Index
Penetrating Wisdom
Through thegradual intensification of habit Sequential entry into samsdra began.
Dualism is doubt.
faith, faith without any questions.
It is devotion and trust in the inconceivable truth.
The biggest obstacle in the path of Tantra, in the paths of Vajrayana, Mahamudra, and Dzogchen, is completely and utterly trusting these ordinary perceptions. The truth is out there and it cannot be experienced by these low-tech perceptions.
The basic meaning here begins with faith in this inconceivable truth. In Vajrayana, that is the fundamental faith.
It is trust and faith in the fruition of the path as well as in the teachings that lead us to the fruition of enlightenment.
Vajrayana goes beyond logic. This is a very important point. Vajrayana is like asking someone to wake you up in the morning. You are not relying on an alarm clock. You are relying on this person, the Vajra master, to wake you up.
Devotion involves wisdom and knowledge.
So you see, two seemingly ordinary and unimportant things can be very important in Tantra. You can never tell what is not important. Only the Vajra master can tell.
there is a big difference between individual understanding and individual interpretation. That is why Buddha taught three yanas. Although Buddha gave many teachings, we only hear what we want to hear.
Sometimes we may misunderstand and say there is no space at all in the Vajrayana for any kind of doubt. That’s not true. It is very very dangerous to say that we must not have any doubts! Buddha said doubt is wisdom. He said that inquisitive mind is wisdom. We are more than welcome to have doubts and inquisitive mind about the path and practices. At the same time, we must not go so far with these doubts that we get caught up and carried away by them.
These problems of selective practice, selective hearing, and selective guru become our major obstacles on the path.
called “the great perfection.” To convey fully the meaning of Dzogchen in English, the expression “full stop” is quite good. Full stop. Period. This period is a little but very powerful dot called the full stop. There is the sense of being full in that this dot has a circular form that is complete and full. At the same time, everything stops here: it doesn’t go beyond this period. Dzogchen has a similar meaning.
The Vajrayana path is known as the path of fruition because we are not working with causes to produce the result. Instead, we are taking the result as the path.
there’s a saying in the Dzogchen literature, “The happiness Kuntuzangpo or the suffering Kuntuzangpo.” Happiness is utterly pure and suffering is utterly pure. In the ultimate space of Kuntuzangpo, there are no differences between happiness and suffering, just as there are no differences between inside and outside.
Milarepa said that between two conceptual discursive thoughts, you experience nonconceptual wisdom. There is a moment of nonconceptual wisdom in between thoughts. We don’t realize that, we just miss it all the time.
One problem with our human mind is that we like complexity, we are addicted to it.
group karma, beings in each of the different realms experience a common world.
when the motivation is pure, the benefit is greater.
“If there are no people who irritate you, then how can you perfect the paramita of patience? If there are no people to make you angry, how can you perfect the paramita of discipline? If there are no people or phenomena to distract your mind from the perfect samadhi, then how can you perfect the path of the paramita of discipline
You have to go through the different stages of experiences and not get attached to them. Go continuously on the path. Eventually, that will lead to realization.
One is free from these five poisons if one’s sensory perceptions simply experience what they are without labeling thoughts.
“You are not bound to samsara by appearances, you are bound to samsara by conceptual attachment. Therefore my son, Naropa, cut the root of this attachment.” The appearances of the world outside, which are the experiences of the five sensory perceptions, are not a problem. The problem here is the labeling process that follows it.
Whatever sensory experiences we go through, if we go through them with mindfulness and awareness, there is no limit to how far we can go. The limit is mindfulness and awareness. Even if we don’t enjoy the experience, that itself becomes a trip.
Neither alayavijnana or alayajnana matters at first, just get the stillness. In that stillness, the alayajnana arises naturally and without struggle.
We identify our guests, “Oh, my visitor is Mr. Anger” or “This time my visitor is Mr. Jealousy” or “This visitor is Mr. Ignorance.”Then, with the great Mahayana compassion and the Vajrayana fearlessness,you open the door. We won’t leave our guest outside, we will invite him in. Be with it, that’s the reality.
a nightmare, or has some painful illusion in a dream, a person with clairvoyance can see that.
