Working With Perceptions Retreat

For this practice, we establish a boundary of a retreat setting. This practice is best suited to be done on retreat. No driving, and no operating heavy machinery during this practice retreat! It is best to limit or lower your responsibilities in life for the duration of this retreat. It is beneficial to lower or limit your interactions with others to the best of your abilities while doing this practice on retreat. This practice is designed to stir things up, so by retreating and establishing a retreat boundary we can ensure that we don’t stir things up in our lives and relationships and cause undue stress on others. For we go into this practice with the intention to awaken for the benefit of others.

This practice is designed to drive you crazy. Or rather—we might say—it drives you sane. This is not a practice to be taken lightly. To be able to practice fully with what arises for you, it is necessary for you not to have work/family distractions. Practice can be full of experiences and visions and nyams (meditative experiences), and can affect your sleep patterns. So no driving during this practice!

It’s the skill of working with thoughts that allows you to make the shift in this practice—by choosing to think in a certain way during this retreat.

It’s the skill of working with emotions that allows you to weather this practice—to accept and even enjoy your freakouts during the retreat.

Those who are not yet skilled at working with emotions may find that they need to stop as this goes on, because they can't deal with the emotions that arise—like fear. And that’s okay. We can continue to train working with thoughts and working with emotions until we are ready.

Retreat Schedule

So, we’re going to do this as a retreat. That means: You set your alarm clock for 4:00 AM. You get up before first light. You do your first session of practice and allow it to finish before the sun crosses the horizon.  If the sun is shining, and you see the golden sunrise striking anywhere — even on the far mountains — that’s the time to end your first session. Stop your first session and go have breakfast.

Breakfast should be simple and carby, with some fat or oil in it — you need the fuel. Whole grains, cereals, breads — whatever’s easy. It’s not the time to cook pancakes or bacon and eggs. After breakfast, and a basic cleanup: You do your second session.

Ideally, two sessions in the morning after breakfast. One after breakfast. Take a break — tea, a leftover breakfast nibble. Then the second session.

Lunch is your big meal of the day. Take some time to cook yourself something nice and balanced. It should have: a couple of kinds of vegetables, some whole grains, a protein source, and it should taste good. Cook more than you’ll eat for lunch, because lunch leftovers are your supper with water added and possibly noodles made into a soup. That’s your retreat rhythm.

After lunch take a nap if you need it, or go for a walk, take a shower, or tidy up a bit.

Now, for the afternoon around 3:00 PM it's time for another session. Try to get two sessions in before sunset.

Stop before the sun touches the horizon. That’s when you heat up lunch leftovers with water, make it a soup, and that’s your supper. Light supper — noodles or rice or something liquidy. Then you do another session after sunset, as twilight is ending and darkness begins. From that session, you go to bed.

The Practice

This text is called “guidance on being at ease with illusion.” You're already hallucinating — you just don't know it.  From now until the end of the retreat, you may assume that any perception you have is likely — but not certainly — a hallucination. Therefore, all perceptions occurring: do not believe in them.

The text was written in the 14th century by Longchen Rabjam, which means Infinite Vast Expanse. It’s guidance on the meaning. Meaning it goes through the channel of understanding, and passed understanding.

To the dharma of the victors that is a stainless illusion, I bow.

Dharma means pattern. Victors refer to those who have gone beyond the beyond. The pattern of the Enlightened Ones is a stainless illusion.

The meaning of all dharmas is taught to be the very way of illusion.

The meaning of all dharmas — all teachings you’ve ever had, all teachings you ever will have,
all teachings you are currently having — is itself the very way of illusions. None of this is real. Stop believing your thoughts.

So that this may be put into practice,

I shall write down spoken instructions from my teachers

and this intent of the essential meaning of the sūtras and tantras.

Now let’s go into what you do during the sessions.

Refuge, Bodhicitta, & Guru Yoga

First, go solely for refuge,

and generate the mind as enlightened.

From the ongoing experience of emptiness,

imagine buddhas and bodhisattvas in a circle who ultimately dissolve

along with teachers of the lineage, meditation deities, and ḍākinīs into your root teacher

who sits upon the sun and moon stacked on a lotus flower on your crown.

Mentally make offerings, praise, and confess your faults, and after that, make the aspiration to

train in illusion.

