I've been reading The Supreme Source: The Fundamental Tantra of the
Dzogchen Semde by Kunjed Gyalpo, translated by Norbu-Clemente (Snow Lion Press)

A favorite quote from p. 153
"The desire for happiness is the disease of attachment; one can be happy
only when free of desires.* Realization is not achieved by striving for it;
it arises spontaneously when one abides in the natural state without seeking
anything. So remain in the natural state without seeking, without concepts!
Even though the name 'enlightenment' is used for the real nature, this does
not mean that 'enlightenment' concretely exists. If someone believes the
opposite, [let them go ahead and try to find] enlightenment apart from the
dimension of fundamental reality; they will find nothing at all. So, instead
of aiming for enlightenment, one has to understand the nature of one's mind
beyond action. On examining one's mind, one finds nothing, yet at the same
time there is clarity that is every present. It does not manifest
concretely, yet its essence is all pervading; this is the way its nature
presents itself."

* Max notes: Or when the 'desire for happiness' is satisfied (purr purr)
and seeking ceases as one dissolves in the Supreme Sauce!

And p. 138
(Explaining the term 'self-arising wisdom'):

"Its being "self-arising" means that, as it is free of causes and
conditions, it transcends all effort."

Okay, so now let's turn to Sri Ramana Maharshi's great one-liner (I was
delighted to read that this phrase was also crucial in Ken Wilber's
development):
"That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real."

In my view, the relaxed and 'resonant' breath is a manifestation of deep,
dreamless sleep, caused by the relaxed lowering of the soft palate and
resonating the trachea as consciousness dissolves into the heart.

My question is: inasmuch as the 'resonant breath' is triggered by deep
relaxation, can it be considered as 'free of causes and conditions' and thus
viewed as 'self-arising?' If so, then perhaps instead of the interest amongst meditators in
'remaining aware throughout all states of consciousness (awake, dream, deep
sleep), maybe we can 'remain asleep while awake and while dreaming...' by
practicing the self-arising resonant breath while awake.

Also, the blue sky frequently occurs as a metaphor for essence:

p. 175
My essence is like the sky. My meaning is fundamental reality. My nature is
pure and total consciousness.
Listen! I have no hindrances, and I transcend concepts: the sky beyond
concepts is the dharmakaya dimension... being like the sky means not
accepting or rejecting.


But 'within' the sky we have a blazing golden ball in manifestation.
How does that work out? I guess Solar Consciousness is the Buddha
manifesting as the Nirmanakaya?

Quoting JP from a Dzogchen list posting 'back when:'

How about when a Buddha is self-manifesting as a Buddha as-is, not
projecting some lesser "state", the inherent dynamics of the Buddha shine
forth spontaneously. And that energy arises from the Dharmakaya, and in
that first moment of arising, a manifestation is beginning to appear yet not
in our 3D karmic world, that's the Sambhogakaya. As that appearance takes
on greater manifestation, now reaching our dimension, the pure dynamics of
Being, appear as the Nirmanakaya or emanation appearing in our karmic
vision. At this level, this manifestation brings about an Enlightenment to
those engaged in less than Buddhic awareness. Kind of a living "wake
up" call.

Max: The sun burns out of compassion for all spirit essences locked in the
embrace of cold matter -- i.e. "Come to me as you are. I am that also." And
it also explains the phototropic urge of all living things.

Comments welcome, especially regarding the 'self-arising' resonant breath!

Max
"Hey, I'm not pursuing bliss! It's pursuing -- well, hello, there! I do
believe the sNOman is melting..."

The Supreme Source

[pp. 174-175, from The Supreme Source, by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu.]

"The true teaching of absolute meaning cannot be comprehended nor shown [through concepts]. It cannot be defined, it cannot become an object of fixation, it cannot be thought: it concerns a nature which transcends thought. [This nature] cannot be meditated on and cannot be some object of thought. It does not know desire and does not conceive the idea of having to accept some fruit [of realization].

"Those who abide in this natural non-discursive state reach enlightenment without embarking on a path; without exercising the mind, these obtain self-arising wisdom; without striving, these spontaneously achieve capacity for spiritual action; without keeping any commitment, these naturally maintain purity.

"[In this state] the senses and their objects manifest as clarity of this fundamental condition, Buddhas and sentient beings are no longer seen as some duality, and everything is perceived as unity in this fundamental condition.

