tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39191671416484672192024-03-13T05:39:36.227-07:00Okar ResearchOkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.comBlogger847125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-24063295128775059732021-03-16T09:28:00.001-07:002021-03-16T09:28:12.459-07:00Shambhala and Chogyam Trungpa
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Robin Kornman said in 1989 that..."Trungpa received the Shambhala Terma Texts in a language that he was not famiiar with...he wrote them down in Tibetan because that was as close as he could get...."
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"Carolyn Gimian writes: I attended many meetings, both formal and informal, with him [CTR] concerning Shambhala Training, Kalapa Assembly and the transmission of these teachings. In my memory, he made it quite clear that he hoped that the full transmission of the Shambhala teachings would be made to many people and that their religious persuasion was not an issue. Whenever those of us meeting with him tried to put limitations on who should be included in the advanced levels of Shambhala Training, and whenever we tried to add requirements as hoops for newer people to jump through, Rinpoche would resist our desire to limit things. I remember once, in Mill Village I believe, that he said that we needed to have more faith in the magic of the teachings.".....http://radiofreeshambhala.org/faq/faq-shambhala/
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"The Druk Sakyong had to say in Comments on the Werma Sadhana:From one way of thinking, the sadhana has been influenced by the traditional buddhist style, but on the other hand it is quite different. It is a self-contained practice. It is not particularly borrowed from buddhism, but it is simply self-existent in the Shambhala style.".. .http://radiofreeshambhala.org/faq/faq-shambhala/
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-18453272769257430752019-11-27T04:06:00.004-08:002019-11-27T04:06:37.135-08:00The Grounding of Johnny Blue
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"Des femmes descendant de leur miroir ancien<br>
T'apportent leur jeunesse et leur foi en la tienne<br>
Et l'une sa clarte la voile qui t'entraine<br>
Te fait secretement voir le monde sans toi<br>
-o- <br>
C'est avec nous que tout vivra."<br>
Paul Eluard....Paris: 1926
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As desire relaxes its once furtive grasp into appreciation and that looked to is seen so<br>
vividly in the light far traveled entering our morning window, and as you lay so still asleep with eyes closed softly in dream passion remembrance, I read slowly to you...
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"Women coming down from their ancient mirror<br>
Bringing their youth and their faith in yours..."
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A ceaseless snow morning and I for the longest time without touching stroke your face with soft looking
and then one hand into warmth unseen beneath pale silk and you so slightly move. ...
Remembrance thoughts of lovemaking before sleep intertwine themselves with the details of
freshly lit incense on my senses........the sounds of your even, still breathing punctuate the silence....
if only one could hold a single moment in life's time it would be this first awakening sunrise moment, as you lie so still asleep....... dreaming...
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"And one her light the sail which leads you off<br>
Helps you secretly see the world without you..."
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I look to a bedside broken mirror reflecting only and for always the flow of present time
with no memory recalled of our passionwalk up the silverglass that night and the look of surprise
in your pleased with broken reflection eyes as minds halted into disbelief laughter...
now, etched so vividly in this first of morning mind is the midnight candleglow beauty
of your milkskin tenderness ways and scents, softfold delicate petals of skin...<br>
"-o- <br>
It is with us that everything will live."
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Deepest winter and snowing heavily in these mountain pines as I read the Eluard...<br> that ancient mirror in the Paris of 1926, he must have known the moments clearly ....<br> the Emperor's mirrorview at Ise...
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Wildflowers drying in a celadon window... colours revealed as remaining moisture captures this first light of day.......beauty fades into the yugen beyond form, then softly disappears...
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I committed to the teachings in July of 1969 in the Sangre de Christo mountains near Taos, New Mexico, as the result of conversations with an elderly landscape painter named Herman Reznick, a Christian yogin with a very big mind who left it up to me to find a clear path and to not be confused by charlatans. We sat those long crimson New Mexico seasky summer evenings on the western view slope of those beautiful mountains, warm pinion air breezing hauntingly soft...breath slow minds focused on dry distant horizons...slow, end of sunlight... talking...
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Oil painting days, strong summer colours<br>
Mixed in the mind with riverbank clays,<br>
Dried bone whites along high mountain trails,<br>
The hues of a soft brilliant sky.
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Vision deepening...<br>
Colours and scents<br>
Worked through the fingertips<br>
Of a long, still gaze...<br>
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Phenomena seem as translucent flow,<br>
Unreal yet visible, floating ... thatness<br>
In the oceanmind world we swim.
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At the Pueblo de Taos, white sage summer dances with slow ritual movement ... the elders motionless in their blankets bright woven and the adobe children with their deep, darkened eyes in wonderland play with laughter voices...red earth dust on their feet, lips soft as cottonwood seed. To the the west hours distant, pastel thunderhead clouds and into the east, highland green mountains with sacred spirit lakes and crystalline drala caves.
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As the edge of day's light fading quickly into darkness the wildflowers return softly into their glow, pinion and juniper scents grow fainter, then slowly disappear. Bloodwarm animals move ghostlike from shade into shadow. An aging desert coyote poet speaks his mind then dissolves slowly into the yellow.
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Mind moves...the high desert lies quietly for centuries.
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Child's mind is beginningless and has no end with the light and colour shapes of imagination play darknesses opening into a continuous present childtime so preconception rich with laughter and short sadnesses and tears-love-pain so vividly woven into abstraction days of stormpassing yellows and shy vermilion desire heart-touched now to a remembered soft blue and as one grows older the illusions of goal and fascination with speed erode the sensibilities and benumb the feelings, nourishing the chasm that develops between who in reality we are and what in thought illusion we pretend to be. Conceptualization obscures basic perception and we become preoccupied lost in a blackened fog of impotent literary materialism with the childwonder corrupting into superficial distraction, continuously falling, deeply fading falling into the depths of a convinced self-solidity.
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Cool blue and fragile green<br>
Dappled sapphire<br>
Dot in white space<br>
Spins aimlessly thru vastness<br>
Warmed by a powerful ruby sun.
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Southwest desert sunrise<br>
(Blood of Christ Mountains)<br>
A tiny brilliant rose-amber spider<br>
Climbs a sparkled glistening web<br>
Seeking shelter in soft morning shadows.
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There came a place on the dreamwater stream<br>
Where I began to see further.
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I returned that autumn to San Francisco to study Zen with Suzuki Roshi, whom I had met previously yet couldn't particularly figure out. Cut the blonde hair short and rode 5 am streetcars through alone darkened streets to the Bush Street shrineroom with its stark shadow outlines and incense scent staircase creaking and sat the difficult sunrise morning hours silently watching the edges of discursive minds exhausting gently into themselves. Studied the flower and tea rituals, cut the arrogant branches, wondered of his theory of time and beauty and came so close....
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The young Tibetan came to teach in the summer of 1970 and he was relaxed fresh, unpredictable...and I sat close very zenlike in complete fascination of his mind and manner and finally discovered my true heart...went to see him a few days later and he was drunk and I walked away in disappointment and swirled for days in confusion then finally decided to find out what was me and what was him.
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Having seen your face<br>
And heard your soft voice<br>
Watched you slowly limpwalk into the room...
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Glimpses of openness suddenly occurred<br>
And what always seemed me<br>
Softened into yearning...
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A young man with a corpse on his back<br>
Proceeds slowly eastward<br>
Through the phenomenal swirl.
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Stillness until one slight awakening stir,<br>
And out an opened window the beauty of slowly falling snow. <br>
The pines grow bluer in the shadow light of this storm... <br>
Pearldust drala wonderland.</I> <br>
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Morning alone, exploring the details of crimson on candlelit brocade as I practice
with the brush then offer the morning tea and the two visualizations and remembered
incantations with the blackstroke ink dissolving down the central crystal channel
to the white heart projecting and awakening all the while to the inviting white smoke
of dried juniper rising into the windsongs of sky galloping horses and the snow...
the snow still falling...perfectly slowly falling...dissolving...
<I>rising, swirling, striving, purling, falling...melting...
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this landscape binds into a refulgent crystalling splendor...
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binding, falling, dissolving, rising...
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life, and death too, are both good.</I>
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I left for Colorado and spent the weeks walking clear mountain streams and driving backcountry roads drinking with young, pretty companions and as always the endless craziness developed and dissolved and how often you came to mind...how affectionately the images arose...
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Early October...the radio and writing<br>
Out an open window...patches of snow up the mountainside<br>
Sky: clear and blue like ordinary mind.<br>
Pine trees and streams, rocks...Yun.
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Last night a full moon too beautiful to speak about<br>
Today, relaxed and thinking of you...<br>
The flow of a gentle warmth through these veins<br>
Geomantic completeness...empty heart.
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Slowly falling snow through a dream morning window...senses exploring senses, mind training mind....then unexpectedly, one timeless pause in the absolute center of completely centerless space.
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I unexpectedly met him standing alone late one summer night in Boulder on a darkened downtown street with the people busily passing and for the first time it occurred to me how alone he must have been in this world with that mind of his and as the years have passed that understanding has deepened, along with others... Only a fool shields himself with softness.
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In a crystalline shallow pool<br>
Deep in some distant mountains<br>
A brilliantly golden fish<br>
Swims wavely perfect in aloneness.
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Able to speak...there is no one to listen<br>
Surrounded by steep, rocky cliffs<br>
The clear, pure water can't flow<br>
To the faraway sea.
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Lonely for his true parents<br>
This flower of the dream-water<br>
Prepares to fly...
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In the winter of 1981 I spent three months in a large group meditation retreat at Chateau Lake Louise, deep in the Canadian Rockies. During the third difficult day of gently persistent outbreath sitting meditation I completely lost ground...began swimming in a quicksand like mind of confusion, murky and bottomless with a complete swirling and the tremendous energy surging and the perceptual world without any solidity. My body was no longer clearly defined with the boundaries of skin to which I had grown accustomed and I had to take long, cold showers in to return to a more solid state. I learned from those quicksand days not to panic ... regardless of what occurred, nor to push my way through. Each moment required complete focus.
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As those days and nights of terror/wonder passed, the sandvision turbulence clarified gradually into an ocean of energy which flowed into, through and about and never for an instant was one separate ... with the soft touch out breath dissolving gently into space without texture ... and the steep mental climbs past rockcloud bound kleshas and finally the relaxed soar into mind brilliant blue sky ... that tremendous shock of blue... <br>
A very strong connection with the earth had begun to occur and I could always feel the incredibly powerful energy flowing up through my very heavy feet...
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Dream/past dream/present dream/future.....<br>
Awakening from a lifedream of confusion,<br>
Feet painlessly nailed to this powerful earth...<br>
And whatever these days I write for you <br>
Is a giftstone tossed to a surfaceless sea,<br>
Playful waves polishingly churning...<br>
Ghostdance sailors of the golden-butter sea .......
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Deep into that blue/glacier winter, powerful experiences continued to occur. Late one night morning as he spoke I began to experience an extremely vivid mirror-like reality and from the center of that exploding perception brightness he smiled a go further look and suddenly with a tremendous jolt the body completely dissolved and there I sat in gone-out wonder nodding gently that I finally understood the precious mind of the lineage and all the while I felt like ancient Tilopa sitting alone unseen in complete reality madness on the banks of a farago river ... riverrun.
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The world we look into is a shadowcave mirror<br>
Platonic dreamplay puppets <br>
Projected by the heart mind resting nowhere in stillness.<br>
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Reflections impossible to grasp, taste, even touch...<br>
Nothing listening to nothing, nothing happening to see.
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Died alive Johnny ... Blue eyes breathing fire<br>
Heartblood gushing through central vein channels.<br>
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Into that mirror without any dust<br>
There is nothing left nothing ... <br>
Nothing to say.
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I walked the empty Chateau Lake Louise corridors deep into that sleepless night somewhat past aloneness and all the while felt so very sensitive to the softer light worlds of the dead. Sat alone until dawn at the glacier view window in a candleglow appreciation of the richness and patience of the lineage, and the ocean-mind world which was sensed but unseen until that alone luminous night.
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Morning, alone ... exploring the details of crimson on candlelit brocade as I practice with the brush then offer the morning tea and the two visualizations and remembered incantations with the blackstroke ink dissolving down the central crystal channel to the white heart projecting and awakening all the while to the inviting white smoke of dried juniper rising into the windsongs of sky galloping horses and the snow... still falling...<br>
perfectly slowly falling...dissolving...<br>
rising, swirling, striving, purling, falling...melting...
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The landscape binds into a refulgent crystalline splendor...
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Binding, falling, dissolving, rising...<br>
Life, and Death too, are both good.
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The return to Colorado was extremely difficult with all the mechanical energy and people along the street glued to their senses, mindlessly drawn along from one shop window to another. Eyes away cold on faces with no light and I as usual with so little to say walked the day slowly through movie streets, watching...
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Sitting motionless...bones harden into rock...<br>
Mind pours into itself...senses achieve astonishing clarity...<br>
Awareness without memory, luminous vision with no expectation...<br>
An indestructible essence is realized... there is no longer fear...<br>
To taste again mind without any taste, to swim in its ocean of brilliance...<br>
To touch the earth with these soft hands, mirror-hand-lines reminding...<br>
To leave the stone footprints, for others to follow.
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Two mirrors: no reflection...<br>
First Trungpa, weeks later alive Blue Vajradhara.
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Into the closing hours of this reverie room, naked feet warmed to a footprint stone floor, the fires of the earth slowly rising and from that which flows so mysteriously of mind unseen into the seed of heart and through a whitened throat with the words as blossoms and then down a powerful arm, softstroked to the touch yet deep within a current of pure steelhardened energy... slow continuous to rockbone fingertips ... the words arising from a speechless silence.
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Waiting downstream for the poetry boats of Li Po, <br>
The brilliance of occurrence unfettered by sense organs.<br>
Nothing comes.
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Cool blue face with mirror reflection tears,<br>
Eyes wetsparkling....Reality.
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In an ocean of love there is no seduction...<br>
The eyes won't turn away nor quiver<br>
Yet the heart does ... it has so little discipline.
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Cremation Day. Vermont
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Spring cricket music fields edged by a fragile green forest<br>
Birch and alder leaves blow softly across a pale blue sky<br>
In a distant valley, woodcutters<br>
Yet mostly silence, mostly beauty.<br>
Back into the forest, traces of white smoke continue skyward...<br>
So many faces today
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Awakening once again to an ocean of aloneness<br>
I feel the breeze of your soft breath <br>
Across my face and through the body<br>
And vow to repay you.
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On Viewing the Relics...Faceless face on a blackened charred head in airless bellglass so vividly seen yet more than a skull because there's so much burnt tissue, especially inside with the right eye socket blown out so completely and the left with blackburnt bandages still ashened across it, a few hairs.... no lips, no nose, no tongue, nor ears nor eyes...unmistakable forehead...while across this same room a photo and I look back and forth from image to relic with such astonished wonder and such incredible sadness. The smiles will never come again, nor the jokes and complaints, and no more poems from the firemelted lips.... the commands have all been given...
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Coal blackened head with a memory face etched so completely in that Lake Louise mirror. The soft, high voice with carefully arranged words uplifting with simply said things. No longer a throat, the voice cords to white smoke. Too real to look at, a presence so strong... and then bending sadly into one last farewell an invisible heavy hand comes down to bless....<br>
Ki Ki So So
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It was the Rigden's birthday poetry, nothing was to be eaten. I sat in secret in the rocks above, August morning watching my sun child dive happily into torn tent openings. A good place to die, I thought, mind chained to these rocks undisturbed a few days with the roller coaster of elements quickly dissolving, earth body to water then fire into wind/space and whatever ... the softer light ones vermillion sky dancing... brilliant white clouds......the Sun!
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It's a Rilkian Inscape, the senses can come too...<br>
With the poetry dancing it's touched naked appreciation...<br>
Stormed palace lady of red ...<br>
Oh mirrored Blue......<br>
Above the relic plain, things settle themselves.
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Having ridden the powerful breathhorse into the fourth time<br>
and viewed Shambhala with it's gemstone streets and<br>
brilliantly coloured forests and valleys...
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Walked this earth with it's molten sunlike center <br>
and for months carried it's powerful, nourishing energy <br>
in these incredibly heavy feet...
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Then one day a glimpse of your soft eyes<br>
in an unexpected meeting, and my life is once again<br>
abandoned to the madness of poetry...
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From "The Vermillion Journal of Eidolon Johnny Blue"
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JTH
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Writings 1981-1987
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Contact.....1-505-289-9612
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</html>OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-43880196491035122682019-01-20T01:04:00.003-08:002019-11-26T00:03:33.735-08:00A Rainbow Of Chaos<html>
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"An informal review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'."
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There is a vast store of energy which is not centered, which is not ego’s energy at all. It is this energy which is the centerless dance of phenomena, the universe interpenetrating and making love to itself. It has two characteristics: a fire quality of warmth and a tendency to flow in a particular pattern, in the same way in which fire contains a spark as well as the air which directs the spark. And this energy is always ongoing, whether or not it is seen through the confused filter of ego. It cannot be destroyed or interrupted at all. It is like the everburning sun. It consumes everything to the point where it allows no room for doubt or manipulation.
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But when this heat is filtered through ego, it becomes stagnant, because we ignore the basic ground, refuse to see the vast space in which this energy occurs. Then the energy cannot flow freely in the open space shared with the object of passion. Instead it is solidified, narrowed, and directed by the central headquarters of ego to move outward in order to draw the object of passion into its territory. This captive energy extends out to its object and then returns to be programmed again. We extend our tentacles and try to fix our relationship. This attempt to cling to the situation makes the communication process superficial. We just touch another person’s surface and get stuck there, never experiencing their whole being. We are blinded by our clinging. The object of passion, instead of being bathed in the intense warmth of free passion, feels oppressed by the stifling heat of neurotic passion.
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Love Story.....A cautionary tale from Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
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Under this fine rain I breathe in the innocence of the world. I feel coloured by the nuances of infinity. At this moment I am one with my picture. We are an iridescent chaos…
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“I will astonish Paris with an apple......Fruit… like having their portrait painted. They seem to sit there and ask your forgiveness for fading. Their thought is given off with their perfumes. They come with all their scents, they speak of the fields they have left, the rain which has nourished them, the daybreaks they have seen.....It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas.
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Genius is the ability to renew one’s emotions in daily experience.
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Time and reflection… modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.
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For an Impressionist to paint from nature is not to paint the subject, but to realize sensation.
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The painter unfolds that which has not been seen.
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I could paint for a hundred years, a thousand years without stopping and I would still feel as though I knew nothing.
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What I am trying to translate to you is more mysterious; it is entwined in the very roots of being, in the implacable source of sensations.
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I am still searching for the expression of those confused sensations that we bring with us at birth.
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Time and reflection… modify, little by little, our vision, and at last comprehension comes to us.
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I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools… I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing....I am progressing very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex forms.......We live in a rainbow of chaos.
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Albert Einstein.....
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A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
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Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
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When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary," he replied . "It's so seldom I have one.”
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Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
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Logic will get you from A to B. imagination will take you everywhere.
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Reality is merely an illusion.
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It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with the questions longer.
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Energy is liberated matter, matter is energy waiting to happen. ....Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it.
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.....space is no longer something distinct from matter, it is one of the "material" components of the world. An entity that undulates, flexes, curves, twists. We are not contained within an invisible, rigid infrastructure: we are immersed in a gigantic, flexible snail shell. The sun bends space around itself, and the Earth does not turn around it because of a mysterious force but because it is racing directly in a space which inclines, like a marble that rolls in a funnel. There are no mysterious forces generated at the centre of the funnel; it is the curved nature of the walls which causes the marble to roll......Planets circle around the sun, and things fall, because space curves.
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Einstein predicted that time passes more quickly high up than below, nearer to the Earth...... If a man who has lived at sea level meets up with his twin who has lived in the mountains, he will find that his sibling is slightly older than him.
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Einstein describes a colourful and amazing world where universes explode, space collapses into bottomless holes, time sags and slows near a planet, and the unbounded extensions of interstellar space ripple and sway like the surface of the sea
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As Chögyam Trungpa explains, from the perspective of the mandala principle, existence is orderly chaos. There is chaos and confusion because everything happens by itself, without any external ordering principle. At the same time, whatever happens expresses order and intelligence, wakeful energy and precision. Through meditative practices associated with the mandala principle, the opposites of experience—confusion and enlightenment, chaos and order, pain and pleasure—are revealed as inseparable parts of a total vision of reality.
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Chaos theory is a branch of mathematics focusing on the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions. "Chaos" is an interdisciplinary theory stating that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, self-organization, and reliance on programming at the initial point known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
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In classic Taoist cosmology, matter and energy are thought to be governed by five basic movements. The strength and influence of these movements wax and wane over the course of a year... all phenomena, such as our bodies and the distant stars, are constructed of the same basic particles of energy and that this energy is always in motion. Imagine everything as part of a vast, never-ending, always-changing grid or sea of energy. Tao is that energy and “all is Tao”.
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This is where lalita, the dance, comes in. You dance with reality, dance with apparent phenomena. When you want something very badly you do not extend your eye and hand automatically; you just admire. Instead of impulsively making a move from your side, you allow a move from the other side, which is learning to dance with the situation. You do not have to create the whole situation; you just watch it, work with it, and learn to dance with it. So then it does not become your creation, but rather a mutual dance. No one is self-conscious, because it is a mutual experience.
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Love Story..... Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
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<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2013/11/okar-research-index.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
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Email: okarresearch@gmail.com
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John Hopkins....New Mexico
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-64384512872614398952018-11-11T01:55:00.000-08:002018-11-11T02:00:55.795-08:00Skardu
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Rinpungpa's Guidebook (written in 1557 AD) locates Shambhala north of the Kashmir Valley and south of the Wakhan Corridor.....
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Rinpungpa, aka: "The Scholar King". A Tibetan prince who was the last of a dynasty of Ministers who ruled Tibet during the 15 and 16th centuries. He was considered one of the finest poets of the Tibetan language. Composed a guidebook to Shambhala in 1557 called "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" as a letter to his dead father whom he believed to have been reborn in Shambhala. Complex and ornate style derived from the Sanskrit poetry of India.
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"The Kashmir Valley, also known as the Vale of Kashmir, is a valley in the portion of the Kashmir region administered by India. The valley is bounded on the southwest by the Pir Panjal Range and on the northeast by the main Himalayas range. It is approximately 135 km long and 32 km wide, and drained by the Jhelum River.
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From: Rinpungpa's Guidebook to Shambhala .... "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" (1557 AD) ...."Crossing Tibet westward.....to the sacred mountain of Kailas ....from Kailas continue northwest to Ladakh and down through mountains and forest to the Vale of Kashmir..(Kashmir Valley)........ then north, through a maze of treacherous mountains....you will pass safely through and come out in the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans......over an 'outer ring' of sky-high ice mountains, down through a vicious desert, into unknown vistas....only to reach a second 'inner ring' of snow mountains. Beyond there, you must choose rightly among high valleys and low cities, having the good sense to know Shambhala when you reach it.........then you will at last, see the cities of Shambhala.....gleaming among ranges of snow mountains like stars on the waves of the Ocean of Milk."
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Skardu (Urdu: سکردو, Balti: སྐར་མདོ་་) is a city in Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan, and serves as the capital of Skardu District. Skardu is located in the 6 miles wide by 25 miles long Skardu Valley, at the confluence of the Indus and Shigar Rivers at an altitude of nearly 8,200 feet. The city is an important gateway to the nearby Karakoram Mountain range. The town is located on the Indus river, which separates the Karakoram Range from the Himalayas.
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Coordinates: 35°17′25″N....... 75°38′40″E<br>
Pakistan.... Autonomous territory of Gilgit Baltistan....District Skardu<br>
Elevation 2,228 m (7,310 ft)<br>
Population: 500,000<br>
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Lower Kachura Lake (Urdu: لوؤر کچورا جھیل), also known as Shangrila Lake (Urdu: شنگریلا جھیل) is located in Kachura village 20 minutes from Skardu city (nearly 2,500 m or 8,200 feet) town. The lake is also known as Shangrila lake after Shangri-la resort is built in 1983....
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Gilgit Baltistan......Buddhism came to this part of the country in the late 7th century when most of the masses were practicing bon religion. Before the arrival of Islam, Tibetan Buddhism and Bön were the main religions in Baltistan. Buddhism can be traced back to before the formation of the Tibetan Empire. The region has a number of surviving Buddhist archaeological sites. These include the Manthal Buddha Rock, a rock relief of the Buddha at the edge of the village (near Skardu) and the Sacred Rock of Hunza. Nearby are former sites of Buddhist shelters......Baltistan had Buddhist majority till the 15th century, before the arrival of Islam in this region. Since then most of the people converted to Islam, the presence of Buddhism in this region has now been limited to archeological sites, as the remaining Buddhists of this region moved east to Ladakh where Buddhism is the majority religion.
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Manthal Buddha Rock (Urdu: منٹھل چٹان) is a large granite rock on which picture of Buddha has engraved which probably dates back to 8 century. This rock is located in Manthal village of Skardu, in Pakistan. Buddha Rock is one of the most important relics of Buddhism in Skardu. It's about 3 kilometers from Sadpara Road. Sadpara road will lead to Satpara Lake......Before arrival of Islam in the region of Gilgit-Baltistan the majority of the people were Buddhist and they had engraved the Buddha on many rock pieces. This Buddha carving was not known to the world till beginning of 20th century due to its remote location. In 1906 the Scottish traveler Ella Christie wrote a book on her journey to the Western Tibet
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Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
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John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
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November 2018
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</html>OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-15588167138051405312018-11-10T02:02:00.001-08:002018-11-11T02:00:33.259-08:00Rinpungpa's Guidebook To Shambhala & the Kashmir Valley
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Rinpungpa's Guidebook (written in 1557 AD) locates Shambhala north of the Kashmir Valley and south of the Wakhan Corridor.....
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Rinpungpa, aka: "The Scholar King". A Tibetan prince who was the last of a dynasty of Ministers who ruled Tibet during the 15 and 16th centuries. He was considered one of the finest poets of the Tibetan language. Composed a guidebook to Shambhala in 1557 called "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" as a letter to his dead father whom he believed to have been reborn in Shambhala. Complex and ornate style derived from the Sanskrit poetry of India.
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"The Kashmir Valley, also known as the Vale of Kashmir, is a valley in the portion of the Kashmir region administered by India. The valley is bounded on the southwest by the Pir Panjal Range and on the northeast by the main Himalayas range. It is approximately 135 km long and 32 km wide, and drained by the Jhelum River.
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From: Rinpungpa's Guidebook to Shambhala .... "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" (1557 AD) ...."Crossing Tibet westward.....to the sacred mountain of Kailas ....from Kailas continue northwest to Ladakh and down through mountains and forest to the Vale of Kashmir..(Kashmir Valley)........ then north, through a maze of treacherous mountains....you will pass safely through and come out in the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans......over an 'outer ring' of sky-high ice mountains, down through a vicious desert, into unknown vistas....only to reach a second 'inner ring' of snow mountains. Beyond there, you must choose rightly among high valleys and low cities, having the good sense to know Shambhala when you reach it.........then you will at last, see the cities of Shambhala.....gleaming among ranges of snow mountains like stars on the waves of the Ocean of Milk."
