(122 MB)
Healing Negative Karmic Patterns: The Practice of Vajrasattva Yab Yum
This talk explores the effects of thoughts and emotions on physical health and inter-personal relationships. Learn how to utilize awareness and meditation to clear psychological and emotional toxicity from the tissues, organs, meridians and energy centers of the body.
To cleanse and heal our negative karmic patterns, Lama Lena gives the mantra, visualization, and explanation of the practice of Vajrasattva Yab Yum. This is a tantric practice that helps bypass the neurotic inner speech of the conceptual mind and goes to work on our “pag chas” (karmic formations) through symbolism and the language of archetypes.
Vajrasattva Yab Yum:
Note of Caution:
Tantric methods can work quickly, untying long-held emotional knots. If we launch into vigorous practice of Vajrasattva, we can arouse emotions like anxiety, humor, anger, lust, happiness, and more. Lama Lena describes these as bubbles of feeling that were previously constrained and which are releasing. Like a foot that fell asleep and tingles as it reawakens, this can be uncomfortable. When these emotions arise, we can rest and allow them to happen, knowing that we’re simply letting them go or, if experienced too intensely, we can ease off the gas pedal of practice and do a little less.
Questions related to this practice should be directed to Lama Lena or posted in the student forum (coming soon!).
This public talk was given at Essential Evolution Holistic Wellness, in Chicago, on June 26, 2018. Thanks to Vova Kuperman at Preserving Authenticity for the audio recordings!
Transcript: Healing Negative Karmic Patterns: The Practice of Vajrasattva Yab Yum
So the first thing that we’re going to do (as soon as I find where my bag went with the text in it) is feed the land spirits. The world is bigger and has more things under sun and moon than you have ever imagined, more things than I have ever imagined, more things than we can ever imagine. We keep this little tiny world view, which is according to what we think can be and can’t be and if something that we think is impossible happens, we just didn’t happen to be looking in that direction at that time, real fast.
Land spirits (spirits of place) are as real as you are, which may not be as real as you think you are. But they’re just as real as you are and they can have a strong effect on your life. It is kind of important to befriend them wherever you go.
So, I need two people related to this studio to be volunteers with the land spirits. You should be one since it’s yours. [laughter] Is there someone else who can do this with you? The two of you would be great.
So what I’m going to do, is I am going to put the blessing of both the magic substances and the body, speech, and mind of all Buddhas of the four times. Let that essence be contained in this vase. From the vase, give the blessing to these substances and then you’re gonna take these cups and plates outside and you’re gonna look around for where there might be some land spirits. Check the back alley if there’s a way back there. Look for a tree, trees lots of times have land spirits or spirits. Look for a place that has just a little bit more sense of “placeness” than another place. It might even be a little bench with some flowers around it. Look around, you’ll see something that has just got a sense of placeness more than every place else. That’s the place. You want to toss the contents of the cup and saucer while retaining hold on the cup and saucer, up into the air to that place and then bring the cup and saucer back inside and just put it down somewhere in the back, we’re done with it. Make sense?
Participants: Yes
LL: I will gesture to you when it’s time to do this. So just hang out because I have to empower the vase first. You can stand or sit, it won’t take very long, just hang out near me.
Magic is any technology you don’t understand. We’re doing magic.
TOMBA LA ME SANJE RINPOCHE
CHOPA LA ME TAMCH[O] RINPOCHE
DRUMBA LA ME GEUNDO RINPOCHE
CHABNE CONCHOK SOM LA CHO PA PULL
(3X)
OM A HUNG (X5)
Would someone else like to go with him to help with the doors?
YULDE YIDAK NEDAK CHORCHE LA
[A] A SE POO CHOPAL DEN BUL WAI
NAMJOR ON LOP SUMDANS DRUPO-DANG
SANJAY TENBA JE PE TRINLEY DZOG
CHE NOM CHO CHENG SOLWA DEB E TU
DAG SO GON LA NE PE SAP SO SU
NE DUNG WOOL PON TAP SU SHEWA DANG
CHO DANG TASHI PILWA DZE DU SOL
[Damaru and bell] (x3)
Drukpa Kargyu Lineage Prayer [7:33]
Tibetan Prayers
OM AH HUNG
Tonight, Volva has been so kind as to print out for me a little piece of paper that tells me what it is I’m supposed to be talking about.This is really helpful. Healing the body and the karma of relationships through spiritual awareness. Relationships is what it’s all about. And it’s all relationships. Even you – who you think you are, you who goes by your name, you who thinks you are an individual.
You are inhabited by lots of little beings and they are perhaps your most important relationship in the world. You and your denizens, your biome. When your biome is not proper, you get really sick. If your biome (all the bacteria in your gut and on your skin) were to be killed, you would die shortly after. And yet 90% of the cells in your body are them. They treat depression now with probiotics. People sometimes get really flippy when they take antibiotics.
