Myron S:
Luna Swift Arrow... Life can be pretty good at putting up road blocks and diverting a persons attention, so I haven't been here often lately. Thanks for your thoughts. It's a very interesting perspective that I was not aware of. I'm not very scholarly in matters of Buddhist philosophy, but I will take a look at Padmasambhava's Initiation. How would you describe your initiation?
I'd always wanted to understand the meaning behind religious texts, so I sought out meditators who might help me to learn about what it meant to be a human being, in its fullest sense. Eventually, I asked for initiation from a Lama, and he gave me an empowerment. That day, he fixed the Sun in its place, filling me with a fine ale, with a fine head - a poetic way of describing a very real deluge/baptism of fire and water (
The Sun). A little later - life does get in the way sometimes - I sought a further empowerment from another monk, who was very kind to me. Some days after his initiation, I started to feel a cut in the heart, a cut within which dwelt a void, and that I can only define as being profoundly empty, as if I had hit a perceptual wall beyond which I couldn't penetrate. I continued to practice my meditation, which was very easy at this time - Trungpa makes a comment in one of his books that the Guru will share some of his subtle body with you, and that's exactly how it seems. This is important, because initiation is a direct experience of non-duality between you and another, as the Buddha experienced in the Maha Saccaka Sutta. I felt a pronounced forward pulling in the belly. It would feel as if droplets were drizzling onto my skin from thin air, and my nose, ears, and eyes brimmed with pressure - this card is interesting:
The Tower My body became enlivened with sensation, particularly in the crown of the head, with its rustling sensations, and a sense of cutting into the very top; and also, a little later, in the belly, where it felt as if tiny, burning beads were moving slowly about. A bead-pair, cooler, moved ever so slowly from the base of the back, upward, and up over the head, to between the eyebrows. From the nose emanated not-so-subtle rods of sensation. Cool feelings streamed out from the heart. My forehead felt very soft. At some point, a nimitta appeared, a single pearl among several, expanding slowly to a portal within an organic-looking tunnel. I presume that this is the circle you see in the ox-herding pictures, and the meanig of the clouds behind Tibetan deities. My throat would fill with descending balls of sensation. At one point, a jolt descended into my torso, from the left eyebrow, right into the belly like an electric spark.
And so on, and so forth, an endless display of sensation which continues to this day, though never in the same manner from one week to the next, marked by a ceaseless movement of spirit, like invisible Cain wandering eternally, or the Damaru turned endlessly by the bone-lineage nun. Marvellous stuff. I really don't do it justice with my descriptions. A universe within a fathom-long body, a creation of a world within a body, with Sun and Moon, full of rivers and life.
One thing worth mentioning, since new feelings can arouse uncertainty and anxiety - spirit is depicted in texts as water; fire, down in the belly, is linked to sexual or aggressive or unpleasurable feeling states. From what the texts are depicting, one leads to the other, so Padmasambhava is placed on a pyre, to be burnt, and yet water rises as the flames are stoked. In this sense, unpleasant emotions, even day to day ones, are rebuilding you in spirit, exactly as they did for Milarepa and Virupa. Christ is scourged before Resurrection and Buddha is assailed before his Enlightenment. To Christian saints, the influx of Grace brought about the birth of troublesome sons. But these sons would assist the work of Grace, and in return Grace softened the effect of the sons. A maiden binds the maw of the beast, and yet the two are connected:
Grace. In this tarot card, the crown of the head is enlivened, and so is the belly, which we see as a fiery mane.
So, Paradise is the state of a man prior to the event depicted in the Tower card. Adam and Eve suffer after the spirit arrives to rework Man in God's image. Buddha started out as a Prince, living in a palace, away from the world of suffering. In leaving Paradise/Palace, death is encountered, as is knowledge of suffering. But death to one world is rebirth into a new one, which is why the Sun card linked above depicts a child.