Seeing, Recognising & Maintaining One's Enlightening Potential

[C T]

HH the Dalai Lama on Dream Yoga:

 

 

“Different factors are involved in the ability to recognize the dream as dream. One is diet. Specifically, your diet should be compatible with your own metabolism. For example, in Tibetan medicine, one speaks of the three elements: wind, bile, and phlegm. One or more of these elements are predominant in some people. You should have a diet that helps to maintain balance among these various humors within the body. Moreover, if your sleep is too deep, your dreams will not be very clear. In order to bring about clearer dreams and lighter sleep, you should eat somewhat less. In addition, as you’re falling asleep, you direct your awareness up to the forehead. On the other hand, if your sleep is too light, this will also act as an obstacle for gaining success in this practice. In order to deepen your sleep, you should take heavier, oilier food; and as you’re falling asleep, you should direct your attention down to the vital energy center at the level of navel or the genitals. If your dreams are not clear, as you’re falling asleep you should direct your awareness to the throat center. In this practice, when you begin dreaming it’s helpful to have someone say quietly, ‘You are dreaming now. Try to recognize the dream as the dream.’

 

Once you are able to recognize the clear light of sleep as the clear light of sleep, that recognition can enable you to sustain that state for a longer period. The main purpose of dream yoga in the context of tantric practice is to first recognize the dream state as dream state. Then, in the next stage of the practice you focus your attention on the heart center of your dream body and try to withdraw the vital energy into that center. That leads to an experience of the clear light of sleep, which arises when the dream state ceases.

 

The experience of clear light that you have during sleep is not very subtle in the beginning. As you progress in your practice of dream yoga, the first experience of the clear light occurs as a result of focusing your attention at the heart centre of the dream body. Although the clear light state during sleep at the beginning is not very subtle, through practice you’ll be able to make it subtler and also prolong its duration." 

 

 

 

 

Wiki explains 'Clear Light' from the perspective of Buddhist tantra: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96sel_(yoga)

 

 

 

Here HH presents a metaphorical explanation of Clear Light from the position of the Nyingma school:

 

With respect to identifying the clear light in the Great Perfection: when, for instance, one hears a noise, between the time of hearing it and conceptualizing it as such and such, there is a type of mind devoid of conceptuality but nevertheless not like sleep or samadhi, in which the object is a reflection of this entity of mere luminosity and knowing. It is at such a point that the basic entity of the mind [clear light] is identified. 

 

 

 

*For further readings, please visit Berzin Archives. 

[steve]

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is offering a 2 week retreat on sleep yoga starting on 6/19/16 in Virginia.

Last year he covered dream yoga.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

See you there!

[manitou]

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is offering a 2 week retreat on sleep yoga starting on 6/19/16 in Virginia.

Last year he covered dream yoga.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

See you there!

 

I would be real tempted to go to this.  But sleeping has been difficult for me with the Prozac thing - plus trying to wean off the sleepers as well.

 

Do you think this would be a hindrance to getting benefit from this retreat?  although when I was doing the practices in Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's book on Dream Yoga, I was visualizing the tigles at the forehead, throat, heart, etc.  But that was before I stopped using the many sleepers.  My dreams were incredible, and there was an awareness of being The Dreamer.  I can only imagine how powerful this practice would be without the sleeping pills.

 

I'm down to just one now, and it lets me sleep until 2:30 AM.  Although last night, I slept till 5:30 - first time since going off the Anacin PM's to lengthen the sleep time.  So there is progress.

 

To go to that retreat, that would be, well, a dream.

 

Rats.  I just looked at the date again.  I was thinking July when I first saw it.  Can't do it in June.

[manitou]

Wiki explains 'Clear Light' from the perspective of Buddhist tantra: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96sel_(yoga)

 

 

You are such a free spirit, CT - totally unconstrained by even a line of conversation.  Thank you for the link to the information on the island of Saaramaa, lol.

[C T]

You are such a free spirit, CT - totally unconstrained by even a line of conversation.  Thank you for the link to the information on the island of Saaramaa, lol.

 my apologies for the mysterious cross-over, Barbara. 

 

here's the intended link (i hope) - nope. Seems like its broken. 

Edited June 7, 2016 by C T

[steve]

I would be real tempted to go to this.  But sleeping has been difficult for me with the Prozac thing - plus trying to wean off the sleepers as well.

 

Do you think this would be a hindrance to getting benefit from this retreat?  although when I was doing the practices in Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche's book on Dream Yoga, I was visualizing the tigles at the forehead, throat, heart, etc.  But that was before I stopped using the many sleepers.  My dreams were incredible, and there was an awareness of being The Dreamer.  I can only imagine how powerful this practice would be without the sleeping pills.

 

I'm down to just one now, and it lets me sleep until 2:30 AM.  Although last night, I slept till 5:30 - first time since going off the Anacin PM's to lengthen the sleep time.  So there is progress.

 

To go to that retreat, that would be, well, a dream.

 

Rats.  I just looked at the date again.  I was thinking July when I first saw it.  Can't do it in June.

