What is Gyulü — The Illusory Body Yoga of Tibetan Buddhism?

Gyulü — pronounced gyu-lü — is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of the illusory body, the second of the Six Yogas or Dharmas of Naropa and one of the most philosophically vertiginous practices in the entire Vajrayana tradition. Transmitted through the Karma Kagyu lineage from Naropa through Marpa, Milarepa, and Gampopa to the present day, Gyulü works with the crown chakra and the waking state — making it the only one of the Six Dharmas practiced with eyes open, in ordinary daily life, in this moment. Where Tummo inner fire meditation works with the subtle body through breath and heat, Gyulü works with perception itself — training the practitioner to recognise that what appears solid, independent, and self-existing is in fact a vivid display arising from causes and conditions, empty of inherent existence, like a flame reflected in a mirror. Far from a denial of reality, the illusory body practice reveals reality more clearly than ordinary perception ever can. The 9th Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje, the Diamond Sutra, modern neuroscience, and quantum physics all point at the same thing. So does looking carefully at your hand.

Look at Your Hand

Look at your hand right now. Really look at it. The solidity you feel — the apparent density of skin and bone and tissue — is almost entirely empty space. If the nucleus of a single atom in your hand were the size of a marble, the nearest electron would be half a mile away. What fills the space between them is not matter but electromagnetic force — the repulsion between electron clouds that generates the experience of surface and resistance. You are not touching anything when you touch the table. You are feeling two clouds of empty space declining to occupy the same location. The hand you are so certain of is a construction. A vivid, functional, entirely convincing construction — and not what it appears to be.

The second of the Six Yogas or Dharmas of Naropa is called Gyulü — the yoga of the illusory body. It does not ask you to believe that your hand is empty. It gives you a direct method for experiencing it. And then it asks you to extend that recognition to everything you see, including the self that is doing the seeing. Of all six practices, this is the one conducted with eyes open, in ordinary daily life, right now. Not on a riverbank in January. Not in the space between sleep and waking. Here. In this moment. Looking at whatever is in front of you and seeing it clearly for the first time.

What Is Gyulü — The Illusory Body Yoga of Tibetan Buddhism

In the Karma Kagyu tradition, each of the Six Dharmas of Naropa works with a specific chakra and a specific state of consciousness. Tummo works with the navel chakra and the waking body. Dream Yoga works with the throat chakra and the dream state. Clear Light works with the heart chakra and the deep sleep state. Gyulü — the illusory body — works with the crown chakra and the waking state of perception itself. It is the practice of recognising that what we take to be solid, independent, self-existing reality is in fact a display — vivid, functional, arising from causes and conditions, and without inherent existence of its own.

The practice is traditionally divided into three progressive stages. The first is the mundane or impure illusory body — working with ordinary appearances and one’s reactions to them. The second is the immaculate illusory body — recognising the pure display of wisdom within all appearances. The third is the most immaculate illusory body — the non-dual recognition in which the distinction between illusory and real, between the practitioner and what is perceived, dissolves entirely. The three stages build on each other. But the entry point is closer than you think. It begins with a mirror. And possibly a candle.

The Niguma transmission — the parallel female lineage that runs alongside the Naropa transmission through the Shangpa Kagyu — also contains its own Gyulü teaching. Kalu Rinpoche, the great 20th century holder of the Shangpa lineage, taught from a short text originating directly from Niguma on how to conduct a complete meditation session on the illusory body and mind, giving particular attention to gratitude, diligence, and karma as foundations for the practice. The female transmission and the male transmission describe the same territory. The same empty hand, seen by different eyes, recognised by the same awareness.

A note for practitioners who have received these teachings through other transmissions — particularly those within the Gelug school through Tsongkhapa’s presentation or the Dalai Lama’s teachings on the Six Yogas. The river you are drinking from and the river described on these pages share the same source — Naropa, on the banks of the Ganges, in the moment after Tilopa’s sandal. From that single point the water has travelled through different valleys, carved different channels, gathered different minerals from different rock — and arrived at you with slightly different flavours, slightly different syllables, slightly different visualisation structures at the throat chakra. But taste it carefully. It is the same water. In Mahamudra we call this རོ་གཅིག — ro gcig — one taste. The recognition that all experience, when met with open awareness, has the same flavour at its root. The science that documents what happens in the body and brain during these practices does not belong to any school — it belongs to the water itself. If you are practicing within a living lineage follow your teacher’s instructions precisely. What is offered here is one channel of one river. There are others. They all reach the same ocean. རོ་གཅིག — one taste.

