Awakening the Sacred Body

An Excerpt from Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s New Book

According to the wisdom tradition of Bon, by nature the mind is open and clear. This is who we are, fundamentally. Openness is the source of our being, and in openness we are connected to all of life. What obscures us from recognizing this source is similar to the way clouds obscure the sun. The sun is always shining, but from our vantage point – namely, our identification with our problems – we don’t recognize the radiance. We are simply more familiar with identifying and dwelling on problems, and we’re used to solving them with our conceptual mind. But it is through nonconceptual awareness that we are able to directly experience the mind’s openness. The purpose of this book is to support you in becoming more familiar with the power of nonconceptual awareness, so that you can recognize the source within you and the positive qualities that flow from it.
It is very important from time to time for each of us, as individuals, to reflect upon and take stock of where we stand in terms of our personal development, our commitments to our relationships and to our society, and our spiritual aspirations. When we are willing to look directly and honestly at where we actually find ourselves in life, the very limitations that we identify become the doorways to greater potential.

In society today, we elevate the status of our conceptual mind and seek change through our intellect. But how we experience the mind itself is a product of wind, or lung. (The “u” is pronounced like the “oo” in the word look.) In other Eastern cultures, lung is referred to as prana, qi, or chi’i. The mind’s capacity for either subtlety and clarity or confusion and turbulence is all dependent upon lung. In the wisdom traditions of India and Tibet there is a vast knowledge about lung that has not fully taken root in the West. How can we have access to this wind? It is not through the conceptual mind, but through our direct, nonconceptual awareness. We access the wind by connecting directly with our body, our speech, and our mind – known as the three doors in both Bon and Buddhism. I am particularly interested in how our relation to the internal winds can improve health of mind and body and bring change in one’s own life and in society, ultimately liberating the suffering of cyclic existence, or samsara, altogether. Emptying samsara may be the larger goal, but emptying your anger toward your partner has immediate relevance. It is important that we work with our conditions as we experience them now. And in this work, wind plays a very important role in transforming suffering. I am confident that by deepening your understanding of wind, you will greatly enhance your ability to make important changes in your life.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s new book Awakening the Sacred Body with accompanying DVD (edited by Marcy Vaughn; Hay House, January 2011) is now available for early purchase online at Ligmincha Institute’s Bookstore & Tibet Shop >