PLEASE ONLY READ THESE NOTES OR LISTEN TO THESE RECORDINGS IF YOU HAVE ASKED PERMISSION FROM LAMA SARAHNI TO ATTEND THIS COURSE OR OTHERWISE LISTEN TO THIS COURSE

Vocab:

1st Panchen Lama Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen (1570-1662)

Chakya chenpo      Mahamudra

Yang sel dronme

Chak chen tsawa gyalwa shunlam

Sera Jetsun Chukyi Gyeltsen

Kedrup Tenpa Dargye 1525 - 1591

Wensapa Lobsang Dundrup 1505 - 1566

       Gyalwa wensapa

Ganden tashi hlunpo

[There are homeworks but they haven’t been sent. They came to us in different Bok Jinpa courses which is why the files aren’t named similarly. Start with 10-1, that would cover today’s class. The courses were Bok Jinpas 10,13,16,17]

*************

Course Introduction

Nice. Okay, so thank you all for joining us here. 

We'll be studying the first Panchen Lama Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s text called The Light on Crystal Clarity. It's an auto commentary on a poem called Victory Road to the Great Seal. 

And, you know, our tradition is that the teacher doesn't teach until a student has asked. But last year I was realizing that I've been so immersed in sharing the ACI and some Diamond Way that my focus was on my study and course preparation and course delivery—and I realized that the depth of my meditation was suffering as a result (it doesn't make sense that it should, but it did). 

I was getting bored with my practice and rather than fixing it, I just focused on sharing the dharma. 

And then it occurred to me—this has got to stop. And of all the meditation practices that I've been taught, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s Mahamudra was the most impactful for me. And I thought, “oh man, I need to pull that one out again.” 

And it's like, here's my teaching notes, *shows a thick book of papers*, and the reading is that much more [indicating that the reading is contained in another book with the same large volume of information]. 

And so I asked myself, “Would you teach Mahamudra again please?” 

And then I said “Yes.” 

Lama Sumati playfully interjects, “You had to ask three times.” 

Lama Sarahni smiles and agrees, “Ok so you’re right I must have asked three times, because I said yes.” 

Then I thought, well, I should share it with others—and about that time I had a Diamond Way group that I realized, “Oh my gosh, they need this.” 

So really it was inspired especially for that, and then as a result, it was like, “let's open it up to everybody because it was offered to us in an open teaching way.” 

It is an open teaching. 

So that's why we're here. It's really purely selfishly motivated because I need to hear it again. So thank you so much for serving as the opportunity for that.

Lama Sumati asks, “Do you have to do the homework?”

Lama Sarahni responds, “You do not have to do the homework.”

You don't even have to do the meditation—but, I'm going to explain to you the purpose, and what I would suggest you do if you want to gain the benefit from this practice, and I'll do that at the end of class. 

Still, I want to give a little background before I do our usual opening. 

So, Sumati and I and Vimala had the honor of receiving this teaching from Lama Christie McNally during our study at Diamond Mountain from 2004 to 2010. She was teaching a course she called Bok Jinpa—which means setting your practice on fire, like turning on the afterburners of your jet plane. You're already going fast, but you flip on the afterburners and boom! *gestures to show an immediate increase of speed and power*

And so this course was designed to be the afterburners of our meditative skills for us to reach shamata—and in the process it, of course, was also an amazing series of courses delving deeper [knowledge] into dependent origination and emptiness. 

And for me, it was the most amazing course series on emptiness—even more than meditation, but to be accepted into that class in 2004 you had to already have been meditating for an hour a day. And then she was training us, well, maybe that wasn't true—you had to be meditating regularly. And then for Bok Jinpa course, we had two 30 minute meditations to do per day.

So this course came along four years into our Bok Jinpa series (it started in 2008 and it took us until 2010 to finish). So we would do one or two courses of it a year, I don't remember how many, but by then we had been meditating for at least an hour a day for four years—before she took us into Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s Mahamudra.

So it isn't a beginner's practice necessarily, but the way she taught us is that she went piece by piece—and our Bok Jinpa class was on Mondays and Fridays. So we would get a class, then we would have a few days to work with those meditations from that class, then we'd get a new meditation and we'd work with it. 

So we had the time to build the practice. And she kept saying, “don't go faster, don't read ahead, don't apply more skills that you have from other practices to this one… step by step, go slowly.” 

So that's how I'm going to deliver it as well. 

And so if it attracts you, I would really recommend that you commit yourself to working with the meditations that you get in each class exactly as they're given and track how your progress is going. 

And then I am offering that I will follow your tracking if you choose to commit yourself in this way, in that the day before the next class comes, show me a copy of your book. I'll tell you about it later and I'm happy to help you with it, to help your commitment. 

So you're welcome to listen to this class and not use any of it. You can always go back and use it again. But why waste the opportunity? I'm not asking for an hour of your time. I'm going to ask for 15 minutes for starters, and then I'm going to push it up as we go along—because the whole idea is to use this practice to do a deep, deep correction of your meditative skills. 

Alright.

The practice is called Mahamudra, which is the Great Seal, and if you've been studying the Asian Classics Institute, there's a practice module called the Mahamudra or the Six Flavors of Emptiness. That's a fabulous practice module, it's a great teaching. And if you noticed, it never did actually get to the meditating on the mind itself (it's one of the meanings of Mahamudra). 

So this Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s practice is the practice of using our own mind as the meditative object, and as a result the benefit of that, he says, is it is really hard to lose the object (because your mind is always there). 

You might be dull, you might be agitated, but all you have to do is:

”Where is it [the object]? Oh, there it is again.” 

So we'll learn how to do that. And then of course it's not just the mind. We'll work on recognizing our misbelief of the true nature of the mind. We'll recognize the dependent origination of the mind, and that will allow us to get to the emptiness of the mind—which is the doorway to the direct perception of emptiness, right? 

Because the first emptiness you will see directly is the emptiness of you.

So as we are working with our mind as the object, we will also recognize what we think is our “me.”

And so we'll be working with the ignorant—what we think is me—the dependent origination—what we think is me—and the emptiness of “what we think is me," and that will come along when we get there. 

So that's where we're going. 

My notes say there are 26 classes—two hour classes. When I shared it before, I am quite sure I counted up, for me, more than 30. 

And so doing this once a week with some breaks here and there, this is going to take us a year probably to really finish the whole thing. So I hope very much that by the end of today and next week's class, you'll be able to decide, “yeah, I'm all in.”

It really, really, really helped me. And so I hope it will do as much or more for you, and that's my job is to help your practice continue to do this *gestures indicating a gradual improvement over time*. 

Alright, so all that said, let's do our usual, gather your minds here as we usually do. And then I'll go right from that into Lama Christie's first meditation practice. I'm not going to do the meditation preliminaries for any of these in the interest of time—but I'm going to ask that you be sure to do your meditation preliminaries sometime on the day of this class.

If it's possible for you to do them before the class starts, not necessarily right before, but sometime before, it would benefit your mind for receiving the class and doing the meditation of the class. But that again, is up to you. 

*************

Gather Our Minds

Okay, so let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again. 

***1 minute***

Now, bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom, and see them there with you. 

They are gazing at you with their unconditional love for you—smiling at you with their holy, great compassion.

Their wisdom radiating from them—that beautiful golden glow encompassing you in its light.

And then we hear them say: “bring to mind someone you know who's hurting in some way… Feel how much you would like to be able to help them recognize how the worldly ways we try fall short. How wonderful it will be when we can also help them in some deep and ultimate way, a way through which they will go on to stop their distress forever. 

Deep in our hearts, we know that's possible. 

Understanding a little bit about karma and emptiness, we see how it's possible… 

and so I invite you to grow that wish into a longing… 

and that longing into an intention… 

and maybe even that intention into a determination.”

Then turn your mind back to your precious, holy being. 

We know that they know what we need to know, what we need to learn yet—what we need to do yet— to become one who can help this other, in this deep, and ultimate way.”

And so we ask them, please, please teach us that.

And they are so happy that we've asked, of course they agree.

Our gratitude arises. 

We want to offer them something exquisite. 

And so we think of the perfect world they are teaching us how to create.

We imagine we can hold it in our hands, and we offer it to them—following it with our promise to practice what they teach us, using our refuge prayer to make our promise:

Here is the great earth filled with fragrant incense, and covered with the blanket of flowers, 

The great mountain four lands wearing the jewel of the sun and the moon,

In my mind I make them the paradise of a Buddha, and offer it all to you.

By this deed, may every living being experience the pure world.

Idam guru ratna mandalakam niryatayami

I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the dharma, and the highest community,

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest, 

May we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Buddha, the dharma, and the highest community,

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

May we reach Buddhahood for the sake of every living being. 

I go for refuge until I am enlightened to the Budha, the dharma, and the highest community,

Through the merit that I do in sharing this class and the rest,

May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other.

*************

Meditation 1: Becoming Aware of the Aware-er

Link to Meditation: Class 1 @ 00:18:28

All right, now settle your body in. 

Get those sits bones pushing down. 

Do your body scan from top to bottom as you know—relaxing, aligning, parking all those parts in a place where they can just stay put. 

***15 seconds***

Then scan from bottom up as you come up, pull your lower tummy in just a little bit. It'll rise. You feel this energy rising—lifting your sternum… lifting the crown of your head… the energies don't go out, they're just lifting. 

And then come back around to park your attention at the edge of your nostril—one or the other—wherever you feel the air of your breath most clearly, and watch as that air flows out and back in.

Adjust the brightness of your focus. 

Adjust the intensity of your focus—meaning your fascination. 

Be fascinated with those sensations. 

***1 minute***

When you find your focus drifting… notice how different it feels… and bring it back to that bright, fascinated, focus on those sensations at your nostril, that we call “breath.”

***1 minute***

 Check now, are you on the breath? 

Fascinated?

Bright, or not? 

Feel the difference, and tune it up again.

***30 seconds***

Now, recognize that there is someone watching the air flow out and back in. 

We call it the watcher state of mind—an awareness that's directed at a specific object. 

So while you are focused on watching your breath, also be aware of who is watching your breath… watching the breath… and aware of the awareness… try.

***1 minute***

Now focus directly on the breath sensation—feel what that feels like.

***15 seconds***

Now, include being aware… of focusing… on those breath sensations. 

What does that feel like?

***30 seconds***

Go back and forth between those different experiences.

***1 minute***

As you shift from direct focus on the sensations, to including the awareness of the focus on the sensations—can you feel the shift?

***15 seconds***

 And then intentionally shift from having the awareness included—to losing the awareness included—and focusing just on the sensations. 

Feel what it feels like to lose the awareness of the awareness. See if you can catch it, see what it feels like.

Now, wherever you are—pause.

And intentionally shift from your breath at the nostril as the meditation object, to some sound you are hearing. 

I'll give you a moment to find one.

***15 seconds***

First, focus very directly on the sensations of the sound. 

***15 seconds***

Notice how your mind is struggling to identify that sound as part of your experience of it. 

Refuse to participate.

Just sound. 

***30 seconds***

And now include the awareness of the sound. 

We can't call it a watcher. 

We would have to call it a listener or a hear-er. 

I like experience-er. 

The experience-er is simply passive—aware of sound.

Again, explore the difference in experience of direct focus on sound. 

***15 seconds***

Then including the “experience-er” , experience-ing the sound.

**15 seconds***

That “hear-er” simply receives information. 

***1 minute***

Now put a pause on that exploration and go deeper … inside. 

See if you can find either the sound or the sensation of your heartbeat.

***15 seconds***

Focus on it directly.

***15 seconds***

And expand a bit to include the “aware-er” of those sensations. 

***1 minute 15 seconds***

So we'll stay one more minute—explore the difference. 

Direct focus … and expand it a bit to include the awareness of that focus.

***1 minute 30 seconds***

Nice. 

Now let go of both of those objects.

Come back to being aware of your body in your room in this class. 

Think to yourself, “I've learned something that I will use to help that other, in that deep, and ultimate way someday. 

And “yay for me!” 

And dedicate to use it that way. 

And then when you're ready, open your eyes. Take a stretch.

*************

Questions

How do you catch the difference between “zeroed in” on the sensation, and the “aware of zeroed in” on the sensation? 

Do you feel it? 

Vimala asks, “Sarahni?”

Sarahni replies, “Yes?” 

Vimala continues, “My watcher is always here *points to center of forehead* … I’ve been working on it, why is it always *points to center of forehead* there? 

Sarahni responds, “My guess is it's always there, because as humans we are such visual beings, that the connection with our eyeball and that part of the brain that our eyeballs deal with, and that goes through the pineal. 

Vimala confirms, “Pineal. That's what I was thinking, yeah.” 

Sarahni continues, “Yeah. So there's right there *points to center of forehead* is a connection between here [the forehead] and the pineal, and we're just learning what the pineal does. 

But I think that the reason our watcher feels like it's up here *motions towards head*, is because usually it's this *points at eyes*, usually it's eyeballs to watch. 

And so it's helpful when we shift to sound, focusing on sound, our tendency is to go, “well now I'm watching sound," but literally speaking you're not watching sound. You're hearing sound or listening to sound. And we'll get into the difference between hearing and listening later. It's a different state of mind, of course. 

So just pick one of them and don't worry about it, when we expand to the sound and then *emoting concentration* are aware of focusing on sound.

Heartbeat, sensation, and then *makes heartbeat noises* aware of that—if you're aware of it in sound, if you're aware of it in sensation—it's a different quality of mind of focus, but the point is it takes some—Lama Christie would call it a “falling back”—to me, it feels like an expansion.

Right, I zoom in *makes fists and pretends to look through a telescope*—but then to catch the awareness of the zoom in, I have to do (it feels like) this *opens hands and pulls back in a widening motion* 

But then when it feels like this *holds both hands up in directly front of her*, the habit of the mind is to go:

“Oh.” *points to left*

“Oh.” *points to right*

“Oh.” *points upward*

“Oh.” *points over left shoulder*

“Oh.” *points over right shoulder*

And we lose what we've zoomed in on.

So this practice is learning how to zoom in, and then fall back—to be this “observer” of whatever's going on in front, but then still holding the intended object as what's going on in front.

Because habitually what will go on in front is: 

“Oh, the meeting I have to go to.” 

“Oh, lunch.” 

“Oh, my leg hurts.” 

“Oh.”

And so our “falling back” / “observer” habit is to let everything in. 

And what we're training ourselves to do is to have this expanded “awareness of awareness” and not lose the object of focus. And that's this training, step by step. 

*************

Lecture

So the first step is to be able to feel the difference between “on the object," and “aware of on the object.” 

Because when we have the awareness of “on the object” included, the minute it starts to slip, some other part fixes it. So the “aware-er” does nothing but “be aware."

Lama Christie says, it's like being in the backseat of your Uber. You let the driver drive. And you have this expanded awareness of the experience being driven, getting there, whatever the experience is—without controlling.

You as the Uber rider do not get to say to the Uber driver, turn left here, go faster, go slower. They will stop and say, “get out.” 

Same thing in this meditation. Your “aware-er” is simply aware. 

And it takes some practice to get that “aware-er” present—intentionally present and staying put. 

So we're learning to do it on our meditation cushion—how's that going to help us off our meditation cushion?

Aware of that anger arising, oh right. 

Aware of the pleasure of the warm water, of doing the dishes. 

Aware, that awareness. 

Now in my experience, after having used this for years, I had this period where it felt like I was so identified with the observer that I had really gotten detached from life. I was just going through life observing, and not really engaged. And I intentionally adjusted that. Because it felt like I was always behind a camera lens, or behind a window and not really able to “be there.” 

But then in the years after retreat and readjusting to life, the pendulum swang the other way, and the awareness of the “aware-er” / the “observer” mode got a little bit lost. And so again, partly why I'm here listening to myself say this is so that I can get that balance back again. 

To have our keen “aware-er” is our tool for being able to recognize:

*clenches fist* “mental affliction arising here”

*opens hand like a seed opening coming from her* “natural reaction arising here” 

And then have this other part of me say, “yeah, I’m gonna go with it, or no, I'm not going to go with that impulse.” So what we do on our cushion is going to benefit us off the cushion. 

And if we don't have that understanding, that connection, there really won't be any reason to learn to be the “aware-er” of what we're aware of on cushion time. 

Now, how we use it off our cushion time hopefully is going to help us choose more and more subtle ways of avoiding, harming, gathering goodness, and doing both for the benefit of all sentient beings (those who are in ACI seven), so that our kindness seed planting is going to crank up. And our kindness seed planting/ripening moves us towards a deeper and deeper understanding of dependent origination and emptiness, right? 

So this practice does help us increase our wisdom as much, I would warrant, as studying more and more and more, right? We can hear the words again: 

“Everything comes from you”

“What you do, plant seeds in your mind” 

And we can work on it through our meditation: 

“I want to see emptiness directly.” 

“This is what it looks like.”

Or, we can grow our awareness, through which we grow our goodness, through which our ability to understand the words goes deeper. 

Do you see?

So that's why we're doing this. And yeah, if we don't do it, we don't give it a chance to see if it works. If we do do it, we do give it a chance to see if it works—and then when we're done, you tell me how it worked. 

So we're studying from two different texts. Lama Christie didn't make this up. Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen didn't make this up.

*adjusts controls* Whoops. See what's going on here. Want to make you bigger so I can see more of you. There we go. 

So, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, I think most of us have met him before. His title is the first Panchen Lama-we'll talk about that. His dates are 150 to 1660—he lived a really long time (obviously that's a typo). 

1550 something, 1570.

I'll tell you more about him shortly. 

No, I'll tell you more about him right now. 

So his dates show that he lived to be 92 years old—in a time where 35 to 40 was old. Most people were dying in their forties and fifties, of whatever you die of in those days. So he really was a really, really, really old man. 

His name Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen:

Lobsang means pure mind. 

Chukyi means “of the dharma”

And dharma can mean the Buddha Dharma and it can mean “of all existing things”—so you decide which is applying to him. 

And then Gyeltsen means “the victory banner”

So when your army wins the final victory over the area, you raise your victory banner, your flag, over the area to declare it yours—and that's exactly what this is talking about; raising the flag from the victory—and the victory here is the victory over all mental afflictions and the ignorance that causes the selfishness that causes the mental afflictions. 

So, it's not just the victory banner over the mental afflictions, it's all the seeds for more (which, of course, have within them the ignorance through which they were made to begin with).

There was an earlier Chukyi Gyeltsen called Sera Jetson Chukyi Gyeltsen. Sera, meaning Sera Je, the monastery. 

He's known for having written many of the monastic textbooks, not all of them, of course. He had a student named Kedrup Tenpa Dargye. Here's Sera Jetson Chukyi Gyeltsen [referring to the spelling of his name on the screen]. I don't have his dates. He had a student whose name is Kedrup Tenpa Dargye (this is not Kedrup Je of Je Tsongkapa’s student).

Kedrup Tenpa Dargye’s dates are 1525 to 1591. 

He's the main student of someone known as Wensapa Lobsang Dundrup, who came to be known as Gyalwa Wensapa. His dates 1505 to 1566. 

Gyalwa Wensapa is known for being a being who transformed his physical body in that lifetime into a rainbow body, and I think the story is that, at the accomplishment of that feat, he left and all that was left his hair and fingernails in front of his altar. 

So he's known for someone who reached their total enlightenment in that lifetime and I guess “demonstrated it," because certainly there are others that have done it, but you don't hear of them. But anyway… 

So we have this part of a lineage; Kedrup Je teaches Wensapa (Wensapa had other teachers too of course), but Wensapa, oh my gosh, achieves the goal.

Then, along comes the little boy, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen (he didn't have that name yet) who's extraordinary from birth, of course. He enters the dharma right away, he gets a teacher right away, and it's said that he memorized the diamond cutter sutra when he was five years old—because he wanted to. Like, “This would be fun!”

And he did it. 

He has an early teacher, and as part of his training that teacher instructed him to memorize a short lam rim text (we hear it “memorize Source of All My Good”). And the boy is at the library and he sees Je Tsongkapas Lam Rim Chenmo, and he goes, “I want to memorize that instead.”

So he goes and he circumambulates the Buddha statue at the temple begging for blessings to be able to memorize the Lam Rim Chenmo. And when he starts memorizing it, he realizes he already knows it and understands its meaning. 

But he doubts himself. 

So he goes to his teacher and he says, “would you test me on this? I think I've got it memorized. And I think I understand.” 

So his teacher tests him and confirms, “yes, wow, you've got it.” 

And he ends up having this extraordinary vision of Lord Buddha. In those days, a teacher would load their students up with initiations and practices and Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen was getting those initiations and practices—and at the age of 14 he had his first actual contact with an angel. 

He had this beautiful vision of the angel Sarasvati and he wrote this amazing poem (if anyone took the De Lam course with Venerable Jigme and Venerable Gyelse, you heard, you have that beautiful poem).