 

You answered your own question but I do think it's important to have as stable a sleep cycle as possible, preferably with no meds, drugs, or alcohol, to get the most out of dream and sleep yoga teachings. That said, it is something we can learn in the moment and apply later when the circumstances permit. In my experience, no matter what the subject matter, Tenzin Rinpoche has a way of connecting to people in very practical ways that sometimes seem to transcend the specific subject matter of any given retreat. 

 

Glad to hear you're making progress!

[C T]

It doesn’t make sense to grab at the highest teachings and reject the rest. It is the kindness of the buddhas to provide us with a complete path, and the preliminary practices are part of that path. All great teachers of the past have taught the identical message: ‘Gather the accumulations, purify the obscurations, and receive the blessings of a qualified master.’ In the tradition I represent, the preliminary practices are very, very important. I don’t think that the buddhas and all the past masters have created them just to lead us astray.

 

~ Tsoknyi Rinpoche ~

[C T]

[manitou]

What a perfect message Lama Lena has.  That anything new, outside of self; anything born, anything created, will deteriorate, will not last.

 

That the only thing that is true is that which is within, our perfect nature.

 

It always comes back to that warm, living, breathing thing inside of us that does not age.  And to remember that not only I, but you as well, and all sentient beings assumedly, have this same warm, living, breathing thing inside us that does not age.  On that, and that alone, can we depend.

 

My first experience with this odd phenomena was very mundane and yet very profound at the same time.  I had just gotten sober 34 years ago, and I was expounding my fears to a woman who was to become my sponsor.  I realize today that she was probably close to being an enlightened one, if not an enlightened being altogether.   I look back at her wisdom today and I am astounded; I was not ready for it at the time and I'm afraid I missed much.

 

But I was going on and on about how fearful I was because my pension hearing was coming up; if I didn't get a service-connected disability pension, I didn't know what I was going to do.  I was a torrent of words and tears.  She kept calmly asking me, 'Yes, but how are you today?'  I didn't hear it the first 2 or 3 times she said it.  Finally, the words seeped through my dramatic diatribe.  I stopped abruptly, and broke out laughing.  I could physically feel the reverse dynamic of all that fear and drama I was putting out there, and it swooped back to a place inside of me - in the period of maybe 2 seconds - and I realized that I was just fine in the Here and Now.  It was warm, it was timeless, it was within me.   It was quite dramatic, and I've never forgotten it.

 

This, perhaps, was my first exposure to Dhogzhen, without realizing it.  But it was that moment that I fully realized the being-ness within that Lama Lena was talking about.

[C T]

All the philosophical theories that exist have been created by the mistaken dualistic minds of human beings. In the realm of philosophy, that which today is considered true, may tomorrow be proved to be false. No one can guarantee a philosophy's validity. Because of this, any intellectual way of seeing whatever is always partial and relative. The fact is that there is no truth to seek or to confirm logically; rather what one needs to do is to discover just how much the mind continually limits itself in a condition of dualism.

 

Dualism is the real root of our suffering and of all our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. When we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political or social conviction may condition us. We have to abandon such concepts as 'enlightenment', 'the nature of the mind', and so on, until we are no longer satisfied by a merely intellectual knowledge, and until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence.

 

~ Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche ~

[manitou]

".....we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence."

 

I love that.

[C T]

Thinking that practice and enlightenment are not one is no more than a view that is outside the Way [that is, deluded]. In the buddha-dharma, practice and enlightenment are one and the same. Because it is the practice of enlightenment, a beginner's wholehearted practice of the Way is exactly the totality of original enlightenment. For this reason, in conveying the essential attitude for practice, it is taught not to wait for enlightenment outside practice.

 

~ Dogen Zenji ~

 

[manitou]

 

Thinking that practice and enlightenment are not one is no more than a view that is outside the Way [that is, deluded]. In the buddha-dharma, practice and enlightenment are one and the same. Because it is the practice of enlightenment, a beginner's wholehearted practice of the Way is exactly the totality of original enlightenment. For this reason, in conveying the essential attitude for practice, it is taught not to wait for enlightenment outside practice.

 

~ Dogen Zenji ~

 

 

I sense the truth to this.  I am experiencing the truth of this.  My recent experiences with the practices on Steve's PPF thread are showing me how very confined to my head my understanding has been.

[C T]

The great Longchenpa said, when the moon rises and when there is a clear lake, even though you may not wish it, the moon is reflected in the lake. Likewise, as long as sentient beings have merit, the image of the Buddha and his teachings and his blessing are reflected, even though you don't search for them. But if the lake is murky and defiled and not clear, even though the moon is shining in the clear sky, the reflection of the moon doesn't exist.

 

Likewise, even though the compassion of the Buddha is infinite and ever-present, if there is no merit among sentient beings for the Buddhas to reflect, then the chance of communication with the Buddha probably does not exist. However, judging not just from us, but from everything that is going on regarding the activity of the Dharma, I feel that we sentient beings still have a lot of merit.