You, the you you think you are, it’s an amalgam of them too. Even your thoughts and feelings are interrelated to the – more feelings than thoughts – of the bugs in your gut and on your skin. You’re an ecology hun, not an individual. And this entire planet, full of its multitude of individuals, thinks she is an individual named Gaia. All of us, become that. And the bugs in your gut have littler bugs in their guts. They themselves – each one of them – are an ecology, and all the stars and solar systems of our galaxy make up a larger entity named the milky way. And it’s all alive and it all thinks it’s somebody, one body.
You are a relationship, not an entity. And if you can relax with this and cease striving to protect your illusory make-believe individual “entity-ness” from all the relationships in the whole wide world, if you can relax in and as a relationship, it flows.
Consider your personality, you like yourself? Right now, I mean, at this moment? It will change. [Laughter] You don’t like yourself? You like yourself better in the evenings than in the mornings? You stop liking yourself when the sun goes down? All these different patterns, your personality that you are trying so hard to maintain and perfect – it’s simply made out of every relationship you’ve ever had. When you read a book, when you read a book you are in relationship with the author. When you write a book, you are entering into a relationship with the readers.
Do you remember being 14? Remember how confusing that was? You had a personality but you were damn uncertain what it could possibly be and it was always changing as the hormones shifted. Do you still have the exact same personality you had when you were 14? If you did you wouldn’t be able to think of anything but girls, (if you were a boy or a gay girl). And vice-a-versa, you wouldn’t be able to think of anything but boys if you were a hetero woman or a gay man. Because at 14 those hormones are very distracting.
You’ve changed since then haven’t you? You feel like you’ve changed a bit? What changed you? Interactions, experiences, relationships, occurrences – everyone you’ve ever met, a little bit of them has rubbed off on you. Everyone who has ever met you, a little bit of you, has rubbed off on them. And so as we pass through time from birth to death, walking our path, we keep changing as we keep having experiences. Some of them quite traumatic, some of them quite pleasant, some of them quite neutral, but each one changes us, just a little bit.
You are the sum total of every relationship you and your biome either together or separately have had throughout time and space. Can you see that and feel that? If you truly can rest with that, it will set you free of having to fix an illusory self.
See, we all want to be perfect. Sometime in some relationships as children, young adults, or older adults, we got in trouble for not being perfect. We learned to understand that we would only be truly loved if we were truly perfect. Ain’t gonna happen. There is no true perfection, only movement and change in the shifting mandala of our relationships, in the shifting mandala of ourselves.
Your thoughts and emotions are going to be based on your past experiences. If you have had many experiences of being scolded and you meet someone who does not scold you, but like any human being is occasionally abrupt and grumpy, guess who is going to feel scolded? Because you have a habit, a… (I have to give you a Tibetan word here, we don’t have a word in English for this) a pogcha. A pogcha is a repeater, a pattern that you have experienced so intensely that you keep placing that pattern on what’s going on even when it isn’t appropriate.
If you’ve ever been attacked or raped and someone is behind you, you hear footsteps behind you, your body (the adrenaline) is gonna react as if you are about to be attacked. You will be afraid. Even though it’s a nice little old lady with a dog walking behind you. But in those moments before you turn around and see what those footsteps are…
Pogchas are what post traumatic stress leaves on you. They’re shapes in your personality caused by traumatic experiences. They bother you. They even sometimes bother people around you. If every time your husband touches you unexpectedly you scream “eek,” when he was just going to pat you and just say, “it’s really good to see ya, I’ve been at work all day”, how is that going to affect him? But you might be going “eek” because somebody somewhere in your life snuck up behind you and slugged you lots, like maybe a big brother. Big brothers do things like this.
Are you following what I’m talking about? Are their questions so far on how these pogchas work? Please don’t be afraid of me or too shy to ask. It’s much more fun to have a dialogue than a monologue, at least for me.
[Laughter] Nope, not yet? Okay. So the – Ok Chill
Participant: So the pogcha are there, but before they are there, they are not there. So what is the process, mechanical process in the mind that makes
LL: Ok first stop pointing at your brain when you say mind Chil Chil you know better than that.
Participant: Right, right… What is the mechanical process in the mind that changes from not having to having it could be anything you know?
LL: The process is one of “eek.”
Participant: So is it generally just like fear because it can be anything right?
LL: Yeah it can be anything. In fact you can have positive pogcha. For instance, let’s say you grew up and have always been safe. You grew up in a nice little town in a nice little place where everybody knew everybody. You could walk around in the middle of the night, nothing had ever happened. And you get to be 18 and you move to Chicago to go to college and you’re hungry at 2:00am, but because you have a pogcha that “nothing bad ever happens to me”, because it never did, you decide to go out and take a nice walk in your not so nice neighborhood (because you’re a broke starving Participant) and go find a burger joint that’s open. You’re gonna get mugged! Because you’re not in your nice little town in Omaha. You’re in the big city which requires slightly different reflexes, like don’t walk down the shadowed alley to take a shortcut at 2:00am. That would be silly. So you have a positive pogcha and it’s causing you not to pay attention, not to have the kind of situational awareness that you need to get by in a city. See that?