First, go solely for refuge and generate the mind of enlightenment. Refuge doesn’t mean “Mommy, protect me.” In this context, refuge means recognizing the nature of mind as your own true nature—and as the true nature of all beings. Refuge is recognizing that you are in no way other than “gone beyond the beyond” and delighting in that.

Bodhicitta is the awareness that we are all that. It is the life force that permeates the universe—that very vital aliveness that loves itself, and therefore loves all itselves, in delight at being so. This is refuge and bodhicitta as one.

From the ongoing experience of emptiness imagine Buddhas and Bodhisattvas extending as far as space and time allow. They fill the entire space-time continuum. They are all sentient beings in the three realms, in their innate enlightened nature, fully manifest as such.

Imagine them forming a vast mandala—circles extending out to infinity. Included within this are all your teachers from all lineages, your yidams, the dakinis—everything. All of this dissolves into your root teacher: the one who first showed you the nature of mind in a way that you actually glimpsed it.

Your root teacher sits on a sun and moon disk (symbolizing śūnyatā and bodhicitta), atop a lotus flower on your crown chakra.

Sit with that there. All of that is absorbed into and symbolized by your root teacher.

Make mental offerings. Make physical offerings. Offer praise. Confess your mistakes—your confusions, the moments you followed your stories and believed them. “I confess being fooled by my thoughts, repeatedly, throughout the day.” "I confess thinking I’m actually doing a practice."

Then make a monlam—a wish-path. Invoke the speech chakra and say it out loud. Express your aspiration to train in recognizing illusion. For example:  “I will come to recognize illusion. I will work at this and do it to the best of my ability.” Use your own words.

Now, your root teacher—who is the essence of all beings in their innate buddha nature— including all your teachers of all the lineages you ever followed. Do not drop them into your central channel to merge with them. Don’t absorb them into your heart, and don’t merge up into them. None of that.

You simply merge—without moving. Without any change of place. You become them. They become you. Because this is your nature anyway. Rest there.

There’s nothing you do with this visualization—it’s not a visualization, it’s an awareness. It’s no longer there, but you don’t make it go away. You don’t absorb it. You simply release it into its natural state—while releasing yourself into your own natural state. They are both the same thing. Yes, it’s tricky. But that’s the essence of it. Remember it’s not a visualization, it’s an awareness.

Main Practice of how to Be

As you imagine being fully absorbed in the illusory nature of all that appears and exists,

remain inseparable from that very reality –

the ongoing experience that has no ordinary conceptual fixations, not even for an instant.

Now, you—that is all of that—imagine, because these are thoughts (and imagination is therefore engaged), being fully absorbed into the illusory nature of all that appears and exists. That means disimagine the separation between you, the perceiver, and all that is perceived.

Put that down. Let it go. Remain as that—inseparable from that reality. It is an ongoing experience, without any conceptual fixation—not even for an instant.

Outward appearances including mountains and mansions,

all of the earth, water, fire, wind, space, and so forth ...

and what’s inward including all that arises as the manifold variations of awareness that affirm or

negate,

all of your moving, sleeping, eating, walking, talking, and so forth –

without distraction, become familiar with their nature being like a dream, an illusion,

hallucination, mirage, a moon in water, an echo, castles in the clouds, an apparition.

Encourage this awareness. There is no end to your sessions. You simply begin sessions—six times a day—using the instructions on how to start a session: taking refuge with the real bodhicitta. Be clear on that. Say the verbal supplications out loud. You make sessions—but you don’t end sessions. You allow the session continue. You don’t force it.

However, in the beginning, it may help to say to yourself: this is a dream, this is an illusion. This is not what is real. Allow yourself to be aware that the appearance of objects, the affirmations or negations of the intellect—what you think you see, your thoughts about what you see—the ebb and flow of experience—everything that occurs is the play of illusion. Stop trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not. None of it is real.

Enhance your practice and train in being artful,

so as to bring whatever you encounter within great intrinsic freedom!

That means: allow emotions to occur. That means: allow sensations to occur. That means: allow thoughts and descriptions to occur. Do not suppress what is moving—recognize it as it moves, so that whatever you encounter can be brought into the great intrinsic freedom.

