Good evening Akasha: On May 13, 2005, at 9:57 PM, akasha_108 wrote:
> [Question: what are the practices -- or names / sources for such in > using bliss with relationship to emptiness and compassion? In other > words, when when one is overcome with bliss, how can it be utilized > for tantric practice?] The practices involving bliss and emptiness are parts of the "completion state" practices of inner tantra. In general, when one receives a deity mantra, one receives it's seed syllable and the longer "chain" of mantra, the dharani. In the first stages of practice, one takes this basis and builds the divine dimension of that being--it's mandala. This is called the "generation stage"--you try to duplicate the dimension of the deity as it was experienced by the originator of that particular manifestation (i.e the yogi who had the initial experience of this dimension). In the completion stage you use the channels and chakra to generate bliss as the basis to explore what bliss rides on top of: emptiness. This is really the bliss of fusion of opposites. This is usually a heat-based yoga whereby one can generate enough heat to live in Himalayan conditions in just light clothing. It works with the nectar(s) of the crown chakra and the fire-in-the-belly (the navel chakra). This is called Tummo (Tib.: gtummo). One uses the "four-joys" to unveil higher levels of emptiness and ultimately the clear light. In the non-dual schools one might just use hatha-yoga linked with pranayama and knowledge of the channels, chakras and bindus to generate bliss. This is an easier method as the previous mentioned involves a lot of practice and many details. Personally I find it easier to discard with the incredible detail and focus on essentials. This practice is known as Tsa-lung or the practice of channels and prana. > TWO forms of bliss exist > - Conditional bliss which depends entirely upon non-empty forms, sense > stimuli and concepts and feelings for its generation and experience. > - Non-conditional bliss which depends for its generation on empty > forms or on the perception of emptiness in general, on imagined > visualised forms and concepts, etc. > > [Question: this doesn't seem right -- per experience, bliss occurs and > is not dependent solely on thse things. Are these two forms of bliss > a correct view per tantra? ] > Yes--I think what these are referring to are some really esoteric divisions in the higher generation of bliss/emptiness: one uses a *visualized* consort (an "empty form"), the other uses an actual physical consort. In order to even approach this level of practice, one has to have truly no attachment whatsoever to the idea of physical sexual congress. The basic idea is that you need to fuse your subtle body with that of your beloved deity. This generates heat and bliss. You use this to stare into what bliss rides on top of. Here is an old post I put up on tis very topic: From: Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 12 Feb 2005 20:56:34 -0500 To: [email protected] Subject: Pith Advice on Bliss and Nonduality pith advice from Lama Yeshe from _The Bliss of Inner Fire_ fr. the section "Discovering Totality" ch. 18 "Good things and Bad Things Can Happen" This is very helpful in it explanation of how to use bliss to discover and experience the non-dual state and also as a warning on experiences such as spontaneous movements, kundalini problems/prana disorders and various "telepathic" phenomena. -S. BLISS AND NONDUALITY Whenever heat begins, bliss begins. This is because of the power the absorption of the winds, the power of the short a [a component of the subtle anatomy], the power to concentration, and the power of the melting of the drops within the central channel. You really taste the chocolate when all these factors are gathered together. During inner fire meditation, it is important to recognize the blissful nature of any heat-in fact, of every physical and mental sensation that arises. You should also recognize its nature of nonduality, clarity, radiance, transparency, and its reflection-like quality, so that the bliss itself becomes the wisdom of nonduality. Also, whenever you experience nonduality, you should recognize its blissful character. As soon as we feel any bliss, we should put effort into generating the wisdom of nonduality. This is important from the very beginning. The bliss itself should be digested and transformed into wisdom. Bliss becomes wisdom, wisdom becomes bliss. Otherwise, the experience becomes one of ordinary pleasure, an explosion of emotional desire and superstition. If we constructively build up the unification of bliss and nonduality, there is no danger of this happening. If you don't have a strong comprehension of the non-self-existence of the bliss, there is a danger of experiencing overwhelming desire when you are not meditating as well. Whenever you open your eyes, many objects will magnetically attract you because your desire is aroused. If inner fire meditation produces more and more desire, you will become nervous, frustrated, and stressed. When we experience any pleasure, we normally grasp at it, and our mind becomes dark, overwhelmed, and uncontrolled. Our pleasure becomes an obstacle that blocks us, like a wall; it is so concrete that we cannot see beyond it. This comes about because we do not understand the fundamental nondual nature of existence. Without this understanding, inner fire meditation can produce tremendous sensory energy. If we are not careful and do not channel the energy in the right way, inner fire can produce tremendous desire. However, this does not mean that we should not have pleasure. We should have pleasure! We can have incredible pleasure, but it has to be controlled so that it can be transformed into clean-clear penetrative wisdom. It is good for human beings to experience pleasure, but it is wrong to experience it without wisdom. The unique quality of tantra is that it always unifies the male energy of bliss with the female energy of wisdom. These two must always occur