Kate Lila Wheeler

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Precious Human Life

December 2, 2010 by klwheeler

I’ve been practicing contemplating what’s called the ‘Precious Human Life’, one of the early components of the Tibetan preliminary practices called the ‘Ngondro’. I did one Ngondro before, and it took me 10 years to complete. This time I’m going far more deeply into this contemplation which is a preliminary to the preliminaries. I was in a rush last time and kind of skipped over it to get to the 100,000 prostrations, 100,000 Bodhisattva vows, 100,000 mantras, mandala offerings and guru yoga repetitions. But this time, letting the precious human life contemplation ‘fester’ within my mind, I feel a sense of interest and safety. I like following the traditional recommendations for practice, the building blocks–making them my own in an interesting way. In any pursuit what makes it interesting is not to ignore it or skim but take my time and feel my way through, learning more about how to open to these frameworks of practice in an honest, genuine way. The P.Human.Life contemplation implicitly draws me into Buddhist cosmology. Then, too, from the common sense view, I started considering the causality of sperm and egg, to get this body. It is clear that the ego didn’t create everything in experience. And causality is complex, not just sperm and egg, a lot more has been necessary to sustain my body and mind’s life until now–this leads to gratitude, also understanding the mystery and fragility of causes and conditions. Then — fear and compassion arise when looking into all the other realms that are not as suitable. I am thinking about the realms in a universal cosmological sense but the practice is also making me aware of patterns of suffering arising within my own life. This can be uncomfortable at times but it seems like things are getting accessible as they are stirred up. NOt yet all that liberated! Yesterday I got very scared about being born in a Buddhaless kalpa–I equated it with not being able to ‘see’ my own mind, which is what all the undesirable births are really about and also what goes on when I get trapped in wanting, stressing out, fear, etc. So this is a Bodhisattva practice, a vipasyana practice when liberating anger, greed, ignorance, or seeing what is yet to be liberated… It’s all the Dharma! I wonder when I will feel ready to move naturally into contemplating impermanence. I am still on the first eight contemplations. Lastly of course, it’s a mentally healthy, happiness-inducing practice to take time to develop gratitude for being alive, eating enough, being healthy, mentally sane, safe enough to be taking this moment onto the path. There is new science about how much benefit comes from practicing gratitude…

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