The Mirror and Candle Practice — A Direct Instruction from the 9th Karmapa

The 9th Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje — author of the Mahamudra: The Ocean of Definitive Meaning, described by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche as the most in-depth and famed text on Mahamudra ever written, traditionally available only to advanced students — gave a remarkably direct and accessible instruction for entering the illusory body through a simple experiment anyone can perform on their altar tonight.

Here is what you do. Place a mirror on your altar in front of your meditation cushion. Light a candle and position it behind you. Angle both mirror and candle with care until, when you are seated in your meditation posture with your eyes naturally forward, you can see the reflection of the flame in the mirror — but not the candle itself. Only the reflection. Settle. Breathe. Bring your mind to stillness in the way you have been trained. And then — look at the flame in the mirror.

Do not look past it or through it or at the wall behind it. Look directly at the reflection. Stay with one question, not as an intellectual exercise but as a lived inquiry: where is the flame? It is not in the mirror — press your finger to the glass and you will not be burned. It is not behind you — you cannot see it from where you sit. It exists in the conjunction of light, glass, angle, and a perceiving mind. Remove the candle — no flame, no reflection.

Remove the mirror — no reflection. Remove yourself — no perception of either. The flame in the mirror has no independent existence and yet it is completely, vividly, undeniably present. Warm coloured. Flickering. Real.

Now stay with that without moving into concept. Not ‘interesting’ or ‘I understand’ or ‘so everything is empty.’ Just the flame. Just the looking. Just the recognition, if it comes, that what is true of this flame is true of everything you have ever seen. Every apparently solid object is a reflection arising from causes and conditions. Every apparently independent thing exists only in the conjunction of conditions and a perceiving mind. The mirror is not a metaphor. It is a laboratory. The 9th Karmapa gave you the experiment four centuries ago. The results are available tonight.

“The reflection has no existence of its own and yet you can see it perfectly clearly. This is the impure illusory body — not a concept, not a philosophical position, but a flame in a mirror on your altar, right now, this evening, if you choose.” — QP

Closed Eyes and Open Eyes — Emptiness and Clarity Together

My Lama taught something about meditation that I have never seen stated so precisely anywhere in print, and I want to give it the space it deserves here. He said: when you meditate with closed eyes, you understand emptiness. When you meditate with open eyes, you understand perfect clarity. And of course — he would pause here, with that particular quality of attention that meant something important was coming — we want both. A perfectly clear understanding of emptiness.

Sit with that for a moment. Closed eyes: the visual field dissolves, the boundary between self and world softens, the sense of being a located observer inside a body looking out at a separate world begins to loosen. Emptiness becomes accessible because the habitual stream of visual input that constantly reinforces the sense of separate solid things has been temporarily interrupted. The mind begins to rest in its own nature. Open eyes: clarity is available because the full vivid display of appearance is present — colour, form, movement, depth — and the practice is to rest in the recognition of that display without grasping it as solid or independent. Not emptiness that cancels out appearance. Not appearance that obscures emptiness. Both simultaneously. Vivid and empty. Like a flame in a mirror.

This is not only the definition of the illusory body in its most immaculate form. It is the definition of Mahamudra realisation itself. The 9th Karmapa’s mirror practice is the bridge between the two — eyes open, full visual display present, and the direct perception that what is seen is empty of independent existence without ceasing to appear. The practice can be taken into any meditation. It can be taken into daily life. It is available right now, in the room you are sitting in, looking at whatever is in front of you. My Lama was teaching Gyulü every time he said it. I understood that somewhat later.