together. We must put effort into ensuring this, because for so long this has not been our habit. Remember, the right inner fire should bring the unification of bliss and the wisdom of nonduality. It is dangerous to forget this, because inner fire meditation is a very sensitive technique. Something will definitely happen, and if good things are not happening, bad things surely will. UNCONTROLLED KUNDALINI According to Lama Tsongkhapa, to melt the kundalini at the crown effectively, the inner fire must be ignited at both the navel and secret chakras and the winds must absorb into the central channel. This brings the yogi or yogini the experience of the four joys. He points out that ordinary people, whose airs have not even entered the central channel, can also experience the melting of kundalini when the navel and secret chakras are energized. This is what causes ordinary orgasm. Some people experience this uncontrolled flow of kundalini during meditation. Simply by performing the vase breathing meditation, they experience blazing of the inner fire and melting of the kundalini. Blissful kundalini seems to come from everywhere, like falling rain. When this happens, there is danger of losing control of the kundalini energy. A man, for example, would lose semen. Lama Tsongkhapa says that it is not desirable to have the kundalini flow uncontrollably. It is not correct to do inner fire meditation in the morning and have the kundalini flow spontaneously in the afternoon. There is a danger that it will merely increase ordinary physical desire. Because kundalini is the main resource that we use in inner fire meditation, it is important for both males and females not to lose their sexual energy. Naturally, as beginners, we will find it difficult to control the energy when we experience it strongly; we have limited concentration and have not yet learned how to bring the airs into the central channel. As Lama Tsongkhapa explains, it is not good to lose too much kundalini energy during meditation, but it is natural to lose a little occasionally. Don't panic and think, "Oh, I have lost some kundalini energy. Now I have broken my vows." When you are a beginner, you sometimes lose kundalini drops. Don't worry about it. I lose it sometimes, and I don't worry about it. Losing a small drop of liquid during your meditation causes no real damage or loss of strength. It does not make you unable to facilitate the kundalini. However, experiencing orgasm through sexual contact or during sleep will cause loss of this facility and damage your strength. You can discover this through your own experience. When you lose kundalini energy strongly in meditation, the significant point is not that you are breaking your vow but that you are losing the strength of your kundalini. The physical exercises and concentration will help you to develop control. Control of kundalini energy is important even in ordinary orgasm. You cannot have a perfect orgasm if you cannot control your energy. It is the same in tantra. You cannot experience perfect bliss if you cannot control your energy. The fact is that if we lose our energy, we have no energy to utilize. In order to use energy, we need energy. If we don't have it, we cannot use it. This is logical, and you can see it clearly from your own experience. When you concentrate well and control your energy, you can experience more bliss, which you then unify with the wisdom of nonduality. If kundalini starts to flow uncontrollably during your meditation And you begin to experience orgasm, try as much as possible to hold it and have it expand inside the secret chakra. Try to hold the energy there as long as possible. The longer you can hold it, the more pleasure you will experience and the more possibility you will have of utilizing that pleasure by unifying it with the universal reality of nonduality. In this way, you learn to control your body as well as your mind. By the way, the semen that comes from the male sex organ during ordinary orgasm does not come from the central channel. For both males and females, the energy and bliss of ordinary sexual experience does not come from the central channel. You should be clear about this. The bliss of ordinary orgasm is produced by the kundalini touching the outside of the central channel. In the logic of tantric yoga, if the kundalini energy generates such bliss when it touches the outside of the central channel, there is no question that it will generate incredible bliss when it flows inside the central channel. Bringing all the winds into the central channel gives rise to an experience of incomparable super-bliss. Drawing the airs into the central channel and activating this bliss is mainly accomplished through the power of concentration. Therefore, someone who loses kundalini energy because they are living the normal life of a layperson can still be successful in the practice of inner heat yoga as long as they can maintain strong concentration during inner fire meditation. This is logical. Naturally, those who have weak concentration and also lose physical energy in this way will find it difficult to generate strong blissful energy. Practitioners who experience uncontrolled leaking of kundalini before the airs have absorbed into the central channel must remember to bring the energy back up the channel before completely losing control. Lama Tsongkhapa points out that practitioners who lack strong concentration will find the kundalini more difficult to control the lower down it flows, especially if it flows below the navel chakra. It is important to be aware of the point from which you must begin to reverse the flow of energy. Not only must this energy be brought back up, but it also must be spread throughout the nervous system. It can be dangerous and produce illness if it becomes blocked in any place. Lama Tsongkhapa is giving this advice from his own experience so you should try to understand clearly what he is saying. The Kagyu tradition teaches many different techniques for reversing the downward