couldn’t think about either without panicking, losing breath and bodily composure. It was a kind of mental and physical agitation as I couldn’t judge or discriminate anything without experiencing great discomfort. I was being forced not to have any conceptions at all. Was it some kind of resultant stage of meditation I wondered, finally arrived to supplant any disturbing considerations and destructive emotions at all costs?
But what threw me is that this particular experience of non-conceptuality wasn’t pleasant. It was a kind of torture. An extreme renunciation of everything related to me and that with which I was normally identified. I was caught between two worlds: one unborn, completely untethered and potentially ecstatic, and the other, familiar, concretized, and predictive; everything made comfortable by tenacious predispositions. It’s then I prayed to my root Guru, yidam and her dakinis to ‘cure’ me as the Buddha himself was cured from all forms of Mara and suffering.
In the morning, while doing my sadhana, I got a call from my sponsor to meet him at Tharlam Monastery near the great stupa in Boudha, Nepal. Walking into the monastery grounds, I saw a dead pigeon. After talking with my sponsor and others, my translation mentor, Vidya, asked if I wanted to go see a Khenpo who’d passed sway during the tortured night I had just had. We went upstairs and there was gray skinned corpse reclined on a palate bed appearing somewhat alive. Earlier that morning I was awakened by a Hevajra chat group posting suggesting we should imagine every night before falling sleeping our pillow is the Buddhas and that we will die and not wake up. It was a redundant recommendation as that’s pretty much what I had done.
23/11
Saraha in his King’s Dohas alluded to semen/bodhicitta as the moon shining both inside and outside of the body. Concerning yogis and yoginis having organisms, it’s the energizing frustration of this transition from inner to outer—much as that exits—that propel the semen/bodhicitta into the bhaga, fertilizing the eggs of incarnating beings with the continuation of their karmic propensities. If the yogin is in samadhi of calm abiding, the force of the excited frustration, generating harsh downward clearing airs within and without the central channel can of course disrupt the calm abiding state, unless the ball of frustrated downward pushing and upward moving airs and energies are separated back into their two natural strong states above and below the navel. To induce calm abiding, both airs need to have been separated into their natural directions and stilled. It’s then transcendent states will increase and continue to focus one’s awareness into the higher energy centers, chakras, or mandalas visualized even outside the body.
This heightening of ecstasy into great bliss also obtains, during anuttara tantric sex, or consort practice when the semen/bodhicitta mixes with that of the other partner, as both male and female naturally possess both this element, along with the red and white ones from their parents.
What to be careful of is having a vajra body choked with gross elements/airs/mind and a physical body clogged with food and other polluting substances. This goes for both partners as the above defilements create the sexual compulsion incapacitating the yogin’s efforts to keep the two major airs, downward pushing and upward moving from being separated. Also, ideally the semen/bodhicitta of the male should mix with the red element of the female within moistened environment of union. Each partner then experiencing, or at least imagining, the newly mixed red and while energies rising up through the body mandala through each chakra and into the ‘outer’ sky chakras. This unifies any notion of the inner and outer. If in fact the semen/bodhicitta is ejected by either partner, then it’s not a negative deed if one remembers the moon shines both inside and outside the physical body, and then experiences the luminosity of their semen/bodhicitta as such.
While I’m not sure this is what Saraha meant by alluding to ‘semen/bodhicitta as the moon shining both inside and outside of the body’ or even that I got his allusion or its source correct. I can only go by my own yogic experiences, and accept responsibility for any misinformation or misinterpretation due to lack of omniscience at this time.
30/11
I’ve observed the aging lamas, who like swans flocking to a pond, came to the West after the Tibetan diaspora of 1959, blessing us with their treasury of omniscient teachings and how decades later they became hunched-over and would take to using a cane. I thought for a time that this was caused from all the cross-legged sitting they’ve done. Now I’m speculating it’s both a little more complex and more interesting. It’s perhaps more attributable to the slowing of metabolism, circulation, the speed of one’s bodily movements, as well as the calming of one’s thoughts, and thus the motility of the psycho-physical elements (akin to the four natural elements) coursing the veins of the yogin’s body mandala chakras.
Isolating oneself from society at any age produces a similar effect. Four sessions of sitting a day certainly concentrates the elements at any age, settling them at the navel chakra, or just below at the sacral, enables profound pacification and pure perception simply by visualizing on the pooling of these settled elements once preliminary practices, requesting, offering, confession, purification, and so forth, as well as vase consecration and the first of the two tantric processes of kye rim and dzog rim (creation and completion), have been diligently practiced.
In summary, it is certain that having received highest yoga tantra initiation into a major yidam’s mandala, and having kept all of the samayas to the utmost of one’s ability, and then having reached the ripening age of seventy, as the accomplished ‘lama swans’ and siddhis I mentioned at the beginning, one may be bent, but ever so kindly for the sake of all sentient beings.
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