, Mahamudra ‘is a Sanskrit word that, great seal’ means and refers to the nature of all phenomena. Is provided just as a legal document with seal and stamp to authenticate the signature, expresses the nature of reality in a figurative sense all their stamps to ensure that nothing exists in a way that only in the imagination of possible and impossible otherwise is. The fact that everything is empty of an impossible mode of existence confirmed, so that things actually exist.
Mahamudra is the term for an elaborate Buddhist meditation and practice system to identify these large sealed nature. These methods are characterized by the fact that you see that nature, by focusing on the mind itself, and discovered the relationship between mind and reality. Confuse our minds with the reality of the imagination, we create our own problems. In addition, we are, if our minds can appear different in a way that does not match their reality, in order to best help them be unable to know them exactly. An understanding of the intimate relationship between mind and reality is therefore essential for both liberation and enlightenment as to attain the goal of mahamudra practice.
The most discussed in Buddhism based on fantasy and impossible mode of existence is literally true existence called ‘that is an existence that would be truly independent of and unrelated to the spirit. Since so-called ‘real life’ is a false existence, paradoxically, that denotes a mode of existence, and even the impossible is not real, maybe we can avoid this confusion, we instead by variations of the term, solid existence ‘use.
We can get an idea of the complex relationship between mind and reality, if we examine it from different angles. Let us approach the subject as a practical, earthy manner and call it the way we and the universe really exist, ‘reality’ we live in reality ‘. On the basis of our everyday experience of reality can we learn they actually know and maybe understand. This process can take place only through the Spirit.
Is the direct experience and knowledge of reality is not enough to understand it clearly, and we also need to think about it too, we can only do so through a conceptual design to do, which is a construct of the mind. Moreover, we can if we want to express formulate for ourselves or for others and what is reality, do so only by means of words or symbols, which are another construct of the mind. The reality may exist, but it’s a pipe dream if we think that we can learn, regardless of the relationship between reality and mind to understand, describe, or prove. Following a philosophical concept of postmodernism, we have the reality to deconstruct ‘of (the assumption) that it is a solid, something that, in the’ outside ‘would exist.
Let us ask ourselves how phenomena exist, we have already used our mind to ask itself the question. Moreover, we can answer this question only if we use our minds. Suppose we answer: “Yes, that’s obvious, but things do exist on a theoretical level, not separate from the mind?”, Then we would say that a theoretical level does not exist independently, regardless of a spirit who sets up the theory, or at least she thinks. We can say nothing further about how a theoretical level there is, because for everything you want to say what we do, we need language that is a construct of the mind.
In fact, we have once we address only the issue of how things exist, enter the realm of description that can be made only by the Spirit. But that does not mean that everything exists only in the mind and the earth has not existed before there was life on it. An object does not need to know at this moment by a specific spirit to exist. But if we want to talk about it there, as things or try to understand this, to prove and to know we can do this only in relation to the mind. Mahamudra begins with this premise.
We can formulate the relationship between the mind and the mode of existence of things in different ways. There are two main approaches to Mahamudra. To describe them in very general terms, presents the first of what exists in terms of phenomena, either as objects of mind or spirit – in other words, as either experience or content of experience. Phenomena, including the mind, therefore, exist only because of the fact that the mind can they appear as an object of perception or can take place. We can establish that our children and our love for them exist only because we can perceive and experience them. The second main approach discussed what exists in relation to intellectual naming, that is, the things for what they are, exist only in relation to his words and terms, to indicate what words or what they mean. Accordingly, there are phenomena as what they are, on the basis that they are only the meaning of the words denoting them, mental or conceptual formulations simple terms. We can establish that our children and our love exist only because we can give them names, which they describe.
