The Heroic Path to Mahākaruṇā: Great Responsiveness Meditation
Tags: Spirituality, Meditation, Science, Enlightenment, Mind

Tranquillity’s Secret — Table Of Contents

This book is about Meditation using Inner Spontaneous Sound to follow the Heroic Path to Great Responsiveness and Complete Enlightenment

This document is a list of all of the sections, subsections, and dialogs from Tranquillity’s Secret that have been published on Medium to date.

The Reverberation of Sound

Proem

An untrained mind is incapable of knowing itself, how then can it truly know anything at all?

The point of the introductory dialogs that follow is not to tell you how things are, but to unsay the things that you’ve already heard and have taken to heart.

Language is intrinsically deficient in its ability to encompass reality — in a descriptive sense — beyond the appearances we experience, yet it is our only practical tool at hand for conveying knowledge across “time and space.”

Agency implies an agent that is doing something. If there is no agent, there can be no agency.

We don’t tend to see our thoughts as invited; instead we see them as originated by us, but that is impossible.

I think we all agree that intuition is something that happens, without having to agree to how it happens. I think it best, at this point to talk a bit about intuition.

There is something definitely wrong with our understanding of what our conscious experience is.

What is a meditative experience? Well, first, what is an experience?

Some types of knowledge, and sources of it, effectively undermine the possibility of achieving enlightenment. Unfortunately, these types and sources of knowledge are those we are most familiar with today because they are the most used pedagogically.

It is very difficult to overcome the dualistic structure imposed upon our experiences, and it is even harder to overcome the dualistic structure of language and thought. Even these words, which may initially sound so perceptive, still can’t break that dualistic structure.

Even though we might be able to come to an understanding of our experiences, that understanding will always separate us from the truth because an understanding creates a something-that-is-understood.

Somewhere along the way, the understanding that something is “beyond concepts” got very confused.

👉 Seven Metanoic Guides (Sequential Series)

I want to present seven guides that have helped me to keep from going astray on my journey along this path.

My first guide is that there is a difference between reality and existence.

Because what is real must be simple, it must be nondual.

We must never forget that a greater Self is a greater error: there is just naturing — and the essence of this selfless naturing, is selfless knowing.

It is the knowing of all appearances and the naturing of all appearances, for knowing and naturing are not something other than the appearances.

The Now is not a time, nor is it Time itself. It is Presencing — the presence that is this naturing that arises as all that appears.

👉 This Visceral Feeling of Self (Sequential Series)

Wisdom traditions say that our belief in our independent selfhood is ignorance. True enough. But they are focused on the belief, and skip over the visceral feeling.

The purpose of this essay is to talk about the Buddhist doctrine of Anattā, although not from a Buddhist perspective.

We viscerally feel something that is truly us, something that endures throughout our life, even if we cannot name it or place where it is amongst all the parts and pieces that make us up.

The ultimate essence of all of our experience is that all of it is empty of any intrinsic self-nature.

The trouble with the insight of the Buddha, as usually taught, is that it is so contradictory to what we viscerally feel to be the case.

I want to explain how both understandings of Anattā come together naturally.

If there is no self anywhere, to what could qualities be attributed, and relations attached?

👉 No Inherent Self (Sequential Series)

This dialog is about one of the most disconcerting, and possibly debilitating, meditative experiences that occurs while meditating.

What is this self that we feel we are, and how is it that we feel that we endure as a single individual throughout our lives (and perhaps beyond)?

This dialog is about one of the most disconcerting, and possibly debilitating, meditative experiences that occurs while meditating.

In fact, it is a pretty silly idea that there can be anything that is not in motion.

👉 Time & Eternity (Sequential Series)

Is Time apart from us, or is it a part of us? What if we have it wrong?

What is the one irrefutable fact about all of our experiences that stands true no matter what appears, how we understand it, or how shallow or profound our realization about what is happening may be? What is the one universal and necessarily true thing we can say about it?

A poem.

We are inculcated to the idea that time is something outside of ourselves, yet we are inseparable from time.

Eternity is the divine aspect of ourselves — what does that mean?

I want to suggest an image for Eternity to overcome the apparent paradox in the question “What is Eternity.”

How does one describe the indescribable? What sweet flowing words can I use to invoke the proper image in your mind’s heart?

The Now is a vignette, not a “moment” of time. It arrives as a whole, not in discrete steps — moments of passing clock time are the illusion.

