Mahamudra - Season 1
Jan - July 2025
Jan - July 2025
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
Playlist in YouTube: Mahamudra YouTube playlist
Season 2 Notes: Sept-Dec 2025 Mahamudra
The notes below were taken by a student; please let us know of any errors you notice. Text in blue font is AI generated and has not been cleaned yet.
Links to Audios of Meditations:
Class 1 (20:35) - Becoming Aware of the Awarer
Class 1 (8:50) - Watcher, Hearer, Awarer
Class 2 (17:53) - Increasing the Quality of the Observer/Awarer
Class 2 (13:27) - Train the Intensity of the Observer/Awarer
Class 3 (13:12) - Observing Thoughts
Class 3 (11:42) - Emptiness of Mind
Class 4 (22:45) - Observing the Emptiness of Appearances
Class 5 (21:49) - The Process of Deconstruction
Class 6 (19:52) - Awareness of Thoughts as Ripples
Class 7 (22:03) - What Happens to Your Watcher?
Class 8:
Full meditation including posture adjustments (29:15) - Class 8 - full
Breathing, blue light, and preliminaries (13:57) - Class 8 - shorter
Breathing, blue light, preliminaries, Mahamudra from Class 7 (33:51) - Breathing + Class 7 Awarer
Class 9 (28:57) - Enjoying the Flow
Class 10 (18:34) - The Appearing Nature of Our Mind
Class 11 (26:30) - Enjoyable
Class 12 (26:28) - Moment by Moment
Class 13 (16:06) - Watching a Stream Flow By
Class 14 (20:01) - Enjoy the Pause
Class 15 (14:38) - Disinterested in Identities and Stories
Class 16 (18:43) - Simply Allowing
Class 17 (27:55) - In Constant Flow
Class 19 (28:59) - The Movement is a Picture
Class 20 (19:03) - Exploring pleasant and unpleasant
Class 21 (24:09) - Who is the watcher?
Class 22 (23:21) - Looking for my "me"
Class 23 (54:41) - Comprehensive meditation on Mahamudra learned until now
Link to audio: Mahamudra - Class 1
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]
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
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."
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
Link to audio: Mahamudra - Class 2
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…
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
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.”
*************
Link to audio: Mahamudra - Class 3
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.
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
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.
*************
Link to audio: Mahamudra - Class 4
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.
*************
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.
*************
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:
Feces
Urine
Phlegm
Blood
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.”
Meaning:
The pair of outer and inner.
The pair of other and self.
The pair of appearances and no self nature,
Need to come together nicely—balanced.
But not such that we get all knotted up, right?
We are all knotted up-thats samsara
So we're trying to loosen the knots—but
Not loosen it so much that the strands all fall apart.
So in meditation, it means reaching this balance with focus, clarity, intensity (that fascination), without the fascination causing us to get all [agitated] about it—and when we let go of all of that, not sliding back into then not so keen in interest.
Losing the intensity will go on to lose brightness, will go on to lose focus.
Tightening that up can go on to too tight—and we get all knotted.
So we're finding that balance in meditation, and the same for in life.
When we can do it in life, we can better do it on our cushion.
When we do it on our cushion, we can better do it in life.
Again, this nice balance of proper weaving / proper twist without overdoing or underdoing.
Okay.
Alright, good. That's perfect timing. We are building up towards the actual practice of Mahamudra, but it's going to take us time to get there.
So just this one meditation of:
Feeling what it's like to be here [points to tip of nose].
And then what it's like to be back here [points to area behind forehead]. And then drop down, what it's like to be in here [motions around chest/heart area].
Somewhere.
And then from the “in here” [holds hands open at heart level]
Shift to the observer, and allow anything to arise.
The task is to not get twisted up, and not get so loose…
To notice, notice, notice.
—
And then when you come out:
Come out [motioning from heart to forehead]
You can come out backwards.
You can come back up to here [points to forehead]
Really aware of your outer world—even with your eyes closed.
And then back to here [points to tip of nose].
Or, you can go from here [heart] to, “I'm aware of my world. I'm aware of my holy being before me,”and [then] do your dedication.
So let's do our dedication.
So remember that person we wanted to be able to help?
We've learned a lot, that maybe it doesn't look like we're going to use it to help them, but we will someday—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 being.
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 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 wisdom.
And may it be so.
Alright, thank you so much for the opportunity.
Have a great week.
*************
Link to audio: Mahamudra - Class 5
Vocab:
Leyke depa
She chuku
hlenchik kyepe osel
leykyi chakya
yeshe kyi chakya
*************
Introduction
Okay, welcome back.
For the recording, welcome back—we are Mahamudra class, I think, 5…
February [2] 25, 2025, look at all those 2’s and 5’s…
Hmm…
So 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.
*************
Let's review a little bit before we do this class's meditation session—and after it we'll take the time to do question / answer if you need.
So in our first class, we just watched our breath.
We learned to get familiar with this “observer” part of ourselves—to be able to bring it up intentionally and rest in that passive “observer mode.”
Then in the second class, we added the sound—we added “listener” to the “watcher.” Which, the observer is still the observer—the difference is what it's “observe-ing.”
But then we're also experiencing the different qualities of the experience of the observer, I guess we could say.
And so in working with sound, we were learning the practice of letting go of the object. The observer becomes aware of an object and then the task was to just be that “passive observer” and not go following the object because that's not observing anymore.
So to just let it go “by way of sound” because sound does come and go so smoothly that it's an easy object to explore that ability to experience and let go.
Then the third was we did that same thing with our thoughts—which seems so much harder to me.
And the ability to stay “the observer,” allow the thoughts to arise and not attach to them to follow what they're doing—and I don't know if you notice that by the time you have a thought identified, you've already attached to it.
And it's like, “wait, how can I even have a thought without being attached to it?”
“Right? That's part of the point.”
So, we were learning to be able to note and let go of our thoughts as well, and then we added just a little bit last class of what Lama Christie would call “deconstructing those thoughts.”
So not just noting and letting go, but noting “they seem to have their own identity” but can't, and then let go. So it was adding a little bit of analysis to it or a little bit of thinking—which isn't passive.
So I don't know about you, but that last week's meditation is kind of frustrating—she's saying to be passive but then apply this reasoning so that the passive cannot attach…
That's attached! Right?
I know, we're just learning tools—we will build them.
None of those steps have anything to do yet with reaching emptiness, do they? But they are all tools that we will use to be able to reach the ultimate nature of the mind (which is what Mahamudra is about reaching).
So today's meditation is going to use all of those three, plus a little bit—and so actually come to think of it, let's stop and talk about our experience so far before we add this next meditation.
So, nobody's having any problem with these meditations, right?!
So we can just go on.
*************
Good, Luisa?
[Luisa begins]
“Sorry Lama, I take the chance because unfortunately I have to leave at the break…but my experience is—I am not aware if I am aware of the awareness. I don't know if I'm doing it right.
So when I am trying, let's say, when I am aware of the breath, but then I am thinking at the same time.
I am being aware of the feeling in my body, of the chair (because I'm sitting in the chair) and I have my feet on the floor (or if I'm sitting cross leg).
So I have the feeling of the body that is simultaneously [competing with] the feeling of the breath—and then I start to get confused:
What is the “aware” here?
What is the awareness?
Because I am aware of several things simultaneously.
[You instructed us to] step back or zoom out and be aware of the observer—I don't know how to do that.
I don't know what the observer is—I can’t really distinguish it.
It might happen that I will evolve to [get to] that point—but at the moment I’m getting caught in this analysis of, “am I doing this right? I don't know if I am the observer, or the awareness, or the…”
So this is one thing.
And the other thing that I struggle with is—in the last meditation, you [said to] drop your awareness to the chest.
So the observer is here [points to chest] and then when you say, for example, drop the awareness there [to the chest]... So I feel my eyes kind of rolling down, and then I feel this kind of tension in the eyes.
But still when I start to watch the thoughts, I come back to the mind because I feel the thoughts are here [points to head] right?
So I cannot really feel an observer from the chest, or if you say go between the eyebrows, then my eyes roll up and I feel like I'm kind of looking with my eyes [in the direction that] you say and I cannot just keep my eyes straight [while also maintaining] some awareness of the chest.
I just wanted to ask if this is normal or and how to deal with that.”
Lama Sarahni beings, “I'm going to guess you are not the only one having that experience.
As humans who have sight—all of our imprints have been made, well, not all of them, of course—most of our imprints have been made through our eyeballs, somehow, and so we are so conditioned to experience things through the eyes; our eyes direct our experience.
And I too found it very difficult in the practices—I was taught to do everything in the chakra behind your navel, and it's like “I can mentally look down there and have it all be happening, but the ‘me’ doing it is still up here in my head.”
For a long time I felt like I was just this “head” moving around in my world and the rest of it just came along for the ride—it was very difficult.
And it finally shifted to some extent—but I would have to admit that on the occasions that I actually feel like I'm down in this other part of my subtle body, I still feel like my whole head is down there and I'm looking at it through my eyeballs.
And it's like, none of that is a “getting it right” or a “doing it wrong.”
All of it is words that have been imparted from the teachers to the students designed to guide us in our experience until we experience something where we go, “oh, maybe that's it. Maybe that's what they're talking about.”
The words have to ultimately fail, right?
Because of their true nature, which is empty of self existence—you interpret the words I say differently than the way I interpret them as I'm—you get it. I don't have to explain that.
But that's the tool that we have.
So I encourage all of us in our frustrations, probably with very similar experiences that Luisa is sharing, that you are not failing in the practice—you are exploring.
So think of each session as this exploration of trying to feel an experience that matches what you think I'm trying to explain—and just note with trying to judge less—whether I'm right or wrong.
Let it evolve. Let it be an exploration.
To say, “I can't tell if I am aware or not.”
Says “you are aware” of the “not sure what's going on.”
So as you explore those frustrations, recognize that that is “the observer” we're talking about the “becoming aware of what's happening” that most of the time we're in “what's happening” on automatic pilot—and yes, we have to be aware of what's happening—but to be aware of being aware of what's happening is what we're trying to get to.
And it is a different sensation that we bring to the party, and we just explore, explore, explore. Until you find some piece of your experience that's like, “oh, maybe that's it.”
It is less reactive, it is more peaceful, it's a more accepting state of awareness—ways you might recognize that you've met it…
Is it has these different sensations than our usual state of awareness, that is in the awareness, acting, reacting, being part of the movement.
This one's a little bit “step back.”
So just keep exploring—trying different explanations to yourself after the fact, right?
Trying not to be explaining it while you're in it—just following through the sequence to the best that you can.
And my advice would be to establish the sequence of the meditation—even the part of dropping back into your heart; being the observer from there, and then just continue on the practice without needing to establish and reestablish, “am I down there or not?”
Just set it up as the instruction and then carry on with the observing / letting go from whatever area of your awareness is the area isn't so important as the moment by moment what pops up, let it go, what pops up? Let it go.
I think I addressed what you were speaking to.”
Luisa responds, “Yes, thank you, Lama. I still use your recording to follow the steps. I am not yet able to do it by myself, but I will try to stop this controlling of “am I doing the right thing?” and then maybe… yeah. Okay, I think that’s the obstacle. Thank you, Lama.”
Lama Sarahni says, “Okay. Alright. Yes, Tom?”
I was thinking, now I don't know if this would be helpful for you Luisa, or for someone else as you were speaking—I was thinking about time-lapse videos, which I'm sure everyone have seen one of a beautiful whatever sunset, it's changing, but you're like, it stays in the same spot and then everything is shifting and moving.
So I think if you can apply the same thing where you're like, I'm just in the same point of view and I'm just seeing things moving, right? It's the same thing. And usually as the landscape change, your reactions are like, “oh hey, that's kind of what you're doing in this rather than you're trying to grasp to the landscape changing.”
So I don't know if that helped, but to me it's kind like that's what we're doing with observation practice.
You're recognizing you're sitting in the same spot, you're recognizing that you're observing this thing that's shifting continuously, and you're just letting it experience—so maybe you can see yourself as a time-lapse video.
Lama Sarahni says, “That's a nice analogy. Somebody else had their hand up earlier.”
Natalia begins, “Yes, I wanted to share also. Thank you Lama Sarahni. Thank you Tom and thank you Luisa. I have the same thing—I was going to ask the same question exactly.
So I realized that there is an observer, and then there is an observer of the observer—and then there is another observer who is observing what I'm saying. And then another observer.
So there's so many observers and layers, layers, layers of not just one, and I think maybe, I think I'm not the only one with this—so many observers.
And then the other one about staying in the head and looking down because I'm not grounded. I'm more of an overthinker and Luisa, I know we are buddies there, and so it is hard to be more in the body, more grounded in the body.
Being grounded is, for me, is not just to focus on the thoughts, but to be more aware of what is going on in the body.
And in meditation, I do put myself in a state where I'm paying attention to what is going on in the body—and I'm not rolling my eyes, but it looks different when I’m observing something in the mind and something in the body.
There is this feeling of looking down, which is not exactly rolling my eyes—and then I decided to try it out and see how it's going to be if I am in my pelvis and I'm just “being there.”
And what happened after that (I cannot say that I did it, but I just had the intention) was that my pelvis became all around me. I haven't had this experience before—so maybe with intention and just observing what may happen, we can explore things.”
Lama Sarahni responds, “Good, good. Anybody else?”
Mike says, “I have a question—and the last three questions kind of shook this loose for me, so thank you all for your input.
I was thinking that the problem for me right now is: it's not necessarily that I'm losing the object, or that I'm getting distracted, or I'm not completely aware of the “aware-er” or the observer…
But it's noticing that I'm not, and then my response to that—I'm getting hung up that I'm losing it, it's that I'm losing it and then I'm going, “oh, I've lost it, I better get back on, and why am I doing this, blah blah blah”
And then by the time I get back to actually correcting the thing, I've just taken myself a mile in the opposite by not wanting to have the experience.
So do you have any advice on, I don't know—not getting hung up on all this analysis and judgment, and just letting things happen?
Lama Sarahni responds, “what about when the noticing of “I'm off,” what if your reaction to that is to laugh at yourself—not out loud—but in your heart, go, “that's funny” and just come right back.
Does that feel like it might work?”
Mike answers, “I mean I like that better than what I'm currently doing.” [laughs]
Lama Sarahni agrees, “Yeah, it would take mindfulness to do it because our habit is to, “reh reh reh reh reh reh [simulating mental chatter]” but now that you've noticed it—and you know that your habit—and the thing about habits is:
Repeating it strengthens it.
Stopping it reduces its power.
And then we put the pressure on ourselves.
“We have to stop it” — and that blocks our ability to stop it.
But maybe if we take this more lighthearted opinion of ourselves, it would help—it would be more enjoyable to actually have the recognizing, “I'm off.”
“Oh yeah, look, did it again.”
Come back, drop in.
And then see it go off again.
“Oh yeah, there. Okay, fun. Bring it back.”
Right?
Yeah, I totally agree with you that self-judgment gets in the way—and we're all so good at it that we want to keep doing it—because something we're good at and easy and it's like, “ah!”
We think it's useful—and doggone it, it gets in the way anyway. Not that we ditch it out completely of course, but nice, thanks.
Anything else?
Okay then.
*************
Class 5- 00:30:50
So then let's try this one on for size…
So settle your body—you know how.
***45 seconds***
Then bring your attention to your breath—the sensation we call breath at the tip of your nostrils.
Focus—bright mind, fascinated mind.
Watching those sensations shift and shift and shift.
What we call “out breath” … “in breath.”
***45 seconds***
Adjust any dullness, adjust any agitation.
***15 seconds***
Now intentionally leave that object and move your awareness up to that spot behind your forehead.
Find it.
Move your awareness close to it, even into it if you get that kind of sensation.
***15 seconds***
Our crystal clarity and sharpness increases here, they say.
***1 minute***
Now intentionally leave that object—and drop your awareness down that elevator shaft.
To that place behind your heart, Lama Christie calls it.
Meaning in the middle of your chest—that holy of holies in the middle of your chest.
So you slide down—sort of exploring, “Where is that? Where is that?
And when you find a place—it's like you step in and have a seat.
And settle yourself down in there—this bright, clear, fascinated awareness.
And from it steps this “passive observer” and that “passive observer” allows whatever the other “experiencer” was experiencing / is experiencing … to bubble up, and pass by.
Whatever it is.
***30 seconds***
Observer is passive, and still fascinated.
***1 minute***
This passive observer gets to passively recognize more subtle ripening.
At first it may be that our passive observer feels like it's waiting for the next thing to come up—but as our observer observes, notice how there's always something arising.
The sensation of your body on your cushion.
A sensation of warmth or cool.
A sensation of time…
Just to be “being” the passive observer is a base conception that's arising, arising…
***45 seconds***
Notice how there is always something—arising.
***30 seconds***
Now we add some intentional, active deconstruction of those arisings that our “observer” is going to observe ourselves do—it's getting a bit slippery.
So as an experience comes to mind, comes to awareness—ask yourself:
What am I directly experiencing?
For example, suppose “observer” experiences, “oh my bottom of my cushion.”
We then allow our analysis to say—what am I…what's the real experience?
Pressure, sensation, that location.
What about that is “my bottom on my cushion?”
We're noticing that our experience is an idea put onto what we could call raw sensation.
First we learn a method for doing the deconstruction—and as we practice, we be “the observer” watching the deconstruction happen.
So, allow the experience “my bottom on the cushion.”
Look to see what of those sensations declare themselves as “my bottom on the cushion.”
Can you see that the sensation itself is not enough information?
The identity of that information as “bottom on the cushion” must be my own mental image—making “my bottom on the cushion” out of those sensations.
So let go of “my bottom on the cushion.”
Sensation is still there—you can do the same with the sensations.
What about that sensation is pressure, or warmth?
Know—that sensation, pressure, warmth—my words, my ideas—not enough information to be that.
Let it go.
What's left?
How subtle can you go?
***30 seconds***
When you go as deep as you can go, in deconstructing an idea from a sensation, we finally reach a conclusion—all of those experiences are “ripening ripples” on this vast awareness.
And with that experience, we shift again to our observer mode—and sit in this vast, ever rippling, experience of mind—of awareness.
***45 seconds***
Part of us may resist, and we start following again.
Notice, let it go.
Some part of us may resist and get dull, sleepy, trying to avoid.
Notice—let it go.
All of it ripening ripples.
Happening.
Let's hold it for two more minutes as best you can.
***45 seconds***
Check.
***45 seconds***
Nice, now allow those ripples to form up into the waves of your awareness—of yourself in this body, and this body in this room, in this class.
Dedicate your effort to growing your awareness—all the way to the direct perception of ultimate reality, in order to help uplift that vast ocean that is “you and your world.”
And when you're ready, wiggle your hands, your feet, open your eyes.
Take a stretch.
*************
Have we reached Mahamudra yet?
No.
Mahamudra is the emptiness of that thing called “mind.”
We haven't got there, but we're getting closer to what it is. We will look for the true nature of as we reach that experience where the subject / object borders are starting to blur. So we get to work with this combination of “passive observer” and simple analysis deconstruction, Lama Christie called it.
And for me the asking, “what am I directly experiencing?”
Helps me see the difference between the identity I'm putting on, versus the information that's getting the identity put on it. Don't worry so much about where that stuff comes from—just notice there's a difference between “my body on cushion” and that sensation—set of sensations.
So it's a fun thing to explore because you can really see, “man, my label, my label's the reality.”
So this particular meditation are if we lean towards the analysis, we'll like it very much because we want to keep analyzing, keep analyzing— and we don't want to do the Arya Nagarjuna analysis, we want to just get to the conclusion and sit in the conclusion with the observer watching the ramification of the conclusion—which is “everything arises is the same.
It arises with an identity, and the identity is just coming out of the mind.
So are the sensations—but for this we don't need to worry about that so much as to recognize the label. And it's all these ripples because there's never a moment it's not happening.
So when we can get to that conclusion and slide into the ripples of the mind “happening,” that's where we're starting to glimpse, “whoa, even my subject side is part of every ripple.”
We're not doing it by analysis, we're doing it by experience.
So it try it again, and again. Again—not with success in mind—just exploration. And see where it takes you all week.
All right, let's take our break and get refreshed, and we'll see what Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen has to tell us next.
So we are learning that this term, Mahamudra is the term being used for reaching the direct experience of ultimate nature, which technically is the ultimate nature of our own mind—because technically there isn't anything that we can experience that's outside of our own mind—which if we weren't already well trained in karma and emptiness, we would misunderstand what that means and fall into the conclusion of, “oh, then I am the only important thing.”
And it's like, “No. Wrong conclusion.”
Trying to reach the ultimate nature of our own mind—the mind we are reaching the emptiness of is called primordial mind. And primordial mind is the term for the ultimate nature of mind.
And it's like…[cringes] I still can't wrap my mind around that because primordial mind should be a thing that has emptiness as its quality, and yet it sounds like they're making the case [that] primordial mind is the emptiness of our mind—and I struggle with that because [I’m still] thinking that my mind is a thing that has emptiness.
Is it a thing that has emptiness? Is my mind empty?
Yes.
Is it a thing that has emptiness?
Technically, I'm thinking of it wrongly if I think of it as a thing that has emptiness—because by saying it's a thing that has emptiness, I'm already starting from the belief that it's a thing independent of karmic seeds ripening that has the quality of being “karmic seeds ripening.”
Do you see?
It's just like… words fail because our words are colored with our belief in the things we're talking about “having their own nature.”
So yes, when we say we're reaching primordial mind—on the one hand we mean we're reaching the empty nature of mind (our own mind) because we can't reach…[smiles/laughs] anyway…I guess we can eventually…but the emptiness of mind is a mind that is so much more subtle.
We can experience our mind as so much more subtle than we currently experience our mind, that we could say, “we're trying to reach that most subtle level of mind called primordial mind.” - and we wouldn't be wrong.
To say primordial means “the most subtle quality of this thing called ‘awareness’ that we all always have, that's never the same two moments in a row, but never non-existent, never not there.”
And it would be helpful to say, “I'm trying to reach that primordial mind, so that I can become aware of its empty nature.”
And that would be accurate in terms of where we're trying to go, the process that we'll use to reach the ultimate nature of our own mind because we can't learn to do it any other way—and once we've done it once, we don't need to learn to do it. But Arya’s…anyway, nevermind.
We've been talking about different synonyms for primordial mind showing us that it has no nature of its own, or it wouldn't need all these different synonyms trying to understand it. And then in Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's auto commentary on his root text, in this part, he goes to Master Saraha and his Dohas, his songs, to help us understand the frustrating difficulty in using mental concepts to deconstruct concepts to try to get to the true nature of those constructs, which is their lack of self existence, which allows them to even be constructs.
And so he goes to Master Saraha, and [Master] Saraha is telling us about “what is Mahamudra / what is the primordial mind?”
He says, “it is the simultaneous. it is our own true nature. it is the thing itself. Yet it is not a thing. And neither is it no thing.”
[throws up hands and shrugs] So what is it—this thing “primordial mind?”
Do you remember when we're explaining the pen, and when you take it a little more deeply and you say, “you put the object on the table and all the people, and all the dogs, and all the flies—everybody is gone—and you ask what's there then?”
Watch your mind.
I'm going to ask you.
What's there with nobody perceiving it?
What does your mind say? No, honestly my mind says, “there's a pen there and nobody sees it. Nobody knows it.”
Right? Truly.
And then it's like—no wrong conclusion.
And then my mind says, “oh, it's a thing with the potential to be anything—according to who shows up.”
That's technically correct as well, but it still implies that I believe there's something sort of shaped like this [pen] and colored like this [pen] that's sitting there, that isn't that [meaning a pen] until somebody shows up.
But do you see?
My mind is still saying, “there's something there.”
So take it deeper.
What's there when nobody's there to perceive it?
Deep, deep, deep—what's your answer?
[shrugs and makes a confused face] Come on. How intellectual is that? I don't know. Can't say, right?
Geshela says that's the perfect mudra [a shrug and a confused look on your face]---I'm going to say—the perfect mudra for Mahamudra is [a confused shrug] because it's true:
What would your mind be if there was nothing arising and no one aware?
[shrugs]
Exactly.
So if the true nature of your mind is [shrugs] [then] whatever appears is according to the one who's perceiving it.
[So] who's the first one to perceive?
From the [shrug] to the [realization] … it's our own subject side, right? It’s perceiving its lack of own nature directly, right? It would feel like that.
Same feeling as what is there when this [the pen] is here and nobody perceives it.
And that is beyond words—it's beyond even demonstration, although as humans we all seem to understand that—even across cultures.
The Universal Mudra.
So this “primordial mind” idea is also a ripening result being experienced by a “subject side” part of the ripening result.
So every ripening result has:
Subject Side
Object Side
Experience between the two—interaction between the two
The three spheres—and every experience of the three spheres—plants new seeds with the three spheres.
And that process of ripening plantings, ripening plantings ,we know, is me-and-my-parts.
Me-and-my-world.
Hyphenate those. They're all one thing. Three spheres, three spheres, three spheres, three spheres.
Our identity is as the “subject side” with other object sides with the experiences that we're having, that we then blame on the object for making our experience, and thus the misunderstanding that pushes the wheel of samsara.
So, as we keep pushing our:
“Level of subtlety of aware” - being the subject side, the observer
“Aware of whatever is appearing” - the object side, and the reaction that we get to that object side
“Deconstructing” meaning recognizing that that happening has to be an identified label of my own awareness and nothing but—we'll keep going deeper and deeper and deeper and realize that there's no foundation whatsoever to that whole process happening.
And that's why we can perceive it.
It's like, “no, no, it seems like we should never be able to perceive it because we can never actually get to it.”
And because we can never actually get to it is why we can actually finally experience it.
Like is a Diamond Cutter Sutra where they're saying [about] all those nirvana-sized beings—”there'll be no nirvana-sized beings when you get them to nirvana which is how you can get them to nirvana, get it?
There can't be anybody [that] you can nirvana-size, which is why you can nirvana-size everybody.
And it's like, “no, I don't get it. It's like, let's read that again.”
This is the same thing.
We'll get there—hopefully sooner than later.
So then a question would be, “when we experience emptiness directly, won't that be through a mental image? Doesn’t that have to be a ripening result of seeds planted?”
Yeah. So it's going to be an appearing nature of something.
How can you have the “appearing nature experience” of an absence?
What's there when everybody's gone?
Is that still a ripening result?
Do you see?
We can't get there with explanations.
We can't get there with words.
We can't get there by putting on a label.
We can only get there by removing, removing,
What we think is there—until finally
We reach some space of exhaustion or something.
And this shift happens.
And what ripens is a mental image of
The absence of [the] self nature of:
One subject side,
One object side,
And the interaction between.
And again, because I'm trying to convey it in words, whatever I'm conveying into your mind is incorrect—from my side it's incorrect, from your side (if you're not an Arya or better, and I don’t know) it's incorrect.
So even with the explanations we're supposed to deconstruct, deconstruct, deconstruct.
So Master Saraha—he is going to go on to say, “we have the true nature of our mind right now. Our minds are lack of a self nature. They are the word we use for this process.”
So if the true nature of our mind is right here with us right now, why do we have to go looking for it?
Why do we have to spend so much effort finding it?
Why would we even sit down in meditation to try to find it?
And if that true nature of our mind is so deeply hidden, we can't get to it, then what's the use of trying to meditate on it?
You'll just sit in darkness, he calls it.
And what he means by sitting in darkness is we'll just still be sitting in the misunderstanding of what we're looking for, and what we're doing to look for it, and we'll never actually get there.
What's the use of that?
He goes on to say, “if you can't reach it, you can't reach it. And if you can't reach it through words, why bother studying? Why bother going to teachings? Why bother trying to figure it out? You're just wasting your time—and if you can't understand it, how are you going to meditate on it? So don't bother to do that either.”
And it's like “Master Saraha, what are you saying?!”
Because he's just disrespecting everything that we've spent hours working on.
And he's Arya Nagarjuna’s teacher, and Arya Nagarjuna is like the master of analysis and deconstruction—I think he'd be the last one to say, “ah, just ditch all that effort.”
Although maybe not—maybe between the lines of Arya Nagarjuna is like, “come on everybody, would you get the picture so we can knock this off and just get into being this truth instead of messing around.”
Master Saraha says, “how could the inexpressible ever be explained?”
All this endless analytical meditation, endless teaching (which I hope to never stop doing) it can't take us where we want to go. We're missing something.
And so he says, “don't pollute a mind whose natural state is pure with all these ruminations. Stop tormenting yourself and simply stay within the bliss.
And it's radical—in Sutra, we are supposed to be training ourselves by avoiding those things that we're naturally attracted to, things that we're naturally adverse to—so that we avoid situations that will bring up the mental afflictions that will override our growing disciplined judgment.
And then as we grow in our depth of understanding and compassion, we reach the Mahayana Bodhisattva practices that says, “no, no, we understand emptiness and karma better enough that rather than avoiding all of that stuff, we're going to use all those attractions and un-attractions, because we understand [that] other people have problems with those too, also.
And so we've learned how to avoid them and change them a bit, so I'm going to use them to help other people learn how to not react so badly to the things they like and the things they don't like—and so we're out to use our own experiences to help others.
And then Master Saraha is saying, “yeah, and you can do that for a really, really long time.”
And we know that three times 10 to the 60th, countless eons from our bodhichitta to our Buddhahood if we do it by sutra path.
Now maybe you're in your last 10 years of your 10 to the 60th eons—I hope that's true. Regardless, Master Saraha is pointing out that there's a different way we can relate to those experiences that we have, that can be transformative…that can be transformative. I'll stop right there.
The bodhisattva path doesn't talk about being transformative—it talks about planting virtue, virtue, virtue, virtue, virtue—which is ultimately transformative, but “transformative” has this implication of being much swifter—could be in the next moment—at any moment.
Now technically that's true in all of it, even in sutra—but in the higher practices, we're using that understanding to actually create the transformation—whether we actually see it or not—it's being created.
So Master Saraha is alluding to using pleasure as the path—even bodhisattvas don't use pleasure as the path, they understand that all pleasures are tainted with the [reality of] “and then they will end, and then they leave us suffering, and so they're out to help everybody stop that cycle of perpetuating negativity—even as we experience pleasures.
So Master Saraha is saying, “that just won't work. We need to learn to use everything as the path.”
And who wants to use displeasure as the path?
No thank you. Right?
But what about using pleasure as the path?
So Master Saraha is saying, “focus on bliss.”
Now what this thing “bliss” is that they mean is a really long story, I still don't understand it.
I like the word love.
And it really does start with just plain pleasure—things that are pleasurable—and it grows to, we use the term “I love…” I don't know, fill in the blank…
“I love horses. And if I could, I would spend all day around horses. And all I think about is horses, for instance.”
We all have the thing that we love.
And I don't know about you, but me growing up, I learned that the things that I loved weren't very practical, and they wouldn't make a living, and they wouldn't, etc.
And so they got delegated, relegated to the background of “things I loved as a kid” that I had to find other things to love as an adult—but it was never quite the same, for me anyway.
But it's a start, right?
I love something means “I want it, I want more of it, I want to keep it.”
And of course, within that kind of love is the mistake—but the pleasure—there's nothing mistaken about the pleasure, and there's nothing mistaken about wanting to experience pleasure.
It's how we go about getting it and keeping it, of course, that reflects the misunderstanding of that pleasure—but there's nothing in the pleasure itself that is wrong or mistaken.
So if we identify things that we enjoy—experiences that bring pleasure—and we properly identify them as bringing us the pleasure because the “pleasure seeds” are ripening from having helped others have a little pleasure in the past, and that by experiencing this pleasure, I will use it in some way to help others have more pleasure.
Then our pleasure does not have to be something that we avoid—it can be something that we intentionally create more of.
Now of course that takes training—because the mistaken view might be, “oh, so my job now then as a being on my spiritual path is to get as much pleasure as I can.”
An old way of getting pleasure is at the expense of others—grossly or subtly.
“Wisdom pleasure” using pleasure as the path would be, “I'm out to be the pleasure for others—moral, healthy.
That's why we have vows.
That's why our lower vows are as important as our higher vows.
Once we have higher vows (who just finished course seven?) and we heard that from Je Tsongkapa:
“To say you don't need to keep your lower vows once you have highest vows is like a rain of hail on the tender crops. Destroys your goodness.”
We can see why that's true—because when we reach a level that says, “use pleasure as the path.”
GREAT, right?
Any kind of pleasure I can find to give somebody else, I'm going to do it.
Do you see where our human mind might go?
Drugs.
Alcohol.
Sex.
Anything.
Because my job is to give people pleasure—”All right. I'm it. For you.”
But pleasures that cause damage, that hurt, that harm—that's wrong view—that's not using pleasure as the path—that's justifying my own pleasure, thinking, “I can use it to help somebody.”
So, still from that moral disciplined background, how do we be a being [where] our intention is: the other's reaction is to feel loved, to feel accepted, to feel moved, to feel safe—all those things we've been trying to do, and be, as “sutra and bodhisattva-ists” culminate in “our using pleasure as the path.”
Right?
It sounds like using our own pleasure is the path—but the only way that works is by being “bringing others pleasure.”
That's what helps.
So Lama Christie shared this story about King Udayana:
Udayana and Bimbisara—they were the ones that ended up with the Wheel of Life painting.
The same guy, Udayana—he's a great king. His kingdom’s doing fabulous. And he is attracted to Lord Buddha's teachings, and he's like, “I want to give up my kingdom and go follow Buddha.”
And he decides to do so—he gives his kingdom to his son.
And he's off in a different kingdom, studying, practicing—doing very well. And he gets word that his son's kingdom is not doing well—the son as king is not a good king and people are suffering.
And King Udayana's heart just goes out to his subjects and he goes to Lord Buddha and he says, “I think I've got to go back. I need to go back and set this right.”
And Buddha says to him, he says, “well, yeah, you can go back, but you'll be, you are, driven by your karma.
There's a term layke depa and I have a vocabulary [sheet] here…
[opens vocabulary list]l
Layke depa.
Depa here means to drive something ahead of yourself—like the shepherd drives the sheep through the gate, that kind.
We’ll hear depa later as “repeat, repeat, repeat,”but here it means “drive all those sheep through the gate, one after the other.”
The lay (LAS) means karma.
So the term layke depa means “driven by karma.”
And it's true everything is driven by karma, isn't it?
Like these things that we're calling ripples of the mind—
That's “movement of the mind and what it motivates.”
It is karma.
Our mind is karma.
We are karma.
I had a student once,
after some class that I gave,
she goes, “man, I'm just this rolling ball of karma.”
She got it in this instant—and hopefully never lost it.
And it's really true.
Layke depa.
So king Udayana—ex-king Udayana, decides, “yeah, I am going to go back.”
And before he reaches the kingdom—he gets killed.
And he's killed by an emissary of warriors, or something, sent by his son (the new king) who got wind that his father was coming back to take the kingdom back.
So Buddha knew that was going to happen. He didn't say, “oh, you don't dare go.”
He's driven by his karma.
And if we try to think that through, which I imagine Luisa [a student in class] will be doing after she hears this—it's like, well, what if he hadn't gone and well, not being Buddha, I don't know—but on the one hand, we could say, “he would've been killed by something else.”
Or maybe the shift in his perception to decide to not go would've shifted the seeds and he wouldn't have been killed.
But maybe that shift would have contributed to a shift and he would've lost his seeds for studying the dharma. His motivation to go was huge—and yet he seemed to get a bad result from that big-hearted decision.
The two were not cause and effect, are they?
So, driven by our karma—which is partly Master Saraha's point—if we have the karma to hear the words of the explanations about karma and emptiness and understand it perfectly—then we will.
If we have the seeds to understand it partially—then we will.
Right? That's where I am.
If we have the seeds to not understand it or we don't have the seeds to understand it (which is different) then we can hear the “pen thing” and we'll stand there and argue that yes, the perceptions coming from the mind of the perceiver, and the dog sees a pen—they just don't know to label it that, right?
There's a part of my mind that still thinks that.
I know there are people who hear the pen explanation and come to that conclusion.
We're all driven by our karmas.
So what's the point in doing anything?
Because anything we do makes new karma.
“Yea, but our karma pushes us to choose to do what we do!”
Which is how we plant new karma—thank goodness our karma pushes us to make new karma.
Nobody decided that—it wasn't decreed—that's how our mind works.
Movement of the mind and what it motivates—that's what we mean by karma.
The ripples on the ocean is what we mean by karma, it's what we mean by mind.
There isn’t “a mind” that's doing it.
There's the process: happening, happening, happening, happening—and our subject side is part of it.
So Master Saraha is instructing us to learn to ride our karma, use our karma, versus resisting it so much—struggling against it—even struggling to make the new “right kind,” when we misunderstand how to make the right kind, even in our intellectual understanding, we're misunderstanding.
So he says, “we have this primordial mind. We have it already. Nobody can ever take it from us. It is the key to this transformation from experiences of outright suffering (suffering of change, pervasive suffering) to experiencing bliss, void, wisdom—constantly.
The outer things…I want to say, the outer things may or may not be different—but of course they're going to be different. As our seeds shift, they're always different.
Moment by moment they're different.
So he says, “the mudra of this cycle, deceives every living being, but their own primordial nature cannot be taken from us—from them.
The teachings say [that] every time we finish one life and move into the next life, we have, at least for a moment, touched this primordial mind.
Technically, every time we fall into a deep sleep, we touch a version of that primordial mind.
Every time we orgasm, we touch an instant of this primordial mind.
Technically, every time we sneeze, if you've ever been knocked out, I'm not sure if when you're anesthetized whether you can reach it or not.
One of our Buddhist friends is in an anesthesiologist, and I asked him, “when you put your patients to sleep, do you guide them to see the clear light?”
And he looked at me funny. It's like, no.
And if I ever get an anesthetized, I'm going to ask my anesthesiologist to do that—I hope that they're Buddhist to know what I'm talking about.
But the point is, although we have these multiple opportunities to reach our primordial—we don't do it.
First of all, we don't know so we don't recognize it.
Second of all, we are not trained in our ability to focus our awareness on something for long enough to hold it—because is going like this [indicates movement]. And so even if we think we're close to reaching it, it's very hard to stay there.
Third of all, it goes by so fast.
So when we die as an ordinary untrained dying person, this tradition says, we do encounter this clear light, but we don't recognize it as our own true nature and we'd like [freak out].
It's scary instead of embracing—and then we're pushed back down into bardo and next life—same with these other fleeting moments of possible access.
So Master Saraha…wait, wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.
We're given two more synonyms for this thing “primordial mind” this thing Mahamudra that we're trying to get to:
One of them is she chuku.
She is short for SHES RAB, which is wisdom.
KU is dharma body—another name of the primordial mind is the dharma body of the original condition.
So when we say “original condition,” we mean ignorant—a non-Arya (before Arya) ignorant condition dharma body. So our “ignorant condition being” has its empty nature and we can call that our “dharma body.”
It's not our Buddha Dharma body—but it will be… it will be—when our seeds ripen us as that.
And then hlenchik kyepe osel is called the spontaneous clear light—the spontaneous clear light is this clear light nature of our mind that sounds like it's this shining thing, an appearing thing, but it's the word that they use for this “what's there” when nobody's perceiving it.
What's there when our “subject / object interaction between” are no longer separate, and we are aware of the potential nature of this ripening system.
So they call it “the spontaneous clear light.”
To reach that spontaneously happens in these different events that I just listed. To bring it on in a meditation is not called spontaneous—I mean it is a spontaneous thing that happens in that meditation, but we've been cultivating it so they use a different term—but it's the same experience.
The ultimate reality experience is the same no matter how you get there.
The effect it has on [the] mind that experiences it is different, according to how you got there, [and then] what your mind is imbued with as you have that experience influences the influence of the experience on the mind.
So she chuku and hlenchik skype osel, they’re both saying what we're going to reach—this true nature of our own mind—meeting our own dharma body.
And that's what they mean by “meeting our mind face-to-face,” which is what Lama Christie called this whole course is “How to meet our mind, face-to-face,”
Not of course, meaning literally.
As humans, conceived in a womb, what that means is that our physical bodies are made up of six special elements—three of which we get from our mother, three of which we get from our father.
And those subtle elements “form up” the grosser elements that make up our physical body—and those gross elements are in various levels and qualities interacting with each other all the time.
And that's what contributes to the uniqueness of each of our bodies and the changes of each of our bodies as we go through life. And then as our karmic seeds for this life are wearing out, those grocer elements are wearing out in strength and ability to adjust according to the other elements.
And slowly or quickly, those grosser elements
Stop being so gross-functioning,
And the subtle elements themselves stop being ripened.
And one by one, as they stop being ripened—
One drops away, the next one is predominant,
That one drops away, the next one is predominant.
They drop away one by one by one by one…
And that process is the process we call “dying”
And we get to a point where all that's left as the subtle element
Is “awareness,” and then even that awareness
Dissolves away awareness of other, awareness of self—
Actually it's self first, other—
And then even “awareness of awareness” drops away,
And we go into a deep, deep, deep unconsciousness
That finally drops away like a veil
Into the “what's there when nothing's ripening?”
And if we recognize it as, “oh…”
I mean it won't be in words—it'll be in experience as true nature.
You experience the clear light.
Which can happen spontaneously at death, if we can go through all of that in a trained focused way—which we can't without training. Because you lose your cognitive ability partway through that.
So it's really not impossible, but very unlikely, to reach the spontaneous clear light at an ordinary being's death—lots of different avenues that that can go to help somebody do that, but it's not going to happen spontaneously, likely.
That same process happens in an approximate way when we fall asleep.
That same process happens in a really quick approximate way when we sneeze, they say.
And that same process happens when we are in an extraordinary state of pleasure, in which we have lost our sense of “self versus other.”
And there is a human condition in which there is the opportunity to do that—and humans call it sexual intercourse, humans call it orgasm—and it's used for ordinary purposes: to conceive, or to enjoy.
Two very healthy reasons to join the two organs.
However, in doing so, we miss an opportunity to use that same process to actually trigger this process of reaching the clear light.
The reason the process works is because our natural tendency is to be attracted to things that are pleasurable, our minds are able to focus more sustainably on things that are pleasurable, than on things that are unpleasurable, of course.
And that particular experience where you are giving to another the pleasure that you are experiencing—that particular exercise because of the focus of attention that stays on the pleasure—it helps draw the winds of distraction, other/self, other/self—closer and closer to winds being in the central channel, in which there is still self and other but not as two separate things.
And in intercourse, it is a time when one could lose their sense of self into another, a bigger other, right?
A union—a “union of the two” if you've heard that term.
So there are practices where you actually use the pleasure of a growing, and then sustaining, orgasm to pull the winds of “self existent other / self existent me” into the central channel where there is no more “self existent / self existent” but there's still ripening, there's still experiences happening—such that those winds will gather the subtle body and the mind that rides on it, to be able to enter the location of the subtle body where the dissolution of those elements can happen intentionally—leading us to experience the clear light.
To experience that pleasurably allows us to do it. To experience those dissolutions unpleasable—which is what it is to die–-we're not going to do it, right? Because who wants to focus so deeply and clearly on something as unpleasant as losing those elements.
But when it's pleasurable, of course we'll focus on it.
So it's a whole training, of course—highest yoga tantra, highest practices, highest of the highest, is this practice.
So to hear about it is extraordinary goodness.
If we check our own minds, there's some part of our minds that go, “wow, I want that. I must be ready for that. I'm going to go find a partner. Let's try it on for size.”
Lama Christie said again and again, said, “wait, wait, wait until it's forced on you. Your karmic seeds will be such that when the time is right, this will all happen and you'll be so karmically prepared that there won't be any brouhaha, there won't be any should I?, shouldn't I?
It'll just be beautifully spontaneous.
So no rush.
But meanwhile, what do we do? Right?
Master Saraha is saying, “use pleasure as the path.”
Any pleasure that we can focus on is easier to focus on than things that aren't pleasurable, as we use them to focus on with our wisdom—which means “this pleasure that's coming to me as a result of my past kindness. I want to share it with somebody.”
“Well, me and my cat, we're the only ones here, all right?”
Right. I'll give my cat a pet as I'm enjoying this, whatever the pleasure is. I'm offering it to the Buddhas who are omniscient—contributing to their bliss-void wisdom.
Our focus as we're enjoying a pleasure is outgoing—sharing it.
Ignorant focus on pleasure is, “suck in more, I want more, I want to keep it, I want to hold it.”
Which is what makes it go away.
So we can start using pleasure as the path!
First of all—give yourself permission to have a little pleasure.
Sutra says ‘no!’
Bodhisattva says, ‘yeah, yeah, okay, a little bit.’
Mahamudra, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, to his sutra class, he's saying, when you understand, when you have your karma and emptiness clear, your morality won't fall as you focus on using pleasure as the path, because the pleasure you're going to use is the pleasure you're trying to give to others, right?
I just said, as you're experiencing your own pleasure, you try to share it. But the pleasure we want to focus on is the pleasure we try to give to others.
Can we give anybody else pleasure?
Technically not.
Can we see ourselves try?
Absolutely.
Will it always work?
No.
Does that mean I didn't get the goodness of trying to give pleasure?
No, I do—right?
The result that I get is according to the result I've given, right?
So then the flip side of using pleasure as the path is when somebody's trying to hold the door open for you and they let go too soon and it hits you in the back, right? Don't blame them. Be grateful for whatever they did do—so that our trying to be pleasurable can actually seem to be pleasurable (it doesn't really matter) but it is pleasurable to the one who's trying to give the pleasure, when the person who's receiving what you're giving seems to appreciate it.
So we create that by appreciating what others try to do for us, even if it doesn't quite give us the pleasure, maybe they thought that it was going to.
So all of this does not say, “oh, seeds don't matter.”
They absolutely matter more so when we're using pleasure as the path.
Our likelihood to be able to use our off cushion time as the path increases greatly when we recognize, “oh, this thing about pleasure, it can be used as the path—and I can be the source of a little pleasure for any being that I interact with—healthy moral attempt.
And that starts the seeds for receiving the teachings and practices that will take us all the way to that using what's the ultimate human pleasure,supposedly—as the path someday.
Okay, I'm almost out of time.
So Master Saraha, he's going to say, “use nothing but bliss as the path.”
And he goes on to say,
There is no secret teaching.
There is no secret word.
There is no meditation.
And there is no object.
All these things just act to cause
Confusion in your mind.
Don't pollute a mind whose natural state is
Pure with all these ruminations.
Stop tormenting yourself and simply
Stay within the bliss.
Revel in the joining of the two
As your sustenance, ceaselessly,
incessantly, feeling up the wheel.
Use this kind of practice to reach beyond the world.
This world of darkness will be smashed
By turning it on its head
There where neither inner winds nor mind
Will ever wander—there where neither
Sun nor moon are ever going to enter.
Let the mind release its breath
In that realm of unknowing.
This is all the advice that the dagger has to give.
So it's a beautiful series of verses that's deep, deep, deep in meaning—in code—but there's a beautiful term that he used:
Let the mind release its breath in that realm of the unknowing.
He didn't say release yourself into the realm of the unknown.
The realm of the unknowing.
It's such a clue.
It took me years.
And finally I remember, and I don't remember the circumstance, but all of a sudden I was saying to myself, ‘oh my gosh, I'm not a noun—I'm a verb!’
And it just shifted things for me so much.
Do you identify as being an ing?
I.N.G.
Do-ing
Be-ing
Say-ing
Sleep-ing
Teach-ing
ing, ing, ing
I play with the ruins, the Scandinavian ruins, and the first one is ng
I think it's the first one—ng.
I'm not done with class, but I'm done with class because I'm out of time.
So the meditation that we have didn't say anything about using pleasure as the path, and this class did get a second meditation but it was only for those who had had initiation—so Lama Christie, shooed the Sutra students out from the other part of this class—I'm not going to do that.
But I'm going to suggest that as you struggle with this meditation—because it's not an easy one at all—somewhere along the line, add the idea of “wow, this is pleasurable.”
Right?
This is fun.
I'm going to have fun doing this—struggle with this meditation. A little bit like the answer to Mike's question, right?
Just laugh when it goes wrong and come back, right?
Have fun.
Add a little bit of pleasure to this, even contrived, and see if it helps you.
Maybe do it a couple of days without, and then add it in some way and see if it changes the quality of your experience.
It may or may not change the outcome—that doesn't matter so much—it's the quality of the experience.
Alright, so remember that person we wanted to be able to help?
We learned a lot, some of which, very delicate for a sutra class that we will use sooner or later to help that other in that deep and ultimate way.
And that's an extraordinary goodness! An extraordinary goodness coming out of you. An extraordinary goodness that you've planted.
So please be happy with yourself.
Think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hand.
Recall your own precious, holy being.
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 accepted 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.
And may it be so.
All right, thank you very much for the opportunity to share.
*************
Link to audio: Mahamudra - Class 6
Vocab:
Zungjuk
Hlenchik kyejor
Gampopa dakpa hlaje
Shangpa kagyu
Dakpo kagyu
Narochudruk
Gauma / kauma
KYUNPO NELJOR
NIGUCHUDRUK
TUMMO
PAKMO DRUKPA
DRUKPA KAGYU
NGAGYEL
SELNANG
RO NGYOM
AMANASI
DUKNGEL KYI SHIJIE
PA DAMPA SANGYE
CHOD
MACHIK LABDRON
DZOGCHEN
NYINGMA
MASTER PADMASAMBHAVA
*************
Introduction
Welcome back. We are Mahamudra studiers, practicers. This is March 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.”
*************
So last class, we got introduced to this idea of using bliss to get to emptiness directly, called the clear light in that context. And we heard that on a very superficial level, it's a method for using that pleasurable state in order to more deeply penetrate to a level of concentration that can reach a deeper conceptual experience of emptiness, and go on to take us eventually to that direct experience of the no self-nature of self, other, all existing things, all experiences, all. That word 'all'. And then of course there are steps to learning how to do that.
And for sutra students, it's still useful to understand that we can use the feeling of pleasure in a similar way. It doesn't only pertain to this thing called bliss, which is very specific. Any pleasure can be used to help our concentration go more deeply. And yet we learn in our bodhisattva vows that we actually have a vow to not let ourselves think that the pleasure of meditation is the goal and so stall us there, get distracted by the pleasure of meditation. When our concentration gets more and more focused, the subtle body effect is that the winds that are usually [stirring], our mind and winds are doing this [stirring]. As we concentrate, they smooth out, they calm down, they draw in. As our concentration is inner - versus outer, then the winds draw in as well. And if winds actually get close to or even in the central channel, that state is pleasurable. It is pleasurable.
And as our concentration levels improve, we reach that state in our meditation where the SHIN JANGS develop. We haven't really talked about them too much, but you get a practiced ease where the physical body clicks in and it's pleasurable, and the mental state clicks in and you're just [steadily focused] doing. You're in your meditative state doing whatever your meditation is doing. Which could be a very active meditation, an active visualization, or it could be trying to single-pointedly focus on a not so active thing. It doesn't matter so much the object, it's the ease with which we can meditate, and that is pleasurable. And the danger of that is that because it's pleasurable, we shift our focus from our object of meditation to the pleasure. And that's what the bodhisattva vow is saying - don't do that. And it's tempting. So, now we're being told, well use that pleasure. Well, how do you use it if you don't focus on it? But if you focus on it, you've lost your meditation object. And so it's this conundrum. And there is a way to use the pleasure to deepen the concentration but not lose our object. And that's why Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen brings it up, is that those practices to learn how to do that in our tradition are usually not taught until you're in Diamond Way. He's so naturally in Diamond Way that he can't help himself but say, look, even in your sutra meditation, you're going to hit the pleasure and here's what you do with it. So we're going to get there. We haven't got there yet, but in today's meditation we're going to add this little piece of letting this exploration of the true nature of our own mind be something that's enjoyable, something that's fun, something that you bring curiosity to, something that you're experimenting with. As opposed to what it's felt like, at least to me up until now, which is do it this way, get it right, do it this way, keep working on it until you have it right. And just to hear myself say that, my own whoever is in there listening goes, 'eek, that doesn't sound like so much fun'. And Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen himself is saying that you can buckle down and try hard and probably it's going to kick you out. Whereas if we bring this piece of 'this is fun', even when I don't think I'm doing it right, 'this is fun exploring it'. And really when we learn the full Mahamudra, as long as we have the steps that we go through, there isn't a right or a wrong because it's all an exploration. And once the exploration brings you to this clarity, then whether we're still in the clarity or out of the clarity, we're still applying the process. So he said earlier, I think he said, that this whole Mahamudra is a trick to get us to shamatha which is that platform from which we can actually penetrate to the direct perception of the true nature of our object. Because your whole experience is all, everything is the object. So you can't ever lose your object, which is what being in shamatha is. You never lose your object. So it's kind of fun when you get to the full practice of Mahamudra to just go through the steps and know that whatever happens, you're on your object and you just stay there until your timer's done having a good time. Let's go through the meditation again. We're adding a little piece each time and then we'll get into his text and how he's going to move us from one stage to the next.
*************
Link to Meditation: Class 6 @ 00:15:50
Alright, so settle your body in like you know how to do. I won't lead it. Get it parked upright, relaxed.
****
And then bring your attention to your breath, that sharp focus right at the edge of the nostrils, one side or the other.
We'll stay there a minute or two.
Adjust your focus, adjust your clarity, adjust your fascination. No control. Simply clear, bright, eager watching.
****
Now notice that there are two base conceptions happening. There is everything that's outside your body and there's everything that's inside your body. In the sense that you are parked at the line between the breath that's outside and the breath that's inside.
****
Now look closely at your actual experience, those sensations. Is there something about those sensations that show out-breath versus in-breath?
If you find something that seems to make the distinction, to give the distinction to you, look more closely at that information. What is it about that information that says out-breath or in-breath?
****
Recognize that the out-breath is an idea imposed upon certain sensations. In-breath, another idea.
Add the awareness of those experiences being mental image ideas. Shape shifting.
Our own minds are making the distinctions. Our own minds are making the very experiences.
Stay focused on the breath, the sensation at your nostrils, and let yourself let go into the awareness that it's nothing but this constant shifting of mental images. Your mind rippling this experience, then this experience.
There's no inside, there's no outside, there's no body.
Simply constant shape shifting appearances happening.
And let the analysis go. Simply be the experiencer.
Now drop in a little more deeply and shift your attention to any object of thought that arises. Any sensation, any idea. Whatever arises, recognize as another ripple appearing and passing. Let it go.
***
If you find yourself following a thought, following a picture, when you recognize that you have followed, just 'oops´, fell for it again, nothing but ripenings, shape-shifting appearances.
Let it all go. Drop in and watch again.
***
Seeds ripening, nothing but.
***
Now sink in a little more deeply and be on alert for the space between any ripple. Are there moments between - one thought that you let go of - before the next thought arises?
And now add the element of curiosity, of enjoyment, of watching for the space between thoughts, enjoying whatever arises next and letting it go. Enjoying this process of the constantly shapeshifting experience happening.
It can be fun.
***
Let's stay two more minutes.
***
Appearances happening and nothing but. Enjoy yourself.
Check.
Nice. Now let go of that practice. Bring your awareness to being inside your body. Wiggle your toes, wiggle your fingers, become aware of your room. When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch…
*************
Does adding curiosity help?
Does adding fun help?
Yeah, it's supposed to.
So I waited until almost the end before I had us add it, but you don't have to wait until the end. In our meditation preliminaries, we have the rejoicing that comes towards the end. Gosh, maybe there is a reason for that, that maybe we're supposed to have this happy, fun state of mind before we go into this serious meditation.
So yes
Student: “Thank you dear. So when you're seeing add enjoyment and it's something mental that you do, how do you add enjoyment exactly`
Well, for me it's mental. I just say “I'm having fun doing this." And I just kind of imagine that it really is fun and it does come eventually. When the shin junks come on. That does make it actually fun, because they're so pleasurable that there's a physical component to it and there is a mental component to it. I am happy. For those of us that are chronically depressed, you can't just say, I'm going to be happy and feel happy. But there's some word that you can find. That shifts from mmum the to oh oh oh, a little bit pleasurable. Find the word that works for you. Maybe it's curious. Maybe it's, I don't know, anticipation. Find the word that works. I agree. “Just be happy” doesn't work. “Just have fun” Doesn't work necessarily. So find the one that works. Okay, thank you.
Student:
I'm recognizing that when we're doing the practices, when we were guiding it and we're adding things, I have to recognize it, but I want to respond back to you.
I know, and then I'm like, I'm building up answers and now I'm like, I shifted out and then I have to force myself back. Is there something that you recommend to, I don't know how to stop the inner chat or when you're saying look into, you know what I mean? When you're adding things in the meditations and I'm like, wait, A part of me is like when I engage with, then pulling away from observing.
Yeah. So when I'm leading you in this, I am leading you in the, I'm trying to help you get to an experience of what it is I'm describing. And so when I'm describing it, it's very natural to have this want to answer. And if you mentally need to answer in order to recognize what it is, I'm trying to click in an experience, then mentally do that. That's okay. When we're learning the meditation. Because that will help you to clarify in your own mind, what's she talking about? What's she talking about this? See that there's the outer end, there's the inner. And I don't know, I can't see into your mind, so I don't know. Okay, they've got it or they don't have it. I can only ask the questions and you answer them in your own mind, which is, you're right, a distraction from the watching when you're doing this on your own and you've found what you think, I'm trying to describe the experience of, you don't need to use the same words I use to get yourself there.
You go into the breath and then you go, okay, this is breath at this level, but let's go deeper and see that. Oh my gosh, this thing I call sensations that I call breath. Breath is the idea. So I have to describe it in words, but you don't have to describe it in word once you get in there and do it yourself. Once you've done it, once you've done it, you just go through these levels. Here I am at ordinary level, here I am at next level, down of a wearing of what's happening. Here I am at next level down here I am at next level down. So once you understand what the experience feels like, you don't need the words anymore. But until we've got that understanding of the experience, use the words. I'm being the watcher and there's a part of me that's saying, look at what you think you're watching. Right? You think the sensations are the breath, but the breath is just an idea, right? So are the sensations. Oh, so is going to be the me that's watching the sensation. We haven't got there yet.
Student: Okay. Yeah. I think mentally, because you're the teacher, I feel like it's almost like I have to respond. So it's okay for me to have that inner chatter and move, see it, let it go as I'm working through it. And then I wanted to just say to Student 1 or how to bring the joy. Sometimes I just think, I just remember that I take myself too serious, I trying too hard or smile. Or we'll do a yoga, some crazy pose and you're like, well, we're look like idiots. That's okay. Smile, don't take yourself. So that makes me kind of relax. I know that I do look crazy. Lama Hector used to say, have a small Mona Lisa smile. Just really smile, which makes me laugh a very, I'm smiling and then that makes me a little bit more relaxed. I don't know if that's helpful.
Great. Thanks, Tom. Yes. Louisa,
I'm not your question. Well, the difference to what we did today, because for me it felt like analytical meditation, Right? And then I didn't know if we had to at that moment also feel that we are watching the analyzer analyzing.
Not yet.
But then I am a bit anticipating. So we are trying to build up this sequence to at some point achieve that what you want us to achieve. What if I am not yet able to recognize? To recognize, yeah, this is the watcher or the observer observing me or observing the one who is aware. If I am not able to recognize that until now, and you keep adding elements in the meditation. So I keep feeling lost. I keep feeling okay, I still don't get this. I don't know who is the watcher and I don't know, what are you making us achieve.
When we got to the point where we just had the last two minutes of sitting there letting everything arise and pass, could you do that?
No. Even that I cannot. I still cannot let pass. I go along with the thoughts or with the, yeah, it is still at that level and that's what makes me think. Okay. And when I practice between the sessions, I still use the recording because I cannot do it by myself. Right? And that's more or less what I'm thinking. Okay, you keep adding elements, but I am still in the base one.
Yeah. I think I would suggest for you, as we add new meditations, don't necessarily work on that one the week in between, but go back and find the one that seems to be the one that's challenging you to be able to rest in the not follow, like follow, bring back, follow, bring back. Whichever meditation you recognize. You can't do that. Stay with that one until a shift happens. Come to class, learn the new ones, but don't do the new ones until you feel like you have this ability to catch the following and let it go. Special for you.
Okay, thank you, Lema. Okay,
Good. Good. Yes, Roxanna.
Thank you. Good morning. I'm sorry, I overslept and I want my mom's, so everything's real quiet out here. So for me, it's like a karma shifted of waking early, of always sleeping. And that had a consequence in my meditation
Because usually I do have a routine when I get up and right now, the first thing I did is jump to the computer. The karma that was going on in my head, the ripening is you have to go to the washroom. And then I started, why do this Karma must ripen. You have to go every morning. So that was the main thing that was going on because I needed to go and guess it. Sometimes we takes for advantage when we just do things and we do not appreciate that our bodies relaxed and calm. And I was able to follow a bit, but not all. I think dilemma froze.
*** Pause ***
We just found the space between thoughts, Right? Right.
I said that this meditation was very different from when I wake up early as when I just jump into the computer, my karma shifted and was able to compare when I trained my mind as to when I immediately just put it the power on and activated it. It's so different when I do it with more consciously, with more precise as just following an instruction because I wasn't ready as I usually am.
And that's a really, really great experience.
It is, definitely it is. Because I'm able to compare.
Yeah, good.
The other thing, when you said, okay, just watch your thoughts and be in that space and see what arises. I wasn't that space, but then my mind, it didn't like to be resting there and it was, oh, your hands are so cold. Oh, I think the room must be things too.
All of these are experiences. And with Mahamudra, that's the point, right? It's not like, oh man, I'll never do that again. It made my meditation lousy. It's like, no, this is the moment. This is what's happening. This is a rising passing. This ability to be one step back. It's more accepting of what's happening. And yet more aware also that what's happening in the way I automatically think it's happening at me, is isn't happening like that. It is happening. It would start the whole explanation of where things come from. So with Mahamudra, everything is the object. We actually haven't gotten to Mahamudra yet. We are just training the skills to be able to get there because the Mahamudra isn't until we get to the empty nature of our own mind, and we actually are not even close to that.
Yes.
It's like, well, at least for me this morning, it's like the angel debates, the devil, the one thought that arise is so disrespectful that you're still in pajamas. And then other thought, it's like, no, but you're in the class. Who cares? That's what counts, right? Right. Kind of a debate. This is silly.
Okay, so Lobsang Gelsay, his root text has said, Mahamudra comes to us in the secret teachings and it comes to us in the sutra teachings. And first he talked about how it arises in the tantra teachings, but of course he couldn't go into detail because he is giving a open course. And then he gets to the section, he goes, okay, so now it's time to talk about the Sutra version of Mahamudra. And he says, and that comes to us from the great medium and brief, which teaches us directly how to meditate on emptiness. It's in the root text and what he means by the brief medium and great or great medium and brief. That tells us that the Mahamudra practices come to us from the Prajna Paramita . So they are sutra and they are a greater way Sutra Prajna Paramita is the perfection of wisdom teachings, the great one, the big one that Prajna Paramita in 80,000, I don't know if it's lines or verses, but big medium, like diamond cutter sutra, white lotus sutra, those and then brief like heart sutra like the sutra, which is really brief.
So he says, now we're onto this section about sutra mahamudra. And he enthuses us about studying it because he says, as the highest realized being Nagarjuna has stated, there is no path to freedom any different than this in keeping with his true intent in the words of the llamas 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. So this term, the Tibetan term, meet your mind face to face. It has the connotation of you have a friend who's never met your teacher and you say to the friend, would you like to meet Geshe Michael? And they go, oh yeah, I would. And so you take them by the hand and you go to Geshe Michael and you say, Geshe Michael, I would like you to meet my friend Tom. Tom, I would like you to meet my teacher, Geshe Michael. And then they have this first recognition and then they carry on their conversation, whatever, and I can back out of the picture. So it has that connotation. Mahamudra is the practice where we meet our own mind for the first time. (54:55)
Mike, this is Mike's mind. Mike's mind, this is Mike. And it sounds so silly. Because it's like, wait a minute, I've been living with my mind for a long time, longer even than this life. Are you telling me I've never actually met it? Yeah, I think Luisa is being brave enough to say, yeah, I can't even find the watcher. And it's true. It's hard. It's hard to figure out what the heck is going on in there. It's like, who is the me? What's the me? What's the mind? What is this thing - my mind? I've been sharing the dharma with people for 25 years. And if somebody said, what is this thing mine` ? I honestly would have to say, I'm not really sure.
I definitely have one. Drives me crazy most of the time. But it's like: What is it? Where is it? What does it actually do? How is it different than me? Right? It's definitely different than me. Who trumps who? Who's more important? Who's in charge? Me or my mind? And is my mind even a thing? Well, wait a minute, is me even a thing? Right? Do you see where it goes? I mean, these are my meditations: “ blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Would you just shut up in there? And that's the beauty of Mahamudra. It's just like, okay, hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye.
And it makes the conundrum more clear. It doesn't solve the conundrum, right? So if we're thinking, oh, when I finally get to mahamudra, I'll understand all that stuff. Surprise. We understand that we can't understand until we're, I guess I would venture to say until we're at Bodhisattva level eight and no longer have the ignorance seeds ripening, still maybe have the omniscience blockers. But before we'll really grasp what we're trying to say. The exploration or the ability to sit with curiosity as something separate from the whole thing happening is a doorway to being able to let this all bubble up. And then our understanding begins to unravel into greater clarity. (58:13)
It's not something that we turn on and achieve. It's something that we just keep letting go, letting go, letting go. It is planting the seeds for this shift in understanding. So by adding this piece of enjoying, trying: Like releasing the needing to do it right. The needing to be successful. The needing to get to level seven. Just enjoy the process is the beautiful part of mahamudra that helps us actually use it more deeply is we have other meditations that we do. You have to do them just like this, right? But this one, it's like you learn the sequence, let yourself fall into it and then let it all bubble. Yeah. Okay. Alright.
Pancha Lama is saying in his text that his intention is to teach his audience how to get into this deep meditation and actually meet face-to-face our own mind. It's a pretty bold statement actually to say he's going to do that for us. And I'm his standing. So it's like, I hope I can carry that out for you, that you will be able to come to this deep experience of your own mind.
Okay, so let's take our break and we'll start into what he calls his sutra presentation, which doesn't seem so sutra to me. So I'm going to pause the recording again here.
*************
So I have a couple of screen shares.
So he is going to go on to make the case that any way we go about reaching this thing called Mahamudra, no matter what method we use, they will all take us to the same place, in the same way that all of Buddha's teachings are taking the disciples to the same place. And the same place being called Union of the two truths. In Tibetan, it's the term for Buddhahood achieved by way of the diamond way practices versus Buddhahood achieved by way of the Sutra practices. There's nothing different about the state of being Diamond Way Buddha or Sutra of Buddha being made of perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom by way of ultimate compassion or growing compassion and growing wisdom.
It's just the method used to make that transformation. So “jarich” means union of the two, meaning the pair of appearing nature and empty nature existing simultaneously. Will we already do that? We, these are our appearing natures. The fact that it has no nature of its own, is its empty nature. So how come we're not already Buddha or Sutra Buddha? It's the awareness that's the simultaneous, simultaneously aware of the appearing nature and the empty nature simultaneous means at the same time. And that is what's meant by a fully awakened being, is a being who's experiencing those two simultaneous as union of the two. That's what union of the two means. He's using the diamond weight term, the tantric term for the goal to be reached in his argument that sutra teachings will get us there, tantra teachings will get us there. And he's going on to point out that the different traditions of practices will also get you there (1:04)
He stays gallupa, he's going to teach gallupa or manhamudra. But in getting us there, he shows that every other practice that says it can get you to “sru," they can. And he says, in fact they're all the same. And it's like, wait a minute, they're not all the same. They're all different. In fact, and they're not going to work the same for everybody, are they? No, because they'll work according to the seeds of the one who's practicing them. So maybe we practice one and it doesn't work. And then we practice a different one and it does work. Or maybe we would have the seeds for all of them to work, but you don't need to use all of them. It's like there are all these different tools that we can use says Lobsang Gyaltsen. Even outside of his own tradition, which is masterful for him and common for Lobsang Gyaltsen to say, I'm going to give you the way that works. And then he praises all the other ways as well to keep us from thinking ours is the only way. Because that would be a blocker to our way even working for us. He's saying, I'm going to teach you sutra, Mahamudra, and it's going to get you to zungjuk, which is a diamond way term. It's so sneaky, skillful. Skillful means he says all these different methods that we're going to talk about. (1:06)
They're like, if somebody finds a jewel in a cave, a really precious jewel. And they show it to different people from all over the world, the different people will have a different name for that jewel. But they're all focused on the same thing, right? I mean, here's this thing I call it pen? Tom, what is your language? Call it “cca." What is your language? Katja?. What does your language call it?
Joana. You get my point, right? Same thing, different names. Same with all these different methods for getting to Mahamudra. The Mahamudra we get to is all going to be the same no matter how we get there. Because what is the Mahamudra? It's the empty nature of our own mind.
It's not our mind. It's the empty nature of our mind.
And what we mean by that is arrived at in all these different ways, but in itself they will all be identical. Not the same, but identical in their absence of self nature. So he quotes from Akita, you'll see it in your reading, who says something very clear about the emptiness that's reached by sutra method and the emptiness that's reached by diamond wave method. He says, emptiness in sutra versions has to do with the complete lack of the elaboration. Elaboration means giving identities to things, complete lack of elaboration. And if the tantric version is any different, that would mean it would have to have an elaboration, wouldn´t it? And it can't.
Lobsang Gyaltsen is saying, right, that's why I'm emphasizing sutra because it's open to everybody. People who have diamond way and people who don't. And it will get us to the same experience that we need to get to. That's also why he's adding to the Sutra students to let yourself add some pleasure factor, some enjoyment factor, some curiosity factor. If he was talking to a bunch of monks who are carefully studying their vinaya, maybe not even Mahayana yet. This would be radical: What I'm supposed to avoid desires. I'm supposed to avoid anything that's going to trigger mental afflictions in me.
Same probably for the lay people he's teaching. Whose mindset is probably more “I want to be more like the ordained people and get away from all my mental afflictions rather than use them." So here he's saying no, give yourself permission to enjoy yourself at least in this practice a little bit. So he goes on then to give a list of nine different practices from the different traditions that lead to this same state of mahamudra. They're not called Mahamudra practices. Because they are coming to us from different traditions, but what they're taking their practitioners to is the same experience. He gives us little glimpses into these different practices that are available.
I'm so insulated in our practice, I don't know if these practices are readily available now or not. Lama Christie said that they were fairly common practices even now. So I mean technically if you hear one or read about it and you're reading and some seeds attract you to it, that would not be a bad thing. They aren't anything that we will go on to study carefully using Gelugpa.
Let me switch my share so you can see it.
I'm just going to read it to you.
Here are the nine different practices he's going to tell us about.
One, it's called the spontaneous capsule.
Two, the practice called Gauma
three, the practice of the five,
four, balancing a bitter taste,
five instructions in four syllables
Six, putting our torment to rest.
Seven, cutting off the object
eight, the great completion.
Nine, a book of notes on the middle wave view.
So he gives us these nine and he says it has been unburdened 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 meaning, their true meaning and see that they all come down to the same basic idea:
To meet your own mind directly means to reach the direct experience of the emptiness of your mind and the direct experience of the emptiness of our mind will be the direct experience of the emptiness of all existence.
Question: Is Sojön as synonymous for Mahamudra.
Answer: Sojön , is the great completion. It is a synonym, yes, But it relates to a specific practice,
Okay, so the first one, spontaneous capsule in Tibetan is Hlechik Kyejor. It's brought to us by a master named Gampopa. His other name is Dakpa hlaje. He's a shanpa … , but he goes on to found kagyu lineage called Dakpo.
So he's in the shangpa , but he develops Dakpo.
I don't know what those words mean. Gampopa is known for a lineage holder, passer honor of the six yogas of Naropa called the Narochudruk. Six yogas of Naropa are these six different diamond way practices at completion stage that we use to make our transformation from ordinary human to being made of love, compassion, wisdom.
First Panchen Lama quotes from Gampopa´´ teaching on the spontaneous capsule using this quote to point out the essence of this practice called spontaneous capsule.
He says, the mind itself spontaneously arising is the dharma body. The thoughts which spontaneously arise are ripples on the dharma body. The images that spontaneously arise are the dharma body's light, the inseparable weave of images and mind is the spontaneous state. So those four sentences are really rich in explanation.
I'm going to read it again so you have it on the recording.
The mind itself spontaneously arising is the dharma body.
You have to have a mind to have the emptiness of the mind. The thoughts which spontaneously arise are ripples on the dharma body. The thoughts are the movement of the mind.
If we used an analogy which will fail, here's your mind, this still lake.
Here's the thoughts,
here's the thoughts and images.
The still lake isn't still anymore, but it's still the lake, looking different, experiencing different. The images that spontaneously arise are the dharma bodies light. The inseparable weave of images and mind is the spontaneous state. That's what's happening now, now, now, now, now … that's what they mean by the spontaneous state, constantly changing, never the same two moments in a row, but never not existent. Does the process ever stop?
No.
Because if it did, it could not be established as having stopped, because somebody would have to establish can't stop.
So he's not going to tell us how you practice the spontaneous capsule because that's not our practice. You just now know there is such a thing.
The next one he talks about is called a gauma, also known as kauma, just the spelling difference.
And it's a practice that was taught by someone whose name is kyungpo neljor , some of us are familiar with kyungpo neljor . He is known for passing on the lineage called the six Yogas of niguma. And one of the six yogas of ninguma A has within it this practice called gauma. It's the gauma is a branch of the clear light practice in the six yogas of niguma.
So Lama Christie shared a little bit the six yogas of niguma
The llamas kept saying, we'll learn them, we'll learn them, we'll learn them. But in our Diamond Way training, we focused on the six yogas of Naropa and it took us the whole time.
So the six yogas of nama we learned about, but we never actually were trained in practicing. They're using those as the basis in YSI. But whether they're actually teaching her practices or not in YSI, I don't know. I'm going to guess they're teaching about them, but not them. In those six yogas you have a practice called tummo, which is inner fire, which is like the foundational practice. And then there's Gulu or illusory body. Then there's Milam, which is dream yoga, and then there's Al, which is clear light. That's where the alma practice comes in.
Then there's poah, which is transference of consciousness and bardo, which does mean the in-between state. But here it's not in between death and rebirth. It's in between a “not ordinary” being anymore, but not fully enlightened yet. In between.
And the difference between the Niguma six yogas and Naropa six yogas is the emphasis on the practices. They all include all the different parts, but naropa come from a different emphasis.
All of them are practices that involve concentrating our mind to bring the winds to where the mind is concentrated. And using practices with the winds to help us be able to better concentrate our mind in the area where we want the winds to get.
So it's this chicken or the egg thing. When the winds gather towards where we want them to go by focusing our mind, which is into the central channel. For winds to be near or in the central channel, it's very pleasurable. Like we were talking about in last class, the more pleasure, the more concentrated our mind will want to get, and then more winds get drawn in and there's more pleasure and more wins and more pleasure and more winds. But the danger is to do it just for the pleasure. Because when we get to the clear light, something shifts the power of using anyway. The power of using our concentration to get the winds to follow is what all of these practices are about.
So the gauma practice is also a shangpa kagyu practice. Not so important that it's shangpa, it's Kagyu versus Galugpa. Lady Niguma is a practice that's emphasized by the Shangpa kagyu.
It's called gauma.
Well, I'm not going to go there. We don't have time.
So then there's another practice called the practice of the five, which is another kagyu lineage started by Oppa student. Gampopa is up here. Gampopa student is down here. Gampo who is Kagyu because he's Gampopa student, but he goes on to establish his own Kagu u lineage. I don't know if he did it or his students did it, called Drukpa Kagyu. .
So just again, a different practice emphasis. So we're at about 11 hundreds timeframe now. So still pre Tjesonkapa, pre Galugpa.
The practice of the five is these five different steps for getting our bodhichitta state of mind stronger and stronger. And then going through these different steps in which we grow what's called our ngagyel and selnang here, these vocabulary words, just so you get to see them because they're important for later, ngagyel means divine pride. Selnang means clear appearance.
So the Selnang refers to what are you going to look like when you are your fully enlightened angel being. And ngagyel is what are you going to be like? So when at the beginning we say that being who's made of love, compassion, wisdom, that's what they're like.
But what do they look like is whatever one pops up in your mind for you, whether it's whoever it is. So we ourselves will have a form of our enlightened being and we will have our me of enlightened me. What we look like and what we are like. So these two different qualities are part of this practice of the five. How to transform ourselves into the holy angel. So there's three there.
And then another practice is guru devotion, which these aren't in order, right? It takes guru devotion to even grow our bodhichitta, alone to grow our selnang and ngagyel. And then the fourth part of those five practices is the part that encompasses the Mahamudra, the reaching the true nature, that spontaneous mind and it's arising.
Then the fifth practice is dedication. (1:28)
He quotes from that practice, if you cannot clear away the gathering clouds of thought from the open sky of the raw mind, those heavenly orbs of the two kinds of knowledge will never start to shine the selnang and ngagyel. So try hard to place your mind within this thoughtless state. Thoughtless sounds like it means get your mind to stop, which no Tibetan meditation practice says, make your mind stop anymore.
Thoughtless means get your mind in the non-conceptual state. So conceptualizing means we take different information and we conceptualize it into a whole. And that's happening like at level where we have an object that we're investigating to see what is it about the object that makes it what it is. And we come to this conclusion, “oh, I'm putting it's label on there." We're conceptualizing to get to that conclusion. We're conceptualizing to hold the conclusion and we're recognizing what it is to be conceptualizing as opposed to direct experience.
And so we say what it is to be a Buddha is you are directly experience appearing reality and no self nature reality simultaneously always. Direct experience means that a Buddha mind does not take information and apply a label. Do they have thoughts? Do they think? Yes, of course, but even their thoughts are experienced directly. It sounds like it should be so obvious what that means. But when you try to really pin down what is it to experience something directly with an ignorant mind, we can't do it. We can't explore what it might be like to do it and get close.
So for instance, when we say, park your mind at the nostrils, watch your breath, and you're watching the thing you call breath, and then you recognize, no, actually there's just sensation in a location. Did you get to that? A location I call my nostrils.
Wait, sensation, wait.
You get to the point where you're beyond words, but you still have something happening. You just can't label it, you can't identify it. And if we can sit there in that direct experience, we have the doorway for being able to penetrate to the fact that there's nothing happening in any other way than information label, information label, information label, information label.
But by saying it, we're still on the label side. So this particular practice is saying just get to that place where we're in the thoughtless state, meaning direct experience, whatever's arising, and as soon as we label it, we've already followed enough that we're not in the thoughtless state.
So it's very slippery and tricky and to explore and play with it and go deeper and come back out. That's what this our mahamadra practice will be about. Recognizing that it's slippery and difficult and our ignorance blocks us from actually being able to do it right?
So have fun doing it wrong and then let it go and it go, let it go, let it go, let it go. Getting to that awareness of this constant ripple on this thing we call awareness.
How are we doing for time? We're doing good.
Student: I might have a question. About ignorant mind. We have tools, right? The four powers that we can use to kind of regret ourselves of really having those set thoughts adjust eyes, and we just label label label in an unconscious level, and that creates our karma. That moving of the mind that we're just used to pretty bad, good, whatever. So can we just do something like the four powers to regret those times that we were just labeling that?
Yeah. Yes. So let's think through four powers on our belief and self existence, our ignorance,
Like, wow, I regret it. I really do. I really, really regret it. And I take refuge in the fact that my seeds for ignorance are just seeds for ignorance. They have no self nature. So I really can get rid of them and I can do an antidote. It can be my meditation on emptiness. It can be read diamond cutter suture. It can be my mantra commitments that I have right? Saying holy names, I'll apply an antidote and now I establish a power of restraint. That's the snag with the four powers of purifying our ignorance.
How do we apply a power of restraint? We'd have to say, okay, I one 65th of a instant, did I do it? Yes. Yay. No. See, that's where I get blocked in doing four powers. If we do a four powers practice that doesn't have all four powers, is it useless? No, I think it still helps. We say, I just can't do my power of restraint, but someday I will and then rejoice. So I think it's worth doing. Do a four powers on our very ignorance.
Student: For example, I can do my part of restraint is just try to focus right now on what you're saying, and I can rejoice of the seconds that I'm really paying attention and taking notes of what I am understanding that you're Saying.
But it's not free of the ignorance, right?
Student: Course it's not free, but
Approximate. Yes. Yes.
Student: Because while we are doing the teachings, that's the closest in my opinion, that I can be learning pie seats. Thank you.
So the next one he talks about is Ro ngyom. LaMi Christie translated it as “ balancing out a bitter taste." The word Ro ngyom: Ro ngyom is short for taste and ngyom means equal. So it really just means equal taste. Everything tastes the same. Sounds kind of blah. But what it means is that the flavor of everything is identical, meaning the flavor of everything is its empty of self nature.
So that anything can be anything according to the observer of it, the experiencer of it. But Lama Christie added the balancing the bitter taste because what we're trying to come to recognize is by reaching the equal nature of everything is that we're trying to get rid of the unpleasantness of samsara. The bitterness that comes from our misperception of perceiving things as having their own natures. That leaves a bitter taste in our mouth. The thing we like, we can't get enough of the thing. We don't like, we get too much of, and it all ends up with suffering or the causes of more suffering. So she used the translator's advantage to say, 'This practice is called balancing a bitter taste.
It's about coming to recognize that pleasant things, unpleasant things, neutral things, all of them occur by way of the same process, behavior, plantings, imprinting our minds that ripen as experiences with that darn delay in between. (1:38)
So in that practice ro ngyom, it's a training in using our mental afflictions as the path. And that by recognizing our mental afflictions, and rather than trying to suppress them, we recognize that they are ripening results of past behavior. It inspires us to not replant the same mental affliction either in the specific situation we're in, being yelled at, we yelled back, but maybe when we yell, when we get yelled at, our solution is to lie, to get out of the situation. So lying doesn't make being yelled at, it makes some other unpleasantness somewhere else, but maybe we're also somebody who yells at somebody else to solve a problem.
So it isn't necessarily just yelling when we're yelled at that makes more yelling bosses. It's yelling to solve a problem that makes yelling bosses and lying to get out of yelling doesn't stop yelling. Do you see? So learning how to use those nuances of our mental afflictions and our reactions to them starts out with lessening the mental affliction. And it goes deeper to recognizing the feeling that arises, that becomes the mental affliction and using the very feelings to transform and then going deeper still to recognizing how the outer factor is or isn't related to the feeling arising so that we can cut off that blame factor even for the feeling. And as we get deeper and deeper, we find ourselves being able to be in a situation where somebody's yelling at us and blaming us for something and our reaction will be, I love you, right? I just love you. How can I love you more? How can I help? Like King of Kalinka's story, it doesn't. It takes layers, it takes practice.
Some traditions. That's their focus on getting to the true nature of one's mind, one's self, one's experiences by way of using all those mental afflictions.
The next practice is called amanasi. amanasi is a Sanskrit word. Technically it means mindless, mindless, but that's not what the practice is about. The practice takes the different syllables, the, the ama, the an, and the si and breaks them down. Each one represents a piece of this practice. Lama Christie called it the instructions in four syllables. Where they teach the first means to cut the root of the mind. I don't know that it's cut the root, cut the ignorance in the mind that root. The mind is the root word for manis, which means to hold the mind still.
So the first practice is to reach the understanding of the ignorance of our mind.
The second is to reach the place where we can hold our mind, still single point of focus.
The second ah means to stop the mind, but meaning to stop it from wandering. The going off after the story.
And the si means to use the mind as the path. So this one actually is closest to the one that Lobsang Gyeltson is teaching us because we learn all these different pieces to come to recognize this process that's happening, all of which is mind in this constant shape shifting. (1:43)
Then the next one to talk about is this one called putting your torment to rest (dukngel kyi Shije). Kyi shije means to put something to rest. Dukngel means suffering. Putting our suffering to rest. It was taught to us by someone named pa dampa sangye. Yo mya be familiar with pa dampa sangye. He gave a beautiful teaching to his students where he shared the essence of what each one of his 55 different llamas had taught him. Not meaning 55 llamas in the flesh, but 55 of the different lineage llamas that he studied and gained realizations about. And it's a beautiful text that we have two boat Jim courses that cover this text called “The
Pristine Path of an egg of pure silver," something like that.
So he has this one called Putting Your Torment to Rest. And I'm going to read the verses that the Panchen Lama quotes in his text. I think he quotes it. Anyway, I'm going to read these verses to you. It explains really beautifully not what we're going to learn, but the experiences we will probably have as we put into practice the Mahamuda that Pancha Lama is teaching us, right?
So just listen. This is pa dampa sangye from the 111th century.
“Here is the holy teaching for putting our torment to rest. When bringing malicious male or female spirits under our control, putting our torment to rest is using the body as a machine to forcefully purify. When sickness comes into the body, putting our torment to rest is to mix the realm of suchness to together with your mind. When a subtle thought arises, putting your torment to rest is driving a plane across the bumps of your afflictions.
A carpenter's plane when tucked away all by yourself, putting your torment to rest is staying immersed within the naked mind. When surrounded by the crowd, putting your torment to rest is to look upon the open face of anything that surfaces.
If you are feeling dull, putting your torment to rest is to elevate with faith. If you get distracted, putting your torment to rest is cutting off its root. If your mind is restless, putting your torment to rest is to stay within the void.
When the mind starts to become enticed by outer objects, putting your torment to rest is to view them in the light of suchness. This is the holy teaching for putting your torment to rest. If any bad sign comes to you, take it as good fortune. The more mistaken thoughts you have, the more virtuous it gets. If a sickness comes to you, it puts you on a higher level.
The more demons you have, the more virtuous it gets. If death should come to you, use it as a path. The more you see the Lord of death, the more virtuous it gets.
This is the holy teaching for putting all torment to rest. It is the heart's intent of every victorious Buddha, past, present, or future."
So he's saying, our habit, our usual habit is we resist all these unpleasant things. We want to avoid them. We want to push them away. We want to stop making the karma for more of them.
And he says, you'll just torment yourself. Use them.
When we understand karma and emptiness, there's nothing that isn't showing us deceptive reality and so the empty nature of it. So our practice is no matter what's happening, pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, repetitive, it doesn't matter what's happening.
All of it is an opportunity to recognize seeds ripening nothing. Nothing but. So how we react will change. Immediately, probably not because our reactions to things are seed driven as well. The reactions are really very little under our choice, if you've noticed. But as we repeatedly remind ourselves how to use every circumstance, pleasant or unpleasant, we're planting seeds differently than we did before. And that's the key to bringing about change.
If we keep doing the same old things, we'll keep getting the same old stuff in different packaging, different colors and shapes, but the same old stuff. We have to do something differently. And just to do different, starts different, doesn't it? And to do different based on even just a belief in Karma and Emptiness starts to chip away at our belief in the self nature of things.
The more consciously we can remind ourselves “not in it; not from it; unique to me; from me” , you can trigger that awareness in your own mind. Even just for an instant. We've planted an instant worth of seeds that will help us in the future. So this putting our torment to rest, coming to rest is by using it all instead of rejecting, avoiding struggling, etc.
It's really a beautiful teaching.
The next one he told us about is chod. The practice was made popular by the practitioner, Machik Labdron , who is a very famous female practitioner who was a high practitioner. She had a spiritual partner, her spiritual partner died, and then she just tailspin into terrible, terrible ripening of all kinds of horrible things. And she couldn't figure out what she was doing wrong. And she hears about this guy, Pa Dampa Sangye, whose gift as a teacher was that he could see the karmic propensities of the student. And so he would be able to know what karmic seeds were creating the problem they had and what karmas they needed to do in order to clear it? It's a really powerful feature of a teacher to be able to know that specifically. So Pa Dampa Sangye had that level. She goes to him and she didn't even have to tell him what her problems were.
He just listed them all and what she had to do, and it took her time to achieve them all. But she did. And as a result, everything shifted and she goes on to be this great practitioner and great teacher.
And she taught this practice called, CHÖD (with the umlaut on top of the two Os). Which is a practice of cutting off. So it's sort of the opposite of the other, which was “use everything as the path." Her practice is just cut it all into emptiness and it particularly is represented by a practice of offering our own body again and again and again. And it's like it's an imaginary practice, clearly, right? You can't cut this thing up again and again. But, it became a very popular practice. Geshehla Michael started teaching it to us in deep retreat, but never completed it. So I don't really know where it goes, what it does.
And then number eight was the one called Dzogchen. Which is, what did he call it? The Great completion, which is a Nyingma practice. So just for the vocabulary, Nyigma was the first iteration of Buddhism in Tibet. It evolved out of the bon tradition. So they're the most ancient tradition in Tibet. And from them came the Shampa Kagyu, and from that came the other Kagyu schools. Finally, out all of this came the Gelugpa..
But Dzogchen practice emphasizes what's called rigpa, which is similar in our tradition to the RANG RIK, which is self-awareness. Mind only school talks about a self-awareness. And in Dzogchen, they emphasize finding the self-awareness and then coming to recognize that it too is a ripening and nothing but. So again, all of these practices are taking us to the same place, but using different objects as tools for getting us there.
The last one he mentioned was a text - I don't remember the name of it - about the middle way. A book of notes on the middle wave view, which doesn't sound so much like as a practice, as a study. And Lama Christie didn't talk so much about. She didn't talk anything about what that was teaching.
So again, the purpose of this review is to show us that there are many different methods for getting to this experience. We're calling Mahamudra..
Lobsang Gyaltsen knows about all these different ones. He knows his personal experience. He has what he's taught by his teacher, and he's going to put that all together into a method that he claims will bring us all to that experience of the true nature of our own mind.
Stay tuned in your reading. It will go into all of this with a little bit more information. Hopefully now it will make sense because you've heard it first.
So the main part of this meditation was the exploration, your watcher and your exploration, right? It's contradictory, the watcher's is the the watcher. But you need to do the exploration to get to the point where the watcher can be aware of how the labels are making the experience. And that's what we're trying to get at.
And then the second piece we added was the curiosity factor, the fun, the enjoyment of it, as opposed to the, oh, I've got to get it right. So see if you can get those two going this week. So remember that being, we wanted to be able to help. We've learned a lot that we will use sooner or later to become one who can help them in that deep and ultimate way. And that's a great, great goodness. So please be happy with yourself.
And think of this goodness, like a beautiful gluing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious, holy being. 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, encourage you, and then offer them this gemstone of goodness. See them accept it and bless it and 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 made. 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. And may it be so.
Thank you everybody for the opportunity to share. I love this teaching.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 7
Vocab:
Tamyal gi shepa
Nguksem
Indrabhuti
Laksh
mi kara
Hlak tong vipasyana/vipassana
Shiney shamatha
*************
Introduction
Okay, so welcome back. We are Mahamudra practitioners. This is March 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.”
*************
(Class 7- 00:07:20)
Let's start with our meditation.
So settle your body in.
***30 seconds***
Feel it's aligned.
