Working with Perceptions

This practice is about working with perceptions. Preferably, the practice is done as a retreat, no longer than 3 or 4 weeks at a time at most. Not as an ongoing daily practice. You’ll benefit most by observing practical silence during the retreat. That means: avoid unnecessary talking. Yes, you may need to say goodnight to your kids or take a work phone call. But aside from what’s truly necessary, keep conversation to a minimum.

This practice is best done outdoors, in a high place with a view. However, if that’s not available, simply arrange your seat near a window—whatever works best within your circumstances.

Do at least four practice sessions a day. Always begin with generating Bodhichitta, and end with dedicating the merit. Take a news and media fast on retreat, since you can’t change anything anyways. You can do all four exercises, one-a-day on retreat. Or they can be done on the same day but each in their own sessions throughout the day. 

Just do the practice. Don’t overthink it. Don’t think about what it’s doing and not doing. Just do the practice. Do not look for the symbolism, do not think about it. Don’t squoosh things into words, don’t grab at it. Just leave the experience be. Don’t try to figure it out.

Think, “they are all good for me, and I should do them on retreat until I get results.” This is not a practice you are supposed to understand. This is a practice for just doing. Other practices are for understanding, but not this one. You don’t need to know all the theories behind it. These practices are pretty Nyam-y -- full of meditative experiences. You may get all sorts of experiences. Just leave them be, and keep doing the practice.

What are the benefits of engaging in these practices? Aware of the suffering created by attachment to views and wrong perceptions, we are determined to avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. By working with perceptions we can begin to loosen the attachment and grip that perceptions have over us. These practices can help us to release objective appearances, blur the division between the possible and the impossible, thus making us more flexible for situations, slide easily through situations, and begin behaving appropriately to the occurrence rather than to previous trauma we might hold. Working with perceptions can put you in harmony with your environment instead of the story you made up about the world.

Spirit Offerings

Because some of the activities of this retreat may be disturbing to land spirits, it is quite necessary that you actually perform the spirit offerings to begin such a retreat—especially one involving inner and outer speech rushens.

Each time you begin a retreat of this nature, you should at least open it with spirit offerings. If the land spirits where you are show signs of disturbance, you can offer more frequently—such as every morning.

If you live in a house with, say, a backyard and a front yard, it’s good to have two sets of offerings. If you also have a side yard, make three. If you live out in the country, you can do all four directions.

You can get up from your seat and take your spirit offerings outside, keeping a hold of the cup and saucer. You toss the contents up into the air toward whatever part of your garden seems wild—likely inhabited by land spirits. That’s usually the less-manicured area, the overgrown corner, the place animals tend to visit. Then, bring the empty cup and saucer back inside. Set them aside in the kitchen or somewhere similar.  Do not leave the cup and saucer outside—just the offering itself. Toss it into the air, to the land spirits.

Spirit offerings are used in most retreats, but rushens are known to be particularly active and tend to disturb the land spirits. That’s why it’s absolutely imperative to perform offerings when doing a rushen.

Rushen of Speech

"Rushen" refers to a kind of Dzogchen ngöndro (preliminary practice). As such, it's an adjunctive practice to recognizing the nature of mind. It improves recognizing the nature of mind.

“Rushen” actually means separating. It’s hard to explain exactly how that fits, but essentially, you are separating samsara from nirvana, before reuniting them again as one. This is similar to the Mahamudra process, where you learn to distinguish between movement and stillness, before entering the Trülkhor Naljor yoga—the yoga of dancing stillness. That part, done later in Mahamudra, is introduced earlier in Dzogchen in the form of a rushen.

In Dzogchen, you wait until a person has enough experience to benefit from it.  In Mahamudra, sometimes you give them that experience right at the beginning.

This practice relates to the energy of speech of intent, of doing—because we talk to ourselves about everything we do. Decisiveness is also part of this chakra.

We use the seed syllable HUNG. HUNG symbolizes the Buddha Nature of the Heart Chakra of all beings.

Before you do your session, arise in refuge and bodhichitta, in whatever way you like to do it. You may have a different way, and that’s fine. All practice gets done in the context of refuge and bodhisattva, and dedicate at the end.