So yes they can be positive or negative and Chil, you have been alive, birth and death, not just this life, how long?
Participant: Eternity?
LL: So there wasn’t a “before pogchas”. You’ve always been having experiences and they leave… Ah… You want this in Western science or Asian science guys?
ParticipantS: Both [laughter]
LL: Both? Ok start which?
ParticipantS: Western.
LL: Start western, okay. Anybody ever take acid? [Laughter] We got a few, anybody ever read about acid?
ParticipantS: Yes.
LL: You’ve read about it? Okay, so you know that technically what it does, is increase the amplitude of the neurotransmitters’ transmission in your brain, so that instead of your neurotransmitters following path of least resistance going through the same channels they have always gone through, they jump tracks. So you think things you haven’t thought before. And you perceive things in ways that you are not accustomed to perceiving things. Those tracks are where your pogchas are stored. If this neuron fires, it is attached to several neurons but habitually it sets off that one because it always did, etcetera, etcetera. So your pochas are going on and they’re reinforcing themselves every time. That’s western science.
Asian Science we don’t work with brains, neurons, and neurotransmitters; we work with energy channels, and chakras, and qi within them. So in eastern science, these energy channels that… the chakras called a wheel because it’s like a nexus of a lot of energy channels that come out of it. They don’t end at your skin.
Any masseuses or bodyworkers in here? So you know that with your hands you’re actually reaching inside a body with something. Those are the energy channels that come out of these chakras. They’re subtle. You can’t lift your own weight with them, but you can manipulate things on a molecular scale.
So you’ve felt your energy channels, if you are a decent masseuse or bodyworker you know what comes out of your hands. If you’ve ever had a massage or bodywork by a decent masseuse or bodyworker, you can feel even before they touch you the penetration. That little tingly, warmthy, indescribable. That’s the energy channels. They come out of all of your chakras here: your chakra of form, your chakra of intent, your chakra of being, your chakra of essence, and your chakra of creativity, as well as your chakras of fear which are on the soles of your feet, helps you run fast [laughter]. And your chakras of manipulation which are on the palms of your hands.
So all of these little lines are extending out, but due to our desire to be an entity and complete unwillingness to perceive ourselves as we actually are (out of fear of perceiving ourselves as what we’re afraid we might be and in hope of perceiving ourselves as what we would like to be, trapped by our hopes and fears, unable to see the reality of what we are), we wrap our energy channels around ourselves and look like a luminous egg, except it’s not even.
When you look at somebody’s energy channels, there’s dim spots, matted bits, like what long haired dogs get behind their ears if you don’t brush them enough. These are pogchas, what they look like in energy channels. So you’re qi runs through your energy channels. All of your thoughts and feelings float on your qi. How your qi runs will determine how your thoughts and feelings run. Anybody here do a lot of hatha yoga? So you know that after you’ve done a bunch of hatha yoga, you feel really different don’t you? You’re thinking differently than before you did it. If you don’t do it for a few days you think differently than on the days you did do it. And you feel differently. Am I correct, oh Hatha yogini?
Participant: mm-hmm.
LL: It does things with your channels and your thoughts and feelings ride on that. So these gnarly bits, matted bits, frizzled bits (like your hair if it accidentally falls in the candle the way the ends look), those are pogchas. Those are where you hold your patterns, in how your channels sit. And because we’re constantly interacting – as soon as we pay attention to another being in relationship, our channels interweave to one extent or another and we exchange energy. So our matted bits might rough up some of their bits. Let’s say, I have a matted bit where I am just really snippy and it’s active today, my qi is running that way. Well, that’s going to rough up some of your smooth bits if I snip at you. “Ne he he”, like a little yappy dog [laughter]. See how that works in Asian science?
The method I was going to and will be showing you if you like tonight, is cream rinse for your energy channels. You know if you’ve got long hair and you ride a motorcycle all day without a helmet, you need some cream rinse. [Laughter] You’re not going to get that out of your hair without either really good cream rinse or scissors. In the same way, if for 30 or 40 years without knowing how to comb it, or what a comb is, you’re running about in the world, interacting and interrelating with all sorts of living beings. You need some cream rinse. You will never get that out without cream rinse.
So in the tantras, symbolic workings of visualization and dreamscaping which penetrate below the conscience resistance to work on your channels, there are methods of cream rinse. If you are interested, I will give you one of them. It is faster than attempting to clear all this psychological and emotional pogchas (some of which are quite toxic) by thinking at them. Cuz you are going to think according to your pogcha. You’re in it! You gotta have something come from outside. Well, not really outside because nothing is outside, because you are a relationship not an entity, but something seemingly from outside.
