Satisfied Buddhist - Domo Geshe Rinpoche

So, while all of this is going on, while the effects are cascading from the interior, what is happening to your inner being, the real you alive on that other level of reality, during change? What is occurring is the actual being holding that energetic change until other messages come to damage it. It will hold the perceptual change in the inner form of energetic change until contrary communication arrives from you on the outside. The perceptions of your perceptions or how you feel about how you feel with all of the accompanying factors described in earlier columns begin to readjust. If it is not supported by careful behavior and holding away dysfunctional habits, the inner being becomes confused and reverts to an earlier stabilized condition. It does not matter whether that was a healthy condition or not, (usually it is not healthy). The general configuration of the perceptual organization returns to the only position that it can hold with the criteria and the process that it is ...

Let us look at the next part of our inquiry into changes in body and mind experienced in spiritual practice. How do perceptions of others help or harm changes while we are feeling in such a fluid and unstabilized condition? We already know that a balanced mind holds the opinions and observations of others in a careful way. That means that we do not become stubborn, inflexible, withdrawn or angry if people tell us what they think and we do not agree with what they are saying. For example, someone might say, “You’ve been meditating and now I think you’re weird.” We do not need to respond by becoming angry, inflexible and attack them in return. Who knows, maybe we did become weird. Maybe they are right! New attitudes toward others arrive by deliberate training, developing confidence while destroying paranoia and fear. We should not immediately feel that we need to defend our self. This is a hard lesson to learn and practice, especially while in a fluid stage of stabilizing new p...

A careful meditator does not harm the changes in consciousness that have been cultivated in meditation. In a trained and skillful manner, he or she checks to see if they are grasping or holding a perception that could harm the new perception. A person is not alive without consciousness and the interactive tools of consciousness are perceptions. The mass of perceptions that comprise a human beings mind are shaped by birth karma as well as experiences of daily inner and outer life process. Individual perceptions such as self worth, understanding the importance of precious human rebirth, racist feelings, altruism, or compassion are manipulated daily. We are shaped by outer events; meditation, peer pressure, and so much more that recreate us into the new and happy or perhaps unhappy person that we consider “me.” Is there a harmful environment within the mind that will potentially damage a new beneficial perception? How do skillful practitioners of beneficial change such as seekers of ...

New healthy perceptions die because the surrounding mental environment and existing perceptions cannot support it. The energetic or spontaneous logic is still too far apart. This is the reason ordinary beings are not enlightened! Up to this point, I say. Existing perception, up to this point, have damaged or harmed knowing the actual nature of reality that has been and is continually displayed. The Buddhas and bodhisattvas have prayed, and worked, and presented enlightened model to us forever. The reason why new awareness perceptions often die before they can be used is that it cannot be supported by other existing perceptions. As we mature in meditation and skillful behaviors, there will be healthy perceptions we have previously cultivated and stabilized. These viable and vigorous perceptions act as a welcome to a new perception as belonging to their value system and gives the needed surrounding strength to survive. In that way, the mind is incrementally lifted with the arriva...

We continue the discussion by exploring how our perceptions of our perceptions or mental states help or harm beneficial changes. How we feel about our own feelings, attitudes, or perceptions can either help or harm the progress of beneficial changes. For the unhappy person who has a controlling type of nature, their present perceptions attack and whip that new perception, twisting it into its world-view! It will distort it until it dies. Even those who practice carefully for a long time have killed healthy new perceptions again and again Perhaps feeling challenged in our attitudes or energetic pushing and pulling even in body sensations could cause the weak to abandon the search for reality or meaning. Some return to a safer place such as the religious practices they experienced as a child, even though they are capable of attaining enlightenment in this very life. In order to overcome the fear of change we return to core inspiration remembering that the desire for beneficial chan...

Your new perception might have to adapt its criteria to accommodate stronger perceptions already present in the configuration of perceptions that I have called the mandala matrix. So, that insight, in the form of an actual energetic embedment, fresh, new, alive and beneficial in you, now has to struggle with other perceptions in order to be able to be used. It might even die. That new perception might perish because it cannot tolerate the conditions of the other perceptions abiding within the same mind. This is very common! Someone has a realization and is back into an ordinary state after a week or two, a day or two or even an hour or two. That new perception, which took ENORMOUS preparation and effort to make that change, had to die in order for our STUPID other perceptions to have supremacy! This is not a whole worldview change but a single perception introduced so that the next part of the preparation can be accomplished. It is a tremendous amount of inner preparation w...

Cyclic existence, the karmic creation and exhaustion of actions over many lives, self replicates and gives rise to a sense of stability and safety that it does not possess. The recycling of samsara gives an unreliable sensation of familiarity that lulls ordinary beings into compliance with an ever-evolving samsaric structure. This circling is all illusory appearance that does not fulfill the promise it seems to make as the excellent support of higher training toward samsaric perfection. The sense of familiarity and learning through experience gives rise to a sense of progress that is by nature without essence. excerpt Mystery of Emptiness & Love Hermitage Buddhist Publishing 2009 Domo Geshe Rinpoche