The Inner Body Rushen

The Inner Separation of Samsara and Nirvana 

This is the Dzogchen teaching of Ati Yoga, focusing on the practice of inner body rushen. "Rushen" here means separating—becoming clear on what is different and what is the same, particularly in terms of samsara and nirvana. 

This teaching is about karmic patterns. When you ask most scholars where all the old karma is stored, they say it is stored in the ālaya-vijñāna—or alaya—the “eight consciousness.” But that is simply Sanskrit for "karmic storehouse." But saying karmic patterns are stored in a karmic storehouse, It doesn’t really tell us much. Similarly, being told that karma is stored in the alaya doesn't give us a practical answer.

Karma is not stored in the natural state. And some texts may refer to the natural state as the alaya. But we want to be clear here that the alaya meaning karmic storehouse is not the same same as the natural state in Dzogchen. However, you may have noticed that you experience patterns. You have certain ways you consistently relate to phenomena. Each person has different patterns. Some are neurological and hardwired, some are familial, learned from your parents, and others seem to be even older. That’s karma. So where is this karma actually stored?

Karmic Smudges

This wrapping is caused by self-focused attention by what you habitually pay attention to: your stuff, your friends, your work, your house, your relationships. This habit of attention wraps the experience of reality around you, forming a subjective filter. The way we perceive reality is projected onto the inner surface of this cocoon through the channels. But due to infinite lives, post-traumatic stress, deaths, births, and the countless experiences we and others have endured, these channels have become bent, kinked, frizzy. These kinks and distortions are karmic formations and obscurations, like smudges on a pair of glasses. They keep us from seeing clearly.

For the purpose of this practice, we imagine these karmic formations to be stored in the color and shape of the chakras.

The Map of Practice

Your map for this practice is the following. In your forehead chakra is a dim, fuzzy white – not pristine white, but a little clouded – A syllable. In your throat chakra is a specific green called chartreuse SU syllable. In your heart chakra—where the apical pulse is actually felt, down near the bottom under the xiphoid process, not up where you salute—is a faded denim blue NRI syllable. Behind your navel is a maroon, red-wine-colored TRI syllable. In the secret place is a khaki or dusty-colored TRAY syllable. And on the soles of your feet is a black chakra—what we jokingly call "bus fart" colored TU syllable.

These chakras are formed in the shapes of Tibetan letters. They are not located on the front of the body but rather inside, just in front of the spine. They’re about the size of your palm and three-dimensional in shape.

Different types of karma affect different chakras. These are similar patterns to the patterns found in the practice of working with emotions. 

• Karma involving hatred, anger, and fear tends to get stuck in the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. 

• Karma involving lust, loneliness, and all the confusions around love tends to get stuck in the chakra of the secret place. 

• The karma of ignorance—“I don’t want to look, I don’t want to know; this is what I believe and I’m not looking outside it”—gets stuck behind the navel chakra. 

• In the heart chakra, we find all the overthinking, the internal monologue, the self-doubt, the “Did I choose right? Am I doing it right?” The constant dialogue that puts yourself down gets stuck in the heart chakra. 

• Competition, jealousy, and comparison get stuck in the throat chakra. 

• Pride, even the pride of being humble or being a "good practitioner" gets stuck in the forehead chakra.

Now, all actions have complex motivations behind them. One single action might have parts of itself stuck in multiple chakras. But as you begin to unravel these patterns, your patterns of repeating those actions will also begin to unravel. The results of past actions may surface more strongly—emotionally, not usually physically—though it can happen. For example, if you’re working on the soles of your feet chakra, you might notice increased anxiety or anger. It may feel more intense simply because it now has your attention. If it gets too much, you can use the Quan Am practice—reciting Om Mani Padme Hum—to stabilize yourself. Not everyone experiences side effects.