Questions? Yes
Participant: So sometimes there is a commingling of energies with certain other people that are really volatile [LL: yup] and sort of unexpectedly volatile, [LL: yup] like there is a surface pleasantness, then there is something…
LL Interrupts: Then every so often, [Sound]
Participant: Yeah there is something there that is kind of other lifey, other worldly.
LL: Other lifey, other worldly or you just have those matted gnarly bits in spots that keep bumping and irritating each other. It might be as simple as that.
Participant: Yeah maybe it might be that. So any thoughts on when those things…
LL Interrupts: You both need cream rinse.
[laughter]
LL: When it’s flared, gently (don’t yank) separate yourself from the situation and work with your own channels to get the pogcha that supports that flare to release and relax. If you do this again and again, although the other person may not be doing this and their pogcha may be quite entrenched and they may have no interest in working with it, it will set off yours much less. And that’s the best I can offer you. You can’t force them. People will proceed according to their own path. You can interact with them, you can tell them you found something interesting. You can show them by the fact that you’re not being thrown off by the action of their pogcha as easily which might eventually lead them into being curious about how you did that… maybe. Does that help?
The trick is, that you don’t run out of the room and slam the door. The trick is that you, gently without really tugging, extract yourself from that volatile situation without either talking or inserting your normal reactive pogcha. For instance, let’s say they’re always snippy and you’re always apologizing and they hate when you apologize, it really makes them more snippy. You ever seen one of those relationships? So instead of apologizing, just take a deep breath in through your nose, which is a first aid measure to settle your qi and then gently, without performing your usual participation in the interaction of [sound], withdraw yourself for a moment and go run your own channels with some cream rinse to get it out. But the operative word is “gently” withdraw, don’t yank. Yanking makes it like those – you know when you were a little kid you’d get them at the fair, they’re called Chinese handcuffs. You pull and they tighten up. You have to gentle your way out of them, by pushing actually. Like That. Other questions? Yes.
Participant: So often times there is an experience of walking away from relating to another person and carrying a substantial amount of very unpleasant energy in the body and then…
LL: You’re carrying it in your body or they’re carrying it in theirs?
Participant: I’m carrying it in my body, and it doesn’t feel good. And as I’m taking the time to clear the energy out, to dissolve it, does it actually help that person? Am I lessening their burden by clearing my…
LL: Yes you are, because their filaments, their energy channels have become entangled with yours, so as you’re clearing the knots out, the part of them that is entangled is also being cleared. Whether they notice that or not and whether they immediately knot it back up as soon as they can or not, you cannot control the choices of another. Not no how. And you cannot actually help another human being unless they ask. Actually in the Tibetan custom they have to ask three times. So I would be unable to show you this cream rinse method unless you asked me three times, if you were Tibetans. But if you were Tibetans you would know that and you would go right ahead and do that. [Laughter] That’s cultural, the three times. But there is a reason for the need for asking. Too many of us who wish to be of benefit to the universe spend way too much time dragging little old ladies who did not want to cross the street, across the street – like a good boy scout. Being asked in words, guards against that.
I have a story for you all from one of my first teachers of medicine. I am by now a doctor of Chinese medicine but this was long, long ago when I was just a kid. One time there was a guy staying in a hotel near where her office was. This is in Dharamsala, North India. So it’s like a small place, different culture. And he took an overdose to kill himself and told his friends because well you know, crazy hippy and so his friends went and got the nearest doctor which was Emma Lobsang and brought her to him. And he yelled go away I don’t want a doctor, I want to die. She says, “oh I’m terribly sorry there has been a misunderstanding”, and turned around and walked out the door and left. Leaving this guy who is expecting a western reaction going [makes a face]. [Laughter] She went off downstairs, ordered a cup of tea in the nearest little tea shop. She is sitting there with her cup of tea since she’d been gotten up in the middle of the night anyway, might as well have a cup of tea. And after a while he sent his friends down to get her because he decided he didn’t want to die.
She couldn’t treat him, unless he asked. And if he had lost consciousness before asking she would have had to let him die. Because the last thing he said was I want to die and he has the right. Tibetan morals.
I had a dear friend, who was slowly bleeding to death in a room, postpartum and was highly embarrassed about having even had the baby because she had not been married or anything and in the place in time and culture… actually she had been a nun, which made it even worse. So she was curled up in there with a partially retained placenta, bleeding out and I knew it. And I knew that given a reasonable amount of time I could save her. She hadn’t called me. So I went to the nearest tea shop and sat down very visibly. A day went by, I went and sat on the wall outside her place, did my mantra, did some ceremony, my own stuff. Another day went by. I waited three days, before she finally decided to ask for help. Just being visible, you could tell I was around. Not going up to the door, not pushing myself. And then it took another day to find a vehicle to get her into Mandi and there was no blood and she needed a transfusion but we were the same type so we had to do a live transfusion with two needles and a tube. It was… but she lived. She has become a great lama among the Tibetans now – highly recognized, 50 years later. Touch and go there.
