User:B9 hummingbird hovering/Nundro notes

Invoking the Lama (from Longchen Nyingtik Ngöndro) (3 times) LAMA KHYEN NO O Lama, care for me ! NYING Ü DÉ PÉ GESAR SHYÉ PA NÉ From the blossoming lotus of devotion at the centre of my heart KYAB CHIK DRIN CHEN LAMA YAR LA SHYENG Rise up, O compassionate lama, my only refuge ! LÉ DANG NYÖN MONG DRAK PÖ ZIR WA YI I am plagued by past actions and turbulent emotions--- KAL PA NGEN PA DAK LA KYOB PÉ CHIR To protect me in my misfortune CHI WOR DÉ CHEN KHOR LÖ GYEN DU SHYUK Remain as the jwel-ornament on the crown of my head, the mandala of great bliss. DREN DANG SHÉ SHYIN KUN KYANG SHIENG SU SOL Arousing all my mindfulness ans awareness, I pray ! Ngöndro Reciting the Four Contemplations which Turn the Mind Reciting the Four Contemplations which Turn the Mind NAMO ༔ Homage ! LU MÉ TEN GYI GÖNPO LAMA KHYEN ༔ O Lama, my unfailing and constant protector ! DAL JOR DI NI SHIN TU NYÉ PAR KA ༔ This free and endowed human birth is very difficult to obtain. KYÉ TSÉ MI TAK CHI WÉ CHÖCHEN YIN ༔ Everything that is born is by nature impermanent and bound to die GÉ DIK LÉ KYI GYU DRÉ LU WA MÉ ༔ Beneficial and harmful actions bring their inevitable results. KHAM SUM KHOR WA DUKNGAL GYA TSÖ NGANG ༔ The Three Realms of samsara are an ocean of suffering. DREN NÉ DAK LO CHÖ LA GYUR WAR SHOK ༔ Recognising this, may my mind turn towards the Dharma. Reciting these verses many times trains the mind properly.
 * http://mildred632.free.fr/dharma/Ngöndro/ngöndro-a4.xml

Sri Sri Sri
http://www.lotsawahouse.org/ngondro.html

Triune: outer, inner & secret
All sadhana of the Nyingma, Bonpo and Kagyu as a general principle have outer, inner and secret evocations. Dzogchen, particularly so according to my master ChNN Rinpoche. There are sometimes quatrunes, but these are also gankyil. Some people holds that the secret is 'higher' than the inner which is in turn 'higher' than the outer. This is a false view. Outer, inner and secret are nondual like the gankyil: they are a triune, interpenetrating and indivisible. The most efficacious is the practice that works and that is individual and unique according to the qualities, propensities and karmic proclivities of the aspirant.

Yana
The same holds true for Yana. Dzogchen is not a 'higher' practice it is the most refined, the most subtle. The spaciousness of the effortless vehicle, Dzogchen, enfolds all the other yana. All other yana flow into Dzogchen in due course. Dzogchen is the ground which support the paths of the yana. In truth, there is only one yana. A Dzogchenpa in quality can practice and teach through any of the yana. The yana are also a historical progression of the Buddha Dharma and provide a valuable categorical and organizational tool of the various literatures and practices. Yana also function as a pedagogical tool. Each yana has its own rules and vows, cycles of initiation and progressive commitments. In truth, the qualities, propensities and karmic proclivities of the aspirant determine the yana not the sadhana. That said, it is generally understood that mode of sadhana determine the yana. This is a false view. A person outwardly practicing and initiated in the first yana, may be practicing as a Dzogchenpa in quality according to their realization. For a meditation master this is self evident. What we understand as meditation in Dzogchen though is not just sitting nor contemplative ritual action, it extends to an expansive continuum effortlessly embracing all activities through waking and sleep. A meditationless meditation. So many Dzogchen practitioners in initiation and not quality tout that this excuses them from sitting meditation and contemplative ritual action. This is unfortunate. That said we are all unique, some people are more fitted to sitting meditation, others to philosophy, others to literature, singing, ritual, craft and arts, etcetera. Our 'dharma' though, in the sense of our occupation and preoccupation, is not just to do what we are good at or have a calling for and are predisposed to, but also to develop practices that challenge and extend us and that within which we are not naturally gifted.