The Tantric teachings are said to really benefit those who have very strong poisons, very strong emotions. For that reason, the wrathful deities play a stronger role on the path of awakening in Tantra.
But at a certain point, some kind of very unpleasant situation comes up that really gets us into that state. That unpleasant situation really clicks us into the state of truly understanding and appreciating impermanence. It clicks us into understanding shunyata and appreciating the notion of emptiness. That happens all the time.
We are making the aspiration that they obtain the ultimate wealth and the ultimate joy, which is the recognition of primordial buddha mind. That is our aspiration here. But our aspiration is not only to recognize this primordial ground of buddhahood. Once we have recognized this ground, we aspire that such wisdom then expands and shines out. We aspire that by recognizing this ground, the boundless wisdom of beings grows to the infinite space of the universe.
“May all sentient beings, including ourselves, be in the state of our fundamental buddhahood that is the primordial buddha Samantabhadra.”
If you want to do an aspiration to benefit others, this is a beautiful aspiration for all beings of the six realms.
In the beginning, you should put some effort into your postmeditation practice. For example, you should try to remember to watch your mind, watch your thoughts, at least once every hour. That’s very good practice already. If you do it every hour, it is already a great achievement. Later, that effort will bring the sense of effortless awareness in everyday life.
The five elements manifest from these five lights. The water element manifests from white light. The earth element manifests from yellow light. The fire element manifests from red light. The wind element manifests from green light, and the space element manifests from blue light. These are the five elements.
It is important to identify the emotion in which we are engaged, even though it is often mixed. Passion, aggression, jealousy, and so on are all mixed at certain points. Identifying them is the process that naturally takes us to mindfulness, to awareness. There is no other way.
The first step is just simply to observe it. Simply recognize the emotion and then watch it as it grows or as it continues. Just simply watch it. In the beginning, just to have an idea that it’s coming is very important and very effective. In the Vajrayana sense, the way to watch these emotions is without stopping them. If we recognize the emotion and say,“Yes, it is passion,” and then try to stop it, that’s a problem. Rejecting our emotions is a problem in Vajrayana.
Just being mindless itself is a distraction. That’s the most subtle distraction we ever experience in our meditation path. Usually, we think of distraction as being something very active. We think of it as a dualistic interaction between an outside object and one of the six sensory perceptions. But distraction here is simply being unmindful, being unaware.
The labeling process is a very subtle way of planting and growing this seed of ignorance in our mindstream.
the most gross element of this ignorance is the division between self and other. The labeling process has matured to the stage where we can clearly see the dualistic barrier.
With diligence and exertion, we can reach a point where effort becomes effortless. However, at the beginning we need to exert ourselves. In order to exert ourselves, we need discipline. That’s why the paramita practices are so practical. The paramita practices are common to both Tantra and Sutra. We can begin with discipline, which is the cause of diligence, and discipline enforces our diligence. Diligence doesn’t come without renunciation and without seeing the possibility of freedom. Therefore, they are all connected.
In the beginning, it’s just the mechanism. We are just starting the movement, which itself has a subtle craving. A subtle attachment is developed in that subconscious move.
Attachment is actually the greatest suffering of all sentient beings.
There is nothing called beautiful outside. Even in our mundane wisdom, we have the saying that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
When we have one good master, another one always looks kinder. The other one always looks much more skilled, much more intelligent, and so on. Then we flip back and forth with our teachers, the same as we do with everything else. That is the totally chaotic path called the hungry ghost realm.
In classical Buddhist paintings, the hungry ghosts are sitting right next to a beautiful lake while, at the same time, they are burning inside with thirst. Even while they burn inside with thirst, they have this stinginess. They think that the water will be completely consumed if they drink, so they never drink. It is said that even if the hungry ghosts drink, they burn inside even more because they worry about losing this wealth of water. If we are not mindful, this hungry ghost psychological state can happen to us at any time.
Whenever lust, passion, attachment, or desire arises, the method given here is not to reject these emotions. It is to let them come, let them arise. There is no need to suppress this emotion. There is nothing wrong with its appearance. The raw energy of lust and passion is in the state of buddha wisdom. The Prayer says that whenever they arise, we should not go under the power of the labeling process, the power of conceptualizing the raw energy of lust and passion. We go through this experience of tremendous energy called passion. What usually happens is that we conceptualize it later. That conceptualization leads us into an endless chain of thoughts and an endless chain of labeling. That endless chain of thoughts and labeling leads us to all sorts of different emotions, such as anger and jealousy, that become problematic.
