In this week’s FBA Podcast, Vadanya delivers an engaging and rich talk titled: “The Great Hidden Treasures of Padmasambhava.”
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Treasures of Padmasambhava
(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - Just a bit of background, especially for those of you who've recently joined us this evening, we're, since last September, our theme for these Tuesday nights has been great Buddhist texts. So we've had a really, really good look at the early scriptures of Buddhism, the Pali Canon, the Canon written in the Pali language. We've looked at some of the later, what I call the Mahayana scriptures, which is called Great Vehicle, if you like, scriptures. Which is the scriptures from the Buddhism of the main form of Buddhism in places like China, Korea, Central Asia, Japan, which has a strong emphasis on altruism, on practicing for others, and not just for yourself, not just for your own liberation. So we've looked at quite a lot of those scriptures. And now last week, we moved on to the third so-called vehicle of Buddhism, the Vajrayana. So Yana means something like vehicle or way. Maha means great, so this is a great way. Vajra means diamond or thunderbolt, or diamond thunderbolt. So this is the way of the diamond, or the way of the thunderbolt. Sometimes also called the Tantra, or Tantric Buddhism that we're now looking at. So this is now mainly seen in the Buddhism of Tibet and in one school in Japan, Shingle, this particular style of Buddhism. But it's a sort of approach to the Dharma, which I mean, we very much take on board, we very much include in our sort of, in our ethos. So tonight we're gonna look at a group of texts. So this is about great texts of Buddhism. Tonight we're gonna look at a group of texts. It's called termas. We're gonna look at the terma tradition of Tibet. Terma means treasure. And I'm gonna look at one terma in particular, which is the Bado Todol, or the sometimes usually known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. So I'm gonna just describe that in a bit more detail. But I'm also gonna look at just the terma, tradition in general. So in the first, if you were here last week, in the first talk on the Tantric tradition, you heard Pammavadra talk about Padmasambhava. Who was the person who first successfully introduced Buddhism to Tibet? So in case you weren't there, I'll just sort of sum up very, very briefly. So the King of Tibet, this is we're talking 8th century now. No, something like that. Is that right? The King of Tibet wanted to introduce Buddhism to Tibet. And he invited the gentle saintly scholarly Shanta Rakshita to come to Tibet and establish a monastery. But the demons of Tibet, or if you like the sort of habitual course energies of Tibet and its people, were too powerful. So Shanta Rakshita, this sort of scholarly saintly figure he gave up. He said to the King, I can't do this King. I can't do this. These demons are too much for me, but I know who can. He's called Padmasambhava, and his current address is a cremation ground somewhere in India. So they sent off for Padmasambhava, inviting him. So the King sent off, got a message to Padmasambhava, inviting him to come and see if he could do what Shanta Rakshita, this gentle saintly person, couldn't do. And Padmasambhava is the great transformer of energies. The great transformer of course energies. So instead of trying to ignore the sort of ingrained negative energies that opposed the Dharma, Padmasambhava got them on his side. In fact, he got them building the monastery alongside the human beings. Whereas Shanta Rakshita's approach perhaps had been to say, well, I don't like any of those, they're just nasty. Padmasambhava's approach was to get them on his side. So they built the monastery instead of knocking it down. And as you've seen last week, if you were here, this approach, getting our energies on our side, on the side of our Dharma practice, rather than having them working against it, is the essence of the Vajrayana. It's the essence of the Vajrayana approach, the tantric approach to the Dharma. So in the Vajrayana or tantra, tantric style of approach, we don't ignore our course energies and pretend they're there, and they're not there. So we don't ignore our anger, and say, I'm not an angry person, I'm not angry. We don't ignore our greed, you know, I don't think that, it's just occasionally, I sort of binge on, we don't ignore it, we don't ignore our competitiveness, our envy, our pride, because these are energies we've all got, and we need to engage all our energy with our Dharma practice if we're gonna get somewhere. So we need not to just ignore and pretend these energies aren't there, we need to find ways to transmute them. We need to find ways to get them on our side, to get them working for us, get them working for the Dharma, get them working for our own liberation. And this approach to practice is very much what Padma Samabha represents and what the Vajrayana represents, this approach of transmuting energies, getting even our course energies working for us. So Padma Samabha successfully introduced Buddhism to Tibet, he built the monastery at Samye. But in fact, he only spent quite a short amount of time in Tibet, in his short stay, he had an extraordinary impact, had a huge impact, but