Tag: Zen Buddhism

Sacred Texts: Timeless Methods of the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra

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Stare at sunlight reflected in water or in some object — and in those moments forget yourself. —Dvapa Nanam (in the Paul Reps style)

Introduction to the Text

The Vijñanabhairava (or Vigyan Bhairav) is an ancient text that outlines many simple methods intended to lead a person to the “spontaneous recognition” of their true nature. Like all the nongradual paths of instant illumination — Tantra, Dzogchen and Zen — the viewpoint of the Vigyan is that a slight shift in perception is all that is needed to discover the Self, recognize your true nature, reach nondual awareness, which is the same ordinary awareness and is always there in the background, or whatever you want to call that state. That coveted nondual awareness everyone talks about, that “cosmic consciousness” — you already have it, you just need to recognize it — like catching a glimpse of sun through clouds that part to reveal an endless sky.

Today it is said that the Vigyan gives 112 of these methods, but it actually contains 163 Sanskrit verses with very important information also given at the beginning and end, which present the philosophy and metaphysics, the nature of reality, which can be thought of as the “bread” of a sandwich containing the “meat” of the methods within. The beginning, and especially the end, may be the most abstract and esoteric parts, while the “112 methods” are the practical manual part of the book. Yet to me there appear to be more than one hundred and twelve methods.

The metaphysical together with the practical features are precisely what make this text a “Tantra,” which works with what is accessible (the body, the senses, perceptions, conceptions, and so on) rather than being just another dry text of philosophy or ritual. Its methods work with living energy that are neither ritual nor practice — they’re simply pokes and pricks and tricks meant to draw your attention to something important. No person is expected to understand or use them all! On the contrary — so many are given so that everyone can find a few that work for them. If even one or two methods work for you, count yourself lucky — that’s all you need!

Comments on Its Structure and Translation

It seemed obvious to me when reading the text that it must have undergone a long period of development, probably several centuries, and that its methods were grouped under broad themes, such as the body, the senses, staring with the eyes, visualizations, meditations on consciousness, on emptiness, and so on. Therefore it seemed equally obvious to treat the verses and methods not as scripture carved in stone but as individual building blocks, some of which I selected and arranged into a more coherent narrative. (The same approach was used for every other text presented on this blog.) Each verse is a standalone method, of course, but grouping a few together reveals a bigger picture.

Just as gallery lighting illuminates individual works of art but cannot light a whole museum, so the selection below hopes to shine small bright lights only on certain portions of the Vigyan — the ones that resonated with me. Whole categories of other methods (e.g., visualizations, meditations on abstract concepts such as “emptiness”) were completely left out.

As a collection of practical wisdom acquired through direct experience, the Vigyan has also been called the Shiva Vijñana Upanishad and the Shaiva Upanishad. It was compiled in its present form probably around the 8th century. The text below is based on Paul Reps’ freewheeling and poetic translation, the first in English (1955), which became timeless with its publication in the classic Zen Flesh, Zen Bones (1957), still in print today.

The Reps translation, which takes up just 14 pages in the 1989 Doubleday edition, may still be the best introduction to the text — but as a poetic, not literal, translation, it has been oversimplified in many places. I updated and modernized the style and language here and there, but in a few places I altered the text substantially after also consulting the translations of Jaidev Singh (1979) and Jan Esmann (2010). The best translation I have found so far is the one by Ranjit Chaudhri in 112 Meditations for Self Realization: Vigyan Bhairava Tantra (2024 ed.); unfortunately, I haven’t had the opportunity to read it yet.

Following each verse I provided the method and verse numbers in parentheses (of the 112/163) for convenient cross-reference against other translations. The “112 methods” were numbered by others; Reps gives only the method numbers, Esmann only the verse numbers, and Singh gives both, though they don’t quite agree.