"As fundamental nature knows neither unity nor multiplicity: could the essence, which has never been born and has never manifested, ever become any object of definition?

"All buddhas and sentient beings, the whole universe and forms of life inhabiting this, are this nature, beyond any concept of affirmation or negation.

"This nature is one in the fundamental condition, and that which is taught by these teachers of the three dimensions serves only to lead all beings, in an indirect manner, to this single reality."

I've been slowly making my way through Ken Wilber journals in  "One Taste" and the following caught my eye. Wilber's use of the term 'translation' first needs to be described:
[QUOTE]
Translation Versus Transformation
   In a series of books I have tried to show that religion itself has always performed two very important, but very different, functions. One, it acts as a way of creating meaning for the separate self: it offers myths and stories and tales and narratives and rituals and revivals that, taken together, help the separate self make sense of, and endure, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. This function of religion does not usually or necessarily change the level of consciousness in a person; it does not deliver radical transformation. Not does it deliver a shattering liberation from the separate self altogether. Rather, it consoles the self, fortifies the self, defends the self, promotes the self. As long as the separate self believes the myths, performs the rituals, mouths the prayers or embraces the dogma, then the self, it is fervently believed, will be "saved" -- either now in the glory of being God-saved or Goddess-favored, or in an afterlife that ensures eternal wonderment.
  But two, religion has also served -- in a usually very, very small minority -- the function of radical transformation and liberation. This function of religion does not fortify the separate self, but utterly shatters it -- not consolation but devastation, not entrenchment but emptiness, not complacency but explosion, not comfort but revolution -- in short, not a conventional bolstering of consciousness but a radical
transmutation and transformation at the deepest seat of consciousness itself.
 There are several different ways that we can state these two important functions of religion. The first function -- that of creating meaning for the self -- is a type of horizontal movement; the second function -- that of transcending the self -- is a type of vertical movement (higher or deeper, depending on your metaphor). The first I have named translation; the second, transformation.
[END QUOTE]

