The Path of Awakening

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Kongtrul:

 

REGARD ALL PHENOMENA AS DREAMS.

Actual phenomena-that is, the world

and its inhabitants-are objects

that we grasp at with our senses.

These appearances are simply our

mind's manifestations of confusion.

 

In the end, they are not actually

existent in any way whatsoever, but

are like the appearances in a dream

By thinking along these lines,

train yourself to have some feeling

for looking at the world this way.

Should you wonder if mind in itself

is real,

>From THE GREAT PATH OF AWAKENING,

by Jamgön Kongtrul,

© 1993 by Ken McLeod.

 

Pema:

 

REGARD ALL DHARMAS AS DREAMS

More simply, regard everything as

a dream. Life is a dream. Death

is also a dream, for that matter;

waking is a dream and sleeping

is a dream. Another way to put

this is: "Every situation is a

passing memory".

 

It is said that with these slogans

that are pointing to absolute

truth - openness - one should not

say "Oh, yes, I know," but that

one should just allow a mental

gap to open, and wonder, "Could

it be? Am I dreaming this?"

 

Pinch yourself. Dreams are just

as convincing as waking reality.

You could begin to contemplate

the fact that things are not as

solid or as reliable as they seem.

 

Have you ever been caught in the

heavy-duty scenario of feeling

defeated and hurt, and then somehow,

for no particular reason, you

just drop it? It just goes, and

you wonder why you made "Much

ado about nothing." What was that

all about? It also happens when

you fall in love with somebody;

you're so completely into thinking

about the person twenty-four

hours a day. You are haunted and

you want him or her so badly.

Then a little while later,

"I don't know where we went wrong,

but the feeling's gone and I just

can't get it back."

 

We all know this feeling of how

we make things a big deal and

then realize that we're making a

lot out of nothing.

 

Gentleness in our practice...is

like remembering something. This

compassion, this clarity, this

openness are like something we've

forgotten. Sitting here being

gentle with ourselves, we're

rediscovering something. It's

like a mother reuniting with her

child; having been lost to each

other for a long, long time,

they reunite. The way to reunite

with Bodhicitta is to lighten up

in your practice and in your

whole life.

 

That's the essential meaning of

the absolute Bodhicitta slogans -

to connect with the open,

spacious quality of your mind,

so that you can see that there's

no need to shut down and make

such a big deal about everything.

>From START WHERE YOU ARE by

Pema Chödrön, © 1994.

 

Trungpa:

 

REGARD ALL DHARMAS AS DREAMS

 

You can experience that dreamlike

quality by relating with sitting

meditation practice. When you are

reflecting on the breath, suddenly

discursive thoughts begin to arise;

you begin to see things, to hear

things, and to feel things. But

all those perceptions are none

other than your own mental creation.

 

In the same way, you can see that

your hate for your enemy, your

love for your friends, and your

attitude toward money, food, and

wealth are all part of discursive

thought. Regarding things as

dreams does not mean that you

have become fuzzy or woolly, that

everything has an edge of

sleepiness to it. You might

actually have a good dream,

vivid and graphic... For instance,

if you have participated in group

meditation practice, your memory

of your meditation cushion and

the person who sat in front of

you is very vivid, as is your

memory of your food and the sound

of the gong and the bed you slept

in. But none of those situations

is regarded as completely

invincible and solid and tough.

 

Everything is shifty. Things have

a dreamlike quality. But at the

same time, the production of

your mind is quite vivid... what

you perceive is a product of

your mind, using your sense

organs as channels for the sense

perception.

>From TRAINING THE MIND by

Chögyam Trungpa,

© 1993 by Diana Mukpo.

 

Osho:

 

THINK THAT ALL PHENOMENA ARE LIKE

DREAMS

 

Now the work starts. **Atisha is

very condensed, seed-like. That

is the meaning of a sutra; it is

just like a thread, just a hint,

and then you have to decode it.

"Phenomena" means all that you see

all that you experience. All that

can ever be experienced is all

phenomena.

 

Remember, not only are the objects

of the world phenomena and dreams

but also objects of consciousness

 

They may be objects of the world,

they may be just objects of the

mind. They may be great spiritual experiences. You may see Kundalini

rising in you: that too is a

phenomenon - a beautiful dream, a

very sweet dream, but it is a

dream all the same.

 

You may see great light flooding

your being, but that light is

also a phenomenon. You may see

lotuses blooming inside you and

a great fragrance arising within

your being: these too are

phenomena, because you are always

the seer and never the seen,

always the experiencer and never

the experienced, always the

witness and never the witnessed.

>From The Book of Wisdom, by Osho

Used by kind permission of

Osho Foundation International

 

**Biography of Atisha

 

Atisha is the teacher who brought

the Mind Training teaching from

Sumatra to India and then

transmitted it to Tibet. He was

born in India in A.D 982. He was

first initiated into, and became

an adept in, the esoteric and

magical practices of Tantra, which

were very popular in India at the

time, and in fact were to soon

to absorb and extinguish Indian

Buddhism.

 

However, when already a well-

established practitioner of

Tantra, he underwent a change of

heart and made a decision to

renounce the search for magical

power.

 

Wishing to develop compassion and selflessness, at the age of thirty

he took Buddhist vows. Wishing to

study with the master of

compassion Dharmakirti (Tibetan:

Serlingpa), he traveled to the

faraway land of Suvarnadvipa

(present-day Sumatra). He stayed

there for twelve years, learning,

among many other things, the Mind

Training practice. Such was

Atisha's gratitude to Dharmakirti

that he was unable even to hear

his name without bursting into

tears. On his return to India,

Atisha taught for fifteen years at

different monasteries and was

recognized as both the most

learned and the most personally

realized teacher in all India.

 

He started to receive invitations

to teach in Tibet, which he

initally refused. (Tibet at that

time had an enormous hunger for

true Buddhist teaching but an

almost total lack of reliable

teachers, due to the brief but

severe persecution of Buddhism by

the insane King Langdarma.)

 

Once, in his role as head of

discipline at the Vikramsila

monastery, he concurred in the

expulsion of a monk for drinking

alcohol as part of a tantric

ceremony. The goddess Tara, his

yidam, then came to him in a

dream and said that he was

responsible for the expulsion of

a sincere practitioner, and that

as penance he should go to Tibet

and teach. The next time the

Tibetans invited him, he accepted.

 

The story is told that he had

heard that the Tibetans were very

open and friendly, so that he

would have no-one to challenge

him in his compassion practice.

So he took along his sulky,

bad-mannered Bengali tea boy so

that he would have someone to

stimulate him in his

 

Mind Training.

 

He had difficulty getting

permission to go from the head of

Vikramsila, since his prestige

in India was so great. Eventually

was allowed to go to Tibet only

on condition that he return in

three years. However, the need

for him and his teaching in Tibet

was so great that he never

returned, but died there twelve

years later. The information in

this biography is mainly taken

from Atisha and Tibet, by Alaka Chattopadhaya. There are a lot of

uncertainties in this history,

fully explained by Mr Chattopadaya,

which the above account glosses over

 

yidam **union; unity for end of

spiritual development

 

from Flow org:

 

http://us.geocities.com/mi_nok/awake.html

 

----Karta