The Body as Mandala: Unwinding into Pure Awareness

Every now and then, I feel called to share something about how the awakening is progressing here as this Dara-vehicle. This is one of those times.

A couple of months ago, in the transition from July to August, these two summaries of the on-going process of realization that I’ve been experiencing came through. They encapsulate the year's unfolding in a matter of sentences. 

While they are jargon-laden and super minimal, they are absolutely spot on. I’ve included links for anyone who wants to dive deeper (than simply receiving the energetic transmission of reading, listening, absorbing). The summaries unfold in reserve order. The most recent series of realizations, in the first summary, are followed by the realizations that occurred earlier in the year. I’ll share those now and offer some elucidation later.

I recommend reading slowly, with an open heart and mind. Approach it like your meditation practice or a delicate flower you wish to connect with.

The Summaries in reverse order:

One

I fell through the four extremes and landed in dependent origination, empty and free of any thing

The moment the nirmanakaya appeared, was the moment the Trikaya resolved. So silent and stealthy, I only noticed in retrospect.

Simply pure awareness, flowing intelligences, participating in and as the whole universe unfolding to itself

Beyond duality and nonduality, simply open

Two

The five elements and five aggregates - that which seemingly made up the body - found themselves in divine union, purely emptiness-livliness!

And then the physical senses revealed themselves to be the life of the Buddhas all along...

...mind continually giving itself over to the heart...

Suddenly! and with great ease Samantabhdra and Samantabhadri, were swimming, mixing in Union, yab-yum, at the heart,
as the heart...

It was all exactly as Gomadevi had explained. The body itself, the mandala.

Then Lord Buddha and Lord Maitreya arrived (one day on a long train ride) and Maitreya came down into the heart and recognized his Buddhahood and this body and the whole world as his domain

And then everything, everywhere, all times, was simply the white A (ཨ)

When moving through shifts in awareness, and continually waking up into a new level of realization, layers at a time, it is hard to remember what life was like before. 

What I recall from April was this sense of being ushered into the next phase of unwinding. I've now tracked seven of these phases (see note below) over the years, and this past Spring the spontaneous presence moved from dissolving the (structures, concepts, and Identification of) Personhood to dissolving the (structures, concepts, and identification) of Human Being. That in particular is the context for these short summaries: the unwinding of everything we understand, assume, and take for granted of being a thing that we label "Human Being". We are laden with these ideas, assumptions, concepts and structures and they are utterly and ultimately unnecessary.

Living the truth of our being requires no identification and no reification.

The beginning of this process, months ago, was very much like a scavenger hunt. Like many of my prior processes all the way through the seven levels of dis-identification. It begins and I can perceive it, there are these hints and experiences, and also there is this organic calling to participate with it. In this case something was happening with the elements of the body, and then the physical senses, etc. so I was reading the sutras and whatever I could find that spoke to my process. And it landed me back with Gomadevi, who has been a figure in the unfolding here for many years now. And what a delight to be guided by her words so directly and so viscerally!

In the couple of months since those summaries came through and that series of realizations concluded, there has been a lot of reordering of the physical experience. The process of the physical elements of the body recognizing their nature is light and indeed all form is inseparable from this emptiness, this radiance, this light.

It may be helpful to add here that over the past handful of years there has been both the “outward” journey and the “inward” resolution. First, the “outward” journey brought the "relative" sense of self into union with the "absolute". And over the past couple of years now, it has been the reserve. The sense of self, now unified with the absolute, layering back into the bodymind. Relative and absolute continually in open nondual union. 

As Thich Nhat Han offers us in his new translation of the Heart Sutra:

“this Body itself is Emptiness

and Emptiness itself is this Body.

This Body is not other than Emptiness

and Emptiness is not other than this Body.

The same is true of Feelings,

Perceptions, Mental Formations,

and Consciousness.”

–

My hope here isn't to have the reader reach a concrete understanding of what was experienced, but rather to share some of the flavor, the energy, and maybe even some inspiration. The ineffable is just that, beyond words and concepts entirely. Anything that we can explain through discourse isn't reality itself, but more like a skillful means. The signs of progression are indeed helpful, insightful as long as we don't confuse the map for the territory. If nothing else, this is a record of my process. 

 With love,

Darananda

–

Note on the Seven Phases of Dis-Identification that I've tracked are: Personal, Familial, Ancestral, Collective, Past Lives (Soul), Personhood, Human Being. More on this in work to come.