Tag: completion stage

Heartspace

7 mins read.

I think we could all do with some kind of conversation between our heart-mind and our thinky head.

rock in gardenI remember some years back already knowing exactly what to think and do, Dharma-wise, when undergoing a break up, and even clearly understanding that I was far better off without this person. My head knew all this very well. But still my heart would yearn for him.

The heart wants what the heart wants, so I realized I needed to change at a heart level. To meditate from a deeper level of awareness, if possible, so as to overcome the deluded habit of attachment and develop wisdom wishes at a more sustainable level.

I am sort of carrying on from this article, Aligning with reality.

Head vs heart

Do you ever feel there are two of you – the wise person who sits in meditation and understands what’s really going on, and the crazy monkey-mind person who goes about their busy day getting overwhelmed by everything, sucked into the vast panoply of appearances, unknowingly driven here and there by the invisible habits of countless spring flowerslives? “Deceived by grasping at things as they appear”, as it says in Essence of Vajrayana.

There can be a struggle between these inner and outer selves. After all, if there is a disconnect between our heart and our head, superficial determinations to change may be drowned out in our habit-driven distracted daily lives and personas. How long did this year’s New Year’s resolutions last, for example?! How long did this morning’s resolutions last in the hurly burly of the day?

One of my favorite quotes is in Meaningful to Behold:

You should not let your habits dominate your behavior or act as if you are sleepwalking.

We are currently controlled by our mental habits and past actions. Our habits are anchored in the mind, engrained by repetition, programming us to act and respond in certain ways, such as automatic irritation when we would much rather be patient, or automatic yearning when we would much rather be content. We probably all sense this, so what can we do about it?lotuses

Luckily, lots. There is extraordinary spiritual technology available to us.

The stillness within

Before we launch into contemplative stages of the path (Lamrim) meditations, we need to be sure we’re feeling it. Any of these 3 methods can help get us there.

  1. Breathing meditation

Even the simplest breathing meditation, designed to let go of scattered thoughts, brings our awareness inward. Eventually we learn to “Leave the object alone”, as my friend Gen Losang puts it.

We are a bit addicted to movement, our monkey mind jumping all over the place. All this going outwards to objects of distraction is dualistic conception – me over here, the world and all its stuff over there. It feels different already just to bring our awareness inwards to examine the mind — already we sense the space around our thoughts, how we are not our thoughts. It is very relaxing just to stay a bit stiller for a while.tree

The slightest experience of peace indicates that lasting peace is possible, so we identify with that. We can learn to live more and more in our heart, where we know and feel things most deeply, where true happiness is. We are connecting to our Buddha nature, which is in fact unfathomably profound, and we can sense that.

Never meditate in your head. You can’t anyway.

And at those times we can believe we are accessing a subtler or deeper level of mind because, even if we are not yet using it directly, we can still know this mind. It also really helps to recognize that our peaceful mind is mixed with the blessings of all enlightened beings, their minds, because for sure we’ll feel ourselves going deeper if we do that.

  1. Clarity of mind

An even more powerful method for dissolving away distractions and going deep is meditating on the clarity of the mind. lake.JPG

  1. Absorption of cessation of gross conceptual thoughts

And then we also have this wonderful meditation on accessing our subtle mind by remaining “unmoving, with a mind as impassive as wood.”

owl blending in
Look closely 😉

This meditation on turning our mind to wood temporarily shuts down all the deluded habits of ignorance, attachment, and worry etc. going outwards. It stops the projector, so that we can meditate at a deeper level and so change at a deeper more sustainable level. We are using absorption of cessation to stop the projector of the gross mind, which is only projecting mental images that aren’t really out there.

It doesn’t seem to work to superimpose Lamrim thoughts on top of hallucinatory thoughts. We need to scrap this movie or dream altogether and start again. Every day, until it takes.

The heart wants what the heart wants

Since the heart wants what the heart wants, it is best to start each Lamrim meditation in the heart, identified with our boundless Buddha nature, ideally mixed inseparably with the blessings of our Spiritual Guide, Buddha. We can observe self-limiting habits and conditioning in the light and space of our own indestructible potential, letting them fade away like mist in sunshine.

Having dissolved away our gross over-thinky thoughts and ordinary conceptions, we can generate the new ideas and language of Lamrim, the new naming, labelling, and discrimination at a subtler level. This will then show up in our lives, as our lives. In the beginning was the word, and the word was made flesh, as my favorite line in the Bible would have it.lotuses 2

By the way, as mentioned in this article Start where you are, it is effective to tune into an example of whatever object it is you’re going to meditate on, eg, the love you already have inside you for a nephew or a pet. This is because we have the seeds for every single stage of the path, so we are watering these, rather than adding something that is not there.

