Kim wrote:
Hello D,
Traditions, yeah. I have a bit mixed feelings
about long traditions these days. When thinking about the number of only
buddhist lineages, not to mention others, existing today, which are
numerous, I am not that convinced of their ability in keeping teachings
alive. There is so much useless baggage.
I've studied with about 3
dozen teachers and masters, both in and out the physical body, but my
main teacher who really got me started, after a number of years when I
hit my head into patriarchal zen, was an American housewife, a liberated
arhat and a mystic of very high caliber. Her name was Sara or Sivakami and she
was very private person. She left her body in 2010. She
got her initial transmission from Yogananda's student back in 1976, when
she was 36 or 37 years old. The second time she sat down to practice
those techniques she had learned, she spent 10 hours in immersion and
during the next 4 months that same kept happening everyday. It was tough
on her body as her mind was completely transformed, all her personal
karmas burned. So, she got her initiation from a physical teacher in a
lineage (which by the way was started 3 generations earlier by a
non-physical master called Babaji) but after that initial samadhi
streak, she started having non-physical teachers and masters visit her
both when awake and when asleep. Lama Thubten Yeshe, after he left his
body the previous time, was one of them. He offered Sivakami to take his
teachings but she kindly refused because she was never that keen about
the buddhist vibe. She was pretty much a heavily meditating bhakta all
her life. She also had the fortune to witness on two
non-physical masters appear in physical form to her. One of them was
Babaji known from Yogananda's book, and the other one was a shaivite
master called Thirumular, the author of the famous Thirumandiram, a
shaiva classic. So, anyway through her initial contant through
Yogananda's disciple, something clicked and she started meeting all
these masters from many traditions in astral form. It sounds pretty
wild... but to me what she later passed to me were of true quality...
compared to teachings that I've received from many lamas or gurus alive today. Her mind and teaching was
juicy and fresh, delicious. That freshness didn't come from a
tradition that had been kept alive for centuries in a physical form but
came from these non-physical mahasiddhas, mostly Babaji and Mular.
So it turned out later that I also had a karmic link to these masters
who asked Sivakami to teach. It was her who re-initiated me into this
congregation of masters which in turn enabled me to initiate my work,
part of which is about helping people get awakened. Like I've said
before I didn't learn the two part method that I use when guiding people
from any living teacher. It came to me intuitively, a memory from past
lives. Later I read they use the same formula in some lineage of
dzogchen... So fast forward to this day...
I've studied, worked and received transmission from many non-physical
masters, yogis and buddhas. I felt for years that I wanted to find a
rinpoche or some lama to study with but I don't feel like that
anymore because buddhas in the physical are so extremely rare. So what
all these traditions out there can offer is quite limited and rarely of superb quality, I feel.
I didn't mean to babble and sorry for
keeping so long but I just wanted to say this as "traditions that keep
the teachings alive" don't always mean "just physical".
Kim Katami
18.1.2016.
Open Heart, www.openheart.fi
Writings of Amrita Baba