HUNG

The First Exercise with HUNG: Sealing - Soft Gentle Blue Hung

This is called sealing with awareness. “Sealing” here is a translation of a word that can also mean gesture, completeness, or pointing. So we could also say pointing with awareness, gesturing with awareness, or completing with awareness—all valid translations. The Sanskrit term is mudra, as in mahamudra.

Posture

Traditionally, it’s done sitting in full lotus.  If you're uncomfortable with that, you can sit in half lotus or in a Maitreya posture.  But you must have your channels in alignment or you could do yourself a mischief. Use this posture for all four exercises.

1. Sealing Outer Phenomena

This practice begins with the sealing of appearances, or pointing at appearances. The first part is sealing outer phenomena—sealing stuff. Start your session with arising refuge and bodhichitta, in whatever way you like to do it. 

What you’ll do is chant HUNG melodiously, gently. Don’t move your lips as you chant the best you can. As you chant, a sky blue HUNG comes up from your heart chakra, out through your mouth. You are that HUNG.  You rise from your heart and go out in front of you until you touch an object. At which point that object is transformed into a sky blue HUNG. It remains a sky blue HUNG, infused with that energy. This can be living things too—if a squirrel runs by, you transform the squirrel into HUNG, and the HUNG continues with it, wherever it goes. Each HUNG is a complete utterance. With each one, rise from your heart, flow out the mouth, touch an object, and transform it into HUNG.

As the HUNGs come out, they are your consciousness, your breath, and the letter HUNG. There’s no conflict in this. One thing can be three different things. Air can be a breeze, a wind, or a typhoon—it’s all air. So in the same way, this HUNG is you. It is your breath, your chi, your lung, and it is a HUNG.

You do this until there’s nothing left to transform. Then you rest. 

When you are finished, you breathe out, and relax the breath on the out breath. Then you rest—empty—for a while. When it gets uncomfortable, you breathe in again. You relax in the emptiness of empty breath.

2. Sealing the Inner Body

The second part is inner—sealing the body.

All those HUNGs out there, as your recite HUNG, you retract them one by one into the body, through the pores of your skin. As they enter your skin, they touch your internal organs. Each organ turns into a HUNG, until the body is completely crowded with HUNGs.

You are bringing the HUNGs back one by one. They transform your lungs, your heart, your liver, your spleen, your ovaries—all of your organs—into HUNGs. You’re just a sack of HUNGs at that point.

Once you are completely full of HUNGs, hold your outbreath for a moment—not forcefully, but gently. 

Then you let go and sit resting in recognizing the nature of mind for as long as it happens. Then you dedicate the merit, get up, go pee, do whatever you need to, and start another session.

Sessions

There is no set time for how long you should chant HUNG out and back in. Find what works for you. Do as many sessions as you can during the day, it is whatever works for you. Avoid practicing these at noon, midnight, dawn, and sunset as they are unstable times of the elements most likely to cause side effects.

The first part releases objective appearances into their insubstantial, unreal nature. The second part purifies the physical elements and releases your corporeality—your sense of solidity—without residue.

Sign of completion: Actually seeing with the eyes hazy misty HUNGs overlaid upon things in the world. It gets you to release objective appearances.

The Second Exercise with HUNG: Potentiation - Black Blue Fierce Hung

Start your session with arising refuge and bodhichitta, in whatever way you like to do it. The posture is the same as the first exercise.

This HUNG is darker—almost black. The color of the sky at altitude after the sun has set: blue-black. This HUNG is about the size of your hand. These HUNGs come out, but as they move farther away, they do not get smaller. They stay the size of your palm.

These HUNGs are fierce. They sound like barking. One breath per HUNG. They’re like lightning: sharp-edged, fast. They come from the heart, and they come out your mouth—up and out. You throw them. They move super fast and impact your visual field –what you see out there– and they knock holes in it like Swiss cheese. They pierce and tatter mountains and houses, collecting in the sky behind everything—which is now gone.You totally destroy your visual field with HUNG, one hole at a time.

When you bring them back, they shrink to the size of a finger— from the size of a hand to the size of a finger—as they come toward you. They knock the same holes in your body, reducing it to atoms and destroying the atoms. These are the fierce HUNGs.

Once everything is gone outside and inside release the visualization then rest. Do not do it on animals or people. The fierceness, sharpness, and destructiveness both outward and inward is the most important part.

Then you dedicate the merit, get up, go get some water, do whatever you need to, and start another session.

