Spectrum of Ecstasy - 17 Ch.12 Method

Spectrum of Ecstasy — Ch.12 Method

The methodological-synthesis chapter (22 pp, book pp. 235–256) — installs the four-step operational sequence for embracing-emotions-as-path and names the Dzogchen/Tantric lineage-methods (trek-chöd / zap-lam) whose essentialisation the method is.

Opening Epigraph

“There is no sudden breakthrough that remains forever — there are only sudden glimpses. But these glimpses encourage us to see more. And so, gradually, we develop the ability to integrate these experiences of unconditioned being into our lives.”

The glimpses register names the realistic practitioner-experience: not the dramatic-awakening-to-permanent-illumination, but sporadic-recognition-moments that gradually become integrated.

Key Points

• Four-step method: the chapter accumulates the steps progressively, restating each time:

  1. Familiarise yourself with the view — repeated re-reading; active looking for correspondences in everyday life; “seeing it reflected in yourself”; “it has to stop being external information and start to become knowledge — knowledge that you discover in yourself.”
  2. Internalise the view through experience — test against your own life; ask: “Does this pattern of emotional styles correspond with my experience? Can I understand my own emotions presented in this particular way? Am I prepared to discover that my emotions function in this way?” If all yes, proceed. If all no, proceed in some other way (footnote 1 explicitly allows other methodologies).
  3. Prepare to ‘catch yourself out’ in the act of conforming to pre-set emotional patterns. “As soon as you recognise a negative emotion arising, you need to look at it. You need to examine its qualities.”
  4. Stare into the face of the arising emotion — “In order to do this it is necessary to relinquish intellectual analysis… focus on the physical sensation of the emotion as the subject/object of meditation. Your whole field of attention needs to be immersed in the wordless sensation of the emotion as it manifests in the body.”

• Five-fold stare-into-and-experience (the method’s element-specific outputs):

  Recognition	Experience (Wisdom)
  Anger	Wisdom of clarity (mirror-wisdom)
  Perceptual rigidity / obduracy	Wisdom of equanimity and equality
  Obsession / frenzied self-seduced-hunger	Wisdom of discriminating awareness / compassion
  Tightening with suspicion / jealousy / paranoia	Wisdom of self-accomplishing action
  Retracting from sense fields / digging into depression	Wisdom of brilliant pervasive intelligence in all-encompassing space

• The dynamic reversal: “At first, thoughts seem to be thrown up by the centrifugal force of the sensation; but, if these thoughts are allowed to fly past and disappear into space you will discover that it is the cyclic nature of thoughts rather than the sensation itself that is the cause of your ‘dis-ease’. When you can simply be with the sensation of your emotion and experience it fully at the non-conceptual level, you will notice a dynamic reversal taking place. The spinning energy that seemed to be generating rivulets of words and ideas has a vast still centre; like the eye of a hurricane. From that experience of stillness it is possible to perceive that the obsessive spinning is not caused by the emotional sensation, but that it is in fact the cause of it. When you realise the empty nature of the sensation of emotional pain, the pain dissolves into an ecstatic sensation of presence and awareness.”

• No bad meditation session: “We are bound both to fail and to succeed many times; rather like the salmon that have to leap up waterfalls to reach their spawning grounds.” Path-is-the-goal: “when one day you come to realise that the path is the goal, the concepts of failure and success will no longer have any meaning.”

• Motivation is necessary: “Without the firm decision to embrace emotions as the path, even those who have vast meditative experience will not succeed.”

Trek-chöd — The Dzogchen Non-Symbolic Method

Ch.12 names the Dzogchen lineage-term for the essentialised-method:

“This is an essentialised presentation of the Dzogchen method called trek-chöd.² In the practice of trek-chöd emotions are deliberately generated in order to stare into them.”

