Yin Ling shared:

A very crucial point on why we need to keep meditating, from the  book "ocean of definitive meaning" teaching by Thrangu Rinpoche : 

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If kleshas really existed, if they had true and solid existence, it would require effort to abandon them. But once you see their emptiness, once you see that they are empty, they will gradually disappear. I say “gradually,” because simply seeing the emptiness of one particular klesha on one occasion does not prevent the reoccurrence of kleshas. 

When you practice tranquility meditation, one of the effects is that your kleshas are weakened, but, as you will remember, aside from weakening them, the practice of tranquility does not eradicate them. But when you practice insight meditation, you actually see their nonexistence. Through seeing the nonexistence of a klesha, it is conquered, it is completely pacified. That particular klesha at that moment is pacified and conquered, but that does not prevent a reoccurrence. The reason why simply seeing the emptiness of a klesha once does not prevent its reoccurrence is that we have a strong habit of entertaining kleshas, which we have accumulated throughout beginningless time. For example, you look at your mind and you observe the emptiness of a thought or klesha that is present within it. Then you arise from that meditation and you no longer observe the emptiness of thoughts and kleshas. In other words, simply observing the emptiness of kleshas on one occasion is not the end of the path.

There will also be fluctuations in your experience, which means that some- times you will have a heightened awareness of the emptiness of kleshas, and it will be easy to observe that emptiness directly; and sometimes your aware- ness of emptiness will seem somehow dull or diminished, and it will not serve to enable you to see the emptiness of your kleshas. As long as the habit of indulging kleshas has not been eradicated, there will continue to be the need actually to observe their emptiness again and again.

Although someone has seen dharmata, has directly experienced the nature of mind, this insight has to be further cultivated. In the same way, on the path of mahamudra, if having seen the emptiness of kleshas in experience once, you do not continue to cultivate that insight and you just abandon it, this will not have any effect on the rest of your kleshas. So there is a great deal of difference between what is abandoned simply through being

seen once or a few times, and what has to be abandoned through the path of cultivation. Therefore it has been said by many mahasiddhas, “Our bad habits are like the tendency of a scroll that has been kept rolled up to roll itself back up every time we try to unroll it.” The insight into the nature of one klesha is not the end of the path.

Therefore, even practitioners who have realized the nature of mind must continue practicing meditation. And it need not be said that practitioners who have not realized the nature of mind must also continue practicing. In short, the actual practice of meditation is very important. As was said by Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thayé in The Essence of Generation and Completion, “The achievement of the final fruition depends upon continuous diligent application. This in turn must be carried out throughout both meditation and post- meditation, through the application of both mindfulness and alertness.”

As for what the result of practice is, it has been said by many teachers, “The sign of having heard the dharma is to be peaceful and subdued. The sign of having meditated is to have no kleshas.” It is said that you can tell whether or not you have genuinely heard the teachings and understood their point by whether or not you are tame and peaceful in your conduct. And you can tell whether or not your meditation is effective by whether or not your kleshas are diminishing. Ideally, someone should finally have no kleshas what- soever. But even on the way to that klesha-free state, your kleshas and thoughts should diminish. Therefore, I think that it is of far greater impor- tance than the experience of dramatic instantaneous pointing out that peo- ple be taught mahamudra as a full system of instruction that they can implement on their own gradually through diligent application using either one of the three texts by the Ninth Gyalwang Karmapa—The Ocean of Defin- itive Meaning, Dispelling the Darkness of Ignorance, or Pointing Out the Dhar- makaya—or one of the texts by Dakpo Tashi Namgyal—either Moonbeams of Mahamudra or The Clarification of the Natural State.

In short, I think it is of far more importance that people receive this kind of complete and systematic instruction so that they can gradually develop experience on their own, than that some kind of dramatic pointing-out pro- cedure be done.

