riding the waves of consciousness on the surfboard of wisdom and compassion

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

In Search of the Garudas


This is a traditional Tibetan image of the Red Garuda.


This description of garudas follows from the The Symbols of Tibetan Buddhism page:

"The Garuda is daring and fearless and abides in the north. With great strength and power it soars beyond without holding back. It symbolizes freedom from hopes and fears, the vast mind without reference point. It is a powerful antidote to the negative influences of Nagas (spirits) which can cause disease and all kinds of harm."


Ogyen (Green) Garuda.

This is a description of the Green Garduda (Ogyen Garuda):

"Ogyen Garuda is Padmakara in the form of the immense space eagle who is born fully enlightened and in full flight. His furious gaze burns away the fabric of duality for all beings, conditions, and situations. His brilliant blue complexion reflects his spacious intelligence and the vast expanse of Dharmata. His hair is a roaring mass of wisdom-fire, which scorches the perceptual distortions of monism, dualism, nihilism, and eternalism. His two meteorite iron horns impale the deluded division of samsara and nirvana. His golden razor beak bites through every dualistic contrivance, and his two wings bear him beyond the limited spaces of existence and non-existence. The nine-fold pinions of his razor wings liberate beings in the temporal spaces of the nine bardos. He wears the human bone ornaments which display the spatial essence of the six classes of Vajrayana. At the centre of his chest ornament is the luminous green 'Trom' which illuminates the universe and makes total collision with reality inescapable.

In each hand he holds a nine-pronged meteorite iron phurba. These two phurbas liberate the potential of the solar and lunar channels and overpower all apparent phenomena in empty rage. With his two phurbas he stabs attraction, aversion, and indifference as they pertain to clinging either to samsara or nirvana. In each claw he holds a nine-pronged beryllium copper grigug. These two grigugs slash the fabric of dualistic clinging in every dimension of existence simultaneously -- without need of moving from the vast single point of awareness."


The Dark Blue Garuda.

Garudas are terrifying


The Garuda is the traditional mount of Lord Vishnu.

Garudas in Hinduism and Buddhism


"Garuda" in Wikipedia

Define "Judgment"


This is a post from my tribes friend Viveka.

Om jai Kindred Spirit… jai onto all

It is only by entering the darkness that one becomes fully enlightened; realizing we are the light we seek, and remembering that we really never left our humble abode beloved of Eternal Truth and Perfect Love behind.

Eternal Truth & Perfect Love is who we really are without the clothing of Maya.

If defining and judging the reality we see around us, helps us to remember Spirit, and moves us closer to the goal of Truth one seeks… We can say we are in Truth, we abide in the light, and it is good karma… If defining and judging the reality we see around us, moves away from the goal of Truth one seeks and, causes us to forget our divinity… We are not in Truth; we abide in darkness, and this is bad karma.

Bad karma leads to pain and suffering, and good karma leads to the eternal bliss of wellbeing. There is a time and a moment for everything within Maya. Maya is the seeming wondrous illusion of separation in beautiful yin/yang balance that helps us remember what we have forgotten. While we are clothed in Maya, with our costumes of name and form; we must explore both good and bad karma to fully understand the nature Eternal Truth & Perfect Love. We need both good & bad, light & darkness, hot & cold, so as to compare one with another to understand the nature both. Good and bad are two sides of the same coin. What gives value to a coin is the metal between the two sides, and so it is with the pair of opposites in yin & yang balance… The nature of Eternal Truth is found in that eternal moment between tick & tock, and the balance of yin & yang.

When we enter the darkness we forget.
We forget in order to sing God’s glory in the remembering.
We forget in order to honor the source of our being, through the cosmic karmic journey of awakening we are all on, transforming the darkness back into light.

When we move away from our center of truth, it is best to abide in seeming dark silence not judging the world around us, so that we find our center of truth, and better see where we are going with the singular vision of wisdom found in our heart… When we are centered in Truth within our heart, then it is time to open our eyes and express our divinity in all we do, as we explore and define the reality of Maya through the filter of viveka, honoring the source of our being.

