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TM is great. Doing program in
the domes in Fairfield was great too, in its heyday. So much samadhi for
so untrained person such as myself. Boy did I scoff at all those others who sat
in full lotus squeezing their eyes shut, training hard every day to get just a
drop of bliss. Still do. That's the value of the TM technique for me. It's very
blissful.
But I found in the Vajrayana a huge
body of ancient knowledge that fully explains the entire range of my TM
experience. And a group of masters who have wedded the esoteric to the practical
values of heart cultivation and appreciation of the small.
In the TMO all meditation
experiences are just "unstressing." In Dzogchen, one liberates the
beings of the six realms which exist in our chakras. The value of this knowledge
is that one can understand that one contains all the negative and positive
impulses, and that understanding is necessary for a nondual appreciation of
existance. You can't run from the negative and grasp after the positive because
they constantly change. If this isn't taught then one gets stuck in a cycle of
despair and delight. One gets stuck pointing fingers at imaginary demons because
one has merely reified their own imaginings and cast them onto the
environment.
If you place an apple in the sun it
will cast shadows. It will start out dark in the early morning and grow shiny
during high noon and dim at evening and dark again after sunset. The perception
of the bright shiny apple changes constantly. One who thinks light or darkness
is in the apple is deluded. So also the entire universe.
Light and dark exist
concurrently in the personality of the perceiver. Samsara is the wheel
that turns in our being. Until it is emptied we will be bound to come
again and again and turn that wheel. It will be emptied when the various beings
of the six realms are liberated, and they are liberated when our 3-fold mind
becomes one in meditative absorption and then when we relax and witness the
spontaneous self arising of those 6 realm beings.
A key value of
the Vajrayana Buddhadharma is that it incorporates all the negative into the
sphere of accomplishment. In Hinduism epic battles occur like the Ramayana where
all the beings die at the end (With a Bollywood flourish.) In the Vajrayana,
Ravana becomes a Dharma Protector. It's a subtle but telling difference which
strikes at the essence as far as compassion. In the Vajrayana no being
gets left behind.
Some like that,
others probably will hate it. Especially prejudiced people who hate those
that they were brought up hating and who want to hold onto their hate. But for
those seeking real liberation anything less than liberating all beings is a
shoddy aspiration. For this reason the Vajrayana is also Mahayana or the
Greatest vehicle. The greatest vehicle serves the most, it's the biggest
and has the most room, and makes the most trips. There is only one
Mahayana, and one Vajrayana. That is, one path which is for everyone demon
or angel, hungry ghost or human, power hungry king or lust filled nympho.
No one is turned away from the Greater Vehicle. And in the Vajrayana there is a
technique for everybody. It is a wish fulfilling gem amongst teachings.
I remember being
very attached to my Hindu deities and still am. Even though I was Buddhist I
still wanted to worship them all. I prayed for a sadhana for them from the
Buddhist tradition. I mean, how rare is such a thing, a Buddhist sadhana to the
Hindu deities? More rare than than that, how rare would it be to find one
that literally came to my door via a flyer in New Orleans. But through Venerable
Ontul Rinpoche just that happened. He gave a teaching called, The Lake of
Enlightened Activity." And there in clear print are Vishnu and Shiva, as
if just for me. Such a clear answering of prayer.
On this group we
are so often talking about what this master or that con man or that master or
this con man are teaching. But in the Vajrayana every single point of knowledge
is available. Every single one, without exception. For witnessing sleep
there is dream and sleep yoga. For not getting confused from one life to the
next and to "fix the pipeline" of ones life current there are the bardo
teachings. For the lazy and crappy practitioner there is Phowa so that one
can be liberated merely upon death. For liberating destructive spirits
there is Chod. There are fifteen thousand (at least) forms of meditation, each
one with some benefit such as long life, or compassion, or strength, or removal
of obstructions or wealth. But each one is still replete in itself with
the Buddhadharma of clarity, emptiness and compassion.
The true Dharma
is a wish fulfilling gem, and cannot be sullied. If thrown in front of a
swine the swine also benefits.
Any benefit dedicated to WJ so that he may give up
smoking crack.
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- [FairfieldLife] Re: Gems of True Dharma Llundrub
- [FairfieldLife] Re: Gems of True Dharma Jeff Fischer