Text, intertextuality and metatextual notations
"When Tibetan letters are stacked to represent a Sanskrit word, each syllable is pronounced irrespective of whether the letter would be silent in a normal Tibetan word.  Each letter is pronounced the same way regardless of what letter precedes or succeeds it.  That is, the linguistic compensations of normal Tibetan pronunciation do not apply to Sanskrit stacks." [typographical error repaired]

Jigme Lingpa mentions his own practice of ngondro in his 'transpersonal autobiography' 'Dancing Moon in the Water' (Chudai Garken; ཆུ་ཟླའི་གར་མཁན) (Full title: )... Convey the importance of the moon in "I am" seed of haM within Carya and more esoteric vehicles. This image conveys a simulacrum and mirrorwork.

Gyatso (998: p.xxi) relates her methodology of signifying textual annotations in "Dancing Moon contains interlinear notes, printed in smaller type than the rest of the text. I have retained this convention in the translation." I note the resolve of Gyatso but I am transcribing the Tibetan text into a Wikimedia environment, the pitch of font is already challenging to view and read unless the screen percentage is magnified. To my knowledge Wylie and Extended Wylie do not have transcriptions yet for identifying such subscript or metascript in their conventions. But that may just be my oversight. There is a beautiful traditional translingual mark ※ for identifying commentary or annotations to a text. I have resolved to employ that for the interim instead of curved parentheses as I commenced doing in a rather cavalier fashion. I would be extending the traditional usage of this mark in this application, but this modern forum is going to necessitate the evolution of new conventionalities such as this adaptation and innovation. I hold that it is considered and respectful.

Vajranatha (1996: p.8) refers to interlinear 'notes' but it is not identified whether these are demarcated by a smaller pitch of font or ligature than the text proper. This Ngondro has a number of such notes. The smaller pitch text annotations are very common and known as where 'yig' denotes 'text' and 'mchan' are 'notes'. Sometimes these are corrections made by a second hand (in which case they will be very short). Sometimes they are notes and commentary, e.g. in philosophical writings you often get identifications of cited sources in smaller writing. Some people just transliterate these notes in a smaller font, other people use xml like notation for example. Sort of depends who the intended audience is. Sometimes they are appropriate as footnotes when it is clear what specific location to place the footnote.

༼ཧཾ༽ = haM, the seed syllable is undefinable and yet is to be defined, for even though inconceivable to say that its majesty cannot be received directly to mind[stream] by the grace of adhisthana is to be in duality. The seed-syllable will reveal itself to me in the practice of the Ngondro, I will invoke haM in a Wheel as it is herein invoked with auspicious embrace; 'I am' the fullness of divine pride in unobstructed interpenetration with deity fully aspected, this is how this seed is utilized in Becoming Vajrasattva which is key to this Ngondro. hamsa = swan = grace; svaham/soham...it is a finality, a completion in binding, in the practice of the mandala it is invoked after the 'bhandha', a binding seal, bhandha = mudra; ha = Moon (male thigle/bindu, white element) anushwara = Solar (female thigle/bindi, red element), the winds of the outer channels are centralized.
 * http://books.google.com.au/books?id=eZQsTlDQ0T8C&pg=PA47&lpg=PA47&dq=ham+seed+syllable&source=bl&ots=O6BwljZV-O&sig=JWlhAscoUwNp5CauG6RE1PGasJ0&hl=en&ei=vfS9So_cEtWSkQX8yqxW&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9#v=onepage&q=ham&f=false

"'Ordinary body, speech, and mind, along with the collections (or, said differently, the white and red elements and the energetic-mind, along with their collections) are inherently enlightened. In essence, they are the five wisdoms. This is the manifestation of enlightenment at the time of the ground.' Patrul Chokyi Wangpo's exegesis of Jigme Lingpa's Ladder to Akanishta, rendered into English (2006: p.30)"
 * Patrul Rinpoche received instruction on the Longchen Nyingtik Ngondro some twenty-five times from Jikmé Gyalwé Nyugu, and Patrul Rinpoche completed the required practices the same number of times. Aum Sri Sri Sri Dzogchen Ling pa Namah


 * Adhisthana or Kaji in Japanese, which is a favourite term often used in Vajrayana ritualism, originally means "subduing others (by spiritual power), refer Kukai


 * http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/advanced/tantra/level1_getting_started/vajrasattva_purification_basics.html


 * The quality of the sadhaka determines the yana not the sadhana. That said, the rites of the Ngondro may be enacted within any yana but is as a generality traditionally cordoned as Kriya and Charya given its ostensible purpose as preparatory and purificatory for entry into the Inner Tantras and in rare cases Yoga tantra given the modality of the practice. My invocation of Ham lead me to Charya. The knowing of why is revealing itself.