In both cases, the existence of the phenomena is not based on their own, such as on an inherent, findable self-nature, which makes them really what they are entirely independent from one relationship to the spirit. Our children do not exist as our children, because they have somewhere to be a critical feature that inherently them to our children ‘makes, even if we do not even exist. And love does not exist in isolation somewhere in the sky, with a decisive inner strength that enables them to their existence. This is impossible, imaginary modes of existence and all phenomena are devoid of them to exist in this way. The absence of such an impossible mode of existence of all phenomena is called their ’emptiness’.
Both approaches are combined with its own characteristic style of the Mahamudra meditation on the nature of reality. In the former, we focus on the spirit that realizes emptiness as its object, and come to the realization that all phenomena are a development of this spirit. In the latter, we concentrate on emptiness as an object of perception, especially on the emptiness of the mind, and come to the realization that even the mind exists only because of the fact that he was as ‘spirit can call’. In the first, we therefore concentrate on the mind which conceives of a particular object, in contrast, the second on an object that is perceived by a particular spirit.
Both the Kagyu and Sakya and Gelug traditions of Tibetan Mahamudra transfer lines, which are presented on each specific manner and explained and are accompanied by their individual meditation. All start on common sources, which originated in India and arrived in the early eleventh century Tibet. The Kagyu and Sakya schools present some of Mahamudra in terms of the inseparability of appearance and spirit. The Gelug tradition, it presents in terms of spiritual designation, while others Sakya schools to connect the two by first consider the relationship between the objects of the mind and the spirit itself, and then recognize the nature of mind in relation to mental naming themselves. The Kagyu and Gelug present Mahamudra practice that is both gross and the subtle levels of mind concern, the Sakya tradition takes its only from the standpoint of the most subtle level. The Kagyu tradition explains two styles of Mahamudra practice – one for those who make gradual progress, and the other for those in which everything happens at once. Sakya and Gelug describe practice pathways for the former. The Gelug tradition of Gelug-Kagyu Mahamudra is called, because it uses methods of the Kagyu-style, to recognize the conventional nature of mind, and then Gelug typical methods for its deepest nature. As the first Panchen Lama, “A Root Text for Gelug-Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra” explains at the end of each approach is intended to achieve the same and the same result. Any leads – on the basis of the mind itself – to eliminate all confusion and the realization of all potentials so that anyone can be of greatest benefit to others of us.
The four true facts of life
To understand the Mahamudra methods to estimate and, if we want to practice, finally, we must understand the proper context. Let us begin by briefly outline this context, in terms of the four facts of life, the Buddha realized and taught, and all the Aryas or highly realized beings – consider to be true – all those noble ‘. They are usually called the ‘Four Noble Truths’.
Buddha, who lived about two and a half thousand years ago in India, was a man who freed himself from all confusion and so was able to use its full potential for the benefit of others to use. He achieved this state of enlightenment basically the fact that he understood the reality, that is, he realized what is true in life. First he saw the truth of suffering. In general, this first as a fact, however, life is suffering ‘words, which sounds rather ominous and pessimistic. This gives but not quite what it should. In reality, saw Buddha, denying that anyone who looks at life truly is, that it is difficult.
Nothing in life is ever easy. It is not easy to live in society, to earn his money or raise a family. May be so stressful these normal aspects of life – we tend to make it even more difficult than necessary. We are like so nervous, upset or worried about anything that we do not deal with the challenges of life as well or gracefully as we could. Always tense, we do not only ourselves, but also all around us unhappy.
Buddha explained that the ultimate cause, which complicates our lives unnecessarily, our ignorance. This is the second true fact of life – the true cause of suffering. Ignorance can be made either in terms of behavioral causes and effects or in relation to reality, and we may not be aware of both, because we either know nothing about it or understand it also wrong. ‘Understanding’ (English, apprehending ‘) is usually associated with the English word, grasping’ understand ‘or’ grab ‘translated, that is, to perceive an object in a certain way. Since the false understanding of reality, the underlying cause of our difficulties in life, we will denote ignorance in this context as ‘confusion about the reality’.
