Lamp of Mahamudra:
The Immaculate Lamp
that Perfectly and
Fully Illuminates the
Meaning of Mahamudra,
the Essence of
All Phenomena

Taking up meditation for the first time, practitioners nearly always want to know how it's done and what's supposed to happen. There are so many ways to answer that question that immediately things get confused. Zen meditation, Tibetan meditation, Taoist meditation and many more -- what happened to the thing that Gotama Buddha talked about; his discovery of the simple system for all people, the key to the lock? Of all the different systems for learning this alternate way of perceiving the world, the Path of Mahamudra should be the simplest and best, for any style of Buddhism or for anyone else. Hardly anyone explains it simply.

This solution to the yogic puzzle was supposed to be something anyone could do. No matter what your level of intelligence or education; no matter what you did for a living or how much time you had to devote to the practice; and no matter what your age or level of health, the Path of Mahamudra was built to work. Everything else that constitutes today's practice -- and the religion which grew up around it like an obscuring jungle -- built upon that first simple method and complicated it. Today we're told many strange things about meditation -- that we can't possibly do it well if we're living as ordinary people live, that nothing unusual should be expected if we do practice, and even that the ultimate understanding is that the whole thing is pointless anyway. Hey! Enlightenment was supposed to be something cool!

One book I have that cuts through all the crap to the essence of the work is The Lamp of Mahamudra by Tsele Natsok Rangdrol, who says that today's world is filled with so-called meditators full of learning, words and pride; trapped either in a rigid asceticism or the pursuit of purely material things. Talking to these people about meditation, he says, is like trying to explain water to people who know nothing but desert. The people who do understand are the ones who come to that understanding through flawless direct experience. They don't need books.

Follow up:

Heart Lamp:
The Heart of the
Matter and Lamp
of Mahamudra

Fortunately Rangdrol wrote one anyway, in response to a friend's request for some simple personal instruction, and his explanation of the path meditation and its effects is one of the clearest I've ever found. If you have no understanding to begin with, not much will make sense beyond the first few pages. Reading the book as an intellectual exercise accomplishes nothing, because the goal has never been an intellectual understanding of anything. That's why you don't have to be smart. All you need to do is read to the first step and take it. That first step often takes a few years, but when you get to it finally, the next step happens. Then you can read further along in the book and what Rangdrol says will make sense. This little book might take a lifetime or more to read and understand through direct experience, but that's the only way to really know what it means. Reading the book in a non-intellectual way triggers something in people who are ready for the real thing. Sometimes all it takes is a word and you're on the path again -- many have been on it for lifetimes already and are just looking for the next starting point without knowing why.

Rangdrol says so many things which seem directed to practitioners in today's world that it continually surprises me that he wrote this book in the 17th Century. I find it hard to think of him as living in old Tibet -- the mental impression I get is somebody in an apartment in Chicago. I've looked for a copy of his book to read online but haven't found one as yet. The pages I'm putting here include the first actual step without the groundwork explanations that preceded it, and his discourse on the disreputable state of modern practice.

To read the pages click on the images and zoom in.