Dated May/June 2025.
1. But why a Lam rim retreat?
As I contemplated on the books "The Mahatma Letters", "Discipleship in the New Age Vol 1&2,", "A treatise on the white magic", "Yogasutras of Patanjali", "Agni Yoga", "Savitri" and "Letters on occult meditations", I intuited substantial parts resonated with 'my inner journey'. Moreover, I saw certain paragraphs literally identical with my own dribbled rough conjectures, especially on the crisis of synthesis. The more I read and contemplated, the more I began to recognize that I read my own (or a disciple's !) Innermost thoughts and feelings, although expressed in different styles and temperaments (which I realized only later were precisely the ray energies, most of these books being on the rays 1,2,3,4,6).
Earlier this year, I read the memoir "Living on the inner edge". This book was my first introduction to what I intuited - A 7th ray approach towards the "Yoga of Synthesis". The terms "Vajrayana" and "Tantra" in connection with theosophy and synthesis were new to me. So I began reading the "Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism" as recommended by Cyrus Ryan. To my astonishment, once again, a resonance with my innermost thoughts and feelings was unmistakable (I wondered if I had been in Tibet in any of my earlier lives?). Soon an irresistible impulse grew to test the realizations of Lama Govinda on Tibetan mysticism, and I decided to embark upon a Lam rim retreat.
Morever I knew that this particular retreat was to end on the exact afternoon of the Vaishak (Wesak 12th May 2025) so I could carry this energy for the inner ashramic meditations.
2. Daily Schedule:
The Sun, which for weeks without end mercilessly beat down upon the plains of southern India, had been hidden behind dark clouds in the Himalayas. During the first week since the early hours of the morning, a cold drizzling thin rain lashed with a thousand fine pine needles against our faces as we strolled from the monastery to the dining hall and back.
Each morning around 6:30am we started with meditation (of various types such as Shamatha (Calm-abiding stabilizing equality), Sunyata (Emptiness), Impermanence, 7-point cause-effect, Tong len, etc. covered in the teaching sessions). It was followed by a breakfast consisting of porridge, baked Tibetan bun, chai and fruits. Then a break, followed by teaching sessions starting at 9am. These continued until 12pm with a short break in between.
A lunch forming the main meal of the day was loaded with rice, dal, vegetables, salad and fruit. After lunch, we had been assigned Karma-Yoga jobs for 20 minutes. Each afternoon, I had to sweep the stairs and verandah of the main monastery. Some did the dishes, a few others toilets, etc. Then some of the participants would have a good nap for about an hour.
From 2 to 3pm, we had group discussions based on the morning teaching session. It was again followed by evening teachings, meditation, light dinner and then the last meditation of the day before we went off to bed at 9pm.
Halfway through the retreat, early morning on the Day 5, we undertook a special pilgrimage to see His Holiness the fourteenth Dalai Lama and attended a Tibetan ritual (puja) (More on this in the next post).
3. Seed-based meditations (as per Patanjali and DK-AAB) on some key Mahayana teachings of the course.
I contemplated on some key topics of the course such as Impermanance, Shamatha, Emptiness (Sunyata), and especially the middle-way of the Buddha (which is at the very root of yoga of synthesis). Here is a summary of realizations (that were in complete alignment with Lama Govinda's esoteric interpretations of Tibetan mysticism).
A. Impermanence (or transitoriness as interpreted in exoteric Buddhism) is more appropriately termed as 'transformation' (in Tibetan Buddhism). Impermanence denotes only the fact of dissolving and change of a form. However, transformation adds the factor of stability to change, implying change is not arbitrary but according to an inherent law (these laws correspond to the sutras of Tibetan Buddhism) in a consistent direction. This direction of change gives rise to the principle of continuity and stability and forms the basis of evolution. (The transformation is visualized as helix in one of the Mahatma letters to A. P Sinnet).
The principle of evolutionary continuity is the basic concept of the tantric view of life, a continuity that extends in both time and space, with each continuous process being intersected and interwoven (tantra actually means interwoven using threads of philosophical sutras) by innumerable simultaneously existing processes. They are the warp and woof of reality, the infinite interrelationship of everything in the fundamental structure of the universe. The law of dependent and simultaneous origination precisely denies anything being absolute and independent in time and space.