Jachym Jerie
Totally agree especially this:
In short, I think it is of far more importance that people receive this kind of complete and systematic instruction so that they can gradually develop experience on their own, than that some kind of dramatic pointing-out pro- cedure be done.
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Yin Ling
it is a very good book, alongside pointing out the dharmakaya.
Thrangu rinpoche wisdom is deep
I just bought and downloaded 58 books of his after loving this one so much ahahaha
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Oskar Melkeraaen Aas
Bullseye, thanks for sharing l think it is a huge problem these days that one have one or two breakthrough and then think the work is over, l think especially for those who do not have a teacher this happens and it causes alot of confusion regarding what is enlightenment among the common man and in spiritual circles.
Nature of mind has to be unintereupted, kleshas has to be destroyd
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Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
> If kleshas really existed, if they had true and solid existence, it would require effort to abandon them. But once you see their emptiness, once you see that they are empty, they will gradually disappear. I say “gradually,” because simply seeing the emptiness of one particular klesha on one occasion does not prevent the reoccurrence of kleshas.
> When you practice tranquility meditation, one of the effects is that your kleshas are weakened, but, as you will remember, aside from weakening them, the practice of tranquility does not eradicate them. But when you practice insight meditation, you actually see their nonexistence. Through seeing the nonexistence of a klesha, it is conquered, it is completely pacified.
Wonderful, wonderful! Like MMK. And like this excerpt I really like which was discussed elsewhere some time ago:
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In the Questions of Adhyāśaya Sūtra (Adhyāśayasaṃśōdana Sūtra), the Buddha makes this point in a dialogue with a disciple (CTB 161):
"For example, during a magical display, a man sees a woman created by a magician and desire arises in him. His mind becomes ensnared with desire, and he is frightened and ashamed in front of his companions. Rising from his seat, he leaves and later considers the woman to be ugly, impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless. O child of a good lineage, what do you think? Is that man behaving correctly or incorrectly?"
"Blessed One, he who strives to consider a nonexistent woman to be ugly, impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless behaves incorrectly."
The Blessed One said, "O child of a good lineage, you should similarly view those bhikṣus, bhikṣuṇīs, laymen, and laywomen who consider unproduced and unarisen phenomena to be ugly, impermanent, unsatisfactory, and selfless. I do not say that these foolish persons are cultivating the path; they are practicing in an incorrect manner."
~ Searching for the Self, p. 233-234, Dalai Lama & Thubten Chodron
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Stian Gudmundsen Høiland
André, do you remember where we started a discussion about this earlier?
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André A. Pais
https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10159886657267158&id=617267157&set=pb.617267157.-2207520000..&source=42
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AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM

All Thrangu Rinpoche 58 Books at $35 (only 60 cents per book!)

All Thrangu Rinpoche 58 Books at $35 (only 60 cents per book!)

• Bartek Nowacki shared a link.

  ht42ftgp0u1oa8ch110  ·

  Hi guys, I was reading an interview with John Peacock and there is something interesting about Anatta, Alaya, Rigpa:

  "It’s about the radically contingent nature of everything that leaves us with nothing left to grasp onto. Dependent Origination, in its universal form and in its sense of human becoming, is unique to world thought and utterly undermining of every other system of thought. It is so challenging, in fact, that both in early India and in current Buddhist teaching, few are able—or willing—to get it totally.

  Can you say more about this?

  Some of the movements and trends we see in Western Buddhism actually are akin to what was going on in the ancient period—a reification of some element of thought or experience. First there was an attempt to treat the notion of a person, a puggala, as somehow privileged metaphysically, much like with the modern psychological self. Even after Nāgārjuna reiterated the absolute emptiness of any thing, very soon after we begin to hear that “everything is empty except for one thing,” the mind. A whole metaphysics of the mind springs up, first around a storehouse consciousness (alaya), and then around a primordial or perfected consciousness (rigpa). These ideas of course resonate easily with both Judeo-Christian, Romantic era, and New Age notions in the Western tradition and thus have great popular appeal in modern Dharma teaching.

  Even if these ideas came initially as a report on experience, which I believe many of them did, it shows a tendency of the human mind to grasp after something to hold onto and to solidify it. This is what is getting us today, “Just fall back on your awareness, just be aware of awareness itself.” When awareness is used as a noun like this, it ends up looking strangely like some Upanishadic Brahman.

  But the Buddha’s final words in the Mahāparinibbāna Sutta are “Everything is evanescent; strive on diligently.” He is encouraging us to be fearless in the face of radical contingency. He knows that we are going to go running away to the safest haven we can just as quickly as possible. In fact if we try to create a false haven for ourselves, we end up just dukkharing, creating more suffering for ourselves. I think that is the absolute radical nature of it—impermanence so profound and far reaching there cannot be any fixed notion of the self.".