Introduction
The 'preliminaries' (ngondro) of the 'seminal heartmind' (snyingthig), the mandala of 'vast open ground' (longchen) is only for the 'vessel' (bumpa) of 'beginner's mind' (nyuanshin).

Shakyamuni did not write anything down, well, nothing has been eluded to in the various canons nor has any direct literary testament been preserved through the relentless juggernaught of Time. Everything we have of Shakyamuni's 'orations', his 'threaded discourses' (sutra), are in effect attribution and hearsay. Hearsay indeed is the Sramana way, the direct transmission of realization through the auditory channel to the Hearer who sits at the feet of the teacher. This spirituality of 'sound' and 'speech' (shabda) as 'transmission of empowered signal' (lung, wang), a modality of 'disciplic succession' and 'lineage' (parampara) and a number of transpersonal techniques and cultural tokens, Shakyamuni inherited from the greater tradition and cultural milieu. In the greater Indic tradition, listening and hearing as modalities of learning were prized. It is important to remember that few people historically in India were literate. Given Shakyamuni's privileged birth we may attribute him with the likelihood of literacy. We do not even know definitively with what languages he did discourse. We do know he favoured the vernacular. Moreover, we may infer that he was not only an inspired orator but due to the great wave of respect that washed over the localities of India where he taught, demonstrably sublime. This 'quality' of the heartmind ༼ཧཱུྃ༽ of true seeing related in 'true speech' ༼ཨཱཿ༽, the mantra that emanated from his lips is for the faithful, palpable in form [body/embodied] ༼ཨོཾ༽ in 'activity' of the revolution of the Dharmacakra. The entwining of 'body', 'energetic voice', 'heartmind', 'qualities' and 'activities' are the mindstream 'the continuum of luminosity in sum' (which is esoterically given the nomenclature 'foundation', 'ground', 'base', 'root' gzhi). This 'spacious' luminosity of the 'sacred ground' the 'field' (kshetra, temenos) is the 'open' silent resonance of the 'void', the 'expanse' of 'emptiness' (shunyata).

For Shakyamuni faith was key, but with the caveat that blind faith is but ignorance. Faith in liberation from constructs and falsehoods, faith in the divine architecture of the natural world and Universe within which we are embedded, and faith in the possibility of an 'intelligence' (bodhi), the full awakening of the potential of the human. I evoke 'faith', but it is such that engenders and interpenetrates with its consort, 'conviction' (shraddha). Shakyamuni took the toolbox of pramana that he inherited and favoured 'direct experience' (pratyaksha) and 'inference' (anumana) as tools of discerning truth. Truth is Dharma. Even the modalities of pramana that Shakyamuni disfavoured hold merit. Shakyamuni wasn't a Buddhist. Buddhism is a cultural construct. The culture replicated and perpetuated itself through the generations, as culture does, by stories (and by exoteric and esoteric means). Buddhism and its sibling and parent traditions are now in diverse localities and spread through manifold speech communities. Stories are endemic, the stuff of culture. There is nothing which is not text, narrative and discourse. Irrespective of what outer form it takes, ritual is a dialogue. Text in this evocation is the fullness of any cultural token in any medium. Indeed, there is only one river, one continuum of human culture with innumerable tributaries. The tributaries have been running together, entwining, and diverging since time untold. In the river of culture there is no island. We infer through narratives and parable. Knowledge hard-won though direct experience is often conferred to others through narrative. To learn by listening and indeed realize by hearing was the mark of a superior disciple. Three classes of disciples or students are often mentioned: poor, middling and superior which may be glossed into English in a plethora of analogues. Dissanayake (2008: p.70-71) provides a valuable analysis of Shakyamuni's social systemic view of language as a mutual arising: "According to Buddhism, language has to be understood as a social practice inflected by convention and agreed upon by the people who use it. What this means is that language is not divinely-ordained or iron-clad, and that it evolves in conformity to the movement of convention. In the Buddhist literature there are copious references to agreement among the users (sammuti) or the practice of users (vohara). Hence, language as a product of social interaction is central to the Buddhist perspective on verbal communication. When we examine the early discourses on Buddhism, we can identify five central concepts that are deployed in discussions of language. They are, etymology (nirutti), generality (samanna), usage (vohara), consensus (sammuti) and conceptuality (pannatti). Among these the ideas of etymology and generality were current at the time. However, the Buddha was not obsessed with these in the way that some others had been; he did not reify them in the way that others did. He was much more interested in the ideas of usage, convention, and conceptuality because they enabled him to focus on the idea of language as a social institution and social practice that responds to changing social and cultural forces."