Feel that solidity, groundedness, and then feel the rising inside—helping to fine tune the alignment.
And bring your focused attention to your breath at your nostrils.
Use that object first to adjust your focus, your clarity, your intensity.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Now open up just enough to become also aware of being the watcher of the breath.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Now, recognize that breath you are watching. Recognize it as simply sensations
***45 seconds****
The idea of breath is simply an object of thought.
Identity, labels upon sensations.
***15 seconds***
Now your watcher, watching sensations.
***15 seconds***
Those sensations too are nothing but objects of thought.
Labels laid on something more subtle.
***20 seconds***
Watch, as these series of sensations are changing, appearing and fading away, giving away, to a different sensation.
***20 seconds***
So even those sensations—raw sensations—are objects of thought.
Images appearing
Ripples on the surface of the mind of the watcher.
***25 seconds***
Now expand to include any experience that is arising.
***10 seconds***
Be the watcher.
Recognize the experience—hearing bird outside.
The immediate experience—is there something outside?
Quickly deconstruct it.
Ah, ripening ripple.
And it will fade away.
***15 seconds***
Remain as the watcher, and add the curious part.
The curious watcher: “what's next?”
Whatever arises—know it as these arisings.
Ripples on the mind.
***1 minute***
Now at this step where we loosen a bit—falling back into a deeper state.
A more expansive state.
A more allowing state.
Yet still alert—eager to be engaged with whatever arises.
Noting it as a label, an object of thought, and letting the thought go.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Now turn this bright, clear, curious focus of attention onto the “watch-er.”
Who is this watch-er?
What is this watch-er?
***15 seconds***
Within the watch-er is your subject state of mind.
What is that?
***20 seconds***
Who is that?
***20 seconds***
Notice that when an object arises, our watcher becomes aware of it the instant after, it seems.
***15 seconds***
Is your watcher the same watcher moment to moment?
***30 seconds***
What happens to your watcher when the object you are watching changes?
***45 seconds***
What happens to your watcher when there is nothing to watch?
In that space, after one object passes but the next has not arisen.
***15 seconds***
Who would you be then?
***45 seconds***
Let's stay two more minutes.
You are being the watcher—exploring who and what that is.
As it watches experiences happening.
***30 seconds***
Let's stay one more minute.
***30 seconds***
Nice, now let that all go.
Become aware of being in your body, in your room, in this class.
Wiggle and move a little bit.
Dedicate what we've done so far to everyone reaching their own true nature.
When you're ready, open your eyes.
*************
So we've just added the piece of looking for our subject side—our me—and the way Lama Christie went about this is implying that our “me” and our “watcher” are related.
Our “me” is in the watcher, or maybe our watcher is in the “me.” It's up to us to figure out our own perspective.
And so we've talked before about “with every experience there's the subject, the object in the interaction between,” the three spheres.
Every seed planted has been planted with the three spheres, so every seed ripening is going to ripen with the three spheres, and the subject side is our “me” side—the one who's having the experience.
There's always going to be a subject side.
And I can remember spending years trying to figure out:
What's my mind?
What's my me?
What's this watcher thing and what's the relationship between all of those?
And then the party line is it's all seeds ripening.
Yeah.
Great.
So who oversees what?
What comes first?
Is it the mind there, and out of the mind ripples up subject, object, interaction between—but there's the mind, the ocean of mind, and then all this other stuff is ripples.
And it's like, yeah, yeah, I like that analogy and it's useful. That analogy is useful.
But really when you get down in there, trying to experience directly the experiences that we have, it gets really confusing.
We'll get to the point where we're saying, “well wait a minute, if the ocean and the ripples on the ocean that's constantly happening is accurate, in the sense that there's a ocean first without ripples, and then ripples happen—then it's like no…because that would mean there's a mind there independent of the ripples happening, of karmas happening, in which the karma are stored, or in which everything happens, or to which everything happens.
And it's like, well wait. Now if that's true, I should be able to find it. I should be able to find that thing that stays still—on its own independent of being an experience I could have.
Wait a minute—it just won't work.
You can't have a mind that's having experiences.
And then where's our me?
Is our mind something different than our me?
Is our me just one of the ripples—like a constant ripple that's got ripples on top of it?
Or is it the me that has the mind that has the ripples?
In which case there should be a “me” underlying all of it that I can find.
And it's like, wait, go looking for that.
And we can look for these things even off our meditation—we have the skills for contemplation.
Everybody knows who their “me” is, until you really get in there and go, “wait a minute, what is my me?”
What is my mind?
What is the experience I have of these things I call “outer experiences” / of these things I call “inner experiences,” emotions, thoughts?
What are even these things I call thoughts?
There's thoughts where I can be hanging out looking at the blue sky, and then I decide to think, “oh, this is seeds ripening.”
I've made the determination and created a thought and heard myself say the thought because I wanted to—but I can also be sitting there staring at the sky and all of a sudden comes some random thought.
What's the difference?
If there's an “I” that's in charge of my thoughts, why does a random thought ever pop up?
I would be in charge.
I would choose to be in charge all the time.
Wouldn't I?
And I'd just make my thoughts be beautiful thoughts.
Wouldn’t I?
It's like, what's the matter with me if I'm in charge of my thoughts and I don't do that?
Either I am a masochist or something or I'm not in charge of my thoughts.
Oh, that seems more the case.
So all of these investigations is what we bring to our Mahamudra practice session where we're in this sort of limbo—we're trying to stay just in the watcher, just in the experience—and yet at the same time doing a little bit (enough of an analysis) that we're keeping ourselves from letting our watcher turn into the follower. Right?
The watcher is going to turn into the follower of—Lama Christie called it the deconstruction—so it's going to take some intentional effort to “deconstruct” what the watcher is showing us that it's watching—and as that gets more familiar, it will be less distracting from the watcher and will become part of the watcher's “watch-ing” to know that whatever is arising is nothing but this ripple—ripple on the mind—I want to say ripple of the mind, so that the deconstruction is happening in the next instant after the experience.
So let's go back to the bird outside.
I've got birds outside.
I have this distinction.
[holds up hands in front of self] I'm in here.
Those birds are outside, they're outside my meditation. [motions towards the side]
But as soon as one pops up, my watcher goes “bird!” [motions away from herself with one hand while holding one hand in front of herself]
And then it goes, “oops, nope, just ripening seeds, nothing but.” [moves both hands back in front of herself]
But do you see, it's actually a mistake to even do that, isn't it? [motioning towards the bird with one hand] because technically we'll get to the place where there's really no difference between “here” and “out there” as our deconstruction is getting more and more accurate to our experience, so that, aaand I'm getting ahead of myself.
So—this is the first piece of the Mahamudra where we're getting closer to what the Mahamudra is really meant to be, which is becoming aware of our own mind.
To get to our own mind, we have to get to the “what we mean by our me” or subject side, and explore that.
Words will not convey what your recognition of your subject side, for you, will be—I can only convey my own recognition of it, and my words that / my conclusion that I come to, is that this subject side…no, I'm not even going to go there yet.
So in exploring the subject side, what gets confusing is that, even Lama Christie was describing this class to us she would say, “we are finding our subject side.”
And then she'd start to talk about the mind.
And then she'd go back to the subject side.
And then she'd be talking about the mind.
And it's like, will you just talk about the subject side or the mind?!
Because in my mind they were different.
They are different, aren't they?
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to do the same thing [removes coat] we finally added the piece where, in your watcher, you include the subject side—and I'm going to ask you to explore that for a week before you decide what relationship your subject side has to your mind, or your mind has to your subject side—and what both of those relationships have to the object of experience.
I mean, I think all of us have enough “wisdom experience” to start to recognize, “oh my gosh.”
Those are going to be hard—they're going to get harder and harder to distinguish between.
But first we need to distinguish between them before we can blur the lines—because technically the lines are already blurred in ordinary human consciousness. Those lines between subject object, interaction between already all mixed up and they're all mixed up by way of ignorance, so that we blame this thing called the object side for everything mistakenly.
And then sometimes, I don't know, we have the seeds to say, “no, I'm not going to blame them. I'm going to blame myself,”which is closer to accurate but mistaken because instead we go, “oh, I'm so bad I can't do anything right.”
And then we're not helping ourselves by taking that blame. We're making things worse.
So first we recognize, we try to do our best to recognize, what do you think your mind is?
What do you think your “me” is?
What do you think “other” is?
And if you come up, I don't know, I really can't answer those questions. Well, good, that's good.
If you have a, “I think my subject side is this, my ego, I have this personality, I have this memories, I have this being, I have this, this is me.”
Great. That's what we'll use.
If you can't find it, that's fine too—but please look.
Look and see.
And then we have the automatic belief, if we're not Arya or better, and I don't know about you, we have this automatic belief that this “me” has its own nature.
“That's what makes me me. Of course I have my own nature or else I'd be you, right?”
We do have something unique to each of us but are holding to my “me” as something that's the same, or that has its own nature is mistaken.
So now again, let's just jump to the punchline of when we say a me that has my own nature. We mean a “me” that I experience as “me,” independent of my seeds ripening—independent of the seeds ripening of whoever is experiencing “me,” right?
So I have my seeds ripening for “my me.”
And when I'm with another, I have the my seeds ripening for the “me” they see me as.
Do I know what they see me as? No.
Do I think I know? Yeah, on some level I think I do.
And so that's the “me” we're wanting to explore, not in our meditation, outside of meditation, so that when we get into being “simply the watcher” and then recognizing, “oh, this watcher, is that the me? Is that what I've been meaning by the ‘me’ all along just this uninvolved watcher person?”
It's like, I don't think that's the me I want to be—but we have to have a subject side. Anyway, okay.
So explore what you think you mean by “me,” explore, think about what you mean by “your mind” because we need those already, those ideas, already bubbling up in order to explore it further in your Mahamudra going forward.
We've studied mind a little bit through the ACI courses and one level, one level, the Mind-Only level of training says that the subject state of mind and the object arise together out of the same seed.
So it's not saying the object and the subject are the same thing—they're saying, “look, a seed ripens and it ripens “the object” and “the me” coming together to experience the functioning thing, and me coming together to experience it in the way that I do, right?
It's really a helpful tool to understand that.
And then that means with every new ripening [holds up both hands, one hand holding a pen in front of her] your mind it, it's different.
[holds up hands and puts them down] It's got to be different.
Right?
[holds up hands and puts them down] Now it's mind seeing pen.
[holds up hands and puts them down] Now it's me seeing notepad.
[holds up hands and puts them down] Now it's me seeing you…
And yet even as I hear myself say that, there's a part of me that says, “yeah, it's the same me now experiencing pen, now experiencing notepad, now experiencing you, but how can it be the same?”
Well, I don't become Tom perceiving the pen all of a sudden.
And now I'm Janice perceiving the pen.
I'm always Sarahni perceiving the pen.
But is Sarahni the same two moments in a row?
We think so.
Our own me, we think.
So you wake up in the morning, is it you?
Yes.
Is it the same you?
Yes. it's the same room—but it's not you see?
So we talk about these things, we hash them out, we even use the words for the thoughts—but to experience it directly makes it real.
And that's what happens in deep meditation, is some kind of experience where when we come out of it, we go, oh, that's what she meant. That's what she was trying to say. And suddenly you've got it. And then you go back in and you reinforce it with future meditations and you take it deeper.
So as we're adding this piece of “aware of our subjects side,” going looking, don't be surprised if it gets confusing.
It's like what part of the watcher is my subject side?
What part of the subject side is the watcher?
What happens to the watcher when it's not watching?
What happens to the watcher when it's hearing something?
It's not watching anymore.
It's listening.
What happens to me?
All of this is about ripening.
Let it go.
Question comes up, let it go.
And we'll sink into an experience that when you come out, you'll go, “oh, okay, that's more clear.”
And then you'll put words on that so that you can remember it. And for me, it's constantly never the same two moments in a row, but never non-existent. That thing, which is for me, but it's too many words.
And you find your own as you come to the experience of what you mean by your me, right?
Okay. So I'm supposed to give you this demonstration, because when we're being taught about the mind and somebody says, “when is this thing mind?”
They say that which is clear and aware.
Remember that?
Was that satisfactory?
Never was for me either.
That which is clear and aware.
What good is that?
But it's significant that mind, mind? What's mind? Mind?
That which is clear and aware.
No, those are the qualities of mind.
No, mind is that which is clear and aware—but aware of what?
Right.
So Lama Christie gave this demonstration—so when this thing which is clear and aware—when it… words fail… when it is experiencing something, that object of experience colors it, and that color is the actual experience, right?
So I'm not saying this is exactly accurate, but it's a great way to use exploration.
So here's our mind. Clear and aware. [holds up a large glass diamond]
Can you see clear? You can see through it. Mostly—tere's a part up here you can't but…
Then when something appears [holds a rainbow picture behind the diamond, causing the clear diamond to turn the same color as the paper] how to get the right side there. Look what happens to the mind. Look what happens to, it's clear and aware.
Oh, right. [moving the picture back and forth from behind the diamond]
Oh… [sseing the clear diamond appear to turn red when the image is placed behind it]
Does the mind turn red because something red has appeared to it?
No, it doesn't become red. But does it appear to be red? Does it appear as red, because red is appearing to it. Can I say it that way? Not quite.
When there's red, the mind appears red.
Now where's the subject side inside that? If I am the mind, well then I appear red too. But if this were anger, I do appear as angry, don't I?
Somewhere the subject side is inside there—and of course this analogy fails because there is never a state where our mind is simply sitting there, clear and aware—is there?
No.
It has to be aware. There has to be…[thinking] This is such a hard class…
There has to be something to be aware of, for there to be an “aware” at all.
How does that make you feel?
”Oh my gosh, everything exists first and then my puny little mind comes around and experiences all of it.”
Is that accurate?
No.
Well, but wait, cause effect, cause effect, cause effect. One thing, then the other thing—that's what cause and effect is, right?
Not actually.
From ripening seeds, yes, but in fact, what has to be there first for this experience to happen, right?
We're getting into Arya Nagarjuna—at what point does it happen? Wait, it's yellow. Wait, now it's red. Wait, at what point does it turn from yellow to red? You can't find it, but we can experience it.
Oh, this is getting so slippery. So when we are watching—where is that watcher who's watching for the moment that the clear and aware mind has something new to be clear and aware of.
Is the watcher inside there?
Is it in between the two?
Is it behind?
Is it separate?
Is it not at all?
Where the heck is it?
And what would happen if nothing were appearing, right? [holds up both hands empty]
The mudra of the answer [the confused mudra]
What's there on the table when all the people, all the flies, all the dogs are gone, right?
So really let's just jump to the punchline—what's your true nature, Mike?
How does that feel?
Is it like ee-gads or is it wow, cool.
That means whatever the first being who comes along to perceive me—I am that for them.
May it be a Buddha [laughs].
But that's where this whole practice is taking us to this ability to identify our subject side as the [shrugs]...not meaning I don't know whether I have one or not, but meaning we use the words ‘no nature of my own.”
Okay? So why did we go into all of that?
Because I think this will help [holds up diamond and colored paper]
Get it right here.
That will help—as you're doing your Mahamudra exploration of being the watcher, watching the things arising, to recognize how, “oh, what the watcher is watching is how that ‘clear and aware’ is being colored by the next instant of arising—whatever that is.
Go slowly.
Start by playing with these things “sensation we call breath” oh, there's the breath at my nostril. Wait a minute, what about that sensation is breath—only my idea.
Take away the idea.
Just sensation, still.
Sensation of outside, inside.
What about that sensation is outside, inside without my label—none.
Throw that away.
What else is there?
I get so quickly down to “not subtle enough to be able to use words anymore,” which is where we want to go—and still watch.
There's still shifting happening—my problem is my “word mind” never shuts up: “how am I going to explain this to somebody? What, what?”
Just shut up and be.
And that will take us deeper and deeper and deeper.
So you start there and then you broaden out and add a more keen “aware” of the watcher.
And then when we add the subject side, we're starting into this.
“Well, I think the subject side stays the same. I think the watcher stays the same as it's watching all of this stuff—it's unaffected—but it can't be unaffected.
And then we're going to turn our mind to the subject side and suddenly it's going to be the object side—like spoiler alert.
That's how we get to recognizing our “no self nature” of our subject side is when we recognize the only way we can investigate it and know it is to explore it as an object, and how can it be both a subject and an object if it has its own nature of being my subject, right?
Ta-da! Mahamudra—we're done.
So if that helps, the color of the mind, with every ripening, use it—if it doesn't, don't use it.
Alrighty, let's take a break. I need to find where I am in my notes—I did all of that without them.
*************
All right, so in our text, we had gotten to the place where Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen says, “finally, it's time to give the instructions on Mahamudra—how to meet your mind face to face.”
And he had said, Mahamudra can be done two ways, Diamond Way or open way—here's the diamond way stuff—we're not doing it because we're an open class—here's the sutra stuff.
And then he gives these nine different practices that are done by different lineages, and most of them are tantra stuff.
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, and
A book of notes on the Middle Way view.
And then he says, look, “the practice has been given all these different names. The practice has been given all these different methods—but in the end, they all boil down to the same thing.
They will all take us to the same place.
And he gave that verse that says, “anyone who's actually experienced Mahamudra will tell you that those are all different names, different methods for reaching the same thing.”
So Lama Christie said, you know that series of verses, she says, in her opinion, that is a more powerful thing that Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen did than going out and standing between those two armies and stopping the war where Lhasa would've been destroyed.
And she said, the reason she feels that is true is because it's so counter to the culture of his day.
She said the background in Tibet is that the culture was highly driven by the mental affliction of anger and violence.
And they had different hierarchical peoples, and apparently when somebody had something that you felt was yours, and you were the higher rank of person, it was like what you did was just go take it and hurt the person however you needed to in order to get it—and then the karma of that bled over even into as it was becoming a Buddhist country.
That's why it became a Buddhist country, was to counter that.
But the people learning to be Buddhist, they're not perfect yet—and those are the seeds of their main mental afflictions.
And so she was describing that as the different factions of Buddhism arose, that the monasteries would develop their system of teaching, and their need for support, and this same karmic pattern would arise to where our monastery is better than your monastery and the monasteries would actually fight each other.
And that the monastery that won anybody who's left from the monastery that lost has to join the monastery that won—and anybody who didn't, they're cut off.
And apparently there was a lot of this going on, even with the Gelugpas.
Je Tsongkapa cleans up all the mistakes. He doesn't say, “let's start a new school,” but a new school comes out of him, and then the people in the new school have those same seeds, what it is to be Tibetan in those days, and they got so enamored with their own school—it's like everybody should be Gelug Pa.
And the same pattern happened again—and then as a result, there are schools of Tibetan Buddhism, or Indian Buddhism that went into Tibet, that didn't survive.
Actually the Jonangpa School, there are no people studying, I mean we study that—but there's no followers of Jonangpa apparently, as a school.
And yet there's still the Sakyas, the Kagyus, the Nyingoas, the Gelukpas.
Lama Christie said with the Kagyus—there are all these different sects of Kagyu—and she said the way they stayed Kagyu is they just left and went out to some other area of Tibet up into those remote valleys and they just stayed and did their own thing in those remote valleys.
And they didn't even have contact with each other because in order to get from this valley to that valley, you had to go down and around and you couldn't get there—so you have all these different sects because they just escaped, but they all still had their same idea: “our system is the best,” right?
It's human nature.
And then something about the karmic seeds of being Tibet.
So Lama Christie said, “here's Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, hardcore Gelukpa, and hardcore Gelukpa is supposed to be only teaching Gelukpa.”
And he puts in this Mahamudra, these other nine systems, and talks about them a little bit, you notice in your reading, where he's praising these other traditions for having practices that will take somebody to Mahamudra.
And other Gelukpas would hear him give a teaching like that and they would go, “oh, you're not allowed to do that.”
Right? He's bucking the system big time to put in a teaching and on paper this praise of the other systems—and Lama Christie was so impressed by that because it takes courage, and determination, and the willingness to take the fallout of that—which no doubt he had.
But his wisdom showed that to embrace others instead of fight is a much more useful way to plant our seeds—and of course, he becomes the teacher of the fifth Dalai Lama, who's known to be the Dalai Lama that actually did unite all those different factions of Tibetan—not just Tibetan Buddhism—but the villages and et cetera.
This was happening between people, not just monasteries.
So he teaches the Great Fifth, and the Great Fifth has the seeds to be able to influence the whole country in this positive way.
So here it is in this text that we're studying is just a sign of his wisdom and his boldness to 'do the necessary,’ Geshehla uses that phrase, in order to get the message out to people.
So next in the text he says, “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.”
So he says, “we're going to use view, use meditation, to reach the view we're learning a meditation that will take us to the direct experience of the true nature of our own mind, which is it's empty nature, our own mind, our own self. Somehow that's almost synonymous. But then as he goes on to describe what we're going to do, he's back to that slippery Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. It's like, well, which one's he actually teaching us?
He quotes from Master Kamalashila's Bhavanakrama, which is Stages of Meditation.
Master Kamalashila says: vision grounded in stillness will annihilate every last mistaken thought.
So I want to show you these words [pulls up vocab list]
In Tibetan, HLAK TONG means vision.
It's not this kind of vision [meaning not eye vision].
It means wisdom, vision, the vision of seeing emptiness directly.
Special insight, highest insight is the Sanskrit word VIPASYANA, sometimes spelled VIPASSANA.
And then SHINEY, stillness, the term stillness, SHAMATHA in Sanskrit.
Stillness, meaning reaching that still point between dullness and agitation, which doesn't sound so profound, stillness between dullness and agitation, that mind can still be moving along with a changing object and be in stillness, right?
The word stillness sounds like it means the mind movement comes to a screeching halt—and it does not mean that.
It means in this still point between these two states that keep us out of a deep enough platform to be able to stay there as we turn our object of focus onto the empty nature of our previous object of focus.
If when we try to go into the true nature of our object of focus, we get agitated or dull—we can't penetrate.
So HLAK TONG reaching highest vision, special insight, is achieved by way of a mind at the platform of stillness—so you would think we would need to be able to achieve stillness regularly before we should even bother.
And some try that and they say, “I need to be able to reach stillness / shamata, so I will go do shamatha retreats. I will use a powerful object like the object, usually one's Lama or one's angel, and I will practice and practice and practice until I can habitually sit myself down into this balanced state of meditation on my holy Lama until I reach shamatha.
And then once I reach, I'm able to reach shamatha, then I will use the meditations that show me emptiness—then I will work on emptiness.
And that is a method.
Panchen Lama says, “it is true that we must have stillness in order to have the direct experience of emptiness, and it is true that from a state of mind of stillness, our intellectual exploration of the thing called “emptiness” will be deeper—more effective.
But, if you spend your time focusing / using an object to reach, and then you use a different object to reach emptiness—like you've gone off on kind of a tangent—and then you need to come back and almost like he's implying we start again.
But it's like, wait, why wouldn't if my object of shamatha is my image of my holy Lama, why don't I work on the emptiness of my holy Lama and use that to reach the direct perception of emptiness?
Wouldn't it work?
Of course it would work.
But he has a point that he's trying to make.
So he says, yes, it's true vision grounded in stillness is what annihilates every last mistake in thought—because the direct perception of emptiness clears out those three wrong beliefs, the most important one being our intellectual belief in things, having their own nature.
Which means we are not replanting that ever again.
And it's just a matter of time before we burn off all ignorance.
But then he says, Lord Buddha says, before you can do either (reach vision or even stillness) you have to be living morally so that you can concentrate. And to live morally means that you are choosing your behaviors according to the view that we're cultivating.
So we learn about the marriage of karma and emptiness, and then we learn about refuge advices, avoiding the 10 non virtues, taking our lifetime lay vows, maybe other freedom vows, and then taking Bodhisattva vows—because those are the guidelines for the behaviors to avoid and to do, that plant the seeds for the results that we, our aspiration achieve wishes to achieve.
So our behavior choices are based on the view we're trying to grow—that we need to reach stillness in order to get.
So he's saying that in fact, we are using wisdom to reach stillness, to reach wisdom, to reach stillness, to reach… right?
It's our wisdom that's already informing our behavior that's going to determine the level of concentration.
So he is making the point that you actually can't distinguish between “do shamatha first and then vision” or “do vision first, and then shamatha,” he's saying you actually do use vision first.
It's just not the vision yet.
So he goes, yeah, we're going to do the [thing where we] reach stillness first and then vision—but we're going to use as our object (to reach stillness) our own mind.
What is the object of our direct perception of emptiness?
When we experience emptiness directly for the first time? What is it that emptiness of that we see first?
Our “me.”
Our own mind.
Right? Our “us.”
So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen says, why not use that as your object for reaching stillness—because then you're there already.
Just, “woop,” and you reach that direct perception of your own mind's, true nature.
So that's his premise for the power of training in Mahamudra because when we use our own mind as the object, number one, it's something that is always there.
The first platform for reaching stillness is that we need to never lose our object.
Well, guess what?
If your own awareness is your object, you can't ever lose it unless you fall asleep.
So you have an object that's never not there.
Can we get dull and irritated and yes, but it's like a sneaky trick for helping us get to shamatha. It’s by using our own mind as the object.
We could argue, yeah, but you're supposed to use a virtuous object as your object so you're making good seeds while you do it.
So then kind of need to debate with yourself, “is my mind a virtuous object or not?”
Are we saying my personality when we say our mind?
No.
That thing which is clear and aware, is it a virtuous object?
Think about that. I think we get into it later.
So he's saying we're going to do both at once—we're going to do a meditation that will take us to stillness, and along the way there we will recognize our own minds, empty nature, deeper and deeper so that when we get to stillness, it's like we'll be almost there.
Just getting to stillness does not make you understand emptiness.
People get to shamata all the time on meditating on anything—and it doesn't automatically make you go to vipashyana—you have to know to do that.
We need that training.
So here he's giving us a training that does both together, kind of a shortcut (is the idea).
So then in his text you'll see he actually goes back and reviews those principles of developing an effective meditation practice. He just started out saying, Lord Buddha said “live morally so that your concentration can grow.”
And then within the living morally when we decide, okay, I'm going to become a meditator, or I'm going to go do a retreat, (a shine retreat for instance, any kind of retreat) there are certain circumstances that we want to try to arrange for ourselves to help things be conducive.
So this is ACI Course Three, and he goes through again, the preliminaries to a meditation career about having few needs and wants, being satisfied with what we've got, having a conducive space, having people around us that are like-minded, all those different factors.
He talked about the five problems and the eight corrections. Do I have that right?
So when you see the reading from this class, hopefully that will all be familiar and it'll be a chance to check and say, okay, how do my circumstances relate to that?
So when he is talking about having a conducive space, he quotes from Lord Maitreya who says:
The wise will practice in a place where they can find things easily. A safe place, a pure place surrounded by like-minded friends. A place that has all the essentials to make a yogi happy.
This is talking about a retreat space, when you're going off from your home life to dedicate some time, but we can approximate it to our own daily practice.
Do we have a little space in our house where we have our little nest and you've got your lip balm and you've got your timer and right, you've got everything you need right there so you don't have to sit down and go, oh my gosh, I need a Kleenex, or oh my gosh, just doesn't have to be a big space where you've got your little sacred area.
It will build up its juju if you do the same thing in the same space and you don't do anything else in that space. It does build up some vibe that helps our meditation go a little bit easier.
Then of course, if we've got this little space where it's like, whoa, it's so sweet to sit here and you go to sit down and you're all wildly mentally afflicted, either the space will help you calm down or you'll recognize this isn't fair to the space, I'm not going to bring this [version of] me into my sacred space and spoil it.
So go back, deal with yourself, come back another time.
So it's helpful.
It can be just a closet, it can be a corner. If you can't manage it, don't worry. But it really does have an effect on our mind over time when you're looking for a retreat space, it's helpful.
There were those different criteria for a retreat space and whether it's been blessed by holy beings and whether it's dangerous, et cetera. We do need a space both retreat and at home where we feel safe. And in the olden days, we needed to be safe from wild animals, safe from enemies, safe from spirits.
Now maybe it's more like we need a sense of emotional safety, and that's where, a place where, our needs can be easily met is helpful. If we're people that aren't used to not having enough to eat and all of a sudden, oh my gosh, nobody's delivered my food for three days (it happened to Sumati once) it's like that's going to be disturbing to your retreat.
So have your arrangements made with people that understand what you're doing. They may not know the details, but they understand how important it is to you and actually for them as well. And so their support will be eager and helpful.
The Lamas shared that they would go on retreat during the period in between our terms and they would go someplace different. They didn't let most of us know where they were and they'd tell after, and then they'd tell us about it. But they would choose, usually choose a place in the world where it was like the locus of whatever bruhaha was happening at the time.
During our training, there was some time where there was some kind of conflict between the Muslim world and the rest of the world, and so Lamas went to a place where the Muslim world and the rest of the world connected. They went to the south of France.
And they intentionally do a retreat in an area that's got conflict. They're not in the middle of the conflict. They don't go to the war zone, but they go to a place where the people in the area represent what's going on in the world—and then by them doing these very sacred practices in that area, it helps purify the area of the negativity.
So the area has this negativity past seeds that's ripening as this conflict of the people in it.
It's not like the earth has its own karmas.
But the people that have the karma to live there are the ones that have these seeds ripening.
So they had this concept that if there was a place that had been very violent or had had really horrible things happen—but now it wasn't so bad—they'd go there and do their retreat there to help purify the place.
And it is just an interesting idea that the power of you doing a practice in a space, your home or otherwise contributes to the uplift of the area, even if you think your own retreat is not powerful at all, just the fact that you tried that, you did one, contributes to the uplift of the area.
And at Diamond Mountain in particular, that property around the spring and the stream that used to be there, that has had a lot of violence in it, and the people who were sensitive to that felt it when they were coming to the property, and Lamas were saying every time emptiness was taught at Diamond Mountain, every time Pujas are done at Diamond Mountain, it's helping to negate, purify, this ugly history that's happened at Diamond Mountain. And as a result, the vibe of Diamond Mountain has changed a lot.
I'm not sensitive to that stuff, but people that came in the early days and come now they say, wow, what a difference—and it's not just that there's buildings now where it was just rock and shrubs before—but it's that the whole vibe has changed by way of all the pujas that were done, all the retreats that have been done, all the classes that have been given, all the big hearted people that come to visit. It really is changing and it is a nexus of change for that part of the country.
And so our contribution really does help, even if we think, oh, I'm just a puny practitioner, it all adds together.
Okay, so he goes on to say, atop a seat conducive for reaching meditation, fix yourself in the seven pointed posture of the body.
So he's just said, we're going to use meditation to reach the view, but in fact, we're using both meditation to reach view and view to reach meditation.
Find yourself a conducive space he said before.
Now he says, atop this seat, put yourself in your seven point posture of bio roach. We've learned it before. We'll go through it a little bit again.
Then he says, clear away with the ninefold 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.
So these are his meditation preliminaries. They are in addition to the meditation preliminaries we've learned, but again, he says he's giving us a sutra practice, but his preliminary to the preliminary is to clear away with the ninefold breath, which is a completion stage practice.
He can't help himself.
His mind is so high, there's no difference to him between Diamond Way and Sutra way and so he knows that the people that are interested in Mahamudra practice that he's teaching, they have the seeds to benefit from learning this ninefold cycle of the breath.
It's one that's taught openly in the yoga traditions, so it's our tradition in which it's secret, otherwise it's open, but it is done differently than what's taught in the yoga tradition.
So unless I run out of time, I'll be sharing that with you as well. So he's saying the first thing you do, wait, normally we do “count the breath” [at the beginning of a meditation].
He says, yes, count the breath, but do this ninefold breath. It's a visualization and a breath work.
And then do your usual meditation preliminaries
Then bring up the vision of the Lama until you have tears in your eyes out of your devotion for them, begging them to help you.
And then when you're ready, Lama dissolves into you and then you start the Mahamudra part. So really like the preliminaries to Mahamudra would take, they could take an hour or more, but if you're in retreat, that's all you have to do.
So why not let it take all day if it needs to?
So he says “a seat conducive for reaching meditation,” and we've learned that the seven point posture of Vairochana is the most conducive posture for meditating—it is because of how to be able to be in that position comfortably locks our body mechanics such that you can really effortlessly stay there and any other position, there is this underlying physical, subtle tensions keeping us there.
But not all of us have the body shape that can actually do lotus, and if we can't, we are not supposed to hurt ourselves trying to get into that posture.
On the other hand, we are also not to just say, meh, I can't do it and not try. So we start step by step.
You just first learn to get one foot up on your thigh and learn to be comfortably propped in that position.
Slowly go to the next one.
I would really send you to a yoga studio or to miss Tom if you want to seriously get into lotus posture.
I used to be able to do it—then as I started meditating, I had a condition where the pressure on my bones was intolerable, so I chose a different posture. There are many different postures that if you can't do lotus, you do this one. And if you can't do that one, you do this one.
The point is we find a posture in which our position is so locked in that we can forget the body completely. Part of our Mahamudra practice, you will sooner or later come to recognize, that this thing, our body, is just like any other thought that ripens and passes.
It has no more reality than any of the other ones.
And you'll reach this state in meditation where it's just the body is a label on sensations and nothing more than that, and those sensations are meaningless to me right now, and we're in this different space.
It takes some time to get there, it did for me a long time, and it's not really the goal, but it's a side piece.
And if we have the body in a position where our mind isn't having to continually come back and go, what's the matter with that? What's the matter with this? It's easier. It's swifter to get to the place where you don't need your body anymore to be in that meditation.
So the key factor is the cushion that you're on because the position that the cushion puts your hips in relation to your knees is what helps lock us into this 90 degree position between our legs, our bottom, and our spine.
So our spine has this natural curve that as we get older, that natural curve exaggerates the thoracic curve, exaggerates the neck curve, exaggerates, the lower spine curves get locked either under the wrong way, or back too far the wrong way.
And when that pelvis’s ability to rock back and forth on the bottom of our spine gets jammed in either position, it has an effect on the rest of our spine.
When the pelvis is flopped backwards, it automatically makes us curve forward, which means trying to stay upright in meditation will be a strain.
When we've got our lower spine overly opened, it turns us up this way and the strain is the opposite, right? It's going to send our energies backward and we're going to be constantly fighting to stay upright.
When we can get that pelvis in the right position, and then from the pelvis we get our thighs, knees, and legs set to hold it there, then very effortlessly the spine will come upright—and with a little rise of our sternum will keep our thoracic spine rising and our crown rising in the same way. That helps to straighten out the spine.
The spine cannot get stacked one on top of the other straight. But we want to approximate that so that our tendency to fall forward or back is reduced. Our tendency to fall side to side is reduced. Our tendency to sink is reduced, and our tendency for our head [drop] to do this is reduced.
When we've got that spine straight and solidly held, it's almost effortless to stay in that position as long as you wish to—so now that means we need some kind of pad underneath our legs so that where your bones from the side of your knees are touching the ground, it doesn't crimp off that nerve. To where the ankles are on the ground, it doesn't pinch off that nerve that you're allowed to have something soft and warmish under your legs.
There may come a time when you don't need any of that—but it's fine to begin with to have that kind of comfort.
So this cushion that we need is a cushion that we want to be soft enough that if you've got a boney fanny, you don't start hurting because your cushion is too hard.
You want it to be such that it's a little higher in the back than in the front. The cushion itself doesn't have to be higher, but if it's made of stuff that's adjustable like the buckwheat hull or whatever, then your bottom adjusts it so that it's like a wedge.
To have your bottom a little higher than your knees helps keep that pelvis in the position that keeps the rest of your spine upright—and I'm sorry on zoom I just can't get at you to say.
When we're first starting, the tendency is for us to use a cushion that's too low—we want a cushion high enough that makes our thighs spread open to an angle, and then our knees can turn in and there'll be weight along all this part of our thigh, almost all of that, so that our knees are bearing weight.
If we have a cushion that's too low, our knees are up like this [high] and then they're not helping us.
So sometimes at the first, your cushion needs to be so high, your thighs don't touch the ground, but your knees do, and then as your body gets used to it, you'll find, whoa, this cushion's too high. You come to a lower one down more and more and more, more.
Geshela told this story once, I think he was trying to bend over and touch the ground with his palms and he couldn't get it. And his yoga teacher brought in a telephone book.
You remember the old yellow pages?
And he put the telephone book and said, put your palms on the telephone book easy. I can do that every day. Pull out a page, pull out a page, one page of the telephone book.
You remember how thin those pages were?
By the time he was down to no pages left, his hands are flat on the ground, effortless.
Similar with your meditation cushion, right?
Except you just can't really pull away one page at a time, little by little.
So Lama Christie was saying to us, our classes, she said:
Find the perfect meditation cushion.
Go to the trouble, try out different ones. Find the one that is comfortable, sets you into your position. It's like, “ah, nice.”
And then she says, when you go someplace, pack your meditation cushion, your yoga [mat] and your meditation timer and anything else you bring, it doesn't matter.
Those are the three most important things to a serious yogini. That's all you need.
And then, I don't know, for me, fast forward now, it's like, just give me anything that'll prop my bottom up a little bit, right? You don't even need your own special cushion anymore. Once you've got the position, you can find something that will help you put into it—I still need something to prop me up.
Eventually people get to where, especially with [full] lotus, you don't need a cushion at all once your back locks into that position. Until you feel it though, it's hard to really know exactly what I'm talking about.
So read the reading, explore your own meditation posture. If you have somebody close by that can help you, please ask them to check your posture and let them adjust you—because very likely, if we've been meditating for a while, we think, “oh, my posture is fine.”
But when somebody actually looks, they may say, “no, actually in your position you're like all this.” And so you get it there.
However, Lama Christie said, once you're in deep meditation, especially this Mahamudra meditation, don't worry about what happens to your body.
Don't intentionally slip out of Mahamudra to check “is my posture still good?”
Other meditations, we do that, but this one, lock it in at the beginning and then get on with it. And if you get knee pain, you do the same thing with the knee pain as you did with the bird singing.
Ah, labels ripening.
It will go away.
And everybody's going to say, what if it doesn't?
All right.
If it doesn't and you're repeatedly distracted, then you stop your meditation on purpose: “I can't use this for Mahamudra right now. I am going to intentionally stop early. I regret it. I'll do this as my antidote, et cetera, right?”
So it doesn't become a pattern. I mean, your legs will go to sleep. Who cares? I mean, technically you could pinch off a nerve and cause damage, but the likelihood is remote if we've got ourselves properly propped.
Alright, I don't have time—we don't have time—for me to teach you the ninefold breath and do the meditation that's coming next, so we'll do it at the beginning of next class, which is the ‘setting our posture and really checking the different levels of posture’ and then learning the ninefold breath. So we'll do that at the beginning of next class.
Yeah, that's good.
So we have a few minutes. Are there burning questions? Good.
In that case, let's do our dedication.
So remember that person we wanted to be able to help?
It's not likely in this lifetime that we're going to ever teach them Mahamudra, but it's very likely that through our Mahamudra work, we will become one who can help them in that deep and ultimate way—and that's an extraordinary goodness, so please be happy with yourself.
Happy your aspiration, happy with your efforts, no matter how puny they may seem—and think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hand.
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 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 being… 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, sharing it with others…
And may it be so.
Okay. Thank you so very much for the opportunity. Have a nice week.
Explore your subject side.
Have fun.
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Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 8
There is no vocab list for this class.
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Introduction
Welcome back, we are Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, First Panchen Lama's Mahamudra class. It's March 18th, 2025.
Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
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.”
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Okay.
Last time we were hearing about first Panchen Lama's review of our preparations for meditation. Not meaning the seven limb preliminary but meaning setting up the conditions. And it seems like mostly those conditions are how to prepare ourselves for a retreat and then we extrapolate them to how we prepare ourselves, and keep ourselves prepared, for our long-term meditation career as part of our worldly life, our spiritual worldly life.
And so we're now at the part of the text and I'm going to read it to you, he says:
“Atop a seat conducive for reaching meditation—
Fix yourself in the seven point posture of the body.
Clear our way with the ninefold cycle of the breath.
Learn to call 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.”
So let's talk a little more about atop a seat conducive for meditation.
Fix yourself in the seven point posture of the body. We talked a little bit about the seat, finding that cushion that puts your hips and spine and knees in just the right spot. And let's talk now about fixing yourself in the seven point posture of the body.
Lama Christie led us through a meditation where she talked us through that. And I'm going to do the same shortly. The audience she was talking to were all sitting on the floor, On a cushion on the floor, which is traditional, not absolutely necessary. It has its advantages however, so I suspect we're all sitting on chairs.
So I need to adjust, I need to adjust it a little bit. I'm less familiar with that than I am with one on a cushion.
So sitting on your chair, just before we get into my guiding you through it, what I'm going to ask you to be aware of is the angle between your torso coming down to your buttocks and then your thighs going out in front and then your lower legs going down from your knees. How high or low are knees are, affect the position of the buttocks by way of the position of the pelvis.
So when we're on a cushion on the floor, the way we get the proper position is by sticking our hips out. So suppose this is my hip joint, not my shoulder. Then we find a way for our legs to get out far enough and up far enough to get our spine up. So when we're sitting in a chair, the way our legs are bent will do this similar locking, not to the same effectiveness as the lotus posture or half lotus or even no lotus, where you've got your heels tucked in deep. But we can approximate it. So when you're in your chair, I would like you to explore so get a feeling of your body sitting on those sits bones. Can you feel them? Mine are very bony. I can feel them.
So you want your weight on those sit bones. Now, take your knees and raise them up. You can't see me doing it but feel what happens to your weight on the sit bones as you raise your knees up. It goes off the sits bones, doesn't it?
Now put your knees back comfortably and then take your shoulders and go back. You go off your sit bones again, right?
Take your shoulders and go too forward. You go off them again. Do you feel that? Take your legs and stick them out straight. In order to do that, you got to go back, right? Roxanna showed it. Just stick your legs out, you got to go back. Now you're off your sit bones again.
Win those. Now drop your knees down lower than your hips at 90 degrees and see how it takes you off your sit bones also. So get your knees at 90 degrees, prop something under your feet to have your knees 90 degrees and your hips 90 degrees and your weight up on those sit bones. Can you feel it?
Now, I do not how to describe what I'm doing here.
(showing while staying) If you, you know how, oh, I'm not tall enough. You have these hip bones, right? They curve around like this and then they go down into the hip socket and they've got a front point. Can you find the front point of those hip bones? So that front point they say pretend they're like headlights. If you tilt that pelvis, your headlights point to the ceiling. Can you feel it. If you point them down too much? The headlights point down when we're sitting on those sit bones, the headlights are pointing straight.
When our hips and legs are down too far, it means our lower back is arched, curved out our butt, sticking out too far. Which means we would not be sitting our weight on the sits bones. When our hip bones are pointing up, it means that this curve that's curved under our buttocks is tucked under. The hip bones are pointing up when our pelvis is rocked forward and our hip bones are pointing up, look what's happening to my thoracic spine and my head. When the butt is sticking out too far, this goes back too far, my head comes up too high. We want the hip bone straight ahead because that helps us raise this thoracic spine and counter the this. It comes up straight. When our thoracic spine is up straight, our head can come up. We'll get there in a minute.
So that position of the pelvis is crucial to the position of the upper body. And once we have that one locked in, then this one can unlock technically because we lock this one in this way. Now this is locked. You lock this one, the pelvis in properly. Then this is available to come upright. So they say shoulders should be even meaning not like this or like that unless we have scoliosis. Some people have scoliosis and this is straight, but not to worry that will even straighten out someday. So we want our shoulders straight this way because that means we're not curving. We want our torso (showing) Here are my legs 90 degrees, here's my torso, 90 degrees. We don't want to be that. We already felt how that takes us off the sits bones. We don't want to be that right. We want it 90 degrees as well.
Now our spine has a natural curve. Curve at the neck; Curve at the thorax; Curve at the lumbar in order to keep us balanced in gravity. For meditation, we're trying to flatten those out. You cannot get them stacked like coins. It's not physiologic, but we want to try to get them as straight as possible. So they say raise your head, but then when people say raise here, raise their head, they do this (showing)
You see? And that's not what we mean by raise your head to raise your head. What we really mean is raise your sternum. Did you see it? Go up, raise your head, Sarahni. My head didn't actually do anything. This did something. I went from this or near everyday life sternum comes out that makes everything go boom. And it's like somebody has taken a hold of your crown and pulled you up to heaven. They don't pull you like this (showing), they pull you straight up so that it's like your neck elongates, but it comes from here from rising here. And then they say drop your shoulder blades down behind your back because our tendency when we do this, did you see what my shoulders did? This is not it. This is it.
Stick that sternum forward, forward and up. And so it really takes them until you quite get it. And when you get it, your shoulders naturally drop. Your chin tucks in. This part rises. And it feels from the inside like you've stacked a rock on top of another rock and it, you know how it either or you get it right and it's like, ah, solid. This does the same. And then naturally your head rises, it becomes level, your chin and jaw go natural.
And then you come to the placement of the tongue. Where our tradition says, put your tongue on the roof of your mouth. But what they mean is put the tip of your tongue at the place where your two front teeth behind there meet the palate. So you put the tip of the tongue there and let the rest of the tongue deeply relax down to the floor of your mouth.
Can you feel it? If you say put your tongue to the roof of your mouth up there, it takes effort to keep it up there. Put the tip of your tongue there between your teeth and palate and let the rest of the tongue deeply relax. There's something about the tongue relaxing the floor of the mouth that helps trigger the vagus nerve.
All of this stuff about meditation science says is about triggering the vagus nerve to predominate over the sympathetic nervous system. And that's one of the tricks to do that. Teeth and lips are a natural position. We add to that, add a little bit of a smile, just a teeny little Mona Lisa smile, which helps with something we're going to get to shortly.
Did I miss anything? Front to back, side to side, legs, arms, hands. Traditionally in Tibetan Buddhism, you put right hand down into left hand and you bring the tips of your tongues to make this thumbs, to make this lovely little oval and you set it in your lap, but they want this tip of the thumb just below your belly button. Which if your feet are not in lotus position, they're up there in midair. So you can put a pillow so they're not up in midair or you can use some other mudra. So this is called the mudra of concentration. And for some it's very comfortable. For some it gets very comfortable when it starts out not very comfortable.For others, it's just like I never relate to that. You can also use the chin mudra. So they say that the purpose here is you can barely feel the thumbs touching and when you become aware that they stop touching, you've lost your concentration.
But that implies you're concentrating and aware on your thumbs and it's like we are way beyond that. So for our purposes, it doesn't really matter what your hands are doing, they just need to be in a position where they're relaxed and they're going to sit there and you don't have to hold them there. And Geshehla has always shared, it's nice to have your arms out a little bit because you build up heat during meditation and then you start to get too hot and sweaty under your arms and it'll be a distraction. So however you decide to leave your arms for meditation, find a place that is comfortable, stays comfortable, and then forget them, doesn't matter. (24:53)
What we're going to do in today's session is to walk slowly through that body position because that's the first thing he says. See yourself atop a seat conducive for reaching meditation. Fix yourself in the seven point posture of the body, then clear away with the ninefold cycle of the breath.
So let me also explain the ninefold cycle of the breath.
And then we're going to do it all. So the ninefold cycle of the breath. It starts with visualization, a scan of our inside of our body. Seeing it as hollow instead of full of organs and stuff. And so to do this, we train ourselves to do a sequence exactly the same every single time. And at first it takes a little while to do, but then once you're familiar with it, you just turn your mind to the hollow inner body. And I'm hollow inside, right?
Eventually it's going to become your reality, your hollow inside. But for now it's all pretend. So when you think of looking inside your body, you're going to start, we'll start from above. So you start scanning from just inside the top of your skull and you look in there and you think, well, there ought to be a brain, but oh my gosh, there's just this clear something.
This tradition says, what you see in there is like a clear blue sky, this beautiful color blue. You choose the blue, doesn't have to be blue, you want yellow sunshine, you can do that. But this tradition uses clear blue. So you look inside expecting brains and what you see is wow, beautiful blue. And you come down, you reach your eyeballs, you look inside the eyeballs. You expect, I don't know what you expect, vitreous humor, clear blue sky, eyelids, lids, ears, nose, oh my gosh, blue sky inside there, teeth every one of your teeth inside.
Hollow tongue, hollow ears, right? All of this hollow inside, down your neck, hollow into your arms. You can do one and then the other. You can get when you're familiar, you can do both at the same time. You're looking down inside expecting muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments, blood vessel - blue sky, beautiful blue - all the way down fingers. Then you come back up slowly start through the torso. Don't forget the curves of your breasts. Down, down, down, down. Looking in all the crevices, all the jiggles everywhere, genitals as well. Oh man, all hollow. Down your legs, one or the other. Into your feet, into your toes, each one hollow. Just this outline of beautiful light.
Now where's your mind when you're doing that? Doesn't really matter. You can be outside looking through into you. You can go inside and be looking. As you explore this practice, you'll find what works for you. But do the sequence the same every single time, top down so you don't miss any place. Then when you get to your toes, you turn and you let yourself float back up inside.
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You get to the looking at your torso and head, and then you notice that inside the torso side to side, in the middle, front to back where the front of the spine would've been, there's this beautiful tube, it's a tube made of light. It's crimson red. It's about as big around as a milkshake drinking straw, a shaft of an arrow. You see that it's lower tip, it's lower opening is just a little bit below the level of your waistline, they call it at the navel, but it's behind the navel. But at that level, a little bit below about your thumbs width below, and it goes straight up, up, up to the crown of your head, and at the crown it curves forward.
Here's you (picture) At the crown it curves forward for about this far four finger widths. And then it curves down behind your forehead by about oh three four centimeters and it stops. It has an upper opening in the midline just above where your eyebrows would meet if they went straight across. So here's straight across, just above that. Inside, about inch and a half. So this is this hollow tube of light. If you look at it face, it just looks like it's going straight, straight down, beautifully straight. It's soft, it's flexible, but it's upright.
Now you also see that there are two side channels that parallel it. So you are working your way up. You come around when you are at the focus of attention. Up here, you see, oh my gosh, there's two more channels. I couldn't draw it. But there's two side channels that actually start from the inside of your nostrils. like where the septum, the border between your two nostrils is. One of these is on one side of it, the other is on the other side of it.
So you see now that there are these two side channels. The one on the left is milky white in color, so opaque. They are also hollow tubes like straws. They are more narrow than the central channel. So a regular drinking straw is a little more narrow than a milkshake drinking straw. So these two are regular drinking straw sizes. Tthey're going to parallel the central channel, not touching it but close to it. So you see the milky white one on your left and the right one is brick red. So these two, they start here at the tip of the nostrils, they run up, pick up the central channel here, not touching, come up and around and down. So your mind's following, seeing these at below the central channel's, bottom opening. These two channels, they veer out a little bit and then turn towards each other. They're going to do something a little different with the ninefold cycle of breath.
So once we have this established, we start up see that it's all hollow, come back inside, see the central channel going up. By the time we get up here, oh my gosh, there's the two side channels. We see them going down and coming together here. This is that (Showing) And then we come back up and we start what's called the ninefold cycle of breath. So with the ninefold cycle of breath, this practice Lama Christie taught us start with the left and go into the right. In the future we start with the right and go into the left. There's a lot more to learn about this, but this is just really early preliminaries. What we're going to do with the ninefold cycle of breath is we're going to breathe in one side and out the other. Three times and then in that other side and out the first one three times and then in both and into out the central channel three times. And that concentration on the breath work is the tool that we use for shifting the mind from outer to inner. So ordinarily we say focus your attention on your breath count to ten three times. You'll never get to ten three times, but just do it for three minutes and then you've triggered your mind to go inward. This replaces that.
So when they say set your attention to your breath, you're doing this inner body ninefold breath, you're not counting right because you're just doing this three and that three and that three and it's nine.
So when we start, we'll go in the left, breathing in the left. When I first learned this, it's like, no, my breath is going in, it's just going in. But what I learned is as I got more familiar with the practice, when I decided I'm breathing in my left nostril, I would be breathing in my left nostril and I didn't feel anything in the right one. All yoga tradition, they do that. This, you're not doing that, you're doing it by way of your concentration. So it doesn't really matter what the breath is doing. Your concentration is “I'm breathing in my left nostril.” So you're feeling the sensations of the air going in the left nostril, but what you're doing is breathing air into that left channel, that milky white channel.
So we're going to breathe in the left. We follow the air, the breath going in, up, around, down. When it gets down below the belly button that channel …. (showing) . So here's your left channel, here's your right channel. Your left channel has done this into your right channel. Can you see it? So your breath is going to go and your mind is going to go from your left channel into the right channel and then up the right channel around and down and out the right nostril. Then your breath is going to turn and come back in the left, up around, down, out, right, got it? In again. Up around, down, up, out, around and down and up. On the fourth breath it goes back in the right up down. Now the left channel has been like this.
This has happened. It's just happened so that by the time you get down there, this is what it looks like and the air goes into the left up and around and out in the right, round and down. Feel it. And it sounds complicated but it isn't now on the last. So six breath.
Now your mind and breath is going to go in both nostrils. It goes in both nostrils. And forget the literal At this point you're breathing into the two side channels. So you're going in both up and around, down a little bit, out and around. Now how was it? We left it like this, but now the two side channels have turned and gone into the central, right? So here's the central. You've got your right and your left both opening into the lower part of the central channel just below the level of your navel in front of where your spine used to be. Got it? So the breath goes into the central channel up the central channel around and out here. So it takes a long time before it feels like you're actually breathing out of here. So don't worry about the actual sensations, know that you're doing it by way of imagining it. We're planting seeds here. So out it goes back in the two sides, up and around, down into the central channel, up, around and out. And again. So three of those. That's our ninefold breath.
The next step then is to start our refuge, bodhichitta, seven-limb prayer, Lama practice. Beg them to help us and stay with us, dissolve them into us. And then we're ready to start the Mahamudra practice, the watcher where we've just been starting with the watcher in classes before.
So let's put that all together. We've almost done half class and I've just described what we're going to do. But let's try it on for size so that you can get a sense of how you can build your own full Mahamudra practice if you haven't done it already.
[Roxana: I have a question. With the white channel, we just visualize milky white and the red, we just visualize red. And when they're coming together, we visualize through the central channel blue?]
Answer: No inside the central channel for this meditation Lama Christie did not designate a color. So she had called the central channel this crimson red. And so I think for right now, leave it be crimson red. When you get your breath into the central channel, although you don't have to have any color at all, it's difficult to me you're inside a tube. The walls of the tube are milky white, right? But whatever it is that's inside the tube to me doesn't have any color at all, right? It's like my breath in my mind, which have no color. And then for that, the sides of the central channel are this crimson red.
[Roxana: So it's just air coming in through those tubes which have a specific color?]
Answer: Right.
[Roxana: Okay, great, thank you.]
So when in the past I've said “set your posture for meditation." We've started from the top and worked our way down and then come up and down again. Lama Christie started from the sit bones. So we'll follow her method as you design your method. The point is build a sequence that you use every single time because then you don't miss a piece and it'll take me, I don't know how long, 20 minutes to go through it, but when you have your own sequence, it won't take you 20 minutes, it'll take you a minute or not even that to go, okay, done.
So here's another option. So start with your sits bones. Are they grounded? She said grounded into the earth. We would have to say grounded into our chair. Now check the angle of your hips. Is that angle 90 degrees? If it's not, stop and prop your feet higher or lower until you have it 90 degrees. Check your legs. Do you have to hold them in that position or are they fully relaxed? Do they stay put in that position? Check your knees. Check your feet on whatever they're propped up on. Do they trust the prop not to slip away? Is it solid and firm and your feet relax there.
Feel free to move them around your feet, your legs to find the position where they go. Oh, nice. That's nice. Then come back up and check your position on your sits bones again. And check the angle of your torso to your thighs. Your torso on your buttock. We did it before. Is it still 90 degrees?
Just actually explore. Lean your whole torso a little forward, forward, forward till you feel off balance. Feel the tension it would take to hold you leaning forward. Go back to the 90 degrees. Now lean backwards a bit. Feel the tension required to keep you from falling backwards even though your chair is there to support you. It takes tension. Come forward again. Overshoot. Come back again. Overshoot. Try it a couple of times until you find that place where you've got the lumbo right? And make a careful mental note of the sensations of that position solid on the sits bones, 90 degrees at the hips.
Now one way to help keep you there is to do a little bundle with your lower abdomen. Pull your lower tummy in just a teeny bit. At first it's like, well it's going to take me tension to hold it like that. And you're right, it does. And as we get into the session, you can forget it. Over time it will become more natural to hold that little bit of tight tummy than not. Now check the uprightness of the spine. We just did the forward and back. Now we want to do side to side. So let's just explore, feel your sensations on those two sits bones. And now intentionally lean your whole torso to one side or the other and feel what happens to the sensation on the sits bones. Find that position where the sensation on the sits bones becomes equal.
Got it?
So we did equal forward to back, equal side to side. Make note of that position and then come up and mentally check your shoulder position. May not meaning shoulder joints, but across the top of the shoulder. Feel aware, they feel like they are right now. Notice where you think your head is in relation to them. And now on purpose, drop one shoulder and raise the other. Just to feel what it feels like. Feel what it does to your head. Make your head turn. Go the other way. Drop one, raise the other. It twists your upper spine. It makes your head get wobbly.
Come back to what feels like they're even side to side. You wouldn't know except by looking. So maybe when you get them positioned where you think they're even open your eyes and take a peek at yourself in your zoom call and see are they even, many of us have the habit of carrying a pocketbook over one shoulder. And so we've got this and we think they're even.
Now let's do the same thing with their position. I'm going to call front to back. Our usual posture, Unfortunately, especially as we get older, these shoulders roll forward the curve of our thoracic spine caves to gravity, and we think we're upright. When our shoulders are rolled forward, it makes our chin come too far forward. So let's exaggerate that as well. It's like roll your shoulders back, stick your chest out over exaggerate the shoulder soldier posture until it's wildly uncomfortable.
Feel what stretches, what resists, and then bring it back to what we thought was normal. And then exaggerate the curve forward. Use up your old person posture now so you don't ever have it. Feel how it pulls you down. Your head wants to go forward, everything wants to droop because those shoulders have gone forward. Roll them back again. And then bring them back to what you think is normal.
And now try this sternum rise thing. Let your, I don't know how to describe it, push your sternum 45 degrees up and you feel what that does to your shoulders. Let's over exaggerate it. Pull it more than 45 degrees up and it throws you off balance. Other way, cave it in. Suck your sternum in. It rolls you forward. Again, off balance. Do that again. Push it up too much. It is like the yoga cat back, old horse, right? Come back to your normal and then raise that sternum just a little because normal isn't meditation. So find the position of that raised sternum that actually goes ´Oh, oh, that's it.´
You have to find your own. So now just because we've moved all around, go back, check your sits bones. Okay, good. Check your torso. Okay, good. Come back. Get that sternum thing on which drops your shoulder blades without having to do anything. Now let's check head & Chin. So head needs to be upright.
Let's over exaggerate it. Raise your chin right. The back of your head drops down. Lower your chin, right face drops down. So does our torso. So does our sternum. Find that middle space. And again, check when you raise the sternum, feel how the chin tucks in. They say tuck your chin, but it's not by tucking your chin. It's not by doing something with your neck. It's by raising your sternum. And the tongue. The chin tucks. It's not overly tucked, it's not not tucked. It's natural. When the cervical spine straightens up, the chin pulls in, the occiput rises, your crown is going to the sky. Can you feel it?
Okay, so then we check side to side, ear to shoulder, ear to shoulder. Are we balanced? Again, that's one that you might want to get yourself set and then take a peek.
Then hands and arms in that relaxed position, find what works for you and then use the same every single time. It doesn't mean that eventually you can't change to a different hand position if you wish. But when we're first growing our habit, sameness is helpful.
All right, so check in with your physical position.
Now look inside, starting from just inside the top of your skull. We expect to see brains, but surprise yourself. What you see is clear, hollow, beautiful color. And slowly scan inside there. You can see brains first and melt them away if you want. Or you can just look inside and be surprised.
Slowly down:
Eyeballs,
Ears,
Nose,
Tongue,
Teeth,
Face,
Neck,
Shoulders,
Arms,
Back,
Upper torso,
Torso,
Belly,
Pelvis,
Legs,
Heels,
Midfoot,
Four foot,
Each toe,
And turn going back up legs into torso.
Seeing now that crimson colored central channel tube,
it's lower opening just below the level of your navel
middle side to side in the space just in front of where your spine would have been
front to back.
Trace it up, straight up before it touches the light outline called skull.
It curves forward, around and down.
And its upper opening is there at the midline of you, behind your forehead, just above the level of your eyebrows.
But you follow on down to see the two side channels with their upper openings in both nostrils. Milky, white on the left,
brick red on the right,
trace them up parallel to that central channel not touching.
They go up, around and down.
They curve outward a little bit and come around with the left one inserting into the right one there at that level below the central channel.
Then you come back up and put your focus of attention on your in-breath going in your left central channel.
It goes up, around and down however long that in-breath takes. And as it shifts it, exhale, it goes into that right channel up, around and out.
And then you follow the breath back in the left channel up around, down, into the right,
up, around and out,
back into the left
round, up and out the right.
Now the next inhale goes in the right, up and around and down. Now the right channel's inserted into the left one and out the left channel
Back in the right,
Out the left,
in the right,
Out the left.
Now in both
Up around down the two side channels insert into the central channel as the exhale goes out the central channel up, around and out and then back in the two side channels
Out the central
and one more.
And at the end of this last out breath, put your meditation on a timeout and re-scan your posture, readjust anything that needs readjusting.
Then you would bring to mind that precious holy being who is the one made of love, compassion, wisdom. You would see them there before you.
They will remind you to think of someone who's hurting in some way. You'll grow your bodhichitta. That deep wish and determination to become one who can know exactly how to help them, what they need to give up, what they need to take up, willing to do anything to reach that state. And so you turn your mind back to that precious, holy being, asking them to help you, offering the mandala, taking refuge.
And then start your seven limb preliminary.
We won't do them now.
We'll just say the prayer:
With my body, speech, and mind, humbly I prostrate and make offerings both set out and imagined. I confess my wrong deeds from all the time.
One would do a four powers there.
And rejoice in the virtues of all.
Please stay until samsara ceases. And turn the wheel of the dharma.
This is where we would beg them again and again. Please bless my mind. Please help me. Please inspire me. Please help me.
Panchen Lama says, until tears are rolling down our face. I dedicate all virtues to the great enlightenment.
And then he says, dissolve the Lama into you. We usually wait until the end of our practice to do that, to dissolve the Lama into us.
There two methods.
The traditional is you ask them, please, please stay with me, help me. And they rise up and shrink and come to sit on the crown of your head, a tiny little being, and you wait until you feel a little bit of something there on your crown.
And then they transform into a tinier little ball of light. And then that little ball of light enters down into you going down that elevator shaft. Guess what? You have that central channel there. Now they can go down that elevator shaft until they reach that holy of holies in the middle of your chest where you see that little ball of light again, become them sitting there in that beautiful temple space inside you.
If you're in there with them, everything is full size. When you're outside looking in, it's a little tiny shining ball of light in the middle of you.
And then we would start our watcher meditation.
So rather than do that, check your body posture again. If anything has shifted, notice what it is so that you can know what to work with.
And then let's dedicate what we've done so far to every being automatically having the alignment that allows them to get in touch with their subtle body that allows them to get in touch with their being made of love.
And then come out of this session, take a little break, get refreshed and we'll talk about it before we go further.
*************
We are back.
So talk to me about the posture thing. Anybody get something that they realize they need to adjust? I know you're all meditators already.
Joana: For me it's the lower back. I mean there it starts my problem. I have problems with the lower back. So this is then just coming up and the rest is just not good. So I have a little bit too much overdoing it. And so I have too much curve in the lower back. And since it is hurting anyway all the time, I try to get out of the pain. So this is why I have kind of a already sticky posture down there. And then I don't get really straight.]
Answer: For now, adjust what you need. Prop with pillows as you need. And from someone who has had chronic body pain, I can tell you it does eventually stop interfering with meditation even though the pain doesn't go away necessarily. But I can also say eventually the pain does go away. From both worldly ways and other ways.
Joanna: The torchlight thing helps a lot to recognize where the hip bones need to adjust because there I recognize that there's some issue. I thought I'm straight.
Lama: Thanks for sharing. Anything else? Anybody else?
So how about the ninefold breath, the channel thing? Was that new to anybody? I think that cat's been out of the bag. Oh really? Okay, good
So there's lots more to learn of course about that. It's like Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen can't help himself, but give ourselves glimpses, give his students glimpses into what's coming. And this is a big one of what's coming. So it's really useful to start to play with it, right? It's our imagination. We can do anything we want with our imagination. Is it really hollow in there? If you got an x-ray, would your lungs not show up? Right after retreat? My first chest x-ray, I was hoping they'd go, there's nothing inside there. What's the matter with our machine? But my seeds were not that.
So hopefully, is there anyone here who's not a visualizer? Everybody's visual. So when I say imagine your inner body's hollow, you can look inside and go, well, there's blue inside here. Okay, good, because that's so much easier. When you're not a visualizer and you have to think it. Anyway.
So yeah, find a sequence that you enjoy and just do it the same every single time. When I look inside my body, I'm blue inside. Does it mean your brain doesn't function and you're going to get stupid? No, not at all. Right? Not at all. And then you see the central channel. See the two side channels, do it the same every single time. You'll get to where you just think my body's hollow, but still take 30 seconds to go to make sure. You'll get to the point where you just look in there and all three, three channels are there all at the same time.
And just make sure, okay, central two sides. Eventually we're going to learn what they mean, what they represent, what you're doing while you're in there. Not in this class, but in others. someday. So right now you're just getting really familiar. When you're first starting, you're just imagining your breath is going through there. You can eventually be riding on the breath and you yourself are going inside and down and around and up. But just let that happen organically. Right now we're just doing this as a breath preliminaries practice. It's planting seeds that are way more useful than just parking your mind on your breath at the nostrils or the old way, counting your breath. So this serves as that for you. Now if you wish to replace it. I'm just saying the seeds you plant will be useful later on.
So you don't do it as a meditation. You do it to prepare yourself to start into your preliminaries.
You get your position, you get your breath thing done, then do your preliminaries.
Then the clock starts for your Mahamudra meditation, which we didn't do this time.
So you stay with the one that we did last week. Okay?
*************
So next in Panchen Lama's text, he goes into his instructions. They don't seem so much like instructions. They seem more like clues to the practice. Again, I'm going to read the text to you and it'll take us probably a couple of classes to talk about it all.
He says, so this is about when we are doing the actual growing the watcher so that we can get to the actual Mahamudra.
He says, 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 century of the mind to catch it running here and 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 what 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 the battle, when you are staying still let go without relinquishing awareness, lock it down, then let it loose. This is where you leave your mind. And furthermore, if you release this mind of yours, all tangled up in knots, have no doubt that you will be released.
So 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.
So these are Panchen Lama's instructions on how to get to stillness. Stillness is not Mahamudra. Stillness is that SHINEY. The level of concentration from which we can grow our wisdom. The platform from which we can get on the platform from which we can grow our wisdom to be more accurate. If we don't get to that first platform, we're never going to get to the goal. So again, this idea of stillness.
I find a concept that I misunderstood for a long time and I still misunderstand, but I hope it's less. And it seems like when we say we reach single pointed focus and then that goes on to become Shamatha, the stillness, that it seems like our awareness that's usually going blah, blah, blah … must just become come … Shhh!
But that's not stillness. Stillness is this balance point between following the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, agitation and dullness. If I'm not going to follow it, I'm not interested at all. And we sink into subtle dullness and then gross dullness and then off the object altogether. So stillness is this quality of experience where there's all kinds of stuff could still be happening, but we neither follow it, nor get uninterested in it. We have this focus of attention, clear, bright mind with the fascination, but not fascination on the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So what are we fascinated about?
What are we really, really trying to reach so that we can reach this ability to see into the dependent origination and emptiness of all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
If we stop all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there's nothing there to investigate.
If we follow all the blah blah, blah, blah, blah, we're not investigating it.
It needs to come up and then an investigation happen in order to penetrate through, but we have to be able to be at the place where we're still at stillness as we investigate.
Does that make any sense at all? I just said stillness is where the blah blah, blah, blah, blah. We don't follow. But now I'm saying in your stillness you will be able to do this analysis. Is that still? Yes, it's going to be still, it's still going to be stillness because you're not following the blah, blah, blah. You are turning on intentionally your analysis.
And then because you have not lost your stillness, you're not following and you're not dull. When you get to the conclusion of your analysis, you have the state of stillness that can stay in that, let's call it wisdom. But we have to get to this state of stillness before we can do our analysis without it being a following of blah, blah, blah.
So this is what he's trying to help us build the tools to find ourselves aware of this state of mind called stillness so that we can actually have an effective tool of our mind and our watcher to do what is the actual Mahamudra section of the Mahamudra. We haven't gotten there yet. It'll be a while. So he's giving us all these different ways to explore how to get to the state of mind of stillness. But do you see, if we don't understand what stillness is, how are we ever going to get there? It'll surprise you. It is like, oh, that's what she was talking about. Oh, that's where my sits bones are, right? And then it'll be like you never didn't understand.
So one of the ways to recognize that we're not in stillness says Panchen Lama is that we get dragged into hopes and fears. He means hopes for the future, even fears for the future. And by implication he means also past. We get pulled into past and future when we're following the blah, blah, blah. Our reaction puts us into either past or future. What we think is past or future. So I don't know. Think about that. The distractions that come to you for your meditation practice. Suppose you've got a meeting later today and you're trying to do your sit and these thoughts about the meeting and how that meeting's going to go, keep coming up. And Mahamudra practice is come up, let them go, come up, let them go. That would be fine, except that we don't Up comes the thought about the meeting and our reaction is, oh my gosh, am I prepared. FUTURE. Oh my gosh, what's it going to be like? Fear of the future. Oh my gosh, I'm supposed to be trying to get shamata hope for the future. Like, oh my gosh, instead of just ripening, let it go. We've followed blah, blah, blah. And the following, he says, notice it takes us either into the future or into the past. What he's pointing out is that we want to be here now. Be in the moment. Technically we're never not in the moment. Would that be true to stay even as we're in our fears or our hopes for the future? That's still a present moment awareness.
If I say, think about yourself when you were four years old and you think back that time you were riding the pony and having such a fun time. We say, oh, that's a memory. A little bit of me is back there in the past, but the past doesn't exist. The future doesn't exist. That is a current moment memory that technically we don't even know is true. We can't confirm in any way. Yeah, it is. It's my memory, but it's a current moment ripening. Technically it has changed, changed changed, changed since when it was planted. We're never not in the moment. But in a sense we are never aware of being in the moment because our reaction to the moment is almost always something from the past or something from the future. And he's saying maybe it would be helpful in reaching stillness to notice that automatic reaction that we have because by noticing it, we can be aware of it. And when we're aware of it with our watcher state of mind, passive observer, we can just go, huh, that's interesting. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Instead of being dragged into. What about that meeting? How's it going to go? What if they say this? I'll say that, right? We're already off our object by doing so. When we engage it. When we engage whatever arises other than our meditation object, we are not in stillness, right? Our mind says, yeah, but even when I'm engaging in my object, I'm not in stillness. If that object moves and it's I guess we can still be in stillness. Even as the object itself is changing or moving or doing stuff. It's that we haven't gone along with any of the distractions.
So an example I used to use was imagine sitting by the edge of stream or a river. And your experience can be watching all the details of what's going by in the river, right? There goes a log, there goes a wave, there goes another, and you can zoom in and go, wow, there's different waters going by me. The details. This one, this one, this one, this one. Or you can sit there and you can be aware of the flow of the river, everything flowing by. Without going into the details of what's flowing by. So if you're going into the details, here comes a leaf, you see it, you're following it, you're following it, and then you can't see it anymore. Or you can be, oh river, your focus can be on the flow or your focus can be on the stuff of the flow. Can you feel the difference?
So the mind that's aware of the flow of the river as the river is changing, changing, changing, changing that, staying in aware of the flow without going to airplane, bird, wind, noise, just focus single pointedly on the ever-changing flow is closer to what's meant by stillness. Do you see? There's stuff appearing, but the quality of the mind is 'Ahhh'.
Lama Christie described - later we'll come back to it - is that stillness isn't the state of still mind, isn't the stillness that we're talking about as shamatha until we have the quality, the physical quality and mental quality called the SHIN JANG, the pleasures. And she said the physical sensation of settling into SHINEY is like when you have that constant hum of the refrigerator going on, and you're so familiar with it that you don't really even notice it anymore. But then it shuts off. And suddenly something's gone. And it's just like it's a relief. So this quality, she says it's a physical relief that this quality that we're cultivating, SHINEY or shamatha, has this physical sense of release of some kind of constant something that we were so unaware of we didn't know. But when it's gone, it's like, oh, the physical sensation of that and a mental sensation that's similar are these two characteristics of the state of mind called SHINEY or shamatha that he's just having tiptoe towards.
[internet freezes 1:38 to 1:40:29 continue with teaching]
So reaching single pointed concentration is this ability to be sitting, the ability to be sitting at the edge of the river, having let go of all the details of what's going by. Enjoying this physical and mental pleasure of keenly, clearly aware of this flowing river, even when something interesting shows up. So here we are enjoying single pointed flow of the river. The river's going by, going by, going by, going by. We're enjoying the flow. And then an otter swims by, and your mind's going to go Otter. Wow, Otter. I want to see what the otter does. It's so cute. Do you see I've lost my. I'm nowhere close to stillness at that moment. Am I still aware of the river going by? Yes. But something came up that caught my attention. I followed it. Did I have clarity? Yes. Did I have nar? Yes. But am I on my object? No. I'm on a new object, the otter.
How quickly our mine decides there's something else. There's something more important, there's something more interesting. And off it goes. It isn't really mind doing that. But it's happening. When we are in shamatha, it would not matter that an otter shows up. The otter, would we even be aware of it? On some level, yes. But it would not kick us out of our shamatha. And especially when our shamatha practice is this Mahamudra practice, we're using everything that ripples up into this experience as the flow of the river.
So even though as we're sitting in this watcher awareness, being the watcher, passively watching, there's all kinds of stuff that's coming up. And ordinarily, in order to stay focused on our object, we reject all that. We reject all that.
In this particular kind of meditation, you don't reject it. You just are very careful not to follow it, to resist the urge to follow it. You let it come up, like you let the otter flow by the river. You let the leaf go by the river because your object of attention is the flow of the river. And all of that's included in it, and it just goes by. So we're learning to be the observer of the flow of this thing we call mind, but the words are giving the wrong connotation. We're learning to be the observer of the flow, let's call it the flow of experience. That helps me.
There's experience. There's things ripening, happening, happening, happening, and we can either engage and go along, which will take us into hopes and fears for the future. Or if they have to do with memories of the past, they'll take us into the past. Or we cannot engage them. If you're the backseat driver, you're not the one that's doing the driving. You're just watching the stuff go by and you don't have any power actually to say, wait, stop. I want to look at that tree better. You're already past it. So that passive awareness state of mind isn't stillness, but it will help us get there. Because it's growing our ability to let stuff bubble up and be aware of it, but not follow the urge to follow it. So eventually where we'll be going is we'll recognize that all of these experiences that come up are nothing more than conceptualizations, ideas. They seem so very real, but we're in meditation. Nothing can happen. That's not a thought. Even the sounds that we hear, by the time the sound gets in enough to get identified. Bird, that bird is the thought. And we're going to zero in on those things. We're calling thoughts and look at, well, what makes that thought that?
Why is that thought bird, is there something in the thought that makes it bird right? What are we going to find? No, that's another thought. Oh no, that's another. Until we can get to this awareness of the subtlety of a thought arising before it even gets its label. Then what the heck is that thing? But we need to have this keen ability to stay on our topic before we can even start to explore that kind of stuff. We can explore it intellectually, but to explore it experientially, we need stillness.
So Panchen Lama says, number one, become aware of our tendency to catch on to an arising experience and use it to follow as we follow it, how it takes us into hopes and fears. When we can be aware of doing it, we can become more aware of choosing not to do it.
All right? I said all that.
Lama Christie took it a little bit deeper for us about the hopes and fears of the future. And memories of the past. And I just want to read it to you. She said: “memory is actually a present moment, ripening. So the whole thing is actually a present moment experience. This is having memories of the past. So I could have vastly different memories in the next moment, but you wouldn't know it because you would have different memories of the previous moment. We have a memory and we believe our memory is accurate, don't we? But accurate to whom and to what she says. Every single moment could be vastly, vastly different and you would have no clue. It's sort of wild to think about it that way. If you correlate that to how every single moment there is a different subject, state of mind ripening with this corresponding object. Me seeing this, me seeing that, me is different. I'm going to say that again. If we correlate that to how every single moment there's a different subject, state of mind ripening with this corresponding object and within each subject state of mind is held, our karmic storehouse for that particular person, then every single moment is a different person. Which means every single moment is a different karmic storehouse. How can we collect karma for someone else? How can we collect at all?
It's something to think about.
It's impossible. There's something else going on. Something invisible.
Karma. Storehouse. Karma.
Question. For each ripening, I mean or for each?
Lama: Yeah, it's given a clue, right? We're thinking we have all of these seeds that we've planted and they're hanging out waiting, and then 65 of them are going off per instant and 65 of them are be planted and they're growing and we think it's all happening sequentially. If you think about it, if we could do a 65th of an instant and we could experience one seed ripening, that seed would include me, object and interaction between. And the me that's experiencing this object includes everything. Everything about me, right? Everything about me is in every instant of me, isn't it?
Student: But then that you has to have three spheres experiencing that and that another three and the same with the other two of the subject. I mean the interaction in the object.
Lama: Exactly.
The whole karmic storehouse is different for every moment that there's a subject with an object and an interaction. So whose karmic storehouse is it? Anyway. The thinking there's a me with a karmic storehouse that answers all of this, right? That's Mind-Only. It's really useful because if you go to this, well, there's a different me every moment. How does any of this work? Nagarjuna would go, well, if there wasn't a different you every moment, how could it work? It's so interesting. Here's Panchen Lama, he's hardcore, highest Middle Way, given us these little clues that I would've missed if Lama Christie hadn't pointed it out and I had it in the transcripts so that I can point it out to you. Helping us.
[Stundet: I think it's so useful because when you kind of understand it, then you know exactly what you have to do in each level body and what to expect and what to be. I mean the path, how it's aligned in the different, I mean, the different scenarios. When we talked about Mind-Only, we talked about the eight consciousness. And what they do and what they represent. It's just giving you the map, right?
Lama: Right. Give us the map. Exactly. Exactly. And you have the map. You're here on the map. You want to get over there on the map. You can't just go right, you got to drive. You got to get there.
Let's stop there.
So for this week's meditation, please add this inner ninefold breath to your preliminaries and then do your preliminaries and then do the same watcher meditation that we did last week's class, which added a little bit of analysis, if you recall. All right. So remember that person, we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. We learned a lot, whether we know it or not, that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate 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 help you, guide you, inspire you, and then offer them this jump stone of goodness. See them accepted and bless it, and they carry it with them right back into your heart. See, 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. And may it be so.
Okay, thank you so very much for the opportunity. Stopping the recording.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 9
Vocab:
Dzin
Dzinpa
Dzinpan
Dzintanyul
Shenpa
Shenyul
Shiney
Shinjang
Shamatha
Yang gunpa 1200’s
*************
Introduction
Welcome back. We are Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's, Mahamudra Meditation Practice Group.
This is March 25th, 2025. That's a significant day for me.
Let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
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.”
*************
(Class 9 @ 00:08:55)
So next, set your posture.
***20 seconds***
You do that wave of relaxation from the top down.
Come to sitting on your sits bones.
Push down from there a little bit.
Make sure you're even on both of them.
Pull your lower tummy in just a tiny bit—help straighten that spine.
Scan up—inner body rising.
Sternum rises a little bit.
Shoulders drop.
Chin tucks.
Crown rises.
If you need to check again for tension, scan back down—inviting any tightness to relax.
Check your hands.
Turn inside starting from above.
See that inside you are hollow—this clear space, beautiful blue color.
***30 seconds***
Get down to your feet, turn and come back up.
Inside the torso, you see that central channel starting just below your waistline in the middle—side to side—in the place a little in front of where your spine would've been.
Beautiful hollow tube running up, curving forward around and down—stopping in that place behind your forehead—level of eyebrows—little above in the midline.
[begin to pace rhythm of breath with movement through the nine-fold cycle]
Following down into nostrils.
…
See the two side channels—brick red on the right—milky white on the left.
…
Follow them up, paralleling that central channel, around and down.
…
The left one curving and inserting into the right one.
…
Come back up, and with your next inhale, imagine your mind and breath are going in that milky white tube—up around and down.
…
As you shift to the exhale, you move into the brick red—rising up and out—turning and going back in the left,
…
Out the right.
…
In the left.
…
This time you go back in the right.
…
As you get down there, the right inserts into the left.
…
You exhale up the left
…
In the right.
…
Out the left.
…
In the right one more time.
…
Out the left.
…
With the next inhale, you go in both.
…
And they insert into the central channel—you exhale going up that central channel and out the forehead.
…
Back in both.
…
In about the central.
…
One more.
…
And then let that imagery stay—but shift your focus to that precious holy being before you.
Feel your devotion to them.
Feel your reliance upon them.
Feel your connection to them.
Feel your need for them to help.
And mentally ask again, please, please help me.
Please help me with this Mahamudra practice.
Please bless my mind.
Anything I'm ready for, anything I need—please help me.
***15 seconds***
And of course they agree.
And you see them rise up, shrink in size, turn to face the same direction as you, and come to rest on the crown of your head.
About the size of the big marble.
And you say or think again, please, please, please help me.
And they shrink further—smaller into a tiny ball of light—that descends then down that central channel, and comes to rest there in the middle of your chest.
So we have them there now, again, with their love, their compassion, their wisdom—helping us do this meditation.
And so now bring your attention to those sensations at the tip of your nostrils that we call breath.
Use this time to adjust your focus, the quality of your focus, adjust your clarity and adjust your NGAR—that fascination or keenness—a state of mind, regardless of the object.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Once we have those three qualities of mind—drop back from that sense of being up close // in front // at the nostrils.
Drop back into the passively receptive watcher.
Simply watching those sensations.
Watching whatever sounds.
Passively experiencing with focus, clarity, and fascination.
***45 seconds***
Our passive observer seems to have no particular focus, no particular topic // object to focus on.
Our focus is on whatever is arising.
The danger is to lose interest—dropping into subtle dullness, or full dullness.
Or to go looking for an object.
Or to insist on following whatever does arise.
Agitation leading to distraction.
Find that balanced point—fascinated—enjoying—being the passive “experienc-er.”
***1 minute***
We are keenly aware of experiences arising—objects appearing.
As we deepen your passive observer—is more and more observing of how each of those arising experiences are, in fact, objects of thought.
Simple movements of awareness.
Ripples and waves on the ocean of this awareness.
***45 seconds***
Now, fine tune your experience to include being aware of the “watch-er.”
The “watch-er” who experiences.
Your subject state of mind…and those arising experiences…
Notice…
Notice their connection.
***45 seconds***
As we explore this connection, we can come to be aware.
We can come to experience how our subject state of mind—our watcher and the experience it seems to be watching—arise together.
Not sequential.
We experience how our subject state of mind changes with every arising.
***45 seconds***
Drop back, further
Subject state of mind, keenly aware, of the rippling that's happening—but disinterested in any specifics.
What is our watcher in the space between any ripples arising?
***45 seconds***
What is this state of awareness?
***30 seconds***
Drop in a little deeper yet.
Fascinated with this, simple “experienc-ing.”
Keenly aware.
Enjoying the flow.
Let's stay two more minutes.
***2 minutes***.
Good, now start to come back up.
Let your awareness of being inside your body be one of the ripples that keeps rippling—aware of this bigger mental image.
Me inside my room, my body on my chair.
Today is Tuesday.
I'm in class.
And then when you're ready, wiggle your hands and feet, open your eyes, take a stretch, get well-grounded.
*************
I really regret that I can't get into your experience and say, “tweak it like this!”
It's like I found myself going, “I want to explain this to them. I want to go…”
And it's like, no, no, let them do it.
I can only imagine now, Lama Christie's frustration with us years ago.
I didn't realize it at the time, and it's like, oh man.
I used this practice in retreat, in retreat we had four sessions a day and I always assigned me a fifth session, sometimes a sixth—so I did an hour of meditation separate from all my other stuff. Every afternoon it was this Mahamudra that I did, and it took years for it to evolve and then of course I haven't been doing it regularly, and now that I'm back in it again, it's like fortunate you jump sort of back into close to where you left off.
And then it's so obvious to me what I'm trying to describe in words, but I really remember, no, when I first started that it took me years to get to that. So I really am not sure how to convey this because we can go too fast and then we think we get there and we don't.
So again, at this stage of this meditation, we are not doing analytical emptiness meditation yet.
But Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, his secret mission here is, [that] by getting us to stillness—by using our own mind as the object—we can't help but recognize how the mind we thought was there (the one that's there, that something appears to) when we're using it as the object, we're going to hit up against the fact that “wait, every time an object comes up, this mind changes.”
And then it's not the same as it was before.
And then we hit up against the fact that there isn't actually a mind there waiting for something to arise—it's in fact the mind of “bird singing” is happening right now.
The sequence is sounds—but it's my mind movement that makes it “bird outside in the grapefruit tree.”
What I'm really experiencing is just sound.
But even then what I'm really experiencing is just decibel.
And then what I'm really experiencing…
So this practice is learning how to be aware on more subtle levels and then they're not subtle anymore—you recognize that it's all this bubbling of the mind [starts opening and closing hands, moving in different angles] like bubbles in a champagne glass…`
And then eventually we're going to go to, “well, then there has to be a mind there for all this to be happening to, right?”
And [then] it's like…find it.
Find the mind that's there independent of things bubbling out of it.
It's like, “aah!” [strains in mental overwhelm]
Right?
It will get there even without going to a specific emptiness // analytical meditation (although we're going to do some analysis eventually.)
So we're in our early steps…what I'm hoping you'll find is that when we're first going into “watcher mode,” we start noticing the difference between (let's use sound) the sound that happens, and the thought about the sound that arises, it seems like immediately upon the sound, and that we're wanting to be aware that, “oh my gosh, that bird in the tree is simply a thought arising.”
Lama Christie used the word thought.
I got confused because to me thought is the mental words, and [take “bird in the tree” for example] I can experience “bird in the tree” without a mental word to do it; but that “bird in the tree,” even without the mental word, is still a thought arising—a ripple in the mind.
So we start keenly aware of what seems to be coming in at us even as we're sinking deep down inside there's stuff arising.
We've already trained ourselves not to follow it:
“Oh, bird in tree, is it the sparrow that's pecking at my door?”
We've already learned not to do that.
Now we're learning to quell the mental image, the thought, “bird in tree” and not even follow that, so that that process starts (that would've ended up “bird in tree”) but my awareness of it as coming up as simply this ripple of thought, this movement of mind (find your [own] words) that you experience in this more subtle level.
It takes this keen “aware-er” aware-ing—to be aware of that process.
I don't know—I don't know that I'm conveying the words.
So we're just learning at this point to not go off and not be dull—because when we lose some specific object, our mind either goes, “find me an object!” or it goes, “okay, who cares?”
And we want to stay fascinated. For a while, for me it was like, “what's coming next?” That feeling like this watcher of what's next.
And then at this stage we have this passive receptiveness, says Lama Christie, where we're allowing stuff to come up—we're not trying to shut it off yet (we're going to go there in this class if I ever get there.)
We're wanting to be aware of what's happening in the moment.
It really is a “now” meditation, an “in the now meditation.”
Learning to be aware of this movement of the mind.
And then we tried to go a little bit deeper into “aware of the aware” of “everything is nothing but thought”(meaning this bubbling up of identities of experiences that have no reality other than this movement of mind.)
She calls it thought—flow of thoughts.
So we're getting to this place where we're able to be keenly aware of this constant flow, without caring about any specific thing in the flow.
And so we get to this point where what we were calling thought, “oh, bird in tree,” those thoughts need us to follow them in order to continue.
So if I notice that thought “bird in tree” at the point where the mind goes “bird..," and it's like, it never goes to “bird in tree.”
And what if I can catch it where it's just going [Lama Sarahni makes a funny face and produces a stifled ‘b’ sound] and it never even goes to “bird.”
You're not going to do it like that in your meditation, you're just keenly aware of, “oh, here comes the “ripple turning into a wave” and you go not interested.
So the ripple never gets to wave.
And then we never get to following it, right?
So we're trying to get to this place—we could call it under the ripples or in between the ripples—and when we're not interested in the ripples, they slow down—and then we find ourselves like, “well, what's there to watch if there's no ripples—if there's nothing arising, what's happening now?”
And that's what we're looking for is to reach that, call it “space in between thoughts” there really is no such thing, like spoiler alert—because what we'll then be looking at is “watching the waiting” for the next arising…and then it's like, “oh, then that's arising!”
Right, drop back.
Drop back.
Drop back.
But in this practice, you don't force yourself to do that—you set yourself in this passive receptivity like “over here watching what's going on” and just let the experiences come, and you watch what happens.
We direct it a little bit, because we need to keep going deeper and deeper and deeper, and then at some point we will turn on the actual vipshyana—which is the triggering the insight into the empty nature of our own mind.---but we'll be so close to that, because we've already been experiencing this changing, changing, changing, changing nature of the awareness that we're watching, and the changing, changing, changing nature of the “aware-er” or who is watching—and at some point it'll become so clear it's like, “will the real me please stand up?”
And was just like—there isn't one.
And it's not scary, it's just like duh!
Because you've spent so much time recognizing that there's been nothing but this bubbling of karmic ripening—movement of the mind—and then out of meditation we connect the dot that it's like, “oh my gosh, everything in this reality is the same thing.”
And that's crucial.
So yes, Roxanna, sorry to leave your question for so long.
Roxana: Thank you dear Lama. I think you answered part of the question that I had. So I'm following the instructions, trying to really focus on your words so I can do what I'm told.
So it gets to a point where I have to (I don't know if you said) let your observer be aware of you're “aware-er”—so that's my mind watching my mind. Right?
Lama: Right. Trying to.
Roxana: Okay, trying to, so I immediately go, okay, it's like having a mirror and looking at it and [then] looking at the ripples.
I think I did a good job and I went to that space where you said that it's “waiting for the next arising,” but I had this overwhelming feeling growing, maybe of being scared, and that kind of freaked me out a little bit. I let it continue—but is it right?
Lama: Not right / wrong.
Roxana: I know but I never felt it [before]! Never, never, never—it's the first time.
Lama: Yeah—it's the natural reaction of self-existent “me” to get scared when it's getting close to the fact that there is no such thing.
And its reaction is “AAH!!!” [screams in disbelief] as opposed to “yay, finally!”
So all of our training—okay, let me go back…
Fear arising is an unpleasant thing.