  Full interview here:

  buddhistinquiry.org

  Back to the Source

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André A. Pais
Admin
The nature of mind is supposed to be beyond affirmation and denial. Being stuck on affirming it is as bad as being stuck on denying it.
Impermanence is a relative teaching (ultimately, all are), because if there is no arising, abiding or ceasing, there can't be any "evanescence" either.
(Even if there is no Evanescence, they still dropped a few good albums back in the days! )
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Bartek Nowacki
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There is no absolute point of view.
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Soh Wei Yu
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While many teachers and students may reify rigpa, rigpa is not reified in original dzogchen texts and teachings:
http://www.awakeningtoreality.com/.../a-letter-to-almaas...

AWAKENINGTOREALITY.COM
A Letter to Almaas on Dzogchen and Longchenpa
A Letter to Almaas on Dzogchen and Longchenpa
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Soh Wei Yu
Admin
The alaya of mahayana sutras is also not a reified entity.
Thrangu rinpoche explains in his book “pointing out the dharmakaya”:
“The Seventh and Eighth Consciousnesses
Previously, we looked at the first six consciousnesses: the eye consciousness, ear consciousness, nose consciousness, tongue consciousness, tactile con- sciousness, and mental consciousness. Five of these, the consciousnesses of the five gates or five senses, are obviously intimately connected with the physi- cal body, as they rely upon particular organic supports in order to function. These experiences of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling are gen- erated in dependence upon the physical body. Even the sixth consciousness, which is, in a sense, less physically oriented, is still intimately connected with
the body in the way we experience it.
It is the seventh and eighth consciousnesses that we might take to be fun-
damentally different from the body. The seventh consciousness is called the consciousness that is mental affliction; the eighth consciousness is called the alaya consciousness. The eighth consciousness, the alaya, is called that because it is itself the ground of consciousness. It is that mere cognitive lucid- ity which is the fundamental level of consciousness.
Earlier, the terms “unstable consciousnesses” and “stable consciousnesses” were mentioned. Unstable means a consciousness that is generated when var- ious causes and conditions come together and subsequently vanishes when those causes and conditions are no longer present together. The first six con- sciousnesses are like that. The seventh and eighth are stable, which does not mean permanent, but means they are continuous. They never stop func- tioning.
The eighth consciousness in particular, the alaya consciousness is subtle, not obvious; it never becomes more obvious, and it never simply disappears or ceases to function altogether. Nor is it permanent, because it is not the same consciousness that passes through time. For example, the alaya con- sciousness of last year, of last month, of yesterday, like the five conscious- nesses or six consciousnesses that were generated at those times, has ceased to exist. Nevertheless, the habits of those consciousnesses and the habits of the actions performed at those times have been retained in the continuity of the alaya; therefore, in each moment, the alaya consciousness retains those habits. Eventually the results of these karmas, these actions and habits, arise or emerge as form, much like the way that, at night, when we’re dreaming, the images and habits stored in the daytime emerge as dream images. What emerges from the alaya consciousness arises as both body and mind, the expe- rience of a body and the experience of a mind.
The alaya consciousness retains the particular habits that are implanted through one’s actions and habituation throughout time, as well as the begin- ningless habit of ignorance. All of these habits that are stored in the alaya con- sciousness re-emerge from it in the form of various appearances. That is how the eighth consciousness functions, how it projects appearances.
The seventh consciousness is called the consciousness which is mental affliction, or the afflicted consciousness; essentially, it is fixation on a self. The seventh consciousness is that faculty which fixates on the cognitive aspect of the alaya consciousness and mistakes it to be “I,” or a self. On the basis of mistakenly fixating upon that awareness aspect of the alaya consciousness as a “self,” it designates “others” as well. That’s why it’s called the consciousness which is mental affliction because this duality between self and other is the
root of all mental affliction, or klesha. This is not the same as when we con- sciously think “I.” That happens on the level of the sixth consciousness. The seventh consciousness is stable, which is to say, it is constant; it is always there. Whether you recollect yourself or not, whether you think of yourself or not, there is a fixation on this imputed self that is always there, whether you’re eating, talking, in the midst of activity, no matter what you’re doing; and it never stops.
The alaya consciousness arises as apprehended objects and an apprehend- ing subject. The seventh consciousness fixates on the appearance of the appre- hending subject as a self and, then, on the appearances of apprehended objects as other. In that way, through the action of these consciousnesses, the appearances of body and mind arise as distinct from one another, in the sense that the body appears as an apprehended object, while the mind appears as an apprehending subject. They’re distinct in appearing that way, but they’re not, in fact, different from one another, since they are merely two aspects of a single appearance that arises through the projection of the alaya conscious- ness. In that sense, as well, they are beyond being the same or different.”
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