👉 Inner Spontaneous Sound (Sequential Series)

Tinnitus is the name of a symptom, not a specific disease. The word means that sounds are experienced, but have no identifiable source. By reducing mental chatter, momentary voids are left during which we can become aware of various inner spontaneous sounds that have no source, starting with the silence of those voids.

We are conflating physical phenomena with mental experiences when we use the same term for both, as we commonly do with “sound.”

We are completely confused about what the brain is actually doing because we conflate it with the mind.

We normally create causal chains of events as an explanation for how sound is experienced. But these explanations ignore the natural variability that is always a character of all phenomena, and by ignoring that variability, such explanations fail to truly explain anything.

If “silence” refers only to the absence of sound, then we shouldn’t be able to hear it. “Silence” should just be the name we give to the apperception that arises when we suddenly realize that we’re not hearing anything at all.

What is the character of inner spontaneous sounds? How can you tell them apart from “normal” sounds?

The evidence obtained through neuroscientific studies of the brain is of activity — not of an actor.

Inner spontaneous sound is evidence that our current understanding of reality is wrong in relation specifically to the source and nature of consciousness.

👉 Meditation And Its Fruit (Sequential Series)

It’s that moment of “realization” that your mind “is elsewhere” that is mindfulness. Notice how your mind just drifted off into doing something else. That noticing is mindfulness. Concentrating on the present moment is just concentration.

The thinking appears to be that the explanatory spiritual doctrines that usually accompany traditional meditation practices are of no importance, and thus can be jettisoned in favor of defining a technique for meditators without all the woo-woo mumbo-jumbo.

Scientists focus solely on the content of experience — which they rigorously control, probe and categorize — without any regard to questions related to what experience is, or how we are conscious of it. Theirs is a diagnostic tool in an allopathic culture focused on symptoms, not causes.

Originally “science” meant knowledge, and specifically the possession of knowledge; but that word was co-opted as short-hand for “the scientific method” and its practice.

Modern secular meditation focuses on techniques taken from ancient spiritual traditions, while jettisoning their deep wisdom born of long experience working with practicing meditators over centuries.

“It’s not about you” is a frequently heard refrain in spiritual conversations, and it is often wielded by individuals who know the words, but not the underlying intent of that statement.

Every living being seeks comfort — the absence of suffering — not ‘happiness’. Happiness is not what you get out of life, it’s what you put into it.

When we accept the present just as it is, we can do so because of the tranquillity we have accomplished through our meditative practice.

We immediately know when we are comfortable because comfort is a state of being in which we can find ourselves — we don’t have to search for it, and certainly do not have to look outside of ourselves to find it.

👉 Knowledge Again (Sequential Series)

Constructive science shifts the scale of studied action beyond our ability to experience directly, to understand, or to use wisely what we know. There is another way to do it.

Captivity within this process of naturing is a restraint that cannot be broken.

Does becoming an “enlightened being” actually make a difference?

👉 Why Dare Say These Things? (Sequential Series)

The intent of this book is to share means to the enlightened manifestation of great compassion in your life, as a way to avoid Global Ecocide.

The Ideological Pathology Of Trying To “Science The Shit Out Of” Our Environmental Problems

Placing my awareness on these inner spontaneous sounds comforted me because I no longer felt the absence of love, I resonated with it.

Dismissing experiences out-of-hand because they are not comprehended within a particular understanding is not wise.

👉 Illustrations of the Nonrational (Sequential Series)

Over time, unexplainable experiences of being guided and protected on my path occurred, so often that I could not ignore them.

The event that led me to my meditative path.

An example of being guided — but this time, the guide was physically present, at least for a while…

And it came in a dream.

How can I explain this, other than to say: the impossible happened that day.

I accept the nonrational nature of these dreams as they are — and my viscerally knowing them.

By letting these feelings of belonging, being loved, and being guided, permeate my being, so many possibilities are opening up in my life.

How a strange visitor showed me the way, and a voice crying out from nowhere saved my life.

I sat quietly in the dark, completely normal, contemplating her statement to me — and what it could mean.

When nonrational events accompany death and the suffering that death brings.

If you put them all together in a single day, you really have to work hard to rationalize the whole of it away.

