FRAMEWORK OF GUIDANCE

THE RECEPTIVE

Welcome to the first "chapter" (journal?) of sharing and developing the curriculum. As I was creating the title heading I remembered the sentence that more of less "started it all" for me: All the relative thoughts that happen in your mind in relation to cause and effect are the agents of the dralas.

This striking sentence was from the beginning of Lord Mukpo's first talk on the drala principle (fall, 1978) and places our thoughts in a new context; as something more than merely discursive or as a function of the fifth skanda, but instead as first thoughts, which can't be considered purely as our own but come from participating with phenomena. To think, "I love that white peony" could never happen without the peony and is more (as is said in the Autocommentary) than taste - i.e., opinion. It is real. That is the kind of real connected to "cause and effect," the goings on of the co-arising universe (the everything "that is hitched to everything else," as John Muir put it).

The white peony is more than taste because that moment of appreciating it is uncreated, unconditioned, pure gratuitousness (pure God if you like). That such an ultimate court or realm moment could communicate, play and elaborate itself with us is inner court, the realm of the "creative imagination," the luminous and communicative principle of the dralas. We don't so much have thoughts as agents of the dralas, we receive them.

Hexagram #2: The Receptive

This brings us to a second fundamental of the drala principle: the drala principle is the feminine principle in that we must become receptive in order to participate with it. Just as the first hexagram of the I Ching, The Creative, is associated with firmness and the masculine energy, The Receptive is the feminine energy of yielding and receiving. These are not gendered but energies of the fundamental play, the back and forth of phenomena.

Since we all, men and women, live in such overactive and obsessively doing ways, we need to become hexagram #2. We could consider it as the necessary posture (like sitting is the necessary or generally ideal posture of meditation). When we switch to the receptive we switch on our availability to the dralas.

Tree with scarves, Bangkok.

AGENCY

Agency is another central word, already encountered above as something our thoughts could be. Many years ago it occurred to me that the spiritual "goal" of relationship (of all types) was agency. In moments of agency, a relationship is not functioning habitually but on the cutting edge of tashi tendril, the true possibility of the next moment, the road the dralas are "guiding" us to take, the path less traveled: auspicious coincidence. Human beings can actually become each others agents of awakening (the opposite of prostitution or a mere business deal). How could it be otherwise? The basic proposition (no pun intended) of the Mayayana, or sangha in general, is the necessity of other for one's own awakening.

Thus, we can aspire to become each other's dralas!

Yesterday I asked "the space" about our class or group of dots. I let my mind be blank... and the image of tree arose. It seemed to tell me that we (the six of us) are unique and different branches, some connected to each other (or becoming connected) others connected to other people (dots), branching in other directions. At the same time, there is a shared "root": the way we feel Lord Mukpo in our life as a guide and teacher. Today I accidentally (my favorite word) come across the photo above, which in turn caused be to remember yesterday's image. 

Here are some things to think about, which are also subjects I would welcome your thoughts on.

Thoughts as agents of the dralas.
The receptive and/or feminine principle.
The receptive as daily-life posture.
Agency.
Trees and dots. 
Any thought you have about this blog, its format, how to proceed, recede or re-seed.

Gassho.