Self-Immolation

“A totality of conditions starts and stops; no separate existent is born or passes away from the totality. There is no separate existence at all relative to the totality as a unity, singly, as imagined by philosophers.” Laṅkāvatāraratnasūtram

"Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking & pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness." Dvedhavitakka Sutta

"Buddhadharma is so abundant, it's so rich, vast and deep, and if you insist that meditation is sitting on a cushion, you're making it so limited". ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Meditation: Introduction to Buddhism In Buddhist sources, the word bhāvanā (lit. cultivation) is used to describe those activities that lead to the development of meditative absorption. Spiritual cultivation (bhāvanā) is the third of the three grounds for meritorious actions, alongside dāna (generosity) and sīla (ethical behaviour). Contrary to the popular idea of meditation as simply sitting and observing the breath, bhāvanā delineates a wide array of activities: Praying, making offerings, ritual, studying scripture, debating, chanting, etc, it's all considered within the realm of spiritual cultivation.

“Today is the planetary day of the Guru. We pay homage to the Teacher because a teacher helps show us the way. Dorje Drolo subjugates sorcerers and mamos (chaos queens) and shows us with his crazy wisdom how to overcome obstacles ahead of us without falling prey to stagnation.” - @WukongReborn on Twitter

"Meditation is a way of deconditioning the mind which helps us to let go of all the hard-line views and fixed ideas we have. Ordinarily, what is real is dismissed while what is not real is given all our attention. This is what ignorance (avijja) is. The contemplation of our human aspiration connects us to something higher than just the animal kingdom or the planet earth. To me that connection seems more true than the idea that this is all there is; that once we die our bodies rot and there is nothing more than that. When we ponder and wonder about this universe we are living in, we see that it is very vast, mysterious and incomprehensible to us. However, when we trust more in our intuitive mind, we can be receptive to things that we may have forgotten or have never been open to before — we open when we let go of fixed, conditioned reactions. We can have the fixed idea of being a personality, of being a man or a woman, being an English person or an American. These things can be very real to us, and we can get very upset and angry about them. We are even willing to kill each other over these conditioned views that we hold and believe in and never question. Without Right Aspiration and Right Understanding, without pañña, we never see the true nature of these views." Ajahn Sumedho

"So much of human anguish and despair comes from the added extra that is born of ignorance in the moment. It is sad to realise how the misery and anguish and despair of humanity is based upon delusion; the despair is empty and meaningless. When you see this, you begin to feel infinite compassion for all beings. How can you hate anyone or bear grudges or condemn anyone who is caught in this bond of ignorance? Everyone is influenced to do the things they do by their wrong views of things." Ajahn Sumedho

"In emptiness, things are just what they are. When we are aware in this way, it doesn’t mean that we are indifferent to success or failure and that we don’t bother to do anything. We can apply ourselves. We know what we can do; we know what has to be done and we can do it in the right way. Then everything becomes Dhamma, the way it is. We do things because that is the right thing to be doing at this time and in this place rather than out of a sense of personal ambition or fear of failure." Ajahn Sumedho

"When there is arrogance, conceit or self-disparagement — whatever it is — examine it; listen inwardly; ‘I am....’ Be aware and attentive to the space before you think it; then think it and notice the space that follows. Sustain your attention on that emptiness at the end and see how long you can hold your attention on it. See if you can hear a kind of ringing sound in the mind, the sound of silence, the primordial sound. When you concentrate your attention on that, you can reflect: ‘Is there any sense of self?’ You see that when you’re really empty — when there’s just clarity, alertness and attention — there’s no self. There’s no sense of me and mine. So, I go to that empty state and I contemplate Dhamma: I think, ‘This is just as it is. This body here is just this way.’ I can give it a name or not but right now, it’s just this way." Ajahn Sumedho

Yidams have both male and female forms. The male wrathful yidam is known as heruka which means “blood drinker,” he who drinks the blood of ego. The female wrathful yidam is called a dakini. The dakinis are tricky and playful. The male and female of the peaceful yidams are known as bhagavat and bhagavati meaning “glorious one.” The male figures signify awakened energy, skillful means, bliss. The female aspect is compassion, emptiness, and intellect (which, as the emptying of confusion, is passive rather than active). The emptiness signifies fundamental accommodation and also ultimate fertility in the sense that emptiness is the mother of form. Through union with the heruka, the dakini can give birth to enlightenment. The dakinis in general reinforce the nature of their consorts and the bhagavati has the role of asking the bhagavat on behalf of all sentient beings to proclaim the teachings. In general the union of the male and female aspects, known as the yab-yum (“father-mother”) form, is a symbol that skillful action is impossible without compassion, that energy cannot be effective without intellect, and that bliss is impossible without emptiness. This symbolism denotes the interaction of these elements as aspects of enlightenment, rather than on the ordinary confused level of indulgence in passion and aggression. — Chögyam Trungpa, The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche: Volume 7

"Death of the mind is despair; depression is a kind of death experience of the mind. Just as the body dies a physical death, the mind dies. Mental states and mental conditions die; we call it despair, boredom, depression and anguish. Whenever we attach, if we’re experiencing boredom, despair, anguish and sorrow, we tend to seek some other mortal condition that’s arising. As an example, you feel despair and you think, ‘I want a piece of chocolate cake.’ Off you go! For a moment you can absorb into the sweet, delicious, chocolate flavour of that piece of cake. At that moment, there’s becoming — you’ve actually become the sweet, delicious, chocolate flavour! But you can’t hold on to that very long. You swallow and what’s left! Then you have to go on to do something else. This is ‘becoming’. We are blinded, caught in this becoming process on the sensual plane. But through knowing desire without judging the beauty or ugliness of the sensual plane, we come to see desire as it is. There’s knowing." Ajahn Sumedho

"If we contemplate desires and listen to them, we are actually no longer attaching to them; we are just allowing them to be the way they are. Then we come to the realisation that the origin of suffering, desire, can be laid aside and let go of. How do you let go of things? This means you leave them as they are; it does not mean you annihilate them or throw them away. It is more like setting down and letting them be. Through the practice of letting go we realise that there is the origin of suffering, which is the attachment to desire, and we realise that we should let go of these three kinds of desire. Then we realise that we have let go of these desires; there is no longer any attachment to them. You can apply this insight into ‘letting go’ to the desire for sense pleasures. Maybe you want to have a lot of fun. How would you lay aside that desire without any aversion? Simply recognise the desire without judging it. You can contemplate wanting to get rid of it — because you feel guilty about having such a foolish desire — but just lay it aside. Then, when you see it as it is, recognising that it’s just desire, you are no longer attached to it. So the way is always working with the moments of daily life. When you are feeling depressed and negative, just the moment that you refuse to indulge in that feeling is an enlightenment experience. When you see that, you need not sink into the sea of depression and despair and wallow in it. You can actually stop by learning not to give things a second thought." Ajahn Sumedho

"Usually we equate suffering with feeling, but feeling is not suffering. It is the grasping of desire that is suffering. Desire does not cause suffering; the cause of suffering is the grasping of desire. This statement is for reflection and contemplation in terms of your individual experience. When you really see the origin of suffering, you realise that the problem is the grasping of desire not the desire itself. Grasping means being deluded by it, thinking it’s really ‘me’ and ‘mine’: ‘These desires are me and there is something wrong with me for having them’; or, ‘I don’t like the way I am now. I have to become something else’; or, ‘I have to get rid of something before I can become what I want to be.’ All this is desire. So you listen to it with bare attention, not saying it’s good or bad, but merely recognising it for what it is." Ajahn Sumedho