The skulls and bones signify death and impermanence, as well as the idea of being eaten up if you hold on to any idea of the solidness of reality. And the fact that these skulls and bones are beautifully mounted in gold is making a positive statement of enlightenment. Human skulls can be mounted in exquisite one-hundred-percent pure gold, the best essence of the earth, and ornamented with jewels, and the deities can hold all sorts of scepters, which are sharp and penetrating. There can be a marriage of samsara and nirvana in one taste. That concept seems to be the basic idea of deities in union, and it is the source of siddhis, or magical powers.
Dharmapalas: The Source of the Fulfillment of All Actions
The third root of mahamudra is that of the dharmapalas, the protectors of the teaching, who are the source of actions. In Tibetan, dharmapala is chökyong. Chö is “dharma,” and kyong is “protector” or “patron”; so chökyong is “protector of the dharma.”
Photo 18. The Four-Armed Mahakala, a dharma protector whose four arms represent the actions of the four karmas: pacifying, enriching, magnetizing, and destroying.
These deities wear even more terrifying costumes than the yidams. Their function is to protect, and to create a feeling in the students that magical power can be demanded, rather than just received. They kill whomever needs to be killed; they give birth whenever there is need to give birth; they fulfill whatever needs to be fulfilled.
INVOKING ENERGIES THROUGH GESTURES
The three roots are the basis of mahamudra visualization practice. But visualization practice also means having a relationship with your personal body. It means having a relationship with your real body, outfitted with flesh and fat and muscles and bones and everything—maybe you don’t have fat, but I do.
How are you going to communicate this body to the reality of that fantastic world of inspiration and power? There is not very much to do; you simply take the attitude of communicating by invoking certain energies. Traditionally, this is done with the use of mudras, or hand gestures.
All sorts of ritual hand gestures are prescribed in the vajrayana, but to understand such mudras, you need to have a general idea of how to relate with objects altogether: how to hold things and how to manifest. You need to learn how to work with reality in holding the earthy things in your manifestation. You could begin with how you reach for a table or a chair, or how you reach for your fan. How to reach for such things is important; it is your first communication with reality. Likewise, how to place things properly is important.
To begin with, you should have some idea of how to go about holding something in your hand. We could look at a series of images to illustrate this.
Photo 19
In this picture, I am holding a pen. I think one of the interesting points is having a wristwatch there as well. I did not particularly want to make the whole thing purely a dramatic event that had nothing to do with the mechanism of the American world.
The pen or brush is one of the important weapons in bringing about the Great East. There is a thumb stuck out, and the rest of the fingers are making postures toward the thumb. These fingers are somewhat sympathizing with the whole reality and making the entire thing very beautiful and ordinary, and at the same time threatening.
Photo 20
This is a better way of holding the pen. It is definitely threatening. The pen is held forward, and there are lots of forces coming from all the fingers, including the little finger and the thumb, which is supporting the pen. This is a gesture of attack. And somehow the wristwatch seems to ornament the whole thing.
Photo 21
This is a picture of a mudra, called the fearless mudra. It looks as if something is held in your hand. It is quite a fat hand, but definitely graceful and realistic.
Photo 22
Here two fingers are holding the lens cap of a camera. It shows that you can catch something casually, but not all that casually. The lens cap is there mainly because you caught it, but still it is real. You caught a black dot.
The idea of these illustrations is not so much that I want to become chauvinistic about my hand, but it is so that you can do things properly, in accord with the situation.
So manifesting mahamudra means acting in accordance with the situation. The three banks—devotion, the yidam, and the protectors—are magical because there is a splash between samsara and nirvana. When you realize that splash, which everyone already has, it produces a kind of power or magic.
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Ground Mahamudra: Understanding Things as They Are 1
That natural, ordinary state has to be cultivated and worked with in three ways. The first way is by not preparing too much. It is by cutting off our preconceptions from the past. The second way is by not expecting a greater flash. It is by cutting off our preconceptions of the future. The third way is by not holding on to our present flash experience. It is by cutting preconceptions of the present. We simply rest our mind, this very ordinary mind of nowness.
REGARDING THE GROUND AS PATH
In the vajrayana, there are two basic approaches to the path: regarding the ground as path, and regarding the fruition as path. In mahamudra, we are regarding the ground as path. But in order to discuss the mahamudra principle, we need to comb our hair once more. We need to go back to the beginning of the path and to the ground of hinayana and mahayana.
In the hinayana, you develop an experience and understanding of shamatha, or quieting the mind; and that basic discipline brings about vipashyana, or awareness. Your development of meditation and postmeditation, or mindfulness and awareness, allows you to become sensitive to the phenomenal world. You find that the phenomenal world comes to you, and that it acts as a reference point. The phenomenal world is present all the time as an object of awareness or an encouragement for awareness.
