Spherical Harmonics

– a yoga poem –

for a mind that does not cling to
any thought or appearance
its arising and release
occur simultaneously

…written in a moment of insight whilst reading Dakpo Tashi Namgyal’s truly brilliant and insightful book Mahamudra: The Moonlight — Quintessence of Mind and Meditation.

It is said that mahamudra meditation is simultaneously the most profound of meditative disciplines and the most accessible for modern practitioners. Traditionally passed orally from teacher to disciple, mahamudra instructions point the meditator to the innate perfection of every experience.

When it first appeared in 1986, Dakpo Tashi Namgyal’s book was the first presentation in English of a major Tibetan Buddhist work on meditation. This classic guide was composed in the 16th century by an eminent lama of the Kagyu school and is so comprehensive and practical that it is still widely used today as a manual.

Divided into two major sections, it presents first the common approach and then the mahamudra approach to tranquility (shamatha) and insight (vipashyana) meditation. Section two has answered almost every question I have had about mahamudra meditation, questions I have pondered for years.

I highly recommend the techniques described in this book as the most direct route to seeing the world in all its transcendent beauty and perfection, and (perhaps one day) discovering freedom of being that is your fundamental nature.