he couldn't transform the Tibetan people, transform the Tibetan culture in one go, he wasn't there that long. And it's often said, I had to say by Tibetans, it's often said by Tibetans, that before the Dharma arrived there, before Buddhism arrived there, Tibetans were barbaric, warlike, violent, ignorant, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So you're going into quite a sort of difficult environment, a very warlike, rough place. And maybe some of the Tibetans were ready to hear the Dharma in the form of glamorous tantric practices. But it would be some time before many of them were ready for the more advanced aspects of the Dharma, like living a simple ethical life, being generous, thinking more about others, that was going to take a little bit of time. So the Tibetans weren't ready for all that Padma Samabha had to teach them. And if he was going to have to make a lasting impact, he had to find a way to continue his influence into future generations, into the future. He had to find a way to teach future generations when people had been practicing the Dharma for longer, were ready for a higher, more difficult message, if you like. So according to tradition, according to tradition, Padma Samabha solved this problem by hiding teachings all over Tibet with the help of his consort, Yesha Sogail. So they together, they hid teachings that were destined to be recovered when the Tibetans were ready to hear them, when the time was ripe. And these hidden teachings are called termas, terma, or treasure, that means literary treasure, or buried treasure, something like the special name for the sort of treasure that pirates put across on the map for. (audience laughing) And someone who finds these treasures is called a turton, a treasure finder. And these termas have been very important in the development of Buddhism in Tibet. And the F.W.B.O. has got a strong link with the term of tradition, because it's mainly associated with the Ningma school of Tibetan Buddhism, which we haven't got on the board, but anyway, there are several different schools of Buddhism in Tibet. The Ningma means the old ones, and they're the sort of direct descendants of Padma Sango, or they see themselves as the direct descendants of Padma Sango. And they're the ones who really make the most of the turton, the term of tradition. And Sanger Acht's, most of Sanger Acht's, Tibetan teachers when he was in Kalimpong, were from that tradition, those were the ones he sort of related to most, the single exception of Babu Rinpoche. And one of his most distinguished teachers, the guy, the teacher who gave him the Mangegosha practice, which he passed on to many of his disciples, Jamiyang Kense Chokky-Lodra, was a spiritual descendant of one of the greatest turtons. I think it had been his two generations before or something. So it's, you know, they're important to us. They're important to us in the F.W.B.O. So the term of tradition is important to Tibetan Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, it's important to us. Now, the most famous term in the West is the so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, the Bado Todol. I'll explain a little bit about that. Well, that means later. And that's the one I'll focus on later in this talk. Another famous well-known term is the Book of Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness, which describes a sort of basic aspect of Buddhist meditation, really, just observing your thoughts and feelings without getting caught up with them, without identifying with them, as though they were mental weather. So you liberate yourself, as it were, even from the contents of your own mind. There are many, many other terms as well, which many of which describe aspects that seem pretty basic Buddhism, some of which are about very complex visualization practices. They're all sorts. So it's a vast tradition. Now, we could see this term, a tradition. It's a sort of as a mythic description. It's a mythic, we could see it as a mythic description of the way the tradition develops, the way the tradition needs to develop. And this isn't the only example of this sort of thing in Buddhism. For example, there's the tradition of Nagajana, the great philosopher Nagajana, had to go down to the depths of the ocean to receive the perfection of wisdom teachings from the nargos, the creatures of the depths. So we had to go down to the depths to get this teaching from the creatures of the depths, who'd been guarding it until humanity was ready for it. Or there's the tradition that Asanga was taught the Yoga Chara teachings, the teachings of vast activity by the future Buddha, Maitreya, who was currently dwelling in a sort of heaven realm, a higher realm, which Asanga managed to visit in his deep meditation. So you've got these other traditions in Buddhism where an advanced practitioner links into a stream of energy, perhaps you could see it like that, links into a stream of spiritual energy, links into a source of wisdom, which is beyond their own through their meditation practice, in deep meditation. So this is given rise, this has given rise, this vast body of terma, literature. And there are lots of different sorts of termas. So some are called earth termas, earth termas tend to be buried in the ground, so they're in caves, so they're under