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Mount Kailash (also Mount Kailasa; Kangrinboqê or Gang Rinpoche; Tibetan: གངས་རིན་པོ་ཆེ; Chinese: 冈仁波齐峰 (simplified); Chinese: 岡仁波齊峰 (traditional)), is a 6,638 m (21,778 ft) high peak in the Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains), which forms part of Transhimalaya in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. The mountain is located near Lake Manasarovar and Lake Rakshastal, close to the source of some of the longest Asian rivers: the Indus, Sutlej, Brahmaputra, and Karnali also known as Ghaghara (a tributary of the Ganges) in India. Mount Kailash is considered to be sacred in four religions: Bon, Buddhism, Hinduism and Jainism.
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Ladakh ("land of high passes") is a region in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir that currently extends from the Siachen Glacier in the Karakoram range to the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent.It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Jammu and Kashmir and its culture and history are closely related to that of Tibet. Ladakh is renowned for its remote mountain beauty and culture.
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The Kashmir Valley, also known as the Vale of Kashmir, is a valley in the portion of the Kashmir region administered by India. The valley is bounded on the southwest by the Pir Panjal Range and on the northeast by the main Himalayas range. It is approximately 135 km long and 32 km wide, and drained by the Jhelum River.The Kashmir division borders Jammu Division to the south and Ladakh to the east while Line of Control forms its northern and the western border........"In the first half of the 1st millennium, the Kashmir region became an important centre of Hinduism and later of Buddhism; later still, in the ninth century, Kashmir Shaivism arose. In 1339, Shah Mir became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir, inaugurating the Salatin-i-Kashmir or Swati dynasty.......
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Shigar (Urdu: شگر) is a district in the Baltistan division of Gilgit–Baltistan in the north of Skardu in northern Pakistan. The Shigar River, bisecting the Shigar valley, falls in the Indus River at Skardu city. The town is a popular site for tourists and trekkers and contains many historical buildings of architectural significance associated with the all communities. The town is inhabited 100% by Balti people of Tibetan descent. Almost 95% people belongs to Shia sect of Islam and the remaining belongs to the Sunni and the Norbakshi sects. It is the gateway to great mountain range of Karakorum.... The valley is very fertile and rich in fruits including apples, cherries, apricots, pears and walnuts.
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Lower Kachura Lake (Urdu: لوؤر کچورا جھیل), also known as Shangrila Lake(Urdu: شنگریلا جھیل) is located in Kachura village 20 minutes from Skardu city (nearly 2,500 m or 8,200 feet) town. The lake is also known as Shangrila lake after a resort built on its bank in 1983....Shangrila Resort Hotel was founded by the late Muhammad Aslam Khan, the first commander of the Northern Scouts of the Pakistan Army.....Shangrila was named after a book titled Lost Horizon by James Hilton.
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Two thousand or more Tibetans have made their home in Srinagar. These are Tibetan Muslims. A few Muslim families remain in the Tibetan capital, Lhasa; some live in border hill towns; but most of them have now settled in Indian Kashmir....The community traces its origin to merchants who travelled along the old silk routes. They were Muslim traders from Kashmir and the adjoining area of Ladakh. Four hundred or so years ago, the then Dalai Lama granted them land in the Tibetan capital...After a failed uprising against Chinese Communist rule, the Dalai Lama and thousands of his Buddhist devotees fled across the Himalayas in 1959. Then, Tibet's Muslim community also felt restive. They were seen by some Tibetans as collaborators with the new Chinese rulers. After a lot of diplomatic push-and-pull, in which the Indian government took an interest, Muslims were allowed to leave Tibet...Dalai Lama visits Kashmir, first time in 24 years....
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The Pashtuns (/ˈpʌʃˌtʊnz/, /ˈpɑːʃˌtʊnz/ or /ˈpæʃˌtuːnz/; Pashto: پښتانه Pax̌tānə; singular masculine: پښتون Pax̌tūn, feminine: پښتنه Pax̌tana; also Pukhtuns), historically known as ethnic Afghans (Persian: افغان, Afğān)and Pathans (Hindustani: پٹھان, पठान, Paṭhān), are an Iranic ethnic group who mainly live in Pakistan and Afghanistan....Historians have come across references to various ancient peoples called Pakthas (Pactyans) between the 2nd and the 1st millennium BC,who may be their early ancestors. Their history is mostly spread amongst the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, centred on their traditional seat of power in that region. ....
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Afghanistan possesses a rich linguistic legacy of pre-Islamic scripts, which existed before being displaced by the Arabic alphabet, after the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan. Among these scripts are Sharada, Gandhari, Kharosthi, Bactrian and Brāhmī . For thousands of years, Afghanistan was inhabited by Indo-Vedic people and thus all ancient documents, tracts, monuments and remains are of Hindu origins. Later, Buddhism became the major force in Afghanistan and brought with it its own liturgical languages.........Abundant archeological evidence in the form of inscriptions, numismatics and manuscripts[citation needed] has provided traces of the precursors of the contemporary Languages of Afghanistan such as Pashto, Dari and other Dardic languages.
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Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
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John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
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November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-37434208183876333592018-11-03T02:27:00.000-07:002018-11-11T01:18:41.084-08:00Waiting To Die<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Spirituality is a particular term which actually means dealing with intuition in the theistic tradition the notion of clinging into a word....a certain act is regarded as displeasing to a divine principle, a certain act is regarded as pleasing for the divine, whatever....in the tradition of non-theism however, it is very direct that the case history are not particularly important...what is actually important is Here and Now ... Now is definitely Now...we try to experience what is available there on the spot...there is no point in thanking that the past did exist that we could have now... this is now... this very moment nothing mystical just simple straightforward and from that nowness however arises a sense of intelligence always that you are constantly interacting with your reality one by one spot by spot constantly we actually experience fantastic precision always but we are threatened by the now so we jump to the past or the future paying attention to the materials that exist in our life all these choices takes place all the time but none of them are regarded as bad or good per se everything we experience are unconditional experience they don't come along as a label saying this is regarded as bad or this is good but we experience them but we do not actually pay heed to them properly we don't actually regard that as we are going somewhere regard that as a hassle waiting to be dead that's a problem that is not trusting your nowness properly but what is actually experienced now posess a lot of powerful things it is so powerful that we can't face it therefore we have to borrow from the past and invite the future all the time and maybe that's why we seek religion maybe that's why we march in the street maybe that's why we complain to society maybe that's why we vote for the presidents it's quite ironical very un(?)ending....."
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Chogyam Trungpa
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Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
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John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
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November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-58488974773913200322018-04-06T01:57:00.002-07:002018-11-11T01:19:00.013-08:00Dzogchen Overview <html>
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Dzogchen<br />
the primordial state in Tibetan Buddhism and Bön.<br />
Tibetan:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>རྫོགས་ཆེན་<br />
Wylie transliteration:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>rdzogs chen<br />
(rdzogs pa chen po)<br />
pronunciation in IPA:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>[tsɔktɕʰẽ]<br />
official transcription (PRC):<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Zogqên<br />
THDL:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dzokchen<br />
other transcriptions:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dzogchen<br />
Chinese name<br />
traditional:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>大究竟、<br />
大圓滿、<br />
大成就<br />
simplified:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>大究竟、<br />
大圆满、<br />
大成就<br />
Pinyin:<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>dàjiūjìng,<br />
dàyuánmǎn,<br />
dàchéngjiù<br />
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According to Tibetan Buddhism and Bön, Dzogchen (Rdzogs chen or Atiyoga) is the natural, primordial state or natural condition, and a body of teachings and meditation practices aimed at realizing that condition. Dzogchen, or "Great Perfection", is a central teaching of the Nyingma school also practiced by adherents of other Tibetan Buddhist sects. According to Dzogchen literature, Dzogchen is the highest and most definitive path to enlightenment.<br />
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From the perspective of Dzogchen, the ultimate nature of all sentient beings is said to be pure, all-encompassing, primordial clarity or naturally occurring timeless clarity. This intrinsic clarity has no form of its own and yet is capable of perceiving, experiencing, reflecting, or expressing all form. It does so without being affected by those forms in any ultimate, permanent way. The analogy given by Dzogchen masters is that one's nature is like a mirror which reflects with complete openness but is not affected by the reflections, or like a crystal ball that takes on the colour of the material on which it is placed without itself being changed. The knowledge that ensues from recognizing this mirror-like clarity (which cannot be found by searching nor identified) is what Dzogchenpas refer to as rigpa.<br />
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There is a fairly wide consensus among lamas of both the Nyingma and Sarma schools that the end state of dzogchen and mahamudra are the same. The Madhyamaka teachings on emptiness are fundamental to and thoroughly compatible with Dzogchen practices. Essence Mahamudra is viewed as being the same as Dzogchen, except the former doesn't include thödgal.<br />
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The word Dzogchen has been translated variously as Great Perfection, Great Completeness, Total Completeness, and Supercompleteness. These terms also convey the idea that our nature has many qualities that make it perfect. These include indestructibility, incorruptible purity, non-discriminating openness, flawless clarity, profound simplicity, all-pervading presence and equality within all beings (i.e., the quality, quantity and functionality of this awareness is exactly the same in every being in the universe). It is said that the impressive personal qualities of the fully enlightened Buddha are derived from the fact that he was fully aligned with this already-existing primordial nature. Descriptions of a buddha as omniscient and omnipresent refer to their ultimate nature. The Tibetan term dzogchen is sometimes said to be a rendering of the Sanskrit term mahāsandhi, and is also used to render the Sanskrit term ati yoga (primordial yoga).<br />
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A homonymous term dzogchen designates a practice and also a body of teachings aimed at helping an individual to recognize the Dzogchen state, to become sure about it, and to develop the capacity to maintain the state continually.<br />
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In his work on Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso's Beacon of Certainty: Illuminating the View of Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, John Pettit clarifies the various usages and implications of the term Dzogchen that are often conflated:<br />
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"Great Perfection" variously indicates the texts (āgama, lung) and oral instructions (upadeśa, man ngag) that indicate the nature of enlightened wisdom (rdzogs chen gyi gzhung dang man ngag), the verbal conventions of those texts (rdzogs chen gyi chos skad), the yogis who meditate according to those texts and instructions (rdzogs chen gyi rnal 'byor pa), a famous monastery where the Great Perfection was practiced by monks and yogis (rdzogs chen dgon sde), and the philosophical system (siddhānta, grub mtha') or vision (darśana, lta ba) of the Great Perfection.<br />
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Maha Ati<br />
Maha Ati is a term coined by Chögyam Trungpa, a master of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhism. He generally preferred to introduce Sanskrit rather than Tibetan terms to his students, and felt "Maha Ati" was the closest equivalent for "Dzogpa Chenpo," although he acknowledged it was an unorthodox choice. The coinage does not follow the sandhi rules which would be rendered as mahāti. This serves as an indication of its pedigree as a calque.<br />
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The Dzogchen teachings are the highest of the nine yana, (Tibetan theg pa, vehicle) of the Nyingma (Wylie: rnying ma) school of Tibetan Buddhism and the Tibetan Bön (Wylie: bon) tradition. Many lamas, particularly of the Nyingma and Kagyu schools, regard them as the most profound teachings altogether.<br />
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The instructions that point to the Dzogchen state are sometimes described as a set of "inner" or "heart" (Wylie: snying thig) teachings. Tibetan Buddhist ascetics consider that the state pointed to by these teachings is very difficult to describe, and can only be discovered through the esoteric transmission and pointing-out instruction by an authentic Vajra Master.<br />
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Although Dzogchen cannot be separated from the Buddhist or Bön tradition, very often teachers emphasize the non religious character of Dzogchen. However, the Buddhist or Bön traditional framework is never negated. Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche says that, as our primordial nature, Dzogchen has existed since the beginning of time and is pointed to by various masters throughout the Universe.<br />
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According to one Nyingma tradition, the first master of the Buddhist Dzogchen lineage in our world was Garab Dorje (Wylie: dga' rab rdo rje, Sanskrit *prahevajra) from Uddiyana (Wylie:. o rgyan).<br />
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Indian originators<br />
According to Garab Dorje, Dzogchen is said to have been passed down as listed following. Often, practitioners are said to have lived for hundreds of years, and there are inconsistencies in the lifespan dates given, making it impossible to construct a sensible timeline.<br />
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Prahevajra (Tib. Garab Dorje, Wylie: dga' rab rdo rje) 184 BCE to 57 CE<br />
Mañjuśrīmitra (Tib. Jampal Shenyen, Wylie: 'jam dpal bshes gnyen) 2nd century BCE (elder contemporary of Prahevajra)<br />
Śrī Siṃha (Tib. Palgyi Senge, Wylie: dpal gyi senge) 3rd century CE (500 years before Vimalamitra)<br />
Padmasambhava (Tib. Pema Jungne or Guru Rinpoche) fl. mid-8th CE<br />
Vimalamitra (Tib. Drime Shenyen, Wylie: dri med bshes gnyen) fl. late 8th CE<br />
Vairotsana (Tib. Nampar Nangdze Lotsawa, Wylie: rnam par snang mdzad lo tsa ba ) fl. late 8th CE.<br />
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Tibet<br />
Padmasambhava (Tib. Pema Jugne or Guru Rinpoche, Wylie: padma 'byung gnas, gu ru rin po che) is considered the source of the Buddhist Dzogchen teachings in Tibet (Tib. bod), which are the heart of the Nyingma (Wylie: rnying ma) tradition, with which they are primarily associated. Dzogchen has also been practiced in the Kagyu (Wylie: bka' brgyud) lineage, beginning with Milarepa (Wylie: mi la ras pa) and most notably by the Third Karmapa, Rangjung Dorje (Wylie:. rang byung rdo rje). The Fifth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth (present) Dalai Lamas (Wylie: ta la'i bla ma) are also noted Dzogchen masters, although their adoption of the practice of Dzogchen has been a source of controversy among more conservative members of the Gelug (Wylie: dge lugs) tradition.<br />
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In the Bön religion, three separate Dzogchen traditions are attested and continue to be practiced: A-tri (Wylie: a khrid), Dzogchen (Wylie: rdzogs chen, here referring narrowly to the specific lineage within the Bön tradition), and Shang Shung Nyen Gyu (Wylie: zhang zhung snyan rgyud). All are traced back to the founder of Bön, Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche (Wylie: ston pa gshen rab mi bo che).<br />
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Concepts<br />
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The essence of the Dzogchen teaching is the direct transmission of knowledge from master to disciple. Garab Dorje epitomized the Dzogchen teaching in three principles, known as the Three Statements of Garab Dorje (Tsik Sum Né Dek):<br />
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Direct introduction to one's own nature (Tib. ngo rang thog tu sprod pa)<br />
Not remaining in doubt concerning this unique state (Tib. thag gcig thog tu bcad pa)<br />
Continuing to remain in this state (Tib. gdeng grol thog tu bca' pa)<br />
In accordance with these three statements, Garab Dorje's direct disciple Manjushrimitra (Tib. 'jam dpal bshes gnyen) classified all the Dzogchen teachings transmitted by his master into three series:<br />
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Semde (Wylie: sems sde; Skt: cittavarga), the series of Mind, that focuses on the introduction to one's own primordial state;<br />
Longde (Wylie: klong sde; Skt: abhyantaravarga), the series of Space, that focuses on developing the capacity to gain familiarity with the state and remove doubts; and<br />
Menngagde (Wylie: man ngag sde, Skt: upadeshavarga), the series of secret Oral Instructions, focusing on the practices in which one engages after gaining confidence in knowledge of the state.<br />
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Tulku Urgyen explains what is meant by "gaining confidence in liberation": "The third analogy of the liberation of thoughts is described as being like a thief entering an empty house. This is called stability or perfection in training. A thief entering an empty house does not gain anything, and the house does not lose anything. All thought activity is naturally liberated without any harm or benefit whatsoever. This is the meaning of gaining confidence in liberation."<br />
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The Dzogchen teachings focus on three terms: View, Meditation, and Action. To see directly the absolute state of our mind is the View; the way of stabilizing that View and making it an unbroken experience is Meditation; and integrating that View into our daily life is what is meant by Action.<br />
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This open awareness of Dzogchen, or rigpa (also comparable to the Buddha nature), is said to lie at the heart of all things and indeed of all Dzogchen practice and is nothing less than "... primordial wisdom's recognition of itself as unbounded wholeness... the incorruptible mindnature."This reflexive awareness of Enlightenment is said to be inherent within all beings, but not to be attainable by thought.Chogyal Namkhai Norbu points out that Dzogchen "refers to the true primordial state of every individual and not to any transcendent reality."In discussing the Nyingma text, the Kunjed Gyalpo Tantra (kunjed gyalpo = 'the all-creating king', synoymous with Samantabhadra Buddha), Namkhai Norbu explains that Kunjed Gyalpo is in fact "beyond" the dualism inherent in the notion of an 'individual'. He writes:<br />
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The transmission of knowledge comes from the state of rigpa that has never been stained and has never been hindered. This is Adibuddha, or "primordial Buddha", Kunjed Gyalpo... The state of Kunjed Gyalpo is knowledge, and in knowledge there is not even the concept of "one and two", otherwise we have already entered into dualism. Also, the concept of "individual" presupposes dualistic vision. But Samantabhadra is beyond all this...<br />
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Klein and Wangyal comment on the ultimate "one taste" and dynamic stillness of the Dzogchen state:<br />
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... cause and effect, sentient beings and Buddhas, subjects and objects, path and goal are ultimately revealed to be of one taste: movement from one to the other is no movement at all, really, but a dynamic stillness.<br />
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There can be found within Dzogchen a sense of Reality as limitless wholeness, a multiplicity which is yet all of one "taste", which is a borderless wholeness. According to Lopon Tenzin Namdak, it is unconditioned and permanent, changeless, not originated from causes and conditions, blissful, and the base or support of numerous exalted qualities. "It is at once base, path, and fruit". "That reality, unbounded wholeness, is naturally complete." Also: "...the essence and base of self-arisen wisdom is the allbase, that primordial open awareness is the base, and that recognition of this base is not separate from the primordial wisdom itself. ...that open awareness is itself authentic and its authenticity is a function of it being aware of, or recognizing itself as, the base. ...The reflexively self-aware primordial wisdom is itself open awareness (rigpa), inalienably one with unbounded wholeness."<br />
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Opposing views<br />
The views of the Dzogchen school are not endorsed by all Tibetan Buddhists. In fact, Bonpo Lopon Tenzin Namdak contrasts his own view that primordial wisdom does not arise from causes with that of Tsongkhapa, who states that without consciousness, there is no understanding. Some critics claim that the views of the Dzogchen school of philosophy conflict with those of Madhyamaka and to the views of other prominent Buddhist thinkers such as the logician Dharmakirti. However, Longchenpa and Mipham argue that the views of the Dzogchen school are in fact in accord with the view of Madhyamaka. Dzogchen meditative techniques are, however, consistent with Madhyamaka.<br />
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Three aspects of energy<br />
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Ananda Chakra<br />
Sentient beings have their energy manifested in three aspects:<br />
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"dang" (Wylie: gDangs)<br />
"rolpa" (Wylie: Rol-pa)<br />
'"tsal" (Wylie: rTsal)<br />
Energy of an individual on the dang level is essentially infinite and formless.<br />
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Many practices of thödgal and yangthig work on the basis of functioning of the rolpa aspect of individual's energy. It is also the original source of the sambhogakaya deities visualized in Buddhist tantric transformational practices and of manifestations of 100 peaceful and wrathful deities in bardo and Zhitro practices.<br />
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Tsal is the manifestation of the energy of the individual him or herself, as apparently an "external" world.[31] The mind of a sentient being is also tsal energy when it is "contaminated" by the karmic "winds" (Tibetan: rlung).<br />
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letter A<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>gDangs<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Trekchö<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Kadag<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Dharmakaya<br />
Thigle<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Rolpa<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thögal<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Lhungrub<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sambhogakaya<br />
****<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>rTsal<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Yermed<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Thugs rje<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Nirmanakaya<br />
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External world versus continuum<br />
According to Dzogchen teachings, energy of an individual is essentially totally formless and free from any duality. However, karmic traces, contained in the storehouse consciousness of the individual's mindstream (Sanskrit: citta santana; Tibetan: sems rgyud) give rise to two kinds of forms:<br />
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forms that the individual experiences as his or her body, voice and mind and<br />
forms that the individual experiences as an external environment.<br />
It is maintained that there is nothing external or separate from the individual. What appears as a world of apparently external phenomena, is the energy of the individual him/her self. Everything that manifests in the individual's field of experience is a continuum (Sanskrit: santana; Tibetan: rgyud). This is the Great Perfection that is discovered in the Dzogchen practice.<br />
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Causality and interdependent origination<br />
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In Dzogchen teachings the interdependent origination and any kind of causality is considered illusory: "(One says), 'All these (configurations of events and meanings) come about and disappear according to dependent origination.' But, like a burnt seed, since a nonexistent (result) does not come about from a nonexistent (cause), cause and effect do not exist.<br />
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Being obsessed with entities, one's experiencing itself [Wylie: sems, Sanskrit: citta], which discriminates each cause and effect, appears as if it were cause and condition.<br />
—<br />
This corresponds to the assertion in the Heart Sutra (Sanskrit: Prajñāpāramitā Hridaya Sūtra), that there is no karma, no law of cause and effect. The assertion was made by bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara in a teaching for the great arhat Shariputra, given before multitude of beings, on request of Buddha Shakyamuni. After the teaching Buddha Shakyamuni greatly praised the wisdom of Avalokiteshvara's words and the beings present rejoiced.<br />
<br />
Guardians<br />
All teachings have energies that have special relationships with them. These energies are guardians of the teachings. The energies are iconographically depicted as they were perceived by yogis who had contact with them. The dharmapalas most associated with Dzogchen are Ekajati (Wylie: e ka dza ti), Dorje Legpa (Wylie: rdo rje legs pa) and Za Rahula (Wylie: gza' ra hu la) in the Nyingma and Sidpa Gyalmo in the Bön tradition. The iconographic forms were shaped by perceptions and also by the culture of those who saw the original manifestation and by the development of the tradition. However the guardians are not merely symbols as the pictures show actual beings.<br />
<br />
Well-being and health<br />
Dzogchen teachings maintain that the quality of people's lives is best when the internal classical elements are balanced.The body is healthy when the elements are balanced. They see the best way to balance the elements as abiding in the natural state.<br />
<br />
Practice<br />
<br />
Up to and including tregchöd (see below), Dzogchen meditative practices are parallel to and often identical with those of essence Mahamudra.<br />
<br />
Preliminaries<br />
<br />
Although many lamas require their students to complete the conventional tantric ngondro before starting Dzogchen practice, there is also a series of preliminary practices unique to Dzogchen. These include the Korday Rushan exercises (Tibetan: འཁོར་འདས་རུ་ཤན, Wylie: 'khor 'das ru shan) "differentiating saṃsāra and nirvāṇa," which are described in such texts as the Yeshe Lama (Tib. ཡེ་ཤེས་བླ་མ་, Wyl. ye shes bla ma). Rushan involves "going to a solitary spot and acting out whatever comes to your mind." The Dzogchen preliminaries also include a series of exercises known as Semdzin (sems dzin). Semdzin literally means "to hold the mind" or "to fix mind."Semdzins are found in all three series of Dzogchen (Semde, Longde and Mennagde), but the twenty-one semdzins found in the latter are common; Longchenpa divides them into three series of seven. According to Longchenpa as reported by Reynolds, "the first group enables the practitioner to find him- or herself in a calm state, and thus the exercises are similar to the practice of Shamatha . . the exercises in the second group enable the practitioner to discover the relationship between body and mind. And those in the third group enable one to discover the nature of one's own condition." Exercises in the first category include "fixating on a white Tibetan letter A on the tip of one's nose. Linking the letter with one's breathing, it goes out into space with each exhalation and returns to the tip of the nose with each inhalation. This fixation inhibits the arising of extraneous thoughts . . . however, the second exercise in the same category involves the sounding of the syllable PHAT! which instantly shatters one's thoughts and attachments. Symbolically, the two parts of the syllable indicate the two aspects of enlightenment, that is, PHA signifies Means (thabs) and TA signifies Wisdom (shes rab)."<br />
<br />
Tregchöd and thödgal<br />
After the indispensable preliminary of rushan, one remains in the knowledge of tregchöd and practices thödgal (also sometimes spelled thogal). These are the main instructions presented in the Menngagde series (Oral Instruction Series) of the Dzogchen teachings.<br />
<br />
In both the Bön and Buddhist Dzogchen traditions, sky gazing is considered to be an important part of tregchöd.<br />
<br />
Thödgal represents more a fruition than a practice itself. There are methods prepared in the event of a psychotic break to bring the practitioner back to sanity.<br />
<br />
In contrast to other kinds of tantric practices, there is no intentional visualization; rather, imagery appears spontaneously using secondary conditions such as darkness or light. Eventually a practitioner has experiences which are viewed as knowing the subtle energies of one's being. These have the qualities of earth, water, fire, air and space (see Classical element). Throughout the retreat, a practitioner is believed to be approaching an experience which is entirely unconditioned.<br />
<br />
Thödgal relies on esoteric anatomy including the avadhuti (also known as the center channel or sushumna in Hindu parlance) and heart chakra. Along with the fact that Dzogchen is based on a class of literature called the tantras, this indicates why Dzogchen is considered a tantric system as opposed to sutra systems such as Zen. This is not to say that Dzogchen is a part of general Vajrayana. Vajrayana is a path of transformation. Dzogchen, an independent vehicle in its own right, is a path of self-liberation.<br />
<br />
Rigpa and rainbow body<br />
<br />
<br />
Tibetan letter "A" inside a thigle. The A represents kadag while the thigle represents lhun grub.<br />
Rigpa has three wisdoms, two of which are kadag and lhun grub. Kadag (primordial purity) is the Dzogchen view of emptiness. Lhun grub (natural formation) is the Dzogchen view of dependent origination. Throughout Mahayana, emptiness and dependent origination are two sides of the same coin. Kadag deals with tregchöd. The lhun grub aspect has to do with esoteric practices, such as (but not limited to) Thödgal, that self-liberate the dependently originated human body into the Sambhogakāya (rainbow body phenomenon). The symbol of Dzogchen is a Tibetan A wrapped in a thigle. The A represents kadag while the thigle represents lhun grub. The third wisdom, thugs rje (compassion), is the inseparability of the previous two wisdoms.<br />
<br />
In Dzogchen, a fundamental point of practice is to distinguish rigpa from sems (mind). The distinguishing of rigpa and sems from each other is emphasized by Jigme Lingpa and goes back to the seventeen tantras.[citation needed]<br />
<br />
The ultimate fruition of the thodgal practices is a body of pure light, called a rainbow body (Wylie 'ja' lus, pronounced Jalü.) If the four visions of thogal are not completed before death, then at death, from the point of view of an external observer, the following happens: the corpse does not start to decompose, but starts to shrink until it disappears. Usually fingernails, toenails and hair are left behind (see e.g. Togden Urgyen Tendzin, Ayu Khandro, Changchub Dorje.) The attainment of the rainbow body is typically accompanied by the appearance of lights and rainbows.<br />
<br />
