The Dharma Wrapper
On carrying dharma practice inside another religious form.
The wrapper is what goes around every other practice — an opening at the front and a closing at the back — and Sam presents it as the first thing a practitioner should learn. It is, he says plainly, another exercise stolen from the Buddhists, and one Pagans he has worked with have taken to. It functions like a grounding, calming and clearing before work, except that instead of grounding to the planet you ground to what the planet itself grounds to: the Ground of Being.
The opening practice is Taking Refuge, and Sam is candid that he first resisted the idea — it sounded like leaving the field of struggle to go hide somewhere, even if the hiding place was the Buddha's lap. A Lama reframed it for him in one line: everyone needs help, and refuge is asking for help. Help is asked from three sources. First, the host of enlightened beings — Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, and beings of every class including gods, humans, animals and demons who have attained or vowed to work for others' benefit; none of them, on Sam's understanding, will force help on anyone, which is why it must be asked for. Second, the Ground of Being itself: profound because nothing is deeper, powerful because everything arises from it, provident because it supports all things, and inherently enlightened, since otherwise enlightenment would be neither possible nor even thinkable. Third, and nearest, one's own already-enlightened nature, buried under karma but never absent, in oneself and in everyone else.
The method is the Three Ah's, in three movements. Asking: eyes open, a white letter A visualised at the heart, a long sounded ah radiating white light outward carrying the sincere wish for help, with the enlightened beings and one's favourite gods and spirits imagined all around, turning to face you. Receiving: eyes closed, another ah, and those beings light their own A's and pour white light — traditionally white nectar poured through the crown, filling the body like a vase and pushing out a black tarry residue. Sharing: eyes open again, a third ah, and the whole host radiates light outward with you toward every being who will take it, with the nightly news suggested as a source of images for who needs it. Sam recommends a week on this alone, three times a day, done as slowly as possible, so that later it can be run quickly and still work.
The closing half is Dedicating the Merit, and Sam explains why it matters by naming a real hazard of magical practice: an inflated ego. Conjuring powers, conversing with gods, transforming into vast cosmic beings takes a toll on the part of the psyche that has to run an ordinary life, which starts identifying with those forces and expecting to be treated accordingly — leaving the practitioner bitchy or giddy or flattened afterwards and in conflict with everyone around them. The Buddhist solution, refined over centuries, is to give the whole benefit away. Hoarding it, he argues, only means the energy collapses back into the old habits the practice was meant to change, grinding them deeper: a drop of water kept on a plate evaporates, while the same drop returned to the ocean is kept. The dedication verses give the merit of this act and all acts to the complete liberation and supreme enlightenment of all beings everywhere pervading space and time, then wish all practitioners' work to come to fruition, closing on a final Ah in the state of presence — the same Ah, and the same wave of benefit, as the one that ended the refuge.
Originally published at samwebstermage.com →