Dorje Phagmo for over 900 years subjugator of Patriarchy in Tibetan Buddhism

Dorje Phagmo was to borrow a phrase from the patriarchal Vajrayana of our day her Yidam, that which Machig Labrön as a young survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of an Indian Yogin subjugated the demon this outrage she suffered, the Indian yogin thought his sexually abusing her would benefit her spiritual development, I call bullshit on this, an excuse men in Tibetan Buddhism use to this day, I’m talking to you Lama Surya Das, no, having a woman get naked and climb on your lap wasn’t to benefit her spiritual development even if as you claim you it was your intention in going there with the woman.

I submit this diatribe for your consideration this morning, not to throw shade on Lama Surya Das, he isn’t a bad man per se for how he rationalized what he did to his student, it’s a thing in Tibetan Buddhism, Kalu Rinpoche did it, Trungpa Rinpoche went there too, but notwithstanding their intention, as a 63 year old man, if they went there with my daughter I’d cut their balls off as a torma offering and dedicate the merit to benefit sentient beings. but that being so this morning while visualizing the field of merit and offering my body to the hideous manifestation of Machig’s yidam above her head stomping with her left foot a man on his back, this detail from her life story and my own father as protector demon, don’t touch my baby girl, and so on clicked for me. I suddenly felt a flash of anger which I brought to my severing of my body as I made my gory offering to the devil of inflation I had summoned, thus subjugating it. May this benefit sentient beings without exception.

Posted with apologies to Lama Surya Das, nothing personal my friend, without reading in the name of keeping it real and benefiting sentient beings without exception. 🌲

“… And one pill makes you small, and the ones that mother gives you don’t do anything at all.” White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane

I submit for your consideration the question, in the Tibetan tradition of the last fifty years in America per se, the personal failures, of Trungpa, his regent Ozel Tendzin, the Sakyong, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Lama Norlha, to name check the most high profile Karma Kagyu and Kagyu-adjacent offenders, did what their dharma activity taught us work? It worked for them personally until it didn’t, alcoholism, AIDS, allegations of sexual misconduct, Financial Fraud, and even allegations of sexual assault, but beyond that, did what they taught us work, specifically, the Vajrayana as taught to Karma Kagyu monastic retreatants in Tibet since Düsum Khyenpa in the 12th century to present, and adapted for public consumption in the West versus Machig Labdrön’s 11th Century Chöd of Mahamudra, Karma Kagyu canon since Rangjung Dorje in the 13th century, according to Jamgon Kongtrul, volume 14, The Treasury of Precious Instructions, but not widely taught in the West for being a non-monastic tradition founded by a woman, and without an Indian origin or a tenuous one at that, as such?

I’ve been a Tibetan Buddhist 40 years and it wasn’t until I moved here to the site of the 16th Karmapa’s Parinirvana and took up the practice of the Chöd of Mahamudra when the Vajrayana approach to demons, bribing them to stay away, simply wasn’t getting the job done for me, so I’m asking the question. I have demons. Always have. The property we bought has demons that I have to work with as a homeowner. All this in addition to all the demonic activity that arises from the practice Vajrayana and so on. Anyway, a chunky topic with a little bite to give you indigestion, if you are so inclined, posted without reading in the name of keeping it real.

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A practice for the Chöd of Mahamudra

We go for refuge and pay homage to the buddhas of the ten directions. We go for refuge and pay homage to the dharma. We go for refuge and pay homage to the sangha. We go for refuge and pay homage to the precious guru. We go for refuge and pay homage to the host of yidam deities. We go for refuge and pay homage to all the heroes and heroines.

Then, to the extent that your mind can embrace this, meditate on your own body as food with a hundred flavors, white, oily, heavy, and supple. Imagine that in your right hand is a sword of wisdom. Since one’s head is the primary limb, completely sever it at the neck and offer it to the guru and Three Jewels, thinking that they accept it with great delight. Similarly, pull out the five essential inner organs and so on from the torso and offer them, thinking that they are accepted with delight. Again, imagine the pleasing offering of the lower body with the legs. Afterward, mentally let go of the guru and Jewels of refuge. Don’t even conceive of your own body. Do not examine the past or anticipate the future—rest in the present moment of consciousness without any fixation whatsoever, soft and relaxed in its own fashion without contrivance.

This body of mine is made up of thirty-two impure substances. It is a bag of pus and blood, extended by pieces of bone, with a net of sinews. Becoming attached and clinging to something like this causes the experience of suffering in cyclic existence. Now I must not be attached or clinging.

