Practices of Emptiness and the Lightbody

 

Practice of Emptiness, Practice of the Lightbody

(from a facebook post)

Dealing with trauma ain't no funny business. That's what you're left with after purifying bhumis, (if one has proper trauma). It can make one feel infested with strong negativity, just very negative world view. And the difficulty is not that you can't "purify" it but because the whole way of seeing the world is distorted. This means that the energy system where the trauma is stored is broken. That's psychic injury or trauma.

I am not sure if the past generations of masters understood trauma the way our generation experiences it. It is logical that they did and there are many central practices like smiling meditation, shamatha, loving-kindness or jhanas (skt. dhyana) that are excellent for healing trauma and have been practiced for millennia but I'm still not sure. I've met a few lineage holders who had no clue about trauma though. They just thought it was a form of compelling self-delusion.

In Amrita Mandala we dive deep into the world of emptiness insight (skt shunyata) from the beginning. We do this because our primary concern is to remove self-delusion that gives brth to existential confusion (skt duhkha). Our method is built to get one from ignorance to wisdom (skt prajna) very quickly because the priority of dharma is to awaken. We don't have a period of shamatha/calm abiding meditation to prepare and no mandatory preliminaries, apart from doing 1 year of Rainbow Body Yoga Lite before taking up the full version of Rainbow Body Yoga. In traditional systems, new students would practice simple calm abiding or do preliminaries at least for one year before even giving them empowerments and practices like RBYL/RBY.

Amrita Sundari

I have built the method in this way purposefully because removing of dukkha needs to be a priority. You can't get true relief from shamatha if you're very much troubled by the sense of self. I know that from experience, having started with lots of shamatha practice leading to a dead end of sorts where I was existentially as miserable as I was before I started practicing. Same happened to Shakyamuni who practiced jhanas for 6 years. My point is that from the purely dharmic perspective the sense of self with all its friends and buddies needs to go first, i.e. emptiness or wisdom needs to be established first.

Traditional methods start differently. They start with calm abiding (skt shamatha), preliminaries, jhanas or such and usually don't give instructions of emptiness insight from the start. There are exceptions but this is how it usually is. The reason why these kind of practices can be extremely frustrating to someone whose hair is on fire due to existential discomfort is because shamatha and jhana meditations work on the subtle body made of meridians which is not where self-delusion is even located. The good side of these practices is that one purifies the meridian system but the bad side is that one's existential issues remain intact.

I think that most lineages and traditions don't even know that there are two different types of subtle bodies: 1. one made of nadis and 2. other made of meridians. These two systems are closely related but are different and have different laws.

If we practice shamatha or jhanas, the cultivation happens in the body or field of meridians which is the subtle system closest to the physical body and its organs. The sense of self as defined in buddhadharma and doctrines of awakening is not there so from the perspective of wisdom awakening these practices are utterly pointless and useless. They just prolong one's existential pain. But, and this is very important, from the perspective of healing of trauma these practices can be golden. I say can be because I also know many people who practiced shamatha for years and still had huge traumas. 

 

Something that I do not understand and do not agree is when shamatha or jhanas are marketed as techniques that develop concentration. I don't think developing concentration is that important when compared to healing. In my zen days I developed concentration to very high degree that I could burn holes into sheets of paper, figuratively speaking, but that skill is quite useless. I wish shamatha had been presented to me as a way to heal but because it wasn't I missed a huge opportunity to heal my traumas because my teachers didn't even know that sphere of human issues and I also didn't even get awakened which is what I had come for. What a miserable sorry ass pancake. 

 

If we look at the human subtle bodies from a different perspective after one has purified the body of nadis (bhumis), which is where the self-delusion is stored, one can be fully and completely awake and yet still have lots of trauma stored in the body of meridians. In traditional systems this doesn't happen, or ideally shouldn't happen because the meridian system should by that time be already purified. But in our system it is the opposite way, the traumas and echoes of the former samsaric mind are still there because the body of meridians hasn't yet been adressed.

During the past few years I have given empowerments and teachings of the Ten Wisdom Goddesses (skt Dasha Mahavidya) and various hingu guru yogas that adress the meridian system but I am just now about to really get the engines started regarding this matter.

I have been working on this question in my lab day and night for over a year now and I am glad to say that my work has produced results. I have given trauma healing teachings before but the best is yet to come. I found that an excellently effective way to adress the meridian system and get the traumas washed out from there is in my old old friend - kriya yoga. For those who don't know I used to teach a form of kriya yoga called Sundara Kriya Yoga until about 10 years ago before switching over to buddhist tantra.

These years and the constant experimenting with various tantric practices have been both very fruitful but to me also very frustrating at times because I haven't been given ready-made answers by my gurus. I had to dive deep into my system and contemplate my butt off to come with solutions and results. An example of this is figuring out whatboth myself and my students were experiencing after bhumi perfection stage when they started feeling distant echoes of the former samsaric mind or still had the same psychic injury they had before. It took me a while to figure out that they are coming from a *different energy system*. Then I had to find out *how to adress* them effectively. This investigation has been a massive undertaking but I am finished with the processing now and have everything my students need. 

 

So just to be clear when it comes to wisdom we have RBYL and RBY, guru yoga with Yeshe Tsogyal and Guru Rinpoche, vipashyana instructions, bodhicitta, basic prayers and so on. No change there. I will, however, introduce a different set of hindu tantric exercises side of these buddhist tantric exercises. The name for this set of exercises of Amrita Kriya Yoga.

Our sangha members have seen glimpses of this already. Few weeks ago I posted an image of Amrita Sundari, which is a form of Tripura Sundari given by mahasiddha Agastya. Amrita Sundari is the main deity of Amrita Kriya Yoga. There are other supplementary practices such as Amrita Sundari Astottara Shata Namavali or 108 names of Amrita Sundari. Like Rainbow Body Yoga, Amrita Kriya Yoga is a program that consists of different yogic exercises.

When Rainbow Body Yoga results in realization of emptiness of all phenomena, Amrita Kriya Yoga results in lightbody, healing traumas and removing old samsaric imprints from the meridians along the way.

Monsoon blessings your way,

Baba, 23 Jan 23

Removing Trauma from the Physical Body

 

Removing Trauma from

the Physical Body

Kim: It also makes sense how the scratches get into the physical cells there in the first place, from stress, trauma and all kinds of scary and anxious situations.

I was just wondering about the very first traumatic situations from early childhood, how they plant the very first seeds of painful selfing and how it builds up from there over time. Then a bit farther down the line comes tensing of the belly, shaky legs and panic attacks and so the energy system goes upside down in stressful situations. And then you start avoiding the stressful situations and the stress itself by various coping mechanisms. You just try to survive, scared of the world, scared of people. Or maybe you feel numb. Maybe you're not having panic attacks everyday and they may be mild when you have them but you have them nevertheless and they mess up your energy system everytime it happens. You just want to have a happy life and cannot understand why you feel anxious and scared so often because you've forgotten the early experiences and you have no idea what's going on in your psyche because you haven't learned even the most basic ways of keeping your mind healthy with various types of meditation.

In Pemako method we have different tools and practices to remove the self-based pain from both the mind and the body. Together with the deity practices of mahasiddha bhumi deities (list on the website), there is tapping of the body with mantras (very effective!) and these female deity practices called Dasha Mahavidya, that I borrow from hindu tantra. All in all, it looks like this formula works very well in the case of students like you who has already purified the 10 bhumis but is working on perfecting the ms bhumis.

Something that I've wondered recently is that I could give Dasha Mahavidya to the whole sangha, as I know there are people who have all the above issues and problems of trauma that affect them physically. I use hindu deities for this purpose together with buddhist ones because it makes the progress much faster than buddhist deities alone.

Shane:>I know I would have benefited a lot from having these mantras earlier on.

Kim: -Aa-ha! Well that is another interesting point that takes us all the way to the beginning of buddhism, and the reason why buddhism exists.

There is no end to methods that make people go round and round in meditative states and momentary experiences. Buddhadharma began because that had to stop because there is no other solution to solve self-based existence except to release self-based states, including those that make self-formations subside, into the body of reality (dharmakaya). But damn it, even in buddhist tradition those enticing states of gross bliss and vast planes of expanded consciousness crept right back in(!) and ever since until today a lot of buddhists are not actually practicing buddhism in the sense of liberating beings to dharmakaya but practice momentary states in samadhi, shamatha and jhana meditations. Too bad.

I don't blame anyone who wants to take a break of the mental wheel of repeated confusion (samsara) but it needs to be crystal clear that states of meditation are momentary experiences exactly like states of negative emotion. People are mislead to think that samadhi, shamatha or jhana meditations would solve existential issues. They can't and they don't so if you ask me, if you are in this for "real" and you wish to really know yourself as a living and breathing buddha, forget all practices that are based on gentle one-pointed concentration. I doubt that buddhism as a whole will ever be able to shake off this basic confusion that in my view ruins the tradition that started as a splendid system of diamond clear recognition, and keep wasting the time people put into these practices. This is madness and buddhism as a whole is definitely corrupt.

So, this is a long and winding introduction to your comment, "I know I would have benefited a lot from having these (hindu tantric Dasha Mahavidya) mantras earlier on".

Yes but hear me out... The reason why buddhism was started and grew out from hinduism is because there was a serious need for a method that would remove dualistic ignorance or selfing. The reason why gross bliss and those states of expanded awareness happen in samadhi, shamatha and jhana meditations, as they do in the vast majority of hindu methods, is because when self-based ignorance is still there in the bodymind, very charming states of bliss arise, and bliss like you know from getting high, drinking and having sex, is a trap. There is nothing wrong with sense pleasures but states of gross bliss are states of delusion made of gold! People think they practice the "dharma" but they are actually just rolling in their own shit, just like pigs do. Rusty chains, golden chains, you know.

So, the reason why I haven't given empowerments of hindu deities to my students is what I have explained above. Ignorance needs to be removed first so that you don't get trapped to self-based states in the form of gross bliss, and that is a task that takes ones time for few years at leastor more. But... if my students promise to practice both buddhist and hindu tantra, then I can consider giving shakti empowerments. But if I see anyone in Pemako sangha getting high on deities, I'll come back to haunt you even after I am dead!  

Kim, 11.10.2021