It was hard but I would have had to let my friend die if she did not ask. There’s a reason for this being held very strictly. When you start imposing what you think is best on someone else… Ever hear “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”? Smallpox infected blankets for the cold Indians, anybody? Wiped out the entire tribe. You can look around this country’s history and Europe’s history and other places history, and look at what was done for someone’s good. And what it did.
So by the way do you want to learn this tantra cream rinse thing or not?
ParticipantS: Yes!
LL: Just Checking.
ParticipantS: [Laughter] [Chatter], Please, please, please
LL: Please Please Please? Yes [Laughter]
So here I have [reading] “to clear the psychological and emotional toxicity from tissues, organs, meridians, and energy centers.” Yeah, that’s what this does. Exactly. Let me assure you that you don’t need to understand how it works for it to work. When you have a headache and you take an aspirin or an ibuprofen, do you understand how that clears your headache? Works though doesn’t it? So this method – Volva, who knows most of these people?
Participant: Probably me
LL: Probably you, so I will give you… or we will at the end Google some images and things that you can distribute to these people. I have a phone here. We might be able to do this on the phone. It’s not in that pocket. Yeah I got a signal…
Participant: [Inaudible 44:54]
LL: Vajrasattva Yab Yum
Participant: Vajrasattva
LL: Yab Yum
Participant: Yab? Y-A-B?
LL: Mm-hum
Participant: YAB YUM, [Inaudible 45:11]
LL: Yup
Participant: Do you want me to print that so others can see?
LL: Can you?
Participant: Yeah
LL: Great!
So I’m going to pass my phone around. It’s not locked, so… (it’s an iphone, you just push that a couple of times and you get back to it if it shuts off) so that you can see this. This is an archetype, not a God. This is a symbolic representation of your Khatak. Khatak. At the end of teachings we traditionally offer a white scarf which is called a khatak. But khatak means primordial purity. You, not your personality which is always changing whoofs and goofs around and goes this way and that way, but the real you, the big you. The you that is beyond coming and going personality [aside:] oooo you got wet baby, come find a spot! Cold?
Participant: It’s very very wet out there.
LL: Here wrap up. Double it and wrap up in it, it will keep you warm a little bit.
Participant: Thank you.
LL: I’m warm enough. Oh that too. There is a blanket coming too, because you’re wet. She’s come all the way from Milwaukee for the past two nights. [Chatter]
So where was I?
Participant: Khatak
LL: Khatak. Your real self, the totality of yourself, not the little self that’s always changing, gets confused and thinks it’s this, thinks it’s that. Beyond time and space, the true self of everyone you have ever been and will ever be, the true nine dimensional totality of yourself, is un-fuck-up-able [laughter] and that’s what we mean by khatak. Your innate, undamageable, untraumatizable, unmessable, undirtiable self – this is a symbolic representation of that. And it has your two aspects, both yin and yang, because whether you are going about currently being male or female and thinking of yourself as male or female, or somewhere in between, you are (inherent in you) both.
You have the infinite open awareness, the spaciousness of sky itself as part of your nature and that is your yin. You have the hero’s path, the great-hearted open-hearted dance of phenomena, of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions inherent to you, and that is your yang. Just as form exists in space, so yang (the dance of form, the dance of phenomena, becoming) exists in open awareness. Mind, complete with its innate vitality and the creative manifestation of that.
This is a symbol of that. And the reason it is in two forms (of a male and a female) is to symbolize [rings bell] the union of yin and yang. And in fact the male aspect of movement is shown in union penetrating openness, which is shown in union surrounding and holding phenomena. And from that point of union, which if you examine the painting where the secret chakras are together, there arises infinite liveliness. The liveliness of the vitality of the universe in the form of light. Can you imagine this? So this image which is actually an aspect of the totality of yourself manifests as an imagined image is seated on an open white lotus flower.
The lotus flower is itself a symbol of that which is born and arises from the muck of the bottom of the pond and is nourished by that muck. If you have a clean, stone-bottomed pond, you can’t grow lotus flowers. It needs the muck. And yet it blooms completely pristinely purely above the water, white as moonlight. And if you splash muddy pond water on the lotus, it doesn’t stick – lotus petals have that thing that some plants have which is completely water repellent and any drop of water that lands on it just runs right off without making it wet. So pureness – purity – arising out of muck is the symbol of the lotus.
We have a few copies of this now to pass around, of the image. So eventually my cell phone will come back up here. [Laughter/Chatter] Thank you for doing that.
You guys can google your own image of Vajrasattva Yab Yum and print it yourself and have it to look at and remind you of the visualization. Even to emphasize that this is the union of yin and yang together, he holds a dorje and a bell in his crossed hands. I need my phone for a minute, I need to check something in that image.