Gazing with the Eyes

Abide in some place endlessly spacious, clear of trees, hills, habitations. Thence comes the end of mind pressures. (35/60)

In summer, when you see the sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity. (51/76)

Simply by looking into the blue sky beyond clouds, the serenity. (59/84)

Listen to the entire mystical teaching imparted: Eyes still, without blinking, at once become absolutely free. (88/113)

In rain during a black night, enter that blackness as the form of forms. (62/87)

At the edge of a deep well, look steadily into the depth until the void takes you. (90/115)

Meditations on Consciousness

In truth, forms are not separate from each other, just as omnipresent Being and your own form are not separate. Each is made of this consciousness. (75/100)

This so-called universe appears as a juggling, a picture show. To be happy, look upon it so. (77/102)

The appreciation of objects and subjects is the same for an enlightened as for an unenlightened person. The former has one greatness: he remains in the subjective mood. (81/106)

Feel yourself pervading all directions, far, near. (67/92)

Realize, I am everywhere. One who is everywhere is joyous. (79/104)

This consciousness exists as each being, and nothing else exists. (99/124)

Feel the consciousness of each person as your own consciousness, and so become each being. (82/107)

Arresting Impulses

Just as you have the impulse to do something, stop! (64/89)

When some desire comes, consider it. Then, suddenly, quit it. (71/96)

When a mood against someone or for someone arises, do not place it on the person, but remain centered. (101/126)

In and Beyond the Body

When on a bed or a seat, let yourself become weightless, beyond mind. (57/82)

Roam about until exhausted and then, dropping to the ground, in this dropping be whole. (86/111)

At the beginning and end of sneezing, during terror, during sorrow, after a deep sigh, when standing above a chasm, when fleeing from battle, during keen curiosity, in wonder, at the beginning or the end of hunger, in those states find the state you seek. (93/118)

Fixing Attention through the Senses

When vividly aware through some sense, keep in the awareness. (92/117)

See as if for the first time a beautiful person or an ordinary object. (55/)

Look lovingly on some object. Do not go on to another object. Here, in the middle of this object — the blessing. (37/62)

Wherever your mind is wandering, internally or externally, at this very place, this. (91/116)

Wherever your attention alights, at that very point, experience. (104/129)

Wherever satisfaction is found, in whatever act, actualize this. (49/74)

On joyously seeing a long-absent friend, permeate this joy. (46/71)

When eating or drinking, become the taste of the food or drink, and be filled. (47/72)

When singing, seeing, tasting, become that and transcend your limits. (48/73)

Remembering some impression, let your mind be absorbed in that — and, losing its present features, even your form is transformed. (94/119)

Watching the Breath

This experience may dawn between two breaths. As the breath comes in and just before turning up — the beneficence. (1/24)

As breath turns from down to up, and again from up to down, through both of these turns, realize. (2/25)

Or when the breath is all out and stopped by itself, or all in and stopped, in such a universal pause, one’s small self vanishes. (4/27)

When absorbed in worldly activity, keep attentive between the two breaths, and in so doing, in a few days be born anew. (27/51)

Reabsorption into the Center

At the point of sleep when sleep has not yet come but external wakefulness vanishes, at that point Being is revealed. (50/75)

With intangible breath in the center of the forehead, as this reaches the heart at the moment of sleep, regain your sovereign power. (31/56)

As the senses are reabsorbed into the heart, reach the center of the lotus. (25/49)

Every Act Is Infinite: Personal Experiences

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“Every act … is infinite. The only thing that saves us is the present moment. We cannot undo the karma of past acts, whose consequences ring out infinitely. Once set in motion, those acts can no more be taken back than a drop of water that has disturbed the surface of a lake. Fortunately for us, we do not live in infinity — we live only in the present moment. What saves us is the present moment.” —Dvapa Nanam, July 2020

Wall-Gazing Meditation

Wall-gazing meditation, a method credited to Bodhidharma, founder of Zen, can be a very powerful psychological tool. When a person is forced to sit alone without any external stimulation, every unresolved emotion starts to suddenly comes up. In solitude, in silence and darkness, without external sensations on which to fixate, the thoughts are brought by free association to settle on the issues with which we struggle every day on a subconscious level. But now, here they are. There’s no escaping them any longer.

All those episodes from the past suddenly and automatically play out on the cave wall. You are watching the movie of your life. What do you see? Traumas, frustrations, regrets, decisions where you chose shamefully, inaction, ignorance, indifference, even pride, jealousy and vengefulness are on display again, only this time with the benefit of hindsight and a fuller understanding of how they came to be. There’s no escape — the movie will keep playing until those feelings are resolved and you are freed from your painful memories.

