King Doha: Saraha's Advice to a King by Traleg Kyabgon

Author:Traleg Kyabgon [Kyabgon, Traleg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shogam Publications
Published: 2017-04-02T14:00:00+00:00

Straying

If we have the right kind of approach to dealing with these experiences, we will begin to gain insight into these things. Through gaining insight into bliss, luminosity, and non-conceptuality these become firmly established. They are then a feature of our psychological make-up or way of being.

But, if not, it is said that instead of furthering our meditation with these experiences we may end up stuck, due to attachment, due to feelings of loss. We get attached to the good feelings and then always try to recreate them, chase after them, without realizing that these experiences will come again. Chasing after them, missing them, craving for them actually prevent further experiences from arising. We may want to make them happen, create them, but these experiences have to arise spontaneously so that at the appropriate time and place the experiences will reappear. If one has such experiences, one should feel good about having had them but, at the same time, not develop attachment to them.

It is said in the teachings that if we do not deal with this properly, our experiences of bliss will actually arouse even stronger emotions which will make our meditation very difficult. With mental clarity also, if we do not handle these experiences properly and instead crave for or miss them, then our agitation will increase and our discursive thoughts will become more disturbing. Again, this will cause problems with our meditation. In any case, the thought of loss causes distraction.

Having an open mind towards our experiences and thinking they are all transient so will come and go, is the first approach to take in dealing with meditative experiences. Secondly, even if we do experience the downside of a positive experience, we do not indulge in thinking of it as such but understand it is our dualistic mind telling us that is the case. If we think in that way, positive experiences and all forms of experiences will continue to arise; otherwise we are only going to inflame our emotions and, in doing so, negative feelings about the practice and about meditation experiences will increase.

It is the same with non-conceptuality. If we do not deal properly with the meditative experience of non-conceptuality, we could end up in what we call a state of absorption, and in Mahamudra language that is a bad thing. Even though in other contexts that kind of meditative absorption is sought after, in Mahamudra it is not considered a good experience. It is not a good state to be in because we have to be alert, we have to be aware, we have to be attentive, observant—all of those things. If we are in a sort of lulled, trance-like state, we don’t have mental clarity, we are not alert, attentive, and so on, and in the long run that is not beneficial. Therefore one tries not to deliberately cultivate that state of non-conceptuality. If thoughts slow down that is fine, that is great; if they don’t slow down, we don’t get upset.

By dealing

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