The Practice of Daily Life — Praise, Insult, and the Impure Illusory Body

The Kagyu instructions on the mundane or impure illusory body include a teaching that is so immediate and so uncomfortable that it deserves its own section. The instruction is simple: let someone praise you and observe the pleasure that arises. Let someone insult you and observe the resentment that arises. Then look directly at both reactions. Where did the pleasure come from? Where does the resentment live? Both arose from causes and conditions — the words spoken, the relationship context, the history of self-image being confirmed or threatened. Both are equally dependent on conditions for their arising. Neither exists independently. And yet in the moment of praise you feel genuinely pleased, and in the moment of insult you feel genuinely hurt.

The practice is not to become indifferent to both — that is not the teaching. The practice is to see the arising of both reactions as vivid, real, and without independent existence simultaneously. Just like the flame in the mirror. The pleasure is not denied. The resentment is not suppressed. They are seen clearly, as they are — dependently arising, vivid, empty. This is the impure illusory body practiced in the middle of ordinary human life. No altar required. No candle. Just the next time someone says something about you — good or bad — and you remember to look.

The Black Crown — The Crown That Liberates When Seen

I have been to Rumtek. I have seen the guards. I want to tell you what I was standing near — and why it belongs on this page about the illusory body.

The Black Crown — known in Tibetan as Ü sha Thong Dröl, the Crown That Liberates When Seen — is said to have been woven by the Dakinis from their hair and given to the Karmapa in recognition of his spiritual realisation. According to the tradition it exists permanently above the Karmapa’s head in the subtle perception of those with sufficient realisation to see it. The physical crown that sits under guard at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim is a replica — a material representation of something that exists in the subtle realm always. When the 5th Karmapa Dezhin Shekpa visited the Chinese Emperor Yongle in the 15th century, the Emperor’s devotion was sufficient to allow him to perceive the Karmapa’s subtle Sambhogakaya form wearing the crown. The Emperor commissioned the physical replica so that others — those whose perception had not yet opened to the subtle — could receive its blessing through the material form.

The ceremony itself is Gyulü practiced at the highest level of upaya. By merely seeing the Black Crown during the ceremony, the tradition holds, one will become a bodhisattva of the first bhumi within three lifespans. Not because of the physical object. Because seeing it — if you have the eyes to see — is the recognition that all form is this way. Everything apparently solid is a material representation of an energetic reality that preceded it. The crown is neither real nor unreal. It is an appearance arising from causes and conditions — the Dakinis’ recognition, the Emperor’s devotion, the Karmapa’s awareness, your own capacity to receive. Remove any one of those conditions and there is no crown, no ceremony, no liberation. The physical object that sits under guard at Rumtek is a flame in a mirror. And it has not been used in over thirty years.

One witness who was present when the 16th Karmapa performed the Black Crown ceremony wrote: “When he dons the Black Crown, Karmapa’s expression transforms and he makes the plane of consciousness on which he is permanently situated visible to others. The music that accompanies it is the most significant of all heard in Tibetan monasteries.” I did not see the 16th Karmapa perform this ceremony. But I have sat in a Gompa and watched my Lama teach Mahamudra. No physical crown. No horns, no conch shells, no drums. He would sit perfectly straight, his eyes going to the back of the room just above all our heads — not seeing us exactly, not not-seeing us, but opening something and holding it open. A quality of awareness entering the room that was not his alone. His words in those moments invited us all into a space he was holding for us. Open mind-space-awareness. Just us and our devotion to the Karmapa, and the door that opened when the conditions were right.

Was it Samadhi? Was it highest bliss? Was it a dream? I am still not completely sure. What I know is that the door still opens when I think of him. The conditions still arise. The transmission is still warm. No crown required. Just devotion, and the recognition that the teacher and the teaching and the taught were never three different things.

Look carefully at the physical form of the crown itself — not the guarded object, but the form as it has always appeared in ceremony and depiction. What do you see at the wings? Not solid gold. Clouds. Golden clouds. Have you ever wondered why clouds? Why not something permanent, something fixed, something that announces solidity and power and duration? Why would the Dakinis weave a crown with clouds on it?

Because clouds are already dissolving. They have never been anything other than dissolving. What appears as golden permanence at the wings of the crown is impermanence itself — vividly displayed, showing its own nature in the very form it takes. The Gyulü teaching is not written about the crown. It is woven into it.

