In 2020, during one of endless lockdowns, when the world seemed to be full of nothing but fear and confusion, I was guided to embark upon a 40-day Bon practice with the “subverter of demons” known as Dorje Drolo, a wrathful manifestation of Padmasambhava, the fully awakened, precious master and patriarch of Tibetan Buddhism.
Dorje Drolo is said to embody insight and compassion beyond logic and convention; in other words, he’s the embodiment of unleashed wisdom. In subduing evil forces, he eliminates all obstacles and leads the practitioner to a state of fearlessness. He also conceals and preserves the secret teachings for future generations.
Similarly to how I entered into the Triple Goddess Practice, with a careful, intentional focus and attention, I read the written practice, mulling over each and every word. I followed by the recitation of a Dorje Drolo mantra 108 times each night over the 40-day period.
Unfortunately, I’ve not been successful in contacting the author of the tranlsated practice, Rudolph Bauer, but you can find it here. I hope it inspires you to investigate what this practice might hold in store for you.
During the practice, whenever I would get a flash of insight, I would pause and take notes. The following is a representation of the insights and questions that arose during this powerful experience that actually did create a fearlessness within me along with an unwavering commitment to Truth.
Insights
- My mind is corralled in awareness by awareness. A vast and borderless field contains all thought. Focus on the field, not the mental activity.
- Direct perception is seeing exactly what is free of any interpretation, just as it is. This is luminosity. This is emptiness.
- Appearances take place within as thoughts, feelings, and memories. They take place without as material phenomena. But it is all appearance with no true substance.
- Negative states of mind create situations that dull the Light of Truth. The common advice to raise one’s frequency isn’t so much born of the idea of being positive all of the time for it’s own sake, so much as it is born of this deeper truth.
- If I give none reason to fear me, I myself become free of fear.
- I am the untouched, the unscathed. In this entire life, I have never once been stained by material existence. Not a single experience or story had marked me. I am simply and always here.
- You just have to be willing to look. You don’t have to seek out nor confront every evil, every injustice, every darkness. Just be willing to meet what comes and truly see what’s there.
- Compassion isn’t a bleeding heart. It’s allowing and holding what is as it is. It is spacious illumination.
- In what ways do we blame if the teachings are misunderstood? Is it the fault of the teachings or the fault of our own misunderstanding?
- Destructive states of self-negation include denying the self that is Pure Awareness and denying the self that exists in the material plane. We are both human and Divine.
- Everything that frightens is merely appearance and spaciousness. That’s all there is. In the dissolving and voiding of any and all situations and fear-based emotional states, notice their emptiness and watch as any attaching interpretations go “poof” before one’s eyes.
- Repetitious reoccupation is what pulls us over and over away from the Light of Truth. This includes endless activity of day to day living and time-wasting.
- Obstructive spirit consists of lies and confusion and destructive spirit consists of arrogance and certainty.
- Integrity is an emanation of Primoridal Awareness, an embodiment and action out of Pure Awareness. Integrity isn’t something the self must fight to embody. Self is relinquished when integrity informs everything.
OM HA HUNG VAJRA MAHA GURU DROWO LOD SIDDHI HUNG