The Incomparable Gift of Buddhist Refuge

The Incomparable Gift of

Buddhist Refuge

When one chants, ”I take refuge in the Guru. I take refuge in His Pure land...” and so on, one instantly becomes a buddha. The ultimate reality becomes even more compelling when chanting, ”I am the Guru. I'm in the Pure Land...” By taking refuge, one uncovers oneself as an entirely free, selfless, timeless and yet vividly and effortlessly present being. Oh, this is the field of buddhas and bodhisattvas who dance and rejoice in the sheer purity of presence, sending out rays of healing and compassion to burdened beings. In other words, by taking refuge, one becomes the eye of wisdom that sees the emptiness of all phenomena.

This simple chant makes us discover our true being that is so well hidden by self-based misperception. The story goes that when Gautama the Prince realized and became Shakyamuni the Buddha and met merchants, who asked a teaching from him, he told them to take refuge.

Maybe the incomparable preciousness of refuge isn't obvious in the beginning but with gradual practice, one realizes that all teachings of sutrayana, tantrayana and even atiyoga are contained in, ”I take refuge in the Guru...”

Kim

God - Selfless Brillance

God - Selfless Brilliance

Angie: >I seem to be picking up that you perceive monistic nondual consciousness to be a higher state than unitive consciousness. To my knowledge, this idea of “ascent” is not held by the Christian contemplative tradition in the sense that one does not “ascend” in relationship but rather grows closer and more open to the Beloved. (Note the unitive rather than monistically nondual flavor of that last statement.)

Kim: -To be honest, I don't know who or what God is, although I pray and enjoy Him everyday. In my exp there is no God and there is no me either and yet it is not a state of suffering and confusion. Technically, I could describe God as: Buddhanature* + Love = God. I use the term buddhanature as described by tantric buddhists, namely mahamudra and dzogchen. I couldn't help myself but blurted out implying that my view is higher. No matter what I do, I cannot help making myself an ass... Anyhow, what I try to convey is that in terms of nonduality which basically means less of me, there is great depth and potential to be set free. As I said, I am not enlightened but in my exp God is not an experience who someone or even God her- or himself experiences. In my exp God is simplicity of being, clarity imbued with love without conceptual labels or interpretations. Everyone of us is free to have our own truths and interpretations, perhaps how I feel my life to be at the moment in day to day life could be termed, not as union or connection, but as selfless (nondual) brilliance.

No Reifications of a Metaphysical God by John Tan

No Reifications of a Metaphysical God

by John Tan, Buddhist philosopher and practitioner.

See Awakening to Reality-blog.

”What is presence now? Everything... Taste saliva, smell, think, what is that? Snap of a finger, sing. All ordinary activity, zero effort therefore nothing attained. Yet is full accomplishment. In esoteric terms, eat God, taste God, see God, hear God...lol. That is the first thing I told Mr. Jax few years back when he first messaged me If a mirror is there, this is not possible. If clarity isn't empty, this isn't possible. Not even slightest effort is needed. Do you feel it? Grabbing of my legs as if I am grabbing presence! Do you have this experience already? When there is no mirror, then entire existence is just lights-sounds-sensations as single presence. Presence is grabbing presence. The movement to grab legs is Presence.. the sensation of grabbing legs is Presence.. For me even typing or blinking my eyes. For fear that it is misunderstood, don't talk about it. Right understanding is no presence, for every single sense of knowingness is different. Otherwise Mr. Jax will say nonsense... lol. When there is a mirror, this is not possible. Think I wrote to Longchen (Sim Pern Chong) about 10 years ago.”

“After realization… Just eat God, breathe God, smell God and see God… Lastly be fully unestablished and liberate God.”

Soh Wei Yu: "Lest readers misinterpret that John is affirming a substantialist notion of a ‘God’, it should be noted that by the phase of Anatta realization, there is simply no more reifications or conceivings of a metaphysical ‘God’ or ‘Creator’ of any kind, and John was simply using the lingo of Mr. Jax to convey the complete absence of a background substratum of Presence and the total luminosity of Presencing-as-manifestation to Mr. Jax using his ‘esoteric lingo’. Even the word ‘Presence’ is not referring to some static entity here - ‘Presencing’ is perhaps a better term, for as James M. Corrigan wrote, “...Awareness is not something other than the “presencing” (i.e. naturing) of appearances. It is not a thing. It is not part of a thing. It is not an “aspect” of a process… ...it is the process—not some aspect of it”

Infinite Love and Perfection of Wisdom

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.". 

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,

www.en.openheart.fi