Sādhaka wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 6:38 pm
Kai lord wrote: ↑Wed Jan 11, 2023 3:03 pm
Skillful means is actually the seventh perfection after wisdom the sixth. It will be perfected on the seventh bhumi.
Which makes sense since one must perfect their insight before being able to demonstrate them indirectly to beings whom are not ready.
This^.
It seems that Upaya actually begins at the First Bodhisattva Bhumi, and is perfected, as you said at the Seventh. Although I'm not sure how Upaya is perfected at the Seventh Bhumi and not later....
FWIW, I think basically what happens is that with the 6th Bhumi, there is a full realization in post-equipoise that all phenomena are in truth pure, but due to ignorance, this is not realized by beings. Really all that is necessary, then, is to overcome ignorance and reveal that which has always been in truth the case.
This is realized for oneself, but nonetheless in terms of one's manifestation in the world, one still is unable to fully help others unless those others have significant merit. For those beings who lack merit, it is realized that one is basically unable, it would seem, to help them properly.
Here, then, great bodhisattva aspirations are made where one basically deeply prays or aspires that one's body, speech, mind, qualities, and activities basically act as adornments of wisdom. In another manner of speaking, one comes to realize that the true guru, which is basically wisdom mind, is the sole reliance for the benefit of beings, and so one's 'own' mind - body, speech, mind, etc - sort of comes to fully rely on this wisdom.
This basically burns through subtle habitual patterns where one might have subtle ideas that there is a 'right' way to teach beings and a 'wrong' way. Also, at this point, one has to come to realize the four activities as discussed in Vajrayana, as one has to allow one's body, speech, mind, etc, to manifest in a pacifying manner through a wrathful manner as is basically 'commanded' by the wisdom guru, so to speak.
At a point, then, one realizes the fullness of these four activities and realizes that in truth, this has always been how it is for all beings. That is to say that everything that happens, has happened, and will happen to all beings is, was, and always will be a manifestation of enlightened love, even if that is not recognized by the beings at the time. This would include things like war, pestilence, famine, cancer, sickness, etc - all of them fall within the scope of the four activities.
At this point, then, it is absolutely impossible to find anything at all that is not pure, and this is not simply an 'external' thing, but rather one sort of participates in it fully. Then, one enters the pure bhumis, because it is realized that there never was any phenomena in the slightest which was ever impure, and given that one is participating in this in a way where in some sense 'personal' activity has ceased, there is no possibility of anything other than experiencing the play of wisdom in a pure land, essentially.
It is necessary, in terms of the path, with the 7th Bhumi to clearly discern that the mind that is rooted in ignorance is, was, and always will be fundamentally misguided. And one has to then fully, utterly, entirely offer up all of this to the true wisdom guru to use as an adornment. Of course, on some level understanding that the wisdom guru is the nature of one's own mind, ultimately.
I think on a sort of psychological level, with the 7th Bhumi one dives into the very corners of the psyche, the very last vestiges of habitual tendencies of viewing things as impure. With the 8th Bhumi, one kind of realizes a sort of non-action, as one's 'self' has been offered up entirely and become a sort of tool that wisdom uses.
Anyway, some words.
“Whoever wants to find the wisdom beyond intellect without praying to his guru is like someone waiting for the sun to shine in a cave facing the north. He will never realize appearances and his mind to be one.”
Kyabje Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche