subdue the vagaries of mind. excellent.

I like to listen to dharma talks as I drive to my morning yoga class. I have a ravenous appetite for downloadable dharma talks. I like my dharma talks high in quality, quantity, variety, and frequency. I find them nourishing, on a soul level, and interesting and centering for my mind.

I recently found some talks by a woman named Kali Ma. Great name. I think Andy Warhol was right when he said that Everyone is Kali Ma for fifteen minutes.

I found her website a bit confusing to navigate, but from what I could gather, she is a sincere tantric practitioner, with a grounded education in traditional Buddhist Tantric Yogas. I am always happy to see someone striving towards the authentic.

Her Dharma Talks are very nice, too. I have listened to "success and failure" and part of "the tyranny of specialness". She has a nice way of drawing the listener in, and uses excellent historical examples to illustrate her point. There are some occasional moments when her personality gets in the way of the true teaching, and slows down the flow of the wisom, but this is minor, and forgiveable. I can imagine that she will become quite a formidable teacher as she continues down her path.

You can download them here!

this picture from moolf

If you are familiar with sand mandalas, you know one of their most important attributes is their impermanence. The monks carefully, painstakingly create the mandala, and then, swoosh, they brush the mandala away. Many people who watch the process feel a great sense of poignancy or loss. Hopefully, at least some gain some insight into anicca, the truth that all things that begin, must end. We are encouraged to realize that our fortunes, our relationships, and our very lives, are no more solid than the colorful pile of dust that remains at the end of the ritual.

I found an unlikely mandala on the internet today, a mandala just as temporary, and no less beautiful as the Tibetan Sand Mandalas. There is a festival at the Buddhist Temples in Lop Buri, Thailand, last Sunday in November. The townspeople offer huge buffets to the plethora of monkeys that roam the temple ground. It is said that offering the food to the monkeys offers great good fortune, perhaps because the monkeys are in some way holy. their behavior during the festival is so similar to that of the Artist Monks. There is another theory that perhaps it is good fortune to feed the monkeys because they are the center of the tourist trade and economy of the area. So, they say thank you to the monkeys, and create another tourist attraction, and perhaps some good karma as well. Everybody's happy.


this picture from moolf

Many of these buffets are huge, round, patterened pallets of food. Clearly, they share many qualities and principles with mandalas. They are sacred circles and temporary dwellings of the most sacred residents of Lop Buri. And they are impermanant. The monkeys literaly live and eat atop these magnificent structures, as they take them apart, bite by bite. Judging by the pictures and videos, it is a fantastic celebration, and a ritual with a clear, inherent ending. When the food is gone, the party is over.

I really enjoy books. I've always accumulated them quite easily, read them voraciously, and collected them doggedly. My library reached a new level several years ago when Bhagavan Das asked me to look after a few boxes of his books. There was some good stuff in there, stuff I may not have come across otherwise, and other things that I was familiar with, but just hadn't got around to accumulating just yet. It was a quantum leap, quite satisfying. I decided to name my library, "The Bhagavan Das Library for Advanced Tantric Studies". I thought it was official and important enough, and got back to the business of reading and collecting.
The BDLATS had another good day, about a year ago, when our dear friend Paul JJ Alix asked us to care for a portion of his collection for a spell. The excitement was lessened only slightly by the arrival of 11 boxes send C.O.D. I realized that this was the way to go. I stopped borrowing books, insisting that now, I only housed collections.
Well, we had a good day today, at the library. Nothing as fantastic as the collections we obtained from Baba or Paul, but still a solid haul. A Craigs List find. Fifteen books for $40. Mostly Chogyam Trungpa. One book by Musician John Cage. I didn't bother haggling, and I almost always haggle. For the sport of it.
It was an easy transaction, the gentleman dropped them off at the yoga school, and said he was happy they were going to a good home. I gave him his money, and thanked him.
I have a few of them already, if can guess which ones, I'll give you one of them as a present. I'll give you a hint, there are three. (No shipping, you have to come and get it)
Here is the inventory:
Dharma Art (Dharma Ocean Series)
The Lion's Roar: An Introduction to Tantra (Dharma Ocean Series)
The Heart of the Buddha (Dharma Ocean Series, 1)
The Tibetan Book of the Dead: The Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo (Shambhala Library)
Orderly Chaos: The Mandala Principle (Dharma Ocean Series)
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Secret of the Vajra World: The Tantric Buddhism of Tibet
Dakini's Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism
Kundalini: Yoga For The West
Healing with Form, Energy, and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen
The Masks of God, Vol. 2: Oriental Mythology
The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology
Silence: Lectures and Writings
Trancending Madness
The Bliss of Inner Fire: Heart Practice of the Six Yogas of Naropa

The rules:
1) The list of books is on my blog, mainlinesutras.com
2) You may enter once, by email, and guess the three duplicate books.
3) Place your first choice book first
4) The person who guesses the three (or the most) correctly, first gets their first choice book.
5) It will trickle down from there.
6) You must come get your book in person.

