Rudolph Bauer,Ph.D. Author, Mimi Malfitano Editor
1. In meditation we become aware of awareness..suspending the mind, we free awareness to experience within its own self its own self….within awareness we experience the nature of awareness..we experience the qualities of awareness: Spaciousness, energy, light, the purity, the oneness…and arising out of oneness is the true affection, the true compassion.
2. This awareness is a field, a multidimensional field, vast and infinite in its horizons. The dharmakaya is the very base of our awareness, the pure beingness of being….Pure openness, pure potential out of which everything manifests and appears. The very nature of dharmakaya is love, creative love…that is why it is often described as the mother, the dakini. Arising out of dharmakaya is the sambhogakaya dimension: Clear light, luminosity of the primordial qualities taking form, the archetypical dimension of our own being, the deities, the dakinis, the devas…inherent within all beings. And then, arising out of sambhogakaya is nirmanakaya: The earth element, the human dimension, the manifesting of us, embodied luminous flesh. Everything, all experience, is the manifestation of the field…this field of being. Through our awareness within us we experience the beingness of our own being, and through the experience of our own awareness we can experience the beingness of being of others. It is the same beingness of being…which is love.
3. Mantras are most useful in the field…actually, mantras are manifestations of the field; so mantras configure and are configurations of the field of innate awareness, which can be both articulated and non-articulated. Mantras can be spoken or simply felt. The more subtle the mantra, the more deeply experienced within the field….within the innermost field, the more mantra actually brings forth the experience of the qualities of the field…of consciousness. The mantras begin as words and sounds, and then becoming more and more subtle, as subtle as gnosis, direct perception, then the mantra becomes what it is…the subtle reality of beingness.
4. A wonderful mantra is the bodhi mantra…
OM AH HUNG, BODHICITTA MAHA SUKHA JNANA DHATU AH.
[‘Bodhi’ is both a Pali and Sanskrit word usually translated as ‘enlightenment,’ but more accurately translated as ‘awakening’.]
OM opens up for us the nirmanakaya dimension.
AH opens up for us the sambhogakaya dimension.
HUNG opens up for us the dharmakaya dimension.
BODHICITTA means the aspiration for realization, which is realization itself…bodhicitta is the love of realization for ourselves and others…bodhicitta is the very nature of awareness itself as love, pure love, creative love…bodhicitta brings forth love.
MAHA SUKHA means the great vast sweetness, the great bliss of awareness, the bliss of oneness.
JNANA means direct perception, knowingness, gnosis.
DHATU AH means in every situation.
6. So this mantra brings forth the experience of bodhicitta of awareness of pure love, of gnosis, of knowing oneness in every situation…It is the mantra of pure love.
7. This is also a mantra of deathlessness.
As you enter the doorway of death, and the body begins to drop away, and the mind begins to drop away, what remains is your awareness. What remains is the bodhichitta, and so your pure awareness enters into the pure awareness of being itself; the light meets the light, and the beingness of your being enters the beingness of being itself. Your awareness is love, and through love you will become…the dharmakaya…which is vast love. This love of awareness does not depend on your mind or the qualities of your mind…whether you are nuts or not, does not matter…the nature of awareness is love, is bodhichitta. To know this is to become fearless…and so this is the mantra of fearlessness. It is unbound, and it takes one beyond the polarities, takes one beyond causality, take one beyond judgments.
8. The great bodhi mantra allows us to hold love and fear, to hold love and terror, to hold love and hate…the bodhi mantra which brings forth bodhichitta dissolves fear, dissolves terror, and dissolves hatred.
9. Through love, the beingness of being is felt though a being…through love of a being, the beingness of being is felt. Of course, with the loss of a being, the beingness of being is never lost. The loss of the being who was the vehicle for the beingness of being is unbearably sad…and so sadness and bodhichitta exist together, and the bodhichitta absorbs and dissolves all sadness. Through all of the various affects, the beingness of being can manifest itself when held in the bodhichitta.
10. There is even a more subtle meaning to the bodhichitta, which is the releasing of light, which is the releasing of the bodhichitta…bodhichitta is actually the light of love or the love of the light…the heart essence is light…the innermost light…which actually at times manifests as a drop…the heart drop of dharmakaya…this heart drop can be released into the field and can be released into a human being…and so one cultivates the heart essence, one cultivates the heart drop, and one can release this blessing, this liquid-like light.