The Manifestation of Virility: A Golden Key Which Is an Inoculation of Sanity in an Insane World.
/By Lama Rangbar March 2020
It is critical when we use words that we take a moment to truly understand what we are in fact saying. What we say proliferates and spreads. Our speech manifests, and so we should be careful with our words.
Definitions:
Virility (in a man) is the quality of having strength, energy, and a strong sex drive; manliness. "Aggression and virility were highly prized in soldiers." Also, from the European root Wiro, associated with masculinity and giving rise to words such as merit and violence.
Noun: The tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another; the quality or fact of being viral.
Virility: (from the Latin virilitas, manhood or virility, derived from Latin vir, man) refers to any of a wide range of masculine characteristics viewed positively. Virile means "marked by strength or force".[2] Virility is commonly associated with vigour, health, sturdiness, and constitution. In this last sense, virility is to men as fertility is to women.
Virus: From late Middle English (denoting the venom of a snake): from Latin, literally ‘slimy liquid, poison or pestilence’. The earlier medical sense, superseded by the current use as a result of improved scientific understanding, was ‘a substance produced in the body as the result of disease, especially one capable of infecting others’.
Merriam-Webster Definition of the word Viral
1: of, relating to, or caused by a virus – a viral infection
2: quickly and widely spread or popularized especially by means of social media – a viral video
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According to a Varjayana Buddhist understanding, in order to deal with any arising within phenomenon, one should understand as much about its root cause as possible. Western science tends to limit itself to the study of what can be observed in physical terms, while Buddhism tries to take into account more subtle immaterial causes and influences. In dealing with a contagious disease we should be both practical and insightful, working from and understanding both sides: material (gross) , subtle and super subtle. Since the virus is definitely here and is spreading, it can also be viewed as a message or indicator.
It is important to note that virility has several connotations. As one of the definitions indicates, on many occasions "virility" is something considered quite positive:
“Virility (in a man) is the quality of having strength, energy, and a strong sex drive; manliness. “
“The tendency of an image, video, or piece of information to be circulated rapidly and widely from one Internet user to another; the quality or fact of being viral.”
“Virility is commonly associated with vigor, health, sturdiness, and constitution”.
In men, virility is considered positive especially if we seek to reproduce and continue on as a species. It represents a force that gets things done and is related with accomplishment and therefore virtue, merit, and even truth.
We would like our memes and video to “go viral”, and spread all over. But the Internet concept of virility is a relatively recent phenomenon, and the true reason why something goes viral is still somewhat of a mystery to advertisers. Something about an issue “resonates” with us, and this is also related with timing and situation.
In a sense, virility depends on resonance and timing or some kind of harmonic behavior. Understanding the mechanism of virility is essential if one is going to understand how to curtail virility in some critical cases, like the spread of a virus. We wish our own virility to be strong. We hope to continue the human race and we hope to be able to pacify the virulence of pathogens that could harm us. We need good information about how to react but we need the media not to cause pandemonium as fear can be very destructive as well.
From a Buddhist perspective, everything arises from a cause. Once the cause arises, it then meets with conditions (time-/space-bound phenomenon), and these things coming together, cause and condition, result in a manifestation. Manifestation means something perceivable or visible. If one therefore understands the mechanism involved in the manifestation of a dis ease, one can then derive methods to subdue the cause and therefore its manifestations. From the Tantras it says that the cause of defilements and diseases is “mean and injurious activity.”
To call ourselves Buddhists, we must first enter the path by taking refuge in the Triple Gem. One takes refuge in Enlightenment, the understanding or teachings that issue from that enlightenment (The Dharma), and the Sangha, the noble community who work to extract themselves from confusion. The main feature or vow to be held within the refuge vows is Ahimsa or harmlessness. Having taken refuge, we should refrain from harming any being. But this vow does not stop at the physical or verbal level. For the practice of Ahimsa to be complete, ahimsa on the level of mind must also be present. In other words, we should not even have the thought of harming another being if we are to be successful practitioners of ahimsa.
It is said that when the refuge vow is taken sincerely with proper understanding, that many benefits arise automatically. Having given up harming others, one’s own life becomes, for the most part, free of the causes of being harmed. This eradication of the cause being established, conditions no longer have the needed link necessary to manifest a disease.
It is based on these understandings and mechanisms, that cures for diseases arise in the Tantras as powerful methods to cleanse the causes of these diseases in order to prevent their manifestations and spread. Practices abound such as Sangye Menlha The Medicine Buddha, Urgyen Menlha, Ta Chag Khyung Sum, the amalgam of three wrathful deities, Hayagriva, Vajrapani, and Garuda, Vajra Body Armor, and practices related with various forms of the 20th Tara, Lomma Gyonma such as Mariamma, Panishawari as well as many others. Understanding this process so far, we are now in a position to look into the use of meditation and mantra as a path to the eradication of the causes of a disease and therefore the manifestation of the disease itself.