flow of energy, but Lama Tsongkhapa mentions only one in _Having the Three Convictions_. Visualizing yourself as deity, you sit in the full lotus position with your head bent a little forward. Your hands are placed together in vajra fists at your chest with the palms inwards and the index fingers stretched up to touch each other, thus forming a triangle. Your eyes are rolled upward. Gazing upward helps to draw the energy back up the central channel. The mind is not using the eye perception; it is contemplating the ham [a seed syllable] at the crown chakra. Pull yourself strongly upward, even curling up your toes. Breathe in a little, focus on the ham, and repeat the syllable hum twenty-one times. You feel that the energy is connected all the way down; you are aware of your secret chakra. As you say ham over and over again, you feel the energy coming back up. You are concentrating strongly and you keep the lower muscles tight. Your body is as empty as a balloon, and you can direct the energy anywhere you want. You bring all the kundalini energy back up from the secret chakra and spread it at the navel, heart, throat, and crown chakras. From there, you spread it throughout the entire body. Another technique is to visualize that the inner fire moves downward and pushes the kundalini back up in the same way that heat pushes up water when you boil it. Waves of blissful energy come to the heart chakra and spread throughout it. The blissful waves then continue up to the throat, crown, and brow chakras and spread through each of them in turn. In his commentary on the completion stage of Chittamani Tara, the great yogi Je Pabongka explains the following meditation technique to help deal with uncontrolled kundalini. When the blissful, white nectar is melted by the inner fire and fills all the chakras down to the navel chakra, before it flows down into the secret chakra, visualize that it goes into the right and left channels and eventually fills all the channels of the entire nervous system. Je Pabongka explained this easy method in relation to Chittamani Jara practice, but we can also use it here. Sometimes during your inner fire meditation, the experience of bliss will cause your body to shake; this is related to movement of the air energies. You should not cultivate the idea that this has to happen. To have a restless body in the beginning is acceptable, but do not allow it to become a habit because it can be dangerous. Your mind reacts to the movement of the air, like a plane caught in turbulence; therefore, as long as the airs are moving, your mind will be distracted. The bliss of inner fire and the movement of kundalini energy should be gentle, blissful, peaceful, controlled, and subtle. TELEPATHIC EXPERIENCES The Kalachakra Tantra speaks of the kundalini drops as having the potentiality of heaven and hell, of all the six realms. Inner fire meditation really shakes our entire nervous system and our entire view of reality. We don't want to have the energy of the lower realms inside our nervous system, as though it were sitting there waiting for us to die. We want to shake it up and bring it now to the navel chakra. When we do, we may suddenly see hell; we may suddenly be in hell. Experiences of heaven and hell during meditation are possible because the entire universal energy is inside our subtle nervous system and can manifest from it. The lamas of all traditions agree that practitioners can suddenly see visions while doing inner fire meditation, as if they are dreaming. Such experiences are similar to telepathy, but they are not actual clairvoyance. You are moving in a dimension where there is telepathic energy, so you suddenly gain what seems like telepathic power. However, you still lack the attainment of singlepointed concentration, so don't become too excited. You have not yet gained clairvoyance. Sometimes you may also be able to read other people's thoughts. Whether or not we call it telepathy, it is obvious that when you become more aware of the nature of your own mind, you will be more sensitive to the minds of other people. You will be able to read the minds of others in accordance with your own level of development. This is nothing unusual. Again, don't believe that you actual telepathic powers simply because you have had a few good experiences, and don't boast to anyone else about them. You should control your mouth. However, since the navel chakra is also known as the psychic chakra, if you want to develop the telepathic power to read other people's minds, you should put effort into inner fire meditation. The yogis of the past have stated that telepathic experiences will come. They are not talking in this way just to attract our interest. However they also advise us to be careful when these telepathic experiences start to happen. You may see your entire nervous system as clearly as you see some thing on television. Or you may see different colors; each of the different air energies has its own characteristic color, so this is natural. The winds enter the central channel, you touch the awareness of non duality, and such visions naturally arise. You may experience the various visions that occur when the elements absorb, such as the appearance of a mirage, smoke, sparks, or a dying candle. Sometimes you may see dakas and dakinis or pure lands. You may even see the five Buddha families and think, "Wow, the five Buddha families! Now I must have attained all their qualities!" Seeing these Buddhas in this way is possible. These visions can be distracting, but stay calm. Remain aware of them, but don't pay them any special attention. It is similar to meditating with a group of people. Although you don't pay any special attention to the other people in the group, you are aware when someone moves or does something. In the same way, maintain your fundamental awareness of the short a and just relax about whatever else happens. It is possible to see incredible visions, both good and bad. Don't become depressed when they seem bad. It is important