In this exclusive video teaching, acclaimed teacher H.E. Kalu Rinpoche relates his own personal journey with the Niguma dream yoga practice. He also touches on the extraordinary importance of solitude for a serious Buddhist practitioner. This HD video teaching is an excerpt from lesson 1 of Rinpoche’s bestselling Wisdom Academy online course Niguma’s Dream Yoga.
TRANSCRIPT
Tashi Delek and welcome to Wisdom Academy. In this very moment, I want to share some few points with you. And first of all, I would like to say thank you for being here and being committed to Buddha Dharma’s teaching. First of all, I would like to share some of my own personal journey, the very reason why I became a Buddhist practitioner and dedicated my whole life to it. Of course, when I was young, I was recognized as a Rinpoche, recognized as a reincarnation, but don’t have so much about ideas about the Dharma. So therefore, when I entered the Three Retreat, I really had a chance and the fortunate and the connection to connect with the Niguma’s teaching.
And Niguma’s teaching, what I love the most out of all the beautiful method and techniques and guidance that is provided by Enlightened Dagini, is that she mentioned if you have a pure mind, wherever you look, wherever you are, everything is pure. If your mind is distracted and impure, then whatever you do, everything is impure. For me, that was the most beautiful teaching I ever heard. There’s a sense of loving, caring, beyond time, the wisdom, and I fell in love with it.
And of course, I read a few volumes of all the Shangpa traditions, teachings, practice in the three-year Retreat. And most importantly, during that Three Retreat, I did the yoga, heat generating practice, dream yoga, illusionary body and mind, and the clear light as well. And all these, I had a glimpse of experience here and there, and I find Niguma’s teaching very beautiful and very meaningful. And not just that, Niguma’s teaching is revered by all the different Buddhist traditions throughout Tibet, whether you are coming from the Nyingma background, Saja background, Kajur background, Gelug background, Chonang background, all the different traditions. They have practiced Niguma’s teachings, empowerment, transmissions for many, many years, over 1,100 years up to date. So therefore, it has an important history, and for me, it has a great impact in my personal journey as well, and it brought me a great happiness and joy and liberation in this life.
And by sharing with you, I hope that it can do the same to you, but then it comes down to your commitment and your dedication, and myself explaining it to you in the right order, and you also engaging in the right order, and that is the most important for each other, to have more conclusive results. Otherwise, it becomes just an experience, just an idea and experience, so that will be not good enough, isn’t it? And especially, I like this idea, this platform of the Wisdom Academy, that I can record, share, interact with the practitioners, so there’s an authentic way of communicating, so it’s not just posting things on the internet, it is, there’s a personal connection between you and me, and there’s a questions and doubt platform to be cleared among each other, and then also, so many different teachers, they share the experience as well, not just myself.
And I find this platform very helpful and useful for all our Buddhist practitioners, because many of us, we are engaged with so many different responsibilities, so making it easy, incompatible, into your life, and I don’t think it will become more easier than this, so therefore, I’m sharing all my personal experience.
Since we talk about Niguma practice, there’s an illusionary body and mind, heat generating practice, clear light practice, dream yoga practice, so these are the main foundation teachings of the Niguma. Of course, there’s the rest of the teachings of the Niguma as well, such as the Five Jewels of Niguma, which are very high, profound teaching, and we will come down to that eventually, step by step, but in the beginning, we have to start with heat generating practice, illusionary body and mind, and the dream yoga, because without these as a foundation, without having capacity or knowledge or wisdom and the quality to have a subtleness of the mind, and then going into the clear light practice, going into the nature of the mind practice, can be useless, because based on the assumptions only, may not be helpful, so laying out the foundation in our path is very important.
So our foundation in this very spiritual journey is illusionary body and mind, so the illusionary body and mind is basically to liberate from our ordinary fixation, and then the dream yoga is more about utilizing the time on our side and practicing throughout the day and practicing throughout the night, and then by practicing the heat generating Tummo and the yoga, as you can see it on the first season of the academy, and then also in this particular second season of the wisdom academy, there will be Tummo guidelines and the method and way of practicing, and that is important mainly because we need to bring the foundation in our physical level, because without untying the channels in our body, to experience fully in the mental state is almost close to impossible.
So therefore untying the channels and cleansing the chakras and purifying our air, developing that awareness in our mind, in the physical and the mental combined inseparably, and then the illusionary body, the dream yoga is a possibility, so you have to understand that the heat generating practice is not so much to do with the heat itself, it’s more to do with bringing the air into a full awakened awareness, that’s the whole essence of the heat generating practice, it’s not so much to do with keeping the air, it’s not so much to do with making your whole body in the hot temperature, even though that I can, and some of you those who have committed, of course you can.
There’s no miracle about it, there’s no mystical about it, if you put an effort you can get the result, it’s very simple. There’s no such thing as by practicing genuinely and not having a result, so if you practice all of this, even you deny that you don’t have experience, other sentient beings, great masters, spirits, human being, all of them can sense your qualities and the result, but you should not push too hard to get a quick result.
Just keep the momentum going, and that is very important. When you are brought up in the monastery, of course in the monastery we have to follow a discipline, rules, waking up in the morning, sleeping early, and memorizing the text, so the whole spiritual dharmic journey becomes a little bit like being in a boarding school rather than the dharmic journey, only in the time of three years retreat I had this sense of dharmic connection, and the reason why the solitude was so important is that when your mind has nowhere to turn, it will only turn inwardly, and that’s why the solitude retreat is important, whether you’re coming from the western background or eastern background, it doesn’t matter of your upbringing, so the solitude is very important.