When you start reaching the higher stages of cultivation, everything you do in the regular world is a GUA or hexagram that can symbolize your stage of cultivation or progress ahead.

For the last several days I’ve been cleaning the stove prior to Thanksgiving, scrubbing every dirty and encrusted surface with cleaner, soap and then a brillo pad many times. Today I turned it on after this complete scrubbing and overhaul and found some of the tiny holes for the gas jets blocked, so I even cleaned every tiny gas jet opening with a toothpick. Every tiny nozzle that had become clogged with a bit of soap from the cleaning is now clean and clear all the way through.

Now everything is clean and open. They all run perfectly clear and smooth.

Ordinary life is a gua (hexagram) that mimics your cultivation. That’s why you must be careful doing every tiny thing in the world carefully, just like my Teacher. If you saw him on a daily basis you’d have to say he was perfect; everything he does carefully. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t make mistakes, or that he cannot change his mind, or alter his opinion, or have wrong judgements. It doesn’t mean you’ll even like him or get along with him. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t make errors.
It’s just that everything he chooses to do he does with exactness and perfection. His mind is clear and he attends to all the details. It’s pretty amazing if you saw it. Regular people look at him and can tell something is different than with ordinary people but cannot tell what it is, so I’m rending the veil

For those who want to open up the crown chakra, and who have passed through the previous nine circulations or unbindings which are referred to by different names in Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, yoga and so forth, remember:

Out through the buddharandra chakra at the back of the head (not the brahmarandra which is about four fingers forward) you push the lobster-scorpion bones and dirty chi
In through the Hai-di, you pull it all back in
Like pulling up a rug or the inner lining of a bottle from the center, you now pull it all up to the frontal star that seems so high in the sky
Pull it on through and to the next level by going through that circular shining you see
And then you have finally inverted it all one unwinding, and pop out on the roof!

You’ll see a thousand briliant stars on a darkened dome shaped sky
Kuan Yin will laugh and greet you at the top, don’t you recognize those stars are the tips of the chakra petals?
Now wait just awhile and rest without making any effort anymore, and then the old chi body will rise into the sky and disappear as its tossed away.
Your body may ache with pain and soreness, but emptiness is your companion, so it all proceeds without need for worries or concern. You should only worry that you don’t work hard to complete the Path.

This is a very very very rare high stage teaching you won’t find written anywhere — neither in Esoteric Buddhism or the tantric schools, Hinduism, yoga, Sufism, Taoism, kabbalah, alchemy or in any form school at all because it is so high and rare, yet it explains how it is all done. When Milarepa reached the first part of this stage, the tips of the 1,000-petalled crown chakra he saw were all yin, so the books say he  generated a thousand penises to f*ck the “thousand quivering vaginas” that appeared in space to combine the yin and yang into one. That was the tantric code for this stage that you cannot understand until you reach it yourself, except I just told you.   At the point I’ve just described, however, which is after the initial breakthrough from the chi bodies of all the five skandhas, this is not necessary anymore. This is now cultivating  much deeper into the “emptiness of phenomena” whereas previous was the initial stage of “emptiness of self.” You cannot get all the gong-fu in one moment. As Samantabadhra Buddha said, at these stages it  happens step by step.

Of course, I’m not describing the unwinding process of the chakras PRIOR to the final push outside the back of the head through the buddharandra aperature. It’s almost impossible to describe the unwinding process other than to say it’s like twisting a sock inside out and tracing it/pulling it and everything it’s attached to  in and out of a tube until the next chakra is found and the process completed from the inside or outside as necessary, turning this way and that etc. etc. A topologist would have a field day describing all the twists and turns you have to do to pull the old chi body completely off the one underneath. The chi layers cover one another so that the chakras and real chi channel system is deformed in shape, just as dipping a metal wire of a certain shape in wax, over and over again, will eventually hide the true shape of the wire. So when I read people offering courses or books on “how to open up the chakras” I just laugh because they never even get to the first unwinding of the process. They’re just making money. They might be well meaning, but they are fooling themselves as to the results of what they are teaching.