So his practice was like that—having visions, having experiences, meditating deeply, getting all of these amazing practices. And when he’s around 18 he comes across the biography of Je Tsongkapa, and reading that, he sees how extraordinarily important a sequential study is. And he had this impulse—I need to go to the monastery and study formally. 

But his teacher was so strict and his teacher was giving him all these practices, he felt embarrassed or not embarrassed—he felt that he would disrespect his teacher if he said, “I want to go study," it sounds like he would be rejecting his teacher. So he worked on it for a while before he actually decided, “no, I've got to go.” 

So he very respectfully went to his teacher and said, I really appreciate all you've given me and I will continue to honor and value and use it. But because of Je Tsongkapa’s example, I really feel like I need to go to the monastery and study formally—and he expected his teacher to *shakes fist with anger* “rah, rah, rah," but instead his teacher who never smiled, gave this great big happy smile and said, “good for you, you have my blessings. Go.” 

So he goes to Tashi Hlunpo, right, Ganden Tashi Hlunpo—the monastery was already there; it now is known as “the seat of the Panchen Lama, but there was no Panchen Lama in those days. But he goes to Ganden Tashi Hlunpo and starts his studies, and of course he excels and he continues to have visions and insights and realizations, and very quickly he's teaching others and debating with others, both lay and ordained. 

He goes on to be involved in the recognizing, ordaining and teaching of the fifth Dalai Lama. So you have to be an extraordinary being to be the one who teaches the young kid Dalai Lama, how to be the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama in Tibet is the highest Lama of the Gelugpa lineage—and all the different lineages recognize that “being” as an emanation of Chenrezig—and so they all honor him as the highest Lama (even though each of the different lineages have their own highest Lama within their tradition, do you see?).

So Dalai Lama is head Gelugpa but also would oversee all the other aspects of Tibet as well, both its spiritual side, its religious side, and its government secular side, so the Dalai Lama would be in charge of everything. 

So the new one being trained (being taught what they already know because they're a reincarnation), it takes a pretty special set of beings to be involved in that, of course. So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen was one of those who helped establish the fifth Dalai Lama in his position. 

That fifth Dalai Lama was known for being one who was able to bring all the different factions of Tibet together. There was a lot of infighting amongst locations and tribes, and even within the Dharma (as I understand it), and the fifth Dalai Lama had this unique ability to bring everybody together—and in the course of his life, he determined that this man, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen (he was honored with this term Panchen Lama) and what that term came to mean is that when the current Dalai Lama withdraws his emanation, there's a period of time before they are re-recognized and trained and can take charge again. 

And so in that period of time, it can be 20 years, somebody had to be in charge of Tibet. So the Panchen Lama “line” are the ones who get put in charge until the new Dalai Lama comes of age. 

So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen was established as the First Panchen Lama by the 5th Dalai Lama—and that started this whole sequence of Panchen Lama, Dalai Lama, Panchen Lama, Dalai Lama.

Now things are a little mixed up because we don’t actually know who the current Panchen Lama is and where they are, right? We don’t know for sure—but it doesn’t matter, leave that aside, karmic seeds ripening.

This is who we’re studying from—and Kedrup Tenpa Dargye, one of Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s teachers in his early years (who was also the teacher of Gyalwa Wensapa) recognized Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen as an emanation of Gyalwa Wensapa. 

Let that sink in.

So Gyalwa Wensapa reaches his total enlightenment in that lifetime and sends forth an emanation (an emanation is different than a reincarnation, I don’t exactly know how it’s different—but different) and the teacher of Wensapa recognizes Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen as an emanation. 

It’s like the teacher is teaching another student who is the emanation of a student who reached higher greater levels than the teacher themselves … “please do so” … just weird, huh? 

You can teach somebody something who knows that they know more than you do—somehow.

This is who we’re studying from—Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen.

He taught ordained and lay-people. He debated a lot. And he loved retreat. He would go into retreat in the fall and winter every year, which is a little different, right? Because the summer retreats—but that’s in India. 

He goes into retreat every winter and when he goes into retreat he says “don’t bother me," and ae does practices like [chu len? verify this @mh] where you eat a flower petal and it sustains your body, so he didn’t need anyone bringing him food, he didn’t need to write out notes, ya know: 

“My heater’s not working”

He just went into retreat for a couple of months and said “dont bother me.”

There was a time where he was in retreat and the Mongolians were on their way to decimate the mongolian army and they’re face to face and someone goes: “Oh gosh, we gotta go get Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen.”

And they say “No no no no no.”   

“Yes yes yes yes!”

Finally somebody goes “Please, please, please, come… We’re desperate, we need you!”

He goes out.

He marches between the two armies and he starts hollering at them about why it would be stupid to have a fight because they're just gonna kill most of everybody there.

“Instead, let’s go have a party and settle our differences.”

And he pays them off, and he stops the war, and they all go have a party, and he’s the hero.

But when we hear the deeper part of that story, he had tried that before and his efforts to stop the war didn’t work—and as a result of that failure he said, “hmm, ya know, I need better karma, I need better virtue.”

So just in case there’s a next time, he goes and buys groceries for everybody in the monastery (if I remember the story right), he goes and restores an old temple, or stupa, or something—some sacred site. He does a third thing I can’t remember right now. But he doesn’t go study war tactics—he goes and makes more virtue, and teaches, and goes into retreat. And then the next time he tries to stop a war—his seeds ripen differently. 

It was his virtue that stopped the war.

It wasn’t what he said, and it wasn’t that he promised to pay them all off—it was his virtue that influenced everybody there, and his virtue comes through his mindfulness on and off his cushion. Because through it, he carefully plans his karmic seed planting so that he has the seeds for what he needs when the time comes. 

So, if you remember when he decided he wanted to memorize the Lam Rim Chenmo—he didn't just get out the book and open the pages and start. He first went and circumambulated a Buddha statue. Like, does that make sense in our world? But it tells us the next time you have a task to do:

Don't just plan out how you're going to do the task—or plan it out, but before you go do it, go circumambulate a Buddha stupa. Go recite the diamond cutter sutra and fasten your seatbelt. Go do something intentionally “merit-making” and dedicate it to your project and then go do your project.

It's interesting, isn't it? I think out of all of this story, that's the hugest lesson for me. Because I'm still in the mode of: “I need to do this. This is how I get it done. I will do it.”

Ya know, and mostly it works out (in my life) because in the past I circumambulated a whole lot of Budda stupas, I guess? Because my plans seem to work... But it's actually unfortunate, because it means I get complacent. 

“Look, things in my world do work!”

“Wrong.” 

“Yeah.”

Okay, let's take a break—I'm 12 minutes past break cause I was having so much fun telling my story.

*************

So I said it before, but Lama Christie pointed out that this particular meditation practice is really powerful for reaching that level of meditation (level nine) TING NGE ‘DZIN or samadhi, from which shamata can arise, can grow. 

And “shamata quality” meditation, we know, is the platform for the platform from which we see or experience emptiness directly, and for our Bok Jinpa group the emphasis was: 

The reason we are “Bok Jinpa-ing” our meditation is so that we can reach that direct perception of emptiness. 

And so every course at the beginning, she would drill that into us. If you're not at shamata, you don't have the platform to be able to sustain your direct perception of emptiness when your seeds are trying to ripen it, right?

They won't be complete enough to get there. 

And so she would always give this first class sermon of:

“We're not working hard enough.” 

She would chew us out, basically, our first class:

“If you didn't see emptiness directly between last course and this course, you're not working hard enough.” -Lama Christy

And it's like boo-hoo *Lama fakes tears* 

But then she would go on to give her own examples of why it's so difficult.

Her point was—it really takes this huge overwhelming motivation driven, by the suffering of our world, to reach this doorway through which that suffering can end. And we hear it intellectually and we feel it in our hearts, and then we get out of our daily practice and we forget, right? 

Our mind seeds don't have it to sustain it. 

And so she continues to point out that this physical world is so heavy, so slow, so gross in terms of solidity that things change so slowly. And it seems like they're changing this fast *snaps fingers*, right? Sometimes. 

But when we go to effect a change, oh man, we work on those hard ones and it just doesn't seem to work. Both worldly things don't seem to work, and even karmic things don't seem to work—because it takes a lot of karma or a really, really, really high merit to change something that's already “a dried lump of clay," into something different.

So we'd be as kind as we can, we become vegan, we tiptoe around the ants, we do everything we can to avoid harming others—but samsara is such that no matter how careful we are, every moment we're hurting somebody in some way just by surviving. And that’s samara—we can't stop it in the physical world. 

She would say again and again and again: 

“We need to be in the world of mind.” 

Not meaning intellect. 

But the world of consciousness. 

In the world of consciousness, everything's instantly malleable—technically by way of our intention. You just think something and it manifests by way of karmic goodness, or course.

So my mind's going off on a tangent—”oh, so I could think something bad and that bad thing would instantly happen, and that would be a result of some past goodness—because I'm getting an instant result.” 

*It would make a great debate. I think it would be true. 

But the point is—we can live and function in the world of consciousness even as we seem to still be inhabiting this “gross” world.

And we see Geshe Michael do it right? He's manipulating, not like consciously manipulating *twist hands around*, but karmically manipulating things constantly. 

And one story, not in this class, but I remember a story Lama Christie was telling for a different reason, but it still works:

She and he were walking along one of the New York streets and they were talking about karma, and how long it takes for karma to ripen, and how as a result you really can't rely on it (she was saying this).

And he said, “no, you're mistaken.” 

And at the instant he said that there was a piece of his favorite chewing gum all wrapped and ready sitting on the sidewalk of the street that they were walking on. 

And she looked at it and goes, “that's your favorite chewing gum.” 

And he goes, “yeah, I know.”

And he picked it up, opened it, split it in half, split it with her and walked on. 

And it's just like, she recognized that he manifested that just to make the point to her that she was still stuck in this physical world reality, and he wasn't.

So how do you manifest a piece of chewing gum out of thin air? 

Well, the emptiness of the thin air means it could be anything for anyone at any time, couldn't it? He needed a piece of chewing gum to teach her something and there it was.

So, you know, Lamas are not allowed to do miracles because then the student always needs another miracle when things happen—but when you have this close personal relationship, your own seeds will make the Lama do a miracle to teach you something when you're ready, right? 

So again, Lama Christie—I couldn't see it at the time—but she was very clearly in this “realm of mind” at the same time as manifesting the realm of physical body through which to teach us.

So her point was, we can't do anything right in this world—we try of course for the karmic seeds—but our task is to come to identify with this world of “aware-ing." 

Awareness, she called it. 

I call it “aware-ing," like the verb; happening constantly.

And this practice of Mahamudra is one of the ways for us to become more directly, clearly “aware” of our “aware identity” and come to relate to that, instead of relating to this thing *points to self* as the me that has a mind—that has an awareness. Okay? 

Alright, our seeds that create samsara ripen a part of us that is going to resist the progress that we make—have you noticed? There's a part of us that doesn't want to do it, and the closer we get to significant shifts, the more scared that part of us gets and the stronger it comes out fighting. 

Lama Christie reminded us of that silly joke of the two flies sitting on the yak poop and the one fly says to the other:

“I hear that there's this place called heaven, and in heaven everything is so amazing and so beautiful and nothing ever goes wrong. 

The second fly says, “Was there yak poop there?”

And the first fly says, “I don't think so.” 

So the second fly says, “Well then why would I want to go there?”

Don't be the second fly, right? 

There's a part of us that is the second fly:

“I don't want to go to heaven, there's no yak poop there.”

So part of our task is to find that fly that wants to stay on the yak poop and be aware of it, and then whatever we need to do.

I don't know quite yet, my yak-poop-fly still is elusive. I've babied it. I've been fierce with it, right? I've brought it along for the ride, I've taken it on vacation! And it still comes up fighting when we get close to something new. So I don't know—it's one thing to hear that we have a yak-poop-fly part of ourselves. It's another to admit that we have it. It's another to find it, give it a name and make a relationship with it, and then help it decide that it wants to go after all. 

And when we get there, things get a whole lot easier.

Alright, so our hero, the First Panchen Lama, he was writing poetry all the time. And one of his exquisite poems is entitled chak chen tsawa gyalwa shunlam. 

chak chen is short for chakya chenpo

chakya chenpo is Tibetan for mahamudra 

Mahamudra means the great seal. S-E-A-L. 

Do you remember one of the ACI courses taught that the “seal” refers to the “king's seal”? The king writes an order, he puts it in an envelope, he seals the envelope with the wax seal that has his special emblem on it. And so as long as that seal's not broken, the person who gets that envelope knows that whatever's inside is a message from the king. 

It declares the authenticity and the truth of whatever's inside. 

And somehow[…]that example is what Mahamudra refers to, and I still don't relate to that example personally because then we meet Mahamudra in all these different contexts and all of a sudden it's meaning, like–how do you get that from the “king's chop?”

*Lama makes a stamping action like the stamping of a seal*

But it has to do with the authenticity, right? The realness. So Mahamudra is about getting to that direct experience of what's real. 

What's real?

Dependent origination and the “no self-nature” of whatever it is that it’s “appearing”—that is appearing.

You can't just say “emptiness is real” because without an appearing thing, there is no emptiness. 

And you can't say the appearing thing is real because it isn't real—it's a ripening seed/result, it's an “appearing reality," and has no nature of its own. 

So it’s real nature is it’s known nature, but it has to be there to have a known nature, right? 

No wonder it's complicated. 

So Mahamudra, another name for it, or another way it's used is—it's a term that you use for the direct perception of emptiness—whether it's your first time or your hundredth time, or your constant [direct perception] as “Buddha-you” perceiving emptiness directly always…

Mahamudra.

The Great Seal. 

PHYAG RGYA CHEN PO (chakya chenpo).

So, chak chen tsawa gyalwa shunlam:

gyalwa shunlam means “the highway, highway, the victory, victory highway, victory road.”

And tsawa just means “on.”

So he wrote this poem and he calls it:

“The Victory Road to Mahamudra” … 

“The Victory Road to Wisdom: Mahamudra.” 

And it's a beautiful poem, and as poems usually are—they're loaded and cryptic. And he understood that so he wrote his own commentary to that poem:

“This is what I meant by that poem. This is the poem that came out of me—and this is what it means.” 

And that text is called yang sel dronme.

yang sel dronme Lama Christie translated as “The Light of Crystal Clarity.”

I like that term “Crystal Clarity." 

So the material that I sent you is Lama Christi's translation of yang sel dronme—within which are almost all of the verses (except for the last/end one) of the poem. So, we also have the poem separately. 

We'll be studying from his commentary, and using meditations that Lama Christie uses to help teach us each one of the sections from his explanation of what his poem was trying to reveal to us. 

So, I get to give you the oral transmission of the poem—and then we'll be using the commentary text after that. So I need to, let me see–do I want to do that now? I think I do, yes. I'll do it and then we'll repeat the meditation that we did at the beginning.

So to receive an oral transmission, you just listen. You crack your head open and let it pour in—which is why I'm not going to put it on the screen for you to read along with. 

You just let it fill you full and then you can go back and read and study it til your heart's content after that, alright? 

So shift and wiggle, get ready, open up, you do not need to stay perfectly still but do stay focused because it's “imprinting." 

*************

The Verses of The Victory Road to Mahamudra

by Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen

I bow down to Mahamudra.

My holy Lama,

In you is the entire store of wisdom

from a billion Enlightened Beings

Yet you masquerade in the dance

Of donning the saffron robes.

To you, the one who grants to me

The three kindnesses

With deep respect do I press my head

To the lotus beneath your feet.

Mahamudra is the essential drop within the hearts

Of every Victor—past, present, or future.

It is the core of the meaning in the great ocean

Of teachings—open or secret

And so in the footsteps of every

Mighty yogi who has Gone to Bliss,

I will now set forth a light to

Make this practice of Mahamudra

Crystal clear.

Mahamudra reaches everywhere.

It is the nature of everything

There are no words to describe

The indivisible diamond realm of mind.

I place my head with great respect

At the holy feet of my matchless Lama

Lord among Yogis, Master of all

Who lays the teachings bare.

Following the footsteps of that highest yogi

Dharma Vajra, and his spiritual son

Who distilled from that great ocean

Of Gelug advices, both open and secret

A single drop of the essence—

The perfect summary.

I grant to you this book of guidance

On the practice of Mahamudra.

Divide this teaching into three:

The prelude, the main event, and the conclusion,

Here now is the first of the three:

Since refuge is the entrance to 

The teachings of the Buddha

And the wish the central pillar

Holding up the Greater Way,

Just mouthing words is not enough—

Fervently take refuge

And bring the wish into your heart.

Whether or not you can see

The reality of your own mind

Depends on how well you have

Gathered goodness, and

Cleared away the dirt

So purify your broken vows

With the hundred syllables—

Complete exactly 100,000 mantras.

Then do the hundred prostrations—

As many cycles as you can.

Now beg for help from your root Lama

The one inseparable in nature from

Every Buddha of the past, present, or future.

Go to them again and again

From the bottom of your heart.

Although there are myriad schools of thought

On the subject of Mahamudra,

They can all be grouped into

The open and the secret ways.

The latter one is the clear light of great bliss

When brought on by certain methods

Such as targeting the crucial points

In the diamond body itself

This is the Mahamudra of

Saraha and the exalted Nagarjuna.

This is the Mahamudra of 

Naropa and Maitripa

It is the deepest core within

The unsurpassed class of the secret word

Illumined in the collected works

‚Attaining‘ and ‘The Essence‘

Then there is the former one 

Of the great, medium, and brief

Which teaches us directly

How to meditate on emptiness

As that highest realized being

Nagarjuna has stated

‘There is no other path to freedom

Any different than this‘.

In keeping with his true intent,

In the words of the Lamas of my lineage

Now at last the time has come

To give the instructions on Mahamudra—

The way to meet your mind, face to face

The spontaneous Capsule, 

Gauma,

The Practice of the Five;

Balancing a Bitter Taste,

Instructions in Four Syllables;

Putting Our Torment to Rest,

Cutting off the Object,

The Great Completion;

A Book of Notes on Middle-Way View…

It has been emburdened

With so many different names

But anybody skilled in both

The texts and arts of reasoning

Or any yogi who has had

The actual experience

Can delve into their true meaning

And see that they all come down to

The same basic idea.

There are two methods we can use

To undertake this practice—

Using the view to reach meditation, and

Using meditation to reach the View.

Here we will be following

The latter of the two.

Atop a seat conducive

For reaching meditation,

Fix yourself in the seven-pointed

Posture of the body

Clear away with the nine-fold

Cycle of the breath

Learn to cull the mental fluff

From the crystalline awareness

Then with a heart of pure virtue

Take refuge and bring up the Wish

As we did before

Meditate on the profound path—

The yoga of the Lama

And after you have begged Them

Earnestly a hundred times,

Watch the Lama dissolve into you.

Don't let any conceptions

Drag you into hopes or fears

Within this state of wavering appearances

Go and test the waters

Of deeper meditation

Where there is no movement whatsoever

Just like falling into sleep

Or losing consciousness,

Don't try to stop

The thoughts which come to mind

Set yourself off at a distance

Of undistracted awareness

Use the sentry of the mind

To catch it running here or there

Then hone in on your focus

To gaze nakedly upon

Its true nature—crystal and aware

Whatever mental picture

Happens to arise

Meet it face to face

For whatever it is

Or, be like a blade master

Chopping off the head 

Of any conceptual thought

That dares to show its face

Then, at the end of battle

When you are staying, still

Let go, without

Relinquishing awareness

„Lock it down, then

Let it loose—

This is where

To leave your mind“

So they say, and furthermore:

„If you release

This mind of yours

All tangled up in knots

Have no doubt that

You will be released“

Loosen up

Just as it states

Without getting distracted.

And when you look into the face

Of any thoughts that come your way

They simply vanish by themselves—

Fading into emptiness;

Then even as you stay there, still

Investigate the mind,

You'll see its emptiness unveiled

Luminous, and clear

This is known as „mixing

The moving with the still.“

So, don't stop an image

If it happens to arise

Recognize it as a movement

Stay in its true nature.

It's similar to the metaphor

Of a bird held captive on a boat

Who tries to fly away:

„It's just like the raven

Who flies from a boat—

Once he circles ‘round

In every direction,

He'll come back to

Land on it again.“

If you continue in this way…

You'll see the face of meditation

Crystalline and bright,

Unobscured by anything at all

And since it has no solid form

It is like the sky—

Inherently empty

And anything that crosses

It is likewise crystal clear.

„If you release

This mind of yours

All tangled up in knots,

Have no doubt that

You will be released.“

„Lock it down, then

Let it loose—

This is where

To leave your mind.“

These days almost every master

Meditating in these snow cap peaks

Is singing with a single voice—

„When you see directly

This ultimate nature of your mind

It is of course by utilizing

Meditative vision

But it cannot be defined—

You cannot point and say: „It's this.“

The guidance pressed into our hands

By the Able Buddhas is to

Hold the mind loose

Without grasping onto

Anything that comes to mind.“

What they say is true of course

But Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen

Will tell you how it is:

This technique is an extraordinary

Way to trick beginners

Into reaching mental stillness

And it is also the way to

Encounter the deceptive state

Of your mind, face to face.