And then — the clouds part. Or perhaps a better image: the curtain opens. Because this is also a theatre, and the Black Crown ceremony is the show beginning. The golden display dissolves at the wings and what is revealed at the centre is the midnight-blue depth of the sky. The Dharmakaya. The unchanging nature of reality that was always the backdrop — behind every thought, behind every appearance, behind every cloud that ever moved across it and dissolved.

What do you see at the centre of that midnight-blue field?

Prominently, inescapably — the double Dorje. The Vishvavajra (རྡོ་རྗེ་རྒྱ་གྲམ — rdo rje rgya gram). The crossed vajra pointing in all four directions simultaneously, from all four directions toward the centre. Can you feel what it is pointing at? The double Dorje is not decoration either. It is the entrance to the Mandala — not a door you pass through, but the indestructible ground upon which the entire wisdom palace arises. You do not enter through it. You recognise it. And in the recognition, the Mandala has always already been entered. The ground was always already there. Under the clouds. Under the golden display. Under everything that appeared solid and permanent and separate.

The crown has been showing us this for six hundred years. The golden clouds dissolving at the edges. The curtain opening. The midnight-blue sky. And at the centre — the indestructible ground pointing in all directions at once.

Perhaps the teaching was never hidden at all.

Technically — it has been. Locked in a guarded room at Rumtek for over thirty years. The teaching about the illusory nature of all apparently solid, apparently permanent, apparently unchanging things — physically locked away by the very forces that believe solid, permanent, unchanging possession is possible. Still there. Still the teaching. The door is guarded. The sky has no door.

Maybe it is time for the crown to come out.

But look more carefully still. The crown is not only the clouds and the sky. It is a complete Mandala — a fully encoded Vajrayana teaching delivered in silk and jewels and gold, visible at every Black Crown ceremony for six hundred years to anyone with the eyes to read it. And the reading begins at the outside and moves inward and upward — a journey through the crown that maps precisely onto the journey through the entire Six Dharmas of Naropa.

The outer boundary — two lines of seven jewels each, fourteen in total, running along each wing — are the walls of the Mandala. The boundary between the ordinary world and the sacred space within. You are standing at the threshold. The jewelled lines are the gate.

Just behind the jewelled lines — the golden clouds. Already dissolving. Already showing their own impermanent nature in the very form they take. And when the Karmapa places the crown on his head, he holds one of the clouds. Not the jewelled frame. Not the structure. One cloud. The gesture is everything — the Karmapa physically receiving the Dakini transmission, taking the entire display of appearance into his hands, holding impermanence itself as he enters the ceremony. The Gyulü teaching performed in a single gesture before a word has been spoken. You have entered the Mandala. You are inside the crown.

Then the midnight-blue sky of the Dharmakaya — the sky without centre or limit. The black attainment resolved into recognition. The Ösel practice arriving at its destination. The territory entered in deep sleep and in the morning waves between waking and dream — here, worn openly on the Karmapa’s head, available to every eye in the room. The sky that is his permanent residence.

Within the midnight-blue field — the Double Dorje, the Vishvavajra (རྡོ་རྗེ་རྒྱ་གྲམ — rdo rje rgya gram). The entrance to the Mandala and the complete Vajrayana path of transformation simultaneously. The four prongs pointing in all four directions represent the transformation of the five poisons into the five wisdoms — ignorance into Dharmadhatu wisdom, anger into mirror-like wisdom, pride into the wisdom of equality, desire into discriminating awareness wisdom, jealousy into all-accomplishing wisdom. The bardo of dharmata in one symbol. The display of the five Buddha families that arises in the intermediate state — terrifying to the unprepared mind, liberating to the one who recognises it. The crown shows you the bardo before the bardo arrives. This is what the ceremony has always been doing.

Above the Double Dorje — the sun and moon. Male and female. Method and wisdom. Compassion and emptiness. The union of the two truths — conventional reality and ultimate reality held together in a single symbol at the centre of the Mandala. The totality. Those with specific transmissions within the completion stage practices will understand precisely what this symbol is pointing at. Those without them will understand that the crown is pointing at a completeness that transcends any partial view.