[Pause]
Or actually just hand me the piece of paper, I’ll check it there since my phone seems to not be finished yet. Yes, this is the right one. What I wanted to make sure of (and I am a little nearsighted to see on the paper) is that she is holding the skull cup and the flensing knife. In her hands there is a cup, a bowl made from a human cranium. This is the symbol of “one taste”. An advanced practitioner enters the level of one taste where the perceiver, the thinker of the thoughts, the feeler of the feelings, and the perceiver of the sensations of the sense organs is not experienced as separate from the perception. This is the point at which one occasionally accidentally walks through the wall and other such things. The laws of physics no longer apply, and ngoshe arises.
So she is holding the skull cap which is the symbol of this. It is full of amrita – the blessed medicine which cures all ills. What’s in here [gestures to ceremonial vase on the table]? It’s a version of amrita, what I put in here (the mendrup and the mani pills). They are adorned with rainbow colored scarves. On their heads, is a crown with 5 jewels. The center one… they’re different colors in different versions. In the one I have, the center one is white, this one’s red. It doesn’t matter which one is where. Those jewels symbolize the five poisons purified into the five wisdoms.
So all of this which is there, you visualize this on top of your head, about a hand span above your crown chakra and life sized, floating. It’s made of light so it has no weight, like a holograph projection made of light. This entire thing, the entire image, symbolizes your own totality. So it’s really you up there. But it’s also not the you that you normally are. The you that you normally are is occupying a single point in the time space continuum. This image is symbolic of the you that occupies all points in the space time continuum and that which is not within the space time continuum – all Buddhas of the four times, all beings with whom you are interactively relating of the three realms, the totality of yourself which is the totality of all and everything – seen in symbolic mnemonic imagery above your crown chakra. And with your channels in alignment (you have to be in alignment for this practice or it’s gonna hurt), from the union of the yab and yum, the point of creativity of generation, descends beautiful, clear, creamy, milky, white light. This is not sharp light. This is incredibly bright light with a soft creamy texture. If you were to visualize it like, what do you call it, fluorescent white light which is sharp, you would end up feeling abraded by it and that would not be good. It is beautiful soft – the creamy milkiness of moonlight in the south seas.
That light, as if it were water, descends into you through this opening. If you follow the line of the tops of your ears up here and then the line from your nose up here, you will find a point where there is a little dent? That’s your crown chakra. There is a little dent where your head bones join. Right there, there is actually an opening. It goes in that opening and it enters your central channel, comes down through your central channel (which extends from the crown of your head down to your secret chakra) and as it goes through each chakra in its descent, it goes out. What it does is completely spread and fill all of your energy channels. You know those little kids things you get at baby birthday parties where you blow into them and they uncoil and go out? [Blows] Like a butterfly’s proboscis? Well that’s what happens to your channels as they fill with this light.
And there is uck in them. Like pipes that have not been used for too long in plumbing. And that uck is washed out of them by the flow of this light. And that uck visualized in the form of scorpions and centipedes and spiders and other little critters that you do not like. If you like lizards, don’t use lizards. If you like spiders, don’t use spiders. Ok? Little creepy crawlies comes out of your urethra, your anus, and is sweated out the soles of your feet, and they fall from you. Like if you were to fall in a mud puddle and then later take a shower and all that stuff fell off your surface and went down the drain. Well this is falling off your innards and going out and where it goes it falls down to the center of the earth where the God of Death (imaginary; the archetype of death) who has a head like a bull, with the big horns like this, big nostrils, and his mouth is open, “aghhh!” And they fall into his mouth. And since those are his natural food, he eats them up with great pleasure and is satisfied.
Do you understand the visualization I have described? There is a mantra which goes with this. You will need, in order to receive the traditional lung for the mantra, to repeat it after me three times. I will give it to you first in Sanskrit and then in Tibetan. You may- Westerners often like Sanskrit, but I always like Tibetan and got it first in Tibetan and that’s my home. So I’ll give it to you in both and you are welcome to choose. Just pick one or the other, don’t try to do both ok?
LL: OM Participants repeat: OM
LL: Vajra Participants repeat: Vajra
LL: Sattva Participants repeat: Sattva
LL: Hung Participant’s repeat: Hung
LL: OM Vajra Participants repeat: OM Vajra
LL: Sattva Hung Participants repeat: Sattva Hung
LL: Om Vajrasattva Hung Participants repeat: Om Vajrasattva Hung
LL: That’s Sanskrit. In Tibetan:
LL: OM Participants: OM
LL: Benza Participants: Benza
LL: Sato Participants: Sato
LL: Hung Participants: Hung
LL: Om Benza Participants: Om Benza
LL: Sato Hung Participants: Sato Hung
LL: Om Benza Sato Hung Participants: Om Benza Sato Hung
See, Tibetans can’t pronounce “V.” Like westerners mostly can’t pronounce [? 1:05:14] If you’re of Russian extraction or speak Yiddish, you can, but the English can’t. So it changes in their dialect, same mantra. There is also a long mantra, but I do not think it will be that useful to you, since the short mantra works as well and the long mantra has 100 syllables and you’re going to get all tangled up in trying to memorize it, and are you saying it right, and what does it really mean, and that actually tends to interfere with just doing it. And it is the just doing of it, that is effective. Not the whys and wherefores that your little complex self of pogchas and interactions may in this moment be attempting to stick to it.