But how to meet the ultimate nature

Of your mind, face to face?

Now I will explain to you

The way to go about it

By setting forth the whispered words

Of my holy root Lama

The one who holds the wisdom

Of the enlightened Buddhas,

The one who lures us through the guise

Of holding saffron robes

The One who washes clean away

The darkness of my mind.

And I agree that one is free

From all elaboration

In either the cycle or beyond—

Free from any extreme

Of existence or the like—

Within the deep space of

A perfect suchness meditation.

Then once you‘ve emerged from it,

If you stop to look around

You'll find a world in name alone—

Simply a projection.

The interdependent working of things

Arise Infallibly.

They seem to rise up on their own

Just like a dream, or a mirage,

A moon inside a lake,

Or a magical display.

The play of this appearing world

In no way negates emptiness;

And emptiness is not a

Refutation of appearances.

When emptiness and interdependence

Become one and the same,

That's the pure and perfect Path

Called forth into being.

It is that wise old recluse

Known as Lobsang Chukyi Geltsen,

Who has spoken this advice to you.

And by the virtue I have done,

May every single wandering soul

Quickly rise to victory

By traveling this Path,

This one and only door to Peace.

May all beings be happy.

So that's where we will be going. 

Don't go too fast.

First, find the “aware-ing” happening. 

*************

Meditation 2: Watcher, Hearer, Awarer

Link to Meditation: Class 1 @ 01:39:31

Let's try that session again, we'll do it shorter, faster. 

Get yourself shifted and wiggled.

Settle your physical body in. 

Feel this subtle body rising—helping your attention become more bright…more alert…more fascinated. 

And bring that fascinated mind to the sensation of your breath as it flows out and in, at your nostrils.

Zoom in closely on those sensations to the exclusion of all else, except my voice. 

***1 minute***

Now, still holding the breath as the object—expand a bit to include the watcher.

***15 seconds***

The watcher, watching the breath to the exclusion of all else.

***45 seconds***

Now intentionally let go of the breath as the object, and shift to a sound. 

First, zoom in on the sound.

***15 seconds***

And then expand a little to include the “hear-er” of the sound.

***45 seconds***

The watcher, the hearer, the experience is totally passive.

Merely receiving information. 

***15 seconds***

Now release that outer sound. Sink in deeper to the sound or sensation of your heartbeat. 

First, focus directly. 

***15 seconds***

And then expand a little without losing focus to include the “aware-er."

***30 seconds***

One more minute.

***45 seconds***

Nice. Now let go of that object, expand to be aware of you and your body. 

This body in this room. 

Recall our motivation at the beginning of class to help that other in that deep and ultimate way.

And recognize that we have learned something that we will use in that way. And that's a great, great goodness. So please be happy with yourself. 

And think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. 

Recall your own precious, holy guide. See how happy they are with you. 

Feel your gratitude to them—your reliance upon them.

Ask them to please, please stay close—to continue to guide you, help you, inspire you.

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accept it and bless it. And they carry it with them right back into your heart. 

See them there. Feel them there. Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. It feels so good. We want to keep it forever, and so we know to share it:

“By the power of the goodness that we've just done, 

May all things complete the collection of merit and wisdom,

and thus gain the two ultimate bodies

that merit and wisdom make.”

So use these three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person…

To share it with everyone you love…

And share it with every existing being everywhere…

See them all filled with happiness, filled with the wisdom of loving kindness, filled with the ability to be aware of their “aware-er."

And may it be so.

*************

After Class

Alright. So thank you again for the opportunity. Those who know how to keep a meditation journal, I encourage you to do so. And if there are those that haven't been taught that—either let me know, or ask one of the ones who do know—raise your hand—who learned to do a meditation journal? Yeah, Roxanna knows. Joana knows Tom knows. Feel free to ask for help and we'll do it right, later. Okay, so we are finished. I'm going to stop the recording if you have questions you're welcome to stay on, but feel free to go. I'll see you next week. We'll do this again.

*************

There is no vocab list for this class.

*************

Introduction

Welcome back, we are studiers of Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s Mahamudra practice. This is class two, February 4th, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do…

The full opening contemplation and prayers can be found in the transcript of Class One under “Gather Our Minds.”

…“May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other.” 

So settle yourself in for a meditation session…

*************

Meditation 3: Increasing the Quality of the Observer

You know what to do with your body—get it set, upright, positioned. 

Lock it in… And then keep it still.

***15 seconds*** 

And then bring your attention of focus to your breath at the tip of your nostrils. 

Zoom in closely.

Adjust that awareness for its brightness.

Adjust its intensity, its fascination. 

***15 seconds***

The sole object of attention is those sensations of breath. 

***1 minute, 15 seconds***

Now take that tight focus, and zoom out just enough to be aware of “focused on the breath," exclusive to all else.

Still bright and clear—still fascinated. 

And now including the awareness of the breath.

***1 minute***

If we widen that awareness too much, it lets other information in and we get distracted.

Or we widen too much, and we lose interest on the breath—falling into dullness. 

Find that sweet spot.

***1 minute***

Very intentionally, let go of the sensations of breath as the object of focus, by the observer, and turn instead to sounds that you are hearing—outer sounds. 

***30 seconds***

Notice whether or not, you had to identify those sounds in order to focus on them. 

If so, our “observer quality” of mind shifted—probably out of our control—to the sound, the object, making the sound, the story about the sound. 

***15 seconds***

So let's try it again intentionally, but with your “observer fascination” on your breath sensations at your nostrils. 

Simply experiencing, observing. 

***30 seconds***

And very intentionally, the observer drops the breath sensations, and turns to simply observing sound. 

***45 seconds***

Check for your intensity. 

Check for your clarity. 

***1 minute 15 seconds***

Check again—is there more than sound coming to that “aware-er”?

Adjust its focus—it's clarity, it's fascination on sound. 

Simply receiving… 

***1 minute***

Now, very intentionally let go of those outer sounds, and sink in more deeply to inner sounds. 

The sound of your heartbeat, the sound of blood moving, the sound of your bowels gurgling… 

If you find no sound—find sensation.

***15 seconds***

And you are “aware-er” is bright, and fascinated, on sensation. 

Notice how some part of the mind is compelled to identify the sensation, before it can just sit in it. 

Once we identify, a story starts.

Let go of the story. 

Let go of the identity.

Find the sensation.

Find the awareness of the sensation—and rest there. 

***1 minute***

We’ll stay one minute—check your clarity, check your fascination. 

***2 minutes***

Nice, now let that object go. 

Think of the good seeds we've planted just so far. 

Dedicate them to the happiness of that other person. 

And become aware of your physical body, in your physical room. 

And when you're ready, open your eyes. Take a stretch. 

*************

Lecture

So remember when you were learning something new—like learning to play an instrument, learning to do ballet, learning—for me it was learning to play volleyball. 

Our inspiration was, “I want to play the violin like that guy.” 

And so you get a violin and you pick it up and you try and it's like, “eh.” [pretends to struggle to play violin like a beginner] 

So you [the hypothetical student] decide, “oh, I need to learn how.” 

And then the teacher says, ya know, “do these skills over and over and over.” 

[And then the student says] “But I want to play that concerto.” 

[And the teacher says] “Right, so here's the music of the concerto—play it.” 

[And the student says} “Oh, I can't.”

Right? 

We do the skills. This skill, and that skill, and this one. And if we're learning a team sport—as we're learning our skill, we're contributing to the other team players learning their skill. And we do the skills over and over and over again, and eventually we're “good enough” at the different skills that we can put them all together and play. 

And we say, “well, that's really what I wanted to do is just play.” 

And then in retrospect we realized doing all those skills was fun too—hard work, good days, bad days… But I see how it was necessary to do the skills so that when I was ready to play the piece, or play the game—it could happen. 

And then in playing, we recognize what skills we want to improve—and we go back and do just the skills, again and again and again. 

So we're doing the same thing here with Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s pieces of this meditation—the result is not going to come from just being able to be aware of those sensations we call breath to the exclusion of anything else. 

But without that skill, we won't be able to do the performance that he's taking us to—which is being able to set ourselves onto the true nature of our own mind, the true nature of that awareness “being aware of stuff.”

But we can't get there until we can find that sweet spot between tight, tight focus on just the sensation (which we've been training in). Loosening up enough to include the awareness on the sensation, and without that loosening, allowing all this other stuff to come in—which is what our habit is—open up, experience everything. 

So we're really training in these new skills—and when we train in skills, we go back and forth, up and down, we do it wrong, and we do it “right-er," so that we can feel the difference. So that sooner or later, you don't actually need the coach telling you how to adjust your effort—you can adjust yourself. 

With meditation, it's hard because you can't have a coach in there with you—and to have someone guiding you in your meditation automatically takes you out of wherever you were. Right? Because you're in that deep focus and then you hear her saying something. So it's a little difficult in learning how to meditate. 

So it's wonderful to use guided meditations all the time—you just put on the audio and you follow along. But for gaining this skill of being able to self-adjust in our meditation, we need to learn those meditations—and then be able to push that “audio” and have it run in our own system, so that we don't have this outer distraction going on that keeps us at a certain level [of meditation]—which is not where we're trying to go. 

So that's the purpose of doing these again and again and again—when it really feels like, “come on, this is so basic.” 

So the First Panchen Lama—he knows what we're thinking. 

And so in his commentary to his root text, he spends quite a bit of time helping us grow our foundation—the foundation for this Mahamudra practice. 

And of course it's the same foundation for every Buddhist practice—Refuge and The Wish. 

And he doesn't just say, “look, you are advanced practitioners studying Mahamudra. Recall your refuge and your wish.” 

He talks to us as if we maybe haven't heard of it before, implying that maybe we think we have a strong refuge and the wish—and maybe it can grow bigger. Maybe if we come at it with a beginner's mind that our refuge and wish will go deeper, bigger than it has before. 

So it's always for me a little like, “why do I have to redo this? I have my refuge!” 

And every time I do, it's like, “oh, that's why.” 

We can get complacent very easily. 

So the reading for this class two will be about the preliminaries—but not just the list of “clean your room, put up your altar.” 

But the real preliminaries and the real preliminaries have to do with the very reason we're even trying to learn this practice. 

And anytime any teacher says, “why are you here? Why are you studying Buddhism?” 

We've learned the a hundred dollars answer is, “because they're suffering in the world.” 

And Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen says the same thing. 

But what suffering and why?

His practice, Mahamudra is a practice that is designed to take us to the experience of the emptiness of our own mind—the “no self nature” nature of our own mind. 

That means becoming more and more keenly aware of it on our cushion in order to have a direct experience of it, and in order to be more and more keenly aware of us on our cushion—in order for the skills that we do to work, we have to have the seeds for the skills to work, [in order] to bring us to deeper meditations on the emptiness of our mind. 

So even what I said about, “do the skills, do the skills...” 

The skills aren't going to work—unless we have the right karmic seeds for them to work—and to be able to do the drills enough, to get to the place where we can be aware of the emptiness of our mind, on our cushion, we need to be gathering the goodness off our cushion—so that our own cushion time can have a positive outcome. 

Right? We understand karma and emptiness well enough to see that.

So the purpose of “on cushion awareness” of the emptiness of our own mind—is to increase our ability to hold that awareness of the emptiness of our own mind while we're in our “off cushion time." 

So if we can't do it when we are so withdrawn, in a quiet space, the most comfortable place you've got—if we can't hold our awareness of our emptiness, of our own mind experience—then how are we ever going to do it when we're out at the grocery store, or in the traffic jam, or even playing in the park? 

It takes both, doesn't it? 

If we lose our awareness of karma and emptiness in our “off cushion time," how is anything that we're going to do on our “on cushion time” really going to take us deep enough? 

We don't have the seeds. 

So—Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is reminding us that we need  a really, really good reason to make the effort “on cushion” as well as to make the effort “off cushion," so that whatever we're trying to do will start the spiral going upward [points upward and makes a swirling motion], instead of just spinning in place—or even spinning downward. 

So we need a really, really, really good reason just to do the skills over and over again. 

[imitating an impatient student] “Sarahni, just take us to the emptiness of my own mind! I'm ready…” 

It's like, “well, not if you can't focus on your breath without dullness, without distraction, with intensity, clarity—for as long as you want—not just three counts of 10—as long as you want.” 

So skills, skills, skills. 

So to help us with our foundation, the First Panchen Lama's commentary—he goes back and he looks at the masters who have come before him, and he quotes from their various teachings. 

He uses Lord Atisha, he uses Master Shanti Deva, he uses Master Saraha (who is Arya Nagarjuna’s amazing teacher), he uses Milarepa, he uses the Sakya Pandita. He uses Gelugpa (well before Gelugpa even), he uses beings that we know of—that we're familiar with (because we're in this Gelugpa path we're familiar with), and he pulls out these beautiful teachings from them—to help us revisit our Refuge and our Wish. 

He has multiple quotes from Milarepa, you'll see one of them says, “If we can't see the object of the senses as a problem, we can't learn to have revulsion for the attachments we have for this life—and then we're never going to get out of this circle of pain. 

So Panchen Lama is saying, “look at our own situation, first.” 

“Life is so tantalizing.” Lama Christie said, “There's so much—we have so much goodness—that we see so much pleasure, we experience so much pleasure in our world, in our experience, our direct experience. 

And there's a lot of crap happening in our world—direct and not direct—but come on… none of us are in survival mode—and that's a result of our own past goodness. 

We have enough to eat. We have roofs over our head. We have the clothes we need. We have the opportunity to study the dharma from our own living room! Oh my gosh, it's extraordinary!

And then breakfast tastes good, and my car runs, and [I] got a test done yesterday, I could afford it, the [insurance] company pays for the rest of it—[there is] so much we take for granted as just commonplace, and we don't recognize, “oh my gosh, this is amazing.” 

And as we’re experiencing those pleasures, we don't even notice that they're coming from our past kindness—we use them up. 

And if we're [pauses] “okay, I'll get there.” {waves hand to indicate she does not wish to start explaining a different topic at this time].

So, as we are experiencing them [the pleasures], we're believing that those objects of the senses were the result of the pleasure that I experienced. 

And that means—I go for more objects of the senses, and more things that will bring that pleasant experience. 

That's what senses do. 

Not like they're out to get us, but that's the karma they come from—and so of course that's going to be their function. The objects themselves don't have the pleasure in them. The sense powers don't have the pleasure in them either, we know. 

But our experience and our experience is that the pleasure comes from those things. 

So of course I want more. Of course I don't want to lose those pleasurable objects. And of course I want to avoid the things that are not so pleasurable—and it leads us to this state of mind of, “really, I'm okay right now.” 

The weather just turned beautiful in Tucson and everybody's outside saying, “wow, wow, wow.” 

And it's like, “Right!”

Right and wrong. 

It's not saying that we should go [we should say], “no, the weather's not really perfect. It's just that your karma shifted and it's going to get bad again.”

Right? You don't want to be the Debbie Downer.

But in our own mind we get complacent:

“I don't need to spend that extra 10 minutes on my meditation cushion, I'm going to go visit a friend—it's her husband's birthday.” 

I did it yesterday! I went to visit a friend instead of staying for mixed nuts. 

And it's like, “oh man!”

Here's Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen saying, “if you did, did you use the time well?” 

And my answer is, “could have done better.” 

So we get allured [powerfully attracted] by the beauties, by the pleasures, by the niceness—and underneath that, of course, is our misunderstanding of where it all comes from. 

It is true that in the Diamond way we are trained to use all those pleasures as the path—in which case you need to go and experience them.

 But in doing so—as we do so as a Diamond Way practitioner—we're to be using them in a certain way with a certain frame of mind, and every time, every moment, we're not in that frame of mind, we are not doing Diamond way. 

So we tend to be in a hurry to get to Diamond Way—and the difficulty is if we don't have this Mahamudra focus, our Diamond Way practice is in name only. 

And Khen Rinpoche Rinpoche would say, “well, no worries, you'll just go to Diamond way hell at the end of this life. At least you can say, I'm here because I broke my tantric vows, instead of because I hated people.”

He was serious, apparently—kind of scary. 

So again, that's what prompted this Mahamudra course for me.

I saw that I needed to crank up the juice on my “observer mode," both off and on my “cushion time."

Because I was getting complacent—so thank you for helping me. 

Lama Christie—she and Geshe Michael—they'd spend five weeks at Diamond Mountain, they'd go teach around the world (what eventually became DCI, that kind of level). 

And then they'd go into a retreat somewhere—and they would choose the location of their retreat according to what was going on in the world, and where there was some level of conflict, and then (I don't know how they would do it because it was before Airbnb stuff) they would find a place to rent and they would go in and they would do their retreat. 

And in their retreat they did meditations, they prepared their courses coming up, they did translation—they had a very strict schedule. 

So this one term, they chose to go to the south of France because of something that was going on in France between Europe and (I think) the Muslim communities in France…and anyway, they book this cottage in the south of France that's owned by a senior British couple who in their life in England, they raised their child, they did their career, they saved their money—because their retirement plan was to have a little group of vacation rentals in the south of France where people could come and enjoy the garden. 

And so they put all their money into buying this property [in the] south of France with a couple of different cottages on it, and they fixed them up, and made them beautiful, and they were living in one that was two stories [high].

And then the wife got cancer. 

And at first the doctors could help…and then it got to where the doctors said, “I'm sorry, there's nothing more we can do.” 

And she was still managing—but then she fell down and broke her hip, and for some reason they [the doctors] couldn't get her fixed. So now, she can't go upstairs to their bedroom, he needs to build her a bedroom down in the living room, and she can't do the garden anymore, and she can't greet the guests anymore—and all of a sudden this dream that they had is in the place where he can't do it himself, and he's taking care of her, and there's nothing anybody can do—that the end is coming—and they're in that position both physically and emotionally…

There's just nowhere to turn—there's no one to help—this is just going to go on to end badly. 

And then for the poor husband, he's seeing the writing on the wall—it's going to happen to him too, and they're just like [puts hands up, looking scared and frozen in place—out of options]

And Lama Christie is sharing this as what Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s point is—it’s that this samaric world is a deception. 

It's a complete deception that anything can go right here. 

[Someone comes along and says] “Oh no, no, it went right for them for 5, 6, 7, 10 years!”

{Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen replies] “but it ended badly—everything that seems to go right is going to end badly in this realm. That's how we made it.” 

Right? 

We made it that way. 

Why? 

Because we misunderstood. 

Why? 

Because we misunderstood. 

Do you see?

When we misunderstand—we misunderstand even the explanation we misunderstand—and we don't get it until we have the seeds ripening to where we can get it. 

And we all have a level at which we hear the words, and we are still misunderstanding. Which is why we hear them again and again and again. We keep taking teachings so that we can hear them again, and share them with others and hear them again, and et cetera. 

So, Lama Christie said that we learn to go through life recognizing the fact that nothing goes right—and we learn to ignore it, we learn to make excuses, we learn to just set our sights on something else when that one goes wrong. 

And so we don't take the opportunity to motivate ourselves to figure out 

“Why?” 

Everything that happens has a cause [makes a strained face and noises indicating discomfort with the fact that everything has a cause—that it’s not easy to hear].

So I don't know—if I had gone to do my retreat at that place, I would've said, “oh, I'm so sorry you're in that position, thank you so much for this retreat cottage, I'm going to go in and do my retreat, and that'd be the end of it.” 

And Lama Christie was pointing out, “no, let their suffering open your heart. See it, feel it. Take some responsibility for it—the reason I'm seeing them in this position is because of my own ignorance.”

Right? My own mistaken belief that if I save my money at the end of my life, I'll be able to do this fun thing that I put off my whole lifetime (not meaning they should have gone and done that when they were in their thirties—they didn't have the resources to do so). But the reason we do things, the attitude we have in our minds as we do them, we set up our refuge first thing in the morning and then we go on into life. 

And at the end [of our lives] we think we did a good job (and we did)... and we're trying to learn to grow our mindfulness, both off and on the cushion—our mindfulness of our ethical component of our behavior.

Why? 

Because we understand that nothing is anything other than ripening results of our past behavior—that means our current behavior is how we create what we'll experience in the future. Again, we have it up here [points to head]. 

How do we keep motivating ourselves to say, “my behavior, my behavior, my response, my reaction, what I say, what I think, what I do.” We start from this level of just noticing pain, suffering—our own and others. 

[But] first, our own…We think we're being self-involved to recognize, “dog gone it, ya know, I still have that pain, I still have this situation to deal with, woe is me.” 

And we can use that “woe is me” very intentionally to change our behavior. 

Even when we have a project to do or a task to accomplish, and we say, “oh, I have to go do blah, blah, blah. I have to go to the grocery store today.” 