Above the sun and moon — the bumpa (བུམ་པ) of Tsepame (ཚེ་དཔག་མེད་ — tshe dpag med), Amitayus, the long-life aspect of Amitabha. The vase containing the nectar of immortal life. The same Amitabha whose mantra was spoken across thousands of kilometres into a dying man’s ear — here in his aspect as the guardian of life rather than the receiver of death. Long life for those who attend with devotion. And at death — the gate to the Pure Land. The bumpa holds both simultaneously. The life protected and the passage prepared. The Phowa practice and the long-life blessing are not opposites. They are the same Amitabha seen from two sides of the same threshold.

At the very apex of the crown — the Spinel. More valuable than a ruby. The pinnacle jewel crowning everything that lies beneath it. Above the bumpa of Tsepame. Above the sun and moon. Above the five wisdoms and the midnight-blue sky. The entire structure ascending to this single red point. Amitabha’s colour is red. Tsepame’s colour is red. The family colour of the West — of discriminating awareness wisdom, of desire transformed into recognition — is red. Whether the Spinel is Amitabha himself, or Tsepame his long-life aspect, or simply the pinnacle of the entire Buddha Amitabha family made manifest in the most precious red stone available — the journey through the crown ends here. In red. In radiance. In the colour of the setting sun, the colour of Dewachen — བདེ་བ་ཅན་, the Blissful — Amitabha’s Pure Land, the destination of the Phowa transmission. The jewel at the top of everything.

The crown is not a crown. It is the complete Six Dharmas of Naropa — the Mandala walls, the clouds of Gyulü parting, the Dharmakaya sky of Ösel, the five wisdoms and their poisons of the bardo of dharmata, the union of the two truths, the long-life blessing and the Phowa preparation of Tsepame, and at the very pinnacle the red jewel pointing toward Dewachen — བདེ་བ་ཅན་ — the destination the entire journey through the crown has been moving toward. All of it compressed into one object. Worn openly at every ceremony. Visible to everyone in the room. The teaching was never hidden. It was always on his head.

Water, Fog, Rain — and the Nature of Water Itself

My Lama often taught the four Kayas through an image that I have never found in any text but that I have never forgotten. He compared them to the progressive states of water. Dharmakaya is the humidity — present everywhere, pervasive, formless, invisible to those who are not looking. Sambhogakaya is the fog — form beginning to coalesce, visible under certain conditions, neither fully solid nor fully absent. Nirmanakaya is the rain — fully manifest, individual drops, appearing to be separate but falling from the same cloud. And then he would pause.

Because there is a fourth Kaya that most presentations mention only in passing and that deserves to be named fully here. The Svabhavikakaya — the nature body, the body of essential nature. Not a fourth state of water. The recognition that water was always water in all three states. The H₂O that was never not itself, whether invisible in the air, gathering in the fog, or falling as rain into the ocean. The Svabhavikakaya is the unity of the other three — not a separate state but the nature of all states recognised simultaneously. The 3rd Karmapa Rangjung Dorje’s Mahamudra Aspiration Prayer speaks of flowing into the ocean of the four Kayas of the Victorious Ones. The ocean is the destination. The rain drop that thinks it is separate from the ocean is the practitioner who has not yet recognised the Svabhavikakaya. The moment of recognition is the drop touching the surface.

The Diamond Sutra points at the same territory in its great closing verse: just as in the vast ethereal sphere, stars and darkness, light and mirage, dew, foam, lightning and clouds emerge, become visible, and vanish again — like the features of a dream — so everything endowed with an individual shape is to be regarded. Not annihilated. Not denied. Regarded. Seen clearly as what it is — arising, vivid, empty, dissolving. The rain drop is real. Its separateness from the ocean is the illusion. The Gyulü practice is the recognition of that in every apparently solid thing you encounter — including and especially the self that believes it is separate from everything else.