rocks or they're buried in the floor of caves, something like that. And then there are sky termas, there's a case of one which plummeted like a meteorite through the roof of a palace. And then there are mind termas, which Padmasam were planted in the mines, implanted in the mines of his original 25 disciples, to mature in their later rebirths. So when the time was right, they would think, oh, I suddenly seem to know this. So earth termas seem to be the most common, the buried treasure seems to be the most common, but termas are in a sense all mind termas, because to be a turtom, to discover the termas, you have to be an advanced practitioner who somehow had the seed of understanding planted in you. It's not just like Joe Bloggs can just go out there. That's a terma, doesn't work. You've got to actually be an advanced practitioner before you can find a terma. So because of that earth termas, you usually seem to be written in a darkening script, which not everybody knows. So darkenies, for those that don't know, are, mean something like sky dancer, and darkenies are wild naked dancing female figures who represent spiritual liberation, energy, freedom, all sorts of things. So if a normal person sees a terma written in darkening script, they see beautiful dancing letters that seem to change, coloured light, seems to change, melt before their eyes, can't make head or tail of it, means nothing. So you've got to really be something before you even know what they're saying. So the typical story, so I'll give you a sort of typical story of the discovery of a terma, an earth terma, might run something like this. One day, an advanced practitioner of the dharma, who has practiced the dharma in former generations, so he's got a link with the truth of it, and perhaps was even one of Paramasana's original 25 disciples. One day, such a person has a memoir one night, probably, 'cause he's probably not having a siesta at the time. One night, such a person has a memorable, bright archetypal dream. And in this dream, a darkening appears to him, him or her. Although, I don't know how many women, I don't know why. Maybe they're up? There are, but there are some. Anyway, it appears to him or her. A darkening appears to him or a beautiful, naked, wild dancing woman. And she leads the dreamer to a cave. He leads the dreamer up into the hills, up into the mountains to a cave, and indicates a place on the floor or a rock or something like that. And when the dreamer wakes up, they realize that this dream was very, very meaningful. They've got that sense that you sometimes have, oh, I remember that dream, that meant something. And they remember, oh, I know where that was. I know where that was. So they think, okay, this is a sign. I must go and dig. I must go and dig where that darkening appears. So they get an expedition together. They get some yaks, perhaps, some various things and some food, and they go off into the mountains to look for the cave. And they look for the cave, and eventually they find just the cave that the turton saw in his dream, him and his or her dream. And they go, and he says, that's about the place here. She says, that's about the place. And they dig, and they dig. Boom! The spade hits something. I said, oh. Clear around it. And lo and behold, there's a chest. There's a beautifully carved chest or a chest of precious metal with beautiful designs on it. And they take it out, and they reverently open the chest and a heavenly fragrance. Fragrance of a heavenly realm fills the cave. And they're really excited at what there seems to be in this chest is either a Tibetan style book or some scrolls. And I think, well, it must be amazing what's going to be this. And they can't make head or tail out of it. So the turton has had the dream, looks at it, and it's just, oh, my eye. It must be snow blindness, I don't know, coming up here. It's just this colorful dancing figures that they see. They can't understand this at all. So disappointed, I mean, come all this way. It seems like the whole expedition was a waste of time. Can't understand what this is about. It uses a few gobbledygook scrolls and a bit of incense, you know? Put it back in a chest. Put it on a yak. Take it back down the mountain. Put it in a back room, up in the attic. Forget about it, back to the normal thing. But then sometime later, the turton will have another dream. Another dream. And in the dream, again, the same darkening will appear. The same dancing naked female figure will appear. And she'll say, come and take them to the chest open the chest and give the scroll. And the person will look at the scroll. And in the dream, they will understand the teaching. They'll read the teaching. They can read the script. They can read the text. And they read it through. And they know that something really important, something that is really timely. And it really needed right now in what is in this scroll. And they'll seem to understand the whole thing. And then they'll-- the dream will fade. And they'll wake up. And they'll sort of think, oh, dream. It would be nice, wouldn't it? It would be nice if I really could understand it. But just to see, they'll go and sort of have a look. And woo, as they pick the scroll up and look at it, they'll remember the meaning of what they dream. They'll remember the teaching. And