Excerpts from Circling the Sacred Mountain
An interesting meditation: (p 59)

Settle into a meditation state. Calm yourself by focusing on your breath. Just breathe – count ten inhalations. Once you’re calm, begin to visualize. Imagine a field of vision up above your forehead, which you see with your mind’s eye, your third eye, rather than with your normal eyes — a kind of space and light, a boundless sky. In that sky is your greatest mentor. It could be some great teacher you had in school, a parent, or a grandparent, Jesus Christ, the Buddha. Whoever the person is, whatever the religion, it doesn’t matter; the race, gender, and era don’t matter. Choose him or her to embody the state of being that you aspire to — enlightenment, the total knowledge of everything worth knowing.

Visualize that person present there before and above you as a body made of light. Now the being looks at you, and you see the face — it’s hard to visualize whoever it is, at first. It’s just a flash, because your mind is unsteady. You see that being up there above you — I’ll just use Jesus Christ because that works for me — right here, not dead two thousand years ago, and he’s happy that you’re going to meditate now. He’s looking down at you, smiling because you are concentrating on opening your mind, and from his smile light rays flow down. Like streams of medicine, they flow into you and make you feel more light. You begin to feel blissful and buoyant, as though a spotlight is shining on you, lifting you up in this spiritual limelight that makes you glow with bliss. It drives away smoky, dark doubts, negative attitudes, and worry. Visualize that you’re being bathed in this radiant aura emanating from a being of total omniscience. It takes a lot of imagining. Don’t forget to breathe — you must breathe to imagine. At least in the beginning.

It is crucial to develop this positive setting before meditating on anything. A luminous setting is the key to lifting ourselves out of our habitual ruminative thoughts, our sense of self-identity, our self-world. We need to enter into the space of saints and sages and gods and goddesses and create anew space of possibility for ourselves. We don’t just say: “Well, I’m going to do something, but it’s going to be the same me that does it.” This goes along with the presupposition that after I finish it’ll still be the same “me” who just spent time meditating. Instead we start meditation by creating an ideal space, and then we enter that space and everything opens and becomes possible. This is a path of becoming aware of and then shifting our sense of orientation, substituting a more positive view.

This space where we take refuge when we meditate is known as the refuge field. It is a kind of portable shrine we learn to live with, as we make our lives more and more spiritually positive.

Now fill the field around you on your level with a great crowd of beings below the luminous presence. These beings cannot see the enlightened beings above, since they are not consciously seeking refuge, but they can see us. In the front ranks of this crowd are all those we know closely — our lovers, our mates, our children — looking to us because they sense that we’ve entered a different field. They perceive the light that suffuses us from the mentor-being as our own new glow. For this reason they’re smiling too. Their pleasure manifests in more light and energy flowing back to us in turn as more empowerment, more energy and encouragement.

From the mentor-being to us, to the other beings, back to us, and back to the mentor, a figure-eight circuit flows. We sit at the central point of the figure-eight. We’re not just developing in isolation, we’re beginning a conscious evolution in relationship with all those around us.

When you get a little more stable in this meditation, you try to include people you don’t care about, and then even people you dislike. But don’t try that right away or it’ll put you in a bad mood. Instead work on creating this figure eight of light and love. Cultivate this field of bliss, which you have earned through much evolutionary struggle. Sense the incredible preciousness of this accomplishment. Feel pleased with yourself, soberly impressed with what you have achieved. You don’t need to adopt a completely different belief system as long as your old one allows you to feel that you are precious. So hold that thought. Proud, pleased, and happy, glowing with energy.

Without leaving the refuge field, we turn to our next theme, impermanence. Right away we address death, reflecting upon how transitory life is. We know very well that some of our plans may not come to pass. We have no idea at what time we actually wil die. Sure, we’re going to die. All beings die. Therefore, we meditate upon what are called the three roots of immediacy.

The first root is the certainty of death. Death is instantaneous when it happens. It’s the withdrawal of your awareness from your senses and your body, your consciousness shoots out into a dreamlike state. Developing a strong certainty that we are going to die liberates us from unfocused practice.. It dawns on us that this body and mind and these five senses will cease to be.

