Kalu Rinpoche | Perspective on Dharma in the modern world (Part 7)

Host: So we actually use this, experiences, and experience of bliss to access this non-dual experience? Is that, is that right Rinpoche?

Kalu Rinpoche: Yes, yes, yeah.

Host: So in some ways, can we say that we do yoga practice to experience, to have these experiences, especially the experience of bliss, to have the experience of non-dual experiences, could we say that?

Kalu Rinpoche: you can put it like that, or you can also say a beginning of “stopping the cycle of illusion”.

Host: stopping the cycle of illusion?

Kalu Rinpoche: Illusion. Yes. Because, like in, like in the West, everybody talks about the “dream yoga”, everybody talks about the “bardo experience”, “I had a bardo-like experience”, and everybody talks about the “dream yoga”, everybody talks about emptiness, I have no disagreement with you.

But only way to, one of the way, let’s say one of the way to achieve all of that is to conquer your body and mind first. Without conquering the body and mind first, you cannot achieve none of it. All that is imagination. A beautiful imagination. There’s nothing wrong with it. You have aspiration to practice all of it, there’s nothing wrong with it.

But if you want to practice bardo, you have to conquer that state of mind as a dream yoga. In order to develop the dream yoga, you need to develop the illusionary body and mind experience. If you want to experience the illusionary body and mind, it doesn’t mean that you become delusional, okay?

There’s a big distinction between becoming a delusional, and recognising everything as it is, as a relative truth. Right?

But in order to recognise that strength of the mind, that, that form of clarity to recognise the illusionary body and mind, you need to practice toumo.

Host: Toumo?

Kalu Rinpoche: The yoga. The heat generating practice, the physical and the mental combined together, with all the potential gathering together.

Live with Kyabje Kalu Rinpoche on Wisdom Dharma Chats (19′ 53”)
Perspective on dharma in the modern world – 4th May 2023

To be continued …