You can cultivate all the dhyana without ever doing this, which is what most yogis, saints, sadhus,… in most religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Zoroasterianism, etc.) do – only by opening up the heart chakra do you enable  its completion. I’ve already given you EVERYTHING you need to know to accomplish this EASILY without the need to undertake  the expensive and confusing road of Tibetan Buddhism that tends to muck everybody up who travels it. You would have to study under a lama guru for years, serving him and making tons of offerings, and still you could not and would not receive this enlightenment teaching. It is all scientific, clear and non-mystical and free. But will you do it?

“Free” does not mean there is no cost to progress or for dharma, as people give up life and limb for it, giving up family, home, sex, power, money, comfort all for just this. What have you given  that you deserve such teachings or progress? What efforts have you expended?  What offerings have you made? What work have you done? Where is your sincere practice schedule … uh oh, time to watch TV? If you haven’t yet achieved anything in this life, you have to look inside and blame only yourself. And yet it can be achieved. The fruit is sitting there right on the table in front of you — will you reach out and eat it? Compared to countless others, I’ve made it so simple for you by explaining everything.

It’s impossible to give clear directions to the unbinding process in detail. The FINAL END of that process is to dump the junk out the back of the head. That’s all the instructions I can give not because it’s secret, but because you can’t describe it with clear directions. Every time you complete several of these your old chi body is cast away, and after many you break through a skandha. At least that’s the TANTRIC way — if you use prajna wisdom you just jump over all this. This is cultivating the sambhogakaya, the Reward Body, the Enjoyment Body, the rupakaya. Of course it cannot even start to be worked on until you open up the heart chakra such as by using the Vairocana-Zhunti Tantra I’ve given you. It all starts at that process. And that process cannot be accomplished until you first accumulate merit for the path, and undergo preparatory practices to partially clean your chi channels … for you can’t do it in one go.

Gosh, too many secrets revealed. You should give this to your fine Tibetan monk friends to help them.

A yogi who has spent innumerable lives cultivating knows the worth of what I’ve just written, even though you may not even fathom it, and would gladly pay millions, billions, trillions or more for this teaching but I’m giving it to you all laid out without any sweat or work or anything on your part. If you teach this to others your merit will be unsurpassed, and you are sure to get the teaching when you need it. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas all use the chakra at the back of the head to complete the yogic part of transformation - so should you. When someone achieves this, it can change the fate of a country, race, nation, world, system or Buddhaland, and so there is usually an immediate response just as there is when a great man is born into a people or nation.  It is so rare, so rare, so rare.

If I’m right, the Wu Cho dialogue with Manjushri –  ”In front 3 3, in back 3 3″ (”in front three by three, in back three by three”) of Zen might be translated as “Previous to breaking through the consciousness skandha, there are three unwindings/unbindings of the complete chakra system for each of the conception, volition and consciousness skandhas. Afterwards to open up the crown chakra …” So it might mean “Previous to, there are 3 x 3… Coming later, there are still 3 x 3…” Actually, I don’t know how many times you unwind the chakras because you honestly end up losing count — it’s so tiring and so many things happen at each stage and you just have to keep going without keeping track of numbers. I’m guessing it’s nine but I don’t know for sure because I didn’t count; there are so many stages of gong-fu that occupy your mind more than counting. Who cares as to the number anyway? We’re just discussing a point. Don’t be pedantic. How should you even know you should count or that the process is going to repeat itself? I didn’t until several went by.  I’m just like a kindly old grandmother who tells you everything, so you should have an easier time of it than me because I have to figure everything out myself.

“Nine” in some schools is also sometimes used just to denote a large number. In any case, this unwinding process is the REAL meaning of the Tao school circulations or revolutions, not the spinning of chi that many times. Imaging that your chi spins/circulates a number of times gets you nowhere near this real stage of accomplishment. As I mentioned, you can cultivate all four dhyana and four formless samadhi absorptions without ever accomplishing this. Only Buddhism teaches you how to get this far - No other school for this world has this completion stage. You typically only “open” chakras at a trivial level, and they look open (but are really covered with wax, so-to-speak without you knowing it) but aren’t at this stage, on so many other paths. That’s why  you get only deceptive semblance dharma and a master can beat you in a spiritual battle. It may look like what people say the first or second or third etc. dhyana is, but it isn’t really the first, or second or third etc. dhyana….Gosh, I’m telling you so much, revealing so much no one ever explains.