Some exceptional practitioners such as Padmasambhava and Vimalamitra are held to have realized a higher type of rainbow body without dying. Having completed the four visions before death, the individual focuses on the lights that surround the fingers. His or her physical body self-liberates into a nonmaterial body of light (a Sambhogakāya) with the ability to exist and abide wherever and whenever as pointed by one's compassion.<br />
<br />
Dzogchenpa samaya<br />
Capriles (2003: p. 180) openly quotes Chögyal Namkhai Norbu in the subtle but very important distinction of the activity of meditation from the effortless abiding of Dzogchen contemplation:<br />
<br />
Chögyal Namkhai Norbu relates that once someone asked the famous Dzogchen Master, Yungtön Dorje Pel, what his practice consisted of, and he replied with the negative “mepa” or “there isn’t.” Then his startled questioner asked again, “Then you don’t meditate?,” to which the Master replied, “And when am I ever distracted?” This is the essence of samaya in Dzogchen teaching: not to meditate or to practice something with the mind and yet never to be distracted, for one remains uninterruptedly in the self-perfection of the single state of rigpa or Truth.<br />
—<br />
In this denotation, dzogchen is a verb, and denotes the perfect process in the grammatical sense or alternately an infinitive verb, wherein the great continuum of 'one taste' (Wylie: ro gcig) or as Capriles renders it "single state" is the effortless 'contemplating' or abiding in the view of non-distraction from rigpa.<br />
<br />
Apperception<br />
<br />
'Apperception' (Sanskrit: svasaṃvedana/svasaṃvitti; Wylie: rang rig) is understood variously in different yana, buddhist schools, and practice lineages. These cosmetic differences are resolved in the practice of 'meditative trance' (Wylie: 'jog pa). For it is in the direct experience and associated literatures of the deep contemplative traditions of Himalayan Buddhism (Tibetan Buddhism, Nepalese Buddhism, Bhutanese Buddhism, etc.) and Bon, particularly Dzogchen and Mahamudra, that apperception is key, e.g. dark retreat (Tibetan: mun mtshams).<br />
<br />
In the language of Zhangzhung, 'rang rig' (Wylie) is 'nges de shin'where 'shin' equates to 'shes pa'. The Zhangzhung lexical item 'shin' is found in many compounds (Martin, 2004: p. 158) where it means: 'to know' and 'knowledge' to both nominal and verbal/process oriented lexical items.<br />
<br />
Pettit (1999: p. 129) holds that 'apperception' (Wylie: rang rig) is key to Mipham's (1846–1912) system of epistemology and hermeneutics discussed in the DRG and in Mipham's Commentary to the Ninth Chapter of the Bodhisattvacaryāvatāra.<br />
<br />
Graham Coleman and Thupten Jinpa (2005: p. 480) contrast the 'svasaṃvedana' of Dignāga and Dharmakīrti with that of Dzogchen:<br />
<br />
According to Indian Buddhist epistemology, and particularly in the writings of the great logicians Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, the term svasaṃvedana refers to the apperceptive or reflexive faculty of consciousness, for which reason it is sometimes rendered as 'reflexive awareness' or 'apperceptive awareness'. However, in the view of the Great Perfection (rdzog-pa chen-po) and in the context of the present work [The Tibetan Book of the Dead], the same term refers to the fundamental innate mind in its natural state of spontaneity and purity, beyond the alternating states of motion and rest and the subject-object dichotomy. It is therefore rendered here as 'intrinsic awareness'. As such, intrinsic awareness gives the meditator access to pristine cognition or the buddha-mind itself, and it stands in direct contrast to fundamental ignorance (avidyā), which is the primary cause of rebirth in cyclic existence (saṃsāra). The direct introduction to intrinsic awareness is a distinctive teaching within the Nyingma school.... This practice is a central component of the Esoteric Instruction Class (upadeśa) of Atiyoga, where it is known as Cutting through Resistance (khregs-chod).<br />
—<br />
Texts<br />
<br />
Dzogchen instructions are found in some Mahayoga texts, as it may simply have been the associated completion stage practice. However, the majority of the Dzogchen corpus comprises the "18" Semde tantra texts, the Longde tantras, and the Menngagde termas.<br />
<br />
Samten Migdrön (Tib. bsam gtan mig sgron) is a Tibetan text of historical importance for the historical relationship of Dzogchen and Zen as well identifying the view of its author, Nubchen Sangye Yeshe.<br />
<br />
Seventeen Tantras of Dzogchen Upadesha-varga.<br />
<br />
These Seventeen Tantra amongst other Dzogchen texts are included in the various divergences and holdings of the numerous extant Nyingma Gyubum editions.<br />
<br />
Reality vs dreams<br />
<br />
See also: Lucid dreaming<br />
Mipham Rinpoche has said:<br />
<br />
The real sky is (knowing) that samsara and nirvana are merely an illusory display.<br />
—<br />
According to contemporary teacher Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, in Dzogchen the perceived reality is considered to be unreal. All appearances perceived during the whole life of an individual through all senses, including sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations in their totality are like a big dream. It is claimed that on careful examination the dream of life and regular nightly dreams are not very different, and that in their essential nature there is no difference between them.<br />
<br />
The non-essential difference between our dreaming state and our ordinary waking experience is that the latter is more concrete and linked with our attachment; the dreaming is slightly detached.<br />
<br />
Also according to this teaching, there is a correspondence between the states of sleep and dream and our experiences when we die. After experiences in an intermediate state (bardo) an individual comes out of it, a new karmic illusion is created and another existence begins. This is how transmigration happens.<br />
<br />
One aim of dream practice is to realize during a dream that one is dreaming. One can then dream with lucidity and do all sorts of things, such as go to different places, talk to people, fly and so forth. It is also possible to do different yogic practices while dreaming (usually such yogic practices one does in waking state). In this way the yogi can have a very strong experience and with this comes understanding of the dream-like nature of daily life. This is very relevant to diminishing attachments, because they are based on strong beliefs that life's perceptions and objects are real and, as a consequence, important. If one really understands what Buddha Shakyamuni meant when he said that everything is unreal or of the nature of shunyata, then one can diminish attachments and tensions.<br />
<br />
The teacher gives advice, that the realization that the life is only a big dream can help us finally liberate ourselves from the chains of emotions, attachments, and ego and then we have the possibility of ultimately becoming enlightened.<br />
<br />
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzogchen<br />
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<font color=black>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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<p>
Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
<p>
John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
<p>
Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
<p>
November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-12096016180294236662018-04-06T01:55:00.002-07:002018-11-11T01:19:20.667-08:00Garab Dorje: Practice Of The White A<html>
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<br />
"Anniversary of Garab Dorje<br />
<br />
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First of all, we are sitting comfortably. We do the purification<br />
breathings, which you know already. Otherwise you can learn<br />
how we do it from older practitioners, and also you can learn the<br />
Tun practice so that you already know it.<br />
<br />
<p>
Then we pronounce A and at that moment we do a visualization<br />
of the white A in a circle of five colors called a thigle.<br />
It represents our primordial potentiality and we visualize it at<br />
the center of our bodies. Then we imagine lights radiating one<br />
by one from this white A and thigle, first blue, then green, then<br />
white, then red, and then yellow, representing the five elements.<br />
<p>
Then we combine our visualization with the mantra OM EHO<br />
SHUDDHE SHUDDHE, and so on, which you can read and<br />
learn from the Tun Book. So there is a visualization that you can<br />
learn from the book, and you can also learn from older practioners how you do this purification. First you learn and do this<br />
purification. When you finish the purification, sound A again and<br />
do a visualization of the presence of the white A in the thigle at<br />
the center of your body. Lights radiate from this A and with these<br />
infinite lights we communicate to all enlightened beings, particularly<br />
teachers who are related to the Dzogchen transmission.<br />
<br />
Above all, in this moment we are working with the transmission,<br />
so with that light we communicate to the teacher.<br />
<br />
The teacher manifests like Guru Garab Dorje. His aspect<br />
is very young, he is white and reddish color, transparent like<br />
a crystal, and his right hand is pointing at you, which means<br />
direct transmission. His left hand is on the left knee in a relaxed<br />
position. This means that at the same time he is in the state of<br />
contemplation. You do this visualization in front of you and consider<br />
that the manifestation has the form of Garab Dorje, but in<br />
the real sense it is the teacher. The teacher is manifesting and<br />
now he gives you the transmission. So your visualization is very<br />
much alive. With this presence, first of all you start with Refuge<br />
and Bodhicitta. In the Tun, the formula is very brief: NAMO<br />
GURU BHYA, NAMO DEVA BHYA, NAMO DH KKINI<br />
BHYA. We use these words and learn what is the real sense of<br />
Refuge and Bodhicitta.<br />
<br />
First of all you do this and then you do the invocation of Guru<br />
Garab Dorje; the verses start with NAMO N̑ OVO QOSGUI GYILKÒR<br />
NAS GADĂG LÁMA GÁRAB JÉ... You should learn<br />
this invocation because when we do this practice with the transmission<br />
we will sing this melody, so before you receive it you<br />
should learn it. There are many older practitioners who know it<br />
already, so we do this invocation precisely while we give transmission<br />
and you receive transmission. You can learn the melody<br />
and way of singing and so on.<br />
<br />
After this invocation we pronounce A again, and at that moment<br />
you imagine that from a white A in a thigle at the heart of the teacher Garab Dorje infinite lights radiate to all the universe;<br />
the enlightened beings and particularly the rigdzins, realized beings<br />
of the Dzogchen teaching in all the universe, receive this<br />
communication. After that we pronounce A again, and from the<br />
body, speech, mind of all these realized beings, their wisdoms<br />
and empowerments come as infinite lights of different colors,<br />
and these lights dissolve in a center of the white A and thigle of<br />
Guru Garab Dorje. Guru Garab Dorje receives all these lights,<br />
and this means that Guru Garab Dorje is the unified wisdom of<br />
all the universal realized beings. After that, we sound A again,<br />
and at that moment we imagine Guru Garab Dorje with a white<br />
A and thigle dissolves in light and that light comes down and<br />
dissolves at our forehead.<br />
<br />
At our forehead there is a kind of<br />
a triangle, at the center of which is a<br />
three-colored circle called a gakhyil<br />
turning from the border to the center<br />
counterclockwise. The gakhyil represents<br />
the potentiality of body, speech,<br />
and mind. The gakhyil turns at our<br />
forehead. You can visualize this triangle<br />
like the central channel, bluish<br />
outside and reddish inside, representing<br />
light inside. This triangle is the<br />
base of a pyramid with sides pointing<br />
inside, meeting at the head chakra and<br />
the central channel.<br />
<br />
Guru Garab Dorje and our primordial state unified manifest<br />
at the center of this turning gakhyil in the form of a tiny, luminous<br />
white A, representing our real potentiality. Maintaining this<br />
clarity we relax and remain in that state.<br />
After a while we do trondu. Trondu means that when we<br />
sound A, from the white A at the forehead representing the state<br />
of unification with the Guru and oneself, infinite lights radiate<br />
in all directions and call or activate all enlightened beings and<br />
their wisdoms. Then we sound A again and receive infinite lights<br />
from all the enlightened beings. We dissolve these lights at our<br />
forehead, in the white A and thigle and gakhyil, and spread them<br />
in our body through all the channels and chakras. Our chakras or<br />
channels wake up and at the same time we purify all obstacles,<br />
negativities, and negative karmas. All of our karmic body at the<br />
material level dissolves into its real nature of five-colored lights,<br />
and we are being in that state. We sound another A and from that<br />
moment we are no longer working with visualization, thinking,<br />
or judging, but are only being in that presence. In particular, we<br />
notice who is doing this visualization, who is being in this white<br />
A at the center of the gakhyil. We are not looking at something<br />
in a dualistic way; we are being in that state, and that is instant<br />
presence and our real condition.<br />
<br />
Now we relax and remain in that state.<br />
<br />
When you relax in the clarity of that presence, at that moment,<br />
the teacher suddenly shouts a very strong PHAT, and when<br />
teacher shouts PHAT you have a kind of small shock, but at that<br />
moment you have no concepts. It cuts through all your thoughts<br />
and confusions. At that moment you are in instant presence. You<br />
notice that instant presence: it is the state of your teacher and the<br />
state of Guru Garab Dorje. It is also the real state of your primordial<br />
state – there is no difference.<br />
<br />
So we relax in that state and integrate all aspects of body,<br />
speech and mind and all of our conceptions of subject and object.<br />
Everything integrates in the sound of the Song of the Vajra;<br />
we sing the Song of the Vajra and everything integrates into<br />
that state and we continue. This is what we do when we receive<br />
the transmission: we receive the transmission, we receive the<br />
knowledge of instant presence, and we notice at the end who is<br />
being in that state of instant presence. At the end when we have<br />
finished, we dedicate merits and empower this dedication with<br />
the mantra OM DHARE DHARE BHANDHARE SV H …<br />
You can find this dedication in the Tun Book. This is how we do<br />
the practice.<br />
<br />
http://www.shangshunginstitute.net/webcast/files/guruyoga%20119-123.pdf<br />
<br />
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<p>
<font color=black>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
<p>
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<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2017/05/okar-research-index-2012-2017.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
<p>
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<p>
<p>
Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
<p>
John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
<p>
Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
<p>
November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-74675986408952862882018-04-06T01:52:00.001-07:002018-11-11T01:19:42.635-08:00White A Thigle & the Primordial State <html>
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<p>
Then we pronounce A and at that moment we do a visualization<br />
of the white A in a circle of five colors called a thigle.<br />
It represents our primordial potentiality and we visualize it at<br />
the center of our bodies. Then we imagine lights radiating one<br />
by one from this white A and thigle, first blue, then green, then<br />
white, then red, and then yellow, representing the five elements.<br />
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"A-khrid.....The first cycle here of Dzogchen teachings is called A-khrid (pronounced A-tri), that is, the teachings that guide one (khrid) to the Primordial State (A). The white Tibetan letter A is the symbol of Shunyata and of primordial wisdom."
<p>
Thigle (Tibetan) or Bindu (Sanskrit):...Luminous sphere of 5 colors of the rainbow representing the principle of the potentiality of all visions whether pure or impure, seeds of light, bodhicitta, sphere of rainbow light, luminous sphere, thig le
<p>
"Thigle – Literally means “drops” and is traditionally used to describe ‘spheres of rainbow light’ which is the ground substance reality. ..In traditional Buddhism it is sometimes understood to be a very specific form or shape. However, from a Buddha Brats perspective it is the actual visual experience of the true nature of the universe experienced as particles of light which are seen as spinning or moving dots or wheels, both large and small. It can also sometimes be observed as squiggles or moving shafts of light.... More precisely its ‘nature’ can be described as Dakini (sky dancer) because of the way it constantly moves around. Its ‘form’ can be described as that of Daka (sky flower) when one sees the specific form that the light particles take. This gives one a direct experience of Dakini and Daka as moving, dancing light.
<p>
tigle (tib: thig le; skrt: bindu) Tigle has multiple meanings depending on context. Although usually translated as "drop" or "seminal point," in the context of the dream and sleep yogas the tigle refers to a luminous sphere of light representing a quality of consciousness and used as a focus in meditation practice.
<p>
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<p>
<font color=black>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
<p>
<p>
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<p>
<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2017/05/okar-research-index-2012-2017.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
<p>
<font color=red>************************** </font>
<p>
<p>
Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
<p>
John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
<p>
Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
<p>
November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-62172659047197872182018-04-06T01:49:00.002-07:002018-11-11T01:20:23.980-08:00The Nine Purification Breaths<html>
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· Sit with legs crossed, spine straight, chest open, chin slightly drawn in to lengthen the back of your neck.<br>
· Visualize the three channels of light in your body: the white right channel, the blue central channel, and the left red channel
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Clearing the White Right Channel:<br>
i. Press your right ring finger to your right nostril and
inhale slowly and deeply. Imagine the breath follows the
path of the red channel all the way to the junction.<br>
ii. Hold the breath slightly as you switch the finger to press
the left nostril.<br>
iii. Following the pathway of the white right channel,
exhale slowly and gently at first and more forcefully at the end of the exhalation. Feel your anger release with the exhalation and instantly dissolve into space.<br>
· Repeat the exercise three times, feeling the increasing openness in the white right channel.
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Clearing the Red Left Channel:<br>
i. Press your left ring finger to your left nostril and inhale
slowly and deeply. Imagine the breath follows the path
of the white channel all the way to the junction.<br>
ii. Hold the breath slightly as you switch the finger to press
the right nostril.<br>
iii. Following the pathway of the left red channel, exhale
slowly and gently at first and more forcefully at the end of the exhalation. Feel the energy of attachment release with the exhalation and instantly dissolve into space.<br>
· Repeat the exercise three times, feeling the increasing openness in the red left channel. <br>
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Clearing the Blue Central Channel:<br>
i. Breathe in slowly and deeply through both nostrils.
Imagine the breath follows the path of both side channels.<br>
ii. Bring the breath to the junction and hold the breath
slightly.<br>
iii. Following the pathway of the blue central channel,
exhale slowly and gently at first. At the end of the exhalation pull slightly in with your diaphragm and breathe out more forcefully. Imagine that you expel the energies of self-doubt and lack of confidence through the crown of your head, where they instantly dissolve into space.<br>
· Repeat the exercise three times, feeling the increasing openness in the blue central channel.<br>
· Resting: Feel all three channels as being more open and clear.
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A simple breathing practice by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche….in that moment, rather than criticizing and judging the second thought that lacks confidence, simply be aware of it. Host that thought in the stillness, silence, and spaciousness. Then, take a deep breath, and as you breathe out, release that thought. It’s like seeing junk mail in your inbox and pressing the delete button; breathing out is like pressing "delete." Right after the exhalation, you will discover a new space within you. That new space is a source of confidence that you can then cultivate….prana, in the practice of the Nine Breathings of Purification
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<font color=black>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
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John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
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November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-19810882174576825552018-04-06T01:47:00.001-07:002018-04-06T01:47:06.838-07:00THODGYAL. Thodgal (thod rgal)<html>
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thod-rgal / Thodgal - passing over the summit (the development of vision practice in the Dzogchen Upadesha)
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"The term Thodgal (thod rgal....Sanskrit: vyuthtkrantaka)...literally means "direct" (thod-rgal du) in the sense of an immediate and instantaneous transition from one location to another, where there is no intervening interval of time. Thus some would translate it as 'leap over'...but it is much more immediate than leaping about. Also, when we say 'vision' (snang-ha) we are not talking about visualization( (dmigs-pa) which, for example is used in Tantra. Visualization is a process which involves the working of the mind. However with Trkchod we have moved into a dimension beyond the mind and with Thodgal, one continues in this direction. Rather than visualizations created by mind we are talking about an integration with vision, with whatever arises spontaneously to vision while the practiiioner is in the state of contemplation. Therefore, the master of contemplation through the practice of Thekchod is an immediate prerequisite to the practice of Thodgal...Otherwise there is the danger of becoming caught up in one's visions, becoming distracted by them and believing them to be an objective reality. It is precisely this attachment to one's impure karmic visions that got the individual caught up in samsara in the first place.......John Myrdhin Reynolds....'The Oral Traditions From Zhang-Zhung'....Page 33
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Taught by Lopon Tenzin Namdak, .....Devon retreat, May 1991 .....
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In the Dzogchen Upadesha teachings we have the practices of Thegchod and Thodgal. Thegchod means we enter into and continue in the state of contemplation (rig pa), the Natural State (gnas lugs). Thodgal means that while in the state of contemplation the potentiality of the Natural State (rig pa 1 rtsal) has the occasion to manifest spontaneously as vision. The medium for the manifesting of this potentiality is either sunlight total darkness or the open space of the sky.<br>
The ultimate result of this Thodgal practice is the attaining of the Rainbow Body or Talu (ja lus). <br>
Indeed Thodgal does possess a method for dissolving the impure physical body at the time of death or even before and then the Rainbow Body of Light manifests. But this is not a process of transforming an impure physical body into a pure Sambhogakaya. The method Proper to Dzogchen is not the path of transformation as is the case with the Tantras but the path of self liberation. So the procedure in Tantra and in Thodgal is quite different. To effect a transformation in vision and in energy Tantra employs visualization in terms of Kyerim and Dzogrim practice. We visualize ourselves in a Sambhogakaya form whether this be a peaceful or a wrathful manifestation. But in Dzogchen there is nothing to be visualized and nothing to be transformed. The visions which arise during the course of Thodgal are not visualizations. Visualization represents the work of the mind; visualizations are created by the mind. But Dzogchen is a state beyond the mind. So these visions which arise in Thodgal are not created by the mind or by unconscious karma but they are a manifestation of what is already primordially present in the Natural State. The vision is not something created by causes but it is Lhundrub (Ihun grub) or spontaneously perfected. Since the Sambhogakaya is already fully inherent in the Natural State it simply manifests. Dzogchen alone discloses our real nature; <br>
To realize the Rainbow Body means that we have practiced Thodgal and not some other method. The visions that arise are not specifically created but appear spontaneously (Ihun grub) in the presence of secondary causes such as sunlight, total darkness, and the clear open sky. They arise spontaneously from the Natural State; no Kyerim or Dzogrim practices must be done first as preparation. All that is required is the capacity to remain with stability in the Natural State. This is called stable Thegchod. Then the Thodgal visions come automatically whether in sunlight or total darkness or in the empty sky. Gradually all the pure visions of the deities arise and these visions develop by way of four stages (snang ba bzhi) until completion. Then they all dissolve into the Natural State. Our personal reality of pure and impure vision (snang ba) dissolves into Reality (bon nyid) which is the Natural State. At the same time that our visions dissolve our physical body also dissolves because it is just one manifestation of our impure karmic vision. Our normal everyday impure vision has the same source as the Thodgal pure vision - and now both equally dissolve into their source the Natural State. There is a single Base, the Natural State, but there are two Paths - impure karmic vision and pure vision, and two Fruits or results - Samsara and Nirvana. Returning to the ultimate source then the potentiality of the Natural State manifests as a Rainbow Body, the real Rupakaya.<br>
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Excerpt from Golden Letters: The Three Statements of Garab Dorje
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With regard to the Das-rjes, in each case the master in question attained the Body of Light at the time of his death, when he dissolved his physical body into the dimension of the space of the sky.
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1. Tshig gsum gnad du brdreg-pa, "The Three statements That Strike the Essential Points, " of Prahevajra or Garab Dorje(dGa'-rad rdorje)
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2. sGom nyams drug-pa,"The Six Meditation Experiences," of Manjushrimitra ('Jam dpal bshes-gnyen)
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3. gZer-bu bdun-pa, "The Seven Important Points," of Shrisimha (dPal gyi seng-ge mgon-po)
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4. bZhags-thabs bzhi, "The Four Methods for Remaining in Contemplation," of Jnanasutra (Ye-shes mdo)
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From Tenzin Wangyal
"This second part with its practices is very similar to the practice
of Togal Even though it is not Togal it uses those methods. The means
for stabilizing the mind in the experience is through the threefold
training or three methods. Before you train the actual development of
visions and experiences through the Dzogchen Togal practice you have
to make absolutely sure that your pure awareness in the state of
contemplation is a hundred per cent stable in the experience of
Dzogchen Tregcho. You know that you first have to stay in pure
Dzogchen contemplation perfectly without any movements or any visions
at all, then Togal will be effective in integrating experiences in
this very state of pure awareness or non-dual contemplation.
For this development or for the purpose of gaining stability in the
contemplation there is a series of three practice methods and special
circumstances to be applied consecutively. These methods are related
and produce gradual development; first you train in the dark, then you
gaze into the sky and finally you look at the sun.
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Before one can practice Thodgal, one must first purify the twofold obscurations and master the state of contemplation throught Trekchod practice, a releasing or a cutting through of all one's tensions and rigidities. If one does not first perfect Thekchod as an absolutely necessary prerequisite, then the Thodgal practice will be little better than watching a cinema show. Although one practices Thodgal not in the state of ordinary consciousness but in the state of contemplation, there is nevertheless the ever-present danger that one will become attached to the visions that arise.
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Excerpt from: The Golden Letters : The Three Statements of Garab Dorje, the First Teacher of Dzogchen, Together With a Commentary Garab Dorje, John Myrdhin Reynolds (Translator)
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The Heart Drops of Dharmakaya teachings were composed by Shardza Tashi Gyaltsen, a Tibetan master who upon his death in 1935 achieved the rainbow body, in which his physical body dissolved into light. Shardza Rinpoche was one of the most influential Bon teachers of his time; his works are used as textbooks in many Tibetan monasteries.
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Thod rgal meditation postures... the 3 postures (lion elephant, rishi) in Heart Drops of Dharmakaya. ... going with the Dzogchen Serzhün and the Bonpo Khandro Nyingthik....(Khandro Nyingtik (Wyl. mkha' 'gro snying thig) 'The Heart Essence of the Dakinis' — one of the 'Four Sections of Nyingtik' (Nyingtik Yabshyi). ...
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The Khandro Nyingtik cycle itself consists of the Twelve ‘mother’ and ‘child’ Tantras of the Takdrol Gyü, the ‘Three Last Testaments of the Buddha’, and other teachings amounting to a total of sixty-five different categories. When the pith instructions are given according to the Khandro Nyingtik, it is these Twelve Tantras of the Takdrol Gyü and Three Last Testaments which are quoted as references
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John Hopkins.....New Mexico....October 2013
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-42342503274450392552018-04-06T01:43:00.002-07:002018-11-11T01:20:49.061-08:00Dudjom Lingpa (1835-1904) : Thodgal Instructions <html>
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Dudjom Lingpa (Tib. བདུད་འཇོམས་གླིང་པ་, Wyl. bdud 'joms gling pa) aka Chakong Tertön (Tib. ལྕགས་སྐོང་གཏེར་སྟོན, Wyl. lcags skong gter ston) (1835-1904) — a great Nyingma master and tertön whose revelations fill twenty volumes.
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Now as for the stages of the main practice, at first you determine the ground by way of the Breakthrough, then the initial moment of impure consciousness emerges in the aspect of an object, a subsequent conceptualization fastens onto it, and delusion sets in. Now, in contrast, in the Leap-over, the initial moment of consciousness is transformed into an appearance of clear light, and by experiencing the very nature of consciousness, all impure appearances dissolve into the absolute nature and vanish. Knowing how that occurs is the indispensable, sublime point of the Leap-over, so recognize it!
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If you do not recognize this vital point, however much you meditate, you will go astray on the path of dualistic grasping, and you will not progress along the grounds and paths of liberation. Thus, once you have truly realized the manner in which the whole of samsara and nirvana is none other than your own appearances, finally all mental states and appearances of the impure cycle of existence will forcefully be transformed into displays of the clear light, reality itself. So this is the practical guidance on the great transference. By truly recognizing the entrance to this path with the wisdom of realizing identitylessness, originally pure reality-itself, beyond mental investigation, the absolute nature free of conceptual elaboration, will be experienced with the eye of expansive wisdom. Unlike nebulous, obscure meditations and intellectual fabrications, with the eye of wisdom you directly see the precious, spontaneously present absolute nature, the reality-itself of the expanse of clear light.
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To practice these instructions, at the outset you must firm up your posture, for if this is not done, the absolute nature, bindus, and the vital energies will be dispersed in all the channels and elements of the body, and they will not manifest. As an analogy, if a snake is not squeezed, its limbs will not become evident, but if it is, they appear. The posture is accordingly of tremendous importance.