(I think we can agree fear is unpleasant.)
The reaction of “oh cool” would be a positive reaction.
So do you see where I'm going with that?
To have a positive reaction to that glimpse into the true nature of the mind as “empty,” to have a glimpse of that, and it be something we're attracted to, has to be a ripening of some kind of kindness.
The reaction of that [experience] being fearful has to be a ripening of some way in which we threatened somebody's existence—it really is a deep, deep subconscious threat to our existence.
We believe that if I don't exist like this, I'm not going to exist at all.
Do you see?
It's the edge of the cliff.
It seems like, “oh, we never go over that cliff of if things don't exist like that, they don't exist at all,” but I hold that I go over that cliff every time.
I recognize this is nothing but arising—I'm thinking, oh, so it's not real.
So you got a glimpse of that misunderstanding that if it's true that there's no whatever that was, then it means there'll be no “me.”
So it is good to reach that, but it means we're not quite ready—that's why we can't just go, “oh, I'm going to go into the direct perception of emptiness.”
Because we’re going to hit this wall of fear.
Roxana: Ok. I still feel it because it was strong. So right now it's like “hooray, I noticed it and [now] I'm burning it off!”
Lama: Yes, exactly—you're burning it off.
And so what we would do with our seeds, which is why I went back to that about seeds, we need our whole foundation of the connection between our behavior and our reality to prepare us for that moment when we hit that door—and am I going to go through it anyway?
Roxana: I'm sorry, it overwhelmed me.
Lama: Yeah, it kicks us out.
Roxana: Okay.
Lama: Yeah, it does, it does.
Good, nice.
So we will want to be ever more careful to avoid causing fear in anybody's mind, right?
Funny that the first vows we take is to avoid killing anybody…
It's like… the seeds in the dharma…
The first thing you ever heard had complete teaching, and it's so extraordinary, ya know, the closer I get the more I see…
We're just…
I don't know :)
Okay, let's take a break
*************
So again, for our context, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is teaching us this method (he's [also] going to give us two more) to reach that state of mind, meditating mind, called stillness.
And stillness sounds like we're going to get to that place where there's nothing arising in the mind and we'll be able to sit there and experience nothing; and that until we make everything come to a still point, we haven't reached stillness—and that's a mistaken understanding of the term stillness, SHINE.
What they mean by stillness is:
The pendulum is in this still point regardless of what's going on.
[holds up hands to simulate the movement of a pendulum]
So he's giving us these suggestions for how to reach that—not going off with the thought, following the thought, agitation to distraction. Not so disinterested in what's going on that we just go into dullness, subtle dullness, gross dullness—asleep.
“Still” is a quality of mind—it's not nothing happening.
So we're using anything that's arising in mind as the object of focus to reach the state of mind that's keenly aware, but not interested in following, but interested enough to stay alert.
And we're using our own mind as the object to bring the mind to that— which is why it's such an extraordinary method as opposed to using some other object—an object we have to take the effort to create (like the image of the holy Lama, which is usually what we use) this virtuous object, my holy Lama in my mind's eye there in front of me and I focus on them without telling stories, without losing interest, but they just sit there.
So it does seem like we get to this place where you have to have a still object in order to have a still mind.
So before I used the analogy of you're sitting by a flowing river and there's one state of mind that's looking at all the details that's flowing by the river, right? We're familiar with that state of mind.
And then you can back off a little bit and just have your focus of attention being the flow of the river—that's easy to relate to, too; just everything flowing by.
And then we can back off a little bit further and be aware of the “flow-ing” happening.
So whether you can quite get that now in the analogy, or you want to work with that for a little bit—there's a difference between “I'm aware of the river flowing” and “I'm aware of the flowing happening.”
And then we drop back a little bit further and become aware of the “aware-ing” happening—then it doesn't really matter what's going on out there.
What we're aware of is the awareness changing, changing, changing, changing, changing.
And then from there we'll go further.
So we want to be able to change the radio station—do you remember the old cars [where] you push the button and the radio [station] changed?
I really like that analogy for this meditation, it's like, “here's one radio station.”
You get the focus, clarity, GNAR—and then push the next radio station.
Back off one.
Push the next radio station.
Back off deeper, back off, deeper, back off deeper—until you're at this aware-ing happening (those were my words that I used to get there.)
And then eventually you start, you do your preliminaries, you just push the “aware-ing happening radio station” and *plunk* you go right into it.
But work your way down in order to be able to fully get there.
So when we do have this state of stillness, we will be single pointed on “ing” ING, happening, verb, something's going on.
But our mind is parked in the awareness of it without following, without losing interest—are you getting the idea?
We can reach stillness on a moving object? Yeah, we can have stillness watching a movie. It's that we never get distracted and we never lose our fascination.
That's the quality of stillness.
We need it clear because otherwise we are putting up a goal for ourselves that we won't reach because it's mistaken.
Okay.
All right.
So this one method of reaching this stillness is this one that Lama Christie is taking us through, this passive receptivity, she calls it.
Let stuff bubble up, but don't follow and don't get dull.
Deeper, deeper, deeper awareness of what's bubbling up—so that it's more and more subtle (your awareness is more subtle) of what's bubbling up, and then what bubbles up never even gets its identity anymore because it's just the bubbling.
All right.
There's a second way of reaching this state of keen sharp crystalline, Lama Christie calls it “crystalline-awareness.”
I'm going to say crystalline “aware-ing.”
There's a second way of doing it that Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen gave us in his root text, he said, “or you can be like a blade master, bless you [someone sneezed], meaning a swordsman.
Anybody old enough to remember Zoro?
One of the early superheroes was Zoro the masked man—he is this master with his sword, and I don't actually remember what he did, but I remember so clearly like Zoro or Princess Bride, you know, who is that guy?
“My name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die.”
Right?
That is Blade Master.
So you're being whatever his name, Antonio Montoya to whatever's arising in your mind.
Sounds—bird in tree *whack*
Oh my back hurts *whack*
Oh my *whack*
Oh *whack*
[sensation in back] *whack*
You're actively cutting it off sooner and sooner and sooner.
So again, remember my example, the sounds // “bird in tree” when we first begin, we don't even recognize sounds // “bird in tree” until already there's “bird in tree” out there.
Ordinary experience is: the bird's out there in the tree and then it sings, and it's like, okay, bird in tree.
So at first Blade Master cuts it off at that point—and then I work it down more and more subtly until the awareness is something (I have to say it in words) something in my ear distracts me, or draws me there, and my swordmaster goes *whack* even before it becomes sound.
It's just an attraction to something—cut it off.
It's more forceful—for some that is like, “okay, I'm on that one.”
And how subtle a mind movement can you get at to cut off before the mind movement finally slows down?
I mean, Lama Christie asserts that if we don't follow our thoughts, they will quit coming up.
Does that mean suddenly everything just goes empty?
No—but the following stops when there's nothing to follow. There's something else to follow, right? There will always be something else to follow. But the things that we're calling the distracting thoughts, they finally give up. They go have tea somewhere, and you can be left to just fine tune, aware-ing, happen-ing—deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper.
So one method.
So you cut it off and you wait for what comes next.
Cut that one off—wait for what comes next.
The key in that practice is to become aware of the waiting for what comes next.
What's happening there?
I'm still aware of something that's not there—oh, that's interesting.
To be aware of something that's not there.
And be keenly aware when something does arise *whack* get back into the “aware of something not there yet.”
So we'd stay in the whacking part forever if we let ourselves—we need to go deeper, deeper, deeper.
But it's one tool, so I don't know, you might want to try it.
So second option, use your force of will to cut off those thoughts—to stop the ripples from turning into waves.
Then third—the third one is sort of like halfway between the other two.
It's not completely passive, but it's not this active cutting off either—it's using some analysis instead of the sword.
The analysis is to recognize the “arising” nature and the “nothing but” nature of whatever it is is arising.
So most of us who are attracted to the ACI and the thinking part of it—the figuring it out to come to an aha! like this version—but personally, because I liked it, I kept spinning my wheels in the explanation.
And because I wasn't good at the passive receptivity one, I didn't practice it so much and I never got deep enough from the analysis to get into the aha! of it, until I recognized [that] this too is a tool to get to a place [where] then you let go of the tools, and [then] you're back into the passive receptivity thing.
So I think that's why Lama Christie chose to have that be our group's focus of our practice, because for the most part, the people she was teaching were the thinkers.
But this one's a really useful tool—we need to already have fine tuned our ability to do this analysis of what's arising, what makes it be what it is, where did it come from, and show ourselves the fact that it isn't what it appears to be.
And if we don't have that system worked out, then the “doing this” (trying to get to stillness in this way) will be a huge distraction, because we'll be trying to figure out how to get ourselves to that proof.
So we're watching the thoughts arise, and when one arises—we recognize—it seems like that thought came up because…
So I need an example I guess…
So I'm in my meditation and the thought pops up about, I don't know, somebody I got mad at.
And then naturally I'll start an explanation of why I'm mad at them to justify my being mad at them.
And, you know, as the passive observer, hopefully I've already caught myself and come back to, “oh, anger arising” and then this part of the meditation would be “anger arising is just seeds ripening and nothing but.”
But to me, that's all it takes in this is once I catch it, “whoa, that's just seeds ripening and no reality other than that.”
But those words have deep meaning for me.
After years of study.
If I said that to some “non-dharma” person:
“When you're meditating—when something arises, just say it's a ripening and let it go!”
It's like, that would not be helpful—so don't use my words if they don't trigger in you this deep aha! of something that was in there that bubbled out, and it has no reality other than that, and if I don't follow it, it won't get solid, it won't go from ripple to wave, and I can just let it go and be done.
And so this whole experience will be—ripening… clearing… right?
Everything.
It's like a whole purification really.
As we're doing that, our own watcher is planting seeds of being aware that anything that arises is seeds ripening and nothing but—so technically you just have to sit there for eons doing that and eventually you'll burn off every ignorant seed you ever planted inside there.
But that's just going to take a long time.
So we use a bit of an analysis, where's it coming from?
We know the punchline—seeds ripening.
So any experience, you're sitting in meditation and all of a sudden you have an awareness of something that you would call your hip.
So we know one of the ways I got here was, I would go [and] recognize, “oh, hip pain.”
And then I'd stop and I'd say, “well wait, what is it about that actual sensation? What am I actually experiencing here?”
So what is it about that sensation that makes it, “oh, hip pain, right?”
You can see there's sensations in a location, but it's my mind that says it's the thought—it's the ripening that says, “oh, hip pain, you better move or something terrible is going to happen.”
When I recognize that those sensations alone are nothing but sensations in a location, then I can look at that—well, wait, what is it about that that is sensations in that location?
And it's like, whoa, that's my own mind identifying something too.
Oh, let's go subtle.
I can't usually get all that more subtle than beyond words., but you see, it's like we'll recognize that everything that ripens is nothing but a mind label, making it into its identity.
There is a sensation, there is something, there is an experience happening—but what makes it, “oh, my hip hurts, I have to move” is thought—mental image—seeds ripening.
So once we have that process in mind, we can just cut to the chase, “oh, seeds ripening, nothing but...”
And then can we get to the place where we can have that awareness without the words?
And then we're still, our mind is still pointed on the seeds ripening and nothing but…
What we were calling the flow in the other meditation:
*woop* *woop* *woop*
[moving hands around indicating different ripenings]
*woop* *woop* *woop*
And that's your meditation!
Is that emptiness meditation?
No.
Is that shamata?
No.
Is it stillness?
Maybe—if we're not following or getting dull.
It starts with TING NGE ‘DZIN—single pointed concentration—single pointed concentration on anything that's arising at any moment.
Do you see?
It doesn't seem so single pointed.
Yes it is.
Because it's single pointed on the happen-ing, the experience-ing.
So then he's given us these three ways to get to stillness:
One, this passive receptivity.
Refusal to follow and refusal to get disinterested—and go deeper, deeper, deeper on what it is that we are watching, passively receptive to…
The object, the subject, the interaction between the two, the just happening of it—deeper, deeper, deeper.
Second one, cut it off, cut it off.
Third one, this watchful recognition of what's arising at more and more subtle levels—and my personal favorite.
All three will eventually take us to the awareness of the flow-ing happen-ing of the three spheres happening together—not separate.
That's the platform from which stillness arises, and when we hold that without following, without donuts—that alone is still a stillness within the desire realm, says Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen.
It's not the platform from which (if we turned our mind to the empty nature of the flow-ing happen-ing that) we could reach its direct experience.
Does that mean you don't bother turning your mind to the emptiness unless you're in shamatha level, first level of the form realm, causal meditation?
No, of course we do.
But in order for that direct experience to ripen—if I have this correct—our level of stillness has to include the shamatha and that needs to be at this “withdrawal level” called the first causal SAMTEN—the meditation level that plants the seeds, any one of which could cause a rebirth in the first level of the form realm, which we don't want that of course, but it takes that level of withdrawal from our sensory “outers.”
So we can see where we're going. We're getting to TING NGE ‘DZIN, we're getting to stillness as everything else is going around.
Now we need to understand about the shift to shamatha, and then what we do with that to deepen into the first samten.
I need to make a mark in my notes—something I want to come back to.
***15 second pause***
So, the state of mind of stillness needs two other factors in order for our mind to have the quality called “shamatha.”
For stillness to invoke shamatha, stillness does not go away when we reach shamatha.
Shamatha is built upon it.
Single-pointed concentration [on bottom] stillness [on top of single-pointed concentration], shamatha [at the top].
What shifts us from stillness alone to stillness and shamatha is this thing called SHIN JANG.
We can come back and talk about all those [other vocab words] another day.
SHIN JANG.
SHINEY is the stillness.
SHIN JANG is this thing, [that] when added to SHINEY, added to stillness, means shamatha.
SHIN JANG is apparently a difficult word to translate—we see it as “agility,” we see it as “practiced ease,” that's the one I think they use in the ACI.
Lama Christie liked the term fluidity.
So the SHING JANG comes in two forms of physical fluidity, and a mental fluidity.
And the beautiful example that I like is that [of] the Olympic gymnast on the balance beam; and she stands up and she does her thing to show that she's ready to start.
That movement triggers in her (right?) it's like she's just pushed the button on the radio station:
“This Balance Beam Routine”
…and she steps onto that balance beam and something takes over and she's doing it—she's not thinking, “now I put my foot like this, and now I raise my hand like that.
She's done all that—thousands of times.
Now she just turns it on and [does her entire routine perfectly] until she flies off the end—and that state is physical SHIN JANG.
Probably, despite her feet hurt, her back hurts, (right?) her hands hurt—it's so physically pleasurable to do that performance because it's so automatic, it's so effortless, it's so imprinted.
So I see two runners, they know exactly what I'm talking about—they get into that flow—we've all been there in something.
Now they call it the flow or the zone—we all get there to some extent.
This physical SHIN JANG of meditation, what's happening as a result of our single-pointed concentration that's reached stillness, is that the winds that carry… the winds that are moving, that move our mind… because of our mind has become, “I'm parked here, everything else can be doing its thing. I don't care. I'm fascinated, but I'm not following.”
The winds that are doing all of this, they calm down.
Those winds become what are called the winds of stillness.
They're called the winds of stillness.
It's not like a new wind comes—when you need the winds to go to the toilet, the winds are the winds going to the toilet.
So when you're in stillness, your winds become the winds of stillness.
The winds of stillness are pleasurable.
They themselves don't have pleasure in them, but our experience of winds being the winds of stillness is it's pleasurable—it's pleasurable to be in that performance zone.
There's an ease to it.
I'm not saying it's easy,
But there's an ease to it.
There's a peacefulness to it.
There's an effortlessness to it,
And all of that is pleasurable.
They call it the bliss of practiced ease,
The pleasure of practiced ease.
When our single pointed concentration
Reaches stillness—the pendulum,
Our subtle body mirrors that;
And that is a physical sensation of pleasure.
Unique to itself, and the tendency for an untrained person would be, “wow, cool, I have reached what it is to be a good meditator.”
And we would stay at that level of meditation because it's so pleasurable.
We have a Bodhisattva that says, no, I'll avoid being attracted to the pleasure of meditation.
Do you see why?
Because your Bodhisattva deeds are going to grow your goodness so that your meditation's going to go deeper and you're going to reach this pleasure of meditation and then we're counseled not to go, “okay, great, this is good enough.”
Because we'll be tempted to stay there because it's so pleasurable.
If this meditation brings you to this stillness that brings on your SHIN JANG, you're going to be at a level where to even think “body pleasure” you'll blade master it or you won't even get there.
But there will be a shift from this being [effortful] / taking effort, to just pushing the radio station and going into it, and being able to stay in it at this physical level for as long as you intended when you pushed the station.
I'm going to do this for 52 minutes—push the button.
At 51 minutes and 58 seconds, your mind will pop out—really.
Physical SHIN JANG, it's a pleasure. Great. Note it. Enjoy it.
If you could say you still had a body, it would feel light as if you could float right off your cushion.
You won't, but it feels like you're flying in the sky.
We see all those Thangkas of the great diamond way practitioner and they and their partner are flying through the sky—and it's like, right, it's a metaphor for flying through the sky of emptiness, but it's also this feeling—the body gets really like a balloon, like a helium balloon.
Then the second SHIN JANG is a mental SHIN JANG, and it's like, well, isn't the physical SHIN JANG actually a mental image ripening?
So technically it's already mental.
But it's a mental image of a physical sensation—and then there's this mental image of a mental sensation of practiced ease, it's different.
We have bodies and minds.
So body gets SHIN JANG.
Our experience is body SHIN JANG and mental SHIN JANG.
Mental SHIN JANG is also this fluidity, this practiced ease, this pleasure included in the meditation happen-ing.
It's not a topic that we have to bring to mind: “Oh, now I am experiencing the pleasure of this meditation.”
It's a quality that kicks in that helps keep us on the object fully engaged, but pleasure is attractive.
So we would lose our shamatha, stillness and TING NGE ‘DZIN if we went off to following that pleasure, instead of using it as part of the ripening happening—and not following it.
Theoretically, we're so trained in not following and not being dull, that when the mental pleasure comes up, we'll just penetrate deeper and it won't be a distraction—it's more the physical SHIN JANG that is the distraction.
I don't know, if you get distracted by the physical SHIN JANG, you're probably not going to get the mental SHIN JANG—it's not that one causes the other—but I think the physical comes first and then the mental arises, although I suppose that could be debated.
So shamatha is this state where our stillness is there long enough that these winds of stillness contribute to the physical and mental pleasure of staying in that state, which if we have this mind and body image of pleasure, when we tiptoe to that doorway of nothing but any of that, that Roxanna mentioned, the fear is less likely to arise—because what's taking you there is pleasurable, right?
That pleasure, the pleasure ripening, right?
You can't have pleasure and fear at the same time.
I don't think so we can see how it's not like somebody designed this system for it to work like this.
It is like our own mental seeds make it work like this.
Kindness brings about the result of deep meditation on the platform that can show us ultimate reality is pleasurable.
Thank you very much, my kindness.
Unkindness is not going to get us there no matter how hard we try.
So we need the off cushion and mental kindnesses for any of the system to work. There's nothing self-existent about Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's Mahamudra practice that will take us to shamatha and vipasyana—it will be a ripening of kindness.
So all of it starts with those heart opening practices that we do even briefly at the beginning of class, think of somebody who's hurting that doesn't access to all of this stuff and isn't interested, and we're going to do it for them—so that our own goodness can come out to help us move along this path.
Sometimes there are periods of time that I don’t even go by the heart opening practice because it's like I hit a wall in my emptiness, dependent origination, or my single pointed concentration, it's like if there's any wall, go back to helping out your neighbor—go back to checking on people—go back to gathering goodness.
And the reason why—SHIN JANG will be a result of kindness.
Shamatha will be a result of kindness.
Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's method of using our own awareness, meaning our own mind, as the object of meditation is that it's always there, which means as long as we don't go off following the bird in the tree, we have not lost our object.
So in stages [of meditation] one through nine, getting to nine is single pointed concentration, automatic—push the button, and there you're there—and from that stillness, shamatha can grow.
To get at level four, we have to be on the object, and when we're visualizing something that it takes effort to visualize, it's so easy to get distracted, we rattle around levels one, two, and three for a long time.
When we use our mind as the object of meditation, guess what? You start at level four—and 5, 6, 7 can happen pretty quickly, as you're checking for dullness and correcting and overcorrecting into agitation and correcting and overcorrecting into dullness, you'll see it so clearly because what you're watching is the mind that's agitated, the mind that's dull.
It becomes so much more clear than when we're trying to use a meditative, visualized object.
So that's his secret weapon.
Use your mind.
There are some people who are not visualizers and for a non-visualizer, to visualize your Lama and have that as your object of meditation is really challenging (to believe that you're doing it right when there's no picture there.)
So for a non-visualizer, you think of your holy Lama and they are there—but there's no picture of them there. It's a knowing instead of us seeing.
So for non visualizers, this whole Tibetan system is like, oh man, why am I in this system? It's all about visualization. I'm just like the wrong person in this.
So I don't know, I finally settled with it.
There are ways that if you are a non visualizer, you can overcome that. I know I've learned that training. I tried it for a period of time enough that I decided it's not important enough…anyway…long story short—if you're a non visualizer and you would like the teaching on how to become a visualizer, ask me. I'll give it to you.
I personally didn't spend time to use it for other reasons.
Why am I going there?
Because Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's Mahamudra does not require visualizing anything. It requires being aware of what's happening in the moment.
How useful is that?
Useful, even off your cushion—to be aware of the three spheres happening increases our ability to more consciously choose how we're going to interact with those three spheres happening off our cushion.
So it's a sweet system to move us through to at least level seven of the meditative levels, and then from there, just diligence and repetition shifts to eight and nine, from which the SHIN JANGs will arise—the pleasures, physical pleasure, mental pleasure, from which staying there (it's not like we have to do anything, but) we get deeper and deeper and deeper, and at some point that depth is such that when we do shift to our emptiness, exploration of that object, what object, our own awareness, will be at the platform where when we penetrate in.
We can get closer and closer and closer and closer until it arises as the full on experience of “no self-existent me other anything in between.”
This is the platform. Yay. So that's why we're doing this. That's why we're learning it. That's why Lama Christie taught it to the group of people who were learning about how to become enlightened beings in this lifetime—but without this ability to get to stillness, shamatha, and vipashyana, those tantric practices would be missing something that could have.
So she was really building a strong foundation for us.
I don't have enough time to finish this next section—let's just start it.
Panchen Lama's root text, he’s making his case for all of this—he's talking us through it without explaining it in the root text.
Thank goodness for his commentary.
His analogy of using our own mind as the object of meditation for reaching stillness and shamatha is like if you have a bird captive on a ship out in the middle of the ocean—so you've got this raven with you on your ship.
I guess they say in the old days you would take this bird in a cage and then when you're out and not sure how far land is away, you would let the bird go (and you know a raven can fly 50 miles before they're exhausted, and so you let the bird go) and if the bird doesn't come back, it means the bird found land somewhere and you're within 50 miles of land.
Now how you know which direction, I don't know, so I don't know if they really did this or not—but the idea is when we use our mind as the object of meditation, it's like letting a captive bird go from your ship that's out on the middle of the ocean.
It will fly around in all directions, not finding anywhere to land, and it will finally come back to the ship. It's the only place to land.
So that's what this Mahamudra meditation is.
At first, we are aware that my mind's like the bird flying out to everything that seems to appear to it, but by the time it gets there, there's nothing to land on, right?
By the time you get to the bird in the tree, it's like there's no bird tree, right? That's just a thought. It comes back again.
Eventually, you don't even have to keep the bird in the cage anymore because it's like it's not going anywhere. Mind is the same. Stuff's still going on, but mind is not going to go there.
We call that sensory input shut down.
It's probably not shut down.
Decibels are still going in, but it's like we're not interested.
We're so not interested. It doesn't even trigger anymore.
And that’s the depth of shamatha that has shifted to the first level of the form realm—it's as if you cannot be aware of anything in the desire realm.
It's not that desire realm disappears.
It's not that you are in the form realm.
It's that your state of mind is so unaware of what was desire realm, that they call it “form realm,” which is why while we're there, we're actually planting seeds in our mind to be in a form realm—which we don't want—but we do want that level of meditation, because from there we can turn it to the true nature of what's going on—and be close to reaching that directly.
We can turn our mind to the true nature of what's going on at any level (and we should) but for it to be the level from which we can penetrate directly, it needs to be this withdrawal of awareness of our sensory arising—sensory input.
So gives us, he goes to the literature and finds these different metaphors for what our mind is like.
So we haven't quite gotten there yet, but we will get to a place where we'll be checking out, well this aware happening—what's its true nature?
What is the true nature of my mind?
We're thinking of our mind as a noun, a thing that has qualities—and I think we're going to come to see that that's mistaken—and we can't really get to explaining the mind's true nature, because any explanation we give is an appearing nature explanation, isn't it?
So the appearing nature of our mind—we have an appearing nature of our mind and we have the mind's true nature—the true nature is its ultimate reality, is ultimate reality. Its appearing nature is the one we're more familiar with—and so we're learning to experience the appearing nature of our mind as an appearing nature, so that we can reach its true nature.
To recognize what its true nature will be, they give us metaphors.
Okay.
So one of them is thus:
Our mind is like the sun,
And reaching Mahamudra
Is like the sun free of clouds.
So the sun in a cloudy sky—the sun is still there, shining just as brightly—but because of the clouds on the other side, the receiver side of the sun, it's like, no, there's no sun there. You can't see it. You can't find it. It's there, but it's obscured, it's obstructed, it's blocked, it's covered, it's grayed out.
Use your own visual or verbal explanation of our ignorant beings.
For ignorant beings, our minds are covered by clouds—like the clouds of mental afflictions, the clouds of ignorance—add to your own story of these analogies to understand what they're trying to show us.
The clouds in meditation could be dullness or agitation—block us from reaching a direct experience of even the appearing nature of the mind.
The clouds could be the ignorance that makes us mistake [an] experiences identity. The bird sounds make me automatically go, oh, sparrow in the grapefruit tree, and that's a mistaken thought because included in “sparrow in the grapefruit tree” is the one that's out there, the grapefruit tree out there from its own side, independent of being results of my own seed.
I didn't verbalize all of that except by saying, oh, there's a sparrow in the grapefruit tree.
That is my mind clouded by the belief in signs that I'm grasping to as being things that are there.
So it's easier to hear that about something outside of us, but it's the same for any thought that arises.
We get indications, we identify it as something and grasp to that something as in it from it—those are clouds in our mind, that's not our true nature of our mind, it is the appearing nature of the mind at the moment, but it's not even actually the pure appearance of the mind—it's clouded.
Do you see?
It's not the sun.
It's the sun covered with clouds to believe that the identity that we come up with is in the thing all.
All right, good enough. We got the first analogy. There are several more coming and I think I have more to say about SHIN JANG and shamatha, but it'll come along.
All right. So thank you for the opportunity, I know this is so hard to [explain in words].
All right, so remember that person that we wanted to be able to help?
We're learning so much. We may or may not ever share with them this material—but it is such that we are that much closer to becoming the one who will help them stop their suffering forever, and that's an extraordinary goodness.
So please be happy with yourself.
Think of that 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.
They're already in your heart, but ask them to stay there.
Ask them to continue to help you, guide 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.
And may it be so.
All right, thank you again.
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 10
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
All right, for the recording—welcome back, we are studying Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's Mahamudra meditation practice. This is April 1st, 2025. Let's gather our minds here as we usually do, we'll do our opening prayers and slide right into the meditation.
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.”
*************
(Class 10 @ 00:07:51)
So settle in for a meditation.
Get your physical body set first.
***1 minute***
Bring your focus of attention to your breath right at the tip of the nostrils.
Use that object to turn on your focus, to adjust your clarity, and tune up your intensity—fascination, eager.
***1 minute***
Now drop a bit back—open your focus, clarity, and intensity onto outer sounds.
Notice first, there's a thing making that sound.
Let that go.
Let your experience be just the sound.
Withdraw further to “aware of hearing the sound,” hearing sound.
Pulling in or dropping back as you shift from these levels.
***30 seconds***
Now drop in and back further to focus, clarity, keenness—on anything that's arising.
You are being the watcher of or for any arising—allowing the arising to pass without following, without disinterest.
Staying in that middle.
***1 minute***
Now, add your recognition that all of these arising experiences are merely mental images—ripening, rising and passing objects of thought, objects of awareness.
***45 seconds***
Slide deeper into this realm of mind.
Simple awareness.
And every shift, every perception—just a ripple on its surface.
***15 seconds***
The object is now the “experience-ing” / “shift-ing.”
***45 seconds***
Now in this awareness of “experienc-ing," there is a subject side of that awareness.
Find your “me, experience-ing”
***15 seconds***
As if each movement, each shift in awareness happens, the “me” experiences that shift.
Can you separate the “me, experiencing” from the experience?
***15 seconds***
Be fascinated with the exploration.
***45 seconds***
There must be an “aware-er” aware-ing for this experience to be happening.
The “aware-er” isn't aware of that experience until it's happening—and then it's gone.
***15 seconds***
Feel that flowing nature of your subject side—your aware-er.
Recognize this process happening is the appearing nature of our mind.
All of it.
***15 seconds***
We’ll stay two more minutes.
***1 minute***
“Be-ing” the “aware-er”/ “aware-ing”
Regardless of the experience, including the experience, focused, clear, fascinated.
***45 seconds***
We get glimpses that this thing we call “my mind” isn't a thing at all—and is infinite.
It is everything.
And so say a little prayer of dedication that by whatever glimpse you have gotten or will get—you'll use to help others learn to love more.
And then bring yourself out of that depth.
Become aware of a “you-being” in a body.
Wiggle the fingers and feet of that body.
Be aware of it, sitting on your seat in your room.
And when you're ready, open your eyes.
Take a stretch.
Nice job.
*************
Everyone was really still, that was nice.
We're not yet going into that emptiness of the mind in these meditations, we're first needing to find the appearing nature of the mind, and our tradition says first, find the gakcha: what we think is there that we will learn is not there.
And then we go looking for the thing that is there in the right way (the one that's ripening out of seeds) and then between those two we see it's like, oh, then it has no true nature like I thought, the nature it has is what appears out of seeds (to use our terminology) and it has no nature other than that—which doesn't mean you don't have any mind—but that's how we have a mind.
So this process, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is taking us very slowly step-by-step into the awareness of the appearing nature of our mind.
And when I hear myself say that, I still, when I hear the word mind, I think intellect. I think mental words. I think my ability to figure things out, like my smartness or something like that—that's what I think of as mind.
And it's such a dinky little concept of what this thing “mind” is—that part of this process is helping us actually pinpoint “what do I believe is my mind? Part of me right?”
There is still a “me” and a body, and a “me” and my emotions, and “me” and my mind that I'm thinking “intellect.”
But in fact, within all of that really is mind.
So unfortunately English doesn't seem to have a bigger word than mind—we can say consciousness, we can say awareness, but for me, I'm still struggling to get the word to match what I understand the meaning of the word now is—because my old word is so solidly tagged with my old belief.
The old belief is part of the gakcha, but of course what we mean by the gakcha is that I have this thing called “mind” that if I had the right kind of microscope, I would be able to finally say, “ah, look, this is what it looks like: green and yellow and purple lights doing this.”
There must be a thing that I can find and define any other thing I'm trying to find and define, right—at least there's something we can focus on here.
Mind is so slippery by the time you focus on that moment of mind [shrugs and looks puzzled] Right? And that's where this meditation is trying to take us—we have to find it first and then find out that we can't find.
That’s what’s so slippery.
We don't want to just step into, “well, I can't find my mind” because there's a part of us that won't believe it—we will come out of the meditation and say, “nah, here it is.”
So tiptoe—find the sensation of regular out here, the birds in the tree singing, and then wait a minute, I don't really have that much information.
Bring it back in.
But there are sounds.
Okay, well wait a minute, bring it in, bring it in, bring it in—turn it into, Lama Christie calls it thoughts, thoughts arising—but again, to me that means a word “thought.”
She didn't mean that, she meant any identification of an experience.
There's a difference between [holds up hand like there’s an awareness of something happening] and my thought is “bird in tree singing” versus [holds up hand like there’s an awareness of something happening] but then [holds up hand like there’s an awareness of something happening] becomes the thought and it's like, wait, no, that's just a movement of my focus from this thing to that thing—and then well wait a minute, that's just the flow happening—well wait a minute, that's just right.
You just keep going down and down and down (that’s what she means by dropping back) and I have to say it in those kinds of words to convey it to you—but in our experience, we’re just withdrawing.
You don't have to logic it out.
Just turn the radio station from this one to that one.
Go deeper, deeper, deeper until you find yourself in this experienc-ing happen-ing, without losing the focus, the clarity, and the intensity.
So, when we finished last class, we were talking about these metaphors from young Drupa for how to leave the mind, which they're trying to help us find some way of describing to ourselves what that feeling is when we reach the state where we are being the watching, we are being the experiencing, of the mind doing its [moving hands around] champagne bubbles, or its ocean ripples.
That really is a beautiful analogy of the mind is like the ocean, vast and you can't move the ocean (we're going to talk about it) the ocean itself does not move anywhere, but there's these constant ripples, waves, things happening on its surface that it looks like the wave is going somewhere, but in fact it's just the water rises here, drops here, then rises here and drops there.
It's like, the wave isn't moving, the mind is doing this.
So all of these different metaphors are ways that someone who was able to be there and do that, they come out and go, oh, it's like [realizes] which of course doesn't match the exact experience.
But each of these different metaphors, maybe one of them, you go, oh, I recognize that—it's not like these are things we need to practice each one, they're just to help us.
So let me talk about those first and then let's go back and see what your experience has been so far.
The first one we heard is “our mind is the sun, free of clouds.”
It is just shining—thoughts come across and change what it looks like.
Thin clouds—you can still see the sun through. Big thick clouds, you can't.
Second one—he says, “leave it like a garuda flying across the sky.”
A garuda is this great big eagle-like bird—it's not an actual human world species—it's a mythical creature and it symbolizes virtue and hope and rebirth and courage and victory.
So the thing about the garuda is they stand on a high high mountain and when they're ready to go do something, they just step off the cliff and open their wings like one flap and they're soaring—no more effort beyond just the decision to go and then [it’s easy] because of their wingspan or whatever.
So he says, “leave your mind like a garuda gliding across the sky,” this effortless [flying]---like the vultures in our world, they're so high up there and they're just going around on the wind currents, but they're looking down. Where's there a dead thing? And when they see it—down they all go.
So like that.
So our mind isn't just the garuda, spaced out, flying around—it's like, we're doing the I-spy / vulture thing too—staying alert and keen on the experience—any experience happening—the mind is floating along those experiences.
The commentaries of that text says that an ordinary bird, doves particularly, they look like they are just frantic flying through the sky.
A mine that's frantic in its meditation is not a mind that is in stillness.
Again, stillness doesn't mean everything goes still—it means the mind's in that balance between agitation and dullness as whatever's happening is happening.
So in this way, like the garuda, one flap and they're in this stillness—no effort, no frantic, no agitation—just enjoying them. So the sense of relaxed, effortless, being in this deep meditation.
The third metaphor was “leave it like a ship on the ocean," and Lama Christie said the commentaries don't actually talk about the ship, they talk about the ocean—and it's what I just said before—a ship out on the ocean, I guess it's going to be a sailing ship (right?) because it's at the mercy of the wind—it's not going anywhere unless the wind blows.
But the point is that the ocean is so vast, and there's this constant shape-shifting of it, but all the shape-shifting of it (meaning the waves) doesn't actually move the ocean, doesn't change the ocean—or does it?
Right?
Is there an ocean that's there first, and then the ripples happen upon it?
And we could say, yeah, I can imagine an ocean that's perfectly still, so it has no ripples whatsoever—and it's like, yeah, but in fact that ocean still has a depth and a surface. So you can't find the ocean that in-and-of-itself that then something happens to that makes the ripple, right?
Technically it's not. I mean, it is the wind that moves the ocean to make the ripples, but the wind can't take the whole ocean and move it—the shore in Japan doesn't get moved by the wind so that now there's some other shore.
So we're wanting to reach this depth of meditation where our awareness is this process of an ocean with these constant ripple waves happening [making hand motions indicating the rippling waves of the mind] identifying with the whole experience.
The next one is “leave it like an infant gazing at a temple."
A temple apparently has bright and shiny things. At the very least, it's probably got butter lamps going. And you take an infant, a really little one, less than a month old, and [when you put them around] anything that's bright or anything that's right in front of their face—that's what they focus on with these big eyes.
And at that level, apparently they don't have words, they don't have thoughts, they don't have identities, they don't have stories about all those things—they just have attraction to these, let's call it colors and shapes, and they can just, if you hold them in front of the lights on the altar, they'll just stare at it.
And it's like that idea of being able to leave our mind fascinated with what is in the moment occurring, but with no story about it, like the infant mesmerized, but mesmerized then means, “oh, you're going to slip into some kind of dull [frame of mind] not that—but fascinated without any story—it's like I can hardly even conceive of it, and you get locked into that so that it becomes pretty effortless to stay there.
Then the next one is “leave your mind like the tracks of a bird across the sky."
Now, most commonly when they use that analogy of the tracks of a bird across the sky, they're using it as an analogy for emptiness—here they're not doing that directly although I think indirectly they're planting seeds for us to recognize the emptiness of the mind better.
Here, the commentary, it says that it is talking about how our tendency as our meditation goes deeper is for those pleasant feelings to come up, and then the tendency would be to get distracted by the pleasant feelings, wanting to have more of them, wanting enjoy them, and that to leave the mind like the mark a bird leaves across the sky (which is none, right?) is to be able to allow that pleasantness, or unpleasantness, to arise and pass without leaving the mark of, “oh, I want more of that," or “I want less of that."
And it really isn't just applying to the pleasure or displeasure—it's really as anything arises in our experience, they'll be the automatic “I like, I want / I don't like, I don't want”---and by the time those two have snapped forward, our natural reaction is to cling to whatever it was that was the “I want," whatever it was that was the “I don't want”---and this is saying, “let those come up and pass by leaving no mark, so can we get to the level of subtlety of awareness that we are aware of the “I like / I want” level.
It's very subtle—because the sensation, we think the sensation needs to be there first, and then we go, “oh nice, I like, I want more," and then we focus on it.
When our awareness is deep enough as that thing we're going to call “pleasure / I like / I want” is bubbling up, you've already let it go—and it's like, why would I want to let go of something that's going to be pleasurable?
Right!
I want to keep it.
And there's the struggle.
Who wants to do a meditation where I ignore pleasant things, right?
Later it won't be like that—it's not ignoring the pleasant things—it's learning to allow them to arise and pass without the, “oh, I want, I like," right?
That's the bird without the sky, I mean the no tracks of the bird.
We don't follow it. We're not going to follow any of it.
And that very state becomes very pleasurable—but who cares, do you see?
The pleasurable, not the pleasurableness of it keeps us in it, but we're already beyond the state where we go, “ah, shin jangs, I want more."
Leave the mind like the tracks of a bird across the sky—unaffected.
That's not quite right. That sounds too clinical and detached—we want to be deeply involved, but not follow.
That's the point.
And the last one is “leave it like an unfolded piece of cloth.”
Leave it like an unfolded piece of cloth.
So if we have a piece of cotton cloth, big piece, and you fold it, and you fold it, and you fold it, and you fold it—you finally get it folded to a point where, when you try to fold it further, you just can't—because it's gotten thick enough that the whole, call it a square, of cloth is now solid.
Right?
It’s stiff. It's hard and rigid, not like plastic, but you get what I mean—it increases its solidity—and then you take that piece of folded cloth and you unfold, and you unfold, and you unfold, and you unfold—and finally you have it as just the piece of cloth—and if the wind is blowing, you hold it up and it just [waving hands like cloth flowing in the wind] it's so flexible, and soft, and effortless.
So our minds in our outer world are folded pieces of cloth, and it’s, I don't know, it's like that—as we're going down in meditation, we're unfolding, and unfolding, and unfolding, and unfolding, until we get down in there where we are being the flapping piece of cloth in the wind.
The wind is the karmic seeds going.
The mind is the change that's happening to it as it's “karmic seed shapeshift."
Our words say there you have the mind, the seed bubbles up out of it and we experience something that's helpful, but as we get deeper, and deeper, and deeper, it is like, “whoa, really?”
It's all the process happening constantly—so leave your mind like that fluid, flapping piece of cloth. Get it?
(kind of 🙂)
So we're only part-way into Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's full practice of Mahamudra where he’s given us a method for going deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper—in order to be able to experience our mind in any one of these ways of these metaphors, depending on which one speaks to you.
So we've only been at it (how long have we been at this?) Six or eight weeks? Five weeks? Seven weeks?
Anyway—we haven't been at it for very long.
So how's it going?
[pauses for response]
That well?
Okay, glad to hear it.
Roxana: Dear Lama? I have a question. Maybe I have too much information in my mind and I don't know if it could be an obstacle.
For example, I do have the sensations. It's a ripple. That's the object in that precise moment. Right? And the interaction between it is just pass it, leave it?]
Lama: Right, leave it.
[Roxana: Okay, so everything arising, and I don't know if it's too subtle or [I’m] paying too much attention. I'm listening to the birds, the sound is coming in, but I can feel how it's coming in. I mean, it's like the decibels, or I don't know the process of inside my ear—how that is rippling—I don't follow it, but I have the sensation.]
Lama: So then as you're turning the dial to go deeper, deeper, deeper, you recognize, “oh, no” (I have to say it in words) “oh, that sensation of the decibels, that too, is a ripple / ripening / passing, and you turn away from that and you go deeper in.
[Roxana: Okay, so that's deeply aware-ing that you're talking about?]
Right.
[Roxana: And out of all of these six methods, I mean shall we just, when we go in [to meditation], should we take one in particular and try it on or try them all or how?]
Lama: No, I would suggest that when you come out of a given day's meditation, you think of these different metaphors and go, “do any of those match what my experience was? Do any of them give good words to explain what it felt like to be inside there?”
Maybe none of them will, so much, for you—maybe you'll come up with a different one.
“Oh, it was like the gymnast on the balance beam.”
So not use them in your meditation coming out, go, “oh, I see what they're saying.”
Like that.
[Roxana: I visualize myself like the car that just, I'm there, I'm setting my mind. I just opened my wings and I'm all set. I don't know, it's like a sensation.
Okay, dear Lama.
But my mind keeps going, sometimes—I had an itch here, of course I didn't stop and I knew it was, but then it came up. “Oh, that's one of your consciousness. Leave it. Oh here’s another one of your consciousness. Leave it.
Right. It's a bubbling up, right? It's an appearing. Find some word that you can apply that sooner or later you don't even need the word anymore. It's like, “oh, another ripening," or “oh, another…[ripple] [ripple]," just until we're recognizing anything that comes up is simply this movement, this shapeshifting, this karmic shift, this wind, this—words fail.
So you find your own tool that allows you while you're being the watcher, watching without following, is also aware of what's bubbling up. Is this process called seeds ripening nothing, but that's too concrete.
[Roxana: Right. Just immerse myself.]
Lama: Right. Immerse in the experienc-ing without following.
[Roxana: Thank you Dear Lama}
Yes, Rachana?
[Rachana: I just had a stupid technical question from doing the meditations from last week in particular, some of the instructions are to keep your mind (your awareness) on the sensation of the breath going in and then down and then up and out again. And then also when we're doing through the both channels.
And so then I sort of have this stupid, if I'm trying to keep my awareness on both of the channels, then I'm like back and forth–are we supposed to try and step back and keep our mind on both of them?
But if it's in one spot, I'm like, there's two of them, I can't keep them in one spot in two different ones. And then as it's going in, I'm like, well, but there's still air coming in, so is my mind following one piece of breath down and through, or awareness of the whole? It's just a stupid technicality, but I'm just not sure where to keep my mind or if I should step back.]
Yeah, it's not stupid at all—we should have that conundrum. It's like, “wait, how can I do that?”
Can you do both at the same time? Yes. Right?
Yes. You can follow breath going into down and around and up and into one.
Yes, you can do it.
So we need to be less literal about what it means to be one point—and we've been dancing with that, what it is to be single pointed, on a single object called stillness—when in fact, the mind never [be]comes still, does it?
So we go, oh, find one little point to focus on and then follow that through and be, and then they say, yeah, but then do it two at a time—so just keep exploring—use your imagination, use your mind to be like, “now I'm going in both channels."
Now I'm meeting me at the bottom and I'm going into one channel and be creative, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Be creative and get it to happen. It will happen. You can do it.
Thank you for asking that.
[Roxana: We don't really need to be in meditation to be working with our channels—or it's best to be always in meditation to work with our channels.]
Lama: That's a hard question.
Ya know, YSI's whole premise is that to do asana's without an awareness of the subtle body and bodhichitta, you might as well be changing the oil on your car—but to do those asanas with bodhichitta and with an awareness of your subtle body, allows those asanas to actually do something for your subtle body—and you're not in meditation while you're doing it.
But I think yoga people would say, the state of my mind is very meditative while I'm doing my asana, and so if I am in that deeper quality of mind while I'm doing my asana, I can actually feel my prana moving—the sensations that ordinary me would say, “ow my muscles tight” in that state, the yogi goes, “oh, I've got a clog knot at that part of my body," so you don't have to be in deep meditation, but it takes a very subtle quality of mind watcher to be aware of those sensations that are called prana that moves the mind.
[Roxana: I'm asking because last week I stayed 12 hours in a place and it was too much time and I wasn't talking, other people were there, but I find myself that I was, the only thing I could do is not go into really deep meditation, but I thought, I'm going to be working with my channels right now. I'm going to be concentrating with awareness, of course, but using the time in a very purposeful way.]
Yeah, that's fine—to do the hollow body and the three channel—that's a very safe inner body work stuff that you can do. You won't get in trouble doing that. You can do more than nine breaths, right? You can decide, right? I'm going to do 37 and work with it that way, but don't try to go beyond that hollow body three channels (what's called the ninefold breath) from this one to that one and that one back like that.
Don't go beyond that please.
Okay, so let's take a break, and then what I'd like to do is we'll go through the last meditation for this course, this Bok Jinpa course—we actually just finished it.
The last class at Diamond Mountain, he would give a little review, another meditation, and then we would do our final exams (in class) and turn in our final book and our final exam.
So we've reached that point, and then we have two and a half more courses to do to finish it off—but that didn't take so long, right?
So let's take a break and then we'll meditate again.
Let me mention our schedule before we go into meditation. We'll start again May 6th, and we'll go through until July 21. Then we'll be off July 28 through August 26th. So we'll start again September 2nd.
*************
(Class 10 @ 01:05:07)
All right, so let's do another meditation.
So first, settle your body—you know how now, so I won't say anything.
***30 seconds***
It locks into place.
And we bring our attention to our breath.
Do your hollow body ninefold breath.
***2 minutes 15 seconds***
The last of your nine, come to focus—still on the sensations at the nostrils.
Adjusting focus, clarity, intensity.
***15 seconds***
And then relax back into “the watcher” of those sensations.
And then “the watcher” of any outer sounds.
***15 seconds***
The watcher lets go of the identities of outer sounds—watches just the sound happening.
Dropping deeper in, using any inner sounds to draw in.
***15 seconds***
And then settling into that space of the mind—watcher, watching anything that arises.
The watcher is aware of all those “arisings” as mental images, as thoughts.
Arising and passing.
***45 seconds***
There are background mental images—your body…your place in your room…
Your legs on your cushion…
Watcher knows—these experiencing, simply objects of thought, movements of mind, ripples.
Notice—without following.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Perhaps you're noticing space between one arising and the next.
That too is an arising.
***45 seconds***
And as you sink in more deeply, those spaces between thoughts can become more clear.
We glimpse how vast is this state of awareness?
Infinite, in fact.
And so try to focus on the awareness itself.
Can there be a moment of awareness without an object that it's aware of?
***45 seconds***
To be aware of our own awareness, that aware-ness has to be the object— but the aware-ness is the subject.
What is it really?
***15 seconds***
Aware-ness is also simply moments of arising and passing projection happening.
There is not aware-ness.
There is aware-ing.
There cannot be an aware-ness that is an independent thing, that is aware of other independent things, can there?
***15 seconds***
There cannot be a watcher, without watch-ing.
There cannot be watch-ing, without an object.
***15 seconds***
Be deep down in this experience-ing, happen-ing.
***30 seconds***
Check dullness—adjust it.
Check for agitation—too much thinking—adjust it.
Being fascinated—aware-ing, happen-ing.
***1 minute***
Check again.
And jump in deeper…
***30 seconds***
All of this aware-ing happen-ing—it is the appearing side.
What's underneath it all?
It's Buddha.
Underneath it all, is the true nature of your own mind, your own be-ing.
It's your Dharmakaya—your own dharma body.
And all this experienc-ing—subjects, objects, interactions between—it's all the ripples of your emanation.
“Hear-ings” in a constant flow.
Dharmakaya—shape shifting.
***15 seconds***
So now, all these movements of mind are rippling emanations of your enlightened self.
And watch how these ripples of your enlightened-fully mind create your world as you come back up out of this depth—your mind ripple saying, “this body in this room."
The ripple making it be there—your room in that building.
That building in its town.
That town in its place.
That place in this world.
All these rippling emanations of your Dharmakaya.
And so hold that idea as you wiggle your fingers and feet.
As you become aware of your body on your seat.
And yourself in your body.
And try to hold it as you open your eyes, and look around what we call “our room."
Impose the awareness—all rippling appearances of my own empty mind.
And then recall that person we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class—this is how we help them. They and their distress is a ripple upon our own holy mind, and so we can help them get free.
The ripples on our minds are real.
And so think of the goodness that we've done, not just this class, but the whole 10-class-force, motivated to stop the suffering of our world.
It's extraordinary what we have set into motion—be happy with yourself, so those seeds are complete.
Recall your own precious, holy guide–-see how over-the-moon-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, even challenge 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
And may it be so.
Okay, well done!
So we'll just carry on starting into the next course next week, and then we'll have this little break, that's not a problem.
So thank you so much, please keep working with it—and I'll see you next week!
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 11
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
Welcome back. We are Mahamudra study-ers under the First Panchen Lama, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. It's April 8th, 2025. We are starting into the second course of Mahamudra as we received it.
So let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please.
Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
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 your body in, please.
We'll do our meditation.
Go through your sequence.
Your inner body scan.
hollow control channel two sides, ninefold breath.
When you finish your nine, bring your focus of attention to that tip of the nostrils. Watching those sensations we call “breath out” “Breath in." Zooming in your focus. Turning up your brightness. Turning on the intensity, the fascination. Probably the mind struggles a bit.
Take charge.
Remind yourself of why you are studying the Dharma.
Why do you make the effort to come to a class like this?
We live in a world that's just crazy. A world of pain. Nothing goes right even when it seems to. It just goes wrong anyway.
We're so immersed in that reality, that broken reality. We fool ourselves into thinking “ Well right now it's okay. It's not so bad.”
But it is bad.
And if it's bad for us, it's way worse for others. Even if we're just thinking of human others. But there's a doorway out and that doorway is called Mahamudra.
Directly experiencing the true nature of ourself, of our own mind. Experiencing directly the fact that all this suffering is unnecessary. It's a result of a big mistake, which itself is a result of a big mistake.
We need to experience that empty nature of our own being - directly.
Turn up your longing to reach beyond this deceptive reality. Your longing to reach truth. Every being in each of our worlds is waiting for us to do this.
So think again of just that one person you want to help so deeply. Recognize they represent all. And go back to your focus at your nostrils as if that other person's life depends upon it. Your focus, your clarity, your intensity. Feel this sense of “I'm doing it for them."
Now we'll start our sequence. Notice how your sense of awareness is up close to that location with nostrils. With that same focus, clarity, and intensity - Switch into your watcher mode; So it feels like you back off a little bit from that location nostrils - still focused on those sensations, letting them do what they will.
And intentionally the watcher turns to be aware of the sounds happening outside of you.
Notice how watcher's experience is the identity of what's happening making the sound. Then watcher intentionally lets go of interest in what's making the sound and turns its interest to simply the experience outer sound. Letting it arise. Not the least bit interested that was identifying.
Watcher still probably feels like we're up in our head.
Watcher now turns its watching more inward to experience any inner sounds, the sound of the breath. Or the sound of the blood in your eardrums. What are you finding when you turn that watcher more subtly?
Notice how first we identify what that sound is,
then sink deeper to your watcher, aware of the sound without its identity.
Then shift your watcher even more subtly to watching any thought that arises.
Those shifts and movements that we would call agitation.
Allow them to arise.
Watcher is not controlling anything but being the watcher.
And at the first level, we notice how those thoughts get identified.
The watcher has to have an identification of that thought to watch a thought, and the task is to refuse to follow the thought into the story.
Watcher's job: Watch them arise. Watch the next one arise. And go.
With the clarity. With the fascination. The practice of this part of Mahamudra is for the watcher to sink in to more and more subtle levels of the arising of each of those thoughts.
Each of just that shows up.
Sinking deeper and deeper into more subtle level of consciousness.
We are likely to slide into dullness. And so you brighten up.
We are likely to follow a thought story. You catch it, let it go. Sink back in.
Watcher is being keenly aware of these subtle movements, subtle shifting of experience.
Enjoyable.
Let's stay two more minutes
Back: For dullness, no agitation. Adjust.
Yeah, can adjust.
Nice job. Now come back up out of that subtlety. Like you're coming up in the elevator. Become aware of your breath again at those nostrils. Become aware of this physical body sitting on your chair, move your hands and feet, become aware of being in your room. Dedicate what we've done so far to reaching that gateway, the Mahamudra.
When you're ready, open your eyes. Take a stretch.
*************
[Student: So what I have been experiencing in trying to do this sequence is that I don't make a difference or I cannot feel a difference between the watcher and the me. Meaning I don't feel a division between, there is some other entity. So it turns out to me or it feels to me that I'm doing an analytical meditation, because I cannot really split into there is a watcher. I would just say the watcher is now looking at the thoughts and letting them come. For me, it is me who is doing that. You know what I mean? I really don't feel a difference. So I don't know if I just keep trying and it's just a fact of practice or..]
Right. And your me can just watch?
[Student: It's just I say it turns out to be like if I would do any other meditation, like when you say, “okay, now move back then that I see, let's say moves back to just perceive or hear the noise outside and see the breathing. But it's not an separate entity that I see doing that. It's just me.]
But you can experience it not being a bird in the tree. You can experience sound happening. Can you?
[Student: Yes, exactly. But as if I would do a normal meditation, if I just do, let's say analytical meditation is the same feeling. I just hear the noise outside or I can identify, okay, there is a thought coming and normally I go with the thought, I am still being carried by my thoughts, but I don't feel there is a watcher. So this is where I am a bit confused. To see as if I'm looking from above. Another reason being the watcher or is the watcher the me?]
Yeah, I would suggest you let your me be the watcher for now.
[Okay. But this is not the right way, right?]
No, it's not not the right way. It's the way you're going to experience it.
I'm going to guess that everybody's experience is similar. And it's okay.
[Other Student: Thank you dear Lama, my question is when we're doing the nine breath cycle, I don't have any problems with breathing with one nostril and inhaling. I don't have that problem at all. But what I do in my mind, I want to know if it's what it is. I am going through the whole cycle and visualizing how it goes, in how it goes out. Is that correct? Bringing the awareness as it is?]
Yes.
[Other Student: Okay. And the length of the cycle, should it be something very natural because natural.]
Natural for this practice. Natural.
[Other Student: Okay then. So it's the same awareness that I bring in when I go into bringing my attention here to the tip of my nose. Okay.
The next question, I get a sensation here in my chest, it's not a discomfort.
At the beginning I was scared because I didn't know what it was like a sort of fear. It's no fear anymore. It's something nice. But is it natural it'll go away or should I —how should I go with that?]
So as we are sinking into this more subtle state of awareness, the subtle body corollary of that is that the winds that carry the movement of the mind that makes this outer stuff, they're starting to do this [Lama shows with hands] — from here, they're doing this — and then they're going to do this — and then they're going to actually start to draw in whether they completely draw into the central channel or not, don't worry.
But what you're experiencing is the awareness of a shift in your body, that's corresponding to the deepening concentration from a mind that's doing this and doesn't even notice it because this is our natural … to starting to, yeah, here's another mudra, right, to try. It's doing this.
And as we're taking that sensation - of this is where we're aware of our world for obvious reasons, this is where our world is apparently coming in at us.And as we're getting more and more subtle, we are not intentionally looking for where our world is really coming from.
Which is where. But as we're going more and more subtle with what am I really experiencing? Then we're withdrawing from our outer interest. We're sinking in. And that subtle shift in our awareness is both a manifestation of and a creating of withdrawing of our winds.
And we're sinking down into this area of our body. We call it the heart. It's not your heart organ, but it is the center of the chest. Which is the place where some energetic impetus from down below pushes up this cracking open of the seeds or movement of the seeds. I don't know where they crack open, I don't think it's actually down here. I think that they start to swell like a seed getting water starts to swell and then it gets up here and it cracks out.
Its little cotyledon - it's called. Which when you see the cotyledon, unless you know what kind of seed it is, you can't tell from that little green sliver whether it's going to be a pomegranate or a banana. But then it comes up further and it gets delineated here and then it gets clarified here and then - bingo - out comes me and my world.
So as we're withdrawing all of that, even in our level of subtlety of awareness of our outer world, naturally those winds are coming in and as we drop down in normal life, even normal ignorant life, as we shift from waking state to sleeping state, the same process is happening. Actually, Our mind and winds are drying in and we sink down. And when our mind and winds get down in here, we are asleep. We are in deep sleep.
We're not aware of it, of course, because we're asleep. That same withdrawing of the winds done still awake, is this stay from which shamatha can happen. Because. as when we get used to that withdrawal of the winds into this area that it would be deep sleep, but now we're doing it very vividly awake. When we get used to that, it becomes actually very pleasurable, physically pleasurable, mentally pleasurable. And then the danger is, wow, this is pleasurable. I will focus on this pleasure and stop right there.
This is all review. We've heard it before.
So your question is like “what is that”? Is that it is the subtle body's mirror of what your mind is doing. So it doesn't mean if you're not having that sensation, you're not doing it right or you're not deep enough. That R.’s subtle body manifestation. And each of us will have our own unique way that this manifests. Maybe for someone else it will be colors arising. And then that becomes something also to note. That the identifying and it's like, no, let's get more subtle. How do we experience a man color blue without identifying blue? Do you see how subtle it's going to go, Beyond words? Mine's always like, oh, because any more than just, oh, This is this is what it is. And then that's been a story. So just this part of the practice which is barely getting into it, you can see how powerful it's going to be when we can really withdraw, withdraw, withdraw.
*************
So Lama Christie explained it as “drop back into that dream state." So I know that my body dreams, but I am really unaware of dreams for the most part. So I don't relate to that dream state.
But for her, her explanation was she would go from vividly up here and then sink back and down as she's letting go of the identities and stories with drying her winds, not intentionally, but that's what's happening. And sinking down with that consciousness into this area of the chest that would be deep sleep. But now because we're being alert while we're there, it's more like dreaming. And in dreaming, We can be actively in the dream. Or you can be dreaming, you can be aware of the dream happening like a movie that's more like when I do dream, I'm not really in them. I'm watching something happen. So it's like this quality of meditation that is dreamlike - in that anything can pop up in any way at any moment and be anything in the next moment - That kind of dreamlike quality with still the clarity and the intensity and the single point of focus, but without the habitual, this is how it is. It's coming at me? Dreamlike, I don't know. I don't relate to it so much, so it's hard for me to use it to explain. If there's a different quality of our aware when it's dropped down. Like if you're really in the aware happening, there's no awareness of where it's happening in your body because your body's long gone.
So when I was learning this, I remember, I drop in in in and then because of it seemed like she was emphasizing be down there in your heart, my watcher would go, and am I in my heart? And it's like, wait a minute, that's a whole distraction. It doesn't matter. It's the quality that we're trying to get to. And the quality that we call “being in your heart” is very different than the quality of awareness when we're up here. And that's what we're trying to get to. So find the way that you describe it for yourself. Maybe it's a falling back, maybe it's a opening up, find it. But then also explore how when you use that term for yourself, see how if by using that term it leaves you open to either falling into dullness or falling into agitation, right? If we think, oh my mind's getting so open and broad, it can just sit here and let anything come up. And then all of a sudden you realize, I really wasn't paying attention. Because, or we go, oh, I'm back in my heart. Am I really there? Am I staying there? Right. Agitation happening.
This is a personal exploration. And Lama Christie's instruction to us, she's talking to a whole group of overachievers. She was saying, take it slowly.
We learned this whole Mahamudra over the course of I think two years actually. We were learning other stuff too, but we're going to get it all in a string. And then our tendency, I know, my tendency would be, okay, got that, got that, got that. Let me jump to the final one and just work on that. And then when I went back and really worked on it in three-year retreat, it's like, oh no, the beginning practices will take you there. Without having to even say, okay, now I'm going to work on this next one. Because as we get more and more subtle, our winds will do the thing that need to happen to get us to the platform where we have that thing called “stillness," which is different than single pointed concentration. Single pointed concentration comes along the way, first. single pointed concentration is focusing on one thing, but we can be dulled out. We can be not doing it intentionally.
When we have single-pointed concentration with the clarity and the intensity, that's when those winds will do what they do. And that's when the pliancies arise. The mental pliancy, wow, this feels so good, mentally. And the physical pliancy, physical comes first, the physical pliancy, SHIN JANG, wow, this feels really good. I could sit here forever. In a physical sense, your body's locked in, it has nowhere to go, nothing to do. Technically, you could sit there for days, you would never need to urinate, you would never need to eat. It feels so good. And then the mind too, it's locked on. And then the effort to keep our focus, to keep our clarity, to keep the NAR, it's just locked in.
Reaching level nine helped us reach time spent in level nine Meditation gives those winds, the time to come in and settle in. And that then shifts from what we would call level nine, TING NGE DZIN, to shamatha. That level of mind from which we can be in the causal meditation, first level of form realm, which is the platform from which the direct perception of emptiness can arise.
Mahamudra is not saying, we'll get to that first level of the form realm and you'll know when you do it by doing this, that's not going to happen. It's going to happen. And you don't have to know anything about it. Because of this, getting more and more subtly aware of whatever is arising. And we didn't even go to the part yet where we've shifted the watcher to be - watching the what's arising and knowing it's just arising and nothing else - where we need to get at this level.
That's the subtle awareness of arisings happening without following, without getting spaced out.
So your question was perfect, R., because that was the class I was supposed to deliver anyway. Is this review of what this Mahamudra is supposed to be. But again, don't hear that everybody should be feeling something in their heart. If you do - now, you know what it is. If it builds up, builds up, builds up and it's uncomfortable, stop.
Winds can get in before the area is ready for them. And that brings on that condition called loom that we hear so much about. We'll bring on anxiety and sleeplessness and chest pain and a shift in our ability to be interested in any of this stuff.
So we don't want to draw those winds in too fast. But what makes those winds there become dangerous is when our mind is too shut down with me, me, me … for it to be able to accept these wins.
So that's why we always start with as much heart opening practice as you need, so that you're doing your practice because somebody else needs it. It's going to benefit somebody else. When we're doing it just for me. Our heart is in its normal, locked down - ."I need to stay safe. I need insight into the true nature of me is threatening, because it right. It's like that me, I think I am is actually doesn't exist. And if I'm so attached to that me, that to get close to the fact that there's no such thing would be like, I don't want any part of that. And winds getting in there are going to put me in this situation “of can't go there." Anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, disinterest - All those kinds of things.
All right, let's take a break so I can get back to my notes and make sure I said what I was supposed to say.
*************
Alright, we're back. So this class was a review of what we had done in the course before. So we're reviewing what we've just finished. And it's great timing because we're going to go into our spring break. And so I would like to have us read the root text together again and I'll point out the parts of the review that will be useful for you to use during your spring break. And we'll see how much time we have after that.
So I will send you the file of this text. I don't think I included it in what I sent you before because
So I'm just going to go along my screen and if you care to read a verse read, if you don't care to read, you're welcome to say thank you, but no thank you.
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 Geluk 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 100 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.
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 what 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 capped 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 workings 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 Gyeltsen
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.
Yay! Sarva mangalam! All of us got to put it into the universe.
So he points out the preliminaries.
We go for refuge and he took us through refuge twice, if you recall. Telling us how important our refuge is. And we know refuge isn't just I go for refuge, Buddha Dharma Sangha. It's that karma emptiness. People have done it before me, right? You think that all through to get that heartfelt: ´ I need to do this because my world is broken, I need to fix it´.
Second one, bodhichitta, the wish as heartfelt, deceptive wish as we can get deceptive. Not meaning there's something wrong with it. Deceptive meaning our appearance, how we describe that feeling within us. `My world is broken, I want to fix it.´
And then the other bodhichitta. Understanding the true nature of things, seeing emptiness directly brings on the wisdom that's the real bodhichitta. So those two factors inspiring our refuge.
Then third, how come just thinking that stuff doesn't make it happen? Because we have obstacles, because we have ignorance and because of our ignorance, we've been selfish loves all of us. And so we have seeds even before. From before that are blocking our ability to just turn on a Mahamudra meditation and step through that doorway to emptiness directly. That only happens as ripening results of some extraordinary bunch of goodness , because that's such an extraordinary positive change. It's an extraordinary pleasure. I'm not sure it's pleasurable in the moment, probably it is, but it's a result of goodness. It's such a good thing that it has to be a result of kindness. So if it's not happening when we want it to, it's because we've got blocks from selfishness. So we need to purify.
And he specifically says, use Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva is that deity who when he was making his determination, when “I'm a Buddha, I'm going to specialize in helping people purify." So we call upon Vajrasattva. And use the hundred syllable mantra and the practice that we've been given and will be given again and again if we stick with this path.
And then he said that mantra a hundred thousand times. If you did a retreat, a Vajrasattva retreat, it would take you three months, four sessions a day to complete a hundred thousand, a hundred syllable mantras. That's all you do is the sadhana and the mantra. Three months it takes. Actually FPMT I think every year in Nepal, they host a Vajrasattva retreat and you do have a timeframe in which you're supposed to finish it.
And I had a friend, he and his wife were doing it and partway through he was just like, I can't do this. I'm not going to do this. And he walked out of a session and he was headed out of the monastery that they were in. He was going to leave the border of their retreat. And as he walked out, the Abbott of the monastery walking along and the Abbott says, “hi, who are you? What are you doing here” And he said, “I couldn't lie to the Abbott." And he said, “I'm in this Vajrasattva retreat. I'm having a hard time. I'm just getting ready to quit." And the Abbott says, “don't quit. You'll regret it.” That's all he said. And my friend goes, oh, he turned around, he went back in and he finished it. So if you want to get your a hundred thousand done, you could do it in one fell swoop or you set yourself this, I think someday I'll finish my a hundred thousand for right now I'll just plug away.
And in ACI, when we learn the four powers of purification and we hear the different antidotes, one of the antidotes is saying the names of the holy beings, using mantra, using sacred words. That's where Vajrasattva comes in. It's a practice. It's not the only way to purify, but in this tradition it's a powerful way to purify.
That's the third preliminary to our Mahamudra daily practice, but it's also a preliminary for before launching our Mahamudra career, for instance.
So fourth one is collecting merit. The mantra, purify, collect, merit. And typically we do collect merit and purify with the seven limb preliminaries to a meditation session. And then when we apply those same ideas to our daily life. We do make our offerings, we do prostrations, we say our mantra and we be kind in our outer world in order to collect the goodness, in order for our meditation to go deeper, in order for our wisdom to grow stronger. Which allows our kindness to get more subtle and both more subtle and bigger.
So that all translates into: keep our vows, keep follow the vow behavior with intention, collect karma.
And then the fifth preliminary is this lama practice, which there's so much to say about Lama practice in the start of your session. So during your meditation preliminaries, we have that first step of honor and offer to the Lama where we are thinking about this being with these good qualities and what they must have done to make the qualities they see in themselves, whatever those are. and how they've pledged to help me grow those good qualities in me and our reliance upon them and why they're the special one for me. Take your time to really grow that connection with this being a perfect love, perfect compassion, perfect wisdom. Whoever it is. In order to grow this place of connection to the lineage.
At some point we really do get this sense of the Lama - whoever it is that we're calling Lama - is the Lama for me because at some point in that apparently human being's life, they were able to open themselves up completely to their Lama. And that Lama had at some point completely opened themselves up to their Lama and do you see where it's going? It's like - each one has completely opened themselves up to guidance by that being who's being guided by that being, who's being guided by that being, who's being guided by that being - all the way back up to our world's Buddha Shakyamuni or Vajradhara. And then that one did the same thing for the Buddha of their world and it's like it's endless. - No, there had to be a first Buddha, don't worry. - But the thing is, we have access to all of it, when we open up to the one that is the doorway to us, and then we're going to become that for someone else. In Tibetan Buddhism, like not other traditions of Buddhism either, the Lama is so critical and we can get the wrong idea because: oh, how you treat your Lama, you're treating every enlightened being however you're treating your Lama even right down to your thoughts. Scary.
And so in human life it then looks like, oh, “my lama can do no wrong," and then my lama goes and beats somebody up and I'm supposed to go, “oh, my Lama can do no wrong." It's like - wait a minute, right? Something else is going on here. And so it can be a dangerous path to say, okay, I'm going to surrender completely to my Lama. They can do anything they want. And then it appears to somebody, you or somebody else that they're doing something wrong. What do you do with that? And we see it. I've seen it in my world in Dharma communities and it's like, eh, so, Why am I going there? The relationship with the Lama is about our seed planting towards them because they're not just this apparently human being pretending to be the angel or an angel pretending to be a human being. They are this tube doorway to all the enlightened beings there've ever been. Which is why our karmic seeds that we make with them are so powerful, right? Get it. So Lama practice is this, trying to get this sense of high strong understanding of why we have need use a Lama.
And his text says, don't go on until you're crying out of your devotion to your Lama. And I didn't know, for me, I didn't understand devotion for a long time. I thought it was just some sissy way of being spiritual. But it's like: oh my gosh, it's so powerful and so hard for someone grown up as a westerner who really was taught take personal responsibility for everything. But I misunderstood what that meant.
So then in that text. He's Gelukpa, he's going to give us the Gelukpa method of Mahamudra-ing. I'm going to be bold and make a new word, a verb out of it, which he doesn't do. I'm making that up. That he's going to give us the Gelukpa path to reaching this thing Mahamudra. He said towards the end, it's like Mahamudra is meeting the true nature of our mind face to face. There's two levels of that, the appearing nature of our mind, face to face that's accurate. And there's the no self nature of that appearing nature of the mind meeting that face-to-face. See, and it's like - when I hear myself say that, it's like, wait, would you explain that again? It's like there's the level of mind that we think we have. Where I think I have this thing called a mind. And so I automatically think that I have this mind and somehow there's a me that has it. And it's like I don't quite understand that relationship to be honest with you. But then they say, yeah, your mind is empty. And then a part of me goes - oh, so I don't really have one. No, that's not possible. It has to exist in some way, but it isn't a thing separate from the me having it. I am with my mind incessantly, but I've never understood its true appearing nature, which is seed ripening, seed ripening, part of the seed, part of the seed, part of the seed, part of the seed. And when I get to that awareness, seed ripening, seed ripening, seed ripening, it's cool, it's freeing, but it's not the ultimate nature. It's the true appearing nature. Never the same two moments in a row, not a thing other than what's appearing. Words fail. But that's not Mahamudra. That's meeting the appearing nature of mind, face-to-face. We want to get there first. And then from that platform, it will take us pretty effortlessly - he claims into - well, there's no mind other than that. Which is its actual true nature. Not no mind at all. Only the mind ripening this moment, this moment, this moment, this moment.
Will the real mind please stand up? If we could hold that, we'd be in that diamond world of our own mind. For that to happen will be a ripening of great goodness. Goodness made how? Refuge, bodhichitta, purification, gather merit, Lama practice.
Once those circumstances all come together, Mahamudra will happen. So technically just do those five and forget about Mahamudra practice, and someday you'll sit down, someday you do those five, someday you'll be standing at the stove making tea for your Lama and that whole sequence will trigger. But then if we haven't made the seeds to be able to sit our body and lock it in and become unaware of it, with the quality of mind that then doesn't fall asleep, which is usually what we do when our body locks in and we become unaware of it, but rather we stay keen, alert and fascinated. If we have the seeds to be able to do that, the experience of seeing the seeds ripen into the whatever will push us into that mahamudra.
So we can also do the five and practice Mahamudra to increase the seeds - for it to be able to happen when we do have the: Oh my gosh, I just saw the seed crack open.
Well in the first half of Mahamudra practice, we are watching the change, the change, the change, the change, the change. What are we actually watching? The seed's cracking open.
You can't get subtly enough to where while you're there, single pointedly, enjoying the flow happening. Where it's like, oh, seeds cracking open. I don't know whether it's going to be a visual experience. Not for me, because I'm not a visualizer. But theoretically you'd be in this Mahamudra and all of a sudden you would have this direct experience. Well, this whole thing, meditating on the flow - without words coming out of a cracking open silver seeds.. And that might be a clue to, oh, stay put and recognize and everything has always been that. And it'll push us into, and there's no me that exists any other way than that direct experience of our own mind, which is the emptiness of our own mind, which is the dharmakaya.
It's like, wait, wait, wait. Buddhas have dharmakaya, I don't have dharmakaya. Something to think about.
Panchen Lama, he said in that root text, there are two types of Mahamudra. There's sutra type open teaching type, and there's tantra type. He does not mean that the emptiness of our mind that we will meet face-to-face is a different emptiness, if we get there by sutra means or get there by tantra means. He does not mean that the emptiness of our mind is different. The experience isn't really even different. It's the method or tools that we use to get there. That's different. Tantra method is called the indirect method, and it has various tools to get us there. It uses a different vocabulary. It calls that Mahamudra, the clear light, and it says you use bliss to get to the clear light. And you do that either by using practices with your subtle body and the center of the areas called chakras and the movement of the mind and winds. And there are methods for bringing on the clear light, bliss state of mind through use of the subtle body.
And there are other practices through the use of a mahamudra. And he says in his text, we're not going to talk about those. He just told us about them, but he is not going to teach us that because this is an open teaching. It's like very subtly saying, guess what could come, if you need it. But if we do our sutra practices well - your result can come from sutra. It's like, no, it's going to take so long. Well, maybe this is your last bodhisattva life. Maybe this is the one. What sutra practices? Those five. And it's like, oh, if I can't do those five well enough in this lifetime, then I need diamond way. They don't say it up front. I'm going to be so bold, me Sarahni, going into Diamond Way is for the people who can't do their sutra way well enough. We think diamond way is for the higher people. It's like no actually, secret. And the higher you go in the diamond way, it's because we haven't been successful in the beginning ones. It's a little funny for humans, because I don't know our own minds automatically - I want to be with the best kids. I want to be with the big kids. And it sounds like the big kids are the ones doing completion stage. And it is true, but it's only because the big kids, I'm one of the big kids, failed in my creation stage, didn't fail completely. Just wasn't strong enough for the transformation to happen then. do you see? So it's a little funny. I'm not saying discount tantra, but I'm saying we can get there from Sutra.
Because if we get into Tantra and we do it wrongly motivated because we don't have the proper seeds from our sutra, the tantra is not only going to fail, but it's going to hurt us. It's going to delay us big time. So it's not an advantage to get into tantra fast. It will come out of us, when the time is right. And the way that time becomes right is by doing those five. And then maybe you don't even need tantra, right? Don't stop asking for it. I don't mean to say that. And again, this is not from scripture until you're at a level of subtlety reading the scripture and then it's like, oh, there it is. There it is.
So I'm not making this up, but it's not Geshe Michael lineage Lama Christie lineage except under …. okay, you get it.
Anyway, so then he goes on and he teaches us in greater detail the sutra or he says he's going to teach us the Sutra way, but then he lists all these different methods of Mahamudra from the other lineages. I'm going to give you Gelukpa way, but then he teaches us a little bit about other non Gelukpa methods. Which when we actually see those, it's like, wait a minute, those are diamond way. Some of those are Diamond way. The one that's actually called Mahamudra is a teaching called the Lady of the [Ganga Skandama?]. And it's the teaching that Naropa got from Tilopa. Hot on the heels of the trial in which he got the name Narotapa, the most veriale of men, which I know one of you knows what I'm talking about. Then he got this teaching on Mahamudra, how to meet your mind directly. And it's like Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is saying, here's a Mahamudra teachin. But it's not the one he's going to teach us because it's through a tantric tradition instead of open. We will get to the same place, however, it is his promise to us.
So the diamond way version of reaching Mahamudra, he tells us, is the lineage that comes to us through Tilopa and Naropa and Master Saraha, who is Arya Nagarjuna's root teacher and my namesake. And then he says, the Sutra teachings way of reaching Mahamudra - this is the path of Arya Nagarjuna. I do not know, if they mean that's is the path Arya Nagarjuna used, or if he means that's the path Arya Nagarjuna developed for his students. I'm going to guess it's the latter.
So Panchen Lama's point in showing us all these different practices, all called Mahamudra in each of the traditions from which they came. His point is they all are given to us through different words, seeming different practices, but in the end they're all the same. And it's like, yeah, in the end they're all the same because they're empty and they're coming out of my seeds. But he means in the end, they all take us to the same realization. The Mahamudra, that each of those practices results in is the direct experience of the true nature of our own mind, which is what's meant by Mahamudra. So they're all going to bring on the same experiential result no matter what method you use to get there.
Then as he's zeroing in the method that he is going to teach us, he says, there's two ways I could go. We could use stillnessto get to emptiness or we can use our understanding of emptiness to get to stillness. And he says, we're going to use meditation to get to emptiness. It's like what we've always heard. You have to be in meditation to see emptiness directly. But then what the method he teaches us, it's confusing. It's like, wait, we're using our object, our own awaring happening when we get there as our object of meditation. And by doing that, we reach the stillness, the shamatha, which is the platform from which we can turn our mind to the emptiness of our object. And because the object that we're using is the very tool that we use to turn to the emptiness of our object, he's like, it's a no-brainer - That this would be the perfect meditation to reach stillness and then to reach the insight that stillness is the platform for reaching.
Ordinarily we have some object of our meditation focus, the image of the Lama, because it's a powerful karmic object. And we get deeper and deeper and deeper until we're at the level of stillness on the object, the Lama. And then in order to reach the direct perception of emptiness, we would be turning our mind to the emptiness of the Lama, which is a great, powerful emptiness. But it's not Mahamudra.
You could have this. He says, if you would have to turn your mind to a different object to reach the direct perception of your own mind's emptiness, it would very likely - like you have to go off your object, which means you're not in stillness. So he says, why do that. Not mean don't ever do a Lama meditation, but for a Mahamudra practice? Because we're getting so used to using our own mind as the object, we will already be like this far away from the direct perception of emptiness when we reach the direct perception of the appearing nature of our own mind.
He says, come on, isn't our own mind the ultimate virtuous object? Yeah, that's his case for Mahamudra. So with that, we're going into our spring break. So I'm going to suggest that you work with those five preliminaries and assign yourself, I don't know, maybe 15 minutes of the sequence through the Mahamudra, so that you can get familiar with. To me, it's like I'm dialing down this dial, first up here, keenly aware, obvious things. Bird in the tree. No, not bird in the tree just sounds, no, not even just sounds, some experience happening. Then down deeper, the awareness, just get familiar with this. Dialing down, down, down. So that you can do it at will, down into that, aware of thoughts, mental images, whatever is arising. There's that one, there's that one. It becomes this single pointed concentration on the flow happening, not the specific things.
So have fun with that.
Don't try to go any further, please.
So remember that person, we wanted to be able to help at the beginning of class. We have learned a lot that we will use to help them in that deep and ultimate way someday. And that's an extraordinary goodness. So please be happy with yourself. Think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious, holy being. 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 and help 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.
We use those three long exhales to share this goodness with that one person,
with everyone you love,
and with every existing being everywhere,
see them all filled with happiness, filled with the wisdom of loving kindness.
And may it be so.
Thank you so much.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 12
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
Okay, for the recording, welcome back. We are Mahamudra class. This is May 6th, 2025. Happy birthday to Lama Sumati. We'll do our opening prayers and then slide into the first meditation for this class.
So let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
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 your body in…
Weight on the sits bones—solid.
A little squeeze in your lower belly to raise the inner energies up—aligning that spine, neck, head.
Turn and scan down the outside, inviting everything to relax.
Eyes relax, face and jaw relaxes.
Shoulders, arms, hands—more so…
Legs, feet.
Come back up as if you're coming back up the inside of the body—bring your attention, your keen, sharp focus at that sensation we call breath at the tip of your nostrils, or nostril.
Wherever you feel it most prominently—zoom that focus in.
Adjust your clarity, and turn on the fascination, the intensity.
***2 minutes***
Now turn that focus onto thinking about why we are here in this class, training ourselves in meditative concentration.
Why bother?
***30 seconds***
We are immersed in a world of pain.
Our own pain, and the pain that we witness—obvious problems. The more subtle pain of pleasures that wear out, and the pervasive pain of “it all ends."
The pervasive pain of the uncertainty.
And yet it's all a big mistake.
And there's a way to stop that mistake.
To implement that way, to stop the mistake, we need this state of mind called Mahamudra, “the great seal."
We need to experience directly the “no self nature” of our own mind—of our own self.
The emptiness of me.
There does not have to be suffering of any kind.
***15 seconds***
So this longing, this determination to help that other one, is also a longing—a determination—to reach this experience, the direct experience of the truth: that their suffering, our own suffering, our very own being has no nature.
***15 seconds***
Grow this longing, to reach beyond this deceptive nature of everything that happens to us, and everything we are—to reach beyond that and to live, instead, in the true nature of appearing things.
***15 seconds***
Every being is waiting for each of us to reach this state.
Every being is waiting for us—for me, for you.
***15 seconds***
So bring your focus of attention back to that point at the nostril, as if everyone's life depends upon it—because they do.
And our job is to simply observe, simply experience, each instant of that sensation.
Focused.
With a bright mind.
With a fascination.
That keeps us locked upon it.
We are doing so because we so desperately want to bring on the circumstances through which we can experience emptiness directly—touch the Diamond World.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Now turn the radio station of your objective focus to sounds that you hear—those outer sounds.
Focus, clarity, fascination—and notice how quickly the mind imposes an identity on what's making the sound.
Catch that first—and then withdraw a bit, to where your focus is on the sound, without the identity, other than sound.
It's easier said than done—that's the practice.
***1 munte***
Now turn that focus inward, and listen for inner sounds, and watch the same process happen: “Oh, that's my heartbeat. Oh, that's blood whooshing in my ears," and sink in further—to simply experiencing the sound.
No need for that label other than sound—inner sound.
***45 seconds***
Check to see if your intensity is still there.
Check your clarity.
***45 seconds***
Now, sink down deeper [to] where your focus of attention is “any thought that arises."
***15 seconds***
Keeping this watcher state of mind, notice how when a thought does arise, how swiftly our attention, our watcher, follows along—in which case, we're not simply “watcher” anymore.
When you catch the following, let it go, drop back in—to, simply “watcher."
***30 seconds***
Moment by moment, there's something appearing within our experience.
There's someone who's aware of that appearance.
***15 seconds***
Let those moments of appearances simply flow along.
Being the one who's aware of those appearances, but refusing to follow where they go.
Enjoying their flow.
Keenly, alertly, fascinated.
And allowing.
We'll stay three minutes.
***45 seconds***
Check.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Check.
***1 minute***
Now, intentionally bring into an awareness.
Bring into your appearing experience, being aware of you being in this body in your room.
Just bring yourself back up—aware of the sounds, aware of the sensations.
And then bring into that appearing reality, the room around you.
And when you're ready, open your eyes.
Take a stretch.
*************
So that was a review of those first three steps of Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s Mahamudra technique.
Did we reach Mahamudra?
I didn't.
At this level of the awareness of things appearing, appearing, appearing, appearing—that's not the emptiness of our own mind.
It's getting closer to the experience of the dependent origination of things, of which our own mind will be one. So we're growing this sequence of taking our experience of “me, my mind, my world," and starting from what's ordinary and drawing it into this sensation (and later, later we'll learn why we're doing this specific sensation instead of your breath, other places, the other reasons, etc. There's a reason for that.
So that's an investigation in and of itself.
When she says “focus on your nostril, the tip of your nostril," it's like, it's this whole big space! There's two of 'em! Where do you mean?
And it's intentionally left up to you—and probably you're going to notice on any given day, someday that breath feels the most like right here [points to left nostril tip] and someday it feels the most over here [points to right nostril base] and someday it's everywhere [motions around entire face].
Good.
The point is to get to this place, find the spot, and then use it to zoom in, right?
You put a slide under the microscope—you've got 10x, 100x, 1000x, emptiness / dependent-origination-x.
So you've got these different lenses.
So it's under the focus of 10x, and when you first spy it, it's all blurry and fuzzy.
So you take the focus thing [gesturing like she is adjusting the focus on a microscope]
Everybody's used to microscope, right?
And you bring it into focus.
And then you need to look at that thing more deeply, so you change the lens from 10x to a 100x and everything goes out of focus again, and you zoom in the focus until that's in focus.
So the process of this practice is:
We first get to that next level,
From here, we go to outer sounds,
Outer sounds—in an ordinary way.
And then the zooming-in the focus,
Is noticing how sound, and
bird-in-tree go hand-in-hand.
And the task for this practice is
To let the bird-in-tree [go]
[And] not need that anymore.
So we're letting that part of the experience—
Trying to let that go—and simply
Reach the level we're experiencing sound.
So it's a little bit more drawn in (is the feeling).
Sound without the label.
Sound is a label—but without the
“who's making the label” / “at sound level label” / outer sound.
Then when we've got our mind
Focused, clear, intense on that,
we draw it in further and go
looking for inner sounds, and
It takes this deeper stillness—more
Withdrawal from the outer attention
In order to witness something, to experience
Something that we call inner sound.
And then that same process is going to happen:
“That inner sound is blood whooshing in my carotid, right? Maybe there's something wrong in my carotid because I'm not supposed to hear it, right?” [making hand gestures to indicate more mental chatter]
Pull it back [pretends to reel in a fish] until you can be experiencing that experience we're calling “inner sound," without [holding onto the mental construct of] blood rushing in my ear…
Just [the experienc-ing]:
Whoosh.
…
Whoosh.
…
Whoosh.
…
Right? It takes this withdrawal from the outer sense, to be able to focus on that inner, without the same story happening.
Then when we've got our focus, clarity and intensity, fine tuned on that—we sink in further to awareness of thought.
And at first, thought seems like the mental words “what the heck am I trying to do?” but then as we go deeper with what we mean by thought—we have a movement of our interest, our attention, our attention wants to move to something, and something bubbles up out of somewhere that our attention then goes to.
This is what we mean by “thought," right?
Yes, we mean the mental words—but anything that bubbles up in the experience, when we're at this deeper state, is this topic that we call “thought."
We're being aware of thought.
So it's whatever is arising when we've withdrawn from outer sounds, withdrawn from inner sounds, and we're in that place—it feels to me a bit like “here's my awaring me waiting for something to happen” and it doesn't have to wait long because up comes some awareness.
Even if that awareness is of “oh, waiting for something to happen."
We're trying to fine tune our focus on whatever is arising.
My own word for it is experienc-ing whatever's being experienced at any moment.
What we're trying to dive into is this place where we can experience without that identifier label that comes hot on the heels of the ripening.
So something bubbles up, we put on a label, after the label goes the story.
So we're dropping in deeper and deeper and deeper to that awareness where something bubbles up, and the story (or the label) gets put on, and we just let the label go, and with the label going will go the bubbling up—and then the next one comes, and the next one comes…
So we're sinking down, Lama Christie said, falling back.
But however it feels to you… [motions towards head] up here is when we're keen on what's going on in our outer world.
As we drop in, it'll tend to be in and down, [motions from head down into the body] but we don't need to force that to go in and down.
By withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing our attention and focus, it will naturally sink away and come down.
But then the task, for especially those of us who are like walking heads around in the world, that every time we adjust for clarity and intensity, it'll feel like we'll go back up here [points towards head] because we think intensity and clarity can only be held up here [still motioning towards her head] and that experience, it feels to be true—but it's not true.
We can have clarity and intensity even as we're dropped back here in this deeper space of allowing—Lama Christie said, [it’s] like being in the backseat of your Uber car and the driver knows exactly where they're going; and they're a good driver, so you feel perfectly safe, but your job is to enjoy everything that's going by.
So we sink into this space where our job is to simply enjoy all this raw, raw, movement, raw, raw arisings, raw appearing—getting deeper and deeper in the labels—letting the labels go.
That's the first three steps after we've done the preliminaries.
So just since we've been gone for a little while, remember there were those five preliminaries:
Take our refuge—not meaning just the words—but reestablish that foundation in “nothing has any nature of its own." Everything that is experienced is ripening results of how this mind has seen itself interact with what it perceives as other, and that reality, that process creates every moment of my reality, of me and my world of inanimate objects and other beings and so that other being's suffering, what they experience is from their seeds ripening. What I experience of them is my seeds ripening, my own suffering is my seeds ripening. So, all of it is driven by this big mistake! It really helped me to go from, “oh, I'm ignorant” to, “I'm just mistaken." So I can fix it if I can recognize the mistake I can stop making. So refuge is feeling that sense of protection or guidance or help that comes when we really understand that it's our own behavior that creates our future because that gives us the power to change. Can we automatically change? I can't. But to understand the process well gives me this foundation for that particular day's practice that makes me go, “okay, I'm going to do my best here."
Then bodhichitta- not just because I'm suffering, but because everybody in my world appears to be mistaken. Sutra level, we're at sutra level. Anything unpleasant in my world is coming from my seeds. I understand about the kind of behaviors that make unpleasant results. I know (egads!) even in this lifetime I did them, and probably in past lifetimes I did a lot. So purify, right? Do some process of cleaning out those seeds (meaning damage them with our growing wisdom) so that they can't ripen so badly, if at all.
Then collect goodness—do something: prostrations, 37 pile mandala, make offerings to the llama—something to gather those goodness.
And then last one was Lama practice- putting that being that who for you is this ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom-being who inspires us. And seeing ourselves admire them, ask them for help. See ourselves offering them something like our practice. Seeing them agree to help, and then seeing how that help actually comes to us in the form of the meditation that we're going to do.
So all of this is describing the seven limb preliminaries that, I admit, mine get on automatic pilot—and from time to time I go back and do my seven limbs as my whole meditation session and really drill into them to refresh them.
So, if you remember, his auto commentary on his root text he says, “with your Lama practice, when tears are streaming down your face from your devotion to your llama, that's when you start your meditation.”
And I'm not the get teary-eyed about my Lama type, so I would never have started a meditation practice if I was waiting for that—but get some kind of that sense in your body and your heart and your mind to where, okay, now it's time (because that state is such a place where your subtle body is ready to allow your winds to move your mind in this way that we're trying to get it to go).