👉 Great Responsiveness (Sequential Series)

The Sound Basis of Mahākarunā (Great Responsiveness) — An answer to late capitalism and the climate crisis of global ecocide.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Traditions Speak

The purpose of this book is to share the use of a very important, relatively unknown, and often poorly understood support — and associated meditation techniques — leading to spiritual attainments.

Illustrates the process by which knowledge is lost or degenerates over time.

Inner spontaneous sound is the sole meditation support that can take one directly to a state of enlightenment without the aid of doctrine or teachings.

Inner Spontaneous Sound is not heard in the common sense of hearing, but arises directly within the mind, as this sound is awakened within mind by the accomplishment of the practices employing it.

Inner spontaneous sound is not a contingent or compounded evanescent phenomenon like that of a waterfall, or waves on a beach. This is why all Buddhas reach enlightenment by using this one support.

Containing the most secret instructions for the means by which all buddhas and bodhisattvas reach full enlightenment.

1. Introduction to the Surangama Sutra

2. Preface By Dwight Goddard To The Buddhist Bible

3. The Circumstances Of The Teaching

4.1 Chapter One — False Mind versus True Mind

4.2 Questions of King Prasenajit

4.3 Questions by Ananda

4.5 Questions That Arise in View of the Sole Reality of Essential Mind

4.6 Relations of Perceptions to the Four Great Elements

4.7 Questions by Purna Answered

4.8 Instructions To Ananda

5.1 Chapter Two — Questions By Ananda As To How To Attain Enlightenment

5.2 The Defiling Presence Of All Conceptions

5.3 Spiritual Experiences Of Highest Bodhisattvas

5.4 The Method Of Avalokitasvara Bodhisattva

5.5 Manjushri’s Summation

5.6 Importance of Keeping the Precepts

5.7 The Great Dharani

5.8 Final Words

Chapter Four — Giving Titles

Why one of the most important sutras in Buddhism was slandered by the spread of false statements.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Practices

A poem

Showing how Plotinus, Jigme Lingpa, Xu Yun, Avalokitasvara & the Buddha described the same necessary meditation moves to reach enlightenment.

When you attempt to suppress emotions, thoughts, or perceptions, you are chaining yourself to them.

Metacognition is the faculty that allows us to clearly see when our thoughts, motivations, desires, ideas, and actions, are incoherent.

A poem

A poem

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Insights

Discursive thinking does not exist in the more advanced meditative states, so one might ask how insights can arise.

A poem

A mirror is not cognizant of what is appearing in it. The opposite of cognizant would be ignorant, or oblivious, or “unaffected by” so this allegory metaphor depicts the opposite of what it is meant to.

Explaining how a mirror is like awareness.

If it is not ‘awareness of’ something, i.e., an observer or a watcher of something, then what is it?

A poem

A poem

A poem

Everything is in motion, even our ‘memories’ of events that we believe are true records of what was.

A poem

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Discussions

We do not overcome the error of believing in a separate self by positing a greater self.

To accept “spooky action at a distance” is to live in an interpretive fantasy that is broken. Einstein was right when his mind revolted at the idea.

Separation is an illusion, but our shared story about how things are, is built upon that illusion. To deny it is to be an apostate.

The liminal event horizon between Reality and Existence results from the limit of intelligibility.

Has our malevolence towards one another grown to become so systemic, and pathologic, that it is now just a given in our lives?

Every artist knows the truth that they are only the conduit for the art they make.

If you are hoping for scientific evidence that enlightenment is possible you will be frustrated.

Plato said reality is necessarily a nondual whole and that the appearances are proof that this is so. No one understood him.

Perfect science would begin with no assumptions; but that isn’t what we have.

Everything is uncaused; yet nothing exists without reason.

Mind-training frees us from mental errors that lead us to suffer, live inauthentically, and misconstrue what is real with what is not.

Why Scientific Knowledge Is Always Contingent, No Matter How Much Proof Is Gathered.

People are able to listen, they just are unwilling to do so.

In a materialist view of reality, there is no room for the variability that is plainly evident to be spontaneous, so it is explained away as lawful behavior that is too complex to measure.

ཨེ་མ་ཧོ། ཕན་ནོ་ཕན་ནོ་སྭཱཧཱ།

Back Matter

How hard-won knowledge can be lost over time

A parable

A poem

A meditation

A prediction made by Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro that was notable for its inclusion of a specific practice — using inner spontaneous sound.

Definitions of important words used in this book.