Infinite Love and Perfection of Wisdom
In
opening and openness of heart there are typical signs. Some people
get so high on love and bliss that they stop caring about everything
else and stop using their mental discrimination. In terms of the
three basic characteristics this means overdoing aliveness/love with
the expense of knowing quality. Then there is a subtler form of this
which I have a story of.
Couple of years back we had a special guest at our center in Finland. He was American lama who had really extensive training in vajrayana and hinduism but in the last 15 years had really diven deep into heart through teachings of Irmansyah Effendi. He spoke much the same way like Alex, "Top and bottom collapsed together, and exploded with infinite love in the heart.".
Couple of years back we had a special guest at our center in Finland. He was American lama who had really extensive training in vajrayana and hinduism but in the last 15 years had really diven deep into heart through teachings of Irmansyah Effendi. He spoke much the same way like Alex, "Top and bottom collapsed together, and exploded with infinite love in the heart.".
I was really impressed by our lama friend's energetic skills. He had been a direct stdent of Dudjom Rinpoche and was trained since the age of 7 by him, so he got his skills down... but he was impossible to talk to. He would go on and on and on for hours on end, until people literally walked away. He was completely convinced that the heart path he followed was significantly better than any buddhist path he knew, and he knew all of them, though had not perfected his vajrayana practice. Listening him, I was like, "Oh really? And how many buddhas and rainbow bodies this path has produced...".
The problem was that he kept bypassing his emotions, always going back to his safe place in the heart when his own emotions started coming up. He had gotten really good at that, like the moment some dirt started showing up he had already shifted back to his safe place of immense and infinite love. It was nice and cute but completely pretentious, an ego trip. We had planned a course that he would teach at our place but the situation was so bad that I had to cancel it. He had mahasiddha bhumis open too.
I understand from my own experience of many years of professional kriya yoga practice which had really strong flavour of love, how great love feels for someone whose heart has been kicked in by the world and people who were supposed to love you. It is amazing and useful to a degree... but that's not the whole story of our mind/psyche and neither it is the whole story of practices.
The three characteristics are excellent guideposts.
It
is curious that buddhist dharma describes perfection of wisdom or
prajna paramita as a mark of buddhahood. Perfection of wisdom
is born out of completing the whole vipashyana process, that is,
realising emptiness of all phenomena. This is the first stage of
buddhahood, perfection of the first 10 bhumis, hence arriving or
abiding on the 11th bhumi, if you will.
Vajrayana
buddhism is very particular about different bodies, like nirmanakaya,
sambhogakaya and dharmakaya. In hinduism they never really made such
divisions even if they discuss Shiva (dharmakaya) and Shakti
(sambhogakaya) principles. Buddhism is very insistent on this point
and it has both pros and cons. The con is that because most
practitioners are unable to stabilise knowing awareness (rigpa), they
misunderstand the meaning of emptiness. You know, mosts buddhists
don't look like they enjoyd life very much. Ha. I think the constant
discussion about the empty nature of this and that, and me and other
makes buddhists go a bit lifeless and boring. But, emptiness itself
is far from lifeless and boring. Good side of separating bodies is
that at least theoretically it brings much more clarity than without
the separation. I think that it is because of this very emphasis why
buddhist practitioners are much more succesful in their practice than
hindus are, at least based on what I know. And having said that the
division between bodies from the point of view of big picture or
dzogchen is completely artificial. I see it as a pedagogical
tool because it helps with the learning of it but purity of emptiness
is not all there is to buddhanature. There is also light and colours,
like there is in all life. This is something that only dzogchen
teachings talk about.
So,
again speaking of three basic characteristics of the natural state,
there is a good reason why clarity or knowingness of given more
emphasis in the beginning until rigpa become stable with the opening
of the 11th bhumi. Looking at our lama friend's and Alex's cases,
even such advanced practitioners who have all bhumis open can
apparently be mislead by the samsaric experience of infinite love. It
is precisely because of this why buddhism is so much more successful
in yoga. I base my statements about success and failure of paths on
bhumi analyses (OHBM).
Heart
and it's ability to feel love is very meaningful but without clarity
it leads astray. Again, buddhahood comes through perfection of
wisdom, not through perfection of emotion, such as love.
-Kim
Katami, 4.9.2019
Open
Heart Sangha,
