Magic and Dharma
I’m just about done with Healing With Form, Energy and Light: The Five Elements in Tibetan Shamanism, Tantra, and Dzogchen, which has been quite a good book. The amazing thing reading through this book is how much entire sections of it read almost completely like a manual for Western magical practices and elemental work. Whole sections of it when the author discusses how the elements interrelate, how the various energies form the body, and how to work with the elements and energies could be taken from a good book on Hermetic magic. It’s also amazingly refreshing to read a trained and recognized Tibetan teacher who is comfortable enough with English to use idiom and Western cultural references when appropriate. He describes the energy channels at one point and he’s trying to give a guide to visualizing their size and references the two side channels as being about the diameter of a pencil and the central one being larger with the diameter of a fountain pen, roughly. He even picks up some analogies to passwords and hard drives when dealing with the chakras at one point but does so in an insightful, not silly, way. It’s nice. I’ve been reading this book off and on for the last month when I had the energy to focus on it.
I just picked up his book on Lucid Dreaming and have his book on Dzogchen and the Nature of the Mind. I think I’ll be reading those next. It’s too bad that Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche is on the East Coast but I’m actually considering traveling to his center if he offers a series of teachings there when I can go. He has a three week retreat starting this Monday but there was no way I could do that. I am in contact with a practice group of his in the Bay Area and he seems to come out twice a year normally to give teachings and empowerments.
Refuge is the day after tomorrow. I’ve never attended the ceremony before so we’ll see how it goes.