they can read the script. And they can read the script. So immediately, just in case this is a passing phenomenon, they sit down and they transcribe it into Tibetan script so that they can understand it. So they sit down and they write this all out into Benton. Whew, it's amazing. It's amazing. So then they'll-- obviously, what would you do? You go and get a spiritual friend. You go and get somebody who you admire. And you show them this. And there are even cases where the person they've showed it to apparently according to tradition has been rather skeptical and thought-- [INAUDIBLE] --and sort of set them a test. Set them a test of, well, OK, if you're not making this up, if you're reading this, you should be able to-- I'll take your transcription away. You should be able to write it out, again, word for word, from if you're reading it. And the person has low and the old sat down and written it out. And then the skeptic has compared it with the other one. And it's the same. Anyway, so that's a sort of typical story of the finding and of a term. And there have also been cases of turtons who've lost the ability to read their script, lost the ability to read their term. If they've allowed their meditation practice to lapse or they've fallen into unskillful ways or they've lost their sort of edge, they'll pick up their term one day and it's gobbledygook again. They can't read it. Which maybe says something about wisdom and how we know things. We have to be in a good state to know things. So, as I said, the best known-- that's a little bit about termas in general. I mean, I think they're quite fascinating. Is that a very romantic archetypal? Things this whole idea of termas and turtons. The best known terma in the West is the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is "Bada Todol." It actually means something like book of liberation through hearing in the in-between state, the in-between state, in this case, being a state between death and the next birth. So, "bardo" is an in-between state. It's a gap. It literally means something like a gap, an in-between place. So, the "Bada Todol" is all about what you should do in the gap between death and rebirth. But there are also other bardos. That's not the only "bardo" that there is. There is the "bardo" of dreaming. There is the "bardo" of meditation. There are lots of other bardos. And it's also stressed that this life itself is a bardo. This life itself is a gap between one state and another. It's called the "bardo" of everyday life. And every moment is a bardo. Every moment is a gap between what the past has made us and what we could be in the future. It's an intermediate state, a place where there are choices to be made, a place where the past is going to exert a pressure, but there are choices to be made about the future. So, this life is a bardo. So, it's not the only "bardo". This "bardo" between life, between death and the next rebirth. But the "bardo Todol", so-called Tibetan Book of the Dead, is specifically about this "bardo" between death and rebirth. And what it is, if you read it, it's a detailed technical description of what you might experience in the after-death state with instructions about what you should do. The description of this state draws very, very heavily on Tibetan archetypal figures, tantric mandalers that only a Tibetan would be familiar with. And Tibetan ideas about medicine and how the body works. So, it draws on all of that. And different bits are meant to be read out at specific times to the dead person, the dying or dead person, as a reminder of what they should be doing in the bardo, when they're likely to be confused and frightened, very confused and frightened. So, the idea is that you hear a friendly, familiar voice telling you the meaning of what you're experiencing when you're experiencing this wacky stuff in the after-death state, and telling you what to do to use the opportunity that you've got and not sort of fall to a lower state because of your terror and confusion. So, the "bardo" is seen as an opportunity to gain enlightenment, to break free from samsara. But it also carries the risk of being reborn in a lower state, a state of perhaps very unpleasant state, indeed, as we shall see. So, that's what the "bardo" Tidal is all about. It's a very technical, detailed book of instructions that isn't going to mean a lot to someone who hasn't been pretty much steeped in a Tibetan-trantic tradition. And as such, it's really surprising to me that there's so much interest in it in the West. On the face of it, it is one of the termers, which is least applicable to our current practice, yeah? To us and our practice here and now, on the face of it. I personally, having come across it, I just sort of thought, "Well, yeah, so great." I personally doubt very much whether someone who wasn't steeped in Tibetan culture and tantric tradition would see exactly these visions after death. I think that's very doubtful, myself. Different Buddhist traditions see the whole thing very differently. It goes on for a different length of time, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And we will not have a friendly lama reading the "bardo" Tidal to us 49 days after our death, going up to-- because we will be buried by then, or cremated. So, it's very use, it's not very