Rat Vase Breathing Again!

Tuesday 9:55 p.m.
This post won't be much use to you, Jack. The Masai Warriors should maybe bounce off elsewhere, but the aliens from outer space are welcome and should know that we earthlings are not all flatheids, at least not completely.

This blog has taken four hits in the last two days from people googling vase breathing techniques. RaBlissBlog comes up third or fourth on the first page, which is really truly pathetic since what do I know about vase breathing? Most of the stuff I know (I hate repeating stuff in this blog!) I got from reading The Bliss of Inner Fire and The Book of the Three Inspirations by Tsongkhapa, the accompanying Readings book, both the latter translations by Glenn Mullin. These are published by American buddhisty basturns who can't even be arsed to answer their emails!

There were two problems in trying to read between the lines in The Bliss of Inner Fire. At one point the boy says you have to view the navel chakra symbol (something like an upperward pointing triangle) from inside the central channel. This is a blue tube running down your spine, sort of. The other troubling point is when he says you must "penetrate" the navel symbol.

Joe, if you're trying this juju without a guru who has at least realised mahamudra, don't come greetin' to me when you go on fire, or get ill, or go right off your fung rocker!

I can't do these visualisations. I don't think you can get there without a long time on your own, but I do try to do them because who knows what the future will bring? Maybe some day. But I haven't had intructions on this. I've had empowerments, but not direct instructions.

So I think this is how it works. You go through the death process as in the books. This is after you stop breathing. You do the eight steps till you reach clear light mind, which I take to be the basis of everything.

Then you built up the intermediate stage, which is the three tubes with the four symbols in the four chakra points and, especially the red navel symbol, which is where the heat is supposed to come from.

Then you do the last stage, which is emanating as the deity in the mandala. The mandala represents everything. The important part here seems to be that the mandala should be radiant and the deity figure proud.

This is, I think, the generation stage. You offer everything to a deity who looks just like you, and bring that down through your body as a white line coming through the top of your head.

The completion stage comes next. Maybe you should wait a year before you try the next bit!

So you take a big breath and go in from the deity back to the tubes with the navel symbol, which you squeeze from the top and bottom. My guru says you don't force it. But then you let go and shoot the breath.

When you are holding the breath, you go further in and see the navel symbol from inside the central channel. So you're in blue, and as disembodied as possible, looking down on the red symbol.

You might become the red symbol here or after the breath. So you're trying at least to imagine yourself as the red symbol around about here.


It's a descending and ascending order. I think a juju master would be able to go from deity to symbol and back again according to what they were trying to do, or according to the breathing stage.

You're supposed to collect the four blisses and experience primordial awareness, which is non dualistic, and very, very nice, at some point. But I'm nowhere near there yet.

On the way back, I think you go in from the deity to the blue tube and dissolve the symbols. You end up as the blue heart symbol and dissolve that till you're back to clear light mind. Then you can reverse the death process and come up as the usual joe or josephine.

It's a way of loosening your false sense of self, I assume. Which is the name of the game.

"When we can see, straightforwardly and non-conceptually, the nature of our clear light mind, and remain totally absorbed in this nature without ever having to regress from it, we have become a buddha." The Dalai Lama. The wall. The Vajaryana is supposed to have the potential of making you a buddha in one lifetime.

All this stuff about becoming a symbol, and a deity, and viewing something from within a blue central channel is a wee bit like the quantum physics stuff I was going on about in posts last week or so. Don't you think?

That'll be tenpercent off the top, please!