“My tears still flow as I write these words. They are no longer the tears of sadness leaving the body. They flow into the Svabhavikakaya. They always were the ocean.” — QP

What Neuroscience Found — The Brain Was Already Doing Gyulü

Researchers at UC Berkeley working with teams at the Allen Institute recently identified a specialised subset of neurons in the primary visual cortex they called IC-encoder neurons — neurons that respond emergently to illusory forms. When these neurons were selectively activated, they recreated the visual representation of illusory contours in the absence of any visual stimulus. The brain was generating the experience of a form that did not exist in the sensory input. The implication is profound: perception is not a recording of external reality. It is a construction — a top-down prediction generated from prior patterns and projected outward onto whatever the eyes are pointed at.

You are not seeing the world. You are seeing your brain’s model of the world — updated continuously by sensory input but fundamentally generated from the inside. The apparent solidity of the table, the apparent independence of the person across from you, the apparent continuity of the self that moves through time — all of it is a construction. The IC-encoder neurons are firing right now, generating the experience of this page as a solid object in your hands or on your screen. Gyulü does not ask you to stop the construction. It asks you to see it as a construction while it is happening. Eyes open. Full display present. The flame in the mirror, vivid and empty, simultaneously.

When my Lama’s eyes went to the back of the Gompa above all our heads — his IC-encoder neurons were firing at what I can only describe as nuclear proportions. He was not seeing less. He was seeing more. The construction was transparent to him. The mirror and what it reflected and the awareness doing the reflecting were recognised as one movement. That is the most immaculate illusory body. That is what the practice is pointing at.

The Quantum Mirror — Observer and Observed Co-Arising

The quantum measurement problem — the question of why a quantum system in superposition of multiple possible states resolves into a single definite state at the moment of observation — is the most discussed and least resolved problem in the foundations of physics. What the experiments consistently show is that the observer and the observed cannot be cleanly separated. The act of measurement participates in determining the outcome. Prior to measurement there is no definite position, no definite state, no definite reality in the classical sense. There is a wave function — a mathematical description of possibilities — that collapses into a specific outcome only when conditions for observation are met.

This is the mirror teaching in mathematical language. Remove the candle — no flame. Remove the mirror — no reflection. Remove the observer — no collapse, no definite outcome, no measured reality. The flame in the mirror and the particle with a definite position are structurally identical — both arising from the conjunction of conditions and a perceiving awareness, both vivid and functional, both without independent existence prior to observation. Neither Buddhism nor quantum physics is speaking of nothingness. Both are speaking of a very specific kind of emptiness — not the absence of appearance but the absence of self-existence, the recognition that what appears does so dependently, co-arising with the conditions that make it visible.

The word illusion in Gyulü does not mean something that does not exist. It means something that is not what it seems to be. The quantum particle is real. Its apparent independence from the observer is the illusion. The rain drop is real. Its apparent separateness from the ocean is the illusion. You are real. Your apparent separateness from awareness itself is the illusion. Gyulü is the practice of seeing through that one thing. Everything else follows.

A Note on Practice and Transmission

Of all the Six Dharmas, Gyulü may be the most accessible in its entry point and the most demanding in its depth. The mirror and candle practice is available to anyone who has a mirror and a candle and fifteen minutes of stillness. The recognition it points at — the most immaculate illusory body, the non-dual awareness in which the distinction between illusory and real dissolves entirely — is the fruit of a lifetime of practice within a living lineage.

The practice can be taken into any meditation, any tradition, any moment of ordinary life. Every apparently solid thing you encounter is an invitation. Every reaction of pleasure or resentment is a laboratory. Every reflection in every surface is the 9th Karmapa handing you the practice directly. But the depth of what is available within the formal Gyulü transmission — the Niguma text, the three stages, the connection to the Mahamudra pointing-out instructions — requires a teacher, a lineage, and the preparation that makes the recognition possible when it comes.

My Lama was teaching Gyulü all along. All at once. All connected. Just so natural. Just so informal. Just like the Buddha.

