tags:: buddhist-tantra, sapling, flowering
breath, visualise and love
Wikipedia on Karmamudra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karmamudr%C4%81
Commentary by Andreas Mueller on the Nida Chenagtsang’s book https://vajrayanatantra.blogspot.com/
General commentary on the Karmamudra book by Nida Chenagtsang https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/40000465-karmamudra
Chogyam Trungpa on Karmamudra:
“Karma comes from the Sanskrit root meaning “action,” what one does in encountering the world. Usually, our major encounters are with other people; and people are both male and female. Symbolically, the most potent form is our encounter with the opposite sex. Now we can look at this situation reductively and literally and think, in encountering a person of the opposite sex, of taking the other person as a kind of utensil. In that way we reduce the encounter to a very dead item. True, sex is fun, but if it continues very long we get bored with it. Here we have to understand the encounter on an entirely different level than the one usually seen. A characteristic of the sexual encounter is that we are never at rest; there is constant action and reaction. This by its very nature can create an opening of awareness beyond the normal level. An expanded awareness tinged with delight can arise.
If we have perceived the karmamudra in this constructive way, rather then reductively, there is automatically a tendency to go further in the direction of open awareness. This leads to the relationship with the jnanamudra. Suddenly the whole picture has changed. The relationship is no longer merely on the physical level, but there is an image involved here, a visualization which mediates a complete degree of appreciation and understanding. This opens up entirely new vistas.
The inspirational quality is much stronger and more far-reaching than with the karmamudra. We can reach a very profound level of awareness in which we become fused with the partner in a unitary experience. The distinction between oneself and the other simply no longer holds. There is a sense of tremendous immediacy, which also brings a sense of great power. Again there is a danger of taking the experience reductively and thinking that “Now I have achieved great power.” But if we are able to relate to this moment as an open experience, we are then at the level of mahamudra or, in this context, the greatest encounter.
When we have had this peak experience, we wish to retain it or at least to make it manifest to ourselves again. This is done through the samayamudra. The samayamudra involves the various figures we see represented in the Tibetan thangkas or scroll paintings. These forms are expressions of the deep impressions that have come out of the encounters we have had with the forces working within us. It is not as though we were, so to speak, containers of these forces—rather, we are like partial manifestations of them. In these encounters our separateness and secludedness are momentarily abolished. At the same time, our deadening reductive tendencies are overcome. In the samayamudra we commit ourselves to the implications of this great experience of openness through the symbology of the tantric path.” – The Dawn of Tantra
“The secret abhisheka transforms your existence completely. Reality is no longer regarded as an obstacle, and you no longer have difficulty communicating. Your passion, aggression, and ignorance are transformed into greater wisdom, so the fickle aspect of duality is conquered. This abhisheka has to do with how you can amalgamate the nirvanic, enlightened point of view together with the samsaric, confused point of view. If you are able to digest this particular teaching, the effect is that your whole body becomes a sacred existence.
THE PRAJNA -JNANA ABHISHEKA: BLISS The secret abhisheka is followed by the prajna-jnana abhisheka. This abhisheka is connected with understanding your reality and the relationship between you and your world. It is connected with how to relate with your consort, your family, and your world. Because of the wakefulness of intoxication, you begin to experience joy. You experience a sense of uniting with the world, a sense of orgasm. Such a relationship is often developed by means of karmamudra, or sexual union practices, which show how the experience of orgasm can be related with that of sudden enlightenment. So the general notion of this abhisheka is that the experience of orgasm is actually a way of opening yourself to the phenomenal world. In this abhisheka, you are allowed to use your passion at last, not as a source of aggression or possessiveness or self-indulgence, but as a source of raising the greatest joy in your life. The prajna-jnana abhisheka changes your mind and body completely; you become able to relate with the phenomenal world. You are able to copulate with the phenomenal world, to make love with the phenomenal world thoroughly and fully. You no longer experience inhibitions of any kind; therefore, you can actually open yourself up completely. By doing so, you can conquer any attacks, negativities, or negative powers that come to you.
The Four Types of Bliss In the prajna-jnana abhisheka, you work with four types of bliss. BLISS OF FREEDOM FROM EGO . The first bliss is the bliss of freedom from ego, which is like taking off your heavy coat on a very hot day. It is a tremendous relief. BLISS OF BEING CAPABLE AND WORTHY OF FREEDOM FROM EGO . The second bliss is the appreciation that you are capable of dealing with that level of bliss or freedom; you feel you are worthy of it. BLISS OF DROPPING INHIBITIONS . In the third bliss, you boost yourself up further to the point that you begin to have no inhibitions about going beyond that bliss or freedom, even if you then have greater freedom. BLISS OF TRANSCENDING FREEDOM AND BLISS . With the fourth bliss, you go beyond freedom and you go beyond the experience of bliss. You do not have to experience the freedom or the bliss, so you are transcending freedom and bliss altogether. You are it already: you are the freedom; you are the bliss. You are united with it; you are one with it. It is nondual experience. That uniting with bliss, that being beyond bliss, is regarded as the bliss of the wisdom of example, which we call peyi yeshe. So the third abhisheka is also known as the abhisheka of the wisdom of example, or the wisdom of analogies.
