Atisha - Life and Works

Authored by Taoshobuddha

List Price: $20.00 6" x 9" (15.24 x 22.86 cm) Black & White on White paper 218 pages ISBN-13: 978-1468040531 (CreateSpace-Assigned) ISBN-10: 1468040537 BISAC: Religion / Buddhism / Tibetan

Atisha Life and Works

Atisha attained the awareness of emptiness and became aware of pure human nature. He learned of the freedom all sentient beings have, a freedom from physical attachments and mental bondage. Taste of awareness is unique. You have no prior experience of the taste. The mind smells something immediately. Once the first taste of awareness has happened be quick! Allow it to crystallize before mind may come in. Because the mind is very cunning - the mind can start telling you, Look, you are no longer ordinary, you are extraordinary. Look, you have attained. Look, you have become a buddha, you are enlightened. Look, this is the goal of all human beings, and very rarely, one in a million attains. You are that one in a million. The mind will say all these beautiful sweet nothings, and of course the ego can come back. You can start feeling very good, holier than thou. You can start feeling special, spiritual, and saintly. And all is lost. Through the remedy, the disease is back. Cling to the remedy, and the disease is back. One has to be very alert about dropping the method. Once you attain something, immediately drop the method, otherwise your mind will start clinging to the method. It will talk very logically to you, saying, it is the method that is important. Between these moments of meditativeness, between these moments of utter joy, emptiness and purity, between these moments of being, remember that all are dreams, that every phenomenon is a phantom. Go on using this method till the settling has happened forever. Train in joining, sending and

taking together. Do this by riding the breath. Now emptiness has been experienced. Atisha says: Attachment, aversion, and indifference are the three poisons, but they can become the three bases of virtue. How can they become three bases of great virtue? If you bring in the quality of compassion, if you learn the art of absorbing suffering, as if all the suffering of the world is coming riding on the breath, then how can you be repulsed? How can you dislike anything and how can you be indifferent to anything? And how can you be attached to anything? If you are unconditionally taking in all the suffering in the world, drinking it, absorbing it in your heart, and then instead of it pouring blessings onto the whole of existence unconditionally - not to somebody in particular, remember; not only to man but to all: to all beings, trees and rocks and birds and animals, to the whole existence, material, immaterial - when you are pouring out blessings unconditionally, how can you be attached? CreateSpace eStore: https://www.createspace.com/3741783