April 18, 2017 Tuesday Evening, Human Class
Sambhogakaya: Living on the Bridge
Kayas; consciousness
Barbara: I’m talking to the class before we start the meditation. “That which we do not love comes as a teacher.” How are we relating to that which is unpleasant that comes when we’re sitting?
Part 2, we’ve been talking about the three kayas. This may be a little harder to do. Don’t force it. But see if you can tell— Dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, nirmanakaya. Here we are in the Dharmakaya, meditating, and this object arises, and it’s unpleasant. We are sitting stably in the Dharmakaya. Are we cutting the object off, trying to push it away; refusing to move out of the space that cannot entertain any uncomfortable object? Are we willing to open to it, step onto the bridge where we can connect with whatever has arisen?
Or do we rush over and off the bridge? Here’s a nirmanakaya object— body pain, frantic mind, planning, mind racing around. Do I rush across the sambhogakaya bridge and into the nirmanakaya to smash into the nirmanakaya object that has arisen and try to shatter it? Can I greet it from the spaciousness of that sambhogakaya bridge? Do you understand what I’m saying? Do the degree that you can, without forcing it, please begin to see what your habitual pattern is with arising, challenging objects. Where do you meet them?
Breathing in, breathing out. Suddenly strong pain in my back— oh! And have I lost the Dharmakaya completely? Am I trying to stay in the Dharmakaya and push world experiences away? Or am I resting somewhere on the bridge? Then begin to fine-tune it. Where on the bridge are you? Are you just at the edge of the Dharmakaya, or are you all the way across, almost ready to tumble off into the nirmanakaya, Dharmakaya lost to you temporarily? Where are you?
So let’s just sit for 25 minutes, and give a little attention to that.
(sitting)
Aaron: I am Aaron. We’re talking about access concentration and the kayas. Citta is consciousness, mundane or supramundane consciousness. With access concentration, the door to supramundane consciousness opens. Without access concentration, you’re very much in mundane consciousness, supramundane consciousness maybe just a speck in the distance. As the mind settles down, you come to the simultaneity where awareness is able to perceive both the mundane realm and the supramundane realm without preferring one or the other.
This is citta. Every citta or consciousness has an object. Mundane consciousness takes mundane objects. Supramundane consciousness can hold supramundane objects. The kayas, or “bodies”, are objects, they are not consciousness. Dharmakaya is a supramundane object or supramundane state that supramundane consciousness can touch. Remember our chain; contact, consciousness, feelings, perception; mental formation. When supramundane consciousness reaches out, it can touch the Dharmakaya; it can also touch the Unconditioned, and they are not synonymous.
I am not sure we need intellectually to get at all of this, only as consciousness becomes clearer, there is a simultaneity of mundane and supramundane consciousness.
One moment, please… Barbara is trying to hear me, peeking in, and I’m trying to shoo her away, because it’s interfering with my clear speech. She will read the transcript. She understands all this already.
Mundane consciousness takes a mundane object; supramundane consciousness takes a supramundane object. If you’re resting in the Dharmakaya, that means you are resting in supramundane consciousness. If you are very much in the nirmanakaya, you are very much with mundane consciousness. The nirmanakaya objects are the objects of mundane consciousness. The Dharmakaya is the object of supramundane consciousness. The sambhogakaya is the wealth body because of its preciousness, that you can be in both places at one time. You can hold the mundane realm, be active, clean up the garbage, hold the crying baby, stir the boiling pot, be present and with loving kindness for the people being noisy in the next room, without leaving the Dharmakaya.
Dharmakaya, nirmanakaya; you’re right there, holding both. If I lose touch with the Dharmakaya, it means I’ve lost touch with supramundane consciousness, and I’m sliding — whoosh!— out into mundane consciousness. And one loses it so quickly.
As soon as I note that I’m losing it, and there is the intention not to lose it, that intention draws me back into supramundane consciousness and touching base with the Dharmakaya and the Unconditioned. I’m not going to go into the distinction between Dharmakaya and Unconditioned right now. That’s not necessary.
Q: Access concentration is the bridge.
Aaron: No, access concentration is not the bridge. The bridge is an object, sambhogakaya, a body. Access concentration is a consciousness where we can hold presence with that body, that sambhogakaya, that wealth body.