The second root is the uncertainty about when we will die. Often children die before their parents, well people die before sick ones, a person in safety dies before one in danger. There is no certainty. The causes of life are few and they are fragile, the causes of death are many. We habitually go along secure with the idea that there’s going to be some time later when we’re going to die, “when you are old and full of sleep,” but there is no knowing when.

The third root is the certainty that when we do die the core of our being is what we will take with us: The Dharma is the only thing that will help us. Our bank account will not help us at that time; our muscles, our nerves, our skin will not help us at that time; our organs, liver, heart, none of that will help us at that time; our eyes, ears will not help us at that time; our friends and relatives will not help us at that time; our course beliefs, our factual knowledge will not help us at that time. The one thing that will help us at that time will be how much of the Dharma we have integrated into the core of our being: our openness, fearlessness, tolerance, generosity, intelligence, calm. That’s what helps us confront death. It’s all we can take with us.

If we neglect the deep core of our being, it shrivels. If we are intolerant, clutching, not generous, with no concentration, then we’re going to be in trouble when we die. The only thing that will help us is what we have invested within. While meditating on this third root, take an inventory of your life. Realize that you’re spending 95% of your time strengthening your body and making it healthy, spending money on medicine, earning money to pay for clothing, medicine, food, face lifts, cosmetics, vitamins. You pamper your body of this life although after death it will turn into garbage. You make huge investments in possessions and property, none of which will belong to you in the future. Someone else will be signing the checks. The government will be taking its inheritance tax. The kids will be blowing it on this and that. And yet we spend 95% of our time on these things we can’t take with us. What a waste!

From the three roots grows our awareness of impermanence, of the immediacy of death. We come to feel that there is no time at all. We become alert to the moment, making the moment as full as possible, because we’re not investing it in some other thing. We don’t know what could be happening next, so we concentrate on what is happening now. This kind of awareness. held in creative tension with the preciousness of human life, is extremely liberating.

Concluding, look up again into the spiritual sky above you. Your mentor or mentors, he or she or they, are delighted that you’re reflecting on these deep themes. Their pleasure at your understanding flows toward you as a cascade of nectar. The mentors themselves actually dissolve into light, flow down, and come to rest in the center of your heart. Their own life stream merges with yours.

Before we break the meditation we cherish a last taste of this nectar. Their luminous energy has filled our hearts; we arerenewed and refreshed. We must also remember gratefully to dedicate the merit of this practice for the sake of all beings — all those we have gathered around us and all the others behind them. Whenever you do something good, you should never leave it just by appropriating it to yourself. That would lessen the positive impact. You should right away invest the positive achievement — the merit — in the larger good of the world. This multiplies the good immeasurably. So in order to dedicate whatever merit we have created here today, we resolve to become perfectly enlightened buddhas so that we truly can become a mentor for all beings, to help them reach their own full potential, their ultimate freedom and happiness.

The trick is to get that infinite bliss and be totally present here in all this concreteness! That’s the real trick, that’s buddhahood. 64

The mind of immediacy is not a morbid mind. It is a liberated mind. All that’s inconsequential drops away, you see? But you have to really reflect on your own death, that that’ll be it for this life of hopes an dreams. You get all tortured about the great novel you’re going to write and all this. Then you’re going to be done. The novel is going to be dust! The libraries are going to burn down. It doesn’t mean you might not still write the novel, but you relate to it in a very different way. You become more immediate about the process of writing.68

We come now to the Buddha’s first noble truth, the noble truth of suffering. People first hear of this theme and think it’s the morbid invention of a killjoy. But it’s not gloomy; it’s merely realistic, a method of evaluating “what is our actual experience?” First we notice how difficult it is to even steady the mind to make such an inquiry, for our internal monologue is constantly demanding, “How can I feel better?” Constantly thinking:”When Iget there, then I’ll feel good.” “When I wake up tomorrow I’ll feel good.” “When I have this food, that thing, that relationship — then everything will be all right. “72

We’re habitually out of balance, and all of our experience will inevitably be frustrating and unsatisfactory. We have to acknowledge this and accept the fact that we’re off balance. We’re simply not going to find happiness, the way we’re facing our situation, feeling ourselves alone and struggling in an alien world, trying to get the better of it. Once we’re set apart in this way, in the battle of self versus the world, the self has got to lose. The world is bigger and stronger; it’s inexhaustible, while we get tired so easily…