Hearing ourselves say it that way, it means it's kind of a burden. “I'd rather do something else. I'll do it.” As opposed to, “I get to go to the grocery store today… I get to go to that committee meeting.” 

The way it's planted in our mind, [the seed] goes in differently—and that's going to have an influence, not only on my attitude when I'm at the committee meeting, but also on the other people there, and more importantly on my future experience of others and my world. 

So, when we see suffering—the point is not to go, “oh man, there’s still suffering.” The point is to remind ourselves of why and where it comes from—and because we're already trained in karma and emptiness, we recognize that it comes from the misunderstanding that thinks that pleasure comes from the object/the experience, and displeasure comes from the “them," and I am the recipient of all of that—kind of like a victim. 

It's all happening to me. 

And why should anything be bad? Everything should be good for me!

That misunderstanding makes us believe that what I do to get what I want, is what gets it for me—and it makes me believe that what I do to push what I don't want, is what pushes it away. 

And we just don't pay attention, when in fact, what we do to get it doesn't always work, and what we do to push it away doesn't always work—which is really what shows us that, “whoa, I must be misunderstanding something… because if this is really the cause of getting what I want, I should be able to get it every time I do that deed.”

So remember, with Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, as a kid he wanted to memorize [a text] something long—and he didn't just get the book off the shelf and start. He went and made some merit first—circumambulating the Buddha statue, begging Buddha, “please bless my mind so that I can memorize that text, so I can know it—please bless my mind.” 

And it's like, “what does walking around a statue have to do with being able to memorize something? Nothing and everything, right? It was his understanding that he would need merit to have that successful outcome when he went to memorize it—and then because of his good seeds, when he went to memorize it, it's like, “wow.” He reads it through once and then he can say it (as opposed to me, it would take me months, years, line by line, repeat it, repeat it, repeat it). 

But even if that worked, it would be a result of some kind of goodness.

But do we, when we are faced with a project, say, “yes, I understand that project has to be done by next week Tuesday, but excuse me, I need to go read Diamond Cutter Sutra in the park six times—and then I'll deal with your project.” 

Like… Do we do that? 

In which case, we are not taking refuge. 

That's hard, isn't it? 

It's like, “oh my gosh, so I need to get the dishes done. I should go circumambulate the stupa—just to get the dishes done?

Technically, yes. 

Any project you have coming up—I don't know, try it on for size—if you have some task that needs to get accomplished: 

Assign yourself something—because of karma and emptiness, mandala offerings, circumambulate, prostrations (we [already] know all of the merit making tools)...

Assign yourself some doable [merit making activity], ya know like 108 prostrations to the Buddha before you go and tackle that task—and then tackle the task—and see what happens. 

So, does planting those seeds today influence your tomorrow? 

Maybe not those specific seeds—but to hear a teaching like this and then go, “whoa, I'm going to try that out.” 

That's a result of past seeds. 

So we have past seeds of having done this before—or we wouldn't be in a class hearing what I'm saying—so what we do today adds to those seeds from before, and then it appears that these ones ripen fast. 

Who cares which seeds? 

As long as the ones that are ripening are the ones that say, “look, I can make this connection—maybe this works as well as deciding “this is my plan, this is how I need to accomplish this project.” 

You still do that, but you load that with this merit making thing. 

Alright, let's take a break.

*************

So Lama Christie was trying to help us weave this recognition of our own suffering, in the place where no things are really okay for me, which blocks our ability to go deep enough in our meditation. But rather than cranking up the juice of, “no, no, I'm just suffering more than I think I am.”

She says, “see all the suffering there is in the world, and people that don't apparently have any interest in, or capability of, hearing the message about behavior.”

I mean for that senior couple, there's not much point in saying, “you know this is all happening because of your past behavior, and if all you do is circumambulate a stupa, it will be alright—it's too late for them. 

They don't have the seeds. 

And even if you tell them—I mean it'd be great seats for future life to tell them, and no doubt that Lamas did—but you wouldn't go to them and say, “you know, you can fix her cancer if you just go out and help people.” 

It's too late—the karmas have ripened already. 

So, our human habit is to recognize somebody's distress, and then go,  “I'm so sorry” and then look the other way. And this practice says probably when we see someone else's suffering (we can't actually physically do anything for them at that moment), but rather than put it aside and look the other way, think, “man, I've really got to get my practice cranking up so that there aren't people with that kind of suffering anymore.” 

So using suffering—our own and others—to motivate our practice. And we need to go back to that from time to time. Because at every level of practice, there's still a kind of suffering that we're seeing in our world. More for us to do. 

So she goes on to quote Sakya Pandita, and what she quotes is, “whenever we're not taking refuge, we are not dharma practitioners… 

And “ouch” [cringes] right? Freedom from the four attachments, it was that [the text Lama Christie quoted was called Freedom from the Four Attachments]. 

It comes in course 14—beautiful story where that comes from, but it's harsh. 

It's a teaching that’s given to this young man who is making exquisite progress in his practice, and he's probably getting a little bit arrogant about his level of achievements, and this holy being [shakes her finger to indicate a scolding] gives him these four statements—brought him up short [forced him to have an unexpected realization]. 

And one of 'em [one of the four statements] is, “don't think you're a dharma practitioner any moment you're not taking refuge.” 

So what does it mean to take refuge in any moment? 

It would be in the moment of this lovely experience with my friends from Canada yesterday to be having this awareness, “wow, this is ripening kindness. Yay! Ripening kindness, yay!” 

And I'm using it up—I'm replanting it because we're together having a good time, and at the same moment being in the desire realm, we are all aging and dying—as we're enjoying each other. 

It was my friend's husband's, I don't know, 82nd birthday and he still plays tennis and rides his bike (not like what 80 years old was when I was a kid). But as we're doing this class, we’re aging and dying because we are desire realm beings (if you are…I am), and to have that in the back of our mind, we can get morose and depressed.

Or we can like, “no, we're not! I'm on it, right? I'm changing it by understanding karma and emptiness as I'm interacting.” 

But do you see how difficult that is? 

We would need this little observer going on all the time, and this little observer would need to be an observer who, I don't know how to describe it, who—with everything they observe, also “observes” but not physically [meaning they mentally observe] the dependent origination and empty nature of what's going on. 

That's what we're trying to build—this observer whose wise, versus the observer who's ignorant, but we need to find the observer first—be able to have access to it—and then we grow the seeds for it to be well-trained in “knowing” dependent origination and emptiness even before we can see it, growing it to the experience of seeing it directly (the seeds ripening, and then the emptiness directly) and then using what we saw to guide our behavior. 

Now, the observer doesn't do all that. It's just the observer, but the quality of what we bring to the observer is what we're trying to build. 

We won't do what we need to do to gather the goodness for that result if we don't have a good reason to do the skills over and over and over again—and if we don't do the skills over and over again (what skills? the meditation practice step-by-step) but also the skills of growing the merit in our “off cushion” time (which in this tradition is going for refuge, growing our bodhichitta, putting out our offerings, doing prostrations, mandala offerings, circumambulation—all those kinds of things…and we would add and being kind to your neighbor, and holding the door open for people, and smiling to the grumpy bus driver, and… 

Right? All of those kinds of merit making things too, not just, “sorry, I can't do the dishes—I haven't finished my 108 prostrations. 

So, Lama Christie's example for going for refug (not going for refuge— and then recognizing it) is that, in their yurt at Diamond Mountain one season, probably more than one—they had a mouse in their yurt, and mice sleep during the day and they do all kinds of stuff at night, and so they're really noisy.

And they were so upset with this mouse and they were doing all the worldly things that they could do to get that mouse out of the yurt. And of course, it kept coming back and making all kinds of noise. And for this class, Lama Christie said, ah, this class brought me up short [ made me have a sudden and unexpected realization] because I realized: 

All the time that we were putting the “Have-a-Heart” trap out, plugging the holes, et cetera. She realized, “I was no dharma practitioner all that time.” 

She said she got to thinking about, “why is there a noise making mouse? Oh, nuts, right? I must be making noise and disturbing other people.” 

And she realized that in the Ranch House (we called it the Lama House then) there were people staying in one room and then Lamas had the other room for study time—and she said, “oh, I realize I'm making noise. I'm making too much noise for the people living in that other room. All I need to do is have more consideration for the amount of noise I make for those other people.”

And she said, “finally, I was taking refuge.” 

Now, she didn't tell us what happened with the mouse, but presumably it became “not a problem” … whether it was still in there or not, whether it was still making noise or not. 

Do you see how she took refuge? 

It isn't just, “oh, this mouse is a ripening of my karma.” 

It's like, “what karma and what am I going to do about it?” 

So refuge—growing our refuge not just in words, but in our behavior.

Then the second thing that the Panchen Lama emphasizes is our bodhichitta—our wish for enlightenment—and we've already seen how that works: refuge for our own suffering, we easily get complacent (unless we're having one of those series of things going wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, then we can go for refuge) but in lives that things really are not so bad, it's easy for our refuge to become just words and not really apply it. When good things happen we want to be “refuge-ing” also—sharing it. 

So bodhichitta is when we strengthen our refuge by noticing—letting ourselves notice—other people's situations, other people's pain—and using other people's suffering as a motivation for opening our own heart.

As we learn about karma and emptiness and we understand, “well, everything I see in my world is ripening of my own seeds, and so those beings, they're just ripening of my karma—they and their sufferings are not real.” 

Is that the right conclusion? 

No.

[The right conclusion is:] “because my seeds are ripening, I'm seeing them as suffering and them and their suffering is very real—and so, my response to their suffering is how I plant new situations where I see more suffering or less suffering or the same suffering. 

Our tendency, as I have said, is that we block off other people's pain or distress. The ones close to us, we'll let them in, we'll try to help—but out of self-protection [we say], “I can't deal with that. I can't even notice that.” 

I admit I still have the tendency that when I'm driving by the person on the street with the sign “Need Help” … I have a hard time looking at them in the eye—I do a little tong len, but I can't really let them in my experience—it's this habit of protecting self because it feels so awful that you can't help them right then. And so we avoid. 

And so it's two [things]—it's seeing their pain and feeling that, “but I can't do anything about it.” 

Two things we're trying to avoid, and two things that will help open our conclusion of, “I've got to reach that state of omniscience so that I can know how to help them.” 

Technically we do help them just by sending them a little love—but how much nicer that would be if I looked them in the eye and sent them a little love and a smile. It doesn't have to be the money, right? 

So my point is bodhichitta is when we take the pain of our own suffering, and how strongly we try to avoid it, and recognize that those “others” are in that same boat—only worse—they're actually having the suffering that I'm afraid I might get in some way. 

They're in it—and it's karma's ripening. “What I see is mine. Whatever they see they experience is theirs. I can't know, actually.” 

And it's all very real. 

Diamond way says, “and because they're empty of self nature and you don't know how they're experiencing themselves, you don't know that they are not an emanation of a fully enlightened being (showing themselves as this suffering being) as an opportunity for me, “sloppy student," to crack open my heart to them. 

But that's a whole thought process, right? 

“If my “aware-er," my observer, has within its observer-mode, “oh, Buddha’s emanation, angel's emanation, angel” it would be a whole lot easier to look that person in the eye. 

It's like, “hi, angel!” 

Different. It would be different. 

Then they're there in order for me to recognize their suffering and use it as a motivator to deepen my practice, deepen my kindness, “bigger” my love, “bigger” my emptiness and karma practice both “on cushion” and “off cushion.” 

And so Lord Atisha is quoted, he says, “the wish for enlightenment is like the sun that clears away the darkness. The wish for enlightenment is like the moon that cools your searing torment.” 

So again, we can stay in the mode of, “I want to end my suffering. I want to reach nirvana.” 

OR 

We can recognize if that's possible for me, it's possible for everybody; and then we can recognize, “if I'm going to see everybody that way, that's going to come from me—and so, seeing other people suffering shows me that I still have work to do on myself—so that my seeds can become such, that there isn't anyone (there isn't any Buddha emanation) that needs to appear to be a suffering being for me anymore. 

When we don't have the seeds to see suffering, there won't be any suffering—not our own and not others. 

The wish for enlightenment (I want to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings)... in order for that to work, I need to know the “no self nature” nature of all existing things, including me. 

Ultimate bodhichitta is the sun that clears away the darkness, right? When we know the empty nature of all existing things, the darkness is cleared away. 

The darkness is our ignorance—our belief that something's identity and its pleasure or displeasure is in it. Emptiness, clears that away. 

The wish for enlightenment is like the moon that cools your searing torment because the apparent nature (your deceptive bodichitta)...

[gasps] “people's pain…they are beings who've helped me… they're helping me awaken by being the suffering being… oh my gosh, I want to help them stop suffering forever... oh my gosh, I can only do that if I grow that omniscience… and in order to grow the omniscience, I need the seeds for it… 

And the seeds for omniscience is compassion. 

So this wish for enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings—the words mean, “I need to “marry” those two (emptiness and karma) into the wisdom and compassion that will drive my behavior, no matter what. My behavior in the face of any other, whether it's a “physical person other” / “animal other” … even a “me other” right? 

How we interact with ourselves is still a subject / object [relationship] side going on. 

So compassion means, “I see suffering… suffering is awful… and understanding karma and emptiness—it's a mistake. It's a result of a mistake. And I want to stop the mistake—in me and in everybody I see… everybody I can experience. 

Our bodhichitta grows in our wish, our bodhichitta grows in our intellect, our understanding—but imagine the state of mind that reaches direct perception of emptiness, motivated with this big wish. 

“I'm going to use it to reach the omniscience. I'm going to use it to grow my compassion, to the point where my compassion manifests as my omniscience—because then I can be what other beings need to take up and give up, so that they too can stop their suffering. They too can become a being who helps everyone in their world stop their suffering.”

You see, it's this beautiful spiral. It's not one or the other. It's not just emptiness. It's not just karma—it takes both. 

Our wish for enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings. has those two components—and then it has the two “bigs," right? 

[1] I need to reach the biggest state I can become

[2] so that I can help the biggest number of beings. 

There's always these two parts. 

To get to that direct perception of emptiness, we need the seeds for “cushion time," to be able to sustain that level of deep single pointed concentration with the Xinjiangs—so that when we turn our mind to the true nature of our object of focus, we can sustain that depth of concentration necessary to go into an absence as a “ripening experience.” 

Intellectually, we can't get, it has to be (it will be) direct. 

Meaning, no conceptualizing.

Like riding a bike for the first time—learning about it through the YouTubes, thinking about it, what it's going to be like. That's all conceptualizing riding a bike. 

But you get on and ride (and of course doing it there's conceptualizing) but now your experience of riding the bike is direct. 

Your direct perception of emptiness will be direct. 

Then you come out and you start conceptualizing again. 

Okay, so then Lama Christie says, “look, if we use our words, ‘the wish to reach total enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings’ it does something in our heart. But is too broad—it's too big to really get us strong and tight in the moment (on our cushion or off our cushion) that we will get into automatic mode very swiftly with our word bodhichitta.”

And she quotes Master Shanti Deva—he says, “we're just a bunch of weary souls that have gone through the cycle of suffering again and again and again. We're sad and helpless.” 

And it's like, again, he's doing the Debbie Downer thing—but in order to inspire us, he wants that sense of “we're just pitiful if we don't do something about it.” 

It would be [like] knowing a little bit about karma and emptiness and then not using it for anything. Now that's pitiful.

And right, he's talking to an audience of practitioners. It's not like he's talking to people who've never heard the message at all, “that is pitiful.”You don't tell them they're pitiful. You say, “wow, you've got so much goodness. Let's see where it came from.”

But to a bunch of practitioners (especially the ones who disrespected him and now are like, oh my gosh, we made a big mistake) he's saying, “come on, you guys are pitiful.” 

But he included himself in it, that was so skillful. We're all just pitiful because we understand intellectually but we're not applying it enough to have transformed yet (theoretically, you can do it in this lifetime). 

Then to help inspire us, Panchen Lama reminds us that when we do grow our bodhichitta—even simply our wish form (our deceptive form) and we declare ourselves to living by it—the Buddhas take us into their family. 

Now, omniscient beings know us all, always—but it's a little bit like we're just another face in the crowd, until we declare ourselves on the path (especially the Mahayana path). 

And then it's like, “oh, okay, you're one of us now.” We have Buddhas and bodhisattvas who have taken us into their family—they're looking after us, they're helping us like we are their children—children that they're fond of, right? Unfortunately, there are children that don't get taken care of, but we have fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, cousins who all are like, “wow, here's another one.” 

And then it's happening from their side. And our mind can go, “well, I don't see them anywhere, right?”

Work with that. 

They're not going to make you see them. They can't make you see them, which is why Panchen Lama is pointing it out. 

So every time we do sit down for our daily practice and we intentionally start with recalling your holy being (you're planting seeds to see them around you)... 

When they remind you, “think of somebody you know that’s hurting.” They're having you crack open your heart to somebody else's pain. They're having you recall that the reason I see them in pain is my seeds. Whatever pain they're having is their seeds. 

And so worldly ways I try to help may or may not help—but the only thing that does help is to try to stop this desire realm altogether. 

Stop perpetuating it. 

I'll use their distress that I see, that's coming from me, as my motivation to crack this nut (about being able to concentrate deeply enough) to reach deeper conviction of karma and emptiness so that my “off cushion” behavior can get kinder and kinder—so that I can go on to see that suffering being in a different way. 

We want to use a specific “somebody” with a specific suffering, to motivate our cushion time—and then we do our preliminaries, which are built in merit making and cleaning out. And now that we're recognizing why they do that—not to make that given meditation session any better necessarily, but by way of doing them regularly, all those seeds are adding up—and then we're better able to do them off the cushion as well. 

Honoring those holy beings, feeling gratitude, making, offering, cleaning our heart, rejoicing, asking them to stay, asking them to teach, as part of the seeing the holy being we do those mental prostrations, right? 

They're all built in. 

And even if we do them on automatic pilot—we're still planting seeds that we wouldn't otherwise probably do in a given day. 

But we can take those preliminaries and we can use them as guidelines for our “off cushion” time too: 

We're interacting with the grocery store clerk…

Can we do it in a way that's respectful and honoring and grateful? 

Why not? 

Can we offer [for] the car to get in the lane in front of us instead of zooming past them—making them wait?

The kindnesses that we already do—they can be perceived as offerings. Can't they? 

[It] imprints differently to give something to somebody, versus to offer something to someone. It's worth thinking about all these different ways that we can be going for refuge using the clues that the practices share with us—not just on our meditation time.

[This] is Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s point: we're no dharma practitioner every moment we're not taking refuge—meaning not behaving according to karma and emptiness. 

Okay, so we have a few minutes left. Take a little break and let's do this meditation practice again. 

*************

Meditation 4: Train the Intensity of the Observer

Okay, so settle your body in first.

Do that top to down scan. 

Get it aligned. Get it relaxed. Get it solid. 

***15 seconds***

Then rising on the inside, 

Straightens things up a bit. 

***15 seconds***

Recall your holy being. Ask them to help you. 

***15 seconds***

Because there's someone in your world who doesn't seem to know and seems to be suffering…. 

…and so feel your urge to fine tune these skills through which you'll be able to better and better. Be aware of seeds, ripening, seeds, planting, and the necessary no self nature of the three spheres… 

…and when you feel that strongly as your motivation…

…start this training session by zooming your focus of attention in on the breath at the nostrils… 

…I focus as if your life depends upon it. 

***30 seconds***

Notice if there's [an] effort to stay on… 

Notice if there's distraction, if there's dullness… 

Adjust the clarity…

Adjust the intensity—the fascination… 

***30 seconds***

Intentionally widen that focus to include the “aware-er” of it—the observing. 

***30 seconds***

Check the level of intensity…

Check for agitation or dullness… 

***1 minute***

Now very intentionally, have the “observing” turn to outer sound.

Watch the experience as you do. 

***30 seconds***

The mind seems to fly out to the object that's making the sound—apparently.

We somehow need to have it identified before we can pull back and just experience the sound… 

When you practice on your own, try to catch that “going out” to find the sound—and then coming back in.

We're training to take “observer” and turn it from “experience of breath at nostrils” to “experience of outer sound," with no more identification than that “raw experience” sound. 

***1 minute 15 seconds***

Now very intentionally turn that observing onto inner sound. 

***15  seconds***

Again, see how quickly an identity is imposed…

But then drop the identity rest in observing the sensation, or the inner sound.

***1 minute***

Check. 

***15 seconds***

Nice, now very intentionally turn your “observing” to those sensations at nostrils. 

***30 seconds***

Zoom in tightly on those sensation of nostrils, so that you drop the “aware-ing” …

And then loosen up [and] bring the “aware-ing” back. 

***30 seconds***

Nice, now let go of all of this object—bring your attention back to that precious holy being before you.

Think of the goodness that we've done—motivated by the distress that we see in that other person… 

And think of all these instances of goodness we have planted… 

Think of it all as a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands—a tangible, valuable thing… 

Be happy with yourself for your efforts… 

Feel your gratitude to your precious holy being... 

