Now when the bardo of meditation dawns upon me,

I will abandon the crowd of distractions and confusions,

Rest in the boundless state without grasping or disturbance,

And gain stability in creation and completion.

At this time of meditation, one-pointed, free from activity,

Do not fall into the power of confused emotions!

Meditation is a state of mind with greater clarity and awareness, different from our ordinary condition of consciousness, a gap in the continual flow of confused thoughts and complete identification with ego.

Here Trungpa Rinpoche interprets it not as formal meditation practice, but as a natural function of the mind, an innate intelligence that sees the clarity of things just as they are.

Often, when people have such flashes of openness, they ignore them, try to suppress them, or even fear they may be going a little crazy. We have lost the tradition of valuing them, and unless one is following a spiritual path, there is no context in which to understand them; they seem disturbing and subversive, undermining the importance of the so-called real world.

On the other hand, it is possible to become very attached to these natural meditative states, or indeed to any kind of meditation, whatever tradition it belongs to. Then it can become a trap and, instead of producing greater awareness, keep one firmly bound within samsara.

Experiences like these are brief glimpses of “the boundless state.” This is the true nature of the mind, but we are continually distracted from it and confused by the disturbed emotions arising from ignorance. In order to rest in it and gain stability, it is necessary to train the mind in a more structured manner.

The verse itself specifically mentions the method of meditation used in vajrayana, consisting of the two stages of creation and completion. This method is called deity yoga, the practice of union with the deity. …

It is a little confusing because the same word, from the Sanskrit deva (masculine) and devi (feminine), is used to mean both the deities of samsara and the deities of the awakened state. The deities of samsara are the gods and goddesses who can be found in all ancient religions of the world: Indian, Far Eastern, Greek, Roman, Celtic, and so on.

What characterizes them as belonging to samsara rather than to enlightenment is simply that they are believed in as real, external beings; in other words, there is no understanding of ultimate emptiness and non-self.

The monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam replaced these deities with one supreme God. However, Buddhism regards this as still being a response to the sense of self.

The deities of the awakened state are synonymous with buddhas; they are the living presence of enlightenment in all its various aspects and functions. Each one embodies and emphasizes some special aspect of buddhahood, yet each is complete and perfect in itself.

The deity chosen as the focus of one’s practice represents total awakening, the essence of all deities; it is the meditated form of the practitioner’s own awakened nature, his or her innate divinity.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, we kept the Tibetan term yidam, but here I call it the “chosen deity,” from the Sanskrit equivalent, ishtadevata.

During the stage of creation, the meditator transforms the ordinary world into a sacred world through creative meditation or imagination. This is often referred to as visualization, but the visual sense is only a part of the creative process. William Blake called imagination the “Divine Vision,” which is exactly what is meant here. It involves all the senses and the totality of the meditator’s body, speech, and mind.

The actual feeling of the deity’s presence and confidence in the reality of the deity’s world are the basis of the meditation. The details of the imagery help to establish and stabilize that conviction. Every element of iconography has a symbolic meaning, so it provides a direct connection to the awakened state of mind.

The success of this whole practice depends on our willingness to give up our ordinary view of ourselves and to recognize the illusory nature of our present perceptions. We realize that we are actually creating our everyday world all the time with our confused, limited, dreamlike imaginations, so it would be far better to create an enlightened world through the techniques of tantric imagination.

Throughout the stage of creation, the meditator must never forget that the deities are neither substantial nor separate from oneself: they are the spontaneous appearances of emptiness, the play of the awakened mind.

All the forms are made of light, like rainbows, so gradually one’s fixed concept of physical reality decreases and the meditator begins to experience even his or her own body as insubstantial.

At a certain point, the deities and their environment dissolve away once more into emptiness, and the meditator rests in formless meditation. This is the essence of the stage of completion.

The two stages go together right from the beginning, but eventually the stage of completion becomes much more profound and extensive.

Completion has two aspects: one that uses yoga practices working directly with the subtle vital energies, and one that simply remains in the natural state of ultimate awareness.

The techniques of yoga lead to a conscious experience of the inner dissolution process that occurs at death, culminating in the experience of luminosity. Then, within the meditative state, the yogin or yogini takes on the form of his or her chosen deity, which is known as the illusory body.

Finally, one meditates that the illusory body manifests in a physical form as one returns to ordinary life.

The completion stage takes one through a process similar to the sequence of death, the after-death state, and rebirth, a sequence that also occurs in sleeping, dreaming, and waking.

By practicing first in meditation and then during sleep, one learns how to transform one’s death into a means of liberation.

It is only through this bardo of meditation that one can acquire the skills to implement the instructions for all the other bardos.

The six yogas of Naropa provide a systematic arrangement of the entire process.

They are practiced mainly in the “new” traditions stemming from the second diffusion of dharma in Tibet, while the “old” Nyingma tradition has its own corresponding practices. There is a marked difference in style between these two in the way they are presented.

Commentaries on the six yogas are often extremely complex and make it obvious that no one would be able to practice them without considerable training.

Nyingma literature, such as Natural Liberation and Trungpa Rinpoche’s own teaching on the bardos, sometimes appears to have a deceptive simplicity; its ideas are expressed in very inspiring language that continually reminds us of our innate buddha-nature here and now.

In a general sense, the stages of creation and completion are present in all aspects of life.

In every learning process, there is a phase of effort and contrivance, which, if we persist long enough, bears fruit in a natural, unforced phase of accomplishment.

If it is a physical skill, like riding a bicycle, it becomes instinctive and automatic; if it is a mental process, like learning a poem, it merges into the background of the mind and remains present as a store of knowledge and source of inspiration.

In all the arts, it is essential to acquire technique and to practice constantly, yet at a certain point we have to abandon reliance on technique, let go of deliberate effort, and allow spontaneity to take over—exactly the same principle applies to meditation.

The peak of this bardo is the ego’s attempt to solidify the open space of meditation.

Even at an advanced stage, attachment to the most subtle levels of realization can arise, producing a feeling of conflict.

We are caught between the two extremes of dwelling in the blissful experience of eternity and sudden doubt about its validity, which comes from the emptiness of space.

Perhaps we are losing our balance or losing our mind, we might even lose everything and cease to exist. This is the opportunity to let go completely and simply rest in the boundless state of the openness and clarity of the true nature of mind, experiencing everything just as it is.

Source: Based on Fremantle, Francesca. Luminous Emptiness. Shambhala. Kindle Edition.

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