Blue truth, p.1
Blue Truth, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Important Caution
Also by David Deida
Praise for David Deida
Foreword
LIFE & DEATH
1. Love Fully and Die
2. Feel Before Memory
3. Give Every Thing Now
4. Unfold Your Heart
5. Resist Nothing
6. Breathe Everything
7. Wear Everyone’s Shape
8. Offer Yourself as Love
9. Unclench as if Asleep
10. Relax as You Are
11. Honor Your Depth
12. Open While Failing
13. Appreciate Dissatisfaction
14. Don’t Wait for Perfection
15. Do Love Through Your Body
16. Be Reminded by Jealousy
17. Express Who You Really Are
18. Live as Love
19. Remain Open When Disgusted
20. Undo All Effort
LOVE & SEX
21. Allow Love’s Hurt
22. Recognize Your Refusal
23. Let Love Live as Anger
24. Permit Your Heart’s Wild Passion
25. Live Your Heart’s Truth
26. Ravish Beyond Safety
27. Enjoy Flowery Combat
28. Unguard Your Sex
29. Don’t Settle for Fulfillment
30. Be Free as Love Now
31. Shine as Love’s Light
32. Play Sexuality as Art
33. Open Deeper Than Need
34. Trust Him More Than Yourself
35. Exaggerate Sex to Liberate Love
36. Hold Nothing Back
37. Offer Sex for the Sake of All
38. Awaken Sexually as Bliss And Emptiness
39. Be Alive as Gifting
Epilogue: Blue Truth
David Deida Resources
About the Author
Back Cover Material
IMPORTANT CAUTION
Please Read This
Although anyone may find the practices, disciplines, and understandings in this book to be useful, it is made available with the understanding that neither the author nor the publisher are engaged in presenting specific medical, psychological, emotional, sexual, or spiritual advice. Nor is anything in this book intended to be a diagnosis, prescription, recommendation, or cure for any specific kind of medical, psychological, emotional, sexual, or spiritual problem. Each person has unique needs and this book cannot take these individual differences into account. Each person should engage in a program of treatment, prevention, cure, or general health only in consultation with a licensed, qualified physician, therapist, or other competent professional. Any person suffering from venereal disease or any local illness of his or her sexual organs or prostate gland should consult a medical doctor and a qualified instructor of sexual yoga before practicing the sexual methods described in this book.
ALSO BY DAVID DEIDA
BOOKS
The Way of the Superior Man
A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire
Dear Lover
A Woman’s Guide to Men, Sex, and Love’s Deepest Bliss
Intimate Communion
Awakening Your Sexual Essence
Finding God Through Sex
Awakening the One of Spirit Through the Two of Flesh
Wild Nights
Conversations with Mykonos about Passionate Love, Extraordinary Sex, and How to Open to God
The Enlightened Sex Manual
Sexual Skills for the Superior Lover
It’s a Guy Thing
An Owner’s Manual for Women
Instant Enlightenment
Fast, Deep, and Sexy
AUDIO
Enlightened Sex
Finding Freedom & Fullness Through Sexual Union
The Teaching Sessions: The Way of the Superior Man
Revolutionary Tools and Essential Exercises for Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire Love
WEBSITE
www.deida.info
PRAISE FOR DAVID DEIDA
“David Deida must have the biggest balls in contemporary spirituality.”
VIJAY RANA
—The Watkins Review
“As a woman, I’ve never felt so understood and validated.”
MARCI SHIMOFF
—Co-Author of Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul
“Every once in a while, someone comes along whose work is clearly a next step . Their ideas seem to answer some collective question hanging out in the culture. Their books and seminars become an underground buzz, and within a period of time, their ideas become part of our cultural vernacular. David Deida is such a person. In a time not too far off from now, his ideas will have spread like wildfire.”
MARIANNE WILLIAMSON
—Author of A Return to Love
“There are few categories I know of for an original like David Deida; for his teachings there is no pigeonhole. He is a bridge-builder between East and West, between ancient and modern wisdom traditions. David Deida is in the dynamic living oral tradition of maverick spiritual teachers who, like free-jazz musicians, can riff directly on Reality, outside of established forms. Mark my words: in a future that I hope is not too far off, David Deida’s original Western Dharma will be widely known as one of the most sublime and accessible expressions of the essence of spiritual practice that is freely offered today.”
LAMA SURYA DAS
—Author of Awakening the Buddha Within
“David Deida’s teachings on this central human concern, sexuality, emanate from a deeply trustworthy source. He has undergone his own rigorous training and practice, which manifests in precise, gentle, and thorough teachings. Like Zen, the fruition of David’s work is openness, compassion, and love.”
