The Discorse Of Generation Stage (生起次第论)

Generation stage or ‘utpatti-krama’ in Sanskrit means the ‘sequence of happening or new born’ is the central practice in tantric Buddhism to achieve enlightenment. It is practice in conjunction to the ‘3 existences and 4 births (三有四生)’ of life and birth according to the Tibetan Book Of The Death. It is the fundamental practice of nadis and bindus (气脉明点) in‘completion stage’; and also the route to accomplishment of rainbow or light body of the Great Perfection.

Having said that the generation stage is the key practice in the achievement of ‘vajra body’ (金刚身), there should be a set of detailed theories and pragmatic practices. The core of generation stage is based on the visualization of a deva-body (天身) to enter the samadhi (meditative stage) of the ‘3-existances’ meaning the death, in-between and life. In plain language; a practitioner ‘creates’ an elusive, empty and enjoyment body that he/she shall be reborn as in accordance to the Book Of The Death. Since this deva-body is free from any karmic bonding; so this practitioner shall be freed from cycles of existence. That is all to the generation stage.

There are 4 essential accomplishments of generation stage:

·         Ritual

·         Effect

·         Results

·         Body

The result of a ritual is to purify the habits of 4 births (四生).

The result of ‘effect’ is to purify the cycle of life and death and planting the seed of trikaya (三身) thus building the foundation of completion stage (圆满次第).

The actual result of generation stage is the attainment of worldly 8 merits (世间八功德). He/she shall become the mantri of the realm of existence.

The body of generation stage shall be the enjoyment and empty body. Due to functions of enjoyment and emptiness, a practitioner achieves the accomplishment of Mahamudra (大手印).

Just to make a long story short, the generation stage is the foundation of completion stage. An important point is that the generation stage is only ‘mind games’ as most of the actions are only visualizations; it is in the completion stage that the actual physical transformation of deva-body takes place.

Of course, the generation stage is only practiced by Maha-yoga and Anuttara-yoga practitioners. Most of people I met in Malaysia only stop at the level of karma-yoga (事瑜珈) which is far from entering the actual generation practice. You will understand what I said by going through the curriculum of generation stage; if you can get hold of a copy that is.

Sad to say that such a profound practice is seldom revealed by visiting Rinpoches or so-called ‘Living Buddha’ (活佛) who only collects donations to build temples. A reason is perhaps the lack of study material in local languages other than the Sanskrit and Tibetan. Even books in Tibetan give wrong information at times. So a guru is still needed if you can find one in the market.

Secret Behind The Legs (两腿后的秘密)

Before I go on with my story, please don’t have any funny idea of what lies behind our legs. Perhaps you have thought of something else which I don’t want to know. Anyway, please hold on to what you think of should lie in behind one’s legs and let me finish my story.

A pretty simple Thai game for a person to see the spiritual world is by lower one’s head and peep through his/her legs in a quiet place. I have no idea what is the success rate of such an exercise to actual see a ghost this way. Perhaps my personal experience when I was studying in my primary school in Kuala Kangsar will give you a clue…

Well, my primary school was reputed to be a haunted one and many people had one kind of contact with spirits or another. I could not say if my experience is real or it was just my hallucination due to being influenced by all those ghost talks around me. You can’t blame me for that as I was about 8 years old then.

When I was in standard 2, I was arranged to be seated at the last row of the class. Behind me about 10 feet away was some empty chairs meant for observers from district educational department since there were some trainee teacher come and go at that time.

It was a rainy after around 5pm the school would end half an hour later. Due to the weather condition at that time and for the students’ safety; the school admin has decided that all the students would stay in the class until outside condition improves. So, my classmates and I were asked to be seated in our chairs and do whatever we like to until further instruction.

At that time, I was tidying my desk and one of my pencils accidentally dropped under my chair. So I leaned over to find my pencil and as I was about to pick it up, I suddenly caught a glimpse of a pair of black shinny boots at a supposedly empty chair behind me.

I thought it was odd, so I purposely drop another pencil and lean over to see between my legs due to curiosity. Well, I couldn’t just stand up and bend over in a classroom full of pupils. My friends would think I am nuts and I would not have a chance to explain myself.

The second time I bent over, to my surprise, I saw a man in Imperial Army uniform wearing a pair of army boots. So I quickly raise my body and looked around me. Everyone was minding his/her own business and the chair behind me was indeed empty.

In order to find out who the queer person was, I again dropped another pencil and bend over to find out. This time, the ‘man’ was not in the chair but his face was just behind me. Our face to face distance was so near that we nearly ‘kiss’ each other.

To be honest, the face I saw was just a skeleton wearing an army cap! Due to fright, I instinctively raised and shouted in horror; then I tripped myself when I tried to turn my back. My chair fell backwards and so did I.  Perhaps my commotion has startled the whole class and the noisy classroom immediately turned quiet.