In the mahayana, you develop an understanding of absolute bodhichitta by resting your mind and by cutting through all thoughts. The precision and the accuracy of shamatha-vipashyana discipline allows you to develop absolute bodhichitta so that you can rest in your natural state. Because you are allowed to relax in the natural state of unconditional alaya, you realize that hopes and fears and emotions of all kinds need not be regarded as obstacles, nor as a big deal. In the mahayana, you see that friends, enemies, and those who are indifferent to you could all be regarded as reminders for overcoming passion, aggression, and ignorance.
SACRED OUTLOOK AS THE BASIS FOR MAHAMUDRA EXPERIENCE
With that understanding, our awareness extends further. It extends a great deal. We begin to realize that the cause of such awareness is our relationship with the vajra master and our realization and understanding of sacred outlook, or tagnang. So sacred outlook comes out of basic awareness; and through sacred outlook, we discover the basis for the mahamudra experience.
Mahamudra means “great symbol,” but this does not mean purely experiencing the symbol, and not experiencing the real thing. Instead, in mahamudra the symbol itself is the real thing. When we eat spaghetti, it could be said to be a symbol of Italian food. But we are not eating symbolism; we are eating real Italian food. So a mudra, or symbol, is itself what it stands for. It is the basic thing, the basic stuff. Things stand on their own. When we say “sunshine,” it could be an image, but at the same time, real sunshine is taking place. So mahamudra is greater vision, a greater understanding of the phenomenal world as it is.
This greater understanding of the world-as-it-is occurs in what is known as ordinary mind, or thamal gyi shepa in Tibetan. Thamal means “ordinary” or “very basic,” gyi means “of,” and shepa means “awareness” or “consciousness”; so thamal gyi shepa is the “consciousness of ordinariness.” We have decided to translate shepa as “mind,” since consciousness is generally referred to as mind, and to translate thamal gyi shepa as “ordinary mind.” The idea is that sacredness is somewhat ordinary, in spite of being sacred.
Although the nature of samsara is like a waterwheel that turns around and around, constantly creating actions that prod
uce later effects, nonetheless there is a basic state of mind that is clear and pure. That state of mind is known as the experience of mahamudra. In the same way that you might try to attain enlightenment or bodhi in the hinayana and mahayana, you try to experience mahamudra in the vajrayana.
Mahamudra is sacred outlook, as well as sacred experience. It is inlook and outlook put together. In mahamudra experience, samsaric projections still occur, but you have begun to develop a notion of sacredness along with these projections. We are not talking about “once upon a time,” or saying that when you become a grown-up, you will have a different experience. We are talking about the present situation. We do not have to make this into some kind of myth; it is happening to you right now. Although kleshas and neuroses will still be there, you could relate with them in terms of sacred outlook and inlook at the same time. You could do it right now.
APPRECIATION AND CHEERFULNESS
There are three levels of mahamudra, or ordinary mind: ground mahamudra, path mahamudra, and fruition mahamudra. All three are related with the principle of cheerfulness, which is very much needed.
The first phase is ground mahamudra. According to Jamgön Kongtrül the Great, “Ground mahamudra is the view, understanding things as they are.” Ground mahamudra stems from awareness, from the vipashyana experience. Because the phenomenal world is a reminder and a source of awareness for us, it also becomes a basis for developing sacred outlook.
Sacred outlook leads to an appreciation of the world, because we feel so much gratitude for the gentle and genuine nurturing process by which the vajra master has led us into the path of the dharma. We remember the guru’s encouragement and kindness. We appreciate the kindness, gentleness, and trueness of the teachings, all of which are represented by the teacher. So our appreciation develops into devotion.
That combination of appreciation, devotion, longing, and heartfelt pain brings about a quality of cheerfulness. You begin to feel that you are a worthy person. In spite of any neurosis that you might come across, you still experience utter appreciation. Such longing and appreciation come from the realization of sacred outlook. You begin to help yourself and to appreciate the particular world you are getting into, so there is no struggle and no threat. And because you do not have to struggle, you experience cheerfulness. So ground mahamudra is based on appreciation and the experience of sacred outlook.
A SHIFT OF PERCEPTION
In the context of ground mahamudra, we talk about the five sense perceptions and the sixth consciousness, or cognitive mind. We use our sixth sense consciousness, or mind consciousness, and we subtract the seventh consciousness, which is not needed. So the editor goes away. Then we go further back, to the eighth or alaya consciousness, which is called the storehouse consciousness. We get to the storehouse consciousness, which is the basis of confusion, and we go beyond that by using it as our doorstep. We get into the beyond-eighth-consciousness situation: the basic alaya, or absolute bodhichitta.
The seventh consciousness is a VIP in the samsaric kingdom. It acts as a kind of foreign secretary to the government of your mind. In letting go of the seventh consciousness, devotion helps, because you realize that you do not have to fight or defend yourself, and so the seventh consciousness is no longer necessary. It can be dissolved. There could be a jump; and because of that jump, you could gain what is known as ordinary mind, as opposed to the VIP mind of the seventh consciousness.
Without the feedback of the seventh consciousness, there is still natural feedback because you still have your sense perceptions. You still have your eyes and your ears and your nose and everything, and you still have the world outside. All those senses have their own little feedback systems; there is no problem with that. But you do not need a policy maker or big-deal feedback such as: “Is it good or bad?” or “Shall we declare war or have peace?” Feedback without policy making is what we mean by the word unconditional.
