My algorithm for self liberation

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My focus this year was self liberation.

This year I've played around with a few formulas for that. There is the formula that Shinzen Young once put forth: equanimity * pain = liberation from suffering.  This year I thought about the motivation equation. That motivation = expectation * value / impulsivity * delay.

As a Mahamudra practioner, I'm not a big fan of expectation. I prefer faith. The belief in something you know from repeated experience. If I value absolute wellbeing, and I know from experience that I feel better the more time I spend with that absolute wellbeing, then it's likely that I will feel more motivated to do that. The more it grows, the more impulsivity and delay are diminished. My motivation then becomes self propelling.

Is this fruition as the path?

For many people in my society the meditative experience is the delay. They value the fruits of relative reality, external sources of power. But from my perspective cultivating and mainting the relative fruits risks delaying the skills of thriving and living comfortably in the absolute. 

As we age and get closer to death, those skills become more necessary. So in 2026 I'm going to put my faith in that basket and watch that basket. 

The Year of Randrol Lhamo

This year I work on building an identity around my vajrayana refuge name, Rangdrol Lhamo.

In Tibetan this mean self-liberating goddess, and I want to try to incorporate this vision of myself in all that I do.

Self liberation means allowing suffering to liberate itself. In vajrayana we see all suffering as a manifestation of the same energy that drives samsara. If we let it run its course it becomes easier to recognize the Nirvana that it all emerges from and leads to. Thus we live in both samsara and nirvana at the same time. 

It is standard tantra practice to visualize yourself as a deity, but I haven't yet tried visualizing myself as the deity name I was fortunate enough to be given. 

Stay tuned for adventures in 2025!

More self liberation

 Rinpoche: Self-liberation and liberation upon arising are not characteristics of thought: they are what happens when the nature of thought is recognized. So it’s not the case that you either recognize the self-liberation or don’t; self-liberation is the result of recognition. Normally, thoughts are anything but self-liberated. A thought arises, and it takes us over, and that produces another thought, and so on. On the basis of these thoughts, we generate further confused projections, on the basis of which we experience pleasure and pain. Now, when the nature of a thought is recognized, what happens to thought is very much like, as is traditionally said, what happens when a snake untangles or unties the knots it's tied itself into. The snake does it itself; no one has to come along and help the snake out. In the same way, when you look at the thought directly, for example, a thought of anger, and you see its nature, then the thought does not generate a further thought; the anger is not prolonged. As soon as the nature is seen, at that moment, the poisonous quality of the anger just disappears and dissolves; and that is self-liberation or liberation upon arising.

Thrangu Rinpoche

“Pointing Out The Dharmakaya: Teachings on the Ninth Karmapa's Text," p. 110

Self Liberation

In the essence of Mahamudra course that I'm talking YMR explains the three levels of transformation, the view (cognitive), meditation (emotional), and application (habitual). 

We first approach the idea of buddah nature with the intellect.  Then through meditation we bring develop an emotional relationship with it, sometimes enjoying it, sometimes not. Finally, through application in life, to our problems, we have the kind of direct realization that is self-generating. We become one with Mahamudra. 

That is transformation.

When eating, cleaning, living, sleeping become Mahamudra, that is retirement from Samsara.