[QUOTE]
Who Actually Wants To Transform?
  It is a fairly common belief that the East is simply awash in
transformative and authentic spirituality, but that the West -- both historically and in today's "new-age" -- has nothing much more than various types of horizontal, translative, merely legitimate and therefore tepid spirituality. And while there is some truth to that, the actual situation is much gloomier, for both East and the West alike.
  First, although it is generally true that the East has produced a greater number of authentic realizers, nonetheless, the actual percentage of the Eastern population that is engaged in authentic transformative spirituality is, and always has been, pitifully small. I once asked Katagiri Roshi, with whom I had my first breakthrough (hopefully, not a breakdown), how many
truly great Ch'an and Zen masters there have historically been.  Without hesitating, he said, "Maybe one thousand altogether." I asked another Zen master how many truly enlightened -- deeply enlightened -- Japanese Zen masters there were alive today, and he said, "Not more than a dozen."
 Let us simply assume, for the sake of argument, that those are vaguely accurate answers. Run the numbers, Even if we say that there were only one billion Chinese over the course of history (an extremely low estimate), that still mean that only one thousand out of one billion had graduated into an authentic, transformative spirituality. For those of you without a
calculator, that's 0.0000001 of the total population. (Even if we say a million instead of a thousand, that is still only 0.001 of the population -- a pitiful drop in the bucket).
   And that means, unmistakably, that the rest of the population were (and are) involved in, at best, various types of horizontal, translative, merely legitimate religion: they were involved in magical practices, mythical beliefs, egoic petitionary prayer, magical rituals, and so on -- in other words, translative ways to give meaning to the separate self, a translative function that was, as we were saying, the major social glue of the Chinese
(and all other) cultures to date.
  Thus, without in any way belittling the truly stunning contributions of the glorious Eastern traditions, the point is fairly straightforward: radical transformation spirituality is extremely rare, anywhere in history, and anywhere in the world. (The numbers for the West are even more depressing. I
rest my case.)
   So although we can very rightly lament the very small number of individuals in the West who are today involved in a truly authentic and radically transformative spiritual realization, let us now make the false argument of claiming that it has otherwise been dramatically different in earlier times or in different cultures. It has on occasion be a little
better than we see here, now, in the West, but the fact remains: authentic  spirituality is an incredibly rare bird, anywhere, at any time, at any place, So let us start from the unarguable fact that vertical, transformative authentic spirituality is one of the most precious jewels in the entire human tradition -- precisely because, like all precious jewels,
it is incredibly rare.
   Second, even though you and I might deeply believe that the most important function we can perform is to offer authentic transformation spirituality, the fact is that much of what we have to do, in our capacity to bring decent spirituality in the world, is actually to offer more benign and helpful mades of translation. In other words, even if we ourselves are practicing, or offering, authentic transformative spirituality, nonetheless
much of what we must FIRST do is provide most people with a more adequate way to translate their condition. We must start with helpful translations before we can effectively offer authentic transformations.
  The reason is that if translation is too quickly, or too abruptly, or too ineptly taken away from an individual ( or a culture), the result, once again, is not breakthrough but breakdown, not release but collapse.
[END QUOTE]
  Wilber then offers two examples of enlightened masters (Chogyam Trungpa and Adi Da) who attempted to start 'transformative' but, when nobody 'got it,' then had to introduce a series of lesser practices leading up to the radical and ultimate 'no practice.' (Curiously, in both cases, a lot of
sexual hanky-panky allegedly accrued around both of these teachers, which detracted considerably from the value of what they were attempting to transmit. Not that they were unique in that particular category.)
  Anyway, a .0000001 'batting average' is not particularly impressive as an estimate of how successful Buddhism has been over the centuries. It is for this reason that I'm very interested in discovering exercises and methods that might allow more average Joes and Josephines (like myself!) to discover the delights of leaving the small self behind. But before this can occur, in my humble opinion, the removal of certain basic energy roadblocks can help things along. For this reason I promote resonating the trachea and in turn the
whole circulatory system through the 'inhaled' OM (lacking the lengthier description I've posted before), sucking on the soft palate/uvula to allow peristalsic waves to massage away the armoring of the body, and also 'thwizzling' the facial nerves (or some similar technique such as EFT (tapping the facial acupuncture meridians with the fingertips) to release tension and sensitize the nostrils so that just the full inhale and exhale becomes extremely more pleasurable.
  It's okay to teach using the breath as a meditation object, but if someone is so de-sensitized -- 'armored' -- that they don't feel the pleasure of this procedure, then what's the point? At least they begin to think "What's the point?" pretty quickly.
  I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need to de-stress the lower sheathes (physical, emotional) before we can use them as vehicles to access the subtler realms.
  When I grow up, I want to look just like Hakuin!

  Thoughts?

 

 A statement by the South Indian mystic Ramana Maharshi  has always remained intensely interesting to me:
 "That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real."
  Actually I've based my whole meditation practice on it.  So I was delighted to find it quoted in philosopher Ken Wilber's published journals, "One Taste," which I'm currently reading, along with his following comments:
  "That is a shocking statement, because basically there is nothing ' literally nothing' in the deep dreamless state. That was his point. Ultimate reality (or Spirit), Ramana said, cannot be something that pops into consciousness and then pops out. It must be something that is constant, permanent or, more technically, something that, being TIMELESS, is FULLY PRESENT at every point in time. Therefore, ultimate reality must also be fully present in deep dreamless sleep, and anything that is NOT present in deep dreamless sleep is
NOT ultimate reality.
  "This profoundly disturbed me, because I had had several kensho or satori-like experiences (glimpses of One Taste) but they were all generally confined to the waking state. Moreover, most of the things I cared for existed in the waking state. And yet clearly the waking state is not permanent. It comes and goes every twenty-four hours. And yet, according to the great sages, there is something in us that is ALWAYS CONSCIOUS -- that is literally conscious or aware at all times and through all states, waking, dreaming, sleeping, And that ever-present
awareness is Spirit in us. That underlying current of constant consciousness (or nondual awareness) is a direct and
unbroken ray of pure Spirit itself. It is our connection with the Goddess, our pipeline straight to God."
  Whew! Good old Ken Wilber! He's really quite amazing. When I first read Ramana's words, I thought to myself, "Okay, what happens in deep dreamless sleep that I can
copy when awake? Hm, well, there's the 'resonant breath'," thought I. Listening to my dear wife sleep-breathing,
I began to copy it while awake. I realized what I was doing was resonating the whole passageway from the septum to the
lungs, so I began to practice a light snore. This snore also resonated the trachea, which lies just behind where the upper
vena cava and aorta enter the heart. Vibrations from the trachea (a stiff tube) easily pass through to the bloodstream,  and this is why after ten or so good -- well, let's call them smiling snores, or purrs, or 'inhaled OMs --“ my fingers and toes begin to tingle, and I melt right into my heart center.  Bye-bye, head trips!  Yee Haw!
   Try it!