Also remember that Wu Cho is shown a crystal bowl in the story of 3 x 3 … and the Diamond Grotto (the crown chakra at this stage), so it matches on this meaning as well. Of course, this is still speculation because I cannot read ancient Chinese, so the meaning three three might refer to something simpler, yet you now have this glorious teaching. Protect it. You can look up the story by googling “Manjusri + three + wu cho” for THE KOAN, by Steven Heine book result.

To me the “3 gates” of Zen may also be taken to refer to the task of the “front 3 3″ just mentioned – the task of breaking through the conception skandha (initial enlightenment), volition skandha (seeing the source of life and creation/destruction), and consciousness skandha (the merging of two empty purities into one another after the state of “no inside nor outside”). You definitely will pass through this before the opening of the crown chakra.

At least that’s my opinion. I’ll have to ask Master Nan Huai-chin. He’s the only one left who knows. No one ever talks about this stuff. Why are you so lucky for someone to tell you everything so clearly?

The eighth consciousness, also known as the alaya consciousness or storehouse consciousness, is a particularly complicated, difficult subject to discuss. Shakyamuni Buddha taught for several decades and had many highly advanced practitioners as his disciples, yet despite disciples of high prajna wisdom and high samadhi attainments, Shakyamuni rarely spoke of the alaya consciousness in order to prevent any entries into error. That’s how important this topic is, and how difficult it is to discuss. As Shakyamuni said,

The storehouse consciousness [alaya] is very profound and subtle;
All its seeds are like a torrential flow.
I do not explain it to the ignorant,
For fear they will cling to it and consider it a self.

Shakyamuni threfore gave very few teachings on the alaya consciousness in order not to provide people with another false source of fixation of something as the ultimate. He didn’t want to talk extensively about something that sentient beings, lacking wisdom, might take as a higher Self or final Reality. In particular, he worried that beings might take the alaya as a big Self, or true atman. In fact, the Hindu sages who were able to reach to the alaya body of consciousness before him all made this very mistake, taking the alaya as the Great Self (Brahman) when it is only the essence of consciousness. They would reach this stage of cultivation and claim, “I am He, I am He” or “I am Brahman, I am Shiva.” Similarly, “All this is Brahman,” “I know the Supreme Brahman; there is nothing higher than that (Prasna Upanishad VI.7),” “All this Universe is Brahman. The Self is Brahman. (Mandukya Upanishad, Verse 2).”

Contrast this with Buddha’s discourse in the Diamond Sutra where he says that there is no such real thing as a world system or agglomeration of world systems, for if such a thing existed in reality it would be the oneness of all phenomena. Neither any components nor the whole should be regarded as real. No stage of attainment should be regarded as real either. If one even considers themselves an ego, identity, being or real self, they are not correct either. No stage of attainment is really existing or ever really attained.

Many in history have reached the stage where they were able to claim “I and the Father are one,” but this was also only reaching the alaya — if that far — without fully transforming it or overturning its basis. And many of those sages were killed by people who did not understand what they were saying. To overturn the alaya and produce a revolution in its basis, turning all its seeds into wisdoms – that’s the stage of true enlightenment taught by Shakyamuni Buddha. Many masters since then have been able to reach to the alaya by cultivating the seventh consciousness to the stage where they silenced the sixth and first five consciousnesses by turning away from the senses and phenomena. Many yoga concentration techniques will help you do this. But many of these also made the mistake of holding on to the alaya as the object of the seventh consciousness and clinging to it as a Self. In Zen a master would have to break up someone’s stage of realization in order to get them to perceive this (awaken) and go beyond. Afterwards, as long as they had attained the right view and understanding, a master would not worry about what particular cultivation practices a student would thereafter choose to follow.

This is so important to understand these various fine distinctions that we should review this in more detail. If you do not understand this, you cannot understand the real meaning of enlightenment and how it puts an end to transmigration (as well as sorrow, misery, etc.) or why it involves cultivating prajna transcendental wisdom. Those things are just words until you understand the whole picture and grand scheme of things.

To read the rest of the article,  click here: The Highest States in Buddhism vs. Hinduism, the Alaya Consciousness vs. Brahman