relevant to us. We just won't have that. So, why? So, my initial reaction, when I was thinking about this talk, I was going to sort of present some teachings from a term. And my initial reaction was that the "bardo" Tidal, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, was the very last one that I was going to talk about, because it was the least applicable to our practice here and now. But then, I read it again. OK, I read it again. And I realized that the low all the details of all the after-death visions and different colored lights and the different sort of this and that, I know all this was very specific and very technical and not likely to be a general experience. The basic experience that was being described, that was being experienced, was simple and universal. The basic experience underlying all these was simple and universal. So, the basic principle that underlies all this stuff and is, in fact, very applicable to our practice here and now. So, the basic principle is just as applicable to our practice here and now, in the bardo of this life as it is in the bardo of the after-death state. So, if we can stand back and not look at the trees, but look at the wood, we can see that what this text is getting at is presenting something very generally applicable and something that we can apply here and now, although it's presenting it with lots of psychedelic colored lights. So, over and over again in the bardo of Todol, the same thing happens. Over and over again, the dead person is offered a choice. This choice is sort of visualised by two lights. They see two lights and they see two directions they could go in. Two lights they could be attracted towards. One light is clear and bright. It may seem blinding. It may seem painfully blinding. It may seem as sharp as a sword, scary, threatening, not at all comfortable. It may even come accompanied by terrible rumbles of thunder. And this is the light of reality, the light of enlightenment. And another light is hazy and soft and smoky and dull and cozy and it seems familiar and comforting and it gives us pleasure. And this is the light of our habitual patterns, our habitual lower states, the patterns we are used to, our old habits, our old distractions, our old ways of being. So, over and over again, the dead person experiences this in different forms, this contrast between the clarity, scary clarity and soft, smoky, pleasant, cozy comfort. And over and over again, the dead person is told to go for the scary clear light, the light that leads to reality, diameter, the nature of things, enlightenment. Over and over again, the dead person is told, no, no, don't go for that night, that seems cozy and dull and safe and pleasurable. The light that seems to give pleasure, that's the light that leads down to lower states of being, old habitual states of being. And this is presented, as I said in a very, sort of psychedelic, dramatic way, with all sorts of colours and things like that. But that is what's presented over and over again, is that choice. And of course, this is exactly the choice that we are being offered in the bardo between every moment and the next, in the bardo of this life. We're constantly being offered the choice between behaving as the person we could be and the person we are used to being. So we're constantly offered that choice. We're constantly being offered the choice to step out bravely into the unknown, into space, into light, into possibilities of what we could be, or going back to the cozy, comfortable, dim, rather smelly hole that we're used to living in. (Laughter) So the principle is exactly the same. I mean, it might come with psychedelic coloured lights in the bardo to a doll, but it's exactly the same principle. That we are confronted with every moment, every moment. So I like to sort of think about this as, when I've got all these stuff comes from the past, which makes me feel like this and makes me feel like that, makes me want this, makes that pleasurable to me. Or would it be like if a Buddha, or enlightened being sort of parachuted down into my body, and I had their experience, although they were having my experience, so they would think, "Oh yes, I really fancy that cream cake. I really fancy sitting down and watching Wimbledon all day on the telly." That sounds nice and comfortable thing to do. And the Buddha, the being who had parachuted down into my body, would think, "Well yeah, but I'm not going to do that. That's just a sort of thing from the past, isn't it? I'm going to do something new and different." I'm not saying that watching Wimbledon is inherently that unskilled thought, but the point I'm trying to make is we've all got that possibility of, you know, we could use this as a sort of thought experiment. What would a Buddha do if they were me, parachuted suddenly down into this body and thought, "Oh well, I'm going to have to make the best of what I've got with the conditioning that this person's got already?" We can do that, and that's going to be frightening, because some of the choices that that Buddha would make will be truly scary, truly, truly scary. Or am I just going to do the familiar things? Which actually, this Buddha who's parachuted into me is going to think, "Blimey, I'm doing that, that's smelly." That's old and stale and stuff. So, it's a bit