Bringing the shadow to light

Machig Labdron was a Tibetan Yogini very well versed in the Prajñā Pāramitā Sutra. So well versed, in fact, she was often hired by wealthy families to read it in their homes, in an attempt to gain spiritual merit.
In her late teens/early twenties, Machig was undergoing an initiation in the company of her sangha. She went in to deep meditation, and quickly reached a high state of samadhi. Then, much to the surprise of everyone present, she began to levitate. Not only did she lift right off of the floor, but she floated right through the solid clay walls of the building, ending up in full lotus in the branches of a tree growing in the middle of a lake.
This lake was inhabited by a fierce Naga. Nagas are Snake-like water spirits with a reputation for being capricious and terrifying. Its not that they are evil, per-se, its just that their morals and sensibilities are very different than ours. Humans are often so fearful of nagas that they refer to them as 'demons'. This particular naga was so temperamental that people were afraid to even look in the direction of his lake.
Obviously, He was outraged by Machig's presence, and her indifferent attitude. So outraged was he, that he contacted all of his naga friends, the meanest ones that would pick up the the phone, and invited them over over to accost this young, bliss permeated practitioner.
The pack of appeared, fearsome and ferocious in front of the tree. They were shocked to find that she did not flee. Instead of seeing demons approaching her, she recognized them all as fragmented parts of her own clear mind. She saw own her fears, obsessions, and confusions marching in, begging for love and healing. Out of boundless compassion, she transformed herself into golden nectar, and offered herself as food to the nagas. This action astounded and pacified the nagas, who transformed into her allies and protectors.
Just like Machig Labdron, we too can reorient our perspective to realize that the true threat to our happiness is not 'other', but a part of our selves. Sometimes called a shadow, because these unloved pieces of ourselves seem to trail behind us, draggin us down, sapping our energy, and occasionally obscuring our vision in a way that causes us to act foolishly.
And just lke Machig, we can find allies in our shadow if only we have the courage and compassion to nourish them light of our spirit, and allow then to take their rightful place in our heart.

An excellent practice to get you started is located here, on Tsultrim Allione's website.

I've also been reading Robert Bly's A Little Book on the Human Shadow, which has some excellent insight from a Jungian/Western Poetic perspective.

Happy New Year!

While I was googling around today, i found this great blog written by a 'joyfully earnest catholic'.
In this one post, he writes a fascinating article about how to convert Buddhists To Christianity.
It is fascinating for two reasons. The first being that the author seems to be respectful, sincere, and kind. He is not overtly or intentionally rude or condescending. It is also really interesting because of this person's misunderstanding of the subtleties of Buddhist Dharma.
In the article, he asks 4 questions that he seems to believe easily prove the superiority of Christianity. I am going to take a few minutes to answer them, as an excercise in understanding, and I will post them later. I would like to encourage you to do the same. Perhaps I'll even email them to this guy, I'm not sure yet.

a. Dear Buddhist, do you really want to spend so much time trying to be rid of desires when you could just change your desires to be holy, through Christ?
b. Dear Buddhist, HOW exactly are you going to be rid of the desire not to have desire in the real world?
c. Dear Buddhist, HOW exactly are your going to live this way in the real world? Christianity offers real peace in the midst of strife, while Buddhism seems to offer the surreal atmosphere of a Zen garden. Is this peace or or stagnation? In the midst of the world’s given disorder and the people in it, is the Buddhist “peace” really possible? Christianity instead offers real and ongoing reconciliation, a peace given and not strived for.

...A gentle clencher: Dear Buddhist, you follow a wise man who never claimed to be God, and yet offers a life system. The Christian follows a man who claimed to be God and offered a life system and eternal salvation as God. If Jesus is who He says He is, He is certainly more likely, as God, to be right.

Theology of The Body website

I haven't read it yet, because it just came out, but I am very excited to curl up with some tea and delve into Sarah's written word. I having spent many hours at Sarah's feet. I find myself consistently astonished and amazed me by Her lucidity. Her ability to describe the spectrum of human experience and the profound importance of simple spiritual practice inspire me greatly. When sitting with her, however, I am able to hear everything she says only once, she invairably goes on to another idea soon enough. It may be one of her ways of teaching impermanance. Im my stubbornness, and my desire to stay with the truths she shares a little bit longer, I have no doubt that I will cling to my copy of 'Insight Yoga', and read it again and again and again. I feel very comfortable recommending that you do the same.

from Al Jazeera

The Caves of Dunhuang are some really spectacular caves in Western China. They are so spectacular, that they are called 'Peerless'. Unfortuanately, due to harsh winds, time, and lots of tourists, the caves are rapidly deteriorating. What will become of them?
New York Times Article (with slideshow)
Friends of Dunhuang (preservation efforts)

It is a quiet night, a few days after Winter Solstice, and a few days before Christmas. Writing a few notes about my dearly departed Ayurvedic Yoga Teacher, Betheyla, seems to be as good a way as any to begin the foray into Blogging. She died before dawn on the Ninth of December, so, where most of the major hubub around her passing has died down, we are still well within the TBOTD's 49 days. Still a good time to be feeling her out, reminding her to move on, etc.
Since she knew that she was dying, she spent a good deal of time with the TBOTD, which I suppose is what any of us would do, and she picked out some passages that she liked. I tried chanting it in Tibetan, but my Tibetan is not so good, so I scanned it a couple of times, and called it good. What to do, what to do...

Well, I suppose that that the Gods decided to take pity on me, because out of nowhere, my ole pal Pema Tendar decided to call, and announced that he was coming down to visit me for a day or two, as soon as I came to pick him up in Newark. Pema's Tibetan is excellent, and he is a Ningma Monk from The Zangdokpalri Monastery, so chanting Bardo Prayers is part of his holy work. I rushed off to collect him, with the hopes of having him teach me the chant, or in the event that it really was to much for me, to get a recording of it for listening and meditating and sharing with all of the other friends whose Tibetan is just as bad as mine. Well, Pema Tendar came through, he was happy to record the prayer, and even pulled out some other texts so that he could add some invocations and dedications. He asked me what her name was, so I believe he personalized it. He really did it up nice. I imagine that Betheyla is really happy with the result, which is good, because you've got to figure that she engineered the whole thing from behind the curtain.

Pema's Bardo Prayer For Betheyla