Ask them to please stay close—to continue to guide you, help you, inspire you... 

And then offer them this gemstone of goodness. 

See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart. 

See them there. Feel them there. 

Their love, their compassion, their wisdom. 

It feels so good we want to keep it forever, and so we know to share it: 

By the power of the goodness that we've just done, 

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom,

And thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person… 

To share it with everyone you love… 

To share it with every existing being everywhere… 

See them all filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness, filled with the wisdom of loving kindness. 

And may it be so. 

*************

After Class

Okay, so this seems like such a simple meditation, but it is deceptively difficult. 

And so you just keep trying, “what does she mean by focus? Tighten? Open up?” 

Try, try, try, try. 

And all of a sudden you'll go, “ah, I think that was it. Okay.” 

You'll get it… 

Any specific questions? [asking for questions from students] 

The sequence is: 

Breath [points to nose]

Outer sound [points at ear] that goes like [points away from ear, then back towards ear while making a noise indicating the location/perception of the sound is changing]  

So you want to  catch that [points away from ears and back towards ears] 

And eventually we'll be able to go to “sound” and it won't do the: 

[points  away indicating a distraction and naming it] “bird” 

[points another direction, naming another sound] “computer”

It'll just go—”sound.” 

And then we go down into heartbeat and it goes,  “heartbeat. Oh, there. Right.” 

But eventually we won't need that, we'll go, “okay, ‘inner’.” 

And we're getting the observer / the “experience-er” / the “aware-er”

Passive. 

That's why I like to use the “ING” instead of “er” 

“Aware-ING’  is trying to experience. 

[Tom raises her hand]

Sarahni asks “Yes, Tom?”  

Tom begins, “I was getting from this class that it's like we're reprogramming back to a default setting.” 

Sarahni interjects, “Yeah, good one.”

Tom continues, “we have to move from the, because evolutionally, our body is so programmed to the fight, flight and automation that we have to move farther than that to come back into the connection of the consciousness and the natural movement of it—rather than the breath—the physical, the muscles [etc.] 

And that's why also our reaction when we see a homeless person or something is first reaction is kind of like this [indicating discomfort] and then we have to, intellectually have to, move through it. 

I was thinking [about this] the other day:

Just before our ACI class I was in the plaza and I was walking into my car and someone was hanging out around my car and it was a homeless person, and it was a little stressful, it was nighttime, I was a little uncomfortable, and they were kind of talking to themselves, and I put something in my car, and I walked away.

And it bothered me that I was kind of uncomfortable. 

My reaction—I didn't do anything toward them—but internally, my reaction I didn't like. 

And when I walked back out of the grocery store, I was like, I don't really have much. But I was like, anyway, reached out and asked, “are you doing okay? Do you need anything? I don't have much. Do you want a donut or some bread I can offer you?” 

And they were like, “no, thank you. I'm meditating.” 

And I was like, “okay. Interesting. I was like, okay, maybe I need to ask more people how they're doing. Maybe I have something to learn from that.” 

But I just feel like I have to reset and really work through the emotional, and I think that's the gap that I'm sensing and seeing too when I also teach yoga—I see the gaps of, “I feel this thing, but I know it's not real.”

And then it's like we have the space in between—and I guess what I've realized from today is that to close the space is to come back to emptiness—come back into, “it's coming from me (even though right now it's not coming as naturally to me as I would like it to be) so I would really like it to become my default mode [so that I can get] out of this.”

Lama Sarahni agrees, “Right, that's what we're training, training.

We're doing the skills  to change the default, right?

Our human default is actually to go into fight or flight—into protection mode—and so we're trying to give ourselves a new default—a vagus nerve default, right? 

Everything's going to be fine.” 

[Rachana raises her hand]

Lama Sarahni continues, “Okay, yes Rachana?”

Rachana begins, “I have a very fortunate problem, I dunno if anybody else will have—but when we get to the portion of the meditation where we are trying to focus on external sounds—I live in the middle of nowhere, there's no planes, there are no external sounds actually—which I'm grateful for, but then what do I do? 

Lama Sarahni asks, “even your computer doesn't have a fan going?” 

Rachana responds, “it's really quiet!” 

Lama Sarahni replies, “Then you focus on the quiet—but then in your own session time just don't spend a lot of time there—go directly to the inner experience… 

[Tom says “sound of your breath” in the zoom chat] 

Sarahni acknowledges “You could use that. Yeah.” 

Yeah. Good. 

“Too bad a problem!” Sarahni laughs.  

Sarahni Calls on another student, “Yes Nati?”

Natalia begins, “So my question is, when I realized that everything I'm experiencing is because of my past seeds, and then all of a sudden it makes me so free and happy (what Tom said about removing the default programs) but I can see people suffering, and then I go to people suffering and they're also because of my perception. 

So I'm thinking if I just change the perception [...] I don't need to experience it, but [that doesn’t] end it. 

It's still going on. 

But it gives the freedom of not being attached, not not-attached, but not being hooked into this—so there is so much openness there.

Lama Sarahni responds, “Yes, you're not attached to the old reaction—either the reaction of “get” or reaction of “push away.” 

When you understand [that] their suffering is ripening—it is happening.

So it's not that we can just wish their suffering away by knowing that “they're empty.”

Because it's ripe and it's hard cement—it's there. 

But understanding why it's there and how I respond to it—changes “future.” 

Natalia replies, “Yes, the programming is [what] I'm letting go of, what Tom said—after [the] automatic reaction to this. 

Lama Sarahni confirms, “Right. That's the practice. 

Okay. Thank you everyone. I'll see you next week, if not sooner. I'm stopping the recording.”

*************

Vocab:

Nyi drel     avadhuti

Dushe sumpawa   kusulu or bhusuku

Kusali

Master Saraha

Dohas

Gnyugma

Tsok tsak

Drip jang

*************

Introduction

Okay, welcome back.

For the recording, we are Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s Mahamudra training class on February 11th, 2025. 

Let’s gather our minds here as we usually do… 

The full opening contemplation and prayers can be found in the transcript of Class One under “Gather Our Minds.”

May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other.

*************

Meditation 5: Observing Thoughts

So set your body for a meditation.

Go through your steps.

***15 seconds***

Your focus of attention to that sensation of your breath at the tip of your nostrils.

***15 seconds***

Adjust your clarity and your intensity.

***1 minute***

Now open up just enough, to be also aware, of being on those sensations—of the breath at the nostrils as your object.

Passive observer.

***45 seconds***

Observing breath at nostrils—nothing else.

***15 seconds*** 

Jack for scattering…dullness. 

***1 minute*** 

Now intentionally shift the observer's “observation” from breath—to outer sound. 

Still being the passive observer. 

Now the object is sound.

***15 seconds*** 

Simply letting the sound wash over you, or through you. 

No story, no following. 

***15 seconds*** 

Notice if your mind is trying so hard to identify, to make a story…

Let all that go. 

Be the observer—of simple sound.

***1 minute*** 

Check your intensity, your clarity, your focus. 

***1 minute***

Now intentionally turn your focus of “the observer” to the thoughts that arise. 

Simply observing—meaning, the thought arises, and your observer,  “notes” , and lets it pass. 

Observer lets them come and go.

Just like the sounds came and went.

***1 minute***

Is your observer struggling? 

Let it relax. 

***1 minute***

Relax enough so thoughts will come—but hold your focus of “the observer” so you don't follow them. 

We'll stay one more minute.

***1 minute***

Nice. 

So bring your observer back to your breath. 

And to [the] awareness of your body in your room, here in class. 

Make a quick dedication that this effort helps bring greater clarity for that person that you wanted to be able to help. 

And then when you're ready, open your eyes.

Take a stretch. 

*************

Lecture

That was amazingly difficult, wasn't it? Or is it only me? 

So, when you do this practice for yourself—write down all the thoughts that come to your mind about watching your thoughts. I remember my list was long—because it's such a slippery topic, and then I park my mind on the next thought and it doesn't come. Then just about the time where I'm losing interest—a string of them.

And then what makes a thought is that you follow it and give it it’s identity, and that's the point to get to the place where we're recognizing, “oh my gosh, these thoughts aren't what I think they are.” 

But don't go there—we're not going into emptiness. 

We're getting to the ability to be this observer, even of thoughts, as they pop up and pass—because if we don't engage them, there's nowhere for them to go. 

They just fizzle, right? 

Which makes the thought get the story about the thought (by our paying attention and going with it). 

Okay, so last class, if you recall, we left off where Panchan Lama had quoted from Sakya Pandita saying that “any moment we're not taking refuge, we're not a Buddhist.” 

And he didn't mean any moment—we're not saying I take refuge in Buddha Dharma, Sangha—meaning any moment we're reaching into our outer world with outer ways of trying to get what we want and avoid what we don't want—we are not being Buddhist. 

We are not taking refuge, because refuge is in karma and emptiness and if we, when we, are truly taking refuge, and we have something that we need to accomplish (Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen wanted to memorize the Lam Rim Chenmo so he went and circumambulated the Buddhist stupa) and then he got out the book and it's like, “wow, look how easy this is.” 

But you have a project to accomplish at work… [and you say] “Excuse me, I'll be right back. I've got to go to the stupa and I'm going to spend the day at the stupa and don't worry, your project will get done.” 

I don't know that we would keep our job very long—unless it worked, right? Unless by the time you got back from the stupa, the project had been solved. 

And I don't know—that could happen, right?

But then somebody else is going to get the credit for solving the problem, and we still might get fired—unless we could show them again, “give me another project” okay, go to the stupa, right?

Theoretically it could work that way. 

But why do I say “theoretically”? 

It’s because of that time delay. 

If our goodness is such that we could ambulate the stupa and have the results show up by the time we got back to the office, we wouldn't lose our job. 

But I don't know about you, I have a longer time lag—and because of the longer time lag, I would not be brave enough to say to the boss, “yeah, I'm going to go circumambulate the stupa to solve that problem at work.”

I wouldn't be brave enough—and as a result I would not be Buddhist in that moment. He’s harsh! 

And then it seems like, well then we shouldn't do anything but circumambulate stupas and read the diamond cutter sutra and yeah, do our mantras, [etc]. 

How would anything get done in the world? And I don't know, it just starts me off in a different direction about what is there to get done in the world, anyway, other than that? 

But let's not go there. 

The point being—to even feel like, “oh man, there are times I'm still not taking refuge.” 

We even say that because we do still believe that there are things in our outer world that we can rely upon, to go to, get us what we want, and avoid what we don't want. 

And it's in our seeds. 

So it's not because we're bad or that we're not trying—it's that we're made up of that old mistaken belief! And so it is ripening as our reality. Our natural first reaction to “it's lunchtime” is to go to the refrigerator and make oneself lunch.

And it doesn't actually work. 

And it's like, “yes, it does Sarahni! There’s bread and butter.” You get whatever you have, you get it out, you eat lunch, and it looks like it works. But, [just in the fact of] there being food to eat, [and] the belief that that food would nourish me as lunch—all of that is being driven by some way in which I helped somebody else get something that they wanted or needed at the time. 

[And the extent to which my mind was focused on that fact] as I was eating my tortilla lunch, [that] is the extent to which I'm being Buddhist at the moment—this lunch is coming from past kindness. 

And it's hard to keep that in mind because our seeds don't have it in it yet until we plant some that way. 

So his point isn't that we're just bad Buddhist, why are you [even] bothering [to try]... His point is [for us to] look at the things that we are going for refuge in—the things that we believe are the source of our satisfaction, happiness, safety—we have families, we have partners, we have jobs, we have homes, we have work…what else is on this list that we expect? 

We have air to breathe, we have earth to walk on, we have physical bodies, we have some amount of health, we have the dharma, we have our Lamas. It's like, we do so have things we can rely on. 

Okay, I see—can't really rely on the family, can't really rely on the work, can't really rely on all of those things—but come on, I've got the dharma, I've got my Lama, and I've got my growing understanding of karma and emptiness. 

So, first Panchan Lama wants us to really recognize how meaningless our reaching out into the outer world for any kind of satisfaction or happiness is. 

It's just meaningless.

Because it doesn't work even when it seems like it works, and when it seems like it works, it is like worse—because we reinforce seeds that say, “look, it works!” when in fact, when it worked it was a result of some past kindness—not what we just did (as I just explained). 

So he's wanting us to really look at all the different things that we expect are the source of our ability to function in our world, and not reject them, but recognize that they don't work every time—so they can't be the cause of the result that “seemed to happen by way of what I just did with them” (or we did together). 

So we get some clarity of this, and then in this tradition they say, “great, go into retreat. Learn to meditate, go into retreat.” As if there's something about being in retreat that's going to magically fix this wrong view. 

And retreat can be magical—often is amazing—and can also be such that we come out a more angry, more frustrated, more upset being than we went in. There's nothing about being in retreat that's going to fix us, unless we have the seeds for retreat to be a positive experience, through which we can plant seeds, through which when they ripen we'll see us change. 

But it's not necessarily the case that what we do in retreat is going to ripen by the end of retreat—whether it's a five day, a month long, however long your retreat is—it takes time for seeds to grow, ripen and manifest. 

So we really can't take refuge in retreat, and then he goes on to say, well look, we can't even take refuge in our own mind—and we're going to go into this more. We keep whittling away things and it's like, “finally all there is left is our Lama and our mind.” 

Surely our mind is where we go to do the work to make things change, and it is true that it’s in the mind that all that happens, but if we're thinking of our mind as “this thing” that we have that we can “get in there” and manipulate in some way, then even our mind fails us—because we're thinking of it wrongly. We're thinking of it as a “thing that exists” that we “have” that we're going to manipulate just like we did the corn tortilla to make it edible. 

And if we're relating to our mind in that way, we're no Buddhists. 

Because it's not that. 

Do we have minds? Yes. 

What are they? Hopefully we're going to get there. 

I can't really answer that in words. 

Each one of us needs to get into the experience and find what it is and what it isn't. 

What we thought it is, what we think it is, and then come to experience like, “oh my gosh, that's impossible.” 

And that what that “thing” is that we were calling “mind” is this instead, right? Not a “thing," but, I don't know, a process or something.

So words will fail even in our own attempt to describe what we come up with when we realize what we mean by this “thing” / “mind.” 

But in order to be able to even work with it, we use words to give ideas and hopefully we have the goodness that those words will help us get some glimpses into our own experience. So we can't rely upon our own minds as the source of our happiness, which is what it means to take refuge. And then it's like he's even going to go on to show us how we can't rely upon our own Lamas. And it's like, wait a minute, right? That's all I have to rely upon, but we'll see how we can't and how we can. 

And then lastly Lama Christie was pointing out, is that we'll come up with our own identity—we have an idea of our own “identity." 

We have to—in order to be an individual in and amongst a world of other identities.

So we have this identity of ourself that as human adults (it's probably pretty strong whether you recognize it or not), and so you have this idea of “I'm this sort of person.”

And “this sort of person” has certain qualities and characteristics that you have, and [other] ones that you don't have—and we believe that those qualities and characteristics and identities are ours and they're in us and we're going to have them.

And yes, to some extent we want to grow them, but come on, they're real—that's the real me.

And Lama Christie shared an experience she had with (one of her friends' experiences) who Geshe Michael was their common Lama—and this friend had said to Geshe Michael, look, I'm not a jealous person, and blah, blah, blah, and Christy Hla said she watched that person in the next week melt down in jealousy over something. 

And the person was so horrified to find that, “oh my gosh, I believed I was not a jealous person and now I see that I am to the extent that I didn't even recognize it when it came up and blah, blah.” 

It was a big thing. 

But it’s helpful to hear that—because it gives us the permission to say, well, “wow, maybe I do have those 84,000 mental afflictions that Buddhist talking about, even though in this whole life that one has never come up.”

The minute we go, “[oh] so [that means] I don't have it” [motioning to indicate “I don’t have an issue with that particular mental affliction”] ***fashion your seatbelt*** 

So our identity of who we are, if we've got this solid idea of it, we're trying to take refuge in that and it doesn't work because there's no such thing, right? 

We try to take refuge in it and then it isn't there for us when we need it. 

So on the other hand, the fact that we can't take refuge in any of these things is on the one hand terrifying because it leaves us in this free fall… but on the other hand, it means all of those things, including our own identity (our own mind), are available to shift into the “purity” that would be our refuge—to shift into the happy being that is what we're using everything else to get. 

The fact that things are not what they appear.

The fact that they have no identity of their own.

The fact that all those things are shifting, shifting, shifting, shifting… means that they could shift “towards the purity” as swiftly as they shift “towards more suffering.” 

Now technically we understand that they're shifting 65 per instant—and if we're stuck in the, “well, they're shifting 65 per instant, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, more bad,” we'll be stuck in that. 

But the shift doesn't have to go from bad to bad to bad—because of the process of the shifting, at any moment the shift could be into “good” (into positive). 

And actually we see that more than in life, more than we probably notice—it goes from a chilly day to a warm day, it goes from hungry to not hungry anymore. it goes from not having enough gas in your car to having gas in your car. 

Those are all good shifts—still samaric shifts I admit, but the “shift-ability” of our reality is the promise that we can, in fact, create the causes for the shift to be that “upward spiritual spiral” that takes us more and more towards that pure world for everyone—that is really what's driving us in our worldly life, right? We say, “I want my happiness,” but really we want happiness for everybody. 

So this practice—that “the watching our thoughts” is not the “doing Mahamudra—it's another step in the process of getting to where we actually start to turn on the Mahamudra part. 

And it's a necessary place to be—the Mahamudra that we're looking at, the emptiness of an object—the object we're going to find the emptiness of is our own mind. 

So we have to be able to go through these more and more subtle things to be aware of, so that we can have the subtlety necessary to be the observer of our own “observing," and then be able to hold that with enough focus, clarity, and intention to be able to turn our “awareness of the awareness” to the “emptiness of the awareness” as it's happening. 

So if we can't stay aware of our thoughts without following them, there's no way we can get to the “awareness of awareness” without following it, right?

So step-by-step by step. 

So as we're exploring the thoughts that arise—what you will end up exploring is—when does the thought actually become the thought?

It takes some kind of recognition of it as “a thought” for it to be “a thought," and then it seemed like it had to be there first to “get that.”

And that whole process is going to happen, and you're going to let it go.

As you're working with that you'll recognize that, “gee, sometimes I can think a thought—intentionally think a thought—and you run it through, hopefully all the way to the end and “finish it.”

And then when you notice or start to think, “yeah, see, I'm good at thinking thoughts. I direct my thoughts” and you notice that how many times are you directing a thought but you get sidetracked by another thought before you finish [the original] thought, and then when you notice that—then think to yourself, “well then how much was I really in charge of that first thought if the other one took me off of it?”

So that we can come to recognize that even when we think we are the one thinking the thought:

“I need to think this thought.” 

“I'm going to think it now.” 

I do think it now.” 

…that, in fact, that process is impossible to be under our control—and thank goodness we know the punchline (seeds ripening) to feel like I'm in charge of thinking this thought—because we don't have the power to necessarily think it all the way through to the end, without some distraction. 

If it was under my control, I would do that anytime I wanted to do that.

So our thoughts themselves are not under our control. 

Again, scary and liberating—because we understand that those thoughts themselves are ripening out of seeds…and if we can / when we make the seeds to be able to “carry a thought all the way through” and that seed ripens—we carry a thought all the way through! 

So we're wanting to show ourselves that in this meditation, to help us recognize the power of karmic seeds—and then when we understand the power of karmic seeds because of our training in karma and emptiness, that reveals to us the necessary “no self nature” of the thoughts, “the observer” of the thoughts and the “observing” of the thoughts, right?

Those three spheres, okay?

Lama Christie went on to point out that we believe that we have a certain level of understanding of “this thing called emptiness,” and most likely, as humans, we think that because we understand emptiness to this level now, [that] we will always understand emptiness to at least that level—and that we're working to understand it better and better and better—and we think that we're just going to add to it in increments. 

However—any level of understanding of emptiness and dependent origination that we have in our mind now is a ripening seed, right? 

Ripening karmic seeds. 

Which means that—we're using them up, as we think of them.

And to what extent are we planting them as we go through our day? 

So our tradition says, “study, study, study…think about emptiness, read about emptiness, take classes about emptiness.” 

Do you see why? 

As we're doing it, we're ripening those amazing classes / teachings—but we're also replanting those seeds. 

And without some version of replanting our seeds (of the marriage of karma and emptiness), we're using them up. 

So it is possible to wake up one morning and have just lost it—not from having a stroke, not like that—but just karmic seeds shift.

They could shift—something could happen—and some mental affliction comes up and all of the sudden that “emptiness and karma stuff” either just doesn't arrive anymore (in our thought process) or when it does, we go, “well, that's just nuts!”

Because seed ripening shift has happened and it can happen with our Lamas as well. 

