Blue Sky, White Clouds

 As of mid-September I expect to be adding transcripts to the Double Dorje posts at the host, currently podbean, rather than the approximate scripts with which I have started.

  Approximate script, with some variations and possible errors: Tantra – is it all about sex? Hello Dear Listener, or listeners. Welcome – or welcome again – to the Double Dorje podcast. I’m Alex Wilding, and I wonder if this is the episode you’ve been waiting for. I hope not, because in that case you are probably going to be disappointed. The thing is that while it would be silly to say that sex is completely irrelevant to Buddhist tantra, it doesn’t have nearly as much to do with it as you might at first think.   Before we get much further into this, I think it’s important to underline the way our modern culture has become so highly sexualised. So much so, that we hardly even notice it anymore. Depending on the context, as of course everything always does, it pays to remember that an image of two deities in sexual union is not necessarily actually sexy! The second of several factors not to forget is that the Chris...

  #Buddhism #Tibet #vajrayana #DoubleDorje #Nyingma Approximate script, with some variations and possible errors: Hello everybody, thank you for being here and welcome, or welcome back, to the Double Dorje podcast. I’m Alex Wilding, and recently I went to take teachings from my teacher, Ngagpa Karma Lhundup. I might quite easily make that rather innocuous statement to almost anybody, and I know from experience that while a few people might say something like, “Oh, well, where was that? What teaching did he give?”, an awful lot of people would nod, hoping to look wise. But I would have seen in their eyes that they wonder what on earth that is. Probably they don’t ask in case I launch into a one hour lecture trying to tell them. At the same time I know there are plenty of newish people who do perhaps have an idea of what is involved, but are worried that there is some kind of etiquette that they need to follow in order not to look a fool. I could say - with a smirk - that not w...

  Approximate script, with some variations and possible errors: Hello good people. Welcome, or welcome back, to the Double Dorje podcast. I’m Alex Wilding, and today will be looking at all the rainbow colours of the mantra, sticking mainly with the famous Mani, as well as looking how they go round and round and round and round. In an earlier episode we looked a bit at the meaning of the Mani, and a couple of tunes that we might use for it. Today I want to look at some of its visual aspects, its colours, and its connection to the “six worlds”. The Mani is a particularly good example to use for this for three reasons: it is beautiful, it is popular, and it is accessible to people who haven’t received an appropriate empowerment. No rules need to be broken! Of course, if you can get an empowerment for this you certainly should. I’m not a great fan of online empowerments – perhaps they sort of work, but it all seems like very thin gruel – but a Chenrezi empowerment should be easier ...

  Approximate script, with some variations and possible errors, of the Double Dorje episode at  the Double Dorje podcast Hello dear listeners, and welcome. I’m Alex Wilding and this is the Double Dorje podcast. The episodes in this podcast are generally not in any particular order, but this particular episode does pick up on something I touched on only very lightly in the episode about spooks, demons and helpful spiritual beings, and that is the overall structure of a sadhana practice. I mentioned then, that a lot of us beginning on vajrayana Buddhism in the modern world – and I was one of these – get started off on what are called “daily” practices. These are short sadhanas, just a handful of pages, designed to maintain a connection with a deity with which, traditionally, we would have already got some fairly full experience. At some stage then we might have a full-strength sadhana thrown at us, and we can easily feel that we just don’t know what to do with it. There seem...

 Approximate script, with some variations and possible errors: Hello, Hello, and welcome. Have you refreshed your knowledge of Defence Against the Dark Arts recently? If not, perhaps you shoul, as in this episode we are going to talk a tiny bit about magic, demons and dealings with the other side. I’m Alex Wilding and this is the Double Dorje podcast. A year or two ago I paid a visit to an abandoned house 10 minutes away from where I live. It’s a single story building down a slope a few yards from the main road. No neighbours. Overgrown gate, overgrown entrance path, front door fallen in. Pots and pans and empty cans still in the sink, filthy bedclothes still on the bed. I confess I felt too iffy about it to do my chöd practice in there, but took myself to the balcony outside to do the chant, beat the drum, blow the trumpet and so forth. But perhaps my lack of courage was a form of wisdom – I showed some pictures of the place to my teacher who is, amongst other things, an experie...

  Approximate script, with some variations and possible errors: Hello friends and all other sentient beings, who perhaps might have once been my mother! You are very welcome to the Double Dorje podcast. A conundrum: direct introduction to the true nature of the mind, also known as pointing out instructions! Ink gets spilt liberally in some corners of the internet about the importance of what is sometimes called "direct introduction". This term is particularly popular amongst those in the orbit of the "Dzogchen Community", which is/was the organization stemming from the activity of the late Namkhai Norbu. They have made it a centrepiece of their teaching structure, and that is where it is known as “DI”. DI is also referred to elsewhere as "pointing out instruction". This last phrase, or something similar, is perhaps more widespread. So first, why is it so important anyway? It might pay to look for a moment at what I think are the really radically di...