Big cycles, little cycles

From monster practice cycles that need a whole Dharma Centre to work through in a year to the handful of practices an individual carries out daily. What are practice cycles for?

Is 550 pages enough?

 

Words or phrases you might want to look up:

• Dudjom Lingpa
• Dudjom Rinpoche
• Terma, terton
• Vajrayogini
• Yamantaka
• Hevajra
• Cakrasamvara
• Shiné

#Buddhism #Vajrayana #Tibet #DoubleDorje #terma #Dudjom

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
Hello dear listeners, near and far, many and few. Welcome to this episode of the Double Dorje podcast. I'm Alex Wilding and this week I'm looking at the idea of practice cycles, both big ones and small ones, and how they can bring a focus to our practice.
At one end of the valley, imagine a vast monastery with thousands of monks and nuns, and now at the other end, imagine that you are a lonely solo practitioner with a tiny practice space where nobody else ever comes.

(00:40):
Regardless of where you live along the valley and which end of this you'd prefer, life is much simpler with a cycle of practices. So let's take a look at that idea.
First let me say two quick things. One is that it would be really helpful to this podcast and help it grow. If you would take a moment to press the like button, subscribe button or whatever it is that you have on your listening platform, as well as telling your friends.

(01:09):
The other is this. At the time of first publishing, the podcast is hosted on PODBEAN, but it's very likely that you're listening somewhere else. If you do want to see the comments, the picture, the transcript or whatever, but they don't appear in your channel, you'll find this
all on podbean.
OK, a minute ago I invited you to imagine a valley with two ends. And although the valley has of course got lots of points in between, I'm going to concentrate on two things.

(01:40):
Big practice circles at one end and our own little cycles of practices at the other. I'll start with the big boys.

(02:16):
It comes as a surprise to many of us as we begin to learn about Buddhism, that the whole thing is just vast.
The basic sutras from more than 2000 years ago fill hundreds of volumes.
Then there are the commentaries. Then the philosophical systematisation. Then there's the poetry, the psychological analysis, the history.

(02:41):
This all makes for a huge foundation for study and discipline.
Is this what provides the bread and butter material for the life of a large monastery?
Up to a point, perhaps, but not entirely.
I do want to take a little detour here to talk about the word monastery.

(03:05):
Some Tibetan Buddhist monasteries do indeed come close to the obvious meaning of monastery, which is to say a building or a complex of buildings where celibate male monks study and practise.
But what about the nuns?
I do gather that the word monk was long, long ago, not gender-specific, but in modern English, of course, monks are male, nuns are female. Admittedly, the status of nuns in Tibet has traditionally been low, although that situation is slowly improving nowadays.

(03:40):
If somebody says Yes, but isn't it a bit too slow? I would have to agree with them, but cultural change does take time.
So there are also Tibetan nunneries being buildings or complexes of buildings where celibate female nuns study and practise.
Another problem with the word monastery is that you may come across institutions where some, at least of the residents, possibly many, are not celibate.

(04:10):
The residents are committed to living their lives, studying their studies, practising their practices, but not necessarily as monks or nuns.
This has led to the occasional use of a linguistic abomination, the married monk.
No, no, no, no, no. No can be.

(04:32):
The very origins of the word refer to somebody who lives a solitary life.
A monk or nun cannot, by definition, be partnered up.
I even came across a western self-trumpeted teacher, one of those who claimed to have authorizations from a wide range of traditions, to have a wife and children, but nevertheless to be a monk in some Tibetan tradition or other.

(04:58):
I forget which.
If you keep going, you may come across other fools of the same type.
Sometimes, therefore, I use the phrase Dharma Centre where other people might say monastery, in spite of the fact that it rather suggests some modern, probably western institution with a library and a tea room, and possibly a gift shop,
where occasional teachers visit from outside.

(05:22):
These can of course be a fine thing, but here I'm going to mean places that you might mistake for monasteries if you didn't look closely at the ways in which people are living.
If someone out there can think of a better word, please let us know!
So back from the detour.
It is good to be clear that whether we're talking about studying the scriptures, the philosophy and so forth, or whether we are thinking about the practices that are carried out, perhaps in the great hall of the monastery at regular times of day, and at great festivals throughout the year,

(05:59):
there is much more involved than anyone individual can master.
The choice of studies and the choice of ritual practices is a large part of what distinguishes one school or tradition from another.
This, I think is a part of what makes the idea of a cycle of practices a natural fit for these institutions.