We are confused when it comes to reality, we feel insecure and are naturally nervous and tense. We tend to everyday things in our life – how to drive to work or get the kids to bed – into such ordeals that we are constantly under stress. Of course we have to worry about our lives and take care of our obligations, but there is never any need to burden ourselves with worry and chronic obsessive fears. They only prevent us from effectively dealing with the life they lead, and with no certainty of happiness and mental peace. Based on Shantideva, the Indian master of the eighth century: “If something is difficult in life, and you can change it, why should it upset you? Just change it! But if you can not change it, why should you be upset? It helps anything anyway. ”
When we feel tense, be it in respect to a particular situation, for example because we stuck in traffic, or on non-localizable way, for example because we have a bad mood, we tend to project our tension to the outside. This applies not only to how we communicate with others and share our excitement, perhaps to them. On a deeper level, we misunderstand our power as something solid and projecting it to all situations in which we find ourselves. Our mind makes the traffic jam and our morning get up to appear as if they themselves were solid, monstrous tortures. He makes it seem as though they were by nature truly and inherently stressful, no matter who experiences them. In addition to ensuring that our mind automatically and unconsciously makes things appear that way, we ride with perhaps even morbid, uncontrollable, repetitive thoughts on it and reinforce our belief that these phenomena have a real reality. Everything feels so tense and stressful that one might think that life is one bear trap somewhere out there, that has us firmly and mercilessly with brutal violence in the pliers.
Buddha explained that this confusion about the reality – our idea that everything exists in the way that it can appear to our minds – the root cause of our problems. In this way we make ourselves difficult aspects of our lives even harder. We come not in the sense that tension is only one way to experience a situation, we think it is really and truly part of the situation, had itself cause an inherently stressful situation, it would be imperative to be stressed out of it . But as a personal experience of a situation of stress is dependent on many personal factors and is not inevitable. As long as we have not understood this well, we condemn ourselves to unrelenting stress.
Certainly it is difficult to live in a crowded city and to put each day in traffic jams, noise and dirt, or perhaps falling victim to a crime. No one can deny that. But if we are a concrete, fixed mental image of the city as a fearsome, horrific, tense place, as ‘building, which is like a monster to us, the poor, the victims, in here,’ make out assaults, we are just harder to live there. The city in our heads that we project onto the streets seems to be firmer and more solid than the concrete city itself in this way does our belief that our ideas actually correspond to reality, all our effort and our stress. Sadly, many people consider not only the place where they live, but life in this way.
Buddha taught that it is not inevitable that we experience such painful symptoms like these. It is possible that these symptoms and their causes to an end, not just temporarily but permanently. Your true cessation or end, which is equivalent to their total elimination, is the third true fact of life – the true end ‘of suffering and its causes. We eliminate a recurrence of the causes of suffering, then we definitely know the absence of suffering, that would be incurred as a result of her. Without a cause can be no result. Since the root cause of the recurrence of our problems is the confusion with which we imagine that things actually exist in the impossible way, as our confused mind makes them seem deceptive manner, it is possible to eliminate the recurrence of this cause. The reason is that Kinky can not declare to be true. Based on fantasy, not facts, it lacks the solid foundation and it can not withstand close scrutiny. For this reason, true cessations is actually possible.
To get a true cessation of our problems and their causes, we need to actively do something about it. Otherwise we continue endlessly because of our habit hard to make our life difficult – for example, by creating tension and over again. Since the root cause of our suffering is a confused state of mind, we need to replace it with a non-permanent state of confusion, so the confusion can never occur again. Such is not confused states of mind with which we see reality, are the fourth true fact of life – true forms of spiritual path (level or state of mind, which serves as a path towards liberation or enlightenment), or true, paths’. It is therefore not enough to conceal a problem such as stress by taking sedatives or alcohol drinking. We need the confusion with which we believe that the tension out there, there, get rid of or store them. ‘ We need to replace confusion with real understanding, for example, the understanding that tension is a product of the mind.