Footnote 2: “Trek-chöd means cutting or blasting through. It can also be translated as ‘exploding the confines of conventional reality.‘”

Structural role: trek-chöd is the non-symbolic Dzogchen method; its Tantric symbolic-correlate is zap-lam. See Trek-chöd.

Zap-lam — The Tantric Symbolic-Correlate

“Trek-chöd is the non-symbolic correlate of the Tantric method called zap-lam.³ There have been numerous bizarre theories published on this theme ranging from the idea that it constitutes a test of ultimate lack of interest in sexual arousal to the idea that it is some sort of degenerate practice that has taken the yab-yum (father-mother) symbolism ‘too literally’.”

Footnote 3: “Zap-lam means ‘the profound path of realising the co-emergence of emptiness and ecstasy’. This includes the much misunderstood and much wondered-about practice of ‘sexual Tantra’.”

Zap-lam requires ro-chig: “In order to engage in the real practice of zap-lam it is vital to be able to maintain the mystic commitment to sustain ro-chig (the one taste of emptiness and ecstasy). The essence of this, and related practices, is to generate sensation; and, then to take that sensation as the subject/object of meditation. This sensation is then realised as the liberated energy of the self-luminous primordial state.”

See Zap-lam and ro-chig.

Celibate vs Non-Celibate Lineages — The Vehicle-Distinction

Ch.12 installs the structural-distinction at the method-register:

• Sutric / celibate / monastic path — based on Sutras of the Greater Vehicle (Theg-chen / Mahāyāna). External renunciation as means of inner transformation. “The advantage of the choiceless life-style with its many externally-applied rules and regulations is that the practitioner (nun or monk) gains a simplicity of living that enables her or him to avoid the otherwise almost unavoidable complications of the life of choices.”
• Tantric / ngak’phang (non-celibate) path — based on Tantras of the Thunderbolt Vehicle (Dorje Thegpa / Vajrayāna). Internal renunciation transforming life-circumstances into opportunities for realisation on the path. “The advantage of external choice is that the practitioner opens herself or himself up to the richness of life in all its multifarious convolutions, reversals and intrigues.”

Neither is easy: “The Sutric path offers simplicity at the expense of richness of experiential possibilities. The Tantric path offers the wealth of life’s experiences, but with it comes the wealth of complications that can sometimes be rather overwhelming. Neither path is an easy one to take, but then living a ‘lay’ existence is not easy either.”

On Deliberately Arousing Emotions (Warning)

“If anger is deliberately aroused, and its empty nature is not realised — further unhelpful perceptual patterning is all that is accomplished. Every time life triggers you, and your potential for manifesting a powerful negative emotion is released, you increase the distorted power of that potentiality.”

Skill-development in wrong direction: “If you repeat an action many times you become ‘skilled’ in that action… In the skill of unlearning unenlightenment it’s better to avoid picking up unskilful habits.”

Pragmatic sufficiency: “We usually find ourselves with many emotions arising on a day-to-day basis whatever we do. So it is unnecessary to arouse any emotion deliberately in addition to the ones we experience every day. In everyday life there is enough to contend with as it is.”

On the Element-Framework Not Being Pigeonholing

“The personal pictures we have painted of the elements provide quite a narrow range. It is apparent that there is a far wider spectrum of personality types in the world than can be covered by the five elemental patterns alone. But it should be understood that the elements interrelate to create a vast and highly sophisticated range of patterns.”

• Element permeation: “just as space permeates every element, so the other elements permeate each other. Each element also contains the other elements within it. There are water, fire, air and space qualities of earth. There are earth, fire, air and space qualities of water, and so on.”
• No fixed-modes: “Nor do we always exist continuously in one specific mode — we fluctuate constantly.”
• Not for others: “it is expressly not the legitimate activity of any spiritual practitioner to indulge in pigeonholing others as a pseudo-spiritual pastime.” The element-diagnostic is for self-observation, not labelling-of-others.