to expect interferences to your practice. Recognize even the bad ones as good, in that they are signs that your meditation is effective. Do strong purification practices and meditate intensively on emptiness, which is the antidote to all interferences. Many lamas mention that you may experience problems such as depression when you practice inner fire meditation. Lama Tsongkhapa does not mention this in _Having the Three Convictions_, but it possible. You may expect inner fire meditation to bring only bliss, but difficulties do sometimes occur. At times when your mind feels crowded and unhappy, this simple meditation might help. Breathe naturally. As you breathe out, feel that your mind becomes one with clear universal space. Concentrate on his clear universal space. This meditation can sometimes be useful. JUST LET GO Surprising experiences can occur when you meditate on inner fire. Sometimes they are painful; sometimes they are super-blissful. It is a very sensitive technique. For example, you may suddenly experience an explosion of incredible bliss. You might think, "Oh, this shouldn't be happening. I should be meditating on the short a instead of feeling blissful. I am being distracted by bliss. This is no good!" Or you may reach a certain point where you see a crystal-clear vision of reality. You might think, "What is this? I shouldn't be experiencing this. I should concentrate more on the short a." You mustn't intellectualize like this. Sometimes you might feel a primitive sensation, some awareness of concrete energy or a triangular shape, just below your navel. I'm just making some projections. Or you might reach a point where you experience a sort of numbness; you lose the clarity of your meditation and go into darkness. This is similar to one of the stages of energy absorption, which you can easily imagine because ordinary orgasm also brings the experience of energy absorption. Don't panic and think, "This is wrong. I should keep my meditation on inner fire." Just be calm. Maintain your fundamental awareness of the short a, and just let go when these different experiences happen. At other times you may feel very pure and think, "Now I must be a bodhisattva on the first bhumi." This is simply your imagination, not something real. When you have a good meditation, you may feel you are special, but don't overestimate. Practicing inner fire meditation with the thought that you are a great meditator undergoing powerful experiences is a symptom of ego. Many things happen when we meditate, so be careful. I worry about the human mind; we always have expectations, and our expectations are always a problem. We seldom manage to be reasonable. Sometimes terrible feelings will arise, and you will think, "this is too much! I don't want to meditate any more." When inner fire meditation becomes a heavy burden, go back to the lam-rim and meditate on your precious human rebirth. When you check up, you will find that meditation is the best thing you can do with your life. In this way lam-rim meditation supports your practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa. If you experience the nonconceptual wisdom of nonduality, don't think, "But what about my inner fire meditation? What happened to my short a and my chakras?" Don't worry. Just let go. In your meditation you sometimes push the right button and experience a super awareness of nonduality. If you worry about losing your meditation on inner fire, you will destroy the experience. Also, if incredibly blissful energy suddenly arises when you begin inner fire meditation, it is wrong to think, "Oh, no! I want red-hot inner fire. I don't want bliss. You should unify whatever bliss arises with nonduality. However the bliss can seem to shrink when you emphasize nonduality. Let's say that you are experiencing a certain amount of clear blissful energy, a ball of bliss. When you focus on nonduality, your ball of bliss becomes smaller, but that's okay. Just let go. It is the same with the inner fire. Emphasizing its nonduality can cause the inner fire to become light and small rather than strong and concrete. As you continue to let go into nonduality, the fire becomes smaller and smaller, until eventually only a very subtle fire is left. At a certain point even this subtle fire might disappear. At that time, again place emphasis on bliss by means of the vase meditation or whatever technique you use to switch on the bliss. When you push the right button, the ball of bliss will balloon again. When there is strong unity of the nuclear energy of bliss and nonduality, let go. Whatever blissful energy arises, let go. And when the energy of nonduality weakens, put more energy into nonduality You will still have blissful energy, but it will be less and more subtle. Just let go. Throughout the entire process, don't give up your fundamental penetrative awareness of the short a. And no matter what else happens, simply let go. Meditation is a state of being. You cannot have expectations. Each meditation is unique, a new experience. It is extremely important to let go in meditations such as inner fire. Intellectual cleverness does not work; it will only cause you to miss incredibly valuable experiences. Our problem is that we often reject valuable experiences because we don't recognize their value. For example, when you experience bliss unified with emptiness and the short a disappears from your vision, you might think, "What is happening to my short a? Should I let it go or not?" Of course you should let it go! You need to be clean-clear about this. When you are experiencing such unified bliss, who cares if the short a disappears? As I pointed out at the very beginning, inner fire meditation is fundamental. It is the foundation stone of all realizations. When you meditate on inner fire, you are using a secret key to open the door to all realizations. Listen to your subtle conscious experiences, and let go. To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! 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