Sign of completion: Hair standing on ends, and goosebumps all over the body. Feeling like an illusion in a mirror. It gets rid of the division between the possible and the impossible.

The Third Exercise with HUNG: Finding Flexibility - Sky Blue Transparent HUNG Bubble

Start your session with arising refuge and bodhichitta, in whatever way you like to do it. The posture is the same as the first exercise.

For your next one, you're all going to need a stick—the size of your forearm, from elbow to fingertips, about that long. If you're practicing outside, you'll stick it in the ground approximately two arm lengths in front of you. If you're practicing inside, stand it upright in a bowl of rice, beans, grains, sand—whatever you've got—so that it stands two arm lengths in front of you, approximately.

This HUNG—you can have several HUNGs per breath. It’s also gentle, but it’s round and you move your mouth. The first exercise we did, you didn’t move your mouth—you just had your lips slightly apart. But this one, you do move your mouth.

The HUNGs are in little bubbles—round bubbles. They are sky blue and nearly transparent like soap bubbles. They start in your heart chakra. When you say HUNG, there’s one in your heart chakra. When you say HUNG again, up protrudes from the first one and creates a new bubble above it. Then another, and another. Up, they fill your mouth and then come out of your mouth linked together like a string of bubbles.

Each HUNG comes out of the one before it, but actually, each HUNG comes out of your heart. It enters the one before it, which then expands or creates the next one above it—and so on, down the chain:

They go down to the ground –in a snake-like chain– they travel along the ground, and they come to your stick. They go around your stick—round and round and round—surrounding, covering, coiling up your stick until they reach the top. And then, a single HUNG comes out the top and just sits there. It doesn’t do anything.

You continue to chant while doing Shiné on the single HUNG on top. The size of your HUNG—the one at the top—should be around the size of your palm, or a bit smaller. Think of something that would be just slightly too full to fit entirely in your mouth—maybe fist-sized.

Shiné means to rest your mind on the HUNG and stop thinking. Or at least leave your thoughts alone, and only pay attention to the HUNG. Do this until you are tired of concentrating — no more than 15 minutes. 

After you become tired of focusing Shiné on the HUNG at the top, let it absorb back into all the others. Then chanting HUNG let it go back around and reabsorb back around, then down and into your mouth, and down reabsorbing again into your heart. Relax.

You do this several times in one session—going out to the top of the stick, single pointed meditation on it, and then slowly absorbing back the path it came to your heart. Maybe three times, maybe more, depending on your pace. But you don’t do it super fast. It’s a steady pace.

Then you dedicate the merit, get up, go get some water, do whatever you need to, and start another session.

Sign of completion: A change in your personality. A notable increase in flexibility (in situations) and creativity. It makes you more flexible for situations.

The Fourth Exercise with HUNG: Taking the Road - Dark Blue Bouncy HUNG

Start your session with arising refuge and bodhichitta, in whatever way you like to do it. The posture is the same as the first exercise.

This HUNG is big—about the size of your forearm—and it’s dark blue. This HUNG is bouncy.

In the first chanting of HUNG, it comes up from your heart, bounces out of your mouth, and lands in front of you. There’s only one HUNG. Every time you say HUNG, it bounces. It moves like a man walking—bouncing. Chant in a Bouncy way, not soft, not loud.

It goes anywhere you've ever wanted to go. It stops here and there. It eats—but it still bounces a bit while it's eating, if that’s what you’ve always wanted to do. It travels all over the world. It plays. It can even go to imaginary fantasy lands. It’s a playfulness that arises in the moment without plan. It goes to any imagined places you imagine. The HUNG is you. Experience the HUNG through first person. You are the breath, the HUNG, and the Mind. 

When you’re totally bored with this practice—after seeing, touching, smelling, and tasting the entire world—then you go to the western edge. And there, you say two loud HUNGs. The first HUNG is like when you jump a little bit on a diving board. The last HUNG jumps off the edge of the world—into the indescribable unknown. And then you rest in the nature of mind. The most important aspect is going everywhere, doing different things in different places and then jumping off of concepts without knowing what is out there.

If you have a preference for a Buddha field, jump off that edge. If you like the northern one, or the eastern one, or the western one, or the southern one—jump off that edge.

Sign of completion: Slide easily through situations. Behaving appropriately to the occurrence rather than to some previous trauma. It puts you in harmony with your environment instead of some story you made up.