Just simply experience the emotion, neither reject it nor accept it. The raw energy is simply experienced without any thought, without any labeling process. Just simply be in that space. The Prayer says that this brings the wisdom of perfect discernment, discriminating wisdom, which corresponds to the wisdom of the western buddha field of Amitabha.
The problem here is not the passion. It is not the lust nor is it the desire. The problem is that we are not leaving them alone. We are not letting them be what they are. We are disturbing them with the labeling process, the thought process. We are not letting lust be lust, we are not letting desire be desire, we are not letting passion be passion. Therefore, the mind becomes agitated.
We are the creator of these states as well as the experiencer of these states.
The pain that we see in the hell realm is the creation of our mind.
But if you conquer just one enemy, your aggression, it is like conquering all the objects of this anger.
If you want to destroy an object, look inside and find the true enemy, which is aggression. Conquer that. Shantideva said that anger is very destructive. He said that one moment of hatred or anger can destroy the virtue of many eons.
Similarly, one moment of anger, aggression, or hatred can wipe out the data of all the virtuous actions.
it would be harmful to have thoughts of hatred toward those surrounding you, but it is much more harmful to yourself than to any other person.
The Mahayana and Vajrayana views say that whatever we experience, whatever we perceive, is basically our own creation. There is no outer creation and no outer creator. The creator is right here. If we are seeing nice beautiful scenery, it is our own creation. If we are seeing a horrible world outside or a horrible experience inside, it is also our creation. It is our mind’s experience. This is a very important element in these teachings.
In Buddhism, when we talk about mind-only, it doesn’t mean that the other person doesn’t exist. What we are saying is that the way we perceive, the way we relate, the way we see phenomena, is very much our mind only. It is our creation. We are projecting outside and we are perceiving that projection. It’s very much our perception only. It is our conception only. In the same way, this hell realm is a creation of our mind. We are projecting all these weird things outside and going through tremendous unnecessary pain.
this emotion called pride. It is very dangerous and destructive because it causes us to refrain from learning. It blocks us from improving ourselves. Having pride means the end of our growing, the end of our development.
“If the pot is upside down, no matter how much water you try to pour in, you can’t fill it.”
That is the definition of pride; an attitude of superiority to others. We get into the suffering of disputation because we feel superior.
The main thing that we need to learn is how to be in whatever state we are in. We need to learn to be in that state completely, honestly, and without trying to pretend to be something better or something different.
We learn to be in the raw state of the emotion itself, without altering it, without trying to be something else.
The main problem of jealousy is lack of appreciation.
That’s what we call competitiveness, always wanting more than what we have.
We go through a painful experience of praising and denigrating. Praising oneself directly or indirectly, and denigrating others directly or indirectly, is the continual process of struggle.
Buddha said that if you rejoice in the merit arising from whatever positive actions others may be involved in, you get the same merit.
For example, we’re attached to sleep so we don’t take delight in waking up, and so forth.
Anger has the same kind of quality. It’s very awakening in its nature but we usually paint it more than it requires or needs. We have to simply experience it. When you experience it, just experience it. Just rest in it. Don’t hate it and don’t follow it with any more thoughts, any more paintings. Just be. Just sort of let it be. It comes close to the end of words at a certain point.
As for the method, we have a tradition in Mahayana practice of reviewing the whole day. Every evening in our last session of meditation, we review the whole day. We try to think about the major emotional events that occurred during the day. We recollect whether we had a major anger, a major passion, or a major experience of hatred during that day. Then we really try to see it and we try to see how we handled it. Maybe we were somewhat successful, maybe we failed. We also try to see how many positive thoughts we had. See how many good thoughts that we had, such as thoughts of compassion. If we do that in our last meditation, we can see our ignorance pretty clearly. We can see our ignorance in these experiences of screwing up our opportunities to recognize rigpa. By reflecting, we can try to recognize ignorance.