GENPO ROSHI
—Author of The Eye Never Sleeps
“David Deida’s work reveals a depth of loving the human condition and understanding its immanent spirituality I’ve seldom seen, even in a glimmer. It’s hard for me to find words with which to express my appreciation and admiration for this unique gift.”
JENNY WADE, PH.D.
—Author of Changes of Mind
“David Deida brings spirituality down from the clouds and back into our bodies where it belongs. His no-nonsense approach to refining our spiritual sensibilities comes as a welcome intervention to both New Age and conservative trends in contemporary spirituality. Deida helps us to get REAL in a world where reality is an increasingly rare commodity.”
MARIANA CAPLAN
—Author of Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment
“David Deida is a Jewel in the crown of those that are willing to live the Truth beyond trying to escape into the Absolute. If you want to know how deeply we can open to God, and how drastically this can be mirrored in our daily lives, then David is your companion where others fear to tread.”
VARTMAN
—Author of Unreasonable Happiness
FOREWORD
by Lama Surya Das
How can I characterize Blue Truth and the spiritual teaching of David Deida?
David presents the kind of challenge that creative artists, spiritual awakeners, and innovators in the history of human beings have always posed. When faced with something new, original, and profound, language fails and the mind is humbled by the lack of a category to hang it on. I could compare David’s work with the Tantric traditions that it certainly resembles in many respects—or Kashmir Shaivism ... Or I could write of its similarities with my own Dzogchen lineage of Buddhism, for it certainly shares with our tradition deep insights into reality and what is.
But there are few categories I know of for an original like David; for his teachings there is no pigeonhole. He himself is carving out his own territory, like a pioneer, an explorer. Unlike much of what we find in the spiritual marketplace today, David does not merely mouth pale shadows of truths from other times, places, and people, but is in the dynamic living oral tradition of maverick spiritual teachers who, like free-jazz musicians, can riff directly on Reality, outside of established forms. This is why I am attuned to his provocative, sacred music.
Naked awareness is the main practice in the Dzogchen traditition of Tibetan Buddhism. We take refuge in and rely on innate wakefulness and awareness practice to lay bare the nature of both the mind and all things; this is the ground, the path and the fruit of the tried and true Buddhist path of awakening. Awareness is the sovereign, all-powerful, and all-accomplishing ruler, the source of all; awareness is the greatest protection; awareness is the way, the truth, and the light. Homage to naked awareness, the heart of the Buddhas of past, present and future. David’s book, Blue Truth, is such an homage.
Samantabhadara—embodying bare truth, naked awareness unencumbered by concepts—is the source of the Dzogchen lineage. Dzogchen actually predates the advent of Buddhism in Tibet. Dzogchen is also the consummate teaching of the Tibetan tradition, a nondual mystical transmission providing direct access to one’s own innate natural state, the Buddha within. This primordial Buddha within us embodies the possibility of realization in one instant.
Thus D zogchen pith instructions tell us: “One moment of total awareness is one moment of perfect enlightenment.” This is the direct path, cutting directly to the core and touching truly upon the heart of the matter. This is what David Deida is transmitting and teaching. He comprehends these deep words. He practices these words by living them, and he teaches what he lives. He has an uncommon ability to render the most esoteric understandings at the core of the world’s great spiritual wisdom in a form accessible and useful to the modern western mind.
David is a man with a mission; he is striving to transform the atmosphere of contemporary tantric teaching and practice in the world today. Although not a Buddhist or part of any pre-existing spiritual tradition, David Deida’s fresh, original teaching lays bare the essence behind each moment’s appearance. His is the exact form of on-the-spot insight, cutting through to the nature of reality, that traditions spring up in the wake of. But David is far more concerned with your authentic realization of openness and love than he is with creating more clothing for yet another spiritual outfit. His teaching serves to remove any cloaks your heart might be wearing, especially any garments knit of sexual confusion.
The true Buddha does not just sit above us all in the remote vastness of heavenly firmaments, but resides within the heart and mind of each and every one of us. What we seek, we are. It is all within. This is the naked truth, a veritable fact of life. David Deida understands this. He speaks from that position. To him, nakedness is far more than mere nudity, and his kind of tantra reaches far beyond prurient interests, sensuality, and mere sex.
From the primordial state of infinite, pure and spontaneously accomplishing awareness arises infinite teachings and manifestations. Timeless truths reveal themselves in timely new forms, appropriate for today and tomorrow. In our ancient Nyingma tradition of Tibet, these are called termas, or rediscovered Dharma treasures, which can come in the form of spiritual revelations of breathtaking beauty and grandeur as well as more pragmatically in the form of spiritual teachings and transmissions, empowerments, exercises and practices. This is how the Tibetan tantric Vajrayana tradition continues to revitalize and continually propagate itself. I believe that David Deida is actually onto something like this, in his own inimitable way.