If we have both the heart aligned with what we're trying to do directed by our head, the two will work better than if we just try to take willpower and make this happen.
Ok, so let's take a little break and then what we'll do when we come back is I'd like for us to read the root text again, so that we're back on board (I need it) and then this second class of the second course that Lama Christie taught us, we'll finish that up and then do a second meditation.
*************
[…here, a conversation which continued from break, into the start of the recording…]
[Roxana: It's like I turn off my visualization part. I'm a good visualizer—but I turn it off during my meditation. Right?]
Lama: For this Mahamudra, we're not controlling.
We're not controlling anything—we are experiencing.
Only.
Okay, so I'm going to share-screen here. I thought each one of us could read a verse so we can all hear ourselves sharing the dharma with everyone else.
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.
Lama Sumati: May the crops go high!
Lamas Together: May the harvest be plentiful.
*************
Okay, so I'm hoping that every time we hear that root text again, we go, “oh!” because of what we've talked about in the classes and what we've explored in our meditations—that the first time we hear it, it's like “what?” and I'm hoping it's starting to, I don't know, be a little bit more interesting.
Okay, so thank you for sharing that with me.
So in the reading (the reading is his auto commentary to his root text) and the section that we're at, is that he's sharing with us why it is we need Mahamudra, and we've talked about it a bit already.
Of course we need Mahamudra because life seems to be nothing but pain, and once we come to that realization, hopefully our natural response is, how do I stop that process—”it can't be right that that's how it should be forever."
But where we've gotten [to] so far in the meditation is this place where we're able to drop down deep and simply experience, experience, experience—experience and let it flow, right?
We're watching the river without paying attention to all the details of the river.
Is that reaching the emptiness of our own mind?
No!
Really, it's not even close.
But what it is close to, is reaching the experience of the ripening of our seeds, right?
Our terminology is “the ripening of seeds."
Every experience we have on whatever level we have is a ripening result of imprints made in our mind by some past behavior—so our ignorant tendency is to not relate to our moment by moment experiences in that way.
We're not really even aware of them.
I mean, we know, of course, that they're changing, changing, changing—but we're just in the experience of human me going through my day.
This practice is helping us get deeper, deeper, deeper so that we can be aware of how it's not like we're sitting in a space where nothing's happening and then all of a sudden something happens—there's never not something happening. There's never not ripening happening—and every ripening has subject object and an interaction between.
So we're sinking deeper and deeper into this direct experience of how this process is just going, going, going, going, and learning to untie the rope that draws our attention (our me) along with the ripening, into the story about the ripening.
But that is not reaching Mahamudra—that's going through (there's a series of doorways we go through to get to the actual Mahamudr, the whole practice is Mahamudra, but) this one doorway [of] being able to get to this place where we are experiencing, is experiencing dependent origination, experiencing results arising out of the seeds.
It's not focusing on seeing the silver seed crack open, that's a different meditation.
This is in the experienc-ing.
Someday the experienc-ing will be that (at the level of the seed ripening opening into the experience we're having), but we can't get to that if we're not at this area where we're following the story, long after the seed is cracked open.
This practice is not about visualizing—it's not about imagining—it's aware-ing.
Aware-ING.
So we need this practice, says Lobsang Chukyi Gyaltsen, because we go through that [previously explained] doorway, into the doorway of “nothing about any of those ripenings is coming from itself," touching into the conceptual understanding of the emptiness of the other, of the experience, the other level of experience—but that's not Mahamudra either.
The Mahamudra that we are trying to reach is to recognize this relationship between our aware-er, it's aware-ing, and what it is aware of—and to come to see that those three are not three separate things, they are three aspects of every arising, and to come to experience directly how none of any of those three (or all three together) can have their identities in them, and be consistent with the experience that we're having of them.
And that still sounds contradictory to a mind that's steeped with belief in something has some nature of its own, “it's got to have some nature of its own to reach this place that not any one of the three, not any combination, and not all of them together, can be anything but a ripening awareness of whatever is being experienced."
So we go through these [three] doorways:
Reach this [first] platform where we can hold the experience-ing
Reach this [second] platform where we can hold the awareness of its ripening
Hold this [third] platform where it shows us that therefore there's no nature in it.
Step by step.
Why?
Because all of our “upset” with anything is part of that threefold process happening—so if we don't like “upset," it's up to us to stop creating the reasons for it to show up in our experience.
[Tom raises her hand to ask a question]
Lama Sarahni: Yes, Tom?
[Tom: I'm confused about how you said each one of them, because wouldn't it be that I'm aware of my awareness the moment that I put a word to it / communicated it [then] I'm snapping out of it—so how would I know I'm passing through it, or recognizing it?
Lama Sarahni: Yeah, you will. I'm just going to say “you will” because you'll be in this experience of direct experience, and you won't need the words to verify the direct experience. You'll put the words on it when you come out of it and you'll go, “oh, that's what happened.” But when you're in it, because we've drawn in so far and have the habit of not following—you won't need those identities when you're in the meditation. That's a great question.
{Tom: Would it be a smooth moving from one to another or different stages?}
Lama: I think I'm going to say that's up to one's own personal experience. It could be either way.
Yes, Janet?
[Janet: Doesn’t it depend? If you set your intention for exchanging self and other—you want these things to happen, because you're not omniscient, you're trying to understand little pieces of what's really going on. So you would almost invite that suffering, so you really understand why the people around you, these things are happening. They're good people, they're better than me. Why are these things happening? And then you get little pieces and then you could take some action. I guess little actions, but I mean, I don't think it's necessarily about not wanting the suffering. The suffering will inform you [of] things you don't about why you see what you see. So I don't know.]
Lama: So you're touching on the difference between experiencing something unpleasant, and actually suffering from it. And you're right—we could have this state of lojong mind. It's like, “I'm going to take on all this unpleasantness, I know I can use it to burn it off and create a better world for everybody," in which case with the next migraine you have, you'll be going “yay!” and there won't be suffering from it. So then there would be this debate [of] well, then is that an unpleasant ripening or not? Yes, it's pain, but you're happy about it. So you've gotten rid of suffering, right? So you're right. You're absolutely right.
[Janet: Well, I don't understand why I see some of the things I see, I'm trying to understand it. And then when I experienced not having enough money because they cut all my hours, then I understand a little bit more about why people work so hard. I don't know.]
Lama: That's where renunciation comes from.
[Janet continues: And the migraines are out there too. I haven't had it, but these same people are also experiencing pain because of all the hours they're working. And so I guess that's possible. I don't know. I mean, I really don't understand this world. This world is very strange to me.]
Lama Sarahni: And that's why we're learning Mahamudra, right? It’s “can't we get to that doorway where it's like there's a world we can understand, but can't we get there?” So we're trying.
We're trying. We're trying.
Lama Christie was saying at any given—oh, I don't have time.
I want us to do this second meditation.
We'll come back to this (about what we do with any given moment of our reality—what we do with our growing and understanding of karma and emptiness with any moment of our reality outside of meditation, and how we can use our growing understanding).
Stay tuned next week.
Let's go back to our second meditation for the day, which is the last meditation we did from the previous class.
That'll get us finished, I hope, a little bit early—so we're going to go through the whole sequence again, and then get this juicy end that Lama Christie gave us before.
*************
So again, settle your body in.
Those sits bones pushing down, so that your torso comes up.
Sternum rising, so your neck and head and crown rises.
Get that set in place.
Then scan down the outside, relaxing things, but not sinking.
***30 seconds***
Pulling that lower tummy [in] a tiny bit—it rises things up.
Go up on the inside.
And bring the attention of your focus to the nostril—the sensation we call breath.
And use that object to fine tune your focus.
Fine tune your clarity.
Fine tune the intensity.
***30 seconds***
Watch your mind resist at first, and then draw in.
***1 minute***
Now shift the object of focus to those outer sounds.
Notice first, the automatic identifying—that outer sound, what's making it?
And withdraw from that, to simply the sound—outer sound.
Focus, clarity, intensity.
***45 seconds***
Decide to draw in further—to inner sounds.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
And sink down further into awareness of any thought, or image, that arises.
Notice the habit of following it—and determine to not follow.
To allow.
And let go.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Now, somehow, add to this watcher state of mind, that every arising that you experience, is simply this movement of mind.
It's simply a feeling in that awareness—a knowing in that awareness—that as we are simply experience-ing—everything we experience, is this arising and passing of these movements of mind, meaning ripening, of karmic seeds.
Don't use those word—simply this “knowing."
***15 seconds***
All of this experience is simply ripples of our own consciousness—our own mind.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Stay in this realm of mind—constant rippling appearances of this and that.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Now our focus of attention has been the ripen-ings, the experience-ings, the objects arising—shift your focus of attention to the “aware level” of those objects—being aware.
***30 seconds***
There must be awareness, to be aware of an object.
***15 seconds***
There can only be an experience of an object when we are aware of it.
Can there be a moment of awareness without an object [that] it is aware of?
***1 minute***
We can get a glimpse of how these moments of awareness are also simply rising // falling moments of projections.
The aware-ness is part of every ripple.
There's not actually an awareness being aware, there is simply aware-ing happening.
***15 seconds***
This thing we call “our mind."
Constant rippling, aware-ing happening.
***15 seconds***
This is the appearing nature of mind.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
The appearing nature of our mind—this raw aware-ing happening—as its own emptiness.
It lacks its own nature.
That lack of an aware-er in this aware-ing is our Buddha nature.
Within every aware-ing is our Buddha nature.
Our own mind is our Buddha nature.
Its ripples are our emanations.
Movements, appearances—constant shapeshift.
***15 seconds***
It is creating, producing, offering.
So step into this identity—this enlightened mind—and watch the ripples of your enlightened, holy mind create a world:
Radiant love.
Radiant compassion.
Radiant wisdom.
Be-ing all.
***30 seconds***
Stay one more minute.
***1 minute***
And so because of your rippling emanations of your holy mind, you perceive that there are some beings in your world who don't see themselves as the holy, angel being that you see.
And so you send forth a pretend suffering being, in order to interact with those others who don't understand yet—and that “you” is aware of your own precious, holy angel guide who helped you reach this state.
You still have your gratitude to them, your devotion to them.
And so we think of the goodness that we've just done, and think of it as this beautiful glowing gemstone that we can hold in our hands.
We're happy that we made the effort—and so we share it with that precious holy being.
See them accept it and bless it—and they carry it with them right back into our heart.
See them there, feel them there.
Their love, their compassion, their wisdom—so we don't forget.
It feels so good, we want 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 shine your angel-being light out to that being who needs help.
Shine it out to everyone you love.
Shine it out to every existing being everywhere.
See them all filled with loving kindness.
And may it be so!
*************
Okay, so that meditation that Lama Christie gave us—it jumps to the quick, and the conclusion—it really goes faster than we should go. But it's so great to plant the seeds that we shift from Mahamudra (actual practice) to imagining, and that's fine, as long as in our Mahamudra actual effort, we're going to still go step by step, right?
So thank you Lama Christie for giving us that glimpse.
Okay, so ta-da! Thank you for the opportunity.
We'll pick this up again next Tuesday.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 13
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
Let’s gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
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 let's settle in for our first meditation.
Get your body still—aligned, and still.
You know how.
***30 seconds***
Then bring your attention to your breath at the nostrils—bright, clear, focused.
You know how to do that.
***1 minute***
Then with that focused, bright, fascinated state of mind—draw back from that location at the nostrils, to become the “observer in the backseat”experiencing that breath.
***1 minute***
Now intentionally shift that bright, clear, fascinated observer mind to the sounds outside.
Notice first, that mind identifies.
Let the identity go.
Sink back more subtly—to simply sound.
***45 seconds***
Watch the mind trying to put the story back on.
Don't follow.
Simply note.
***30 seconds***
Recognize the story as giving identity.
And so we see, how that entity comes up out of our own mind— our own thoughts.
Not from the thing itself.
***15 seconds***
Still bright, clear, fascinated observer of sounds arising.
Now also knowing, each of those moments of experience are simply arising mental images—simply movements of our mind.
***30 seconds***
Now allow your bright, clear, fascinated observer to open up further to anything that arises in your experience.
And whatever arises, note the identifying story, and impose your recognition—that these are identities arising from me.
Mere mental images surfacing in my own mind—and let them go.
***1 minute***
Anything that arises to your awareness, recognize it as these mental images—just another movement of mind—and let it go.
Sinking deeper and deeper—meaning to a more and more subtle level of awareness of movement of the mind.
***15 seconds***
Allowing it all to appear and pass.
***15 seconds***
Like watching a stream flow by.
All of it, mere images in a constant shapeshift.
***15 seconds***
We’ll stay three more minutes.
Let yourself enjoy that flow.
If you find yourself following a story—simply catch it, remind yourself, “all of it, ripening images," let it go—fall back a little further—start again.
So three minutes from now.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Check.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Nice, now gather your mind—your self back inward.
More together.
Aware of your body.
Aware of being inside your room.
Aware of being at class.
When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch…
*************
So Mahamudra practice is about getting to the direct experience of the true nature of our own mind—which is it's no self nature, right?
Our own minds’ emptiness.
Is that what we were watching in this meditation?
No.
We're still at the practice of being able to get this sharp, bright alert quality of mind, into the subtleness that allows us to be aware of what's popping out of it.
So we're still at the level of looking at objects, experiencing objects—learning to have this quality of mind as the observer that can allow stuff to bubble out, and not allow the story about what's happening that actually establishes that something's happening.
So if this is a struggle, you're on the right track!
Habitually, as (what we call) a seed ripens into our experience—the seed ripens and boom, we're in the middle of the experience.
But technically what's happening is that there's hints of something and it gets an identity, and then a little more, and another identity, and a little more, and another identity—so the whole thing is evolving over time.
And technically, you don't have the whole experience identified until the experience is done and passed.
So we've got to have this ongoing story in order to finish off, “I drank coffee.”
So like we think, well like what's the point of getting to the space where we can be aware of an experience arising even before it has anything more than the identity…Words fail…
Shift.
Movement.
You find the word that helps you, that when you're working with this, you can just use some word that will trigger your understanding—it's like, “oh, there's the subtle movement” and let it go instead of following it into what becomes, you know, “my elbow hurts.”
Because then what will happen is I have to move my elbow, right?
And then
And then
And then
And then
And then…
So we're trying to get more and more subtly aware of the movement of the mind, but we're doing so by way of “the objects that [we would ordinarily say] it moves to, right?
But of course there is no object there that it moves to, and when we’re doing all of this behind closed eyes, and from the observer-mode thats sinking back further and further and further, we are able to more directly recognize or experience that the identities of things are all happening within this space of my own awareness.
So this is a really useful practice to get more and more directly experiencing how there is nothing we can experience that's outside of our own mind. that's outside of our own karmic seeds ripening. It's outside of our own experience, right?
So if I said, “can you experience something outside of your own experience of it?”
You know, you’d go, “no, that's ridiculous.”
But is there any experience that's outside of our karmic seeds ripening?
No, that's ridiculous.
So is there anything that we can experience that's outside of our karmic seeds ripening?
No, that's ridiculous.
What is “karmic seeds ripening”?
Movement of the mind and what it motivates.
So is there anything we can experience that's outside of movement of our mind?
No, that's ridiculous.
It doesn't seem so ridiculous, right?
[Lama places her hand on her face, indicating she is talking about her physical body] This is not movement of the mind.
This is a solid thing, right? [pulling her face]
It gets back aches, it gets hungry, it gets sleepy—but is this anything other than movement of my mind?
No.
But do you see how it's like…[gesturing that it’s hard to understand or put into words]
So this level of Mahamudra practice—it's not Mahamudra—but we need to go through this step because as we are more and more aware that every one of those subtle shifts in experience is my own mind shape-shifting, my own mental karmic seeds, all karmic seeds, shape shifting.
We automatically, because of our training, also understand that they are nothing other than that.
So by way of becoming more and more aware of dependent origination, which is our experience, that the emptiness of the object of experience has to be there.
We don't learn that in this meditation—we bring that with us into this meditation.
Eventually we'll add that (we won't be able to not add that) awareness of, “with every one of these movements that we're not identifying (except as movement), we are then aware of the empty nature of that appearance, whatever it is—the no-self-nature, nature."
So with every appearance, the appearance is a positive thing, a present. And for something to appear in the way that it does, it has to lack its own nature, so as proved or shown to us by the fact that I'm experiencing it.
It seems so circular, but that means if we have proven to ourselves that any appearing thing must have no self nature, so it can appear to me in the way that I am experiencing it, then everything we experience, we are also experiencing it’s emptiness.
Directly?
No.
But intellectually, logically—enough to bring us closer to being able to have an “appearing something happen on a subtle level in our meditation” and recognize the emptiness underneath it.
Now—so suppose we get to this really comfortable, easy, enjoyable, single-pointed concentration at this level of Mahamudra—any arising appearance and nothing but—appearance and nothing but—appearance and nothing but—that's still focusing on objects of experience.
We have subject, object, interaction between—where all the Mahamudra practices are taking us is to becoming aware of the subject side of every moment of experience, and then doing the same thing with the subject side that we've gotten good at doing with the object side—recognizing experiencing how the subject side shifts with every object that appears (we would usually say appears to it, but) as we're getting more accurate, it would be appearing with it, wouldn't it?
It's like this one, and this one, right? In the video—here's me, here's the object—it's like bing, bing, bing, bing [indicating consecutive ripening]
So that this one, the subject side, is as constantly changing as the object, isn't it, because it's this one, and then this one, and this one, and this one.
And that will help us get to this doorway of opportunity of being able to say, “oh, here's the real me, the one I can't actually ever pin down.”
So every time a new “me” pops up as the appearing thing, it's empty nature, it's no self nature, the fact that it's a ripening of the seeds that just ripened is also present.
So when we finally get to the depth of focused, clear, intense quality of mind, familiar with the ever-changing “ripening without following the story," we'll be able to take that ability and turn it onto the subject side.
But we go step by step—because to start trying to turn it onto the subject side before we can do it with the object side, somehow we won't understand accurately.
So those who've tried—teach us—do it step by step.
Take all the time you need to get good at each step, and then the other step will reveal itself to you.
Once you know it's coming, it'll show up in your own experience.
So this is a meditation about what am I actually experiencing?
And, at some point in meditation (actually probably not until you're coming out) but you'll realize, “wow, all that time I really was unaware of having a body at all.”
Maybe early on in our meditations, what would pop up is “pain in my knee.”
And you work on that, and then over time, it's like, well, I wasn't even aware of my outer room. I wasn't even aware of my body. Stuff was happening all the time, but my mind had gotten subtle enough that there was no body there.
And it's like there is a psychological condition called disassociation, where you disassociate from your body, meaning anything that happens to it, you just go, eh, I can't deal with this—so that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about this deep conviction that we have, that our elbow is our elbow, and here it is, and it's always there, and it has a life of its own—and coming from experiencing that, it's like, no, it's nothing but a mental image.
It's nothing but a ripening out of my seeds.
And I like to use the body sensations in this level of this meditation because I like to go:
Oh, here I am sitting in my meditation posture on my cushion.
And then drill down…
What am I really experiencing?
Oh, like a warm and pressure sensation on my bottom, on my seat.
Well wait, what about that sensation is “my bottom”?
No, it's just sensation in a location.
Well, what about that sensation in a location makes the location right?
I just keep ripping away the identity, and I get to a point where there's no words anymore—I don't know where else to go, and I try to just go…ahhh—and there's nothing other than this process.
And sit there for a little while.
And I can do it from whatever sensation in my body that started it. It'll take us to the same place—so the same with the outer sounds, the same with the inner sounds, the same with the constant flow of thought.
So when we talk about thought, to me the word thought means those mental words that get strung together into an idea, and then I react to the idea and mental thought—but when they use “thought," they even have this term non-conceptual thought.
What in the world does that mean?
And I don't know for sure honestly, but it's like any awareness of something is a thought.
They're using that word as a thought even before we have the actual word.
“Oh, that's a silver car driving by the street, right?”
It's there before the words, and then the words get put on.
But the thought was just the movement of the hints of things—information that then get a label and then a story.
So we're trying to use this meditation time to drill down into more and more subtle levels of awareness, of hints, identity, story—and stop it at the hint level, and then do it even more subtly at the hint level.
See, and it goes beyond words very quickly.
But it won't go beyond experience.
You can keep drilling down—if we can stay in that focused, clear, fascinated, quality of mind that's allowing stuff to come up, but then drilling into this process of not allowing the story to happen, you see?
So it's not turning it into an analytical meditation (although it sounds like that's what I'm describing), it's an experiential time where you've already established [that] everything that appears to me is movement in my mind and nothing but, and now I've got 20 minutes to just sit here and enjoy it, explore it, experience it, and watch how much we struggle to not identify.
Okay?
Alright, last class, I left us on this cliffhanger, if I remember right.
We were talking about how these elaborations, Lama Christie uses the word elaboration by which is meant the identity followed by the story.
So we get some hint, we get some hint/sensation, and then, “ah, pain” // elbow pain // Oh my gosh, tendonitis // Oh my gosh, I overdid it in an class // Oh my gosh, right?
And it's like bing, bing, bing—the story starts.
All of that is elaboration.
And we use the word later, which is why I think she's using it now.
And these meditations are helping us get, she called it get, above the elaboration—the elaboration is our deceptive world, our deceptive reality.
It makes a real reality—that's deceptive, right?
We've done that in ACI classes over and over again—deceptive, not in the sense that it's not really happening, those things, but deceptive in the sense that we think that their identity and why their causes is somehow in them or in something other than the seeds planted by my own behavior.
So I just got myself distracted…
So in this space where we're getting above the elaboration, meaning, at first, we're just watching it happen—breathing, being able to not control—then going more and more subtle into the elaboration happening—we're able to lessen less grasp to the experience of the moment as something that has to be what it seems to be.
And it's one thing to do that on our meditation cushion—it's another to be able to do that off our meditation cushion.
Lama Christie's premise is that the more skillful, the more familiar we get with that ability to not to recognize the elaboration as coming from us, not the thing (the event), that has a resonance in our off cushion time to be better able to not buy into the elaboration, making the story of our off cushion experience as well.
So of course, the more we do the meditation, the more resonance we have off cushion—and so she was saying then that the benefit becomes that we can reach this place where in any given moment of our real life (out of meditation life, I don't mean real) we actually have the capacity to change things in the moment.
She was really bold and she said, we do have the capacity to change things in the moment.
So sutra level, we learn, oh, I am struggling with money, so the way I cope with that is I be more generous—I can be more generous with my time, I can be more generous with my skills, I can be more generous in various ways, and I protect other’s stuff really carefully so that more abundance can come to me...
And we know it's going to take time, maybe even a whole lifetime.
So when we're understanding emptiness, independent origination at a “highest school” level, she says that in any experience there are multiple possible realities at any given moment, of course—but there are three basic realities possible—and depending on which reality we see it as that colors our reaction in the situation.
So suppose we have the yelling boss experience—we didn't do what they're yelling at us for, this time. We really are hurt “that rotten boss, there they go again, yelling at me for no reason.” It's unpleasant, it's painful.
Our ordinary “sutra training me” says, oh, that rotten boss, they're hurting me.
Old world, old worldview me says “oh, they're hurting me. I don't like them. I need to do blah, blah, blah to get it to stop.”
Next level is, “oh, that rotten boss, they must have had a bad day. They're hurting, they're in pain. I still want to be nasty, but I'm not going to. I'm going to try to be nice.”
Third level reality would be if there is one, enlightened being in this world, they got enlightened by way of wisdom and compassion. That made them a fully omniscient being. That means they're aware of this, of me and what I need to give up and what I need to take up, and their love makes them appear to me in any way I need to move me along the path.
Do you see where I'm going with this?
So therefore, this rotten, nasty, yelling boss is a holy angel appearing to me to give me the opportunity to: I get to fill in the dots: burn off, yelling nasty person's seeds, plant new kindness with enough wisdom that colors my ability to at least pretend they're an angel helping me.
It will help me cut off the, “well, they really are a nasty person, but I'm going to pretend they're in pain and be nice.”
Do you see?
So, we're trying to make this shift from “really, they're a mean nasty person, but understanding karma and emptiness I can pretend…”
That's NOT where we're going.
That actually won't help much.
It'll buy me enough time to respond more kindly—but when we understand that they are not “angry yelling boss” there's not even the baseline reality [of] “angry, yelling, boss."
There is “seeds ripening reality and nothing but” that means at any given moment in that yelling, their empty potential allows me to see them a different way—allows me to experience them a different way—allows me to make myself not react in the old way, but rather respond in a way that burns the seeds and plants new.
When we can add this piece of “because their true nature is empty—they really are a Buddhist emanation."
Then how I respond to them plants the seeds of me interacting with a Buddha powerful karmic seed.
In the few experiences where I've actually been able to do that, it's like, “whoa” … hit my face on the floor in front of 'em. Instead of, I didn't do that. Don't blame me for that. It's like, whoa, whatever you say, just show me how to get to enlightenment.
But do you see the point is if our mindset is still “no, really their baseline reality is they're ordinary human, angry with me, all the rest of that is pretend."
And it's helpful to pretend.
But when our baseline reality is profound dependence—empty—my seed's ripening, then we can choose this reality where that being is my holy guide here to take me by the hand and help me stop the samsaric world.
The difference is the basis.
Our Mahamudra practice, even at this level where we're still focusing on the object side of every experience, will help us be able to be more aware as things ordinary (apparently ordinary) things are ripening—that even as they appear ordinary, they are not.
So that our response to them will not be ordinary either.
It may still be “bring them a glass of water," but our seed planting during bringing them the glass of water will be “me offering to a holy being.”
Maybe even without the actual words going on, we can start with the words.
So Luisa asked, does that mean I can choose my reality?
Yes.
And it's like, kind of scary to hear because we could go off—way off cocked with that, right?
“Okay, I'm in my own reality. I can do anything I want because if they're the angel, then so am I for them."
So we need the whole foundation of Sutra path, and the foundation of morality to keep us from taking a teaching like this and going like, “all right, I'm already the angel, I'm king of the world. I can do anything I want."
Maybe I've done that before and that just gives me a deep “ah-ha” for what I'm seeing in my world right now.
I confess to everybody my lifetime when I misunderstood and…get it?
Yes, Luisa?
[Luisa: My question is more Lama, so you say, okay, if the baseline is…]
Lama: Empty…
[No the wrong baseline—if I believe they are coming from themselves, then of course I have to pretend on the first level and that will buy me some time—but it's not the ultimate way. Now, you say the correct meaning of baseline is the ripening of karma, and because of that I can choose my reality—but in a given moment, in the moment the boss is yelling, it’s still pretending—because in that moment I cannot choose, it's not going to change, because the karma might not ripen in that moment for me to perceive that boss differently. You know what I mean? It is still the case that I am pretending, but maybe I'm more aware of that the baseline is different or what do you mean exactly?]
Lama: So start there—because by pretending it will shift our seeds so that pretending can get more real.
Lama Christie's point is that it could very well be that bosses yelling, baseline reality, and we choose not to stay in that reality, and seeds do shift and suddenly—I don't know, they're giving you a raise, right?
Or suddenly you're both seeing heaven.
Do karmic seeds shift moment by moment.?
Yes.
Do they have to shift in the same way as what they were doing the moment before?
No.
And they don't, right?
Because eventually the yelling stops no matter what we do.
Why do we think that it's going to take them finishing out there yelling for it to finish?
Is it going to happen next time that you decide this is the holy angel?
I don't know—maybe!
You have amazing goodness inside each one of you—it could be the next moment.
If it's not—my mind goes, “well, if it's not, it's because I'm so rotten and I'm bad and it's never going to happen to me…”
But really, a better response would be, “okay, not this time, but I planted good seeds."
And then the next time, “okay, not this time either, but I planted good seeds."
Those seeds are going to accumulate fast because it's such a radical departure from, “oh, that rotten boss, I'll try to be kind, I know that's a good seed to “wow, this is purely ripening me on my path to the end of suffering for everybody. I'll do whatever I can. I'll take this on. Holy boss, I'll wash your car if that's what would make you happy. Anything you need.”
As long as it's moral—as long as it doesn't break our vows, that's a whole different class.
What if that angel asks you to break your vows?
What do you do then?
Different story.
Lama Christie's point was this level of Mahamudra will help us cut that belief in our baseline reality being the one that's real, that we need to change.
Do you see?
If we're holding to a baseline reality, we're blocked from making the changes that we so desperately want to make.
Baseline reality as a thing needs to become, I use the word “profound dependence," because it’s not just the baseline reality is emptiness. There has to be appearing things that lack self existence for there to be emptiness. Now there's always appearing things—but to me the profound dependence does both.
The profound is the emptiness.
The dependence is the appearance.
It takes both.
So, just this level of this practice becomes so much more clear, even as we're focusing on objects happening, happening, happening—we're getting seeds from our meditation that we are aware that there is in fact no object that we can experience that's outside of our own karma—outside of our own mind.
When we say karma, think mind.
When we think mind, think karma.
They're not exactly the same, but it is helpful to get to this awareness that there's nothing existing that is outside of our own mind—our own karmic seeds ripening.
Can we experience something that we can't experience?
No.
Could somebody else experience something we can't experience?
Yes—happens all the time, doesn't it?
Okay, so let's take a break.
Tom you had a question, so we'll take a break—Tom's going to ask her question—come back when you're refreshed.
*************
[They literally just start to drill, so I don't know if that affects my sound, and I'm not sure exactly how to ask this, but what I'm getting from it is that we need to have a certain amount of strength to be able to make this decision, that mindful decision of like, okay, this person yelled at me, so I have to make a certain amount of decision that requires strength. When we sit in meditation, you need to have a certain amount of physical strength to sit in it, right? If not, we make adjustments.
And when I think of it, it's like from a physical aspect, when we're going on an adventure outside and we see a hike and we're so excited, I can do it, but then you're like, this is at a different angle, you're like, I can't do it. My body's not going to handle it. So what advice can you give us to build that strength so then we can implement the mental seeds and those decisions in those moments? Because I feel like it's very easy to say when someone is screaming at you, but I think a lot of people find the dharma because they have a mental and emotional healing journey that they go on, but we're missing a lot of that strength.]
The whole process of getting to the point where we manifest teachings like this, means that we've been working with our own mental afflictions and circumstances sufficiently that we are building the strength to be able to try this on for size…and when we meet… So, then the process itself will probably push us into circumstances that show us, “oh, here's where more strength is needed—mental, emotional, physical strength.”
So just hearing as you're asking your question, my mind was going, oh, well then there are people coming behind you on this path that if they stay with the path, they will eventually meet some version of this teaching and you'll be thinking they'll need some strength, they'll need to have worked through mental afflictions before, is there someone I can help build resilience, build tenacity, build… shine that light on somebody else.
Because our tendency is to think, what can I do to build my strength?
And if we're going to be consistent with our worldview, we go find somebody who needs help with strength in any way—it doesn't even have to be in the dharma—and help them get a little stronger.
Then secondly, you look back in life: “where have I already helped people build strength, physical, emotional, mental, and rejoice.”
I'm glad I did that—I'll do more.
And that if one chooses to actually build physical strength through yoga, asana or workout, whatever you do will actually work.
Otherwise not.
So help others be resilient, be strong.
[Tom: Would that, thank you—and then would the term that we're what we're talking about would be outside of a dharma term, would be a little bit of self-confidence in that sense?]
Yeah. Self-confidence, tenacity—stick to it—I can do this no matter what.
Resilience.
[Tom: I think we all had moments when we were like, we had a yelling boss in our life, or a family member, and then we're like, oh yeah, it's coming for me, I totally get it—but then we go into a different situation and it's the same thing, just a different person, and we have the labels associated with that. And then when they yell, it's like, I can't handle it and we crumble down. So I was just, yeah, I think that manifests in different ways. And we have these associations. Yeah. Yeah. So I was just thinking of from that term, I'm like, so I have to build a lot of strength, but it's like you have to build it on such a wide, wide level.]
Yes, okay, so let's come back.
Roxanna asked before these meditations, do you do the hollow body? So yes, before your own personal practice, you do the refuge, the bodhichitta, the beg the llama, the hollow body, the ninefold breath—and then you start, right?
So we're not doing it in the interest of time. Thanks for asking.
[Roxana: Yes. It's just that I was doing it and then I got a little bit anxious because I wasn't finishing and we were going ahead, so I just thought, okay, so I do it before class.]
Do it before class, or at least in your personal practice or do it faster if you're doing it in class. But then don't do it fast in your personal practice. Take your time to do that. Ninefold breath, 18 fold breath if you want to. It's an amazingly effective practice for seemingly being so ordinary.
[Roxana: Thank you, dear Lama.]
Alright, so we'll go back into the Panchen Lama's text, and in his commentary he's going to explain a little bit about the different practices from the different lineages in Tibet who are practicing Mahamudra to get to the same goal—the direct experience of the ultimate nature of the meditator's own mind—and they're doing it in a different way, using a different method to go there.
So he has set it the beginning: this is a Gelugpa presentation of Mahamudra, and then he spends all this time on these non Gelukpa methods—and it's like it's a little confusing, but in the end it's very Gelugpa to teach the other methods, and then say, and we've just learned the Gelugpa method and this is how you do it—because right Gelugpa is about the lists, it's about the definitions, it's about the details—but to understand the other practices, and then see how a Gelugpa would do those differently, maybe, is Gelugpa.
But anyway—we'll get there.
So he first talks about Master Saraha's Mahamudra practice, so Master Saraha was this accomplished Yogi, and Arya Nagarjuna’s root teacher, heart teacher, and his Mahamudra lineage, he says, if you go searching for the mind or anything that appears to it, you will come up empty handed. Neither could there ever be a searcher—and since a non-existent thing couldn't start and couldn't stop (in any of the three times), you could not change its nature into any other thing.
It is, in its essence, the reality of supreme bliss—and that is why all that you see must be the dharma body.
So in a way that is saying, again, what Lama Christie just shared about those three possible realities—our three reality choices—that make how we respond to this situation will plant different seeds according to the reality we are responding to.
So in his second part of this verse about “all that we see must be the dharma body," it taps into that basic nature of things is their empty nature, and then we'll take it further to see that the basic nature of all existing things is the emptiness of our own mind.
And it's like, wait, what?
But we're getting there.
Those come in two verses from Saraha: when we go searching for the mind, or anything that appears to it, we come up empty handed.
Very Gelugpa, isn't it?
Arya Nagarjuna—he learned well from his Master Saraha.
Then when we go looking for the “search-er," we won't find it either, will we?
So, the mind and anything that appears to it, and the one who's checking those all out—none of them are there.
They are all non-existent things, he says.
Eeek! I'm not a non-existent thing!
And the reasoning is, because they can't start, and they can't stop.
We didn't go there in this particular meditation about looking for the moment the hint started, but we're going to do that in the future.
Arya Nagarjuna investigators, right? You're all over this.
Can we pinpoint the moment something starts to be what it is?
No, we've done it again and again with things, objects.
When does this pen start to be a pen?
When it drops off the conveyor belt in the pen factory and goes into the box?
When does it become a pen?
Yes, Janet.
[Janet: So this is an example of my analysis. So we're all together, I told Roxana this, we've done initiations with you, we've struggled with meditation, we failed, we've succeeded—but then if we were there at a past life, what happened before that, that created that past life? Where's that coming from? And then the analysis just stops right there. If I go back and I find that moment that caused that, then you keep going back to the next moment that caused that.]
Exactly. That's an exactly correct analysis. And eventually doing that, our mind will go “???” and there's nothing else.
There's nothing.
There's no specific thing ever—but this process.
So you end up and then it builds back up again, and then here we are, back to where we are it's perfect. Well done, you.
[Roxana: I know, and then 300 years from now you'll say, oh, we've done more initiations together and we've studied Mahamudra, and you're going to be going back and back. But you're already an enlightened being.]
Exactly. We'll be having a picnic, remember?
[Roxana: Remember? That's right.]
Only it won't be remembering, right? My Buddha picnics get a little jumbled, because I can't quite get it right.
Okay, yeah. So, technically when I said when's the first moment of this pen, all of us should have been saying “wrong question, what pen?”
Right? So, same conclusion for what's the first moment of a thought?
Can you find the first moment of a thought?
Okay, have a thought.
Wait a minute, every time I say that to myself, I just go blank.
So think about the color of your sky right now.
That thought—did it have a first moment?
It's like, yeah, but the first moment of the color of the sky would've been just turning your mind skyward.
That's not the thought—the color of the sky—it's just turning the mind toward it.
And then the thought “turn your mind to the color of the sky” doesn't actually get its identity until it's full, until it's complete, and by then you’ve thought “blue” or “gray” or whatever it is—and then that's not actually the thought I asked you to think.
So really you can't pinpoint the start of a thought for exactly the reason Janet said, because there was a start of that as well, and then a start of that, and a start of that—and you can't pinpoint the start of the thought because the thought's not the thought until it's over and complete.
So then you can only say, well, there was a start because it got completed, but by the time it's completed, is it even there?
No, it's gone.
So it's like, well, what are these things [we call] thoughts?
Current moment ripening experiences?
So do we have to string mental words together to come up with a thought?
Technically not.
And then even in that way, you can't find the moment of the start, or the moment of the staying, or the moment of the stop.
Does that mean it hasn't been an experience?
No, it has.
But the reason we can't find “start, stay, stop” is because we're looking for something that has its identity in it that goes from, not being there, to being there—and there's no such thing as a thing with an identity in it that can either be there, or not be there.
So, the thought we're trying to figure out where it starts “doesn’t” // not “isn’t” → “doesn’t." because the thought we're trying to figure out is one where the thought has its own identity. The thought “think the color of the sky” makes you think the color of the sky—but it doesn't—it’s coming out of our own seeds.
And then we can have the thought, “think the color of the sky," but the thought's identity is not in it.
It's so much harder to do this with thoughts than it is with an object [holds up a pen].
And it is harder still to do it with our own self, they say—although I don't find that so hard, hmm.
So Master Saraha’s Mahamudra is: get yourself in the realm of thought and recognize that, allow them to arise and pass, stop the story, catch them at more subtle levels, let them go, recognize them as ripening mental images and nothing but and let them go—it's the same as what we were doing with anything that arose, but now we're identifying thoughts.
But anything that arises is a thought.
So technically we were doing it.
If a thought's movement of the mind, then whether it moves to a sound outside it's a thought.
So it's the more subtle level of the experience.
[Roxana: Dear Lama, but if I stop to recognize it's empty nature then I'm losing track, right? I mean, if I'm supposed to be seeing a river just flow, letting everything pass—but if I stop to recognize the empty nature of the birds singing—then I'm stuck there. I'm stuck in the thought, right?]
Right, right. If we are doing the empty nature of the bird singing, you're too far into the story, right? That's a different meditation—that's not Mahamudra. I'm not saying it's not useful, that's [just] not what we're doing.
We're getting familiar with the “appearing side” of profound dependence.
Just the arising, but with that underlying intellectual understanding that everything that arises must have its emptiness—but without going there yet, right?
There arising and nothing but, arising and nothing but, right?
That was my hours and hours and hours of fun sit during long retreat is just arising and nothing but.
And it got really subtle.
But use your own words—whatever will help you trigger this being in the [arisings, moving hands to indicate the bubbling up].
Okay, so then Master Saraha says, it is, in its essence, the reality of supreme bliss.
What are we talking about?
The mind—we're going searching for the mind—anything that appears to it—and the “search-er."
So now he's talking about the “search-er."
Technically he's talking about all of it, but we're going to focus in on the “search-er," the “me," the subject side.
It is, in its essence, the reality of supreme bliss—and that is why all that you see must be the dharma body.
So he's saying, the mind, and the subject side, and the object side—it's reality is this thing called “supreme bliss," and we don't hear that until we get to Diamond Way, this thing called bliss, “supreme bliss."
And it took me a really, really long time to make this connection—I still don't feel like I have it quite, but they say that emptiness is the no self nature of any given existing thing, and emptiness is bliss.
And it's like, how can emptiness be bliss?
Bliss is a positive thing. Emptiness is an absence of self nature of something.
And they would just say “the emptiness of this, and emptiness is bliss, and so that is bliss.
That is bliss.
They don't say “gives you bliss," they say is bliss.
So I don't know, we could add a fourth reality to our angry yelling boss:
They're empty.
I'm empty.
The yelling is empty.
My upset is empty.
Emptiness is supreme bliss.
This is all bliss.
Yell at me all you want.
Would it even be yelling anymore?
Even as the person next door is hearing the yelling?
Would it be yelling for us?
Whoa. I don't know.
I think we might get blamed for being high on something.
But we would be, we'd be high on emptiness.
You know, for me, emptiness is love—I relate to that more than bliss,
But then it would end up the same place—if the yelling boss is empty, I'm empty, it's all love.
It would still be a totally different experience in the moment if that was our reaction to it.
So Lama Christie said, at this point—to us, to our group—that connection between bliss and emptiness, you gotta work it out.
So it really is one of those things that the explanation, the lack of self existence is the all potential of anything to be anything, and to experience emptiness directly is the highest virtue, that it's a result of great virtue, it must be pleasurable, even though at the moment you don't know it.
All kinds of reasonings that we can use to say emptiness is bliss, but it's still hard to catch that connection—anyway, so keep working on it I'm not going to say much more.
I mentioned before how we believe there's this base reality that is our reality that we think is there—that is what we need to transform.
And as we are learning about dependent origination and emptiness, for any appearance to happen, it has to be seed ripening from the one who's experiencing that appearance, and so it appears unique to them, and so whatever that experience is—if there are other people involved in it—then their experience is unique to them, and we've got all these different unique experiences happening, and altogether we call it “me and my world, me and my life” (each one of us calls it that) and those appearances, because different beings can experience the apparently same appearance in a different way, tells us that that object does not have its identity in it the way we believe that it does, as we experience it.
Why am I going there?
So that when we understand that we all are experiencing this pen—each of us has our own unique experience of it, by experiencing the pen—as the appearing thing, we know it's emptiness.
We can't see it directly, but we know it's there.
Similar to how when we studied empty space—we learned that what's meant by empty space is the place a material thing is in, so that anywhere there is a material thing, you know it has a space it's in, but you can't see the space directly.
That's so close to being able to then say, “I see this dependent origination pen // coming from my seeds pen, and I know then that it has to lack its own true nature—so that I can see it the way that I do.
So a presence of something // an appearance of something, is said to be supported by its absence—by its absence of self nature.
A positive thing rests on a negative thing (is the words they use)---that throws me because positive // negative seems good // bad—and it's not that.
It's [that] a presence requires an absence to be the presence that it is established as being to the one who's experiencing it.
Got it?
What establishes an existing thing?
To be perceived by a valid perception—so for this pen to exist, somebody has to be aware of it.
Whoever's aware of it—what they are aware of is unique to them—which reveals the fact that the object has no “pen-ness” in it.
It has no cylinder in it.
It has no left and right side in it.
Right?
Keep going down, because we're so sure it has something in it—these are the different levels of schools to perceive anything reveals its emptiness.
It has to be supported by its emptiness.
It's emptiness has to be there in the same way that the space this pen is in has to be here.
Okay? All right.
So, we don't believe that, right?
You followed my explanation. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
But as soon as we experience the yelling boss, right?
They are in them, from them.
Not my fault, not empty, right?
I am reacting badly to them.
I am here, in me, and right?
We don't have this awareness [pulls out two pens: green and blue] “Appearance—empty [holds up green pen]
“Appearance—empty [holds up blue pen]
[points at head] Thought…
Appearance—empty.
So, we're wanting to use our cushion time to get so familiar with that “appearance—empty, appearance—empty” that we can do it off cushion, because when we do our response, we will respond instead of react—and that will grow our goodness, our virtue, so that when we get back on our cushion, the goodness result will help our Mahamudra meditation get better.
And as we get more and more familiar with “appearance is empty, appearance is empty," it will be so familiar that when we get to the place of saying, “my own appearance is empty," we won't go [makes head exploding gesture].
We’ll go—cool.
Because we're so familiar with everything else, more and more and more subtle “everything else” in our meditation cushion, right?
Right down to the instances of (we would call it) time—but it's not, right?
Okay, how are we doing?
Ooh, I got time.
So bliss—the emptiness part of any appearing thing is bliss.
Whatever that means.
And then Master Saraha says, and so that means everything we experience is the Dharmakaya.
If everything we experience has its empty nature, then that makes it the Dharmakaya—it's like, wait a minute, there are multiple steps inside there that we've just skipped—that isn't the logical conclusion, is it?
If everything's empty, therefore it's all the dharma.
And whose Dharmakaya are we talking about here?
So when we were talking about the three realities, and we say, oh [there’s] no base reality—so emptiness of the three spheres happening here—in that emptiness, this could very well be “angel appearing to me."
I lost my train of thought…
Sorry, senior moment—I really did lose it.
Okay, we won't say that.
[Roxana: I'll help you. You were explaining who's Dharmakaya are we experiencing?]
Okay, thank you!
Whose Dharmakaya are we experiencing?
We're saying [that] that angel yelling at me is Buddha's manifestation—so then if we're seeing their emptiness (of Buddha’s manifestation) we're seeing, we're pretending to see, or be aware of Buddha’s Dharmakaya—which that'd be a great seed to plant in our mind, to be aware of anybody's Dharmakaya.
But Saraha is saying, in Mahamudra—reaching the direct experience of the emptiness of our own mind—whose Dharmakaya are we going to be experiencing?
Our own!
And it's like what?!?!? I can't have a Dharmakaya, I'm not Buddha!
But isn't that the promise?
The emptiness of our own mind now is identical to the emptiness of our own mind, when our own mind's goodness forces us to perceive our own mind as exquisite—ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom.
Does our Dharmakaya exists right now?
It's a great debate.
So, the emptiness of my mind now changes into Dharmakaya later.
No, the emptiness doesn't change—emptiness is identical.
Is it one in the same emptiness?
Like, if I could put the emptiness of my mind in a jar—and then when I become Buddha, I need to have that jar with me?
No, it's not like that.
But do you see?
So, the emptiness of our own mind is our Dharmakaya.
Do we experience our own mind as a Buddha's mind?
Not yet.
Could we?
Sure!
In an instant.
Why?
Because our mind lacks any self nature.
How we perceive it is driven by our karmic seeds ripening.
Clear out the obstacles, and you’ve got it—because your subject side is your subject side, and it will never be any other subject side (which is why a Buddha can't take our karma. A Buddha can only teach us because our karma is our karma).
We are the subject side.
Somehow we think that there's a “me” that has a subject side—and that's mistaken.
We are the subject side—and it takes the subject side to make an imprint (a karmic imprint).
So there's always a subject side in every imprint, and there's always a subject side in every ripening—and your subject side can never be “other," except to yourself.
Like, when we go looking for our subject side…here's like the punchline to Mahamudra:
When we go looking for our subject side,
It will become the object we are looking at—
And how can a subject be an object at the same time?
It can't unless it's empty—so voila, that's how you get there.
But don't skip grades.
It'll happen—spontaneously (in which case you didn't skip grades).
So, Master Saraha, he's just given this bombshell and he doesn't give any more explanation, apparently. That was his m.o. [modus operandi] he’d just blurt out this verse to somebody, and it was up to them to figure out what it meant. Somebody would hear one and they'd chew on it for lifetimes.
Arya Nagarjuna, I guess was close enough and tenacious enough that he would say to Saraha, “what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that?”
And he got taught beautifully.
So Lama Christie said, that seems very Gelugpa, that version Saraha, and she said, but probably the Galugpas would add a list of what it meant, and how to do it, and these fine tuned instructions—whereas Saraha (non-Gelugpa) he just says, here, figure it out.
And there's a benefit to that as well.
Let's go to the next lineage that Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen talks about.
Lama Christie didn't identify this one, but it's the one that we used for the meditation where we sunk back into anything that's arising, we used it to get more and more subtle in the arising, and to recognize it as an appearance and nothing but—and let it go.
So this second school, it's Mahamudra practice, is to get in this space of just “the flow," and recognize then in that process, how there's really no actual distinction between physical things and mental things.
In the Abidharma explanation of all existing things—do you remember that chart? It's burned in my mind that:
There's changing things and unchanging things.
And in changing things, there's physical things and mental things.
And in each of those two, there's these different categories of things.
And we relate to that, right?
There's my physical world and there's my mental emotional world,
and that drives how I respond to my physical world.
But they seem very separate—we have the five heaps.
One of them is the physical world—all the rest is our mental emotional world.
And then further we think, well, there's my body
And then there's the physical world outside my body.
And those are different.
And so in this space where you're sinking down into the flow,
Aware of everything as your own mental images ripening.
A ripening of a physical thing,
A ripening of an emotion,
A ripening of an intellectual thought.
They are all just ripening.
They're all just mental images.
They're all the same thing.
We got there—at least temporarily—in the space of the meditation as things arose, and we said, “no mental image, nothing," but maybe we didn't connect the dots that that's what was happening—but it will build to where we have this different relationship with me and my world. When we come out of our meditation as well, there'll be this carryover.
It's like “I'm back in my room of solid things” and there's still this awareness of “yes," and it's all mental image driven.
We could see how if we actually related with our apparently outer world as these mental images, we would be able to stick our hand through a wall, we would be able to manifest ourselves in Malaysia when we needed to—because this, if it's a world of mental images there doesn't have to be the restraints and the limitation.
If we're still in the space of seeds ripening apparently randomly out of our control, we can't do that.
But as we're working on interacting with our world by choosing which reality we're going to interact with, we are growing the capacity to reach into our karmic seeds and somehow influence the one that's needed to come out.
I can't do that yet.
Sumati can kind of do it.
Geshe Michael does it.
And Lama Christie told us this story:
While they were still in New York City and they were going somewhere, they were walking somewhere and she had some personal time with him and they were having this discussion about the emptiness of karma.
(So karma has to be empty also, right?)
And he was getting to the conclusion and he said, look, it would be like you could just reach into your reality and tweak it to make stuff happen. Like manifest an orange in your hand. People can do that, right? And Lama Christie said, just as he was saying that they turned the corner and there on the sidewalk was a piece of his favorite chewing gum all wrapped up like it was waiting for him.
And she picked it up—they both started to laugh, he unwrapped it. He shared it with her, and it was just like, oh…
I heard that story too early to really understand the ramification of it.
But you who've been around Geshe Michael in these latter days—he's doing this kind of stuff, and if you just pay attention, you'll see it happening—which tells us it's possible.
We're told don't do miracles even if you can, because it'll just make people want more miracles and more and you'll never be able to satisfy them.
But when it's useful, you do.
All right, so that second method of Mahamudra is getting to this level where it becomes our reality that apparent outer reality and apparent inner reality are all “seed ripening driven reality."
It doesn't mean we stop using cars to go to grocery stores—we just understand so clearly what's happening as we interact, as this apparent outer thing interacts within another apparent outer thing.
As we are being aware of the appearances, we are subtly aware of the emptiness that's necessary for them to be the appearance that they are, and until that becomes automatic, we add it in some way to the experience in that particular meditation practice.
In the scripture, the English translation is always just a mental image or merely a mental image—and it always threw me a little bit what they meant by just a mental image because it seemed to, for me, the word “just” made something smaller, or less important somehow.
But then I read (I think in Utpala’s text the Emptiness Meditations book) that they define just meaning “only," as in it couldn't be anything other than—and once I understood that that's what they mean by just a mental image (it isn't possible to be anything other than a mental image) now I can say “just a mental image” and understand better.
So why am I talking about that?
When we say just a mental image, the implication, the ma yin gak, is “and so it's empty."
For something to be a mental image, it has to lack its own nature.
Do we have that dot connected yet?
It took me a long, long time actually.
To be a mental image means it's my mental image.
I can't be aware of your mental images.
I can only be aware of my mental images.
By mental image, what's meant is the picture—the identity of the thing.
For some people, mental images are visual. You get a picture in your mind.
Think pen.
Something comes up.
For others, it's not visual.
It's—I don't know what to say—Dinara, what is it?
It's an idea, right?
An idea that gives something reality—but it's not a mental picture—but it's still a reality that's tangible somehow, just in a different way.
So “mental image” is synonymous with “a seed ripening”
It also means the object's identity—
And as soon as it has an identity, it has quality
And as soon as it has identity and qualities, it has a story.
And if it were true that this object's identity, qualities, and story were in it (the way we believe) what would be the ramification of how anyone would experience it?
If it's identity, quality and story is in it from it, everybody has to experience it the same way.
Logic.
Logically true.
Does everyone experience it the same way?
No.
Do you experience it the same way as anybody else ever?
No.
Do you experience it?
Yes.
So it's identity and qualities and story must be coming from you—that's what we mean by mental image.
Your idea of this thing—which includes where it's located, where you think it came from, what you think it does—all of that's included in the story from its qualities and identities coming from you // from me // unique to each one of us—and that reveals that its identity, characteristics, and story cannot be inside it.
So we just went full circle and back.
So that means this pen is really a part of your own mind.
Right?
Are your experiences a part of your mind, or are they outside your mind?
Experientially, they're outside.
But when we really investigate—if an experience is something outside my mind and suddenly I experience it, well then my mind has to touch a physical object, doesn't it?
That would be an experience.
Can we experience anything that we can't experience?
No. That's ridiculous.
Can we experience anything not unique to ourselves?
No.
Why do we experience anything in the way that we do?
It's a result of a cause.
A cause has to be there already, right?
So the cause for a resultant mental image has to be a mental image that got put in sometime before.
We have our subject side watching itself interact—what it experiences is the result.
What it perceives itself doing, plants the seed that becomes the cause of a result in the future.
The common denominator is our subject side—never the same, two moments in a row, but never not existent, always there.
So subject side is throwing out these mental images—me, my body, the tree—me, my body, the tree “outer thing”---me, my body, the outer thing is all the seed ripening.
The outer thing is still a mental image of “the thing is an outer thing."
Do you see the subtlety that we're getting to?
No, nothing exists outside of our own minds ripening.
Do things exist outside of our physical body?
Yes, of course—but they don't exist outside of you, do they?
They're all mental images.
Mental images of emotions.
Mental images of visions.
Mental images of sounds.
Mental images of solid things.
Mental images of car accidents.
And they are all real.
So don't take this and go, oh, everything's a mental image, so nothing's real—[this is where you fall off a] cliff.
Everything is mental images, so anything is possible.
Reach into that emptiness—tweak it.
Make it Buddha paradise for everybody.
Why not?
I'll do it tomorrow if you'll do it tomorrow!
Yes, Janet?
[Janet: Last week in the Nagarjuna investigators, we also talked about the lack of causes and conditions with the surfer in Indonesia. So it's not just causes that causes, it's the lack of causes too. He did nothing to stop the baby being born, and therefore he contributed to it.]
Right. Which is saying that the surfer in Indonesia and the baby being born in Sweden are all part of my ripening.
And so it's like, in any given seed ripening—that includes all the things that didn't ripen that would've prevented that from ripening.
So you're right.
[Janet: So there are a million things that could have paused us from being here, technical issues, etc.]
Exactly. They’re all causes for you being here because they didn't block you from being here—and that's all part of your mental image.
So in a sense, it's like rejoice in all the ways you haven't blocked people doing the things that they want to do, that all of things that could have blocked us from being here didn't happen. Yay. So that they will not block us in the future too. Okay?
So I yapped through the time for our second meditation–so sorry.
And remember that person that we wanted to be able to help?
We learned a lot that now is swimming around inside here that we will use sooner or later to help them stop their suffering forever—and that's an extraordinary goodness, so please be really happy with yourself, and think of this goodness, like a beautiful glowing gemstone that we can hold in our hands.
Recall your own precious holy guide—see how over-the-moon happy they are with you for practicing Mahamudra.
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—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, please share this goodness, this wisdom with that other.
Share it with everyone you love.
Share it with every existing being everywhere.
See them all filled with the wisdom of loving and kindness.
And may it be so.
Okay. Thank you so much for the opportunity, it makes me work hard.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 14
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
For the recording, welcome back—we are Mahamudra class, May 20th, 2025.
Before we get started, I'd like to ask you that for next week's class, would you please ask someone to put a small object in an opaque bag, so you don't know what it is?
It should be an object that's safe to hold in your hand and, you know, something you can hold and then investigate—and don't try to guess what it is, don't peek, right?
But have it available for next week.
I think we've all done this exercise, but after having been Mahamudrists for a while, I suspect the exercise is going to feel a little bit different, right?
So an object in a bag for next week.
*************
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, set your body in its meditation posture.
***45 seconds***
Have that body set.
Bring your focus of attention to the sensations we call breath—at the tip of the nose.
Simply watching the air as it flows out and flows in.
***15 seconds***
Adjusting your focus.
Adjusting your clarity.
Turning on the intensity—the fascination.
***30 seconds***
Fascinated watcher of sensations at that location that we call “breathing."
***2 minutes***
Now open up that awareness to include outer sounds.
Focus, clarity, fascination.
Noticing the story.
Watching and letting go.
***30 seconds***
Turn from outer sounds to inner sounds.
***15 seconds***
Focus, clarity, intensity.
***1 minute***
Now sink in deeper to awareness of any sensation arising.
Simply watching, simply aware.
***30 seconds***
Notice the story that wants to happen—let it go too.
***30 seconds***
You are the fascinated observer.
***30 seconds***
Notice how quickly your observer turns into an identifier, and you have identities and stories about what you are observing—takes me longer to say it, than it does for you to do it.
Notice, and let that go.
***1 minute***
Sink deeper, into the more subtle arisings.
Allow those images, those concepts, those sensations to arise—and pass—through this landscape of pure mind, pure awareness.
***30 seconds***
Be fascinated.
***45 seconds***
Any experience—allow it to arise, allow it to pass.
***15 seconds***
There's nothing but fleeting images, shape-shifting like a dream.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
It might be that as you stop applying a story—an identity—to those arisings, that they slow down in their appearance.
If you are finding a pause between one “appearing” that you've let go and it's passed, before another arises—focus on the pause.
Enjoy the pause.
***1 minute***
Something arising, or nothing arising—it is all this constant shape-shifting of awareness.
Let's stay two more minutes.
***15 seconds***
Aware-er, aware-ing, and nothing else but.
***1 minute 45 seconds***
Nice, now bring yourself back up.
Aware of your body there.
Aware of outer sounds.
Aware of “in your room”
And when you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.
*************
I hope that's getting to be more fun!
We are still practicing being in the deceptive nature of our mind.
We're not getting to its emptiness yet—but the appearing, appearing, appearing, appearing—to go from the objects that are appearing to it, to the it appearing as those objects appearing to it.
And we're not doing it intellectually.
We're trying to do it experientially—being aware of that constant “what's popping up into awareness."
Being aware of the habit of—sound, bird, grapefruit tree, dove.
It's like this fast [snaps fingers], and my experience is, “oh, dove in the grapefruit tree," but it's happened, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing.
So we're trying in our meditative focus to be more earlier aware…
Instead of instantly aware of “dove in the grapefruit tree."
To be aware of, “ooh." that first thing that I would call the sound that triggered that—but even before calling it “sound."
Is there an experience of sound before we even know it as sound?
Yes, there is.
And so this method of just getting more and more subtle—noticing the identity getting put on, and not following it into the story means we'll be able to get that, catch that identity getting put on sooner, more and more subtly—and apparently when these things pop up and we're supposed to put on a story to keep us focused on it, and we don't put on the story, the mind itself goes, “okay, forget that one, right, here's another, okay, forget that one," and eventually they say it stops, it stops for a while.
Does it stop awaring?
No, of course not—because now there's the pause to be aware of (and we're doing the same thing) “oh, pause," whoops…
Versus—being as keenly observant of what we're calling “pause” as we were of what we're calling “whatever thought, word, experience popped up”—to be as aware of the pause as we are of anything that's not a pause, and not call it anything different.
Simple, raw experience is what we're trying to get to—and it's frustrating because by the time you've identified that there's an experience there to observe, we've already gone too far.
So technically this is an exercise in frustration, because we can never actually get to the place where we are just experiencing raw sensation because even that's applying an identity to an experienc—and that's what's going to finally push us into the, “oh, oh, that's how it all works," and that will allow us to deep dive into the empty nature of our mind, meaning nothing has ever been any other way than by these identities rising out of our own mind and passing.
So that's where Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen goes next is he's explaining to us the different methods of Mahamudra practice that practitioners from different lineages—Tibetan lineages—have used, and he explores them and helps us learn about them, and he says in the end they are (all of them) supposed to take us to cutting the mind from its root—meaning they're all meant to help us come to experience directly that ignorance that's the cause of all suffering, and when we can recognize that (really experience that, too, as nothing but arising) we can finally cut it from our mind.
So he's taught us about a couple of different methods so far, we're on the third one today.
So he's not identifying who taught what practice, which is probably skillful, because in the end he's going to say, “you know, in my experience these don't actually work," so he's not going to point out who's teaching them.
His opinion is they don't go far enough—but it's not that they're not useful, and for any given person, any one of them can be the one that will take them into the deep dive of the true nature of their own mind.
So they're not to be disrespected.
So he gives us a verse in his commentary, he says:
Don't backtrack with thoughts of the past, and
Don't anticipate with thoughts of the future, rather
Let the mind bask in the luminosity of its natural,
Uncontrived state of being in the present moment—
Then you will see directly the naked face of the mind.
When you leave the mind untouched in its natural condition, Realizations surface, if this state can be sustained—
Flowing like a river—everything will surface.
Oh yogis, always hold yourselves within a deep meditation;
Rid yourselves of every hint of holding on to things.
So he has these two parts:
Catch yourself when you're in the past—thinking about the past.
Catch yourself when you're thinking about the future.
Let it all go.
Be in the present moment, right?
Be here now.
Geshe Michael teases about that—and if you've ever tried to be in the present moment, it became really clear to me really fast, is you can't ever get there.
So it was just so frustrating—I know in most of our training years, Geshe-la would tease about be here now, and then in one of our break times in Great Retreat, he would come and he would give some teachings, and he gave this teaching about Be Here Now, you should be doing the “be in the present moment” practice—and it's like “after all these years, if you say and don't bother with that, he's telling us in Great Retreat be here now, and it's like okay…”
So the next month I went in and worked on being here now, and I found it so frustrating—but in a sense, it was like, if it had not been frustrating—if it had been fascinating, right? It would have been a doorway for me.
I see now [what] I couldn't see then.
So it is worth the exploration to try to find the present moment, in order to reach that place where it's the effort to find it that's helping us reach the “aha” about the emptiness of the present moment:
From a Mahamudra point of view, it's just another doorway to reach the emptiness of our own mind—because could we reach a present moment independent of our awareness of the present moment?
Whether there is one or not, we have to be there, aware of being there, right?
Like it can't happen independent of our awareness of it—and it seems so ridiculous for me to bother saying that, but deep down, we believe things can happen to us that are not our karma ripening.
I mean I admit that.
And when I say “my karma ripening," what I mean is “movement of the mind, and what it motivates."
So to say “to try to experience the present moment," just to try, means my awareness has to be there—means my seeds have to ripen being in the present moment—and there's no present moment I can experience other than that—and that's the emptiness of the present moment.
You see?
So we're trying to get there without the words, the mental words—we're trying to get into that by way of experience, and then put the mental words on after you come out of it, “oh, that's what that was," and it's so hard not to put the mental words on when we're in it because we think it's the mental words that identifies it, right?
It actually is the mental words that identifies things, right?
Nothing has an identity until the seed ripens its identity, right?
At whatever level.
Yes, Janet?
[Janet: Would this be in the stages of meditation, the object, the focus, and intensity—this is the focus, you want to up the focus in the present moment?]
Right, our focus is on what we're calling the present moment.
Our clarity is how bright we are in our focus,
And our intensity is how fascinated we are,
And the experience is what we are focused, clear, and intense upon.
So the level of meditation is determined by the extent to which we are staying focused on that object (without thinking about something else once we get to level four), and with only needing a modicum of adjustment of dullness and agitation (once we get to level seven), and at level nine, fully engaged in that experience—with no need to adjust our focus, clarity, and intensity—does that answer?
[Janet: I mean, because my issue is focus—I haven't even gotten to the dullness and subtle agitation, and in Tai Chi, like if we're doing training, we know it's training, it's not a real fight—but if someone were actually trying to kill you and punch you, you would automatically be super focused—but to just train and hold that focus, it takes a lot of mental energy, and then I lose the energy and it drops—and it's even worse if I do caffeine, and I don't do the caffeine that day, I struggle to find that focus all day, and so there's a lot of things that contribute to my lack of focus, but there's a thing that would contribute to it, like that animal part of your mind, if you were threatened, that would just jump up—but you're saying to do this in meditation, not because someone's trying to kill you, but to try to have the focus like that, without the adrenaline and without the hormones or whatever that are going on—without drugs—to try to have this being aware of subtle things.]
Right, and that's where all of our efforts in our renunciation, and our study, and our growing our compassion for others' suffering is designed to help us plant the seeds to see how important our focus on our meditation cushion actually is—how our focus on our meditation cushion actually is the place where we can grow our impact on our outer world—and I agree with you, it's hard to keep that focus on our cushion, and so we want to start with this as powerful a motivation as we can for needing to focus my mind on my own mind and what's popping up in it.
So, when we're having trouble (like I'm talking to myself here too) when I'm having trouble staying focused on my object—I should catch it, stop, go back, reconfirm why I'm even trying.
Because there's somebody, right, one of my extended families, I don't even know them, but their dad just died, and it's like I feel what that feels like for them—and it cranked up the juice on my practice.
So, the focus, the ability to focus, because we decide we're going to focus, is the foundation of this training—it is necessary—and that's based on motivation.
We can focus when it's something we're interested in.
So, right, we work with that.
Then, karmically, help other people focus—where do I interrupt people?
Yeah, I do, I interrupt, David.
I interrupt myself, right
Yeah, good.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Focus on our own mind—it really shouldn't be so hard because guess what?
It's there all the time.
That's the trick with Mahamudra—-if what's arising in your mind is your object of focus, you can never lose it (because to be aware of losing it is still focusing on your own mind).
So, technically, to just do a lousy Mahamudra meditation—you're already at level four.
So Ta-da!
Yes, Roxana?
[Roxana: Well, first of all, Dear Lama, thank you—I think, I feel like you're in my mind, you exactly know what to say in the precise, perfect moment. I refer with the pauses and all of that—I do have long pauses, and I was getting a little bit of conflict, to be honest, thinking, “oh, it's too long and nothing appears." But thank you for guiding me on that way. And I would like to know if you may please assist me what document you're reading right now so I can also follow on that one because I have many documents that you sent.]
It's in both the root text and the commentary
Course 13, class two, I think.
[Roxana: Thank you, Dear Lama.]
Seven, eight, nine. Okay.
So, what does it mean to be in the past?
You know, we know, logically, there's no such thing as the past:
The past is gone.
It doesn't exist.
You can't be in the past.
But think of when you were five years old—some event when you were five years old.
So, thinking [about], having those memories, enjoying those memories, or not, either way—we're in the past in that moment, aren't we?
No, I'm right here.
But the thoughts that I'm thinking, I think, are of things that actually happened.
And it's like, well, how could I have a memory of them if they didn't happen?
Yes, but your memory of them is a current ripening, isn't it?
Do we really have any right now verification that that event really happened that way?
No, actually.
Does that mean it didn't happen at all?
No.
Does that mean the impact it had on our lives shouldn't have had that impact?
No.
But does that mean the impact it had on our life needs to continue to have that same impact?
No.
So, but when we're thinking about what happened yesterday—we settled down into meditation, and you know, our minds doing this thing, and finally it zooms in—we have this habit to go, oh, I didn't sleep so well.
That's in the past.
Oh, yesterday, they said that thing to me, and still in the past.
Or we go, okay, later on today, I've got that program at nine, and then this, and I need to do that, right?
We're in the future.
So, our habit is that we are very likely either in the past or in the future, in every moment, with everything we're doing.
You know, washing the dishes, thinking about what I'm going to do next. Next, I'll vacuum, and then after that, right? And then after that—we're so rarely just here doing this—because we think it's a waste of time.
I can get the dishes done, and I can think of six other things at the same time, and look how efficient I am.
And it's not efficient, actually.
To wash the dishes while I'm washing the dishes is more efficient.
It will go faster. They will get done, you know…
And then you can go to the next thing.
Yeah, but then I'll have to pause and wait and think, what's next? Whereas I can have it already planned out.
And it is human nature, and it's a habit we have that influences our ability to focus in meditation—because our mind says we should be doing the same thing.
Even as I'm meditating, right? I should be… [whatever my mind is telling me to do].
My own mind's habit is—I get in deep to something, and then it's like, “how am I going to explain this to somebody else?” And it's like, “shut up, just shut up!” and I've already distracted myself from the distraction, do you see?
Because it's gotta tell me about it—because it thinks that's the only way to identify what I just experienced, is to give it some kind of word label.
For many people, it's not so much in words, it's in images, pictures, right?
The movie kicks in, and then we're off on the movie that has made the experience be what it is.
It's not bad, it's just samsaric.
Right? It's mistaken.
And so, the task in our practice isn't to beat ourselves up every time we find, “oh, you know, I'm in the past, I'm in the future," it's not to beat ourselves up, it's to just recognize, “oh…," and let that go too.
We are wanting, in Mahamudra practice, to be in the present moment—in the sense of being more and more subtly aware of what's coming up—and then, when something bubbles up, in order for us to identify what it is, by the time we identify it, the bubble up has changed.
It's gone, right?
There's a bubble up, and then there's the identity.
If we're trying to identify the bubble up, we don't identify it until it's actually happened already, right?
We can't.
So, by the time an identity gets put on, we're already in the past—so, even to say experience—to say, “I have experienced," we're in the past.
To be in the present moment would be, being able to experience—without any kind of conceptuality about the experience, right?
Conceptuality means you take information and you give it a label—whether it's dove in the grapefruit tree, to bird sound outside, to, you know, to, it gets beyond explanation but there's still a ripening and an identity happening.
We're trying to reach that place where there can be ripenings free of identities, and our mind should go, “that's impossible," right?
That's the emptiness of the process—that's hopefully where we're going to get pushed into, it's like, “wow, there's nothing but this process happening."
But we can't push ourselves there.
We set up the circumstance and wait, right?
Clear, focused, clear, fascinated…
And as that pause actually happens—
When it does—instead of freaking out,
We rest and allow the pause in the same way
That we rested and allowed the back pain,
Rested and allowed the traffic noise,
Rested and allowed…right? Got more and more
Subtle into the awareness of the ripenings
As ripenings and nothing else.
So, Lama Christie left us for a week exploring past, future, present moment—to hopefully show us how rare it is that we are actually in the present moment—and yet—how it is true that we are never anywhere else but the present moment.
Because as we are thinking about the past, we are in the present moment thinking about the past.
We are in the present moment thinking about the future.
And so, it's like, well, right, yeah—we want to get to that…what is it really?
And let ourselves [sit] with the “no answer “to that.
I saw a chat question flash by.
[Tom: Yeah, it was my question—first, you said a bird, and a bird showed up in my window at the same time, and that was a little scary. I thought it's like hitting my window. I'm a little confused, or maybe I understand, and I'm not sure how to apply it. But even in our meditation, we're going step by step, like in the preliminary, you have to go to the next thing. So, even in your meditation, you're not actually present fully, because you have to plant the next step, or knowing that there is a next step coming?]
Not technically.
[Tom: So, when are we present?]
Always and never.
[Tom: Okay? [confused]]
Let's take a break.
*************
So, if we could be fully in the present moment—do you think there would be any stories going on?
No, there couldn't be, could there?
Would there be nothing at all going on?
No, that's not possible either.
Someone in our class said, well, wouldn't actually being in the present moment be equivalent to experiencing emptiness directly?
And Lama Christie didn't say yes or no, she said, “ah, you know, that's something to think about."
To me, it would be experiencing things directly, right? We hear that a Buddha's omniscience means that they're experiencing the empty nature of all existing things and the appearing nature of all existing things simultaneously—directly.
An omniscient mind has no conceptions.
Conceptions means you take this information, and this information, and you conceptualize it into a pen—to experience directly means there's no needing to take this and this, to come up with that.
So, being in the present moment means no need to take this and this and come up with that—you are just experiencing “no way to explain," right?
No way to say.
But experiencing.
The ING becomes the important piece in my personal experience.
And it's the happen-ing, it's the experience-ing ING, it's the we aware-ing that is the experience we're wanting to experience—not impose—but reach that sense.
But by the time I've put that label on it, it's not that for me anymore.
[Roxana: So because we're studying the three spheres, right? And we relate to everything by the three spheres—it's like we're training our minds: subject, object, interaction between—so we can understand the imprints that we're making, right? That's the purpose of it. So, if I want to shift my mind to an ING, to just being ING ING ING, it would be like the same analogy of the river?
Yes.
Yes.
The flow versus the thing flow-ing.
[Roxana: Thank you.]
[Joana: I have a question too Lama Sarahni—when I do this meditation, somehow the watcher becomes a distraction, because when there's this ING happening, then I try to fix one part, but this also needs to be an ING, but I try to hold it [in a] fixed [way], and then this becomes a distraction for me to have something that is static and watching things arising, coming, going—is it okay to leave that out or?
Yes.
Yes.
When we're using that idea of a watcher, it's to get us to the place where we stop following the story, right?
A watcher doesn't follow—a watcher watches and lets it all pass by.
Once “being the watcher” is needing an identity and a story—it’s something to let go of as well—but if I were to say, okay, let go of your watcher, our habit would be to go back into the storyteller (the identifier).
So you just keep letting it get more and more engaged, more and more subtle.
[Joana: That's what Roxana just said with becoming the flow then—so first you're watching the flow, but then you're part of that too with the watcher mind.]
As long as you don't become the follower.
Alright, so those two verses had said, “don't go in the past and future," and so one aspect of learning this practice is recognizing when we are in the past // when we are in the future—meaning when that story that's being told as a result of what's coming up, it is in the past compared to the information that's triggered it, but then does that story then go into something from our past that's impacting us now?
Hopefully we're way beyond letting our mind distract us so far that a dove in the grapefruit tree would let me go to, “hmm, the guy who's going to come to cut down that grapefruit tree hasn't come, I talked to him in February, right? I expected him to be here. I should call him."
You see, I went from past to future—triggered by the dove in the grapefruit tree.
So if we haven't already gotten to the place in our meditation where “dove in the grapefruit tree” is enough to cut it off, then we recognize, “oh, I was in the past thinking about the guy who's supposed to come get it. And I'm in the future about what I need to do about it. And that's all ripenings and lettings them go."
Right?
So wherever along the way we catch, “ah, ripening is nothing but let them go," settle back in—and that's not losing our object, you see?
To catch it, identify it, let it go.
All right. So at this level of the stages of Mahamudra, we are practicing our ability to catch the story, the identity arising after this raw sensation, and instead of engaging it, let it go—at more and more and more subtle levels.
So we're actually, you know, sitting on your cushion, looking for something to arise—and knowing we're going to identify it, and letting that whole process go.
First, we have to identify that we're doing it, then now that we know it's happening—where can I be aware of it and let it go at a more and more subtle level?
And that's the fun of this practice—because there's always stuff that's going to come up, and how subtly can I become aware of it, and how quickly can I stop following the identity that my mind automatically gives to it?
So, the example I like to use is when I'm sitting and I use my own body, (not in a Mahamudra, but in a different kind of meditation) it's like, “here's my body sitting on my cushion."
And then it's like, “well, what am I actually experiencing here? Well, there's a sensation," right?
I tune into the sensation that I would call “my body edge," and it's like, well, what is it about that sensation?
That's the edge of my right shoulder, right?
It's not enough information—just the raw sensation isn't enough information—and I go down further.
What is it about that sensation of my legs and bottom on the cushion that makes it legs and bottom on the cushion?
There's not enough information.
Well, then what is there?
Sensation in a location?
Yeah, but what's that?
And what's that?
And quickly I get beyond words—there's still a sensation.
But I can't identify it in any other way beyond raw sensation.
And then sit there and watch what it does.
No, and my mind insists on going back to bottom on cushion.
No.
And since I'm going sensation in that location.
No.
And getting more and more able to rest in the raw sensation without an identity- if I could really do that, what would happen to my idea of a body?
Sensation's unidentified, right?
Don't need it.
If I could do that same thing with my awareness—same—didn't make the body disappear, wouldn't make the awareness disappear—but it would help reveal its true nature: nothing but concepts put onto information (we call it names and labels onto indicators).
So a Mahamudra meditation session is this opportunity to explore all of this—not to intentionally explore it—but explore it by way of let's see what arises and then let it go.
Let it go.
Recognizing what's happening.
Shapeshifting mind images in this constant show that finally slows down, and even seems to come to a halt—but hasn't come to a halt—it's just gotten so subtle that we have no “story” to apply, and so we call it a “pause," which is a story applied.
[Roxana: Ok, so definitely [we could say that] we're working with our inner winds—and I remember once I saw this nun that lived in a beautiful place, and she cooked beautifully, and she said that garlic and onions are certain things to avoid while meditating. Of course, she’s probably at the ninth level of meditation already, but is it good to avoid it?
Yeah, they do say that there are certain foods that are too stimulating to your subtle body that should be avoided and garlic and raw onions are that—my guess there are others in that list as well.
I'm not so familiar with that except in terms of what the monastic tradition says, and my guess is they say it because they all live together and those are foods that make us stinky, but so does meat (make us stinky), so I don't really know—but yes, I understand that that is true.
Okay. Thank you. So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen goes on to talk about this idea that all these different practices are designed to cut the mind from its root, and when we say cut something from its root, it kind of implies that you're trying to kill something, right?
And you got the big tree—we've heard that teaching where you have a tree that's, you know, it's trunk is huge, and they say, take this axe and go cut that tree down and it'll take you forever to cut with the axe—but if you find its taproot, right? And technically, if you nail a copper nail into the huge tree's taproot, that when the taproot dies, the tree dies, and you can push the thing over eventually.
So in the same way, there's some taproot of our mind that if we cut it, we kill the mind sounds like, but that's of course not what we're trying to do.
The mind we're trying to cut is our ignorant…the ignorance of our mind.
But technically, if we've not seen emptiness directly yet, then every imprint we've ever made is colored with that misunderstanding that things identities are in them—which means our very mind is colored with that, and we do want to cut that mind, we do want to stop that mind.
We want a mind that's free of that.
Is it going to be a different mind?
No.
Do we have a mind that's in and of itself that is colored with ignorance, and if we take the ignorance away, the mind in and of itself will be a pure mind?
It's like, “eee, I don't think so…”
So we do want to cut the taproot of our ignorant mind—it doesn't mean we're going to kill the mind because there is no mind to kill.
We will kill the ignorance that makes us think we have a mind that “we don't want to kill."
Am I getting this across accurately?
Yes, we want to cut the ignorance from our mind—we can chop away at it on the surface, or we can get to the taproot.
So chopping away on the surface is working on overriding our selfishness—the taproot of our selfishness is our misunderstanding where “me” and “my pleasure” actually comes from, because I misunderstand that the thing that gives me pleasure, or displeasure, is not the thing that's causing my pleasure or displeasure—that thing is a ripening result of how I have created it to be the cause of my pleasure, or displeasure.
So whether it is or not—it's not coming from it—it's a result of my own past behavior.
And misunderstanding that colors our mind such that our behavior choices are: to get what I want and avoid what I don't want—thinking that what I do in the moment brings me those results—when it doesn't!
And every time it seems to, our reaction to that is to confirm the ignorance.
And every time it doesn't work is a doorway to going, “oh, there's something wrong with this picture."
But we don't do that—we come up with a reason for why it didn't work:
Oh, the car's battery is dead.
That's why the key didn't start the car.
Okay, I'll just fix the battery.
And so we perpetuate the misunderstanding,
Even when our world doesn't work
According to what our misunderstanding believes it should.
So, we can work and work and work and work on our own selfishness—but if we don't change the ignorance, it’ll take just a really, really, really, really long time to chop down the tree of our “me first."
So we want to work at the level of our misunderstanding—of the “me” and the “other” and the “interaction between” meaning: what I do to get the pleasure that I want.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to be happy.
And so sometimes that's really the first step is to look deep inside:
Do I really believe that I can be happy?
Do I really believe I deserve to be happy?
Do I really believe something can help me be happy?
If we don't believe that it's okay to be happy
We won't be able to chop down that ignorance.
Something in us won't let us do it, and
We'll come up with all kinds of obstacles and blockers and whatever.
So it seems like it should be automatic, but I don't know about you, I've had to work with that.
Help everybody else be happy? Yeah, I'm all over that!
So again, our misunderstanding is that we are forced to believe that “objects” and “others” have their identities and their qualities in them, and that makes us react in ways that push away those we don't like, and cling to those we do—whether it's people or things or experiences or reputations or whatever.
It's not that we shouldn't want those [things] that are enjoyable, and want to avoid those that are not—it's how we go about experiencing that pleasure is our tool.
So we've used the angry yelling boss example so many times, and we know the punchline—you know, it is experience boss yelling at me, it is unpleasant.
I can react in the same old way.
Now I know if I do, I perpetuate unpleasantness for lots of us in the future.
I can also think, “oh, this boss had a really bad day. You know, I shouldn't contribute to it. I'll try to be nice when really I want to be nasty. So I'll be nice instead."
Or we can say, “hmm, you know, if Buddha's exist, here's a Buddha emanating to me to burn off some crap seeds that I've made and give me the opportunity to, to what? Make an offering to them?”
Could we make an offering to that angry yelling boss? Wait, wait, time out—let me go get you some flowers.
That wouldn't work.
But whatever we do in response is going to make a different imprint in our mind, than if we had responded to them as a suffering being who needs our help—or if we had responded to them as an angry yelling boss, “I don't like them."
So suppose they're the angry yelling boss, I don't like them. I really want to point out how nasty they are to them, but instead, even from an ignorant perspective, I'm going to deprecate myself and say, I'm sorry, you feel that way, how can I help you?
And I'll resent saying it.
And I'll be mad about it.
And I'll hold it against them, right?
I said something kind.
But deep down, it really didn't help my seeds much, did it?
If I really could see them as hurting.
And I said, “I'm so sorry, you're upset with me. How could I help you?”
It would be a little bit more genuine, wouldn't it?
So same words would plant different seeds in my mind,
ripening into someone who I was upset with, you know,
trying to help me instead of…[what i naturally think is happening],
and then angel them being what I need to burn off.
I'm so sorry, this whole situation is going [on].
I'm so sorry, I made you have to pretend to be
An angry yelling boss, to ripen my seeds
For having yelled at the dog. I really am sorry.
Like, I regret it so much.
But how can I help right now?
How can I help you?
How can I help the dog?
How can I help everybody?
Same deed, different seeds planted, right?
So, with our working, with our ignorance—it still boils down to how we respond in situations that are either unpleasant or pleasant.
So how would it go in a pleasant situation:
The boss comes in, “Sarahni, you're so great! Your team has done so well. I'm going to give everybody a raise."
Well, of course. Right?
Okay. Thank you so much.
Because my mind is thinking, well, finally, right?
Seeds of expectation, and the second level would be, you know, suffering some sorry, being, being kind. “Okay, thank you very much. You're so kind."
Right? A little more genuine.
And now what if their angel being ripening seeds that I need to ripen?
Wow, right?
Joanna's wow factor.
It's like, wow, look what seeds can do!
Who can I share it with?
Who can I share this with?
Is the difference between a negative ripening that we're replanting—with ignorance—and a positive ripening that we're replanting—with ignorance?
A positive ripening that's replanted with ignorance is “thank you so much, I accept that."
rReplanting with wisdom is: “thank you so much, I know where it's coming from. Who can I share it with?”
Hey, our impulse when good things come is “great, I get to keep them!”
Our impulse when negative things come is “ehhh”
A wise response is “okay, unpleasant things. I'm burning them off. I'm not going to replant."
“Okay, pleasant things. Great. Let's share it.”
You can't always share it in the moment, but we can certainly share it.
Moving forward, like no, she gave me the raise.
What should I give the raise away?
Well, I could be more generous, right?
She gave me the flowers.
What do I take the flowers and hand them right over?
You might…
Or, wow, it's so pleasant to be offered flowers—next time I go to a friend's house, I'm going to stop and get flowers and take her flowers—because it was pleasant.
Or maybe that friend would prefer a potted plant over flowers—I'll take her a potted plant, right?
It's like when we receive something that's pleasant, it's like, “oh, I can do that for somebody else to replant those seeds of pleasantness."
Only understanding why to do that will inspire us to do that on more and more subtle levels—and it's not anything we're doing on our meditation cushion during Mahamudra—but this increasing level of awareness of how to experience anything, we're having indications, hints, of things that our karmic seed is forcing the identity and story about onto—I lost track of that sentence.
The greater awareness we have of that, the sooner our ability to recognize our reaction that's arising, and to choose whether I want to follow that reaction or respond a different way.
Any trick that we have that will help us get off of “automatic react pilot” and into “plant seed response pilot," right?
Have that be automatic.
We're wanting to grow that ability to go from react mode to respond mode.
And the time we spend with our Mahamudra meditation:
Of being more and more aware of how we receive it
We have an experience ripening
It gives us a hint.
We put on a label.
That effort in meditation to be more aware of that grows into being more aware of it happening in our outer world—not at the subtlety—but at the bigness of it, at the story about the rotten boss yelling at me for no reason.
All that story is coming out of me, not out of her.
Even though she's the one saying the words.
All right.
Panchen Lama says “the more we understand the emptiness of our own mind, the less we are in samsara."
So we tend to think that samsara is all or nothing—but in those moments that we are really functioning from our growing understanding of “mental seeds and nothing but," right?
When you are genuinely saying, “oh, angry, yelling boss, I really am sorry that you're upset with me. I didn't do what you're saying I'm doing. I mean, I don't deserve any of this.”
Worldly, but ultimately, I understand. Thank you very much. How can I help?
When that's truly genuine, and we are trying to respond in a way that will be helpful (to the boss and everybody else), our samsara at that moment is less samsaric.
Samsara is not 100% or 0%.
It's varying according to the extent to which our ignorance is running the show.
So it is worth trying [in our] off-cushion time to hold an awareness [of] “this is all coming from me."
It's pretty magical when we actually do that—it's like, “whoa, look what I'm creating. May it be sweet for everybody because wow, it's some blue sky and some flowers over there and no traffic on the road. It's quite extraordinary."
And if we walked around like that, maybe they think you're, I don't know, schizophrenic or something because you would just be wide eyed and like, wow.
But it's true.
It's all our creation.
And so is the crap.
Yucks, right?
So take responsibility for both—the crap getting burned off, the kindness is getting planted.
How long can samsara last once we're onto its mistake?
It's doomed to end because it itself isn't a thing that needs to be transformed—it isn't a thing that needs to be stopped—it's the color of the mistake, and the less we make the mistake, the less samsara gets its color.
So we are in the process of stopping it already—like how much samsara do you still have?
99%?
2%?
Right?
It depends at any given moment—but it makes it more doable to think of it that way. Right?
Samsara is not a thing that has its own nature that we're fighting against.
It's merely, like hugely, but merely our own misunderstanding [that] the identity of this object is in it.
You see, it just jumped right out of my hand when I said that [referring to the pen she was holding up to make the point].
All right, so at any given moment, we have this opportunity to choose which reality we are going to respond to—old, ignorant reality—angry, yelling boss—jerk from her side—blaming me for stuff—hurting boss—suffering boss—that because I understand a little bit about dharma, I'm going to be more kind, even though I have to admit I don't want to.
Or…
You know, higher level, Diamond Way level has to be an emanation of my angel, my perfect holy being—why would they do this to me?
Wait, whoops—they're not doing it to me—their compassion shows up as just what this one needs to clean out stuff and plant new.
Wisely.
They're willing to do that.
They're not willing—they're compelled by the compassion that brought them the omniscience that knows “I need to be yelled at by an angry boss right now."
Do you see?
It's not them deciding that—it's my seeds making them do that.
“Oh, I'm so sorry.”
Okay, let's get through this then.
You know, just keep yelling at me like YELL MORE.
That's dangerous.
What if thier yelling turns into hitting me with an iron pan, you know?
Do I take that too?
Maybe, right?
That's up to the practitioner.
No, the teacher doesn't say yes, let them beat you up.
Can an angels emanation make bad karma?
No.
Do you see how dangerous this is?
You don't talk like this to somebody who hasn't been studying for a while.
They, the angel, wants you to stand up for yourself. Right?
Maybe that angry yelling boss wants me to stand up and say, “I did not do what you're saying I did. This is what my team did. The fact that it didn't go right is a result of the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…” and give them a Dharma teaching.
You know, am I brave enough to do that in the face of old reality, angry yelling boss that doesn't want to hear about my worldview?
Or is that what the angel is prodding me to do?
“Stand up for yourself, Sarahni! Don't let me take advantage of you like that.” Right? “That's been your pattern.”
Oh, I'm so kind.
Let people do anything they want to me.
It's like that's not helping anybody.
Yeah, get firm, get strong, get confident.
And they'll do what they need to do to get me to do that.
Why don't they just come and say, oh, you're so wonderful. Right?
Because if I still perceive myself as a suffering human being,
I'll say, Okay, great. I can just stay like that.
And I'll never get that trunk of the tree of ignorance chopped down.
So it's very slippery, this path at the higher levels at the Diamond Way level.
It's so possible that we would hear those teachings and let our old mindset of “me, me, me” take those teachings and say, “see why that's correct," and use them in the wrong way—and my guess is that anyone who has met the Diamond Way in this life has met it in past lives—and used it incorrectly.
Because otherwise, we would already be enlightened beings, which probably you are, but I'm not.
So do you see very, very slippery, slow, that Diamond Way…
We want to be well prepared.
Well prepared means: clearly understanding identities and characteristics of self, other, and interaction between are nothing but the ripening results of behaviors done by the one we call subject side.
So Mahamudra practice helps us get deep into that process of seeds ripening and nothing but—so all these images that we're sitting there waiting to arise “ooo image, ooo image,ooo images," those are seeds ripening.
So another way to relate to them is like:
Seed ripening, nothing but…
Oop…
Go…
Go…
Which means as it's ripening and passing, and we're recognizing it as a ripening, we're like burning out the “not recognizing it as a ripening," right?
Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen doesn't go that far to say, impose on it your understanding that it’s seeds ripening and nothing but—neither did Lama Christie—she called them mental images.
But what she meant by mental images is seeds ripening, or is the term we weren't using this term seeds ripening back then, but when we connect the dot, we can see what's going on.
Do it in meditation so that it's easier for that idea to pop up when we're out in our “apparently” real world—which is really no different than what's happening in meditation, we're just so far into the story side.
When we're off our meditation cushion, we can't be aware of the “before the story” part.
All right. I know I keep saying the same thing over and over again—the idea is that one of the ways it gets said for any one of us will go, “oh, okay."
So we just say the same thing again and again.
So don't let yourself be in the past or the future.
Stay in the present moment.