like that. We've constantly got this choice between behaving like the Buddha we could be. The enlightened being we could be, or being like the person we usually are, which is going to feel a load more cozy and comfortable and pleasant. So anyway, that's the basic choice that's presented in the barre du daal, and it's presented over and over again. So, in the barre du daal, it's presented in a particular form, the cozy, pleasant lights that the dead person sees after death lead to one of the six traditional realms of the wheel of life, which some of you will be very familiar with, and some of you won't at all. But these are traditional realms that are illustrated on the wheel of life. They're both places that we can be reborn, so realms in which we can be reborn, but they are really states of being. They are states of being. The realm is a manifestation of the inner state. So, we're reborn into these different realms in Buddhism. These are the choice that the person after death is making. We're reborn into these different realms, not as some sort of punishment for our karma, our wrong understanding of karma, but just because that's the sort of person we're used to being. If we're a particular sort of person, a particular sort of being, we're manifest in a particular sort of world. So, the being in the dead person in the Tibetan book of the dead part of the dal, sees the cozy lights sort of drawing them towards these different realms. And also, at the same time, sees the light of a sort of corresponding Buddha figure, an archetypal Buddha figure, who in some way is the antidote to going towards that realm. And the realms that are seen, the realms on the wheel of life, for those of you that don't know them, I'll just quickly sum them up. There's the hell realm. Now, it's not somewhere you sent as a punishment, but it's the place that thoughts of anger, resentment, blame lead you to. It's a place of extreme mental distress, extreme mental suffering, intense negative mental states. There's the realm of the hungry ghosts, a realm of constant craving that can never be satisfied. A hunger goes for tiny mouths and huge bellies, and everything they eat and drink turns into swords in their throat. So, it's the state of addiction, of constant craving that can never be satisfied, constant wanting. Then there's the animal realm, a dull, unthinking state, with no sort of foresight, no culture or learning. There's the human realm, the familiar mixture that we know. There's the realm of what are called the Asuras, A-S-U-R-A-S, or titans, the realm of big competitive egos, seeing a realm of battle. A realm where life is a battle for status, position, power. And then there's the god realm, a life of unchallenging pleasure and no effort, and no awareness of impermanence, which might sound very nice, but unfortunately ends. So, this might be the life of the, I don't know, the, I don't know. Anyway, some people manage perhaps to live in a god realm for a while, life of undemanding pleasure, but it ends, and then the ex god suffers even more because they develop no robustness, no ability to put up with adversity. So, the inevitable adversity of all the other realms just seems terrible to them. So, these are six sort of states, if you like, six states that you can actually meet people. I was in a hospital recently. We were having, we were talking about this in our chapter night, because I said, ah, there were people from every single one of these realms in the world that I was in. There was even, some poor guy was absolutely in hell, and really, there was everybody, there was a guy who was hugely, ah, I won't, I won't go into it. But anyway, there were people from all of these realms. These are people who are like this, people, you know, we all inhabit some of these realms, some of the time. They're not just places that we get reborn. We've probably all spent time in all of them, and some of them will really attract us. Some of them will be really like, oh, I want that one, I like that one. That's really nice, like cozy. So, in a way, we're choosing them, and the dead person is choosing them, and we're choosing them. Why do we choose them? So, why on earth do we choose states which are actually causes of suffering? They're actually states of suffering. It tells us in the Battle of Todol actually, it says we choose them because of habit energy, because ingrained habit energy. Even if we know it's a state of suffering, we're drawn towards it because it's what we're used to, and it seems cozy and comfortable. And the opposite seems frightening. So, I'm really got time to look at all of these realms, but one of the principles in the Battle of Todol is that you're drawn towards one of these realms. The object incidentally is to not be reborn in any of these realms, but to break free entirely from conditioned existence. But we're drawn towards one of these realms, and if we sort of, if we keep going down, down, down, it gets worse and worse, and everything gets frightening, and frightening. But at the same time as we experience the sort of pull of these realms, we experience the influence of a Buddha. So, we start out, we just see the clear light of reality, and we're absolutely petrified, get me out of here. But over time, that sort of becomes a bit more human. It becomes like the