This is my all-time favorite quote about love:

From the Dutch magazine Am1go at: http://www.ods.nl/am1gos/am1gos3/index.html

Love cannot be given
From a talk with Wolter Keers in Gent on January 18, 1978.

    I had a meeting yesterday evening with a group of psychiatrists and psychologists. There I defended the proposition that there is only one psychic obstacle and that you can reduce all of psychology and psychotherapy, and all psychiatry to that one obstacle. That one problem is that we have forgotten that we are love. It was told to us when we were little that we got love from our mother and father and so on. And when it all maybe went wrong later in all sorts of ways, we discovered that we had not received enough love. And so love became for us something like a sack of potatoes that you can give and get in a big sack or a small sack and the like.
    This has nothing to do with love. What we actually are is the most humble of all humble things, that in which everything arises. That is the light itself. Nothing is more ordinary, common, everyday than that light; we have known nothing except that. Love is the discovery of myself (the light) in the other; the recognition of the Silence that I am in the other. That is love. Love cannot be given to anyone, you cannot get love; you can't make water wet, because water is wetness. Neither can anyone give you love, no one can receive love from you, you can only recognize love in yourself and you can recognize love in others. The moment that it happens, there is naturally no other anymore, because you indeed recognize in other, in the most literal sense, notice well, in the most literal sense; yourself. I never speak to anyone except myself, and you never hear anyone except yourself. I cannot underline enough how literally true this is. Love is to recognize yourself in the other, in what you unjustly saw as 'an other' until that moment. But it is yourself that you see there because there is only one Self. There is only one light. There is only one love. The recognition of yourself in the other, of the Silence that you are in the other, of the light that you are in the other, that is what we call love. It is not a question of giving, it is not a question of receiving, it is a question of recognition.

Someone on another list asked,  "How do we "cut the root of mind?"

Mind - i.e. self-awareness in humans - lags about a 1/2 second behind pure awareness, according to neuroscience. Also, of the 11 million bits of information per second that our perceptions receive, supposedly only 40 bits per second are presented to our consciousness. I suppose it saves glucose to process as much as possible unconsciously.
 
So... is the NOW 1/2 second 'wide?'  And if so, how do we place ourselves on the frothy edge of the wave? All of Nature surfs there, except for our heads... But what about our hearts?

My heart lives on the front edge of the NOW. If I dismount from the 'high horse' of self-awareness, I can 'unsaddle' the mind and turn it loose in the meadow to graze on its own while I remain mindlessly blissful in the heart, the 'seat' of pure perception? The headless horseman?

How do I remain 'mindlessly blissful' in the heart?

Wellllll, there really is NOTHING to do, is there? Perhaps just a teensy exertion of the will, a 'leaning-forward' in front of the thought stream... like a surfer leaning forward on the surfboard, a letting-go similar to falling asleep, but staying alert and awake...

Okay, I admit it. I cheat. I do the 'three vajra mantra' to resonate the trachea, which resonates the aorta and upper vena cava, which resonates the heart and bloodstream. Total bliss, which in turn creates relaxed one-pointedness.

On the inhale: OMMMMMM (vibrating the septum, soft palate, trachea)
On the hold: (silently) AHHH
On the exhale: HUNGGGG (although I think of it more as a gargle on a French "R")

It feels just too good to center other than in the heart. And mind is so happy off in the far corner of the pasture, cropping succulent grass all on its own, swishing its tail!