Treating Pleasurable Experiences the Same Way

“If you are successful in staring into the face of your emotions and you have become enthusiastic about the possibilities of this practice, then it is also possible to treat your pleasurable experiences in the same way. It is generally easier to learn from sorrow than from joy; so most people are content to let happiness be, rather than to risk it in any way. Real joy and well-being, however, are not threatened by the keenness of staring. Radiance is based on taking insecurity as security, so if pleasure is real, it is experienced as complete vibrant awareness that extends itself infinitely outward to all beings.”

Pleasure-staring is possible but structurally less-urgent than pain-staring (people rarely want to risk happiness). The practice operationally symmetric — same mechanism applies.

Q&A — Chapter’s Distinctive Material

”Artificial Intensity” — What Makes It Artificial

NR: “It’s artificial in the sense that it’s not authentic. Intensity is an aspect of the mechanism that’s attempting to maintain the illusion of duality. It’s artificial because it’s something that is superimposed. We have our authentic non-dual nature and then we have the structures that exist in order to attempt to prove that we are solid, separate, permanent, continuous and defined. The raw texture of the emotions we feel is not artificial, but the conceptual scaffolding in which they exist as painful experiences is artificial. These almost infinite forms of scaffolding are a constriction of our essential natures.”

Raw texture ≠ conceptual scaffolding. The scaffolding makes the emotion painful; the raw texture is pre-pain, pre-pleasure, pre-concept.

Pattern-Impersonality — The Sad Shock

KD: “Yes. That’s how it seems. The world we perceive seems to us to be a certain way — according to our history, culture, and social background. It’s quite a shock to entertain the idea that what you think is personal actually fits into a box labelled ‘another variant on the theme of samsara’. That’s very sad.”

NR: “There’s nothing you can do within samsara that doesn’t fit into a pre-ordained series of possibilities… They’re pre-ordained by the need to maintain the illusion of duality. If you want to maintain the illusion of duality, there are only a set number of approaches to that.”

KD: “In simple terms, there are the patterns of the five elemental neuroses. We experience these as if they were our personalities, but in actual fact, they are the method by which we avoid manifesting authentic personality. And yet from the perspective of Tantra these very patterns of impersonality are the doorways to the discovery of authentic personality.”

Critical inversion: the patterns we take as personal are impersonal (samsara-variants); what we take as non-personal (non-dual nature) is the authentic-personal. The five-fold patterns are the doorways to authentic personality.

Tantra as Backward-Flip on Sutra

NR: “It’s an entirely different paradigm. The logic of Tantra is profoundly exciting. The view is completely and unequivocally radical because it is not based on the logic of samsara. The view of Tantra is based on emptiness; in which all form is a fluid and unimpeded exultation!”

Positive vs Negative Emotions

NR: “It’s more a matter of being suspicious of any reaction or any emotion that functions like a computer macro. That is to say — you should be suspicious of habits that perform themselves as if you were operating on auto-pilot. The terms ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ as applied to our emotions simply indicate whether we like them or not — let’s not get too damn profound about this!”

Computer-macro diagnostic: suspect the automatic, not the disliked. The positive/negative labels are preference-labels; the real signal is auto-pilot-ness.

Discriminating Awareness IS Compassion (Elaborated)

KD: “If you think about the word ‘discriminating’ — it means entering into the particular, looking at things in great detail and making very specific judgements. Awareness is broad and all-encompassing — awareness is linked with emptiness. Discriminating awareness is linked with form — because form is particular. Form is linked with compassion because in order to manifest compassionate activity you have to have infinitesimal awareness of individual forms. Discriminating awareness is compassion, or more accurately ‘active-compassion’, because discriminating awareness sees everything according to the extent of particular individual need.”

The etymology-based argument:

• Discriminating = entering-the-particular + making-specific-judgements (form-side)
• Awareness = broad / all-encompassing (emptiness-side)
• Discriminating awareness = form + emptiness co-operative
• Form ↔ compassion (active-compassion) because particular-infinitesimal-awareness-of-individual-forms is the prerequisite for compassionate response at the specific-need level.

