“I think meditation is extremely important and don’t ever let anybody tell you that it’s just not having any impact on the world. You’re changing the fundamental fabric of the cosmos when you meditate.”
Ken Wilber
The following quote written by eminent scholar and Buddhist practitioner of note Robert A. F. Thurman is from his Introduction to The Way Of The White Clouds by Lama Anagarika Govinda.
… as we begin the twenty-first common era century in hopes of not repeating the violence of the world wars and genocides of the previous ones - it is crucial that we face up to some important lessons that Lama Govinda tirelessly taught. Western culture, based on the religious forms of Christianity and Islam, which, in Lama’s words, “lost themselves … by overpowering the human mind through the dictatorship of a partially world-creating and at the same time world-negating spirit,” is still relatively uncivilized, focused on the external conquest of other civilizations, violence, war, imperialism, and a rampant need for material possession and self-aggrandizement. Contrary to its inflated self-image, it is not the most advanced culture the world has yet seen. Its very developed material technology is, in fact, put to the childish uses of violent destruction and thoughtless consumption. Its worst problem is its foundational confusion, which leads those of us under its thrall to feel disconnected from nature. Hence we tend to be not responsible for the consequences of our actions, and distract ourselves from the extreme danger of destroying everything in our path by the irrational promise of either a blissful salvation by an absolutely disconnected omnipotent “God” or else a blissful oblivion.
Hence our barbarous culture - I do not call it a “civilization” - poses the ultimate threat to planetary life, to all the human beings of other more ancient and better balanced cultures, all other life forms, and the eco-system itself. … The urgent need, therefore, is for we bearers of ths unbalanced, disconnection culture to rediscover our interconnection with the rest of life, our infinite responsibility to ourselves and all other living beings, the extreme negative danger of our continuing on the path of destruction and consumption, and the positive potential for us to find a reliable happiness within our own souls, to conquer our own inner negative habits, and to cultivate our infinite capacity for love and joy.
The Buddhist world movement is not accurately thought of simply as a “world religion,” undersood as a set system of beliefs and institutions that parallel those of religions. It can be viewed that way with some validity - indeed both proponents and opponents do so - but it is only one-third a religion at most. It is more fundamentally a way of living and a pattern of ethics, a basis for numerous civilizations that emphasized individualism, wisdom, gentleness, altruism, and universal equality. And it is a way of understanding the world, a tradition of sciences based on the possiblilty of human beings developing a complete and accurate understanding of the realities of life and death. Its fundamental teaching intends to help beings understand their causal interconnection with all life, find the causes of all their sufferings, intervene to prevent those causes from giving their effects, and achieve the evolutionary goal of enduring and shareable happiness. It is therefore just what the victim/bearers of a confusion, violence-, and greed-based culture need to cure their self-imprisoning malaise and world-endangering malfunction.
Properly applied the practices of Tibetan Buddhism facilitate shifts in consciousness to higher levels where true, far-reaching wisdom manifests. Real wisdom is so rare there’s almost no reason to mention it these days. Very few people know what it is, why we need it, how different things would be if, on balance, people had it or at least could connect to it. Given the set of challenges the human race faces NOW, not some time in the future, we urgently need problem solving based in transcendent wisdom. For this reason alone, everyone should engage in meditation every day. All people free to do so should be doing daily meditation practice. Start now. Adopt a daily meditation practice. WAKE UP.
Buddhism is one of the great world religions. Buddhism is non-theistic. It is not about God. It is about the Tibetan word which points at the “ground of all being.” We translate that Tibetan word into English as “mind,” but the Tibetan word does not mean what that Enlish word mind means - not even close.
Our English word “mind” frequently means something as small as an epi-phenomenon of brain - not even close. Not even in the ball park.
We often use the word consciousness in place of the Tibetan word for what Buddhism is about. “Consciousness” comes closer, but the real issue is fundamental to the summit Buddhists wish to attain - words don’t go there.
The “ground of all being” can be looked at directly - but words, with their extraordinary limitedness, can not be used to label it; especially in the West where we have no experiential cultural habits. We value the intellectual. We value the material. We imagine ourselves to be separate. We believe our shadow belongs to what it’s projected on… everything is out there… This whole package is a long, long, non linear ways from looking directly at the ground of all being.
But still, we can use the word consciousness to talk about what Tibetan Buddhism… all Buddhism… is about.
“We always compare the records and the prophesies when we get together with Tibetans. They’re pretty much the same because we’re the same people-you know, from the same original roots.”
Mad Bear
From MAD BEAR Spirit, Healing, and the Sacred in the Life of a Native American Medicine Man by Doug Boyd. Simon & Schuster, 1994.
“What moves is mind.
Its nature is awareness.
If primordial purity is realized
They are said to be one.
Wisdom is the primordial purity of consciousness.”
From The Vajra Garland
The Lotus Garland
Translated by Yeshe Gyamtso Published by KTD Publications ISBN 0-9741092-6-6
We could use a much, much greater abundance of wisdom. Each of us, if we want to, can deliberately grow wisdom.
“… to do that you have to access the innate capability of the brain, and the tools, the key, to really develop the brain holistically is to experience the holistic reality, the meditative state, so-called spiritual experience, the experience of the unified field at the source of thought.”(my bold)
Quote from What tHe Bleep Do wE (know)!? the book. ISBN 0-7573-0334-x
Shamata Meditation is precisely the experience of the unified field at the source of thought.
Buddhism is a verb. It is the deliberate pursuit of the higher, non-ordinary states of consciousness.
Lama la
Shamata Meditation, a most direct path to all our unrealized potential. Looking… looking…always looking for only the source of thought, Emptiness, the absolute nature of reality.
We have to meditate and reach non-ordinary states of consciousness before we become the creator of our own reality.
Quantum Activist Amit Goswami, Ph.D.
“If we simplify our lives, we gain tremendous freedom. For example, there were great masters in Tibet who expressed the insubstantiality of true existence not only in the outer world of appearances but with their bodies as well. There were some realized beings whose bodies were transparent. They had no shadow. They lived in a house, but the house had no walls. The sunlight came right through the walls. They would sit or lay in space as if lying on a cushion or bed. The possibilities are limitless. Yet it all starts with beginning to simplify our lives, shedding habitual tendencies and conceptual fixations.” Khenpo Rinpoche
from the book The Wish-Fulfilling Wheel by Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche