The supreme heart jewel nectar
This is a clear and detailed manual for the practice of Tantric Mahamudra, the quick method for discovering the peace and happiness that lies within our own mind.
Mahamudra is the union of great bliss and emptiness – the very subtle mind that experiences great bliss and realizes ultimate truth. By enabling us to go within to uncover the deepest level of our mind and then to use the very subtle mind to meditate on ultimate truth, Mahamudra practice destroys all our delusions at their very root and thus propels us quickly to the state of full enlightenment.
Mahamudra Tantra begins by explaining the basic correct view and intention needed for successful Mahamudra meditation, as well as the meaning of Tantra and the two stages of Highest Yoga Tantra practice, and then explains the preliminaries and stages of training in this profound practice.
Excerpt from this book:
From the Six Stages of Training in Mahamudra
Generally, all our waking minds are gross minds because they are mounted upon gross inner winds that flow through our left and right channels. Subtle and very subtle minds usually manifest only during deep sleep or during the death process. They are mounted upon subtle and very subtle inner winds, which flow through our central channel. Ordinary beings cannot identify their subtle and very subtle minds because their memory is unable to function during sleep and death. Only Highest Yoga Tantric practitioners, through the power of their meditation, can identify their subtle and very subtle minds during waking, sleep and the death process.
Meditation on the central channel, the indestructible drop, and the indestructible wind and mind is the method to manifest and realize directly our subtle and very subtle minds during waking. Although the first three stages of the six-staged training in Mahamudra are also practised with the waking mind, they are preparations for success in the next three stages of training in Mahamudra. Thus the six-staged training is the method to manifest and realize directly our subtle and very subtle minds during sleep.
In the third stage – identifying our own subtle mind – we need to meditate on our subtle mind. The nature of our subtle mind is the cessation of all gross minds, and its function is to perceive an empty like space. Since it is impossible for the subtle mind to manifest without the gross minds first ceasing, we therefore meditate on our own subtle mind as follows.
First, we stop paying attention to any object; we should not think about anything but remain like a stone or a piece of wood, without experiencing or perceiving anything. We remain in this state for a few minutes, and then we imagine that all our gross minds dissolve into our subtle mind like water bubbles disappearing into the water from which they arose. We then try to perceive our subtle mind by contemplating:
Its nature is the cessation of all gross minds, and its function is to perceive an empty like space.
This is the practice of seeking. When, through contemplating in this way, we perceive clearly the generic image of our subtle mind, we have found the object of our meditation – the clear appearance of our subtle mind. This is finding. Having found our object of meditation we then need to train in holding it without forgetting until we can do so for about one minute. This is holding. When, by continually repeating the steps of seeking, finding and holding, our concentration is able to remain on its object – the clear appearance of our subtle mind – for five minutes, we accomplish the fourth step, remaining. At this point we accomplish the third stage – identifying our own subtle mind.