The urgency with which these feelings present themselves as soon as there’s an opportunity shows how imperative their resolution must be. The average person might not understand that urgency if they can continue to postpone the process by keeping busy — year after year, decade after decade — and keep kicking the can down the road.

During the process of self-reflection, some of the following question might come up: “How could I do those things? What kind of person am I? Who am I really?” In order to resolve past issues and regrets, your idea of yourself will need to change. Not only will a roomier idea of yourself provide some comfort for a while, but with a bit of luck the very concept of a personality with be thrown into question. “Who am I really? Who do I want to be?”

Your concept of yourself — an aggregate of hereditary traits, experiences and social conditioning — may be conceived of as a penned-up animal, with the pen more or less arbitrarily designating a safe space in which to wander, in which to live and die. In our analogy it represents the playground of consciousness, with the implicit understanding that a person straying out of their pen incurs a total loss of social and economic function, of dignity and security, which leads to an early death. Beyond the pen is the unknown and death. This is the social agreement every person unconsciously undertakes.

But is wall-gazing meditation right for everyone? Should I abandon family and friends to wander and settle in a cave where I can contemplate my own nature? Is self-reflection essential on the “spiritual path”? Well, it’s almost a preliminary, really. To understand that the self is not a fixed thing, not something independent but relative and incidental, can be a first step to dissolving the idea of the self completely, discarding it and laying it aside as a useless thing. But does it need to be done away from human society, in “a quiet place” or in a cave?

I have found that it doesn’t need to be done in a cave, monastery or retreat. The optimal time and place to do the wall-gazing meditation while immersed in society is while putting a child to bed. The darkness, the stillness, the need for quiet while waiting for the child to fall asleep, all conspire to produce ideal conditions for wall-gazing meditation to take place. The same psychological process, the same movie will play upon the darkened walls of the child’s bedroom. There’s no need to leave the family.

In fact, family life is probably more conducive to spiritual progress than some artificial retreat. In an ashram, temple or cave, without social or financial responsibilities, without loved ones to depend on you for their needs, without these limitations a renunciant might well slacken their efforts. It’s simply human nature, when the pressure isn’t on or isn’t turned up to the max, to find it difficult to self-motivate.

If the reality we experience is created entirely by the mind, as Buddhists believe, then the process of enlightenment might be the process of navigating the psyche. It’s true that, as the Buddha said, many leave but very few succeed in making the passage to arrive safely on the other shore of the river of samsara, also called the Ocean of Suffering. These days, very few even seem to leave. What the Buddha neglected to mention is that rather than row or sail across and arrive as a conquering hero, the sincere seeker must crawl along the bottom in darkness and through human waste, like a blind crustacean crawling along the ocean bottom through muck and filth. Seeming to sense the difficulty and their own lack of will, very few even attempt the crossing. But why crawl on the bottom? Because if you don’t hit bedrock, if you leave anything unexplored, that’s the same as leaving parts of your psyche dark and unexplored — which cannot properly be called enlightenment.

Exploring the psyche and accepting your emotions one by one, they lose their power over you. Once you accept them you automatically stop reacting to them and they lose their hold on you. No longer pushing them away, trying to keep them at bay, trying to keep them from being yours, from defining who you are, you find you are not defined by them. You may think, so what? And whose emotions are they anyway? They arise as the inevitable outcome of events over which you have no control. People imagine themselves as well-defined, self-contained vessels with a clear inside and outside and not as the sieves they are, susceptible to psychic influence, and unaware of most of what they do or why they do it. They don’t even try to understand. Instead they try to keep constantly busy fulfilling the goals they were saddled with.

Looking within, facing your feelings and accepting them, relieving your traumas can be very uncomfortable. Many abandon the quest because they think they cannot bear to see the process through. But if you’re interested in what I’ve been describing, the good news is that you can start right now, right where you stand.