Our mental attitudes can be changed much easier than the entire world. To revert once more to Shantideva, who writes in his treatise on patience as follows: “You can not possibly cover the entire surface of the rough world of leather. But if we cover the bottom of our feet with leather, this fulfills the same purpose. “To free us from our problems in life and others in the best way to be useful, it is therefore essential to the nature of the reality of the phenomena that we experience, understand, and indeed in terms of their relationship to our spirit. The Mahamudra teachings include effective, sophisticated methods to achieve this goal.
Us and our lives take them seriously
When the first true fact is that life in general is not easy, we should certainly not expect that it would be easy to see the nature of our mind. The actual nature of mind, at whatever level, is not altogether clear. Already correctly identify and recognize what the mind is extremely difficult. We’d need a strong motivation, even if we try to begin to see him. We need to be clear about why we want to see the nature of mind. Let us consider briefly the Buddhist presentation of the stages of motivation that we go through in order to achieve the greatest success in this endeavor.
Each level of spiritual motivation is the foundation that we take ourselves and our quality of life seriously. Most people in the morning and have to either go to work or school or stay home and take care of the household and the children. In the evening they are tired and try to relax by drinking a beer and maybe watch TV. Finally, they go to sleep, and next morning they get up and the same is happening all over again. They spend their whole lives trying to earn money, raise children and so much fun and enjoyment as possible to have.
Even though most can not change the shape of their lives, they also have the feeling that they can not change the quality of the experience of this form. Life has its ups and downs but a lot of it is always stressful. They feel that they are a tiny part in a huge, solid mechanism, in which they can change anything. For this reason, they spend their lives in a mechanical, passive way, as a passenger on a lifelong roller coaster, always up and down and all around, on the assumption that not only is the retracted track but also experienced when driving tension and stress is a indispensable part of the trip are occurring again and again.
Since life when you experienced it in this way, despite all the pleasure can be very depressing, it is very important to do something about it. Get drunk with us only every night, until we forget everything, or to surround the whole time with entertainment and distraction to have as constantly running music or TV, or are continuing to deal with computer games, so we never have time on our think life will not eliminate the problem. We must take ourselves seriously. This means we must respect ourselves as human beings. We are not only part of a machine or a helpless passenger on a specified journey through life, which sometimes runs well but is too often anything but smooth. We must therefore take a closer look at what we experience every day. And when we see that we are stressed by the tension of our city, our household and offices, we should not accept this as an essential point.
Our lives, our work and our environment, including the attitudes and behavior of others, only the circumstances under which we live our lives. Our quality of life, however – what we see for yourself, nobody else at this moment – is the direct result of our own attitudes and behavior that they generate, not the other. This is evident from the fact that not everyone experiences the same environment in the same way.
Admittedly, some environments are more difficult than others, such as living in a war zone, and we must always be vigilant to avoid real danger. But be vigilant is something other than tense, and the latter need not necessarily accompany the former. However, we have the feeling that our tension is inevitable, then we will not even try to overcome them. So we condemn ourselves to a very unpleasant feeling. But that must not be so.
We are nervous all the time, then the first step to change something in this situation to take us and our quality of life seriously. Suppose we go down the street and come here on a bug and crush him in part, without him all totzutreten. If we continue and the experience of the beetle, that his leg is crushed or torn, ignore, we do this because we do not take the insect and its life seriously. We do not respect. If we do not treat us even better than these beetles, and our deepest pain and agony ignore, which is really unfortunate.
Means to take ourselves seriously, we actually look at how we experience our lives, and if there is something unsatisfactory about it, we admit that. Our tension and stress we do not disappear by denying it or avoid looking at them honestly. And admit that something is wrong, is not the same as to complain and to have self-pity. Still, it suggests that something is fundamentally wrong with us and we are a bad person, because we are nervous. To remain objective not to be melodramatic, and non-judgmental is essential for any spiritual healing process.
Safe Direction and Buddha nature
After we seriously ourselves and our quality of life and gives us the difficulties we are experiencing, perhaps, have admitted, the next step, hope to have that 1) it is possible to overcome them, 2) there is a way to To achieve this, and 3) we are able to achieve this. This brings us to the topic of refuge and Buddha nature.
