Drupon Rinpoche retreat and how the tummo is coming along.

 

I went down to the Samye Ling last week, the first time I've been there since the same retreat last year. Usually, I feel frustrated by sitting in the temple all day, most listening to Q and As, or stuff about the Gampopa text the rinpoche is teaching from, but this time the day just sailed by after the usual settling in time. I sat from half eight in the morning till eight at night (with breaks), staring down at my postcard of Dorje Sempa. This puts you in a semi-meditative state, but most of my meditations these days are full of vase breathing, a no no in a temple packed with folk.

I was expecting to be staring down at my old postcard of Lama Yeshe, taken about thirty years ago. I thought I should do this since what I'm doing is based on Guru Yoga, and I don't concentrate so much on Lama Yeshe as I do on the Dorje Sempa illustration, but at about the time when the photo was taken, Lama Yeshe told me, after I'd told him about going through a series of gurus every morning, told me to concentrat on him. He did this rubbing his thumb on his chest in a very deliberate fashion.

So, I'd been concentrating on the Lama Yeshe photo and I was getting quite good at visualising it. Of course, it's simple. Trying to visualise Dorje Sempa is still beyond me, by miles. The second night I was in Potala House, I had a wee dream. All that happened was my granddaughter, Rowena, toddled towards me (she's about fifteen months old) and gave me the Dorje Sempa postcard I use for visualising (as if I could!). In  the dream the postcard of Dorje Sempa was perfectly visible. I was told that this dream meant that I should do more with Dorje Sempa, and so I was staring at that postcard throughout.

In the evening I was reading Gold Wrapped in Rags, a biography of a Thailand forest monk. It is the best thing I've read about meditational experiences and the first 100 pages or so was brilliant. The Tibetans are shy about talking about experiences. I suppose experiences aren't the point, but not many people are going to get realisation, so folk like me feel inspired by books like this. It's free. I got it off a link on facebook.

Hard to say what was going on while I wasn't really doing any vase breathing, but it's coming yet for all that. Every fortnight something occurs and hope soars. (That's maybe why they don't rate experiences. Hope soars, but the next day where is it?). But I really feel that the wind is at my back now and this winter should be much better than the last. There was maybe a hint of desperation once my relationship finished and I knew I was going into the last phase of my life on my own. Not much option but the plunge in a more or less solitary existance. But I wanted to know that I do without much support and stick with it.

I'm much more confident now in what I'm doing now. I told the wee lama, with whom I had an wonderful hour's conversation, that I'd go to Beaumont in the Spring. Who knows if I'll ever be able to dry off anything, but day by day the experiences change, so I'll post more here even although I feel I'm trying to describe the undescribible.

Almost all my books on Kindle are free today. And for the next five days.

Another update on the inner fire meditations

    

                    I thought I should post here because if I wait till I can make steam appear on a wet tee-shirt then I might wait .... for who knows how long.

                  This is not to say that things have not been happening! When I sat to meditate this morning, it was not the same meditation I was entering as it was last week. Even yesterday. Something does feel as if it is opening and a little further up into my throat.

                   It was a year past in October when something happened when I was meditating and I thought, Here, we go! Here comes the heat! Not for the first time, but it did feel significant.

                    One reason for that was that I felt a wee bit trepidation. The last time I had any of that was decades ago when the pulses were shaking down my arms on the outbreath of vase breathing. Sid, RIP, on the Holy Isle mentioned that. The wee lama asked me if I was scared a while before that. Scared is progress!

                    It was nearly like a wave of flames coming up your torso, so you kind of pull back and away though you can't lift away from something inside you.

                    That's happened another twice, I think, but the problem with this path is that I can't remember ever having down down it, so I don't know the signs. All I know is that the meditations seem to be developing day by day. Also, when I'm not doing vase breathing, sometimes I have felt close to tranquility, but it doesn't last for long.

                    I was wanting to get some success with this meditation before I went back to Beaumont. I don't want to be able to do this in retreat and then come out of retreat and go backwards. This was perhaps not a great idea since I thought I'd be steaming wee tee shirts ages ago.