And then it's like—it's not that you see that person again and you think, “gee, I used to think of them as my Lama.” 

It's just that the seeds have shifted so much, it’s like you never thought of them as your Lama. 

It's hard to grasp because we think we have this continuum of memory and our memories are always going to be the same—but as I get older, I see that memories are not all the same—and those seeds could get lost.

And of all the dangerous stuff that Lama Christie was pointing out in this class—that's probably the scariest:

We think, “lose the seeds to see a Lama and I'll just go find another one.”

But we could lose the seeds to even understand the power of having a spiritual teacher—and then just be off the path, and essentially (in a way), have to start over in whatever time frame the seeds ripen for enough renunciation to start again. 

So understanding these “emptiness-es” of ourself and other—it's at every level—even our understanding of emptiness and karma. 

So the Lamas are wanting us to get this sense of being pushed in this direction (the samsaric direction) of the end of everything that we know and have, right? 

We call it dying.

And we were born with a certain amount of seeds for this life—and yes, we're helping to protect life so that this life will be “as better as possible” but it's debatable whether you can actually add seeds for the length or not—regardless:

Whether it's going to be long or short,

we're headed there with every instant of

burning off those “65 per instant” seeds for this life.

A life in which we have met the dharma. 

The life in which our seeds have ripened.

A growing understanding of karma and emptiness.

A life in which the seeds have ripened.

Seeing the power of having a spiritual teacher, and

Using them as a powerful karmic object

with which to plant our seeds. 

So really the refuge that we have…the thing that we have to take refuge in—I am reaching a stall. 

I want to say it's karma emptiness, but I just said we can't even take refuge in that—because we could lose our understanding of that. 

But it's not the karma and emptiness we can't take refuge in—it is our understanding of the karma and emptiness that we can't take refuge in, right? 

The understanding of karma and emptiness—the ramification of that when we understand it well enough is, “oh, then my behavior matters.

How I plant my seeds is how I grow my emptiness. 

Understanding how I keep my Lama.

How I interact with the samsaric world is how I go about stopping it—transforming it.

And we can take refuge in that.

And it's work. 

It takes this strong effort. 

So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, in his reading, he quotes from someone named Master Saraha—and Saraha doesn't come up very often in the open teachings. 

Master Saraha was Arya Nagarjuna’s heart teacher—and he was one of those crazy yogis who would spit out these one-liners, and leave—and kind of leave you there puzzled about what to do, but kind of pierced through something in your heart mind, that wakes something up in you.

Master Saraha, here. 

And those sayings that he would blurt out got compiled by somebody (I don't know who or how), and they're called the Dohas /  Master Saraha’s Dohas. Doha means one, Dohas with an ‘s’ is plural—but I don't know if that's true in Sanskrit, or if the English use of Doha makes it plural—I don't know. 

So they call them Master Saraha’s Dohas. 

It means his spiritual songs—these verses that just seem out of context, but really, really meaningful. 

At the end of each Doha, Master Sarahaa says: 

“And thus speaks the dagger.” 

And so Saraha means “the one who cuts to the quick of things.” 

And so he calls himself the dagger. 

We had a Bok Jinpa course on Master Saraha’s Dohas—do you remember that? Vimala? Sumati?

[Vimala and Sumati both smile] 

Yeah, it's on my list—it'll be fun to explore and try to share someday. 

But anyway, Master Saraha’s Dohas—one is quoted to us by Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, and it says, Master… The Dagger says: 

When you do perceive—you perceive that it is everything. 

No one could possibly come to know anything other than it. 

It is all we read about. 

It is all we hold to.

It is all we meditate on.

It is said to be the heart of all the commentaries.

There does not exist a view which it does not represent.

(There's a second part to this Doha that I'll get to after our break)

But the “it” that he's talking about here is this “thing” that in Tibetan is called gnyugma.

It's hard to say, gnyugma.

Gnyugma literally means unborn mind. 

Have you read that term?

When they talk about, “see your unborn mind as it is.”

Gnyugma.

It's like what is also called “primordial mind.” 

And then Lama Christie will go on to try to help us understand what's meant by this unborn mind, primordial mind—and we fall again into that conundrum of “words are in the ‘appearing nature plane,’ and so cannot adequately describe this thing that we mean by gnyugma—the primordial mind.”

We're talking about the emptiness—but it has to be the emptiness of something for there to be an emptiness—but without the emptiness, the something isn't the something—but without the something, you can't talk about, it's emptiness.

So we're trying to get at that thing that then becomes labeled “primordial mind.”

So let's take our break and then we'll talk a little bit more about it—before we get into why we're talking about it.

*************

So this thing “primordial mind,” when we do perceive—we perceive that it is everything.

This gnyugma… 

No one could possibly come to know anything other than it.

It's all we read about. 

It's all we hold to.

It's all we meditate on. 

It is said to be the heart of all the commentaries. 

There does not exist a view which it does not represent… 

So, to perceive “unborn mind,”

Means to perceive the true nature of our own mind—

So it's not that our “unborn mind” is something

Different than what we're calling “our mind,” 

but what the term “unborn mind” is using to describe, is 

The true nature of “our own mind.” 

So that will be this investigation that will go on for a while—about how we take a beginning understanding of what we mean by “the true nature of our own mind” and work with it, work with it, work with it—until we have a direct perception of the true nature of our own mind—and then that experience is the experience of what they call “perceiving our unborn mind.”

When I hear myself saying the words, I can catch this holding to “my mind” and “my unborn mind” as these two different things [holds up hands to indicate two separate things] that are like in some kind of little box, that it [this one] has its identity [moves one hand] and it [this other one] has its identity [moves the other hand], and somehow I'm going to bring them together. It’s like, inside my mind there's a little teeny unborn mind—and actually in other teachings they actually teach it that way. 

But it's all a tool for being able to use “intellectually understood words” in an appearing (and so, deceptive) reality to reach a direct experience of it.

When you do perceive—he doesn't say, “when you do perceive it.” 

When you do perceive—you perceive everything. 

You perceive that it is everything.

So, a teaching by the Third Karmapa was about “unborn mind,” and he said, “it's like how a wave stirs up the water.”

The unborn mind is stirred up—and what manifests is innumerable objects of our outside world. 

Do you remember how [The} Mind Only [school of Buddhism] says,”oh, all you're ever looking at is “mind only.” 

Everything is mind. 

And yet—functioning things have their own “real identity,” because they function.

And it's like, “come on, what I'm looking at when I look at the tree outside is my own mind?” They say. 

It's like, “no, it's not. It's the tree outside.” 

And yet here we are back to that, saying, “ripples of the unborn mind are “what we are experiencing.”

There's always ripples on the ocean—waves and ripples—and those waves and ripples are what we call “karmic seeds ripening.” 

So, seeds ripen into a mental image. 

We experience that experience, [holds up a pen] “me holding pen”experience,

and we interpret it as: 

“there's a pen of its own”

“there's a me of my own” and

“the two of us are here together.”

But in fact, this whole experience is [holds up hands and starts to move fingers in a rippling motion “ripples of the unborn mind.”

And then this [moving fingers in a rippling motion] is the experience—and those ripples just like on the water, they're constantly moving—it looks like the wave is moving through the ocean, but it's not.

Right?

The water humps [crests] here, and is down there, and then humps [crests] here, and is down there—but it's not a wave that's moving through—t's circumstances changing.

In this way—our experience is ripples of the unborn mind. 

The whole play of the universe comes from these ripples on the unborn mind.

So now, how big is your unborn mind? 

Where is your unborn mind? 

It has no limitation.

It has no place.

Is it a thing?

No.

But is it?

Yes.

Lama Christie used to refer to “the realm of is.”

Which is a beautifully vague term that can be really helpful.

Panchan Lama had said earlier that if we really understand Mahamudra meaning “the emptiness of our own mind…”

…let me say—”the True Nature of our own mind…”

If we were really good at logic, we would realize this thing about every experience—every existing experience, and every existing thing is “ripples of the unborn mind.”

To say “karma and emptiness,”and to say “every existing thing is ripples on the unborn mind,” is to say the same thing—says Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen—and that “we could get there by logic, or we can get there by scripture, but most importantly from both, to get there by personal experience, is when it “locks in” as a realization—as what has become real for us.

So, “when we see it we'll know” they always say—and so “I think I saw emptiness” wasn't quite…close, maybe…but you'll come out shifted, such that there's no doubt anymore.

And then what we learn about that experience, too, is that you come out of it now-knowing that “every Buddhist scripture is absolutely true” is the words Geshe Hla uses.

I have a little bit of trouble interpreting that, but accurate. 

I call it accurate.

Like functioning. It will function to help us all stop suffering forever.

And then Master Saraha has said, “it is the correct view of every correct view.” 

So I don't know, my own mind is like, “wait a minute, we're the only ones that have correct view.”

And of course that's totally mistaken, because any view that holds this correct view within it is going to be a correct view—no matter who you say taught it, or how you got there to reach it. So just because someone has the experience that we would call “the direct perception of emptiness imbued with bodhichitta” doesn't mean that somebody would have that experience and come out suddenly taking refuge and Shakyamuni Buddha, right?

They can reach it from their own tradition—and they'll have their own words for it—but the impact on their mind will be such that they use their behavior change to get there, and they'll continue to use their behavior change to fine tune it.

So, oh man, the rest of Master Saraha’s Doha says:

Yet it's only revealed to us through

The holy lips of our own Lama—

Hold onto the essence of what your Lama teaches you

And see your unborn nature as if it were a piece of gold

Resting in your open hand; that thing that children cannot see

For every child is fooled by his perceptions. 

And so the dagger speaks. 

So he said, “perceive the true nature of your own mind and it's everything.”

And Panchan Lama has earlier pointed out that even our Lama is not “a thing—in them from them—that we can go to as a source of our happiness (when we're thinking of them in a wrong way).

And now, Panchen Lama is pointing out that Master Saraha says, “and rely upon your Lama. The only way to get to the direct perception of the true nature of your own mind, is to rely upon what your Lama teaches you.”

So to rely upon your Lama, and to rely upon what they teach you, is two different things. 

Is it not?

Right, to rely upon the Lama means, “you fix me—you do it.”

And of course, that's not what a Lama is or what they do “from their side” or “from our side,” but what they do is teach—either formally or by example or by Shakti pot, or however.

And then it's up to us, the student, to try on for size what it is they've taught us, and keep at it, and keep asking.

And The Dagger says, “do so and you'll come to see the true nature of your own mind as if it's a gold nugget laying in your hand.”

Meaning as obvious as the gold nugget in the palm of your hand—the direct experience of the true nature of your own mind will be that obvious.

In the moment—will you be aware? “oh, I'm seeing the true nature of my own mind like a gold nugget in my hand?” 

No.

Because that's all appearing reality. And your direct perception of the true nature of your unborn mind will be it's empty nature. So you won't have the awareness of doing it while you're doing it. 

And when you come out—you'll realize, “whoa, that was as obvious as a gold nugget in the palm of my hand.

Do you see?

So he means by that, “this direct experience of it.”

But how can the Lama, or even the words out of the Lama's mouth, make us have that experience, right?

They can't—because if they could, they would!

They would just walk up to you and say the word and *boom* you'd go into the direct perception of emptiness.

Maybe they're doing that all the time—but my seeds don't ripen for them to be able to do that.

So how is it?

Why is it that it's only through the Lama's words that we can access our own mind? 

And Panchan Lama says, of course, it's because they teach us what to do—and what they teach us to do is tsok tsak and drip jang.

Tsok tsak means gather goodness—collecting goodness. 

And drip jang means to purify ourselves of obstacles.

So in many lineages of Buddhism, the group mantra is “purify and make merit.”

If you're complaining about anything, the answer you get:

Purify and make merit.

Anything you don't like is being purified by going through it.

If you're replanting it—knock it off.

If you're planting new, great.

Use every situation in samsara to purify and make merit.

And really in our lam rim, when they say, “you take the Lama.”

And then you say, “oh, Lama, what should I do?”

And they go, “get the essence of your life.”

Remember that?

And then if we don't keep asking, they don't say anything more, and then they start through:

“See how fortunate you are.

See how that could end at any moment.”

And at each step we're supposed to go, “oh my gosh. And then what? Oh my gosh. And then what?”

And you end up with this long set of Lam Rims, that if you boil them all down, are—purify and make merit.

We wouldn't know how to do that—we wouldn't know to do that, let alone how to do it—if we didn't have someone who has done it or is doing it to teach us what works, and what doesn't work—because our belief in self existence blocks our ability to figure it out ourselves.

We could come up with “purify and make merit,” but the things we would choose to do to “purify and make merit” would be things that would just perpetuate the samsara [that] we're trying to block.

We need the one with the insight to tell us how to do it. 

And then of course, we need “us” to apply what they teach us in a way that's unique to us.

We have to do it.

So after going through all this, there's nothing you can rely upon—nothing at all, except the words of your holy Lama—but not even those, except by way of how they show us “how to gather goodness” and “how to purify,” but then the words aren't enough.

We gotta do it.

Got it?

So how do we tsok tsak and drip jang?

And now I'm going to get rid of this [referring to the vocabulary list being shared on screen].

1:17:56

So in Panchen Lama's reading, he starts with the purifying obstacles—so the term drip jang really does say “purify obstacles,” but it's important to hear “it” meaning purify ourself of obstacles—which means a little different. 

We can take the obstacles and purify them, or we can take ourselves and purify us of obstacles—seems like you end up the same place, and in Diamond Way, you would use those obstacles to transform them (so it would be debatable). 

But here it's important to think of it in terms of purifying myself of those obstacles, I guess—because you could purify the obstacles and you yourself could stay a jerk and that would not be helpful. 

So again, Panchan Lama's perspective, (because he's a wise man “Panchan”), is that the self we are purify-ing is this mind. 

He's way beyond his own personal, personality, ego identity, right?

If we still have one of those, we can be purifying that too, but deeper in is “this thing” our mind, our awareness, and that's what has the obstacles affecting it—and we want to be able to purify it, of reacting negatively to those obstacles when they arise. 

Those obstacles that need purifying are what are blocking us from experiencing emptiness directly when we try to do it.

If we didn't have those blocks, we would see emptiness directly when we sat down to do it—and there are some schools of Buddhist thought and practice in the Tibetan where “just remove the blocks and you will be enlightened.”

And literally it's true—but practically it just sounds too easy.

You can't just remove the blocks. 

But when they're gone (mental afflictions, seeds for more, and obstacles to omniscience) when those are all not happening anymore—the way you get there is through purifying yourself of all of those things, and the purification process inspires you to gather the goodness that ripens as the result we're seeking.

All right, so Panchen Lama says, “we are given the Vajrasattva purification method.” 

So his personal advice is “use Vajrasattva.” 

So Vajrasattva is this fully enlightened being who when he finally stepped onto his path to fully enlightened being, he said, “when I become a Buddha, I'm going to… help people purify—that will be my specialty, right?

He, of course, sees emptiness directly (dependent origination directly) right? He could do anything—but he decided “I'll be the purification specialist.”

And then there's a mantra that we're given that is about begging him for help to purify us, and there's this practice where you put him on your crown and ask him to fill his pledge. 

And as we recite the mantra, he pours this white light into us that pushes our negativities out, pushes our obstacles out, and blesses us with the wisdoms that we want—it's a beautiful practice.

And you do it as you're saying, the hundred syllable mantra. And in the end you say, “did it work?”

And Vajrasattva says, “yes, my child, you are pure.”

And they melt down into us and we go throughout our day.

And I don't know about you, but an hour later I'm blaming somebody for something and it's like, “sorry, Vajrasattva, I’ve got to do it again.”

Does it mean Vajrasattva doesn't work? 

No.

Right?

It means there's so much in there that it takes more than 21 (a 1 day session of 21). 

So they say, however, 21 Vajrasattva mantras keeps the negativity from doubling—from growing, and a hundred thousand Vajrasattva mantras purifies you completely

There must be some catch to that because I've done the hundred thousand, and I still get back pain. 

But it sounds like all you have to do is do this practice. And of course, that's not literal, is it?

The reason the practice works is that those holy words can serve as our antidote force in our four powers of purification—so we still need to establish what it is we're going to purify with our Vajrasattva, do our refuge, our regret, our power of restraint, and then use our Vajrasattva practice as our antidote power—in which case we will have purified those seeds that we were specifically working on. 

So it is a great practice. It is a “lower way” tantric practice, and so there is an empowerment that we can get to use Vajrasattva practice, but they're so kind they say, “you don't have to have the empowerment to do Vajrasattva.” 

So in our particular lineage, Geshe Michael never emphasized Vajrasattva practice—so we don't have a separate text to use (it's within other teachings in the Diamond Way, a specific Vajrasattva practice), but the FPMT, the Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Sutra and Tantra Centers (or something like that), FPMT—they have a library or a store, and for a few American dollars, they'll send you the e-book of the Vajrasattva practice and you're welcome to use it if it inspires you to do. 

So then just ask someone who has the hundred syllable mantra to give you (the oral transmission of it) and then learn to say it (if you're inclined to use Vajrasattva).

Okay? So he recommends Vajrasattva practice as our regular purification practice in the form of this drip jang (doing our purification) and to use it regularly and daily. 

And we remember the story of Lord Atisha: anytime he had a wrong thought, he'd wait, “time out," get out his little stupa, circumambulate, and do his four powers. 

And whether he did Vajrasattva or not, I don't know.

But it doesn't mean that you do your Vajrasattva practice like every day as part of my meditation preliminaries, we do it, we should do that. 

But we can do four powers anytime we find ourselves going, [indicates making the mistake of planting a bad seed] “oops, ah”  

Regret.

Seeds planted.

Don't like it.

Antidote force [Om Vajrasattva samaya manupalaya…] pop out seven of 'em—some number—and then do your power of restraint.

So our purification practice, do it daily—but also do it daily—like regularly.

Anytime there's a need—out it comes.

But then Panchen Lama he goes one step further, he says, “and while you're doing your drip jang, do a hundred prostrations, do at least a hundred prostrations, do a whole lot of sets of a hundred prostrations, in fact.”

So he doesn't clarify whether he means “full on” ones or the half ones, but the prostration is a way that we show ourselves—that we humble ourselves before this being, this concept, this ideal that we have in mind—we're seeing ourselves do something that shows ourselves that we're honoring them—and that means we can ask for help from them.

Right” We really don't believe we can get help from someone that we don't in some way admire or honor. 

So it's a tool for impressing upon ourselves that this being that we're asking for help, is someone who is a being of love, compassion, and wisdom—and then in a hidden way it's also working with our channels—it's a very baby form of Hatha yoga practice to just do prostrations repeatedly.

And so Panchen Lama has us doing: something physical (prostrating), something mental (the four powers) and something verbal (The Vajrasattva mantra), as our power of purification—and you see what he's so skillfully doing is, he is rolling in the body, speech, and mind all at once in our purification practice.

So maybe we're purifying some anger.---the anger is getting purified from mind, from speech, and from body, right?

Our anger is held in our body in some way—so if you're a yoga person, you could do the opposite.

You could say, “here's my yoga session, I'm going to do Vajrasattva mantras while I do my yoga.”

And you'd be doing similar, and you have your Buddha image in front of you—you could be doing the similar [thing].

And if you're not a yoga person…prostrations.

Don't set out to do a hundred prostrations your first day because your knees will hurt so much three days later that you won't ever do them again—start out with 10 and then go to 15, right? Build it up. 

So in this purification, the drip jang, this is Panchen Lama's preference: Vajrasattva practice with prostration.

We've learned other purification methods: we've learned 35 confession Buddhist—which if you've learned that practice, that also is a verbal, mental, and [physical] prostration practice, with 108 prostrations to complete the whole thing to the 35 Buddha (three times plus some extra).

Or you could use the thousand angels of bliss if you know that practice with the mikme tseway mantra—you would just add the prostrations to it while you're saying your mantra.

So any of those practices can be used as your drip jang (your purification)

as long as they have the four powers included. 

Then for collecting goodness, that tsok tsak, he says the collecting goodness is done through what's called the practice of the Lama. 

So to collect enough goodness to reach the reality of our own mind—we collect that goodness with the Lama, because the Lama is, for us, our highest karmic ripening, and they are our highest field of merit—meaning our most powerful karmic object (not in them, from them), but because you give them that power by way of your own relationship with them.

There is not a Lama that we can rely on who will fix us.

And so there is a Lama, right, that we can create, that we give the power ,to teach us how to fix us. 

Technically, we could give them the power to fix us. 

Panchen Lama, you'll see in the reading, he says, “the Lama is every single Buddha that ever did exist, ever exists now, or ever will exist, all combined into one.”

Not from their own side.

He's saying, “when you see somebody and they are so special to you, then recognize [that] they are every Buddha ever.

And the feeling that we would have would be awe, and gratitude, and devotion, and reliance, and trust, and surrender. 