When you meditate on this carefully and thoughtfully, you begin to feel genuine sympathy for yourself, you begin to excuse yourself from chasing your illusions. 75

Turning to the second noble truth, the noble truth of causation, you begin to analyze the self-versus-the-world structure itself, since it’s clearly the cause of all the suffering….
Ignorance, which is the fundamental self-construction, or better, missknowledge, the habitual assumption of being a
separate, independent self, this is the root cause of all suffering, according to the insight of the Buddha…This is the first primal reaction of the alienated self — desire, greed, and attachment. When the world won’t give itself over to you, when it even comes to take things away from you, then you feel fear, anger, and hostility — the second primal reaction of the alienated self.76

Knowing that the causal pattern of evolution is inexorable on the relative level helps you avoid both the irresponsibility of reckless activity and the hopelessness that arises, from the fear of losing the positive results of good activity. 76

Once we feel compassion for ourselves we can allow ourselves to abandon compulsive pursuits. The immense relief we get from that abandon enables us for the first time to look at others and begin to feel real compassion for them. To develop this compassion, it is first necessary to realize that we don’t now feel real compassion for others. This can be a bitter pill, but when we examine ourselves we soon encounter a being so caught up in thinking about itself, in wanting happiness and not wanting any suffering, that not much attention is paid to others. We don’t really care deeply about others, except in rare instances when we are in love or in some other exceptional state. Being habitually preoccupied with ourselves, we don’t easily put another’s life-pulse ahead of our own. 92

Realizing this, we soon discern that the source of the like and the dislike is not something intrinsically objective in the person. It’s actually in my reaction to their pleasing or displeasing me. 93

Once we have impartiality as a foundation, we can begin with the first of the Sevenfold Causal Precepts, 1st Precept is known as mother recognition. This meditation is premised on the infinite past lives of ourselves and others… //seeing all beings as our mother. // People start to look familiar, no longer strange. 95

2nd precept is Gratitude. When we meditate on this we should reach the point where we feel so moved by the love of our mother that we become tearful.

3rd precept is Repaying that kindness. 2nd phase of Gratitude.

4th precept is Love. For all our mother beings. see the beauty in them. We can see where they could be happy and perfect. We don’t get caught up in their theater of pain and misery. We love them by seeing their loveliness.

5th precept is Compassion. We look clinically at our mother beings and we realize that for the most part they are constantly batting their heads against various walls, doing the opposite of what would make them really happy. They’re addicted to various emotions, delusions, bad habits. Finally it becomes unbearable that they should suffer so, and we vow: “I will do what I can, I will devote my life to relieving them of that suffering.”

6th precept is Universal Responsibility. Since God has not freed these mother beings of their suffering yet, I must do it. This wild resolution to do the impossible is the actual spark that kindles the spirit of enlightenment, the spirit that makes a being a bodhisattva. In the modern worldview of one single lifetime, saving the universe is an insane goal. But in our meditation, our vow to liberate all beings from suffering is calm and rational. For from the Buddhist point of view, we have infinite lives infinitely entwined with other beings, so we must free every single one if we want to free ourselves. It becomes the natural thing to do.

7th precept is the fruition of the previous six. You give birth to a new messianic soul that is resolved to place the needs of others above the needs of self and to exchange preoccupation with your own happiness for a preoccupation with others’ happiness. 97

Buddha gave an understandable explanation that the reason we don’t so easily love our neighbors is that we are caught in a distorted perception about the centrality of ourselves as fixed, independent, isolated entities apart from all others. 110

Then you restore your boundaries and you feel different again. But you suddenly realize that the difference between you and other things is habitual. It’s arbitrary, it’s relative. There’s no absolute difference between you and other beings. 116

The chief enemy who has been forcing us into one suffering after another is this self-preoccupation habit, which we have had since we were animals. 127

You focus on yourself and constantly think: “What can I get? Where do I fit in? Are they doing what I want? Are they meeting my needs?” These attitudes are the sputterings of the demon self-concern, the bars on your prison walls. 129

We begin with facing all the negative things that happen to us, finding the way not to let them bind us into negative-reaction cycles but turning them to our advantage instead… The first step is to take responsibility for everything bad that happens to us and not to project responsibility out, in order to use all our energies to evolve ourselves internally rather than to vainly struggle with the environment.145

“Henceforth I’lI only use positive perception.” This refers to an internal revolution. It doesn’t mean you annihilate your critical faculty. Everything is void, so everything is relative. Relative reality is fluid and not fixed, being simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary. It is multifaceted and ambiguous, easily provoking cognitive dissonance.

