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

The mind as an event

 

Today I will contemplate this perpective.

The mind and everything that moves within it, is an event, not a thing we can grasp.  An event is something that happens, takes place. 

The mind just seems static because it's an event that is always happening now.

But it is happening quickly, everywhere, infinitely expanding. 

As long as space endures...

I miss writing.

Trying to find that space in myself where life makes sense. Where there is the possibility of clarity. This weekend on the Way of the Bodhisattva closing retreat, I've had some insights that I know are true roots.

I've finally understood the dynamics of emptiness. 

When something and its nonexistence

Both are absent from before the mind 

No other option does the latter have.

It comes to perfect rest from concepts free

It is said that when Shantideva recited these lines, he floated up and disappeared.  

I have no plans to disappear, but in a certain way I did this weekend. My intuitive belief in the solidity of myself is substantially less intuitive after two days of "sense of self" meditation.  With a less solid sense of self it's easier to let go of suffering. 

But it's also easier to develop buddah nature, compassion, joy, equanimity. The immeasurables. 

Even if the inner refuge is an illusion, it is more stable floating on emptiness. 

 

Taking Refuge

Last weekend I travelled to Boston to take refuge.

I have a new name, Karma Rangdrol Lhamo.  In English: Self-liberated goddess. 

Taking refuge means another level of committment, beyond anything I've done before in the almost 15 years since I started this journal.  I'm not sure exactly when this root really took.  In part it's a pre-requisite for studying Dzogchen, which is something I've been wanting to do for a while.  In part it's grown out of the night my father died and I had no way to spiritually honour him than to read chapter 10 of The Way of the Bodhisattva. Something clicked deeply for me when I read the lines "as long as space endures, and beings are to be found, may I remain to drive away the sorrows of the world." 

My father gave me my love of religion, but he also grew disenchanted with Catholicism in the end, as I have. But I need devotion in my ife. 

Whatever the cause, this feels right...

Happy Losar

Today marks the Tibetan New Year, which I celebrated with an online recitation of The Nectar of The Path.

I'm a Tibetan Buddhist now. Not something I expected to say 10 years ago, when I first started my journey with Mingyur Rinpoche.  I'd had enough of ritual with Catholicism. The appeal of Mingyur Rinpoche was his secularism. 

But there is reward in being locked in. Just as I've been acculumating savings ever since I signed up for a paycheck withdrawal RRSP, I believe that my mind will clarify, peace and love in my heart will grow more effortlessly from my commitment to a belief system that has proven its merit to me over and over again in the last decade. 

Next week I officialy take my Bodhisatva vow.  

I took it in my heart a few months ago.  Before that even, when I read the dedication chapter of the Way of the Bodhisatva to my father a few hours before he died. 

In April I hope to take the first course in The Path of Liberation, and receive pointing out instructions from Mingyur Rinpoche. 

I've received an amazing taste of these instructions from Michael Taft.

Despite all the deep sadness of events in the world right now, as war rages on, I feel ready to accept whatever comes this year of the water tiger. 

May the peace of the water element, from which I take my name, combine with the power of the tiger element to accelerate love and ease to everyone who is suffering now. May we all be liberated. May we all one day soon know joy.