Mantrayana, the Way of Secret Mantra is the tantric tradition that was disseminated to the Himalaya in the first wave, the early translation period which in contradistinction with the new translation period was given the nomenclature Nyingma. It is important to foreground that just as every person is unique, as is their spirituality, the threads of the tapestry of tradition are also a dynamic continuum, stone that never sets.

Obeisance, homage, salutation, prostration
The following wisdom of Gordon (1833-1870) is monumentally set and largely illegible in the weatherworn stone of the foundation of his figurative commemoration in Melbourne city:
 * "[Life is mostly froth and bubble,]
 * Two things stand like stone...
 * Kindness in another's trouble,
 * Courage in your own."

This salience has been very important to me through the years and is sound for any spiritual path. I know very little about the man. But this holds the essence of prostration. Prostrations are salutations: a disciplined, courageous humility that exalts as it yields. For many of the Dharmic Traditions they are subsumed in obeisances to guru or murti and vinyassa yoga practice. Prostrations and circumambulations share a physicality, a visceral embodiment of prayer. Just as prostrations pathe the holy roads of Christendom and orient the directives of Islam, so too do they wear the body of those holy people who for untold millennia have circumambulated Mount Kailash, oft aniconically represented by the Bonpo as a sauvastika, a form that embodies radiating spirallic movement. Both the svastika and sauwastika are signs evident on the Buddha Shakyamuni's worshipful footprint. Indeed, the footprint as an absence was one of the first representations of the Buddha Shakyamuni other than his sacred mendicant bowl. An absence as the Buddha as Tathagata has both 'Thus come' and 'Thus gone'. Visually significant and powerful teachings of shunyata which for the most part is an analogue of the motif of self-sacrifice (atmayajna) wrought though the liberation from the 'I', the 'egoic persona' (ahamkara). Shakyamuni's anatta, one of his Three Seals was not something new to the greater tradition, but it was reworked and packaged brilliantly.

Levi (undated, unpaginated) holds that: "In the Tibetan tradition certain mantras or ritualistic maps are written in language which is neither Sanskrit mantra nor discernible through methods of ordinary reception or comprehension. Such is the Language of the Dakini ( lit. in Tibetan sky-walker ) which cannot be understood through discursive analysis but which in itself evokes the powers it describes & the beings for whom, according to the theory, this language is inherent.The Song of the Vajra or Vajra Lu in the Maha Ati School of Tibetan Buddhism Ema kiri kiri is an example The melodies to such 'songs' are received in dream by the masters of the lineage through which the text has been 'transmitted' & singing them is a direct means of entering into the state of realization of the master, with or without a conceptual understanding of the text."

In our modern confluence of cultures into the one global milieu quickened by the Internet, Buddhism has a number of transpersonal tools and practical wisdoms for fortifying meaning and purpose and orienting ourselves in a complex moral and social environment. The First Turning discourse in English often favours the Pali of the Theravadin as this is the only extant, complete Buddhist Canon from one of the early schools, but this also foregrounds the importance of bringing the other less-represented schools in Buddhist discourse to our modern dialogue to redress this skew. Tse-fu Kuan (2008: p.3) holds that: "The Theravada Canon in the language of Pali...is the only complete Buddhist Canon preserved by one of the early schools in an Indian language probably very close to the languages used by the Buddha and his disciples."

