Phenomenal objects are pure in themselves, it is our relationship to those objects which is impure. 
Ordinarily, we divide into bad and good. The division may be for any reason. It may be hygienically, morally or in any other way, but we divide life into two - good and bad. And ordinarily, whenever we say purity we mean goodness - the bad qualities should not be allowed and the good qualities should be there. But for Tantra this division of good and bad is impure. Tantra does not look at life through any dichotomy, any duality, any division. Then what is meant by purity in Tantra? Tantra says that to divide is impure and to live in non-division is purity. Or to discriminate, make dualistic distinctions is impure. So for Tantra purity means innocence - undifferentiated innocence A child is there; you call him pure. He gets angry, he has greed, so why do you call him pure? What is pure in childhood? Innocence! There is no division in the mind of a child. The child is unaware of any divis…

I wanted to share this post of the Vajra Guru Padmasambhava giving teachings to some women.
Giving teachings to women used to be rare. Orthodox Buddhism, like most traditions in patriarchal societies, have a low view of women. This is not so with Vajrayana Buddhism. I see this reflected in the post below. These women asking questions in the post below have been repeatedly told that they were not good enough, that women cannot attain enlightenment and the best that they could hope for was rebirth as a man. But this is not the view of Padmasambhava! He tells them that the Nature of Mind is neither male nor female nor neuter and that it is not a fault to be born as a woman. At the same time he urges them to persevere in their practice and warns them not to fall back into bad habits associated with females such as vanity and gossip and so-on. It is important to note that all of these women attained enlightenment and Yeshe Tsogyal even attained Buddhahood.

Even Tibetan society is patriarcha…

There are various ways in which to become lucid in dreams. The western practices have cataloged quite a list of methods. These are the acronyms with the suffix "-ILD" ( ....Induced Lucid Dream). There is mnemomic induced lucid dream (MILD), dream induced lucid dream (DILD), and so on. All these methods are very valuable and effective and we should make use of any of them that work well for us. However, as dream yogis, what we should be striving for is to master the Wake Induced Lucid Dream (WILD).... This is when one passes from wakefulness straight into sleep and dreaming without losing awareness. This method often produces a different quality of dreams as well, including experiences of being out of body and similarly strange yet useful experiences.

One reason why the wake induced lucid dreaming method is special is because as yogis one of our goals is to not lose awareness as we pass from one mental state to another. Every time the thread of our awareness is cut we succumb …

My dreams are populated by characters that are featureless when I don't pay attention, like extras in a movie, but become more detailed when I pay attention to them. Faces appear on them, personalities emerge, if I look.

This happens in waking life as well. I like to walk down streets, in the marketplace, seeing everything as a dream, paying attention to all details, events and beings as dream events and dream characters. If I am absorbed in my own subjective experience and distracted by thoughts, passers-by are just props, extras, ghosts or phantoms. But if I 'wake up' from the trance of internal monologue, and recognize my experience as lucid awareness, I become aware of exquisite and surreal details rich in meaning which does not extend past the moment of recognition of natural lucid awareness. 

Lucid dreamers are in a unique position to realize the nature of mind. In dreams the trick is to remain lucid and not get caught up in the events of the dream and lose lucidity a…