I have discovered something, in my rookie seasons as a meditator, about the growing up of one's experience of meditation. It's based on the Supplication to the Takpo Kagyu, which is something we pray in our school, and I do every morning in my own practice. What I discovered is this being of meditation which really is a great picture not only of reality, but a great primer on the growth pattern of meditation.
The first part of the prayer is the invocation of the Kagyu lineage, and asking for their blessings. If you are part of the Kagyu lineage, then you have the right to expect their guidance in this matter. The second portion has four aspects: the feet, the head, the body, and the essence.
The first aspect is the feet. "Revulsion is the foot of meditation, as is taught. To this meditator who is not attached to food and wealth, who cuts the ties to this like, grant your blessings so that I have no desire for honor and gain."
Interestingly enough, to gain a firm foothold, one needs to detach from this world. Revulsion can also be translated as renunciation. The point is the same. To gain a foothold, some stability, and as feet the implication of mobility, or movement, one needs to check the level of attachment to this world. For example, my priorities in terms of my practice. I persoanlly like to blog. I maintain this one and two others www.gonzotruth.blogspot.com and www. whidbeyharrisons.blogspot.com. The former is a politically oriented blog, and the other a family life type journal. The political blog emerged along with my emerging political awareness, and is the better example of getting too attached to this world. It was and still is, easy to find material to blog on. But the over-investment of time leads to worry, and ego, and all the stuff that attachment is made of. And if I let it, it will take over my meditation time. So I remind myself that this political reality is just apparent reality, not genuine reality. I need to cut that tie to how important I think my small contribution to the political debate is.
The blessing one seeks in this first step is not that honor and gain don't happen, but that I have no desire for them. Karma determines whether or not honor or gain will happen, and in the Seven branch Prayer, the last stanza states, "...may I become a splendid leader of sentient beings." So it isn't against the concepts of Buddhism to have honor and wealth. We do need to be free of the desire. Desire for them is an anchor in apparent reality. To utilize that mobility meditation can give me, I need to cast off that anchor to sail freely into genuine reality.
Revulsion in itself though is a good word. Besides the verbal aspect of reminding yourself (renunciation), actually feeling the weight of apparent reality, and it's suffering, is very helpful. So to re-use my anchor metaphor, there you are on the lake, fishing, getting nothing. The sun is burning you. The one lone rain cloud drenches you, and it's lone bolt of lightning zaps the end of your rod and burns your hands. More clouds are on the horizon, and now your hands hurt, making it difficult to pull up the anchor. And oops!, that lighning also popped a couple rivets in the small boat you're in, and you're taking on water. And you're in the middle of Lake Mille Lacs, which means the neareset land is several miles away. How well can you swim? Sun burned, headache setting in, hands burned from the lighning strike, and I can't swim all that well, and a storm is approaching, making swimming difficult at best. I am feeling pain and fear. That's the idea of feeling the revulsion.
The second aspect of this body is the head. "Devotion is the head of meditation, as is taught." This stanza drives to the core of this practice. This school is a verbally oriented school. Once one has mastered the lower levels of tranquility and insight meditation, and achieved some of the basic nundro practices, and connection to the Lama, the gate is opened to enter into the teachings you won't find written down in any books. It was just this last two years that an explanation of this mahamudra practice was published by the Tibetans.
Behind this gate is a treasury, considered so for it's power to accelerate enlightenment. But the concern is what gets us there. Besides the first step, of being released from lusty desires, even for the treasury of oral instructions, then one needs to have devotion.
This is where many trip up in Buddhism. Particularly Westerners. We love our individualism, and we are suspicious of cults that demand devotion. But devotion in Buddhism is not a blind faith devotion. Buddhism is not a blind faith practice. It is a reasoned, experientially proven practice. And as the last sentence explains, the type of devotion one is after is not blind faith devotion. It is genuine devotion.
There are stories in Buddhism of monks in caves separated from their teachers who achieved higher levels of consciousness and even enlightenment because of their devotion to their teacher, despite there being no actual face-to-face connection. And that's what genuine devotion is. An ardent, profound dedication. It establishes a relationship chain that allows the power of the teachings to flow through the living teachers to the student.
The third aspect is the body. "Awareness is the body of meditation, as is taught." Now we have something that connects the head and feet! And I'll pick this up in a second post!
No comments:
Post a Comment