"Authentic spirituality is revolutionary. It does not seek to console the world, it shatters it."

- Ken Wilbur

"Life as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, dismemberment, disintegration, and with it the crucifixion of our hearts with the passing of the forms we have loved."

-Joseph Campbell

"The teacher who crushes your pride and makes this worldly life completely miserable is something that you ask for. He is the assassin, he is the man or woman whom you have hired to completely dismantle you.”
-Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

from Carl Jung:

“Enlightenment is not imagining figures of light but making the darkness conscious.”

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”

“We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”

“Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering.”

“Shrinking away from death is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.”

“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself, you cannot tell it about other people."

-Virginia Woolf

To probe deep into your roots:
The ignorance and confusion are you yourself.
The preconceptions which are yourself
Are envoys and agents sent by yourself.

-Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibet's Beloved Saint, Milarepa

"If you want to know the past, to know what has caused you, look at yourself in the present, for that is the past's effect. If you want to know your future, then look at yourself in the present, for that is the cause of the future."

-The Buddha, Majjhima Nikaya

"As witnesses not of our intentions but of our conduct, we can be true or false, and the hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil, but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

-The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt.

H.Y.P.O.C.R.I.T.E.S.
Hide
Your
Personal
Opinions
'Cause
Rumors
Incite
Twisted
Examples
So who are you to judge?

-mb

"If you don't walk your talk, you're going to step in dog sh*t"

-me

I have a special relationship with Tara, the first meditation retreat I went on in 1996 was to a Tibetan temple in Hawaii dedicated to Tara.

An early feminist, Tara insisted on being reincarnated as a woman to show that enlightenment was possible for everybody. She's called the Mother of the Buddhas, and she watches over humans as they cross the ocean of existence. She was born from a tear of Avalokiteshivara and her compassion for humans is so great that she loves us more than a mother loves her children.

I've had lots of mystical experiences with this goddess, once she told me that when I look at a picture of her, I am looking in the mirror. When I practice Deity Yoga, it is easiest to do with her. She is fierce, and beautiful and the most revered deity in Tibet. Her mantra is OM TARE TU TARE TURE SO HA.

The picture above is from www.dakiniunlimited.com - a great artist.

Vajrakilaya – the awareness-being who stabs the roots of anger

Dorje Phurba (rDo rJe phur bu – Vajrakilaya) is shown here in union with Dorje Phagmo (rDo rJe phag mo – Vajra Vaharahi). Dorje Phurba, which means 'thunderbolt nail', obliterates the minions of aggression by plunging the self-existent dagger of non-duality into the heart of hatred wherever it hides and whomever hides it within themselves. Within the space of his vajra-destructiveness, dualised beings are unable to cling to callous imperatives. He wears the six human bone cemetery ornaments resplendent with thunderbolt nails, in display of his mastery of the six classes of the Vajrayana. The Kriya Tantra nails overpower the anger of puritanical pretence. The Upa Tantra nails overpower the anger of petulant propriety. The Yoga Tantra nails overpower the anger of pretended buddha karma of pacification. The Mahayoga nails overpower the anger of the pretended buddha karma of enrichment. The Anuyoga nails overpower the anger of the pretended buddha karma of magnetising. The Atiyoga nails overpower the anger of the pretended buddha karma of destruction.

The empowerment for Vajrakilaya reads like a horror movie - rivers of blood, lakes or fire, mountains of human corpses. It's an intense 2 day practice and afterwards you've got a powerful protector. When I asked Rinpoche what I should name our son he told me "Dorje Ratsa" - Thunderbolt Scorpion. Our own little wrathful deity. How sweet!