We are the light; we are the seeming fragmented light that has entered the darkness to bring light to where light seems not to be; we come as an act of the highest devotion in motion honoring the source of our being.

It is most wonderful and beautiful how we are all expressing the same Eternal Truth from different points of view and in a different light, but the essence of the Eternal Truth we speak of, remains the same, unchanged and eternal.

JAI TO ALL YOU BEAUTIFUL LIGHTS, EXPRESSING ETERNAL TRUTH & PERFECT LOVE IN YOUR OWN UNIQUE WAYS!!! Thank you, for the wonderful contrast and beautiful colors that your individual and unique journeys of transformation add to our costume of Maya; which moves the heart to live life to the fullest.

Om shanti shanti shanti…

The Vedanta Society of Southern California

Sunday, May 6, 2007

My enemy is my friend


The Mahayana Equilibrium Meditation, as instructed by Lama Zopa Rinpoche. Lama Rinpoche is the Spiritual Director of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition.

This meditation comes from Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s book, "The Wish-fulfilling Golden Sun of the Mahayana Thought Training" (Kopan Monastery, 1974). Rinpoche has described it as more than the standard equilibrium meditation, as he has added a number of techniques for overcoming anger and developing patience.

[Meditate in the first person and pause for contemplation between paragraphs.]


Think: It is never enough to gain only self-liberation. Attachment to personal peace and striving solely for this is both selfish and cruel.

Visualize that you are surrounded by all sentient beings, with your mother seated to your left and your father to your right. In front of you, visualize an enemy; someone who dislikes you or wishes you harm. Behind you, place your dearest friend; the person to whom you are most attached. To the side, visualize a stranger; someone for whom your feelings are neutral.

Think: There is no reason at all for me to be attached to and help my friend or to hate and harm my enemy.

If I were to strive for only my own self-peace, there would be no reason for me to have been born human. Even as an animal, I could strive for this. The various animals have the same aim as many highly educated people--self-happiness--and also create many negative actions, such as fighting with and destroying enemies, cheating others with political mind and so forth, all in the pursuit of their own happiness. There is almost no difference between them except their shape.

The main purpose of my having been born human is to strive for and achieve higher aims--to bring every sentient being to everlasting happiness. This is something no animal can ever do.

Just as I wish to avoid suffering and find happiness, so, too, do all other sentient beings. Therefore, I and all other sentient beings are equal, and there is no logical reason for me to care more about myself than others or to harm enemies or any other sentient being.

For countless rebirths I have been discriminating other beings as friend, enemy or stranger with the self-I consciousness. Chandrakirti said, “Where there is self-I consciousness, there is discrimination of other.” From discriminated partisanship between self and other, attachment and hatred arise.

All misfortune arises from acting under the influence of these negative minds.

The self-I consciousness causes attachment to self, which produces attachment to my own happiness.

The entire range of negative minds arises from the above.

Anger is caused by greed and self-attachment and makes me discriminate against whoever disturbs my happiness, producing the enemy.

Attachment creates the friend, who helps, and determines the enemy, who hinders.

Ignorance labels those who neither help nor hinder as strangers.

Anger makes me hate and harm the enemy; attachment makes me cling to and help the friend; and ignorance makes me see the stranger as having a permanent self-nature. By acting under the influence of these negative minds, I lead myself into difficult and suffering situations.

Attachment creates danger and suffering for myself and others. The whole earth is in danger of exploding. Attachment offers no peace and brings only suffering.

Since beginningless time, the two negative actions of helping out of attachment and harming out of anger have thrown me into samsaric suffering, making it impossible for me to achieve the perfect peace of liberation and enlightenment.

Negative actions leave negative imprints on the consciousness; these ripen into endless experiences of suffering. If I continue to behave in this way, I will experience the same suffering over and over again for eons and will never receive any realizations or enlightenment itself.

