Tantra 6 - Cremation Grounds

[Guest guest]

> Much of tantra is shown to take place in cemetaries, cremation grounds, or

> in unspeakable places like amongst lepers. Why is this? Well it's for

two

> reasons, one to point out impermanence, and two to lessen our attachment.

>

> Impermanence. People think they are the aggregates of their experiences.

> They identify with their loins, their stomachs, their money, their jobs,

> their minds, their egos, basically people identify with whatever arises

> without discrimination. People are always getting blow about by the wind

> like balloons. From birth to death people are fighting for a handhold

> against rock and all that happens are somefingernails get broken. The

> handhold is never made firm.

>

> Everything besides the Absolute pure awareness of our true nature is

> impermanent. All reactions to circumstances are in the mind. You see an

> apple and want to polish it and take a bite. I see an apple and remember

the

> wriggling green worm I saw once and shudder and feel repulsed by apples.

Who

> is right?

>

> There's no wrong or right except insofar as how the mind cognizes various

> things. All our actions are based on mental apprehension which varies

> always. The only true perception is that which involves no mind, or just

> pure awareness and clear apprehension.

>

> Attachment. People all fight about their relative viewpoints. On another

> newsgroup someone is blaming God or praising God. What is God to blame or

> praise? All we know of God is in the mind. Does anyone believe that some

> book or another can sum up the creator of all the universes? What

blather.

> And then people invest always more energy in their beliefs until they

fight

> wars in some name or concept. It's always the ideological that wage the

> greatest wars and kill the most people. Look at Communism and Fascism.

>

> Practice your meditation in the cemetary of mental construction. It

should

> be understood even after just a little samadhi that one is unrelated to

> their thoughts which come and go unceasingly. We are not our thoughts.

Our

> thoughts change spontaneously and constantly based on karma. Which is to

say

> that everything relative changes always and the reasons for specific

things

> cannot be found in open systems like life. Karma is a safe term for

> explaining the multiplicity of circumstances.

>

> Tantras show Bhairava and Kali and Tara and Vajravarahi and others

standing

> on corpses. They carry knives, they have fangs which drip blood, and

drink

> out of skulls full of nectar. These things are symbols all of them of the

> Absolute pure awareness which is untouched by all traces of relative

change.

> People call it God, but it is beyond God, as pure awareness is the only

> ultimate in this existance. It is self evident and needs no proof. No

> awareness equals the nihilistic nothing. So awareness is what we're

talking

> about and samadhi is pure awareness. This awareness stands up to all

change

> and therefore dances on the corpse of it. Change is about start and

finish,

> birth and death. The only thing beyond change is the pure unified field

of

> unchanging awareness.

>

> Awarenes in samadhi cuts off thought like a knife. Samadhi is experienced

> when the body is still like a corpse. When engaged in activity the

tantrika

> maintains awareness and they watch all thoughts come and go knowing

without

> attachment that those thoughts are just the remains of spontaneously

arising

> karma, and they cut them off and let them go thus acheiving liberation

from

> making any new karmas.

>

> This state of natural nonattachment and realization of impermanence which

> arises as one meditates and then carries further into daily life as

> awareness grows is symbolized by living or practicing on a corpse or in a

> graveyard.

>

>