The Actual Practice

Now, for the actual practice. In your forehead is a white syllable Om. It is bigger, brighter, and whiter than the Ah, which is located slightly below it. From the Om comes a brilliant white light. This white light dries up the chakra you're working with, or all of the chakras. From the red Ah at your throat comes ruby-red light, which also dries up the kinks and cracks in the chankra. In your heart is a blue Hung, the color of the sky at high altitude—darker than what we see at sea level, but also brilliant.

You recite the mantra: Om Ah Hung. 

This is the mantra you use. As you say it, the brilliant white, red, and blue lights radiate from your forehead, throat, and heart chakras. In their brightness, they unravel and dry up the karmic patterns within the chakras—like dew vanishing in the morning sun, which is the traditional analogy.

And that is the practice.

You recite the mantra with your mala: 750,000 times. That’s one hundred thousand for each of the six chakras, one hundred thousand for all of them together, and fifty thousand to cover for any mistakes. It goes fast.

Visualization is the key. Most people prefer to focus on one chakra at a time in the beginning. It’s recommended to start at the bottom—with the black Du chakra at the soles of the feet—and do your first hundred thousand there. This is because death is certain and its timing is uncertain. You might as well begin by clearing your hell karma first, then hungry ghost karma, then animal karma, and so on upward. It’s just sensible.

You may, if you wish, visualize all the chakras at once—if your capacity allows. Or you may dry up a chakra entirely in one session and repeat that in future sessions. Alternatively, you may perceive the chakra as slowly drying up and vanishing over the full hundred thousand repetitions. All of these approaches are valid.

By “drying up,” what you actually see in your visualization is the color of the chakra fading, the light diminishing, and the sharp lines that define its shape relaxing. By the end, there is neither shape nor color—just clarity.

Start a session with taking refuge and generating bodhicitta—however you choose to do that, even if it's just a quick thought or flash. Then you do the practice the best you can, and finally you dedicate the merit when you feel you are done.

The Inner Separation of Samsara and Nirvana 

Detailed Guided Meditation

To bring the inner source of confusion to an end, let us separate samsara from nirvana in an internal manner.

If our internal seeds of confusion have yet to be exhausted, aversion and the other afflictions will continue to plant their respective seeds, which in this case are the habitual patterns associated with suffering.

Because we continue to water these seeds, their habitual patterns will continue to become active again and again, and the continuation of samsara will unfold.

So let us use this time to separate samsara and nirvana from within us.

In this life, from the past until the present, we have accumulated negative karmic and habitual tendencies within our body. This body is produced by ignorance and confusion, and as such the six realms are present within us as seeds.

Because the seeds of the six realms have yet to be purified, we wander continuously throughout the six classes of existence and experience the suffering of samsara. To purify these seeds, as well as the causes that lead our body, speech, and mind into a state of confusion, we need to separate samsara from nirvana.

All the habitual patterns created by karma and afflictions in our past accumulate in six parts of the body. Let us visualize each of these clearly and meditate on the entire range of habit patterns associated with each of the six realms.  

Next, out loud, recite OM AH HUNG. Imagine the white, red, and blue light of wisdom blazing forth shining brightly from each of these syllables at the top of your head, throat, and heart center.

This light completely evaporates each of the six syllables of the six realms of samsara, as well as their habit patterns, to the point where nothing more remains.

This light blesses the ordinary body, speech, and mind with the enlightened body, speech, and mind of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and floods all the six realms with light. 

Imagine that each of these realms, along with its habit patterns, is evaporated into nothingness and that all the causes and results of samsara and the lower realms, both your own and those of others, are refined away. 

Imagine that your body then becomes brilliantly clear, like a crystal ball wiped clean. 

As you imagine and experience all of this, continue to recite OM AH HUNG for as long and beautifully as you can. Recite one hundred thousand repetitions of OM AH HUNG for each of the seed syllables of the six classes, along with additional accumulations to compensate for shortcomings, bringing the total to seven hundred thousand. This will bring about the signs of the purification of negativity, and ordinary fixated attachment will be purified of its own accord.