What is the most important information I learned in my years of reading?

Thursday afternoon, during a physical therapy session for some aches and pains, the therapist asked what I did during the day. Being introverted, I responded with a short answer: “Read”. “Read what?” he asked. Slightly longer response: “Oh, about spirituality, religion, consciousness.” Probing further: “How long have you been reading about those subjects?” Answer: “Thirty-plus years.” Further: “What’s the most important information you learned?”

Lying on a table, consciously breathing in and out while doing exercises, wasn’t the best time to contemplate the most important information I had learned in thirty years of reading and taking notes. I rambled something about The Tibetan Book of the Dead and what a Hindu woman had told Morgan Freeman in a video titled The Story of God. In essence she said she viewed truth as the trunk of a tree and all the different religions as branches.

Driving home I wondered how I would have answered the question had I been asked when I wasn’t doing physical therapy and the purpose hadn’t been to distract me from the exercises.

Morning Meditation 1, 9, 2024

Sometimes I wish I had a device that could record my meditations and provide a printout. Today in particular because my meditation actually began about 3 a.m. when I suddenly woke up and began thinking about Merrell-Wolff’s explanation of subject/object consciousness. I fell back to sleep, but the thought process began again when I sat for my official meditation. I’ll do my best to remember.

Everything begins with Consciousness or Light and here I must mix philosophies. I believe the Kabbalah explains it best: There is Ein Sof which is everything, and it sends its Light into Keter and then to the first sephirah which is Hokhmah or Wisdom. Ein Sof retains its Essence. So for my understanding, we do not know, and maybe never will know, what Essence is. I think of it as the unknowable Creator which means we only know its Creation made from Consciousness or Light.

“Thinking about” and “Putting into Practice” are Radically Different

As I wrote in a previous entry, I recently reread Dzogchen Ponlop’s book Mind Beyond Death, and this week I had a chance to practice one of the methods of looking at the nature of the mind…and didn’t succeed very well. I’m referring to “Taking Pain and Sickness as the Path”.

And, I confess, I’m not referring to unbearable pain; I’m referring to a cold and cough. As Dzogchen Ponlop explained, “It is very difficult to transform an experience of intense suffering if we have no basis for working with pain to begin with. Therefore it is initially necessary to work with minor pains and illness and discover how we can bring these to the path.”

So, he continued, we begin with situations in which we feel only a little discomfort. “Whenever we are in pain,” he wrote, “we look for a drugstore; if we have even a slight headache, we reach for the Tylenol.” Or in my case, 5 over-the-counter cold remedies and 2 types of cough drops.

Mind Beyond Death by Dzogchen Ponlop

Thanks to Raffaello Palandri’s blog entry on October 21, 2023, referring to Mind Beyond Death by Dzogchen Ponlop as the book of the day, I began rereading it. I had purchased the book in 2010 on a daytrip with Frank DeMarco to Serenity Ridge Retreat Center in Shipman, Virginia.

I read it then, but rereading it thirteen years later has made a significant difference, especially since I have been re-studying Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between (The Tibetan Book of the Dead).

This morning I realized the essence of Buddhism is contained in the following: the six realms, the five elements, the five skandhas, the Wheel of Life, The Four Noble Truths, The Eightfold Path, The Heart Sutra, the mandala of the five Buddhas, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead.

I have been looking at this material—off and on—since 1991, but my recent study has helped me understand it at a deeper level, especially focusing on the bardos—the in-between moments in life or the gaps between the end of one moment and the beginning of the next.

The Space In-Between, The Bardo, The Gap

Before beginning this blog entry, I sat and stared at the blank computer screen for what seemed like an interminably long time. During the night I had lain awake mentally writing it but, when it was time to type, too many thoughts flooded my mind. Where to start writing about the space “in-between”, the “bardo”, the “gap”? Shall I begin with Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between (The Tibetan Book of the Dead? Or, an article by Chris Wilson in the Duversity Newsletter which a friend emailed to me? Or way back, 40 years ago, when I read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning in which he wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

In Chris Wilson’s article in the Duversity Newsletter he refers to 2-term logic in human psychology, meaning that we are beings who react to stimuli. After we learn a complex task, it is embedded in the neurological structure of our brain and becomes a habit; i.e., we no longer ponder a choice because there is no “in-between”. From this perspective, we live as automatons or robots that have, in essence, given up the last of our human freedoms. Or as Gurdjieff wrote, average human beings spend most of their waking life in a state which isn’t far off from being asleep.

Interesting Timing of Events

I find it interesting how a certain event attracts other similar ones. When I began writing my blog series on The Process of Dying, Jenny sent me an email about Andrew Holecek’s Embodied Philosophy course on The Tibetan Book of the Dead. During the course Holecek mentioned Francesco Fremantle’s book Luminous Emptiness which I had read years previously, so I reread it. Next I re-listened to Robert Thurman’s CD series on Liberation on Hearing in the Between. Then I read a translation and commentary of The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Francesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa. Included with the book was a CD of the same material read by Richard Gere which I have now listened to at least three times.