The teacher immediately rushed to my place and as he pulled me up from the floor, he seemed to understand what I have gone through. Without waiting for my explanation, the teacher said:

“It is not good to drop pencils too many times.” 

Coffee Nation: North Vs South (南北话咖啡)

The earliest coffee culture in Malaysia perhaps can be traced to the deep brown coffee in Northern Peninsular or just pure black coffee from ‘kopi tiam’ (coffee shop) served by Hainan tea shops (海南茶室) prevail in Southern Peninsular Malaysia.

In this sense, each shop will have its own special flavor pending on many factors: from the warm to hot ceramic cup to self-blend secret coffee bean recipes, then ingredients used in the frying of coffee beans, temperature and the precise control of thick, weak, sweet, bitter and sweet tastes of the producer. All these factors caused coffee produced by all coffee shops are slightly distinct.

So it is not difficult to discover that there would be some die-hard fans for every ‘kopi tiam’ in Malaysia. These fans can assuredly tell you what is really called a real cup of coffee.

Having said so, if you are a frequent traveller like me who travels from Johor Bharu in the morning and arrived in Penang at night or vice versa; you will find that there are distinct variations in the north and south coffee. That too means that you are few lucky ones that can taste coffee of different flavours in one day.

The northern coffee is much thicker and looks darker. It carries a special smoky flavor, which is not everyone’s cup of tea figuratively speaking. On the other hand, the southern coffee is slightly sour in flavor and the color is lighter.

In the past, coffee/tea shops are favorite places for local folks to meet and talk. Traditional coffee/tea shops are spacious facing main roads. The floor tiles are mostly black and white floor tiles. They are furnished with semi-antique wooden chairs and tables, coupled with a tall wooden casher’s counter. One could see white steams rose from the kitchen when shop owner is making coffee. Of course, unlike the western folks, coffee is best to be enjoyed with bread, butter, homemade ‘kaya’ (coconut jam) or even half-boiled eggs with soy source. I can 100% assure you that all these combinations will bring you to heaven! But simple good old coffee/tea shops are getting less now days in big cities.

Now days there are many types of coffee available out in the market with many types of modern coffee franchises. I personally like the old coffee shop where I can lift up my legs and talk out loud without attracting any attentions. 

Last but not least, do you prefer a cup of 'kaw' (thick) coffee or just plain (weak) coffee?

Traditional Taiping Cakes (太平传统糕点)

If you come to Taiping town Jalan Panggung Wayang hawker center and the morning/evening market, you can find all sort of traditional Chinese and ‘nyonyah kuih’ (cakes). I just bought a few to show you and to satisfy my appetite. For example the Chinese cup-cake (发糕), 9-layer cake (九层糕), baked tapioca cake (烤木薯糕) and ‘pretty face cake’ (kuih seri muka/salat). The later four types of cakes are sometimes called ‘nyonyah kuih’ by locals or the ‘ladies’ cakes’.

I am not about to do a detailed introduction of all available cake types in Taiping as those info can readily be found in the intranet. Suffice to arouse your taste buds and motivate you to visit Taiping soon. 

A Trip To Kuala Sepatang (十八丁走一回)

Kuala Sepatang is a small fishing village off Taiping town. As the name implies, this is a place for enjoying seafood. In addition there is a mangrove conservatory and a charcoal production plant that one can visit...

Fishing boats and mangrove trees.

Most of buildings in Kuala Sepatang are built on swamp areas. The three stories building at the background is a restaurant.

Crabs and mantis shrimps awaiting to meet their masters.

Sumptuous seafood lunch: soft-shell crabs, steam fish, clamps and vegetables all for MYR120++!

Small seafood restaurant from outside but BIG inside!

If the seafood is not enough, please get yourself some 'black gold' which comes with a lucky number and one sells for about USD9 only.

Perhaps seeing is believing... Do join me next trip to satisfy your appetite and more activities to come!

The Essence Of Great Perfection (大圆满精要)

Both mahamudra (大手印) and great perfection belong to the 4^th empowerment of Tibetan Buddhism. If we were to compare, the practice of great perfection would be one step higher than mahamudra because it is touted as ‘the pinnacle of Tibetan Buddhism’. Actually, both mahamudra and great perfection are teachings originated from India but flourish in Tibet just to point out historical fact.

Some gurus treat mahamudra and great perfection as the same and in my opinion; they are not so correct because both of the training system are different as their end results are different. If you still remember the Tibetan Book Of The Dead, then the aim of mahamudra is to attain enlightenment during the dying process. On the other hand, the aim of great perfection is to achieve enlightenment before the end of this life if possible.

Some Chinese scholars also like to compare Zen with great perfection; and they too were just as wrong too. For the practice of great perfection is based on systematic stages of exercises that stretch a practitioner’s body, mind and spirit. Zen practice on the other hand depends very much on the intellect of a student. And it is exceedingly difficult to grasp the gist of Zen compared to the more systematic great perfection training.