Have you questions?
Participant: [Inaudible 1:06:29]
LL: Yes, do you want Sanskrit or Tibetan?
ParticipantS: Sanskrit
LL: Om Participants: Om
LL: Vajra Participants: Vajra
LL: Sattva Participants: Sattva
LL: Hung Participants: Hung
Let us together do the visualization while singing, reciting the mantra, just a little bit so that we remember it.
Oh, by the way, this is tantra using monlam. The vibration of the sound is important. Just thinking it doesn’t work. You actually have to [whispers] say it very softly. You’ve got to feel a little rumble in here even if you are trying to be really quiet. It’s part of the effect. It’s part of the science.
[Participants and LL Chant together] Om Benza Sato Hum
Rings Bell
[1:11:27]
How do you feel? After your shower? It is good to do this practice at the end of the day, to assist you in putting down and releasing the crap of the day. Just as those of us who have active physical jobs (like working construction) always take a shower when we get home or done, those of you with active mental jobs where you interact with others, this shower when you get done, would be very useful. Are there any questions? Yes
Participant: Do you close your eyes when you visualize?
LL: Traditionally not. But you can if you want to. It is not that important. Many of us, what we do when we are visualizing, we get an image (download it off of the internet) put it in some kind of frame and put it right here and then we face it when we are doing the visualization. And so we make the image and it starts to fade and then we look at it again and then do it, and then we look at it again and then do it. I am exaggerating the eye opening and closing. So for the tantras, it is not that important. Tomorrow when I will be teaching more the direct source of all of this power, rather than how to simply use it and do things with it, just like last night and tonight, that has to be done with the eyes open, just a little bit. But for what I am teaching tonight if you would prefer to close your eyes, it’s not a problem.
The mantra in Tibetan writing, “Om Benza Sato Hung”, there is a lotus in the heart chakra of the two (because their hearts are pressed together, it’s one chakra). There’s a male and a female in the image but they have one heart chakra, shared. There’s a lotus there and the mantra is going around on the inner petals of the lotus in a clockwise direction, that is helping to generate the energy which comes forth from them from the secret chakra. It is being created by the turning mantra on the lotus. Whether you get that part strong in your visualization doesn’t matter much.
I need to warn you that in this practice, if you do it a lot, you may find yourself having crying or laughing jacks. The experience of one of these matted bits like straightening out is the emotional equivalent of when your foot went to sleep and then you got up and gave it a good shake and it had all these pins and needles. Except it’s an emotional sensation instead of a physical one. So it can be a little intense, the pins and needles in your emotions. And you might interpret it as anxiety, anger, fear, humor, lust, a tummy ache, happiness… it’s a bubble of feeling that was constrained, being opened. So if you’re doing a lot of it and that happens, you can either simply let it happen and know that you’re letting it through and it will eventually cease to bother you, or you can back off and do a little less until you are more comfortable going ahead. That’s gotta be up to you and how you’re working with the practice. We often go into retreat for three months and do it gonzo, which is very powerful. Other Questions?
Participant: Where is the secret chakra?
LL: Clitoris
Participant: Sorry I probably came in late.
LL: Clitoris, head of the penis, sometimes that whole area of sexual arousal, which can extend for a woman from the clitoris back into the vagina and into the G spot, and for a man, pretty much, it is strongest on the glans of the penis, the head of the penis, but extends through the shaft and possibly even includes the balls. That whole shebang is the secret chakra. If you want to exactly locate it for other reasons than this practice, inside your body, because sometimes you do things with it. It’s right where your- it’s kind of where your uterus is, your cervix. It’s where the G spot is if you have one, and if you don’t know where your G spot is, think of it as the cervix or the uterus. Right about in there is where you would work with that energy.
Guys you would also work internally with that energy if doing some of the other tsa lung practices and… where would it be for a guy? About four inches in from the base of your penis, inside. I don’t know what’s in there anatomically, but that would be part of a different tsa lung practice, don’t get confused. Other questions?
This light is the creative force of the universe. The ultimate creation is babies, eggs, tadpoles, regardless of your species. So the symbol of the creative vitality of the universe is sex, because it’s a really strong energy for most sentient beings. Even paramecium and microbes do it. In fact, the only thing that doesn’t do it, is the particular type of fungus that lives in shoes. [Laughter] It has evolved to not do it because feet don’t usually meet other feet, being in shoes, or so I read in biology class. Yes
Participant: [Inaudible 1:19:15]
LL: Vajra V-A-J-R-A Sattva S-A-T-T-A-V-A. I don’t know if there is one or two “t”s but Google will fix it. Yab, Y-A-B, Yum, Y-U-M.