The purpose of practicing positive perception as mind reform is to stop blaming everybody else in the world, to stop seeing faults as others’ problems, and to take all faults upon ourselves. This empowers us to do something about ourselves and to take responsibility for our future and for the world. ..// We must change our habitual way of justifying our own faults by blaming the world into a new discipline of seeing our faults as causing our problems. Then we can use the energy from this challenge to eliminate our faults within. 148

The Blade Wheel states that “obsessed with pleasure we drown in suffering.” 156

I can change the past, by purifying the present and polluting no more… // Sin is what interferes with the infinite. Sin is what intervenes and blocks the figure-eight circuit, breaking us up…// All outward enemies would be seen as manifestations of old business. Suddenly nothing outside me can harm me, because I refuse to acknowledge the old border of me. There is no secret weapon anyone or anything can pull on me. For the smoking gun always comes from my own holster. 158

When we suffer natural disasters, instead of bewailing our fate, we reflect that our own unethical conduct and vow-breaking exposes us to this type of thing. At first they seem to come from nowhere, we don’t deserve them, and we feel out of control; but we can regain leverage if we recognize our own failings in the past as underlying causes.

Buddhists think there are angelic beings powerful enough to avert storms or divert floods. What happens to us is never a random accident. We can embrace even a natural disaster as a circumstance and an opportunity to renew our energy and intensify our spiritual development, rather than simply complaining in vain. We learn to consider even thoughts as significant deeds, causing effects far beyond the subtle medium of electromagnetic energies in the brain, in order to develop the subtle mindfulness about negativities within us even at the most subtle level. Mind reform involves radical attitudinal change, requiring that we not waste our primary energy struggling with external reality, but focus it internally in ourselves where we can become the masters rather than remain constant victims. This does not mean we should do nothing about external circumstances, just that we should keep our priorities straight. 170

With a little effort of critical thinking, we can go beyond this and realize that this moment itself is infinite. Within this moment are all the qualities of all of our past and future lives. It is like Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence: Everything we do we should be willing to redo for eternity. Everything we do reverberates for eternity, so we should live in ultimate concern for the quality of our living…// We should live in the infinity of the moment and find the power of taking responsibility for infinite consequences. // “Henceforth I’lI control myself with real love of freedom.” That freedom, the true sense of the infinity of the moment, is right here now. 173-4

So we need to intensify detachment to overcome our enemy of self-addiction. // Far more harmful than Mara the Tempter, is the devil of self-addiction each of us carries within us, mistaken for our very self. 174

Let’s be kind, let’s be happy, and let’s accept others’ kindness on the crown of our head. 175

“Mindful’ means we must know the subtle details, the little ways that have allowed each tiny bad motivation to creep in, because each has a huge negative effect. // The notion that the ultimate or nirvana is some place into which you float away is based on your flawed sense that you are a separated thing who could withdraw into the inner room of your falsely absolutized self. This — the delusion that we are or can be separate from the world is the source of all negative things. Nirvana is this world as experienced by an altruistic being — a truly other-preoccupied, infinitely expanded being — and so enlightenment means super-mindfulness of minute facts and minute consequences, not an awareness that is just blown away and collapsed into nothingness. 176

When we feel ready to gain the energy necessary to achieve the infinitelv positive, we have to be open to a healthy fear of the danger of the infinitely negative (hell, evil). 176

Enlightenment is the ultimate tolerance of the cognitive dissonance that grips you when you confront absolute and relative at the same time. Enlightenment is being simultaneously totally present to the relative and totally liberated in the absolute. Buddha is totally out of here, in nirvana, where nothing bothers him. At the same time he’s totally present here, concerned for all beings. 189

the four(?) remedies: remorse (You must genuinely acknowledge the evil things you have done. Really face them.), repentance, resolve never again to be the slave of the self-preoccupation habit, and the wisdom of voidness (really there was no reason to have done them, they’re not ultimately there; that’s where you break the chain). Repentance alone, as it tends to reinforce your sense of the concrete reality of the sin, is not enough. Ultimately, you have to see through the sin. When you truly see its voidness, you can break free, and then you really will never do such things again. 190