Symbolism of the Lotus

In April 2021, while lying down in bed, I found myself meditating on the symbolism of the lotus, when suddenly I felt I understood it. “Its roots in the mud, its petals reaching for the sun,” I saw the lotus growing in myself as a golden flower. The roots reach down into the mud, into the “lower nature.” The lotus reaches the crown the head and opens as a thousand-petaled flower. I felt the three centers — the sacrum, the heart and the head — as spheres of golden light, and I could keep my attention on all three at once. My heart was golden light.

There seems to be some controversy among some kundalini yoga schools as to what exactly should be the goal of raising the cosmic energy, with some arguing for placing it in the chakras of the head — brow or third eye (ajña), top of the head (sahasrara) — for example Danish guru Jan Esmann, while others argue for working with “the secret space of the heart.”

The first argument for the heart as bestower of liberation is that the heart controls emotion. In the familiar seven-chakra system, the heart is the middle chakra, the hub of the wheel. It’s always in the center of the seven, the fourth whether you count from top or bottom, with three chakras above it and three below it.

In Tibetan Buddhism and in other yoga schools, on the other hand, a soul (jiva) hopes to escape the wheel of karma by shooting out the crown chakra in the moments after death, as the Tibetan Book of the Dead explains. Tibetans believe that while the body dies, the subtle bodies lives on, surviving the event, and reincarnates into another physical body. Therefore, the only way to escape the cycle of death and rebirth is to escape this subtle body. So what remains? And is this cheating death? Is there a better way to do it?

Should the yogi seek through the heart to the unmovable point of the symbolic wheel and rest in the Self there? Or does the jiva escape by going deeper within, finding the center like a wonderous cave at the bottom of a lake, hiding gold and treasure, and find a means of escape that way? The goal of these two approaches is not the same.

Feeling the Body As Energy

Another experience of dissolution is feeling the body as energy rather than matter. Normally we experience the body as the sensation of having limbs, weight, inertia or momentum, aches and pains, sensations, and so on. Experiencing the body as energy is feeling the body more as nerves and bones, as the skeletal and nervous systems.

Feeling yourself as a collection of aches and pains is a different from feeling your body as having arms, legs, weight and inertia or momentum. Like a matrix superimposed on the body in the same general space, but not identical with it, experiencing the body as energy means a gateway to another way of experiencing yourself as the world itself, once consciousness makes this small leap in how it understands the body.

In those moments there is neither body nor traumas, no limbs, no weight, no bones or joints, no aches and pains. There is an energy as if holding up the body all by itself, with no effort or sensation, and a nonlocal or disembodied awareness that seems not to depend on the body. But the sensation lasts only a few moments.

Original drawing, Feb. 2017, before the kundalini was stable. In this case it arced forcefully from the thoracic spine, just below the shoulder blades, during tai chi practice — and seemed to take the shape of a snake. The upward, fire component of the current does frequently pass outside the body, from the mid-back to the top of the head — but the goal is to keep it inside the body by closing the circuit. Even though it only lasted for a second, the size and shape of the energy are not exaggerated in the drawing (which was done immediately afterwards). The coils on the bottom were added rather fancifully to indicate that the energy comes from a subterranean common source of energy — the earth itself.

Raising Kundalini Shakti

As far as the mysterious power (shakti) known as kundalini, there isn’t much to say about it. Between 2016 and 2021 I became somewhat familiar with this power, as I’ll relate below.

I remember going on a hot summer run in 2016, when I suddenly that I understood the metaphysics of Vedanta. I had first about Vedanta 6 years earlier, but now it felt to suddenly sink in — it seemed so clear. The concepts of the three motions, polarity, the ground of manifestation and the unknowable indivisible reached their fullness in me, becoming perfectly comprehensible. As that happened, all at once I felt a surge of power, intense but pleasurable pulsations in my head — so much so that I stopped running for fear of having overheated my brain. I hoped I wasn’t having a stroke. But the surge was definitely connected to what I had been thinking, because with each insight the pulsations surged stronger. The peak only lasted a few seconds.

In July 2021, I managed to deliberately raise the cosmic kundalini shakti. I tried three times and I succeeded fully on the third try.

