Dharma Diaries Blogging on Buddhism

We are literally in a vehicle in the rain on a cold day.  The rain drops crowd the windshield and reflect each other, causing the illusion of samsara.  Impermanence can even be seen as they accumulate and soon begin to bring each other away.  It is only with the wisdom and compassion of the virtues and the two truths that we finally use our wipers and discover that there is actually nothing; formlessness.  Even after this, however, there remains the temperature difference.  You have to find the middle way to make sure the windshield doesn’t get too foggy, but also that you don’t get too cold.  Some people like to think they can just eliminate the obstacle and smash through the windshield, but this is not the case as you remove the protection and invite the dangers of things like stray bugs and objects, making yourself vulnerable.  Other times people get cracks in their windshields, making it harder to reach nirvana.  For some, it is only until they get a new car that they can solve this issue, while others manage to drive despite it.  Even despite all of this, once you finally reach your destination, it is important to step out of the car.

This entry is about a particular Tibetan style of meditation on the Bodhisattva Chenrezig.  The intentions of this entry are not instructional or to be interpreted as means to replicate this function.  This entry is purely for educational use, I am not an ordained monk or of any status other than a follower of the Dharma, and would advise that any means of practicing this style first be done under the direct guidance and supervision of a monk.

Style - Integrated meditation and liturgy (recitation of mantras during meditation)

Function - Reverse/overcome habits that bind us to samsāra

The grounds/basis of samsāra is pure, but our experience is not.

Samsāra is too close, and from that spouts our ignorance.

• ex. Holding a book too close to your face

We mistake the absence of Self for the presence of Self, which causes us to undergo repeated rebirth

• ex. A rolled up piece of paper remains rolled up

We become attached to “I” or “mine” and show apathy towards things that don’t affect us, and express anger towards “other”

Samsāra is self-sustaining

Karma can only be known by a true Buddha

• ex. Peacock tail
• We observe its beauty and colors, but a Buddha sees the karmic causes behind what made it have these features.  A Buddha can see karmic causes in all six realms simultaneously.

There are two stages, generation and completion.

• Generation -  The goal is to overcome the habit of rebirth.
• Four meditations:  Instand Deity, Threefold Path, Four Vajras, Five-fold manifestations

Meditation - Cultivation of familiarity;  Cultivating a habit until it is a remedy to samsāra.

There is nothing that is not easy when you are used to it.  We are savants at suffering, rebirth, etc.

There is no Self and Other, such dualism is habitual to us because we strongly believe they are so.  The easiest way to get rid of “self” is to replace it.  Your sense of Self is reinforced by the continuation of who and what you think you are.

In Generation, the “I” object of identification is replaced with another, so that we refer to ourselves with “other” rather than “I.”  You visualise yourself as the deity of the practice.

Is this pretending or spurious?  No; Now, with the belief in “self,” is spurious.  Thinking of oneself as divine is the correction of an error.

In Generation

• Four ways of rebirth:  Instantaneous, No causes/conditions (ex. heat/humidity), Born with conditions other than genetics, Born because of genetic conditions (egg/womb)

The only reason we do not think we are divine is because we strongly believe so.  Through apprehension of the Self as a deity, we dilute the Self with Self (ex. A cup of coffee diluted with water).  In doing so, you infiltrate and alter self-fixation, and realize your own true nature.

Benefits for Beings Filling Space - Benefits filling space and for beings that fill that space.

Chenrezig is the passion of all the Buddhas.  The activity is to empty samsāra from its depths.  Chenrezig’s Bodhichitta is supreme because he has vowed to remain a Bodhisattva until all things have achieved Buddhahood; Until he has liberated every being but himself.

Śākyamuni predicted a place filled with red-faced people who were hard to tame.  This place is considered to be Tibet, and Chenrezig has appeared as monarchs and ministers in Tibet.