The relative self is the living self. When we get rid of the delusory overlay — our sense of a rigid, absolute self — we are released! Then our relative self at last becomes a buddha-self. This is what selflessness is. It does not mean you throw away, suppress, or destroy your ego. Understanding it strengthens your ego and liberates you. Buddha is smiling not because he wants people to commit psychic hara-kiri, but because he sees that it’s possible for people to get rid of the erroneous sense of absolute self. You’re simply getting rid of a delusion, you’re not getting rid of yourself. 191

We are also working on taking that little triumph in the day when you get rid of your self-involvement and just release yourself into your play or work. You get free of self-constriction and enter the zone of power. 193

…formula is that evil is infinite, but goodness is infinite squared — infinite times infinite. Because the infinite evil beings draw energy from their self-addiction, each works for one person only. But the infinite good beings draw energy from love for others, each works for infinite others.104

Now we know that it is considered a great blessing in the West to leave this body in your sleep – not so in Tibet.

Tibetans like to die wide awake. They also meditate with their eyes open. 207

In their ceremonies, the Lakota people say, “Oyatsuke Mi-yasun,” all beings are my mothers. All beings are my fathers. All beings are my relatives. 208

We learn to pretend as children. When a parent had something we wanted, we could be so sweet. As adults we’re still hinting for presents, flattering and stroking people to get what we want from them. Inside, we’re always dissatisfied, always wanting more from those we’re with, never enjoying just being with them. The other side of greed is stinginess with what we have. I hide things, lock them up, and repeatedly check my hoard to see it it’s still there. 210

Nor will I only avoid the stupidity of commission, but that of omission, too. It’s what they call mindfulness, which is the realization that life is a ten-board chess match — and every move does matter.

My self-habit is my jailer, keeping me from really being new, fresh, live, and joyous. But the jailer is just as much a prisoner. 227

This is what differentiates buddhahood from theistic visions of the highest deity, a transcendent being who is outside the world and beyond it and yet somehow inexplicably reaches into it. That illogical possibility that there is a non-relative, absolute being is transcended in the Buddhist philosophy by the concept of nonduality, that a buddha is a being who is infinitely present everywhere in the universe and yet simultaneously totally liberated by being infinite.238

Here the freedom made possible by voidness loosens the chain of evolution and lets us out of the prison of fatalistic determinism. 241

So when we can relate to something that is simultaneously there and not there, that’s when we’ve mastered nonduality. 256

Tantra… It isn’t that there isn’t good and evil anymore, but you use the language of ordinary and extraordinary instead, and you say, “I’m going to transmute the vision of the ordinary into a vision of the extraordinary.” 287

Tantric vows. You see everything as a magical, poetic reality. 304

Om mani padme hum declares that everything is perfect in every atom in every instant, that compassion and wisdom are present everywhere, that love is present everywhere.

Bliss emerges from everything everywhere. There is nothing to fear. Even when it looks like hell in front of me. I can just embrace it and it will turn into a bed of roses. 317

If you develop an inner murmuring like water flowing, your mantra will bring grace and gracefulness to your last stand. A death where the mind easily leaves the failing body and rolls on with the mantra unimpaired. … // It is the heartbeat of the strong love force of the universe.

Once you realize voidness or selflessness, what you realize is that your world is what you imagine it to be, maintained by the shared imaginative patterns of all beings. Your mind is completely intertwined with other beings minds, so we must focus our minds all together to create a better reality. Though it is fluid and subtle, there’s still an objective reality, because there are so many subjectivities other than our own 334

Full satisfaction isn’t addictive, because it opens out into endlessness, leaving you free of craving. Things that hint at satisfaction and then frustrate you become addictive, because you have to keep going back, hoping for better luck next time. 336

Now the saint returns to the marketplace, so focused in her transcendent magic that it persists, unencumbered by the unmagical world because she knows that the ordinary nests perfectly within the extraordinary. 340