Thu, 27 Aug 2009
Renunciation and Retreat
The second stanza in the Ganges Mahamudra says:
O! Look well at worldly phenomena! Dream-like and illusory, they cannot last! [But] they are not dreams or illusions in actuality. Therefore, when giving rise to disenchantment, you have insight into worldly activities. Completely severing the connections of attachment and aversion — the domain of samsara — meditate alone in mountain and forest hermitages!
This stanza talks about solitary retreat and though I'm sure it's helpful, it's not necessary to do solitary retreat to be a mahamudra practitioner. As Thrangu Rinpoche says, it can be done along with your daily life, which makes it such a valuable practice for Westerners. But even if solitary retreat isn't necessary, it's still necessary to practice, and not just a little practice. No one has more than twenty four hours in their day and time spent meditating has to be taken away from something else. This will be difficult to do unless you have a genuine spirit of renunciation, which is called disenchantment in this text. The stanza says that we develop renunciation by meditating on impermanence and then seeing phenomena as dreamlike. These are traditional contemplations in Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism, respectively, so the stanza is asking us to familiarize ourselves with the philosphical teachings of Buddhism. After understanding these teachings, a sense of detachment from daily life will develop and one will have an enthusiasm for meditation practice.