The first time I deliberately raised the cosmic kundalini shakti I thought of qigong teacher Michael Winn, who credits himself with writing or substantially editing Mantak Chia’s “first seven books that established his fame” and claims to have had all and sundry supernatural experiences. He came to qigong and Chia from kundalini meditation, which Chia convinced him is a pointless exercise in blowing heat out the top of your head. So when I thought of Winn during my meditation, the thought took the shape of, “Don’t let the energy enter your head!” And in this way thinking sabotaged my first attempt.

Of course that absurd thought startled me and I lost the kundalini at the base of the skull. I felt it retreat immediately and curl up gracefully in the sacrum. It dawned on me that of course the cosmic power makes its home in the sacrum (Latin for “sacred”), that trapezoidal bone which the ancients knew can’t be destroyed by fire, and not in the atrophied tip of the tailbone, that useless vestige in which some adherents of sanatam dharam (better known as Hinduism in the West) believe it curls up.

The second time I deliberately raised the cosmic kundalini power I thought of Tara Springett, author of Healing Kundalini Symptoms and Higher-Consciousness Healing. After completing Tara’s questionnaire, which is available for free through her website, it occurred to me for the first time that maybe kundalini is available to all of us, even without the supervision of a “master” who advocates practicing dangerous breath-holding techniques — for years! — to force the power out, and doesn’t get you there anyway. It might even respond to the call of pure will!

On my second try, however, the thought came to me, “Make a wish on it! Ask it for something!” The thought rang so false and petty to me that it instantly cut the power, and in this way sabotaged my second attempt. But maybe there was also a lesson there, which is that Michael Winn’s way and Tara Springett’s way could never be my way. I had to find my own way.

The third time I deliberately raised the cosmic kundalini power, I was in bed with my wife, around sunset, having decided to make her part of my third attempt. I thought her presence might help. It worked. The kundalini ascended along the spinal cord, and as it reached each center, I had a feeling difficult to describe. It was bliss (ananda), but that’s not the word I would use to describe it. It was radiance, release, boundlessness, like the pulsations of a nova — a star exploding along the horizontal plane. No doubt was possible, no sorrow was possible, no fear, no regret, no loss, no pain. Those things exist, to be sure, but if cosmic power is also possible and can be felt directly, what do those other things — pain, loss, regret — matter then?

I had succeeded in raising kundalini shakti without any special method, using only awareness and intent, then it went back down and curled up in the sacrum. My wife, who was in bed next to me when I finally succeeded, said she sensed a bright blue, “more of a turquoise” aura coming from me, along with a “golden fountain” of light gushing forth from below. We were holding hands and she sensed the light also going into her. I also saw it as a golden light and felt the bliss and power of the light touching each chakra — especially the heart and the head.

One of the easiest ways to activate kundalini shakti is to listen or even sing along to really powerful music. Mantras, Emika, Vivaldi all do the trick for me, but they won’t necessarily trigger a full blossoming. Jai!

Wisdom of Bodhidharma, Founder of Zen

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The text below was extracted from Red Pine’s translation of Bodhidharma’s “sermons,” published in 1989 as The Zen Teaching of Bodhidharma, then rearranged mosaically to form a short introduction to the sage’s teaching.

“Everything that appears in the three realms is mind. Hence buddhas of the past and future only talk about transmitting the mind. They teach nothing else.”

What Is Buddha?

A buddha is an idle person. He doesn’t run around after fortune and fame. What good are such things in the end? Buddhas of the past and future only talk about seeing your nature. All practices are impermanent. Unless they see their own nature, people who claim to have attained unexcelled, complete enlightenment are liars.

Buddhas don’t save buddhas. Buddhas don’t recite sutras. Buddhas don’t keep precepts. And buddhas don’t break precepts. Buddhas don’t keep or break anything. Buddhas don’t do good or evil.

A buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and in bad. Karma can’t hold him. No matter the karma, a buddha transforms it. A buddha is free of karma, free of cause and effect. To say he attains anything at all is to slander a buddha. What could he possibly attain?

But the awareness of a mortal is dim compared to that of a buddha, who penetrates everything. To go from mortal to buddha you need to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness, and accept what life brings. Unless you see your own nature, all this talk about cause and effect is nonsense.