When you go to try to find the present moment—
You can't find it—that's fine.
It doesn't mean you're not in it.
Be aware of those hints of things
Without going on to let the hints turn into identities.
Catch yourself putting on the identity from the hint,
Is what this group of practitioners who use this kind of Mahamudra practice.
This is what they did.
They got into the present moment.
They watched these more subtle arisings.
Caught themselves putting on the story,
Which means they are in the past,
Adding a story about the future—letting that go.
Becoming more and more aware of that happening
At more and more subtle levels
Until their not putting on the story
Made the stories (that are the hints)
Ripen more slowly, until they got to the point
Where the pause was the hint that gets a story.
It’s beyond words…
Then it would start up again.
So you get to play with that one until next week, and then we'll take it a little bit deeper.
So we've got 10 minutes—let's do our closing and then if you want to go early, go early. If you want to stay and have questions, stay.
So remember that person we wanted to be able to help?
We've gained more glimpses into how it is the case that we will someday help them stop their suffering forever—and that's an extraordinary goodness coming out of you and being planted back in you.
So please be happy with yourself.
Think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hand.
Recall your own precious holy being—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, hold you…
And then offer them this gemstone of goodness.
See them accepted 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 with everyone you love.
To share with every existing being everywhere.
See them all filled with happiness—filled with loving kindness—filled with wisdom.
And may it be so.
Okay. Thank you very much everyone for the opportunity.
I always learn something.
So questions, comments, anything.
Okay. All right.
I'll see you next week—if not sooner.
Have a great week.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 15
Vocab:
Mahamudra Upadesham
Chakgya Chenpay Men Ngak (Tib)
Ganga Ma
Kelwa
Kelnden
*************
Introduction
Welcome, we are Mahamudra group, May 27, 2025.
Let's gather our minds here as we usually do—we'll do our opening prayers, and then our experiment, and then talk about that, and then our meditation.
Okay, so just opening prayers here.
Becky, it's nice to see you.
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.”
*************
All right—so we're learning that this practice of Mahamudra meditation is about learning to become more aware of our very awareness, as it's happening in real time.
And when we're first trying, you know, I remember, it's like, how difficult it seemed to be to do that.
And then, you know, after years of working with it, now it feels like, how can somebody not get that?
But it's only by familiarity, you know, that the shift in my own mind has happened—so I remember the struggle of like, “am I doing it, or am I not doing it?” as I was learning these practices, and I don't know, at some point I figured out that I was doing it.
But anyway, so eventually, its promise is that it will take us to this ability to be keenly aware at such a subtle level that the “me," the “being aware," and “what I'm aware of," is all happening, but on a level that's direct—which means free of conceptions.
Conceptions means [that] information arises and our mind has to give it an identity, and the instant the identity goes on, a quality goes on, and a story happens.
So first, we're learning how to recognize the story happening and slow it down, or get into smaller pieces of it, or however you experience that—until we can see that, or experience that, there's something kind of rise that's pre-identity.
There's still something there—which of course, it needs an identity.
But it gets beyond words, beyond conception, beyond putting things together to come up with something else.
So it takes time before we can get our awareness subtle enough to find that space where this process is happening—of something coming into awareness, or bubbling up out of awareness, that differentiates—that is differentiated—from whatever was bubbling up before.
And we're, we're wanting to get into this experience of the, just the constant, like words fail, shapeshift, the constant flow, the constant shifting of the mind, you're going to find your own word that describes it for you.
So, in, in, in learning how to do this practice, right, it was also in the practice, in the time of sharing the ACI with other people, and it's like, well, let's do this experiment where can we get an experience of our mind, taking information, and then putting on the label—like if we can experience that outside of meditation, maybe it would be easier to take that more and more subtle inside our meditation.
And so, you know, from time to time, I would have people do this object in a bag thing.
So let's play with that!
So now, when I when I first started doing Object in a Bag Experiment, I’d see that my own habit would be to try to identify the thing as quickly as possible.
And that's not the point.
The point is to slowww everything down and watch the process happening of your mind, or your you (I'm not sure which one it is) trying so desperately to identify the object.
But we're trying, we're wanting to experience the moment by moment experience of what happens in the process of that identity.
So what I'm going to ask you to do is to put your hand into the bag and grasp the object.
Your awareness is just: “what's happening."
[starting to explain the method]
Maybe…eh, I don't know…
So you're not going to look at the object—your eyes are closed or keep the object in the bag, however you want to do it, you're not going to look at the object.
You're going to put the object in one palm, either one doesn't matter.
Then just take the index finger of the other hand, and just ever so slowly…
[running finger over the object she’s holding in her hand]
Investigate.
Right?
Your eyes are going to be closed.
So the only information you're going to have is the sensation on one palm, and the sensation you're getting from your index finger.
And watch what your mind does.
You're just watching.
Right? So however long it takes you to…I don't know…
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna just say go, you get your object, you start to investigate it.
I'm going to watch your faces, and that'll tell me to know when to talk again.
Alright, so have fun.
Slow is the idea.
Experience what your mind is doing—then we'll talk about it.
Give me your thumbs up when you think you have the identity.
Don't look at the object yet.
Okay. Okay, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Thank you.
Those who have the identity in your mind, check out the details.
What color is it?
What does it do?
In your mind's eye, look at that object, feel your relationship with that object.
Everybody have it? I believe they have it.
Now, those who have it in your mind—go backward.
You think you have this?
There's an object in your hand.
Deconstruct.
Review that experience—what information was it that finally popped it into view?
Was that really enough information to make a whole object?
Everybody have it?
Yeah, do you have yours?
Okay. Okay, so open your eyes, look at your object.
Does it match what was in your mind's eye?
Did your mind's eye give it a color?
Does it match the color? Yeah.
[Roxana: I wasn't sure with that color, to be honest.]
Good. Good. Because of course, your finger can't see color, right?
How could you possibly get color out of index finger?
But okay, so what was somebody's object?
Tom, what was your object?
[Tom: It's this like sunglasses, like cleaner thing, but it's in a plastic bag—so I thought that was like, I was recognizing it's plastic by the sound, and then I thought it was tissue paper—but I was like, wait, the thing open from the side and tissue paper open from above, but it's soft. So then I was like, let me explore more. And like my finger went in, and I felt that it's very soft. And there was like a little nut. So I was like, it has to be some type of like a soft bag. So I guess I had two items, maybe one.]
Right, right, right. So, you experienced the fact that with this limited information, the mind was going, it must be this. No, it must be that. No, it must be this. No, it must be that.
And then all of a sudden **KABING** the whole thing was there.
Did you feel that?
That, then the whole thing was there—and often our mind will even, it'll just say it, this is what it looks like, this is what it's used for, like, even color, everything—but the only information you actually had was tactile, you know, a little bit of sound, Tom had some sound.
I want to go back—did you catch the moment that your mind goes **BING** and the whole thing was there?
[Tom: Yeah, definitely with the plastic—with the second thing, like it took longer time, like this, I was like, I could recognize the feel. And I was like, this has to be plastic the way like, how do you say crinkle or like feels? Yeah. And then the second thing, it took longer. So like, I was watching myself, like, you know, trying to, to dig in my brain to be like, what, what the hell is this thing? But it's soft. And I was like, wait, it's not a paper. And like, it was very, like, investigating mind. I was like, this can be on this side, if it's a tissue, it has to be on this, like I was, and then the Oh, okay, it has to be this.]
Right? So when the identity popped, could that identity have come out of the object?
No, it came out of your mind, right?
You experienced the identity of the object coming out of your mind. So now, look at some object outside your room, or in your room, like outside you.
Can you experience the identity popping up from out your mind?
Yeah, I can't either.
Roxanna says, Yeah, of course. Yay, Roxanna. Right?
I have to go through this. “No, nobody sees it like I see it."
Like I've got a ficus tree right here. And it's like, nobody sees the ficus tree like I see the ficus tree. But if they saw the ficus tree, they would see it as a ficus tree.
Oh, no.
The bird doesn't know it's a ficus tree, but the bird knows it's a tree. Yeah, but the bug, right?
My mind has to do that whole thing before it comes back to, “oh, this is popping out of not out of it's popping up within my own mind, my own awareness."
And yet when I do it with my finger, with my eyes closed—easy.
There’s not enough information to come up with the whole thing—and yet when I've got eyeballs involved, oh, plenty of information coming from the object.
And it's just ridiculous that we do that—and yet, that's our moment by moment, experiential reality is that the things have their identities in them, and if I get enough information from it, I can know what it is.
That's our familiar state of mind.
Mahamudra is about learning to step back into this aware-ing happen-ing with our eyes closed in meditation, and our eyes open [while] walking around.
So when we have the familiarity with that quality of interaction of awareness happening, aware-ing happen-ing, we can do it as we're out in our outer world and still be engaged—but the danger is we get so identified with simply the watcher that we disassociate, and our little body becomes a robot walking around and not being very reactive or responsive because we're so keen on being the watcher—we're so uninvolved.
And that's not the outcome of Mahamudra, if you find yourself going there, right?
Reverse course, talk to me about it.
Yeah, I found myself there—and it's not helpful.
In the long run, it's not helpful.
Yes, Tom?
[Tom: I'm wondering, because looking, even in experiencing the bag, like whatever was hitting effect, it is based on past experiences that I was able to put like a vision to it and words to it. I'm just wondering, like, how would that like effect, you know, like, I mean, because even if, okay, like, I need glasses, right, to look far. So even if I can look outside the window, and I can recognize some stuff, but if somebody move or something, I may not 100% know, but my brain will always you know to put certain information together to bring me to the closest thing that I think this is based on past experiences. So like, are we supposed to not like, what am I doing with that? Like, would it show up if it's, if it's something that I've never seen before?]
Right. So, what you're describing is the very process of how identities occur to us—they are based on past experience.
But when we say that, we think that what we mean is, “oh, because I've experienced plastic crinkling before, I recognize plastic crinkling before."
And that is true—on one level.
But then there's the question of, well, why, why have I experienced plastic as crinkly, or even such a thing as plastic—that keeps that question of why keeps us going back until we end up with the real cause-effect relationship, which is how we've interacted with others in the past.
And that's a long story—and we're not going there.
Right now, in Mahamudra, our Mahamudra practice will help us come to recognize what's meant by dependent origin, the marriage of dependent origination and emptiness.
Our practice of Mahamudra will bring clarity to those two concepts as two sides of one coin.
It will become more directly clear how our behavior, past behavior is actually the reason why we ever experienced plastic as crinkly—so that we do almost every time, again.
So when we're out walking around in the world, you know, it's hard to engage at that level—with our karmic seeds ripening, while we have a task to do—right? We have to stay safe, we have get stuff done.
We play with that in our contemplation time, in our meditation time, so that it becomes more automatic to have that kind of awareness of what's going on as we interact with our world, so that we can do so with a different state of mind.
You know, when we're saying, “oh, all the worldly things I do to help people don't work anyway," the conclusion isn't, “so I'll just stop doing them."
The conclusion is, “how do I do those with a state of mind that actually will shift things eventually?”
So as our wisdom grows, it's not that we do anything necessarily different for the other person, but it's why we're doing what we're doing and what we're holding in mind as we do it, that changes the offering of the flowers to Aunt Mary as a kindness, and offering the flowers to Geshe Michael as making different karmic seeds.
Same act—different seeds.
Because of the different relationship between you and the person according to our own mind—so this experiment of seeing how the identity and the story could not have been in the object, because I never got enough information for all of that.
It has to be coming out of my mind—and then if it's coming out of my mind, it had to get in there some way, and it got in there by way of how I interacted with others, right?
That's a long, there's a lot of pieces to connect that dot—but I'm just going to say let's jump to the punchline, for now.
Crinkly plastic got in there by way of something you did for another.
If crinkly plastic is a pleasant thing, it was a kindness.
If crinkly plastic is an unpleasant thing, it was an unkindness.
But either way, it made this information become crinkly plastic.
But the crinkly plastic wasn't in it—that's what we just showed ourselves.
And we showed ourselves that we can be aware of the process, you know, that not that, right? Your finger hit, your mind said something about its experience. And then you agreed or you disagreed. And then you got more information. Oh, agree or disagree. Not enough yet. Not enough yet.
So you experienced this process of your mind trying—I find it frustrating, because my mind wants to cut right to the chase, get it done.
And it's like, no, slow down here. What are you really getting?
Okay, so we can do the same thing—in meditation, with no specific object, with whatever is arising as the object of experience at every moment, that's what we've been setting up.
And first we use an object—breath.
Then we use an object—outer sound.
To do the same thing as explore the bag.
But we started with bird sound in the tree.
And then we deconstructed. No, my mind's
making bird in tree making sound.
All I'm getting is song, bird song.
Wait, I'm not even getting that. I'm getting decibels.
Wait, right? Bing, bing, bing.
Then we turned it to inner sound.
And then we sank in deeper and opened up our watcher to [say] “okay, anything that wants to arise, you're welcome."
And the task was to recognize how what arises seems to have its own identity, and then, right, allow it to come and pass—until our awareness of the bubbling up was getting more and more subtle, before even identities, where there's just this change happening, shift happening.
We were wanting to get into, Lama Christie calls it into the flow.
But we were still at the place where we were just watching stuff bubble up and pass, bubble up and pass, bubble up and pass—and then by not engaging with whatever is bubbling up in passing, they say, the bubbling up will slow down, less of it, because it's not being engaged.
And then, at some point, there's a, it seems like nothing's bubbling up.
And then we're, if when we get, we reach that pause, what seems like a pause, we'll do something with it.
We'll talk about what to do with it.
But until we actually experience the pause, we won't, you know, you won't be able to get into a meditation session and put yourself into a pause—but we'll pretend that we can, so that you know what to do with the pause when it does happen.
And then, as you experience the pause and use the pause for other things, it will get more easy to reach the pause.
Anyway, okay, we'll get there.
Yes, Roxanna.
[Roxana: Thank you, dear Lama. You just talked about deconstructing with the example of the bird and the sound of the bird—if I'm listening to the bird, and I'm just letting it go, not engaging in it—do I deconstruct? Or I just let it go? Or how does it work, in that moment?]
Right, right, right. So if we are, you know, for instance, for the Lion's Dance meditation, you know, when you're intentionally going deeper and deeper, you do, you do the just letting it go, right?
You know that it's out there, and you go, I'm not interested in that I'm changing the radio station—I'm going inside, then I'm changing again.
For for Mahamudra, when we first started, we did that—but as we're turning on our Mahamudra practice, you would want to, instead, notice “okay, I'm using an outer sound to recognize how it is that that outer sound is something bubbling up in my own mind," right?
Its identity, “bird in tree” is coming out of my own mind, and I'm going to be aware of that on more subtle, subtle levels to fine tune my ability to do that at the level of raw awareness, as I draw my mind in.
So I start with the deconstruction from outer sounds.
Then from inner sounds.
Then sinking down into the thoughts.
What I use is, what is coming to awareness the most prominently—which usually is the sensation of my body on the cushion.
And so I'll end up taking some time to deconstruct that, you know, oh, I'm sitting on my cushion.
And then it's like, “no, how much of that sensation can can be identified as me sitting here on my cushion?”
It's like, there's not enough information.
What am I exactly feeling? What am I directly feeling?
Just warmth and pressure in a certain location?
Well, what makes that warmth?
Well, what makes that pressure?
Well, what makes that, right?
Then I'm drawing finer and finer into that experience. It's not so much letting go, it's letting go of the identity—it's drilling in deeply, then sooner or later, I hope I'll get to the place where what I'm watching is what's arising into this mind, and I've let go of the sensations of the body by this time, I'm deeper into just, “okay, what else is going to pop up here?”
And at whatever level it pops up: notice; apply something that says, “seems like it is it, in it, I know it's not, I'll let it go."
We don't want to be using so many words as that—just the experience, [motions to the side] just like disinterested, until it's this popping up and passing, popping up and passing.
And then we're focusing on the experience of that—popping up and passing—and that's what will take us into what Lama Christie is calling the flow—this constant shapeshift of information, shapeshift of experiential information—the data.
Before any identity of the data.
It does take some active doing at first—but then we want to get into the place where we're just flowing with it, and then you're back to the place of just, it pops up, you let it go.
So this practice is a combination of those two that you say.
[Roxana: So first, I play with the intellectual experience, and then I go into a more subtle understanding of, “oh, it's just seed ripening—it's coming from me…”]
Exactly, exactly. We don't want to just jump right to seed ripening until we've gone through the process of the deconstruction.
So until our familiarity is that—we don't want to just jump to the party line—we want to experience it happening.
And the way we do that is to intentionally recognize the mind putting on the label.
That's why I wanted to do this experiment—because you experienced how the mind popped the whole identity.
So that's happening at all these subtle levels as well—everywhere along the way that the identity comes up; whether it's just pressure, that's still identity that the mind's giving a whole identity onto something, and we don't have enough information to actually do that from the thing, for the thing to have been the thing that gave us that information.
That's what we're trying.
That's what we're going to end up without having to go through those crazy words, right?
*************
Okay—so all that said, let's do the meditation that we started with last week, which was just getting down into this awareness of whatever arises, and letting it pass at more and more subtle levels of its arising.
So get yourself ready, and draw on that experience of what it was like to investigate and then feel the identity pop up—and then since we've talked about it, recognizing how that identity popped within your mind, not from the object.
Alrighty. Any questions, any other comments before we settle in?
So get your body still, you know how to do it.
***15 seconds***
Then bring your focus to your breath at your nostrils.
Adjusting focus, clarity, intensity—you know how to do that.
***45 seconds***
Open your awareness up to include outer sounds.
***15 seconds***
Noticing how quickly the mind gives an identity.
***15 seconds***
Decide to draw in more deeply—become aware of any inner sound.
Inner sound of your breath, heartbeat, belly gurgling, whatever.
***15 seconds***
Sinking down more deeply, and opening up to any thoughts, any images, any sensations arising.
Keenly aware, but disinterested in what they are.
***45 seconds***
You are simply the watcher of whatever arises.
***15 seconds***
Even watching the urge, the tendency, to follow a story about the ripening, and letting it go.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Sink in more deeply—aware of these arisings at more subtle levels.
***15 seconds***
Fascinated with the process happening—disinterested in the identities and stories.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Check—check for dullness, check for agitation.
Those too, simply ripenings—let them pass.
Be the fascinated observer.
***2 minutes***
Check again.
***30 seconds***
Let's stay two more minutes.
***2 minutes***
Nice, now allow the identity “me and my body” to arise and stay.
And allow the identity “me, my body in my room” arise and stay.
And dedicate that effort to reaching the identity through which you can help that other in that deep and ultimate way someday.
And when you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.
Okay, let's take a break and we'll get back into our text.
*************
[Roxana: So it's like a backwards design, right? It arises and it's like, like in my mind, when I do strategies or whatever, I take the goal, but it's a backwards design. So that's what I do with the arising. It's like something appears and I try to deconstruct it using the 12 heaps, for example, the heap of desire, the heap of form, the heap of something like that?]
Yes and no.
Yes, you apply the analysis to familiarize yourself with the fact that this thing that has arisen has come about by way of what your analysis has shown you, and then at some point, get to the place where you don't need to apply the analysis for the next thing that arises.
So I usually do the analysis with the outer sound, and then the sensation of my body, and then once I'm done with that, it's like, okay, anything that arises is—is arising in that same way.
And then there it is.
Don't need to do the analysis anymore—I know that its identity is not in it.
And then what I'm watching for, “well, what identity do I still think is in it?”
And it gets beyond words, so you can't do analysis anymore.
You just have to go, “nope, that's not from it either."
And so we're trying to get to that place where that active engagement with what's arising and passing doesn't have to happen anymore—that we can step into the arising and passing happening mode, without the analysis.
So you start with the analysis, then let it go.
[Roxana: Okay. Now I understand the analysis, so I just let it go.]
Yeah. Right.
[Roxana: Okay. So I can feel when I'm in a balanced state, when my winds are balanced. So that's the pause for me. Then suddenly something arises, and I do not engage with it, but if I apply the analysis, then I know if I should cleanse it away, purify it or, or let go, purify, let go. That's the awareness.]
Right.
[Roxana: Okay. I got it. Thank you, dear Lama.]
*************
Okay, so in Panchen Lama's auto commentary, we're in the section where he's going through describing a little bit about the different methods of Mahamudra from different schools of thought, different lineage practices—and we've reached the fourth one that he talks about that's from a text called Mahamudra Upadesham.
Mahamudra Upadesham.
In Tibetan, it's Chakgya, which is Mahamudra, Chenpay Men Ngak. Chakgya Chenpay Mahamudra—that together.
Men Ngak, which means, like, secret whispered personal advices—not secret as in, nobody else can hear them “secret," but secret because like, it's you and me here together—and maybe there's other people, but it's like, right, if these are for your ears only that kind of secret.
So that Upadasham, that's what that means is like, personal, personal advices, personal instruction from right, one person to another.
So the implication is from somebody we, you know, admire and want personal instruction from. But it [also] implies this like, certain special occasion, that you just happen to be together, and some special transmission takes place through words.
Through words.
So the Mahamudra, the great seal, given as these personal advices, and it's a text from this thing that happened once upon a time when Master Tilopa was with his special disciple, Naropa, and they're sitting on the edge of the Ganges River (I imagine they're on one of those, you know, wharfs that goes down in) and they're sitting there and they've got their feet, they're kicking their feet in the river, and Tilopa is saying something to Naropa, and so it gets the nickname Ganga ma.
This text is usually called Ganga ma, although its name is Mahamudra Upadesham—secret personal advices on Mahamudra, given on the banks of the Ganges River from Tilopa to Naropa.
And then the story between Tilopa and Naropa—it's a long one, we'll learn it someday in detail, I hope—Naropa is this really famed gatekeeper for Nalanda University, and he's pretty proud of himself, and he's got a good reputation, and I don't know, maybe he's even been abbot, I don't remember exactly.
But one day, this old hag shows up, he's reading this book. And she goes, “Oh wow, look at your Naropa," right?
He goes, Yeah.
And she goes, “Whoa, what book are you reading?”
Oh, just this blah, blah, blah, you know.
And she goes, “Well, do you understand the words?”
And he goes, “Of course, you know, I'm Naropa, I understand the words."
And she dances with joy.
And then she goes, “and do you understand the meaning of the words?”
And he goes, “I'm Naropa, of course I do."
And she starts to wail and beat herself and cry.
And he goes, “What's the matter?”
And she goes, “Well, you're the great Naropa.You're a monk. When you answered that you understand the words—you were speaking truthfully, and it made me happy. But when you said you understood the meaning, you're lying through your teeth—and you're a monk. You just broke your vows.”
You know, and he's like, “Who is this hag?," you know?
And he goes, “Well, if I don't understand the meaning, who does?”
And she goes, “Well, none other than my brother, Tilopa.”
And he says to her, “Well, ask Tilopa to come visit me.”
And she goes, “You don't ask Tilopa to come visit you. You go find him.”
And she disappears—like before his very eyes—poof.
And he goes, “Oh, man, she was not some old hag.”
And he goes back to the monastery and he says, “Guys, I gotta leave. I need to go find Tilopa, this guy Tilopa."
And they’re all like, “Oh, no, you can't leave, you're Naropa, we need you and you're gonna give up everything?”
He goes, Yeah.
…so I mean, it's a longer story about how he finally cuts himself free—but he finally does.
And he goes in search of Tilopa, and there's a whole long story about all the mistakes he makes in his search for Tilopa—and then finally, he meets Tilopa—and then his training finally starts.
And the recurring theme is when Tilopa finally comes out of his Samadhi meditation (that he's been in for a year, and Naropa has been begging for teachings and making offerings) and finally, Tilopa's eyes pop open.
Naropa asks for teachings and Tilopa jumps up and says, “Okay, follow me.”
And they go and they find themselves in some circumstance, and Tilopa will say something like, “Well, if I had a real disciple, they would blah, blah, blah."
And he gives this instruction that Naropa then just follows.
He just does.
And with each one of these, the immediate result from what he does, is he gets like beat up to a pulp, or you know, falls from a high place, or he gets burnt in a fire—like something terrible happens to him.
And then Tilopa comes along and goes, “What's the matter?”
And Naropa, you know, says, “Oh, I did this and now my body is really hurting, and samsara is really a rotten place."
And Tilopa heals him in the instant, and then gives him some direct, extraordinary teaching.
So this happens 12 times (before something else happens)...
And one of the teachings that Naropa receives after, you know, “doing something” is this one—which is why we're studying it—because Naropa and Tilopa are in our lineage.
You know, we'll learn more later—but it's the context of why Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen spends more time on this, and why Lama Christie spent more time on this particular text.
So in your reading, in his commentary, he actually puts different verses from this text into your commentary—the one that you have.
And anyway, so we're going to spend a couple of classes on it.
So in this particular trial, they call them Naropa's 12 trials—I don't remember which number it is, but there, Tilopa has just popped out of a year-long meditation, and Naropa has begged for teachings and they go off. And they come across a high official and his new bride [that] just got married—so they're, you know, on the elephant, there's the procession, there's all the other people there.
And Tilopa looks and he goes, “Whoa, if I had a real disciple, they'd go drag that bride off that elephant and drag her around a bit."
You know, and Naropa could have said, you know, “In all due respect, Holy Lama, I don't think that… I think that breaks my vows. I don't think I should do that."
And he might have been right, correct—and maybe Tilopa would have given him some kind of teaching as a result.
But Naropa's state of mind was, “Tilopa is this fully enlightened being whose job it is to make me enlightened as quickly as possible–they know exactly what I need. So it must be that.”
So he grabs the new bride, drags her around—and of course, all the people beat him to a pulp.
And he's laying there, you know, crushed and in pain.
Tilopa: “Naropa, what's the matter with you?”
Right? He has some verse…
And then he gets healed, and they go off—and he gets this practice [which is] about becoming // about reaching the true nature of his own mind.
There's always some connection between the trial, the event that he's asked to do, and the teaching—this profound teaching that he gets as a result.
So there are these 12 profound teachings that Naropa gets—this one is one of them.
You're getting it without having to drag the bride around and get beat to a pulp—all you had to do was do whatever it took to get you here into this class.
So part of the story to students about Naropa is, you know, compare your own personal story—what have you had to give up? What have your struggles been? And compare them to Naropa's.
And it's like, what am I complaining about?
But then also, it says, Naropa's devotion, and reliance, and his vision of his Lama, was so strong, and so pure, and so doubtless, that he didn't interpret his Lama's words according to his own, “what would happen to me."
In each of those trials, he experiences terrible pain, apparently from what he just did.
But he's got some wisdom, he understands that the pain that he was undergoing as a result of having gotten beat up—what seemed like a result of having dragged the bride around—they couldn't be coming from his action of having followed his Lama's word.
So yes, he experienced that terrible pain, and yes, he was willing to take that result—to do what his Lama told him to do.
It's a dangerous teaching to give, because if you're the Lama, and you don't have Tilopa's wisdom, it sounds like it's saying, “well, just tell your student to do anything you need them to do."
Right? There's still the selfish “I” going on—and that's the danger of being in that position.
Tilopa didn't need the bride dragged around—he knew what would get purified in Naropa by doing such a thing.
And our mind wants to say, “oh, it's all metaphorical. You know, the bride has to do with the partner."
And yes, that is going on.
But no, it's not just a metaphorical story.
So, devotion is this key player in our progress on our path.
And it's a very difficult key player—from both the teacher's position and the student's position.
Devotion can't really be imposed.
It certainly can't be imposed from the Lama's side.
But even from our own side, devotion is something that arises and we can cultivate it—but we can't just decide, “oh, I'm devoted."
Because the instant we do that, our own mind will say, “okay, let's just see how far your devotion goes."
Like, come on.
One of Naropa's very first trials was there on the top of this tall building, and Tilopa says, “well, you know, any real student of mine would jump off this building."
And it's like if you're standing on the top of a rooftop with Geshe Michael and he says, “you know, any student of mine would jump off this building.”
Would you jump?
Would you even hesitate to jump even if you decided to jump?
Would you go [“umm I’m not really sure about that”]?
Or would you go, “I just, I don't think you really mean that Geshehla."
What is it [really]?
What do you mean jump?
Do I need to jump out of my worldly life?
What do you mean?
Right?
Because we have this belief that they can't really mean that, because it's going to hurt me.
And do they want to hurt you?
No, of course not.
Do they really mean for you to jump?
I don't know, Naropa took it literally, he just jumped. No hesitation. You want me to jump? Jump.
Over he goes and he gets smashed up.
You know, like he's willing to take the consequence—no matter what—to follow his Lama's word.
Dangerous—but powerful, when your identity projection onto that Lama and their word is that they are fully enlightened and they know exactly what I need.
And so they're operating in this space of emptiness that really is empty of—dangerous to say—empty of virtue or non-virtue from its own side.
That the goodness made by acting on one's pure devotion towards a being who is omniscient—made of love, made of compassion—is so powerful that it overrides any apparent good or bad involved.
Because it's so good to do that—but dangerously good.
We learn Lam Rim—we're taught to cultivate our progress in our path by study, meditate, serve, serve the Lama, and those are all steps that we take, processes that we do, to plant the seeds to keep the progress going.
And then separate from all of that is this level of devotion to our path, devotion to the teacher, devotion to the teachings—our level of belief is one thing.
Devotion is this, I don't know, it's like I didn't relate to devotion until recently, and it's a feeling in one's heart that it's right—that it's what would be the highest for everybody, and that this particular being or teaching, or whatever it is that we're devoted to, is the doorway to it or the answer to it.
So it isn't something we can sit down and cultivate necessarily, although, if we know someone who does seem to demonstrate this devotion in them—we could rejoice in seeing someone with that kind of devotion, it would help grow ours.
If we've ever had a sense of devotion to something, anything, even not spiritual, we could rejoice in having had those seeds.
It isn't something we can just push a button and turn on for most of us, and yet it's this powerful, powerful quality of heart/mind that increases the power, or the speed, of our progress—of our ability to gather the goodness necessary to see emptiness directly, in order to really be purifying and making the merit through which we transform ourselves in our world.
Okay, so the first thing Tilopa says to Naropa, sitting on the banks of the Ganges River, is if you really long to reach this object beyond all thought, beyond all deeds…(sorry, this isn't the first thing he says…)
Here's the first thing he says:
He says, “Mahamudra can't be described."
Like he sits down to give a teaching on Mahamudra to Naropa and he goes, “you know, I can't describe this to you."
But fortunately, he goes on to try to do so.
“Mahamudra can't be described unless, Naropa, it is taught to one possessing enough intelligence to endure the pains of spiritual fire and devotion to their Lama. One like you, with a heart pure enough to hear the purest of things.”
So the fact that Naropa is still sticking close to Tilopa, after all these different events of following the Lama's advice and getting hurt—apparently as a result, but not as a result, of course—and then getting healed and then getting teachings.
Naropa keeps coming back for more.
Partway through those 12, he gets this teaching on how to reach the direct experience of the true nature of his own mind—like hasn't Naropa had the direct perception of emptiness yet? After all of who he is and what he's been through?
Apparently not.
It's encouraging, and it's discouraging at the same time.
So to give a teaching on Mahamudra to somebody else—it's not going to influence that somebody else, or the way in which it's going to influence that somebody else is going to be determined, is by the level of somebody else's Kelwa—I didn't write that down.
Kelwa—Goodness, level of goodness.
Kelwa is this word for our store of virtue.
But the store of virtue sounds dry compared to what Kelwa is—Kelwa is the goodness in our heart that keeps us devoted to our goal.
It is the accumulation of all the kindness that we've done—regular, ignorant kindness, but added to it all the goodness that we do as a result of our growing understanding of karma and emptiness, so our “baby wisdom," and then of course, once we have wisdom, any kindness done with wisdom is now our store of virtue is really growing fast.
So Kelden is someone, I have to check this word for you, is one who has this Kelwa.
So everybody probably has a little bit, every human anyway—and the amount of this Kelwa, this deep core of goodness, the more we have it, the more meaningful are the teachings that we receive. We can hear the same teachings as other people, and we'll hear them differently based on our level of Kelwa, you see, our level of goodness.
So to hear, to receive secret advices on Mahamudra, says Tilopa to Naropa, is like “I could say these words to somebody and without sufficient Kelwa, they won't be meaningful."
So the goodness that Naropa has is what makes the teaching become “the teaching” that is special for Naropa.
So, [the] same thing is going on here—I'm giving you the words that Lama Christie gave me.
Your level of Kelwa will be the way that you hear them and how they impact you and how they work or don't work for you.
So he's saying to Naropa, like in this sort of not so subtle way, “you do have enough goodness to hear these teachings."Or maybe he's saying, “you'll hear what I'm telling you according to the level of goodness that you have," which implies or says that there's infinite instructions in that Mahamudra teaching that Tilopa is giving—because it depends on who's hearing it as to how it's going to affect them.
So it's also a teaching on the emptiness of the teaching—and those two of course need to go together.
Kelwa is our level of kindness—and the words of the Mahamudra, having no nature of their own, makes it such that our goodness can make the Mahamudra teachings the exact thing that you need, or not.
So it's fascinating to be told at the front of your teaching, “look, these words have no meaning. Whatever meaning you put on it, that's what it will be."
And it's like, okay, maybe you're going to hear the words and say, “oh, go out to dinner Chinese food tonight."
And somebody else is going to hear the instructions [and go,] “Oh, this is how you sit down and see emptiness directly tomorrow."
It's not coming from me.
So what am I doing here?
I get to be the vessel for you.
Someday you get to be it for somebody else—I hope.
Okay, now let's go back, so the instruction begins…
Oh, yes, Janet?
[Janet: I know I joke around a lot, but I guess I like to make you laugh for whatever reason. So, do you remember in one of the Nagarjuna classes, I said, “why can't he just tell me what to do?” [laughing] You should be careful what you wish for.]
There you go, Janet.
Okay, so then he says:
If you really long to reach this object
Beyond all thought, beyond all deeds,
Take a trip inside your mind and
Rest within the naked mind.
Turn the putrid swamp of your conceptions into crystal.
Don't feed or strangle what appears. Just take it as it comes.
And when there is no more to grasp or let go,
You are released into Mahamudra.
I'll read it again.
If you really long to reach this object
Beyond all thought, beyond all deeds,
Take a trip inside your mind and
Rest within the naked mind.
Turn the putrid swamp of your conceptions into crystal.
Don't feed or strangle what appears. Just take it as it comes.
And when there is no more to grasp or let go,
You are released into Mahamudra.
So, we've had enough experience with this practice so far to recognize this arising and passing.
At first, we're applying analysis so that we're convinced that we don't have to anymore.
And then we're trying to be in this space of just aware of it going, going, going—we're being the watcher, but the watcher feels a little bit separate from the whole process happening.
Sooner or later, you'll not have this separation between watching what's arising and experiencing the arising and passing—and that's more of what it means to be “resting in the naked mind."
Then, what's happening in our experience is this constant conceptualizing—we've been talking about it—conceptualizing meaning coming up with identities, qualities, stories on this “not enough information," that conceptualizing—it's through conceptualizing that we make our experiences of “me experiencing talking to you inside my computer," that's all conceptualization.
There's information that's happening—my conceptualizing is taking information and making reality out of it.
That happening is happening in our mind, in our awareness—so don't think your mind is all stuck inside your head, because that doesn't make sense (that all conceptualization is limited to inside my head because what about my neighbor's house, which is clearly outside my head. But my neighbor's house is still my conceptualization // information).
I watch my mind go through the different levels of emptiness dependent origination—every time I hear that my neighbor's house is my conceptualization.
“Yeah, but there is a her and there is a house and the way I'm experiencing is unique to me, but it's still out there.”
That's Mind-Only school, right? And lower.
“Well, there's something house-ish out there.
I'm making it my neighbor's house.
That's independent school.
Highest middle way says, “no, there's nothing out there other than the “your neighbor's house for you," and that's just like, no, that's not possible—because when I turn my back, it's still there.
But it isn't for me.
Do you see?
But yes it is for me!
Anyway—I'm getting distracted.
Mahamudra is taking us to the direct experience that there's nothing happening outside of our own mind, and for an ignorant being, everything that is happening inside my own mind is a putrid swamp.
Yikers!!
So what does he mean by the putrid swamp of conceptions?
The stain that makes it putrid is the belief in the identities of the things, right (and others), and the identity of myself being in them.
So when we conceptualize “my neighbor's house," included in that conceptualization is “my neighbor's house in it from it," the one that's there—the “my” neighbor, who's her from her, and the me who's me, right, “me” separate from all of that, so that I can experience it.
The putridity is not the neighbor's house—it's the belief that the neighbor's house is unique to it, in it from it.
We use the term self existent, but I find that so inadequate.
So each of us needs to find our own succinct way of pointing out to ourselves the stain of the ignorant belief, so that we can catch it happening within our experience.
The struggle, I remember the struggle that I went through for so long [and it’s] like, “okay, I understand that the neighbor's house is coming from me and doesn't have its own identity," but then I don't understand how there can still be a neighbor's house when I'm not thinking of it.
And, and it's like, I just couldn't let myself—it was just too scary to really face the fact that everything is happening in my own mind. It either made me feel really, really isolated, like I was the only one, or that nothing was real.
And then it's off that cliff of well, nothing's real, then nothing really matters. You know, and yeah, it's nice to be kind, but, you know, just because I'm kind doesn't mean everybody else is kind. And then I just get used, you know?
It took a long time before pulling away the self existence didn't make everything seem like it should disappear, but the self existence of things that we're pulling away is that something that's in the neighbor's house, that I'm pulling away?
Was my neighbor's house ever self existent?
No.
So when we pull away the self existence of something, does the pen disappear?
No.
Well, where is that self existence that I'm pulling away?
It's just a belief in something.
It's a belief in something that never existed.
Never has never will.
So there's no self existent “neighbors house” to pull away—there never has been.
It's so slippery.
The process of Mahamudra is becoming experientially aware of the fact that there's nothing that can be that can arise (that can be experienced) that's outside of this ripening process—that's outside of our own mind.
We cannot be aware of something beyond our own awareness—because even to think of something that is non-existent is still within our awareness.
So Mahamudra is helping us get to a direct experience of that.
And they use the term putrid on purpose, because we're so complacent with our ignorance, because we're so used to it, that we don't really even believe it's possible to not have it.
But if we became aware that when we are holding things as self existent, it's as if we are moving through air that's poisoned—we would be more concerned, wouldn't we?
Listening inside my own mind—it doesn't seem putrid to me. Yeah, it's tedious. It's constantly pointing out what's wrong with this situation. It knows enough to keep its mouth shut.
But you know, it's not very pleasant most times in there.
But come on putrid?
Putrid would be a mind that's I don't know, thinking porn, and cursing, and I don't know, [to me that’s what putrid is].
I don't have a putrid mind—but as long as I'm believing that something has its identity in it, its qualities in it—what's going on in this mind is like swimming in a cesspool.
Like if we had that conceptuality, would we let our ignorance go on very much longer?
I hope not.
Right?
If that putridity was our normal, common everyday way of life, we wouldn't even know it was putrid, we wouldn't know any better.
So then, you know, would it be a putrid swamp? If that's normal?
Yeah, it's like somebody would say, “you know, you're in a putrid swamp."
And it's like, “no, I'm not."
Until they took you out of it and said, “look what it can be like."
And then it's like, to go back into your putrid swamp is like, “don't make me do that!”
So he's saying, “look, be willing to recognize when you're in there," watching everything arise, that the belief that what arises is in it from it, and consider that putrid.
{If we do this,] we will be much more likely to go, “No, I don't want any more of that."
Right?
Much less likely to complacently allow that ignorance to go on.
But we need to be able to recognize our ignorance, recognize the putridity before we can be able to clean it—to put some bleach in that cesspool.
So we go through the steps.
You can start with the outer sounds.
The experience, “bird in grapefruit tree," that's the putridity.
But that experience of “la la la la” was “bird in grapefruit tree," and we're learning to take that experience more and more subtly—like you did with the object—right?
When the object popped in, was it suddenly that the object with its own identity showed itself to you?
Yeah—the object had its own identity the instant it popped in, but the experience showed you that no, it didn't—my mind put that identity on it, because it didn't have it.
And then it did.
So a little less putrid in that moment.
So can we impose that same, “a little less putrid” with every experience that is popping up as we're in this “watcher mode," allowing everything to come up—he says, grasping and letting go.
We have to grasp to something to let it go. Right?
Otherwise, you wouldn't use the term “let go."
So by the time something has arisen to that awareness, we already have something that's been grasped to—that we need to let go, to let pass, which apparently is why, as we continue to let go, let go, let go, we get to the point where we don't even grasp.
And, and that's the point of the pause (I don't know if that's the point of the pause, or if that's the doorway to the pause, not exactly sure which) because if we're not giving even a subtle identity to something, then what's happening?
And that's what we're going to explore as we get there when we get to the pause—what do we do with that?
We'll see.
So what we're learning to clean (what we're training to clean out) isn't the conceptions—it's the staying on the conceptions that include the object's identity in it.
That's the staying.
When the object's identity is put on it by me (by my kindness or not) that's a pure object.
So the goal is not to become a being who is “object-less," because that's not possible.
A fully enlightened being is conception-less in the sense that they don't take two things and come up with a third—they're experiencing directly “things," but they still have thought. They still put identities onto things.
They are doing so pushed by wisdom and compassion, instead of doing so pushed by ignorance.
So we want to get clear that we're not trying to stop conceptualizing—we're trying to remove the ignorant stain on the conceptualizing that we're doing.
And again, this process of Mahamudra helps us do that moment by moment, even before it slides us into the direct perception of the “no self nature of things," because we are intentionally allowing these things to arise to our awareness, and refusing to allow the identity [that] we put on them to drag us along with it.
And we're doing that because we understand that whatever has arisen has no identity from it other than the one we put on it that is stained with the “from it."
But every time we refuse to go along with that, we damage the “from it stain” a little bit.
So just allowing to come,
And refuse to play
Is damaging our in it from it stain.
Cleaning, putting a little bleach on that stuff.
All right, so let's spend the week on this same meditation:
Just sink down in, let everything come up.
Use what you understand of the experience of the identity just suddenly coming out of your own mind with each of those.
Just have in your conceptualization about it that every time you recognize and let go, you're cleaning away that putrid stain of belief in self existence from your mind.
So, really the practice is not about how well am I doing? Am I doing it right?
It's like the period of time that while I'm in there, letting stuff go—I'm scrubbing away at my belief in self existence, hooray!
Just do it.
All righ, so remember that person we want to be able to help?
We've learned a lot.
We have set in motion the helping them in that deep and ultimate way someday, 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 being, see how happy they are with you.
Feel your gratitude to them, your reliance upon them—maybe even your devotion to 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 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 wisdom.
And may it be so.
All right.
Thank you, everyone.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 16
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
Okay, for the recording, welcome back—we are Mahamudra practicers.
It's June 3rd, 2025.
Let’s gather our minds here as we usually do, please. Bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
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 let's settle in to do our meditation together.
We're still working at the same section, the same level of growing this familiarity with drawing in and sinking back, opening up to the allowing without following. So we're spending quite a bit of time getting good at that. So that it can go deeper, deeper as we progress with Lobsangchuky Gyaltsen's instructions.
So get your body aligned. So that it can fall still.
Once it locks in, you bring your attention to your breath. Bright, clear focus at the sensation at the tip of the nostrils. Being the watcher, the observer. Just let the body breathe.
You're adjusting the quality of your focus, the quality of your clarity, turning on the intensity.
(12:00) Now shift the focus of attention to outer sounds.
Notice how the mind goes out there.
Notice how the labels get thrown on.
Watcher's job, let them go.
Notice them at more subtle levels.
(14:02)
When Watcher is recognizing body hearing happening, level, focus on body hearing inner sounds.
And Observer notices the same thing. `Oh, identities, labels on information` . Let that go. Aware of the process. More subtle, subtle levels.
Staying fascinated,
curious,
Then sinking in deeper to be observing any thought that arises about anything.
(16:36)
Keenly aware of the mind throwing that identity onto something and simply open for the next one to arise and pass.
(17:45)
You are being the observer, not the follower of the story.
Being aware of whatever arises at more and more subtle levels of aware and letting them pass.
(19:04)
All the specifics are falling away.
There is still experiencing happening.
These images passing through this landscape of raw mind, raw awareness.
(20:57)
It can become dreamlike, discontinuous images popping up.
If we were to follow them, they would take shape into a story. Our observer is not interested in the story. Our observer is fascinated with what's going to pop up next. Fascinated with letting it go.
If there's any struggle, let that go too.
(22:10)
If you experience moments of waiting for the next image, recognize that waiting is also a mental image arising and passing.
The pause,
Your focus, your clarity, your intensity of simply allowing what's arising.
*** 2 Minutes ***
We'll stay two more minutes.
(26:55)
Now come back up through the levels.
Let the identity, yourself inside your physical body, come back.
And then the identity, me and my physical body in my room in this class come back.
Make a note to yourself that all of this is also thrown out onto information by my own mind, and that's what makes it real.
(27:45)
When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.
*************
So are you noticing that you can never not be throwing out some identity? I know, more and more subtle levels, but there's always something happening. Our job is not to stop it. We can't stop it. What we're trying to do is become more and more familiar with the process happening. So that when we have this ability to just sink into that deep level of awareness of that process happening, the flow happening, we'll have the skill to get there swiftly and then use our own mind as the object that we're watching - to see how it too is simply this process happening.
And then its empty nature is that it's nothing other than that. And then we're going to meet our own identity along the way - to see that, son of a gun, that too is nothing but that process and nothing but. But words don't do it until we can get the experience of it.
So this whole Mahamudra is about the experience happening. And we're devolving, deconstructing, deconstructing to experience what happens at more subtle levels. We just have to try it on for size in order for you to be able to go, oh, her words mean that experience in me. So that's why we're doing this beginning part of the Mahamudra practice again and again and again. It isn't the Mahamudra. It's the ability to do the Mahamudra when we get there.
So hopefully it's getting to be more fun. This idea of what's coming next is this state of mind that helps us stay engaged as opposed to, I don't think I'm doing it right. Oh, this is boring. It's right. Have this fascination of “where that come from”, but don't answer the question. Just whatever will keep us engaged and fascinated with, well, you know, what's that? I do that, do I have enough information for that thing? And I keep digging down until I get beyond words. And it's still just as like, curious. What's that? What's that? What's that? All right.
So in Lobsang Chökyi Gyaltsen commentary, we were in the section where he's describing the Mahamudra teaching that Lord Tilopa gave Naropa on the banks of the Ganges River. You know, they're both sitting there dangling their feet in the water and he's giving Naropa this teaching. Based on the trial that he just experienced, which was to drag the bride down off the elephant, you know, and drag her around.
What's that connection about the bride? You have to think of that from a guy's side versus the bride's side. And then he got beat up as a result. And so the first thing Naropa says, as you recall, is, you know, your Mahamudra can't be taught to anybody, unless that anybody has the karmic goodness, the spiritual virtue to hear it, and the devotion to hear it. It takes both of those together. And so we were just, we just talked a bit about devotion and what devotion means.
And I wanted to touch on it again, because it's such a slippery thing. It can be really dangerous to have really, really strong devotion, but like the karmic, the good karmic goodness to have really, really strong devotion, but not the karmic goodness for the one you're devoted to, to not abuse the privilege. Right? It happens. It happens a lot, actually. And so devotion is dangerous.
But on the other hand, devotion is this, what we're calling this emotion of such trust in another being, like our perception of them is that they are so much wiser than we are. That they love us more than we can conceive. And that everything they do is designed solely to help us stop our suffering, ultimately.
And does that come from them? Or does that come from us? Right? So, you know, are you going to turn that on just to just anybody? Because, oh my gosh, that would be a great attitude to have. So I'll just pick somebody. And they're going to be the one who loves me so much that anything that they do is getting me enlightened as quickly as possible. Could it work? Yeah, actually, it would be a hugely powerful practice. If you could hold it while they abuse you and take advantage of you and beat you up, because that might happen.
But on the other hand, it might also happen that, oh my gosh, right? Everything they say, triggers this deep shift in you. Everything they do triggers this deep shift in you. And before you know it, you and your world and them has completely changed. It could be anybody.
But if we don't have the seeds, and like, who knows what's in their karmic pocket, then devotion arises in response to our experience with someone. Because past seeds ripening, of course, but we watch them and we see them and we see how they behave with their other students and we match whether we think they're going to be the one for us.
Technically, that's not devotion. Technically, devotion is, they're the one, right? Like falling in love. They is the one. I just know it. Samadhi maintains that the instant he saw me for the first time, she's the one I'm going to marry. I don't know if I believe that, but it's his story and he's sticking to it. Bad idea. So we really can't turn devotion on and off. We can aspire to it if we're one of those who doesn't have it. We can admire people who do have it to help, right? Rejoice for them in order to help grow our own. We can think about it. We can think about, you know, what kind of mistake did I make in my devotion practices in some past life that I don't have it in this life? If it's something we're interested in. For a long, long time, I didn't want any part of devotion. I disrespected devotion. You know, I must have abused it either direction, as the disciple or as the teacher, probably as the teacher. And so I wasn't interested. And then something happened, you know, and it's like, well, this is an odd feeling in me. You know, I don't recognize this. Oh my gosh, I think it's devotion. But it's devotion to somebody who's not in physical manifestation. So it's kind of safer, right? Then devotion to a physical being that you still waffle between, no, no, they're a perfect being. No, no, they're human.
The Lama Christi would say again and again, the instant, like the very instant you devote yourself to some human appearing person as your Lama, they start doing things that don't seem so Lama like, you know, up until then, everything they did was so amazing and perfect. And then you devote yourself to them. And now they're picking their nose and farting in public and, you know, doing all kinds of things that you find offensive. And it's like, whoa, was my devotion now misdirected? Or did my devotion now kick in to where now the challenge happens? Everything they do for me is still so perfect. It' sdifficult. This idea of devotion is difficult.
Yes, Tom.
(Tom: Um, so first, I spend the whole week thinking about devotion, and, and realize that devotion comes with love, right? But then in our world, or at least in my experience, is that we have hierarchies of different loves, right? Like love to a parent, parent to a child, romantic love. And so I was kind of exploring and questioning, like, what type of love are we supposed to experience towards the teacher, towards, you know, the refuge, because when we have romantic love, we tend to have a lot of refuge in that, in that person. And even when I was googling the definitions of the like, compassion, love, like the type, it was, there is different nuances. And I was gonna ask that question, basically, like, what type of love and relationship are we should have toward a refuge and teacher that I know it would be the correct path to follow, if that makes sense. Because I noticed, like, if I spend time thinking about my boyfriend, I was like, Oh, I have this, like, and it was, and it also, right away, those type of love, made me feel very external of myself, like being saved by the other person being, you know, and not so much from within to myself, if that makes sense.)
(40:25)
Yeah, yeah. Human love, human love has this connotation of expectation, they will make me happy. The love in our Tibetan Mahayana tradition, love is that emotion to want the other's happiness, not meaning I want your happiness for myself, but meaning I want to be the source of your happiness My happiness comes from being the source of your happiness, that love.
So if this object of devotion has that kind of love for us, and they have the wisdom that knows that triple berry pie will bring me pleasure, but will perpetuate my suffering. Okay, they might do different things with triple berry pie. Sometimes they get it for me for my birthday. Sometimes they drop it on my white dress. Sometimes I'm making this up -Nobody's ever done that. Sometimes I can't get it no matter how much I want it, right. And it's like, all of that, my devotion would say, all of that is my holy being, showing me something, teaching me something, showing me my attachment to my expectation that triple berry pie will bring me pleasure, which it does every single time, which is so dangerous, you see. Because every time it's as delicious as I expect, I'm reinforcing my misunderstanding that my pleasure came from the triple berry pie.
You know, and then, so the devotional object being our perception of them, devotion is that our perception of them is that they love us like that. All they want is our happiness. So now our love for them is, would then say, I want their happiness too. Like I want to please them. And that, like that strikes a negative chord in a lot of people. You know, it's like, it's not up to me to please anybody, right. It's up to me to please me. And we become people pleasers and that is misguided and misunderstood and causes suffering.
So I'd say our sense as the disciple of that being is that we want to please them, but not in a human sense, that we want to follow what they say. We want to learn the lesson they're trying to teach us so that they don't have to do it over and over and over again. They don't care. They're happy to do it over and over and over again. But you see, it's this really fine, delicate relationship that the feeling of devotion is. It's the word that we use for this very delicate trust that we have in this other being's guidance. And when we have it, then we are able to go to them for guidance. And we are able to see things in ways that we weren't able to see before.
Because of this relationship that we've built from our side, that allows them then to have the impact on us. That's what drives our wish for that relationship, is we want to change in ways that we can't seem to recognize how we need to change or how to do it. And so this other being is the one that we trust to show us what we need to change.
So then, part of this thing we're calling devotion, then, is the force that can hold us as we have experiences that end up being painful, so that the painful experience doesn't make us run away.
So Naropa had these crazy, horrible trials that his lama would repeatedly say, once he went through all these awful things just to find the lama, he devotes to the lama, and then any student of mine would jump off this roof. Over he goes. And he lands, and he's all crushed up, and he's in pain. What's the matter with you? Why did you jump? Oh, my body's raised, says this thing. And Tilopa heals him and then gives him a teaching. And it's like, come on, any normal person would do that once and go, I'm out of here, lama, thank you very much. Couldn't you have just taught me that? But could Naropa have heard the words of the teaching that he got and understood them in the same way if he hadn't purified whatever it was he purified by getting hurt by jumping off the roof? He could have jumped off that roof and flown, couldn't he have? So he crashed and burned, and then was able to hear the words of the teaching and receive the teaching.
So his devotion grew when he jumped off the roof and smashed his body all up. His devotion grew towards his lama instead of diminished. But, you know, put yourself in the same position, you know, not even close to the jumping off a roof with my lamas. But there have been other situations, you know, where it's like, I leaped and yuck happened, you know, and the yuck was really yuck. And it took a long time for me to process it. And it's gonna happen.
And we think, oh, once I have this great devotion, you know, I'll be so heart warmed by just thinking about my person, then life will go great. And everything I want will happen. And you see, it's all misguided, because everything we want, worldly, is exactly what we've signed on for this relationship to overcome. But we think, oh, no, they're gonna give me everything I want, my life's gonna get great. And it's like, guess what? No, it doesn't. Can it? Yes. Life can not change one iota and your perception of your life could be everything's great. And people around you go, what's up with you? You know, you can't pay your bells, your car's always breaking down. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I know. I know. It's so great. Like, because everything's an opportunity, right? It's just it's, it's, I almost said, it's just an attitude change. But I'm using the word wrong. It is an attitude change. And nothing but that.
That changes, the changes, the changes are from suffering to happiness, to suffering to not suffering, to happiness. Devotion is a really, really important piece. But so that we have the strength or this conviction that will allow us to leap metaphorically. And that the leap will have to do with our different identities. Like ultimately, the leap that we are waiting to take is the leap into the identity of our empty nature.
(50:20)
And it's like, you can't even describe it in words so much. But we have all these identities that we live within, you know, like a fish in water, we're unaware of them, how we shift between them. And each one of them, it has included in it, and in it from it a self existence. A thing that it is, that's tangible in some way that we can rely upon. We are mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, workers, yoga teachers, you know, you know, all your identities, if you ever write them down, like it's a good, good thing to write them down. Sometime you'll never, you'll never finish. I'm even the fellow bus rider, when I'm riding the bus. We have identities, so many of them, and every single one has its has a nature of its own. Right? We're forced to see ourselves that way. So then we have these attachments. Our belief in things having their identities in them, means that their qualities are in them, which means it's the berry pie that tastes like berry pie, that's so delicious, that even as I eat too much of it, I still want more. And then it's gone. Oh, my gosh, how long is it going to be before I get another berry pie?
Like that, that we understand that our belief in the self existent nature of tea and cars and angry people. But our belief in self existence goes further into the belief of the berry pie and the pleasure from the berry pie is from the berry pie. And so I want more berry pie. And when berry pie goes away, it's the cause of my unhappiness. All of that. It's in it from it having nothing to do with whether I shared apricot pie with somebody who that was their favorite, because I took triple berry pie to the potluck. Because that's what I wanted. Do you see: Versus - ah, what would be their favorite pie? If I take their favorite pie to the party? Then hopefully, my favorite pie will show up one of these days. It's like why don't just buy triple berry pie for them? They'll like it too.
Just the subtlety of karmic planting. When we understand pretty soon, their favorite pie will be triple berry pie and you get to take it to their birthday party. And then yay, right? That's like paradise, wouldn't it? If everybody's favorite thing was your favorite thing? Yay, would be like that. So why am I going off on that?
(54:05) Because with the devotion, we're able to make the leap, regardless of what the consequences are. Our belief in them is strong enough that even if the immediate consequences of what we did is negative, it won't rock our faith in the process. So really, our devotion could also be said to be turned on to the conclusion of our studies. Are we so devoted to the understanding of the four steps? That even if, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm doing everything as kindly as I can. And I am doing it with a high intention. I'm doing it regularly. I'm doing it to high karmic product. And I'm even rejoicing a little bit and nothing's changing. In fact, things are getting worse in my far away world, not my immediate world, things are getting worse. Is my devotion to the teachings strong enough to hang in there? Right?
I'm in the crash and burn part. And it's gonna shift, it's gotta shift. Or do I start to doubt? I admit I'm having doubts. So devotion isn't just towards a being, it's towards a concept and towards an ideal and towards a belief that, hey, this really can shift things or towards the belief that it doesn't matter how long it takes, it is shifting. Now.
So devotion is one thing. Then that spiritual goodness, the kela, that we talked about last week, that spiritual goodness means to have this higher goal in mind. That in our interaction with this, these teachings or this other being, our goal is beyond worldly. Our goal isn't just to have our business be so successful, right? We can quit running it and we can give it to somebody else. Our goal is really even beyond human conception. Our goal, we've heard it, we all have enough spiritual goodness to relate to become a being who stands on a billion planets to save all beings.
To me, that means to become a being whose love manifests as everything and anything for anybody. Like that's what I see as what I want to become. And I have the goodness to hear that that's possible and what you have to do to transform your identity into that and to cling to that hard enough that even when it seems like no matter what I do, I'm not getting any closer to not lose the vision, right?
That anytime I think of that vision, it still is like, oh yeah, right? I can't quit till I'm there.
So it does take both. The devotion being the willingness to see that things can get worse before they get better. And that's not meaning we're failing. It means we're working hard enough to really rip out the crap because it's painful to do the rip out.
(58:14)
And that they call it the spiritual fire, the spiritual goodness being to have the belief in the goal. So if we're thinking what blocks us from that goal, why can't we just think, oh, I'm made of love and be that. We have blockers to that. And those blockers are self-existent me, self-existent other, and self-existent interaction between the two. That's where all those attachments come in. The attachments are driven by the belief in there's identities and natures in them. And that the bottom line belief is the identity and nature and qualities and characteristics of this are in this coming from this. And it gets a little bit squirrely because yes, my qualities and identities are coming from me, karmically coming from me, but not coming from me in the self-existent sense. Not like they are me, they are mine. That self-existent me is the deepest blocker to becoming the being who's made of love, compassion, wisdom. Because of being made of love, compassion, wisdom cannot be a being made of love, compassion, and wisdom in them from them. Well, wait, how's it ever going to happen then? Do you see it gets really. You'd think it would get clearer and clearer the closer you got, but it gets more and more slippery. Because our seeds are such that even as we're thinking of the fully enlightened being we aspire to be, we're thinking of that being in a self-existent way, we can't help it.
So Mahamudra practice in the end is going to be able to reach an awareness of that self-existent belief that's flowing along with all of these. As just another identity that the mind is throwing onto something else. And be able to go, no, no, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go. In order to walk our way into the direct experience of, oh, no such thing. Without the fear or danger of going also nothing at all. Which is why we do it with everything else that's going on in our experience over and over and over and over and over and over and over. Because yes, there's no sparrow in the grapefruit tree singing. There's the one I'm making myself here. To be able to rest in that, what's there is there, but not the way I thought.
Words fail. So, so Lama Christi, I'm getting ahead of myself, actually. Let's, let's take a break. I need to regroup to see what I've said from class and what I haven't said yet. And then I'll pick up.
So all of that in answer to Tom's question was actually part of class. It was coming up in class. So she did this subuti thing. Thank you so much. Lama Christi, used the word surrender more often than she used devotion. Like our willingness to surrender. And she told that she gave this one story or experience that she and Geshe-la were on their way to the ACIP office in New York City. It didn't have its own office, but where it was happening. And he said, let's go in the back door. And so they had to go around the block. And, and she, they got to the door. She stepped ahead of him and turned the knob and it was locked, you know, the knob wouldn't turn. And she stepped aside and he stepped in front of her. He grabbed the knob in and opened the door. And then he stepped in and she stepped in after him. And she said, what, what impressed her wasn't the fact that the door was locked for her and not for him, but what she got from that moment is, “Oh, when I follow my Lama, doors open up for me that otherwise would not”. And, you know, it was, it was early on in her Dharma career. But she said that just shifted her whole perspective. It wasn't like she had to revisit it just in that moment. It was like a realization. They say you only get those in meditation, but you know, I think that you can have realizations in life that just change you at that instant. And you don't have to go back and revisit, revisit, revisit.
If we could like recognize those kinds of situations or things that we need. If we knew what it was we needed to surrender, we could just surrender it. We wouldn't need a test or a trial or somebody to do something, you know, odd or miraculous. We would just do it. If we are here still as samsaric beings, and I don't know about you guys, but I am, then that must mean I can't really know what I need to surrender, or I would just do it. If I'm serious about wanting to get to my goal. So either I'm not serious about getting to my goal, or I don't really know exactly what it is I need to surrender, and in which case it would be really helpful if there was somebody who did know.
So do you see kind of the logic of how the dharma teachings have been fed to us? It's like we have the tools to go back and look. Well, once we recognize, well, either I really don't want my goal, or I really don't know what I need, it takes our refuge to a whole new level. It's like it's not just that the building's on fire and I need help. It's that I'm on fire. Like, I don't even know what it is I need to change. I think I do. I think I need to change my belief in self-existent me. Butt I don't really know what that is enough to be able to stop doing it. So I do need somebody who knows what I need to give up and what I need to take up, like directly, like an omniscient being.
Okay, so you got that. Surrender. So one task that each of us then might be worth spending a little time with yourself is, like, what kinds of identities do I rely upon that need to be given up? Like, just to say it like that implies that there are some identities we don't need to give up, and that's a wrong implication. All of our worldly identities are stained with the belief that they are in me, from me, somehow, something that makes me me, that I am, that I can't possibly give up and still exist. Right? The two cliffs. I'm me, and if I'm not me, I'm nothing. No. Middle way me.
What is it we need to give up? Make yourself a list. And see if you can identify what needs to be given up. The willingness to give up starts the process, and the understanding about giving up, and maybe even, you know, doing some kind of four-stepping plan to try to give them up, could very well trigger the giving up without needing to do a leap from the building and crash and burn.
It's not a given that everything has to be painful. It's our resistance to the change that makes the change unpleasant, because otherwise it wouldn't be unpleasant. If there's resistance to falling off a building and getting crashed, it's going to hurt to crash. If there's no resistance, guess who jumps out of airplanes regularly? Like, crazy, but not unpleasant. Right? It doesn't end up with crash and burn. So it's our resistances. The more what we resist persists.
(1:09:01)
So Tilopa's talking to Naropa on the banks of the river, saying, you know, I'm sitting down here, now it's time to teach you Maha Mudra. And I can't teach Mahamudra.. There's nothing I can say that will teach anybody Mahamudra, unless the one I'm talking to has this spiritual fire, the spiritual goodness, and the devotion to hear my words in a way that brings them to the practice of Mahamudra. So that's the same for all of us. The words I'm saying have no power in and of themselves to teach you about how to reach your own no-self nature. Your seeds are ripening what you hear and how you hear it and how it's going to impact you. Yay for that.
There's no Mahamudra other than that. That the one each of us will reach as a result of what we do with what we hear, from the one that we have the seeds to hear it from. The hardest identity to give up, of course, is the me, the self-existent me.
And so I was thinking, like, how could we even pretend? And it popped into my mind. So just consider that you are in a place you've never been before. There's nobody you know. Nobody knows you. You don't read or speak the language. And there you are. Is that scary or is that like, wow? Yeah, you know, I admit it's still a little scary. And I admit that 30 years ago, just to have that thought would have been terrifying. So I feel like I've come a long way. And when I sit myself into that imagining, I can feel the one that's like, ah, how are my needs going to get met? You know, who's going to hurt me? The fear. And then I can also step into the one it's like, wow, I really am right now anything for anybody, including myself. And which do I choose to sit in for a little while.
And then this is not Mahamudra practice. This is have a full on fantasy. Be the one that's anything for anybody and walk through that little town. And what happens? You know, just flirt with what it might be like to be this no identity at all. To start to get a glimpse of where we're trying to go with our Mahamudra practice. We're not going to go into that kind of visualization. We're going to drop in finally to the me- no self nature when we eventually get there.
So in Tilopa's teaching to Naropa, I can't teach this to you, except that you have the spiritual goodness and devotion to hear it. He's saying that to Naropa, to us, we can't hear it unless we've got a certain amount to. His second verse is “cast your gaze well upon the worldly things which cannot ever stay. They are just a dream and illusion, illusions and dreams, which in actual fact cannot ever truly exist. So learn to find them sorrowful and give up these games of the world.” So he's talking to someone who's already given up the games of the world. He's been a monk since forever. And he even gave up his monk's life to go in search of this particular holy Lama. And now he's given up all kinds of stuff. And still Tilopa is saying, give up the games of the world. See that there is nothing worldly that can bring any kind of happiness. Every worldly experience is suffering and the cause of more suffering, no matter how pleasurable. Because of our belief in the self nature of the pleasurable things, pleasure is in it. And so it's the source of my pleasure. And the reverse, unpleasant things, unpleasant nature is in it. So it is the source of my displeasure. So I can blame either way. I'm blaming the object, whether it's the triple berry pie or the person who brought the triple berry pie: Animate or inanimate objects, the other. We're blaming for the experience. Because there's a me, it's happening too. The underlying is the misunderstanding of the empty nature of me. Really, even more than the empty nature of the berry pie or the other. The empty nature of me is the culprit.
So this practice is casting our gaze upon worldly things. Meaning we've got worldly minds. So everything that arises to it as we're doing this watch, watch, whatever arises, it's all worldly stuff. Clearly, it's not out there, right? Because we're just watching our own mind move. But it's all the worldly stuff that worldly stuff comes from. All this ripening and passing, ripening and passing. We're wanting to be in this sense of, it just poofs up and then changes like how a dream, right? You can be in your living room one instant, at the beach the next instant, and you don't stop and go, wow, how did I get here? Which in real life, that wouldn't happen. It takes time to get from here to the beach. But in dream life, anytime they do have some consistency, when you think back and you try to describe it to somebody, the consistency isn't really consistency, right?
You can't say this happened in my dream and this and this and this and have it make sense to anybody else. So our outer life is no different than dream world, than illusion world. We've studied the illusion a lot in ACI and will more so as our later classes come up. To be an illusion doesn't mean it's not there at all. It means it's not there in the way we think it's there.
Like the illusion of a mirage. You see water in the desert. You get closer. Oh, that's not water. It's a mirage. The mirage was there from the beginning. There was never any water. The yelling boss is there. The yelling boss from their own side is not there, never was there, is not possible, can't be there. But the yelling boss is there. So we're learning to interact with our world and ourselves from that state of mind. We do it by planting seeds in our meditation to not fall for the story, the full on identity and recognize that it's our mind giving the identity so that we can do that when the yelling boss is happening. Oh, my mind giving this identity. But without falling off the cliff of, well, then this isn't happening at all. And I can just walk away, you know, because it's not really happening. So she won't get upset if I just leave and go have a cup of coffee, like wrong conclusion. From what we do with where's this yelling boss coming from?
(1:19:19) Tilopa is helping us take our renunciation a little bit further, like a lot further. We've already recognized that, you know, worldly life, we need to do it because we've got commitments to do it. But we're our hearts not really in it anymore. Our hearts in the Dharma. We just want to do Dharma all day. But then we can bring our own worldly state of mind to the Dharma as well and be thinking, well, the Dharma is more important because it's the Dharma. And so, of course, I'm going to spend more time on the Dharma than on my worldly life because it's so much more powerful karmic object. And I it's like everybody should be doing this. We bring our own belief in self-existence to our Dharma study. And the point isn't to say, oh, well, then I shouldn't do that. No Dharma at all, because it's not self-existent. No, it's understanding where and why we're studying the Dharma and what we're going to do with it. It isn't just a study. It isn't just to get your certificates, your ACI certificates. I know I pushed that, but I push it because what you have to do to get the certificates is planting seeds in your mind to be able to complete what it is you've set out to do.
So Tilopa is reinforcing in Naropa that the difference between worldly things and Dharma things and between Dharma things. And the point Tilopa is trying to make is not the things we do or the other people or things involved - it's the belief that we're bringing to what we do. It's our state of mind. It's our intention and our motivation and our understanding that we bring to what we're doing that makes it worldly or other worldly. So if we're doing our Dharma self-existently, then it's no different. Our attachments to it are no different than our attachments to our worldly things. Yeah, we learn new stuff.
That said, when we have a bodhicitta attitude to our Dharma, we can have a bodhicitta attitude to our worldly life and then our worldly life and our Dharma life become no different. Oh, so then all we have to do is watch movies all day. No. We help other people by studying our Dharma. We help other people by doing our meditation. We help other people by mowing their lawn. We help other people by cleaning our house. We help other people. We're becoming Buddhas by doing the dishes. No way. Yes way. If we're holding our mind on our bodhicitta. It seems so simple. Why don't we just do it? Just turn on bodhicitta every moment. And how long would it take for you to change all your seeds? Not very long. We just have to have the seeds to be able to do that.
Which if we can hear it and not be able to do it, it means we don't have the seeds to do it. It's so stuck. Right. But it means we can make a seeds to do it. Right. That's called practice. And so our practice is in our worldly life and in our Dharma life. Because that's the practice is to make there no difference between Dharma life and worldly life. Because we have the same attitude in all of it. So then we do all of it. And we find this nice balance between all of it because we're out to help people. And most people are not in our Dharma life. Most people are in our worldly life.
We wouldn't even make that distinction anymore between worldly and Dharma when our mindset is bodhicitta. Bodhicitta colored.
(Janet: So I guess when I look at the worldly life in the Dharma life, you know, I see the problems. So you want to help people, right? You want to help people in the future. They won't get a skin condition, say, because you help them. But then if you look at that thought, the thing in the past and the thing way in the future, the skin condition that hasn't even happened. And so then the only way you can help people is if the skin condition comes up, because then it's in the present moment. But then here I was thinking of trying to prevent the skin condition of the people. It's not real. And so my thought of the skin condition isn't real. And so you have to be okay with skin conditions if you're going to help people, because sometimes it's just not going to be a real problem until it's present. It's this future thing. And then I feel bad because I feel like I'm so smart I could see it happening. But the truth is, I really don't know. I don't really know if there's something else with that skin condition that's not what I see. And then I start to get a little confused because aren't I trying to help people? And then I come back to you just have to be okay with seeing that skin condition. That's just the way this stupid place is. You have to be present to things. And you don't know in the future when things are going to happen. And you can try to prevent them, but you don't really know what other things. So I don't know. The time thing is a problem. The past and future thing, it has been a huge problem for me thinking about things)
(1:26.20) Right, right, right. Because where we are is now and what's ripening. And those things are real. They're not real in the way we think, but they are real. So I know you know what you mean when you say they're not real, but I always get a little bit with other people hearing someone use the word “not real” in relation to their explanation of what's going on. Because my own mind goes, what? It's not there. You're absolutely right. You can't help the person's skin condition until they have the skin condition. And whether or not what you do to help prevent the skin condition works or not, you won't actually know. Because if it works, they never get the skin condition. And you don't know whether you did that or not. When they have the skin condition, right, you know, how to try to help, whether it works or not, isn't based on what you did. That's based on their karmas, if you noticed, right? Same thing you do for different people with different skin conditions at different times. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
(Janet: Of course, because all of our skin is different. But, you know, there's the creepy thing of my seeds. Well, am I creating this skin condition from my mental seeds so myself can be a hero? That's that's a possibility too. And that's just really super creepy.)
It is. It is. It is. And, and something to work with. To see it's like, am I trying to help people to be a hero? Or am I trying to help people because they're in need? No, and we all have that question. We all, for an ignorant being, everything we've ever done for anybody has been stained with what we'll get out of it. Self-existent belief makes that happen. So it's not something to say, oh, I'm so bad. It's like, yeah, that's part of this crap that we're trying to. I can't think of the right word, but we're trying to do with it. We're trying to see into where it's coming from so that we can stop recreating it.
And thank goodness you have the opportunity to help people in that way that they can't do for themselves. Also coming from our seeds. But so is the me there in that situation is coming from my seeds too.
So Lama Christi pointed out that as our renunciation is growing, we're recognizing that all those worldly things that we go to for pleasure or blame for displeasure, our pleasure and displeasure isn't really in them. And so we can loosen our attachment to them. But she said just that raw desire, that is a suffering. To just want is a suffering.
And it's like, but wait, you have to want, you want pleasure, you want to avoid displeasure. If you didn't have that at all, you'd never get out of bed. You wouldn't do anything. It's like that very desire is what motivates us, right? It's what drives the wind to move our mind - is I want something like, what's that? What's that? Our mind's going, moving based on desire. This desire is coming out of the ignorant, right? The pig's mouth, both the desire and the ignorant, the dislike coming out of the ignorance mouth. What would desire be if we didn't have the ignorance, do you think?
Like desire is I want attraction to something. What would its opposite be, do you think? Like if I want is this feeling Its opposite would be something outflowing. Instead of want, wouldn't it be give or share or be like out? Something expansive instead of contractive.
So if what if the underlying theme of our awareness wasn't desire. What if it was this other thing? Could you even imagine? Instead of getting out of bed to go - I don't know - I get out of bed because I have to go to the toilet. And it's like, so that example doesn't work very well. But what if I'm getting out of bed to go have a cup of tea? And it's like, what if my very impetus for getting out of bed was to, I don't even know how to say, make a cup of coffee and take it to Samanthi.
A lot of people do that. You get out of bed to change your baby's diaper, right? How many moms have done that? Otherwise you would have stayed in bed a little bit longer, but baby needed, right? So we have the seeds for this motivated by taking care of another that are the seeds that will help us override the thing that blocks us from being that. Instead of being that was still the stain of whatever our self gain is. Unfortunately, there's still some self gain in moms taking care of babies. If you're a suffering being mom, but that kind of idea, right? We're wanting to reach this other identity that's so different than every identity we could conceive of having as a being who still is staying with self existence.
To get there though, we need to go through that doorway of our blank nature in order to grow this new identity. Our old identities block a new identity. They need to go. When we devote ourselves to a path, that path's job is to show us these identities and our job is to let them go. If we don't do it by our own volition, something about the path, right? Or the one who represents that path is going to do something that makes that happen.
They're not going to sit there. The lama's not going to sit there and go, you know, what's so-and-so's identity that I need to pop that bubble. It's not like that. It's all happening spontaneously from whose seeds? Yours, right? The student determines how fast they travel along the path according to how they use that object of devotion. It sounds terrible. Use them.The object of devotion is doing their part. Yes, they have their seeds as well. But for us, it's our task.
What would be the hardest thing for you to give up? If you give it up on your own, they don't have to do it. Probably the one we think is the hardest isn't because we probably don't even see it.
So, this devotion is this surrender to let somebody else be the one that keeps showing us these identities that need to go. And then our job is the willingness to let them go once we see them happen. Even in terms of our attitude towards our desires, our attitude towards our worldly life, our attitudes. All of this is about attitude. How are we doing here?
Lama Christi says “we're giving up our attachments to everything, even the Dharma”. It's going to come back around. What about that lama, our object of devotion? Like finally, we have something we can rely upon. Finally, we have something that knows what we need. Finally, we have something we can stay attached to. No, because our attachment would imply that that lama and their qualities is in them from them. And it's not. It's all coming from you.
So, can you rely upon that lama? Yes and no. No, not from them in them. Can you? Yes, from you in you. And see why it's not a given then that your devotion will stay strong. Because we don't know how our devotion seeds, how many we've got. So then we are wanting to replant them, right?
As we're benefiting from the lama, our respect, our service, our helping others serve their lamas, even if it's not the same one, that's fine. To help us intentionally keep our karmic seeds for having such a being in our, as our guide. If when we hear an instruction from them, we go, “ hmm, I don't think so”. Right? And the instructions say, you would go to them and say, and I'll do respect lama. I hear you tell me to do this. And these are the reasons why I feel like I need to do that. And they'll say, okay, fine. And in our minds, we've achieved what they wanted us to do. But in another part of our mind, it was like, but we made the decision and that's healthy. And it's limiting. It's a very, very fine distinction at anywhere along the way. Naropa could have said, and I'll do respect to Naropa. I don't think you really want me to drag that bride around. It's going to hurt her and upset a lot of people. What is it you really wanted to teach me? And may be to Naropa would have said, great, let's sit down by the side of the river and I'll tell you Mahamudra. Right. Or Naropa might've just sat down and gone into another years of meditation. How do we know? We would only be able to judge based on our own sense of, I know better than the Lama or not. Again, very dangerous.
(1:40:26) Lama is empty also. So we give them the power to influence us by way of our interaction with them. They don't need us bowing at their feet. We need to show ourselves some humility. What is it that you need to show yourself in your relationship with this holy being. Whoever it is, right? Whoever it is. I'm not talking about me for any of you. I'm not even necessarily talking about Geshe Michael for any of you. Whoever it is that this has what you need.
Okay. So let's go on. Verse number three, to Tilopa is saying to Naropa, let go of your fondness of your retinue. Turn away from all of your loved ones.
(Lama Sumati:. We interpret instead of to Tilopa thinking he knows better, I'm excuse me, Naropa thinking he knows better. He says to to Tilopa, what you've taught me, I can't do that. So taking what you've taught me, I can't do that. I need to do, I need to do something else. So you're not telling to Tilopa, you know better. You're expressing the correct interpretation of this teaching.)
(1:42:09)
Correct. Correct. And that's also a valid and correct response that will bring a result. And it's not wrong. It could have saved Naropa a whole lot of pain. And those pain seeds would still be in there growing. So I'm not arguing. I agree with you, Sumati, I'd be the one saying, and I'll do respect Lama. Right? Your teachings say not to hurt people. This would hurt people. I can't do it. I will break my mouth. And, and there are others where they would Lama said to do it. I'll do it.
We had this at Diamond Mountain. We had this a lot, you know, and then we learned from the Lamas we only, we only told them to do that in order to keep them busy with something else. Right? And then like the situation would happen that Lamas would say, say something. It'd be nice to have light on this path. And then the person who heard that would come to Sumati and say, the Lamas want lights along this path. And then Sumati would, he was instructed to go to the Lamas and ask first, because we got burned and Lamas would go. We didn't say that. Right? We just said we needed a flashlight. Only we said, we said it in a way, right? So it was like these misinterpretations. There was a group that leapt. There was a group of people that leapt when the Lama said something, and there was a group of people that thought it through according to the vows. And when the Lamas were, you know, asked about that, they would say both are right, planting different seeds, ripening different seeds. So there'll be some times when you leap and there'll be other times when you say, but you're right, Sumatii, it's not out of arrogance necessarily. It can be out of morality. Right?
(Sumati: Well, it's out of respect for how you interpreted their teaching. I guess my point is, well, you have to be careful to not appear to be arrogant. What you're doing is you're, you're trying very hard to follow exactly what they taught you. And that, that can be difficult. Others can look upon that as being, well, you know better than the Lamas.)
I aspire to be the leap type, because I'm not, because I see how powerful that could be. But scary, right? Especially when you read Naropa. Nice.
(Roxana: Excuse me, Jhurnama, the leap part. Can you explain a little bit more, please? So yeah, yeah. I don't know if it's in my language. I can't have a clear idea. Thank you. Probably language.)
We use, we use the term to leap when, when there's a situation where you don't really want to do it, but you decide to do it anyway. You know, and it's like you take this leap into something you don't want to do or leap into the unknown. In particular, the first Naropa trial was there on the roof of this building and Naropa says, you know, any, any good student of mine would jump right off this roof and flip over Tilopa goes. And of course he crashes. And then Tilopa goes down there. So literally there was a leap in the Naropa story, but when we use it as a phrase, it means “to jump into something that you don't know or don't want to do”.
(Lama Sumati: If the leap for me would be to go to the mixed nuts. I learned translating. That would be like, oh my God, I'm out of my mind. I don't want to do this. I have no skills. I like to have at least a little skill before I do something. I have no skill, but I'm going to do it. Well, I should be not saying. I'm not going to do, but anyway).
We've all leaped right already in some way. And then there are other leaps waiting for us very likely.
I'll just carry on. So let me go back to verse three. (1:47:43)
Let go of your fondness for your retinue,
turn away from all of your loved ones,
walk alone into the forest
to an isolated hermitage
and practice meditation
reside within the state of that, which cannot be contemplated,
reach that thing, which cannot be reached.
And you will reach Mahamudra.
So he's saying to Naropa, everything's got to go. Our attachment to anything, anybody has got to go in order to experience directly this true nature of our own mind. Is it literal? It's got to go. Is he saying, just ditch your family, go and live in retreat. It's tempting, right? I'm getting very tempted. But it's not what he means.
He is talking about reprioritizing things. And again, more attitudinally reprioritizing. We do have commitments. We can't ditch them and then think that we're going to get some good result from our meditation practice. Our fondness to our retinue, right? All of our loved ones. We are in those relationships in ways that benefit ourselves personally, that increase our egos and our belief in a self-existent me.
All of us have our unique take on that. And those block us from being able to get into deep enough meditation to be able to sit in our no-self nature because of the importance of those relationships and what they bring to us. Right? So it's not saying walk away from all those relationships. It is saying, look at how we are attached to those relationships for our own personal need and then work at that level.
(Lama Sumati: And I might add that walking away from relationships karmically sets seeds for similar actions that you run into that were not favorable for you. So you have to karmically, with wisdom, think of how to do these tasks)
And he's saying, use all of those relationships to see how they reinforce our identities. All these different identities. And then you can consciously decide, okay, “ I am the sister right now” as you're interacting with your sister, right? And I'm going to be as kind of sister as I can. Instead of the sister, that I used to be. Now I'm going to be the grocery shopper. Right? We step into these different identities all day long, shape shifting identities. We do it automatically.
We can do it very intentionally and consciously. And then, and so be them differently, be them more wisely. This is what he means by stepping away. Now, it does take a little bit of time actually away from the automatic pilot in order to gain this ability to have this awareness of shifting identities from moment to moment.
And that's the advantage of solitary retreat. So our tradition in particular is very keen on solitary retreat. You learn how to do solitary retreat and group retreat. But then when you take yourself off alone for some period of time, that's when we can really recognize - oh my gosh.
Where is the grocery shopper me? Where is the auntie me? Where is the grandma me? Where is, right? All of those interactions with other beings reinforce our identities, even with pets and animals. And, you know, we've got mosquitoes flying around in our house right now and one lands and it's like, my initial reaction is get off me. And then my second reaction is, oh, I'm lunch right now, you know, and I just let it.
But to be isolated to where you don't even see anybody and you don't see anybody see you, you block off the mirrors, you block off the windows. And all you have is like your experience of you, you realize your experience of your body is very different. Like you can't see your face. You can't see your back. Really all you can see, I can see a bit of something that I call a nose. I can see something I call glasses. I can see hands to almost my elbows. And it's like, I put all that together into having a body. That's nuts, right? It's miraculous. But it's the idea when you're all by yourself with no feedback, it gets disorienting. So if you don't have a systematic way to approach it, you'll go kind of nuts. But with a systematic way, you can very clearly come to get a sense of being without being any of those identities.
And that's a start to reaching the ability to see that we have no self nature.
So let's still spend the week on just sinking down into being aware of the flow and watching for the pause and recognizing the pause as part of the flow. See where we go.
Remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We have set in motion the in that deep and ultimate way someday. 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 accepted and blessed. 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 may. 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 wisdom. And may it be so.
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Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 17
There is no vocab list for this class.
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Introduction
All right, for the recording, welcome back. We are Mahamudra studiers, practicers, achievers—soon to be achievers. So we'll do our opening prayers and then I'm gonna give class, and I set my timer so that we'll do our meditation at the end of class, okay? But I set my timer so I won't yak through it. 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.”
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All right, so thank you for joining me this morning (this afternoon), I'd like to remind us all that in our tradition tomorrow, the full moon tomorrow, is called Sagadawa—I don't know what those words actually mean, but it's the Tibetan date for celebrating the birth, enlightenment and parinirvana of Shakyamuni Buddha. Like, we celebrate all those three things on this one day, and so it's one of those merit multiplying days and it's a great day to like be really intentional and do something that would plant some powerful, powerful seeds for yourself, your family, your world—and you can be creative with what you wanna do.
The traditional things are, you say these prayers, and you do these rituals, and you do circumambulations, and you make lots of prostrations, you do lots of offerings, all those traditional things—they have power.
Those rituals have power because they have no nature of their own, right?
They're “powerful karmic object things to do," but that doesn't mean only ritual, right?
So I just bring it up because it's this great opportunity to do a [shake up] in our own minds, with our ignorance and selfishness.
[pulls up screen share]
So to remind ourselves, we are in Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s section where he is describing, or giving some explanation of, that teaching called Ganga Ma, which is the teaching that Naropa received from his Lama Tilopa after one of his trials.
And they're sitting on the shore of the Ganges River, you know, splashing their feet in it, and Tilopa is teaching Naropa the Mahamudra about Mahamudra—which is somehow related to the purification that he did by dragging that new bride off the elephant and getting beat up for it.
That's a long story in itself.
So we had stopped in this verse, let go of your fondness.
Let go of your fondness for your retinue
Turn away from all your loved ones
Walk alone into the forest
To an isolated hermitage
And practice meditation.
Reside within the state of that
Which cannot be contemplated,
Reach that thing which cannot be reached
And you will reach Mahamudra.
So we had talked a bit about this “isolating ourselves” to practice meditation—and he doesn't mean only practice meditation when you're isolated, because he's not meaning for us to go out and live in a cave forever, or at least until we reach Mahamudra.
We were talking about the need to isolate from all of those identities that get reinforced every time we interact with another person. We have the “us” that we are for them, and we don't recognize that that's actually a window to the fact that our own nature is just this empty potential to be the “coworker” for them, the “mother” for them, the “owner” for that one, the “this” for that one.
And when we get familiar with this constant shape-shifting of identity, you still have this one in there that's like, “yeah, but what about me, right? What about me, the real authentic me, the real me?”
But as we do this practice, we come to recognize that that “me” is just another one of these constantly changing identities that is shape-shifting with every experience that we have.
It's really difficult to reach an awareness of those shifting identities while we're in the midst of doing them—of being them.
And so from time to time, it's really useful—I don't know, maybe even necessary—to remove yourself from all of those relationships and be in a space where you don't even see yourself, right? You know, no mirror. You don't see other living things at all, is the idea of an isolated retreat, so that you can be in that space of being without them.
And it's not gonna just happen naturally that you go into isolation and you realize, oh my gosh, all my identities are gone.
One needs to be clued, right, into watching for it, and actually even exploring it.
And so that's where this teaching towards Mahamudra is so helpful is once we hear, “oh my gosh, I see what she means."
Like when I'm driving to an appointment, even when I am all by myself driving to that appointment, I'm the driver, right?
Once I'm at the appointment, I'm the “at the appointment-er."
And then once I'm seeing the doctor, I'm the patient.
And we have this deep, deep, deep conviction that the “I” is the real thing.
And that it's doing all these other things—but we're learning with Mahamudra that all those identities are “obstacle-ers” to our “being able to reach this, making real for us that our true nature is the blankness that allows us to be that, at that moment, and then this moment, and then this moment, and this moment."
So he's saying, “get out of town for enough time to recognize, oh my gosh, who am I, what am I?”
And if we get out of town untrained, you know, you could go crazy.
So you go into retreat with specific practices to do, right, to work on, to study—and then you come back out, and the task is to use what you learned in retreat out in our real world.
And so in this particular topic, once we have this recognition of all these different identities that we shapeshift—we can use them more intentionally.
We can use them with a heart-mind of bodhicitta, right?
Now I'm the mom—with bodhicitta in order to help this one in the highest way possible.
Now I'm the car driver—with bodhicitta in order to help.
Right?
So we can use all of those identities very intentionally—it's not that we need to get rid of them all and walk around blank.
We want our identity “walk around blank," but then to step into each one of those roles intentionally.
I'm not saying I can do it.
I can do it on my meditation cushion—but once I'm with somebody face-to-face, whoa, the seeds are so strong for me, them, interaction between.
It's so hard to hold this constant shapeshifting “me."
Okay, so “reside in the state of that which cannot be contemplated, reach that thing that cannot be reached and you will reach Mahamudra.”
The second half of what we can work on more deeply when we have withdrawn ourself from our ordinary pattern of daily life—the needs, stresses, etc., of daily life—when we can get the ability to withdraw for a few days, for a few weeks, for a month or so—we finally can, all the pattern of daily life can, fall away because you're intentionally putting yourself into a new pattern and a different pattern, and we can then go more deeply into whatever practice it is that we're taking with us into retreat.
So he's saying here that reside in that state which cannot be contemplated—the only reason we get there is by contemplating it.
And he's pointing out that all those thoughts that go along with the contemplation, all the analysis that we do, those are included in what he's calling the “worldly things” to isolate from.
So if we misunderstand, it sounds like he's saying, “go into retreat and stop thinking."
Like “put your mind into that blank nothing state and that will be Mahamudra," and that was the whole big argument between the Huashang and Master Kamalashila, you know, years, years, years before in Tibet.
It's not that Mahamudra is reaching this state of blankness, right?
You could drink yourself into that state. If that was it, right?
It would be easier to become enlightened.
It's not that state.
It's something very different.
But we can't think ourselves there. Have you noticed?
Like we think about emptiness and we think we've got it, but is that the direct perception of it?
Do we come out and have those four Arya truths happen to us, you know?
Not me.
So he doesn't mean reside in a state where you're not contemplating because you can't contemplate it—he's saying the state of that which cannot be contemplated is “reside in your emptiness," in your “no identity."
When we recognize that our identity of the moment is dependent upon what's happening, and you're putting yourself in a situation where the same thing is happening every single day at every single moment (which is what retreat becomes), we're being able to be in emptiness more awaredly because you're so bored, right?
There's just nothing going on.
There's nothing to relate to.
That which cannot be contemplated is a thing, right?
It's the emptiness of anything you're contemplating—but we can't reach it by thinking about it.
We can't reach it by not thinking about it either, we have to learn it.
