Hillary

“Let me use a simple analogy of how our ego fixation and self-cleaning mind works. Like a high-security base, our ego, which forms at the moment of rupture from the ground, sends out agents to explore the outside world and report back.

There are three types of reports or reactions. The first is constantly surveying for potential threats, creating aversion, aggression, or hatred. The second report is concerned with making our ego feel safe. Desire, grasping, and attachment are born from this. And the third report is about neither enhancing nor threatening the ego, producing indifference and ignorance.

Aggression, desire, and ignorance. These are the three reactions or poisons constantly taking place within us. The plot lines may flip, and what is at first seen as desirable may become threatening or vice versa. And what at first seems irrelevant may later become something to grasp or to reject.

The play of these three fundamental poisons creates two poisons, pride or arrogance, jealousy or envy. Those are the origins of the five poisons, which I introduced in the last chapter: ignorance, anger, pride, desire, and jealousy. And the way to transform these poisons into wisdom and return to the one ground is through meditation.”
― Lama Tsultrim Allione, Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine

“In Tibetan Buddhism, we talk about three different methods for working with the basic split or the dualistic rupture from the ground of being, the fundamental state in which we find ourselves.

The first is called the path of renunciation, and this is what we associate with the monastic tradition in early Buddhism. The Buddha taught laypeople, but the ideal path was one renouncing worldly life, the path of the monk or nun who becomes celibate and gives up worldly clothes, wealth, possessions, and so on. They do this in order to limit the complications that distract from those spiritual paths and to limit the tendency to fall into the five poisonous states.

The second is a method called the path of transformation. Now, in this path, the image used is that of a peacock. In the path of renunciation, we don't eat the poison, we avoid it. In the path of transformation, the symbolic peacock is said to eat the poison, and the poison transforms it into his beautiful feathers. All those marvelous colors, that incredible translucency, the poisons are used and transformed on the path.

Therefore, in the path of transformation, we weaken the hold of the five poisons that have arisen from the basic split, and working with our body, speech, and mind, we transform the uncomfort patterns into wisdom. This is where we find the mandala. We embody the five Buddha families, working with the notion of the sacred embodiment. The path of transformation has to do with the body, with dance and hand gestures, with speech in terms of sounds, mantras, and the subtle energy of sound. The mind comes into play with visualizations, actually seeing and holding certain images. These three essential factors, body, speech, sound, are the tools of the path of transformation.

The third path presented in Tibetan Buddhism is called the path of natural liberation. Sometimes it's called self-liberation or inherent liberation. Unlike the path of transformation, there isn't the idea that you take something and turn it into something else. Rather, the path of natural liberation is a method where we experience reality as it is, as perfect, and our state as innately perfected, so there's nothing to do. We do not need to renounce. We don't need to transform. We are discovering what already is, the self-perfected state.”
― Lama Tsultrim Allione, Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine

“Now, imagine for a moment that the ground of being is the vast blue sky that has no beginning and no end, no center and no edge, and the nature of this space is pure, infinite awareness. Everything arises from this space. Its essence is empty. Its nature is radiant. It expresses itself as all-pervading compassion.

The two paths form when the ground of being expresses itself, or self-exteriorizes, into appearances by radiating its pure, luminous, rainbow-hued light. Here, the mystical brown energies move into exteriorization, manifesting as the five lights, white, blue, yellow, red, and green.

At this point, the individual awareness either recognizes that pure, rainbow-hued luminosity manifesting as appearances as inseparable from itself, or it sees the luminosity manifesting as a separate world of appearances. In that moment, the split occurs, and the two paths are created.

The path of liberation, which recognizes the inseparability, and the second path of confusion, which sees appearances as separate, creating fear and anxiety. The path of confusion forms the dualistic barrier, and our ego fixation becomes a way to resolve our separation anxiety, and the result of taking this path is called samsara, the pattern of grasping that propels us through life, death, and rebirth. This is the path that we all took.”
― Lama Tsultrim Allione, Wisdom Rising: Journey into the Mandala of the Empowered Feminine

“Here, however, the comic element is very faint. It is too far from its source.

If you wish to strengthen it, you must go back to the source itself and contrast the derived image—that of a masquerade—with the original one, which, be it remembered, was that of a mechanical tampering with life.”
― Henri Bergson, Laughter - An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic