Radiance Sutras Quotes

There is a place in the heart where everything meets. Go there if you want to find me. Mind, senses, soul, eternity, all are there. Are you there? Enter the bowl of vastness that is the heart. Give yourself to it with total abandon . . . Once you know the way the nature of attention will call you to return, again and again, and be saturated with knowing, 'I belong here, I am at home here.

Be conscious of this unconscious prayer (of your breath), For She is the most holy place of pilgrimage. She wishes for you to enter this temple, Where each breath is adoration Of the infinite for the incarnate form.

Your heart sees by its own light. In meditation, adore the subtle fire The light that you see by Is the light that comes from inside.

Lila is Sanskrit for “play,” “amusement,” and the sense that the universe has been manifested as an act of play by the divine. Through play, find your way. In play, find freedom, revelation, illumination.

Let your attention glide           Through the centers of awareness along the spine                With adoring intent.           There is a song to each area of the body.           Resonating in sweet vortices,           Long rhythmic vowels and hums,           Ah . . . and . . . eee . . . ommmm . . . hummmm . . .           Resounding on and on.           Find the harmonies           Emanating from the circulation of life energies.           Listen to these as sounds,           Then more subtly, as an underlying hum.           Eventually as most subtle feeling.           Then diving more deeply,           Dissolve into freedom.

to shine through and dispel the gloom. Work is a way of engaging with the world. Work is also love and what you give to others. Your to-do list might feel like hell some days, but the light of consciousness wants to illuminate your work as well as your meditation practice.

The yukti here is to use the terribleness of darkness as a gateway into the mystery of the soul. Meditate on this terror, and something mysterious happens. You become one with the blackness. This yukti tells you to take your worst fear and merge with it.

This dharmadhātu is the sphere and the great nirvāṇa of buddhas, which cannot be perceived even by śrāvakas and pratyekabuddhas, let alone ordinary beings. Still, buddhas, bodhisattvas, and sentient beings are not different in essence since they are nothing but three different states of the dharmakāya in terms of its being more or less unobscured by adventitious stains. The dhātu of sentient beings is ultimate reality and the tathāgata heart, which is also identified as the dharmakāya, fully endowed with the inseparable, innumerable, and inconceivable qualities of a buddha, just as the radiance, color, and shape of a jewel are inseparable. The three states of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and sentient beings are nondual, being neither the same nor different.

Behind the spine is infinity. Below the perineum, Invisible pulsating roots Open downward into space. The heart is wide as a spiral galaxy. Steadily consider Back, root, heart, And know the living body of vastness That you are.

The quiet is there all the time, but it takes effort to notice it. Some people even say they can hear the sound of creation behind it. I haven't found that yet, but there's no harm in wondering if it will ever come into my hearing. As Lorin Roche puts it in The Radiance Sutras, his beautiful translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, we listeners become "absorbed in vastness / Like the song of the stars as they shine.

Radiant space above the head. The small self enters delicious omnipresence. This it remembers and knows as its truth.

Forget all of your ideas about the body— It’s this way or it’s that way. Just be with any area of it, This present body, As permeated with limitless space, Drenched in freedom.

Bathe deeply in that ocean of sound Vibrating within you, now as always, Resonating softly, Permeating the space of the heart. The ear that is tuned by rapt listening Learns to hear the song of creation. First like a hand bell, Then subtler, like a flute, Subtler still as a stringed instrument, Eventually as the buzz of a bee. Entering this current of sound, The Listening One Forgets the external world, becomes Absorbed into internal sound, Then absorbed in vastness, Like the song of the stars as they shine.

The Bhairava Tantra is set as a conversation between the Goddess Who Is the Creative Power of the Universe and the God Who Is the Consciousness that Permeates Everywhere. For short, they call each other Devi and Bhairava, or Shakti and Shiva. They are lovers and inseparable partners, and one of their favorite places of dwelling is in the human heart.

Fart—it’s the Heart Sutra!” Ma hissed. “How can you not know that? Think, Guo Tianxu. If the Prince of Radiance is a sign that we have Heaven’s favor, how long do you think that will last if you go around executing monks?