A Special Liturgy is believed to have been written by an incarnation of Chenrezig.  It is divided into six parts:

• Refuge in Bodhichitta
• Meditation on the deity
• Mantras
• Path of post-meditation
• Benefits

Also, the Three-Fold Holiness:

• In the beginning, begin by generating Bodhichitta
• In the middle, practices cultivate wisdom
• At the end, dedicate your virtue to the awakening of all beings

Meditation on the Deity

Think of yourself in ordinary form surrounded by all other forms.  Above their heads is a white lotus with eight petals, above the lotus is a white disc representing the moon.  Atop the white disc is a symbol of the sri, emanating colorful rays of light that remove the sufferings of the realms and collect blessings before retracting.  Then, the sri transforms into Chenrezig himself.

Chenrezig

• Body a full white, radiating five colorful rays that fill the six realms and fil them with happiness
• Smile and gaze represent love
• Eyes see past, present and future
• Two hands in prayer in front
• Third hand holds a mala, fourth holds a flower
• Silk scarf/ribbon that floats above his body, as if being blown by the wind
• Skirt of red silk
• Finest gold jewelry, inlaid with the finest jewels
• Tiara/crown
• Earrings
• Short necklace (similar to a choker but with pendants
• Longer necklace that goes below his waist
• Bracelets at his elbows, arms and legs
• Rings on his fingers and toes
• Belt
• Skin of deer/antelope called a Krishnasara draped over his shoulder, symbolizing harmlessness rather than violence
• Long, jet black hair, half up (having transcended samsāra), half-down (having transcended Nirvana)
• Amithaba - A form that looks like Buddha, but with red skin rather than gold.
• Behind Chenrezig is a Moon Disc.  He is not leaning on it, but he could if he wanted to
• Embodiment of all sources of refuge
• Upon realizing all of this, you recite the Liturgy of the Visualization of the Deity

Recitation of the Mantras

• You and all in unison supplicate the deity
• Attitude - Entrustment in Chenrezig until your entire feeling of perception is altered, praising Chenrezig by means of desperate eulogy
• Recitation and yoga of the three gates = emanation and withdrawal of recollection/light rays
• Through the condition/power of your supplication, the rays of deities intensify greatly and shoot out of Chenrezig above the beings’ heads
• In his wisdom, by touching your body, Chenrezig changes all reality like the flick of a light switch.  Anything you’ve done wrong is immediately purified.  Any actions that prevent higher liberation are purified when the light hits you.  You see the Self and Other and their differences.  All beings are transformed into Chenrezig (the inanimate environment is transformed into the realm of Sukhāvatī).  All sounds become Om Mani Padme Hung.  All thought, states of mind, etc. become pure.  Each state of being is purified of its suffering.

There are two principle kinds of treasure discovery:

Earth Treasure:  Texts and artifacts

Mental Treasure:  Buried in memory; Discover through mental visionaries

The content is taken from philosophy/epistemology and put into meditation techniques.  The great Karma Lingpa claimed he could look at a book once and know everything in it.  Because he was such an good tertön, he is credited with “revealing” the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Master of Experience

• Jigme Lingpa - Was not celibate
• Nyingma - Traditional; Affiliated with Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna
• Staff of Soulful Devotion (Apparitions of the self: the secret autobiographies of a Tibetan visionary by Janet Gyatso, pg. 183)
• Padmasambhava

Tantra

• Kanjur - Tibetan Buddhist Canon
• Nyingma Gyubum - The three tantras of the Nyingma

Transformation refers to a non-dualistic attitude towards spiritual development

Lingpa thought that feelings like anger should not be suppressed in meditation, but exploited for their great energy, and that from that transformed something beautiful.

