Purification and Giving to the Nth Degree

SHAMBHAVI
Abhinavagupta says, There's no such thing as ignorance. There is only greater or lesser access to wisdom. You don't have ignorance, you have partial wisdom. According to Abhinavagupta anyway.

When we are doing purification practices, we are creating more cause for us to have greater access to wisdom through our perceptions.

We have our mind, which is one organ of perception. We have hearing, we have tasting, we have touching, we have seeing, we have smelling.

And through all of these senses, we can perceive more wisdom. We can perceive the nature of the Self. We can perceive our own nature. We don't have access to right away unless we do something.

When we think of human beings, just the ones that we know, we already can see that human beings have really vastly different perceptual capacities at their disposal.

I had a girlfriend once who whenever she would read a magazine, I don't know what was going on because she was going so fast that she could never actually see anything on the page. [Laughs] So this is one mode of perception.

When two people look at the same work of art or listen to the same piece of music or read the same poem or taste the same food, each of them is going to have a different level, you could say, of perceptual engagement with that experience.

Some people's perceptions are going to be less refined and less subtle, and other people's perceptions are going to be more refined and more subtle. They're going to perceive more, and they're going to perceive more subtle things, or they're going to perceive less and perceive less subtly.

And of course, we're just on this huge continuum, us humans. And then we have some people that we say have extra sensory perception. They don't really have extra sensory perception. That's just a silly phrase. What they have is more perception. The gates of their perception are more open.

Then we have people who have done a lot of spiritual practice, who can see subtle energy and sense things in the world that we can't, unless normally we do something to make that happen.

And then we have people like Ma who could see past, present, and future, and see things that are far away from where she was physically, and see all kinds of entities and beings in their subtle bodies and things like that.

So what we're seeing when we talk about these things is not extra sensory perception. What we're seeing is the range of perception that's possible in a human body.

And perceiving the nature of reality directly with your senses is what we are trying to do. And our senses, obviously, we have to assume if we're going to embark on this, that our senses are actually capable of that--that all the yogis and stuff in this tradition aren't just making that up. [Laughs]

So when we're purifying, when we're doing purification practice, we are purifying our perceptions so that we can perceive more of the natural wisdom that we are immersed in and made of.

And when we do that, so-called negative forces have less hold on us. They have less to hold on to. That doesn't mean that we are never impacted, for instance, by other realm beings or pesky ancestors.

My Dzogchen teacher liked to tell a story. He liked to tell a lot of stories about when he was in his 20s and he was very proud, and he did all kinds of dumb things out of pride.

One of the dumb things he did was, according to him, he had something wrong with one of his legs, some injury of some sort or pain that wouldn't go away. And he went to doctors and it just wouldn't go away.

And somebody in his family told him, well, I think it's some other realm provocation. That's why you have this pain. And you should go see this person out in the country who's some kind of shaman who will help you with this.

And Namkhai Norbu pooh-poohed this whole idea entirely. Not because he didn't believe that there were other realm beings or ancestors that could provoke us, but because he thought he was above all that. [laughs]

So he was a bit spiritually bypass-y, I guess, in his 20s. And finally, out of desperation, he went to the shaman, and then the pain was gotten rid of.

So the shaman who has more acute perception, that's what shamans have. They're able to perceive more than we are and they can work with time. They can perceive time, which is one of the ultimate perceptions, I think. And so they're able to reverse provocations by working with time.

When we still have the conviction that we are in danger of being very harmed, then we have purification practices that can satisfy or chase away other realm beings or ancestral forces. We have various mantras and rituals and things that we can use to do that.

But ultimately, anything can be a purification practice if our hearts are really open enough, because the ultimate medicine for any provocation is kindness. This is something I learned when I was doing purification practice, that most of the other realm things that one encounters can be resolved with kindness.

Probably some of them require more fierce medicine than that, but it is an incredibly powerful medicine.

But then, of course, we have to stop hating ourselves. We have to stop being angry at ourselves, and we have to stop hating other people, and we have to actually feel genuine kindness, even for those who are provoking us, other people and other realm beings included.

And that's a pretty tall order for most of us who tend to see provocateurs as people we should dislike or beings we should hate or who tend to have self-hatred too.

You cannot use the medicine of kindness thoroughly as a purification of provocations unless you truly, truly feel kindly toward yourself. It just doesn't work otherwise.

But we have mantras we can do and various rituals, and then other people can do rituals for you to work with unwanted influences. That's what shamans and healers do.

STUDENT 1
Thinking about ancestors, I feel like what I'm doing during ancestral puja and stuff is trying to feel kindness, like asking for help and offering them help and activate a pathway of communication, like kindness and helpfulness between us?

SHAMBHAVI
Well, ancestors can be there to help. They're just an aspect of wisdom. But like any concatenation of patterns of awareness and energy, things can get stuck.

Most of us are stuck in various ways in our lives. I mean, think of all the ways you're stuck. [STUDENT: Yeah] Ideas you can't get out of your head, behavioral patterns you can't get rid of, et cetera.

Well, that can happen when we're not human anymore, too. If you have some very strong pattern, for instance, of mourning the loss of one particular love, let's say, that's a strong pattern that people get into.

If you hold on to that pattern and cultivate it throughout your life, that pattern could be released when you die to just survive on its own and become this mourning ghost and get stuck in that pattern.

If we have ancestors who release those kinds of patterns or those kinds of patterns have held together from our ancestors, they're related to us more closely because they're our ancestors, and they might be hanging around, causing us to feel sad, or whatever they do.

And the idea is that you want your pieces of your ancestors anyway, the little filaments of ridiculous things that we get stuck in-those represent suffering. They represent pain, and they represent an aspect of them that isn't able to move on.