The three objects of friend, enemy and stranger are false and have been labeled incorrectly for extremely temporal reasons. The current friend, enemy and stranger have not always been friend, enemy and stranger in my countless, previous lives. Even the enemy of last year can this year become my friend and yesterday’s friend become my enemy today. It can all change within an hour and does so because of attachment to food, clothing and reputation.

A scripture says, “If you try for a moment to befriend an enemy, he will become your friend. The opposite occurs if you treat a friend like an enemy. Therefore, the wise, understanding the impermanent nature of temporal relationships, are never attached to food, clothing or reputation.”

Lord Buddha said, “In another life, the father becomes the son; the mother, the wife; the enemy, a friend. It always changes. In cyclic existence, nothing is certain.”

Therefore, there is no reason to be attached to friends or to hate enemies.

If the ignorant, self-I conception and its objects were true, the three designations of friend, enemy and stranger should have existed from countless previous lives and should continue to exist through the present to beyond enlightenment. This makes complete nonsense of the concept of enlightenment, since the Buddha’s sublime, enlightened mind is completely free of the delusions and imprints that create such distinctions.

Out of his compassion, Lord Buddha taught the equilibrium meditation so that I, too, might become free of delusions, imprints and ignorant discrimination. The concepts of friend, enemy and stranger are false because they and their basis are totally illusory. There is no self-I.

My problems are created not by the enemy but by me. In my previous lives, I harmed others through ignorance and the results of this return in this life, causing me hardship and suffering.

Lord Buddha said, “In previous lives, I have killed all of you before and you have all slaughtered me. Why should we now be attached to each other?”

Chandrakirti said, “It is foolish and ignorant to retaliate to an enemy’s attack with spite in hopes of ending it, as the retaliation itself only brings more suffering.”

Therefore, there is no reason to retaliate.

The enemy is the object of my practice of patience, which helps me overcome my anger. I should not hate this enemy, who brings peace into my mind.

The enemy is infinitely more precious than any material possession. He is the source of all my past, present and future happiness. I should never hate the enemy. Any possession can be given up for his peace.

An enemy is my greatest need, the source of all beings’ enlightenment, including my own. The enemy is my most precious possession. For his peace I can give up myself.

From now on I must never hate or harm the enemy or any other being.

The enemy harming me mentally and physically is under the control of his negative mind. He is like the stick that someone uses to beat another. There is no reason to get angry or to retaliate by harming the enemy. It is not his fault; just as the pain I experience from a beating is not the fault of the stick.

If I had clear wisdom I would see that harming others out of hatred is harming myself out of hatred. Obviously, I should not harm others.

All sentient beings, including the enemy, are the object of Lord Buddha’s compassion. The numberless buddhas hold the enemy and all other beings dear to their heart. Therefore, harming another, even slightly, is like harming the infinite buddhas.

The Buddha always considers all sentient beings, including enemies, to be more important than himself. Mindlessly harming another being for my own benefit is the act of a mind of stone.

The enemy and all other sentient beings have been my mother countless times. The holy body, speech and mind of the infinite buddhas are servant to all beings, enemies included. Therefore, I must never give harm to any other being.

Not harming my worst enemy, the ignorance in my mind, and destroying an outer enemy instead is like killing a friend by mistaking him for an enemy. I should not harm the outer enemy but the inner one, the actual cause of all my suffering.

Because of transcendent realizations based on the equilibrium meditation, no bodhisattva would ever see another sentient being as an enemy, even if all rose against him or her.

The enemy is merely a concept created by my hatred, just as friends and strangers are concepts created by my attachment and ignorance. I should not believe the distorted perceptions of my negative minds.

If I investigate with my wisdom eye, I will never find my attachment’s friend or my hatred’s enemy anywhere, neither inside nor outside their bodies. Wisdom tells me that these are merely names.

For all these reasons, I can now clearly see how foolish and nonsensical I have been over beginningless lifetimes.

