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Library: Sacred Texts

The Six Meditation Techniques of Acarya Manjusrimitra

O Noble One, should you wish to experience the Continuum of Awareness (vidya-santana) in all its unveiled nakedness, then:

(1) focus on absolute Awareness as the object [of Meditation];

(2) press the points of the body with the mudra1;

(3) retain the coming and going of the breath2;

(4) aim [the arrow] at the target [of the crown bindu];

(5) rely on the immovability (acala) of body, eyes, consciousness;

(6) and grasp the Vast Openness [of absolute Awareness].3

Colophon

This is the last testament of Sri Manjusrimitra.

Footnotes

1 For further reference to the mudra, see in particular the description given in the Sri Hevajra-dakini-jalasamvara-tantra, vol: ii, ch. 5, line 69: svasavyetarapanes tu vrddha vanamika ca ya/ tabhyam prapidayed yogi sambhoge laharidvayam//.

2 To retain the coming and going of the breath here means to practice what in Yoga is called the kumbhaka, or vase-breath.

3 Manjusrimitra's six steps are remarkably similar to a passage in the Mundaka Upanishad (ii, 3, 4): "Having taken as a bow the great weapon of the Secret Doctrine, one should fix in it the arrow sharpened by constant Meditation. Drawing it with the mind filled with That, penetrate, O noble one, the Imperishable as a target! The sacred Mantra is the bow; the arrow is oneself; the Absolute is said to be the target. With heedfulness is That to be penetrated. One should become one with That as the arrow with the target!"

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