Reddit mentions of Tantric Practice in Nying-ma

Another rich week in practice both on and off cushion: with /u/CoachAtlus in town SPUDS was very active and hung out most days last week. I truly cannot understate the power and significance of Sangha: to my friends who show me what is possible, that validate and flesh out experience, point out where to go, inspire me to help others along the way, and to really make the most of this life – my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude goes to you. For those who feel this is lacking in their life: participate here! Join the discord, which is really getting lively (thanks /u/roses- , you’ve been doing an awesome job), or better yet, start your own Sangha, even if there’s only one other person at the start. As the saying goes: if you build it, they will come.

After reviewing what it takes to master stage 8 I’ve doubled-down on concentration practice, which feels reminiscent of intensive physical workout and has been quite fun. After reading the instructional half of Right Concentration my main focus is familiarizing myself with the jhanic territory, and I’m quite pleased with my findings thus far. For the last few sits I’ve spent 30 minutes on metta practice, switch gears to breath at the nose, then observe a pleasant sensation (usually in the head / throat / heart). Despite generating a ton of piti and reaching access concentration pretty well, it has taken approximately 20 minutes to stumble into 1st jhana. Once I arrive though it stabilizes, and I’ve been able to run up and down 1st-4th jhana. The most notable snag occurs between 3rd and 4th, where piti bursts from nowhere like a covered pot boiling over; what surprises me is that in 3rd piti is gone and I feel equanamous, nor am I expecting / craving 4th, but it’s a clunky shifting of gears. Level of absorption is fairly light (e.g. – sounds are lowly audible) but concentration deepens to the point where mental proliferation ceases for a while. On my half day retreat last Sunday I was able to sit comfortably for 1:45, so jhana does indeed seem like the ticket to mastering stage 8. That said, learning the jhanas for their own sake is plenty good for me as it’s fun territory to hang out in, but I’m just glad that I have direction and know where to put energy and effort.

Aside from this, the imaginal / magickal / tantric aspects of practices have really opened up via metta, which served as a gateway into something even deeper, and from it I’m tapping into a lot of juice (the energy body is quite intense all day long). For reference, here’s my metta sequence that led me to the imaginal (note: after repeating my stock phrase 3x for each object I’ll improvise a monologue towards them):

self -> benefactor -> neutral -> one who is suffering (instead of a “difficult person”) -> generate a visual glow from the core that permeates the entire body -> send it to SPUDS -> /r/streamentry -> all practitioners -> all beings (which gets really detailed; single-celled organisms, animals, rocks, anything that comes to mind, those who are suffering, those who are well, etc.) -> the infinite expanse of the universe, which then leads to void [black visual field] -> rest in void and invoke a golden image of the Buddha: from here, I’ll ask for help on being a bodhisattva, give thanks for the Buddha’s inspiration, then I’ll imagine him multiplying in my visual field until its completely crowded -> imagine a burst of light raining into the crown chakra -> settle into all sensations that arise from it (piti, deep absorption, metta, etc).

Having a sense of how powerful the mind can be, it’s interesting to find myself in this realm of practice given my non-religious upbringing. And yet, Burbea’s teachings on emptiness and modes of seeing really opened me up to new avenues of practice, namely tapping into “divine” energy. Prior to my deeper practice this would’ve completely turned me off, but now I see the heartfelt application of these techniques as a means to greater concentration and increased sense of well-being (thus priming the ground for insight); there’s no stake in whether or not something is conventionally true, but simply (yet powerfully) a way to orient the mind towards a specific goal. I haven’t felt this attuned to the power of imagination since I was a child, where the world seemed more mysterious and wondrous than it did as I grew up. Turns out that if all is mind one can shape it accordingly, and though I’m not here to convince anyone anything the world seems utterly different than it used to, even just months ago (let alone a year). This thing that we conceive of as reality consists of infinite multitudes, and through practice we can be more open to seeing and accessing them to embody compassion and understanding, which leads to the reduced suffering of all beings.

Coming back down to earth: inspired by /u/flumflumeroo’s recent post I plan on doing a year in review when the time comes, but I’ll say this for now: my sense of well-being and happiness has been a solid 9 or 10 every day for at least a month. Given that I had such crippling depression last fall to the point that ceasing to live had its allure at times (though the act of suicide seemed utterly repulsive, I would’ve preferred a slow nodding off into non-existence) I feel utterly and completely transformed. So yeah, the buddhadharma is damn powerful. How awesome to discover it and taste these early fruits – in a conventional sense this is only the beginning, and given how generous this process has been I trust in it fully. With that said, what choice do I even have? None at all.

EDIT:

Currently reading Tantric Practice In Nying-Ma

https://www.amazon.com/Tantric-Practice-Nying-ma-Khetsun-Rinbochay/dp/0937938149/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493148999&sr=8-1&keywords=tantric+practice+in+nyingma

And this .pdf on Pure Land Buddhism:

http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/pureland.pdf

Also, this Buddhism lineage chart is pretty neat:

http://holyvajrasana.org/lineage/lineage-tree-of-all-major-buddhist-sects#prettyPhoto