Recourse is to not take a passive act in which you go into the hands of a higher power that will do anything for one, like the German word ‘refuge’ might suggest. It is an active process, our lives to be a safe, reliable and positive direction. This is the direction of the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha – rejected – the three precious jewels. You are precious in the sense that they are both rare and valuable. Each jewel has two meanings – one interpretable and definitive – and a common representation. Offsetting the level leads to the final, while the representation serves as a focal point for the respect, without in itself represent an independent real safe direction.
The Buddhas are those who have cleared all their confusion, so that they can fully use their potential to help others. On the final level, the direction is safe in their Dharmakaya or her body, which includes everything – that is, in their awareness and knowing its nature, which include both everything. The Rupakaya form or body, manifests a Buddha, serves as the interpretable level, whereas Buddha statues and paintings represent the first precious jewel.
On the final level, the source of the Dharma orientation refers to the complete elimination or complete absence of barriers and the complete attainment of all good qualities that the Buddha’s own. Offsetting your level is what they indicate, and what helps us to achieve the same thing, that is, their written observations and findings. They are represented by the Dharmatexte.
The final level of the Sangha of the source direction is the internal community – within the mind – the complete removal or termination ‘of the obstacles and the acquisition of good qualities. More precisely, it is the community of such properties, all of the Aryans – are collected, as they progress further along the path – those who have seen the reality of concepts directly and freely. Offsetting your level is the community of the Aryas, both the lay and the ordained, which already have some signs of real fixes and achievements. It is represented by the community of monastics in general.
In short, the final level of the three precious jewels of the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha representing the goal, we want to achieve. Offsetting their level indicates that we rely on the outside to get there. But we have also internal factors over which we must rely. These have to do with our Buddha nature.
We are able to resolve our problems and to achieve the final three precious jewels, Buddha nature, because every possession, ie the various factors or the basis of work that make this possible. Of all our natural resources, the most important is our spirit. We all have experienced a ghost, which is prevented by anything in his nature to them, everything that exists. No matter what happens – no matter how confused, stressed or unhappy we may be – we experience it. Even death is experienced something that we experience or, if he comes. Since then we have a spirit that allows us to experience that which exists always, so we have the basic resources that allows us, a total absence of confusion and the use of all good qualities for the benefit of others to learn – provided that such and such a complete absence of exploitation ever exist. In other words, if we can prove that it is possible that these exist two things – and that it is not only nice, but completely unrealistic wishful thinking – we can be confident that we can reach them, for the simple reason because we have a spirit.
We can experience things without confusion and without tension. Even the most confusing, most nervous person experiences moments of clarity and peace – and it was only when he or she is sleeping peacefully and have pleasant dreams, or harmless. This shows that confusion and tension are not an essential part of the nature of mind. Therefore, confusion can be eliminated. And not only that, since confusion can not be confirmed and can be completely replaced by understanding, which can be confirmed, confusion can be eliminated forever. Thus, a total absence of confusion exists. In addition, because the spirit hinders confusion, to use his full potential, and a utilization of all potentials exist, once the confusion is gone. Since we all have a spirit and has the spirit of each is the same nature, to learn everything that exists, so we can all learn to recognize the final three precious jewels.
Let us, therefore, to eliminate our confusion and to realize our potential, like the Buddha, their accomplishments, their lessons and what they have built up over the path, and those who are progressing on the path, we show we go with a reliable and positive direction through life. To take refuge means, therefore, to give our lives this realistic, safe alignment. Without this, our mahamudra practice either no direction and leads to nothing, or it leads to a wrong direction that will bring more confusion and problems. In addition, we travel, the farther we walked through the mahamudra methods in this safe direction – in other words, the more we consider the nature of the mind and recognize its relationship to reality – to be more confident when it comes to the truth of this direction and our ability to achieve their goal.
buddhisatva 