Let it all happen. Don’t stop any of it. This includes fear, ecstasy, desire, aversion, confidence, lack of confidence, awakeness, dreaming— Don't stop any of it. Don’t take any of it as real.

Moreover, during the daytime,

it is crucial that you are not distracted for even an instant

while in the ongoing experience of becoming familiar with things as a dream and so forth.

Even though during your free time you may do whatever you like, you don’t stop the practice to do it. So, whether in session or out of session, do not take any thought, emotion, or sensation as belonging to a real reality. Do not separate yourself from what is thought. It’s not “I have thoughts,” it’s “I being thoughts. I being feelings. I being perceptions.” Do not separate yourself from the experience. 

Use mindfulness as your tool here, to continuously bring your attention back to both the ongoing, moving set of perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences, and the nature of mind, which is not other than these. Whether you sit on your cushion for the whole session, or you get up does not matter. What matters is you keep doing the practice of seeing everything as an illusion.

For in the infinite vastness of open awareness, awareness is the vitality of bodhicitta, which, by its nature, shimmers with the illusions of form and function— with all phenomena, both inner and outer. Remain in this state of awareness.

In this way, initially practice guru yoga,

secondly, the illusion of appearances and mind,

and thirdly, rest distinctly in knowing that which is beyond projection and contraction.

The illusion of appearances—of “I,” "me," "mine," and "mind." Rest beyond focusing a point of attention. It’s not about focusing; it’s the context in which all focusing happens. Live in the context of Dzogchen— the context of infinite, vital, alive, open, dancing, shimmering, sparkling awareness. Be that.

Exert yourself in meditation by staying loose in the ongoing experience that is like space!

After your session, repeatedly become familiar with things from that ongoing experience of

illusion.

No grabbing, no shoving. After you get up, repeatedly become familiar with things— from that ongoing experience of illusion.

Nighttime Practice

At nighttime, rest on your right side,

breathe gently, and don’t glance about abruptly.

From the vital point of the mind within your heart,

[imagine] a white syllable “A,” 

about the size of a thumbnail, emitting light – and this light

emanates forth across

all appearances and existence, saṃsāra and nirvāṇa,

which melt into the light, are reabsorbed into you, and dissolve into the “A.”

At bedtime, or anytime you nap during the day, lay on your right side, allow your breath to be gentle and keep your eyes rested. You can do the refuge, bodhicitta, guru yoga practice as taught. Then imagine a white Tibetan syllable “A” which shines light in all directions. The light permeates all phenomena which melt into light and are reabsorbed into you and dissolves back into the “A”. Breathe in and out with the “A” syllable. It doesn’t matter whether the light goes in or out on the in-breath or out-breath. What matters is that the light goes with your breathing. Imagine that. Let the light of the “A” ride the breath.

By meditating without distraction in that very ongoing experience, While you are asleep in a

dream and similarly –

first, be certain and then,

multitudes will proliferate from one

and those multitudes will be absorbed back into the one; the fierce will be transformed from the

quiescent,

and there will be apparitions of gods, nāgas, and so forth ...

At that very moment, train in their unreality

and gradually mingle with their unborn luminosity.

Without discretion means using mindfulness. Keep using the tool of mindfulness. Recognize that all of your experiences in this moment, while you are experiencing them, are illusions. And play. Play with it. Imagine your yidam as clearly and vividly as you can. Imagine being your yidam. Play with your imagination. Make more illusions—and know they’re illusions. Make an illusion about the perfect job—what it would be like. Know that it’s an illusion. Make illusions about the worst thing that could happen—know that that’s an illusion too. Play with the images. When you’re fantasizing during this retreat—and you will, because we all fantasize all day long—make them rich. Add to it, smell, sound, and texture.

Sometimes, imagine something like a unicorn—imagine what it smells like, what it looks like, what it sounds like when it walks, what it feels like to touch it, and the mood it invokes in you—all at once. Then, imagine that you are the unicorn. What does it feel like to move in that body? What do you smell as a unicorn that might be different from what you smell as a human? Play, but maintain clear awareness, knowing that all experience is an illusion. Don’t let go of that, even for a moment—whether or not you believe it in daily life, during this retreat, do not let go of that.