But then once we reach a certain point of thinking about it, we drop the thinking, but without dropping the conclusion of the thinking, right?
That was Becky's question: when I'm in the pause does, you know, what's happening in the pause?
And there's a difference between just blank out in the pause, and that which cannot be contemplated, that which cannot be described, that which cannot… right?
Because I'm giving a class, I'm gonna try to describe it—and so did Tilopa, and so does Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, and so does Geshe Michael…
And then they all say, “but what I just said, that's not it."
When we reach that thing that I'm trying to describe that isn't describable, and sit in it directly—we've reached Mahamudra.
That's what we're talking about.
Mahamudra is this thing that can't be expressed, we heard that.
The empty nature of our own mind, which is bigger than what we're thinking at first.
All right, let's see if I said what I'm supposed to say…
Ah!
So Lama Christie said, “okay, just close your eyes for a moment and think of your best description of emptiness. Like, do the mental words.
What do you understand emptiness is?
Think it—got it in your mind?
That's not it.
Now, think of the clearest like mental image picture you have of emptiness that's beyond words…
Got it?
That's not it either.
Now think of the clearest feeling you have about emptiness, beyond words, beyond image.
Feeling your own emptiness.
Wow…
You got it?
That's not it either.
That's what Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is saying, that Tilopa is saying to Naropa.
All right, we'll get back to it.
What we're trying to reach, that which cannot be contemplated—we can't reach it correctly until we're experiencing it directly, and then even those words are mistaken.
But when we come out of it, we'll know we did it.
Hooray for that.
All right, Tilopa goes on.
Things of this cycle are meaningless.
Just feeding your ignorant likes and dislike.
The things you do lack any essence.
So focus upon the ultimate essence
That lack of essence.
You don't see the object beyond all thought
With the things that you are thinking.
You won't find the object beyond all deeds
With the things that you are doing.
(He's telling Naropa)
If you really long to reach this object
Beyond all thought, beyond all deeds,
Take a trip inside your mind
And rest within the naked mind.
Turn the putrid swamp of
Your conceptions into crystal.
Don't feed or strangle what appears.
Just take it as it comes.
And when there is no more to grasp or let go
You are released into Mahamudra.
So we talked about that before, the putrid swamp of all of our conceptions—they're putrid because every thought is, and has been, stained with that misbelief of a self-existent me // self-existent other.
And as a result of that misbelief, we have the automatic “me” and “mine” and “what about me?," meaning the selfishness, the self-concern, this one first, habit, even at very subtle levels—as long as we believe that our me exists in some way outside of the projected seed ripening.
As long as we think we exist in some way outside of the karmic seed ripening, we will need to protect this “me” and to get this “me” the things it wants by grasping to things so wrongly.
So every seed, every imprint that this mind has ever made is stained in that way.
And so all of those stained seeds are floating around in this mind, which makes it like this putrid swamp.
The mind isn't the putrid swamp.
Those seeds in the mind make it putrid.
And it's not really even the seeds, it's the misunderstanding and selfishness inside the seeds.
So if we clean up the putridity…if we run all of that water through a filter, the water that comes out is clean and pure and beautiful and drinkable and clear.
So thank goodness that those, the putridity of the seeds of our mind also have no nature of their own.
They also are empty of self-existence, because that means we really can clean them, and when the mind's seeds are clean, the mind is experienced as clean.
So when I hear myself saying that explanation, it sounds like I'm saying “there's this mind, and inside it are a whole bunch of seeds, and inside those seeds is this “yuck," and so as a result, the whole mind is full of “yuck," because the seeds are full of “yuck."
But technically speaking, is there a mind that's sitting there full of all those seeds?
No.
Well then, wait, what's full of “yuck”?
Is it the seeds full of “yuck” or the mind full of “yuck”?
Like what's the relationship? We've got the three spheres going on again.
So because, because, because what?
Because those, that putridity of the swamp can be cleaned up, and because that raw naked mind is simply reflecting the seeds—when we clean up the seeds, that mind is cleaned up, because it’s true nature is blank, available, it gets stained by the putrid seeds and it's not stained when the seeds get cleaned.
When the seeds are clean, all of what arises in that mind is also clean.
So how do we do that?
How do we clean?
The cleaning is happening moment by moment.
As each seed ripens, it's done and gone.
How we respond to the experience of that seed plants new seeds.
And if we stay on “automatic habit," them doing that to me and so I react in this way to get what I want, avoid what I don't want, we've replanted putrid seeds.
If we're onto the system, if we're onto it, then we can say, “great, another one gone.”
Technically another 65 per instant gone. So lots going.
And I'm gonna use my intention and bodhicitta included in my next response, in my response to this experience, in which case what we've newly planted is different than what it would have been if we stayed on automatic pilot.
So we can see what the game's all about.
The strategy of the game is: let it ripen, let it ripen, let it ripen.
My power to win this game, right, to reach my goal, is in my response.
And really in my response, my power is in my attitude about my response, right?
My intention, the level of my love, compassion, wisdom—while I do whatever it is that I'm gonna do.
So this was the verse that was leading the meditation we've been working on really for the last two weeks, right?
Just allowing, getting to that space where we can be—up comes something else, let it go, up comes something else, let it go—getting more and more subtle levels of awareness of when something shifts in the mind.
And we recognize the pattern and just don't go with the pattern.
And maybe we did get to the place where it seemed like there was a timeframe where nothing arose—no specific thing arose, and in that space where no specific thing arose, that itself is an experience arising that we were to allow to be and pass.
So to train ourselves in the ability to be more and more subtly aware of what's arising without following it is this practice of Mahamudra, and as you get more and more subtle in it, we see that the very awareness of something arising is already an identity of something. It's already a conceptualization if ever so subtle.
And our task is just to allow—allow and pass.
And have you noticed how hard it is to not follow the story?
And as soon as we recognize, “oh, there I went again," you just let it go at that point and drop back down.
And wait—so it really does get to this place of feeling like you're waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting.
But even in that, that's at a level that is misunderstanding something.
All right, let's go on here…
Tilopa goes on:
Picture now a fertile tree
With widespread leaves and branches—
Cut the root, and
All its billion leaves and branches wither.
Picture now a darkness
Which has gathered for a billion years—
And yet a single lamp
Can dispel all the darkness gathered there.
So this darkness is the ignorance that colors the seeds that are making the swamp putrid, and it seems like every one of those billion, billion, billion seeds would have to go off in order to clean them—in which case it could take 3 x 10 to the 10th countless great eons to clean up our karma, once we had that high compassion intention to reach Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings—it would take a really long time.
But he's pointing out that the commonality in all of those seeds is the misunderstanding, it's the ignorance, the belief in things having their own natures, and if you turn on the light of the impossibility of that—all those seeds, every one of the seeds that's ever been made with that mistake are damaged.
They're not damaged so much that they can't go off at all, but the belief in them having the nature they appear to have is damaged.
So we've heard again and again:
We experience emptiness directly for the first time,
We come out of it,
Things go back to appearing the same way “in them, from them,"
But now our belief in them existing in that way is gone.
Is there being “in them from them” gone?
No, because it was never there in the first place.
There's nothing different about the things you perceive–they've always been projected.
You saw it once, “oh my gosh, that's a projection!”
Then you directly experience that, “oh my gosh, nothing's ever been not a projection including me, oh wow” —damages all your ignorance since forever, and you come out now without the belief in things having their own nature so you can never replant ignorance.
You still have seeds that have the old belief in—but you don't believe the old belief anymore.
The light clears the darkness, dispels the darkness with all of them.
Doesn't dispel it completely, right?
Takes time–path of habituation—to be replanting our seeds with full on wisdom // compassion before we reach our goal (whether it's nirvana or Buddhahood) but he's saying here that it's not that you have to experience emptiness directly for every moment you've ever lived in order to transform.
One time starts the process—then you do it again and again and again—but not for a long time (if it's Sutra level), but still the process has been set in motion. You are on that conveyor belt out.
The previous imagery about cutting the root, if you've got this great big tree and you need, usually the story is if you have this great big tree and you need to cut it down (I hope you never have to) and you had an ax, a little ax—it would take you a really, really long time to chop this tree down.
But if you had a copper nail, you could drive the copper nail into its tap root and its tap root would wither and then the whole tree withers and you just have to sit around until that happens.
So this analogy is that there can be hard ways to go about something, chop the tree down with an ax, or there can be more apparently magical ways—it's not magic, it's just getting to some crucial point—and you affect that crucial point and all the rest of this is like fallout as a result.
So typically this analogy is used to talk about working at the crucial point, “cutting the tap root” or the crucial point, “turning on one lamp in a huge darkness," usually that analogy is used to talk about using a very specific location within our subtle body to focus our mind, to draw our winds, to be able to trigger the withdrawal of the subtle body into the indestructible “drop” at the heart to trigger the dissolution process that you use to transform death, bardo and rebirth into the path to your holy bodies.
So it's like, if you knew that, you'd see that, and if you didn't know it, you wouldn't see that—and so my job was to plant that seed.
We don't learn those practices until we get to diamond away, and then highest diamond way, but Yoga Studies Institute teaches it even before your initiation—advertisement for Yoga Studies Institute.
So it is, for your own mind, a single instant of the clear light can dispel a billion years of bad deeds and obstructions (woohoo!), and if someone of weaker mind can't rest upon this object, urge them then to place the mind on a crucial point of inner wind.
So he's saying, if our meditation is not strong enough to get us to Mahamudra practice—if your sutra practice isn't strong enough to help you transform into a Buddha fast enough, well then go to Tantra. And if your creation stage Tantra isn't strong enough to help you transform, well then go to highest Yoga Tantra—that'll do it.
So in a sense, it's like, “oh, so are we in such a hurry to get to highest Yoga Tantra or do we just do our sutra practice better, stronger?”
It's like the dunces go on to Tantra—but we're in the age of degeneration—we're all dunces by definition or we wouldn't be here, we'd be Buddhas already, so Tantra is available to us. But it isn't necessary when our sutra practice, when our understanding of the two bodhicittas is strong in our mind as we're doing the dishes—the transformation can happen, will happen in life.
In this life.
There are just tricks of the trade in Diamond Way.
So let me go on here.
Use a myriad of different viewpoints and myriad visualizations until you coerce the mind into staying in that state.
What state?
The Mahamudra state—the empty nature of one's own mind.
And we haven't quite gotten to the description of how we get there, but we're getting close.
Here Tilopa is saying to Naropa:
Use whatever method you need to use to get to that single pointed concentration turned on to the empty nature of your object.
Use any level school,
Use any text,
Use any instruction,
Use any experience,
Use every experience to recognize what's really going on.
And then we need a word because we have to conceptualize it before we say, “okay, not that.” right?
Conceptualize it to get close, and then drop the conceptualization and be in it.
So when we're meditating and we are going through those nine levels, reaching beyond the nine levels into Shamatha, and we can intentionally on demand, put our mind on an object of focus, and be so engaged in that object of focus that there's nothing other than that object of focus happening—people might describe that as becoming one with the object.
That's not what's happening—but it might be what it feels like.
It's like they say, you know, “I was staring at the tree and I became the tree," and it is kind of like that, because there's no distraction, there's no wobbling, there's no me it, me it, me it, me it, there's just the experience happening—that's the doorway to this state that we're trying to get to.
Because that's the “so engaged in the object” that when we then focus on the object's nature, we find that there isn't one there—we find the absence, and then we're still so engaged that that absence is the absence of all three spheres of that experience at the same time without having to go back and analyze.
So we're coercing ourselves both on our meditation cushion and during our daily interactions with life, to keep up its awareness of “whatever I'm experiencing is a ripening result and nothing but."
Those are my words.
But you find your own words.
Everything,
Profound dependence happening—sometimes that works.
Bodhicitta—it's something that will remind you that it's this constant shape-shifting of awareness and things that are aware of happening, happening, happening.
And nothing has any nature other than the process happening.
As we're planting our seeds like that, it will become more and more our reality.
It's difficult off-cushion because we're on automatic pilot off-cushion.
We do it on-cushion to help us to be able to do it off-cushion.
All right, let me see if I've said what I need…
So in Panchen Lama's commentary to his root text, he gives us all these different schools, methods, of reaching Mahamudra. He doesn't go into them in detail, but he gives us this text for instance, and apparently the other texts are available too.
And so he's like saying, read them. If one attracts you, find somebody to teach it to you. Explore that one. Find the one that triggers your own ability to get more clear as to how to reach this state “Mahamudra."
Use whatever you have to use—he's given us permission to go outside our lineage if that's what would be helpful, and in that, he's also reminding us of the no-self-nature of the words of each of those teachings.
You know, “no, I'm Gelugpa, I stay in the Gelugpa tradition because there's something special. The Gelugpa knows better than everybody else.”
Wrong, right?
Sakya tradition, those words are empty also.
Maybe they're correct, maybe they're incorrect—it'll depend on who's reading them, using them, studying them.
So it's an emptiness teaching in and of itself, a Mahamudra teaching in and of itself that powerful Gelugpa Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen says, “look, here are all these other methods for using Mahamudra."
He's not saying they don't work—he's saying “now mine, I'll give you mine, because that's the one that worked for me."
But come on, he was already there before he started.
Nonetheless, it's a subtlety in the text that without having the lineage to point out that subtlety, I personally would miss it. I would just think, “well, that's cool, he's being thorough." And it's like no, he's showing us Mahamudra right there in his text—the empty nature of what we're studying.
Because who's it coming from?
Ta-da!
Us.
Revealing the empty nature of our own mind.
All right, so let's take a break.
*************
All right, are we back?
So we actually just finished the class from reading three, and we're now into technically our class four, course 13, class four.
You're reading number four, and Lama Christie started it with a meditation called the skylight meditation that we'll do next week (because I'm not going to finish class four today) and I want to do something we've done before for our meditation at the end of class—so it's coming.
But for your reading, we're picking up in reading four now.
And like in the middle of a verse, Tilopa is shifting from telling Naropa, “you really need to get to this Mahamudra and these are [the reasons] why—and now he's going to shift to a little bit of instruction about how to do it—or what we need to know in order to be able to do it.
And Lama Christie took us back to that just really short, “think your thoughts, describe to yourself what emptiness means. That's not it. See it as the mental image. That's not it. Feel it as best you can. That's not it either, right? The not it, not it, not it, right? Not that, neti, neti, neti, right? Not that, not that, not that.
Because we're trying to get to an absence of something that we think is there, but it's not really there at all.
We need to find it first (what we think is there) and then recognize that, “oh my gosh, that's not possible—that's impossible” (to be able to find it's “not nature," it's “un-nature”).
She was pointing out how we are so immersed in relating to ourselves and “outer world” [and we how believe] in those [things] having their own identities and qualities “in them, from them," that we don't even recognize that we're doing it, right?
Our belief in that reality is so thick, so strong that we're not aware that it's a belief that we have. We're just living it, yeah?
And yet every moment of that living it is technically nothing but these conceptions—pieces of information that are glommed into an identity and a happening.
And when we say, yeah, but what about the information?
When we're looking at the information, it's still pieces of more subtle information that we're glomming into information.
At every level, we're doing that.
We're doing that in a combination of words and images—whether those images are visual images or auditory images—there's still some kind of picture in our mind of a whole—a whole “happening."
And then we interact with the whole happening in some way as if we're a “whole” as well—”in me, from me," interacting with the “in them, from them."
And that's why we butt heads.
That's why we disagree.
That's why we can have a good time.
That's why we can love each other.
Because I'm me, you're you.
If we were all one, what good would that be?
If we're not at all, what good would that be?
It has to be like this, doesn't it?
No.
And in fact, it's not ever been like that.
We just thought it was.
So Lama Christie gave the example of what she means by this from, you know, Geshe-la wrote that How Yoga Works book, and then there's also the Kadrin book from it—and the original one had sort of both of those in one, so I'm not really sure where this comes from, whether it's in How Yoga Works or not.
But the scene is, there's the girl, and the master, and the girl's just getting started and she's been out in the woods for a long time. She's really, really hungry.
And the teacher holds up this pear and he holds it up to her, and it's this beautiful, shiny, ripe pear. And she's so hungry. And he says, you know, would you like this pear? And she goes, yes, yes, I want that pear.
So he hands it to her. She takes it. She's ready to bite it.
But she turns it around, and the back of the pear is all rotten and there's maggots coming out of it, you know, and it’s like, naturally our response to maggots is to wanna throw up, it seems like.
And she gets mad, like “you gave me a rotten pear, you mean old Lama.”
And the point is her mind was taking the information that she got—shape, color, and making a whole ripe, amazing, beautiful pear.
Because the part she was experiencing directly looked delicious, and her mind put on the back of that pear—looking equally delicious.
But when she turned it around, the back of the pear betrayed her, right?
It wasn't the way it should have been.
Well, was it ripe when she was looking at it or was it rotten when she was looking at it?
Right?
You'd have to say, for her, in the moment, it was a ripe pear.
And then she turns it around and it's no longer a ripe pear.
What actually happened?
Did the pear change?
But really the right answer to that question is “what pear?”
Right?
So do you see? Even in our analysis of looking for dependent origination and emptiness, we're thinking there's a thing there to analyze.
And there has to be a thing there to analyze.
But there was no pear that was ripe, and no pear that was rotten.
There was the “what was being perceived by her”
And her mind made it into a pear that was ripe.
And then her mind made it into a pear that was rotten.
And she got mad.
So why did she get mad?
Because her expectation was that the picture her mind made (that she didn't know was a picture her mind made) was the way it was.
And when it's not like that, it means the world has done something that it wasn't to her expectation, right?
And I'm not criticizing the little girl—we all do this all the time.
And we think, “well, that pear was really rotten."
And then we would automatically think, “well, and that Lama knew it was rotten when he handed it to me, why would he do such a thing?”
Right?
Blame, blame, blame, blame, blame.
But blame in the sense of just misunderstanding the whole piece.
If she had seen the right pear, wanted the right pear, turned it around, saw that it was rotten and knew that it was all coming from her mind—what do you suppose her reaction would have been?
I think she would have laughed, right?
Because she would have caught her mind in its expectation of a beautiful pear.
And it's like, “oh, I was doing it again. Self-existent pear.”
But then what about her hunger? You know, does she have self-existent hunger? And can you just decide, “oh, my hunger is empty so my body doesn't need food," right?
It gets slippery.
To say things are empty of self nature, does it mean nothing matters at all?
No—our response matters very much when we understand the empty nature of things.
Our response matters.
Okay, I have just a few more minutes, let's get started.
So, Tilopa carries on with this second half of verse eight.
So the first half of verse eight was:
Use a myriad of different viewpoints and myriad visualizations until you can coerce your mind into staying in that state (meaning the state of its own clear light, its own empty nature).
And then he goes on to say:
Imagine you're studying
The entire sphere of sky.
You'll come to stop delineating
The middle from the ends.
So he's starting into clues of how to weave our “meditative watch-er” to this state of the empty nature of the “aware."
And one analogy is to consider our mind like this vast sky, and then do this kind of exploration.
So in this verse, he's pointing out that if we were to use the sky as our meditation object, not for Mahamudra, but to use the sky, and when you're laying on your back staring at the sky, at first, you can see that there appears to be an end, there appears to be a horizon, and it's like the sky ends here and the mountain starts there or the ocean, whatever.
It looks like there's an end to the sky.
And then as you become more engaged in your meditation object, the sky, right, you become less and less aware of the things that are not the sky—the mountains, [etc] right?
And your awareness becomes so engaged in the sky, nothing but the sky, that you no longer have a factor arising that says there's a “this side” and a “that side” and an up and a down.
You're in the sky.
And when you and the sky are like full on, meditation object, you can't even say that you're in the middle of the sky, and there's the sky to the left of you and the sky to the right of you—because there's no separation between you and the sky.
There's just sky.
So you can reach this experience of “stopping delineating."
And that's the reason he brings up this idea—it's not so much to do this practice of becoming one with the sky, it's getting the idea of the delineating happening.
Delineating means you've got a jumble of information, and then we delineate a “something” within that—and then that delineated thing has its identity.
That's actually the process of what's happening that we call our seeds ripening.
There's the all potential of anything to be anything, but our seed ripening delineates it into: Sumati making me a cup of tea, and then me doing dishes. And then… right?
It's like this constant delineation happening—shape-shifting happening.
Anything that doesn't interfere with it is part of it, because everything is anything, and anything is everything (within the empty nature of the three spheres).
So he's just giving us these little clues—this one's about how it is that we delineate things.
And that's what makes them real.
And that's what makes “us” separate from “other," is this process of delineation happening.
All right, so we're gonna go into more about what to do with the “delineation happening” so that we can stop doing it, so that we can see what it's like when you don't do it—which is getting us closer and closer to the Mahamudra.
But I wanna stop, and do the meditation for this class—because then we're gonna shift next week a bit.
*************
Okay, so settle your body.
Get it parked—the physical body, solid on your seat.
Do that body scan.
Relax it from top down, just quickly.
Turn your mind, bring it up the inside.
Bring it to your breath—those specific sensations at the nostrils, the tip of the nostrils.
Focused on that sensation.
We call it breath—but it doesn't matter, really.
The sensations focused.
Fine tune your clarity.
Turn on your curiosity, or fascination.
Get that intensity cranked up a bit.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Now turn on your Mahamudra meditation sequence.
Turn that focus of attention to some outer sounds.
Recognize the identity going “out there."
Laugh at that, and be aware of the outer sounds at a more subtle level.
Laugh at that—they're not really like that.
***30 seconds***
As you let those outer sounds go, turn more inward.
There are inner sounds.
***30 seconds***
Be simply aware—letting go of their labels.
***1 minute***
Sink down deeper into awareness of the thoughts that pop up—whether they're word thoughts, or images that pop up, or sensations.
Your mind is simply observing.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Recognize the identity getting put on.
***45 seconds***
All these shifting images…
They're nothing but objects of thought…
Triggering stories…
Simply arising out of this vast realm of mind.
***15 seconds***
Be keen and alert to what arises, and keen and alert to let it go.
***30 seconds***
Enjoy yourself in this watching and letting go, as you do it more swiftly or more subtly.
Like a game.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
So you are in this realm of mind, with these ripples arising.
***30 seconds***
Now turn your focus to this vast realm of mind, this place of awareness.
Focus on the awareness.
It's slippery.
If you can't seem to find it, go back to the watcher—watching and letting go—until you feel secure again, comfortable again.
And then shift to the awareness of the rippling.
***1 minute***
What happens to the object of awareness when our focus is on the awareness?
Can there be a moment of awareness without an object it's aware of?
***45 seconds***
We get the sense that these moments of aware-ness are also simply rising and falling moments, of projections, of mind.
***15 seconds***
There's no awareness that's doing something.
There's simply aware-ing.
Awareness would be a thing—an independent thing.
The aware-ing, these moments of apparent awareness, are ripples themselves.
This is the appearing nature of our mind.
Aware-ing, happen-ing.
Always.
***45 seconds***
And what is within, or underneath, the appearing nature of our mind?
It is the potential to appear in that way, at that moment.
And then, the potential to appear in this way in this moment.
Aware-ing, happen-ing—the appearing nature.
The potential to be that.
The true nature.
And that is your Dharmakaya.
That is your Dharma Body.
The ripples are your emanation.
***30 seconds***
Allow yourself to sink more deeply—into the aware-ing happen-ing.
These rippling appearances of your all-potentiality.
Feel it.
***15 seconds***
The constant shape-shifting.
With the empty nature.
In constant flow, constant radiance, constant providing.
Be that.
We'll sit for three minutes.
If you lose it, go back to get it again.
***3 minutes***
Now allow those ripples of the mind to form up into an awareness of yourself in this body.
And to arise into the ripples of awareness of this body in your room.
And an awareness of your intention to carry with you what you've learned.
And allow those ripples to grow into “you here in class” when you're ready.
Open your eyes, take a stretch.
Good job.
*************
So when we do that meditation from a platform of shamatha— single-pointed concentration with the blisses—you can imagine, I mean I don't know your minds, but my mind wasn't in shamatha while we were doing that.
You can imagine what that experience would feel like.
Yeah.
So we explore it, we plant seeds to have that as a direct experience—rippling and nothing but.
If that's gonna be a good thing, it's gonna be a result of extraordinary kindness seeds.
Kindness to ourselves,
And kindness to others,
Kindness born of understanding
Karma and emptiness,
Kindness born of understanding
Suffering is a big mistake.
And so I wanna stop
Contributing to it for crying out loud.
And I wanna do what I can to try to
Bring a little happiness to my world.
I can't bring any happiness to my world
Other than what I see, but I can try.
And that's the key.
So, hopefully, coming out of this kind of glimpse into our true nature would leave us with this sense of, like, wanting to send forth ripples that are pleasant for everybody.
So we would come out hopefully thinking, “oh, I wanna be loving. I wanna be kind. I wanna be helpful. I'll do my best."
And maybe it lasts five minutes, but that's five better minutes than if I just gotten out of bed and did whatever I do now.
Yes, Tom.
[Tom: In the meditation, you said something about, can we view the seer without the object… And my mind just went from like zoomed in, to zoomed out. Is that kind of what it was supposed to be? Like from pinpointing, like if I look at an image and when I'm like zoomed in, that's the object. But when I'm zoomed out, it's more like the “no subject."]
Yeah, I mean, there isn't a “you're supposed to do anything," it's “what comes up” and then “what we do with what comes up."
But the idea is to recognize that you can't have an awareness without something to be aware of, and there's a whole nother train of thought (that we don't go through now) that shows that, “oh my gosh, that's the emptiness of the awareness itself."
That there's no awareness without an object, and no object without awareness, and [oops] there you are, Nagarjuna says.
So yes, to be able to go to that, “oh my gosh, there's something, something is gone that used to be there."
For you, it became big—for others, maybe a color shifted, right?
Everybody's experience will be different.
Okay.
So that particular meditation, we have done a version of it before at the end of our first course, Bok Jinpa, Lama Christie gifted us with this—it's a glimpse to where Mahamudra practice is going.
And it felt timely to do it again, because of where we're going next week into this vast, our mind like a sky, like a vast sky.
So it'll help us do this particular meditation—it'll shift it a little bit for us once we see what Tilopa has to say to Naropa in the next couple of classes.
So it may be that this version of Mahamudra is jumping a little too fast, right? If you get to that place where you're trying to identify all these ripples as just “awar-ing happen-ing” and it's like too agitating, or doesn't make sense, or you don't think you're doing it right—then go back to being the aware-er awar-ing and letting go, awar-ing and letting go, until that becomes comfortable, fun, interesting, to see what's gonna come up next, to see what's happening in the pause, what we were doing with our meditations in the last couple of weeks.
So you can take it to this next level if it feels comfortable.
You can do it some days and not other days, right?
You watch your own mind, your own response, your own ability to stay in that level of focus to decide whether you wanna drop all the way into the “nothing but rippling happening” level or stay in “being in the flow of things."
Reaching that level of flow, and nothing but, is not so different than this other one.
Okay, so any questions or needs before we go?
Otherwise we'll do our dedication prayers, we just have a few extra minutes yet.
Good, all right.
So remember that one we wanted to be able to help?
By doing what we just have done, we have set in motion the end of their suffering forever someday, 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.
They see your amazing progress that you probably can't even see yourself.
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 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 loving kindness, suddenly—filled with the wisdom of loving kindness, suddenly.
And may it be so.
Okay, so thank you again for the opportunity to share, I'm really grateful.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 18
There is no vocab list for this class
*************
Introduction
Okay, for the recording, welcome back—we are Mahamudra studiers.
This is June 17, 2025.
We'll do our opening prayers and then go right into the meditation for this class.
So, bring your attention to your breath, please, until you hear from me again.
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 your body.
***45 seconds***
And bring your attention to your breath, at the very tip of your nose—using it as the object to draw in your focus.
Turn on your clarity, and fine-tune the intensity.
***15 seconds***
When you have the adjustment, step into that watcher mode.
Fascinated watcher of the breath.
***45 seconds***
Checking and adjusting the focus, the clarity, the intensity.
***30 seconds***
Go through your sequence of sinking in further.
Shifting to outer sounds.
Noticing they're not outer sounds at all.
***30 seconds***
Shifting to inner sounds.
***30 seconds***
Letting go of all those identities that pop up.
Sinking in and opening up to anything that arises.
Keenly aware of that mind—aware of this, aware of that…
Not following—simply noting and letting go.
Aware at more and more subtle levels of what's popping up.
Still fascinated, still bright.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
Now for this session, allow this image and story to arise:
Picture yourself in the very middle of a big blue sky.
All that you can see in front of you is this infinite stretch of beautiful, blue, clear sky.
Behind you, the same.
To your left, to your right—same.
Vast blue sky.
Above you, below you—the same.
***15 seconds***
So, you are in the middle of this infinite stretch of empty blue space—not outer space—empty blue sky, stretching forever in all directions.
***15 seconds***
You, what is you, is there in the middle of it.
***15 seconds***
Now stretch your mind out into that vast blue sky, in all directions at once—reaching your mind out.
Out, out…
As far as you are willing to go.
***15 seconds***
So then you, too, are nothing but vast, blue, empty space.
Feel “being” that.
***15 seconds***
Now shrink back down to being the “you” in the middle of it—a point in the middle.
***30 seconds***
Now shift again, expand back out.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Now shift and be the point in the middle.
***30 seconds***
From either level—the point in the middle, or being the vastness—recognize [that] this is a metaphor for our own mind.
This vast sky is our own mind for the purposes of this practice.
And as you watch the sky of your own mind—either from being the point in the middle, or from being the “all” of it—still these clouds of thoughts will come and go.
Ephemeral wisps of insubstantial shapeshifts within this vast space.
Within this vast space, somehow, are birthed all of our thoughts, all of our experiences.
Everything that happens around us is all happening in this vast expanse of our own mind—this vast blue sky.
But our mind itself is nothing but that empty space—the place where it's all happening.
***30 seconds***
So pick a level—either from being in the center, watching, or expanding out, to being the whole sky and watching, observing, experiencing.
And be aware of all the clouds that arise and pass in this vast blue sky.
Any arising, any thought, any sensation—like we were doing before.
***15 seconds***
Watch them appear and pass, disappear.
***45 seconds***
Fascinated with this shape shifting, but totally disinterested in stories or identities, happening in this vast space of your mind.
***45 seconds***
As you relax more deeply, perhaps the arisings slow down.
***15 seconds***
Perhaps there are even some pauses between.
***15 seconds***
And in those pauses between, is revealed, the potential for another—for any arising.
In that space between, is the ultimate potential of everything.
***15 seconds***
The ultimate potential of everything there, within the space, of the clear blue sky—your own mind.
***30 seconds***
To awaken to that ultimate potential, is to awaken infinite bliss, infinite love...
Within that vast space of your own mind.
***15 seconds***
So now, bring that “you” in the middle of the sky.
Let the sky shape shift into you, this body in your room, in this class.
Get that mental image all around you.
Feel your physical body.
When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch, grab some water.
**************
That meditation is called The Skylight Meditation.
You know, in English ‘skylight’ means you have a window in your roof so you can see out. So to me, it doesn't quite fit, but it means light like the sky, right? The light of the clear blue sky because of its vastness.
In science, we know you can get beyond the sky—but for these purposes, where we're tapping into this feeling [like] when you're on a mountain and you can see to the horizons in every direction—the sky just goes on forever.
So in this particular meditation—it's going on forever all around us (is the metaphor), and we'll explore it in different ways.
But we use it here because this text, the Ganga Ma, uses the metaphor of the sky for Tilopa's instructing Naropa in how to reach this experience of “what's meant by Mahamudra," which we're still trying to quite understand what they mean by that.
There's a lot to explore during that process of, you know, being in the center of the sky—like what “me” is there?
Not my physical body for sure, you know—really what's me in the middle of the sky?
That took me a long time to play with.
And then when I expand that “me," is there this big “me” that the sky is inside, or have I dissolved into the sky?
What is it she's really talking about?
And there's no right or wrong way, right?
It's: explore it.
You will learn stuff about what you believe is your identity “me," when you try to figure out, “what does she mean ‘me’ in the middle of the sky?”
And that's part of the reason we're doing this—not to do it in exactly the right way—but to explore all these different ideas that we really can't get to in a straight-on instruction.
So the thing is, though, if you use this blue sky meditation—if your whole time is spent on investigating “what me is she talking about?," we won't ever get to the point of being the sky, and aware of how anything that ripens, anything that happens during the time you're in that part of your meditation is this “clouds that appear, float by, and disappear."
And so it's just another way to get to that place where we're able to be, not so much the watcher of things—but the experiencer of things.
So if I'm being the whole sky, and then any experience that pops up—I'm not watching the experience, I'm being the experience, right?
It's like [indicates an experience happening], and then [indicates another experience happening], and then [indicates another experience happening], and we're trying to not identify with them, right? (Which I have to identify just to explain.)
So say I'm “being the sky," and then what all of the sudden happens is, you know, “itch in my shoulder," and it's like, we're trying to be aware of that—a sensation coming up before it's even identified as “itch on shoulder."
It's just, “oh, there's something."
The metaphor is “simply a cloud in the sky."
What do clouds do, right?
They pass by.
I don't know, sometimes they get big and they rain—but you see if they get big and they rain, that's us following the story.
You know, if you see a little beginning cloud, and you stare at it saying, you know, “cloud go away," it'll disappear in front of your very eyes.
Have you ever done that?
And then same, you know, I've never made one bigger, but should be able to do the same thing, which maybe you could even make it rain.
So this is another tool, this particular method of dropping into, you know, putting us in the platform where we can have the experience of Mahamudra, the direct experience of the true nature of our own mind—this is another method that some of us will relate to (this blue sky meditation).
But the point isn't “becoming the blue sky," the point is the metaphor of identifying as this vast mind, within which this constant shapeshift is happening.
So this next section of our Ganga Ma text is Tilopa explaining this (not in so many words as I get to do) to Naropa, to help him better recognize the true nature of his own mind.
So all of these popping ups and passing bys, they are all pictures of things.
I mean, our blue sky mind is a picture of a thing—we can't get to our mind without a picture of it, meaning a mental image, meaning an idea. Whether it's in words, or sounds, or colors, and shapes—we can't get to a thing without having some way of relating to it.
And of course, “misunderstanding me” [the misunderstanding version of “me”] believes that the identity of the thing is coming from it, and I just need to be able to get enough information from it, about it, to know it.
And then, you know, we understand that if that were true, everybody would know it in the same way, at some level—which we can't ever find that level where any given thing is the same for everybody. And that tells us, “oh, it's all unique to me."
But we still believe that the thing is there to be unique to me—and that's enough to help us, but it can't be accurate.
And holding that belief will block us from reaching that level of being able to help that thing that's there independent of us [to] stop suffering.
So, we, as ignorant beings, are always mixing up the mental picture and [with] the existence of the thing.
The girl wanting the pear, that turns out to be a rotten pear—she had in her mind that it was going to be a delicious, edible pear. It was going to solve her hunger.
And then it deceived her because it wasn't that.
Was there no pear there at all?
No, there is a pear there.
Was the “beautiful, delicious, going to solve my hunger problem, pear” there?
Apparently not.
But she didn't know that until she turned it around.
Thank goodness she turned it around before biting into it.
So she didn't hurt the maggots, right?
But imagine the experience of biting into a pear and, “oh my gosh, I've got a maggot in my mouth."
What is it about maggots that's like the worst?
She's mixing up her mental image for the object.
You know, if this were easy to just stop doing, we'd all just hear it and go, “well, that's stupid, I'll stop doing it!” and we'd all be free of suffering.
And I don't know, my knees still hurt, so I'm not free of suffering yet.
It's not that easy.
But every time we explore and wonder and question, we're getting a little bit closer to reaching the experience that is the doorway, right?
That puts us on that conveyor belt to the ending of suffering for everybody. So that's why we're here. Thank you very much.
So even as we are exploring the empty nature of our own mind, we are still doing it through ideas, through mental images, through words and labels.
And technically, we'll never get there through explanations—to hear one, or to tell ourselves it—because it's all of that is the appearing nature of this truth we're trying to get to, that is an absence of an appearance.
So yes, we need to rely on those mental images, those words, those labels—and we understand that they are limiting.
They're expanding our understanding and they're limiting us at the same time.
In the end, we need to drop them all.
In the end, we get to this place where we can
Become that absence fearlessly.
Okay, so let me do this screen share here…
Okay, so we're picking up on reading from Bok Jinpa 13, class four, and our previous reading left off with the first half of verse eight—Lama Christie called it verse 8a, and it had said, “use myriad of different viewpoints and myriad visualizations until you can coerce your mind into staying in that state.”
What state?
The state of the true nature of our own mind.
We're calling it the clear light nature—and it's going to get us in a bit of trouble—because when we hear the term clear light, we're thinking it's a thing, right?
An appearing thing.
And the true nature of our own mind is an absence of any appearance.
It's the potentiality for any appearance to pop up, whether there's a pop up or not—so it's slippery.
Again, because we can't get to it through words—but it's the only way to get to it is through words.
So we use clear light.
But it means this absence of self nature of the mind.
But it doesn't mean there is this vast absence of self nature of the mind sitting there, waiting for something to come out of it.
Right?
Something has to be appearing for there to be an empty nature.
So our mind has to be appearing for it to have its empty nature.
So there's always something going on.
How do we ever rest in that absence?
We're trying to get there by planting seeds, right?
It's the only way it's going to work.
Okay, so use any way you can get, to being able to rest in the no self nature nature of your mind—says verse eight, first half.
This is Tilopa teaching Naropa.
Second half of verse eight—here's a way, maybe try this one!
Imagine you're studying the entire sphere of the sky—you'll come to stop delineating the middle from the ends.
So we said, right, you're in the sky, you're looking in all directions, it's endless in all directions—well, then how can you say you're in the middle of something?
But wait, if it's endless in all directions, and I'm the one that is it—I'm always the middle, because anywhere you go, it's infinite all around you.
So everywhere is middle, and nowhere is middle.
Which way am I?
The middle would be delineated by where the sky ends.
But things don't end, do they?
Things don't start.
Things don't stay,
Teaches Arya Nagarjuna.
So to have a middle of anything isn't coming from the thing—it's coming from the one who's deciding “this is the middle."
Do we decide it on purpose?
They say we make it up.
We do make it up, but not because we want to.
To me, those words “make it up” means “I decide it's going to be like that."
So this applies, not just to the sense of space, infinite space, there can only be a middle if we delineate a factor that allows us to measure it.
When you stop delineating those factors—no such thing as a middle.
Then if there's no such thing as a “me, in the middle of the sky," well then what am I?
Where am I?
It leaves us in a bit of a free fall of trying to figure out, from our old reality, what is it to be up there in the sky?
And then the same principle applies to anything that we're delineating.
Delineating means “here's this vast, not enough information yet, and then we draw some kind of line about information, and then we've got, “oh, person out in a field.”
We could have drawn the line around stuff and come up with scarecrow, but then our mind goes, “oh no, it was really a guy, not a scarecrow, (or it was really a scarecrow, and not a guy).”
But in fact, both of those—either one, was our mind doing it.
So either way, there was neither a scarecrow nor a guy.
What is there is according to our delineation, that's coming out of our own mind.
And I'm doing this because we still fall back into thinking that “my mind is here [in my head], my karmic seeds are here [in my heart], and somehow the karmic seeds go from here [the chest] to there [the head] and then get shot out into the picture.
But really when we're thinking about it—it can't really be like that.
Because the “me," if this is included, “me” has got to be part of the picture, right?
So this whole process has to be happening somewhere else than inside here [points to self].
But for now, let's leave it inside there so that we can work with it.
Our perception is our delineations—we're just not aware of the process happening.
The thing is fully delineated by the time we experience it.
The beauty of Mahamudra practice—this getting deeper, deeper, deeper, more subtle—is that even off our cushion, we can become aware of being more subtly aware of these “shapeshiftings happening” as we go through our experiences—and that will buy us some time to get off automatic pilot.
If all that we're doing doesn't help us choose our behaviors more kindly, then it's not worth our time.
All of it's got to come back to how I make my behavior choices, my responses, right?
Okay.
So in that particular experience of becoming the sky, we can experience “stopping delineating things."
And then we're doing it intentionally as best that we can.
And then hopefully able to recognize that we're doing it a little better when we're off our cushion.
But then the different ways that we delineate things is:
Our physical body- we're delineating:
Its whole, with
all of its parts.
In any experience, we are delineating:
The subject
The object
The interaction between
The feeling that arises
The reaction I want to do
The decision to do that reaction.
…like all of that is these shape shifting delineations happening.
In the mind, our delineations are:
Current
Past
Future.
Like what's happening now, what's going to come next, where did it come from?
They're happening so fast that we're not aware that all of it is simply these “shapeshiftings happenings” in this vast expanse of the metaphorical blue sky of our mind.
Our mind is not blue.
Our mind is not a sky.
But metaphorically—it's vast, and it's clear, and it's available for all the clouds that pop up in it.
We're working on coming to recognize all these delineations, rising and passing, and the things that are delineated are nothing but that, and so they are [appearing/existing] when they are [appearing/delineated], but not otherwise.
So, again, as Master Tilopa is teaching Naropa—he's talking about our mind, our mind, our mind.
And we've learned our mind is “that which is clear and knowing."
And we heard that Tilopa has already said his description of mind is:
Infinite,
Empty,
Untouchable,
Immutable,
Impossible to describe,
The birthplace of everything,
The impossible foundation of all things.
These are all words that he uses in the course of his training of Master Naropa.
And it's like, all those words—are they adjectives?
Is he saying “the mind has these qualities”?
Or is he saying using these as nouns?
“This is what the mind is. It is infinite.”
It's hard, because the words are limiting.
We're going to see, that Master Tilopa, when he's talking about mind—he's not talking about trying to pin down the appearing nature of mind, he's helping us get to the true nature of mind.
Which is its no nature.
So, it's hard because we hear the mind…I hear the mind, and I think, “oh, what's all going on in my mind? That's my mind.”
And then it's like, yeah, but that's not what we're talking about in our Mahamudra practice.
We're trying to talk about its true nature—which is [that] our mind also is nothing but ripening results of past seeds.
How can my mind be “an arising” in the mind, and nothing but?
Well, how can it be anything else than that?
Okay, so let's go on here. Let's go on here. Oh, no, let's take our break.
Okay, I'm going to let the recording go through the break so I don't have to stop the share and reset this whole thing up. Okay, so there'll be a pause.
*************
So, next verse:
It's the same when studying
The mind using the mind—
Images and feelings stop, and
You come to rest beyond all thought
Seeing the mind's true nature:
Unsurpassed enlightenment.
“But wait," Master Kamalashila is saying, “you don't want to stop your mind. If that was enough to get enlightened, just go have somebody knock you out, right?”
Go have surgery. They'll knock you out, good.
That isn't the process that he's talking about.
Will image and feelings have stopped when we're having the direct perception of emptiness?
We could say, “I'm not experiencing anything but the empty nature of me.”
So when you come out, you would say, “well, yeah, it really was as if everything had stopped.”
But for any appearances to stop—like it's impossible.
Because it's like saying you can go into non-existence and then come out of non-existence.
So when he's saying images and feelings stop, as we are getting more and more subtly aware of the ripenings happening, the delineations forming, we reach a point where we're aware of simply the process happening—the arising, passing, arising, passing—and the arising never arises fully into a specific thing—other than the arising.
So, you know, you could say, images and feelings do stop—because this arising never gets so far as being a feeling.
It's just an arising—and you haven't followed it that far.
And so we do sink deeper, and deeper, and deeper, until we shift from the awareness of the arising constantly into the “all potentiality of the process of the arisings being reality.”
And that's where the doorway can push us into that direct experience of clear light—direct experience of emptiness.
As long as we're staying on the level of “the delineations getting their full on delineation,” we're stuck up in that level from which we can't get to the undelineated level.
So it's not that images and feelings come to a full-on stop, but we would say, “well, I'm not having any, because all I'm having is this [making noises and moving hands indicating each arising happening] beyond words…
…being there.
Okay, so don't do your Mahamudra trying to get your mind to stop.
That's not what we're saying here.
So, he goes on to give us more metaphor for how to work with this imagery of the mind as the sky:
Picture now a layer of fog
That dissipates into thin air
Without going anywhere
Without staying anywhere.
It's the same with all the layers of
Conceptions arising from your mind—
The waves of thought just dissipate
By seeing your own mind.
So he uses fog as the analogy, because of how, you know, when you're in a fog—it can be so thick it totally obscures your vision, so it's really dangerous to continue driving when you're in this deep fog.
And then like you're waiting, waiting, waiting for the fog to lift—and then all of a sudden—it gets thinner, it gets thinner, it gets thinner, and it's gone.
It's not like it takes a wind to come up and blow it away.
It's not like we can do anything to blow it away.
It's just “the conditions are foggy,” and then the conditions change and it's not foggy anymore—it's not blocking our view anymore.
Science tells us “hot air, cold air, [and so-on], then it warms up enough and moisture is no longer condensed in the air, and woop it goes away—so we have an answer for what happens to fog.
But again, it does not take some big event to get it to go away.
It just appears—and disappears.
I used to drive from Riverside to LA., and you went through this area that was a little bit hilly and then a valley, and you'd go around (there was this one area) where you'd go around this corner, and you could sometimes hit a really dense fog—you wouldn't know it was there, because you couldn't see it—and then you drive right into it, and you know, if it wasn't so bad, you couldn't keep driving, you’d drive right out of it.
It was just like this cloud, sitting on the road in that one section of the highway—and then other times, it's like, no cloud, right?
You never really knew whether it was going to be there or not.
So he uses fog here to work with our analogy because of how thick it can be, how very real it can be, how dangerous it can be—and how woop it just dissipates into thin air.
He says, “look, all these arisings in our mind, from our mind, are like this fog.”
They're so dense, that they're there in front of us, right?
We drive into them—we get hurt.
That like every conception arising is like fog—it poofs out, and it dissipates.
And another one, and dissipates.
Just waves of thought, dissipating—you don't have to do anything.
In fact, we do stuff to keep them rolling along—that's the story we tell ourselves about the information that makes it into the identity, from which we have a feeling, and a reaction, and a behavior, right—and through which we perpetuate the cycle.
It's because our stories go on and solidify these conceptions that are arising—they're all conceptions, at every level.
So, as we are putting ourselves in this space of “watching the process,” we can watch at these more subtle levels, so that those waves of thought // story // things that become so real, so concrete—dissipate.
If we're just watching and not engaging, right, there's nothing there, right?
It's like, and at some point, as we keep watching, even the arising gets so subtle that it seems like it stops.
But, of course, it doesn't stop.
It's gone.
So we have this vast expanse of our sky—our mind—says Lama Christie, this potentiality that we're calling “the vast sky of our mind,” and all of a sudden, a cloud appears, a thought, an itch, a sensation, a sound—something appears—and then if we don't even engage it, it will just disappear.
And we go, “well, no, but it's still there.”
Yeah, because you're engaging it.
Well, no, I'm not. I'm just watching it.
Right.
Well it's like, well, how can I watch it and not engage it and still be watching it?
Right—figure it out.
Getting more and more subtle.
It's a practice.
It's an experience-ing in which we are planting seeds.
More than, “okay, I'm going to, I'm going to get to this goal, and then go to that same goal every single time.”
It's the “what we do along the way to [get] to the goal of Mahamudra” that actually will get us to the goal, sooner or later.
Okay, I said all of that.
So, Lama Christie had said, when we are able to be aware that our thoughts about the things that are happening (this is off-cushion time now) our reactions to things that are happening, are just as ephemeral as these layers of fog that come and go.
As we go through life, and experiences happen, and we're in this space of, you know—another bubbling up, another bubbling up—our experience would be very different.
She went so far to say, if you could walk around in a Mahamudra state of mind—you would be all-powerful.
I don't think she meant all-powerful as in, you know, “change the light green because I want it,” [or] “drop the price on the peaches because I want it,” not that kind of all-powerful—but all-powerful in the sense of over our own responses to what's going on.
We would be off automatic pilot, and we would be very carefully choosing our seed planting behavior—and we would be able to do that because the solidity of ourself and our experience would be so not solid, we would understand so easily how, you know, “yes, I'm still feeling anger, but you know, that's just this idea on top of a sensation, that sensation could be—you know, love, weird feeling for love, but who cares? We'll call it love. Out of love, I'll do this for that person instead of that, that I would have done.”
It wouldn't be choice-making anymore. Our Mahamudra state of mind is [that] we would just be like love walking around.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
Okay, now let's go on.
Verse 11:
Take the sky for instance
Devoid of any color or shape—
Its nature is immutable
Unblemished by clouds of black or white.
So it is with your own mind
Devoid of shape or color
It can't ever be blemished
By good or bad, black or white.
So he's talking about karma, isn't he?
He's talking about karmic seeds—and he's saying “our mind can't be influenced by karmic seeds”?
It's like, that doesn't seem right—does it?
I mean, the whole point of learning karma is to learn about the karmic consequences: “I do that, [and as a result] that's going to happen to me someday. I don't want that to happen to me someday, so I won't do this [action], because of the imprint it makes on my mind that stays in my mind growing until circumstance brings it over the threshold and it ripens into my current experience.
Like come on Tilopa, if you don't know that, what are you doing teaching Master Naropa—and what am I doing in your lineage?
So what's the punchline here?
Is our mind affected by what we think, say, and do?
Yeah.
Is the true nature of our mind affected by what we think, say, or do?
No. Correct.
See? The empty nature of our mind is unchangeable—unchanging—totally pure—pure from the beginning—already peace.
We've heard all these terms—I think we've heard all these terms.
But do you see the switch, “my appearing nature of my mind?”
No, that's full of selfishness and complaining and, you know, “woe is me, what about me?”
But the true nature of that mistaken mind is no nature at all.
And that is devoid of shape or color,
Devoid of good or bad,
Devoid of right or wrong,
Can't be influenced,
Can't be changed.
So that part of our mind (part, [meaning] not [like a place] “over here” and the rest of my mind is [located over] there) but that aspect of our mind—it already is, and always has been, and always will be.
Because your mind is your mind, and my mind is my mind—so the emptiness of this mind, and the emptiness of this mind when it's perceiving itself as fully enlightened being—it's still there.
I don't want to say it's the same emptiness, because it's not the same emptiness—but it's there, right?
My “Buddha mind emptiness” and my “current mind emptiness” are identical—it's that this “my mind” with its emptiness is my Dharmakaya.
We want to say Dharmakaya-to-be, but it's already.
Because it's my mind, and it will never be not my mind.
But when I say “my,” I don't mean “Sarani.”
I mean “subject side” in this constant subject // object // interaction between—happening constantly.
Subject side changes,
Changes names,
Changes shape,
Changes form,
Changes feeling, right?
Changes identity,
But it's always—subject side.
Okay, so again, this verse is saying, “we are not investigating to try to find a direct experience of the appearing nature of our mind—we are investigating, and exploring, and delving into reaching the direct experience of the true nature of that “appearing mind”.
And they use the word “mind.”
Like why didn't they use a different word?
But it's because—I don't know why they didn't—but in my own explanation, it's like, because then I would be thinking of whatever that word they're using to distinguish between my appearing mind and my empty mind—I would be thinking of that as a thing—and I would still get it wrong.
So better to leave me with a conundrum that I have to [really think deeply] about, so that I can get it as intellectually accurate as I can, so that my experience of the empty nature of my mind conceptualized is as accurate as it can be, so that those seed planting are going to help me get to the actual 100% accurate “no nature” experience of my mind.
And it's all helpful (is what I'm trying to say).
Think how the nexus of the sun
Burns so clear and bright
That it cannot be covered
By a billion years of darkness.
And just so at the nexus of
Your mind is the clear light,
Which cannot be obscured
By a billion years of blind mistake.
So this is the conclusion from what we were just talking about.
It's like, “yes, my mind has been clouded by the darkness of the belief in its own nature, in it, from it, since forever—and even so, the true nature of my mind (which is it's empty, blank potential to experience itself in an ignorant way, or not ignorant way) has never ever been affected by that mistake.
My “appearing nature” of mind has been affected—badly affected
Continues to be affected.
But not the “clear light nature” in the same way of how the sun is not affected by the darkness around it—it's a funny analogy, isn't it?
It's like, how can there be darkness if there's a sun?
And I think that's why he's using it in that way.
It's like, “if I have the clear light nature of my mind, that how can there ever have been any ignorance to begin with?”
It should be so shining, so bright, that no darkness could ever be anywhere.
So really our darkness, our ignorance, is just this really big mistake.
It's some belief we have about our world and ourselves that we shroud this brilliant sun in such a way that, the sun's still shining, it doesn't care—but we put this big curtain around it so it can't shine on us.
It's really absurd.
As if recognizing the absurdity can make us take the shroud down.
You know, theoretically it could.
I'm looking to see what Lama Christie had to say about this verse.
Okay, let's go on.
I'm sorry, Tom you have your hand up. I didn't see that.
[Tom: I was wondering, if there is a difference in a healthy mind, like people taking this class, and someone who's maybe like a serial killer, like, you know, the darkness… I think we all have certain attachment to certain like distractions, a little depression—but then there’s like a whole different level of people who have heavier mental illnesses (I'm not sure how to define it correctly). So I was wondering, would that be the same thing from a Dharma perspective? I was just wondering…]
I'm not quite following your question… the darkness we're talking about here is the holding to self, and others, as existing as these solid things, in them, from them, that make them have to be what they are—and so my reaction to them, my feeling about them, that drives my reaction to them, has to be what I do, like it will be what works for what I need.
So when that kind of darkness has influenced [a person’s] previous behavior in some way, and it's ripening now as their personal experience of, you know, depression, or hatred, or needing to self protect in violent ways—it is still all the same process—their mind ripening information, that is interpreted in a certain way, forced by the ripening of results of those past deeds, that then is believed in as true, such that the feeling that arises, we need to address in a certain way, and then we act in a certain way, and it perpetuates the cycle.
So yes, we would say all of it is within this understanding of seeds ripening, and seeds passing, which makes it real.
Right? It doesn't in any way, say, “someone's depression is meaningless, because it's just seeds ripening.”
It makes it very real, just like my car is very real, right?
It takes us to doctor's appointments, (that’s about all it seems to do anymore) right, our projections are very real—because there's no such thing that we can experience that's not our projection—and never has been, and never will be.
It's such a tendency to hear “all things are nothing but a projection,” and to fall off that cliff into, “oh, so they're not real.”
When “things are projections” makes them real.
[Tom: I feel sometimes in, I’ll say, the spiritual world of practices, there is sometimes still the exclusion, or removing anyone with like evilness, we're still somehow isolating them as like, “Oh, something is wrong with them or that brain,” but it's still my own perception of them. Obviously, we all agree that killing and murdering is bad. But I also feel like even if people suffer from clinical depression, there is certain view is like, we're speaking of like, “Oh, normal brains.” And so I was wondering if that is the darkness that was described, or if there were any nuances and you clarified that, thank you.]
Okay good.
So we might think, “I've been ignorant for so long, infinite time, how can I ever possibly change it?”
You know, like we're going along in our practice, trying, trying, trying, trying, you know, don't seem like we're getting anywhere…
It could, we could ripen the seeds of getting discouraged and say, “well, I've just been ignorant for so long. I can't overcome it. Like I give up.”
Don't ever do that—but we could see it happening.
And he's pointing out that, “yes, we've been ignorant for so, so, so long—and our mind is empty of self nature—which is why it can be experiencing itself as ignorant, which is why it can experience itself as not ignorant.
Because it's emptiness is already neither ignorant, nor not ignorant.
It's emptiness is the availability to be either one.
And when those seeds ripen—it doesn't change the emptiness of it.
It is still infinitely available to be anything for anybody.
You—that big blue sky,
Infinitely available to be anything,
For anybody, at any moment.
I love that.
Now what I show up as, you know, according to them—but it still, this one's love being there for them. And we can see how it can all play out in this really long time.
Verse 13:
Say you wish to analyze
The empty nature of the sky
But you find there are no words
To express this quality of the sky.
Just so, we can talk about
The clear light of our own mind,
But there's nothing there for us to say,
“This is what I'm speaking of.”
It's that conundrum—we need to use words to describe it to ourselves, but at some point we have to say, “and that's not it.”
Right? Remember when we did that:
Think of your highest understanding of emptiness. That's not it.
Think of what it might feel like to be in the direct perception of emptiness. That's not it.
That's not it. That's not it. That's not it.
So, same thing—you get [to the point where] you think, “oh, this must be it,” and stay there, knowing that this is an appearance, right?
It's an experience-ing, which means it's not the emptiness.
The emptiness is the absence.
So you can't know—you can't be aware of being in it when you're in it, right?
You aren't really “in it”—there isn't a thing to be “in”.
We can't talk about “it” either and get it right—but we can get there.
Why?
Because it will be [the] ripening of seeds, too.
What kind of seeds?
Incredibly powerfully planted kind of seeds.
What kind of seeds?
Study, study, study.
Meditate, meditate, meditate.
Serve, serve, serve.
You know the punchline.
Okay.
Ask yourself: what could ever rest
On any fraction of the sky?
Nor could any object rest
Upon your Mahamudra mind.
Release yourself into
The pristine fundamental state;
Your bonds will all be broken
Without a doubt, you will be free.
So in the analogy of the sky, the sky is this ephemeral place.
We say “above us” that if you throw a rock into the sky, there's nothing solid enough [in] the sky for the rock to land on and stay up there.
If you throw a feather into the sky—even a feather can't find anything to land upon and stay there.
Right?
Nothing can rest on any fraction of the sky.
No solid object.
What are clouds doing up there? Aren't they solid objects?
Wait a minute, Tilopa.
He's using it for the analogy of “nor could any object rest upon your Mahamudra mind.”
But wait, I just spent the last hour (and 20 years) describing to people how every appearing experience we have is resting upon our mind, right?
It's coming out of the mind, it becomes this solid thing (the experience) “me” getting out of bed, teaching class—and then it passes by.
Isn't my mind there and these things come out of it and sit on top of it (it's kind of like the way it feels) and then they move along, and then the next one comes up, moves along.
Is that what's happening?
I think quickly we'll go, “no, that's not what's happening.”
What is happening?
Got 20 years? We'll start again—trying to explain.
Because in order to say this, to make sure your audience understands that you have to tell them this, and in order for them to understand that you have to tell them this, right?
Joanna and I were having [a] chat about this.
It's like [what do you do?]
So again, is Tilopa saying to Naropa, “get really clear of your mind as “all these things arising within it”?
It's like, no, he's saying, “get underneath all of that.
Recognize that none of that is anything but this constant shape-shifting // appearing nature of the mind, that requires an underlying “no self-nature” nature of the mind [in order] to be all of that happening.
There's not a mind there that's “a thing” that all of this is coming out of.
The thing we call “mind” is this process.
Appearance.
Appearance.
Appearance.
Appearance.
Appearance.
Appearance.
Right?
Because it requires awareness—it requires aware-ing.
The awar-ing factor for any experience.
And that aware-ing is the consciousness,
The awareness—that which is clear and aware.
But it's not a thing that's doing that.
It is the explanation of that happening.
Aware-ing, happening.
Right? Language would be so different if we could say it more accurately.
Me, you // you, me // teaching, happening
Moment by moment…
When we can release ourselves into this pristine fundamental state, our belief in all of those surface ripenings as being in them, from them—gone.
The belief is gone.
Is the experience gone when you come out of your experience of pristine fundamental state?
No.
We come out because the process is still happening—and the belief has been damaged from all those seeds, but not the ignorance.
So things still appear to be in them, from them—to the Arya—but without the belief that they are that way…We say they are living in the illusion. Does it mean like they can automatically walk through walls because walls are illusory?
I don't think so yet—but they understand that what they're seeing is existing, but not the way it appears to be, “the illusion in that way.”
But you're free at that point, because you're not ever again going to plant a seed with the belief in things [having their] nature's in them or your nature in you.
Once you stop believing, you apparently can't ever believe again—not even in future lifetimes (although maybe you don't know that you don't believe when you first get reborn as a human, it'll take a little while) but you're still not planting seeds for the belief—apparently.
So it doesn't happen in that instant that we are free of all mental afflictions, but we are free of replanting new mental afflictions.
So it's just a matter of time before we wear out or damage the seeds that we have for any future mental afflictions—all the way up to the affliction called “obstacles to omniscience.”
When we use this term “pristine fundamental state of our mind,” Lama Christie says that's code for the essence body of Buddha, the Dharmakaya—our own Dharmakaya.
The empty nature of our own mind is our own Dharmakaya.
It is an absence.
How can an absence hold anything up?
There isn't anything to be held up.
How does an absence shapeshift into a “something,” into a “presence”?
It doesn't—absence is unchanging.
It's a…I was going to say it's a quality…but I'd get in trouble there…
It is, what must be in order for us to have any experience of anything at all.
Are we experiencing things?
Yes.
So therefore—our minds deepest nature must be the availability to experience what we are experiencing: now, and now, and now, and now, and now…
That's even true for our ignorant experiences, isn't it?
Our mind has to be empty in order to experience things in the wrong way.
It has to be empty in order to experience things in the right way.
It just plain has to be empty to experience anything at all, and it always has been empty because we always have been experiencing things.
How do I know that?
Because here we are, we are existing conscious beings.
So we always have been.
If things are solid things that need to sit upon the absence of our own mind for us to experience them—it’s just impossible for that to happen.
Those solid things that we interact with have to be coming out of this empty nature of our mind [in order] to be able to experience them as solid.
Can I get away with that: “coming out of”?
Except that that means then that there's a thing there and woop they bubble out.
It's helpful to think of it that way for a while, but then it's like, no, because then what's the “that” before it bubbles out, right?
This Nagarjuna again:
If you think your mind is there before something bubbles out of it, right?
What's there before?
We've done that chapter, like three or four times, haven't we, Janet?
What's there before—there can't be a before!
There's only “the ephemeral always now.”
Okay. Let's go on. Am I boring you to tears?
Verse 15. Now I'm looking at my Lama Christie notes again. Yeah, we did all that.
This is your mind's true nature…wait, I gotta go back…
What's my mind's true nature?
Ah! The pristine fundamental state—from which all our bonds will be broken, without a doubt.
This is your mind's true nature
It is like the sky.
And it is every single thing
There's nothing not a part of it.
Give up this lie of the physical realm
Rest in your inborn nature
Hearing the few words you speak
As simply its own echo.
This is a beautiful verse to explore.
Is there anything that we could experience that could be outside of our awareness of it?
No—like by definition, to experience something, we have to be aware at some level, so even when we say, “yeah, but there are galaxies that exist that are beyond what anybody knows about.”
It's like, okay—and so they have come into our awareness, and so they are coming out of our awareness—aren't they?
To be aware of something, we have to be aware of it, and being aware of something is a function of our mind—is happening as mind.
Mind shape-shifting is all experience, is what he's saying here.
There can't exist anything for any individual that's outside of their experience of it.
But then we start this argument, “well, wait a minute, I'm not experiencing the Fry's grocery store,” you know, that's four miles away, six miles away—does that mean it doesn't exist right now?
Does that mean the only things that exist for me right now is what's within my peripheral vision and my peripheral hearing?
It's like, “no, you can't say that, that's not what this is saying.”
But is it true that there can't exist anything that's outside of your own mind—your own awareness—your own ripening?
Okay?
If we call the appearing nature of our mind, “our ripenings,” our karmic ripenings—and the empty nature of the mind as “that availability for the ripenings to be ripening,” then can there be anything that exists “for me” that's outside of “my ripening karmas”?
No—everything is my karma ripening.
Everything is unique to me.
Does that mean I'm the only one that exists?
No, of course not.
Okay—there's lots of other stuff that exists, unique to me.
Does any of it exist outside my own mind?
Technically not, right?
Do I think that [it] exists outside my own mind?
Sure, I do.
Because I think my mind is limited to my intellect, to what I see, hear, smell, right?
It's like what I'm holding to be my mind, I'm holding to in a mistaken way that makes me believe that there's all kinds of stuff that exists independent of my mind—that I only can interact with by way of my awareness, by way of my mind.
But as we dig deeper, we come to see, “oh my gosh, that's all ripenings of my own mind,” right?
Mind-only school says that—everything's mind-only.
They deny that they mean it's “all mind-only” in that way.
But in a way, they're right.
Middle Way is not saying:
“There's a mind, and it's yours, and it's the only thing that exists, and everything comes out of it.”
They are saying:
“Nothing exists in any other way than as ripening results of karma—and that is mind—that is the functioning, that is the process. Profound dependence, process—is our mind.”
Our mind is vast.
It's huge.
It encompasses everything.
Like, who is the creator of your world?
You are.
Which you, Sarani?
No—subject side.
Subject side “me.”
And it always will be.
It's dangerous to say (right?) to beginners, “hey, you're the god of your world, you already are.”
Because, our mistaken mind will go, “great, I can do anything I want. I can make you do anything I want.”
Oops.
You know, maybe we've all done that before—or at least I've done that before (made that mistake, so here I still am) but it's true—our behaviors create our future circumstances, and there's nothing that we can experience that's outside of that system.
We've created everything—and it's all the process of mind happening.
Not intellect, not those baby awarenesses of form, feeling, you know, it's like, it encompasses all of that—but the process of profound dependence happening is what we mean by “mind.”
The mind's true nature is that it's nothing but that process—it's not a “mind” that comes out of that process.
It's nothing but that process—like “the sky” is this empty space: available.
But where our analogy with the sky is: the sky's “a thing” there that we can look at and think about, the analogy or the metaphor breaks down there—but even then, when we look at it more deeply, it's like, no, no, the only reason there's a sky there is that the sky of my mind is ripening seeds for this thing called the blue sky that I can relate to as she talks about the blue sky as an analogy for my mind.
All that's our mind also.
So you really, it's like to say it's coming out of my mind isn't quite right. It's happening on my mind isn't quite right.
It's like, it's all mind happening doesn't feel quite right, right?
The language fails—and that's why we need to dig into deep meditation to get it right, to get the experience accurately enough to cut the belief that was that blackness that was trying to blank out the sun, but doesn't.
Yes, Janet.
[Janet: So you had said cause and effect, but when I listened to this talk, it's chapter five, it's the elements. The sky is space, the space in the nation of objects. It's the unchanging thing, the changing things are in. So we are the chair in the space. So this, this is, this to me is chapter five.]
Of Nagarjuna, yeah! Good. Nice.
So give up this lie of the physical realm.
I mean, does that mean “walk out in the middle of the street, right? There's no Mac truck that will run you over. If you get run over, no big deal, right? You have no body that gets run over.”
It doesn't mean that.
Give up this lie of the physical realm as being anything happening outside of our own mind—but what that means is “outside [of] our own karmic seeds ripening.”
Our mind is karmic seeds, right?
We learn where the karmic seeds are planted, etc., so that we can grapple with this understanding of what they really mean by “karmic seeds.”
They aren't “little things that are stored somewhere”—they are this constant shape-shifting impression, right? That this mind shows this [one thing] and impresses that [other thing] and shows this, and impresses that.
And we have to think of it as being sequential.
My personal take (not from scripture) is [that] it's all happening simultaneously—but with ignorant brains that work the way they do, we can't comprehend simultaneity in that way.
So ripenings and imprints are happening simultaneously, but for our needs sequentially—and that is “me and my world,” me and my experience: moment, by moment, by moment, by moment, by moment—and for all of that to be experienced, it all has to lack its own true nature so that it can be what's unique to this one, and what's unique to that one, right?
I create the others to be others within this whole process, and it's necessary that there be others.
For the process to be, there has to be two, right?
In the Tao Te Ching, the one, then there's two, then there's three, then there's the myriad of things—it's not like from this, from that, from that, because of this, because of that, because there's one, there has to be two, because in order to be aware of one, there has to be somebody aware of it.
That makes two.
And once there's a subject and an object, there's an interaction between—that makes three.
And once you have three, you have everything.
Same here, same here.
Okay, so do the blue sky part of the meditation, but don't get hung up in playing in the blue sky—be sure to also sink into the, allowing the arisings, right, the clouds that pop up, and get subtler and subtler about those arisings to let them go.
All right, so we didn't quite finish class four. Oh, maybe we did, but we'll review it a little bit.
So remember that one that we wanted to be able to help?
We've explored a lot, planted those seeds that have set in motion the end of their suffering forever—and that's an extraordinary goodness.
So please be happy with yourself.
And think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.
Turn your mind to your precious holy being.
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 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 wisdom.
And may it be so.
Alrighty, thank you for the opportunity.
I learned so much. Thank you.
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 19
There is no vocab list for this class.
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Introduction
Welcome back. We are Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s Mahamudra course. It's June 24th, 2025. We'll do our opening prayers, and then I want to finish up that verse 15 from Ganga Ma that we were working on, and then we'll do our meditation for this class because it's a little bit different. And I also would like to mention our upcoming schedule, Geshe Michael's program in Mexico City coming up in July. Our last class for a little while will be July 15, and then after Geshe-la's program, shortly after that, Sumati and I travel, and we'll be back the end of August. So we'll pick this course up on September 2nd with a review, and then after that, carry on. So depending on how far we get right before July 15th, it will depend how much we have left over. Remember my text? We're down to about, right out of this, we have about this much left. So we're getting there. So let's gather our minds here. As we usually do, please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
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We are in Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's Mahamudra text, his commentary on his root text, where he has been talking about Tilopa teaching Naropa the lesson that he earned by dragging the new bride off the elephant, right? And dragging her around a bit and getting beat up for it. And so as an apparent result of that event, he's learning Mahamudra, the Mahamudra practice. And so we've been looking at the verses of the text that came out of that teaching, Tilopa and Naropa sitting at the banks of the Ganges. And it becomes these verses that the text is called Ganga Ma. So we were on verse 15 when I ran out of time last week. The meditation that this verse triggers is this version of not a Mahamudra practice, but a preparation to reach the Mahamudra practice is that practice of the sky, the mind like a blue sky. And reaching to infinity and being the spot in the center and exploring things that arise within that vast sky of the mind.
What are they? Where do they go? Where do they come from? Do they leave an imprint? Exactly.
The exploration. So we had talked about how that sky metaphor for the mind helps us shift our thinking about our identity and our thinking about what this thing that we're using the word mind for, what we're really talking about. We're not just talking about the intellect. It's something way more than that. But to really pin down what is this thing mind, that which is clear and aware. Come on, what does that really mean? So we're using all these different suggested methods of exploration to get to something that really there aren't words that can describe it precisely enough that to just hear the words, you'll go, “oh, I get it”. For all kinds of different reasons. You know, the emptiness of the words, the emptiness of the mind. Nothing. We can't get to anything through words, technically. And yet highest world view says everything is nothing but names and labels. Those are words, right? Not typed out words, but identifiers that come out.
So we were talking about the mind's true nature. It is like the sky. The mind, technically, incorporates everything. There's nothing not a part of it. Is there something that you could know exists that is independent of your knowing it exists? What an absurd thing to say. Of course not.
Is there something that could exist that doesn't arise within the space of your own mind? We think, of course, all those things I don't know that somebody else knows. But technically, it's saying the same thing.
Can something exist beyond your experience for you? No.
Can anything exist outside of your own mind? It's saying the same thing.
But when I even hear myself say the words, it's like, no, it's not saying the same thing. There can be things that exist that I don't know about. But can there? See? So he's already laid that out for Naropa. You were hopefully spending a little time on it every day during the week. But then Tilopa goes on to Naropa and says, give up this lie of the physical realm. Rest in your inborn nature. Hearing the few words you speak as simply its own echo.
I should read the whole verse for the recording.
This is your mind's true nature.
It is like the sky.
It is every single thing.
There's nothing not a part of it.
Give up this lie of the physical realm.
Rest in your inborn nature.
Hearing the few words you speak
As simply its own echo.
(-1:46:35)
Lama Christie was in the frame of mind of preparing her students for a career of solitary retreats. You know, if that was interesting to them. And she had on her radar screen the upcoming three-year retreat that would, you know, happen at this point in bok chenpo. We're still a number of years out. So she went into the advantages that give up this lie of the physical realm. Tilopa was saying to Naropa, look, your job in this physical world is done. Right. He was Abbott of Nalanda. He was gatekeeper. He was, you know, all these amazing things. He had these roles that he identified with. He'd already given up most of them. But maybe Tilopa like sees in his mind that he's thinking at some point he'd go back into that arena.
And Tilopa is pointing out that at some point your role in this old world view, this old physical realm is done. And she said, he's saying to Naropa, it's time to go into retreat. You know, there's nothing in this physical realm that can bring you what it is you're really looking for. That your achievements need to happen in the realm of your mind.
And although our physical realm is nothing but manifestations of the realm of our mind, until we exit the automatic way we respond to our physical world, until we exit that for some period of time, it's very, very difficult to really use it for our practice. So she was laying out these advantages of going into retreat regularly. And, you know, planting the seeds for that long retreat to actually happen. So, you know, we use the term retreat when we, you know, leave our ordinary life and we go to a program where we're in some place new with different people maybe and studying deeply something in particular. It is a retreat, retreat from life. Vacations are retreats, right? Retreat from our ordinary routine. We do do retreat.
But the retreat he's talking about here is solitary. Going into solitary retreat for some period of time long enough to be able to recognize all of these identities and expectations that we have on ourselves so that we can let go of the ones that no longer serve our practice and to cultivate the new ones that we can use to serve our practice.
So there are a lot of advantages of taking some time, four or five days, 10 days, two weeks, whatever, to put yourself in a circumstance where you intentionally are not going to see other people, interact with other people, technically even other beings with whom you have a regular relationship. So, you know, you don't even want to go into retreat with your cat. Not that there's any wrong thing wrong with having a pet, but we go into ordinary mode so automatically. Yeah, you know, later when you're good at retreat, no problem. But when we're still in this arena of learning to de-identify with those automatics, we want to be isolated from all those automatic ways that we react to others. So even just to see other people, see cars whizzing by, right? You really want to isolate yourself not, you know, in a black room, not like that, but put yourself in a space that's different and all by yourself.
And it allows us to use this training to go into this space of, you know, what is this really? And become more and more present to our awaring happening level of functioning. Because there's nobody needing anything from us. We're doing the same thing every day in the same place. So it sounds like really boring.
A friend of mine went into their first month-long retreat. And they decided to do a Yamantaka retreat. And he got in and sent out a note after his first day. And he said, am I really supposed to do this same practice four times a day for a month? You know, and it's like my answer, big Y-E-S, yes. You know, it's like how boring. And yet partway through something like that, the idea is that you will meet this space coming out of your own heart, where it's like, wow, this is the most important thing I can do for my whole world. Is the same thing on the same cushion, the same routine, the same pattern, eat practically the same food at the same time of day.
So that all those decisions that you need to make, none, none necessary. You quit needing to see things and identify things. And you can get into this space of how it's like everything's this shape-shifting happening. Now you need training, of course. You don't want to walk into a cave and take a prayer book and do that on your own without some kind of training to be prepared.
So give up the physical realm for Naropa. It was time to literally, you know, cut the ties. Come on, he'd done that already. He'd been chasing Naropa for 12 years, you know. So on another perspective, give up the lie of the physical realm. What is the lie of the physical realm? That it looks like it's in it, from it, coming at me, happening independent of my perception of it, right? All the different levels of understanding of karma and emptiness is the lie of the physical realm.
Physical realm has no nature of its own, which is why it can be the physical realm that we experience. Unique to me, unique to you. If we give up the lie of the physical realm, if we can really do that moment to moment. Of course we can be in and amongst it, without it impacting us, but rather with us impacting it. Hearing the few words you speak as simply its echo, when we apply that to being in retreat, in the retreat space, mental space, whether you're still in retreat or out of retreat. In retreat, the only speech that you allow yourself is the holy words of your practice and mantra. So prayers and mantra. You are only speaking what has been determined to be holy speech.
You don't talk to yourself, you don't talk to the bugs, everything else is silent. So we really are speaking few words compared to ordinary life. Actually, a sadhana can be really, really long and can be a lot of words. But then once you get to know the story of the sadhana, there's only certain pieces of it that you want to say out loud. All the rest of it, you're running this movie and then you say. So what starts out to be a couple of hours of sacred speech, becomes a few sentences here, a few sentences there, that this relating to the world auditorily, verbally, lessons.
And it helps us access relating to the world from this mind level, not intellectual level, but I don't know what to call it. It feels more intuitive, it feels more psychic, it feels more energetic level. But then any words we do speak, we will also recognize as simply its own echo. What's the its own echo? It doesn't say your own echo, which is what you would think the metaphor of an echo would mean, right? You're standing at the canyon, you say “hello”, and then you hear “hello, hello, hello, hello”, in all these different places. And because you know it's an echo, you know you're the one who started it. And then it's what you hear as a result of that. So it is a good metaphor for planting a seed and then getting the result over here, over here, over here, over here.
It isn't quite right, but it's not talking about your own echo. Even the words, your sacred speech that's coming out of your mouth is a result of seeds planted in the past. That's true. What you would say as simply your own echo. Hearing the few words you speak as simply its own echo, that it refers to your mind, right? Or does it refer to the physical realm?
You could think of it both ways. The echo of our inborn nature is how Lama Christie suggested we investigate it.
How would a metaphor of an echo apply to our own inborn nature?
Our inborn nature being the empty nature, blank nature of our own mind. An echo is the “hello” that we hear coming from somewhere else. So our own mind, if we think it's limited to here, and then stuff outside and my mind that's limited here somehow make contact, which then would require eyes, ears, nose, right? To make that contact. Then this echo metaphor doesn't make sense. But if we're expanding our understanding of our inborn nature, our empty nature of our mind is like the sky encompassing all existing things, then now this thing that appears down in the canyon over there, the word “hello” coming up, it's just something that ripples out of this mind that seems to be over there right now. And then -over here - right now - and over there right now. I'm not making the sound happen. I did that already. “Hello, hello, hello, hello”. All of it, these echoing of the inborn nature.
Just another way, not just, but another way to think of the metaphor we're calling ripples. When anything pops up and passes, it's like a ripple on this ocean of mind. So ocean is another great analogy to use to try to get to our inborn nature of mind. It's just so solid, so much more solid than sky. So Master Naropa to practice Mahamudra, get yourself into retreat, get yourself isolated. Find that inborn nature of your mind to whatever extent you can. And anything that arises up out of it. No, it's an arising within it. Let it pass. Don't rely, don't react.
Is that reaching Mahamudra to be keenly aware of everything that's arising, is arising as images in your mind? No, that's the appearing nature of our mind. Getting closer to the actual appearing nature of our mind, the appearing nature of our mind is not its true nature. It's not all of it. It's part of it. So there's more to do than just reach that place where we can rest so blissfully. And this pops up unidentified, let it go. The next one comes, let it go. Next one comes, let it go. It's a beautiful stillness meditation and we can get lulled into it and reach very deep levels of meditation.
But it's not enough to reach the goal of becoming the one who can stop the suffering of others forever. Alright, so now I'm ready to go to the next meditation.
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So get yourself settled.
Get that body aligned, solid seat, upright, scan down that relaxation, that inner energy rising you up.
Recall your motivation and turn on the microscope of your mind, focused on your breath at the tip of your nostrils.
Focus, fine tuning, focus, clarity, intensity. (- 1:26:38)
Now go through your process of sinking deeper into as the watcher, the experiencer, the observer, catching the identities of things, dropping them, catching, putting on the identities of things, dropping that, starting from outer, going to inner, you know how.
We'll stay two minutes.
(- 1:22:35)
So hopefully we are at this level of awareness that every awareness is nothing but a picture rising up and passing an image, an idea, a sensation.
And for the purposes of this exploration, notice too the sensations we call our own body is the same and actually look for them.
Where is my bottom on my cushion?
Let the image arise and then deconstruct it. I don't really have enough information to call that sensation, my bottom on a chair. It's simply sensation, location, my hand in my lap, not enough information.
(-1:19:15)
We're recognizing this distinction between a raw experience and an identity of that experience. And if it seems confusing, it's okay.
Check your clarity, check your fascination, curiosity. Let's call it curiosity.
Aware of things arising onto the surface of awareness, just ripples and even those get an identity of some vague type.
So we get to play a little bit. I'm going to say a word. You get to watch what arises in your mind as a result of the word that you hear.
And I want you to watch where that whatever arises seems to come from and where does it go?
So you're watching this thing that pops up as a result of my word. Asking yourself, where did it come from? What's it like? And what happens to it?
We'll stay one minute on each word. Here's the first
flower.
East.
Love.
Elbow.
Emptiness.
Blue.
I am going to speed up
Magic.
Always.
Ocean.
Karma.
Music.
Mind.
Awareness.
Thought.
Movement.
(-1:06:59)
Did your mind move to do all that?
The experience mind moving is also an arising image. A picture. The movement is a picture.
Where did all those pictures come from?
What lies beyond the picture?
What do we think lies beyond or before the picture?
Before I said the next word, we have an idea, a concept of our subject's state of mind, the thing we call my mind. It's a thing. It's present, always.
But it's a picture, nothing but a mental image.
It has a flip side.
It's absence. The absence of any real nature of our own subject's state of mind at any particular moment.
And that quality of absence also is a picture, a ripening.
How do we ever get beyond or beneath the constant pictures?
We take the pictures for real things, but they're not.
How do we experience something we've never experienced before if the experiencing before is the cause of the picture?
We say, pray for blessings from the holy beings. And those holy beings are just your mental images also.
Where did they come from? Where did they go when you're not aware of them?
All that rippling on the surface of your beautiful subject's side of mind.
What makes that movement?
What makes the subject mind move to an object when the subject and object both are the mind's own pictures?
It's like magic.
Try to come to some kind of conclusion about this exploration and offer that effort to that precious holy guide. Dedicate that effort to breaking through soon.
And then let your awareness rise back up to the surface. This picture of this body in this room in this class. When you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch, and let's take our break.
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Natty asks if it's true that without being in retreat you can't reach Mahamudra. Mahamudra being the direct perception of emptiness.
No, you don't have to be in retreat for that to happen. Doing retreat will cultivate the experience, but no. Thanks for clarifying that.
(Student: What do you mean cultivate the experience? We need to have been in retreat before or after?)
Retreat experience helps us reduce our tenacity to all of those identities that we cling to so strongly that block our ability to get our concentration deep enough to reach that platform of being able to see emptiness directly. So it's what's being planted in retreat and what's not being planted, that we would have planted if we were outside of retreat in that same time frame. That is the advantage.
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So that meditation will be difficult to repeat on your own because you don't have somebody to call out random words for you. But the purpose of all that was this exploration, the watching. Where did that image come up? I said the word magic, like something popped into your head as a result of the word magic. And then we would say, well, that image came out of the word I said. And then you're sitting there looking at some other word. And then this one, we were just trying to explore. I don't know if you got actual answers to where it came from and where it went. I want to hear because I think the point is, it's like, this is so confusing. I don't understand. But what we did understand was how our awareness was shifting, shifting, shifting. I mean, were we at least at that level? It's like she's wanting me to think about elbow. And now I'm thinking about whatever the next word was. I don't remember. Right. And now this one and some were words that we're familiar with. But how do you get a mental image of emptiness? Like, what's yours? All right.
So that was intentionally a confusing meditation. But the purpose is this more raw experience of this movement. And then that movement is the mind just blown in the breeze. And the stuff that pops up, right, is random stuff. Or is there something pushing it to make the ripple happen?
In an ocean, the ripple happens because wind blows. But when it's our metaphor of our mind, what's going on here? And if I could just explain it, the explanation would be you imprinted your mind with something by way of what you thought, said and do. And that made an imprint. And now that imprint is bubbling to the surface. And it's shapeshifting your mind into this experience. And we mistake it for being a thing out there and a me here. Right. We've heard the explanation. And that explanation is all words and labels coming out of the very process that's being tried to be described. They fail.
You know, it'll get us to understand enough that it's like, oh, my gosh, my behavior. But it isn't it isn't it isn't actually it. I am and the the what's actually happening, where things come from, where they go, that won't be. Like - accurately known until after the direct perception of emptiness and then probably even then, until we're Nirvana or better, we still won't be able to describe it exactly. And especially describe it in a way that we know the heares or we'll hear it. In the way we mean for it, because of the right, the process is happening, even as we are experiencing emptiness directly, it's still the same process happening, it's still mental image ripening.
This section of Mahamudra is where we are getting more comfortable with that no specific answer; with the nebulousness of this arena of mind where things are coming up, but we're not even going so far as a specific identity. And yet even the raw data is information receiving that label at that level of simply raw experience. So all of that is taking us to a more and more direct experience of the appearing nature of our mind.
But that's not Mahamudra .It's a necessary piece. Because by reaching the appearing nature of our mind we are able to see that what I thought was my mind was some kind of nature of its own. Isn't there. Never was. Couldn't be no such self-existent nature of my mind. No mind. That is a thing that gets imprinted by the seed.. What like that's blasphemy. Because it's all part of the process. So the gatcha mind my mind that I have right that gets imprinted. The appearing nature of my mind is this thing I call mind that gets imprinted by the seeds and ripens as part of the process. Always there. Always your unique subject side mind. It never shifts to somebody else's subject side mind.
You know, you could debate me on that too. Is because when you're reborn as your next human, you are somebody else. But your subjects mind is still the same mind. But wait, no, it's not the same two moments in a row. So how can you say it's the same mind? Right. Do you see why the it's so slippery? Because words fail. So this text that we're studying the Ganga Ma has 28 verses in it. We just finished verse 15. And then we know as we go through verse 21. Lama Christi said, it just seems like it drops in unannounced, unrelated to what was happening before and what happens afterward. And she felt it was useful to take that verse 21 and drop it in here for us.
Because it's useful in this space where we're trying to explore this movement of the mind.
We've heard movement of the mind and what it motivates. What is that? Karma. So technically, the answer is what moves my mind. Karma. I mean, that is the Maroc answer. But what does that really mean? Because that's all mental images. Ripening ripples on the surface of our mind. What does it mean?
(-43:44) Here's verse 21. Verse 21 says.
At first, the karma is a stream
that cuts its way through mountains.
In the middle, it's a river
Ganga slowly winding past.
At the end, the waters merge
And mother and child are reunited.
It's really beautiful. And it has nothing to do with the verse that came before the verse that comes after. It seems we would at first glance say, well, to Lopez talking about what karma seems like. Through the course of a lifetime.
No, as being newborn human. From the birth experience through until you're about. I don't know. 20 something. It's like huge changes are happening seemingly really fast. You go from security of womb right to out in the cruel world. And then you go from an infant to somebody who's in school in five short years. You've learned to walk. You've learned to talk. You've learned to tie your shoes. Wow, man. Changes, changes, changes, extraordinary changes happening.
And then we reach adulthood and we get settled into our routine. And it's like there goes your 20s. Yeah. Still some extraordinary changes. You're getting settled in, but not like before. Then you get through your 30s into your 40s and you look back and it's like, yeah, you know. Just not so dramatic changes in ourselves. When we reach adulthood, just the karma seems to be more like lazy Ganga River sliding along. And that goes on for a long time. Doesn't seem like much is changing.
Of course, it's not true. Then in the end. You slide back and reunite. Mother and child here, meaning you, the child, slide back into where you came from, which isn't really meaning your mother, but meaning the process. You go into death and you'd start over again. So why would Tilopa in the second two thirds of his discussion on how to meet the clear light nature of your mind suddenly be reminding him “Look at the beginning. Karma seems to move really fast in the middle. It goes slow. And in the end. You merge. You merge back. Like, you don't really. But it seems that way. It's just like, where did this come from and why?”
Llamas Christi offered that Tilopa was pointing out to Naropa that this movement of the mind is. also, simply, the part of the picture, the picture happening, the constant changing picture happening. If the movement of the mind had some kind of nature of its own, if karma had some kind of nature of its own, it couldn't be perceived to move faster. Cause more change now than then. It would be some steady, regular pattern that we could rely upon if karma movement of the mind had some kind of its own identity, its own power, its own right - something coming from it. It couldn't work like this. Maybe it's a subtle way of Tilopa pointing that out. I don't know. Why didn't he just say, see, Naropa, your mind moves.. And the movement of the mind itself is nothing but movement of the mind. All right. It just adds to the confusion. It seems.
So when you are exploring the movement of the mind, like, really, you're exploring the movement of the movement and you're going to keep digging deeper. And you're a wearing happening experience of your growing Mahamudra to reach the true appearing nature of your mind. Will recognize that. That movement itself is somehow simply a belief. That movement has to happen. But it's like, but it does have to happen because that's right without movement.
There has to be movement. But as soon as I say there has to be movement, we hear it as, “oh, yeah, movement as a thing that pushes another thing. So there has to be blah, blah, blah” We hear it wrongly. It is true, there has to be. But it's not true that it's a force that in and of itself is what pushes the mind. Same for karma. If we're thinking of karma, the principle of karma, the laws of karma as a thing. That is the whole principle behind the appearing nature of our world. We're not understanding karma.
Karma has to be empty of self-existence as well. In order for it to be the thing we call karma with the thing that we call the laws of karma, which are really just explanations for the experience we call movement of the mind and what it motivates.
It's all explanations. Explanations make mental pictures.They make ripples happen. And as these ripples are happening, what we're experiencing is, oh, me understanding emptiness. When we're up here at the surface level, especially ignorant surface level. Oh, me, them. They do that to me. I get mad at them. I do this to fix the problem. Waves, not just ripples. As we understand better. Right. It's all going to fall apart. Which isn't a bad thing. It's a good thing. Because we'll get glimpses into its truth as not self-existent and not fall for that. Well, if not self-existent, then not at all. Because my mind still, when I hear my own self explained to my own self, “karma is simply mental images ripening as well”. I feel this, so it's not real. Instead of the into the middle where it's like, oh, that explains everything.
Our beliefs in things having to be real keeps us in one cliff or the other or close to it.
(Janet: I do listen to the recording. So this this queuing of blue and, you know, magic show. I mean, I do get the cues because I listen to recordings)
You can do it that way.
(Janet: Do you want us to look at blue and then look at it with emptiness and then look at the magic show and then look at it with emptiness? Or do you just want us to look at what's arising?)
I want you to focus on the arising of something in response to that auditory cue. It's not so much identifying what arises. Lama Christi, what she wanted for us is to be more aware of what is the experience that I'm calling something bubbling up, being there for a little bit. And then what happens to it? Like, does it burst or does it fade or does it being aware of the movement of the mind that's triggered by another cue? The movement. Does that help?
(Janet: It simplifies the whole process, which I'm completely grateful for)
All right. Thanks for asking.
(-32:47)
So I so admire Lama Christie. As I try to deliver what she taught to us, I have the advantage of I'm using what she taught me. But I see that she took this text, the auto commentary on the Mahamudra root text, and she worked with the whole thing. And then went through it in a way to guide her students to where the text can hopefully take us. So she went. We're still in the Ganga text, but she went to a later piece in Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's auto commentary to help us understand this verse better so that we can better understand verses 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.
Like, I would not have known to do that. So like, wow, I'm just so grateful to Lama Christie. Thank you so much.
