Renunciation allows the mind to emerge from its ordinary limited preoccupations to take an interest instead in realizing its unlimited and completely liberated potential. We no longer rely on sensory pleasures for our ultimate happiness. We see the fatality of expecting deep satisfaction from limited transitory phenomena. Renunciation loosens our habitual grasping at pleasure and reliance upon externals for satisfaction.
Bodhisattva or Service
As long as we remain tightly focused upon our own happiness, whether temporal or ultimate, we will never experience the expansiveness of a truly open heart. This narrow self-cherishing habit of the heart brings us nothing but spiritual suffocation. Narrow selfishness always leads to disappointment and equally clear is the fact that open-hearted dedication to other beings bring about happiness and sense of well-being.
Emptiness or Correct View
Cultivating a correct view gives us the wisdom to clearly realize the actual way in which we and all other phenomena exist. By cultivating correct view, we remove the obscuration so that we may see the pure vision of reality.
Lama Yeshe – Introduction –Transformation of Desire Tantra
I’ve found the books on Buddhism that I’ve read over the years are fairly simple in their intent, but very complex in their approach. A lot of study is required to understand the path of the sutra, or the teachings and discourses that lead to full spiritual awakening. This study, and the understanding that results from this study, seem to be mainly of an intellectual nature.
I don’t believe a spiritual awakening can be attained from the
intellectual knowledge alone. To accompany this intellectual knowledge, we must also possess the more esoteric “inner knowing” that comes from the raw experience of one who has journeyed the path. Only those who have traveled the path will be able to possess the “inner knowing” that would be necessary to guide others along the way.
The spiritual road of tantra and kundalini that leads to enlightenment must incorporate this “inner knowing”. It is the “inner knowing” that moves the journey from speculative to reality.
Yet, all Buddhist teachers stress, before journeying the path
of tantra and kundalini leading to enlightenment, an intellectual understanding of three things is necessary in order to stay on the right path. They are Renunciation, Bodhisattva or Service, and emptiness or correct view.
Renunciation
We do not generally like “renunciation” because it implies having to give up something. But I prefer not to look at it in that way. There’s a gospel parable which for me speaks of the proper way of understanding “renunciation”.
Jesus said: "The Kingdom of God is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field.
We focus, not on what is renounced, but on what is
discovered and attained. What is renounced is false and harmful. We just may not know it yet. As a result, we cling or grasp at what we know. But when the truth is discovered or experienced, then we willingly let go of what is false to possess the real treasure. Renunciation is the letting go of what is no longer of any value, or at least accepting it for what it is.
Bodhisattva or Service
Bodhisattva first asks us to take a giant leap in faith and trust that something is true that does not first appear to be true. Jesus speaks about it in the gospel of Luke when he says:
“Do not worry about your life, and what you are to eat, and your body, and how you are to cloth it. For life is worth more than food, and the body more than clothing.”
He is inviting us to take the focus off “self”, and put it on others. This is not easy because ego consciousness sets us up to believe the opposite; the importance of “self”. But as we dare to surrender “self” to the opposite of what we perceive to be true, we discover Bodhisattva or the service attitude.
Emptiness or Correct View
Emptiness here is not what it seems. The word itself is inadequate. It helps when we combine it with “correct view”. This is again a case of the truth being something other than what it seems. Our ego consciousness creates the impression that all things including “self” have an established concrete, permanent and enduring reality when in fact they do not.
There is no concrete, permanent and enduring reality. Everything is constantly changing. Nothing stays the same. It’s hard for us to get out heads wrapped around this because what we see is the opposite.
But the truth is, the “self” that we see, the “self” that has
been hurt and is being hurt by past and present trauma does not exist in the way we imagine. And “self” is merely a label we have placed on our perception of what we think is there. In meditation, we can move beyond this perception of “self” and experience emptiness, but we have trouble hanging onto this when our meditation time is over because ego consciousness again creates “self” as something permanent and something real. So we have to stop letting our ego consciousness fool us into believing that something exists in a way it does not. Emptiness, although empty of "self", moves us into being at one with all things. It is here we experience becoming the compassionate one, the awakened Buddha, Christ consciousness.
There’s a scripture from the letter of James that speaks to me about all three of these attributes:
“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like”.
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