Why Heartache Stops Being “Uncomfortable”

NR: “Because the word ‘uncomfortable’ would not exist. Once there’s no conceptual scaffolding, there are no reference points by which you could determine ‘comfortable’ or ‘uncomfortable’; ‘pleasurable’ or ‘painful’ in the relative senses of these words.”

Comfortable/uncomfortable are reference-point-dependent — when the scaffolding dissolves, the pair dissolves with it. The raw-texture of the sensation is not categorisable as either.

Glimpses Fusing or Remaining Pieces

NR: “Both. You see, the idea of the fusing of sudden glimpses doesn’t really work. The idea of remaining in pieces forever doesn’t work either. It’s when we realise that they are limited constructions, based on partial experiences, that both are spontaneously inseparable. Basically, from the perspective of unenlightenment, there is no way that you can conceptualise enlightenment. The enlightenment you could conceptualise would just be another variation of unenlightenment.”

Enlightenment cannot be conceptualised from unenlightenment — any conceptualisation is another unenlightenment-variant. The fusion-vs-pieces dichotomy is itself such a conceptualisation.

Living the View as the Remember-the-Method Method

Questioner: “It’s like I need a method to remember the method! Is there such a thing?”

KD: “Living the view is, in itself, the beginning and end of method.”

The compressed-formulation: there is no method-for-remembering-the-method above living-the-view. Living the view IS the method. See Living the View.

The Intellect-as-Spade Parable

NR’s extended vignette: you can dig potatoes with a spade; you can carry them into the kitchen with it; you can even peel them with the spade (inefficient, lose a lot of potato); you can stir a giant pot with it. But if you keep using the spade past its appropriate-domain:

“You may try to eat the potatoes with the spade; and even though you chip bits off your teeth, it only strengthens your belief that the spade can accomplish all ends. So you sit back after the meal and smile with satisfaction. You look admiringly at the spade. The spade glints in the candle light. The well-oiled grain of its handle looks somehow sumptuous against the white linen table cloth. You develop romantic feelings toward the spade, you go to bed with the spade, you make love with the spade, and eventually raise a family of little trowels…”

Moral: the intellect is a spade — appropriate within its domain, catastrophic outside it. The practitioner’s task is knowing when to relinquish the spade. See Thought as Sense on intellect-as-sixth-sense.

Tantra as Esoteric Hobby — The Warning

“If you’re going to engage in this kind of practice, then it should be of some real benefit. Adopting a ‘mystical outlook’, can just assist us in hiding from reality. If I fill my life with oriental ritual observances, merely to avoid facing a failure to live in the world — my ‘spiritual path’ will accomplish nothing. If I populate my vocabulary with oriental words and spiritual catch-phrases, all I’m doing is filling time. I’d do better to involve myself in voluntary work, in order to make some real difference in the world.”

Spiritual-masquerade as avoidance of life. See Imitating Enlightenment.

The Chapter-End Summary Diagram

Ch.12 closes with a two-page summary table (book pp. 255–256) organising the five-element framework in a single schema:

Element	Colour	Initial Reaction to Space	Distorted Energy	Liberated Energy	Direction	Season	Time	Khandro/Pawo (Buddha-family name)
Earth	Yellow	Insubstantiality, hollowness, insecurity, fragility	Obduracy, arrogance, pride, fixity, wilfulness, poverty/miserliness	Equality, equanimity, balance, harmony, wealth/generosity	South	Autumn	Mid-morning	Rinchen
Water	White	Fear (of recognised threats)	Anger, aggression, hatred, violence	Clarity, mirror-wisdom, penetrating insight	East	Winter	Dawn/sunrise	Dorje
Fire	Red	Isolation, separation, desolation, loneliness	Indiscriminate possessiveness, obsessiveness, compulsion, consumerism	Discriminating wisdom, compassion, pure appropriateness	West	Spring	Sunset	Pema
Air	Green	Vulnerability, groundless anxiety, nervousness, panic	Envy, suspicion, jealousy, paranoia	Self-fulfilling activity, spontaneous accomplishment, free and fluid capacity for action	North	Summer	Dusk/early night	Lekyi (las-kyi — karma-family)
Space	Blue	Bewilderment — feeling overpowered and overwhelmed by spaciousness	Intentional ignorance, deliberate torpor, wilful stupidity, introversion, depression	Infinite unrestricted intelligence, pervasive wisdom, omniscience	Central, peripheral, pervasive, directionless	Time, continuity	Timelessness	Sang-gye (sangs rgyas — Buddha-family)