Participant: [Inaudible 1:19:37]
LL: Yum Y-U-M. Yum means female aspect, Yab means male aspect. There is another Vajrasattva image which is not yab yum, which is singular, but I have always preferred the creative power of the yab yum. Yes.
Participant: What is the chopping knife that the woman holds?
LL: It’s a flensing knife for peeling the skin off, for a butcher to pull the skin off. It cuts the crap off, cuts through the crap, [laughter] peels things down to the essence.
Participant: [Inaudible 1:20:26]
LL: Yup [Laughter], they are. Other questions?
Participant: [Chatter] [laughter]
LL: I think [laughter] what with the weather out there and the fact that you may be full, I’m going to put out some of my cards, so you can find me because if you choose to do this practice, you may get questions. Otherwise, did you get- Chil, let me have one of those handouts that’s beside you. I just want to check something to see if that has my email on it. No, oh yes. You can reach me at the email on that, so if I don’t have enough cards, which it looks like I don’t, Because I don’t- Jan are you out there?
Participant: No she’s not.
LL: Yeah she couldn’t find any parking.
Participant: Lama Lena has a facebook page and you can follow her on Facebook. I don’t know who does the post, but they post events, when she comes into town.
LL: If you’re on facebook there’s two things. One is my personal facebook page which is, you know, my dog did this, and I saw that, [laughter] and that’s Lena Feral. And then Lama Lena’s Teachings is another facebook page which is set up to email people, it’s an automatic email. If you like it, it will email you. And it emails you all the teachings I’m doing, shortly before, like the week before. So if it turns out you are vacationing in Spain and then you get an email saying I’m near Valencia on the weekend and you happen to be also, then you have that opportunity if you want to take it. So that’s what that does.
There is a website where all the solidly scheduled teachings are listed. There is a handout that’s got that on it. And Rinpoche’s email is on that, should have my email but since Rinpoche doesn’t do email, that email goes to me. And if it’s urgent, I WeChat it to him because he does WeChat, not WhatsApp. And if not I collect them all and read them to him when I get there in October. Apparently I have two cards left until tomorrow when I remember to fish some more out. You know all these people?
Participant: The majority of them yes… People can take pictures with their phone.
LL: Yes, I’m going to put them right here and you can all come up and photograph them. I don’t have my phone number on there because I change sim cards all the time depending on what country I’m in, so you are going to do better by email, I travel a lot. So that’s how you can contact me. I answer all emails from Participants myself. You don’t have to be bound at the hip to me if you’ve had a teaching from me and questions come up I answer your email. The thing is, I answer all emails eventually [laughter] I don’t have a secretary, I do it myself, I’m on the road.
If you’re in crisis, first word of the title of your email should be “urgent.” If it says urgent, I’ll stop at a cafe and answer you to get a signal, even if I am out in nowhere, as soon as I can. But if it’s just, “well you know, I was wondering”, it’s gonna wait until I really have a chance. Also worth knowing is that I answer all the short ones, before I answer the long ones. [laughter] If you want to write me two pages I will write back to you about it all, but not nearly as fast as if you wrote me one paragraph, got and answer, wrote another paragraph, got an answer. Just letting you know. And yeah I can be a little slow at times and at other times I’m right on top of it same day, it’s just- you don’t know. I think that’s really about it. Unless there are more questions on practical, impractical, or other matters.
Participant: If you notice that your pogcha influenced someone else negatively would you bring it up to that person or just work on it within yourself.
LL: I work on it within myself. Whether or not to bring it up to that person will entirely depend on the relationship, whether they like having things brought up or they’re a person who doesn’t like having… you know, some guys don’t like things being brought up, so guys like that I probably wouldn’t bring it up. Why? I know some women really like to talk about stuff, so if it was somebody like that I might bring it up, it would really depend on the situation, but I wouldn’t try to resolve it by talking about it. In my experience that doesn’t actually work. I would go work on it with the practice and probably I would do that even before I brought it up if I was gonna bring it up, because I would want to lighten my entanglement in it so I could bring it up clean, rather than, “but you said!” or whatever crap it was.
It is important if you have received any benefit from being here this morning, this evening, not to grasp that benefit and try to tighten and hold and keep, but to rather open yourself to all your relations (which is everybody and their bugs) and share any benefit. There is a song – excuse me, I don’t carry a tune but I’m going to do it anyway – which is used to remember that. So while I sing it off key, please be kind enough to imagine that any benefit amassed from this evening is shining out like light to the entire universe, satisfying their every need.
Dedication Prayer
We are Complete.
Transcribed by: Lauren Pittman
Reviewed by: Tasha Schumann