So we do our Lamrim meditations in our heart, with a peaceful undistracted mind. On this basis we reinvent ourselves – having dissolved everything away into inner empty space, we now have a chance to start from scratch. This is because everything is empty and therefore entirely unfixed, including, and especially, ourselves.

Check out this excellent guest article, The Meditation Game Changer, for more on that.

New me

rock gardenMoreover, we need to identify deeply with these new understandings and determinations, believing “I am a being of boundless potential who has a precious human life,” to take the first Lamrim meditation as an example. This wisdom discrimination will bring about very different actions and results in our daily life, don’t you think?, than the deluded discrimination that we cannot change, “I am pathetic. I can’t help even the people I want to help, and my life is going nowhere.” We might feel guilty or doomed, like we’re a total loser who is wasting this precious opportunity …  instead of inspired, feeling that we are the luckiest person alive.

We don’t use the word “subconscious” in Buddhism, but, if we did, I think this would be what I’d be talking about, changing at a subtler level.

I like to practice Lamrim in this way, in the light of our boundless potential that is part and parcel of our increasingly blissful levels of mind. (You can learn all about how to identify and realize the three levels of mind in Mahamudra Tantra.)

This is part of the union of Sutra and Tantra that is the hallmark of the Kadampa tradition. We are basically going with the deepening heart bliss (taught in Tantra) on the tulipsone hand and the infinite possibilities of the wisdom realizing emptiness (taught in Sutra) on the other – thereby rebooting and completely transforming our reality from a samsara of suffering, ordinariness, and fixed existence into a Pure Land of bliss and the endless possibilities of emptiness.

As it says in Request to the Lord of all Lineages:

Through enjoying great bliss and the emptiness of all phenomena I have pacified all  ordinary appearances and conceptions,
And thus I have accomplished the real meaning of human life.

We are waking up so that we can wake everyone else up as well.

And, one last thing for Tantric practitioners …

In Highest Yoga Tantra completion stage, just so you know, we are aiming to get the energy winds from the left and right channels into the central channel for a completely orchidsblissful non-dual experience of the mind and its objects – that gap between them vanishes because it is an optical illusion of the ignorance that rides upon impure winds. With this manifest very subtle mind mounted on pure wisdom winds, we are finished with the powerlessness of confusion. An explanation of how to do this is given in The Oral Instructions of the Mahamudra.

Over to you. How do you keep your meditation determinations, or practical plans to apply the teachings, alive and well in your busy life? 

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Enlightenment might be closer than you think

A guest article by a modern Buddhist and full-time worker who aspires to become an actual Mahasiddha soon.

Je Tsongkhapa
The great Tibetan Buddhist Master, Je Tsongkhapa

Realized teachers of Je Tsongkhapa’s tradition have taught that it is possible to attain full enlightenment in a few short years. In the 16th century, Khedrub Sangye Yeshe explained that thousands of Je Tsongkhapa’s disciples accomplished this. How many practitioners must have done the same since then?!

An even more important question to ask, I think, is whether we believe that modern disciples of Je Tsongkhapa’s tradition have done the same? Is it possible that any of our teachers and Sangha friends have these realizations? If the answer to these questions is not a resounding ‘yes’, then we may have to consider this further. In my mind, there are two clear reasons why yes is the only answer to these.

It is likely that your Sangha have reached their full potential

Pure mind, pure worldFirst, ordinary minds can only perceive ordinary appearances. This means that as our mind draws closer to purity, the purity of those around us will appear more clearly to our mind.

For example, when we become a Bodhisattva who can meditate with our very subtle mind, our teacher will still be able to guide us further on the path. At this point, will we have any doubt that they have followed this inner path to its completion? Since this will soon be the case for us, wouldn’t it be helpful if we adopted this recognition now?

Second, modern Kadampa practitioners can’t talk publicly about their completion stage experience. This is not because they don’t have deep experience, but rather so that they can remain a humble example of a practitioner whom others can emulate. What did the thousands of disciples of Je Tsongkhapa do after they attained enlightenment? They remained as humble practitioners and teachers to help others follow the same inner path to freedom and happiness.

The quickest meditation for reaching our full potential
Ghantapa
“We should meditate single-pointedly on the indestructible drop that always abides at our heart. Those who are familiar with this meditation will definitely develop exalted wisdom.” ~ Ghantapa, the Mahasiddha who attained enlightenment using the same practices taught in the book Modern Buddhism

Now we agree that our Sangha may have attained enlightenment (or be well on their way), we need to understand how they did it. Modern Tantric master Geshe Kelsang explains the blessed meditation below as one of the quickest paths to enlightenment.