 

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche ~

 

[C T]

A sailor should cross the ocean if he has a boat; a general should defeat the enemy if he has an army; a poor man should milk the 'cow of plenty' if it is within his reach; a traveler who wants to go to distant lands should pursue his journey if he has an excellent horse. As for you, who have a precious human life for the moment and have received instructions from a spiritual master, the embodiment of all the buddhas of the three times, think with joy and enthusiasm of traveling the great path of the supreme Dharma and getting ever closer to the ultimate goal: enlightenment and liberation.

 

 

~ Shabkar Tsogdruk Rangdrol (1781-1851) ~

[manitou]

 

 Likewise, as long as sentient beings have merit, the image of the Buddha and his teachings and his blessing are reflected, even though you don't search for them. 

 

Likewise, even though the compassion of the Buddha is infinite and ever-present, if there is no merit among sentient beings for the Buddhas to reflect, then the chance of communication with the Buddha probably does not exist. However, judging not just from us, but from everything that is going on regarding the activity of the Dharma, I feel that we sentient beings still have a lot of merit.

 

~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche ~

 

 

 

 

When you refer to merit, could you explain exactly within this framework what you mean?  Does Merit necessitate having a spiritual master, in this sense?  Or is Merit something that can be developed within one's own means?

[C T]

When you refer to merit, could you explain exactly within this framework what you mean?  Does Merit necessitate having a spiritual master, in this sense?  Or is Merit something that can be developed within one's own means?

In this context, merit directly refers to those who find an affinity with the teachings or Dharma. Purists will say Dharma implicitly means the teachings or sutras directly propounded by Buddha Sakyamuni, but there are teachers who are more open and will say that Dharma refers to any body of teachings that 'contain' the Four Dharma Seals, namely, all compounded things are impermanent, all conditioned phenomena and experiences are ultimately unsatisfactory, all phenomena are non-self, and Nirvana is true peace. So it follows that these same teachers will infer that it is possible that other spiritual paths may indeed reflect these four seals, and can therefore be considered buddhadharma. 

 

While these four pillars seem quite straightforward at first glance, there's actually quite a substantial depth to each and every one of them, and to reflect on these as a stand-alone teaching may take many years or even lifetimes. Personally i can vouch that this is so. 

[manitou]

Thank you, CT.  That was a really straightforward explanation, and quite understandable.  I would look forward to it greatly if in some subsequent entries on this thread addressed the four seals individually.  I mean, if you're taking requests.....

[C T]

Thank you, CT.  That was a really straightforward explanation, and quite understandable.  I would look forward to it greatly if in some subsequent entries on this thread addressed the four seals individually.  I mean, if you're taking requests.....

Thank you, Barbara. 

 

Re-reading the above, i realized that i should have said 'merit directly refers to affinity'. Meaning that whomsoever feels within a spontaneous, natural openness and relates to the buddhadharma with some degree of seriousness and wisdom, such leanings are appropriately affected with the term 'merit'. 

 

As for the Four Seals, i would say that this whole thread is supported by it/them. I try only to share the wisdom of Buddhist masters past and present who inspires my practice daily. I understand your request though, and will do my best to assist where possible. 

[manitou]

I understand affinity.

 

If the four seals have been being addressed all along, then please.......

 

 

'Don't change a hair for me.....

Not if you care for me......

Stay, little Valentine, Stay.....'

Edited June 14, 2016 by manitou

[manitou]

 

 

 

 

 

Just for the 'woooooo' factor, my brother's melanoma cancer was just downgraded today in scope from stage 3b to stage 1, which only requires periodic monitoring.  No treatment required.  A far cry from what he was looking at.

 

Waiting for more serious wisdom here....

Edited June 22, 2016 by manitou

[Bud Jetsun]

 

Waiting for more serious wisdom here....

Congratulations!

 

Start from the beginning of this thread again and re-read if you are seeking additional wisdom. The mind you have now was not the mind you had when you read it through the first time.

 

It already contains enough wisdom for a hundred lifetimes of appreciation on each page.

 

Unlimited Love,

-Bud

[manitou]

Isn't that the truth?  Sometimes it's nice to reread a particularly good book because your eyes are higher than when you read it the first time.  It's as though you see things when you're ready to see things.  When the pupil is ready the teacher will appear.

[C T]

The nature of perception is nonarising.
If something arises, it is your clinging to its reality.

 

The nature of samsara is groundless and rootless.
If something has ground and root, it is your thought.

 

The nature of mind is unity.
If there is partiality, it is your attachment.

 

The nature of a master is endowed with a lineage.
If you invent your own, you are deluded.

 

 

~ MILAREPA’S SONG TO SHAKYA GUNA ~

 

 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2016 by C T

[C T]

It is better to leave things settle as they naturally will. 

 

This is the simplicity of non-action. 

 

It is the pinnacle of effortless awareness itself, 

shining by its own light. This light is never not aware, 

even in the midst of fear and uncertainty. 

 

See and hear it in the brightness even, not just dark. 

 

.

 

 

 

 

Simply rest in that. 

 

 

 

Edited June 28, 2016 by C T