Reincarnation is not guaranteed, since we have to understand who or what is capable of such an extraordinary thing.. Here are some answers…
About Dr Asa Hershoff
The Buddhist chakras, except for a few specific tantras, are described as five in nature. You would naturally expect them to stack up according to their hierarchy, their density, their sequential refinement, just as in the Shaivite approach and their hapless inheritor, the Western New Age chakra system. After all, that is how humans seem to be built. The vertical stack of human anatomy is our natural, biological makeup as our form and function span the gamut, from earth to sky.
But the tantric path is about building a new body, a new form, one commonly referred to as a light body or rainbow body. The meditations we superimpose (the spiritual stack) on our normal bioenergetic hierarchy (the biological stack) are revolutionary.
Purifying the Fine Mess of Existence
Purifying Samsara’s Grand Mess We find ourselves in world that is not of our making. This body, its strengths and weaknesses, is also not our free choice. We learn, adapt, re-configure, but still here we are, living through strange narratives and story lines, feeling out the complex mixtures of identity and experience, and the madcap […]
Are You a Knowledge-Holder?
There is a word we come across in reading Tibetan Buddhist books, liturgies or philosophy that is both intriguing and enigmatic. Rig-Dzin literally means awareness-holder or knowledge-holder1. There are other words in that language that mean “being in possession of” or achieving a certain state or level. But here it literally means “holder.” So what is being held, who is holding it, and where is it being kept—and why?
Breaking the Prison of Meditation
Something from nothing Like any religion, Vajrayana developed a codified set of rules, systems, behaviors, philosophies, and practices intended to guide the seeker sequentially along the stages of the path, directing them toward enlightenment, realization, moksha, the godhead, illumination, or a thousand other names that hint at our ultimate human potential. Some of these systems […]
Why Spirituality (Sometimes) Fails
The Two Functions You live within an amazing transformative machine. It’s called the body. It has two very different functions. I would guess that ninety-nine percent of people use it for only for the first, which is to eat, sleep, excrete, reproduce, have a variety of pleasant, painful and interesting experiences, and die. The second […]
Clearing Trauma
The greatest obstacle to spiritual development is—not what you might think. Various religious and spiritual pathways talk about our disturbed emotions, our anger, our anxiety, our past actions.
Elemental Protection in Challenging Times
Why Protection? Life on planet earth, within the Sol solar system, on the outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, itself made up of 100 thousand million stars, has never been particularly easy. But the challenges we share globally, and the problems we face individually, have reached a whole new level of difficult. Yet […]
Purity, Impurity & the 5 Elements
Purity is not a word you hear once a week, or even once a month—except in a commercial for a new laundry detergent. Yet every culture is based on specific ideas about pure and impure. Socially, these concepts determine status, reputation, and trustworthiness. On a personal level, they inform our morality and ethics, as well […]
In Search of the Elemental Body
Seeking the Buddhist Body The Tibetan empowerment or wongkur is an essential part of Vajrayana-Buddhist tantra-as well as Shaivite and other Eastern traditions. It is the entry point, the transmission of the seed of enlightenment, and permission to enter the mandala of enlightened mind. One obtains the stream of form, energy and consciousness, transforming mundane […]