Although these practices are publicly available, to engage in them we require a Highest Yoga Tantra empowerment. We also need a foundation in Sutra and preliminary practices as explained in Modern Buddhism, Part 1.

This is the actual meditation as explained in Modern Buddhism, Part 2:

First we find the object of this meditation, that is, the clear perception of our indestructible wind and mind, by contemplating as follows:

Inside my indestructible drop is the union of my indestructible wind and mind in the aspect of a tiny nada, which symbolizes Heruka’s mind of clear light. It is reddish-white in color and radiates five-colored rays of light. My indestructible drop, located inside my central channel at my heart, is like a cave, and the union of my indestructible wind and mind is like someone living inside this cave.

Meditation tip: stop relying on your ordinary self
Completion stage Heruka
Two-armed Heruka

The self we normally see and relate to simply cannot do this meditation — it is too subtle, rich, blissful, etc. for our ordinary self to orchestrate. (Plus that self doesn’t even exist!) That’s one reason why generating ourself as our personal Deity is a preliminary for this meditation.

We never rely upon our ordinary self to internally guide these meditations, but instead upon our completely pure self as the Guru Deity and our connection to blessings. Relying in this way is a lot more important, I think, than focusing on meditation technique.

To receive blessings and make smooth progress, we feel that the nada (or HUM if you are following The Oral Instructions of Mahamudra) is our own teacher inseparable from Heruka. That is why another essential preliminary for this practice is dissolving our teacher into our heart. It allows us to connect with his or her experience of these meditations, which he or she has already completed.

Here we are recognizing that the HUM or the nada is our teacher’s clear light mind, which is the synthesis of all Buddhas’ clear light minds. It is the clear light mind of all of our Sangha friends who are Heroes and Heroines. The purified blissful true nature of all things is appearing inside the drop at our heart. Nothing other than this bliss and emptiness appears to our mind, and we hold this awareness with deep faith and concentration.

The union of appearance and emptiness in completion stage

Our practice of completion stage is based on the foundation of our practice of generation stage. In the generation stage meditations, Geshe Kelsang often emphasizes the union of appearance and emptiness. We don’t leave behind this experience, but instead can learn to integrate it into our practice of completion stage. This is a perfect way to stop the grasping and pushing in our mind.

Meditation tip: stop grasping by recalling emptiness

To stop grasping at our subtle body (the central channel, indestructible drop, and indestructible wind), we can recall how its true nature is emptiness. One skillful way of doing this is applying the same lines of reasoning that Geshe Kelsang provides for the emptiness meditation on our gross body to our subtle body.

The channels, winds, and drops of our body exist but are all unfindable upon investigation. They have no true existence, and if we search for the subtle body or any of its parts with wisdom, their true nature, emptiness, will appear to our mind.

Meditation tip: stop pushing by recalling mere appearance
knowledge letter hum
The letter HUM

Pushing in our practice of completion stage is something that Geshe Kelsang cautions against in many of his books. I find that one skillful way to stop pushing is by recalling the words from the Yoga of Buddha Heruka sadhana:

My subtle mistaken appearance of all phenomena, including the channels, winds and drops of my body, is purified.

This means that our central channel, drop, and nada are just a mere appearance not other than emptiness.

Inside this space of emptiness, we recognize these objects are the mere appearance of the Guru Deity’s subtle body and a blissful imputation of our pure mind. With this recognition, everything will be a blissful appearance, and there will be no basis for pushing in our mind. Instead we can simply allow our mind and winds to absorb into this blissful, empty appearance at our heart.

This is so easy, even I could do it

oral Instructions of mahamudra

If you made it this far into the article, I will let you in on a little secret buried in Part 4 of The Oral Instructions of Mahamudra. In here, Geshe Kelsang says that once we are able to reach the second mental abiding on this meditation, our winds will enter into the central channel. This is incredible, seeing as the second mental abiding only requires five minutes of single-pointed focus!

If we do this meditation repeatedly, when we attain the second mental abiding our inner winds will enter into our central channel. ~ page 126

Once we develop this blissful experience, we can continue to meditate with it and it will not be hard to reach the fourth mental abiding. At this point, not only will our winds enter, but they will also abide and dissolve within the central channel. As a result, we will be able to manifest our very subtle mind, attain tranquil abiding, and use that incredibly blissful concentration to remove the two obstructions from our mind.

What are we waiting for?! Let’s go do this meditation and keep doing it until we unlock the full potential of our mind and liberate all living beings …

Over to you: Comments and questions for the guest author are most welcome.