Notable: the final column uses the Buddha-family names (Rinchen=Ratna, Dorje=Vajra, Pema=Padma, Lekyi=Karma, Sang-gye=Buddha/Vairocana) rather than the iconographic symbols. This is the five-Buddha-family mapping for the khandro-pawo pairs — each element-khandro/pawo pair belongs to a specific Buddha-family.

Closing Benediction

“We all have the intrinsic capacity of clarity that can be awakened through the practice of shi-ne. We can discover these things for ourselves and discover our own analogies based on our own rich histories of experience. We wish everyone reading this our very warmest encouragement on their path, and hope that everyone everywhere will eventually make their journey into vastness.”

“Journey into vastness” echoes the Roaring Silence Ch.7 chapter-title — the shared destination of both books’ distinct methods.

Related

• Spectrum of Ecstasy — the book
• Embracing Emotions as the Path — the core methodological thesis Ch.12 operationalises into four-step form
• Trek-chöd — the Dzogchen method essentialised in this chapter
• Zap-lam — the Tantric symbolic-correlate
• One Taste — ro-chig; the mystic-commitment required for zap-lam
• Five Elements — the framework whose five-fold structure this chapter operationalises
• Living the View — the meta-method (“living the view is the beginning and end of method”)
• Three Terrible Oaths — the active-will expression of living-the-view
• Mirror-Wisdom — the wisdom of clarity (water element)
• Wisdom of Equanimity — the wisdom of equanimity and equality (earth element)
• Discriminating Awareness — the wisdom of discriminating awareness / compassion (fire element)
• All-Accomplishing Wisdom — the wisdom of self-fulfilling activity (air element)
• Dharmadhatu Wisdom — the wisdom of brilliant pervasive intelligence in all-encompassing space (space element)
• Shi-nè — the practice that opens the capacity-for-staring; the precondition
• Rigpa — “the state of naked perception”; what the stare-into-emotion discloses
• Ngak’phang — the non-celibate Tantric sangha mentioned as the Vajrayāna vehicle-form
• Vajrayana — Dorje Thegpa; the Tantric vehicle
• Imitating Enlightenment — the failure-mode (Tantra as esoteric hobby; spiritual masquerade)
• Thought as Sense — the context for the intellect-as-spade parable (intellect as the sixth sense-field)
• Namthog — the thoughts that “fly past and disappear into space” in the dynamic-reversal description
• Distracted-Being and Liberated-Being — the pattern-impersonality diagnostic
• Referentiality — the scaffolding whose dissolution dissolves comfortable/uncomfortable
• Compassion — discriminating-awareness-IS-active-compassion identity elaborated (etymological argument)
• Four Denials — solid/permanent/separate/continuous/defined — the five-marker frame restated
• Beginningless Enlightenment — the ground that allows path-is-goal recognition
• Reference Points — the scaffolding whose dissolution is the method’s operational result
• Symbol — the element-symbol framework the final diagram summarises
• Khandro, Pawo — the five-Buddha-family names (Rinchen / Dorje / Pema / Lekyi / Sang-gye) supplied in the final diagram
• Ngakpa Chögyam, Khandro Déchen — voices throughout the chapter’s Q&A