Do you know much about the early schools of Buddhism? The Theravadin are only one of in excess of 18 schools. The first turning were codified in many languages not just Pali. If you are focused on the first turning then be aware of its historicity. The Theravadin like the Gelugpa have been given too much attention or have been overly favoured and foregrounded in English discourse. The Buddha taught and recommended teaching in the vernacular which most definitely was not Classical Sanskrit. Indeed he was reacting to the spiritual authority in large enshrined by the Sanskritic tradition. Shakyamuni was an iconoclast. The reasons why Shakyamuni favoured the vernacular are similar to the Protestant Reformation and the move away from Catholic High Mass in languages removed from the understanding of the people. Accessibility! Sanskrit is a control, a control in the scientific sense. A tool of calibration in a complex linguistic environment. That is how Sanskrit works in the milieu of the Dharmic Traditions as well as how it works in Western scholarship and indeed Dharmic scholarship in all languages. Sanskrit forms the nexus of orientation.
 * 'diglossia' (Sanskrit: dvaibhashika), indigenous Tibetans grounded in scholarship are Pandita, an extension of the general understanding of the term. The term 'Lotsawa' in Tibetan is a complex Sanskrit-Tibetan hybridization.

"East Tibet, known as Kham, includes the valleys of several great rivers (the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze) and the pastureland between them. Although more spread out, Kham had a population roughly equivalent to that of Central Tibet. Owing to its proximity to China, a number of important trading routes lay in Kham, along with several major towns including Derge and Chamdo. Kham was politically more decentralized than Tibetan, and its different regions were governed sometimes by hereditary princes and sometimes by lamas from their monastic seats. The Nyingma and Kagyu schools were particularly strong here, with a few medium-sized monasteries in the valleys and numerous retreat centers in the surrounding hills and mountains." (Ray, 2000: p.10)

Recitation, evocation, invocation, spellcasting, go[d]spel[l]
Bija "The entire Universe is a garland of spell letters" from the Mandarava Terma of Namkhai Norbu

The Buddha Dharma is a complex and confusing for many. Many people foreground certain practices and doctrines and discount others. This is natural but also unfortunate. Each practitioner needs to determine which pramana they hold are determiners of valid cognition and condusive to truth formation. Bija and the esotericism of language is a complexity in Buddhism as the following discussion intends to convey. Skillful means is a very powerful doctrine and epistemological tool. Rationalism has its purposes and is to be held in merit but the irrational too has its purposes and is to be valued. In Magical thinking there is a certain power to alter our experience of the world and thereby in truth altering our world as our world is our experience of it.

Dissanayake (2008: p.70): "'In order to understand the distinctiveness of the Buddhist approach to language and verbal communication, we need to place it alongside some of the dominant views that were current at the time in India. One such view was that language is sacred, that it was a divine creation, and that it was an instrument of divine will. Buddhism repudiated this view. Closely allied to this notion was that language incarnated essences and carried metaphysical meanings. Buddhism rejected this view as well. What is interesting about the Buddhist approach to language and verbal communication is that it marks the middle path, the avoidance of extremes that has always characterized Buddhist thought. The Buddhist approach to language avoided the essentialism that was dominant in many other views current at the time; it also repudiated a totally materialistic approach to language that advanced the view that it was totally arbitrary.'"

The following work of Levi needs to be rewritten, condensed: Semiotic or modern language theory speaks of appropriated or motivated and non-appropriated or arbitrary language systems. "Is there between words and things a rapport of simple convenience or an eternal appropriateness? In India, as in Greece, both of these were supported. But the second, expounded by Bhattihari does not exclude the first..." R.Daumal, RASA Appropriated or motivated language systems are those in which the word for a person, place or things is a subtle form of that 'thing' and, as such, of course can not be 'translated.' Non-appopriated or arbitrary systems, like our modern European ones, utilize words which indicate or formulate but are not considered to BE the object implied and thus many different word exist, in the different languages, for table, bird, chair or friend... In general, prayer implies a dualistic relationship between the speaker and the object of the prayer. In appropriated language system, such as the one derived from Sanskrit exposition 'mantra', this is not the case. Here the implied object is inherent in the language system and not considered to be apart from it. The letters themselves are understood to be the subtle (sthula) form of the deity or Goddess shakti and each syllable is a bija mantra directly reflecting diving powers and potential. Appropriated or motivated language theory (in which a word is the subtle form of the object it describes) is traced to at least two other language systems, ancient and esoteric Greek and Hebrew. The formulas developed in these are furthermore, at least in the Sanskrit tradition, protected by formal initiation in which circumstances are created to favour the empowered nature of this speech. When non-motivated or arbitrary systems are in use, prayer becomes a supplication to divine power. The needs of an individual can be met through complete supplication, at least theoretically, but spiritual practitioners attest to the phenomena of the answered prayer.

