Innholdsfortegnelse for Spring 2024 i Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly

UTTAR PRADESH in India—the land where Lord Buddha grew up and discarded His worldly treasures to go in search of enlightenment, where He delivered His first sermon and performed great miracles, where He preached the philosophy of the eightfold path and finally embraced liberation from the cycle of life and death! A visit to the Buddhist Circuit in Uttar Pradesh, India, is the trip of a lifetime. Though Buddhism is not widespread in India, the sacred places related to the life of the Buddha are important destinations for pilgrims, and continue to draw the faithful and the inquisitive from all over the world. The most significant destinations in the Uttar Pradesh Buddhist Circuit are Kapilvastu, where Prince Siddhartha grew up; Sarnath, where He delivered His first sermon; Shravasti; the famed…

ONE OF THE MOST renowned yogis in Tibetan history, Milarepa (1040–1113), transformed his negative karma through deep practice on retreat, in time becoming a great inspiration for practitioners, who still sing his many “songs of realization” describing his path to realization and joy. His name derives from his clan name, “Mila,” with “repa” referring to the simple cotton robe that he wore, which marked him as an accomplished practitioner of tummo (Sanskrit: chandali), the practice of yogically generated “fierce inner heat.” Milarepa received this practice from his root guru, Marpa Lotsawa (1012–1097), who brought tummo from India on one of his three pilgrimage journeys. Following the command of his guru and motivated by deep remorse for his earlier practice of black magic (which is said to have caused the deaths…

A FRIEND recently remarked to me how amazing it was that her baby, no matter how far or in what direction they might roll during the night, always seemed to maintain at least one point of contact with her mother’s body. This is something I am sure many parents can relate to, and it is a common experience of young lovers as well, eager to remain in contact, even in unconsciousness. This thread of constant contact, the thread of continuity, is at the heart of tantra (Tibetan: gyu; meaning continuity). A common synonym for this continuity is “luminosity” (Sanskrit: prabhasvara; Tibetan: osel), also translated as “clear light” and “luminous clarity.” The concept of luminosity can be traced from the earliest Buddhist sources through its development in classical India, and into…

MELVIN MCLEOD: Thank you all. I think it’s ideal to have a panel of the three of you who, I would say, are among the most highly trained Westerners in advanced Vajrayana/tantric practices. Perhaps, Lama Yeshe, we could start with you telling us a bit about your background as a practitioner of advanced Vajrayana practices. LAMA KARMA YESHE CHÖDRÖN: I began my practices of Vajrayana with much more philosophical and linguistic studies: studying the Tibetan language, the typical monastic college curriculum on a scaled-down basis at Rigpe Dorje Institute at Pullahari Monastery in Nepal. Then, after spending some time studying and doing some translation work for the khenpos there, I went into a classical, three-year retreat in the Karma Kagyu lineage, a Mahamudra retreat in Crestone, Colorado, headed by Kyabje…

When appearance and emptiness arise inseparably,the View is realized.When dream and wakefulness are without distinction,Meditation is actualized.When happiness and sorrow seem the same,Action is liberated.When this life and past and future lives are without division,Timeless Awareness is naturally attained.When consciousness and space are coextensive,Reality [Dharmakaya] self-illuminates.When your own mind and Buddha are without any difference,Fruition is spontaneously perfected! —Lama Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdröl (1781–1851) From The Flight of the Garuda, Song Twenty, translation by Ian A. Baker…

THE SPRING 2024 Buddhadharma is dedicated to a set of yogic practices once considered highly secret due to their perceived incompatibility with aspects of monastic life. Yet the Six Dharmas represent the heart essence of the Buddhist tantras and an accelerated path to buddhahood based on activation of the body’s subtle nervous system, configured as a constellation of radiant energy plexuses (Sanskrit: chakras) and flows of vital energy (prana) coursing through channels (nadis) between the pelvic cavity (sometimes inaccurately thought of as the base of the spine) and the crown of the head. The ecstatic consciousness that these practices induce fuses with experiential awareness of the interconnected nature of all phenomena during phases of waking, sleeping, dreaming, and dying, thus leading to liberation from subconscious conditioning and its attendant dissatisfactions.…

THERE IS A LEGEND of a female master, Machik Jobum, who lived sometime in the eleventh to twelfth century. After experiencing severe illness, her father taught her the Six Dharmas (Tibetan: Naro Chodruk), a series of meditations for accomplishing swift awakening. Practicing these meditations, she became a great adept and attained mastery over her body and mind. Machik Jobum had accumulated a heavy burden of negative karma due to a difficult past in which she had committed murder using black magic. However, the Six Dharmas were a remedy for her, providing a path to healing and redemption. Jobum’s story is recounted in Tibetan histories such as The Blue Annals and in Tāranātha’s history of the Kalachakra. It is a reminder that although this system is composed of advanced esoteric practices,…

MY TEACHER Lama Yeshe Rinpoche once told me, in his characteristically blunt manner, “Some people have a lot of knowledge, a lot of wisdom. That’s not you! But you, you can actually do this practice. That is good.” It is with those words still ringing in my ears that I approach this article. With so much brilliant contemporary scholarship on this subject from the likes of Glenn Mullin and B. Alan Wallace, among others, I have little to add insofar as academic reflection on Naropa’s instructions for using lucid dreaming for awakening. But what I can offer is an exploration of the essential core of this practice: What’s the point? How does it work? And how can we do it? TRACING THE SOURCE The notion that dreams have a role…

VAJRAYANA practitioners of all levels of training are encouraged to cultivate some form of “death readiness,” the specific form being dependent on the meditative and yogic maturity of the individual. The most basic form of this training is known as phowa, which can casually be translated as “blast off.” Every school of Tibetan Buddhism has several hundred manuals on phowa applications, with different sects often having their favorites. There also is a tradition of the professional phowa master visiting the home of a deceased practitioner and assisting them in the transference process. That said, I will here only address phowa from the perspective of a personal training. The practice is mentioned by Karma Lingpa in his Bardo Thodol, published and translated in 1927 as The Tibetan Book of the Dead,…

THE CHÖD TRADITION developed by the female Tibetan adept Machik Labdrön in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is a practice aimed at cutting (chod) one’s attachment to the idea of a self through ritualized meditative practices that involve specific musical elements. While the historiography, translation, and hagiography of Chöd practice has received a fair amount of attention from Western scholars, its musical and performative aspects have not been studied to the same degree. The Sound of Vultures’ Wings: The Tibetan Buddhist Chöd Ritual Practice of the Female Buddha Machik Labdrön (SUNY), by Jeffrey W. Cupchik, fills this gap by examining Chöd through the lens of ethnomusicology. In researching this volume, Cupchik apprenticed with recognized Chöd masters in order to better understand the functions of music in the practice. The resulting…