So in Panchen Lama's latter part of the text, if you recall, he's talking about different versions of Mahamudra practice. And in the end, he says, they'll all get you to what we mean by Mahamudra. They're just going by way of different paths. So he calls them different schools, but don't think of them as the different schools of levels of understanding emptiness. It's not that. So his fifth version way that some people teach Mahamudra, he went to that fifth type of practice.
And he uses a root text by someone named Lama Shang. And Lama Christie said, I have no idea who that guy is. So I have no idea who that guy is, but he has this beautiful text. And in it, he says, if a sudden thought arises within this state of equipoise, don't let your mind see it as other than the Dharmakaya, the clear light itself.
This stream of thoughts, therefore, is simply emptiness streaming from emptiness. The Dharma body sent out from the Dharma body. The union of the two emanating the union of the two. I'll read it again.
If a sudden thought arises within this state of equipoise, don't let your mind see it as other than the Dharmakaya itself, the clear light itself. This stream of thoughts, therefore, is simply emptiness streaming from emptiness. (-29:02)
The Dharma body sent out from the Dharma body.The union of the two emanating from the union of the two. Logically, it's like…. Experientially, it's like, oh, if we could just hold it and keep going into it. If we had the powers of concentration necessary, right, it would take us. So this is Lama Strong's answer to where do your thoughts come from? Out of emptiness into emptiness.
But then what did your mind just do? I know what my mind just did. Oh, emptiness. Here's emptiness. Back in and then out comes blue - back in. Out comes elbow - back in. Did it feel like that outcomes blink and then back in? Is that accurate? No, because that means there's an emptiness there - waiting. Right. For some impulse. To make it push something up. Can there be an emptiness there? Without something there that lacks its self nature. No. So you can't say, oh, my world comes out of my Dharmakaya. You could only say it's Dharmakaya coming out of Dharmakaya.
It's emptiness manifesting out of emptiness. It's like the whole thing is just a big shape shifting happening. Appearing to be subject - object i- nteraction between. And so there is subject - object - interaction between - happening. But not in the way we think. In this way. Right. As this constant shape shift. So if like everything is Dharmakaya shape shifting. And our identity is this this wee little subject side. Then like wee little subject side, wee little subject side, wee little subject side. We're missing all the rest of this exquisite happening because our identity is this little pinpoint in the middle of the sky. Instead of, wow, the whole thing.
So what happens to our subject state of mind? When we identify with the whole thing, does subject state of mind disappear? There's no subject state of mind because our identity is with all of it. Or is suddenly our subject state of mind that teeny little thing is all of it. That can't happen because then we still have the other that - something has to shift. So that there's still subject - object - interaction between. But somehow our identity comes to include all of it. Right. We have our subject side, but we are not it. Does that mean we become the object? Well, no. Object means other. Other means other. But. It's. It's our Dharmakaya shape shifting subject, object interaction between. So really, there is no other. Except as the mental imaging ripening other, and that's what makes other other real. It's like. We. Crazy. Hmm. (-24:07)
Often through master to Lopez Ganga, my text. It sure sounds like he's talking about the Mahamudra nature of the mind as a positive thing. Reach the clear light. That's the true nature of your mind, right? The clear light seems like it's a presence, but it cannot be. It's the word for the emptiness of the mind, but it really does create this false impression that there's a clear thing.
The true nature of our mind is its lack of self nature. Of its subject state of mind so that there can be a subject state of mind. But it can't be there before there's a subject state of mind. There has to be a subject state of mind for there to be the no self nature of it so that it can be that self nature, right? But the two are so intertwined, you can't, .we can't have one without the other.
So wouldn't you think that it would be so easy to see? Because they're intertwined. You can't see one without the other. But the thing is, we see the appearance. Emptiness is an absence. And how do we see an absent? We can't see it with our eyes. We can't hear it with our ears. But we can know it. Just like we can know the place the pen is in is there, even though we cannot see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, touch it. But we know it's there because there's the pen. Your mind just saw the space the pen is in.
Now do the same for the pen's emptiness. You see the pens here. You have to know that it lacks its own identity in order to be the pen that I'm holding in the pen that you're seeing.You are seeing its emptiness. You're knowing its emptiness. What if we knew the emptiness of every experience as we're experiencing it in the same way that we know the pen space is there?
We have to turn our mind to it, don't we? We have to think about it. Otherwise, we just take for granted. Pens here don't even think about the space it's in. We have to think about it. Same with the empty nature of an appearing thing. Until it's imbued within our experience, we have to think about it.
Oh, pen, not self-existent pen, empty pen. Oh, empty them. Oh, empty me. Oh, empty feeling. Oh, empty without that meaning. Oh, so it doesn't matter. Right? Empty, so it does matter. What I do in response to it creates. How I react to it creates as well. It's not like sometimes we create and sometimes we don't. We are creating constantly.
So this verse by Lama Tsong that somehow is helping us understand verse 21 is going to help us understand verses 16, 17, 18, etc. Because Lama Tsong is reminding us that there's no emptiness without appearance. And there's no appearance that's not coming out of its emptiness.
You can only have them both or not at all. Both or nothing. All or nothing. So I'll read this verse one more time from Lama Tsong. You will get it in your reading somewhere along the way.
If a sudden thought arises within the state of equipoise,
don't let your mind see it as other than the Dharmakaya, the clear light itself.
Something arises. You see the appearing thing and you know.
Oh, emptiness appearing right before me.
Blue. Oh. Elbow. Oh. Oh.
The stream of thoughts, therefore, is simply emptiness streaming from emptiness.
The Dharma body sent out from the Dharma body.
The union of the two emanating from the union of the two. Union of the two, of course, means Buddhahood. But here meaning union of appearance and emptiness. You can't have one without the other. Of every detail, every big thing, every little thing.
OK, so let's go on. So here's verse 16.(-16:15)
In Ganga Ma text, Tilopa talking to Naropa. Clear all thinking from your mind. Look upon the world. It's a moon inside a lake. Look upon this body. It's a hollow reed without a core. The mind. It is the sphere of sky beyond objects of thought. Leave it alone in its natural state. Don't make it stay or go. So this verse is actually a summary of the Mahamudra practice that Tilopa wants Naropa to be doing. There's six steps to it. We've actually only learned the first five. We'll get there. Clear all thinking from your mind. When you're tuning your focus to your breath, turning on your microscope, getting yourself settled to start your practice. The whole practice is thinking. We use thinking to guide us through the practice, but it means all that worldly stuff. Turning it all off, you're bringing in. Look upon the world. It's a moon inside a lake. We start with the outer. What we're behind our eyes. We still have an experience of an outer world happening around us. And he says, you know, you know, it's a moon inside a lake. The lake is a still body of water. The moon is shining up in the sky because of the circumstances. The moon is unobstructed. The lake is still. There's a reflection of the moon in the water. If the water is all shaky, the moon image isn't really intact. If the moon's covered by clouds. Don't see it in the lake. Circumstances are such that there's the reflection of the moon in the lake. Right.
We don't think, oh, look, the moon's in the lake. But what if you'd never knew that the moon was in the sky? Right. All you'd ever seen was the moon in the lake. Sometimes jittery and sometimes still. Right. You wouldn't know that it's just a reflection of something. Like that's where we are before we understand the pen thing. It's like we never knew there was a moon in the sky.
So that analogy is used for so many, many, many things. But here it's his clue to recognize.
Man, the bird in the tree singing, that's all the circumstances making me see a moon shining moon in the lake. The Bird singing, that's coming from me. Sounds information. Circumstances. Fine.
So you turn your mind first to the outer world. Okay. All of that's just ripenings of my mind. I'll let those identities go. I'll let my interest in that go. I'm going to turn inside. He says, do the piece about the body. Chuck on your own body and find that all these mental images, you know, my elbow, my knee, my back, my motions. Same as moon is inside a lake. But they say a hollow read without a core. There's like planting some subtle seeds to have that image, which Panchen Lama started us there. Right.
Do that practice of hollow body, ninefold breath. Right.Didn't he teach us that? So. You know, this thing I call my body also is mental images popping up, making it what it is, nothing but this process happening. Then slip down deeper into the mind. The aware this level and see how that awareness level is is actually so vast.
And so you turn on this awareness like the sphere of the sky. Before they say beyond objects of thought, but underneath objects of thought or. waiting for the objects of thought. No, no. He says beyond. And then leave it alone in that space. And then we'll come to see how there's this natural movement of things arising, passing things, arising, passing things, arising, passing. And we can be keenly aware of this appearing nature.
Again, this isn't yet at the actual Mahamudra, but it's the steps that we use to be planting the seeds to be able to shift into the empty nature of all of this. That we've gotten used to doing. It'll hopefully become effortless. So you sink down into this awaring happening level.
And. Let it go. There's a section later that says tighten up and let it go. That's how to meet the true nature of your mind. Meaning you rest there. Right. And it's like just more this constant morphing happening without agitation, dullness. Right. Without following any one of those stories. Right. So once we get down into this level, we're still training in our level of meditation practice.
So finally, it says don't make it stay or go. You just rest and allow until your timer goes up. So be sure to set a timer.
So really, this is a review of the Mahamudra practice that we've been working on related to the Ganga Mantra. This verse 16.
I still have five minutes. Tom, I ignored your hand up. Okay.
So let me go on here. We've got five minutes. When there is no turning in the mind. This is Mahamudra. And after you have mastered this, you reach matchless enlightenment with no object to focus on the nature of your mind is clear. When there is no path to travel, then you've reached the Buddha's path. So verse 16 was, these are the steps of your practice. You reach that level where you're so keenly aware, everything ripening, ripening, ripening, ripening.
That's the appearing nature. That's not the true nature. The true nature is the emptiness of the pen that I can't see, but I know is there. So the true nature is going to be the emptiness of all that turning that allows the turning to be happening. It has to be there.
So, but the verse says when there's no turning in the mind and it sounds like it says all of this aware, awaring, awaring, awaring, it will finally stop. But we know that's not true, right? The mind can't stop. If it stopped, there'd be no awareness happening and there'd be no existence, right? Existence requires perception, right? We learned that. Our mind can't stop. We don't even want it to stop because if we do spend time in a suppressed mind, you know, we plant the seeds to become a cow or we plant the seeds to become formless realm or form realm and that's not helpful on our spiritual path. So there's something else that they mean when they say there's no turning in the mind and… oh man, only three minutes to do that.
I will start and we'll review next week in the, in the second verse of the yoga sutra that I don't know the verse on the top of my head but it says something about s- top the mind from turning and yoga is stopping the mind from turning - or like stopping the mind from moving. And, you know, it's like, it's the same idea. It's like, really?
And, I remember when I first heard Geshe Michael Lama Christie teach the yoga sutra and they said, look, this word, the Sanskrit word of vritti, citta vritti, movement of the mind. It's not just movement of the mind. It's how the mind turns things around. It's turning of the mind, not movement of the mind. And when we say it's how the mind turns things around, what it means is a mind that misunderstands, sees the pen and turns it around to believe that the pen, its identity, its qualities are in it coming at me.
The mind turns it around and makes that happen. If the mind didn't turn it around, the mind would experience the pen as it's ripple manifesting, but the mind turns it around.
Do you see it's, it's real appearing nature is already happening. It's true appearing nature from me is already happening. My mind turns it around and insists it's the pen coming from the pen factory that's here with its own qualities.
My experience has turned it wrong. Right. It's not that the way we've always seen things is the way they are. And now we realize, oh, that's dysfunctional. Let's do it a new way. It's always been wrong. It's always been that everything comes from our own Dharmakaya out of Dharmakaya. It's always been that we've always misunderstood it. Our mind turns things the wrong way.
When we stop turning things the wrong way, right, then we experience things in the accurate way they really exist, which is Dharmakaya out of Dharmakaya. Is it like are light bulbs coming on? I hope because I'm out of time.
So, verse 16 reviews the meditation Mahamudra we've learned so far. The meditation that we did was the one with the words being triggered to explore this movement of the mind so that we can reach that place of, oh, bubbling, bubbling, bubbling or ripple, ripple, ripple or whatever.
But that's only surface level. That's still the mind turning around. We'll go into this one deeper than or review it next week.
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So, remember that person we wanted to be able to help. We have set in motion the end of all their suffering someday. No matter how confused we feel 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 being. 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 then 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 the wisdom of loving kindness and it changes their minds. It changes their hearts and may it be so.
Thank you everybody. You know really it's a really powerful goodness to study these things in times of chaos. Right. You'll hear more, right, from Holy Geshe Michael coming in July. Like there's nothing more powerful we can do than try to touch the diamond world of our own mind in order to change things. So, good job everybody. It's all coming out of you. So, yay. Thank you.
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Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 20
There is no vocab list for this class.
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Introduction
Welcome back, we are Mahamudra class—this is July 1, 2025.
Let's gather our minds here as we usually do…
We will do our opening prayers. I will yak a little bit, and then we'll do a meditation that starts us into another class from Lama Christie but still within the same Ganga Ma text.
So let's gather our minds here as we usually do. Wait…
Announcement
Because there's a different group on the Mahamudra list that gets the recording, I would like to announce again that Tom has offered yoga sessions online for people. She has a flyer that describes what she has to offer, she has a wide repertoire and great expertise in helping people through their asana practice.
So her email (if you want to just see her flyer) is Tom, T as in Tom, O, M as in mother, B as in boy, K, 1991 at gmail.com [tombk1991@gmail.com], so on the recording—contact Tom.
All right, now let's gather our minds here as we usually do, please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again…
…May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other.
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So we're still learning about what Master Tilopa had to say to Naropa—teaching him Mahamudra practice.
We stopped in the middle of this verse 17 out of 28 (so we're getting there) where we were talking about there's no turning in the mind.
So verse 17:
When there's no turning in the mind,
This is mahamudra.
And after you have mastered this,
You reach matchless enlightenment.
With no object to focus on,
The nature of your mind is clear.
When there is no path to travel,
Then you've reached the Buddha's path.
So this whole text, Ganga Ma, it's like riddles, have you noticed?
If we take it literally—it doesn't make sense. It's bringing in all that we've studied before to try to understand the deeper meaning of what we've studied before—because we only understood it at a certain level (whatever level we were at at the time).
So of course, as we learn more we're going to understand all of it, and then when we're talking about reaching meditative stillness, it sounds like what we're trying to reach is this place where just no awareness is happening at all.
And remember, that was the whole debate between Master Hwashang and Master Kamalashila—you don't really want to reach that state— because it's just planting seeds in your mind for a state that doesn't think, doesn't… right?
It is pleasurable to get to that state, so it could send us to a desire realm, pleasure being, or form or formless realm—but it could also send us into animal, right?
So we don't want to just stop the mind, and yet here we hear it again:
“When there's no turning in the mind, this is Mahamudra.”
And so thank goodness for the Lamas down the ages to say, “the no turning in the mind, doesn't mean stop the mind.”
Even when we're getting to that point where we're saying in the meditation, “we're watching the things ripening, ripening, and they slow down in their ripening.”
And even the words Lama Christie uses is saying, “they'll finally stop.”
But it's not that nothing is arising when we reach that place that she's calling “stop.”
It's just what's still shifting, shifting, shifting is getting more and more subtle.
And so again, here Tilopa is describing to Naropa, that we're reaching the true nature of the mind—the ultimate nature of the mind (the Mahamudra) when we're no longer experiencing the ripening of “things” as “things with their identities in them,” because by the time you have that piece—which is instant—the mind has turned around what is, in fact, happening.
So for anything to ripen as a karmic seed, what's really happening is it's coming out of our karma, it's coming out of the ocean of the mind, it's making a wave on the surface—and it's coming out of the very mind that's perceiving it, but the mind perceives it as something that's happened at it.
So that's what we mean by the “turning in the mind.”
Turning things around.
Instead of just: it ripens and we experience it as a ripening.
We still do something in response to it in outer life, but now what we do is going to be differently motivated and differently planted.
So when there's no turning in the mind, meaning when we are directly perceiving what's actually happening—this bubbling-up out of your, call it [just for the sake of discussion, the Mind Only term] foundation consciousness (just this constant shape shift).
Now we're seeing the true nature of the mind.
Is it the ultimate nature (to be aware of the bubbling forth)?
No!
That's the “appearing nature.”
And then the fact that even that is coming out of seeds and has no nature of its own—that's the clear light nature.
So we're still hitting two levels of Mahamudra—the actual “appearing nature,” and then it's ultimate nature (it's empty nature), so that it can be “whatever is appearing at the time.”
So when we're no longer turning things around, it means we're experiencing things directly as seed ripenings—not something coming at me.
That's when we're at this doorway of Mahamudra.
So when we've mastered being able to get to that level in our meditation of witnessing the seeds ripening—now—he says, “you've reached matchless enlightenment.”
You've not reached it yet—but it's coming.
You're getting a glimpse of it.
And then we'll go on to repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat—until we get to this place where you're no longer even focusing on an object arising, you're aware that it's all subject // object // interaction between—arising all out of the same seeds—and the essence is the empty mind (the available mind) that's constantly there with every arising.
So it's not like there's an arising, and a nothing, and an arising, and a nothing.
There's always the arising, and the emptiness of the mind that has the arising happening—and it's just constant shape-shifting.
So when we are experiencing that directly—Tilopa is describing that as “having no object to focus on,” because it's all happening.
It's not distinguished between subject and object.
Now you see that the nature of your mind is this “clear availability to be that,” constantly.
And then he says, “and then, you know, there's no path to travel.”
You've reached the Buddhist path when you know there's no path to travel.
No path at all?
No.
But yes—there is no Buddhist path in it, from it, that we have to go do to get it.
But we do have to do this, this, this, and this to get on it!
Right—because there's no Buddhist path, we can get on a Buddhist path and get there.
If there was one in it, from it, sitting somewhere that we have to go reach—we could never reach it—which is why there can be a Buddhist path like the Diamond Cutter Sutra.
So Lama Christie said, “look, we have an idea in our mind of what seeing emptiness directly is going to be like—because we've heard it, and so we aspire to it. And the thing is, if we haven't seen emptiness directly before, and we hear that explanation, then our mental imprint of what it's going to be like is mistaken.”
It has, in it, this idea, this turning in the mind, it's—we turn it around and think there's some kind of nature in it. Each of those experiences from seeing the pot on the stove, the silver seed ripens into pot on stove, the idea I need to run and jump on my meditation cushion, I need to go into deep meditation, and then in that deep meditation there'll be like water poured into water, and then I'll come out, and I'll have those realizations of the four truths, it's going to be like that.
And that's all a mental image we have about it.
And there's no such thing, right?
That's a mental image of something that doesn't exist.
But we have a mental image of thinking that it's going to have to exist like that—which is actually a blocker.
Because what if I'm looking at an apple, and mine's not a silver seed that opens that but mine's an egg [or whatever] that cracks, and then I see the apple is coming out of my mind—but it didn't happen the way I thought it was going to happen, so it can't be it.
Do you see we are blocking ourselves by this idea—but if we didn't have the idea, we wouldn't have the seeds to work with to aspire to its result.
So we're really caught in this crazy conundrum of this automatic turning our mind around—it even turns around how we're thinking of our goal, whether the goal is our seeing emptiness directly, or our goal is total Buddhahood—we're thinking of it wrongly, which means we're limiting ourself in our ability to reach it.
But then it doesn't mean don't think about it at all—but [we have to] somehow recognize that when we're thinking about it, the thinking about it is a mental image (a shape shifting of what's going on), and it's up and gone, and up and gone—and so we can work with it, we can deepen it, [and] we can understand it better and better if, as we're thinking about it, we're recognizing, “wow, this is just a mental image,” which is what makes it real, and I'm gonna think about it coming out of emptiness so that I can understand it better.
It's a dependent origination happening just to think about seeing emptiness directly—so that we can see emptiness directly.
All right, let's go on…
Practice what cannot be practiced
To reach matchless enlightenment.
(That's what we were just talking about.)
The King of all worldviews
Lies beyond subject or object.
The King of meditation
Lies beyond all movement of the mind.
The King of all activity
Lies beyond the need to do.
So, again we're in this confusing space of [where] Tilopa is giving Naropa these instructions; Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is giving us these instructions; Lama Christie is making them usable; which I hope I'm transmitting to you.
And then they're all reminding us: “all of that is mental pictures arising out of the ocean of our karmic seeds, arising and passing, arising and passing—and there's no more reality to it than that—which is why it is our reality—and it can work.”
So we practice what cannot be practiced—so that we can practice it.
And we're trying to get to this level of, at least intellectual awareness, that what we're doing in the moment—isn't what we think, so that then our intention and our direction for where we want to go with whatever we're doing is being included in the seeds that are being planted by our experiencing of our moment to moment to moment.
Which is why we're wanting to imbue our minds with Bodhicitta and all that it means—so that no matter what we're doing in the moment (because we're planting seeds while we're doing anything) we want all that doing to be colored with that [attitude of] “I want everybody to be ultimately happy, and to be able to help that happen I need to become omniscient, and to become omniscient I need this great compassion and I need the wisdom, and so I want to be Buddha for the sake of all sentient beings—and that's why I'm brushing my teeth—and that's why I'm doing the dishes.
Doing the dishes, brushing my teeth has nothing to do with getting enlightened—but it has everything to do with getting enlightened.
Every activity we do can be the cause.
So the King of all worldviews lies beyond subject or object—but how can there be anything beyond subject or object?
Every karmic seed planted has had subject and object and interaction between. There's no such thing as ripening that doesn't have subject or object.
As we're sinking deeper and deeper into our Mahamudra state, we are recognizing that both “subjects” and “objects” and “the interaction between” are this shape-shifting of this ocean of the thing we're calling “mind,” and so technically, they're not separate subject and separate object somehow coming together to have an experience—they are the appearance of this ocean of mind at the moment.
So lying beyond subject and object doesn't mean getting rid of them—it means being in this space of awareness that they are mutually arising moment by moment. We're not making the distinction [of] subject here, object there, object coming at subject, subject having this feeling, which is what's coming up soon—it's happening, shape-shifting happening // arising happening…
Words fail—but we're trying to describe it so that we can reach it.
He goes on to say, [in this text] The King means like the highest, the most powerful, that which will change things most swiftly.
It’s to have this worldview that subjects, objects—they are not two different things with their own natures—they are mutually arising happenings constantly, each dependent on the other.
Anybody been in Arya Nagarjuna class? We've been working on this.
So to have that worldview [of] everything [is] seeds ripening—King of meditation—no more moving the mind around, right?
No more anything but seeds ripening.
Even as things look like they have their own identities, if you're aware of them coming out of your own mind, your mind's not turning it around anymore.
The King of all activity is beyond the need to do—our response in meditation—you're beyond the need to do, because you've reached this level where you're in the being, the happening, and you're not needing to, “I'm the observer, I let go,” right? There's nothing you need to do anymore.
You're just floating, or…right… I don't know how to describe it.
And then out of that meditation you also carry with you for a while this sense of the spontaneity of the shape shifting. Yes, there are things you need to do. You have to get up and go to the toilet—but you're aware of it in this different way, of just being this spontaneous, effortless, next thing to do.
And so here he's saying that you're beyond the need to do, meaning [that] you're beyond this [level of thinking:] “do I do this? Or do I do that?” Right? It's just like, “whoa,” you're in the flow, and the next thing is the next thing and you automatically do what needs to be done.
Nothing needs to be done. You don't need to make choices.
Is that coming across?
You're just like in this effortless flow.
I'm guessing we've all experienced that to some extent, you know, little snippets from time to time where no matter what's going on, it just feels like it's such ease, no decisions to make, you just are there, right?
Being what the next person needs, being in the place for whatever it is that you need, and it just goes—and how sweet that would be if that was our reality all the time.
And we kind of think, “oh, that's not possible,” and it isn't possible from our old way [that] our mind turns things around—but it is.
It's how it would be, if our connection to existence was accurate to how existence exists—which is this profound dependence happening.
Let's see if that's all Lama Christie said…
Yeah, let's go on.
“With nothing more to hope or fear
The final goal comes into being—
The unborn foundation of all things,
Free of the blinding seeds of darkness.
Stay here in your unborn essence.
Don't let the meditation end
Letting appearance appear
As nothing but the play of mind.”
So the final goal in Mahamudra is reaching the direct experience of the clear light nature of your mind—which is [the] Mahamudra way of saying the direct perception of emptiness (and I think I want to throw in there with a mind imbued with bodhicitta).
He's describing that direct perception of emptiness as “the unborn foundation of all things, free of the blinding seeds of darkness.”
It's just a beautiful phrase.
Now, what do you think seeing emptiness directly is going to be like?
Oh, it's like water poured into water—you can't really talk about it—but your mind wants to try—my mind does.
It's like, “wow, how would I describe that to somebody?”
Here's Tilopa’s [description]:
“The unborn foundation of all things, free of the blinding seeds of darkness”—darkness being ignorance, [darkness] being the mind turning things around.
The unborn meaning, always there, foundation of all things.
Then stay there in your unborn essence—like why ever come out of the direct perception of emptiness? Why not just sit there forever?
Apparently it doesn't happen, right?
We don't have the seeds to sustain it.
But even though we will come down (out of it) and get off our meditation cushion, his advice is “don't let the meditation end.”
So when the meditation ends—we come out of this space of “unborn foundation of all things free of the blinding seeds of darkness,” and we're back into the ocean's waves.
Awareness again.
They were always going on—it's not like they stop—but we're aware of them again.
And he's saying, “when you come out of your direct perception, and the waves start again, don't let those appearances fool you into thinking they are something happening other than this play of mind—this divine play of the mind shape shifting.
You've gone through that level of recognizing [that] everything is just a shape shifting of my own “thing I call mind,” and then we get into the emptiness side of that [thing I call mind], and then we come back out of the emptiness side of that [thing I call mind], and everything looks like it's in it, from it itself.
And he's saying, “don't let yourself believe it.”
Are you going to let yourself believe it? No.
Are you going to see it that way? Yes.
Do you have any power over not seeing it that way? Technically not.
But he's saying, “make yourself remember that it's nothing but a play of mind.”
And we'll be able to do that better because we've had the direct experience that nothing is anything but the play of mind.
Even if we're not having that direct experience at the moment—having experienced it once—we can remember.
And then our task is to remember to remember.
So he goes on, the King of all worldviews (which is “that which lies beyond all subject and object”) breaks free of every border.
“The King of all worldviews
Breaks free of every border;
The highest King of meditation
Is depth and space without an end.
The highest King of action
Is to stay here doing nothing;
The highest king of the final goal
Stays here, beyond its hope.”
We take what we've come to know (what we've experienced in our Mahamudra meditation) that we repeat, repeat, repeat—and use that to color our being [during our] “out of meditation time experience.”
So life will be more like in meditation and out of meditation—but really all the same thing going on.
It's all this constant shape shifting.
And there'll be less and less distinction between “now I'm the meditating me” and “now I'm the not meditating me, I'm out in the world me”.
And our identity shifts somehow so that this distinction is less and less clear.
The borders between our “not meditating [life]” and [our] “meditating life,” [are breaking down], but then our borders between “me” and “other” are also breaking down.
All of it is this constant shape shifting.
And as I hear myself saying that I can feel like my subject side (my “me” myself) going, “wait a minute! wait a minute! Me” You're gonna get rid of me?”
And it's like, “no sweetheart, you're just gonna identify as the constant shape shifting going on,” and it kind of relaxes, but it's still on guard—she's gonna get rid of me.
And that's the thing that blocks our ability to just sit down and go, “I’m gonna go into the direct perception of the emptiness of “me.”
“Me” goes, “no, you're not!”
Because self-existent me is gonna disappear when we say that.
And self-existent me knows it.
And it's not gonna just say, “great!”
It's a big blocker.
So next comes that verse (we studied it already) that just seems to be out of the blue:
At first the karma is a stream
That cuts its way through mountains.
In the middle, it's the river
Ganga slowly winding past.
At the end, the waters merge
And the mother and child are reunited.
And at one level, it sounds like he's talking about [how] karma flows along through our lifetime—lots of karmic changes when we're first born and young, then it seems to go more slowly as an adult, and then in the end you're done with that karma of that life (and mother and child are reunited).
But maybe it's even pointing out how things go on our spiritual path…
When we first gain our renunciation, we search and search and search—and then finally we meet the one that's “ours,” whatever [whoever] it is.
And then wow, it’s like suck it up, suck it up, suck it up—we're learning so much—we're trying so hard.
At first, our enthusiasm is so strong—our effort is so great [and] it feels like there's lots of karmas happening, lots of changes happening.
And then as we get more familiar, [and] we complete all our 18 ACI courses, now I know it all [and] I'm just supposed to put it into practice—things smooth out in the middle, and we're just diligently going about making our changes.
And then in the end it all becomes automatic, and spontaneous, and we're getting closer and closer—and then you reach your goal.
Or maybe he's even pointing out that in the course of our Mahamudra meditation—as we're learning to watch the ripenings of our mind seeds—”man, they're flooding out of us!”And as we watch, and disengage, and watch, and disengage—they really do seem to slow down, because instead of following them all the way out to their identity, and then having to unfollow—we're catching them before there's all these other seeds ripening that make them into the identity.
So it really does seem like things are slowing down, slowing down, slowing down—and eventually you reach into that level where you're simply aware of the shape shifting happening.
The mother [and] child are reunited, the subject // object are just [going] “blip, blip, blip, blip.”
And your experience is that.
Call it flow.
Call it the sky.
Call it something—we'll talk about in a little bit.
So you get to chew on this verse somewhere in your practice career and see what it means for you.
Then Tilopa says to Naropa:
“You can practice the perfections.
You can practice the secret word.
You can study a collection
Like the monastic discipline.
You can analyze each different school’s
Texts and modes of thought.
But none of these will let you see
The clear light—Mahamudra.”
It's pretty radical—Naropa was this great meditator. He was [the] gatekeeper of Naropa Institute (some big institute, right?) He was a perfections expert.
Maybe he wasn't secret word expert yet.
He was a discipline expert. He was an expert in all these things.
It's like Tilopa saying, “you know, you thought you were so great. Why won't any of those let you see the clear light?”
Because those are all surface of the ocean stuff—waves.
And as long as we're believing that they have some nature in them—to make us wiser, to tell us what to do—that if we know them all, we're going to get enlightened.
It's all surface stuff.
And as long as we leave it there and expect them to automatically turn on the clear light for us—it's not going to happen.
It's a little bit of a relief, right?
Do you have to finish your 18 ACI classes? Yes.
But they themselves are not going to get us to the clear light.
All right, now I'm ready to take you into the meditation for this class.
So get yourself refreshed, please.
And then we'll sit for a little while.
*************
Okay, get your body settled.
Do what you do to align it.
And relax it.
***30 seconds***
And then lock it in, and stay there unmoving.
Any movement will be a distraction.
So once you've got it locked in, bring your attention to your breath—there at the nostrils.
Using that time to zoom in your focus, check and adjust your clarity, and then turn on your eager, curious, fascinated—the intensity.
***1 minute***
Now shift from the breath location as your object, to your system of sinking deeper into being the watcher.
Starting with the outer sounds—noticing their identities—letting go.
Tuning into inner sounds—the level of their identities—let them go.
More subtle, more subtle.
Sinking in more deeply.
***15 seconds***
Allow yourself to lose the room around you.
To lose your body—simply by thinking of those sensations as “nothing but ripening pictures,” and let them go.
Sink down into that vast landscape that is mind—aware-ness.
Simply watching anything that arises.
Any thought.
Any sensation.
Watch without following.
Alert, keen, curious—unattached.
***45 seconds***
Now for this session, zoom your watcher into the feeling that arises associated with any other arising.
Something pops up—with it, is a “pleasant” or “unpleasant.”
This session, your watcher is watching for the pleasant or unpleasant.
Maybe they're strong, maybe they're not.
They might be hard to notice.
***1 minute***
If something arises, and we have the urge to follow it—it's because there was something pleasant about it.
***15 seconds***
We're trying to recognize that feeling that arises with every arising.
***15 seconds***
If we follow the feeling, it will go on to become an emotion.
So when we note the feeling—Mahamudra lets it go.
***30 seconds***
They seem [like, or they appear to be,] related to the thing that appeared just before them.
***15 seconds***
The feelings themselves arise and pass.
***15 seconds***
What are they?
Where do they come from?
***15 seconds***
Are they a part of you?
***30 seconds***
You, the passive observer, can observe—identifying that as “feeling pleasant” // “feeling unpleasant,” and as the observer—know—it's simply arisings in the mind, and nothing more.
Same as we're doing for any arising.
***30 seconds***
An arising of pleasant?
Let it go.
An arising of unpleasant?
Let it go.
Without following it with a story, it arises and passes—like anything arises and passes.
***15 seconds***
Those arisings have no control over you.
You—the observer.
Enjoying the process—whether the feeling is pleasant, or unpleasant.
***15 seconds***
Sink in under all that thinking.
***1 minute***
Check where you are.
Adjust as you need.
We'll stay two more minutes.
Aware-ing, happening…
Pleasant, unpleasant…
Get even more subtle than those identities.
Experience-ing…
And nothing more.
Alert, bright, fascinated…
Enjoying…
***15 seconds***
One more minute.
***1 minute***
Nice job, now bring yourself up in the levels.
Allow yourself to be aware of being inside your body.
And your body inside your room.
And your room inside a world.
And you in class.
And dedicate the seeds you've just planted to reaching the clear light.
Knowing it as your own true nature.
When you're ready—open your eyes, take a stretch…
And we'll take a break.
*************
A Request
[Tom: Lama Sarahni, I know you're going to be traveling soon, I was wondering if we can do a session where we go through the full practice up to where we have gotten so far—like the preliminaries, the full nine-fold breathing process, etc. and have it recorded. So without the extra class, just the practice… Is that something that we can maybe do?
Good idea. Thank you. I will sort that out. Add it to my stack here.
*************
All right, so we just managed to get to the Bok Jinpa course 13 class 6—that I only just realized the course materials I sent you didn't have a reading class six. Sometimes it happened that we didn't actually have a class six in our term.
Anyway, we did have a class six—I had it in my hard copy, but didn't realize.
So Sumati is going to make it into a PDF for us and I'll send it to you at the end of class. So yours will be complete. But I'm going to go on.
[Which means] I don't have it to show you [right now on] screen share.
So you'll just have to pay closer attention when I read the verse [before I] talk about the verse.
But let me talk about this meditation first:
I remember when Lama Christie led us through this particular meditation, and it was just like, “uhh I don't get it,” you know…because in a guided meditation, where it's your first time reaching it—to reach the subtlety of being aware of something [that] pops into my mind—and then [in that same instant] to recognize the thumbs up, thumbs down before the “I like // I want” starts—it really takes a high level of subtlety.
So, if you are thinking, “I didn't get it,” not to worry, right?
It takes some exploration to be able to catch the, “Oh, there's what she's talking about.” That heap of feeling—we're working on the heap of feeling it—it happens so instantaneously, right?
The seed that ripens includes a thumbs up or thumbs down.
And then that starts the I want I don't want.
And then from there, it becomes the actual emotion related.
So this meditation wasn't about “find the emotion,” because the emotion means we followed it far enough to get an identity of emotion.
The end result is when we recognize [that] the thumbs up or thumbs down is just [a] seed ripening issue, and not anything more tangible than that.
We can rest in the meditation of, “it doesn't matter whether whatever [has] popped up, pops up with the thumbs up, or pops up with the thumbs down—either way, we can still let it go.
And that means it doesn't go on all the way to the emotion.
The emotion is the factor that generally triggers our reaction to something—whether in meditation, or outside of meditation:
Something comes up.
Like or dislike.
Identify.
That all happens like [really fast and at once].
And then there's the emotion about it:
“Oh, that's harmful. I'm afraid I need to act like this.”
“Oh, that's wonderful. It will make me happy—I need to act like that.”
So if we wait until the emotion is full-on before we decide, “oh, I need to act like that, but I'm not going to,” we're already in the rapidly flowing river of our karmic seeds reacting (according to the emotion happening).
Whereas, if our awareness (even out of meditation) can be:
Thumbs up, and we go, “okay, great!”
Or
Thumbs down and we go, “okay, great!”
Our ability to choose what we do next is free of the story that was automatically gonna follow along—but doesn't have to—because our watcher state of mind, [this way of being] a little bit detached from “life in our face,” allows us this “respond time” (instead of react time) because we've noticed [that] our [reaction of] thumbs up or thumbs down has already happened—and if we decide, “I'm not going to let it go on to identify into this full on fear, joy, whatever—I'm gonna respond from here in a way that somehow contributes to the best of my ability in this situation, then I've done the best that I can do.”
Whatever happens next in this situation is not related to what we just did.
So, if we're in this ugly situation and we say something kind, and they just get all the matter—it's not because we said something kind.
Right?
We need to do [it] again and again.
[Lama Sumati enters and hands the Bok Jinpa papers he was just scanning into the computer to Lama Sarahni]
[Referring to Lama Sumati]: “Wow, you are fast! Thank you.”
So this particular meditation level of Mahamudra, Lama Christie said it's one of the most important Mahamudra meditations we can do.
The most important is the one that's going to take us into the clear light, directly—but along the way to that, this one is so useful, because it helps us find the level of our attachments to our reactions based on our emotions that are triggered by the heap of feeling.
Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs neutral.
So if our level of awareness becomes such that we can be aware of that—do you see? We can already be responding differently.
So in the meditation, we're wanting to get to this space where we're just aware of it all ripening and we're safe in our meditation cushion space where we can just let go of the thumbs down and the thumbs up.
Out in our apparently “real” world—we may not be safe in the face of an awareness of a thumbs down happening. So [during our] off cushion time, our watcher state is not meant to just be in the flow // let it go—but it's to be in the space of this keen awareness of, “this is a ripening, and I need to respond in this way,” versus, react, react, react.
So the “let it go, let it go, let it go”—is cushion time.
The “respond wisely” is the result of our cushion time.
When we recognize that the thumbs up // thumbs down [part] does not have to dictate our action (and that it can inform our choice of response, instead) we have this opportunity to shift from reactor to respond-er, [or more specifically—from reactor to seed] plant-er.
So our normal ignorant human state is to react, react, react, react—and we're trying to become beings who plant, plant, plant, plant.
And it's very difficult.
But this is one of those ways to help that [process] become more doable—and eventually to become automatic. [Automatic meaning that] the state of our mind is always “what to plant next? what to plant next?”
So again, we're dealing with the heap of feeling (which is thumbs up or thumbs down, basically); physical thumbs up // thumbs down, mental [thumbs up // thumbs down] there [are] some neutral [thumbs] in there…
The things we call “feelings,” or emotions—they are part of the “heap of all the other factors,” but the thumbs up // thumbs down is part of the story that we're following that ends up as the emotion // that ends up as the action—the reaction.
So as you're exploring this meditation, you might want to start with trying to experience the difference between the full-on emotion that we would call feeling (language calls it feeling, but call it emotion instead) and then [trying to] find the subtlety of the identity of those sensations (calling it emotion), and then [trying to] find the subtlety under that of the thumbs up (that gives it a pleasant emotion) and the thumbs down (that gives it an unpleasant emotion) so that you're intentionally, intellectually, experientially, exploring it before you sit back into a Mahamudra [meditation] of just saying, “okay, I'm going to rest in the thumbs up // thumbs down (if we can't actually get there).
The next thing [that Tilopa] goes into [with] Naropa is reaching a state of being free of ignorant liking and ignorant disliking.
This is what happens when the thumbs up or the thumbs down triggers—it's triggered by previous [instances of] thumbs up being in the thing from the thing // thumbs down being in the thing from the thing.
Right? Ignorant liking // ignorant disliking..
Which is why when it ripens back on us, the thumbs up includes the “in it, from it,” and to be able to rest in the “thumbs up—let it go,” we'll see more and more clearly that it's just a seed ripening: “in it, from it” or not—doesn't matter.
It's all coming out of this seed ripening process happening.
So in Lama Christie’s translation of the verses, she chose to use “hatreds and desires” as the translation for the words that were being used for the “thumbs up feeling // thumbs down feeling,” which is “ignorant liking and ignorant disliking” happening—in order to keep the meter [of the words in the written poetic verse].
To me, the [term] hatreds and desires just feels too strong—because the subtlety that we're at when we're feeling the “thumbs up // thumbs down,” it's not a hatred, and it's not a desire—it's just a sense of moving towards (for a thumbs up) and a sense of moving away, or wanting to push it away, (for the thumbs down).
So, I'm going to read it the way Lama Christie gave it—but then I'm going to read it [in the way that I like to phrase it] too. I use [the terms] “pleasure and displeasure” because, to me, it's the more subtle way that I could relate to.
So Verse 22 was, “you can practice, you can study your ACIs, you can master it all, but that's not going to get you to Mahamudra.”
Right? That alone's not going to do it.
He says:
Let nothing surface in your mind.
Be free of hatreds and desires.
Be free of pleasant, unpleasant.
They are just waves upon the water,
Rising up then dying down.
When hatreds or desires arise,
They block you from seeing the clear light.
You lose your realizations and you break
The vows and pledges which you promised to protect.
So he's pointing out the sequence:
Something arises.
We like it.
We want it.
We expect [that] having it is going to bring us pleasure.
So we go do whatever it takes to get that thing.
Worldly ways—which generally will include the willingness to harm somebody to get it for ourselves, grossly or subtly.
Thumbs down—unpleasant.
Don't want [this] emotion (or whatever it is).
Act to push it away—avoid it, stop it, prevent it.
Ignorantly willing to harm somebody else, to avoid it for ourselves.
That's the pattern that we're recognizing as our “ignorant samsaric being nature.”
All coming out of mental seeds.
All this process that we're learning to recognize as “existence.”
All made by the misunderstanding.
Still—it's the same process happening.
So he starts out with:
“Let nothing surface in your mind.”
Again, we're in that conundrum—”What? Stop everything?”
Like if I could, would I even want to do that?
Uh, no.
But we're making the distinction between being the ocean, and not allowing the awareness of the experience [to] be up at the surface.
So in the Mahamudra, we're aware of the constant shapeshifting happening—but we're not letting ourselves follow the seeds that would make the story that would make the waves and ripples on the surface be “what's going on.”
“Oh, I hear the traffic noise outside.” I'm at the surface at that level.
So he's saying, “Don't let yourself get to the surface. Stay under here—the ocean.”
Deep down in the ocean, right? It's just doing this: [holds out both hands together with palms up, gently swaying back and forth]
Isn't it?
Tom, you're familiar with the ocean—deep down, this constant, gentle, tiny, sway that's hugely powerful—and then by the time it gets to the top, it can be a storm, it can be a really calm day, but there's always bigger stuff up here [the waves on the surface] than what's under here [at the bottom of the ocean].
So in this Mahamudra [where we’re] going level, level, level, level, we're sinking deeper and deeper and deeper into this sense of “be-ing” this gentle sway—and what comes out of it all the way at the top—for right now—doesn't matter.
If we're not even going up there to the top, can you say it's even happening up there?
Right?
So maybe from up there, you'd say, “oh my gosh, that mind has stopped!”
Because there's no ripples happening.
It never actually gets to “no ripple,” but if you're underneath there and you're unaware—yeah, right.
So we are getting to the place where nothing is surfacing in our mind; because we're so subtle, the full-on identities are not surfacing. Even at the subtle level, the subtleties are surfacing—and we're going to get under that too, eventually.
The things that take us up to the top is—guess what?
Thumbs up // thumbs down.
Starts the story that takes us up there.
So to be aware of that subtlety ripening and being able to go, “oh, that's just another version of the surface,” and not let it drag you further, allows us to sink deeper into the gentle sway of being the deep ocean.
Unattached, unfollowing the stuff that makes the ripples on the top.
Lama Christie said, “it helps to have a really clear picture in your mind of the being you want to be.”
Think of your best human self and then add to it this love beyond description, holy great compassion—and then add to it some level of knowing that you are exactly what the other needs right now for their highest and their best.
Not intentionally stepping in and saying, “I am what you need,” but just spontaneously, effortlessly being that.
Get your highest ideal of you, and then decide, “I'm going to make all of my decisions, my behavior decisions, my choices based on being that.”
We'll fail, of course—but we have this “best self” idea.
It's a mental image and nothing but—which is why we can actually bring it about (that, and something better even), but without having an idea of it, it's not going to spontaneously transform you.
We want to have this ideal. And then we want at some point to make this decision that because of the empty nature of “me,” that ideal of “me” can become just as real as this “not ideal” version of “me.”
And we can decide, “I'm going to live as if I'm this best version of me; I'm going to be my best self always, to the best of my ability—even when I'm by myself and nobody knows.”
Because who always is there?
You and your seed planting.
You know, so we say, “I can be my best self on Sundays [when] we go to church,” and you're on your best behavior, right? We say best behavior.
And then you go home after church and, “oh, I can let my hair down.” You know that term? It's like, finally, I can be myself—I was being so good, and now I can be me.
And people say, “oh, you know, you need to be your authentic self. You need to be true to yourself,” and this tradition would say, “yeah, if you just want to keep on suffering—be true to yourself.”
Because the “true to myself me” is a “me” that misunderstands where things come from, and so the being “true to myself me” says, you know, “it's okay to hate that group because they want to hurt my group[, etc.]”
We justify all of those—and it is true in a samsaric world [that] there are dangers and we need to protect ourselves and our loved ones.
But it's not true, ultimately.
Even the best things we do for the wrong reasons just perpetuate this suffering world for all of us.
So really, when we identify this “best self,” and we tie our hair up, and we decide, “I'm going to be my best self,” we actually don't ever want to say, “okay, I can let my hair down,” because it means we're giving ourselves permission to go back to being an ignorant, selfish slob.
Will we do it from time to time?
Absolutely—and don't beat yourself up.
But think about [and] revisit this idea of what it takes to be your “best self” always.
If it's this big stressful effort, then work on understanding it better and better until it's really what we want to do (because it's actually more pleasant than being the “let my hair down [version of] me” because that “me” is really a selfish slob).
And it likes it—which is why it wants to do that—but point out to that selfish slob self, “look, we just hurt ourselves trying to get happy—haven't you recognized that yet?”
That self existent “me” is really, really tenacious—in my personal experience—maybe not yours.
So when we are functioning from the “wave level” of our own mind, then we will choose behaviors based on what's best for my self existent “me,” and those I love—and the end result of that will be [that] we break our pledges and vows (he's telling Naropa).
Naropa, who when the Lama says, “go drag that bride off her elephant and drag her around in the dirt.”
He goes, “yes, Lama!” [makes a hasty prostration indicating that he just jumps right into action without thinking].
And he goes and does it.
And then he gets beat up and beat to a pulp every single time, and Tilopa goes, “Naropa, what's the matter with you?”
[Naropa says,] “Oh, my gosh, I did something wrong. I got beat up. My body's crushed. This is horrible.”
And Tilopa heals him (thank you very much) and says, “oh, my dear Naropa, you need to learn Mahamudra.”
Should he [Naropa] have said, “in all due respect, Holy Lama, I don't think you really want me to hurt that bride.”
But then in the end, when we get to the punchline of the Mahamudra, it's significant that it was a bride that brought on the Mahamudra practice.
So from one level it would be because when you get married, that's like “the height,” apparently, of your success as a human—you have this person that you love so much, you're devoting yourself to them…
And back in the old days the bride really devotes herself—really surrenders—to the husband. And so there are all these components of the desire factor, and the surrender factor of the bride—all kinds of subtleties in this analogy that are both positive and negative:
Pointing out the ignorance of our samsara in those situations, but also pointing out how this disciple master relationship plays out—and how desire can get in the way of that, and can also be used to really strengthen the progress.
[These are all] subtle things that I can't say anything more about—I just want to plant those seeds.
So Master Tilopa is, again, using this image of the mind as a big ocean with the waves on its surface being the “experience level,” and the mind underneath being the “profound dependence level,” and that within all of that, is the empty nature of all of it, at all parts of it.
We also heard the analogy of the mind [is] like a big sky, and the clouds that come and float by—that's the analogy of the mind being this vast availability and up pops something that passes, and up pops something that passes… and maybe we relate to that image as what this thing our mind “is:”
“Oh, my mind's like the sky and all these poppings up are just like clouds…”
Really, they're not a part of the sky.
They're in the sky, but they're not a part of the sky.
And so if we're learning to identify ourselves as “the sky,” then the stuff that pops in it, it's not part of me, it's just the happenings that are happening—so I don't have to be so attached to what's happening (either good things or bad things). Maybe the sky thing doesn't relate…
Maybe the ocean thing relates better:
The ripples on the surface are not the ocean—
It's just stuff happening on the top.
I personally like the analogy of:
My mind is like a mirror with no reflection.
I can't really even conceive looking in a mirror
That has no reflection in it.
[So,] my mind is like that [holds up one hand to represent that piece of the analogy], and then I use the analogy of putting another mirror in front of it [holds up another hand to represent that second mirror] and then it's like, I know I really can't conceive of that—but the instant something pops up between them [indicates mind being blown], there's like [a] beyond imaginable amount of stuff in those two mirrors that isn't the mirror.
It gets beyond words for me—but that's my analogy that I use for mine, and it helps me better get to that “beyond words” explanation for what I'm trying to be in this Mahamudra meditation state, so that I can better have that as “identity,” I don't even want to say “my identity,” but “identity” in the out of meditation state.
These meditations will help us identify less and less and less with the “what we are experiencing,” and better able to relate to everything as just a “washing past” or a “passing through,” or, you know, “ripples going along,” whatever your analogy is, we're trying to get every moment of experiencing happening in outer life as feeling the same.
I did go through a time where I felt detached—too detached—and so I intentionally let that go and stepped back in. But to be able to be the witness, even when we're out in an outer world, is really helpful for the meditation witness—but also, when you choose to engage more deeply, you're less on an automatic pilot (having gotten into that witness stage for a while).
Alright, we still have a little time.
Verse 24:
Lama Christie didn't have much to say about it…
Tilopa says to Naropa:
When you never stray from
That place you cannot stay.
That thing you cannot see.
This practice of the holy ones
Becomes a beacon in the dark.
When free of hatreds or desires,
Without lapsing to an extreme,
You will come to behold
The entire mass of teachings.
Verse 25:
Lost within this space, you are
Free from the cyclic prison cell.
In this place, even out of meditations,
All sins and obstacles are severed.
You will then be called Illuminator of the Teachings.
Fools are they, who haven't any longing for this goal.
So, we understand that once we experience emptiness directly, our belief in things (identities) in them, from them, is forever broken—but we still have the seeds to perceive things that way—we just no longer believe them to be the way we perceive them.
And that means that every seed planted after the direct perception of emptiness has no belief in the self-existence that we perceive in them.
Which means we are (by experiencing things as self-existent) burning them off, because we're not replanting them with the belief with which they were planted.
So it's gonna take time.
We still have lots of seeds that were planted with the belief in the self-existence that we saw in them—but now we are burning them off, burning them off, burning them off.
Even without doing anything in particular—we're gonna do particular things to burn them off even faster because we reached it intentionally, with a state of mind of bodhichitta (which is why they say we would then be on the conveyor belt to nirvana, or buddhahood—for those with bodhichitta).
Because technically you don't have to do anything but burn off all your seeds.
You're welcome to go faster—and we will.
So he says, “come on, as you're getting closer and closer, you are becoming more and more aware of how seeds create our world.”
All those karmic correlations that we studied in last night's class, they become more and more obvious (of the process that's happening) and then eventually we get into the direct experience, and then come out.
So Naropa is already hot on the trail of doing this, and he says, “look, you know, there are beings who are on spiritual paths who don't know this—[they] don't know this piece.
Really, this is the piece that's unique to Buddhism—and not really all levels of Buddhism quite get it, apparently.
And so he's saying, “oh man, my heart goes out to anybody who doesn't long to reach this place where just by experiencing anything, you're burning off your past ignorance.”
Like, what a relief it would be!
Even if you still have 500 years worth of lifetime to go… Come on, 500 versus 10 to the 60th, right? Three countless eons. Remember, we studied that too?
It all comes back—everything we learned in ACI comes back.
So Lama Christie described how we get to this point where every moment of living feels like the exact perfect place and thing and being— like everything is exactly right.
Not that everything's going right—but it doesn't matter whether it's going right, or not going right.
Your sense is [that] this is exactly how it's supposed to be.
We've probably all had little glimpses of that—and it's magical and amazing.
And then it ends.
And that's okay.
But imagine [that] it's constantly like that, and it becomes part of our identity—not in a sense of ownership—but in spontaneous being.
Lama Christie was describing it as:
Whatever you need, there it would be.
Again, no matter pleasant or unpleasant—
Your sense would be this spontaneous
Participation, just as it needs to be.
And she described (I don't know where it comes) that she was walking with Geshe Michael one time, it was just the two of them, and she was trying to pin him down about karma (good and bad karma) and she was doing this debate that if you killed somebody with a really, really high motivation, that that killing wouldn't be a negative deed—and he didn't actually answer her.
But [with] what he said back (she realized later) he was tapping into this idea of a Mahamudra state of mind; his answer to whether or not there's really good karma and bad karma; his answer was, “when you're in this state of mind, then anything that you needed at any given moment would just be there for you.”
And as he said, that they turned the corner—and there on the sidewalk was that piece of wrapped, fresh chewing gum of his favorite type.
He had just said these words, and [then] he picked up [the chewing gum], unwrapped it, split it and shared it with her, and walked on.
He didn't say anything more at all.
We've heard this story in different contexts—but here's where it shows up. [The reason] Lama Christie shared it with us is in this context:
When we're in this space of awareness of
Everything as seeds ripening, and nothing but,
So that anything is possible at any moment—
Everything that is happening, is exactly what we need.
It's not like, “oh, I want chewing gum right now, so I'll pick it out of the air.”
It's that, chewing gum appearing on the sidewalk would make his point to Lama Christie—so there it was.
Like that.
For me, it's been more like those days where wherever you are, whatever you're doing, it turns out to be exactly what the other person needed.
There was one break time during retreat (I remember the day specifically) I had a date with Venerable Kading to work with her [on] some tapping stuff—and it went so beautifully. And as I'm walking home, I met up with Vimala—and she was limping. She [had written to me prior, saying,], “my back is hurting,” [and I responded to her,] “let me come help you.”
So I went and helped Vimala, [and after we finished] she gets up and [says,] “wow, that's fine!” And [then] on my way home, I [ran into] somebody else, and they’re in search of such and such—I have that—”come home with me, I'll give it to you.”
It's like every moment was just exactly what they needed—which, to me, is more pleasurable than exactly what I need.
Because what I need is to be what you need.
And it's just beautiful.
And you know, the next day, it didn't feel quite like that.
But this idea of being our best self might be—being the best thing for somebody else.
And again, our selfish “me” goes “Hey! But but but, what about me?” Coming up…
Mahamudra practice…
So Lama Christie went on—we have a few minutes yet—she says, “Why can't we just hear a teaching like this, and go sit down, and go into a Mahamudra meditation, and just turn the dial down, and experience it?”
Why can't we come out of that meditation and put our hair up—and stay up?
And it's because we have blockers—we've got garbage floating around in that deep level of the ocean (funny how our outer world reflects our inner!) and as long as that garbage is in there, it floats to the top, and it drags us up with it—something about that.
And so that the key factors in any of this goodness that we're ripening by hearing these insights, is that we also have this ocean of mind of things we've done based on our misunderstandings and our selfishness.
We can't help it.
We are samsaric beans—that's what makes it samsaric—so don't hate yourself for it.
Recognize that “I was just mistaken all along.”
And then we get to clean it up.
So our purification practices aren't just, “Buddha said so—you have to do it.”
Purification practices are taking that dredge through the ocean and gathering up all of that debris—and then taking it somewhere and burning it up.
Or there's a company that takes it all and compresses it into building blocks. Transform it into something useful—I like that better than burning it up.
But we need to gather it, right?
And to be able to gather it, we need to be able to recognize it.
If we think all that garbage is seaweed, we'll just leave it there—because seaweed is supposed to be there.
We need to recognize the garbage—as garbage—and then decide, “ooh, I need to gather this up, I want to gather this up, and make it into building blocks for my Buddha paradise.” Why not that?
How do we do that?
Vajrasattva practice is one.
Four powers and any of the six classical antidotes is another.
All, of course, powered by the power of restraint—not doing it again (to the best of our ability).
So in our preliminaries is always a purification practice—we don't need to limit it to doing our meditation preliminaries—we are welcome to [do a purification] practice anytime we want to, anytime we need to.
So Lama Christie said again and again, if you're having trouble making progress with your meditation (either at the beginning, or the middle of your career, or the end of career) go back to purification practice.
Our “mind ocean” needs to be crystal clear—free of that garbage floating around.
My mirrors need to be clean—if you've got all that debris, it's gonna interfere with the clear reflection.
If your sky is full of dust and junk, [you can’t tell if the clouds have gone away or not].
When our season [in Tucson] shifts from dry summer to wet summer (that isn't really wet, but we call it wet) it's heralded by a great big dust storm. And the dust storm looks like this big black cloud on the horizon.
When we were new to Tucson, I was at home and I saw that, and [I thought], “wow, cool air coming!” I went and threw open all the windows…
And it blows in and it's this big dust cloud.
And by the time I got the windows closed, there was dust—dirt, not just dust, dirt—everywhere!
And I just laugh at myself—I love that story.
The reason I'm telling it, is that it came last night—and it's still in the air (this dust in the air). And it's really thick enough that you can't see if there's clouds there or not—because the dust is so thick.
It needs to be cleaned up.
So Lama Christie gave us some selling points for reaching stillness—there's that word stillness again.
Stillness is that level of meditation that isn't “nothing happening,” but is so unattached to whatever's happening, that it can just come and go without disturbing the mind, without impacting the clear sky, without anything happening to the mirror—no matter what's going on between the two of them.
Stillness.
Selling point to stillness:
When we are in stillness, even while we're in meditation, the clarity of our mind gets to this whole new level, and our ability to think (like literally mental word “thinking”) when you go back up to that level, gets so direct—so cut to the chase.
But it feels like you know stuff that you didn't know before.
Second—you can better (she used the word “see,” but not literally “see”) know the karmic workings of your own life. You see the patterns, and you see the mistake we make that perpetuates the patterns—it gets more clear. Instead of this, maybe this, maybe that—it’s like, “ahh okay, got it.”
And then that evolves into actually this clarity about other beings [and] people's patterns as well—all this information that we take in that seems neutral, is all information about past karmas and habits that perpetuate karma.
She says, even looking at the fine details of the grain in your rug will give you information about your own mind (when you get to this deeper level). [You’ll see] the way people carry themselves [and] you'll know stuff about people.
I’ll bet Tom knows that // feels that, right? You can tell when somebody's got sciatica [just] by the way they walk—you can tell.
I mean, those are gross things—but more and more subtly, you'll just know things about people.
And then of course, the task is to keep your mouth shut until they ask about it—or drop little tiny clues.
Third—it's as if we've had this constant buzzing noise that was so constant we weren't aware of it, and all of a sudden it stopped.
And what a relief it feels.
So this stillness state of mind has this “ahhh…” relief factor in it that's so pleasurable; you're not having any overt mental afflictions for the first time—ever.
And then of course, when you come out of it, they come back and so you're eager to get back in it.
You can perform fun miracles—I don't know what she meant by that.
Number six, by far the most important, it's the platform from which we can reach that clear light—from which we can see emptiness directly.
So if we say my goal is seeing emptiness directly, the pre-goal needs to be shamatha or this stillness, and that pre goal needs to be “I need to clear my mind enough that I can get there.”
Okay. We have only three verses left to finish our Ganga Ma text, and then we'll be back into Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's (somebody else's version). So we'll carry on.
But you have this [meditation homework] exploration of feeling—Mahamudra level—aware of feeling, and dissociating (detaching) from the “following about the feeling” so they can just arise and pass, arise and pass—and see how that goes.
So remember that being we wanted to be able to help?
We learned a lot that we will use to help them, in that deep and ultimate 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 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—share this goodness with that one person…
Share it with everyone you love…
Share it with every existing being everywhere…
See them all filled with happiness, filled with loving kindness…
And maybe so.
All right, thank you so much for the opportunity. I love this class.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 21
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
Okay, welcome back. We are Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's Mahamudra training. This is July 8 2025.
Upcoming Schedule:
And I don't recall whether I had talked about the schedule coming up or not. So I'm going to do it over again. Which I'm looking at, we have the next two weeks that I'm available yet. And I would like to suggest that we do a class on the 15th. That's next week, Tuesday. And on the 22nd, Tom had the great idea of could we just go through the meditation with the preliminaries, right straight through to the point that we've gotten when we're gonna take our break. So that's what we'll do on the 22nd. Not actually any more teaching, but we'll just do a practice session. And it won't take the whole two hours, except we can talk about it. Then we'll be off until September, Tuesday, September 2nd. We'll be back on September 2. And I know I'm gonna, I'm gonna write that down, and I'm gonna lose my list. And then I'm gonna forget. And somebody's gonna have to say, say, you said September 2, and I'll go, okay, so just be prepared. I am writing it down. But it happens every time.
[Student: I can add that to the website to for easy reference. ]
I'm gonna make a schedule for the fall. Because I don't know.
So that said, I'd like to finish up the verses from Ganga Ma. And then we'll, from there, that's been a little detour of detail from Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen's self-commentary on his root text. And so then from there, we'll get back into his commentary.
And that's where our meditation will come in. So let's just do our opening prayers. We'll finish up Ganga Ma, and then we'll meditate.
Meditation [2:24]
So let's gather our minds here. As we usually do, please bring your attention to your breath until you hear from me again.
…..
May all beings reach their total awakening for the benefit of every single other. [ 10:02]
[Verse 25]
[11:10] So last week, we ended with those six selling features, selling points for reaching stillness. They came out of this as a result of this verse.
Let me go back.
So we are studying the verses that Master Tilopa taught to Naropa sitting on the banks of the Ganges River, kicking their feet in the water, while Tilopa is giving Naropa the teaching that came about as the result of his acting from the lamas - `Any good student of mine would drag that bride off her elephant, you know, and swing her around a bit` And he does it, gets beat to a pulp. Oh, man, gets healed and gets taught this. And there's a connection. Not sure what it is.
So they're almost to the end. Naropa doesn't know it yet. And Tilopa says, ´you know, lost within this place. So he's described how to get to the actual experience called Mahamudra from this meditation practice that he's teaching. He's been teaching Tilopa. It doesn't sort of sound like an actual teaching, but it has been.
So lost within this place, meaning in this place where you are experiencing the true nature of the mind. Not just its appearing nature, but it's true nature. The emptiness of it and its appearing nature.
Lost within this place, you are free from the cyclic prison cell. Like within it, you are already free. When you come out in this place, even out of meditation, all sins and obstacles are severed. You will then be called `illuminator of the teachings`. And fools are they who haven't any longing for this goal. This is where Lopsangchukyakaltsen is saying, and the first goal to reach that goal is we need to reach stillness. That platform of meditation from which this Mahamudra experience can actually be triggered.
So the longing for the goal, you know, long for stillness, meaning do what we need to do to adjust our life, to make it conducive to our meditation training being successful to get us to stillness. And then long for the goal of reaching that direct perception of the true nature of our own mind. Verse 25, that's where we left off.[14:45]
Verse 26, those who are not longing for the goal he's talking about: “For their life ends and the river of misery always carries them away. My heart cries out to think of those lost in the realms of unbearable pain. If you wish to escape this suffering, rely on a qualified Lama, enter the stream of their blessing, and your own mind will be freed” .
It seems odd to me that he's saying this to Naropa, who's already devoted himself to a teacher, When he was three years old, he devoted himself to a teacher. And then a teacher and a teacher and a teacher, he had many. And then he has this experience and he goes. `Oh my gosh, my real teacher must be this guy Tilopa.` And he goes looking for him. And it's a long story. So here's the teacher who repeatedly says any good student of mine would blah . Naropa does it, he gets hurt badly. He gets healed, he gets a teachings.
[16:17] Tilopa is saying, `rely on that qualified Lama`. And we've had qualified Lama teachings before, son of a gun, we just did one last night and Sunday, yesterday morning and Sunday, funny how that works. But enter the stream of their blessing and your own mind will be freed. It's such a deep topic about entering the mind, entering the stream of their blessing.
I repeatedly love that image of you know, it was some commercial, you know, a guy just cracks his head open and stuff pours down in. I don't even remember what it was advertising, but I love that little cartoon. And it's like that, you know, if we crack our head open and let the Lama pour in. It's like every thought they would have every decision they would make everything they've ever learned, everything they've ever experienced, is pouring into us and all we have to do is surrender and let that all take over. And it's like we become them. And then you know, our mind goes, you know, you can't do that, that would be, that would be mental illness that you know, that would be schizophrenic, or that would be, I don't know, they'd take advantage of me, right? There's all kinds of `what about me going on`.
And that's all legitimate, and it should. We need it. Because it's not about, `okay`, `I won't do anything until Lama whispers`? And then I'll jump off roof, I'll jump in a fire, I'll, you know, go on a leach filled river, I'll do anything you say.
And it's like, wait a minute, that's not, that's not me being taught, right? How to stop my mental afflictions, that's just giving myself over. But there's, there's something to that. Some balance between us learning our personal responsibility for our personal decision making. And us surrendering to the wisdom of a being who perceives directly emptiness, independent origination, and whose love then pours through. Love, compassion, and wisdom pours through. [18:44]
To enter and surrender ourselves to that holy being really does take our transformation faster. At the moments that we can hold it. And of course, it's, it's almost impossible for most ordinaries. I'm sorry, you know, me self-existent me, being to hold this for very long.
But we can imagine how easy life would get. Not easy as in how struggle free life would get. If we had this, like ongoing commentary from the Lama, telling us how to think; how to look; how to be white, how to see I don't mean how to look. But how to how to see how to behave, how to react what you're seeing, it would be extraordinary. And in the moments when it happens, it is extraordinary. But then there's also this meaning of enter the stream of their blessings.
[20:09] Which means, receive initiation from them, like receive, the introduction to the lineage that they opened up to. And so when we open up to the Lama, what, what we open up to actually is the fact that they opened up to their lineage Lama too. And their lineage, that lineage Lama opened up to that lineage, right? And so we're not opening up to just a single being, we're opening up to the whole flooding forth of our lineage, which is why it's important to understand our lineage to know our lineage that there is one, you know, all the way back, and then we can end up being part of different lineages as well.
Typically, we find that we're part of one. And then it feels a little bit like we exclude all the others, because this is my lineage. But if when you ever track the lineage back, which they tried to make a poster once of this lineage all the way back from Shakyamuni, and it ended just look looking like a big tangle of tumbleweeds, you know, because they all intertwine, there really isn't like one lineage that goes straight back up to Shakyamuni that doesn't include all these others as well. Which is beautiful. And it should be that way, right? Because we're trying what we're where we're headed to is this identity of all. All inclusive, No being all and everything for everybody that that doesn't require a single lineage. But we get through that they're through the stream of this lineage. So another meaning of the stream of their blessing is it's not just from them.
It's from every being who's achieved their goal through these methods. And that's huge. But then it also is referring to receiving initiation.
[22:29] Initiation generally refers to going through a certain ceremony, in which the leader of this ceremony has already met that enlightened being who is the center pillar of the practice that you are being initiated into. And this ceremony is the setup for you, the new student to be introduced to that deity, that special being, so that that special being and the student can have develop a direct relationship. No, is it really necessary? Does that deity not know you already their omniscient? Of course, they know you. And so we could work with them. But it's like, how different is it to get a personal introduction? ` Hi, how are you? Yes, this is the Ronnie. This is pleasure Guinea Lake. Yeah, right. How much more direct is your connection? When you get this introduction? So it's done, insert, it's done in formal ways, in certain ways, it's done spontaneously in other ways. But once you have that initiation, you've entered the stream of the blessing of the Lama in a in another way. At a different, at a different level, a different vibration.
So from there, to Tilopa gives Naropa these two verses that I can read to you, but I can't talk to you about.
Verse 27.
He Tolipa s says to Naropa :
[24:40]
“ To rouse the wisdom of bliss and void
rely in an actual consort,
Use the blessing of method and wisdom
to enter into union.
Let it slowly descend,
then drop the swirl,
send it to its place, and
let it spread throughout the body.
Don't cling to it and you'll arouse
the wisdom of bliss and voidness.
All worldly goals will fall upon
you as you quickly reach the highest goal.
Your life will be long, your hair never gray,
you'll shine forth like the waxing moon,
your face will be radiant and clear
and you'll have the strength of a lion.
So this is referring to taking on the highest yoga tantra practices. So it's where Master Chukyi Gyeltsen, like just touches into the fact that there'ss open practice Mahamudra that works. [25:54]
And there's a diamond way practice of Mahamudra that works.
The thing with the secret way practices is that when we use the practices that use the subtle body and the mind - the winds, the channels, and the drops of consciousness - when we use those directly to reach the direct perception of emptiness, when we come out of that direct perception of emptiness, the impact it's had on our mind and body is such that we are ever so much closer to reaching our goal of total Buddhahood than we are when we have the direct perception of emptiness sutra way.
We see the emptiness we experience is the same, but how we get there is different. And what we do to get there in that different way, right, is seed planting that affects us in a different way than the seed planting that we do in order to get there from sutra.
From sutra, we hear, ´oh, now probably seven lifetimes to go, where all your circumstances will be great
From diamond way, reach the direct perception of emptiness, they call it clear light, just to make a distinction. You're guaranteed to do it to finish it in that life or the bardo of that life. So do you see the difference in speed, same emptiness directly that we're experiencing, but different outcome after coming up. Both are fabulous, of course. So Lobsang Chukwigaltsen is teaching us the sutra way, and he dangles this little pieces of encouragement. So if we've seen emptiness directly sutra way, to see it again, it takes a long time, they say. Then you use the diamond way methods to see it again. You cultivate it much swifter, much more quickly. And then you use that again, and again, and again, and again. That's all I can say. So last, not lastly, he says, [Verse 29] So this is Tilopa to Naropa. “These are my advices on the crucial points of Mahamudra. May they live on in the hearts of those with the goodness to understand. “
And he goes back into Samadhi for a year, and Naropa is left there. “Like what do I do with that?” This completes the teaching spoken by the glorious Tilopa to Naropa on the banks of the river Ganges.
So we just completed the text within the text. Yay! Right? To complete something is extraordinary.
And let's do our meditation. That technically is the meditation that starts the class seven from Bhojjimpa 13. Which is the second to the final class of that course for us. So we're moving right along. So if you need a little break, you need a wiggle, you need something to drink, do it now. [30:46
[talks between students].
Okay, are we ready? Are we back? So make your body still. That's how Lama Christi says to us. By now, right? Course 13. We've been at this with her for like five years. So she doesn't go through the details. We know how to do it.
[32:45] And you decide to bring your attention, your focus of attention to the tip of your nose. And be aware of how, as you're focusing at the tip of your nose, at first, there's this outer awareness of stuff going around, around you. There is an outer awareness or a physical body and just intentionally decide to disregard all that that the most important thing are these sensations called breath.
Those specific sensations at that specific spot, because it's so necessary to have the tool of turning on stillness at your determination.
Push your concentration to a point of a sharpness and edge, but not so tight that you jump off the object.
You have your focus zeroed in, you have your clarity.
You have your intensity, fascination, curiosity, eagerness.
Once we feel that state of mind, lock in, then we intentionally move from the breath as the object of focus to the awareness of whatever's arising.
So to do that, you take this keen watcher focus mind from the front and drop it down and back a little.
And as it slips down and back, it's a bit like it's shifting realities, still bright, clear, sharp, but more dreamlike. Anything can arise at any moment.
So we're opening up, being more available to what arises and brightly, sharply being the watcher of what arises. Allowing what arises to arise and pass with a mixture of curiosity and disinterest.
[38:01] Probably we feel this process of something arises and our mind attaches an identity. Our watcher, aware of that tendency. Lets it go before the identity even gets fully put on. Watcher's job is just observe.
We check to see if mind is sliding into dullness. Okay, rises, passes, rises, passes, who cares? Or if it's struggling to go and make the story about what's arising. The practice is to stay in the middle between those two. Keen, fascinated, but simply aware of the arisings happening at as subtle a level as we can be.
[40:50]Check. Where's your focus? What's your clarity? What's your intensity? Make your adjustment.
Now add to your watcher state. It's understanding that these gross and subtle images that are arising and we're trying to let pass are simply mental images. Karmic seeds ripening. Give them an identity. Give them a word. That your watcher knows them as. And add that knowing to the experience of watching them arise and pass. You may at first have to repeat it in your mind. “Ripening is nothing but”. Eventually, that's distraction. Your watcher knows, these things that pop up are simply the shape shifting of the mind itself. That process of past seeds planted, bubbling up and passing by.
[ 44:28] Now we're going to add the new component. You have this strong watcher state of mind happening. Take a tiny part of that watcher focus and turn that focus on to “who is this watcher? Who? Me, the watcher ”. Be the watcher watching those things, shape shifting, moving, rippling, and then be aware of the me that believes that it is the watcher.
[ 45:50] Find the feeling first. Of course there's a me. Me is the watcher. What a silly thing.
Now recognize that this me, it arises as something that we believe has a basis in truth. It's a real thing. The fact that we can find it means we believe that it's a thing that is there, that is doing the watching, doing the listening to the instructions, doing the watcher watching things pass, knowing they are ripenings and nothing but.
It's me.
[ 47:55]Now recognize that this me arising to our mind is also simply a mental image, and arising and passing moment by moment, changing, changing, changing.
Does it have any reality of its own? We get all jumbled. Go back to watcher watching until you sink back into the comfort of that state because we're familiar.
[49:35]Now turn the watcher on the me and recognize that me in the same way that we were recognizing any other thing that comes to mind. When you get jumbled and confused, go back to the watcher and then try again.
[ 51:05] Me, it's running. What appears? What passes? Is something there doing it?
Mental images, pictures, words. Is there something that those images, words land on when you catch that appearing nature of me and no self-nature of me? That's where we rest. That's where we stay, and it will likely be only fleeting. When we lose it, we go back and build it from whichever stage we can use to build it back again.
[ 53:20]Let's try one more time. Just a few minutes. Slide into the watcher. Knowing everything that's arising. Is this shape-shifting of my mind?
[ 54:00] Then add your me and watch it in the same way. Let's stay one more minute.
[ 55:45] Nice. Now let it go. Congratulate yourself for trying. Bring your watcher back up into being aware of you with your buddy in your room, in this class. Dedicate to somebody's pain just having gone away for the efforts that you just did. Then when you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.
[56:40 ] That was fun, hey? When I think I get a glimpse of where this practice is going, I always have the urge to laugh. Not laugh at it, but it just feels like such a relief. Oh my gosh, this whole suffering life is so absurd. Then it kicks me out of it, right?
This is the actual, real piece of Mahamudra. Is to get to the point where we are digging into using our own ME as the object of our watcher, who's aware that everything that arises to it is nothing but a - in the long story short - karmically driven ripening seed. That once it ripens, it's done. As long as we don't add a story to it, which keeps the similar seeds ripening until it turns into a whole big story, it's just blip and gone, blip and gone. It's one thing to be aware of that in the things of our world. It's really helpful to have that keenness of knowing that when we are out in our world, because it's like, well, this is all just an elaborate story happening. I can tolerate the crap better, and I can inspire myself to add kindness to the story, because I understand that end result's going to be better for everybody.
It takes us a step back from our reactivity of, I have to fix this. I have to do that. I have to, I have to. It's just like, okay, I'll do my part. It is helpful, but it will help us to stop making the negative karma that would block a deepening of our meditation. It would help us gather the goodness so that our wisdom can grow. It's not enough to actually make the transformation that we're saying we're determined to make. We want to have this component of not just that things are appearing out of karma, but that nothing has any nature of its own other than that.
It's not really inherent in the awareness things are ripening seeds, because I watch my own mind. I know they're ripening seeds, and I'm still believing that they have their reality. Seeds ripen into reality. And my reality includes those things having a nature of their own.
[1:00:14] It's coming out of the seeds. So just to be aware everything's coming out of seeds doesn't automatically make us aware that they don't have any nature of their own as a result, because the seeds has the belief that they are self-existent. So they're self-existently coming out of my seeds. It feels like we're just stopped. So when they teach about emptiness intellectually, we learn about the emptiness of things and then the emptiness of self, because there's these two components of the gagcha that we need to recognize we believe are there that aren't there and never have been there and never could be there, so that we can go beyond just this recognition everything is seeds ripening. It's helpful to even get at that recognition, because it does change our behavior, and we can become so incredibly kind because we understand karma, but never actually work on the self-nature.
It will help us gather the goodness that the understanding of the no self-nature will grow, but it's not like all of a sudden it's just going to occur to us. Everything's karma ripening, so nothing has any nature of its own. That's too big a shift for us to come up with. So we hear it. We have the goodness to hear it taught, and we have the goodness to not run away screaming from having heard it, which some people could hear the thing about the pen and just like, “no way”. I understand the experience, but the implication doesn't fit, because if they don't have the karmic seeds for that explanation to be a doorway to something amazing, it isn't. It doesn't have it in its own way.
Emptiness is not self-existent, is it? [1:02,23] Like if you ever tried to explain it to somebody and they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, and it's like, otherwise you just say the word and everybody would go, oh yeah, it does, but it doesn't work like that.
So in this piece, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen has theoretically brought us to the place where we can turn on the watcher and even like be in this really comfortable but bright and alert awareness of just that movement of the ocean, right? Deep down, deep, deep, deep ocean, and it's just going like this. Without getting lulled into falling asleep, but bright and alert and aware that this is a subtle nature of this very process of profound dependence. I love that word.
But I've built the meaning of it by over many years. It's being the watcher, even the experiencer of this. When we can turn that on from having worked with it, worked with it, worked with it, and slide back into that, that's not stillness yet, but that is the level from which it's time to then start looking for emptiness.
So when we're in this, like being the shape-shifting, it's the appearing nature of our mind, like everything else has fallen away, and what's coming up is the, we call it a mental image. I don't relate to that word so well, but I'll use it. This mental image, and then we don't follow it, so it passes, and then this thing, the mind, the vast sky of the mind, vast ocean of the mind is still there, and then something else bubbles up, and we let it go, and that something else bubbles up, and just from watcher state, we're just there experiencing it, aware that it's the bubbling up, and then we need to add the component of “the nothing but”.
But Lobsang Chukwugelsen doesn't take us there about these things, right? The objects arising in the mind, the ripples in the ocean, the movement in the ocean. He takes us to ME. When we're going to take this quality of mind that can watch so comfortably, what we're then going to watch is the ME component of the watcher who's doing the watching, and then we'll get the, we'll get the… Get's take a break so Janet can deal with her, maybe.
[1:05:42]
So it takes a little while. First it takes a little while to get to that comfort level of, you know, watching at the depths of the ocean level. You know, And they say that when you're, when you spend time at that level, the sway of things, coming up will slow down, and we reach this pause.
You know, frankly, I don't ever find a pause, but if you do find a pause, then your watcher just watches the pause, and it's, it is helpful. It's like a little shortcut, maybe, to the emptiness, because we recognize even the pause isn't appearing, and underneath that we can go probably more directly to the no-self nature of things than from something that's arising that we need to analyze to get underneath a little bit.
Yes, Janet?
[Student: Well, this was in the past, and I missay things in the past, so I'll take that, but I thought you had said that a reversal is a pause. The ignorant liking turning to the ignorant disliking, those moments are things to meditate on because it's a pause moment. I really like my job, and then I really hate my job. I really hate this man, but then he cheated on me for three years, and I didn't find out. Now I hate this man. So there's this reversal thing happening with our ignorant liking and our ignorant disliking, and then when we're not ignorant about it anymore, there's a reversal].
That's a good reversal. Yeah.
[Student: And then you said you should meditate on that because that's the pause. It's when things shift from our ignorant one way to the ignorant the other way]
[1:08:21] Right, right, right. In that sense, well, I was going to say I was using the pause in a different way. There isn't really ever a pause between seeds ripening, but when we're in our outer world, when we're more aware of the process happening, the pause can help us in the sense of pausing myself from acting from my reaction, right? Up comes the reaction. Well, he's been cheating on me for three years. Up comes the reaction. Yeah, you know, it's even beyond words at that point. And then when we identify it, well, he's not trustworthy. I hate him. All of that comes. So if we've got this recognition that it's, you know, how I respond is gonna create my future, that gives us some time to decide whether we're going to act from our feelings in the moment or not. Right. So in that way, remembering to pause, is like Master Shantideva's bump on a log pause. Give us enough time to let that feeling bubble up and pass. Where we use the watcher. It's like, whoa, this just feels so terrible. I should act badly from it because that's what everybody expects of me, including me. But now I'm going to be like a bump on a log and choose something different. That pause is helpful.
[Student: But that's what this meditation was about. ]
Yeah, the feeling, right?
[Student: Yeah, you're ignorant. And then when you found out you felt bad. But then when you like analyze it, it was coming from your past deeds]
Right. So who are you going to blame? You know, sorry, jerk. Right. I'm still not going to have anything further to do with you. But I'm so sorry. My seeds made you do that. Sorry, what you're going to get back. Yuck. Right. Sorry. Goodbye. That's fine. Yeah.
[Student: My ne lama said that if he felt bad because of breakout, it's because he hurt someone in a past life. And it's happening right here right now].
Exactly. That's absolutely true. Yeah.
So a pause in meditation is that we're we really it doesn't ever really happen. Because if so, the bird singing, the bird singing, the bird singing, and I'm withdrawing, withdrawing, withdrawing from the bird singing. …And the bird stopped singing for a short period of time. There's a pause, right in something that was drawing my mind away, that's now no longer drawing my mind away. But from Mahamudra point of view, we would be recognizing that: Oh, that pause in the bird song is a just a shapeshift of the ripening bird song happening. Now there's pause in bird song happening. When we let go, let go, let go, let go, we even get to the point where like we're sitting, we're watching, we're sitting at the face of a cave and stuff's pouring out of it. And we let it go. And we let it go. And we let it go. And we let it go. And so less and less and stuff is pouring out of it. Until you get to the point where you're sitting at the cave, waiting for something to pour out of it. And nothing comes and nothing comes and nothing comes. They say that we get to that point in Mahamudra because by not giving stories to things. You know, I don't know, our mind says, Okay, she doesn't care about that one. She doesn't care about this one. She doesn't care about that one. But finally, it goes, I give up. And it quit spitting stuff out of the cave. But then our task is to recognize, well, nothing coming out of the cave is as much as something as something coming out of the cave. And that's a ripening appearance of my mind as well. The pause, the nothing coming out of the cage is still an awareness of something.
And it's a, right, it's like a peek into the empty nature of anything, the pause or anything. Because we see that we can't, we can't turn our minds to the emptiness without there being something to be empty of a nature that we thought was there that wasn't there. So we think of the pause as being something that was there that suddenly is not there, not happening. But that itself is a happening that has its known nature, so it can not happen. And it gets a little slippery. But even then, says Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, that's still about outer things.
We study at emptiness, we learn about emptiness. First from outer things [showing an onrange/Grey pen]. Technically, they say, there's emptiness of our parts, and there's emptiness of our ME.. The emptiness of our parts, we first think, oh, it's the emptiness of my heaps, you know, and my heaps are limited to this thing and how I feel in response to this thing and my outer world. But technically, me and my parts means me and anything I can experience, which includes - the Eiffel Tower and the ocean and includes everything. So when we're studying about the emptiness of my parts, we are really talking about the emptiness of any outer factor, whether it's a material, like a non living thing, or a living being. So even when we're talking about that dependent origination and emptiness of another person, they're still in the category of the emptiness of things. When we're talking about the emptiness of person, we're really talking about the emptiness of our ME, our own ME, subject side, that's constantly there. But as we, you know, are coming to know, it's never the same two moments in a row, but it's never not there. So what the heck is it?
And that's where this level of Mahamudra goes. But in order to recognize the “no nature of either things, or self”, we have to first really clearly identify what we think is there.
Okay, we need to clearly identify the appearing nature, the appearing thing, so that we have the thing clearly in mind, that we can then investigate to see “how is it that I believe this thing exists? And is that really possible, and be consistent with my experience of the thing?. So when we're learning, right, we learn from about things, because it's so much easier to come to understand that, oh, you know, every being perceives this object, unique to them, we even know the punchline, forced on them by the power of the ethical component of their past seeds.
And understanding that reveals that the object itself cannot have any nature of its own, because any nature of its own would force anybody to perceive it in that way, whatever gross or subtle nature it had in it, from it, every being who perceived it would have to perceive it like that. So that will take us down in different levels of understanding. Okay, not everybody calls this a pen, some people call it a steelo, some copy, call it right, but they still see pen. Well, not everybody sees orange and black. Not everybody knows pen, in which case, there's, there's just this long thing, right? But there's still a long thing there.
But wait, you know, not everybody knows long thing. And what if you don't know long thing, then what's somebody gonna experience? But yeah, but a fly still lands here. There has to be a thing here for the fly to land on. Right? So they have some thingness nature to it. Independently, we keep going down, what is that thingness? And it actually takes us through the different schools of thought. Because we find ourselves, there has to be something thingness to it. Come on 50:50. Like, I bring my piece, and it brings its piece. And together, we make whatever the object is at the moment. And that's enough to say, so you know, if I bring a different piece to it, I can use this thing with its thingness, you know, to tie up my hair, I can use it to scratch my cheek. Because that's what I bring to the party. It brings long cylindrical thing to the party. Right?
[1:18:53] Our own mind. Where that ends up going eventually, as we all know, is, well, if it has any thingness to it, then that's a thingness I can't change. And it's if a thing if it is a thingness, that I that's in a suffering world, then there's a part of a suffering world, I can't change. And if there's part of a suffering world, I can't change, then I can get free of it. But the suffering world is still there. And what good is that? And so it's like, right, where's the thingness? What's the thingness? And it's a great meditation. And it's a different practice: To dig, dig, dig into the thingness of outer objects, to get to this comfort level to go “Wow, just to perceive anything at any level reveals it's no nature. Wow, yay”. Like no nature is everywhere, because there are things everywhere. And we can get to that comfort level of things is emptiness. Because we've worked with it to see that for something to have no self nature is its availability to be anything at any moment. Whereas when we are first meeting things have no nature, our mind gets kind of freaked out.
What? There's nothing there. Right? Well, then what are all those things in my can container, you know, my pen canister where I can go depends and they're always there. Like we hear the no self nature and we can't help it go. Oh, nothing at all. And we fall off that cliff of nothing at all. And so nothing matters. And then we pull back and go - No, no, no, the pen has some kind of nature. Okay, fine. Those two cliffs. They say you don't fall off the cliff of non existence unless you get a wrong emptiness understanding. I feel my own mind falling off and coming back like it's like teeters on the edge and I can pull back every time I really get to this conclusion. It's like no self nature. It's like nothing that didn't know for me the difference between saying oh, there's nothing there versus there's no thing there is what helps me not teeter over that edge. Right? No thing means no specific thing, which means any possible thing. But you need to have an appearing something to lack self nature. If we come to the conclusion - was like, Oh, well, then there's just this big field of emptiness out there. That we then can like, throw an image out into and then we get this one or that one. It's, it's useful, but it is inaccurate. You know, and there are, like I've, follow Lynn McTaggart, and her work with the field and the intention of aid and stuff. And she has a really effective method for helping people with their intentions, create change. And, you know, she describes that as the quantum field is this vibrating jelly that's just waiting to manifest right what we throw out with our intentions. And, and it's accurate, but it leaves this impression that emptiness is a thing out there.
And we study emptiness understanding that she doesn't use the term emptiness - use the field, that the field - is something out there. We understand emptiness as an absence. And an absence of something that we believe is there, that actually is impossible. And that's where it gets so wiggly, so slippery. It's like, well, if the Gagcha doesn't exist, never had never could. What is it that I'm zeroing in on: That's so important for me to identify before I can remove it. And it's like, well, because this thing that doesn't exist, we believe in so strongly, that we would get so mad at the guy who we find cheated on us, that we would do something to hurt him back as we are leaving that relationship. Because we think, right, we're thinking wrongly about where it all came from. These non existent things, the things that have their own natures, they cause all our suffering, a non existing thing is the cause of all our suffering. Isn't that bizarre. And it makes me feel like such a fool. Like I fell for it for eons and still do like, yeah, yeah.
But then do you see how it's a belief change that we make? It's not a all the things in the world change that we need to make. And of all the things that we believe have their own nature, though, the strongest one is our ME, right? What about me? And are you Nagarjuna, the Khacig? I do so exist. Right? And every chapter. Yeah, yeah, I understand. I understand. I understand. Okay, I buy it Nagarjuna. But I still have my own nature. I do so exist. There's that I and that is the Gakcha. We want to identify clearly so that we can look at it. So that we can really investigate, you know, how is it like the pen? So that we can find the emptiness of that ME, which will reveal the all potentialness of the ME. So when we understand the Gagcha ME, ME doesn't disappear. The belief in a self-existent me disappears. And what's that going to be like?
[1:25:50]
[Student: Well, you know, the punchline is that things don't exist in the - but they exist in the in a different in a way we don't think they do. Which is coming from our own side until they don't come from our own side anymore. But for now, they're coming from our own side. So when my nei lama says, I do so exist, because it's coming from my own side as a student]
Right. Right. That's why we need to identify what do we mean by the I when we say I do so exist, because we do exist, but not the way we think. So we need to find the way we think we do exist. And then that's what gets analyzed in this deep awareness level of mind. So when we're doing the watcher, watcher, watcher, watcher, watcher, watcher, that is bringing us to the level of concentration called stillness. Like we use just that practice to reach stillness. And when we can sink into stillness, then we have the platform from which we can turn on this analysis of the ME aspect of the watcher. And we'll have the platform from which our analysis of here's the gagcha me. All right, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling it. I'm seeing it. I'm aware of it. And apply our analysis, whichever one you're going to choose to use, that reveals, oh, that one doesn't exist. The subject ME does exist, but not like that. How does it exist? Oh, right beyond words. And then because we're at the stillness platform, coming to that conclusion of the no self nature of the ME, we'll be able to stay there for some period of time, something will shift and will pop up. And then we go back where we left off and build it again. Rest again. Right when we get into those rest, it's not stopped. But we come to our conclusion and we fixate on it. Right? Every time we do that, it's an opportunity for the shift the doorway to shift into the direct experience. We need to be at stillness level for our analysis to take us to that doorway to emptiness directly. If we're not at stillness level, and we do the analysis, it's still useful. And we're planting good seeds. When we have stillness level and do the analysis. Now the conclusion of the analysis can be held. Because our stillness will hold us there. And the doorway can open. You see, so he's building us up. Use this easy part of the practice to reach stillness, become down there in the ocean, right at the at the appearing nature. So keenly experiencing the appearing nature of my own mind, this vast, constant shape shifting, you know, so pleasant, without getting dulled out, staying fascinated, sharp, but unaware of anything else. Single point in concentration, the pleasures will arise, right, the beingness will arise. And when we've got that level at stillness, our analysis will take us deeper. But don't just stay on stillness at the awareness side, always turn it to analysis. And even if we're not at stillness level yet, at some point in your meditation, you shift to your analysis of self, to plant the seeds for your Mahamudra practice to take you where you want it to go. And we don't want - it's not a Mahamudra practice technically, to get to the level of awareness of the appearing nature of our mind and leave it there.
