Dharma Wheel

Astus wrote:Since vipashyana is the key method to attain certainty in the true nature of mind and phenomena, if you have trouble applying instructions found in Mahamudra, you can also try Madhyamaka.

Yogins and yoginis who have [the view of Dzogchen] pay no attention to their own level of accomplishment regarding either attachment to the objective, material aspect of nominal experience or to the degree of any emotional attachment. Such yogins and yoginis make no distinction between high and low views, nor do they pay heed to the speed of accomplishment on the path.

monktastic wrote: Now this sounds like fantastic advice. Dzogchen and Mahamudra masters insist that the realization gained through Madhyamaka is equivalent to their own, but as far as I know (which is almost nothing), Madhyamaka does not require Direct Introduction.

Sometimes people think Buddhists only teach mindfulness, which they understand as knowing what you are doing. And they think mindfulness is the path to enlightenment. Or they consider mindfulness to be a therapy. So that becomes their meditation. But this is not even close to the Buddha's teaching. Everyone pays attention while they are driving. And fishermen are attentive to fishing, and musicians to playing their music. If these were meditation and led to enlightenment, everyone would already be enlightened. Of course, this kind of mindfulness is a good thing, it keeps you from having accidents. But this kind of mindfulness is not dharma practice. What mindfulness really is will be explained later in the text. Buddha said mindfulness is important in meditation, but in higher level meditation you need to go beyond it, because mindfulness is dualistic. In higher meditation you go beyond subject and object. Being aware of mind itself is mindfulness.

If you are meditating for your own happiness, practice when you feel like it. If you are practicing to remove anxiety and develop peace you need to practice more. It is like preparing yourself to defeat the enemy. If you are meditating to seek unconditional peace and happiness, then meditation should take precedence over everything else. If we don't make use of this present opportunity, then it will be very rare to have this chance again. That is why many masters meditated for years alone in the mountains.

Meditation is not for the sake of gain, but for loss. We have fixation and grasping and from those our emotional reactions arise. When we meditate our fixations and grasping should decrease, so there is no basis for our negative emotions and they fall apart. The more you lose, the closer you come to your essence. When you lose everything and there is nothing to grasp to, then you have crossed the border of samsara and you are enlightened. Then buddha nature is revealed of itself. Finally you reach a state where there is nothing to lose. Then is no ego, no goal, you could also say no happiness. It's like it says in the Heart Sutra.

Many people are confused, expecting to gain things from meditation. But that is mixed up. Chasing after pleasant emotions, thinking one day's meditation is better than the next, chasing mental abstractions. Next you might start smoking nirvana.

But meditating without a goal will not lead you into a wrong view. So our meditation is not meditating, It is being aware of our moment of being. So don't meditate, just maintain your awareness. So there is nothing to gain. When you remain in natural way, the you become natural. And when you maintain that in daily life, you come closer to reality your grasping becomes less and you gain real wisdom and compassion.

If your mind is happy, meditate on happiness. If it is sad. meditate on sadness. If it is agitated, meditate on agitation. Just be aware and stay on whatever happens. That is how you should meditate. That is is the accumulation of wisdom. Even remaining in that wisdom for one second clears away the accumulated ignorance of many kalpas. Then in you daily life you accumulate merit. Through these two accumulations, you will attain enlightenment

Many philosophical systems arose in the first thousand years of Buddhism. The essence of them all is these three instructions on Mahamudra. The most profound meditation is the ordinary mind. When we anticipate what meditation is like, that doesn't bring wisdom. But because this instruction is too simple and also too profound, this instruction doesn't satisfy. Natural mind is something we have with us all the time. We think the truth is far away but it is within us all the time. So we need a more elaborate instruction from a book. It is like churning butter from milk, or extracting diamonds from the earth.

Even though I don't have the realization of Bokar Rinpoche, I still have his blessings. You can study philosophy for 100 years and not be finished. Since life is short, to attain enlightenment and be free of samsara, mahamudra is a short and easy way to enlightenment. If you have an unshakable devotion to the guru, you will get the result of mahamudra.

The main practice of mahamudra is resting the mind naturally. It is importance to keep the mind free of contrivance. The main technique is unforced awareness, resting the mind in a relaxed fashion in its natural state. There are so many practices, but I would like to tell you one secret. When I was studying this I came across the term "ma.bcos.pa" many times. It is usually translated as unfabricated. It means letting the mind to be in a natural way. In this system bad thoughts are not something to avoid and good thoughts something to cultivate. All thoughts are like waves, which are the same as the ocean. In the same way thoughts are the same as mind itself. Simply remain natural, but with awareness. Having expectations or rejecting mental states never works. Let the mind be itself in a spontaneous way with awareness. So simply sit and leave the mind in a natural way. There are many levels of mind, shallow and deep. They are all present, but we are normally focused on the sensory levels and don't notice the deeper levels. Let the mind be aware of all the levels of mind.

muni wrote:I read here the interesting posts.

Maybe a bit off topic but the recognition from within our cosy protected place should also be difficult or not be so easy.
At least I heard about. A warm hand placed on a cold of a passed away beloved one; is a teaching which gets no any applaus and a possible little understanding of the naturally state beyond birth and death, which needs no applaus by the illusion of this world.

I heard a teaching which was like: some hardship is profound tool, can be better than a thousand of books.

monktastic wrote:- When you are in the natural state, your experience will be like [...timeless, duality-free, ...]

monktastic wrote:Now this sounds like fantastic advice. Dzogchen and Mahamudra masters insist that the realization gained through Madhyamaka is equivalent to their own, but as far as I know (which is almost nothing), Madhyamaka does not require Direct Introduction. Come to think of it: doesn't that contradict the requirement of DI

• "I see through everyone. If I've seen people, I know whether or not they have any enlightenment or understanding, just as an expert physician recognises ailments at a glance, discerning the nature of the illness and whether or not it can be remedied. One who knows this only after detailed inquiry into symptoms is a mediocre physician."

• When followers of Zen come to see me, I have already understood them completely. How can I do this? Simply because my perception is independent - externally I do not grasp the ordinary or the holy, internally I do not dwell on the fundamental. I see all the way through and do not doubt or err anymore.

Anders wrote:Not entirely. Without being certain, what I understand from the claims is that the view of Madhyamika and the prajnaparamita sutras is equivalent to Mahamudra - however, the methods for entering such realisation are not.