In the vajrayana, we seem to go back to seeing things as we used to. You can afford to do so because your mind has already been trained and completely processed or shinjanged. You have gone through a period of seeing the nonsubstantiality of things as they are, and you have developed renunciation and revulsion. Having renounced the world, having felt revolted, having already vomited, you can then take a fresh look. You begin to see very naturally. That is what is known as ordinary mind.
But in order to experience ordinary mind, you first have to go through the hinayana process with its emphasis on simplicity and transitoriness. You also have to go through the mahayana process of realizing that others are more important than oneself. Then, having gone through those two processes, in the third yana, or vajrayana, you take a fresh look. At that point, you discover that your process of perception is strong and clear, and you begin to realize how things are as they are.
Going through the three yanas is like taking a tour of a factory. First, you are taken to the entrance, and you see how the raw materials come into the factory. Then you see how they are put onto conveyor belts and processed by machines of all kinds. You go through the whole factory, and when you have finished the tour, you understand how those raw materials are made into the finished products that you have seen. It is a complete educational system.
As another example, the way you perceived a table in the past and the way you perceive a table now from a mahamudra point of view may not be all that different. But generally you are naive; you have never experienced how a table is made, and you have not seen the tree that the table is made out of. So your path involves a process of education and training. This is why the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana journey is the best education you can receive.
It is very important that you do not just rush out and get blessings right away, before you have even renounced your own samsaric mind. That is why we put tremendous emphasis on going through the three-yana discipline. Through this process, your mind is shinjanged and lojonged. Because of that, your phenomenal world begins to become different. By the end, you might find that your mother seems more likable. So your perception changes, but whether the world changes or not is questionable.
We have been indoctrinated by the world to believe that unless we are motivated, we cannot function. But then you begin to realize the great switcheroo: without motivation, you can function much better. Because there is lots of wisdom, lots of prajna, everything is more scientific and direct. You do not have to run the world on the basis of egotism, or on passion, aggression, and ignorance. You can run the world better without those things. That is precisely the logic of enlightened society. Conceptual mind is based on good and bad, for and against. It is based on having allegiance to one or the other. But when you do not have that allegiance, you see your red better, your green better, and your yellow better. You can function better because you do not have a private scheme. You are working along with the four seasons.
When the perceiver is no longer deeply rooted in untrained samsaric mud, perception is not a problem. So you do not have to watch what you do. You may get feedback, but so what? You just see that rock is rock. There is no editor. There is no producer for your film, and in fact it is not a film at all. So once again rock is rock, but it is majestic rock. The world is beginning to become very expansive. You no longer have any domestic quarrel with anything. You see the world as it is, neither bad nor good. The world is simply the world. It is simple because you have gone through the proper training. You have trained in the hinayana and mahayana practices of shamatha and lojong, and you have trained in the vajrayana preliminary practices of ngöndro and devotion. Therefore, you are able to see the world properly. Otherwise, the vajrayana could begin to seem like black magic, and it could be the seed of rudra-hood.
Ground mahamudra is experienced in our sitting discipline. During sitting practice and even during tonglen practice, there is some kind of coming and going, thinking and not-thinking process taking place. But beyond that process of thinking and not thinking, there is a base of nonthought or nonconceptualizatio
n. No matter how freaked-out you might be, no matter how very confused you might be, there is some kind of dancing ground that is always there and is common to everyone. That ground of nonthought or absolute bodhichitta is applicable to everybody, and it is always taking place. Because of that, it is possible to experience mahamudra. It is like having a fireplace that already has a draft system and a clean chimney, so whatever wood you might burn in that fireplace is sure to be burnt completely.
LOOKING AT MIND AND ITS PROJECTIONS
This ground of possibilities has two aspects: mind itself, and mind’s perceptions. Mind is the perceiver. It is that which is capable of perceiving. In terms of the levels of consciousness, it could be the sixth consciousness, the cognitive state of mind that moderates what we hear, smell, and see of the phenomenal world. Along with the mind, there is phenomenal existence, that which mind projects on to. The mind is like a mirror, and phenomenal existence is like the reflections. Once we have a mirror, then we also have reflections. Because there is light, there are reflections. Those reflections are the phenomenal world, which consists of the objects of passion, aggression, ignorance, and all the other kleshas.
Mind and its perceptions are never produced. They are not manufactured by anyone. It is a natural situation: once you have a mirror, you automatically have a reflection. Once you have ears, you automatically hear sounds. Once you have a body, you automatically feel what is soft or harsh, hot or cold. These situations are often regarded as negative because they produce pain and pleasure, but if you look at them in another way, such things are neither good nor bad. They are unconditioned existence, which happens naturally, like the four seasons. When cognitive mind and the perceptions of mind are unconditioned by good or bad, they play and work together side by side, next to each other, or one by one. We see, we look, we hear, we listen, and so forth.
The Tantric Path of Indestructible Wakefulness Page 64
