Long Cessations:
How Buddhahood is Actually Attained
Tomi: "I have started to have full Rigpa moments; yesterday it lasted for two hours."
Kim: Reg. "full rigpa moments". These are long periods of the mind entirely ceased. This is directly experiencing "emptiness of all phenomena", the whole mind from 1st to 10th bhumi empty. I say long because they last much longer than few seconds or minutes. It means literally experiencing oneself as a fully enlightened buddha.
Awakening experiences (bhumi openings) are usually brief. They are like flashes of all lights of a house switched on but it (cessation) lasts only from seconds to few minutes. Despite of the briefness of bhumi openings and perfections, these breakthroughs indicate that the type of practice is correct because despite of their briefness at this stage of practice, cessations are directly seeing one's buddhanature, which is the heart and soul of all dharma and spirituality. There is no dharma other than awakening experiences.
Based on several accounts of our sangha members, this begins to happen roughly around the perfection of 1st-6th bhumis. As you keep perfecting them and have smaller perfecting shifts (for ex. 7.1, 7.2, 7.3) inside major perfections (7,8,9), durations gets longer. For example, let's say from 1-2 hours, to 4-5 hours, to 12 hours, to 24 hours to 48 hours. The longest I've had so far was 60 hours or 2½ days nonstop in August 2020 when I was (still am) working on perfecting the 10th bhumi.
So, when someone has more than six bhumis perfected (and all 13 open), it means that her or his mind is more than 50% purified. In other words, in the mind of such person, one's natural state has become prevalent over self-deluded state, and because of this cessations start getting longer and longer, or in other words, one doesn't only "begin" to see oneself as a buddha but really gets to try living as one. This keeps happening until insight of emptiness penetrates into all bits of the psyche (1-10 bhumis).
So with what Tomi here calls "full rigpa moments", we are talking about not partial, nor short but complete recognitions during which one gets to live, breathe, taste, touch and act as a fully enlightened mahasiddha for hours or days, depending how long it lasts. During these moments we really get to experience how life is for a mahasiddha. Through this experience we really come to know what purity and freshness (suddha/kadag) are. We come to understand why they call it the "great perfection" that is "unexcelled" (anuttara samyak sambodhi). Again, it is very different from brief glimpses... You get to live as a mahasiddha, that's it!
Nine Pemako sangha members so far have told me they've had these lasting anything from an hour to half a day. This indicates that we are approaching buddhahood as a group of individuals in the near future.
We have been reminded again and again by past masters, such as Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, who said that in his lifetime he met "many men and women" who had attained buddhahood, that it is "not a fable or a fairytale" and that it is possible indeed for people "world over". These words can be found from his book Repeating the Words of the Buddha.
Living grace and guidance of our gurus, Guru Rinpoche and Yeshe Tsogyal; correct view of emptiness that unites samsara and nirvana; correct view of compassion that is equal to all sentient beings; correct application of practices that in the case of Pemako many are unique to our method; committed internal work to make us strong and fearless in the face of hardship; and faith in the teachings of mahasiddhas who've lived before us. That's how we've made it work.
-Kim, 3.3.2021