Currently I've been listening to recorded meditations by Adyashanti, a California meditation teacher whom I like a lot. His three-CD set includes three meditations that are excellent, especially the one on the phrase, "Not my will but the will of my heart" (paraphrased?)
I've also been reading with great interest a new book by Ajahn Brahm, abbot of a Buddhist monastery in Australia, titled "Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond: A Meditator's Handbook." In it he explains how the Buddha promoted bliss states as essential to entering meditative absorption, but how many teachers today ignore or do not emphasize this aspect. Quoting from p 130:

...the Buddha repeatedly stated that the pleasure of jhana 'is to be followed, is to be developed, and is to be encouraged. It is not to be feared.' (MN 66,21).
In spite of this clear advice from the Buddha himself, some students of meditation are misled by those who discourage jhana on the grounds that one can become so attached to jhana that one never becomes enlightened. It should be pointed out that the Buddha's word for attachment, 'upadana,' refers only to attachment to the comfort and pleasure of the five-sense world or to attachments to various forms of wrong view (such as a view of a self). It never means attachment to wholesome things like jhana.
Simply put, jhana states are stages of letting go. One cannot be attached to letting go, just as one cannot be imprisoned by freedom. One can indulge in jhana, in the bliss of letting go, and this is what some people are misled into fearing. But in the 'Pasadika Sutta' (DN 29,25), the Buddha said that one who indulges in the pleasure of jhana may expect only one of four consequences: stream winning, once-returning, non-returning or full enlightenment! In other words, indulging in jhana leads only to the four stages of enlightenment. Thus, in the words of the Buddha, 'One should not fear jhana.'

There is a free online or .pdf downloadable version of an earlier draft that later became chapter 9ff, at http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/
Look under Ajahn Brahm

Okay, I'm slow to get acquainted here, but I'm gradually moving ahead. Invited a couple of friends, and posted a bunch of photos today.
I've also decided to write down a Daily Practice schedule, and can share at least one tidbit for now:
  I'm trying to keep my tongue reversed as a mini-asana as well as an ongoing reminder to stay out of my mind and in my solar plexus as much as possible. This grew out of my continuing enthusiasm for the anonymous yoga teacher Yogani's Advanced Yoga Practices as available at:
   www.aypsite.org
  Yogani covers all bases, while at the same time retinaing his anonymity - a sure guarantee that a cultish group of adoring disciples won't clutter his life.
  I also am attached to David Spero, an enlightened spiritual master who remains 24/7 in the "nectarous state" of sahaka samadhi. David's teaching is very simple: "just relax into your innate innocence." David silently radiates a powerful transmission of non-duality, devotional love and kundalini-shakti. Through his spiritual communications, one is initiated into the free and fiery energy of the Divine.
  www.davidspero.com
Check out his recorded talks, videos and writen articles.

Written to someone whose husband hates their thumb-sucking:
Yes, that's tough... Because of this type of situation, I've been investigating just sucking on my uvula/soft palette. It can be done any time, anywhere, with no one noticing. What's the uvula? It's that 'nipple' thing that hangs down from the roof of the back of your mouth. Try one hundred sucks on it when you first awaken in the morning. I find that it puts me back into the 'sleep-bliss' state but while awake to enjoy it!

The more you do it, the better it gets and the less time is necessary to achieve the 'flow state.'

Follow it up with some in-and-out purring for extra fun (if your hubby will let you)!
Inhale: HONNGGG (rattle the septum and vibrate the trachea)
exhale: GREEEE(gargle a French R in the back of the throat)

If you smile, you can do the in-and-out without changing mouth position. Resonating the trachea vibrates the whole circulatory system because the heart sits right in front of where it branches into the two lungs. 10-20 good purrs and my fingers and toes start to tingle very pleasantly.

Of course all of this is my opinion only.

• Bowing to the Oceanic Self in you, the reader...

Just joined zaadz and gradually am finding my way around this interesting place! It looks fascinating!
I have to remember to sit staighter at the computer and breathe deep relaxed breaths, A book I just read, "Breathing Ecstasy: Finding Sexual Bliss Using The Incredible Power Of Breath" by Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks is encouraging me. The title should make it a serious seller, although truth to tell the couple's couple exercises are a minor part of the book. Not that it matters, really. The basics are good, although the same that are taught in every breath-oriented teaching I've run across - Wilhelm Reich's orgone, Lowen's Bioenergetics, ReBirthing, and Holotropic Breathwork, not to mention traditional pranayama in yoga. But it's nicely put together and it encourages me to lie on the floor and just BREATHE through all my cells and soles of my feet before moving ahead with a few other meditation warm-ups.

Also it's reminding me to sit straighter at the computer. My tendency is to hunch over and then wonder why my shoulder blades ache. Luckily I have my 5-year-old cairn terrier friend to remind me to take a break, and that a walk around the neighborhood is a very good idea.