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First, the lion's posture is as follows. Join the soles of your feet in front of you. Plant your vajra-fists on the ground between your legs, and look up into the sky. That is the dharmakaya posture and gaze. For the sambhogakaya posture, plant your knees and elbows on the ground and support your cheeks with your palms. Point the soles of your feet outward, and gaze directly in front of you. However, if appearances of the clear light do not manifest, alternately run your gaze to the left and right and up and down. Rest your gaze wherever those appearances are most clear. For the nirmanakaya posture plant the soles of your feet on the ground, press your chest against your knees and clasp your knees with both hands while interlacing your fingers. Straighten your spine, and gaze downwards.
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Here is the significance of those postures. With the dharmakaya posture, the soles of the feet are joined in order to constrain the afflictive vital energies in their own place. The vajra-fists are placed on the ground to cut off the pathways of the afflictions. The gaze is directed upwards to open the vision of primordial wisdom. With the sambhogakaya posture, pointing the soles outward causes the vital energies to flow easily. Pressing your knees against your chest balances the heat and cold elements of the body. Pointing your knees and elbows at the ground blocks the impure apertures. Supporting your cheeks with your palms balances bliss and emptiness. By directing your gaze straight in front of you, primordial wisdom settles in its own luminosity. With the nirmanakaya posture, the soles of your feet press on the air mandala in order to suppress the power of the karmic vital energies. By pressing together the fire mandala of the thighs and the fire mandala of the belly, the impure vital energies of samsara are extinguished right where they are. By pressing together the water mandala of the knees and the fire mandala of the palms, the heat and cold elements of the body are balanced. By pressing together the fire mandala of the palms and the fire mandala of the armpits, cold disorders are dispelled. By pressing together the water mandala of the backs of the hands and the water mandala of the throat, heat disorders are dispelled. By gazing downwards, the eye of omniscience is opened. Even if you look straight ahead or turn your gaze upwards, the eye of omniscience is still opened, so there is no difference. You may direct your gaze wherever you find the greatest clarity.
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Moreover, it is not necessary to use all three postures. Rather, you may stay in any of the postures that facilitates the arising of the clear light and that you find comfortable and suitable. If you like variety, you may shift from one posture to the other and from time to time apply yourself to other spiritual practices. If you want nothing complicated, strive in meditation continuously throughout the day and night. Those who can meditate only during the day and not through the night should constantly practice throughout the day. The practice is to have three special sessions during the night and to intermittently train in the dying process. (1)
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The important thing for the senses is that you look with eyes partially open and that you do not suddenly open them wide, for that will dull your vision, and it will prevent the appearances of the clear light from manifesting; so do not rigidly fix your gaze. The important thing for the vital energies is that you practice breathing gently through your mouth through a little opening between your lips and teeth; and pause for a moment with the breath exhaled. As for the object of your gaze, in the beginning for about one month, during the daytime direct your gaze one cubit(2) from the sun; then the [practice during the] night will clear away any problems of heat increasing in the eyes due to the sun.(3) In order to achieve stability in the clear light, gaze at the moon in the same way.
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At night if you gaze at a flame, by looking above it with your eyes half open, at first you will see nothing more than something like an orange bale of hay. After awhile, the absolute nature will appear and bindus will arise in the form of quivering lines. Finally, beautiful, limpid visions of the absolute nature and bindus will appear clearly and extensively. Remain with your body unmoving like a corpse in a charnel ground; keep your voice silent, avoiding all articulation; and do not exhale through your nose but slowly breathe through your mouth without impeding or forcing it. That is the reliance upon the crucial point of letting the channels and vital energies be, without retention or manipulation. Remain without moving from the state in which consciousness experientially emerges as the clear light, without the mind being modified in any way. Wherever you are, by keeping the body straight, all the channels and vital energies will be straight, and once the mind has dissolved into empty awareness, you will be stabilized in that state.
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The explanation of the channels and bindus of the path according to this yana is called Ati-anu, so you should come to know them correctly. The mouth is the aperture through which coarse, impure mental afflictions, vital energies, and mental states manifest, and the nose is the subtle aperture for subtle afflictions, vital energies, and mental states. Here is the way they move. In the lungs, channels having the width of a straw of wheat are filled with that which is called the exhaled and inhaled breaths. If they increase, heat disorders arise, if they decrease, cold disorders occur, and if the breath flows smoothly, there is a balance of the heat and cold elements of the body. In one day, there are 21,600 breaths, which are like mounts for mental ideation. Therefore, even though there are profound methods for forcefully constraining the vital energies and mind by retaining and manipulating the channels and breath, they may be enormously obstructive and misleading.
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The six kinds of lamps(4) of the ground of the nature of existence are the avenues by which primordial wisdom arises, and the eyes are the evident apertures of primordial wisdom. The ears are the hidden apertures of subtle primordial wisdom, and they are the pathways by which consciousness apprehends appearances, so you train in their sounds. Through the evident apertures of primordial wisdom, you train in the clear light that illuminates the darkness. Dream appearances are the avenues to the manifestation of stainless vision, and by familiarizing yourself with the clear light, emanation, and transformation, the appearances in the transitional process of becoming can be emanated and transformed. From that you can emanate a pristine nirmanakaya buddha-field and accustom yourself to transforming the appearances of the intermediate state.
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Here in order to experience the visions of the embodiments and primordial wisdoms there are three kinds of lamps of the vessel. The quintessence of the body is the citta lamp of the flesh at the heart, the inside of which is soft white. This is called the lamp of the channels, the quintessence of the channels, and hollow crystal kati channel. It is a single channel, one-eighth the width of a hair of a horse's tail, with two branches that penetrate inside the heart like the horns of a wild ox. They curve around the back of the ears and come to the pupils of the eyes. Their root is the heart, their trunk is the channels, and their fruit is the eyes.
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The quintessence of the apertures is called the fluid Lasso lamp. That consists of three kinds of lamps of the vessel. Although the three kinds of lamps of the vessel are given three names, in reality they refer to the same thing, like a root, trunk, and fruit. Thus, in the context of the path, they are simply called the fluid lasso lamp.
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As for the three kinds of lamps of the vital essence, the lamp of the pristine absolute nature is the quintessence of the five outer elements. The transformation of impurities into the five-colored lights of the empty essential nature of the quintessence is called the absolute nature, and because of the purification of the reification of impurities, it is called pristine. The element appearing as space, transformed into the quintessence, is blue and light blue. The element appearing as water, transformed into the quintessence, is white and gray. The element appearing as fire, transformed into the quintessence, is red and brown. The element appearing as earth, transformed into the quintessence, is yellow, pale yellow, and dark yellow. The element of air, transformed into the quintessence, appears as green, tan, and light green.
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At first, in whatever color the impure visions appear, when they are transformed into the absolute nature, they still appear in that same color. As for the visions of the absolute nature, at first they are of the nature of such things as the sun, moon, and a flame, bearing all five colors, filled with rainbow patterns of the absolute nature, like brilliant brocade. This rainbow weave arises as horizontal images. Beginners may achieve stability in this by gazing for a month at the sun and a crystal during the daytime, at the moon during the nighttime, and by gazing at a flame while indoors. At the beginning, shimmering images arise, after awhile they become more stable, and finally they remain motionless. At that time, look at a clear window, dispense with the flaws of enjoying or not enjoying the beauty or lack of beauty of the light images. Then a whitish blue emerges which is not that of the external sky, but know that it is important to rest in a state without attraction or aversion to its qualities.
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To transform the five inner elements into quintessences, the element of the quintessence of the mind is transformed into blue and it appears as such; the element of the quintessence of the blood transforms into the color white and appears as such; the element of the quintessence of the flesh transforms into the color yellow and appears as such; the element of the quintessence of warmth transforms into the color red and appears as such; and the element of the quintessence of the breath transforms into the color green, and appears as such.
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As for the lamp of the empty bindu, the five quintessences appear in circular forms, so they are called bindus. Although they are spherical, without corners, in your vision they appear like concentric circles due to throwing a stone in a pond. The interior of the so-called hollow crystal kati channel is filled with the lights of the five quintessences, and a form of an indestructible bindu is present in that space. By gazing at that with the eye of wisdom, the interior of that channel becomes evident and arises in the form of outer appearances. Without grasping onto them, your own channels will illuminate themselves. If you grasp onto the visions of the absolute nature as being external and onto awareness as being internal, you will fall into the error of dualistic grasping.
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In the domain of that pristine, absolute nature, the lusters of awareness called vajra-strands appear like moving, floating threads of gold. That is the initial phase. After awhile they appear like pearls threaded on a string, and finally they emerge in the form of full and half-lattices. They are the basis from which the two kinds of lamps of vital essence arise, called the lamp of self-arisen wisdom and the self-knowing sugatagarbha.
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The four lamps of the path of appearances are the fluid lasso lamp, the lamp of the pristine absolute nature, the lamp of the empty bindu, and the lamp of self-arisen wisdom. The four lamps of the contemplative path are combined in one. Know that synthesizing them, then applying yourself to practice is of the utmost importance. If you practice in that way, unlike the mentally constructed, vague meditation as in the Breakthrough--the reality-itself of the clear light will directly appear to your senses, so they are called the direct visions of reality-itself. This is not like meditating on substantial, human- like deities that are strenuously conjured up by the mind, as in the stage of generation. This alone is the practical instruction for achieving stability in the great experiential displays of the embodiments and primordial wisdoms, thereby liberating the actual three embodiments within yourself. This is superior to the ordinary kinds of transference involving the three recognitions, (5) a path by which you visualize shapes and colors and propel yourself aloft, as it were. This has the distinction of the great transference by which you transform all appearances and mental states of samsara and nirvana into the absolute nature of reality-itself.
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Due to continuously practicing single-pointedly in that way, the potency of the vase empowerment strikes the materiality of your body, so that you have no wish to move your body; due to the potency of the secret empowerment permeating your speech patterns, you have no wish to speak; and due to the potency of the wisdom empowerment striking your mental continuum, your attention remains wherever you place it. This is real quiescence that is devoid of signs. Thus, since all coarse and subtle ideation is calmed in the ocean of the original ground, it is quiescent; and since awareness remains without fluctuation in its own state, it is still.(6)
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By transforming appearances and mental states into displays of the embodiments and primordial wisdoms, there is an exceptional vision of the clear-light appearances of reality-itself, so this is called insight.
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From the impure state of samsara, since you truly know the reality-itself of the Breakthrough, the nature of existence of suchness, you see the truth of reality-itself. Due to achieving a great, unprecedented vision of reality-itself, this is the Very Joyful [ground]. With the first visions of the Leap-over, you come to the confidence of never returning to samsara, so you implicitly achieve the first ground of the sutra path. On the mantra path, all delusive appearances and mental states come to maturation in the nature of the clear light, reality-itself; ignorance is transformed into awareness, and you implicitly achieve the ground in which awareness holds its own ground. At this time, even if you die and are interrupted [in your practice], you will be reborn as a tulku, and you will have embarked on the path of liberation. The outer signs are that the appearances of the absolute nature are majestic and stable, as if the curtain on them had been opened; and bindus appear, ranging from the size of fish eyes to thumb rings.
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This is the way the experiential visions progress. Initially, vital energy fills you inside from your heart up to your throat, or various sorts of illnesses or disagreeable pains may occur. Randomly moving throughout the exterior and interior of your body, staying in no one place for long, these disturbances arise due to the potency of the vital energy of primordial wisdom striking the ascending wind. After awhile, they increase and your throat may become sore and blocked so that food is obstructed and coughed out. You may lose your appetite, have trouble breathing, and lose your voice. Then they increase yet further, and disturbances arise due to the potency of the vital energy of primordial wisdom striking the life-sustaining wind. Then you may experience mood swings from joy to sorrow and from desire to hatred. Due to the potency of the vital energy of primordial wisdom striking the descending wind, when the disturbances increase, urine and excrement are blocked and cannot be excreted, and when the disturbances subside, they are expelled constantly. Due to the potency of the vital energy of primordial wisdom striking the pervasive wind, when those disturbances increase, the body becomes swollen, and when they decrease, all the flesh of your body withers as if it were becoming a corpse. Due to the potency of the vital energy of primordial wisdom striking the fire accompanying wind, when the disturbances increase, sweat emerges from the body and great heat arises; and when they subside, you get goose bumps, your complexion deteriorates, and you shiver with cold.
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Finally, all the winds combine and enter the channels and elements of the body, and sharp pains arise in all the channels. Movements of the winds permeate your whole body, inside and outside, giving rise to various illnesses such as combined heat and cold disorders. The body becomes swollen, boils and sores appear, dire illnesses arise, medications and divinations go awry, bad omens appear, and individual channels and joints become painful. Gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and lymph disorders may arise, and you may become lame, blind, deaf, or mute, and may pass out. Know that various random kinds of pains may arise in the body.
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You may engage in various kinds of behavior, acting coquettishly or shamelessly, like someone afflicted with a disease. In short, know fully well that due to the functions of the channels, winds, and elements, these bodily pains will not be the same for everyone, so there is no one criterion for recognizing them.
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As for your speech, you may find yourself singing various songs and melodies, babbling, speaking offensively, having your behavior not conform to your speech, not living in accord with your words and acting contrary to them, and speaking uncontrollably as if your words were uttered by an insane person. Such speech is nonsensical and random, So recognize this!
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Like the noises made by a madman, your mind may ramble aimlessly, without being able to remedy or alter it in any way. Due to the disorders in your heart and life force channel, at times you may weep, groan, sigh, exhale forcefully, or constantly want to be on the move, without being able to remain in one place. Your environment may seem so miserable that you do not want to stay where you are, and you may constantly experience a wide range of confused emotions. So recognize this! You may have various sorts of visions of gods and demons or random sensations of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, and so on. These are the outer signs of the appearances of the clear light.
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At the beginning stage, remain motionlessly with your face completely covered, and bindus from the size of the dots on dice up to the size of thumb rings will appear. At times, the visions of the absolute nature, together with the bindus, will not be evident, but the luster of awareness will appear in forms called vajra-strands. At times the bindus of the absolute nature will not arise, then they will fluctuate in size, and they will become unclear, no matter how much you try. On occasion, the visions of the absolute nature will repeatedly appear in the expanse of clear light in spherical forms of five-colored lights. Those are the criteria of familiarity with the practice.
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At this time, even if your life comes to an end, you will go straight to a nirmanakaya buddha-field, with no intermediate state. By gaining greater familiarity with this practice, the visions of the absolute nature will appear resplendently like loosely woven cloth, and they will appear in the sky in the form of dangling lattices and half-lattices. In the midst of the visions of the absolute nature, all sorts of images may appear, such as stupas, lotuses, white conches, wheels, vajras, jewels, swastikas, swords, spear-tips, images like stacks of books, and various forms of letters and animals. Whatever appears, those are visions of the absolute nature, so know that it is important not to mistake them for bindus. Bindus will appear in round shapes, gradually growing from the size of thumb rings to the size of cups and on to the size of round shields.
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At the beginning stage, the lights of awareness, called vajra-strands, no broader than a hair's width, radiant like the sheen of gold, appear to move to and fro, never at rest, like hairs moving in the breeze. Even as they stabilize a little bit, they become clear and lustrous, temporarily wavy, and they slow down somewhat, appearing like deer running across a mountainside. Then as you become somewhat more accustomed to the practice, they appear like strung pearls, and they slowly circle around the peripheries of the bindus of the absolute nature, like bees circling flowers. Their clear and lustrous appearance is an indication of the manifestation of awareness. Their fine, wavy shapes indicate liberation due to the channels, and their moving to and fro indicates liberation due to the vital energies. Due to the qualities of purifying the bindus, the presence of bindus on curves [of the strands] indicates that one will be liberated. By the power of meditation, they appear in the forms of lattices and half-lattices, transparent like crystal, radiant like gold, and like necklaces of medium-sized strung crystals. The criterion of having thoroughly familiarized oneself with the practice is that they appear indeterminately, but they remain stable, without moving or vibrating. In this case, the name of the cause is also given to the result, and that is the vajra-strand luster of awareness. They are the luster of awareness, so they gradually become as stable as awareness itself. They are not the real, self-arisen lamps of awareness and wisdom.
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Once the beginner's phase has passed, the visions of the absolute nature become beautiful, clear, and stable, and they take on various divine forms. Although they may increase and decrease, before a single inner sign has arisen, the appearances of such outer signs are premature, like a dzaki flower that blooms out of season. So that does not constitute progress in terms of experiential realization. Even when the inner signs occur, the outer bindus of the absolute nature may become indistinct. That happens to some people who have a dominant water element, and the elements of their channels are such that the development of their experiential realizations proceed like a slow foot race. If that is mistakenly identified as progress in meditative experience and as reaching consummate awareness, even if visions occur that would seemingly indicate the extinction into reality-itself, in fact one has in no way gone beyond ordinary consciousness. Indeed, one is proceeding in the opposite direction, contrary to the tantras, so this is an enormous error. It is important to know this.
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Even if muddled outer signs and vivid images are present, recognize the importance of the emergence of the inner signs. Although experiential visions may appear to your inner consciousness, if the outer signs are unclear, that indicates that you will not be able to gaze at the clear light for sustained periods, and there will be obstacles. Know this as well. When experiential visions homogeneously arise inwardly, the visions of the Breakthrough are aroused, causing the meditative experiences of the Leap-over to be disrupted. However, when the visions have not matured into the clear light, the potency of the clear light has not been perfected. If they stop, the visions of light will not develop, and that indicates that the eye of primordial wisdom has not entered the eye of wisdom.(7) Therefore, you should constantly strive in the practice.
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When encountering that situation, some people develop their minds with meditative experiences, then travel to many regions and finally succumb to adversities. Consequently, they get stuck there and do not achieve liberation. Some people encounter images of the bodies, speech, and minds of buddhas which are actually apparitions of maras, gods, and demons--and due to visions from the power [of progress in meditative experience], words of Dharma appear to them as written letters, and they are consumed by the desire to write them down. Out of lust, they consort with women, and consequently claim to be treasure-revealers. There are many such people who bring ruin to themselves and others. Due to extrasensory perception and visions in dreams, some people perceive good and bad things in themselves and others, and they leave such things as hand-prints in rock and other objects. Signs may manifest due to the apparitions of gods and demons, causing them to declare themselves to be siddhas. They then take a consort and take control of those around them. Laying the foundations for prestige and great deeds, they spend their whole lives in constant, relentless striving. Those who spend their lives tricking others with magic rituals to dispel obstacles and wander around begging and seeking wealth without satiation are possessed by maras and demons. Even if they become renunciates and gurus with great followings, they are deludedly involved in the eight mundane concerns and the negative conduct of maras.
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Some people take meditative experiences to be illnesses and regard conducive circumstances as demonic. When they receive medical treatment and perform rituals, they become confused by all kinds of divinations and diagnoses, and they become overwhelmed by speculations. Upon noting bad dreams and evil omens, fantasies arise even more forcefully, and those outer manifestations are apparitions of gods and demons. Any of the 404 kinds of illnesses in the body, including disorders of the wind, bile, phlegm, and combinations of them, are inner manifestations as bodily pain. If you regard them as being truly existent, you fall into error, and you will either die or deludedly fall under the influence of objective adversities.
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Some people go through various kinds of unbearable miseries and ecstatic experiences, all of them arising as secret manifestations called joys and sorrows. If you cling to them and reify them, you will stray into error, and you will not attain liberation. Due to misery and discomfort and pain in the life force in the heart, people sigh and feel like weeping, and everything they see and feel seems to be of the nature of suffering. Then they restlessly yearn to escape somewhere where there will be no human intruders, and when they come to such a place of solitude, they yearn for companionship and moving around. Overcome by desires and cravings, they find they cannot remain in solitude, and they scramble after anything that will bring them pleasure. That is falling into error, so recognize this!
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Frightened by suffering, your body, speech, and mind become agitated, impelling you to become active, and that is a great mistake. Some people become depressed at the miserable pain in the life force in their hearts, and out of despair when they wander from one village to another, this seems to help. Then when they come around to their own homeland and so on, before many days have passed, uneasiness arises again just as it did before, and they wish to be on the move again. Such people wind up squandering their whole lives.
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Some people's minds are filled with doubt and vacillation, doubting that they can ever come to certainty , and they waste their lives by repeatedly traveling to many lands. Some are carried away by viewing their teacher's counsel as being wrong, and they fall into false views. Others take their own meditative practice to be harmful, and they constantly feel regret and wonder what to do. They think that if they were to go to some other famous spiritual teacher, that might help. Nowadays there is not a single spiritual teacher who is well versed in the nature of this path, the manner in which meditative experiences arise, and so forth. Thus, fearing that their reputation will decline, they cannot admit they do not know and are not familiar with those things. Some of them teach things that are their own mental fabrications, then tell others that their meditation is wrong. Others say, "Your guru doesn't know how to teach, so you have been proceeding on a false path. Do this instead..." Teaching that their own level of instruction is all you need, they heap praise upon it. There are a great many who pompously declare that they can transfer their realization to others, saying, "I shall grant you my realization, our minds will merge, and you will simultaneously perfect all grounds and paths." If that were possible, the buddhas would have transferred their state of realization to sentient beings, and samsara would already be empty. Specifically, if the minds of all the buddhas' sravaka and pratyekabuddha disciples received the buddhas' realizations by having their minds merged with the buddhas', why would they be drawn far beyond the Hinayana? Do not place credence in pretentious assertions about transferring one's realization.
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Some people think they have no craving for the eight mundane concerns. Others who have not developed their minds in the slightest become obsessed with various visions they experience. Those spiritually blind people never critically examine the way they wander about in delusion, then claim they have reached the state of the extinction into reality-itself and think their own delusions have vanished. Accomplished scholars scorn such attitudes and demolish them with their weapons of scriptural authority and logic. So individuals who enter this path should be careful in this regard.
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Even if you succeed in other Dharma practices, you will not achieve the highest state of liberation in this very lifetime. Consequently, maras will not be jealous or angry, so they will not create obstacles for you. If you do come to the culmination of this path, you may achieve liberation in one lifetime and with one body. In this case the might of the terrifying Lord of Maras is dredged up, the maras are aroused to jealousy and aggression toward those advancing towards the state of spiritual awakening, and they are sent out to create obstacles. They then create problems and manifest objective apparitions to lead people astray.
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By practicing single-pointedly, without succumbing to such obstacles, the appearances of light increase, and as soon as you settle in meditative equipoise, all appearances become totally pervaded by light and bindus, with no intervals between them. Ordinary phenomena that appear due to looking at impure phenomena with the eyes, are seen with the eyes of the flesh. The appearances of the absolute nature, of bindus, or of [vajra-] strands arise simply by attending to the visions of light. They are derivative of the manifestation of wisdom, so they are said to be seen with the eye of wisdom. During meditative equipoise, the displays of the absolute nature and of bindus increase, stabilize, and become continuous, and they are said to be illuminated by the eye of primordial wisdom.
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The consciousness that manifests the visions of the clear light during the initial phase is called the eye of wisdom. Wherever the eye of primordial wisdom, free of dust, is directed, it illuminates whatever it sees until the visions of the absolute nature, the bindus, clear light, and divine embodiments are seen. Then due to the sharp pinnacle of primordial wisdom, free of fluctuations in the clarity of the eye of wisdom, all appearance, both while in meditative equipoise and otherwise, transform into displays of light and rainbow bindus with ever increasing clarity. In the end, appearances of earth and rock vanish and dissolve into continuous, omnipresent displays of visions of light. That is the criterion for have acquainted oneself with this practice. Impurities have been transformed into the vital core, and the vital core has been transformed into the five lights, and they become manifest. That is the criterion for perfecting the power of progress in meditative experience. At this juncture, the larger bindus cover the sky and earth, while the smaller ones variously appear as small as grains of mustard, and they appear in aggregates of five. Within the visions of the absolute nature appear the doors, roof, Dharma wheel, crowning parasol, strings of bells, and silk hangings of a palace.
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Individuals who embark on such a profound, swift path, who have the fortune of combining their karma and prayers, will experience the spherical images of the first phase even at the time of death. At that time, they will expire in the nature of nirmanakayas. Finally, once the power [of their progress] has been perfected and nothing appears other than the fivefold aggregates of bindus, they will be liberated as sambhogakayas, without experiencing the intermediate state.
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To present this in terms of the grounds and paths, when you come to the state called progress in meditative experience on the path of the Leap-Over, that is identified with the fifth ground of the sutra path called Difficult to Practice. These meditative experiences are unbearably painful, and under their influence one experiences craving and confusion. Therefore, when one comes to this stage, since it is very difficult to follow the path to its culmination, this is called Difficult to Practice. On the mantra path all the appearances of birth and death in samsara are cut off, and one does not perish. This is the achievement of the state of a vidyadhara who has mastery over life itself.
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Then the appearances of reaching consummate awareness, in which awareness matures into its vital essence, are as follows. The upper portions of the divine embodiments appear in the midst of all the fivefold aggregates of bindus, while the lower portions of their bodies appear in forms of clouds of light. One half of their bodies appears as if it were separated. At that time, by practicing continuously, eventually entire divine embodiments will appear. The white, solitary embodiment, replete with the ornaments of a sambhogakaya is Vairocana; the blue embodiment is Vajrasattva; the yellow embodiment is Ratnasambhava; the red embodiment is Amitabha; and the green embodiment is Amoghasiddhi. By continuing in constant practice, the embodiments eventually appear in the form of male and female deities in union; and they arise together with their entourages of the four male and female bodhisattvas.
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As a result of further, continuous practice, assemblies of the five buddha classes appear in spacious, vast palaces, beautifully adorned with all manner of ornaments, clothed in various silks, blazing with rays of light, and adorned with bindus and minute spheres. By familiarizing oneself with that more and more, volcanic mansions appear that are inwardly constructed of three tiers of skulls, while outwardly appearing as palaces. In their midst are mandalas of ferocious blood-drinkers. The deities and consorts are embraced in union, and single male deities appear dressed in fresh elephant skins, tied with belts of human skin, with lower garments of tiger skins, each bearing weapons. They appear in all sizes from the larger ones as vast as the sky, and the smaller ones as tiny as peas. The entire universe appears to be filled and totally pervaded with rainbow light and blazing fire. Objects as small as the head of a pin are filled and illuminated with divine embodiments with all their ornaments. That marks the perfection of the potency of reaching consummate awareness.
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The mark of one's speech at this point is that one's voice is soothing and enchanting, like songs sung by the children of kumbhandhas. In addition, various words of Dharma, legends, and knowledge of linguistics, poetry, and composition naturally emerge. Appearances arise as symbols and as scriptures, and the meaning of all oral transmissions and practical instructions flows forth like the current of a river. Words of melodious songs and so on inspire others' perceptions of the world, and their minds are blessed.
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The bodily signs are that your body vividly appears as mudras of the five buddha-classes, like the appearance of a reflection in a space of limpidity and luminosity, like a mirror-image. The body appears as a variety of reflections, as light as cotton, with no sense of materiality. As an indication that bodily parasites have been released into the clear light, it becomes free of lice and nits. White hair turns dark, bright white new teeth grow in, and your muscles become youthfully strong, and wrinkles clear away. The perceptions of others shift simply by laying eyes on you, and they experience faith and reverence. With the blazing forth of the warmth of primordial wisdom, all thoughts of clothing are discarded, there is no longer any sense of being cold, and you experience continual blissful warmth. Casting off all thoughts of food, you can live for months and years on the food of samadhi, the power of bliss and emptiness. In each pore of your body are displayed unimaginable kinds of abodes of sentient beings as well as buddha-fields. That indicates the achievement of mastery of miraculous emanations. With your mastery of incarnation and emanation, you manifest an inconceivable number of emanations in an unimaginable range of abodes of sentient beings, and in a single instant you guide an inconceivable number of sentient beings. You manifest an inconceivable number of emanations in an unimaginable number of buddha-fieds, where you make myriads of offerings, receive empowerments, and open up an inconceivable number of avenues of samadhi. Such transformations are displayed in your own and others' fields of experience, and you send forth and disclose unimaginable emanations and miraculous displays. Due to your pristine perception, appearances arise as displays of buddha-fields, and due to the pristine purity of the mind-itself, the universe arises as a display of divine embodiments. Due to the pristine purity of your voice, sounds arise as wheels of Dharma. Pure appearances pervasively arise as displays of those three pristine purities, without even a speck of impure appearances.