Think of kaya as body, it’s an object. Think of citta as consciousness. Consciousness takes an object. Access concentration is a form of consciousness, which takes an object. It takes the object of the simultaneity of the mundane body and the supramundane body, the Dharmakaya and the nirmanakaya. It takes the bridge itself, and how the bridge touches at either end, and then the object at that end, the crying baby or the loud people, and the object at this end, of that spaciousness, peace and light, emptiness of a sense of separate self; and it holds them both together. In that way, you don’t get pulled off this way or that way. You can rest on that bridge, hearing the people and saying, “I’m glad you are so happy and enjoying your dinner.” Or if necessary, kindness asks gently if they can remember the people meditating in the next room and be a bit quiet. And you have not left the Dharmakaya. Where could you go? You’re always in the Dharmakaya, at some level.
Q: Dan was telling us that the Dharmakaya is very frightening, scary.
Aaron: I don’t find it frightening; I live there all the time! What’s to be frightened about? It’s frightening for you as a human because you perceive it as leading to “no self”. If there’s no self, what will happen to me? What will I be? Who will I become? Will I be destroyed? If you obliterate the ego, what will happen?
Of course, some people do have this problem, if they have a sudden experience. I’m thinking here of a student from long ago and far away who took hallucinogenic drugs and had a profound experience of the Unconditioned. Coming out of it, he ended up in a mental hospital for a while because he had no ground anymore. He had no preparation for that experience, so he didn’t know how to move himself back and forth.
Your training here is a gradual one, not a, drugs— pow! You are learning how to be in both places, to move back and forth and stabilize yourself. So that yes, it still can be frightening. With recollection of the path, as defined in Visuddhi Magga. One step is, let me try to say this in the simplest way possible…. Objects are seen as arising and objects are seen as passing away. We note them arising and passing away. Then attention moves to passing away, to dissolution. Fear may arise. Everything is dissolving, there’s nothing left to hold onto. There may be intense fear. If everything is dissolving, what can I hold onto?
At this stage, if the meditator has not had sufficient grounding in finding that inner light, radiance and love, fear is likely to come. If the meditator is beginning to ground – not in the Dharmakaya but at least in the sambhogakaya – feeling themselves in this place of high energy, light and love, there will be less fear. You’ve all experienced it. You know this is home, this is safe. If you didn’t have that experience, you began to meditate, and suddenly everything dissolved, including the body and the ego, terror would arise. As I said, this may be part of this delineated path, the arising of terror as dissolution experience starts.
I like to describe the experience this way. If I took you to the top of a cliff on a cloudy day and said, “Jump!”. You could hear the sea down below, waves smashing; could you jump? Of course not. You can’t see the water, it’s too foggy. The surf sounds fearsome. But I lead you gradually around a long path down the hill to the beach and we wade into the water. It’s a sheltered cove, and I point it out to you and say, “Come now, swim with me”; we swim out. The waves are hitting over there around a bend; where I wanted you to jump is over here. I point out we’re treading water here; there are no rocks below us, no big surf; it’s safe. Can you feel what this experience is? Now we get out and we walk back up to the top of the cliff, and I say, “Jump!” Can you do it? Maybe a little easier, at least. You still can’t see, but you have a basis of trust.
This is what the first experience of the Unconditioned is like. Dharmakaya and Unconditioned again are not synonymous. The Dharmakaya, the truth body, is something we realize or recognize when supramundane consciousness is open. And it goes the other way, too. Resting in the Dharmakaya we can see the Unconditioned, but we’re not fully into it. But when we open fully into the Unconditioned— the Dharmakaya is an expression of the Unconditioned. I would say it in that way. The Unconditioned is the consciousness-container; the Dharmakaya is arising or present in that container. Does that make sense to you, Dan?
Dan: The ground, it is arising from the ground
Aaron: The Unconditioned is the Ground. The Unconditioned is That Which Is. Everything is arising from it. Nada, luminosity, energy, scent and taste, these are what I call direct expressions of the Unconditioned. If you’re resting in the Unconditioned, touching the Unconditioned, then you can hear nada. You can see the luminosity, feel the energy, and there’s no doubt that the Unconditioned is there, but you’re not yet firmly in it.
Think of a vast container, That-Which-Is, God, Unconditioned, Ground of Being. All-Ground is one term that’s used. From there, everything is expressing out, everything. The supramundane world, the mundane world. The supramundane world is closer in, the mundane world further out; but all expressing from the same core.