These are big words, but David is a big mind that can step into such yetisized shoes and tread such a nondual mystical path. A gifted and charismatic teacher, an erudite and wise person of integrity and heart, David is the one western teacher of tantra whose books I read and whom I send students to learn from.
He is a bridge-builder between East and West, between ancient and modern wisdom traditions regarding this least understood of all spiritual teachings: the mystery of intimacy as a yoga of transformation, transcendence, and self-realization.
Buddha nature is the essence of every appearance and every moment of nowness. And Blue Truth points to the Buddha nature of now so artfully and so consistently, and in so many different areas of human life, that you can’t help but have glimpses of the Dharmakaya, the Unborn and undying naked reality shining through your own experience, as you taste it via David’s evocation of each moment’s realization of what “is” in the very midst of what appears to be.
Blue Truth functions like the renowned Tibetan truth method called Pointing-out Instructions, reminding us that phantasmagorical visible appearances are a magical, dreamlike display of consciousness, energy, and light; and that the only authentic choice is to recognize it Just As Is within love’s fearless, accepting embrace.
Mark my words: in a future that I hope is not too far off, David Deida’s original western Dharma will be widely known as one of the most sublime and accessible expressions of the essence of spiritual practice that is freely offered today. The results of true practice, in any tradition, are unmistakable; David Deida demonstrates them.
Truths are many, but truth is one. All the great traditions have this truth at the core. Dzogchen teaching expresses it without much cultural accouterment or baggage. Not a matter of mere intellection, it can’t really be taught—but it can be caught. When you catch on, then it is truly transmitted and realized. We can truly awaken in this way.
Spiritual seekers can realize what masters and sages throughout the ages have always realized: the facticity of what is, clear vision of things as they are through naked denuded awareness—not fabricating anything, not constructing, not building anything up, far beyond contrivance and elaboration. This true teaching on the primordially pure and perfectly whole, complete and radiant nature of reality, mind and consciousness is as true today as it was thousands of years ago.
No one has a corner on the market of truth. It is free and belongs to everyone, to one and all. Truth belongs to those who cherish it and realize it. Though David doesn’t call himself a Buddhist, I do know that he is deeply rooted in Buddha nature. His teaching exposes that fact. I think we are all lucky to find these naked teachings here today, just as I count myself fortunate to have David as a Dharma friend.
Blue Truth is a fresh and original contribution to an unorthodox lineage tradition of unsullied new revelations. Much of the book helps us learn how to use our bare awareness and pure attention to reconnect and relax into the View of things as they are amidst daily life—with our kids, watching TV, at work and so forth. Beyond our time on the meditation cushion or yoga mat, spiritual awakening includes transcending our unfulfilling habitual conditioning, learning to love, and expressing our deepest heart in the midst of our everyday human lives. Sexuality in particular tends to hold people back from spiritual progress and development; the second half of this book is directed at transmuting this limitation into an opportunity, through skillful means of naked awareness practice and truth-method of self-realization.
So do me a favor. Let yourself rest loose, and read Blue Truth with the openness and freedom from preconceptions about Buddhism and religiosity that Zen masters call “beginners mind.” When I read these oral teachings in written form, I like to remember the ancient Taost philosopher Chuang Tzu’s advice, who said: “I am going to speak some reckless words, and I want you to listen recklessly.” In that spirit, I can guarantee you that these insightful teachings will deepen your experience of immanent Buddha-nature and shine a new light on your moment-to-moment practice.
Lest we take all this too seriously, I find it helpful to remember that Buddha is as Buddha does. This is up to you. Blue Truth is about naked awareness: not something to believe in, but something to try out for yourself. As the Buddha himself used to say, “Come and see.”
LAMA SURYA DAS
Dzogchen Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts
March 2002
Lama Surya Das is one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars. He is a lama in the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. His teachers include the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa, Kalu Rinpoche, Dudjom Rinpoche, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Nyoshul Khenpo Rinpoche and Neem Karoli Baba. He has spent over thirty years studying Zen, vipassana, yoga, and Tibetan Buddhism, and has twice completed the traditional three year meditation retreat at Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche’s monastery in France. Surya Das is the founder of the Dzogchen Foundation in Massachusetts and California, founder of the Western Buddhist Teachers Network with the Dalai Lama, and is active in interfaith dialogue and social activism.
Lama Surya Das is also a poet, translator, chantmaster, and the author of the recently released Awakening the Buddhist Heart: Integrating Love, Meaning, and Connection into Every Part of Your Life, the bestselling Awakening the Buddha Within, and Awakening to the Sacred. He writes an “Ask The Lama” column online at Beliefnet.com. More information can be found at www.surya.org.
LIFE AND DEATH
1
LOVE FULLY AND DIE
***
Sooner or later,
this present moment