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Once the union has been mastered, the many avenues of the impure cycle of existence are purified, and can be united with the great bliss of the absolute nature. Once liberation has been mastered, simply by focusing your awareness you can bring to a state of liberation even someone who has committed the five deeds of immediate retribution. Once you reach mastery over the elements, you can transform all things into gold, silver, and so on; and phenomena are mastered such that you can transform water into fire, fire into water, and so forth. Once you have mastered the ayatanas(8) of the five generic emblems, you can transform your body into the five elements, have your body take on the shape of other creatures, and manifest yourself in various emanated forms. Once you have mastered all stages of birth, dying, and aging, when you want to transcend the three worlds, you will become awakened in the absolute nature of the dharmakaya, Samantabhadra. This occasion is called awakening in the great openness above, without reliance upon any of the virtues, vices, causes, or effects of all your lifetimes. Without reliance upon the qualities of your karma or the appearances of the intermediate state, all mental states and appearance naturally awaken by themselves, like the dawn breaking in the sky, and there is no death.
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Reaching the state of consummate awareness on the path of the Great Perfection means that you implicitly attain what is called the eighth ground on the sutra path, and you also implicitly achieve the state of what is called a Mahamudra vidyadhara on the path of generation.
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Moreover, due to the inconceivable differences among people's metabolisms and faculties, there is a corresponding, inconceivable array of meditative experiences. Thus, they are not uniform and there are no definite criteria for them. The foregoing descriptions are simply metaphorical and symbolic. You must examine this with awareness and ascertain that all appearances are of the nature of meditative experience. So recognize this!
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O Vidyavajra, by practicing in that way, enthusiastic, courageous individuals do not need to be concerned with such issues as the acuity of their faculties, the quality of their karma, or their age, as is the case on other paths. They are said to be of superior faculties solely due to their enthusiasm and courage. Therefore, when those who integrate Dharma with their lives, without becoming frustrated in their meditative practice, experience the outer and inner appearances of reaching consummate awareness, without confusing one for the other, all phenomena will appear only as lustrous light, and no ordinary appearances will ever arise again.
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Finally, like a full moon, the appearances of all embodiments and bindus gradually decrease in number. From your brain(9) a white mass of light, like a billowing cloud emerges in the space in front of you. In its midst appears an aggregate of five bindus, in the center of which appears Vairocana with his consort, adorned with sambhogakaya ornaments, and surrounded by four similar deities in union. Above, below, and all around those divine embodiments, vajra strands arise in the forms of dangling lattices and half-lattices, like rosaries of clear crystals. Then blankets of light, white like the moon, emerge from the hearts of those embodiments and penetrate down into the point between your eyebrows. For seven or five days those blankets of light appear as ornamental bindus stacked up like upside-down conch bowls. Finally, they dissolve into the point between your eyebrows, transforming your body into a mass of light. You thereby receive the immutable body-vajra empowerment.
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At this point, even if you die, with no intermediate state, you will experience the central buddha-field called Ghanavyuha and achieve stability. There the entire ground is composed of precious crystals. It is so vast and all-pervasively immense that it rivals the dimensions of space itself. Its surface is smooth and even, like the face of a mirror. When you step down, it gives way, and when you lift up, it rebounds. As the soles of your feet touch the surface of the ground, the primordial wisdom of bliss and emptiness blazes forth. Clouds of delicious aromas spread forth from hills covered with medicinal plants, and the whole ground is completely covered with brilliant lotuses of various colors. The sky is criss-crossed with lattice patterns of rainbow-colored light, and forms of rainbow canopies, parasols, victory banners, and pennants appear in it. It is surrounded all around by a great moat of water bearing the eight excellent qualities, and on its shores are pebbles of various precious substances, turquoise meadows, and golden sand. All around inside them are immense, majestic, lightly filled forests of wish-fulfilling trees. In the groves around its ponds are flocks of birds that are emanations of buddhas, white like the color of conch, yellow like gold, red like coral, green like emerald, and blue like lapis-lazuli, as well as other colors such as black, tan, and variegated. Their beautiful forms are pleasing to behold, and their lovely voices proclaim words of the sublime Dharma, as they circle around the ocean and alight on the wish-fulfilling trees. In the rivers are innumerable, lovely, enchantingly beautiful goddesses emanated by daughters of the devas, nagas, gandharvas, and kinnaras, who are constantly making clouds of offerings and rendering service.
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In the center of that buddha-field is a square palace with doors on each of its four sides, produced by the natural appearance of primordial wisdom. Its east side is composed of crystal, its south side is composed of gold, its west side is composed of ruby, and its north side is composed of emerald. Its roof is of lapis lazuli, and its exterior and interior are spacious and luminous. Its whole floor inside is made of precious rainbow crystals. When the light of the sun and moon streams through its windows, the floor becomes covered with rainbow light and bindus. Jewel lattices and half-lattices hang from its walls, and parasols, victory banners, pennants, and silk ribbons flutter in the wind, giving rise to words of the sublime Dharma, which are heard by herds of lovely deer. This vast, spacious palace is beautifully adorned with thresholds, Dharma wheels, and top ornaments of the sun and moon. It is exquisitely designed and is replete with all ornaments.
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In its center, adorned with rainbows and a mass of light is a broad, high, jeweled throne supported by eight lions. On its lotus, sun, and moon seat is the Bhagavan Vairocana, adorned with all the sambhogakaya ornaments, of the nature of the purified aggregate of form, the embodiment of the primordial wisdom of the absolute nature of reality. He is surrounded by an immeasurable assembly of bodhisattvas on the tenth ground, and he is constantly turning the wheel of Dharma. Recognize the importance of occasionally bringing that buddha-field to mind even while you are still on the path.
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O Vidyavajra, when you who are following this path finally go beyond that stage, red-colored light emerges from your throat spreading into the sky in front of you. In the midst of that light a fivefold aggregate of bindus arises, in the center of which appears Amitabha with his consort surrounded by the four male and female bodhisattvas. Between them are red vajra-strands in patterns of lattices and half-lattices, like rubies strung together. From the hearts of those divine embodiments rays of red light appear which strike your throat in the form of a string of bindus, like inverted ruby bowls, and stack there. They appear to dissolve into your throat for twenty-one, seven, or five days. You thereby receive the secret vajra empowerment of unceasing speech, and you achieve confidence.
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At this time, there is a discontinuity, a shift of appearances, and in an instant the entire ground, vast and spacious, is composed of rubies. When you step down, it gives way, and when you lift up, it rebounds. The whole ground is completely covered with brilliant lotuses with blossoms of various colors. The whole environment in all directions is completely surrounded by inconceivable buddha-fields. There are naturally arising ambrosial ponds with jewel pebbles, golden sands, turquoise meadows, wish-fulfilling trees, ambrosial springs, rainbow canopies, and various parasols, victory banners, and pennants. Unimaginable offering goddesses are constantly making offerings and rendering service, and in the center of all this is a palace composed of rubies. Its inner walls are white on the east, yellow on the south, red on the west, and green on the north. Its roof is blue and blazes with blue light, and it is adorned with all ornaments and fine attributes. In its center, is a lotus, sun, and moon seat upon a jeweled throne supported by eight peacocks. On it sits the Bhagavan Amitabha, red in color, adorned with all the sambhogakaya ornaments and garments, of the nature of the purified aggregate of recognition, the embodiment of the primordial wisdom of discernment. He is turning the wheel of Dharma for an immeasurable congregation of bodhisattvas on the tenth ground. You are instantly transported into their midst, you stabilize there, and achieve confidence in this state.
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Then when you move beyond that point, blue light emerges from your heart into the space in front of you like a billowing cloud, and in its midst arises a five-fold aggregate of vast, spacious blue bindus. In their center is the principal deity Aksobhya with his consort surrounded by the four male and female bodhisattvas. Adorned with all manner of ornaments, lattices and half- lattices of blue vajra-strands arise in the spaces between them like garlands of vairata. From the hearts of those divine embodiments blue light billows forth, penetrating down into your own heart, where bindus stack up in a column like inverted lapis-lazuli bowls. They appear to dissolve into your heart for ten days or longer. You thereby receive the wisdom-gnosis empowerment of the undeluded enlightened mind, and you achieve confidence.
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Even if there is an interruption at this time, with no intermediate state, your appearances will shift, and you will experience the southern buddha-field of Abhirati, as vast as the absolute nature itself. Its surface is smooth and limpid, like the face of a mirror. Its color is blue like lapis-lazuli and it is criss-crossed with lattice patterns of rainbow light. Verdant hills of medicinal plants are beautifully adorned with various flowers, wish-fulfilling trees, lakes of water bearing the eight fine attributes, golden sands, turquoise meadows, jewel pebbles, and unimaginable goddesses making offerings, singing praise, and rendering service.
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In the midst of the sky and intervening space adorned with all manner of lovely ornaments is a square palace with four doors. Its exterior is blue in color like lapis-lazuli and blazes with light. Its interior is radiant and luminous with the colors of the five primordial wisdoms. In its center is a jeweled throne supported by eight elephants. Upon it is a lotus, sun, and moon seat on which sits the dark blue Bhagavan Aksobhya, adorned with all the sambhogakaya ornaments, of the nature of the purified aggregate of consciousness, the embodiment of mirror like primordial wisdom. One hand touches the earth, while the other is in the mudra of meditative equipoise. Around him is assembled an innumerable Sangha of bodhisattvas, who are listening to the Dharma from the Teacher while bowing their heads in respect. As your appearances shift to this, you will attain liberation.
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When you move beyond that point, yellow light emerges from your navel into the space in front of you like a billowing cloud. Immediately, the whole ground becomes luminous with yellow light like the color of gold, and all other phenomena arise as displays of yellow light. In the midst of that mass of light a five-fold aggregate of large bindus arises like a round shield, and in its center is Ratnasambhava with his consort, surrounded by the four male and female bodhisattvas. Lattices and half-lattices of blue vajra-strands arise in the spaces between them like garlands of amber. From the hearts of those divine embodiments yellow light billows forth, penetrating down into your own navel. In that continuum of light bindus appear to stack up in a column like inverted golden bowls for five or seven days; and finally, they dissolve into you. You thereby receive the primordial wisdom vajra empowerment, free of signs and words, in which all excellent qualities are perfected.
E<p>ven if there is an interruption at this time, with no intermediate state, your appearances will shift, and you will experience the precious buddha- field of Srimat, as vast as the absolute nature itself, in which the whole ground is like the color of refined gold. Its surface is smooth and even. It is filled with grassy hills of medicinal plants blanketed with various flowers, ambrosial ponds, purifying springs, and a myriad of clouds of offerings of such things as wish fulfilling trees. In its center is a palace emanated by primordial wisdom. Its exterior is like the color of precious gold, and its interior bears the colors of the four kinds of activities from the natural potency of the five primordial wisdoms. In its center is a jeweled throne supported by eight supreme horses. Upon it is a lotus, sun, and moon seat on which sits the Bhagavan Ratnasambhava, whose body is adorned with the signs and symbols of enlightenment and with all the sambhogakaya ornaments, of the nature of the purified aggregate of feeling, the embodiment of the primordial wisdom of equality. He is surrounded by an immeasurable Sangha of bodhisattvas to whom he is constantly revealing the Dharma. With the emergence of these appearances, you will achieve liberation.
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When you move beyond that point, your body appears as five lights, and from it emerges a mass of dark green light into the space in front of you. In its midst appears a five-fold aggregate of five-colored bindus of light, like a rhinoceros-skin shield. In it is the principal deity Amoghasiddhi with his consort, surrounded by the four male and female bodhisattvas. The images of their bodies are limpid, they are replete with all manner of ornaments, and blaze with a magnificent mass of light. Everywhere above and below them vajra-strands appear in the forms of lattices and half-lattices, like turquoise garlands. As for the upward and downward extensions, from the hearts of those divine embodiments green light billows forth, like the color of emerald, penetrating your genital region. In that continuum of light bindus appear to form in a column like inverted turquoise bowls for ten days or so; and when they are complete, they appear to dissolve into you. You thereby receive an empowerment that grants you mastery over the spontaneously present divine embodiments and displays of primordial wisdom.
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At this time, even if your appearances shift, you will experience the buddha-field of Karmaprapurana, in which the whole ground blazes like the color of emerald. The entire environment is replete with all manner of ornaments and fine characteristics, and in its center is a palace, bearing all wonderful qualities. Its exterior is green like the color of emerald, and its interior is of the clear, luminous colors of the four kinds of activities from the natural potency of the five primordial wisdoms. In its center is a jeweled throne supported by eight pheasants. Upon it is a lotus, sun, and moon seat on which sits the Bhagavan Amoghasiddhi, whose body, green in color, is adorned with all the sambhogakaya ornaments, of the nature of the purified aggregate of compositional factors, the embodiment of the primordial wisdom of accomplishment. He is surrounded by an immeasurable assembly of bodhisattvas on the tenth ground for whom he is constantly turning the wheel of Dharma. As your appearances shift to this, you will achieve liberation.
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When you receive the vajra-empowerment of spontaneous, original perfection and you go beyond the final purification of the visions of meditative experience, all the mandalas of the blood-drinking deities in the skull mansions appear to you. Rising up into the sky above, you let out a terrifying roar and appear to dance in various ways, causing all realms of the universe to tremble and shake, the great earth quakes with a great roar. Consequently, the entire animate and inanimate universe dissolves into the nature of light, and, with a wave of your hand, your own body disappears into the realm of light.
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At this time, you will achieve the four great confidences of fearlessness. What are those four? Due to arriving at the ground of your own being, the dharmakaya, the nature of the original protector, the primordial buddha, even if you have a vision of buddhas filling the whole of space, you achieve the great confidence in which there is not the slightest bit of faith or reverence for them. By coming to spiritual awakening within yourself, in which you can be neither benefited or harmed by any other causes or effects, you achieve the great confidence in which there are no hopes for the ripening of effects from their causes. By coming to the ground of your own being, which is originally free of birth, cessation, and abiding, even if you are surrounded by a thousand assassins bent on murdering you, you achieve the great confidence that is devoid of even the slightest trace of fear. By experiencing the state of the originally pure, primordial protector, and coming to the state that is originally free of delusion, you achieve the great confidence in which there is no anxiety concerning samsara or the miserable states of existence.
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Then the appearances of the absolute nature, the bindus, the divine embodiments, and the buddha-fields gradually vanish like the full moon waning to the point that it disappears into the moonless sky. Finally, awareness is awakened as the ground, and you come to the nature of the dharmakaya. The fundamental root of self-grasping is destroyed, and the mind of grasping is extinguished. The ray of dualistic grasping is severed, thereby extinguishing apprehended objects. Conceptualization involving dualistic appearances is extinguished, so you expand into the even, pervasive nature of the equal purity of samsara and nirvana. Your body becomes like a corpse left on a charnel ground, so no fear arises even if you are surrounded by a thousand assassins. Your speech becomes like an echo, reverberating back all the sounds of others. Like a rainbow dissolving into the sky, your mind expands into reality-itself, free of conceptual elaboration, a great, all-pervasive state beyond all dimensions.
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O Vidyavajra, an individual who has extinguished the appearances of all phenomena into the absolute nature of reality-itself has far exceeded the tenth ground of the sutra path known as the Cloud of Dharma. Such a one has implicitly reached the supreme ground of a spontaneously present vidyadhara on the mantra path. Still the most subtle of latent cognitive obscurations arise, and like the illumination from a flash of lightning in the sky, on occasion your body appears, for just the duration of a hand-wave, as a body of light in an expanse of light. Recognize that appearances and the mind occassionally separate, and speech and words of Dharma are sometimes uttered as they were previously. When this phase is completed from ten days to ten months, the most subtle of cognitive obscurations vanish into the absolute nature. This perfects the power of primordial wisdom of knowing reality as it is, and you gain mastery of the originally pure ground, the primordial dharmakaya. By perfecting the power of the primordial wisdom of seeing the full range of reality, you gain mastery over the spontaneously present divine embodiments and the displays of primordial wisdom. As the originally pure youthful vase body, you are transformed into a totally perfected buddha, and you become all-pervasive.
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Those having superior faculties are liberated as a great transference embodiment, extending infinitely into the all-pervasive dharmakaya, like water merging with water, or space merging with space. Those having medium faculties attain buddhahood as a great rainbow body, like a rainbow vanishing into the sky. When the ground clear light arises, for those having inferior faculties the colors of the rainbow spread forth from the absolute nature, and their material bodies decrease in size until finally they vanish as rainbow bodies, leaving not even a trace of their aggregates behind. That is called the small rainbow body. When the ground clear light arises, the material bodies of some people decrease in size for up to seven days, then finally only the residue of their hair and nails is left behind. The dissolution of the body into minute particles is called the small transference. For those of superior faculties this dissolution of the body into minute particles may occur even during the Breakthrough.
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O Vidyavajra and the rest of you assembled disciples, listen and consider this. These are the superior qualities of the spontaneously present youthful vase body. The obscurations of ignorance are dispelled in the absolute nature; ascending to the dharmakaya, beyond the total-ground, lustrous primordial wisdom manifests, and it transcends lustrous clarity. The primordial wisdom of seeing the full range of reality manifests, and primordial wisdom transcends the mind. Natural spiritual awakening within yourself surpasses traveling to buddha-fields. Free of all the extremes of conceptual elaboration, it transcends causality of dependent origination. Imbued with the eight freedoms,(10) it transcends all actions and their effects. The absolute nature and primordial wisdom are equally pervasive, transcending mundane existence. Perfectly complete buddhahood, imbued with nine surpassing greatnesses is praised by all the jinas."
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NOTES
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(1). This refers to the preceding practice of imagining the dying process as a preparation to the main practice of the Leap-over.
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(2). To protect your eyes, it may be better to direct the gaze about six feet away from the sun.
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(3). Although the daytime practice of gazing near the sun may impair one's vision, it is said that the nighttime practice of gazing at the moon may actually enhance one's vision. Most important is that one carefully examine whether one's practice is damaging one's eyesight and to alter the practice if that occurs.
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(4). The use of the term lamp (Tib. sgron me) is, of course, a metaphor, for the essential nature of these lamps is luminosity.
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(5). The three recognitions (Tib. 'du shes gsum) are recognizing the channels as the path, one's own consciousness as the traveler on the path, and a buddha-field as one's destination.
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(6). This sentence gives an etymology of the Tibetan term zhi gnas (Skt. samatha), translated here as meditative quiescence.
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(7). The eye of wisdom sees appearances of the absolute nature, of bindus, and vajra-strands that arise simply by attending to visions of light, whereas during meditative equipoise the eye of primordial wisdom sees the displays of the absolute nature and of bindus as they increase, stabilize, and become continuous.
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(8). These ayatanas presumably refer to the five 'signs,' (Tib. mtshan ma, Skt. nimitta) that eventually arise due to meditating on the generic emblems of the five elements of earth, water, fire, air, and space. These practices are discussed in B. Alan Wallace, The Bridge of Quiescence: Experiencing Tibetan Buddhist Meditation (Chicago: Open Court, 1998) in the chapter "Quiescence in Theravada Buddhism."
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(9). The Tibetan term here (dung khang) literally means "conch abode," but it refers to the brain.
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(10). (1) The freedom of the formed observation of form, (2) the freedom of the formless observation of form, (3) the freedom of beauty, (4) the freedom of limitless space, (5) the freedom of limitless consciousness, (6) the freedom of nothingness, (7) the freedom of the peak of mundane existence, and (8) the freedom of cessation. (Tsepak Rigzin, Tibetan-English Dictionary of Buddhist Terminology (Dharamsala, India: Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1986) p. 236.
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<font color=black>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
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John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
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November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-11429111858012502902018-04-06T01:40:00.001-07:002018-11-11T01:21:09.478-08:00Three Postures in Thodgal<html>
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"First, the lion's posture is as follows. Join the soles of your feet in front of you. Plant your vajra-fists on the ground between your legs, and look up into the sky. That is the dharmakaya posture and gaze. For the sambhogakaya posture, plant your knees and elbows on the ground and support your cheeks with your palms. Point the soles of your feet outward, and gaze directly in front of you. However, if appearances of the clear light do not manifest, alternately run your gaze to the left and right and up and down. Rest your gaze wherever those appearances are most clear. For the nirmanakaya posture plant the soles of your feet on the ground, press your chest against your knees and clasp your knees with both hands while interlacing your fingers. Straighten your spine, and gaze downwards."......http://www.theopendoorway.org/Dzogchen-Thodgal.htm
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<font color=blue>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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<p>
Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
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John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
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November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-91405524597024536492018-04-06T01:37:00.001-07:002018-04-06T01:37:16.027-07:00Sky Gazing: Fixing Your Gaze On Space
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"As regards the gaze, we must not look up or down but stare straight at the letter A. The eyes should not be wide open, as the mind may grasp the A as an external object, nor should the eyes be closed as we may start to doze. We must not blink the eyes or inhibit the flowing of the 'three waters'....We must not lose awareness of the A even for a moment..The mind follows the eyes: when a person looks, the mind passes through the eyes.If we gaze at the A, but our mind wanders someplace else, this is not concentration on the A........"....Wonders of the Natural Mind: The Essence of Dzogchen in the Native Bon Tradition ...Page 82.....By Tenzin Wangyal
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"Sky gazing (Dzogchen)......In both the Bön and Buddhist Dzogchen traditions, sky gazing (Wylie: nam mkha' ar gtad, THDL: namkha arté) is considered to be an important part of tregchöd.......Sky gazing is a practice from the Dzogchen tradition.....the word dzogchen is a Tibetan rendering of the Sanskrit mahasandhi, which can be translated as "great perfection," or "total completeness." ...
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"Firstly there is the Dzogchen gaze. The method of Dzogchen gazing disorientates the conceptual mind.....it’s very important to practise the gaze first. You have to do that in order to keep your eyes from seeking forms upon which they tend to settle......In terms of Dzogchen, we train through the senses and the sense-fields rather than through trying to let go of thought. We learn to fix the senses. We keep the senses unmoving in relation to the external world......You would sit by the sea. Or you would sit by a river. You would focus on the surface detail of the water, so that you saw it very clearly and crisply. You would then fix your gaze. You would achieve that by keeping your eyes from moving. The eye muscles habitually track movements by flicking backwards and forwards along the line of movement......You become aware of that darting movement, and you continually attempt to freeze it – to fix your gaze. ......your eyes were not moving. ....This is a specific of many Dzogchen practices..... The impression you would receive would be like a photograph taken at a slow shutter speed. This is one of the best ways to train in fixing the gaze.....The way to train in focusing in space, in terms of Dzogchen, is to learn to feel comfortable when your eyes have no object of focus. This seems challenging at first, but it is by no means difficult. It is, in fact, easier than learning how to fix the gaze. There is a fairly simple method. You stretch out your arm and focus on your index finger. Then, when you have settled your focus, you lower your arm and maintain the gaze. Every time you find your eyes settling on distant objects, simply raise your arm again and re-focus on your finger. You just keep repeating this process until focusing in space becomes a simple muscular reflex.....you develop the ability to fix the gaze and focus in space......you do both at once....".....Aro gTér, a Nyingma terma. It is described in detail in the book moving being, by Khandro Déchen.....http://www.aroencyclopaedia.org/shared/text/s/skumnye_ar_eng.php
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"GAZING AS DZOGCHEN ......We look through the mind and we gaze within awareness…becoming aware of awareness is the path of gazing (whether eyes or open or closed)…we can gaze into awareness and we are immediately the field, the field of being. If we look and look for awareness with our mind only blankness arises, a blank state. Sunyata, primordial knowingness is not blankness, it is not blanking out. As we become aware of awareness we enter the gaze, we become the place of the gaze…this gazing from within awareness opens the multidimensionalness….the different dimensions of the field manifest within the gaze, within us. The gaze is both within us and beyond us. Within the gaze, there is neither simple inside nor simple outside. The gaze is place...a vast place beyond inside and outside.
There are many forms of gazing. At times we gaze through the eyes of the mind, (heart channels), we can gaze through the entire body, and we can gaze through the heart essence, hridayam. We can gaze through touch, we can gaze through sound, and we gaze through sight. We can gaze into various phenomena…all directly…unmediated…we can gaze into sky, we can gaze into death, we can gaze in the pre-personal, gazing into soma, gazing into the elements, gazing into the dakini, the vortexual, the element of flesh, we gaze into psyche…the gaze itself is psyche, not mind.
Gazing both leads to and is gnosis, jnana…direct perception. Togal, the leaping over practice, is not simply gazing into the sky - although sky gazing is its cultural and historical elaboration. If you wish to live in gnosis then gaze…gazing is the most direct of methods…Detailed instructions on the gazing methods of Dzogchen are generally secret and protected."....Written by: Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D.....Transmission: Journal of the Awareness Field
Journal of the Washington Center for Consciousness Studies......http://transmissiononline.org/issue/the-awareness-of-awareness/article/gazing-as-dzogchen
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" In Dzogchen, there are three kinds of space that we can talk about. There's the ordinary, dualistic outer space in which things exist. In relation to the practice of Trekcho practice, there are two other types that are discovered. There is also the inner space of the mind where thoughts etc. are experienced as being without any kind of actual 'place' of appearing or thing that creates them. This is inner ying - nang ying (nang dbyings). The outer space has a similar nature, where there is no fixed place to things that arise and they are not solid or within any kind of objective frame of reference. Basically, there's no place they arise, stay or disappear - similar to the nature of the mind. This is outer ying - chos ying.".... http://www.dharmawheel.net/viewtopic.php?t=4234
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"Greek....atenizó: to look fixedly, gaze......Original Word: ἀτενίζω.....Part of Speech: Verb.......Transliteration: atenizó......For Plato, the contemplative vision of the philosopher, a "perception" of the absolute Good and the absolute Truth, can initially be understood, however, only in terms of an analogy that depends on an understanding of the perception of sensuous Forms (Republic , book VII, 532). Unlike the worldly knowledge we achieve with eyes still attached to the earth, the knowledge achieved by the philosopher's gaze is a knowledge free of images, shadows, reflections: it is a knowledge free of all sensuous and material limitations, and it is a knowledge free of perspectivism and its "distortions," grasped all at once and once and for all (book VI, 500–11)....The analogy of the sun is found in the sixth book of The Republic (507b–509c), written by the Greek philosopher Plato..... Socrates reveals this "child of goodness" to be the sun.....The sun is a metaphor for the nature of reality and knowledge concerning it."