Nothing gets suppressed in this retreat. No feelings are suppressed. No feelings are grasped as real or related to any real reality occurring. By meditating without distraction, what is the meditation you’re resting in? The awareness of illusion. It is not just a thought or a set of words, like walking around saying “I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming,” although if that comes up playfully, you don’t need to squish it.

It’s resting in the “ye” sensation of walking through a dream—an illusion, a mirage, a fantasy. It’s not just the thoughts of “it’s like this.” But the thoughts need to be strong enough to bring forth the feeling that it is like this.

Sometimes, imagine that you are your coffee cup, looking at you sitting there from outside. Sometimes imagine that you are looking at your coffee cup from inside the body. Flip it back and forth. Play with it. At that very moment, train in their unreality and gradually mingle with the unborn luminosity. Everything—all sensations, all emotions, all ideas—are themselves the play of awareness.

Awareness is referred to as “luminosity” in twilight speech –symbolic speech– because just as the seer sees by light, when there is no light, the seer would not be able to see. So, the mind experiences by this vitality that pervades all experience. This is why you cannot exactly say what has a life force in it and what doesn’t. This is why you cannot exactly say which plants and trees are sentient and which aren’t. That’s why, in usual normal life, we treat the universe with respect.

When you take refuge with Bodhicitta, this is what you reify. Don’t go to your old traditional refuge, “Oh buddha, save me.” That’s not where we’re going. This is where you feel all life in the universe has gone beyond the beyond, which is its true nature and always has been, outside of the time-space continuum. You feel that you are that.

It’s not so much that you draw your teacher down or go up and are absorbed into your teacher. It’s that you shift into the recognition that you, your teachers, and all living beings you’ve encountered throughout the past, present, and future are all that. This is the meeting of true Bodhicitta and true refuge, and the heart opens in awareness of love for the dance of illusion and all the moats of experience interacting, interpenetrating, and intershifting, which are that.

That’s how you take refuge before each session. It’s not something you say or do. It’s not even exactly something you visualize, although you can use visualization and words to remind yourself to do it.

On all such occasions, make supplications to your teachers and do not be distracted even for an

instant.

During the day, be very diligent in conjuring apparitions.

This vital point is extremely important!

“During the day, be very diligent in conjuring apparitions.” This is the playing with your imagination.

By becoming familiar in this way,

even though illusory experiences will dawn as described,

it will be impossible to avoid developing the understanding that they are unreal.

Do follow the instructions; it works.

As for affirmations or negations and fixations that arise in your mind, by training to recognize

these as illusions,

obstructions will transform into their intrinsic freedom!

Not only is what you see, touch, smell, taste, and hear an illusion—what you feel and think is, too. For the duration of this specific, bounded retreat, maintain the sensation of awareness of that fact. This is a doing. Using mindfulness, return your attention again and again to the illusory nature of all phenomena, both inner and outer.

Moreover, from this ongoing experience, the qualities of meditative concentration — bliss,

clarity, and nonthought — will dawn.

They’re not real. Know they’re not real as they dawn. Enjoy the nyams! Bliss is cool. Clarity is much fun. Non-thought is kind of restful and will certainly normalize your blood pressure and do other nice things for your body. But that's all an illusion. Your body is an illusion. Everything I say is an illusion. This is part of dream yoga. That’s a thought.

By resting with these appearances, move into their translucence –

at that very moment of an appearance,

evenly move into their cracks of light, ambiguities, and perforations – move with the shimmering,

fluctuating, and pervasiveness of awareness.

What that means is that the nuances of appearances have in-between space. In between the moments, in between the dots. Have you ever had an experience, where everything is made up of tiny dots? It happens most easily at twilight. You might want to go outside at twilight. And when you see the dots, see if you can slide between them. Perforations refer to the dots, cracks of light are something you see from time to time on the edge of dreams.

You also might be having some hallucinations. Most of you are always having some hallucinations, but you just think they’re real. Go ahead and walk forth into your hallucinations. 

We are going to merge the dream and waking state. There is no waking state here in phenomena.

“Move with the shimmering, fluctuating, and pervasiveness of awareness” means don’t stay in your body—go out, wander the universe if you feel like it. This is part of the play.

By merging outer, inner, and in-between into one, invert the holdings of your body.

