Mahamudra: Meditation on Mind’s Conventional Nature

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Sutra and Tantra Mahamudra

There are various traditions of mahamudra: there’s the sutra tradition and the tantra tradition. The sutra traditions involve the various methods for meditating on voidness, which is the absence of all fantasized, impossible ways of existing. The tantra tradition is the meditations on the clear light. It says in the text, “The former” referring to the ways of meditating on mahamudra according to sutra:

The former refers to the ways of meditating on voidness as directly indicated in the expanded, intermediate and brief (Prajnaparamita Sutras). The supremely realized Arya Nagarjuna has said, “Except for this, there is no other pathway of mind leading to liberation.” Here I shall give relevant instruction on mahamudra in accord with these intentions of his and discuss the methods that lead you to know the mind, face to face, in keeping with the exposition of the lineage masters.
From the point of view of individually ascribed names, there are numerous traditions, such as those of the simultaneously arising as merged, the amulet box, possessing five, the six spheres of equal taste, the four syllables, the pacifier, the object to be cut off, dzogchen, the discursive madhyamaka view, and so on. Nevertheless, when scrutinized by a yogi, learned in scripture and logic and experienced (in meditation), their definitive meanings are all seen to come to the same intended point.
And so for this (sutra tradition of mahamudra), out of the two methods, namely seeking a meditative state on top of having gained a correct view (of voidness) and seeking a correct view on top of a meditative state, (I shall explain) here in accordance with the latter method.

Again the text refers to the methods of sutra and tantra. The sutra method is meditating on voidness, the absence of findable existence, whereas in the tantric method, the meditation is on the clear light. In either case, it all comes to the same point. There are various methods for this in the different traditions of the Nyingma, Kagyu, Sakya and Gelug. They have different terminology and slightly different methods, but they all aim at the same point.

In terms of the sutra method, the text says, there is either first gaining a correct view of reality and then meditating on the nature of the mind in terms of that, or first meditating on the mind and then seeking a correct view of reality in terms of that. What is discussed here refers to this latter technique, some of the methods for which have been discussed earlier.

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