Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

Dramatic title, I know, but technique is always a double-edged sword, a risk that we take. I have seen this at work with astrological techniques; I know it from personal experience with learning meditation techniques and find it helpful to know what techniques are all about, any technique.

For one, a technique is always a hand-me-down, often the essence of someone else's experience
reduced to bare-bones, freeze-dried if you will. Just add realization and you are good to go. However, authentic realization in the dharma or in the everyday practical world is not all that easy to come by.

Any technique is the remainder of a full-blown realization, the final result of something lived through, the "Aha!" experience of someone else, and not our own. We would have to make it our own. After all, the dharma that Shakyamuni Buddha left us is nothing more than a method or technique, a way to enlighten ourselves which we are left to figure out. Vajrayana Buddhism is all about working with a guide or teacher to make sure we get it right. We can't always trust ourselves, especially starting out.

Learning any technique by rote, and not experiencing it, much less realizing it fully, is not only useless, it is dangerous, one more obscuration on top of all our other obscurations. It can poison our mind for the topic, whatever that is.

The whole idea of "empowerment," whether in Buddhism or anywhere else in life, is about realization. That is why, in many Buddhist rituals, the rinpoche or whoever offers the empowerment is called the "empowering master." Empowerment is a blessing and a pointing-out. If we have no empowering master, then we have to empower ourselves, which is not at all an easy thing to do. Worse, when it comes to mind training and the nature of the mind, it is pretty much impossible. There is no free lunch.

In a previous blog I pointed out that the same principles that embody a technique are also true in finding terma (hidden mind treasures). There has to be a spark of insight, followed by an understanding, usually intellectual, that arises from that spark. The understanding is roughly a template for how the technique works, the bare bones of a concept. That understanding has to be fleshed out into an experience, and life breathed into it, usually something we work with or practice using for a very long time. We have to make it ours. If the experience is practiced long enough, through the help of our teacher or guide (where all true empowerment comes from), we may eventually fully realize the technique to the point where we have the same realization as the original creator of the technique. That is the goal. Only then can it be said we are empowered, and only then can we in turn empower others.

So we work in the fields of mind to achieve clarity and finally realization.

This is why in Tibetan and Zen Buddhism students are not encouraged to teach others when they have no realization. It is like the blind leading the blind. We are sure to make a mess of things and get stuck, just like the proverbial tar baby. The more we try, the bigger the mess. In Buddhism we are told to first enlighten ourselves, at least somewhat, and only then can we guide others.

The mind is filled with techniques and ideas waiting to be expanded into realization. In the field of astrology, which I have studied for fifty years, I am surrounded by techniques that can be practiced and put to work. My point, repeated here, is to keep in mind that these techniques are the essence of someone else's spiritual discovery, perhaps the essence of their whole life's work boiled down into a freeze-dried template or method. They must be realized afresh or they become dead weight.

We take on techniques at our own peril. If we realize the technique, we can use it and even pass it on. If we fail to realize it, and just go through the procedure or technique by rote, it works somewhat; there are results, but mostly it is just so much more dead weight. This is why a teacher or guide who has realization is so important, someone who can verify and confirm our realization and bless our efforts. Otherwise it is just too easy to wander on indefinitely with no direction known and no confirmation.

What we take from others by way of technique should be scrutinized to make sure, as best we can determine, that they have not only the technique to share with us down correctly, but also the authenticity that realization brings. Passing on a dead technique does not constitute true lineage. The whole idea is to pass on realization.

I have always been very scrupulous in accepting teachers and the methods or techniques they offer. My rejection of a teacher is not necessarily a remark on their ability, but only on my inability to easily learn from them. As corny as this may sound, my teachers reveal their authenticity by the signs they give and by the fact that I can actually learn something from them.

The mind is rich beyond measure with dharmas, not just Buddhist dharmas, but all kinds of dharmas, like the astrological dharmas that I have mentioned. We are all familiar with how our favorite sport and its athletes require extreme dedication and practice to excel. Do you imagine it is any different for athletes of the mind?

Don't let that last comment discourage you, either. We not only can clarify our mind, but sooner or later, we are going to have to. Nothing else will do.

If we lack mental clarity and want to have true insight, we have to clear away and lose some of our obscurations to see better. If we want to mine the treasures of the mind, we have to learn at least something about just how to do that. In the West we are taught to use the mind for outward things, but not how to turn the mind on itself and look within.

I can well remember, many years ago, when I first turned away from reading and studying books in favor of learning directly from the mind itself. As I have shared with you many times, my first true dharma teacher would say to me. "Michael, one day you will have to "be" the book." I guess that eventually sunk in. The pages of books, as precious as they can be, pale compared to the vivid authenticity of the mind itself.

Instead of curling up with a book, as I used to, I spend time in the mind, and I don't mean daydreaming or musing. Just as there are nuggets of gold embedded in clay-matrix, so are there glistening treasures to be probed and gradually brought to light in the mind itself. If we learn to allow the mind to just rest as it is, these diamonds of insight slowly, but surely, reveal themselves. In fact, they urge themselves upon us.

What I enjoy most is the extreme clarity in which all of this takes place. They talk about "clean rooms," where computer chips are manufactured. The mind itself is a pristine environment, where patience and pure intent unearth the deepest knowledge we have ever known. We find the tip of the iceberg, and in time the entire iceberg reveals itself to us, not just abstractly or intellectually, but first as a full-blown experience that rocks our world, and ultimately as a crystal-clear realization that we can take with us from that moment on, even after this life is gone.

[Harvest time is almost over. Here is a photo taken in the garden of my neighbor Pam, who probably has the greenest thumb I have ever seen.]