I’m going to ask Barbara to send you some very precise delineation of this that I spoke years ago, but I believe she can find it easily. We tried to create precise pronunciation, vocabulary for it. (BB: this is an 85 page journal from a July, 2011 self-retreat with Aaron. There are no simple pages to extract. I will share the whole journal with anyone who wants it)
The All Ground… Let me speak of it this way. Think of the Unconditioned as a, if we use the metaphor of a pure underground spring. As soon as that spring percolates up through the surface, it’s breaking the surface, it’s no longer 100% pure. How do you access this spring? If we have a membrane permeable in only one direction over the spring the water can only rise up through it; the dirt cannot fall back into the spring; but you cannot reach a hand through the membrane. The very first water that comes up is very pure. Then as it washes down the hill and into a river; the cattle are wading in it. It’s not so pure anymore.
In the direct experience of the Unconditioned, what is sometimes called an enlightenment or awakening experience, you have gone into the spring directly, but you have no way to bring that pure water back out into the mundane world. After that experience, there is the memory of it. The memory is not the direct experience. Where is that direct experience now? Where did it go? But there’s a memory of it. And one can work with the memory. This is like the water that has percolated up through the membrane, and it’s just right here. It’s a direct expression of the spring, a direct expression of the Unconditioned. And it percolates up. You know the spring is there, because the water is there, right there, very close to the Dharmakaya and very close to the Unconditioned. We could call it Dharmakaya, truth body, right here. The source of the pure water is just on the other side of the membrane, Dharmakaya. It’s not the Unconditioned, but it’s as close as you can get. It expresses out as sound, light, energy, really the various elements, also. It expresses out into the world, and it becomes less and less pure as it spreads out.
How many of you at least sometimes have used nada or luminosity as a primary object?
Q: I’m not sure what (those are).
Aaron: Nada is the sound like crickets chirping, but not an external sound, an internal sound. The Cosmic OM, a subtle sound that’s not heard through the ear but within. It’s not the noise in the body, it’s a different kind of sound. Luminosity is a pervasive light that fills everything. You still see the world, but there’s light.
Q: I think I experience this sort of thing more often when I’m not meditating.
Aaron: Probably. Children lie on the hillside, watching the clouds float by; the world is filled with light, and they hear nada. They’re resting in awareness, watching the clouds float by.
What we’re trying to define here is the Unconditioned, which you can go into it, you can come back out, but when you’re in it, you cannot really relate to the present-day mundane world, not within the Unconditioned. You are on the far side of the membrane! Those who have become what you call deeply realized or awake are standing firmly in the Unconditioned, grounded there, but they are on the beginning of the sambhogakaya bridge. They can move back into the Unconditioned, in meditation they will, but they have learned how to hold both together.
In dzogchen this is taught as resting in awareness (rigpa is the Tibetan term) — awareness is not synonymous with Unconditioned. Awareness is consciousness; it takes the Unconditioned as object. Resting in awareness, “seeing the view”. You’ve heard me speak of this. Just ahhhh…. There’s a sense of spaciousness and joy, light, wonder. You’re touching the Unconditioned, but you’re touching it up here on the top of the filter, not underneath. Seeing the view.
View, meditation, and action. The meditation step is, when you are pulled out of pure awareness, noting you are out, and learning how to meditate with it, coming back into connection with it. In other words, here’s the Unconditioned. You’re up here, and suddenly there’s noise in the next room and you go running out. Mind goes running out, or the whole body goes running out. Awareness notes, “Oh, I’m running out. Come back.” You come back and you sit back in your chair. You’re at the door, ready to yell at them. “What am I doing?” You come back.
View, ahhh. Meditation. Aware of that which pulls you away, and the ability, based on your intention, to come back. As you practice with this and your vipassana practice—you will understand why I no longer separate vipassana and dzogchen, pure awareness practice— it’s the same thing. If you’re sitting— hearing, hearing, irritation, wanting to run out the door. Where is the core of being, right here? Where is love, right here? Where is kindness, right here? Bringing yourself back in the vipassana practice. So whether we do it in pure awareness practice or vipassana, it’s the same coming back.
And when you practice that enough that it is stable, the third step is action, being able to take it out into the world. Those that we would consider enlightened beings are always connected to the Unconditioned. They never leap off the bridge, but they know how far out they need to go to respond in a wholesome way to that which is happening that could be doing harm. This is the heart of enlightened experience.
Q: Someone like Jeshua would be like that.