Thus, emptiness as realized by Sakyamuni Buddha alludes to the emptiness of everything as existing in itself, be it as a thing or a being or any absolute concept. Hence, the totality of the universe as Brahman must be the totality of relations, unity in interrelated diversity. Undifferentiated oneness of the Brahman (a monism concept of advaitee vedantist with which I had earlier struggled and I intuit so did J Krishnamurty) then was experienced as a concept without any content of reality and was recognized to be the interpretation of my intellect that was not completely in sync with my intuition.
B. All reality is built upon the duality of part and whole, of individuality and universality, of inner and outer, of matter and energy, differentiation and oneness, time and space, form and emptiness, contraction and expansion, inhalation and exhalation, materialization and dematerialization, etc.; and there can be no question of “greater” and “lower” values between these dual, mutually complementary qualities. The concept of value depends on the merit of the momentary situation, the particular circumstances. Wherever there is an imbalance between the two poles, the one that is in danger of being outweighed represents the greater value. “To the Divine as infinite, the finite should be as much a necessity as to man the infinite."
The middle way of Buddha - reiterated and reformulated in Nagarjuna's Madhyamika Philosophy lies at the very heart of the Tibetan Buddhism experience: the recognition of this duality and its integration in the union of “male” and “female" qualities, of creative and receptive, active and passive, physical and spiritual, finite and infinite qualities, etc. It is the recognition that there can be no form without emptiness, no emptiness without form, that there can be no knowledge without ignorance.
Only for an intellect that gets cut-off from intuition, the fundamental fact of duality and diversity gets overshadowed by the ideal of absolute oneness. Duality does not deny unity in any way; on the contrary, it presupposes an underlying unity, because unity in the spiritual and actual sense is not mere uniformity but the perfect cooperation of different qualities and forces and the inseparability of polar opposites.
Thus correct realization of the middle way of Buddha enhanced my intuitive grasp of the "Yoga of Synthesis of Master Djwal Khul".
C. Most interestingly Sunyata got connected with the essence of my PhD. Thesis (Ray 5) in which I had proposed that a signal is not just a vector (nothing such as independence of parts of signals corresponding to Sunyata of Buddha) but a generative functor (recasting the law of dependent organisation in new mathematics called Category theory invented by mathematicians Alexander Grothendieck and Saunders MacLane). Thus, the emphasis of these mathematicians on arrows/functions/transformations being much more fundamental than objects is simply a mathematical rediscovery of ancient Tantra of Buddhism.
Lama Govinda had remarked "Tantras cut through the whole maze of intellectual arguments of emptiness by leading us back to actuality, as the only reality accessible to us by experience, upon which the Buddha laid the greatest stress in view of the speculative nature of religious and philosophical theories of his age. It is the danger of our conceptualizing intellect to get farther and farther away from life by losing itself in piles of abstraction, because the more abstract a concept, the easier it is to manipulate it."
I realized this was so true today within the contemporary mathematical and scientific community.
Therefore, just as modern category theory has once again (although the mathematicians are yet unaware of it as per my research so far) rediscovered the Sunyata of Sakyamuni Buddha, each of us must realize our Divinity anew daily (or whatever expresses the deepest reality within ourselves) because the religion of yesterday is dead and becomes a fetish, a mere conceptual dogma. This is the meaning of the Tantric meditative practice (a ray 7 sadhana), in which the divine presence is ever recreated in luminous images and archetypal symbols, until the mind and body of the devotee are transformed into the visible and tangible expression of Buddhahood (Tibetan Sangye-hood).
Continued in the next post (In the Dalai Lama's presence, Diya offerings to Stupa and OM Mani Padme Hum chanting, Picnic Lunch on the last day, Meditations on Mandalas etc.)...
Images -
1. Meditations and Teaching Sessions were held inside the main Gompa (monastery) of Tushita.
2. A typical retreat day @ Tushita from early morning to late evening.
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