The Mahamudra part is bringing up the ME and looking for it to reach its appearing nature, right? Me the watcher, ME the watcher, ME the watcher, ME the watcher. Hey, wait a minute. Will the real me please stand up? That's the one I use. I find it going bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh. And then say, please, will the real me show up? And it just like, and then it starts up again. No, and so it doesn't slide through that doorway, because it won't stay there.
So, Roxanna, I slid by your question.
[1:31:56] [Student: No, I just want to clarify something. For example, when each time when you say, the observer or the watcher, observe, watch what's going on. Like in my mind, I'm concentrating single-pointed as say, but it's like I have to turn on like this mirror in front of the watcher to also observe what the watcher is watching. And it works for me that way. I'm aware of what the watchers observing]
Right, that's fine. That's fine. And then we're going to take it to this place where the watcher is doing the watching. And they say, take this little piece of your mind, right? Little piece of the watcher and turn the watcher on to the watcher. Watchers still doing that. But now you're watching that. Who's doing that? What's doing that? And of course, your you is making you do that, right? It's this infinite regression. But for the purposes of learning how to do it, we're looking for the ME that is the one that says, But about ME, I do so exist. What you know, that that phrase, that tone of voice is, is like reveals this, we use the word self-existent ME. It I have trouble relating with that one too. Because it's like, I know I'm not self-existent. I know I depend on all kinds of bazillion things. For me to be me. But there is a me, right? The very word says me, I this one, right? That that everything is coming out. That's the one we're looking for. We want to really admit that we have it. Admit that it's just like constantly concerned with its own safety, its own feed me, its own, I need more sleep, right? We, we hesitate to even want to go looking for it, because it's just so ugly. You know, but but you can't find you can't deny the Gagcha if we don't know what we're looking for. In the reading, they say, you know, what if someone said, here's a bow and arrow? Go fight the enemy. But they don't tell you who the enemy is. You know, and it's like, wait, who's the target? What's the target? How can we zero in our analysis on the ME, I think I'm there? If I don't have it clearly identified? Well, how can you not have your eye clearly identify? Say the word ME? Is that something clearly identifiable?
Where does it stop? Where does it start? How do we you know, it's like it's constantly there. And it's so vague. Until somebody insults us. Until somebody hurts us. Right? Until somebody does something really nice for us. Oh, right. Either way, there are certain circumstances where our ME like is really obvious. And then the rest of the times, it's so subtle in the background. And so our watcher, we've been used to watching things bubble up. Take that same quality of watcher ability and watch yourself as you go from one thing to the next during the day. Like it's like, okay, I need this now. I want that now. Right? I'll do this now. And like, fine, find that ME. Like, let I hesitate to say let it be really there. Because we don't want it to ever be really there. But to find it to be able to deny it. You know, admit, look, look, look for it. Look for it out of meditation first. [1:36:43] And see how it's something stirs us to “Oh, I'll have a cup of tea now”. Because that will bring some comfort because that will distract me because whatever we're looking for the I under there. Right? We will find it. We will find how it's imposing itself on everything. And so just find it first. Before we, you know, automatically deny it. Okay. We need to find it.
[...] [Student: We need to integrate the heaps as well, right?]
Yes, you can. Right? The me that has the physical, it has the physical body, the ME that has the feeling heaps, like any one of those heaps is an avenue through which you can find the ME that has those.
[Student I think would be a lot easier.]
Good. They they are the other. Right? When we're self exist, the self emptiness of other emptiness of self, the heaps are the other. But through them, you can find the gacha me the me that has a heap of form. In the form, independent of my karmic seeds, like it gets absurd. When you say the me that exists independent of my heap of form, like, well, I don't exist without this body. But we're gonna someday. If we believe our mind goes on without this body, then we do believe that there's a ME independent of the body.
Nagarjuna takes every one of our I do so exist and he goes, Okay, let's check it out. [1:39:17] And we still resist.
[Student: Thank you . Yeah, I think it's a lot easier to go through that avenue]
.Yeah, but end up at the me not at the emptiness of the heap. Find the me. That's a way to find the me self-existent me that has the heaps. Me that has the heaps independent of the heaps is what you're looking for. And we're so well trained, we automatically want to go and there's no such thing. But that's bypassing that thing. That's keeping us as some sorry being if you are and I don't know. Yeah, if you're not, you don't need all this stuff. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. So when we do identify the Gagcha ME, the self-existent me, and we turn our analysis on to it.
Very commonly, what we find in those meditation sessions is, as we're getting more and more clear on the absurdity of this ME that exists independent of anything else, distractions will come up in the meditation. Dullness will come up in the meditation, you know, even if you've like overcome those obstacles. As you drag back into your brightness and clarity, you hit into these factors that will kick you out. They're fear, because this self-existent me Gagcha, that seems so slippery to find, is actually so strong, so powerful, that when it's getting close to being recognized as this imposter, it resists, it resists the realization that there's no such thing.
And that resistance, right, it's all our own mind resisting its own revelation of its own true nature. It, it kicks us out of our meditation. Again, the advantage of being at shamatha level is that it's less likely to kick us out. But it can still happen. There's this deep fear of annihilation, right of revealing to ourselves that we don't exist at all, if we don't exist in the way that we think. Right, those two cliffs, where they really come into play is at this place where we're touching on even a deep intellectual recognition of our no nature of our ME. Because we've been colored by our “ yes, there is a me. It's independent of everything that's going on”. And now we're showing it, its own glimpse of its own impossibility. And it wants no part of it.
So the resistance that we have to our practices, really on every level, is actually this deep down.
[.... interne checking ],
Ah, you know, the other Jim, of course, we were talking about that strong, great compassion as our motivating factor. It's like, from the get go. That's, that's what will help us overcome this fear factor that prevents us from going through that doorway of the no self-existent ME. Is developing from the very beginning of our practice. The on the behalf of others, peace. Now I'm doing this for everybody else's benefit. Because our self-existent ME really wants no part of it. Right?
Our me, our true nature, me, empty ripening seeds, wants every part of it. Right? There is this beautiful, amazing part of all of us that sees, right, sees what we're meant to be. And there is this other part of us. That's like, “no, I don't really want any part of that”. So if you're getting close to that destruction of that ME, it's going to come out fighting. And that's Angel Devil, right? Lobsang Chuki Gelson, same guy. He says, “Look, you know”, he doesn't say it in that text. But you know, in my, in my mind, it's like he's this Mahamudra expert. And he sees that as he was going through his Mahamudra, the stages, there's the devil, like, no way are you going to get to this place? You know, where self-existent ME disappears forever. Doesn't really disappear forever. If it was never existing in the first place, can it disappear? Like, what's really going to go away? If there's no such thing anyway? Why is it so hard? Beliefs are really hard to change. That one in particular, but it's just a belief. It's not even a thing. A belief is a belief. And then it's like, guess what about that belief. Ripening, nothing but ripening, nothing but. Like, why can't we just get that ripening belief and set a flame to it and be done with it? Technically, we could. But that would just be one set of seeds of the belief, right? Yeah, well, once you get rid of the belief, all the seeds with the old belief, you know, they'll be meaningless. Do you see once where are you? You can't replant ignorant seeds. You can ripen ignorant seeds. But you won't be replanting with the belief. Takes time to get with more wisdom seeds than ignorant seeds. But right, that's what it takes. And then to get there, we need stillness. And to get there, we want to stillness practice that moves us so close to the doorway of the direct perception of emptiness. We can find stillness on just our breath. But then we won't have the skills and the goodness of having already been so keenly aware of ripenings, ripenings, ripenings. And then we'll get to the point where even at that level of ripenings, ripenings, it'll be ripenings and nothing but. Ripenings and nothing but. Ripenings and nothing but. Right and then we're already replanting damage to our belief in things his own natures, because we're spending so much time in the awareness. It's like, oh, this is just the process happening during my meditation session. And then as a result of that growing understanding, our outer world where we understand that's where we're making the seeds. It's like, okay, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be more, even more helpful kind, right to the best of my ability. I know that all the unpleasantness that I'm experiencing is the burning off of these seeds, and I'm really trying hard not to replant them. So that when I go back into meditation, things will go deeper, deeper, deeper. It's a whole upward spiral.
[1:48:56] When we get to the point with shamatha, where there's pleasure, doing those meditations, right, it increases the power of our practice in the sense of now we like more want to do it, because it's pleasurable instead of doing this practice, where when you come out, it's like a failed again, right. And so it really is important as we're growing our career to reward yourself for being on your object, right?
When we were in Mexico, we added that piece, reward yourself, you were on your object for a fraction of a second. Yay. Yeah. Same when you're keeping your meditation book for the other class, right? Give yourself a happy face. Give yourself a thumbs up. Just for trying. It's important. So that at some point, these deep investigations into emptiness are so pleasurable. That even when we're getting close to that place where our self-existent ME is going, it's going, yeah, but it's kind of nice to be here. Like it's starting to go. Yeah. You know, I like pleasant. I don't like that. I like this. I don't like that. We're trying to coax it to go along because it's pleasurable.
And then it'll go, wow, I was never like that in the first place. Thank you so much for showing me what a jerk I've been. I'm done. Done with that. Right? You can rely on me now. I'm the no self nature ME, nothing but seeds ripening. Let's go out and love everybody. Right? Which is really what everybody wants is to be loved. So it all comes around. Hooray, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen. I love Mahamudra practice. Doesn't require visualization much, but does require effort, diligence, training, a sloppy Mahamudra. I'm expert in sloppy Mahamudra. Doesn't change things too much. So anyway, Mahamudra practice.
I still have five minutes. Let's see. So from Gangama to Lopas said, and you know, technically all of this relies upon the blessings of your holy Lama. And if you find that you're feeling stalled in your practice, any practice, and you're getting frustrated, go back to requesting blessings from the Lama. Right? Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen preliminaries to Mahamudra practice is you set yourself up, you get your holy one in front of you and you beg them for blessings until you're crying and then start your practice.
So if at anywhere along the way you get stuck, just let go of whatever you're working on. Go back to the image of that precious holy being who loves you so much, who understands perfectly what the stock is all about. No, is pouring into you everything that you need. Just go back in your Mahamudra and be the watcher of you. Self-existent you asking that Lama, please help me. Please help me. Please help me. Please help me. I feel it in your heart and don't no need for them to do anything different or feel anything in the meditation. Your timer goes off, finish your cushion and be open to how that help is coming to you.
Like not expectation, but expectancy. Right? So that you have this expectancy that your prayers will be answered and you just wait and see what it's going to be like. Not even wait and see your what you're noticing what it's being like, because their help is coming. Their help is coming. Whether we ask for it or not, we don't receive it until we ask for it. Like I'm talking to myself here. You know, I took personal responsibility, hlaksam namdak really, really seriously. I still do. But then that means my Lama taught me everything. I know what I need to do. I just need to bust my button, do it. And then it's like, yeah, but I feel so sick. I'm too tired. All these excuses. And instead of going back and saying, well, I'm gonna just bust my mind. Right? Just help me. Just help me. Just help me. Right? I keep drilling, right? My own do it yourself, do it yourself. So there is personal responsibility and there is relying on Lama. And that is personal responsibility. Right? Because what's going to pour into you is what we do next, is what we follow.
So again, if you get stuck in any given meditation or any time in your practice, go back to just Lama, help me, Lama, help me, Lama, help me, Lama, help me. And, and a shift will happen. How long do I have to do that for? Until the shift happened. Okay. So it's helpful to know that because we're going to go into a long break. And I don't know if your mind's like mine. It'll get distracted. And it's like, ah, we're not having Mahamudra class. I'll let my Mahamudra meditation slip. It's like, please don't. Beg the Lama for help.
So remember that person we wanted to be able to help. Just having this class pour out from me to you, came from you, and has gone out into the universe. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven different ways. And that's a great, great goodness. And we've set into motion the end of suffering of that one person that we want to be able to help. And that's a great, great goodness. And so be happy with yourself.
Think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands. Recall your own precious holy being. 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 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 loving kindness, filled with the wisdom for why and may it be so.
Okay, thank you very much.
[Student: Thank you for the amazing class. A quick question, because the internet broke up a little bit and I'm just thinking of the transcript. The describing the Gagcha ME, that doesn't exist. You used an adjective that began with the letter D and then it was an imposter, something imposter. I don't think it was the word despicable imposter, but it was a long word that started letter D. Do you remember what it might have been? Otherwise, we'll just leave out the adjective]
. Yeah, leave out the adjective. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Sorry.
[Student: Thank you, Lama. This was a beautiful class. I just quit clarification. During the meditation, when I had, especially today, I had like kind of dullness, even wanted to go to sleep and it felt like, you know, like a curtain. And so my observer get activated and it just went and like started to remove it actively. So will it be okay? I mean, because you said just let go and don't, in my understanding, let go and don't be like active, sit back and relax as an observer. But my observer was active, more active today than usual. More active than usual.]
Yeah, you know, when we are, so, so you're clarifying the distinction in: When we have our, our meditation practice session going. And we're, we're checking, we're still checking from time to time. Am I on the object? If I am, am I clear? Or am I dull? I mean, am I agitated? Or am I dull? And whatever the answer is, we need to adjust it. And then we make the adjustment, we go back to the meditation. And it really is technically a distraction in the meditation to fix the meditation. So what you're describing is you, you did a check, you found dullness, you made the adjustment to the dullness. And it's fine for the watcher to make the adjustment to the dullness. But you make a, like a mental note, that this wasn't the Mahamudra meditation happening. This was my adjustment in my meditation. And now I'm back into it again, and back on to my object. It's a little disconcerting. It's like, until we just go into shamatha, we still have to do this adjustment period. No, and it's not, it's a, it's a different, right quality of mind than Mahamudra. So it's fine for the watcher to fix it. Just make a note now watchers back to watching.
[Student: Because what you're in generally, without adjusting, it should just lay back and just observe with an active state of mind, right?]
Right. Like being in the backseat of a car, fascinated by what's going by. Like that.
Anything else?
[Student: Thank you, dear Holy Lama]
Okay. Thank you all for the opportunity. Have a great week. We'll see you next week, if not sooner.
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 22
Vocab:
Dakme
Gangsak gi dakme
Chukyi dakme
Gakja
*************
Introduction
All right, welcome back, we are Mahamudra practicers—July 15th, 2025.
Let's do our opening prayers and go right into our meditation, the same one we did last week.
Sorry, my computer needs me to change language. It's disappeared. 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.
*************
So set your posture for meditation.
***45 seconds***
Have it settled—lock it in so you can forget it.
Draw your mind in to focus on that specific spot at your nostril—find the one that's most prominent right now, and use it to adjust your focus, your clarity, your intensity.
***45 seconds***
Make a note of the quality of your attention today…
Is it a little dull?
Is it a little agitated?
Make the adjustment you need to make.
***45 seconds***
Now shift into “watcher mode” and first, be watching for any outer appearances (outer sounds probably, since our eyes are closed).
Go through that process of recognizing how the mind jumps to the object so quickly, with its full-on identity.
Fine-tune your “watcher” to be aware at more and more subtle levels of what we're calling “outer sensation.”
Draw it in.
Draw it into some inner sensation—whether it's sound, or tactile, or whatever is arising from what we would call “inside our body.”
***15 seconds***
Keeping your fascination, your focus, your clarity.
***15 seconds***
Now, “observer” slides down deeper, or opens up—however you get your sensation of being aware of what's arising, at more and more subtle levels.
Sliding down to that level of awareness—like being underneath the ocean.
Aware of that subtle movement, that's making ripples of identity on the surface.
***30 seconds***
“Observer” is passively aware of arisings happening…
As they arise and pass…
***1 minute***
Next, your passive observer's fascination gets more specific, in that your passive observer is now fascinated with your awareness of the fact that every sensation, color, shape, sound, image, is nothing but a mental image rippling this mind.
That fascination with the mental image—knowing it's a mental image…
As it arises and passes…
***30 seconds***
Seeds ripening, and nothing but.
***45 seconds***
We are being fascinated by the appearing nature of our mind.
***45 seconds***
Even if we reach a space where there appears to be “nothing appearing,” that is still a ripening—that is still an appearing, and a passing.
It's not enough to stay here enjoying the appearing nature of our mind.
We want to reach the true nature.
It's “no nature” that allows it to have the appearing nature that it does.
So within that fascinated, passive watcher is a “yourself,” a “me.”
“Me” the watcher.
First, find it.
Easier said than done, in my opinion—my experience.
So obvious, but so hard to get a hold of.
***15 seconds***
When you find your “me,” the one doing the watching, recognize that in that identification of “me” is a “me” that is real—a “me” that has a basis in truth.
“Me” doing the watching.
“Me” the meditator.
Find your belief in that “real me.”
Self-existent “me.”
***1 minute***
Now recognize that it is simply another “arising appearance,” another ripple in the mind—no different in nature than any other awareness that arises.
That me, “the watcher,” is also an arising—and nothing but.
***30 seconds***
If you get scrambled—let it loose—sink back down to being deep in the ocean of the movement of mind.
Simply movement, simply ripenings…
***15 seconds***
And then start the process again.
Recognize the “me” part of that passive observer.
By doing so, something arises to our mind.
“That's me.”
“That's what I mean by me.”
And find the belief, the feeling, the attachment to “real me.”
***15 seconds***
Always there—the aware-er.
I have to be separate from what I'm aware of.
“Me.”
The observe-er.
And once you have that, sink again into your Mahamudra awareness.
“Aha.”
That's arising.
Movement of the ocean wave.
No identity other than that—arising / passing… arising / passing…
***15 seconds***
It's me—nothing but a mental picture, an idea, a label.
Seeds ripening, and nothing but.
So I can be what ripens.
***30 seconds***
Get a glimpse of the conclusion—my “me,” available to be.
***15 seconds***
What can you do with that?
***15 seconds***
Nice—now dedicate whatever glimpse, whatever understanding came.
Dedicate to increasing your kindness, so that your Mahamudra will grow deeper, so that your wisdom will grow bigger, so that you and your world can reflect that.
And then bring your awareness back up to the surface.
Become aware of your body in your room.
And when you're ready, open your eyes, take a stretch.
**************
So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen’s practice that he's given us so far has been this tool to sink deeper, deeper, deeper into the awareness of the appearing side of things—of our own things—and our own mind.
And then he wants us to do the same with the thing we call our “self,” our “me.”
Our me has an appearing side, and it has its true nature side—and he says, “all the different methods of practicing Mahamudra will eventually take you to the direct experience of the no-self nature of the self”— which is the first of what we perceive at STONG LAM.
And so all of them will do it, he says, and being “Gelugpa,” he says, and Gelugpa version does it best.
So, you know, no “best,” it depends on the “who's doing it.”
But he specifically takes us through these steps—it kind of implies that he's saying the other Mahamudra practices leave you at the level of things ripening, and it's up to you to figure out, “oh, nothing exists in any other way than that.”
And his point is that's not going to happen automatically, unless we are trained in making it happen.
So, you know, I don't know where he's leaving the other practices because I'm not trained in those—this is the one I'm trained in—but its beauty is that it takes us to this next step of calling forth our own “me,” and going through the process of first identifying the “me” we think is there, the Gakcha me…
And then, because we've gotten [to that point, by using] this ability to be aware of what's ripening at such a subtle level that the identity that's getting put on “it” is beyond words (it's still a label happening) but we can't say, “oh, it's a bird in the tree.”
(The tree is gone, so I don't have birds in trees anymore)
But it's like, no, sound…outer sound…no, sound…no, aware of sound…no, decibels, no…it just keeps coming down to some movement of the mind that we catch that and stop the story.
And then what's going to happen, right?
That happened in a moment—if we don't follow it with story, it goes away.
If we don't follow it with story, it just goes away.
And then the ripples keep coming, keep coming, keep coming—they get more and more subtle.
And they won't ever go away completely—they do slow down, they say.
I haven't personally experienced that.
But the point is, we can just stay there forever—and when you come out, we'll have made some good karma by not doing other things that we would have been doing if we weren't in meditation.
But we really haven't cultivated the doorway to the end of all suffering—which is the point.
So, we finished that little detour into the Ganga Ma text—which he just mentioned, and then Lama Christie chose to take that text and teach it to us fully for other reasons (seed planting reasons for her classes).
So now we're back into Panchen Lama's auto commentary on his root text, where he's gotten to the point of, “let's talk about the Gelugpa version of Mahamudra,” and he starts out by saying, “to do this part of the Gelugpa version of Mahamudra, we need to have already cultivated the ability to be at that deep level of meditative stillness concentration at the level of things just arising.”
So we've just gotten started—we've been doing this for several months, and maybe you took to the practice like a duck to water, maybe not.
It all takes practice.
We're going to learn where we're supposed to go with it—and then it's up to us to work with it, work with it, work with it.
We're going to the next level so I can teach it to you—maybe we'll have the seeds where it's like, “oh, right, right, this is where I'm meant to be in my meditations. Where has it been?”
Or we get in there and it's like, “oh, man, I understand intellectually, but I can't seem to get it to happen.”
He'll say, “go back, beg the Lama for help, do your purification, gather your goodness, keep working with the stillness.”
So I'm not saying avoid getting to the place where it's this enjoyable process of just “aware of ripenings at more and more subtle levels.”
That's what gets us to stillness very easily—because you're never off your object, as long as your awareness of what's rising is active.
So it really is this skillful tool.
When we're off our object is when, “oh, what am I going to serve for lunch because I've got friends coming over.”
Right? That's off the object.
But even then, you can be the “observer” watching all those thoughts—in which case you're doing your Mahamudra, but you're up at the “ripple level,” the surface level of the ocean.
And then you go, “whoops, let's sink back down again.”
You've never actually lost your object.
The trick of Mahamudra is you're automatically at level four just by doing Mahamudra—and then the task, of course, is the dullness versus the agitation and making that adjustment, et cetera.
Anyway, he starts his Gelugpa presentation of Mahamudra by quoting Lord Buddha and other teachers to remind us why we're even trying to do this—and you'll see in your reading, it says what sutra it was, and Lord Buddha says to the guy, “look, people wander around in this cycle of suffering because they don't understand emptiness, and because they don't understand emptiness, they do all the wrong things trying to get the happiness that they want—and so they end up just hurting themselves and others in their effort to get happy—and that's what it is to perpetuate the cycle of samsara—and to understand emptiness (just to understand it intellectually) it is the doorway to the end of that pattern of doing what we think is right to get happiness, but it isn't what will bring happiness.”
But we don't know it.
So Buddha's point is we suffer because we don't understand emptiness, which implies that when we do understand emptiness, we'll stop suffering.
And then the question is, well, does that mean we have no pain ever again?
And eventually—yes.
But on the way to the “eventually,” we'll still have negative karmas to ripen, but our understanding of their empty nature (of the three spheres of what's happening during what we're calling negative karma) will be such that the negativity can be unpleasant, but there won't be any suffering from it.
So then you would say you can have suffering without pain—if we're using pain and suffering synonymously.
And I sent Janet on this wild goose chase of trying to figure out an Arya Nagarjuna verse that was translated as pain and suffering as two different things—and we found that in the verse he was using the same word—which I think is really helpful.
At a certain level of understanding of karma and emptiness, we'll say, “I have pain, but I don't have to suffer.”
It's still implying that those sensations we're calling pain have some kind of nature of being pain in them, from them.
So to even have to clarify, or feel I need to clarify, when we understand emptiness we will have no pain anymore really means: we'll have pain, but we won't suffer—means I'm still thinking that there's some kind of essence to something that gives me pain that makes that thing not 100% empty.
It's [a] “level of school” thing, and it's fine!
We can function at Mind Only level of karma and emptiness and we will get very, very far along our path to the end of suffering—and then we'll find out ourselves, “oh, silly me, what was I thinking?”
So it's okay for us to say, “look, can you really get beyond pain or can you get beyond suffering before you get beyond pain? And how is it that just understanding emptiness can help me do that? Or does it really not happen until I've seen emptiness directly that I stopped suffering from my pain?”
And I don't know about you, but I understood the difference between pain and suffering before seeing emptiness directly, because I can make that adjustment between suffering and pain now—and I haven't seen emptiness directly.
So we're working on getting our mind to a level where we are experiencing this ripening, ripening, ripening, ripening, and then applying our understanding, “Whoa, I understand the process of what I'm experiencing right now.”
Constant shape-shifting mental image of this ocean of mind.
And now Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen says, “look for the “me” that's inside there.”
There’ll be a level where we find, “I believe my “me” is outside of that process. Actually, I think my “me” is the one doing that process.”
And it seems like that when we go, “oh, things are coming from me.” Isn't the implication that “me” is outside the projection? And it's like “me” is doing all the projection.
So we actually want to find that “me.”
There isn't one—but we believe there's one.
So we want to find that.
From this state of mind of being so sunk down into what's aware-ing, that our “analyzing me” will be able to really penetrate much more clearly [or] directly than we could do if we're trying to do that analysis from the surface level.
So most of our intellectual analysis of emptiness is at the surface level of our mind—we're being the ripples.
And we get it right in words.
We get it pretty clear that
We can understand it well enough to
Choose our behavior more wisely.
We get it.
But when we're sunk down into this
Deep in the ocean, aware of
Just that movement, and now
We take our analysis, our contemplation, and
Drive it into our object at hand,
(Which is going to be our subject side,)
We can experience much more
Than we would at the surface level,
Staying at the surface level.
So we use these constant arisings to sink deep, deep, deep, deep, deep.
And then we do what we would do at the surface level, down here at the bottom level—but our object is going to be our subject side.
It's slippery with the words.
So in every one of these bubbling up experiences, we are the subject side being aware of the object.
The “aware of the object” is the experience between—so there's the “me,” there's the arising, and there's the awareness of the arising (which is the experience between subject and object).
We're sunk down so far deep that we can be the observer observing our subject side as the object—which right there intellectually says “your subject side is not a subject side—in it, from it—if you can see it as an object.”
Yea! Right?
That right there shows you the no self nature of your subject side.
It's so sweet.
But, you know, it took me years to weave through that “Aha.”
To go: “Oh, my God, this is so simple.”
But we want to get it by, “Aha,” not by, “teacher said to see it that way.”
Right?
So planted seed—you ripened a seed to hear me say, “here's the clue to Mahamudra practice,” and we want to keep cooking it until it bubbles up and it's like, “oh, I see what she was talking about!”
Because it will be deeper at that point than what it was you just heard.
So that the practice of Mahamudra then is: “I'm the observer; I'm the passive observer; I'm the passive observer—how do I recognize the “me” part of the passive observer, without losing the passive observer?”
And don't really worry about whether you lose it or not.
How you know you've lost “passive observer” is if all of the sudden you recognize, “ah, I'm up at the ripple side of my mind again, getting distracted, following all kinds of stories. Okay. Sink back down—I lost it.”
So really, the first part is learning how to really identify this little piece of the watcher is the “me” watching.
“Find your subject side,” is what he's saying.
Just find it.
Take as long as you need in your practice (not on any given day, but [generally] in your practice) to really clearly identify:
What you mean by “me” when you say “me”?
Is it your body?
Is it your feelings?
Is it you're “discriminating between things”?
Is it your “all the other factors”?
Is it your awareness?
Even as I say it, it's like, “no, there's the “me” that has all those things.”
And we're so well trained. It's like, no, there's no such “me.”
But for this piece—let there be such a “me”.
Find it, because we believe in it so strongly.
How do I know?
Because when my “heap of form” doesn't get what makes it feel good, my “heap of feeling” does a thumbs down.
I feel it.
Heap of feeling doesn't care—thumbs up // thumbs down—who cares?
It's me who cares.
So we want to find the “me”—the mistaken “me”—first.
Because we don't believe it's really mistaken.
Me! What about me?
We're doing it in Arya Nagarjuna—the Kachik—at the end of every chapter.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nagarjuna. I agree. I agree. But what about me?!
I do so exist!
That's the “me” we're looking for in our Mahamudra.
When we're down at that subtle level, theoretically, it's really obvious—I don't know, I didn't find it really obvious for a long time.
But hopefully you will.
So, “if we understand the emptiness of my “me,” there will be no pain,” says Lord Buddha.
And my mind goes, “yeah, right, eventually.”
But technically, it can be the next moment.
Then he quotes Master Shantideva, who in his ninth chapter out of ten [has] been talking about the six perfections—and in order to even start doing six perfections, [we have to first] do our refuge, our bodhicitta and our purification to clear out obstacles and gather goodness—and he says (at the wisdom chapter), “look, you know, all of these different practices that have been given, they were all stated by Lord Buddha as being for the single goal of reaching wisdom.”
So it sounded like our perfection of giving, our perfection of patience, all of those are achievements in and of themselves—but technically, all that we do [on the] “method side” is designed to get us to, and beyond, the direct perception of emptiness.
It's all about skillful methods to help us stop gathering unkindness and gather kindness with a growing wisdom.
All of it is for wisdom.
And then lastly, he quotes Lord Atisha, who's saying about Lord Buddha, “Lord Buddha gave 84,000 mountains of teachings, and they've all been spoken in order to converge on a single thing—thusness.
All Buddha ever wanted to talk about was emptiness—but he was aware that his audience wasn't always prepared to hear about emptiness, and understand it in the way that would inspire their practice.
And so he didn't always talk about emptiness.
And in fact, he didn't even talk about emptiness at the level that he wanted to talk about it—until he had an audience who was ready for the perfection of wisdom sutras.
And even then, he had one brave Bodhisattva [that said], “wait, I was there when you taught this; and I was there when you taught that; and those two seem contradictory; which one did you really mean—because from the Bodhisattva's side, if I'm understanding [correctly], we relate to the every existing thing—and it's all suffering—but we don't relate to when Buddha says, you know, all that stuff, it really has no nature.”
And it's like, wait, that can't be right—it can't be and not be—because we misunderstood what “no nature” meant.
We thought “no nature” meant “doesn't really exist”... [as if Lord Buddha had said] I told you all that stuff, but I was using skillful means to show you that nothing really exists.
But that's not what Buddha means by no nature, is it?
That nothing really exists…?
But wait, nothing does really exist.
It depends on what you mean by “really,” you know, that slippery word.
So Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is weaving his presentation of the Gelugpa needing to go to this investigation of the self because he's being consistent with Lord Buddha's teaching “using skillful means to get us to stillness,” which is the platform from which this investigation into our “true nature of mind” can penetrate it deeply enough to affect our judgment off-cushion, so that we can choose our behavior,
Such that we will cultivate our meditation practice,
Such that we can cultivate our virtue,
Such that we can cultivate the direct perception of emptiness,
And then movement through the path of habituation afterwards.
Even diamond way practices are all simply skillful means to get us to see emptiness directly.
All of it.
So, Lobsag Chukyi Gyeltsen, in talking about emptiness, and analyzing for emptiness, he doesn't use the term STONG PA NYID. He uses DAG MED as a synonym for emptiness. DAG MED does not mean emptiness, does it?
DAG means self.
MED is a negator.
So “no self.”
And to just hear the word in English, like what does your heart do?
“Don't tell me there's no self!”
“I am too a living being!”
It's the only thing I know for sure is I am.
It really is the only thing we know for sure—that you exist.
So why is DAK MED such an important concept?
And let's take a break before we go there.
I'm going to just let the recording go.
[Roxana: Did you just say that it means that he uses it as a synonym for emptiness?]
Yes.
[Roxana: OK, thank you.]
Yes, Tom.
[Tom: I think you broke my brain this class.]
Just wait…
[Tom: I'm not 100% sure I understood the meditation correctly or not. But what I've gained from the last class, ACI class, this class, is that like things happen and they're like in a chain. Like there is always like two things that might be like opposite. Right. Or like we're doing, we're observing the body, knowing that there is no “I,” but there is an “I.” Like there is this duality of things that has to happen—I don't know if at this point I'm like, is everything just an oxymoron? Like I have, it's like a dissociative, cognitive, dissociative and non-duality always happening at the same time. So it's like, I understand I need this body to like reach enlightenment, but like this body is like not really relevant. It's like every class we're like saying, “find the me”, but there is no “me”. But then I can't find the “no me” within the “me.” And it's like this, like, so it's almost like we're always connected to each subject with like the link of the opposite of it. Right. Like this is kind of what I was gaining. There's two links of the subjects. And then there is the seer, which is also attached to the subjects. So I'm trying to understand, is it like we're trying to break that link or within that link is emptiness?]
Right. So we want to be so intellectually aware that there is nothing but that process happening.
You're calling it the link—I'm calling it the process.
We want to be so intellectually clear that there's nothing but the process happening—that [then] outside of meditation—we automatically focus on the seed planting—on the “what we're planting by what we're doing, which is influenced by why we're doing what we're doing, more than what we're doing.”
And so we're trying to get this intellectual understanding that's so infused with our identity that when we go into one of these meditations on that, we will get pushed into experiencing it directly—which shifts it from high-level intellectual that was helping us to, “oh, right, that's the way it is,” so that now we don't have to still be working with clearing out the belief in self-existence that we still had when we were at the high level of intellectual functioning from it.
So you're right, there is always this process happening that is “the link,” and when we go looking for the me, well, it's what's coming up in class next is: how do we find the “no me” if there really isn't a “me” to find, we have to find the one we think is there and then show ourselves that, “oh, it isn't there in that way.”
Because it's not true that there's no me at all.
[Tom: Yeah. That's kind of like what I've felt like through this. I mean, I've felt it in the past, but like in this meditation, I was like, you were saying those things and I was like, yeah, but there was like, that's like, I was like, I knew that it's like, I knew that there isn't, but I'm also limited to it. So I'm not sure, what am I supposed to do with it?]
There’s no “supposed to,” you just keep digging, keep digging, keep digging, and find that [aspect that says,] “wait a minute…” and sit in that for a moment—and then start again.
We're going to talk about it, because we end up on the two cliffs.
Wait, there's no “me.”
Not no “me” at all.
Wait, there is so a “me.”
The “me” that is the subject side.
Oh, wait a minute, I'm over here.
And that's where Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen goes next actually.
[Tom: I think that's like where most spiritual practices stop, like they get lost in that—like, that's what there is like the whole non duality, or like the cognitive dissonance, and it's like, they're both the same thing technically, but they both just stop at that. And I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. And I'm like, yes. I've gotten to that conclusion for like a while. And I'm like, and. I was looking at the fish and I was like, are you seeing something at the depth of the water that I'm not seeing? What is happening?]
Of course it is, right?
My understanding of the interpretation of this (what we call the experience of the “no self”). The interpretation of other traditions is, “oh, I felt the oneness with the whole universe, or I saw the face of God—because the mind that went into that experience—that's the seeds of their interpretation of the ultimate—of what's ultimate.
And then I hear those words as, “I became one with the whole universe, which is an existing thing—in it, of it—and now that I know I'm one with it…
It would change me, certainly.
But it would not give me this tool that connects behavior to creation.
To become one with the universe doesn't make you come out knowing that morality is through which we create—you come out being more loving (people say), [of] which the end result is that you're going to be more kind.
But it doesn't make the connection between intentional morality creating my world.
Science misses it too—when they get into quantum physics, they reach this “no identity,” except by way of the observer.
But they don't go, “Ohhh, then I need to be kind.”
[Tom: It's like going into a depression because it's like, nothing means anything. And like, we're all those. Or it's like pure love, but it's also. Very hard. I think I find to like, stay with it sometimes because it lacks in the moral behavior. And it's, it's, it's sometimes come across very dismissive.]
We're going to talk about it, Subhuti.
So we're back.
All right…
DAG MED is this term that's described as “no self’ or “no self nature.”
So, just think for a minute, if I ask you, “think what comes up when you say “me,” yourself…
Now, when I ask you, “what's your self nature?”
Can you even come up with an answer to that?
If I was at the grocery store taking interviews:
“Hey, what's your self nature?”
Maybe somebody would say, “I'm a child of God.”
Maybe somebody else would say, “I'm human.”
What would you say?
What's my self nature?
Our tradition says we believe we have a self nature that's independent of any other factor.
Do we agree with that?
I don't agree with that—my “me” depends on a whole lot of different stuff.
But what does it mean for me to be self existent? Highest school—what does it mean?
“Me” exists—independent of, or outside of the projections that is my experience. A self existent thing is a thing that exists independent of any other factor.
Ultimately, the other factor we're talking about, is the projections ripening into experience, experience, experience, experience.
Can we experience a projection and be outside of it?
Come on, that's ridiculous.
Can you be the projector projecting something?
That doesn't feel so ridiculous, right?
In the movies—the projector is there, the screen is there, there's that beam, right? (Doesn't happen anymore, but it used to).
So the projector was separate from the screen. I mean, honestly.
When you recognize, “oh, that's projection, that's projection,” I'm looking at things around my outer world, “that's projection,” I feel that when I say that, I still feel like I'm outside the projection—I'm seeing it like I'm outside the TV set, I'm watching the movie.
That's the “me” we're looking for—not just the physical body, obviously, I'm separate than the microphone. My physical body is separate.
But even then we're going to say, “am I really?”
So in order to recognize the lack of self nature that DAG MED refers to, we need to find the self nature that we think is there so that we can check to see: is it really there?
And it feels so slippery—I find [it] difficult to pin down (finding the self that I think is there). I have to go through this effort to find it.
Why go through the effort to find it if you're just gonna negate it?
If you can't find it in the first place, just go, “oh, yeah, it's not there,” but try that on for size the next time the boss is yelling at you.
The “no self nature me” isn't gonna all of a sudden pop up and go, “oh, boss, I love you for yelling at me, how can I help you?” It's not gonna do that even when we know in meditation that that would be the best response.
This thing about “no self,” what it's really trying to get us to understand, is not in the words—it's not even in the explanation that I'm trying to give—it's gonna be in your seeds ripening, and where you will pin it down is from this deep state of meditative stillness, in which, when you turn your watcher mind on the watcher itself, you'll come to recognize, “oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, beyond words,” and you'll be able to recognize it's arising nature, and let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go, let it go—until every time it arises you are aware of its empty nature, so that it can arise in that way.
That's what we're trying to get at.
It’s this tag [back and forth] between appearance and emptiness [meaning] that they cannot happen without each other.
Any appearance reveals the appearance’s emptiness.
All three aspects of the appearance:
Subject side,
Object side,
Interaction between.
Each factor has its own emptiness,
[And] by way of its appearance, we know it's there.
So we're gonna dig into the “subject side,” says Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen.
So we're not just going for emptiness in Mahamudra—we're going for the “no self nature” of our subject side, our “self”.
Very specific.
Because that's the one that we experience first in the direct perception of emptiness, and that's the one that is the hardest to meet, because…
Well, I'll get there.
So back to the DAG MED—the “no me,” which is technically what it means.
When we say “lack of self nature” and “lack of a self nature” and “lack of the self nature,” those have really three different connotations.
If we say (about the pen), the pen has “a lack of the self nature—the pen,” still leaves the pen open to have some other self nature, by way of what the word “the” conveys to that sentence—and I don't know how that translates in your languages, so maybe this isn't so useful.
To negate “the self nature” only negates its pen-ness—not its cylinder-ness—you would have to then say “the cylinder-ness,” and negate that.
Which is one way to reach emptiness.
But, to say we're investigating “the lack of self (of me)” isn't quite correct.
To say “a self nature,” means ([in the case of] this object)...
To deny it [possesing] “a self nature” means [to deny] any self nature [which] it could have.
So if you deny the [self nature] that you think it has, and you call that “a self nature,” and you can show yourself that it has no such self nature, you've shown yourself that it can't have any kind of self nature—just by way of the language.
“A self nature” to the pen versus “the self nature to the pen.”
Then what if we just say, “the pen has lack of self nature”?
That doesn't quite get it on the ripple side—but it's actually closer on the underneath side—except that to say that is “the appearing side” of the idea of the emptiness of the pen.
Because we can't actually talk about the actual emptiness of the pen—because it's an absence.
That's why the MED is necessary.
DAG MED—we're talking about reaching the absence—of a presence.
Of something that we believe is there—that's actually not there.
Is there anything we could ever find the appearance of, that actually has its own appearance?
No.
[Just] like everything we're going to go looking for “it’s true nature,” we are going to find that it has no nature—like that.
No nature independent of being the “appearing side” of my “object side” of “my experience”.
Because we couldn't experience it.
Can we experience something outside of our experience?
No.
Can we experience something outside of our projections?
What does your mind say?
What does your heart say?
Yes of course! I know there's like universes beyond ours because science has shown us pictures—but I'm not aware of them. I can't see them.
I believe there are things that are outside of my projection—but is it outside of my projection?
No, it's my projection for:
“science-to-have-shown-me-pictures-and-for-me-to-now-know-that-there-are-such-things-because-I've-seen-pictures”.
Hyphenate all of that.
We can't experience anything that's not our own projection.
Are we the projector outside of it doing it?
No.
If we are the “projector inside” part of it, and part of the projection changes—can we stay the same (if we're part of the projection that's changing all the time)?
No—we have to be changing all the time too, right?
And where does the “me” (the subject side) end, and the “object side” start, and [where does] the “interaction between” play out?
There are subjects.
There are objects.
That's how we make karma.
Without subjects and objects—
How would the system work?
There wouldn't be a system.
Even as Buddhas, there's
Subject side Buddha and there's
Object side Buddha, and there's
Interaction between emanations happening—
All of it bliss-void wisdom.
Yeah.
So, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen, he very succinctly (in Reading Seven from Course 13) takes us through this idea of DAK MED // no self nature, and the scripture divides it into gangsak gi dakme and chukyi dakme.
Gangsak gi dakme means “the emptiness of self.”
Gangsak is self—one’s self.
I like to use the word “the subject side”.
[For me:] I'm the subject, [and] you are the object, the pen is the object, [etc.]
For you: you are the subject, I am the object. Right? “Subject side.”
CHOS KYI DAG MED—CHOS KYI is the word for all existing things.
So the “no self nature” of all existing things, CHOS KYI,
And gangsak gi dakme, the “no self nature” of the “self.”
In CHOS KYI DAG MED, it is often also translated as the “no self nature of the parts of the person.”
Gangsak is “no self nature of the person.”
CHOS KYI DAG MED can be the “no self nature of the parts of the person.”
The parts of the person would be the [5] heaps.
Others make the case that all existing things are, in fact, part of the parts of a person—and we're not going to explore that in this class, but it's a beautiful clue to where you're “self identity” is going; to see that the distinction we make between “me and my parts” [holds hands over chest/heart] and “me and my parts” [opens arms and motions outward to all existing things].
And [that] will lead to a growing ability to do Exchanging Self and Others, a growing ability to grow our Bodhichitta better, a growing ability to grow our love and compassion…
But for right now, let’s called CHOS KYI DAG MED, “other.”
The no self nature of “other.”
And gangsak gi dakme, “self.”
The no self nature of “self.”
So now where does an “other,” who has their own perception of “self,” fall?
Is that in our gangsak gi dakme or our CHOS KYI DAG ME.
For me, the only thing in gangsak gi dakme is my “myself.”
The category of the “no self nature of other” includes other people, other sentient beings, other beings with consciousness, and other things with no consciousness—all other existences in the category of CHOS KYI, and all of those other existent things, and beings–they are also DAG MED.
They have no “self nature.”
They don't have “a self nature.”
They have no “self nature.”
Do you hear the difference?
Lama Christie said you can also translate CHOS KYI DAG MED as “the non-self-existence of all existing things,” which means:
All existing things as a huge, big category.
And the fact that nothing in that huge big category has any self nature.
CHOS KYI DAG ME can mean this “no self nature of all existing things” as a big huge concept.
She points out that we'll see that in reading other places, but that Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen is using the term CHOS KYI DAG MED as “no self nature to the parts of the person,” and then he leaves it up to us to decide whether that's limited to our personal five heaps, or if our personal five heaps are extended to include all existing things.
Gangsak gi dakme is the “no self nature of the self,” one's own self—not looking for the self nature in other things or other people—but looking for our own self nature.
The most important one to make real—to realize.
So he gives us these three steps to go through, because first we need to be able to clearly identify the gangsak—the “self”—[so that we can] then show ourselves [it] can't exist in the way that we believe it exists.
So we need to find the self—and then we need to find the belief in how that self exists—and then we look at whether that belief is true, or whether the thing that “exists” can actually exist in the way that we believe it does.
Either direction we look at it (in this third step) we'll get this glimpse of, “Oh, it doesn't exist the way I thought—but it doesn't not exist at all.”
When we hear, “oh, that self, there's no such thing!”our mind goes, “that's not true!” and it pulls it right back, because it says “that's not true—the one thing I know is [that] I exist!”
It can't be true that “no self nature” means I don't exist at all—but that's not what [they mean by] “no self nature,” it's just that [that’s what happens] when you negate your belief in a “me” (that has its own nature), and then your heart (your mind) hears somebody [come along and] say, “no there's no such thing.”
When the belief disappears, the thing it believes in disappears—we think.
But wait, the thing it believes in is a “me” that exists outside of the projections happening.
Is there such a me?
Has there ever been such a me?
Could there be a such a “me?”
No.
Do we believe there is such a me?
Yes—so it's valid (when we get close to showing our belief that it's mistaken) for the “me” that believed in the belief so strongly to get a little scared, because it's going to see directly that what I believed in since forever has been mistaken because it's believing in something that didn't ever exist, and it's been doing all its deeds to protect this thing that's non-existent—but does that mean our “me” is non-existent?
No—we're so well trained we know not to fall off that cliff. And they say that the only time we would get close to falling off that cliff of, “oh, you know, nothing matters” is when we are under a huge amount of worldly stress.
Lama Christie shared about a friend of hers who had a really, really, high level of understanding and experience with emptiness and dependent origination—[this friend] went through an experience where she lost a loved one [after] having struggled to resolve some things [with them] before they died—and they died before she could get there (before she could get it resolved).
And her grief and regret were just so huge that the reaction, in her seed ripening, was:
“You can't change your karma, you can't help people, and that this just isn't… you know, that none of this works.”
She got so blocked by her grief that no amount of going through the pen, and explaining the seeds, could help kick her out of it.
She has since kicked out of it (she's a wonderful teacher), but it can happen that our seeds shift for some reason (usually it's a big major thing), but we can lose our seeds for our awareness (it is a little scary), and they say that the only time you fall off that cliff of, “oh, if-the-world-isn't-the-way-I-think-then-it-isn't-at-all-so-nothing-matters” is when we get wrong teachings, misunderstood teachings on emptiness, or we're under such an emotional burden that we can't hold the wisdom that we've grown so far.
In my own experience, I recognize these really subtle flips of my own mind as I'm getting to this impossibility of the “me” I think is there that I feel [like] it's not there at all. Even when I do it with outer objects, and I get close to the “oh, there is no pen other than the one that I'm ripening, if I stop ripening it, etc.” it goes to nothing.
And it isn't really falling off the cliff of “if things don't exist the way they look, they don't exist at all,” but I feel my mind go there (to something's emptiness) meaning it's non-existent—and as long as we still have that (even subtle) belief that something's emptiness means it's non-existent, our mind, our heart, will be scared to let us get all the way to the direct perception of emptiness—because it will mean you're going into a direct experience of not existing at all, and that's not what our emptiness reveals to us. But if we believe that's what it's going to reveal, we're not going to let ourselves go into that deep meditation that will help us to glimpse that.
So that's a different avenue through which we convince ourselves that there's no such thing as non-existence, but it's worth exploring if you feel this sense of (as you're getting deeper into the emptiness of “you”) you're starting to get scared.
It's a good sign that you're getting deeper and closer, actually—but it's going to kick us out.
So, if you meet it, then at another time go and look you know “why am I still why am I having this deep gut reaction that if I'm empty I don't exist at all, instead of the deep reaction of my emptiness reveals my all potential to be anything for anybody at any moment?” In which case we would be so eager to get into that.
It's not by choice—all of it’s by seeds ripening.
So, in order to get to this level where this contemplation of our “me” // “what me do I think is there?” // “how is it that I'm believing in that me?” … Can those two exist in that way and be consistent with experience to find what gets negated, and what gets negated when we see that that thing we believe as existing independent of the projections ripening it is mistaken, we recognize “Ah! The true nature of me is the not that.
The true nature of me is the not that.
We don't want to [say that] “the true nature of me is a something,” we want, “the true nature of me is an absence of something.”
And [then] it gets slippery again—to find and rest in an absence, when every moment of forever we've been in presence’s. All of those appearances, no matter how subtle, they are all happening on the appearance level of our experience.
In order to be the appearance that we experience them as they have to have dakme. They have to have no nature of their own that allows them to be whatever my seeds ripen them as for me.
So is there a pen that I experience?
Yes—while I'm experiencing it.
Is there a pen while I'm not experiencing it?
[shrugs] Right? You can't really answer.
So same for our “me.”
Is there a “me” that we experience?
Yes.
Is there a “me” there, independent of my experience?
Crazy.
Is there ever not an experience of your “me?”
Technically even when you are knocked out with anesthesia there is still [a] subtle [version of] “me.”
Even when you're going through the death process there is still “me,” [it’s] probably not so subtle at that point, because at one point that's all you've got—is your “me.” And you're even losing the me you thought you had—which is an opportunity, if you're well trained, to find the end of the “me” you thought you had, and the “no self-nature me” that you've always been, and use that experience to reach the emptiness, or direct experience, of your gangsak gi dakme.
You can do it by dying—but only if you're really really well trained, in which case that experience isn't experienced as dying at all.
It's something different.
So we don't rely on dying to get to the clear light—unless we're really really well trained.
We do it in Mahamudra practice instead—and then that's what makes us well trained, so that we'll be doing Mahamudra whether we're flying through the windshield of the car, or laying on our cancer deathbed, or being at a picnic… we're still “Mahamudra-ing” because we've made it this habit (not that you're [necessarily] in meditation, you know that) but [that you’re] aware of this constant shape shifting “me” that is creating [everything we experience].
“Moment by moment this is my creation, my past creation.”
We'd be offering, we'd be sharing, we'd be giving, we'd be outflowing as a result of our experiences of gangsak gi dakme.
Intellectual ones are enough to get this shift in awareness of our “self.”
The direct perception makes it so [that] no more belief [is] ever planted.
Intellectual belief means [that] you know it's planted, but it's getting less strong, less strong, less strong—still really helpful in transforming our identity of “self.”
Okay, so we get down deep; when we're ready, we turn our “watcher” on to “the watcher;” we bring up our subject side “me.” First, we try to identify, “how is it that this me exists? How is it that I think this me exists?” Really let your analytical mind go through some explanation of “you.”
Then, how does this “self” appear to me right now? That [question] you won't be able to answer so much in words (I can't, anyway) but just get this strong feeling of this “me” appearing in some very specific way.
What makes you, you, versus somebody else?
There's some dividing line in your awareness.
Then, the third piece is:
What am I grasping on to?
What is it that I'm believing is it's “in it from it?”
What is it I'm believing is its own identity?
It's like a circular process. We call up the “me”---something's going to appear to our mind whether it's a visual image, or just a thought, or a feeling—you identify that.
“Me.”
Please, “me.”
I'm looking at “me.”
I'm being “me,” now.
How does that naturally appear?
In another class Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen says, “if you're having trouble finding the “me,” a good time to recognize it is when somebody accuses you of something you didn't do.”
So if you have to, [insert] a little time-out in your Mahamudra—put yourself in a situation, for example, somebody says “Janet you stole my wallet!”
And Janet's mind goes, “I did not!”
Grab that “I.”
And then go back into your Mahamudra.
Forget the scenario, just grab that “me.” [It’s the “me” that says] “I did not do that!”
Then, be intentionally aware of “how do I believe it exists?”
Our belief is that I'm my own “me.”
I'm never anybody else.
I'm always “me.”
Even when I'm not “Sarahni me,”
I was some other “me,”
It's always “me,” “me,” “me,”
And I'm responsible for “me!”
Give all your reasons for why your “me” is real.
It is real but not the way we think.
Why it's real in the way we think it's real.
It's hard because we're so well trained, we don't even want to do it. But if you get upset when somebody blames you for something you didn't do, then we're still holding to our “me” in that wrong way—in which case we want to be able to identify it, so that we can negate it—so that we can show ourselves, “oh my gosh, that's a big mistake.”
Yes it exists—but only as this “projected ripening from past beliefs that it exists.”
So every moment we can show ourselves that that belief is mistaken, and that “me” doesn't exist in that way at all, we can glimpse our dakme [our gangsak gi dakme—our absence of that “me;” our absence of any “me” that could exist in that way—an absence of any “me” that exists independent of whatever's ripening “me” at the moment—my own ripenings “me” and other beings ripenings (of what I am for them).
We make this distinction, [that] I am “me,” in “me” and whatever I am for them—that's their problem. But as we start to extend that line, I want to try to be a “for them that's uplifting” That's helpful.
I can't do it—I can't make them see me that way, I can only plant the seeds for others to see me that way in the future by way of how I behave.
So, our investigation of our “me” starts with: “find the one that we're so strongly believing is there.” Take the time to get it clear, and then you investigate it like you investigate the pen thing.
Any favorite emptiness meditation on yourself that you want to do, you apply (from this deep state of meditative awareness) [the idea] that everything we're doing is this “bubbling up and nothing but.”
So as we're doing our analysis, because we're doing it from Mahamudra point of view, we are aware that our whole thought process is this “aware-ing nature” and “empty of self nature,” as we're showing our own self it's [own] appearing nature—which reveals to us that our “self” can't have any nature of its own—because otherwise it's appearing nature couldn't be changing.
So that's the other clip, that when we say, “oh, I do so exist! I have my own nature.” If we existed with that own nature the way we believe, then the ramification would be, “I would be the same ‘me’ whether I'm perceiving Geshe Michael give the Wisdom in Time of Chaos [a recent teaching that Geshe Michael gave in Mexico City], or whether I'm putting gas in the car, or whether I'm sitting in meditation—my “me” would be the same.
But now wait, my “me” is the same—no wait—it's not the same!
Do you see how slippery it gets?
I am the same “me,” but I'm never actually the same “me” two moments in a row.
How can you be the same, and not the same, at the same time?
Don't you love the logic classes?
Are we one, or are we many? All of these [concepts] come into play from our deeper investigation of our own self nature.
So this part of the meditation will get very cognitive for a while, but you're still on this level of “this is all ripening stuff and nothing but,” so it's planting seeds in a different way than if we were doing it from the surface level—that's why we go to the trouble to get deep down in.
When we get to that conclusion: “Oh, my gosh, my subject side is always there but never the same two moments in a row—and that's its appearing nature—and in order to be like that, its own nature is absent, empty, available, find a word [that makes sense to you], and then make sure that when you use that word, you use it to sink into the “un-ness,” the absence of what you thought was there.
When we put a word on[to], “oh, my true nature is available.” It's helpful, but it still puts us on the appearing side.
“Oh, my true nature is…”
I like [the phrase], “will the real me please stand up?” [gestures indicating that she has located the “real me”] And then [the illusion] starts up again.
We can only hold it for a fraction of an instant at first, and then you go back and get there again—”Okay, “me,” changing, changing, changing… Will the real me please stand up?”
[pauses] Starts up again.
Every instant of reaching that unutterable feeling is a glimpse // is planting seeds to get there.
So again, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen gives these three [instructions]:
First, call up the “me.”
Second, identify what you think is there—how it's appearing, and how you're believing in it as independent of the projections. Find that.
Then check, is that possible?
Do your analysis.
Come to the conclusion.
When you pop out of the conclusion, check—did I fall off the [cliff] of, “oh, so it doesn't exist at all?” or the cliff of, “well, then even my ‘no self nature’ has its own nature.”
Whoops—back to the middle.
When we get in there, we'll see how our mind reacts to protect its own self nature. It's not really our mind doing it. It's our ego, right?
Our belief in the self existent me does not want to let go, so it's going to [push us off the cliff of], “hey, you're saying I don't exist at all? You're nuts!” or it's going to say, “See?! My no self nature has its own nature, and that's my real nature!”
Oops.
Back and forth and back and forth…
It's just like angel devil teachings—also by Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen.
So, that text is telling us what he went through in his Mahamudra meditation. He met the devil, and the angel, and he had this conversation that went on for, I don't know, 500 pages. Mine's going to probably take 2,000 pages. But it's fun!
So, Roxana, you had your hand up but I was on a roll, so please forgive me.
[Roxana: Oh, thank you Dear Lama, I think you clarified before it’s just that I'm taking notes and I was writing as you were speaking, and you said the thought process is the aware-ing nature showing us our self nature, but that's when we're thinking self existently—you just rephrased that, right?]
Right—any appearing nature can also show us our “un-nature” by way of the fact that our appearing nature changes, changes, changes.
If we had our own nature, it would be our own nature every moment, because by “own nature,” it means “unaffected by other things.” So, yes, our appearing nature shows us our mistaken nature, and it shows us the fact that we don't have to be mistaken by it when we understand that within every appearance is the revelation of our no self nature—because now I can be this, and now I can be that, and now I can be that—so my own nature has to be an un-nature—a dakme—an absence of something.
[Roxana: Thank you. That was that big doubt that I had, but as you were speaking, everything got clear. Thank you so much.]
Okay, so Panchen Lama points out [that] there are three different ways that we could be thinking of “me” when we say, “that's me.”
We could be thinking, “oh, that ‘me’ exists in truth.” Meaning [that] there's the real me.
He said, we could also be thinking, “oh, there's the ‘me’ that lacks any true existence that is merely the ripening projection of this moment.
Or we could be saying, “there's me,” without characterizing it in either of those two other ways. The simple me.
We had this in ACI, but maybe not yet—it comes later in Guide to Bodhisattva's Way of Life.
That third way—it’s just “me,” he says, that is a nominal perception “me.”
Nominal perception means a valid perception, and the valid perception establishes something as existing.
So when we say “me,” it does exist—because it's being perceived by a valid perception.
We do exist.
That's proof that we exist.
Our valid perception, “me.” The simple “me.”
That's the one that, when we are in our meditation, we invite to show up. “Will the simple “me,” just “me,” valid perception, please stand up?” There it is in meditation.
Now, we look at it like [we’re] looking at the two husbands in the kitchen.
There's a husband that does exist.
There's a husband that doesn't exist.
So that “me” that pops up—there's a “me” that does exist, [and] there's a “me” that doesn't exist.
The “me” that does not exist (the husband that does not exist) is the one that's yelling at me for no reason at all. “I didn't do anything.”
That one's not there.
Is the husband there yelling at me? Yes.
Is the one yelling at me independent of my seeds ripening, making them yelling at me? No.
The one that's not there is the one that's yelling independent of what I brought to the party.
“Yeah, but I didn't do anything, I just walked through the door!”
It's like, no, you did do something. You yelled at the kids (in that scenario).
So here's my “me,” my simple “me,” valid existing thing—am I holding it to be something that is validly existing in it, from it, independent of my seeds ripening?
When I say it like that—no, that's ridiculous.
But do I hold to that? I have to admit—yes, I do.
The other way we can relate to that simple me is to realize, “oh, that simple me is nothing but seeds ripening, my true nature is the absence of that—so it can be what's arising in this moment, in that moment.”
Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen says that one—that second way of perceiving me—that will only arise in the mind of a well-trained Mahayana Gelugpa Buddhist. Not fair to say Gelugpa only, but a well-trained-in-emptiness-and-karma-person.
It won't just occur to us (as ignorant beings) to question our self-existence.
So he tells us—”check, when your ‘me’ comes up, recognize valid perception me, that one's there, that one exists.”
Does it exist in it from it?
If it did, everybody would know it—and they don't.
If it did it would always be the same—and it isn't.
It can't be like that.
Check your mind.
“Oh, so do I not exist at all?”
No, that's silly, I am having the valid perception “me.”
Does it exist in the way that I think?
No, that's silly because that's not how I'm experiencing “me.”
What else could I be?
Wait... Right?
So we know the punchline: my true nature is not that, and it is valid perceived me, and so it has to have no nature of its own so it can be whatever I'm perceiving it as this moment, this moment, this moment, etc.
We can jump to the punchline or [we] can really stop and investigate:
“No, I do have a nature of my own because I do things.”
You'll take yourself through the six different flavors of emptiness and dependent origination if you take the time.
So don't take the time all in one session, but as you're investigating, what happens when you say there's no self nature “me,” what pops up?
What rejection of that pops up in your mind?
“No, no, no, no, there's some consistent thing because it's always me. I don't turn into Carol all of a sudden.”
Your mind will show you these different levels of belief and emptiness in karma in this experience of long term Mahamudra career meditation.
Our goal is to find our belief in what we call the “self existent me,” the me that's independent of the next seed ripening.
There's no such thing.
When we can show ourselves that in meditation without getting scared by it, we will [be] better able to recognize [that] there's no me that needs all of that protection in my outer life.
It won't happen all at once, but it will give us the space that we need to choose our behaviors more kindly in the face of unpleasant[ness] so that our meditation will grow deeper, so that our wisdom will grow higher, so that our behavior will grow kinder, right? We get on that cycle.
All right, we have one more class from this course 13—and so I would like to have class next [Tuesday], even though it's hot on the heels of Geshe Michael’s [retreat], so that we can finish this before we go away. So if you have to miss it, it'll be recorded.
So, [we’re doing the] same meditation that we did two weeks—going deeper.
So thank you for the extra minutes, I’m really going into debt.
So, remember that person we wanted to be able to help?
We have contributed to the goodness from which they will end their suffering someday—and that's a great, great goodness, so please be happy with yourself.
Think of this goodness like a beautiful glowing gemstone that you can hold in your hands.
Recall your own precious holy being—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 then 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 being everywhere.
See them all filled with happiness.
And may it be so.
And I need to correct myself—I promised Tom that I would lead us through a full meditation from preliminaries to Mahamudra preliminaries to Mahamudra. That's what we'll do next class, and then I'll save the end class from this course as the bridge into the next one in September.
All right, have a nice week, I will see you next [Tuesday].
Yes, Tom?
[Tom: Well, now I'm frustrated because I already made the conclusion of this class yesterday (it took me a few hours to) and now I'm going to have to wait like till September to figure out what's the next thing to do with it. And I was wondering, so what I've gathered from this session is that our practices are almost like a short and long term so like if I'm standing by the beach, the waves are breaking on the beach are like the afflictions. It's the emotions. It's the attachments. It's whatever rising. Pretty close to me. And just like focus with their eyes. Like, that's what come close. And that's what I'm seeing. And I'm not seeing the farther of the ocean. I don't see the big waves that might be building and coming toward me. And I can be very aware of standing there and observing the beach and the waves. But. Very much struggling to looking farther. If it's because I'm limited. Because my eyesight or my mental affliction or because those. Emotions are so fast and so much. But then we're trying to learn to let them pass without the attachment. But then they're going to be a big wave somewhere that coming. And I need to write that wave of emotion. Because that wave could be a wave of.Compassion of wisdom. Of something. And so it's like I need bifocal glasses to do both at the same time. All the time. Right. And then. And I can't really get rid of the close waves. Like that's the me that. You know, like that. Even though I'm like, I, I'm aware that it's not here. I am aware that this means nothing in that sense of. The nature of its own. Right. Like to myself, at least. But I also know that this is necessary to be.]
That's a great analogy, and we're wanting to be in the space of “it doesn't really matter what wave is coming at me // flowing over me…
My response (because of my wisdom // compassion) is always going to be a positive response. It's always going to be a response propelled by loving compassion—for subject, object, and interaction between.
When we have that wisdom state of heart, with bodhicitta, it won't matter whether it's a little ripple wave, or it's a huge tsunami that's flowing over us, it's all opportunity for more kindness.
We shift from, “how do I react?” to, “I'm just creating, creating, creating, creating, creating”---and this is the ripenings of past creating, right?
It just this mind shift.
I'm not in it all the time, but when we are it's really lovely.
[Tom: So we're surfing the waves. The close ones are usually shittier. The nicer one out in the ocean. So in short term, I can say like strengthen your body. Strengthen your mind to recognize those. Short. Experience. Appearing waves, whatever. Seeds show up. But they're not going to be what's going to take me farther.]
Right, but they are opportunities to plant the seeds that will take you further.
[Tom: Now we have to wait till September!]
No, you get to explore, explore, explore.
[Tom: I might have some new conclusion.]
Yeah, that'd be fine.
[Tom: I spent like five hours yesterday, and like I wrote it down and like I worked it out, and then you said the same thing all class. I was like, “and what's the thing?”
Yeah, the conclusion is, you know, “I'm love. I'm made of love.”
[Tom: But it's the how to utilize it. That's what's missing for me sometimes. Because you're like, okay, I know I'm not the body. I'm not, I'm not this. But then like, we're using all those tools. But like, at what point that tool is like, that really doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Like, that's like, how do we make the leap from the tool to doing the thing?]
Well, you're using the tool to do the thing.
[Tom: But I also don't feel like I'm getting to the thing. That's what I'm saying. It's like, I don't know if it's like time for a new tool. It's time to like sharpen the tool. I don't know.]
Yeah, just keep using it. Keep using it. Your analogy is great.
[Tom: It's a lot of English words. I have to find a different way to apply them that I can connect to better.]
Yeah, good. Okay, thank you.
*************
Link to Audio: Mahamudra - Class 23
There is no vocab list for this class.
*************
Introduction
Welcome back, we are Mahamudra class—it's July 22, 2025.
Our purpose today is to go through the Mahamudra practice from preliminaries to where we've gotten so far, which has finally been reaching the place where we look for the me—the subject side—and do some analysis.
So of course, it's going to take me longer to talk us through this than it would take you to do it—but you will have the sequence that you then use in a review meditation for a while until you learn it, and then stop listening to it, stop reviewing it, and do it, right?
Run it.
And when you run it, you can vary the amount of time that you take for the different sections, according to your day.
Spend more time on your preliminaries on a day that you just can't get quiet, or can't get woken up, and on days that it's like, “whoa, I'm on it,” do your preliminaries—but don't hang out. Keep going so that you have more time to go into the meditation section.
So, I don't remember when we learned the ninefold breath practice, did we learn “hollow body three channels” in this class?
We did.
Okay. All right, then.
So I'm not going to set a timer, but one would.
And then you choose if [you’re going to] set a timer for how long your preliminaries are going to take you, and then [set] a second one for how long your actual meditation time is going to go, or if you set a timer for the whole thing, depending on how your program (your practice) goes.
But typically, you'd set your timer at the beginning, and then it's one of those things that you're going to forget.
So you know, it's great to have a timer that has multiple timers on it, so that you don't have to poke it again.
I'm not going to do that—I'm just going to watch my computer time to move us along.
But you would set your timer.
And then the timer you set needs to include the time it takes for you to set your posture, to come to the breath—[so] you [need to] map that whole [timing] thing out.
*************
Alright, so are you ready?
So first things first—you set your posture, wiggle it around till you find that place of balance where your spine will stay upright.
Feel where your sits bones meet whatever you're sitting on—give them a little push down so you get a strong feeling of them, and then let go of the push.
As you scan up the body, it helps to lift your sternum a bit, which drops your shoulders, raises your head occiput (the back of the head/neck).
And as you come back to the top, turn down the outside scan, inviting everything to relax—face, shoulders, arms, chest.
***30 seconds***
[And when] you have everything nicely relaxed and still propped up, scan back up again, raising that inner energy.
***15 seconds***
And bringing your attention to that being who, for you, is a manifestation of ultimate love, ultimate compassion, ultimate wisdom.
See them there with you, gazing at you with their unconditional love, smiling at you with their holy great compassion, their wisdom shining into you.
And then they remind us to think of someone who is hurting in some way.
Feel how much you would like to be able to help them.
Recognize [that] everything we try falls short.
But we know in our hearts, there's a way to become one who can help them stop their suffering forever someday.
And we know that's what we're meant to become.
And so we establish our Wish, and recognize our need for the Lamas guidance, the Lamas help.
And so we turn our minds back to that precious holy being.
We know they know what we need to know.
They know what we need to learn yet, what we need to do yet.
We know they can't help us until we ask—and so we ask, please, please help me, please teach me, please guide me.
Of course they agree.
Our gratitude arises—we want to offer them something exquisite.
And so we think of the pure 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 a blanket of flowers.
The Great Mountain,
The Four Lands,
Wearing a jewel
Of the Sun, and 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 meditation 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 meditation 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 meditation and the rest,
May all beings reach total enlightenment
For the sake of every single other.
Check your body posture again.
Bring your attention to your breath.
***15 seconds***
Use watching your breath, at this point, to simply trigger the turning inwards.
We'll watch 10, but for your own practice, you establish how many “breath watches” it takes to turn your meditating-mind on, and your outerworld-mind off.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
And we'll start the preliminaries—bring to mind that precious holy being, again.
Admire something specific about them.
Feel your aspiration to become like them—be specific.
***30 seconds***
Tell them.
***30 seconds***
Feel your gratitude to them for what you learned from them so far.
Your gratitude to them for what they will—how they will—continue to help us.
And from that gratitude, make them an offering.
It can be any kind of worldly offering, or imagined offering—but what they like best is to hear something about how you used something that they taught you.
***1 minute***
See them receiving your offerings—so happy.
So happy with you.
We may think our efforts are so puny, but they are like a proud parent of the kindergartner.
***15 seconds***
You feel so safe with them—so loved by them.
And so you can open your heart to some mistake that's been made, some negative seed that you planted recently.
Clean your heart.
Tell them what happened.
Review your refuge to grow your regret.
I'll give us a minute or two to do that.
***1 minute***
We understand it's all driven by that big mistake—that big misunderstanding.
We understand how that misunderstanding that drives the mistake, blocks our ability to make much progress on our path.
We understand that our feeling of regret damages those mental seeds—damages that belief that we're right to blame the other to justify our action.
And out of our regret, we decide to do an antidote—and we can establish as the antidote: doing this meditation.
And we can establish as an antidote: the opposite way to respond in the next similar situation.
***15 seconds***
So think of being in that situation again, and see that you having the same feeling—recognizing the blaming the other, and choosing a different response.
***45 seconds***
Lastly, establish your power of restraint.
Something that's achievable.
***30 seconds***
Now see that holy being, and they say, “Well done! That's all cleaned out,” so that your heart opens to being able to rejoice.
Tell them of some goodness, kindness, you saw someone else do recently.
Tell them of some kindness, some goodness, you did recently.
***30 seconds***
Think of someone you don't care for so much, and find one good thing about them, and tell [your] holy being that [thing].
Rejoice in the good qualities that you see in that holy being.
Rejoice in all your good seeds.
***15 seconds***
Now ask that precious, holy being to please stay close to you.
Ask them to continue to teach you formally, informally.
Ask them to help you [to] be aware of them teaching you—guiding you.
***15 seconds***
Ask that they live a long, long, long time.
***15 seconds***
And then dedicate these preliminaries.
You can dedicate the preliminaries to this meditation being your antidote force, and more.
Then you can shift and wiggle, if you need to at this point—if you don't need to, you don't have to.
But you go back and check that body, to release any tension that's built up.
To check its position.
To set it up right.
Body scan, relaxed—inner energies rising.
And then again, turn your mind to that precious holy being.
Ask them to bless your mind.
They agree, and they remind us to do the hollow body and the nine fold breath as preparation for Mahamudra—meeting our own mind face-to-face.
So to do that, we recall our motivation—that person who's suffering in my world.
I want to help them, really help them, to get free.
I'm doing this meditation practice to plant the seeds to become a being who can help them get free.
They are depending upon me.
And with that, you bring your attention to your breath.
***30 seconds***
And then bring your attention to this body—this thing we call “body.”
From your meditating vantage point, be aware of its edge—its outer boundary, then look inside.
Start from inside your crown—and you are astonished to see that it's totally clear in there.
Some beautiful color.
Hollow space.
Scan down.
Coming to recognize, “oh my gosh, everywhere I look, there's simply this beautiful, clear, hollow space.”
***45 seconds***
Down your torso, down your legs…
Turn and come back up…
And as you come back up into the torso, you see, “oh my gosh,” there's this beautiful channel going up the middle, side-to-side, a little in front of where your spine used to be, front to back, going straight up.
When it reaches your crown, it curves forward and down, and ends there—where your eyebrows would meet if they went across.
And then you notice, “oh my gosh,” on either side of that is another channel, smaller—the milky white one on the left, dark red one on the right.
They go up from our nostrils, paralleling that central channel—up and around and down.
And a little below the level of our navel, they curve around, and the right one inserts itself into the left one.
***15 seconds***
So when you have that picture, you begin your ninefold breath.
Slowly, gently—moving your awareness with the inhale, in the right channel, which means in your right nostril, just up, around, and down.
By the time you're ready to exhale, you're down there below the navel—you move your awareness with the breath going into the left channel, up, and out.
Nice, gentle, slow.
…
Then go back in the right.
…
And out the left, at your own pace.
…
In the right again.
…
At the end of that exhale, out the left.
…
The breath returns in the left.
…
Up around and down, now the left channel is inserted into the right one.
And your exhale goes up the right—up and out.
…
Back in the left.
…
Out the right.
…
In the left.
…
And out the right.
…
Then the breath comes in both at the same time—up around and down.
…
Both channels now insert into the central one, so your exhale goes up that central channel—and out it's opening at your forehead.
…
Then the breath goes back in the two sides.
…
Exhale up and out [of the] central channel.
…
One more time.
…
With this last exhale, as the breath finishes exhaling from the central channel, bring your focus of attention again to that precious holy being.
Recall their good qualities.
Feel your reliance, your devotion upon them—your aspiration.
Ask yourself again, “why am I doing this?”
Because there’s suffering in my world, and it's coming from my own karmic seeds—my own mistaken understanding—and I want to stop it.
I want to stop perpetuating it.
We know our interactions with others imprint our mind and become our experience.
That holy being teaches us, guides us, even is for us, the circumstances we need to learn, to grow, to change.
Take your refuge in them over, and over, and over.
Please help me.
Please help me.
Please help me.
I'm willing to change.
Show me.
***15 seconds***
And finally, they rise.
They shrink.
They turn to face the same direction as you, and they come to sit on your crown.
Feel them there.
And they pour their blessings into you.
***30 seconds***
And with this, we are ready to begin our Mahamudra.
Do a quick body scan, see if it needs any adjustment.
Then again, set it like a rock.
***15 seconds***
And bring your focus of attention to what we call the opening of your nostrils—to what we call the breath.
You can choose one or the other—wherever you sense that breath the most clearly, focus your attention there.
***15 seconds***
No changing, no controlling.
Turning on your “watcher” state of mind.
Turning on focus, clarity, intensity.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
Now turn that focus on to that awareness of outer sounds.
You know the process—the sound and the story that goes with it, that is the mind going out, following the story, becoming more keenly aware.
So we don't even follow the story.
So the outer sounds don't take us out anymore.
***15 seconds***
You drop down and back to inner sounds.
Same process.
Becoming more subtly aware.
***15 seconds***
And so no longer interested.
Dropping in deeper.
Your “watcher,” now watching anything arising:
Any thought,
Any sound,
Any sensation,
Any image,
And the story that starts up—watcher just letting go.
***30 seconds***
Back to your watcher—is it watching or following?
Correct [it].
Has it lost its fascination?
Crank it up, if you can.
***30 seconds***
Reach this place of “the vast landscape of mind” or “deep ocean of mind.”
Simple, subtle, shifts, shifts, subtle movement, ripenings.
***45 seconds***
Check again.
***1 minute 30 seconds***
This is the aware-ing—the appearing nature of what we call “our mind.”
***30 seconds***
Keep your observer keen, bright—and use a tiny part of it to now look for the one who is being the observer.
Who, what, where is that watcher, watching?
***30 seconds***
The watcher is now that which is being watched.
***15 seconds***
Is that watcher there, independent of what arises to its awareness?
***15 seconds***
Is it there first, and then something arises and passes?
Then, is it still there after the arising is gone?
Has the watcher changed?
If not, how could it have a new awareness?
If it does change with every awareness, then which one is the real watcher?
If “watcher” depends on the object of awareness arising, what is there in between objects of arising?
***15 seconds***
Is there ever an instant of “no object arising?”
Is that even possible?
***45 seconds***
Who is even asking these questions?
Will the real me please show yourself?
Will the watcher that's not part of the projection please stand up?
***45 seconds***
Of course nothing stands up—and then we lose it.
And so we start again—as far back in the sequence as you need to go to establish the watcher watching.
Arisings and nothing but…
The appearing nature of mind…
***15 seconds***
And taking a piece of that to investigate, who is the watcher?
Do your investigation to find its appearing nature—part of every projection.
And so it's constantly changing nature.
And so it's no nature of its own.
And hold that conclusion.
***45 seconds***
And when you lose it, go back and get it again.
We'll stay two more minutes—making this shift between the appearing nature of mind and it's empty nature.
***1 minute 15 seconds***
The “no me” but not “no me” at all.
We're at the doorway to reach that.
So let it all go.
Return your awareness to that holy being on your crown.
They have been pouring their blessings into you.
Feel your gratitude for their assistance.
Think of the goodness of what you've just done.
Be happy with yourself, no matter what you think was the quality of your session.
Think of it as a beautiful glowing gemstone [that] you can hold in your hand, and offer it to that holy being.
See them accept it and bless it, and they carry it with them right down into your heart.
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.
That dedication includes every one of your own goals, and all the goals of others.
And you can bring your attention back to your physical body, in your physical room.
Move and wiggle, open your eyes, take a stretch.
*************
Not so hard…?
[laughs]
Yeah, it is hard.
It takes longer to do the preliminaries than it does to do the practice—and we understand why, really…
I mean, why [is] the system built like that?
Because the seeds we're planting building up into the meditation are probably more powerful than the meditation itself (at the level we might be in our meditation practice).
So it's not so much that the meditations that we do this morning are going to help my meditation, you know, that comes the minute next.
But our preliminaries are:
Gather goodness, clear out yuck,
Gather goodness, clear out yuck,
Gather goodness, clear out yuck.
And then, with all that “gather goodness, clear out yuck”—you actually don't need to spend so much time in the meditation, because you[‘ve] spent [so much time doing] all of this “gather goodness, clear out yuck” stuff.
Eventually the preliminaries will get shorter, and then the danger is, “I don't need my preliminaries anymore.”
And it's like, yeah, you know, probably when you're nirvana-cized and better, you won't need your preliminaries—but I anticipate that you'll do them just for fun.
You know, you don't have anything to clear—but it's still fun to do your “gather goodness.”
So anyway, that gives you an outline—you don't need to use my exact words, of course. What we're trying to get is this heart feeling, that inspiration…
We can do our meditations all up here [places hands on head] I've done them for years, it's like being a walking head.
And it helps.
But it helps so much more if we have something that makes our heart go [opens hands in front of heart], “I want to do this, [opens hands in front of heart] I really want to do this.”
It'll help us go deeper, and it'll help us [in getting to] “be” in this vast place of just the movement happening.
And if it's all up here [points to head] the tendency is either to get distracted by it, or to lose interest.
It's like, “what good is all this stuff without the stories?”
Right? The juicy stories of how I'm going to help people with it.
And that's where my mind would always go—it would get into that conclusion and then it's like, “wow, how am I going to share this with somebody else?”
It wouldn't sit in the conclusion—it would start yammering about it, explaining it to myself, so I could write it down later, and it's like, “shut up in there!”
But when we're down here [places hand over heart] doing it out of this deep love, compassion, inspiration—when we get from this part of the mind [moving fingers and making ripple motions with hands] to the part that has to be there [puts hands together in a smooth and more subtle way] the “un” part that has to be there too—it's like some shift happens that's a bigger shift when we're doing it out of the “emotional component,” than when we're doing it out of just “head component.”
When we get to the “un” part—the no “me,” the “no mind,” right—it's so critical to not fall off that cliff…
So you don't take beginners into Mahamudra practice this deep.
We need to understand that emptiness doesn't mean nothingness, it doesn’t mean everything disappears—it's the explanation for how it is [that] there can be a mind that's shifting, shifting, shifting, ever changing, and yet still “be.”
I mean, when I say that, I still feel the contradiction—it's like, “no, I have to be there first, and then something pops up.”
That's what it is to be a watcher.
I'm there [holds up left hand in mudra in front of heart and keeps it still]
Stuff goes by [makes flashing movements with right hand]
And wait [makes more flashing movements] wait, does it?
Right? Isn't the watcher? [takes left hand away and now just making flashing movements with the right hand].
Well then who's there for the next one to come by?
So if “watcher” is following, it's not the watcher—it's the follower.
“Watcher” really does stay put, but then does it mean there's stuff going by?
Not really.
It's watcher… [makes hand movement with both hands] Right?
So it's not really a watcher there at all. Is it?
There's just the watcher side of… words fail… of the what's there… or what's possible… or I don't know how to say it…
In class this weekend (the last Geshe Michael class) he was talking about that term SNANG STONG.
SNANG STONG means you have the appearing side, and the STONG side; the SNANG side and the STONG side—and son of a gun they go together, right?
They are “union of the two.”
They are “you can't have one without the other.”
And in Nagarjuna class we’re repeatedly trying to explore: which comes first?
Because in experience:
I'm there first, something happens.
I'm there first, I have desire.
I'm there first…
And it's like, how can I be there first?
How can anything be there first?
But wait, if there's not something there first,
Well, then what is it?
And we don't have this ability to just go, [shrugs and smiles] Right?
What's the pen when all the puppies and all the people go away? [shrugs and smiles]
[shrugs again more enthusiastically] Right?
Can you identify with yourself as: [shrugs intensely] Nothing yet…?
Not nothing at all, but nothing yet.
Like, our minds can't get it—but our heart can kind of get it.
And then my mind goes, “oh, I need a word. I need a word to explain that—just to myself.”
No. You don't need a word.
Just be it.
Right?
So I didn't use that term in the meditation: sink down into that “I can't find my me…”
Right—be that.
And if you reach [the point of] getting close to that, and you get a little scared—it's a good sign.
But the “being scared” will pop us out—and then you go back and see how deep you can get to make this shift from “me the watcher.”
I'm watching the “me.”
There's still a sense of a “me” doing that that's separate.
But when you're really in there, in the sense of “I really am the me who's exploring the me,” and we get close to that “me’s” no self nature—it's going to go “Ahh!” [makes a panicked face] until it understands.
So we touch in, and it goes “Ahh!” and it jumps out.
And then we touch in, and it jumps out.
And as we practice, and work with it, the promise is that at some point, rather than meeting that “Ahh! There's no me!” we reached the “Oh my gosh… That's the real me...”
And it's not a thing,
It's not an appearance.
It's more like love, or light, or some
Amazing sound, it might be.
But, like, beyond words…
Beyond words.
And this Mahamudra practice [of] feel, feel, feel, feel, feel, feel…
Get disconcerted [moving hands around indicating ripening]
Use the intellect to go through that “where's [the] me doing this whole thing, and if it's constantly changing—then [shakes fists] what is it?”
To [finally] feel the [puts hands on heart] “Oh man…”
When I find that real “no me,” that real “no me” is possible to be anything for anybody—and we won't get lost in it, because when you reach that feeling of our “all potential to be anything for anybody,” the next thought is, “well, I want to be for them what will help them be free from suffering and reach ultimate happiness—and I want them to be that for me.”
And then that stirs forth what's going to come next.
And so it's like from a fully enlightened being, their emanations burst forth from that deep, profound dependence SNANG STONG of their true nature—which is their emptiness and their appearance together.
So, Mahamudra takes us to a very keen awareness of “appearances and nothing but” in this twofold [way of getting] to a really clear experience of the appearing nature of mind, and then explore its true nature by way of shifting to the “me” (the subject side).
It becomes pretty clear that if your “watcher” is your subject side, and everything it's watching is “the object and interaction between,” we're letting go of the “interaction between” really early in this practice (that's the story that follows) and we're becoming more keenly aware of “object side arising,” but it's getting more and more subtle—to where it's just: shift, shift, shift, shift…
Geshe-la was saying, “That's karma.”
[holds one finger up in middle of forehead and moves it, just slightly, one degree clockwise]
Just the shift from this moment to the next…lost my train of thought…
We can sit there for a really long time:
Yeah, ripenings, ripenings, ripenings, ripenings…
I did an hour a day in Three Year Retreat of that—just sitting there:
“Woah, ripenings, ripenings, ripening.”
And it's hard to get underneath that then to see that there's nothing but that—even though that “nothing but that” is glaringly apparent if you know to look for it.
So, you get to the surface level—it's not surface level at all—it's [the] deep, deep, deep part of the ocean that's just doing this [balls up hands together and sways back and forth].
Right, Tom?
You know, the seaweed’s moving (if there's seaweed down deep)—but there's no identity happening, other than: movement, movement, movement, movement—shift, shift, shift, shift.
But that's not the true nature of mind—that’s seeing the apparent nature of mind.
And what we want is its true nature—which is the fact that it's nothing but part of every ripening.
The mind, and so the “me” also (the subject side) is nothing but part of every ripening.
So what's there if there's no ripening?
Is no ripening possible?
No.
So, is your non-existence possible?
No.
Right?
If you are part of every seed ripening (and it's impossible for there never to be a seed ripening), it's impossible for there never to be a subject side.
Your subject side is always your subject side.
My subject side is always my subject side—it won't always be Sarahni, of course, but it will be this subject.
Subject, object, interaction between.
So, we let go of the interaction early in the practice, and we're down there, no longer identifying—but being aware of: objects, objects, objects, objects…appearances, appearances, appearances, appearances.
And then we go looking for the “self.”
When we go looking for the “self” it becomes the object.
Well, if my subject can be both the subject and the object—what true nature does it have?
[shrugs and then starts making ripening movements with hand]
Just appearance—and nothing but—and that's how we get to the emptiness of “subject side.”
Is the emptiness of “subject side” the emptiness of our mind?
[long pause]
Something to explore.
Is that a Sumati hand up?
Oh no, that's my marker.
Okay, so please make a commitment to explore your Mahamudra daily at some level.
This was a whole hour meditation—you don't have to do the whole hour—but please do it daily.
We'll start up again in September—the 2nd.
We have like this much more [holds up measuring fingers indicating ¼ of the material is left] in this big of a binder [other hand shows the total amount of material] to do.
And we'll just carry on till we're done.
So thank you for the opportunity to share this practice—it's my personal favorite.
And so thank you, you've done me a big service to let me do so.
And that's all I have for today.
Yes, Dinara?
[Dinara: Thank you so much for leading this meditation. I wanted to quickly ask, because we are also doing Bok Jinpa, what would be your suggestion to practice? Like, one day Bok Jinpa, another day Mahamudra? Or would you suggest doing at least something every day?]
Yeah—at least something from both of them every day.
Your preliminaries can be the same—same preliminaries for both of those, and you can decide how much of each day you want to spend—but it is saying, “time for meditation practice, time to crank up a bit.”
Because we can't just do five minutes of this and five minutes of that and [be able to] make much progress—but whatever fits your schedule.
But every day.
Maybe do one in the morning and a 15 minute one before you go to bed, you know, maybe it's time to go to two practices a day.
But yes, both of them. Both of them daily. Thanks.
[Dinara: Thank you.]
Yes, Tom?
[Tom: I found myself laughing a lot during practice, so I apologize if I made funny faces. The first thing that happened when I called the teacher, it was You, Lama Sumati, Dalai Lama, Je Tsongkapa, Manjushri, like, super clear. I don't know. And then I got so excited, I held your hand so hard, like I was holding you. So then I was like laughing because I was like, Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you. So I felt like I wanted to apologize to the two of you because I'm hearing your voice, and it also on top of it feels so real. And I was like, Oh, no. So then I was laughing. And then so that's also something interesting. Like there is this weird clarity because I'm not seeing but I'm also seeing it's like there is like, I know. So like, you're here. So I don't know. Like, when you when we're about to go into the I think the Mahamudra or the breathing, you're like saying again, to come back to that person that’s suffering. And I saw like the world like the planet come out of my heart. Like, so I don't know if that's like, yeah, like, right.]
Okay. Yeah, so with those kinds of experiences, the Lamas always say, “Okay, cool. Let it go.”
It's all right. It's all good. It's all okay.
Is it supposed to happen?
Nothing's supposed to happen, right?
What happens is unique to each of us.
But the tendency can be—we want to follow that—and that'll become a distraction.
Or we'll want it to happen again next time—and it doesn't—and “Oh, what am I doing wrong?”
Right?
So it's like, “cool, let it go.”
Like a like a nice dream, you know, “cool.”
[Tom: Yeah, like, so I didn't follow it, and then even when other stuff coming up, I was like really proud of myself like, yeah, it showed up. Cool. And then for the breathing, I was wondering—is it basically nadi shodhana? Like, inhaling one, exhaling…]
Yeah, it is.
[Tom: Wouldn't it be more beneficial, or better to do it with the hands or no?]
No. No, because we're learning to do it by way of our concentration.
[Tom: And on that, I felt like it was like, inhale, exhale, right side, inhale, exhale, right side. And then we went to the left side.]
Yeah. Yeah, we do:
Inhale right, out left.
Inhale right, out left.
Inhale right, out left.
Inhale left, out right.
Inhale left, out right.
Inhale left, out right.
The first six are alternating—then the last three are all into, and out of, the central channel.
[Tom: Okay, so yeah, in the count, I guess I lost but then I came back to it, so I just wanted to get clear. Yeah. In the Mahamudra, when we're trying to find ourself, I didn't have that fear like you spoke about— instead, I had this bursting laughter of the realization of like, it's empty. It's like, it's me I'm all being, I'm none of those being and then I had like, I'm a zombie, I'm the walking dead. So then I started laughing because it's like, it felt so pleasant and good. And it was like, heart opening, you know, maybe I did a two hours, you know, the workshop, the heart opening. So like my mind, but it felt like, so, yay!]
Yeah, I always, I often get that too, and I drop into that it's I want to laugh because everything is just so absurd it’s like, oh my gosh.
[Tom: So the more I was trying to like, find it, the more I was laughing, but then the laughing started to kick me out. So, I just wasn't sure. Because I was like, I don't feel fear. Like, you know, I know some people were mentioning air. I was like, yes, bring it. So like, I have no idea what's the bring it.]
May that stay. Really—may that stay. Nice. Good.
Anybody else? Comments, questions, needs?
Good.
Have fun! So there's really no wrong way you can do this, except to keep following—in which case you're not doing it at all.
So, you know, Lobsang Chukyi Gyeltsen: “This is a really sneaky way to get people to stillness, to slide down into that “being.”
And hopefully it does get more and more still—not stopped—still, but just disinterested in anything else, and keenly interested in this.
So no agitation, no dullness, because it's like, “wow, this is so fascinating!” Instead of [makes a funny face indicating dullness or boredom] right?
So, I hope it works for you.
So that's all—we already did our dedication, we’ll just do another quick one:
May our whole world manifest the change that we created this morning.
And I look forward to seeing you all again soon—we still have a few classes yet this week before we're on our summer holiday.
Okay, I love you. Thank you so much for the opportunity.