Trying to find enlightenment or a buddha is like trying to grab space. Space has a name but no form. It’s not something you can pick up or put down. And you certainly can’t grab it. Beyond this mind you will never see a buddha. The buddha is a product of your mind. So why look for buddha beyond this mind?

Da Mo scroll

On Practices

To find a buddha, all you need to do is see your own nature. If you don’t see your own nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good karma, reciting sutras results in good memory, keeping precepts results in good rebirth, and making offerings results in future blessings — but no buddha. If you don’t see your  nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you will never find a buddha.

The fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don’t believe that the clarity of their own mind is the sage. People of no understanding prefer to look for distant knowledge and long for things in space, buddha-images, light, incense, and colors.

If you attain anything at all [by invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, observing precepts, practicing devotions, or doing good works], it’s conditional, it’s karmic. It results in retribution. It turns the wheel. As long as you are subject to birth and death, you will never attain enlightenment. To attain enlightenment you have to see your own nature.

On Delusion

Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Act, don’t question. When you question, you’re wrong. Wrong is the result of questioning. If you understand anything, you don’t understand. Only when you understand nothing is it true understanding.

[Your real] mind, through endless aeons without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It’s not pure or impure, good or evil, past or future. It’s not true or false. It’s not male or female. It strives for no realization and suffers no karma. It has no strength or form. It’s like space. You can’t possess it and you can’t lose it. No karma can restrain this real mind.

When the mind stops moving, it enters nirvana. Nirvana is an empty mind. The eternal bliss of nirvana comes from the mind at rest.

Through endless aeons without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that’s your real mind, that’s your real buddha. The mind is the buddha, and the buddha is the mind. Beyond this mind you’ll never find another buddha. If you think there’s a buddha beyond the mind, where is he? To search for enlightenment or nirvana beyond this mind is impossible. The reality of your own nature, the absence of cause and effect, is what’s meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana.

On Suffering

Every suffering is a buddha seed, because suffering impels mortals to seek wisdom. But you can only say that suffering gives rise to buddhahood. You can’t say that suffering is buddhahood. Your body and mind are the field, suffering is the seed, wisdom the sprout, and buddhahood the grain.

Mortals liberate buddhas and buddhas liberate mortals. Mortals liberate buddhas because affliction creates awareness. And buddhas liberate mortals because awareness negates affliction. There can’t help but be affliction. And there can’t help but be awareness. If it weren’t for affliction, there would be nothing to create awareness. And if it weren’t for awareness, there would be nothing to negate affliction. When you’re deluded, buddhas liberate mortals. When you’re aware, mortals liberate buddhas.

When you’re deluded, you’re on this shore. When you’re aware, you’re on the other shore. But once you go beyond delusion and awareness, the other shore doesn’t exist.

When mortals are alive, they worry about death. When they’re full, they worry about hunger. But sages don’t consider the past and don’t worry about the future. Nor do they cling to the present. And from moment to moment they follow the path.

The Path

The path is fundamentally perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting. The path has no form or sound. It’s subtle and hard to perceive. The awareness of mortals falls short. By mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things, they lose the way.

Despite dwelling in a material body of four elements, your nature is fundamentally pure. It can’t be corrupted. Your real body is fundamentally pure. It can’t be corrupted. Your real body has no sensation, no hunger or thirst, no warmth or cold, no sickness, no love or attachment, no pleasure or pain, no good or bad, no shortness or length, no weakness or strength. Actually, there’s nothing here. It’s only because you cling to this material body that things like hunger and thirst, warmth and cold, and sickness appear.

If you know that everything comes from the mind, don’t [hold on to anything]. Once [you cling], you become unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire Canon becomes so much prose. Understanding comes in mid-sentence. What good are doctrines?

The Goal

An uninhabited place is one without greed, anger, or delusion. Greed is the realm of desire, anger the realm of form, and delusion the formless realm. When a thought begins, you enter the three realms. When a thought ends, you leave the three realms. The beginning or end of the three realms, the existence or nonexistence of anything, depends on the mind.

When you’re deluded, there’s a world to escape. When you’re aware, there is nothing to escape. When you’re deluded, buddhahood exists. When you’re aware, buddhahood doesn’t exist. That’s because buddhahood is awareness.