The name of this empowerment has a much deeper significance than the literal understanding of it. It is an empowerment where the student encounters the subject that is none other than herself, through the words spoken to her by her teacher. There is a rich array of symbols, illustrative images and allegory used as a means of self-discovery, and the student is presented these in the form of a question. It is:
'the empowerment that the ecstatic intensity, on this level where the last trace of duality has been dissolved by the progressive intensification of the four lighting up phases in Being's sheer lucency, on it's way to recover and display it's dynamics. Having reached it's final destiny, and firmly occupied in it's rightful place, the ecstatic intensity rests in it's envelope of precious spontaneous thereness, in it's own bed.'
Guenther, p69.
I sort of smile at this point. This is all we are given, regarding this empowerment.
As a conclusion though, it is noted by Gunther that there is an internal logic to the four empowerments, such that each one deconstructs the traps built into a person's cybernetic existence, and aids the person in seeing the world anew, rather than seeing what she usually sees in a confirmatory manner.
As noted by Klongschen rab'byamspa:
'If a person who is so fortunate as to embark on these empowerments as steps in his mental-spiritual growth does not, right at the beginning, on the level of exteriority, cut off the conceptual-propositional thought patterns, the fictions concerning the phenomenal, and the cognitive operation will not be stopped in their proliferations; if, on the level of his interiority, he does not gather them up into the non-conceptual-nonpropositional dimension of thought, his psychic potential will not set out on it's path of enhanced integration and intensified awareness; if, on the level of the arcane dimension, he does not cut off all that went before but what is still more nonconceptual and nonpropositional, the lamps will not come up to be the path; and if, on the level of unsurpassable reality, he does not encounter Being's beingness in himself by what is utterly nonconceptual-nonpropositional, his visionary path will not be bright.'
Part of what I love about this Dzogchen material is that I get to make up half the meanings thus attributed to the descriptive words. Alive in spontaneous Being-ness, with question marks after the meaning-ness. :)
Guenther, H. (2005). Meditation Differently. India: Shri Jainendra Press.
3 comments:
But what is odd is that since we are meant to cast off our pre-programmed selves and so forth it's basically like saying - look all people are idiots, all these thousands (and millions) of years of developing into a society and the pleasure of a certain group physio-psychological experience is what you need to get rid of - it makes one suspect, what is actually so charming is the momentary experience of novelty.
Or in another sense, the fact of being transformed into a blissful parasite - since the enlightened who begs for a living (or is propped up to semi-godhood by an organization) would hardly last long in the jungle - no, only the support of the complex society rejected has allowed his evolutionary gift to be enjoyed with threat of sudden clomping over the head with a stone.
Hi Zog,
Can you tell me a little more about how you perceive that it's meant that we 'cast off our pre-programmed selves', by virtue of the material in this post? I ask this, because, as I identified in the post, the way I see it, we half-create the meanings, we are part-creators, in that which we are already given as created, by virtue of our culture.
So the 'word and meaning empowerment' is not about abandoning all that is already known and understood (as an individual or collectively), or necessarily about engaging in desperate alms-bowl on the corner kinds of activities, but moreso about recognising the intuitive, creative moment, that we are graced with, in presencing a self that is embodied, in our culture, given, with the language of that culture.
I'd love to understand a little more about where you're seeing the rejection, of the benefits of our culture and society so given, in this post - the nonconceptual and nonpropositional referred to here, for my thinking, in no way is meant to stand separate from, or outside of the skin that we are in, the time within which we walk.
Thanks for prompting me to reflect on this,
With love,
Trish
I guess when it says "last trace of duality has been dissolved" I take that as a radical break from the mind set any large social group must take (the materialist, producing mind set,wanting to get bigger and build stuff and make defenses and farm etc.), forcing people to work and so forth.
Because, I think the blissful person will not feel the motivation to be a worker.
I see what you mean about empowerment though. like an added layer to consciousness, I was thinking too much in terms of getting rid of poisonous elements of consciousness, or just social norms that are often considered in terms of helping States to control people.
Mainly I think you are probably correct.
Often extreme adapts become gurus - like Osho for example - and in a sense, they are parasitical, from the point of view of the state.
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