Aaron: I would put Jeshua beyond that. Jeshua, yes, as a human, because he also had to learn as a child how to work with his emotions, how to work with the world and not be reactive. But because he did not forget who he was, or at least not fully forget, it was much easier for him. For you as less awake humans, it’s harder because you have this veil of forgetting. So much of what you are doing is learning how to break through the veil of forgetting, which is really a matter of holding the combination of Dharmakaya and nirmanakaya, and resting in the sambhogakaya.
Five of you are coming to the retreat, and there are several more in the class coming who are not here tonight. For the rest of you, this is much what we’re going to be working with. The vipassana practice, of course, and deepening vipassana practice. But also watching how we hold ourselves more skillfully on this bridge, rather than running off into the other room, yelling at people. How do we do this? We’re going to work with what I’ve called the practice of Clear Light, which is one way of remembering your connection with the Dharmakaya. Resting in that Ground of Being through luminosity, through light. We’re going to work with it through light, through energy, through the elements, because you’ll be sitting there on the beach with the ocean, the sun, and the breeze. (Aaron asks if the non-retreat participants would like to receive the audio files from the retreat, including John’s talks— yes.)
Is this clear now, more or less? (laughter) Less rather than more?
Q: I had an interesting experience a week ago Sunday. My cat is very ill. She has pancreatitis. I had taken her to the vet that morning, where she had gotten fluids, antibiotics, anti-nausea, (inaudible) but she had a very bad night. She wasn’t responding. She was in a lot of pain. She wouldn’t let me come near her, which is unusual, because she’s very (inaudible). I was afraid I was going to lose her. So I was empathizing with her pain, and I had a lot of fear about her leaving me. And I didn’t know what to do for her, so I was crying, kind of panicky. And I prayed to Aaron, Father John, Mother, to please help me. And I heard, “Stop crying. You can do this. You need to hold the space for her. You need to be there.” So my tears let up. I thought, okay. And I got online and I immediately was drawn to this page where this Buddhist woman had a dog who was dying. And she wrote out what she had done that night for her dog. She played (inaudible) on her computer. She said (inaudible) her dog to ease his transition, (inaudible), ease her anxiety. And kind of pulled herself out of the panic, and hold space. So that’s what I did. And it was very much like either being there with her in the mundane, or pulling back enough where I could see a bigger picture for her and me, and what she was going through, and what will happen to all of us, we will make that transition. And I’m trying to make this as easy as I can for her. Someone told me that she doesn’t want to (inaudible, possibly that she wants to die at home, not at the vet’s). So I’m trying to do that for her. It was difficult for me when I was in it with her. So what Aaron was talking about, how (inaudible) relating to what was happening.
Aaron: This is beautiful and a very good example of being able to ground yourself in the Dharmakaya while reaching out to a very painful place in the nirmanakaya. If you went all the way out without grounding, you could not help your cat. If you stayed hiding in the Dharmakaya, you can’t really be in the Dharmakaya and hide there, but in that which seems to be the Dharmakaya, a safe place, pushing mundane reality away, you can’t help her. When you’re on the bridge, the more pain on the other side of the bridge, the more deeply you need to ground on your side. So much of your practice is truly learning how to hold that ground. Learning that you have access to it, that it’s available, how it feels, so that when you’re suddenly shaken, you know how to ground. I think of the tightrope walker. They must fall occasionally to learn how it feels to be unbalanced. Then they learn how to stay balanced, even when the rope is shaking.
There’s one more part to this. You are always co-creating in the world. The more deeply grounded you are in the Dharmakaya, in the Unconditioned, in that which is love, the more you can invite the perpetuation of that. But when you get pulled off into fear, to darkness, filled with negative thought and not noting and taking care of the negative thought, you get swept away. It’s like a big wave coming over the bridge and washing you into the sea. You’re not grounded so it hits you.
All of you are learning how to co-create and how to manifest in your lives. In every moment, there is a choice between manifesting that which is for the highest good and with love, from the deep intention of your heart, or manifesting negative results from a place of fear. Each time you do that you get immediate feedback. It becomes more painful. But when you are able to not rush off screaming, “My cat! My cat! What will I do?”, although you may have felt like doing that, but remembering to come back to the open heart. Remembering to come back to the essence of your being, and to trust that essence. Then you can more deeply manifest from a place of love.