lights of particular Buddha, particular archetypal Buddhas who offer us an alternative. And the alternative is the sort of antidote. So, for example, we're called, we might be called by the soft, smoky white light of the hell realm, we might actually want, we might actually quite like our indignation, and our blame, I mean, I like feeling like that. So, we're called towards that. At the same time, we'll experience the clear, bright light of aksobia, the Buddha of wisdom, the Buddha of the Vajra. So, anger blaming resentment leads to that hell state. But there's a connection between that, and what's called the mirror-like wisdom of aksobia, which sees everything exactly being precisely as it is. So, if we are like that, we need to stop blaming others for our pain, stop resenting others. I'm going to use the energy that we put into that, the energy of anger as a sword to cut through our delusion. We need to see that our pain is caused by our delusion. And use the clarity of our, the clarity of that energy. There's somehow a connection between anger and clarity. I think, I always think that's why scholars are such a competitive lot, was arguing with each other. So, there's somehow there's a connection, and this is sort of embedded in the Tantric tradition, they're a sort of personality type. Well, the energies are drawn in a particular way, but they carry in a way that own antidote with them. So, if it's anger, then go for wisdom, see it as it is, get that anger against your delusion. But if it's the soft, yellow light that leads to the realm of the hungry ghosts that's calling you. Mmm, green cakes. What a beer. Mmm. A place of, you know, calling towards you're sort of distracting yourself with crisps and desires and wanting and shopping, this and that. It is the hungry ghost realm that's calling. We need to transmute our passion and desire. And the clear red light of Amitabha, the Buddha of love, transmutes passion and desire into passionate meta, passionate concern for others, passionate compassion. There's somehow a connection between wanting, desire, and warm passion for others. So, we need to sort of work on warm love for others, our passion for others. If it's the soft blue light of pride which is calling us, apparently it doesn't quite work, the associations don't all quite work, but if the soft blue light of pride is calling us, we need to contact the generative power of generosity, we need to see as the proud of what we can contribute. So, we need to contact the energy of Rat the Samava, the jewel Buddha, golden Buddha, who shines like a summer sun, ripening everything around him, giving everything around him. It's got his hand in the gesture of generosity, he's giving out. That's what we need to connect with if pride is what we're about. We need to sort of be about giving. And if we're attracted to the realm of envy, the realm of envy and insecurity and competitiveness, attract us to the realm of the asuras, where we're going to go out and prove ourselves, show how big we are, get loads of status, beat the other guy, beat the other woman, have loads of nice big car and have everybody call me, sir, thank you. If that's what we're going for, then we need to connect with the clear green light of the Buddha, Amoga City, who is about action, is about action. If we take action, if we're active in others' behalf, not just in our own, then what it ceases to be about, you know, we cut through this sort of insecurity that leads us to the realm of the asuras. I'm not going to say anything about the gods because I've got time. But so, in each case, in each case, there's a sort of soft, cozy light, which calls us to a lower state, and a rather harsh, penetrating light, sometimes with thunder, which seems a bit, which calls us in the opposite direction. And for some reason, well, because of habit energy, we often spend our lives choosing the sort of one of leaders to a state that isn't actually very pleasant, might just be boring, might actually be very painful, but it's amazing how we go for what we're used to instead of stepping out into this rather scary, light. So that choice is always there. That choice is always there. It's there in the in the bardo. It's illustrated by these different sort of lights that you go in the direction of, in the bardo after death. But it's here now as well. More importantly for us, it's here now. We can choose, but choosing every moment. Every moment is a bardo in which we have a choice between something which may seem unfamiliar and scary and a bit too clear for our liking. And something which is going to seem comfortable and cozy because it's actually what we're used to. But if we keep going with what we're used to, we're in downward spirals. Because if you keep becoming more what you're used to, you end up in a big deep rut that you can't get out of at all. Whereas if we keep stepping out into something rather scary of being a different sort of person, being the person we could be, then while really the sky's the limit, change makes more change and all sorts of possibilities open up. So that's what the bardo to doll is all about. And that's why in fact it is relevant to us. And not just if it happens to be dead. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhaustaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]