Meditate that on the soles of both feet the essence of mind appears without intrinsic nature like moons reflected in water. Joining the abdomen and back, intensely compress body and mind and then draw up the lower vital wind. Like moons reflected in water, they rise up white and flowing steadily (dkar na ra ra). Coming through the big veins of the thighs, they steadily rise up, and then in the torso at the level of the navel the two combine into one. Focus intently on it there shimmering white and round (dkar hri li li). Then again rising steadily up, it comes up to the heart. Meditate that it comes up to the throat and then rises up from there clear to the cranial aperture at the crown of the head. Meditate that it is there at the cranial aperture, clear and white, the size of the eye of a medium spindle, (pencil size) and sharply shout phaṭ. That sends the water moon–like [sphere] up, projecting from there into the sky as far [as it can go]. [If] you feel that [you don’t want to let it] go, and that it is staying there shimmering white and round (dkar hri le), meditate without distraction on that.

Then as [the sphere] grows larger, imagine that awareness pervades wherever space pervades. Wherever awareness pervades, space pervades. Without concepts of meditating or not meditating, rest relaxed and easy in your own fashion. In that vein it is also said of this, “Equal to the realm of space [in that] it is inseparable and unfathomable.”

“While concentrated by concentration, relax by relaxing. This is the single vital point of meditation.”

While going about your business in whatever way is comfortable, visualize the appearance of the essence of vital wind and mind combined, without intrinsic nature like the moon in water, meditating on it below the navel. Understand it as described above.

Sit with your legs in vajra position, hands in the mudra of equipoise, spine straightened, neck slightly bent, and eyes focused on the tip of the nose. In mind, do not examine the past or anticipate the future. In the present consciousness, do not engage mind at all. Rest [mind] in its own fashion—buoyant, loose, blank (had de), undecided (tshom me)—free of all considerations of meditating and meditation objects.

Contemplate and meditate that “All sentient beings headed by this evil spirit that causes me harm are pitiable. Out of compassion I should donate this body to them.” Meditate that the eighty thousand types of obstructors, headed by this harm-doer, gather before you.

Visualize your very own body as extremely large. Meditate that the right hand holds a sword of wisdom, and totally sever [your head] at the neck and donate it. Meditate on the harm-doers and so forth who prefer flesh eating the flesh, those who like blood drinking the blood, and those who like bones sucking the bones. Then pull out the five essential inner organs and others from within the torso and donate them. Meditate that it is consumed as before. Then donate the upper torso with its arms and the lower body with legs. Meditate on the harm-doers and such that like flesh eating the flesh, those that like blood drinking the blood, and those that like bones gnawing the bones. Meditate that they consume the entire body without leaving leftovers even as small as a sesame seed. After that, without examining the past or anticipating the future, rest tranquil and soft in the present consciousness without any mental engagement whatsoever. Then meditate on compassion, cast out the body as food, and rest in the abiding nature of mind.

To the buddhas, the dharma, and the sublime assembly I go for refuge until I attain enlightenment. Through my merit of generosity and other virtues, may I attain awakening for the sake of migrators.

The Lady Machik’s instruction, The Eight Special Appendices from The Perfection of Wisdom, Severance of Evil Object*

*The Treasury of Precious Instructions: Essential Teachings of the Eight Practice Lineages of Tibet; volume 14, Jamgon Kongtrul translated by Sarah Harding, in part excerpted from Chapter 12 and submitted for your consideration, may it benefit sentient beings without exception.

A 1/6 Ganachackra visualisation of Dorje Phagmo

Picture the dakini as usual for Machig Labdron’s Chöd for Mahamudra, but with the heads of Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and Peter Navarro on her ornamental pike. The five heads of her diadem are adorned with the skulls of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Fox and Friends hosts, Brian Kilmeade, Ainsley Earhardt, and Steve Doocy. Her garland of skulls are the heads of the so-called “Sedition Caucus” in Congress who attempted to block the certification of the duly elected President of the United States and replace the will of the people with the that of Republican controlled State legislatures in the States which certified their electoral votes for the the candidate that won the popular vote, the expectation being that they would vote to thwart the peaceful transfer of power. Finally, imagine Dorje Pagmo treading on the corpse of Ronald Reagan.

Then proceed with the visualization of the Dakini severing your skull above your eyebrows with her blade, held in her right hand, for the skull cup she holds in her left hand, from which she serves the above named assembly of demons your brain, heart, lungs, liver, and so on, much to their delight and profound appreciation, thus subjugating them to your will that our Democracy not perish on our watch and survive for future generations.