“Just help me. Just help me. Please just help me. I know you know, right? I know you know, I know you love me. I know that you'd like to just turn me inside out and shake me upside down until I get it. But just help me, please—please.”

The words in our tradition are “Please bless my mind. Please bless my mind.”

And, I know, if those words don't move you—find the ones that do.

“Please help me.” 

“Please, please, please.” 

Can you feel it?

That begging for something—but ordinary human existence is [says], “that's ridiculous. Nobody's going to do that for me. Nobody's going to give that to me.”

Right? Our mind is going to get in the way—and that's what it is to have a relationship with a Lama.

[makes air quotations] What we mean by a Lama is like: there's this being who really is that made of love, made of compassion, made of wisdom—for you.

It doesn't matter if they're not that for anybody else. 

So Panchen Lama says that the most powerful way to gather the goodness, or let's say start the ball rolling on gathering goodness, is to beg for the blessings from your holy “Lama,” right?

This being who is—that love, that compassion, that wisdom—it collects the highest merit we can collect.

Doesn't that sound easy? 

Just sit on your cushion.

See your holy Lama.

“Please help me. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me, please help me. Please help me.”

How many millions of those would we need to say? 

And then get off your cushion and go do what they've taught you.

And then come back and say, “I tried. I goofed up here. I did. Okay, here—Please help me. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me.”

So let's meditate—you can guess what's coming. 

*************

Meditation 6: The Emptiness of Mind

Settle yourself in.

***15 seconds***

Bring your bright, clear, focus to the sensation of your breath at the tip of your nose.

First, get there tight—and then back out to include the observer.

***30 seconds***

Now recall your understanding of the empty nature of all existence.

Including your own mind.

No self nature…always…ripening…

***30 seconds***

So that means the room around you is “ripples…appearances on the surface of your empty mind.”

Expand it out to the places around your home.

Appearances on the surface of your empty mind.

***15 seconds***

Even our own thoughts.

Those thoughts about the outer world being appearances of your mind—are appearances of your mind

***15 seconds***

Be aware of them and let them shift and ripple.

***15 seconds***

Your own identity—the observer—another ripple.

Constantly shifting.

***15 seconds***

Constantly shifting. 

***10 seconds***

And so you could wake up one morning, with a totally enlightened mind.

***10 seconds***

We can take refuge in the emptiness of our own mind.

******

And as we grow this awareness of everything is mind…

The “you” that needs to take refuge, is within it. 

***15 seconds***

And as enlightenment ripples upon this mind—the you, and all existence, is a part of it.

Enlightenment has surfaced across the universe.

***15 seconds***

Now, bring to mind that being who for you is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom.

They are your holy Lama.

Perfect, immaculate—made of unconditional love.

Clean your heart of some negativity. 

***10 seconds***

Tell them of it.

Tell your regret and why you regret it—which makes your refuge.

***10 seconds***

Make a promise not to repeat it for a specific period of time.

***10 seconds***

Then gaze into their eyes and beg them for blessings.

Ask them to bless your mind, to experience emptiness directly.

Ask them to bless your mind to experience the reality of your own mind.

Ask them that your understanding of emptiness always increases.

Ask them to bless you to see your holy Lamas, always in a pure and perfect way.

And then, simply repeat:

“Please bless me. Please help me.”

We'll sit for two minutes, 

***2 minutes***

Ask them one more time with feeling…

And then see how happy they are with you.

Recall that we did this whole class, motivated to become one who could help that other in that deep and ultimate way.

And so think of the extraordinary goodness we've done.

Imagine you can hold it in your hands like a beautiful glowing gemstone.

Feel happy with yourself.

With your past seeds—with the seeds planted.

Ask that holy being to please stay close—to continue to guide you, help you, inspire you—and then offer them this gemstone of goodness.

See them accept it and bless it—and they carry it with them right back into your heart.

See them there. Feel them there.

Their love, their compassion, their wisdom.

It feels so good, we want to keep it forever—and so we know to share it:

By the power of the goodness that we've just done,

May all beings complete the collection of merit and wisdom—

and thus gain the two ultimate bodies that merit and wisdom make. 

So use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person. 

[coughing] I'm sorry…

To share it with everyone you love.

To share it with every existing being everywhere.

See them all filled with happiness.

*************

After Class

So, Panchen Lama says, “when you get to the point where you are in tears and your body can't stop shaking—then you draw the Lama into your heart, and at that point—you're ready to start your Mahamudra.”

So he says, “it seems like this is a preliminary to the Mahamudra—but in fact, the first step in Mahamudra is to do your purification and beg for your Lamas blessings as your merit making., and then you work on coming to recognize the true nature of your own mind.” 

He says “it's the real karmic cause for gaining realizations.”

So for your meditation—for the rest of this week—add this part and then go to the focus on the breath, the focus on the sounds, and go on to explore the focus on the thoughts (the thoughts as the object of the observer , the observer's observation). 

Okay, so you can split it up in time however you want. 

Got it? 

Okay, thank you very much for the opportunity.

*************

Vocab:

Drikung kaygu

Chakchen

Chakdrel

Lotsawa shunu pel

Ne 

Atung

Mishik pay tigle

Machupe sem

Tamyal gi shepa

Nguksem

Indrabhuti

Lakshmi Kara

*************

Introduction

Welcome back. We are Mahamudra practitioners on February 18th, 2025. 

Let’s gather our minds here as we usually do… 

The full opening contemplation and prayers can be found in the transcript of Class One under “Gather Our Minds.”

May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other.

*************

Meditation 7: Observing the Emptiness of Appearances

So, settle your body in  for meditation.

***45 seconds***

Bring your attention to your breath, the sensations is at your nostrils, at the tip of your nostrils. 

Adjust your focus.

Adjust your brightness

Adjust your intensity—your fascination.

***1 minute***

Your attention is agitated today. 

Figure out how to calm it.

If it's dull or disinterested—figure out how to get it eager…

…on those sensations we call breath at the nostrils. 

***1 minute***

Our consciousness is there at the front—the front of your nose.

And there's a connection with this location and your Ajna chakra. 

The energy of Ajna brings intensity of focus.

***10 seconds***

Now move your focus of consciousness up to the spot between your brows on the outside.

Then move directly behind that about an inch and a half, three, four centimeters inside in that space behind your forehead.

Search around in your awareness for a little something there.

Maybe it's a sensation, maybe it's a tiny light or a color. 

Or maybe it's nothing at all. 

Either way, find it and draw your fascinated, bright, focus of attention there.

***1 minute 15 seconds***

Now take that bright, sharp focus of attention and drop it down into that “holy of holies” in the middle of your chest.

It's a place in the midline of the sternum, about halfway up and down—but back in front of your spine.

It is a feeling of dropping back and down. 

And keeping the bright alert focus to settle into that location.

***15 seconds***

And it's from here that we add the component of our observer.

The observer of our thoughts. 

The observer of our experiences. 

The bright, alert, fascinated “observe-ing.” 

***45 seconds***

It will feel more expansive than the type of focus at the nostrils.

And so the tendency is to get scattered and agitated—to follow what arises. 

Or it will bring on the tendency to get dull.

We are being “observe-er.”

Fascinated observer. 

***30 seconds***

Notice all the things that arise—trying to get your attention.

Your observer notices and lets them go.

***15 seconds***

Observer also observes how those things fade away—when they are let go.

***1 minute 15 seconds***

All of these things that are being observed…

…are all objects of thought.

To explore that—recognize your awareness of the room you are sitting in and how that room appears to your mind's eye when I ask you to think about it.

You maybe have a visual image without your eyeballs of that familiar room.

And so it's easy to recognize that that experience is simply a mental image that we can call a ripple on the surface of your mind—notice how that experience “room around me” is an idea´. 

Ideas are movement of the mind. 

Movement of the mind is karma. 

The room around you [that] you are visualizing—of course, it's an object of thought. 

When I suggest that you “let it go,” that image before you will fade away. 

***15 seconds***

Slide back down into that holy of holies. 

Into the state of awareness we're calling “observer.” 

And watch, listen, feel: observer is observing it all. 

Aware that every experience that arises is this “ripple” on your consciousness, that will move along and fade away…as your observer simply observes.

Without following.

No story.

***15 seconds***

Let's sit with this [for] three more minutes. 

I'll say “check” from time to time.

You check your brightness, your intensity, of being the “observe-er.” 

“Observe-ing” 

***Three minutes*** (check once halfway through)

Nice.

Now draw your focus of attention back up and forward so that you become aware of your body and your room. This ripple on the mind we call “my body” and “my room.”

“Here I am, in class.”

Dedicate that effort to helping that other in that deep and ultimate way someday.

And when you're ready, open your eyes—take a stretch. 

*************

Lecture

I remember learning this practice and how resistant I was to it—it's like, “no, no, I want to be doing the analysis.” And “no, no, this can't be right.”

And I realized—after we got to the end of the training—it's like, “oh, these are all just baby steps.”

We're learning the tools to become aware of being aware.

And when we can get there—then we do the work called the Mahamudra practice.

Until we can sustain with focus, brightness and fascination, “being aware of being aware,” we can't do what Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is training us to be able to do:

Put aside your frustration and try.

Just rest in being the observer.

Even though maybe it feels to you like, “no, no, I don't want the seeds of just being a dull observer. It'll make me a cow in a future life.”

It's like, “no, because we're training ourselves in these tools that we need, to get where we want to go.”

Lama Christie, she was keenly aware of the frustration in at least my mind (I'm going to go so far as to say there were other students in the same boat) and so she kept trying to explain what it was like to be in that …  She kept calling it “in the back of your heart, like you're listening to a song.”

[begins motioning with hands]

The song flows along. 

If you follow each note—you're missing the song. 

If you lose the whole thing—you're missing the song.

To listen to a song you just listen and enjoy.

So this state of mind we're calling “the observer” is this open, receptive, not controlling, not directing, not anything other than:

This bubbles up, this bubbles up, this bubbles up…

But of course as everything bubbles up, our habit is to follow it—and observers, we could say yes, the observer is following it—but we're trying to be the observer letting it all do this [motioning with hands].

As opposed to, “here's the observer, here comes something, I'm going to continue to observe it.”

We want to have this experience of, “oh my gosh, these experiences that I call ‘my experiences’ are actually just this (I mean at first it seems like this string of events going by) … eventually we're going to see that it's [this] string of ripples.

Just our own awareness, taking shape, shape shifting into:

This experience, this experience, this experience, this experience.

But we can't get there, to that direct experience, until we have this ability to focus, bright, keen on the awareness, of the awareness.

So learn to put yourself into observer mode—like being in the backseat of the Lyft [and the driver is doing] the driving.

They know where to go. 

You just sit back and watch it all go spinning by:

“That tree—there it is - [swings hands to the side] - gone.

The same with this meditation—let go and you'll see how things come up and fade away. So although it starts out seeming like (this that) it will get to where it's like, don't make it be that. 

Wait until it is observed / experienced that way.

 So maybe experience is better than observed. 

You're being the “experience-er.”

But then without engaging the experience, so that it's this and then it's this, and then it's this, and then it's this. 

I remember specifically first learning this and someone had said, “park your stuff like you're at the mouth of a cave and you're waiting for what's going to come out of the cave. The next thought, the next image, whatever.”

And I parked myself at the front of the cave and I waited and I waited and I waited. And the harder I looked for something, the “nothing-er” came out and I was so frustrated!

And I asked the teacher and he said, “That's the point! That's the point!”

Get into that space of right before anything arrives and then do something with it—and it's like, “oh.” But it was like I was going there too fast. I didn't know what to do with it back then.

So work with these little snippets of meditations Lama Christie gave them to us. Resist the temptation to go too fast. 

Step by step.

We'll work.

I think at the beginning of next class (I'm going to make myself a note) I will open us up to talk about what our experience has been. I don't want to do it now because we've only done this particular meditation once. And so I'd like you to try it on for size. But then let's see how it goes at the beginning of next class, so I can get some feedback.

Thank you. 

So let's go back to Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s commentary on his root text about Mahamudra, and he gives this review of what Mahamudra means—well, he's trying to convey what this term Mahamudra means, what the state of mind Mahamudra is referring to, and so he does a literature review and he finds early traditions, early explanations of Mahamudra.

He tells us about them from the different levels of possible practitioners, and then later we'll hear from different traditions as well. So you have in your reading, he's going to quote from a master of the Drikung Kagyu lineage (so let me just share some vocabulary for the opportunity to plant some seeds).

[opens screen share]

So we usually say Drikung Kagyu spelled like this—it's one of the four lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.

There was a[n] early Drikung Kagyu master who was teaching Mahamudra apparently and he said, “in Mahamudra—the term mudra has four different levels of meaning.”

So we know the word mudra as the hand gestures that we use to represent things that we're thinking about it. Mudra has other meanings as well.

So Drikung Kagyu lineage guy, he says there's four different kinds of mudras:

The first one is the mudra of ritual.

The second is the mudra of the dharma.

The third one is the mudra of pledge.

And the fourth one is Mahamudra—the great mudra.

And then he says, “and those four, what those four are depends upon the system that you're in.”

So really we're interested in Mahamudra, but to understand all four of them (from the different systems) helps us understand the Mahamudra better.

So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen goes through all of them for us.

So the different systems we're talking about are in the text, it says “the system of the listener”—but what it means here is the “Hinayana level practitioner,” which we understand to mean “a practitioner whose final goal of their spiritual work is reaching nirvana.”

That's what they believe is the highest outcome for a human to reach.

So for a Hinayana practitioner, the mudra of ritual is referring to our own body, speech and mind—and so we use our body, speech, and mind to burn away our mental afflictions.

What we do with our body, speech, and mind either perpetuates or burns away our mental afflictions—that are what we need to burn away in order to reach that state of mind: Nirvana.

The mudra of dharma in this system of the Hinayana, is the lack of self existence to “person.”

Meaning to oneself.

Which would also then apply to another person’s “self."

But the lack of self existence to a person—that realization is what's meant by “the mudra of the dharma.”

The mudra of pledge in this system is that point at which we have become completely free of any negative thought. It's like what we pledge to do, pledge to become, as a Hinayana practitioner is to become “nirvana sized” right?

In Diamond Cutter Sutra, “I'm going to nirvana-size all other beings.”

We nirvana size ourself first, meaning:

Because of our direct perception of the true “no self nature” of ourself, we were able to go on to stop our mental afflictions from perpetuating, and damage the seeds for more; reaching nirvana.

But this mudra of pledge is the nirvana with remainder—which is kind of a long story. 

Then for this system, the Mahamudra is reaching that place called “nirvana with no remainder.”

So “nirvana with no remainder” from this level of practice, or I don't know what to call it—from this system… that's not right…

For this practitioner—is a state where you no longer have your five heaps.

“Nirvana with no remainder” means there is no physical body, physical world, discriminating between things, feeling all the other factors that make you up, and even no consciousness.

And so if we are not Hinayana practitioner's raised in that system, it doesn't make any sense. Like, don’t you have to be aware of being “nirvana-ed” in order to be “nirvana-ed.”

So how can you be nirvana with no remainder of any consciousness? 

And they would say, “well, you're just misunderstanding—what you mean by consciousness is mistaken because of course you can be “nirvana-sized” with no remainder—all these people have done it.

It's like, “okay, yes, I'm misunderstanding.”

So don't break a bodhisattva vow by disrespecting it—there's something we're not understanding.

Regardless—we also hear that when a being reaches this nirvana, at some point a Buddha comes to them and says, “there's more to do. Nirvana is, whether it's nirvana with remainder or without remainder, it's not your final goal—it's not your ultimate, right? There's more to do.”

And what “there's more to do” is to grow that compassion through which that being can experience themselves as omniscient, and thereby help everyone reach nirvana—freedom from mental afflictions.

So I don't know if that lower tradition says, “right, right, that will happen.” Or if they go, “no, there's no need for that.” 

I don't know, but let's leave it at, okay?

So a Mahamudra could mean reaching that state of nirvana with no remainder. 

Then we have the Mahayana, the open teaching Mahayana level practitioner, and for these practitioners, their practice focuses on the way of the [six] perfections, and then according to the way of the [six] perfections these four uses of the term “mudra,” is that the mudra of ritual is the six perfections themselves (giving moral discipline, right? You know them).

The mudra of (I'm looking at it), the mudra of the dharma is the lack of any elaboration—so this term elaboration is used to mean the appearances…the appearances side of any experience—any instant of experience is called the elaboration.

Elaboration means you make more and more details of something so it becomes more and more elaborate. To elaborate something is to identify a specific out of a general. To elaborate means to make something bigger and better than it maybe really is—all these different terms of elaborate and they're all useful in thinking about “how is it that they're using this term in terms of the deceptive reality.”

Our deceptive reality is an elaborated reality, meaning our seeds ripening into “something” and then we give those “somethings” stories, and those stories include the reality: the “own reality” / the “self existent” reality.

And so elaborate / to elaborate, has all of these meanings in it—which means the elaboration is also the illusion; because all of this outer world is illusion in the sense that—we're so sure they all have their natures in them from them—when they don't.

So the things that we interact with truly are illusory, because they don't have their nature in them from them, the way we are interacting with them as—so what we're interacting with is something that's “really not there.” 

Is there something there that we are interacting with? Absolutely—the results of our own past deeds—projections happening—they are real, they always have been, they have never been in them from them [in] the way we've always thought.

Do you see?

So he's already introducing us to this conundrum of being able to say, “oh, everything's illusory.”

And to be meeting it in the accurate way—experiencing it in the accurate way. Which means they're more real than they were when they were elaborated—so “elaborated reality” implies the mistake is included, but by using the term “elaboration,” we're putting a kink in the belief that it's coming from itself—because if it's coming from itself, we don't need to elaborate on it.

We don't need to make it more real.

So work with these terminologies just to “crack the nut” of our old belief that things are the way they are. 

[retracing] So where did I go into all of that?

The mudra of the dharma for the way of the [six] perfections is this lack of any elaboration:

If we lack elaboration happening, what's there?

When we are aware of the “no self nature” of myself, what's there?

We're talking about emptiness from a different perspective, aren't we?

So the mudra of the dharma, we're going to see, it always has something to do with emptiness and our perception of emptiness (first, intellectual— eventually direct) which is where we're trying to go.

Then the mudra of pledge is (in the open Mahayana practitioner) is being completely untainted by any self-interest, so that we're getting to see what they mean by pledge.

And then the Mahamudra is for the open Mahayana—they say it's a “single song of suchness and love.”

Suchness is the term for emptiness—so the Mahamudra is the single song of suchness and love, quite beautiful.

But then we have another vehicle of practice, which is the Diamond Way—and they divide the Diamond Way into two, which ordinarily is “creation stage” and “completion stage.”

But here he divides it into chakchen and chakdrel—these two words here.

Chakchen means your Diamond Way practice with desire, and Diamond Way practice without desire. And it's too much to go into those details here, but he uses the differentiation between the two to help us, to give us a glimpse of, how Mahamudra in Diamond Way needs to rely on these two different qualities: “that with desire” and “that without desire” and how they come together. 

And so again, it's like, this text is an open text and it's going into some details of Diamond Way that you wouldn't otherwise get to go into, except that this was taught by a very high master, and then taught to me by a very high master (not that I'm implying I'm a high master at all) but I've been given the permission to share it, right?

So I'm just qualifying so I don't break any of my vows in sharing what I'm going to share, but I have to admit I'm leaving some stuff out—because Lama Christie was talking to mostly a group of Diamond way practitioners that she had been training already for four years, and so she knew what we had been taught. But there were other people in this class that weren't amongst that group and they still had the goodness to be there. 

So you have the goodness to be here, for those of you that are not Diamond way practitioners, if you're not, and I wouldn't know anyway. I only know the ones I know.

So anyway.

Diamond Way is called “the path of the secret word.”

So in the path of the secret word with desire, chak chen, our mudra of ritual is our partner—so in the Diamond Way, by way of the seeds that we make to get there, and the seeds that we receive by receiving empowerment, we are given practices in which we create the experience of seeing others as already enlightened beings here to help us.

Now you don't need empowerment to do that. We just would need to think about the empty nature of anybody or anything, and think about what we know about what beings have to do to become Buddhas, omniscient, which is that holy great compassion, which compels them to manifest in a way that would help anybody—and when you put those all together, we could come to the conclusion because of the empty nature of “you, and you and you” are Buddha Emanations here to help me.

Thank you very much.

And in the Diamond Way we receive the seeds to experience at least one “very special one” coming into our life as the one that we don't have to rationalize their angel.

“Whoa, they're the one.”

And they call it “partner,” but partner in the sense of a messenger—someone who's bringing us the message. The message is, “you are not a suffering being—you are empty of being a suffering, being—step into that identity and use it! And here I'll help you do that.”

And some days they're exceptionally kind, and some days they seem exceptionally mean—because they know what we need. 

So this “mudra of ritual” is this being, who finally, it seems like they show up (but our seeds create them of course).