Then one day when I took a walk downtown into Yellow Springs, I stopped at the Dark Star Bookstore and saw Paul Beard’s book Living On. I took it off the shelf and put it back three times before finally deciding to purchase it. After reading it I wrote several blog entries.

Next, I saw a small article in the Yellow Springs News announcing a book group at the local Dharma Center. The book to be discussed is Pema Chodron’s How We Live Is How We Die. So, I ordered the book online and read it immediately. I’m still debating whether I’ll attend the book group Thursday evening.

Pema Chodron’s new book How We Live Is How We Die

This is an “off-the-cuff” entry relating to my recent entries on the Process of Dying and the book Living On by Paul Beard. I had mentioned to my wife Jenny that I wondered if there was anyone in the local area that would be interested in discussing Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between (The Tibetan Book of the Dead). She suggested sending an email to the local dharma center, which I did, but didn’t receive a response. Then in this week’s edition of the Yellow Springs News there was a very small announcement that the dharma center’s book group would be discussing Pema Chodron’s latest book, How We Live Is How We Die. I ordered the book online Friday, received it Sunday, and finished reading it yesterday, Tuesday. I took 15 pages of notes, most of which were similar to what I had written for the blog entries.

The Wheel of Life and the London Eye (The Millennium Wheel)

This morning I was doing a meditation on the Buddhist Wheel of Life which involves the twelve links of dependent origination: ignorance, formation, consciousness, name and form, 6 senses (including mental formations), contact, sensation, craving, attachment, existence, rebirth, death.

I have done this meditation many times, but this morning I had a different realization. No matter what age people are, the majority of us are already at the eleventh link—rebirth. If we do not prepare for the twelfth link—death—we begin the cycle again in ignorance.

Here I would like to define ignorance not as having limited mental abilities in life, but as not understanding that every manifested person or object is conditioned by something else. We are all Luminous Emptiness or Timeless Luminosity. Hence the meaning of the Heart Sutra: Form is Emptiness and Emptiness is Form.

Between the twelfth link and the first link is the protector of Buddhism—Yama. When I’m meditating, I then focus on Yama and the directions contained in Liberation Upon Hearing in the Between (The Tibetan Book of the Dead). By following that advice, one can get off the Wheel of Life and not recycle in the world of birth, old age, sickness and death.

This morning was different in that I suddenly had an image of the London Eye or the Millennium Wheel. I’ve seen photos of it but have never given it much thought. So, this morning I looked at information on Wikipedia and discovered it’s 443 feet high, holds 800 people at a time, and takes a half hour to revolve one time. There are 32 capsules with each one holding 25 people.

I then saw the connection and realized being on the London Eye is comparable to being on the Wheel of Life. Since I would already be on it and 443 feet in the air [I’m not fond of heights], it wouldn’t make sense to ponder why or how I got there. I’d just be there at the top of the Eye with 24 people in a small capsule. [By the way, I’m also claustrophobic!]

If I were at the top of the Eye, I would only have to endure another fifteen minutes before I could get off. If I’m on the Wheel of Life between the twelfth link of death and the first link of ignorance and don’t get off, how many more times will I go around?

Comments on reading C. G. Jung’s commentary on the book The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation

This morning I began reading The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation: Or the Method of Realizing Nirvana through Knowing the Mind, edited by W. Y. Evans-Wentz with a commentary by C.G. Jung. The book was first published in London in 1954.

I only read the first two pages of Jung’s commentary before taking notes regarding the difference between how the East and West defined the Mind. In the East, the Mind had a metaphysical connotation, whereas in the West, it was viewed more as a “psychic function”. Due to this, Jung stated, the psychology of the West is a “science of mere phenomena without any metaphysical implications”. This has, in turn, isolated the Mind in its own sphere and severed it from its “primordial oneness with the universe. Man himself has ceased to the microcosm and eidolon of the cosmos, and his ‘anima’ is no longer the consubstantial scintilla, or spark of the Anima Mundi, the World Soul.”

Part Nine The Process of Dying

After the mental projections of the peaceful deities, vidyadharas and dakinis are over, the five peaceful buddhas now reappear beginning on the eighth day as “blood-drinking wrathful deities”, and the instruction is to “Recognize them without being distracted”. Each of the five buddhas represents a family, so the name given to these deities is the name of the family followed by the term Heruka. I will use only the first one as an example. He is Glorious Great Buddha-Heruka who emerges from within your own brain but is really Blessed Vairocana with his consort.

Over the next several days thirty wrathful herukas and twenty-eight yoginis will emerge from within your brain and appear before you. As reassurance, the instructions state the following: “You have a mental body of unconscious tendencies, so even if you are killed and cut into pieces you cannot die. You are really the natural form of emptiness, so there is no need to fear.”

But, if you are still afraid, the peaceful deities will appear again in the form of Mahakala and the wrathful deities will appear as the Dharma King, the Lord of Death. Finally, an inspiration-prayer is provided that should be recited with deep devotion. When you are finished, “All fears will disappear and you will certainly become a buddha in the sambhogakaya, so it is very important; do not be distracted”.

And this ends the bardo of dharmata, called “The Great Liberation through Hearing, the bardo teaching which liberates just by being heard and seen”.