Phat! Phat! Phat!

Posted without reading after watching Stephen Colbert’s monologue from last night on YouTube this morning.

May this practice benefit sentient beings without exception 🌲

Demons to the Right, Demons to the Left, Stuck in the Middle together with You

It’s hard to believe that I have been living three miles south of the site of the 16th Karmapa’s Parinirvana. What was American International Hospital when His Holiness died here in 1981 is today called Cancer Centers of America. The nuclear power plant that you could see outside the window of the apartment building across from the hospital on Sheridan Road in Zion, IL has been shut down for years. The apartment building remains, the McDonald’s Bob Martinez and I took Shamar Rinpoche to that evening to fetch dinner that evening for the famished monks that had arrived earlier unbeknownst to us and needed to eat is still here. Not that we were prepared to feed anyone. Bob and I had volunteered to transport mattresses and furniture in a rented van from Chicago Dharmadhatu which was on Clark Street just north of Belmont Avenue the thirty miles to where His Holiness had decided he wanted to die here. In that regard nothing has changed from what he was able to see with his miraculous vision as the 16th Karmapa from Rumtek Monastery half a world away. Today with the benefit of Google Earth you can see the appeal of the location, in the center of the North Amiran continent on the shore of Lake Michigan, down to such details as the park next to the hospital, complete with a circular drive with a sidewalk for disciples to circumambulate in his name. I remember how back then people I knew, kids my age, unemployed college graduates angry at Ronald Reagan and scrambling to survive his economic view of the world thought we were witness the end of an era. It was only the beginning of something that over forty years later we as a generation in our old age have yet to get our minds around. Dharmadhatu is no more. Our demons did that. KTD will forever be the place where Ogyen Trinley Dorje raped a nun. Our demons did that. Everywhere we look we see demons. That being said the Karma Kagyu lineage, first and foremost among all of the lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, thanks to the dharma activity of Khenpo Tsultrim Rinpoche in the West since 1975, and the people he has trained over the years such as Sarah Harding and Jerome Edou, Google them both, have preserved for us Machig Labdrön’s 11th century Chöd of Mahamudra and her example of a non-monastic buddhism perfect for the subjugation of demons. Demons to our Right, Demons to our Left, stuck in the middle together we can make this charnel ground of a world we have created over the past forty years worthy of what the 16th Karmapa believed we were capable of creating for the benefit of sentient beings without exception.

Posted as written without reading and dedicated to Scott Bennet whom I have been thinking about a lot recently

Milarepa’s idea of “Enlightenment in one lifetime,”or bust…

Vajradhara’s cockpit like Shakespeare’s,

All the world’s our stage,

Our shrine room,

Every time we perform our version of the “Chariot that Carries Us Along,” as Tibetans have for generations since Marpa’s gangster dharma that made Milarepa wish he was dead,

Those masters that preceded us in the the art of Mahamudra, so freely transmitted to our privileged generation of Western college aged Punks that came of age during Ronald Reagan’s “Wonder Years” and have lived long enough to grow old in the “Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue” that is retirement in Donald Trump’s” America here in Beach Park,

Illinois, here on the western shoreline of Lake Michigan,

We offer the universe in this mandala to Alan Ginsburg’s precious Guru,

Three miles from the exact spot that the 16th Karmapa passed into Parinirvana 39 years ago.

Not bad for a new hire at Prudential Insurance Company, a degree in Sociology, and hardcore desire to never again have to be born, ready to put ngondro into practice, Milarepa’s “Enlightenment in one lifetime,”or bust.

Growing old in a Vajrayana that ruined so many young lives in the name of preserving Tibetan Buddhism

Those of us that in our interest in learning to meditate burned the brightest in our youth, choosing to prostrate ourselves before so-called masters to the horror of our friends and families whom we harmed in the process when we took refuge with these Tibetan monks living in exile that arrived in our respective countries in the West over the years in the name of preserving Tibetan Buddhism, as a whole, we can say most of us chose poorly in whom we chose to sacrifice so much of our young lives to.

Tibetan Buddhism has trafficked in children for centuries, middle aged monks separating young boys from their families as reincarnations to be psychologically, physically, and sexually abused by these men, a practice that continues to this very day in monasteries across Nepal, India, and Bhutan. It happened to the reincarnation of Kalu Rinpoche. It happened to the reincarnation of Jamgon Kongtrol Rinpoche. To name but two of the most horrifying examples of children we trusted some of the biggest names in Tibetan Buddhism of the late 20th centuries. The young men that raped Kalu Rinpoche remain to this day unpunished by Ogyen Trinley Dorje, the 17th Karmapa, a victim himself of monks using children to advance their careers as celebrated Tibetan Buddhists.