If you could realize this equilibrium meditation it would be your most priceless possession. Equilibrium brings peace to numberless beings and all your future lives.

A tough question and a reluctant answer


On April 29th, a friend that I made on people.tribes.net, Lama Jime Gyatso, asked me a question that has been racing through my mind like a train through a subway tunnel.

>Lama-Jigme Gyatso wrote:
>
> Dear Daniel,
>
> Right now,
> in THIS moment;
> what are some of the specific things in your life
> that your heart could hunger to heal?
>
> Om Mani Padme Hum,
> Lama Jigme


It has taken me ten days to be able to come up with an answer.


Dear Lama Jigme,

I have been thinking of this question every day since you sent it to me. I am sorry that I have not responded sooner.

I was molested by a group of boys when I was five years old. I have spent years writing about it, sharing about it, being in therapy about it, praying and meditating about it, and suffering from it. There have been years when I thought the pain of it was going to drive me out of my mind. For 15 years, I tried to drink myself into oblivion over it. [Thank goodness I have been sober now for almost 20 years.]

For years I thought I was gay. At 30, I entered into my first gay relationship. It lasted for almost ten years. I thought "coming to terms" that I was "gay" would stop the pain. Instead, the pain just took a nap.

I have been on a three-year fast from sex, quieting my mind, hoping to discover the solution. Now I realize that thinking I was gay was a defense mechanism to not face the trauma of being essentially gang-raped. Believing that I had "asked for" being molested, I needed to think that I must be gay: that was how my little boy mind tried to comprehend what happened to me and why. Now I understand, that had I not been molested, I might not have ever thought of myself as gay. But that doesn't erase the experience.

I now regard myself as a straight man with a bisexual past and uncharted future. This, to me, represents a lot of healing and growth of consciousness. However, that has not removed the scars of the sexual trauma. I still feel a part of me wanders this earth, like a ghost, looking for a healing that I cannot conceive. Today I don't feel straight, gay, bisexual, or necessarily asexual; I don't fit in anywhere. Still feeling defensive, I think and behave like a sex-phobic sexual anorexic, as though that were going to cure me.

When I share this with most people, all of their sex phobias come up, and little to anything good comes of it. That just makes me feel more dislocated.

At various times in my life, I have lived as a monastic. Not surprisingly, those experiences did not address my sexual pain and shame. I have been a buddhist for a long time, but the pain remains.

I have run out of ideas what to do. But I think part of the problem is that I have been running on my old ideas. I have been running with those old ideas wrapped around me, not knowing what else to do.

Right now, in THIS moment, the thing that my heart is hungering to heal is my sexual trauma. I am not attached to what the consequences of this healing might be. What my heart hungers for healing is not about the sex; it's about my ability to connect with life and with others, who in many ways I have shut out.

Thanks for asking me this question. It's exhausted me, but I feel more heart conscious.

Sincerely yours, Daniel Jordan

Thanks for the question, Lama Jigme!

Link to Lama Jigme's web page.

About Me, the Vajra Surfer वज्र

My photo
Los Angeles, California, United States
Hi! ✌ I am a flower-picking ❀ redwood-tree-hugging, ♻ green-party-progressive, 21¼-century reincarnation of John ☮ Lennon from the ♆ spiritual vortex of Santa Cruz, California! I'm a Egytpo-Grecian☥, Neo-Platonic⊿, Gnostic☿, Buddhist⎈-Hinduૐ-Daoist䷀䷁ mystic⁂ and ϕhilosopher-king. 兡 Beyond my preternatural affability there is some acid and some steel.™ I've sober for ⨦20 years. 兡 I like to sing 吉 in my car like I am ☆ live onstage. I chant, which is kind of like singing, except more introverted. I pray for peace 平 and for the enlightenment of all beings. 曰月

Vajrapani, Holder of the Vajra

Vajrapani, Holder of the Vajra
om vajrapani hung phet