If you envision your son (one class member, not recorded, spoke of fear for his son in a dangerous place) going off to a place where there’s extreme violence, and there’s a lot of fear, “He could get hurt! He could get hurt!”, contrary to giving him more safety, that puts him in more danger, because you’re sending energy to him and to the whole situation, of “He could be hurt!” When you can see the possibility with no denial and then practice by offering metta to him and to the various forces at war there and to the people in the surrounding area whose homes are being bombed and struck with artillery, just holding this with the loving heart, knowing this is how this world is, “There is fear and hatred here. There are those who would do harm. And I hold this in the enormous heart of love, not just my heart but THE heart of love, wishing for the highest good of all beings.”, this supports healing. If enough people are doing this, it can help in a critical situation; it can shift everything and create a change from the animosity to hearing and connection.
I would say here that I admire M because this is what he is trying to do, working with the NGO who are trying to help the two sides hear each other, and help the world see what’s happening so that world pressure can be applied, not negative pressure but loving pressure to end the conflict. That doesn’t mean he’s going to be safe, there’s no promise. But if enough of you are willing to take this risk, to go into places that are not entirely safe— of course, nothing is entirely safe. You fall in the bathtub and crack your head open. Nothing is safe. Some places have more apparent danger than others. But if enough of you are willing to acknowledge that there is negativity in the world, and to know yourself as a force of light and of love, no ego there but with great humility to know yourself as a force of light and love, and to know only love is the answer, to hold space for the negative, wherever it may be appearing in the world, this is the only way you’re going to change the world.
Q: You said that the Dharmakaya is the ground, everything coming up out of it.
Aaron: The Unconditioned is the ground; the Dharmakaya is the first expression of the Unconditioned. You can’t go into the Unconditioned and work with metta with conscious mind, but you can rest in the Dharmakaya and work with metta.
Q: But did we come out of the Unconditioned? Do we have some memory of this pure being that was us?
Aaron: Yes, I think all of you do.
Q: So we cannot feel like it’s something we have to learn, so much as to remember.
Aaron: Think about your love for your husband. Think about the care you gave him in his final days and how much you loved. And I’m not saying there was no anger or frustration or pain. But the purity and power of that love. How could you have known that love if it wasn’t at some level recognizable as your essence?
Q: That’s what I’m saying. This end of the bridge is known to us already somehow.
Aaron: Exactly. That’s why we do the Remembering Wholeness sessions with the Mother, because what she’s inviting you back to is to remember that light, that essence, that wholeness, that radiance and divinity. She keeps telling you, that you are radiant, you are divine. She’s not trying to make you that; she’s trying to remind you to help you remember you ARE that.
Q: Isn’t it funny how we resist that thought? We can’t accept it, somehow
Aaron: Ross goes on to say, in his article, about why we get stuck in the ???(unclear) of the sandbox. Barbara will email the article. At some level, you’re here to experience the sandbox. It’s the ground for your learning. It’s not always going to be pretty. Others will be throwing sand in your face. How do we combine knowing, “I am divine, and this one who’s throwing sand in my face is also divine.”, deepen into that ground and still say, “No, no more sand-throwing.”? This is what you are all learning.
Q: This is a teaching for grown-ups. I think that there has been a part of me that just really, really wanted to believe that if I live with sincerity and good intentions and do my best that there will be no suffering, no sand in my (inaudible).
Aaron: Because you are not yet fully awakened, there will be suffering, even if you do your best. We’re not guaranteeing no suffering, only that you are on the path, and eventually there will be full realization and an end to suffering in this or a future lifetime. But meanwhile there’s a possibility to live with more love in every moment, instead of combativeness, separation, and enhancement of the suffering. So, we’re not talking about enormous suffering versus no suffering, but moving slowly out of the pattern and habit of suffering. If you stub your toe, there’s still going to be pain. You have the choice whether you will suffer from that pain or not.
Aaron: Are there further questions for me, or shall I turn this back to you to hear more from the rest of you?
This will be a heart of our work at the retreat, some talking in the afternoons with me, but a lot of silent practice, and practice with the elements, and with light, because you’re sitting there and the light is so powerful, even on a cloudy day. The sea out there, and the radiance of it. There’s so much light, sitting there by the ocean. We’ll do a lot of pure light, clear light practice, and whatever else is appropriate. No one practice, I’m not going to say, “You have to do THIS.”; whatever is most suitable to each.
I will leave the body now and let you get back to your class. I trust we’ve resolved the first question.