Lust - Blissful

Anger - Luminous

Ignorance  - Non-conceptual

Through Tantric practice, you use the negative and get something positive

Third chapter of The Third Eye by Lobsang Rampa

• Lobsang fell out of a tree, was possessed by a Tibetan monk on a quest
• As a child, he had siblings.  One died when he was seven.
• Failed a test that Tibetans pass
• Goes into “training” to become a monk.  Trephination to see auras, sat out in front of gates for days to memorize texts
• Goes on trip with teacher, does a bunch of trivial things
• Sent to China to study Tibetan, Chinese and Western medicine
• Becomes a Chinese pilot
• “Super Pilot Doctor”
• Tortured by Japanese during war after crashing, escapes and gets recaptured twice.  Gets on a boat, sets off into the Sea of Japan, washes ashore in Russia and is captured and tortured.
• Learns how to control dogs, “dog trainer”
• Escapes before being recaptured again
• Eventually crashes again, ruining his body
• Telepathically communicates with his teacher, and eventually the monk attains Hoskin’s body
• The old body goes back to Tibet, which is guarded
• He tries to be a photographer in the new body and is approached by a publisher
• He says the Earth is two planets that have collided and we are extraterrestrials.  Says Ireland was part of Atlantis that broke off.
• Why should you read this book?  It proveds a false yet common image of Tibet and was one of the first works about Tibet, increasing awareness of/interest in the Far East.  Donald S. Lopez, Jr. also speculates that the book could be a Mind Treasure.  The Third Eye made the West pay attention to the Far East and notice China’s treatment of Tibet and its people.

References/Suggested Reading

Ocean of Reasoning by Jay Garfield

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way by Jay Garfield

Tathagatagarbha

3^rd Sandhinirmocana Sūtra

Professor L. Stafford Betty

The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama

Prisoners of Shangri-La by Donald S. Lopez, Jr.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Ngok Loden Sherab

The Myth of the Given by Wilfrid Sellars

The Attention Revolution by B. Alan Wallace

Blake’s Apocalypse by Harold Bloom

Notes on Nāgārjuna and Zeno on Motion by Brian Galloway

The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path by Tsongkhapa

The Mahābhārata: The book of the assembly hall. The book of the forest by Johannes Adrianus Bernardus van Buitenen

Next Entry:  Chenrezig Meditation

Meditation

• Introspection cuts through boredom/sloth, ill will/anger, sensual desire; Weakens other hindrances

Yogācāra/Cittamātra

God makes sure/causes preceptions that occur inside; Pre-established

Natures

• Illusory - Creates a subject/object dichotomy
• Dependent - Causal flow of mind
• Perfected - Subject-object

The unconscious part of the mind houses the karmic intentions

Karma plays the role of God

Samatha - Focused; Focus on breathing

Dzogchen - Great Perfection - (Nyingma School); Open Awareness

Mahāmudrā - Great Seal - (Kagyu School); What you find, ultimately, is reflexive awareness

Vipaśyanā - (Theravada); More like Samatha

Medication is counter-productive

• When diagnosed medically, some people can’t even get through daily activities

After third stage, take up a vacation¹

Tetralemma

NOT

• Self does not exist
• Self exists
• Both
• Neither

Nagarjuna evokes the two truths to avoid the charge of nihilism

Prasaṅgika (Regarded as “too much”)

• Candrakīrti
• Jayananda
• Patsap

Sautrāntika (Regarded as “too little”)

• Dharmakīrti

Mabja was in the middle

ex. Observation of a moose

• Prasaṅgika negates the moose
• Chaba tries to make a logical connection
• Mabja - There is some with an without a logical connection, a conventional valid cognition.  Mabja thought that you could teach the Ultimate on the basis of the Conventional

The moose is empty - There is something about that region of space that causes the image of a moose²; Conventional truth is second class

You know what you’re negating

Negate too much or too little

Really precise about what you’re negating

Tsongkhapa - If there were no minds, nothing would exist; interdependent origination is emptiness

Svabhava - Chairness; Treeness; A tree is empty of treeness; Conventional analysis

Grasping onto self

• Nagarjuna negates too much, negates the world and suffering of others

Two Types of Ignorance

1. Learned
2. Innate

Next entry:  Exemplary Literature

¹yod min medmin - approach to Mādhyamaka; Non-existent, not non-existent; Freedom from extremes, freedom from proliferations

² There’s not even a region of space