Tantric Buddhists use skill and insight in meditation in order to locate and understand the causes of disease within themselves. It is understood and explained by the Buddhas, that if the cause is eradicated, that even if the presence of the virus exists as a condition in the environment, that there can be no linkage between that condition and a cause, and so the disease has no basis for manifesting.
Western scientists insist that the cause of this Coronavirus wave is predominantly the material manifestation of a visible virus. The treatment they seek is normally related with a substance-based vaccine or substance-based treatment of symptoms. Unfortunately, they mostly stop at this level of discovery of the cause. Naturally there were many causes of the virus itself, ranging from perhaps greed to eat tasty fried bat wings or fear leading us to manufacture such a virus as a weapon. There are also causes for its spread and the difference in its virulence, or virility, among different people.
The tantras refer to diseases that thrive in hot climates, moist climates, and cold environments. Typically many diseases are of the cold type and thrive in cold conditions of the body. The body therefore manifests a fever as a natural defense reaction to burn out the pathogen, which is fragile in the presence of heat.
The visualizations and mantra recitations are designed to help us search out any residual and subtle causes of diseases within ourselves, and to burn them out or eradicate these causes with decisive or liberating certitude of mind. Essentially, if our minds are functioning well and clearly, our own bodies are then quite capable of producing whatever substances are needed to fend off most viruses.
One of the principles involved in tantric practices is that of a conscious and directed manifestation of awareness, heat and decisive formula, which is directed at finding and uprooting the related causality. Another feature of the meditation and recitation of mantra deals with addressing hidden causes that reside in our continuums. Some relate with the four obscurations, habitual tendencies, karmic obscurations, emotional obscurations, and intellectual obscurations. There are also so-called “spirits” which manifest within our energy systems, such as hesitation and the five poisons of mind, hatred, neurotic desire, arrogant pride, jealousy, and ignorance. If one’s mind is filled with hatred or even extreme frustration, for example, one may be increasing the causal elements which will connect with the condition, presence of the virus, to give rise to a result, the manifestation of a disease.
For any of these approaches, sufficient recitation of mantras combined with the insightful process of internal exploration adequate to establish self-familiarization (Gom) in Tibetan, or meditation in English, are required. With an insightful view of our internal worlds, we then can develop the power to eradicate the causes with our own disciplines.
The use of mantras can be accomplished in various "modes", as expressed in the tradition notion of the Four Activities: pacifying, increasing (perhaps tonifying in the case of illness), magnetizing or power, and forcefully subjugating or liberating by employing the understanding of unobstructed space and formulaic resonance. It is by the decisive control of formulaic speech and its resulting resonance that the causal links to the diseases can be eradicated. Decisive control of the causal links can also be accomplished by sincere faith as well.
In our current case, the people of our small planet have been falling prey to their own fears. More and more, our own fears are being used to force us to buy things or vote a certain way or are weaponized so that we panic and make bad decisions. Our hatred and intolerance can be exacerbated and we can find ourselves flinching for no reason or separating from old friends for trivial reasons. These situations make us all more vulnerable as our sense of peace, well-being and strength from community dwindles. The virus and its virility could be said to be a manifestation of our own failure to live by compassion, weakness of mind and therefore a stressed natural immune system. But instead, if we can for a single moment see this as an honest message or even a gift from a perfect nature, then we could see how this small virus could actually be the cause of uniting all of us with commonality of our humanity under the single blanket of our mutual compassion for each other and all beings. If we are to call ourselves good responsible humans, let alone Vajrayana practitioners, we should decide our fate as responsible adults. Expecting the government to do it for us is like asking self-absorbed children playing in a sand box to make you a sandwich. It will most likely be made out of sand if you get one at all. We must use meditation to decide what we really want and make it viable. We must choose what virility we wish to manifest. We can allow the virility of the virus to win as it also has some natural rights. We can allow the virility of our fear and doom to win and manifest our fears, or we can make ourselves and our compassion and wisdom viral. Please take this request seriously, use this time to meditate and become familiar with the truth of your internal landscape and paint the landscape that really serves all beings. The cure still is and always was compassion and loving kindness. These things are free, and within our own capacity to engender.
-OM MANI PADME HUNG-
This was written by a Dudjom Lineage Yogi called Sun Rays, trained by compassionate, wise, flawless beings, in an attempt to pay back their kindness by working for the benefit of beings that are apparent. May the lineage of the great healer, the Victorious Buddha’s natural mind, go viral and maintain virility. May beings develop the impenetrable fortress of a strong relaxed mind of harmlessness and kindness, and may all dis-eases be eradicated, leaving only well-being and enlightenment in its wake.
For more information on one of the traditional Buddhist practices to pacify illnesses please visit:
https://www.thegreatawakening.org/ta-chag-khyung-sum-drupcho-march-2020