(06:25):
In the course of a typical day, the hall may be used for half a dozen regular practices and at special times, such as New Year, they can be extravagant spectacles, including even the famous Lama Dances.
You might have seen some of those on video. I have only ever seen one such dance in real life, but that was done on an extremely small scale.

(06:51):
I can imagine that a large elaborate one would be quite thrilling and inspiring for that matter too.
So here we already have the idea of a selected group or cycle of practices that belong together in some way, which that monastery, and perhaps others related or subsidiary to it, will perform.
But that's not the end of the story, as the cycle of practices has a more developed form.

(07:18):
In a future episode, I hope to talk about the tradition of what we call treasures or termas.
The finders of these treasures, who are known as tertons, are held to be spiritually gifted individuals who can retrieve sacred texts and instructions from other realms.
There is a lot to be said about that, what these other realms actually are, and how those treasures come to be recognised as valid, but that's not a subject for this episode.

(07:50):
Some of the most famous tertons treasure finders have been very prolific.
To take one example, the collected works of Dudjom Lingpa extend to 20 volumes, each volume having 5 or 600 pages.
Just one of these, the one that focuses on the wrathful Black Mother or Throma Nagma, contains enough practical material, liturgy, and so forth to keep a Dharma Centre busy full time.

(08:20):
One volume of Dudjom Rinpoche's works -
I should explain that Dudjom Rinpoche was the successor in the incarnation line to Dudjom Lingpa, who I mentioned a minute ago -
contains practices of the four revolting thoughts, preliminary practices including refuge, bodhicitta, prostrations, mandala offerings and guru yoga,
a principal sadhana, at least four subsidiary deity sadhanas, longevity practices, activity practices, numerous protector practices, practices for removing pollution, for increasing wealth, for enhancing harvests, for deflecting untimely death, yoga practices, practices for the time of one's own death, empowerment texts,

(09:00):
burnt offerings and much more.
This is what I mean by a practice circle being one of the big boys.
Perhaps big girls would be more appropriate here, because the one I'm thinking about is very much focused - almost entirely In fact - on female dirties. But as it happens, as I'm sure you realise, the connotations of big boys and big girls aren't quite the same. So I don't know what we should say, Big baddies?

(09:29):
Wallopaloozas? I've included a picture of the texts for one of these wallopaloozas in the notes. 550 pages long it is, getting on for the size of a couple of bricks.
This one is volume 16 of Dudjom Rinpoche's collected works, the volume that contains the Khandro Thugtig cycle.

(09:51):
By the way, the other 44 volumes in the New Treasures of Dudjom are similar in size.
Savour those numbers!

(10:14):
When an individual begins to relate to such a cycle, they will begin with the things I mentioned earlier and probably will do again. Meditations about the four revolting thoughts refuge, bodhicitta, preliminaries such as prostrations, mandala offerings, guru yoga, including lots and lots of mantras, maybe even millions.
And then a great deal of practice of the main sadhana of the central deity.

(10:39):
And then yogic practices such as fierce heat dream yoga, clear light. And then dzogchen, which itself has many instructions, practice stages.
And then many of the auxiliary practices I mentioned a minute ago - and let's not forget chod.
Anybody who gets through all that - and for the sake of clarity I should stress that I'm nowhere remotely in that league at all -

(11:06):
might even start another cycle with similar elements, but with its own details, perhaps focusing on a red passionate deity like Vajrayogini or maybe mainly on a form of the Lama such as Guru Rinpoche.
I have been speaking here mainly from a Nyingma point of view.
Someone who's practising in one of the new translation traditions, sarma, as opposed to nyingma,

(11:32):
that is to say, the Geluk tradition, the Sakya tradition, or perhaps the
Kagyu tradition may instead be focusing on practices related to one of the high tantric deities of their particular tradition, Yamantaka, Hevajra, Chakrasamvara,
but is still likely to be involved in a whole bunch - that is to say, a cycle - of teachings preserved by their tradition. It's probably obvious that for most students, these things will only matter at all, if ever, after years and years of involvement.