Sheldrake (1988, 1991 ) is held in esteem and as a visionary by many, and by the same number he is also dismissed and discounted as a crank. Sheldrake (1995) suggest the theory of morphic-resonance, a vibrational archive of information and knowledge that can intercommunicate ideas, strategies and behavours to all members of that species or biome and to which each species has timeless access. Sheldrake's wife is a Dzogchen practitioner. I mention him here as the meme of morphic resonance holds a teaching story of particular importance for the poetics of prayer and the esotericism of magical thinking. When we participate in a ritual, we participate in all the evocations of that ritual throughout time and timelessness, they all resonate and interpenetrate. Ritual may be held to open an imaginal portal where adhisthana may flow. Some yana of Buddhism foreground ritualism whilst other yana deny its utility. The Buddhist way is the middle between two extremes and finding coexistence of that which is otherwise held as mutual exclusivity is to be lauded. The timelessness of the mythological world for Eliade, contrasts with the timeboundedness of an historical world. Unlike Lévi-Strauss, Eliade holds that the mythological and historical worlds are linked, and in fact, that humans pass between timeboundedness and timelessness during ritual and other religious practices.

Dzogchen has its own stragegy for understanding manifestation and the poetics and efficacy of prayer, the doctrine is dang, rolpa and tsal (Norbu, Shane, 1999). It is through this doctrine that the skillful means of yidam as thoughtform are realised. It is through this doctrine that the non-theistic and theistic trends in Buddhadharma and indeed, in the Dharma proper, may be resolved. Many people find comfort and support in a deity and a personal god. It is only when their insistence on the universality and supremacy of their chosen deity or god and deny the validity of difference and the plurality of the spiritual possibilities open to the human, that this arrogance fully reveals itself as spiritual and social canker. Many folk just want to pray to a personal god as this is personable and intelligible, they can relate person to supreme person. Indeed, devotion and bhakti is very important if not key in all trends of Buddhadharma. Devotion is the warmth of sentiment and feeling. Devotion is the heart in the heartmind. Devotion to guru in guru-yoga deifies guru in no uncertain terms and holds that the most benefit from guruyoga is yielded if the aspirant experiences their guru as Buddha. The difference between deity and buddhas and bodhisattvas and saints or realised siddhas is really just politics and polemics. When Buddhism is transplanted out of its original cultures it may become sterile and loses the sacredness of the deities interspersed throughout all phenomena. This animism is evident as folk-religion in all historical cultures of the Buddhadharma. It is only the ill-informed unromantic modern mind that wants to sterilize the magic of myth in living spiritual traditions. If we secede from magic well, then the power and possibility of magic is lost to us. That is tragedy. Superstition is also a tragedy. We seek the middle-way and realise that the middle-way too is an extreme. Question everything and then question questioning.

Eliade (1957: pp.68-70) contributes famously to the phenomenology of the sacred with his insistence that when humans experience the sacred, the numinous, through ritual or myth, they enter the timelessness of the original event. Eliade names the experience of the mythical in the historical realm through ritual and myth, hierophany. This original event, this primordiality, is key to Dzogchen.

A simple way to envision a bija is through the upaya of the Two truths and Essence-Function. In the nonduality of Atiyoga the two truths coalesce as essence interpenetrates with function, indeed they are a continuum.

Cleary (1995: p.ix) in his 'Translator's Preface' to his English rendering of the Samdhinirmocana Sutra, he frames an eloquent overview of the polyvalence of 'essencelessness': "'Here, essencelessness is defined in three ways. First is essencelessness of characteristics, which refers to the nature of conceptualized characteristics, which refers to the nature of conceptualized characteristics projected on phenomena. Second is essenceless of birth, which refers to the dependent or relative character of phenomena, which by virtue of their interdependence have no individual point of origin. Third is ultimate essencelessness, referring to the selflessness of all things, which is call the ultimate truth.'"

