Renunciation

Revulsion is the foot of meditation...

Whatever I call it, revulsion, disenchantment, renunciation, this is the first stage of Tantra. You cannot take refuge if you don't know what you're taking refuge from.  You cannot visualize enlightenment if you are not clear on what heavy psychic conditioning you are hoping to liberate yourself and all beings from. 

If you are not generous with yourself, you cannot give yourself permission to let it all go and to transform. 

It hit me today what generosity means for a Bodhisattva.  I'm giving up, by ordinary standards, what it takes to be successful.  I'm giving up the centrality of  "wordly pursuits."  I'm giving up prioritizing them, which risk may giving up on having them. 

I do this to achieve buddhahood with no guarantee that I will, and no guarantee that anyone will care if I do. 

But I persevere because I know I'm so close.  I can feel my subtle body purifying. I can feel the energy balancing.  I can feel the bodhichitta growing stronger every day.

In Fearless Simplicity, Tsokny Rinpoche says to start with shamata.  We start by developing ease, delight, joy. And then we have something to give. Compassion arises naturally when we want others to have what we have. 

We want them to know that all is impermanent, but not nothing.  And we want them to know that they know this. 

He likens bodhichitta to the salad dressing.  Without it merit is dry and dull.

Let it all go, the default network.  Just let it go. 

I'm feeling really excited about starting Tantra. 

Toggling with tantra

A new, very strange dream to work with.

I grew a third eye!

This might have something to do with the White Tara practice I've been doing. I'm toggling between tantra, Dzogchen, and the last week of Bodhisattva immersion.

Toggling between effort and effortlessness, the joy of non-duality seems to be arising more spontaneously this week.  I've been doing analytical meditation that is working to dissolve the self, and I've been experimenting more with tantric practices.

Feeling inner space, lucidity and the pleasures of deity practice is opening up more channels, and unleashing great big boulders of stress.

Maybe I am ready to start letting it all go.  

Dreamlike nature of samsara

This morning in meditation I had and experience of what Tsonyi Rinpoche describes  as "baby rigpa."

It felt like the natural result of two practices I've been toggling through all week, Dzogchen and meditating on dreams. I've been working on effortlessness in my meditation and the practice of what Mingyur Rinpoche describes as "chok zhak," the natural dropping down into buddha nature. I've also been pulling out an example dream that represents the work stress that I've been struggling with in recent weeks. I've been asking the Andrew Holocek question "who is dreaming this dream?." 

Yesterday the answer to that question was the aggregate of work stress. There's no "me" that is generating that dream.  Just stress throwing together all kinds of scenarios. And then the dream in real life. My stress creating all kinds of stories that distract me from real productivity and leadership. 

Woke up in the middle of the night and grabbed for a guided meditation. Took the last week of Dzogchen, Cortland Dahl, guiding through the realization that everything is pure awareness.

Went back to sleep and had a different work stress dream. 

This morning I sat with that sense of vulnerability, and out of it came this very pure sense of nowness.  There were no dream, no past, no present. Just what is. I felt it as a thin channel running through me.

It was clarity, lucidity, but it was also love. Pure unconditioned love.

It felt safe, like home. It felt like real power