(12:05):
For a long time and for most
of us, there is another meaning of the practice cycle that is equally important, perhaps even more.
What practices might someone like you or me do on a regular basis?

(12:30):
The scale of activity, the scale of practice that we're talking about is very different, but we are facing the same issue of settling on a suitable extract from the enormous wealth of possibilities.
The problem is this, and I speak here from my own experience:
When we begin,
it's quite possible to trundle along for some time, perhaps even years, picking up bits of practices here and there. We might know a prayer to the lama. We might sometimes do one or two of the widespread practices using mantras such as Chenrezig or Tara, and we might at some stage get the empowerment of these deities.

(13:09):
to give it a much greater depth.
We might be familiar with spending some time on one of the many methods of tranquil abiding or shinay, such as watching the breath.
We might go to a local centre once a week, or once a month, or once every few months and take part in larger practices there.

(13:30):
This is all fine, it can be comfortable, inspiring, and I have no doubt at all that it can be very beneficial. But as time goes on, we might start to feel that we are just dabbling. Yes, because of our practice and our involvement, perhaps with our dharma brothers and sisters, we do feel that we are

(13:51):
calmer and kinder in everyday life than we would have been otherwise.
Great. And yet, to borrow a Christian metaphor, we may feel that our practice is built on sand.
The things we do are almost arbitrary add-ons. They could be swapped for something else, even from another religion, or not religious at all, and it wouldn't maybe make much difference. The obvious question now is why that should be a problem?

(14:18):
The answer lies in the beginning. In the four revolting thoughts. Life changes. Life throws all sorts of problems at us. Even if we managed to dodge every bullet, the one big bullet at the end,
death, of course, is going to get every single one of us.
We need something more durable.

(14:40):
Famously, humans are all different, and there are doubtless many solutions to the problem of feeling that we've got a few nice ingredients on the table, but we still haven't baked a cake, so I'm going to just offer one solution, one that's helped me beyond measure.
Give some careful thought to where you have the strongest resonances.

(15:04):
If you've taken refuge, you have made a commitment to Buddhism, but one of the points I've been trying to make here is that Buddhism is a gigantic and complex field.
A jungle, I might almost say. It's a complex culture, and even if you give your whole life to it,
even if you were born to it, having the very mixed blessing of being recognised aa a tulku, you'll only be able to engage properly with a small extract.

(15:31):
So choose a sample and make it the golden thread in your life.
You might find some verses for the four revolting thoughts for refuge and for bodhicitta, which is, of course, compassion for all beings, grand as that rather sounds.
You might find a practice based on a deity such as Chenrezig, or on a lama such as Guru Rinpoche, one that's really very short.

(15:55):
Make sure you've been introduced to it properly, and commit to doing it every single day.
This is why it has to be short.
Of course you can do more when it suits you, and that might indeed be most days.
And of course, one day you may have reason to change to a different core practice.
But choose one that is short enough and simple enough that you can do it every single day with the exception, of course, of real emergencies.

(16:21):
And short enough and simple enough that the commitment to doing it every day won't come to feel like a chore.
If you go down that road, it will inevitably lead to some kind of burnout sooner or later.
Rather, what it should always feel like is an oasis of clarity and peace.

(16:44):
Then youve found your ground to stand on.
I could make specific suggestions for these practices, but I don't want to do that here for the simple reason that what suits me may well not suit you. What I am hoping to
encourage is the concept of finding your core practice, one that works in your own life, whatever that is like with your own connections, whatever they are.

(17:13):
In passing, perhaps I should note that in the old tradition it was much more usual for people initially to take up a deity practice intensively and extensively, and to use the short daily practices afterwards to keep up the connection and the flow of blessing.
In the West nowadays, people often start with very short practices and only engage in the big versions, perhaps later.

(17:40):
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, Im really not sure.
But needs must. We work with circumstances.
So that's my thought for the week. Please remember to like, to subscribe and so on. And whatever it is
keep up the practice.
Bye.