Why awaken? How does awakening make Dzogchen Atiyoga & Mahamudra practice easier?
By
Ugi Muller
Imagine
that you are in a big garden full of all kinds of plants, trees and
animals. To many of these plants and animals you have a fearful and
hostile attitude. You want to keep them away from you. On the other
hand, many of these plants you like a lot and want to keep them
close, even possess them. Now you heard of the Buddha’s nondual
teachings and want to attain Buddhahood in this life time. You know
that this entails one job only: looking directly at every plant,
every animal and everything in the garden to see their true
nature.
That’s a very challenging job. It means that you have to face all the plants and animals you always wanted to keep away from. And it means to let go of all your beloved ideas about the plants and animals you like. You’ll have to completely drop every point of reference and orientation you’ve ever had.
That’s the gardener’s Dzogchen Atiyoga and Mahamudra practice. Very challenging, it’s asking all of you.
Now as if this wasn’t challenging enough, there’s another obstacle you’re confronted with. You are bound to a strong pole in the middle of the garden by rubber bands. Wherever you try to go, it always immediately pulls you back to that pole. As if it is magnetic. This is actually so normal for you that you take it as a law of nature like the gravity that keeps your feet to the ground.
Without any awareness of your attachment to the pole you just don’t get far with your practice. Whenever you try to walk up to and look into the nature of a plant or animal, the rubber bands draw you back to the pole, making it very hard to even get a proper look at what’s there to be looked at. It makes this already challenging task of direct looking a 100 times more strenuous. You spend 95% of your practice time struggling against the rubber bands and maybe just 5% directly looking. And you don’t even know that it’s happening!
Now fortunately you see someone walking through the garden and he lets you know that you’re tied to a pole. You look down your body and for the first time you see it. “What the duck, all this time I’ve spent being tied to this pole and strained my ass doing anything, thinking that life is just this hard.” You see that being tied to this pole is not necessary or natural at all! And within no time you remove all the rubber bands from your body. You can’t believe that you actually thought being tied to this pole was part of your being.
Now you are able to walk freely through the garden and follow through with your challenging practice of looking at the true nature of all the plants and animals, the ones feared aswell as the ones hoped for. Finally, you are able to give a 100% of your focus to the practice itself and not to the struggle to even get there.
So what does this garden story have to do with awakening and Dzogchen/Mahamudra? Awakening is realising that there is a pole in your mind that you thought yourself attached to. And letting go of it. This pole is the subject consciousness, the more or less constant energetic impression of being a personal self which is located behind your eyes. It’s a strict filter that frames all our sense consciousnesses in a dualistic and personal way. It renders all experience around a poor me and makes pretty much a huge anxious drag out of everything.
Not seeing this subject self at work makes Dzogchen/Mahamudra practices extremely and especially unnecessarily difficult. Being awakened to this subject’s non-existence on the other hand makes an effective and fast Dzogchen/Mahamudra practice possible. You just can get to the task directly without the drag of personal drama. And it’s much more fun this way …
If that sounds appealing to you, I highly recommend to you to look into the Two-Part Formula of Pemako Buddhism. It’s a proven and very quick way to achieve awakening and to spare you years, decades or even life times of unnecessary struggle.
You can find the Two-Part Formula in this free ebook together with many real people’s accounts of awakening and losing their pole:
https://www.pemakobuddhism.com/114
May all beings be free!
Ugi, teacher in training
That’s a very challenging job. It means that you have to face all the plants and animals you always wanted to keep away from. And it means to let go of all your beloved ideas about the plants and animals you like. You’ll have to completely drop every point of reference and orientation you’ve ever had.
That’s the gardener’s Dzogchen Atiyoga and Mahamudra practice. Very challenging, it’s asking all of you.
Now as if this wasn’t challenging enough, there’s another obstacle you’re confronted with. You are bound to a strong pole in the middle of the garden by rubber bands. Wherever you try to go, it always immediately pulls you back to that pole. As if it is magnetic. This is actually so normal for you that you take it as a law of nature like the gravity that keeps your feet to the ground.
Without any awareness of your attachment to the pole you just don’t get far with your practice. Whenever you try to walk up to and look into the nature of a plant or animal, the rubber bands draw you back to the pole, making it very hard to even get a proper look at what’s there to be looked at. It makes this already challenging task of direct looking a 100 times more strenuous. You spend 95% of your practice time struggling against the rubber bands and maybe just 5% directly looking. And you don’t even know that it’s happening!
Now fortunately you see someone walking through the garden and he lets you know that you’re tied to a pole. You look down your body and for the first time you see it. “What the duck, all this time I’ve spent being tied to this pole and strained my ass doing anything, thinking that life is just this hard.” You see that being tied to this pole is not necessary or natural at all! And within no time you remove all the rubber bands from your body. You can’t believe that you actually thought being tied to this pole was part of your being.
Now you are able to walk freely through the garden and follow through with your challenging practice of looking at the true nature of all the plants and animals, the ones feared aswell as the ones hoped for. Finally, you are able to give a 100% of your focus to the practice itself and not to the struggle to even get there.
So what does this garden story have to do with awakening and Dzogchen/Mahamudra? Awakening is realising that there is a pole in your mind that you thought yourself attached to. And letting go of it. This pole is the subject consciousness, the more or less constant energetic impression of being a personal self which is located behind your eyes. It’s a strict filter that frames all our sense consciousnesses in a dualistic and personal way. It renders all experience around a poor me and makes pretty much a huge anxious drag out of everything.
Not seeing this subject self at work makes Dzogchen/Mahamudra practices extremely and especially unnecessarily difficult. Being awakened to this subject’s non-existence on the other hand makes an effective and fast Dzogchen/Mahamudra practice possible. You just can get to the task directly without the drag of personal drama. And it’s much more fun this way …
If that sounds appealing to you, I highly recommend to you to look into the Two-Part Formula of Pemako Buddhism. It’s a proven and very quick way to achieve awakening and to spare you years, decades or even life times of unnecessary struggle.
You can find the Two-Part Formula in this free ebook together with many real people’s accounts of awakening and losing their pole:
https://www.pemakobuddhism.com/114
May all beings be free!
Ugi, teacher in training