In order to understand great perfection, there are two essential theoretical points one must remember:

·         The nature of our mind is luminous. It is our ignorance that has masked out the Buddha within us.

·         The nature of our mind is empty, so is the nature of outside world. This is known as borderless emptiness.

Having understood the above, we now must understand the nature of our mind. Our mind likes to cling on worldly matters that interest us and our mind is creative. It is the creation and destruction of thoughts that have made our world ever changing. So as to let our mind rest in Dharmadatu, we must:

·         Let our mind rest from creation and destruction of thoughts

·         Let our mind rest from meditation (meditation makes our mind dull)

·         Let our mind rest from clinging on illusive world

Great perfection understands the nature of our mind is not stagnant, so in order to counteract our changing mind and not to kill creativity, the concept of Trikaya or three bodies are developed:

·         The peaceful state (such as in peaceful sea)

·         The enjoyment state (wavy sea)

·         The transformation state (the evaporation of sea water and rain fall)

In short, the practice of great perfection is all about our mind as the saying goes:

不修，不整，不散乱。

One neither engage in practices, nor put it in order; just not scattering.

To sum up, great perfection not only comprises of views (见) but also physical training (修) to purify our body, mind and speech. A practitioner of great perfection should stop mantra recitation and visualizations which are only illusion generating activities of lower yoga practices.

There are many types of supplementary trainings to make our body relax and to unlock our energy channels such as yoga postures. The all famous white yoga is meant to use sun light to clear our energy channels so that the mandala of 100 deities of intermediate state can present at once in the space in front of us. Once the mandala of 100 deities are seen, then the practitioner can proceed to practise the black yoga will transform a practitioner’s body into rainbow body.

All of the materials can be found in most major languages in our bookshop, so it is not a taboo to describe this practice openly. The question remains whether a person can put this precious teaching into practice as it is almost impossible to get an accomplish master these days.

The Intermediate Beings & Ghosts (中阴身与鬼)

In fact, there is no notion of ‘ghost’ in Tibetan Buddhism. The next close idea of a ‘ghost’ is the ‘intermediate body’ which can refer to a potential being of deva, asura, hungry ghost, hell being, human or even animal.

After a dead spirit experienced 3 to 4 days of long slumber, it awakes to go through the actual dying process of about 14 days and then if this spirit is not liberated; it will enter a stage of ‘becoming’ of its future body e.g. a human etc.

Contrary to common understanding of Tibetan Book Of The Dead. Not all dead spirits will be reincarnated within 49 days period. Only a handful especially those who have created severe karma or extremely good karma will be reborn instantly. For majority of folks, they must wait for a particular period of time. The period can range from a few weeks to hundreds of years.

This is same as when you are changing your job. When you have tendered your resignation to your current boss, you normally give 1~3 months’ notice. The time between the beginning of resignation to the beginning of a new job is the ‘honeymoon’ period. i.e. you only wait for your time to start the new work while passing down whatever left in your hands to your colleagues.

Likewise, an intermediate being is a free body until it is time for its reincarnation. If you have psychic eyes, then you will notice that this intermediate body looks like a blob of grey mist measuring about 3 feet height. This intermediate body can move about freely and it can pass through walls. It can also have certain magical powers such as predicting the future and mind reading. However, this intermediate body lacks the ‘seeds’ of father and mother; it has no form and this intermediate one cannot withstand the blow of winds and it is afraid of strong lights.

In another way, intermediate body behaves like the common notion of ‘ghost’ as it needs to seek shelter from elemental forces and lights. It also needs to feed on energy to survive. So until these intermediate beings are reborn, they shall attach to human, animals, trees or electrical appliances for energy.

The conditions of these intermediate beings vary: for example an intermediate body of a deva or an asura (demi-god) will have more magical power and happier than the ones destined to become an animal or hungry ghost. Perhaps we can categorize the common ‘ghost’ as those intermediate beings of lower classes: animals, hungry ghosts or hell. Because these beings from lower realms cannot own food and shelter, they depend very much on their human hosts to supply. Hence, theoretically speaking only lower class beings would dwell in a shrine to serve our human world. Higher beings would not like to stay in filthy human realms.

Of course, the above discussion centred on what is told to us by the book of dead. Traditionally, the Chinese believe that all human will become ghosts when they passed away. All ancestors must be remembered and worshipped so that they will protect the descendants.

If people died outside of their house and no one would pray to their spirits, they shall become wandering spirits and haunts anyone who is in bad luck. So you will find the Chinese give sumptuous food offerings during the famous ‘ghost month’ to appease these good brothers and sisters so that they will not create trouble.

Of course, theoretically speaking, ghosts should not exist in the West where all dead are laid to rest in peace until the judgment day… Unless people there refuse to give out the ghost figuratively speaking.