THE FORMLESS ABHISHEKA: THAT After the bliss of the third abhisheka, you have the fourth abhisheka, which is something more than that—or maybe less than that. After peyi yeshe comes töngyi yeshe, or “actual wisdom.” Tön means “ultimate,” “pith,” or “final,” kyi means “of,” and yeshe is “wisdom”; so töngyi yeshe means “ultimate wisdom.” The fourth abhisheka is very ordinary, but it is not particularly a big comedown. It is known as the mahamudra abhisheka, or the abhisheka of That. That traditionally refers to suddenly stopping the mind, suddenly stopping thoughts so that there is a gap. Ordinary mind is then introduced as very ordinary mind, and the idea of abhisheka as something special is cut through. Therefore, ordinary mind is experienced very directly. Once you have seen real ordinariness—the superordinary, the absolute ordinary—you realize that the regular world is not all that ordinary. Its ordinariness is purely superficial; you have not really deepened into it. The point of this abhisheka is to realize that none of those processes you have been going through are based on a subject-object relationship. It is no longer a matter of “this” and “that,” “I gain” or “I lose.” You are simply introduced to the understanding that past, present, and future are one. Again, this is what is traditionally known as the fourth moment. The fourth moment consists of warmth and power and strength. I don’t think I can actually explain it to you until you have received these abhishekas, but roughly speaking, there is a quality of warmth, strength, joy, and tremendous delight, because at last you are freed from being stuck to the past, present, and future. This also means that you are freed from “I” and “other,” “me” and “my belongings,” and all the rest of it. Usually, we find all of that schmuckiness so annoying, but at the same time, so pleasant. Because we feel so much pain from those fixations, we begin to enjoy them. But in the fourth moment, you begin to be given freedom from conceptualized enjoyment. You are given an experience that is no longer yours as a possession, but belongs to the cosmic world. That is why this is known as the fourth moment, because it is free from past, present, and future. You begin to appreciate that. The fourth moment accommodates all the rest of the abhisheka empowerments. It is the conquering of the entirety of space altogether; it conquers the entire time-and-space speculation. Our notions are not exactly changed, but they become bigger. When we talk about time and space, we usually think in very small measures. When we talk about time, we talk about minutes and hours; and when we talk about space, we talk in terms of yardage, meters, and miles. The measurement of the fourth moment transcends such measures altogether, and at the same time it comprehends them all at once. It is the all-encompassing space, definitely so, which includes both time and space. So although the fourth moment is talked about in terms of “moment,” which you might think means time alone, the fourth moment includes both space and time. That is why we can actually breathe in and out when we have a shamatha experience. We are beginning to transcend our small and limited world a little bit; we are beginning to go slightly beyond. Sometimes students find that they are regressing, because for the first time they are beginning to measure their realization of time and space. But if we go beyond that and begin to measure less, we get a greater quantity. We begin to feel less passionate, less measured, and less heavy. So we are going slightly beyond always keeping track—at the beginning, we do this just slightly, but in the end, we do it entirely. But this does not necessarily mean that you lose the context of those measurements or limits; they are still included. It is like having a gigantic mound of sand in your storage bin. You know every grain of sand, and you also know the mound as a whole, but you are neither belittling each small grain of sand, nor are you giving greater credit to the larger pile of sand. You are bringing the two all together, which makes you both free and joyful. It makes you smile. When you come to the fourth or formless abhisheka, real wisdom is transmitted. The teacher’s mind and the student’s mind actually meet together properly, completely, and thoroughly. With the fourth abhisheka, the mind of the teacher and the mind of the student become one, and the student is able to have a direct glimpse of dharmakaya. The fourth abhisheka is known as the abhisheka of That with a capital T. You do not have to dwell on the past, present, or future. You could just wake yourself up on the spot. That particular spot is very ordinary; it is often called ordinary mind. Your mind is opening into ultimate sacred outlook. But at the same time, with ultimate sacred outlook, there is nobody to flash sacred outlook, and nobody to open to sacred outlook: the doer and the doing are dissolving into one. There is a feeling of basic shock; the possibilities of conventional mind are dissolving into nothing. Wakefulness is a choiceless state. You cannot help but be wakeful, as long as you do not try to follow it up or to sustain it.” – The tantric path of indestructable wakefulness