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"Kum Nye is a morning exercise designed for strength, endurance and focus. Clear focus opens your awareness and allows you to overcome your obstacles. Strength improves inner health and vitality while endurance increases your energy levels. Taking as little as 20 minutes, Kum Nye gives you a complete workout, increasing your fitness, flexibility and vitality. In this form of Kum Nye, a series of 8 positions are held while using specific breathing patterns. Whether you are inactive or athletic you can perform the positions within your own ability and experience positive results........Stephanie Wright is the author of "Kum Nye, Waking up for Beginners". ....Tibetan Dur Bon Medicine is an ancient traditional medical system with its roots in central Asia and Siberia before it became established across Pre-Buddhist Tibet......http://www.stephaniewright.co.uk/tibetan_dur_bon_medicine/
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"Kum Nye and sKu-mNyé are a wide variety of Tibetan religious and medical body practices. The two terms are different spellings in the Latin alphabet of the same Tibetan phrase (Wylie: sku mnye), which literally means "massage of the subtle body". Some systems of sku mnye are vaguely similar to Yoga, T'ai chi, Qigong, or therapeutic massage. "Kum Nye", Ku Nye, and Kunye are also used to transcribe the Tibetan phrases dku mnye ("belly massage") and bsku mnye ("oil massage"), which are pronounced identically to sku mnye. dKu mnye and bsku mnye manipulate the physical body, rather than the subtle (energetic) one......Systems of Kum Nye are found in many Tibetan Buddhist and Bön traditions. These can be entirely different both in purpose and in methods. For instance, some forms are very slow moving; others are intensely aerobic. Some systems are based in the Tibetan Medical Tantras (scriptures), and are mainly therapeutic. Other systems are based in Dzogchen, and are mainly religious in purpose.......Three systems of sku mnye have been described and taught in detail in English. These are Tarthang Tulku's Kum Nye, the Aro gTér sKu-mNyé and the Bön system taught by Stephanie Wright. Systems of bsku mnye are taught by the International Academy for Traditional Tibetan Medicine and the Shang Shung Institute."......
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Proverbs......4-25........"Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids lock straight before thee. "To look right on" and "to look straight before one" is to fix the eyes steadily and unswervingly upon an object before them, not to allow the gaze to deflect either to the right hand or to the left. As a noun, the word nokakh, rendered "right on," signifies what is straight in front of one; adverbially, it has the same meaning as that given in the Authorized Version. The corresponding "before" (neged) is substantively the side of any object which is opposite one, and as a preposition is equivalent to "before," "in the presence of," like the Latin coram. The versions (LXX., Syriac, Targum) take nokakh in the sense of "right
things:" "Let thine eyes look at right things;" contemplate them, aim at justice and equity. This meaning is given to the cognate adjective nakoakh in Proverbs 8:9; Proverbs 24:26; Isaiah 26:10; Isaiah 30:10; Isaiah 59:14; but in the Proverbs the word nokakh only occurs twice (here and ver. 21), either as an adverb, "right on," "straightforwardly," or as a preposition, "before." Look straight. Gesenius takes this verb yashar in hiph., "to make straight," as used elliptically: "Let thine eyelids direct a way before thee;" but the meaning is the same as "Let them look straight before thee." The Syriac, Gejerus, and Holden render, "Let thine eyelids direct thy way before thee;" i.e. do nothing rashly, but everything with premeditation; examine thy conduct, and see that it is right. The verb yashar has this meaning, "to direct," in Proverbs 3:6; Proverbs 11:5, but it is here used intransitively (Mercerus). Eyelids (aph'appim); so called from their fluttering, rapid motion, here used by way of poetic parallelism with "eyes." What the command inculcates is simplicity of aim or principle, singleness of motive. The moral gaze is to be steadily fixed, because if it wanders indolently, lasciviously, aimlessly, it imperils the purity of the soul. This verse may be understood, as Zockler, as containing a command levelled against dishonest practices. The man who intends to cheat his neighbour looks this way and that how he may deceive him. Such an interpretation may be maintained on the ground that the former verse is directed against falsehood in speech; this against falsehood in action. But the former view is preferable. If you wish to keep the heart, you must be guided by simplicity of aim; look not aside either to the one hand or to the other, lest you may be led astray by the seductions and temptations which imperil the onward and upward progress of the soul. The passage reminds us of the "single eye" (ἄπλους), "simple," i.e. intent on heaven and God, of Matthew 6:22.".....The Pulpit Commentary, Volume 4......(1880 AD)......By Spence-Jones, Henry
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John Hopkins.....New Mexico....April 2016
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-65889071939937514722018-04-06T01:32:00.002-07:002018-04-06T01:34:32.290-07:00The Seven Mirrors of Dzogchen....Dranpa Namkha (8th C.AD)<html>
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"Dzogchen, also known as the “great perfection,” is considered the path of self-liberation and the highest form of teaching in the Yunddrung Bon tradition......The Seven Mirrors of Dzogchen is a powerful heart-essence teaching that offers a direct introduction to the clear, open awareness of the Dzogchen view as well as methods for maintaining this state......The Seven Mirrors was directly transmitted by the Bon master Dranpa Namkha to Lungton Lhanyen in the 12th century....... The Seven Mirrors is a short work of thirty pages, and thus it is ideal for a weekend teaching......In this brief work are taught seven mirrors that give quintessential instruction on the topics of: preliminaries, view, meditation, result, conduct, the teaching regarding the pure realms and the six migrations, and the ultimate summary of the teaching. As the Seven Mirrors states about its own teaching: This is the essence of the teachings: Like seeing your own face in a mirror, you will see the principle of the clear, innate self-awareness."
<p>
"The seven mirrors are:<br>
1. The heart mirror of the view<br>
2. The heart mirror of the meditation<br>
3. The heart mirror of the result<br>
4. The heart mirror of conduct<br>
5. The heart mirror that explains the pure realms and lands of samsara<br>
6. The heart mirror of six-fold consummation<br>
7. The heart mirror that explains the benefit of meeting with this teaching<br>
http://gyalshen.org/the-seven-mirrors-of-dzogchen/.......Geshe Kelsang Gyatso<br>
http://www.ligmincha.org/en/programs/overviews-of-teaching-topics.html
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".......This fourth major cycle of Dzogchen, together with the above three, is included within the four-year training program of study and practice in the Meditation School (sgrub-grwa) at Triten Norbutse Monastery in Kathmandu. It is said that in the eleventh century, the Bonpo master Lungton Lhanyen (Lung-ston lhagnyan) actually met Tsewang Rigdzin (Tse-dbang rig-'dzin) in person in the guise of an Indian sadhu. The latter revealed to him the Dzogchen teachings he had received from his father Dranpa Namkha (Dran-pa nam-mkha', eighth century). Having acquired the power of long life (tshe dbang) by virtue of his yoga practice, Tsewang Rigdzin is said to have lived for centuries. Some of these texts, such as the Nam-mkha"phrul-mdzod present Dzogchen in a much more systematic and intellectual manner comparable to the Dzogchen Semde (sems-sde) class of the Nyingmapas......Having previously taught the A-khrid and Zhang-zhung snyan-rgyud extensively to Western students both in Nepal and in the West in recent years, Lopon Tenzin Namdak Yongdzin Rinpoche has been focusing on the teaching of the Ye-khri mtha'-sel, convinced that Western students are especially suited to the prac-tice of Dzogchen.".....In presenting the view and practice of Dzogchen here, we are following a collection of Bonpo Dzogchen texts known as the Nam-mkha' 'phrul mdzod, "the magical treasury of the sky." They are connected with the master Lung-ton Lha-nyen (Lungston Lha-gnyan, b.1088) and the teachings of this cycle were transmitted to him orally by Tsewang Rigdzin (Tshe-dbang rig 'dzin), an ancient sage who was disguised as an Indian sadhu. [2] The texts are from the Dzogchen teachings of the latter's father, Dranpa Namkha (Dran-pa nam-mkha'), and they present a more philosophical view of Dzogchen.....
<p>
Nam-mkha' 'phrul-mdzod, attributed to Dranpa Namkha (Root text with 7 folia).<br>
Nam-mkha' 'phrul-mdzod 'grel-pa, attributed to Dranpa Namkha' (commentary).<br>
Gab grel, attributed to Dranpa Namkha.<br>
<p'>
"The Seven Mirrors of Dzogchen with Lopon Tenzin Namdak......Yongdzin Rinpoche, Lopon Tenzin Namdak, the greatest living master of Dzogchen within the Bonpo tradition of Tibet, will teach a retreat in Germany on the ancient text entitled “The Seven Mirrors of Dzogchen,” from the cycle of the Namkha Thrul-dzöd, “the Magical Treasury of the Sky,” by the enlightened Dzogchen master Drenpa Namkha. Having been a master of Dzogchzen meditation practice in both the Bonpo and the Buddhist traditions, and completely rejecting all narrow sectarianism, Drenpa Namkha was among the Twenty-Five Disciples of Guru Padmasambhava in Central Tibet in the 8th century of our era. After having concealed many Terma texts himself dealing with the practice of Dzogchen, this master composed this short text distilling the very essence of all these teachings. Beginning with the qualities necessary in a master and in a student, the view, meditation, conduct, and result of Dzogchen practice is discussed in lucid detail, as well as providing descriptions of higher states of consciousness and practices in preparation for the Bardo experience after death. During the retreat and based on this text, Rinpoche will provide instructions for the practice of Dzogchen.".......http://www.vajranatha.com/schedule/98-fall-schedule-2012.html
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"According to Lopon Tenzin Namdak..... sTang-chen dMu-tsha gyermed was a disciple of Dranpa Namkha, the prince of Zhang-zhung and not the later Tibetan Dranpa Namkha who lived in the eighth century as claimed by Karmay....( Treasury (1972), pp.xxxvii, xxxviii). This sage appeared to Lodan Nyingpo in a series of visions, dictating a number of texts which the latter wrote down. At this time, it is said, Lodan Nyingpo was 23 to 24 years old and these visions came to him spontaneously without his conscious control. Even though this process would be designated a Mind Treasure (dgongsgter) or a pure vision (dag-snang) by the Nyingmapas, the Bonpos classify such vision revelations as snyan-brgyud or oral transmissions, even though they do not represent a continuous oral trans-mission from the earliest time. In all, Lodan Nyingpo received four cycles of oral transmissions in visions from the Vidyadharas and the Dakinis. (See Karmay, Treasury (1972), pp. 183, 340)."
<p>
"Notes to Chapter Three: Four Essential Points for Un-derstanding Dzogchen......<br>
1. The Nam-mkha' 'phrul mdzod, "The [Magical Treasury of the Sky], "attributed to Dranpa Namkha (eighth century), a contemporary of Guru Padmasambhava, belongs to one of the four principal cycles of Dzogchen teachings in Bon, the Ye-khri mtha'-sel, rediscovered by Lungton Lhanyen (Lung-stong lha-gnyan) in the eleventh century"....
<p>
"2. Lung-ston (var. Lung-bon) Lha-gnyan, b. 1088, is said to have met in person the sage Tsewang Rigdzin (Tshe-dbang reg-'dzin), who was disguised as a Hindu sadhu. Tsewang Rigdzin was the son of Dranpa Namkha (eighth century) and he was said to have realized the power of long life (tshe dbang) through his yoga practice and so he was still alive in the eleventh century. The cycle of Dzogchen teachings he transmitted to Lung-ton Lha-nyen is known as the Yekhri mtha' sel, the removing of extreme (views) with regard to the Primordial State."
<p>
"......... for Bonpos, it is the Srid-pa'i mdzodphug, the root text being attributed to Tonpa Shenrab and the commentary to Dranpa Namkha (eighth century)."
<p>
John Myrdhin Reynolds: Articles & publications
<p>
"Geshe Kelsang Gyatso was born in 1972 in Horpan Village in Amdo Ngwa, Eastern Tibet. In 1986, at the age of 14 he entered Nangzhig Monastery. There he received his monk vows from Gyawob Rinpoche.....In 1990, he continued his studies at the Menri Monastery in India. He received vows and initiations from His Holiness Menri Trizin Rinpoche and studied under the guidance of Menri Ponlob Rinpoche. In 1995 he moved to Triten Norbutse Monastery where he studied Dzogchen and Tantra under Yongdzin Lopon Tenzin Namdak Rinpoche and teachings on the Sutra from Khenpo Tenpa Yungdrung Rinpoche. In 2003, Kalsang Gyatso received his Geshe degree and is one of the main teachers at Triten Norbutse Monastery teaching Sutra, Tantra and Dzogchen
<p>
"Snan Rgyud Nam Mkha' 'Phrul Mdzod Dran Nes Skor and Zan Zun Snan Rgyud Skor: Texts From Two Cycles of Bon-Po Rdzogs-Chen Oral: Transmission Precepts Hardcover – January 1, 1972........by Sherab Wangyal (Author)......Publisher: Tibetan Bonpo Monastic Centre; Reproduction of the Original Manuscript edition (January 1, 1972).........ASIN: B0042LVTJY
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<font color=blue>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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<font color=blue>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2017/05/okar-research-index-2012-2017.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
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John Hopkins.....New Mexico
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Email: okarresearch@gmail.com
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-18926831173161101392018-04-05T02:05:00.001-07:002018-04-06T01:00:22.912-07:00Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche...... (1954-1992)
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"Born in Lhasa, Tibet in 1954, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche was recognized as an incarnation of the previous Jamgon Kongtrul by the late Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, the supreme head of the Kagyu lineage. At the age of six, the young tulku left Tibet to join the Karmapa at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim where he was raised by the Karmapa as one of his four “heart sons.”
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"Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche accompanied the Karmapa to the United States in 1976 and 1980 and in recent years carried out the Karmapa’s work, inspiring and teaching large numbers of students in Asia as well as in Europe and the United States. At the time of his death, he was engaged in building monasteries and initiating plans for a home for the elderly and a health clinic in Nepal. Yet for all his industrious projects to preserve and disseminate the Buddhist dharma, the real loss is Rinpoche himself, for he was one of the few younger Tibetan lamas considered to embody the true dharma wisdom of his elders."
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Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche died in a car accident in the Kalimpong District of Darjeeling, India, on April 26,1992.... He was thirty-seven years old.
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Source: https://tricycle.org/magazine/jamgon-kongtrul-rinpoche/
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His recognized incarnation, Jamgon Kongtrul Rinpoche relinquished his title as a monk on April 14, 2016...He was in charge of two monasteries of the Karma Kagyu sect in Kalimpong and Kathmandu, and was identified as a Tulku when he was a nine-month-old baby.
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http://www.tilogaard.dk/english/Jamgon_Kongtruls_exit_messages_on_Facebook_august_2016.pdf
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<font color=black>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2017/05/okar-research-index-2012-2017.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
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John Hopkins.....New Mexico
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Email: okarresearch@gmail.com
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-37750014417310097472018-04-05T01:23:00.003-07:002021-03-16T09:08:19.499-07:00Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche....1939 – 1987
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Chogyam Trungpa Photo ... Robert Del Tredici
.....http://www.bobdeltredici.com/robert-del-tredici-com/trungpa/
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"Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche....March 5, 1939 – April 4, 1987......In 1976, Chogyam Trungpa began giving a series of secular teachings, inspired by his vision (see terma) of the legendary Kingdom of Shambhala. Trungpa had actually started writing about Shambhala before his 1959 escape from Tibet to India, but most of those writings were lost during the escape.....In his view not only was individual enlightenment not mythical, but the Shambhala Kingdom, an enlightened society, could in fact be actualized. The practice of Shambhala vision is to use mindfulness/awareness meditation as a way to connect with one's basic goodness and confidence. It is presented as a path that "brings dignity, confidence, and wisdom to every facet of life." ....Shambhala vision is described as a nonreligious approach rooted in meditation and accessible to individuals of any, or no, religion. In Shambhala terms, it is possible, moment by moment, for individuals to establish enlightened society."
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Robin Kornman said in 1989 that..."Trungpa received the Shambhala Terma Texts in a language that he was not famiiar with...he wrote them down in Tibetan because that was as close as he could get...."
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"Carolyn Gimian writes: I attended many meetings, both formal and informal, with him [CTR] concerning Shambhala Training, Kalapa Assembly and the transmission of these teachings. In my memory, he made it quite clear that he hoped that the full transmission of the Shambhala teachings would be made to many people and that their religious persuasion was not an issue. Whenever those of us meeting with him tried to put limitations on who should be included in the advanced levels of Shambhala Training, and whenever we tried to add requirements as hoops for newer people to jump through, Rinpoche would resist our desire to limit things. I remember once, in Mill Village I believe, that he said that we needed to have more faith in the magic of the teachings.".....http://radiofreeshambhala.org/faq/faq-shambhala/
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"The Druk Sakyong had to say in Comments on the Werma Sadhana:From one way of thinking, the sadhana has been influenced by the traditional buddhist style, but on the other hand it is quite different. It is a self-contained practice. It is not particularly borrowed from buddhism, but it is simply self-existent in the Shambhala style.".. .http://radiofreeshambhala.org/faq/faq-shambhala/
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"Look at the sun. The sun is shining. Nobody polishes the sun. The sun just shines. Look at the moon, the sky, the world at its best. Unfortunately, we human beings try to fit everything into conditionality. We try to make something out of nothing. We have messed everything up. That’s our problem. We have to go back to the sun and the moon, to dragons, tigers, lions, garudas (mythical birds). We can be like the blue sky, sweethearts, and the clouds so clean, so beautiful. We don’t have to try too hard to find ourselves. We haven’t really lost anything; we just have to tune in. The majesty of the world is always there." Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche...“Helping Others...Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/shamis-en-balkh-great-eastern-sun.html"><B><font color=blue>The Great Eastern Sun: Sharchen Nyima</font></B></a>
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"Shambhala vision applies to people of any faith, not just people who believe in Buddhism… the Shambhala vision does not distinguish a Buddhist from a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Moslem, a Hindu. That’s why we call it the Shambhala kingdom. A kingdom should have lots of spiritual disciplines in it. That’s why we are here."...Chögyam Trungpa (Great Eastern Sun, The Wisdom of Shambhala, p 133).
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"Chogyam Trungpa sketched in the outlines of what a Shambhala culture means. “Shambhala is our way of life. The Shambhala principle is our way of life. Shambhala is the Central Asian kingdom that-developed in the countries of the Middle East, Russia, China, and Tibet altogether. The basic idea of Shambhala vision is that a sane society developed out of that culture, and we are trying to emulate that vision. That particular system broke down into the Taoist tradition and Bon tradition of Tibet, the Islamic tradition of the Middle East, and whatever tradition Russia might have. It has broken into various factions."
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"...When we asked the Vidyadhara whether these (Shambhala Root) texts originated with Padmakara, the source of the vast majority of treasure teachings, at that time we didn’t know that other teachers also hid dharma as termas. So when Rinpoche replied that these texts were more likely from Gesar, we were understandably puzzled. But after a long pause Rinpoche added, “And of course Gesar was an emanation of Padmakara, so that should take care of things for you!” When we asked about what meaning Gesar had in terms of the Shambhala teachings, Rinpoche exclaimed: “Gesar is the vanguard of Shambhala.” (It should be noted that in other contexts, the Vidyadhara indicated that the Shambhala terma had originated with the Rigden kings, Shiwa Ökar, or Gesar of Ling.)"........http://nalandatranslation.org/projects/articles/gesar-supplication/
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"Trungpa Rinpoche’s Great Vision.....Many will remember Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s determination to gather the sacred relationships, wisdom, and living essences of the world’s authentic traditions, and to give them a home under the Shambhala banner. He had a vision of making living relationships with the sacred deities and traditions of this world, and inviting them to support us in creating an enlightened society. Before he came to the West, he had profound meetings with the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, which resulted in the Christian-Buddhist (-Jewish) dialogs held at Naropa University. In his 1983 trip to Japan, he invited Amaterasu Omikami – the indigenous Japanese goddess of the Sun – to come live at the Kami Shrine at SMC. At the 1979 Kalapa Assembly, he was asked if there still might be Chinese dralas present, to which he replied, “There are lots of them, all of the emperors and all of the deities of Mount Wu Tai Shan. There are lots of them, absolutely lots of them…. I think they will be the first to agree with us, the first to come along and join us.” In 2007, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche made a pilgrimage to Wutai Shan, which is also seen as the abode of Manjushri. Trungpa Rinpoche also talked of his dream of going to Mount Sinai to ask the great Western deity Jehovah for his support in our efforts to create an enlightened society on this earth. And he once gave a talk to a gathering of a western secret society, where he talked to them about basic goodness and the importance of maintaining their traditions. In presenting the Shambhala teachings, he preserved many aspects of the indigenous tradition of Tibet, including the teachings on lungta, drala, werma, and wangtang.".....http://shambhalatimes.org/2009/03/02/opening-communication-with-other-authentic-traditions/
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"Gentleness is the rule in the Shambhala kingdom. It is actually much more terrifying than kindness, to your surprise. When you are gentle, there's no room for hostility. We like being hostile; we want to be perked up and energized by our negativity. But in Shambhala, we never do that, and we shouldn't do that. However, with Shambhala vision, there is festivity and joyousness, because we are not totally in the dungeon of our neurosis. That cheerfulness is what we call the Great Eastern Sun. The model for the Great Eastern Sun is the sun that shines at ten o'clock in the morning. The sun is no longer the early morning sun, and it is no longer a teenage sun. The sun is about to be full, but it's not quite full. That ten o'clock sun is the Great Eastern Sun....."......http://chronicleproject.com/stories_117.html
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"The Shambhala Teachings most likely have Iranian origins."
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"The reason that you don't understand the Shambhala Teachings is because you are Buddhists."
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"One important difference between the Shambhala Tradition and the Buddhist Path is that Shambhalians work more closely with higher beings."
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"SEARCHING FOR SHAMBHALA......by James George.......The following is an early draft of Searching for Shambhala, an article that was later published in Search: Journey on the Inner Path. James George sent this draft to Chögyam Trunpa Rinpoche in 1976....http://www.chronicleproject.com...."To say that such a centre has existed does not mean that it still exists. Nor does it follow, even if it exists, that it could be located by satellite photography or tracked down by systematic ground expeditions. But so long as there is the remote possibility that such a place is real somewhere in our world, here and now, there will be those who will look for it. We can take Shambhala as the prototype of the object of this search..... in 1968, when we had the now well-known Tibetan teacher, Trungpa Rinpoche, staying with us. We had been asking him about the Tibetan tradition of Shambhala. To our astonishment he replied very quietly that, although he had never been there, he believed in its existence and could see it in his mirror whenever he went into deep meditation......"
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"I am honoured and grateful that in the past I have been able to present the wisdom and dignity of human life within the context of the religious teachings of Buddhism. Now it gives me tremendous joy to present the principles of Shambhala warriorship and to show how we can conduct our lives as warriors with fearlessness and rejoicing, without destroying one another... I have been presenting a series of "Shambhala teachings" that use the image of the Shambhala kingdom to represent the ideal of secular enlightenment, that is, the possibility of uplifting our personal existence and that of others without the help of any religious outlook. For although the Shambhala tradition is founded on the sanity and gentleness of the Buddhist tradition, at the same time it has its own independent basis, which is directly cultivating who and what we are as human beings."....Trungpa (1984), pp 25-34..... "Shambhala: Sacred Path of the Warrior". ISBN 0-87773-264-7......
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"Bon, unlike the religious outgrowths of the Aryan culture, especially Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism in their quasi-popular forms, gives little heed to the pursuit of salvation through austerities. Bon philosophy speaks of Yeshen as being reflected in the interplay between heaven and earth."...(Chogyam Trungpa: The Heart of the Buddha"...1991..pg 222)....
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"I have kept the name Mukpo as my family name, my identity, my pride." (Trungpa:1984..pg 94)......Tonpa Shenrab was born at the palace Barpo Sogye of Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring. His father was Gyalbon Thodkar of the Mu clan ......
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" the word La is similar in meaning to the word 'soul'. All human beings possess a la, consciousness (sem) and life (sok). The la is an entity which is part of one's being but is unintelligent. Therefore it can be stolen, confiscated, regained, as well as reinforced by spiritual power." (Trungpa: 1978..pg 227)....
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Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Gerald Red Elk......Rocky Mountain Dharma Center July, 1984......http://www.shamansdoor.com/?attachment_id=59
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MASTER WARRIOR..."Those who have been fearless in their search and fearless in their proclamation belong to the lineage of master warriors, whatever their religion, philosophy, or creed...They are the fathers and mothers of Shambhala." <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0877732647/okarresearchA/">(Trungpa: 1984..pg 179)</a>...."The basic quality of the master warrior is that his presence evokes the experience of the cosmic mirror and the magic of perception in others." <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0877732647/okarresearchA/">(Trungpa: 1984...pg 176)</a>..."The master warrior has relaxed completely into the unconditional purity of the cosmic mirror." <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0877732647/okarresearchA/">(Trungpa: 1984..pg 177)</a>..."the birth of the master warrior takes place in the realm of the cosmic mirror. The master warrior is humble, extremely humble." ...<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0877732647/okarresearchA/">(Trungpa: 1984..pg 176-178)</a>
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"We are working with iconography as a journey, rather than as entertainment or excitement or cultural fascination. We are talking about personal experience, how we actually see this world. There is a basic iconographic pattern in the universe, like the existence of the seasons and the elements, but how we react to that is individual.""....(Trungpa: Dharma Art.:1996...pg 94)
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"The work of Shenrap still exists in Tibet in the form of 400 volumes, but it has undergone heavy Buddhist editing." ....The Tibetan texts "Ziji" (gZi brid) and "Zermig" (gZer mig)(Piercing Eye) Two biographies of Shenrab Miwo (Mibo)..... (Trungpa:Shen = divine,heavenly,ally..... Rap = Supreme One.... Miwo = Great Man)......(Chogyam Trungpa: 1978..pg 220)
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Chogyam Trungpa...."NYIDA: The vegetarian diet of Shambhala. Nyi stands for yellow and green foods, primarily vegetables and fruits, and da for white foods such as milk, yogurt, cheese and tofu......enjoy as your provision only yogurt, milk, white butter, cheese, fresh vegetables, raw fish and white rice. You should refrain from garlic, onions, fat and other meats."
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"My most favorite person in music, Mozart...sat in the sense that his mind became blank before he composed. Some kind of mind-less-ness in the Buddhist sense has to take place."..(Trungpa: 1996..pg 20)...
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"Creating art is like meditating. You work with one technique for a long, long time, and finally the technique falls away."...<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1570621365/okarresearchA/">(Trungpa: Dharma Art...1996..pg 115)</a>...
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INSPIRATION..."Has two parts, openness and clear vision (Sanskrit: shunyata and prajna). Both are based on the notion of original mind, traditionally known as Buddha mind, which is blank, non-territorial, non-competitive and open."..(Trungpa: 1996..100)...
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FILM...."I would like to create a film in such a way that the audience has to take part in it. To do so, we would need to provide lots of space, speed, and richness."..(Trungpa: 1996..pg 116)...
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DANCE...."If there is no aggression, that brings joy, openness, dance!"..(Trungpa: 1996..pg 52)...