We want them to be able to move on. We want ourselves to be able to move on. So we want the same thing for them. We should pray for our ancestors to be relieved of their suffering so they can continue on to find teachers and teachings or whatever's next for them and not be stuck in those patterns.

We should pray that our practice benefits them. We should work to become unstuck ourselves, to help them be unstuck, and so we don't leave stuff behind to pester our relatives.

But basically, the ones that can are there to help us with their wisdom. And the ones that are stuck, we are there to help them get unstuck with our prayers and our kindness and our own sadhana. Mainly, we have to do it with ourselves first.

You can't make a different world, a different culture, a different way of relating just by having better ideas. And you can't make a different world if you've got the same feeling landscape, but you think your ideas are better.

That's all horizontal change, because every government on Earth, just about, no matter what it is, no matter what -ism or -ist they call themselves, every government is founded on the same horizontal principles of a mixture of greed and selfishness and violence, and some altruism.

But we're all like that, right? If we really want something that's actual, vertical change, we have to change how we relate to ourselves and other people. That's the only way. So whatever we're yearning for or working towards, it's just the next part of the cycle.

Which is great because the next part of the cycle is the Satya Yuga. So we have to create little Satya Yugas in our own hearts, and then we can have vertical change. Otherwise, we just get horizontal change.

If we're still all running around defensive and angry and outraged and resentful and self-protective and over-consuming and not caring about the other fellow, really, not listening to each other, all that stuff. If we're still doing that. It really doesn't matter at all what our political point of view is. It's all just slight tweaks on the same old. The same moldy cheese. [Laughter]

But there are cycles, right? Right now, I'm in my Rahu mahadasha. I'd like to live into my Jupiter mahadasha, which is next. And so now I'm also in the Kali Yuga and the Satya Yuga is next. So I'd like to live into both of those things, see how they are.

I want to live in whatever the Satya Yuga is, because it means I'll be surrounded by worshipers, and that's what I really want. I want to be surrounded by worshipers.

But we can do a little of that here and now. We don't really have to wait for the big thing to happen. We can become worshipers. We can become devotees. And that's really what Jaya Kula is about, becoming worshipers.

At least that's what my Jaya Kula is about. I don't know what anybody else's Jaya Kula is about, but that's what my Jaya Kula is about, is becoming worshipers.

And the very, very first step for a lot of you is recognizing, deciding that all of this self-hatred and self-criticism is whack and not worth anything. Not worth anything. Not worth your time at all.

Not one second of your time should be spent in self-loathing, self-criticism, self-hatred, measuring yourself against others, feeling lesser than. Not one second of your time should be wasted on that.

It doesn't mean we never feel badly about anything. I'm not talking about some silly cartoon version of this. But the kind of self-disapprobation, self-disparagement that goes on in this culture, it's our number one job to decide that we are not going to have that anymore, because everything else comes out of a feeling of friendliness and respect for yourself.

STUDENT 2
If when you sit in the cushion, you are in pain and you are determined to practice, is there a way to work with that?

SHAMBHAVI
Yes. It's the same advice for what Ma said about get the best doctor you can afford. Get the best cushions you can afford, get the best chairs you can afford. Get whatever you need, if you have the money. Get whatever you need to make your sitting as comfortable as it can be, given your circumstance.

If you don't have money, build something, borrow something, do a GoFundMe. Be creative, be persistent. Be persistent in getting what you need to do your practice. And then you just do your best. But if you don't take steps to get up to the bar of as comfortable as I can be, then you are suffering needlessly and interrupting your sadhana needlessly.

STUDENT 2
Once you have done everything that you can, but there is still pain that you have in your awareness and in your body, are there anything things that you have done in your practice that allow you to work with it in a more effective, skillful way?

SHAMBHAVI
Well, everybody's pain is different. So what I do isn't really necessarily going to be the best advice for anybody else. But you asked me what I do, so I'm just answering for myself. I always sit through it.

I think everybody here can attest to the fact that I enjoy pushing myself to limits in various different ways. I will teach when I'm sick, I'll teach when I'm in pain, I'll teach when I'm exhausted.

I'll practice under those same conditions, not because I'm being some martyr or slave to dogma or rules or trying to prove anything or get some reward. I just enjoy, literally enjoy, being at the edge and still continuing to give my all. I like that feeling.

So that's why I say it's not for everybody. It makes me feel like everything's good between me and Ma when I do that. I feel she's smiling on me when I do that.

And I'm smiling on myself because if you know you've given to the nth degree of what you're capable of giving, you can have no complaints about yourself no matter what. You've done your best.

I just like the feeling that I've done my best, and then there's nothing left. There's no residue of I could have done this or I could have done that.

I'm not that way in every area of my life, particularly the food that I eat. I'm much more lax about my diet than I am about my sadhana and about teaching. But you know, can't have it all. [Laughs] Maybe I'm a little too friendly with myself. I don't know.

It's so relaxing to know that. It's really relaxing. After that, it's like, you've done it. That's it. You've given your all. I also like the feeling of being used up. I don't want to keep it for myself. I've never wanted that. I've always liked the feeling of being used up.

And that was my big complaint when I was a kid, that no one around me actually wanted what I had to give. That's the circumstance that I was in, and I always felt like 99% of what I had to give was completely unused and untapped and unasked for.

And I still feel that to a degree, just because students, by and large in this culture, and maybe in every culture, who knows, don't really have a full understanding of the teacher-student relationship and what it could be.

So I still feel somewhat untapped, but much less. I mean, Ma is tapping me to the nth, nth, nth degree. So even if students aren't, Ma's doing it.