Turn upside down in your body where your head’s where your butt is. Go on, imagine you’re looking out from your butt. Now look out from there, up at the rest of your body. This is all talking about those occasional playfulnesses of going up into the corner of the ceiling and looking down, or from 360 degrees with 360 eyes all looking in. Or spherical. It’s doable. Takes practice.

In the ongoing experience that is never separate from great vastness without reference,

attraction or repulsion, affirmation or negation,

while laughing or losing control, whatever occurs –

these will dawn as ornaments of your mind.

Do not try to maintain your illusion of sanity through this retreat. Go ahead, freak out. Feel it. Be upset. Be happy. Be afraid. Have pleasure. Have pain. Pretzel yourself into an uncomfortable position. Use fantasy. Feel this. Feel that. Let it be as it is. Do not suppress. These are your crown of skulls in your Yidam practice or your crown of jewels, depending on which item you’re using for adornment.

Through unwavering meditative absorption,

the mind will remain clear and lucid,

your vision will see the translucency of appearances, you’ll have the clairvoyance of knowing

others’ minds,

and you’ll accomplish the immeasurable supernormal powers, such as the ability to travel

through space.

Lucid means able to think, feel, and perceive—not abandoning or rejecting those. You have the knowing beyond time and space. You’ll hear others’ thoughts. You’ll get siddhis, such as the ability to travel through space. Go on, dream yourself elsewhere. Wake up there. Dream yourself into the backyard. Wake up there. You can do it.

Allow yourself to be excited by the illusory occurrences of this retreat. Allow yourself to be terrified by the illusory occurrences of this retreat. Don’t grab onto the liking or the disliking. Let it be. Don’t suppress.

By the virtue that arises from this explanation

of how to experience all phenomena as illusory by nature,

may the activity of the illusion-like victors on behalf of all beings without exception

remain beyond limit!

I, the yogin of illusion, Stainless Radiance (Drimé Özer), arranged this instruction on the

coalescence of luminosity and illusion, the essential meaning of illusion, extremely vast and

profound in meaning, on the mountain slope that is like an illusion, White Skull Snow Mountain

(Gangri Tökar).

Fortunate individuals of future generations,

please constantly and diligently apply themselves to this way of the dharma.

Freed from the dimness of the illusion of mis-knowing,

appearances of percepts will transform into the spontaneous illusion of pristine wisdom.

This concludes the text called,

“A Wish-Fulfilling Gem: Guidance on the Meaning of Being at

Ease with Illusion, A Dzogchen Teaching,

” that was arranged by the child of the victors, Drimé

Özer.

Virtue! Virtue! Virtue!!

Appearances of perception will transform into the spontaneous illusion of pristine wisdom. They never were anything other than that. The only problem was you thought they were real, and so got all bent out of shape, running hither and yon to get them perfect. You keep trying to make a hallucination perfect, and you get upset when it won’t do that.

This concludes the text called "A Wish-Fulfilling Gem: Guidance on the Meaning of Being at Ease with Illusion." 

Summary

Start with refuge, bodhichitta and guru yoga. Make offerings to your guru as the embodiment of all buddhas. Praise and make confessions of your illusions and make the aspiration out loud for  recognizing illusions.

Imagine being fully absorbed in the illusory nature of all that appears and exists, without separating yourself from your perceptions. That means remaining inseparable from that very reality—the ongoing experience that has no ordinary conceptual fixations, not even for an instant.

That means you can’t describe it. Outward appearances, including mountains, houses, the earth, water, fire, wind, space, and so forth; and inward appearances, including all that arises as thoughts and feelings, the manifold variations and varieties of awarenesses that affirm and negate all of it—moving, sleeping, seeing, walking, talking, and so forth—without distraction.

Become familiar with the nature of all these experiences, as if they are like a dream or an illusion. That’s the main body of the practice.

Finally, when you lay down to sleep, as the light goes out, your consciousness is that light. When it’s all the way out, your consciousness is everything out there. It’s almost like you can look back on your sleeping body from a thousand points across the space-time continuum. From all around. And then it comes back in, and you look out through your body. Then it goes back out, and you look in on your body from out there—not just from one point, but from all the “out theres.” Use your imagination to make this real for you—until you actually notice it.