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"Poetry, linguistic expression, and music are identical as far as I am concerned."....<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0394732693/okarresearchA/">(Trungpa: 1983..pg xx)</a>
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"I once went to hear the St Matthew Passion in Oxford. This was such a great discovery. Experiencing the tremendous heroism and spiritual passion in that atmosphere of sanctity, that I felt as though the occasion was my own private feast. From the beauty of the music I gained further appreciation of the Western legacy. My Tibetan friend panicked and thought I was in danger of being converted to Christianity."..(Trungpa: 1983..pg xx)
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"Then there is Gita, the female bodhisattva of song." (Trungpa:1975..pg 20)
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Robin Kornman (standing), Larry, and Jan Watson with the Vidyadhara in 1975 Photo by Robert Del Tredici....http://nalandatranslation.org/projects/articles/remembering-robin/
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"According to Robin Kornman, “Trungpa Rinpoche began to reconstruct the original text after escaping Tibet, and it is this later work to which we refer. The first chapter describes the creation of the world by nine cosmic gods (shrid pa 'i lha) who appear in the form of native Tibetan dieties known as drala (Wylie: dgra bla), or war gods. These gods represent primal or originary aspects of the phenomenal world. For example, one of these lha stood for all kinds of light. Glancing in many directions, this diety created all of the lights existing in the world, including the sun, the moon, the light of the planets and stars, and the inward luminosity of consciousness itself. Another represented space and the sense of direction ... In Trungpa Rinpoche's epic these were directed by a ninth lha called Shiwa Okar ... a sort of absolute principle behind creation and the nature of reality. After these nine cosmic deities have created the world, [Shiwa Okar] goes to the things they have created and invests each one with an animistic spirit, a drala."….http://labelingthoughts.org/wiki/Shiwa_Okar
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"There are many gods....They are always present everywhere.....the deities of the indigenous traditions of Western Europe and The Americas especially were dismantled, suppressed, undermined, abused, forgotten...followers were not even allowed to mention them.....but they still have not been able to destroy them, even with the desecration of the entire planet...the drala principle exists everywhere, always."..(Naropa Institute 1975.....Trungpa)
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"The fundamental vastness of the world cannot be expressed directly in words, but in children's literature, very often it is possible to express that vastness in simplicity."...<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0877732647/okarresearchA/">(Trungpa: 1984..pg 104)</a>
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"Another wonderful example of literature that evokes the sense of ordinary, or elemental magic is The Little Prince. The Fox tells the Prince what he calls 'my secret, a very simple secret' which is that 'it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye. Saint Exupery has a different vocabulary for describing the discovery of magic, or drala, but the experience is basically the same."...(Trungpa: 1984...pg 105)...
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0525444467/okarresearchA/">"NOW WE ARE SIX"...by A.A.MILNE</a><br>
"In the poem 'Waiting at the Window' several hours are spent on a rainy day looking out the window, watching drops of water making patterns on the glass."..(Trungpa: 1984..pg 104)
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"....you don't give in to things that indulge your reality. There is no special reality beyond reality. That is the Big No, as opposed to the regular no. You cannot destroy life. You cannot by any means, for any religious, spiritual, or metaphysical reasons, step on an ant or kill your mosquitoes at all. That is Buddhism. That is Shambhala. You have to respect everybody. You cannot make a random judgment on that at all. That is the rule of the king of Shambhala, and that is the Big No. You can't act on your desires alone. You have to contemplate the details of what needs to be removed and what needs to be cultivated...."....http://chronicleproject.com/stories_117.html
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<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1570621365/okarresearchA/">Trungpa, Chogyam...."Dharma Art"....1996</a><br>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0202900673/okarresearchA/">Trungpa..."The Pon Way of Life" in Himalayan Anthropology...1978</a> (Reprinted in "The Heart of the Buddha": 1991)<br>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0877730504/okarresearchA/">Trungpa...."Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism"...1973</a><br>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0877732647/okarresearchA/">Chogyam Trungpa..."Shambhala, The Sacred Path of the Warrior"...1984</a><br>
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Photo by Michael Wood
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Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin....."At first, when Trungpa Rinpoche introduced the Shambhala teachings to his students, it was very unsettling for us. For centuries, Buddhists have been teaching their doctrine, which is very precise and orderly and follows a specific progression. The students who had become accustomed to the Buddhist teachings found the Shambhala teachings quite challenging. Because the Shambhala teachings have nothing to do with religion, and in some way nothing to do with doctrine, they are difficult to grasp in a conventional way. When Trungpa Rinpoche introduced the Shambhala teachings, they were like a sudden, brilliant flash of light. They had nothing to do with the past, and they did not project anything particular in the future. They had to do with now. To begin with, we were amazed and shocked that a whole body of teaching like this could exist, and that we had no knowledge of it. That shock was good for us, because we soon realized that we could not rest on our so-called knowledge or experience, but we had to open our minds to the very basic, ordinary truth of Shambhala.".. Talk One from Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, a seminar taught by the Vajra Regent in Vancouver, British Columbia, November 1987. ......On August 22, 1976, Chögyam Trungpa empowered Ösel Tendzin as his Vajra Regent and first Western lineage holder in the Tibetan Karma Kagyü and Nyingma lineages
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Trungpa Rinpoche: "You see, all ancient traditions—such as the Egyptian, the Pon tradition of Tibet, the Shintoism of Japan, the Taoism of China, and others—all paid a great deal of attention to the process of growth. The process of growth means birth as well as coloring, blooming, decaying, turning into a seed, dropping on the ground, regenerating as another plant, and going through the cycle of the four seasons continuously. Because of that, because it is of the same nature, human life has been dealt with in exactly the same way. So much sacredness has been imposed on the idea of the birth and death process. I don't think it is so much an intellectual, philosophical, or religious phenomenon, but it is much more earthy—being one with the facts of life, with this growth process.....For instance, in Pon, the Tibetan pre-Buddhist tradition, they say the time of death and the time of birth should coincide. That brings a conclusion to that process of birth and death—which includes the climate, the time, the location, the direction the dying person is facing, the particular collection of parents and relatives, and how many people are gathered there, how many men, women, or children. That whole collection brings a total picture of complete conclusion. So they are very earthy people. It is quite different from how modern occultists work with the same thing. It is very earthy; nobody allows room for hallucinations or imagination. Everything is dealt with completely within the tradition and the actual experience of the moment......From that point of view, in all the traditional civilizations of many different cultures, the death experience is regarded as an important point. And on top of that, the Buddhist discovery was to see all those colors, directions, temperatures, and climates of the dying person as a psychological picture. So it is seen completely differently but in exactly the same way."......From seminar's in Allenspark, Colorado & Karme Choling.....1971.......http://www.beezone.com/Trungpa/transcendingmadness/transcendingmadness1.html
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<font color=blue>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-82352163058789779652018-04-04T03:07:00.001-07:002018-04-06T00:46:13.769-07:00Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche...1910-1991
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Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (Tib. དིལ་མགོ་མཁྱེན་བརྩེ་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་, Wyl. dil mgo mkhyen brtse rin po che) (1910-1991) — born in the Dergé region of Kham, Eastern Tibet, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche was recognized as the mind emanation of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo (1820-1892), and was one of the closest disciples of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo’s activity emanation, Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö (1893-1959). He is regarded by many as one of the greatest Dzogchen masters of the twentieth century.
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His root guru was Shechen Gyaltsap Rinpoche, and Dzongsar Khyentse Chokyi Lodro (1893–1959) was his other main spiritual master. After he completed what is known as the Preliminary Practices (Ngöndro), Khyentse spent most of the next 13 years in silent retreat in remote hermitages and caves near his birthplace.....After completing his retreat in 1938, Khyentse spent many years with Dzongsar Khyentse Chokyi Lodro.....the Dalai Lama regarded Dilgo Khyentse as his principal teacher in the Nyingma tradition and of Dzogchen..... Khyentse was also one of the main teachers of Chögyam Trungpa, whom he held in high regard.
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His death in Bhutan on 28 September 1991.....final cremation ceremonies were held for him over a three-day period near Paro in November 1992.
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Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-11701155703770004842018-04-04T02:18:00.001-07:002018-04-06T00:46:31.752-07:00Khandro Tsering Chödrön...1929-2011
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Khandro Tsering Chödrön's name literally means "Dakini Lamp of the Teachings and Long Life."
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"The wife of Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, an eminent Rimé master, she was universally regarded as one of the supremely realized female Buddhist practitioners of our time. Tibetans called her a "hidden master" because throughout her life she refused to preach with words, yet she taught by her sheer presence, beauty and example. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche revered her as "the queen of dakinis". Khandro-la was born in a small village in East Tibet around 1929 into an ancient Tibetan family. Her mother was Dechen Tso, a princess of Ling, who was married to the two Lakar brothers Tutob Namgyal and Sonam Tobgyal.... She became Jamyang Khyentse's spiritual wife in 1948, at a time when he was in poor health and many of his disciples were urging him to take a consort to prolong his life.....After fleeing Tibet in 1956 and losing her husband in 1959, she devoted her time to prayer and meditation."
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According to Dzongsar Ngari Tulku (Tenzin Khedrup Gyatso), on one occasion [c.1952], when Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö was opening the sacred place of Gyalgen Khyungtak, above Dzongsar Monastery, Jamyang Khyentse, Gyarong Khandro, Khandro Tsering Chödrön and Sogyal Rinpoche all left their handprints in the solid rock.
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She travelled from Sikkim to Europe and America several times.... On 5th of December 2006, near the beginning of Rigpa's first three-year retreat, Khandro Tsering Chödrön took residence in Lerab Ling, located near Montpellier in southern France.
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Khandro Tsering Chödrön passed away on 26th May 2011 in Lerab Ling, where she showed all the signs of attaining the final accomplishment of a great Dzogchen practitioner...Khandro Tsering Chödrön's stupa was consecrated in 2014 at Lerab Ling.
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Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.
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<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2017/05/okar-research-index-2012-2017.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
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Email: okarresearch@gmail.com
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-30638431564135083602018-04-03T02:33:00.002-07:002018-04-06T00:46:53.886-07:00The 16th Karmapa ... Black Crown Ceremony<html>
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The sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (August 14, 1924 – November 5, 1981)..... spiritual leader of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He was born in Denkhok in the Dergé district of Kham (Eastern Tibet), near the Yangtze River.
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The Crown that Liberates When Seen (Üsha Thong Dröl)
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The Black Crown (Tibetan: ཞྭ་ནག་, Wylie: zhwa nag) is an important symbol of the Karmapa, the Lama that heads the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. The crown signifies his power to benefit all sentient beings. A corresponding crown, the Red Crown, is worn by the Shamarpa. The Tai Situpa wears a red crown as well, whereas Goshir Gyaltsab wears an orange crown.
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Legend tells that in a previous eon, in a former life as an accomplished yogi, the Karmapa attained the eighth level or bhumi of the bodhisattvas. At this time, 100,000 dakinis (female buddhas) manifested their hair as a crown, and offered it to the Karmapa as a symbol of his accomplishment.
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The Karmapas were traditionally the teachers of the successive Ming Dynasty Emperors of China. When the 5th Karmapa, Dezhin Shegpa, met the Chinese Emperor Yung Lo, the Emperor, through his devotion and spiritual realization, was able to perceive Karmapa in the Sambhogakaya form of Vajradhara (Tib. Dorje Chang), wearing a black crown on his head. The Karmapa explained to the Emperor that he could see the 'Vajra Crown', the power-field of wisdom-energy that always stays above the Karmapa's head. The emperor offered to have a physical replica made so that others could receive its blessing.
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Wangchuk Dorje (1556–1603) was the ninth Gyalwa Karmapa, head of the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism.
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A crown encrusted with precious stones and topped by a huge ruby was commissioned, and using this, the 5th Karmapa started the tradition of the Black Crown Ceremony which was performed by successive Karmapa incarnations up to the time of the 16th Karmapa, Rangjung Rigpe Dorje.
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The Black Crown Ceremony.....
In preparation for the ceremony the Karmapa meditates to become inseparable with Chenrezig, the Buddha of Compassion. A mandala offering is made, followed by the seven branch prayer. This is to accumulate good impressions for the ceremony that ensues. The Karmapa then places the crown on his head while reciting the mantra 'Om Mani Peme Hung', transmitting blessings to each participant in the ceremony to the extent that they are capable of receiving them. It is said that by merely seeing of the Black Crown during the ceremony, one will become the first bhumi bodhisattva within three lifespans. This is one of the key reasons why the Black Crown is so important to the Karma Kagyu lineage.
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Recent developments.....
In the early 1960s, the 16th Karmapa brought the Black Crown and other valuable relics of the Kagyu lineage to Rumtek monastery in Sikkim. They remained there in safekeeping until 1993 following the 16th Karmapa’s death. The ensuing split in his lineage caused a conflict at the monastery between supporters of the two rival claimants for the title of Karmapa. Since that time, it is said that many valuable items have disappeared from the cloister. On July 5, 2004, the Indian Supreme Court delivered a final judgement to grant Rumtek monastery to the Karmapa Charitable Trust, principal supporters of Thaye Dorje, one of the rival candidates for the title of 17th Karmapa.
The Crown that Liberates When Seen of the Karmapas is stored today in Rumtek Monastery, in Sikkim, northern India.
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<font color=blue>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2017/05/okar-research-index-2012-2017.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
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John Hopkins.....New Mexico
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Email: okarresearch@gmail.com
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-89643370727886968012017-09-22T02:22:00.003-07:002018-04-03T12:12:37.503-07:00Okar Research ... Notes on Practices
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2014/11/breath-is-time-kalachakra-and-so-hum.html"><B><font color=blue>Breath is Time: the Kalachakra and So Hum Breathing</font></B></a>.....The Kālacakra tradition revolves around the concept of time (kāla) and cycles (chakra): from the cycles of the planets, to the cycles of human breathing, it teaches the practice of working with the most subtle energies within one's body on the path to enlightenment.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2015/06/yeshe-kyi-spyan-buddha-wisdom-eyes-and.html"><B><font color=blue>Yeshe kyi spyan, Buddha Wisdom Eyes and Miksang Arts</font></B></a>.....Miksang is a Tibetan word meaning "good eye.....From the heart to the eyes there is a connecting vessel-path (maidao). It is the most secret duct (ji mimi guan) like crystal whose name is Kati.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2014/06/anapanasmrti-sutra-buddhist-breath.html"><B><font color=blue>Ānāpānasmṛti Sūtra... Buddhist Breath Awareness Meditation (160 AD)</font></B></a>.....Breath-Mindfulness Discourse, a sutra that details the Buddha's instruction on using awareness of the breath (anapana) as a focus for meditation.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2014/06/sufi-prayer-of-heart-breath-awareness.html"><B><font color=blue>Sufi Prayer of the Heart & Breath Awareness Meditation (Khorasan: 1200 AD)</font></B></a>.....Zikr-i-Qalbi...Pas Anfas, in Persian, means guarding every breath..... Zikr is performed with the heart using breath as the medium: Be present at every breath. Do not let your attention wander for the duration of a single breath.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2014/04/reiki-and-zhangzhung-bon-healing.html"><B><font color=blue>Reiki and Zhangzhung Bon Healing Practices</font></B></a>..Tse Dup Yang Bod Soul Healing .....the similarities between Reiki and Bon healing are undeniably profound...many consider this to be the origins of Reiki.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-tsewang-rigdzin-ritual.html"><B><font color=blue>The Tsewang Rigdzin Ritual</font></B></a>.....The Tsewang Rikzin is the ritual of reinforcing the life force (chi bslu) and retrieving the soul (bla bslu) ... the practice belongs to the tantric vehicle of transformation.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/12/six-yogas-of-naropa-bon-mother-tantras.html"><B><font color=blue>Six Yogas of Naropa & The Bon Mother Tantras</font></B></a>..... The six practices—inner heat, illusory body, clear light, consciousness transference, forceful projection, and bardo yoga—gradually came to pervade thousands of monasteries, nunneries, and hermitages throughout Central Asia over the past five and a half centuries.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/12/lucid-dreaming-yoga-nidra-and-dream-yoga.html"><B><font color=blue>Lucid Dreaming, Yoga Nidra and Dream Yoga</font></B></a>.....The Yoga of the Dream State are a suite of advanced tantric sadhana of the entwined Mantrayana lineages of Dzogchen (Nyingmapa, Ngagpa, Mahasiddha, Kagyu and Bönpo).
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/10/tapihritsa-dzogchen-master-7th-8th.html"><B><font color=blue>Tapihritsa: Zhang Zhung Dzogchen Master (7th Century AD)</font></B></a>..... a Bönpo who achieved the Dzogchen mastery of the rainbow body and consequently, as a fully realised Trikaya Buddha, is invoked as a yidam
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/09/pas-anfaas-kashmiri-sufismshaivism.html"><B><font color=blue>Pas-Anfaas (Breath Watching) & Kashmiri Sufism/Shaivism</font></B></a>.....What keeps Kashmiri mystics firmly anchored in the Indian soil is their meditative technique. By and large they use variations of pas-e-anfaas(watching the breath). This is similar to various techniques of pranayama widely practised in India's Hath-Yoga traditions. These meditative techniques were being practised initially by the Shaivaite yogis of Kashmir before the advent of Islam
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/06/shinto-shin-tao-way-of-gods.html"><B><font color=blue>Shinto: Shin Tao, Way of the Gods, Kami, Dralas, Deities</font></B></a>.....Chögyam Trungpa incorporated elements from numerous traditions into the Shambhala Path that he thought would be beneficial to practitioners: From Shinto, the pantheon of kami (gods and spirits), the Sacred Mirror, the Kami shrine at RMSC, and the Chinza-sai Ceremony......."Shambhala vision applies to people of any faith, not just people who believe in Buddhism."...
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-vegetarian-diet-of-shambhala.html"><B><font color=blue>NYIDA: Vegetarian Diet of Shambala</font></B></a>.....Chogyam Trungpa...."NYIDA: The vegetarian diet of Shambhala. Nyi stands for yellow and green foods, primarily vegetables and fruits, and da for white foods such as milk, yogurt, cheese and tofu......enjoy as your provision only yogurt, milk, white butter, cheese, fresh vegetables, raw fish and white rice. You should refrain from garlic, onions, fat and other meats."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-five-pure-lights.html"><B><font color=blue>.Five Pure Lights ('od lnga) & The Six Lamps</font></B></a>.....The Five Pure Lights (Tibetan: 'od lnga) is an essential teaching in the Dzogchen tradition of Bön and Tibetan Buddhism. For the deluded, matter seems to appear. This is due to non-recognition of the five lights. Matter includes the mahābhūta or classical elements, namely: space, air, water, fire, earth. Knowledge (rigpa) is the absence of delusion regarding the display of the five lights...
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/03/blue-sky-mind-blue-pancake-sky.html"><B><font color=blue>Blue Pancake, Blue Sky Mind & Dzogchen Realization</font></B></a>....."There is a dimension of surprise that we never thought of, we never expected. We never expected the sky to drop on our head."......The Blue Pancake........A teaching on maha ati by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-six-lamps.html"><B><font color=blue>The Six Lamps: Lhündrub Tögal & the Vima Nyingtik</font></B></a>.....The Six Lamps brings us to a direct experience of the dimension of pure light: the luminous self-awareness of the mind, or rigpa. The practice of the Six Lamps directly introduces us first to our inner light - helping us to overcome the internal darkness of ignorance, doubt and negative emotions
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-fifteen-stages-of-practice.html"><B><font color=blue>Dzogchen: Fifteen Stages of A-Tri (A-Khrid) Meditation</font></B></a>.....The A-Khrid teachings regarding the Ultimate Origin-(A) is believed to have a historical source in the great lama rMe'u dGongs-mdzod(1038-1096).
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-twenty-one-nails.html"><B><font color=blue>Twenty-One Nails: Oral Transmission of Zhang Zhung</font></B></a>.....The Oral Transmission of Zhang Zhung is one of the three principal systems in the Bon tradition for the transmission of dzogchen or "great perfection" teachings.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/03/shambhala-basic-goodness.html"><B><font color=blue>Döné Sangwa: Basic Goodness: The Natural State</font></B></a>.....Basic goodness is fundamental to the Shambhala tradition. It was a primary focus of the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s teaching toward the end of his life......The Tibetan for basic goodness, döné sangwa, appears in the Vidyadhara’s Shambhala terma. As far as the Translation Committee is aware, it is a term unique to the Vidyadhara’s terma. Thus far, we have not found it elsewhere, not in Tibetan literature in general."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/03/shambhala-chod.html"><B><font color=blue>Chöd: Cutting Through Attachments and Aversions</font></B></a>.....As Chöd practitioners, we intentionally create situations for our demons to arise in order to practice cutting through attachments and aversions to both inner and outer objects, realizing the true nature of these phenomenon.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/02/shambhala-milam.html"><B><font color=blue>Milam: Dream Yoga, Perceived Reality, Yoga Nidra</font></B></a>.....Dream Yoga are tantric processes and techniques within the trance Bardos of Dream and Sleep (Tibetan: mi-lam bardo) and are advanced practices similar to Yoga Nidra.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/02/shambhala-ancient-rituals.html"><B><font color=blue>Ancient Ceremonies, Practices & Rituals</font></B></a>.....PERSIAN FIRE RITUALS...."In the haoma fire ceremony, the celebrant is required to sit cross-legged, as close as possible to the good earth.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/02/shambhala-ki-so-cha.html"><B><font color=blue>Ki So Cha'o: Phywa & the Sang Sol Ceremony</font></B></a>....."Ki ki so so lha gyal lo" is the prayer a Tibetan will recite at the summit of a mountain pass. It can be translated as "victory to the gods"The Tibetans believe that it is at these high mountain passes that the good gods fight with the evil gods and that the lung-tar (coloured paper printed with prayers) and prayer are an offering to the good gods.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/02/shamis-en-balkh-light.html"><B><font color=blue>'Od zer ...Light Rays, Luminosity…Heart, Eyes, and Space</font></B></a>.....This internal luminosity, projected outside the heart, manifests in external space as something apparently real and substantial, like a cinema show projected onto a great screen surrounding the individual. One then becomes lost in the fascinating display of the show, as if one were caught up in a dream where everything seems objective, solid and real....The individual wanders around in circles, becoming lost in this projection....Thus one comes to live in one's projections and not in their source.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/01/shamis-en-balkh-sexual-ritual.html"><B><font color=blue>Ancient Sexual Rituals from Greece to India</font></B></a>....."Hieros gamos or Hierogamy (Greek ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage") refers to a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities. It is the harmonization of opposites."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/01/shamis-en-balkh-dark-retreat-practice.html"><B><font color=blue>Sadanga Yoga, Dark Retreat, Ratriyoga & Seven Cycles of Clear Light</font></B></a>.....Drugyalwa Yungdrung wrote a practice manual for this system, and for over seven hundred years this has been the primary source of instruction on the practice of this system. Drugyalwa’s practice manual is quite extensive and contains instruction on preliminaries, actual practices of sky-gazing, sun-gazing and dark retreat
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/01/shamis-en-balkh-dzi-stone-beads.html"><B><font color=blue>Ziji: dZi, Zi, Ji...Brilliance & Splendor</font></B></a>.....The ancient Dzi absorbs cosmic energy from the universe. Tibetans generally believe that dZi beads are of divine origin and therefore not created by human hands. Some say they are dropped by the Gods to benefit those who have the good fortune to find them.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/01/jambhala.html"><B><font color=blue>Jambhala & Kubera: Gods of Wealth in Central Asia</font></B></a>..... In India the title of Yama is Dharmaraja (as that of the Shakya kings of Shambhala) and his city (identified with the world of the dead) is Yamapura (Jambul? - actually in Turkic it would be Jam Baliq which also resembles Shambhala)"
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/01/shamis-en-balkh-scorpion-seal.html"><B><font color=blue>The Scorpion Seal & Ancient Shambhala</font></B></a>....."Scorpion in Tibetan is digpa ratsa means negative- , or harmful action and also, menace. As in the symbolism of Beg-tse, it is evocative of the Buddha-dharma's power to transmute bad, even deadly, circumstances into beneficial ones. It is therefore used as a seal by the Vajrayana or tantric Buddhist masters who can effect transformations. The Ngak'chang Rinpoche has a scorpion seal, and the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s red scorpion seal may sometimes be seen on his calligraphies."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/01/shamis-en-balkh-earth.html"><B><font color=blue>The Earth Witness Mudra & Sacred Earth Element</font></B></a>.....Just before the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, realized enlightenment, it is said the demon Mara attacked him with armies of monsters to frighten Siddhartha from his seat under the bodhi tree. But the about-to-be Buddha did not move. Then Mara claimed the seat of enlightenment for himself, saying his spiritual accomplishments were greater than Siddhartha's. Mara's monstrous soldiers cried out together, "I am his witness!" Mara challenged Siddhartha--who will speak for you?.....Then Siddhartha reached out his right hand to touch the earth, and the earth itself roared, "I bear you witness!"
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/shamis-en-balkh-natural-perfection.html"><B><font color=blue>Natural Perfection ... Pristine Rigpa….Shenlha Okar.....Nine Ways</font></B></a>..... Ati-yogins and yoginis, however, understanding that everything is unreal, are aware of the ZING of reality (de bzhin nyid), and their minds are released into the nameless matrix that is beyond both bondage and liberation."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/shamis-en-balkh-lamed-thegpa.html"><B><font color=blue>Lamed Thegpa, bLa-med theg-pa ...The Ninth Stage of Dzogchen</font></B></a>......The categories and ideas elaborated in this IXth Vehicle are usually referred to as the teachings of the 'Great Perfection' ( rdzog-chen )
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/shamis-en-balkh-werma.html"><B><font color=blue>Werma & Drala Deities & Shambala Terma Texts</font></B></a>.....The Warrior God Werma Nyi-nya in the Musec Guimet in Paris.........horns of a garuda, lion's head, lynx ears, fearful face, crocodile mouth, tiger's teeth, feet and wings in the form of swords.
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/shamis-en-balkh-ashe.html"><B><font color=blue>ASHE: The Powerful Existence Arising Out of Basic Goodness</font></B></a>..... 'A' means "first" and "last"; it also means "the manifestation of nonexistence," and it can also mean "power" or "a storehouse of power." Such power is not the gift of external agents of any kind. It is reawakened power which exists naturally. Fire has power of its own; wind has power of its own; earth has power of its own; space has power of its own. Such power has neither beginning nor end, and such power exists in you, individually, inseparable from basic goodness. A is that fundamental, basic openness, space, imperturbable and peaceful. 'SHE' means "stroke" or "form" and it could also mean "visual manifestation." So ASHE altogether means "the powerful existence arising out of basic goodness."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/shamis-en-balkh-great-eastern-sun.html"><B><font color=blue>The Great Eastern Sun: Sharchen Nyima</font></B></a>....."Look at the sun. The sun is shining. Nobody polishes the sun. The sun just shines. Look at the moon, the sky, the world at its best. Unfortunately, we human beings try to fit everything into conditionality. We try to make something out of nothing. We have messed everything up. That’s our problem. We have to go back to the sun and the moon, to dragons, tigers, lions, garudas (mythical birds). We can be like the blue sky, sweethearts, and the clouds so clean, so beautiful. We don’t have to try too hard to find ourselves. We haven’t really lost anything; we just have to tune in. The majesty of the world is always there." Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/balkh-five-elements.html"><B><font color=blue>The Five Elements in Shamanism, Tantra & Dzogchen</font></B></a>....."In many indigenous traditions, we relate with the raw elements. Fire Pujas, Earth Ceremonies, rituals near springs, Sky and Space rituals.....Basically we are relating with the raw elements and their related spiit realms.....If you do not have a reference place when we talk about spirits, do a little dzogchen practive and feel spacious......Inviting the four guests......The shrine is basically the house of the enlightened first guest....such as Shen Lha Okar."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/12/balkh-fire-temple.html"><B><font color=blue>The Five Elements: Atar: Sacred Fire</font></B></a>....."Atari..... (Avestan ātar) is the Zoroastrian concept of holy fire, sometimes described in abstract terms as "burning and unburning fire" or "visible and invisible fire"
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/11/balkh-and-kashmir-shaivism.html"><B><font color=blue>Tantra in Central Asia (400 AD)</font></B></a>....."Tantrism originated in the early centuries CE and developed into a fully articulated tradition by the end of the Gupta period. Tantric movements led to the formation of many esoteric schools of Hinduism and Buddhism. It has influenced the Hindu, Sikh, Bön, Buddhist, and Jain religious traditions and spread with Buddhism to East Asia and Southeast Asia."