Then our relationship with them is our “training” to be able to hold our minds on “everything they think, say and do is designed to get me enlightened as quickly as possible.”

So mudra of ritual again is in reference to our practice—the efforts that we're making in our transformation of ourselves and our world.

The first one we had “mudra of ritual” was our body, speech and mind

Second one was the six perfections.

This third one is the angel that shows up for us.

The “mudra of the dharma,” well, let's take our break before we go on. Sorry to stop in the middle of a thought, but there's too much more, right? So I'm going to stop the share and pause the recording.

*************

So we're on the path of this secret word “with desire” and the mudra of ritual is when the angel comes to us.

Then the mudra of the dharma in the chak chen (the practice with desire) is called “the capsule of wind and mind.”

And again, these are just like teasers—I can't say too much more about what's meant by the capsule of wind and mind, but because it's mudra of dharma—we know it has something to do with emptiness, reaching emptiness and the perception of emptiness. 

The “mudra of pledge” in this one is keeping our pledges and vows most purely—all of them, not just the Diamond Way pledges of course.

And then the Mahamudra for the path of the secret way with desire is called simultaneous wisdom—”bliss void wisdom” is the way we hear it said.

Now it's a really long story [to explain] what's meant by that.

So the next half of the path of the secret word without desire, free of desire, “the path free of desire,” the path is called the inner fire path that frees, which is interesting—the inner fire path that frees.

The mudra of ritual here is utilizing the machine of the body, the body and the branching winds—so here is where the Hatha yoga comes in in our tradition—the asanas—using asana in this very specific way and very specific reason, on “the path of the secret word that's free of desire.”

So somehow the body speech and mind practices for the Hinayana practitioner, the practice of the six perfections, the practice of the angel friend, and the practice of Hatha yoga are all related. All of those are mudra of ritual.

The mudra of the dharma at this level is bringing about wisdom within the bliss. The yoga of dharma is bringing about wisdom in the bliss.

But wait a minute, we're in the Diamond Way that's free of desire! What's bliss doing there? 

The “free of desire” must mean something different, or the “bliss” must mean something different. Not sure which one that takes long training. 

[looking through the reading] I'm seeing what I can say and what I can't say.

Mudra of the dharma—again, reaching a level of emptiness understanding, and then the ritual of pledge, sorry, the ritual of pledge is practicing with our channels winds and drops, without using a partner (which has something to do with keeping our vows) has something to do with, I forget what the first one was, the pledge, reaching our goal nirvana. The second one was also about reaching the goal.

Keeping our pledges is what creates the causes for the result—being our goal of Buddha in Buddha Paradise, emanating.

Then the final Mahamudra from the path of the secret word free of desire is when it all just happens spontaneously—it's like a big let down, isn't it?

It's like, “oh man, I thought that one was going to be like the key to everything.”

And it is—it means when you are spontaneously always this being made of love, made of compassion, made of wisdom—your compassion, your love, your wisdom omniscient.

So Mahamudra—is he making the case that Mahamudra is another word for Buddhahood?

I don't think so—but “the great seal” is a term for how we become that, which when we do, it will all be spontaneous.

Okay, so you might want to make yourself a table [chart] of these four different levels of practitioner, and the four different ways that mudra is being used—ritual, dharma, pledge, and Mahamudra—and just by making that table, and looking at it, and thinking about it, it'll plant the seeds for it all coming together—which I hope it does so for you very quickly—for me it's still coming together.

That information that Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen has shared with us is like rich, rich, rich.

So he goes on to quote someone named Lotsawa Shunu Pel—Lotsawa, we know means translator—so here's this translator, here's his name [brings up screen share]. 

Shunu Pel, means shining youth

So the Lotsawa (translator) named Shining Youth (Shunu Pel)---he says, “Mahamudra is that thing which acts to place a seal upon every single practice that you ever do, from the time that you are just a baby taking your pratimoksha vows—all the way up to your highest tantra practice. Mahamudra is this great seal.

So it must have something to do with emptiness.

And technically anything we do can be the causes for our Buddhahood, when we do it with a mind of bodhichitta—and the mind of bodhichitta can mean two things:

The wish to reach total for the sake of all sentient beings…

…and it means the state of mind—the mind as it's been influenced by the direct perception of emptiness. 

So which bodhicitta is it that makes everything we do a cause for our Buddhahood?

And do you have to have both?

All of those are good questions to be thinking to ourselves.

So Lotsawa Shunu Pel, he goes on to say that, “this Mahamudra is the non-conceptual wisdom that perceives emptiness.”

The “non-conceptual wisdom that perceives emptiness” is the technical term—so Mahamudra is a word for seeing emptiness directly.

We started there, didn't we?

We're trying learning practices according to Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen that will help us have that experience at least once in this lifetime—and then from the perspective of the Diamond Way, one time not enough.

Yes, it gets us going, but when we reach that experience through the practices of the Diamond Way, the effect on our being is exquisitely greater, than the effect of “Sutra way” of reaching direct perception of emptiness.

“Sutra way” clears three mental afflictions from our minds.

Diamond way experience, we come out of with what's called our “impure illusory body”—meaning your first direct perception of emptiness achieved by Diamond Way has already started to transform your physical experience of your physical body.

Now there's still a lot to do, but once that level is achieved, which doesn't even actually require the full “non-conceptual experience” of emptiness called the clear light at that level. It only requires an approximate experience of the clear light to put you, to put your experience of the transformation of your being from human to a fully enlightened being so much closer, that you can achieve it before—you'll achieve it in that life.

Because you've already transformed your body in such a way that you will go on to transform it into a body of light—whether or not people around you see your physical body dying, you won't have that experience.

So once you reach your impure body of illusion, there's no more death for you—for you, right?

There's only the transformation that's going to happen sooner or later—and very probably sooner.

So it's still Mahamudra—reaching that non-conceptual (meaning direct) experience of the “no self nature” of yourself in all existence, is the thing (the experience) that seals the end of samsara, and the beginning of your transformation into Buddha-You in Buddha-Paradise, emanating—which is why it's so important . 

And the better we understand it as we go into it, the greater its influence has on us to experience truth directly, not knowing what it is, it won't impact us—we all do that when we die, we all experience the clear light of death, we have a bazillion times.

But we've never recognized it as our true nature—so it doesn't influence us in that way—in fact, we go, “AH!” [makes a recoiling motion] and go flying away from it.

So all of this training, study, study, study—it's so that we're imbued with all of this wisdom and aspiration and compassion when we go into that experience, so that when we come out of it we are on our conveyor belt to the end of all suffering for everybody as a Mahayanist.

All right?

All right. 

So in Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s root text, he says, “although there are myriad schools of thought on the subject of Mahamudra, they can all be grouped into the “open” and “secret” ways—the latter one is the clear light of great bliss when brought on by certain methods such as targeting the crucial points in the Diamond body itself. This is the Mahamudra of Saraha and the exalted Nagarjuna. This is the Mahamudra of Naropa and Maitripa, it is the deepest core within the [unsurpassed class of the secret word illumined, sorry,] unsurpassed class of the secret word illumined in the collected works, Attaining and The Essence.

So, Attaining and The Essence are the names of two collections of “highest yoga tantra” training explanations—and he's telling us that the Diamond Way version of Mahamudra is brought about by working with our Diamond body—and diamond body means the body as it becomes transformed, and the things that we transform are the five different (sorry) the six different substances that we are born with that also relate to the main mental afflictions.

And when we purify those substances and transform those mental afflictions into wisdoms—what we're creating are the six Buddha families.

“Wait, there's only five Buddha families.”

Right—there are five Buddha families, and when they are created by the purification of the five mental afflictions and you put them all together, you have the sixth Buddha family—Buddha Vajradhara. 

So it's not called a separate Buddha family—[be]cause it's all of them together.

So when each of us becomes “our Buddha," we will be the “all of them together” of those five, which makes us the one who holds the Diamond, the one who is the Diamond Buddha Vajradhara. 

[Someone comes along and says:] “Well wait, he's already Buddha Vajradhara, how can I become another one? Does that mean I'm going to dissolve into that one?”

[Response:] “No, you're going to become a Buddha Vajradhara for your world.

So Buddha is less “somebody's name” and more a description of your being when you are being made of love, compassion, and wisdom, emanating. 

Okay, so for fun, those five different substances.

I'm sorry, I said six, there's five substances, that are impure substances.

We have gross versions of them—what we work with are the subtle versions of these gross ones.

And what it is to be human is to have all six things needed—five of them are these five substances.

The gross substances are known as:

1. Feces

2. Urine

3. Phlegm

4. Blood

5. Semen

And those are going to get purified by way of working with their subtle versions. They relate to our main mental afflictions, pride and stinginess, jealousy / ill-will, ignorant disliking, ignorant liking and wrong morality—which when you roll them all together, are born of ignorance—misunderstanding.

So in the Diamond Way, when you're reaching towards the transformation, we'll be working with crucial points, crucial points called ne in Tibetan, I didn't write it down…[writes it down “ne”] 

But the ne that we work with are the center points of the various areas in our being that are called chakra—which are the location where, when we focus our mind at that ne—that crucial point—it's an area where our winds will gather (because of the focus of our mind is there) and then we can achieve some kind of shift to the combination of wind and mind when they're brought together.

It's called “making a capsule” when your mind and the wind that it rides on gets into a certain location, that has a certain influence on it, and that influence impacts us when we come out of that—so there are these different locations within this subtle body where it's easier to focus our mind and get our winds.

OR

In reverse—to focus your wind so your mind goes there—which is what the Asana practices are doing. 

It's at first increasing your awareness of, and insensitivity to, the winds in your body as you're moving it in certain ways, and then you use that increasing awareness to use those practices to draw your winds into the central channel, into the specific location called the ne, that allows the mind to go there too.

So for some people the winds are easier to work with, for other people, the mind is easier to work with—but it takes bringing them both together (they call it into a capsule) to reach the Mahamudra—which happens when the mind and the winds are drawn into a certain location and held there long enough that the winds can dissolve—which brings the mind to a still point, of which, reveals the experience of clear light—meaning the direct perception of emptiness.

So one way to get there is our Sutra way—meditate, analyze, remove—be. 

The other way to get there is to work with our winds and mind.

So our tradition, you don't learn that stuff until you've gathered the goodness of your Sutra practice, your creation stage practice, etcetera.

And then that goodness ripens, and look, here's these practices.

Yoga tradition—go to YSI. You want to learn this stuff specifically?

Go to YSI. Right? They're teaching it. Anyway...

So the ne is this crucial point where the mind and winds can access the state of being able to do this dissolution into the clear light.

Does it happen every time?

No.

It still is seeds ripening / seeds planting.

There's no magic to the Diamond Way.

It's still seeds, planting seeds ripening.

And for our asana practice, to get our winds into our central channel—into the ne—it will still be seeds ripening.

And if it's a good result—which it's supposed to be—then there has to be seeds from some kind of extraordinary kindness.

So regardless of the level we are on our path—our kindness counts, our kindness draws it all, and our kindness born of understanding karma and emptiness (and so the unnecessary-ness of all the suffering in our world) is what compels us to continue to be kind, even when we don't feel like it, right?

Even when it feels like the world is caving in. 

All right, so again Panchen Lama's text is giving us all this background information about this thing, Mahamudra, and he goes on to say there are synonyms for the experience we're calling Mahamudra, which is the experience of clear light (Sutra) called the direct perception of emptiness.

So he gives us these synonyms:

Atung, is one.

Mishik pay tigle, is another one.

Machupe sem, a third one.

Tamyal gi shepa, and nguksem 

Nguksem we heard already—they were using that term for the primordial mind as if it's a “thing” sitting at the bottom of the ocean (which is misunderstanding of what they mean by “primordial mind”). 

But here he's saying, “look, it's a synonym for the clear light nature of our mind, the empty nature of our mind.”

Oh, that makes more sense—we have to have a mind to have the emptiness of the mind.

And we have to have the emptiness of the mind, in order to have the mind we have.

And Mahamudra is reaching the direct experience of that “mind and its emptiness simultaneously,” and then the final Mahamudra is reaching the experience of “mind and the emptiness of mind simultaneously,” always—rather than going in and out of it…in and out of it…in and out of it…

In it and stay—that's what it is to be omniscient:

Perceiving emptiness and dependent origination simultaneously—all the time, of all existing things.

Do you see?

We've been learning that since we started:

What's a Buddha?

Okay, so “primordial mind” is a synonym for “direct perception of emptiness” for “clear light," right?

My head is still cracking against that—because no, my mind isn't the clear light.

But here he is saying, “atung!”

Atung is the word they use for the shape of the short ‘a’ syllable in Sanskrit.

I don't know that that's how they draw it—because when you write a word, you don't write the short ‘a’ all by itself, it always has to have a consonant with it…and then I don't think it looks like this…

[picks up a small whiteboard and pen] 

But when you talk about the short ‘a’ as “a thing,”

[looks to the side] I'd have to look at it…

It's drawn like this:

So this represents the “ah” in the Sanskrit alphabet—it's called the atung.

And the reason it comes up, is that in these practices of targeting the crucial point to get the winds and mind to gather there—there's a practice of using the atung at the naval ne—which again—yoga teaches…

I'm not allowed to.

BUT—because Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen did—I get to mention it!

So, there's this practice where you focus on the atung at the ne of the navel—and by focusing on it, our “focus of mind” pulls the winds in, and the winds blow on this little atung that you're focusing on—and it sparks it into a little tiny flame.

And this little tiny flame is what one will use to further draw winds and mind into the central channel—it's called tun mong (sp?)---and it's one of the most, very important and beginning practices of our practice of the “secret world [word?] with desire.” 

So he's saying the atung is a synonym for Mahamudra.

Well, it can't, it can't be exactly—because it's a positive thing, it's the presence of a thing.

And Mahamudra is talking about the experience of “appearance and emptiness simultaneous[ly].”

So in that way, we can think of the atung as Mahamudra because to even think about atung, we have to know its emptiness—we have to also think of its emptiness.

Well that would be true of everything!

The pen would be a synonym for Mahamudra—and maybe that's his point, right—that eventually when we are so keenly aware of the empty nature of everything we experience—we're “Mahamudra-ing” all the time, which would be helpful.

Seeds planting.

So, another synonym for Mahamudra is mashik pay tigle—we know that one, right?

The “storehouse consciousness” where all our seeds stay.

It's said to have a location.

Why does it need a location? [said jokingly]

But it's in that center of our heart chakra—the place where all our mental seeds stay.

What mental seeds would that be?

All the imprints ever made affect that area in the middle of our chest and we call it, Geshela calls it “the refrigerator” where you store all your stuff: mashik pay tigle.

Another name for Mahamudra.?

Wait a minute. 

So mashik pay tigle and nguksem (primordial mind), they're pretty similar. Like, we would say the primordial mind is where the mashik pay tigle is—but in saying that, it's because we're thinking [that] the “primordial mind” is a “thing” that has in it, this “thing” called “the refrigerator full of my karmic seeds.”

It's helpful to think of it that way—but it's not accurate.

Because they aren't things other than explanations for how reality works.

So if we're understanding them as explanations, then, “oh yeah, I see how they can be synonyms for Mahamudra.”

Helping us to understand this thing that we're trying to wrap our minds around called Mahamudra.

Machupe sem means “uncontrived mind.”

What the heck is an uncontrived mind?

Like, trying to say “the mind” before we think about it in a certain way?

Primordial mind?

Raw mind?

What is it—what is my mind before I call it “my mind?”

These are all the things that we'll be exploring in the practice called Mahamudra:

Oh, there's my mind—whoops.

I just contrived it into a “my mind,” and

then we go off on all these arguments.

“Yea, but if it's not my mind…”

Right?

Right. [confirming a realization]

Right. [confirming another realization]

Right?

Keep pulling it away…keep pulling it away…Until we can rest in that…

Remember when we're doing the pen explanation—what's there when you put it on the table and all the observers of it go away?

What's there?

Answer that question.

Can you feel it?

It's so hard to stay in that…[emptiness]…it’s like, “no! fill it in! put it something on there!”

Because it's scary to be in that.

So what about yourself?

Put yourself there, and then go away.

Nobody's perceiving you, not even you—what's there?

[shrugs] Right?

Right.

That's close to your own true nature, and it's scary.

Can be.

It doesn't have to be.

So Lama Christie suggested that all of these synonyms for Mahamudra are helping us look at the state of our “subject side.”

Most of our exploration of emptiness is about objects—other objects—our own body / other object.---but it's uncommon to turn our emptiness study, even our aspiration to reach the direct perception of emptiness, from the perspective of the subject side, right? 

Every experience has:

Subject

Object

Interaction between

And we're so focused on the subject in the interaction between, that we take our subject side for granted—because it's always there—but it's the subject side that's happy / unhappy / having the mental afflictions.

It's the subject side from which the ignorance is coming—it's pretty important to get familiar with the subject side in order to find its “no self nature.”

And part of the experience of going to look for the subject side, is what reveals the “no self nature” of the subject side—and we'll get there (I'm getting ahead of myself).

It's like the punchline of looking for the subject side is to find its empty nature—because you can't.

Anyway.

Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s point in all of this, points out Lama Christie—thank you very much, is that he's taking us to the Mahamudra by way of examining, or learning to examine, our “subject” state of mind, and finding the “subject” state of mind's emptiness, to step into experience directly—and everything that he shares with us is a necessary piece of reaching that. 

All right, there's the last little bit here…

[pauses to look at notes]

I said that, I said that, I said that.

Wait, I didn't hear myself say:

And when we experience this “subject” state of mind's emptiness—that's what's called the clear light.

Right?

It's not a clear light.

It's not a thing.

It's not an appearance.

It's the term for the empty nature of all existing things.

The term for the empty nature of our own mind.

And that's a clue.

Like all existing things are ripening images out of our own mind.

It does not mean you are the only existing thing.

Your “you” is ripening out of that as well.

All is ripples on the surface of our primordial mind—which

Has no nature of its own—other than

The “thing” upon which the ripples are happening.

It depends on the ripples.

The ripples depend upon it. 

Okay.

So, Lama Christie wanted to explain in that verse the term Attaining and The Essence, because it wasn't really clear—those are two collections of books that Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen was using as he studied Mahamudra, and wrote this teaching, gave this teaching to whoever it was that learned it first—and the collection of texts called Attaining is apparently a collection of seven different books, written by seven different people—each one about attaining something; attaining something different. 

And each one of the seven authors are all amongst the 84 Mahasiddhas in the tradition.

So she went looking for some of those just to share with us a little background—and two of the authors, of two of these seven books, was King Indrabhuti and one of his wives whose name was Lakshmi Kara.

So King Indrabhuti, he apparently mastered something and wrote one of these texts.

His text was called Attaining Wisdom—and Lakshmi Kara, one of his wives, she apparently got tired of worldly life and went to the king and said, “in all due respect, this isn't worth it. I need to leave and go live in a cave. May I do so?”

He gave her permission—she goes and gains these great realizations and comes back and he greatly admires what she's learned and he decides, he gets his renunciation too, and he goes back into the cave with her.

She writes a text, I don't know where in this story that she writes the text, called attaining…(sorry, I have to find it)...

Attaining Non-Duality

So he goes back to the cave with her—he gains great realizations.

Together, they come out and they teach the untouchables—which is interesting.

And the story goes, many of those untouchables, they achieve the paradise of Dakini—and they all fly off to heaven.

So the implication is each of these different authors of each of these different books called Attaining [something]---attained it themselves—which is why they wrote about it.

And so Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is quoting from these texts in what he's teaching us about Mahamudra.

Then the collection called The Essence is apparently three different books—all of which were collections of those songs by Master Saraha (the Dohas).

So again—Master Saraha, Arya Nagarjuna’s teacher, one of the Mahasiddhas, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is pointing out, “these are my references, this is who I'm using.”

Right?

Maybe he's saying, “this is who I use to gain my own realizations.”

I'm not sure about that. 

One of Master Saraha’s songs says, he's addressing his audience, he says:

Yogis, let go of your mind.

The mind of a yogi is a Brahman's thread.

Loosen up and let it go.

If you release this mind of yours—

All tangled up in knots,

Have no doubt

That you will be released.

And it is apparently a quote that's used—and misused—in that it sounds like it's saying, “oh, just let everything go, and just rest in arising, nothing matters, just let everything go. that's all you need to do.”

Our growing meditation seems to be that too.---just observe, let it go, just observe, let it go.

It's the tool—it's not the result.

This as well, what Sara is talking about, is the balance that we need to achieve in our meditative concentration—but also the balance in our life. The Brahmins thread apparently to make it you twist these strands…twist and twist and twist. But you know how if you take a string and you keep twisting it, it'll twist up on itself? And then when you let it go it unwinds and it knots and it gets into a big mess…

So as you're twisting and twisting—you have to twist it just enough to get the twist—but not so much that it gets all that.

I think somehow that seems to be something we all experience as kids, and so we know.

So Master Saraha is saying, “our minds need to be twisted nicely.”