Calling Home

Dear Teresa,

                           I’ve been back at work  (well, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning)  for a couple of weeks now, so I thought it would be a good time to write you a wee letter about how my meditations have been going since I had a word with Lama Yeshe.

                           The lama told me that if  I kept on with using the symbols and channels for meditation, I would “unleash energies”  I wouldn’t be able to control, and that my mind would go into “a very bad place”, and that I’d have to stop meditating.

                           He also said I should do the Dorje Sempa and that I could continue with the Medicine Buddha sadhana I was doing.

                           This left me very troubled, confused and a bit disturbed. I know from reading Gopi Krishna’s book “Living with Kundalini” that a bad arousal can be very serious and I thought this might be what the lama was warning me about.

                           I wasn’t sure. One part of me was thinking that the lama might be giving me the party line, which is that everyone irrespective of anything has to do this Dorje Sempa stuff. Another part of me has been trying to think of the lama as being the same as Shakymuni so I could do this vajrayana stuff, and from this point of view obviously I had to do what he told me.

                           I was hoping to use the meeting with the lama to launch myself into a month of very serious meditating (at least for me!), but meeting him had quite the opposite effect. A lot of my practise for the last three or four years has been on these channels and symbols, particularly the symbol at the navel chakra. More recently I’ve been using them all and raising awareness up to the crown chakra. This was giving me tremendous amounts of bliss even although I can’t do the visualisations properly.

                          The routine I had with the Medicine Buddha sadhana ended up not with me trying to dissolve everything into emptiness, but going into this stuff with the channels and symbols.

                          After the meeting with the lama, I was quite disconsulate and thought I should perhaps go back to where I started, which was using Susquehanna as a mantra and just doing calming meditations and insight meditations. My confidence in what I was doing has only recently come back. I’m now doing some vase breathing again, but without trying to visualise anything and without holding my breath for very long. The lama did not tell me to stop doing vase breathing.

                          Tha lama said I should continue with the Medicine Buddha sadhana. I think I should tell you what my idea of the Medicine Buddha sadhana is.

                          I go through the dying process. Mirage, clouds, etc. I arise as the Medicine Buddha. (No channels or symbols at first anymore). I supplicate, etc., and imagine the Medicine Buddha in front of me. I ask for purification of the body, speech and mind, and try to imagine the coloured lights coming out of the Medicine Buddha and into me. Here, I am thinking of the three symbols in my head, throat and chest. This makes the penetration of the lights easier for me.

                         Then I imagine the Medicine Buddha above me head and ask for my addictions to be cured, etc. Lots of bliss is coming down from the visualisation at this point. Then I try to dissolve the visualisation into myself and re-affirm myself as the Medicine Buddha. Then I try to imagine the symbol at the heart and dissolve everything into that. Then I dissolve that.

                          I try to imagine the Kalachakra Mandala in front of me and then try to imagine myself as the Medicine Buddha hovering over the Mandala (I’m sure this can’t be right, but I don’t know what else it should be. I can’t imagine myself in a palace.) Then I offer all this up to the Medicine Buddha appearing in front of me, but at a bit of a distance this time. Then I try to imagine the Medicine Buddha over my head while I am the Medicine Buddha hovering still over the Kalachakra Mandala. I’m really not very good at this, but this is what I’m trying to do.

                          Then  I dissolve everything into the symbol at the heart centre and then dissolve that into emptiness. Then I reverse the dying process, dedicate the merit, and stop meditating.

                           I had a look at the Medicine Buddha sadhana in a book when I got home, and it’s nothing like this. If I’m doing something wrong here, please let me know.

                           Within this, I think I’m doing the mandala offering and the guru yoga,  the two out of the four aspects of the Dorje Sempa stuff.

                            One of the remaining aspects is 100,000 prostrations. I take an awful lot of exercise for someone who is fifty nine years old. I cycle, run, shadow box, skip, do some yoga and tai chi, as well as dig my allotment. I doubt if doing prostratrions is going to make me feel humble. I feel very humble when I dig my allotment. If the lama had to me to go and do that, or do 100,000 sun salutations I’d be much happier. Doing the prostrations is going to stop me doing something I think would be better for me, but I have started doing the prostrations anyway. I think I’ve done about six hundred in the last couple of weeks. I can probably do about three hundred a week. I’ll be dead before I get through 100,000 at this rate.

                           I cannot bring myself to do the 100 syllable mantra. I don’t speak Tibetan. I have been using Om Mani Padme Hung and Om Ah Hung Vajra Gurus Padme Siddhi Hung for nearly fifteen years, but doing the 100,000 recitations of the 100 syllable mantra will stop me meditating. I don’t have the time in my life right now for this. If I can get out of my half time job before I die, I will have time, but right now I don’t. I don’t want to have to memorise a huge mantra in a foreign language I don’t speak, but I will do so if I have the good fortune to do a proper retreat sometime. It doesn’t make any sense to me to do that right now.

                        I’ve been having problems with my ego ever since speaking to the lama. I could do a few of the 100 syllable mantras at my work, but it would take ten lifetimes to complete 100,000 at that rate. That’s why I gave up on them when I was first had the Dorje Sempa initiation.

                          I’ve had two wonderful meditations today, but I’ve been thinking about writing you this letter for some time. In fact, I think I’ll post it to you as an attachment to an email to get it out of the way.

                          Sorry, but I can’t send a tenner with the email. The next time I write, I’ll double the money!!! If you think everything is okay with what I’m doing now, you don’t need to bother getting back to me.

                           It’s great for me to have this connection with you. I’m sorry if I was creating concern. I’ll try to get down to the Samye Ling for a couple of nights when the schools break up in October.

                                           Yours in the Buddha,

                                                       Hotboy