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<a href="http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2012/10/balkh-and-mithra.html"><B><font color=blue>Mithraism & The Eye of Mithra (1400 BC)</font></B></a>....."Mithra is young. His eye is the sun. The rays of the sun are his arms. He wears glistening garments. His abode is golden. He is a king and a universal monarch. Mithra is ever waking and watches in darkness."
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<font color=blue>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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<a href="http://okarresearchindex.blogspot.com/2017/05/okar-research-index-2012-2017.html"><B><font color=blue>Click Here to view the Okar Research Index</font></B></a>
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John Hopkins.....New Mexico
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Email: okarresearch@gmail.com
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</html>OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-58953215404330918872016-04-03T05:39:00.001-07:002018-11-11T01:21:41.792-08:00Rinpungpa's Guidebook to Shambhala .... "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" (1557 AD)
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RINPUNGPA: "The Scholar King". A Tibetan prince was the last of a dynasty of Ministers who ruled Tibet during the 15 and 16th centuries. He was considered one of the finest poets of the Tibetan language. Composed a guidebook to Shambhala in 1557 called "The Knowledge Bearing Messenger" as a letter to his dead father whom he believed to have been reborn in Shambhala. Complex and ornate style derived from the Sanskrit poetry of India. Piles subordinate clause on subordinate clause and makes abundant use of lavish epithets and terms even Tibetans have difficulty with.(Way to Shambhala pg 195)
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Rinpungpa's Shambhala Guidebook......."Crossing Tibet westward.....to the sacred mountain of Kailas ....from Kailas continue northwest to Ladakh and down through mountains and forest to the vale of Kashmir...... then north, hrough a maze of treacherous mountains....you will pass safely through and come out in the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans......over an 'outer ring' of sky-high ice mountains, down through a vicious desert, into unknown vistas....only to reach a second 'inner ring' of snow mountains. Beyond there, you must choose rightly among high valleys and low cities, having the good sense to know Shambhala when you reach it.........then you will at last, see the cities of Shambhala.....gleaming among ranges of snow mountains like stars on the waves of the Ocean of Milk."
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"But the most affecting of the guides was a desperate letter, called 'The Knowledge-Bearing Messenger', written in about 1560 by a Tibetan prince, Rinpungpa, who included instructions for the messenger carrying his letter to the secret land: 'Take this message and go to my father in Shambhala. May my words of truth, conquering the mountains of dualism, guide you along the way and help you to overcome the obstacles that lie before you.'.....According to Bernbaum, Rinpungpa warned of everything from starvation to forests of knives to rivers so cold they killed at first touch. Adding in the Panchen Lama's instructions, and those from the Mahabharata, it pretty much boiled down to the same thing. From the lowland Indian river valley where the Lord Buddha lived, crossing Tibet westward, via the sacred mountain of Kailas, then north, over an 'outer ring' of sky-high ice mountains, down through a vicious desert, into unknown vistas. All the while you must appease dozens of gods, accumulate merit and fend off monsters, suppress the demons of delusion and transcend mere existence, recite 99 million mantras and fly through the sky on a fire chariot, only to reach a second 'inner ring' of snow mountains. Beyond there, you must choose rightly among high valleys and low cities, having the good sense to know Shambhala when you reach it."...The Road to Shangri-La by Patrick Symmes
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"Using the ancient texts, and Google Earth, I calculated this at 3,400 miles. Rinpungpa's letter would lead me through three countries, a dozen languages, past the world's highest mountains and down into the bottom of the lowest desert in Asia......We rolled west through Shigatse, along the last paved roads we would see until the Kunlun Shan, the range on Tibet's northern edge, almost a month later. Shigatse was the original source of Prince Rinpungpa's letter.......'Turn to the north and west and take the high plateau to the sacred mountain of Kailas… From Kailas continue northwest to Ladakh… wind north through a maze of treacherous mountains… come out in the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans and quilted robes filled with cotton… a barren desert devoid of water will stretch away before you like the desolate paths of suffering that run through this world of illusion.'.....The Road to Shangri-La by Patrick Symmes
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"We slept in a monastery of the Nyingma, or Ancient Ones, the original Buddhists of Tibet. Like the monk on the train, the abbot, a high re-incarnation, discouraged me from trying to reach Shambhala in a 4x4 Jeep........ Meditate more, he said, feeding me balls of yak butter mixed with tsampa, or barley flour, from his own fingertips." .....The Road to Shangri-La by Patrick Symmes .....http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/3669971/The-road-to-Shangri-La.html
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"Rinpung Ngawang Jigdag.....The learned Tibetan prince Rinpungpa wrote 'The Knowledge-bearing Messenger' in 1557 AD as a letter to his dead father, whom he believed had been reborn in the earthly paradise of Shambhala....In this excerpt from the poem, he gives the yogi directions for reaching Shambhala....Take this message and go to my father in Shambhala....Go first to the shrine of my father in the palace of Rinpung.....then go toward Shigatse....after that you must travel across central Tibet....stop also in the mountains of Nepal, at the holy shrine of Muktinath.....then turn to the north and west and take the high plateau to the sacred mountain of Kailas.....from Kailas continue northwest to Ladakh and down through mountains and forest to the vale of Kashmir....now the journey becomes more difficult....follow narrow paths that wind north through a maze of treacherous mountains....you will pass safely through and come out in the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans and quilted robes with cotton.....leave them behind and go north across the plains....after many days of travel you will enter a deep forest...on the far side of this gloomy passsage, you will come to a wild foaming river called the Sita.....on the far bank you will find yoursel in a tranquil park where elephants play beneath a mountain lush with grass.....(pages 351-352 missing).....now go on across the beautiful countries that lie ahead....your path runs through idyllic towns.....then you will come to the last great obstacle of the journey....a wall of mountains piled so high and deep with snow that not even eagles can fly over it.....after crossing the mountains, you will have to go through one last forest filled with snakes and wild animals....then you will at last, see the cities of Shambhala.....gleaming among ranges of snow mountains like stars on the waves of the Ocean of Milk."........The Book of Heaven: An Anthology of Writings from Ancient to Modern Times.......Page 349-354......By Carol Zaleski, Philip Zaleski
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?........"the land of the Paksik, horsemen who wear white turbans and quilted robes with cotton."
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Ladakh ("land of high passes") (Ladakhi: ལ་དྭགས la'dwags; Hindi: लद्दाख़; Urdu: لَدّاخ) is a region in the Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir that currently extends from the Kuen Lun mountain range to the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent....... It is one of the most sparsely populated regions in Jammu and Kashmir and its culture and history are closely related to that of Tibet.
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"The Vale of Kashmir.....Kashmir Valley is a valley located between the Karakoram and the Pir Panjal Range in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. It is around 135 km long and 32 km wide, formed by the Jhelum River....The Kashmir Valley, or more poetically the Vale of Kashmir, is a large valley in the Himalayan mountains and an administrative region of Jammu and Kashmir state in India."
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" A Thai, he didn't believe in the stories, carefully curated over the centuries by Tibetan Buddhists, that Shambhala was a real place, a city that could be found. Shambhala, the monk told me, was a destination for an inner journey. I should meditate more, he suggested, and travel less.....The Buddhism scholar Robert Thurman looked at me with pity when I mentioned my quest during a chat at Tibet House, in New York. Gene Smith, who directs the city's Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center, laughed out loud when I told him my plan. "We got a guy here going to Shambhala!" he shouted...... I ran into Peter Matthiessen, the author of The Snow Leopard, which mentions Shambhala three times, speculating that the hidden kingdom may have been based on some real but forgotten city or culture, out beyond the Gobi. "One must go oneself," he wrote, "to know the truth......So I told him I was going. Matthiessen shook his head. "It's really more of an idea," he said......By consensus, I was on a fool's errand, headed to a place that couldn't be reached...The current Dalai Lama insists the kingdom is real.".......http://www.outsideonline.com/1886931/kingdom-lotus
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"A letter called "The Knowledge-Bearing Messenger," written around 1560 by a Tibetan prince named Rinpungpa.......One cold winter day, I drew out a rare copy of the prince's letter from the closed stacks of the New York Public Library. The manuscript, written in medieval Tibetan, was printed on long, loose-leaf pages that mimicked the palm leaves used in ancient Buddhist books. I had brought a red-robed monk, a young Tibetan from Staten Island, to attempt a translation, and when I unwrapped the book in his presence, a crowd of hushed bibliophiles gathered to watch......Rinpungpa was surrounded by enemies, his world collapsing. Buddhism was no longer practiced in India, its land of birth, and Islam had conquered Afghanistan to the west and the Central Asian steppe to the north. Rinpungpa's own clan had ruled brutally, and the prince correctly surmised that his days were limited. Seeking help, he summoned a spirit messenger to reach the enlightened kingdom, where his own father would be waiting, reborn in paradise.....Take this message and go to my father in Shambhala."....The Kingdom of the Lotus.....by: Patrick Symmes ....2007
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“For me, Shambhala, you see, turned out to be not a goal but an absence. Not the discovery of a place but the act of leaving the futureless place where I was. And in the process I arrived at Constantinople.”― Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day (2006).. Against the Day is the story of a quest.... Above and beneath it all is the search for an ancient place, a holy grail, known as Shambhala. There resides a secret of life. Meanwhile, a weapon that destroys everything is for sale. It appears to be entropic in nature from the clues Pynchon provides....Ringpungpa is quoted by Pynchon...."
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"Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'."
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Okar Research was begun in 1979 in order to annotate and deepen my understanding of the Shambhala Terma Texts received by Chogyam Trungpa:<br>
Golden Sun of the Great East....Received as terma in October, 1976.<br>
Letter of the Black Ashe....Received as terma in January, 1978.<br>
Letter of the Golden Key that Fulfills Desire....Received as terma in October, 1978.<br>
Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun....Received in 1980...A long and a short version exist.<br>
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John Hopkins....Northern New Mexico
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Email....okarresearch@gmail.com
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November 2018
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OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-91322273540000348892016-03-24T06:47:00.001-07:002018-04-03T12:12:54.232-07:00Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772 AD) Tantra, Kabbalism & Shambhala
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Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772 AD) .......a Swedish scientist, philosopher, theologian, revelator, and mystic..........Renowned most of his life for his contributions to the natural sciences, Swedenborg had a spiritual awakening in his 50s and published what is now his most famous work — a description of the afterlife called "Heaven and Hell."...(1758 AD)...Highly regarded after his death by philosophers and mystics, Swedenborg claimed he could visit heaven and hell at will and that his ideas about spirituality, God, and Christ came to him in dreams and visions.....
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"Swedenborg was fascinated with the 'Shambhala' myth, and under cover of employment for the Swedish East India Company and his appointment to the Swedish Court as Master Ironmaster and Miner...... his interest in India and Central Asia, and the sexual rites that went with his New Jerusalem Society, later to be frequented by William Blake....Swedenborg became intrigued by the similarity of Yogic Tantra techniques of mediatation and sexual magic to Kabbalistic techniques....Swedenborg argued that the Yogis of Central Asia discovered the secrets of Kabbalism long before the Jews....Gershom Scholem also noticed that, already in the thirteenth century, in the Kabbalah of Abraham Abulafia, (1240- 1291 AD) the techniques used 'to aid the ascent of the soul, such as breathing exercises, the repition of divine names, and meditations on colours, bear a marked resemblance to those of Indian Yoga and Muslim Sufism."....Page 137.....Black Terror White Soldiers: Islam, Fascism & the New Age.....By David Livingstone
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"The Swedish East India Company (Swedish: Svenska Ostindiska Companiet or SOIC) was founded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1731 for the purpose of conducting trade with the Far East.....In 1736 Swedenborg wrote to King Frederick, requesting a 3-4 year leave of absence to travel to the Continent.... he presented a different rationale than his actual complex agenda.....his mission included political-military intelligence work, Moravian-Masonic contacts, and Kabbalistic-Hermetic research.....while in Hamburg, Swedenborg pursued his investigations in Jewish mysticism....he later recorded that he achieved a signigicant psychic breakthrough in August 1736, while in Amsterdam.....perhaps he learned somthing of Kabbalistic brathing and meditaion techniques from the Jews in Hanover or from Moravians living in the Jewish community in Amsterdam. Swedenborg noted that he began to experiment with breath control.....In August 1736 he moved on to Paris where he lived for 19 months....his journal was interspersed with dream sequences and he was involved with Masonic and Freemasonry in Paris....in 1738 he left Paris and was on his way to Italy.....in Lyon, he visited the Library of the Jesuits, where Chevalier Ramsay had earlier studied the mystical manuscripts brought from China by Jesuit missionaries....Ramsay was assimilating Chinese notions of the 'Heaven Man' into Kabbalistic notions of 'Adam Kadmon, the Grand Man....themes that he wove into Masonic philosophy.....he arrived in Turin in March 1738....of further interest to Swedenborg would be Rehbinder' alchemical studies and contacts.....he contacted some Jesuits who dabbled in alchemy....Swedenborg learend of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher's Kabbalistic interpretation of the Tabula Isiaca, which drew heavily on the Sepher Yetzirah and Zohar..........Emanuel Swedenborg, Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven: Jacobites, Jews and ...edited by Marsha Keith Schuchard......https://books.google.com/books?id=RzvBUj_gvecC&pg=PA221&lpg=PA221&dq=Swedenborg+Swedish+East+India+Company&source=bl&ots=gOGynliT1s&sig=9k2hjYyl_ub1kn_I1Pb17OhpgZ4&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDyOCS_tbLAhXBtIMKHcXfCBMQ6AEIMTAC#v=onepage&q=Swedenborg%20Swedish%20East%20India%20Company&f=false
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"D. T. Suzuki, the Japanese scholar who would later become world-famous for his many books on Zen, was introduced to Swedenborg sometime during his years working with Paul Carus in Illinois (1897-1908). ......A correspondence with Swedenborgians in the Philadelphia area led to an invitation to translate Heaven and Hell into Japanese, which was accomplished during a Christmas-time visit to London. Upon returning to his homeland Suzuki introduced Swedenborg to Japan by publishing that translation in 1910, followed by Divine Love and Wisdom and The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine (both 1914), and Divine Providence (1915). In addition, he published his own study in Japanese entitled, simply, Swedenborg (1915). Much of this was compiled from English sources but the introductory first chapter was original and notes that: 'The theological doctrines presented by Swedenborg have some similarity to those of Buddhism... True salvation rests upon a harmonious unity of what one believes with what one does. Wisdom and Love are the manifestation of the Divine, and Love has more depth and breadth than Wisdom. The Divine Providence reaches into the minutest things in the universe. There must not be any occurrences that happen by accident.....In 1927 Suzuki published a nine-page article suggesting that Swedenborg's doctrine of correspondences may be compared with the Shingon doctrine that phenomena are aspects of Mahavairocana Buddha's ceaseless teaching."......The Dharma of Emanuel Swedenborg: A Buddhist Perspective.....By David Loy
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"The notion of an “Oriental Kabbalah” began with Swedenborg... and was especially promoted by the Chevalier Michael Ramsay of the Hindu Tantra as an expression of an 'Asian Kabbalah'......Page 77.....By David Livingstone......Transhumanism: The History of a Dangerous Idea
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"While associating with Moravian and Jewish mystics in London, the 56 year old Swedenborg learned how to perform the mystical Kabbalistic marriage within his mind, through the sublimatin of his sexual energy into visionary energy. By meditating on the male and female potencies concealed in the vessels of Hebrew letters, by visualizing these letters in the forms of human bodies, by regulating the inhalation and exhalation of breath, and by achieving an erection without ejaculation...the Kabbalist could achieve a state that elevated him to higher realms.....Marsha Schuchard has found that grail of researchers - original documents that confirm suspicions about her subject. In this case they are surviving records of the unworldly Moravian Chapel in Fetter Lane showing how William Blake's family were worshippers at this shrine of eroticism...She gives a close reading of the more rewarding poems such as "The Crystal Cabinet" and "Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell". These, she says, suggest sex practices aimed at visionary breakthrough, while Swedenborg's belief that "the great toe communicates with the genitals" is demonstrated by Blake's self-portrait "William", showing his body flung back while a flaming star descends toward his left foot. Weird stuff, indeed.."........Marsha Keith Schuchard: Why Mrs Blake Cried...Swedenborg, Blake and the Sexual Basis of Spiritual Vision.....
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"The secret and mystical sexual practices at the heart of William Blake’s creative and spiritual life ......Reveals newly discovered family documents connecting Blake’s mother and Blake himself to Moravian and Swedenborgian erotic and visionary experimentation ......Shows Blake had access to kabbalistic and tantric techniques of psychoerotic meditation, which used sexual arousal to achieve spiritual vision..... Marsha Keith Schuchard shows that Blake and his wife, Catherine, were influenced by secret kabbalistic and tantric rituals designed to transcend the bonds of social convention. Her exhaustive research provides a new context for understanding the mystical practices at the heart of Blake’s most radical beliefs about sexualized spirituality and its relation to visionary art." ...William Blake's Sexual Path to Spiritual Vision by Marsha Keith Schuchard (2008)
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"Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686 – 1743 AD), commonly called the Chevalier Ramsay, was a Scottish-born writer who lived most of his adult life in France. He was a Baronet in the Jacobite Peerage.....Ramsay's works include:.......Les voyages de Cyrus (London, 1728; Paris, 1727): Engl. 'The travels of Cyrus to which is annexe'd a discourse upon the theology & mythology of the pagans' – a book composed in avowed imitation of Fenelon's ''Les avantures de Télémaque''........http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/ramsay_biography_oration.html
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"William Blake’s desire for concubines, following the example of Biblical Patriarch Abraham, which reportedly made his wife cry, prompting Blake to give up the plan. .....Sanctified sexuality, however, never left his imagination and it went far beyond Biblical concubines and included the Jewish esoteric beliefs of the Kabbalah, ‘celestial marriage’ practised by the Moravians and Swedenborgians, as well as Indian Yogic and Tantric traditions of sacred sex. And it all began at home, when his parents became members of the Moravian Congregation of the Lamb in Fetter Lane, London...The Moravians, who originated in Czechoslovakia and migrated to Saxony, were a sectarian fellowship under eccentric German nobleman Nicolaus von Zinzendorf. ."
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"The Moravian Church is one of the oldest Protestant denominations in the world, with its heritage dating back to the Bohemian Reformation in the fifteenth century.......their heritage began in 1457 in Bohemia (and its crown lands, Moravia and Silesia), then an autonomous kingdom within the Holy Roman Empire. This region today is part of the Czech Republic.....The first printed edition of the Gesar epic was published in Beijing in 1716 in a Mongolian version. It was this text which formed the basis for the first Western-language translation, a Russian version published by the Moravian missionary Isaac Jacob Schmidt in 1836. A German translation followed in 1839. Another Moravian missionary, August Hermann Francke, collected and translated a version from Lower Ladakh between 1905 and 1909.....At first the Moravians had no intention at all to evangelize Tibet......... and the Lower Ladakhi version of the Gesar saga that was edited by her husband....A Russian translation of the Mongolian Geser texts, which had been printed in Beijing from 1716 onwards, was published by the Moravian missionary Isaak Jakob Schmidt in 1836; a German translation followed in 1839."
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"Abraham Abulafia (1240- 1291 AD).....in his later writings, the founder of prophetic Kabbalah produces a synthesis between Maimonides’ Neoaristotelian understanding of prophecy as the result of the transformation of the intellectual influx into a linguistic message and techniques to reach such experiences by means of combinations of letters and their pronunciation, breathing exercises, contemplation of parts of the body, movements of the head and hands, and concentration exercises.".....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Abulafia
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<font color=blue>Okar Research is an informal online review of published materials exploring the history, myths, legends, languages, geography, terms, practices, teachers and teachings of the ancient Central Asian 'Kingdom of Shambhala'.</font>
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John Hopkins.....New Mexico
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Email: okarresearch@gmail.com
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</html>OkarReviewhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08409630373552801244noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3919167141648467219.post-36072988358096012972016-03-21T06:48:00.000-07:002018-04-03T12:13:16.531-07:00Tzimtzum: Primordial Space & Time in the Kabbalah
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"The tzimtzum or tsimtsum (Hebrew צמצום ṣimṣūm "contraction/constriction/condensation") is a term used in the Lurianic Kabbalah to explain Isaac Luria's (1534-1572 AD) doctrine that G-d began the process of creation by "contracting" his Ein Sof (infinite) light in order to allow for a "conceptual space" (Primordial Space) in which finite and seemingly independent realms could exist. This primordial initial contraction, forming a Chalal/Khalal/Khalal Hapanui ("vacant space", חלל הפנוי) into which new creative light could beam, is denoted by general reference to the tzimtzum.".......https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum
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"Tzimtzum.....a refraction and concealmentof the radiating emanation.....two meanings:<br>
1. Contraction, condensation<br>
2. Concealment, occulation"<br>
.....Schochet (page 49)
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"These tzimtzum are all in the nature of a 'veiling of the countenance' to obscure and conceal the light and life-force so that it shall not manifest itself in a greater radiance than the lower worlds are capable of receiving.".....Schochet (page 57)
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"En Sof.....The luminary, Radiator.....Infinite, without limits, beyond all concealments....a radical leap or jump (dilug and kefizah)....a radical act of creation....after that has occurred begins an evolutionary process culminating in finite and material entities."<br>
Or En Sof.....The light, Radiation....the light of the En Sof....this manifestation is equally omnipresent and infinite."........Schochet (page 51)
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"Ohr ("Light" Hebrew: אור; plural: Ohros/Ohrot "Lights" Hebrew: אורות) is a central Kabbalistic term"
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"The term En Sof indicates no grasping nor any thought, prior to all that are emanated, created, formed and fashioned....no time of start, no beginning, no end, continually present, absolute perfection."
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"Ein Sof, or Ayn Sof (/eɪn sɒf/, Hebrew: אין סוף), in Kabbalah.....may be translated as "no end", "unending", "there is no end", or infinity. It was first used by Azriel ben Menahem, (c. 1160 – c. 1238 AD) who, sharing the Neoplatonic belief that God can have no desire, thought, word, or action, emphasized by it the negation of any attribute. Of the Ein Sof, nothing ("Ein") can be grasped ("Sof"-limitation). It is the origin of the Ohr Ein Sof, the "Infinite Light" of paradoxical divine self-knowledge, nullified within the Ein Sof prior to creation. In Lurianic Kabbalah, the first act of creation, the Tzimtzum self "withdrawal" of God to create an "empty space", takes place from there. In Hasidism, the Tzimtzum is only the illusionary concealment of the Ohr Ein Sof, giving rise to monistic panentheism.".....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ein_Sof
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"Olam Ha ba....'olam ha-ba, (עולם הבא) "world to come"....the spiritual world to come, the supernal Garden of Eden."
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"Primordial Space....brought about by a contraction and concentration of Divinity into itself....this first act of creation was to bring about space in which the divine emanations and the evolving finite world could have a place to exist....it was screened, dimmed, hidden and concealed...where this concealment and occulation of the light occurred, an 'empty' place, a 'void' evolved into primordial space....this is the act of the first tzimtzum, an act of 'Divine Self Limitation' rather than 'Divine Revelation'.....
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"In the second phase of the creative process, an overt ray or radiation of the divine light beams into the primeval space of the chalal (a void)......this thin ray or line (kav....the thin line of energy that emerges after the tzimtzum) irradiates the chalal and is the source of the subsequent emanations....it is both the creative and the vivifying force of creation.....the 'kav' itself undergoes a series of contractions and concealments making possible successively lower stages of creation.....the lowest stage is the finite, pluralistic and material world.....lower beings in this world are in a state of finitude and limitation."........Schochet (page 56)
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"Tzimtzum, the process of a progressing dimming, occulation and condensation of the light of the En Sof, brought about umerous levels, one lower than the other.....The are referred to as the Five Realms or Worlds....the 'higher' worlds receive a radiance infinitely greater than the 'lower' ones.".....Schochet (page 105)
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"Change depends on time..... it is a relative, temporal-spatial concept....time and space are themselves creations....from our temporal-spatial perspective there is 'before' and 'after' but not from the supra-temporal/spatial perspective."
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"Because the tzimtzum results in the "empty space" in which spiritual and physical Worlds and ultimately, free will can exist, G-d is often referred to as "Ha-Makom" (המקום lit. "the Place", "the Omnipresent") in Rabbinic literature ("He is the Place of the World, but the World is not His Place"). In Kabbalistic interpretation, this describes the paradox of simultaneous Divine presence and absence within the vacuum and resultant Creation. Relatedly, Olam — the Hebrew for "World/Realm" — is derived from the root עלם meaning "concealment". This etymology is complementary with the concept of Tzimtzum in that the subsequent spiritual realms and the ultimate physical universe conceal to different degrees the infinite spiritual lifeforce of creation. Their progressive diminutions of the Divine Ohr (Light) from realm to realm in creation are also referred to in the plural as secondary tzimtzumim (innumerable "condensations/veilings/constrictions" of the lifeforce). However, these subsequent concealments are found in earlier, Medieval Kabbalah. The new doctrine of Luria advanced the notion of the primordial withdrawal (a dilug - radical "leap") in order to reconcile a causal creative chain from the Infinite with finite Existence."....https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tzimtzum
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"The symbol of Tikkun ha-Olam embodies the most distinctively Jewish, as well as the the single most important ethical injunction of the Kabbalah: the command that humanity must restore and redeem a broken and fallen world (see Shevirat ha-Kelim).....as articulated by Isaac Luria in 16th century Safed.....the Unification of G-d and His Shekhina: An erotic union between the masculine and feminine aspects of G-d is an important Kabbalistic symbol which predates and was incorporated into the Lurianic symbol of Tikkun. The Zohar holds that G-d's feminine aspect is exiled on earth as the "Shekhinah" and that she must be reunited with "The Holy One Blessed Be He." The unity between the masculine and feminine aspects of the godhead was broken by the sins of mankind, and the exile of the Jewish people, and is maintained by the "Other Side". Through the observance of the mitzvot and divine worship, humankind is able to reestablish the union between God and His Shekhina,".....http://www.newkabbalah.com/tikkun.html
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Mystical Concepts in Chassidism.....1979.....by Immanuel Schochet.....Brooklyn,New York......Jacob Immanuel Schochet is a rabbi of Kielcer Congregation and a well-known authority on Jewish Philosophy and Mysticism.
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"The teachings of the Kabbalah originally were restricted to 'Yechidei Segulah'....a chosen few whose saintliness matched their scholarship...R. Isaac Luria (1534-1572 AD) declared that as of then it was not only permissible but a duty to reveal Pnimiyut haTorah, the esoteric part of Torah."......Schochet (page 17)
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Transhumanism: The History of a Dangerous Idea......Page 77.....By David Livingstone
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