Wheels within wheels
The Vaishnava specifically and most proponents of Sanatana Dharma in general, hold Shakyamuni to be an avatar of Vishnu (or Krishna). In the Jataka Tales of Buddha Dharma, Krishna is of the mindstream of Shariputra. Turning the Wheel of Dharma and the Dharmacakra becomes a function and are embodiments or emanations of Vishnu's Sudarshan Chakra. Historically, Buddha Dharma the evocation of Indian Buddhism specifically, was just seen by the populace and also by a number of Western scholars as yet another sect as testament to the efflorescence of Dharma. Buddhists monks became a caste.

In Mantrayana, Mandala are used as consecration portals, they focus divine qualities. Padmasambhava used Mandala in the Caves of the Himalaya where he initiated his disciples. Historically, these Mandala would be more visually like yantra with bija and symbols than the magnificent institutional Buddhist Vajrayana Mandala that has emerged. These Mandala would have been made somewhat like Rangoli directly on the ground and would have been demarcated with flour, grains, ash and sand and included precious objects such as gems and crystals, berries, beads, flowers, seeds, bone and fruit, for example. Indeed, true vajrayana mandala not for public display often use ground crystals and pigments eg. two vivid basic copper carbonates, the blue 'azurite' and the green 'malachite'  and sometimes a third intermediate 'turquoise' colour. Most if not all mandala for public display and which have had photographs taken have inconsistencies and are not inaugurated and the deities are not invited to take seat. This though is not generally disseminated. Indeed, sand or silica is a crystal. Jigme Lingpa, the revealer and codifier of our Ngondro was a worker of crystals and wrote a treatise on their soteriological and esoteric usage and crystals or jewels are to be seen in his iconography. In Vajrayana thanka, jewels are often interspersed forming the wheel of a sacred personage's aureole.

Mandala are a field of bodhi.

Outer, inner and secret. The outer wheel is a wonderful rite and indeed is seminal to our Ngondro but also not necessary as is every form of ritualism in Buddha Dharma. The wheel of consecration became subsumed through imaginal imagery in the sadhana where it is evoked as the refuge field. I though am kinaesthetic so have found the outer wheelmaking to be of value. Wheelmaking for me has been a portal of communication. I have practically employed wheels invoking teachers with whom I require adhishthana, to empower me to realise their teachings. The wheel is a 'support' focusing the mindstream communion of guru-yoga and communion with yidam.

Yoga is communion
Yoga has outer, inner and secret modalities. I often enact the rite of puja for my guruji, ChNN Rinpoche. The ngondro of the Longchen Nyingtig and the Longchen Nyingtig proper have cycles of esoteric pranayama (tsa-lung) and bodily movements (trul khor) associated with its lineage. Guru yoga is in essence an inner modality of outer or physical yoga. That leaves us open to the mystery of secret communion which is entrained when the four corners of the wheel are in employ of the mandala of the Ngondro: prostrations, recitations, mandala and guru-yoga. That said, each of these four corners have outer, inner and secret forms.

The ever-humble and self-deprecating Dingo Kyentse, et.al (2008: p.54) holds practical wisdom in yoking his guru to his mindstream simply and directly in devotion 'as it is': "'Generally speaking, my teacher Shechen Gyaltsap appeared to genuinely possess all the qualifications of a master that are taught in the sutras and tantras, and he was especially grounded in the experience of the highest view of the Great Perfection as it is. Subsequently, when I studied, reflected, and pretended to teach these aspects, I felt that having the good fortune to actually receive such a golden doctrine like a wish-fulfilling gem from my precious master, the perfect Buddha, made gaining a human birth worthwhile, and I felt even more devoted and inspired than usual. Even nowadays, while pretending to teach these aspects, I keep my precious master in mind and feign to invoke him to make the exposition and study meaningful.'"

'As it is' is an unornamented substantive or essential gloss of Dharmata in English. Efficient and functional, though it has no poetry. Even though we frown on the reification of essences in Buddhadharma, we also evoke them as skillful means, eg. bija. Our buddha-nature may be envisioned as bija and the nature of our bija determines our 'gotra' or spiritual family. Bija is essentially a function of the essence of Dharmata, where the essence and function indivisibly interpenetrate.

On one of the book covers of Brilliant Moon is a picture of his eminence (check appropriate title) holding a flower to the gateway of his throat. He was often photographed with flowers. Flowers are mandala, indeed we throw or caste flowers upon mandala in certain schools and where they fall determine gotra and therein meditational deity. This is also poignant in showing that the zen lineage, rime mindfulness and meditation sadhana was strong in this rinpoche.