Ngondro helps, the one practice available to us all as practitioners of the Vajrayana but practiced to completion rarely beyond those of us that live in retreat, those of us have burned their bridges to their former lives, including our lives as Tibetan Buddhists and live for nothing other than the blessings and protection of the four empowerments of an unbroken lineage of self-liberation that reaches back through the centuries to the original Buddha himself.

The 21st century has seen the total repudiation of the Tibetan Buddhism of the sect which produced my guru, the Karma Kagyu sect associated with Ogyen Trinley Dorje, China’s disgraced 17th Karmapa whom hasn’t been seen in public for years since the Panama Papers scandal and his subsequent mental breakdown.

Thirty nine years ago when I took refuge I did so to move forward in my life. Rinpoche offered me a path forward always available to me regardless of the obstacle I felt was holding me back in my life, the true nature of the mind which he pointed out to me and the ngondro he instructed me to practice as his disciple to this day has inspired me to go where so few of the Tibetans I admired in the past ever lived to experience, so many of my favorites tragically dying long before their time. Where they failed I continue to move forward. As we all must if their lineage has any hope of surviving the Tibetan Buddhism they dedicated their lives to preserving.

Karpo, Marpo, Ngonpo, (secret); White, Red, Blue, (secret); Body, Speech, Mind, (secret)….

This is where Rinpoche started with me as a disciple 39 years ago. It was our first sit down together. We met the night before in Bob and Colleen’s kitchen. Rinpoche was in his room. Colleen had made tea and asked Khenpo Karthar if he wanted some. And there he was as if summoned from my imagination, a middle aged Tibetan in the robes of a Karma Kagyu monk.

Up until that moment I had thought I wanted to be a Zen Buddhist. I had been sitting, following Shunryu Suzuki’s instructions (Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind), since the summer of 1979. It changed my life, as much as it took to change my life as an 18 year old.

Since Spring I had been sitting with Bob and Colleen twice a week in their living room. Bob had placed an ad in the Chicago Reader classified section. “Free meditation instruction in the Tibetan Tradition.” I called. It turned out we were neighbors. It wasn’t what I was looking for as a Buddhist but I was new to Chicago and it was nice to know somebody. They had a small child which made for a challenging dynamic to work with as meditators. The discussions afterwards were as rewarding as the time spent trying to meditate.

Rinpoche’s instructions that Bob and Colleen had received, much through the grape vine, mostly Ngodrup, Rinpoche’s translator, and Kathy in Columbus, Ohio, guided us in these early months together. To my mind Tibetan Buddhism was for Tibetans, as the name implied. The Vajrayana was nothing but magical thinking. Yet here we were under the guidance of Khenpo Karthar putting his instructions into practice together as we moved forward into our respective lives and the people we were to become as adults.

When Rinpoche entered the small kitchen I stood up and prostrated before him. I don’t know where that came from. We did prostrations when we entered Bob and Colleen’s living room shrine as we decided at the time to be the routine we would follow. I had no issue with following their example. I had never prostrated before another person though so finding myself prostrating before Khenpo Karthar took me by surprise.

For Rinpoche we were his first disciples. Among Tibetans he was just a monk. But for Bob and Colleen he wasn’t a nobody that nobody sent for. “We-don’t-want- nobody-nobody-sent-for” as they would say in Chicago back then. Rinpoche was sent to us by the Karmapa himself.

The next day I had Rinpoche and Ngodrup to myself for the afternoon. We sat in the sun room off of the living room in the front of Bob and Colleen’s third floor Rogers Park apartment on Bosworth Avenue. The western exposure bathed us in a September light that afternoon. And the three of us talked and listened to each other.

It was as if we would never again have the opportunity to speak together like this. It was a now or never kind of situation. No stone was left unturned as such. In the end Rinpoche grasped both my hands and placed his forehead to mine and told me we would never again be apart, in the words of the final lines of the Mahamudra Ngondro I have practiced daily ever since.

The blind leading the blind, Like a deer in the headlights

What 6 hour of ngondro looks like on a fitness tracker

Ten years after the widow-maker. Permanent damage to both left and right ventricle. Two stents. No hope of recovery, and so on.

À quoi ressemble 6 heures de ngondro sur un tracker de fitness

Dix ans après le fabricant de veuves. Dommages permanents aux ventricules gauche et droit. Deux stents. Aucun espoir de guérison, etc.