Eva Natanya, 03 Apr 2020
Eva (Yangchen) begins with a guided meditation on settling the body, speech, and mind, and setting our deepest intention. She then begins an overview of the preliminary practices (ngondro) of the Dudjom Tersar tradition, emphasizing that the preliminaries are never finished until we reach enlightenment. She adds that these practices actually nourish us along the way, and never get old or dry as long as we continue to deepen our understanding.
Eva then explains the origins of the Dudjom Tersar tradition and the way in which the ngondro practices have been passed down from the time of Dudjom Lingpa to the current generation. She then walks us through her process of researching the various explications of the Dudjom Tersar ngondro and explains that she has discovered a commentary on the preliminary practices from an early terma that Dudjom Lingpa himself revealed.
Eva then walks us through the various “uncommon” preliminaries of Refuge, Bodhicitta, Vajrasattva, Mandala Offering, Chod, Guru Yoga, and Phowa. She explains that Refuge is the foundation to all Buddhist practice, Bodhicitta the gateway to the Mahayana, and that Vajrasattva purifies our two obscurations (afflictive and cognitive), while Mandala Offering helps us achieve the two accumulations of wisdom and merit. She describes merit as the “fuel” of “goodness” that propels us along the path. After a few comments on Chod, saying that while it is a profound practice of offering the body, and is said to remove all obstacles and difficult circumstances, we will not go too deeply into it in this retreat because the full practice of Chod technically should come after the complete vipashyana practice, according to the framework in Dudjom Lingpa’s revelations. She then turns to Guru Yoga, described as that which makes our being filled with blessings. Finally, she turns to Phowa, which “trains one in the path to liberation.” It is also sometimes referred to as “Buddhahood without meditation.”
She then begins her teaching on Refuge, starting with an explanation of the three types of faith (admiring faith, aspiring faith, and undivided/unbreakable faith) and the three types of Refuge (Fear of lower realms, or Lower Capacity, fear of suffering of all of samsara, or Middling Capacity, and Mahayana Refuge, which is of the Highest Capacity and entails taking refuge for the sake of freeing all beings from samsara and bringing them to enlightenment). Finally, she speaks of the importance of having a true refuge that we can rely on, especially in times of adversity. She comments that something about this profound practice gives inherent meaning to our life, regardless of what might happen externally.
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