Soheit — Suchness — The Space That Needs Nothing From You

There is something that happens in this practice that no formal instruction quite prepares you for. The space opens — or rather you notice it was always open — and the mind does what minds do. It reaches out to see it, touch it, feel it, sometimes all at once. This does not work. The space is jenseits all of that — beyond the reach of the reaching itself. So the mind tries something else. It tries to add to it. To define it. To place it somewhere it can be held and named and understood. And the space does not resist this. It does not push back or close or say no. But it does not need the addition either. The additions slip off. Dissolve. Not because the space rejects them but because it is already complete. Already perfect. There is nothing it requires. Nothing it lacks. Nothing that could be added that would make it more what it is.

And then the deepest addition arrives. The one that feels most like truth because it is so old and so familiar. The feeling of being impure. Unworthy. Not quite enough to be here. And this too — this especially — is yours. Not the space’s. The space has no position on your worthiness. It does not welcome you because it does not need to. Welcome implies a threshold, a door, a distinction between inside and outside. There is no threshold here. You already belong. You always did. The feeling of unworthiness is the last addition, the most persistent one, and it slips off too. Given enough stillness it slips off too. And what remains when it does is not achievement or arrival or understanding. Understanding is not necessary here. Nothing is necessary here.

The Sanskrit word is tathata — suchness, thusness, the quality of being exactly thus. The Tibetan is de bzhin nyid — just-so-ness, the very nature of just as it is. And in German — in the language of Meister Eckhart who pointed at the same space from a different tradition six centuries ago — Soheit. Such-ness. So-ness. The quality of being exactly and only what it is.

Soheit.

Not two things unified. Not a problem resolved. Not a gap closed. Something that was never divided. Something that was never incomplete. Something that needs nothing from you and in needing nothing from you gives you everything — the recognition that you were already home before you knew you were looking for it.

My Lama’s eyes going to the back of the Gompa. Thus.

The flame in the mirror. Thus.

The tear finding the ocean. Thus.

You, reading this, feeling unworthy of the space you are already sitting in. Thus.

Ahha.

The tears stay wet on the page for all to feel their Svabhavikakaya.

“The flame in the mirror is neither real nor unreal. It is the teaching itself — vivid, empty, and completely sufficient.” — QP

Continue the Six Dharmas

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← Back to: Naropa — The Living Lineage of Awakening

→ Next: Milam — Dream Yoga (coming soon)

Further Reading & Sources

Kagyu Primary Sources

9th Karmapa Wangchuk Dorje — Mahamudra: The Ocean of Definitive Meaning (free download) — Internet Archive — the complete text of the most in-depth Mahamudra treatise ever written, traditionally restricted to advanced students, now freely available

Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche — The Ninth Karmapa’s Ocean of Definitive Meaning — Snow Lion — Thrangu Rinpoche’s distillation of the 9th Karmapa’s text, described by the 17th Karmapa as bringing forth the central issues with unique ability

Tilopa — The Ganges Mahamudra (free online) — Lotsawa House — the root transmission, the source from which Gyulü flows

Naropa — Primary texts and translations (free online) — Lotsawa House — songs, praise verses, and transmission texts

Sarah Harding — Niguma, Lady of Illusion — Snow Lion / Tsadra — includes Niguma’s own illusory body teachings from the Shangpa transmission

Jamgon Kongtrul — Treasury of Knowledge Book Eight Part Four — Snow Lion / Tsadra — Six Dharmas including Gyulü from a Kagyu-Rime perspective

Science & Research

UC Berkeley / Allen Institute — IC-Encoder Neurons and Illusory Contours — Science — the research showing specialised neurons that generate illusory perceptions — the neuroscience of top-down construction of reality

Bessel van der Kolk — The Body Keeps the Score — The definitive account of how the body constructs and stores experience — relevant to the impure illusory body practice

The Translating Karmapas Project

Translating the Karmapas’ Works — translating-karmapas.org — The extraordinary project born at Karma Guen cataloguing and translating 1,369 texts from the collected works of sixteen Karmapas — a gift to every practitioner who comes after us. Please support their work.

Karma Guen — Diamond Way Retreat Centre, Andalucía — The home of the ITAS translation programme and the blessing field where the Translating Karmapas project was inaugurated in the presence of the 17th Karmapa

Support the Translating Karmapas Project — Direct support for the translation of the Karmapas’ collected works into English

Series Navigation

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