Atisha the Thrice Great

Who is Atisha and why are we inviting you to explore his seven points of mind training this January at our weekend meditation retreat, January 20 -22, 2023? Atisha is most commonly known for bringing Buddhism to Tibet and for his Heart Meditation, where we breath in the suffering of others into our hearts holding it there until it transforms into compassion on the exhale.

We are using the discourses of Osho from the Book of Wisdom, to learn more about this enlightened master during our time together and I thought it might be helpful to publish an introduction of this Beloved Teacher. His seven points of mind training are as relevant today for us as they were a thousand years ago when he shared them with the Tibetans, changing the course of history there and throughout the world.

Here is an excerpt from the Book of Wisdom where Osho introduces Atisha. Enjoy!

Who is Atisha?

Atisha is one of the rare masters, rare in the sense that he was taught by three enlightened

masters. It has never happened before, and never since. To be a disciple of three

enlightened masters is simply unbelievable — because one enlightened master is enough.

But this story, that he was taught by three enlightened masters, has a metaphorical

significance also. And it is true, it is historical too.

The three masters that Atisha remained with for many years were: first, Dharmakirti, a

great Buddhist mystic. He taught him no-mind, he taught him emptiness, he taught him

how to be thoughtless, he taught him how to drop all content from the mind and be

contentless. The second master was Dharmarakshita, another Buddhist mystic. He taught

him love, compassion. And the third master was Yogin Maitreya, another Buddhist

mystic. He taught him the art of taking the suffering of others and absorbing it into your

own heart: love in action.

This could happen because all these three masters were great friends. They had started

their search together; while they were on the way they had remained together, and when

they attained they were still together.

Atisha became a disciple of Dharmakirti. Dharmakirti said to him, "I will teach you the

first principle. And for the second you go to Dharmarakshita, and for the third to Yogin

Maitreya. This way you will know all the three faces of the ultimate reality, the three

faces of God — the trinity, the TRTMURTI. And this way you will learn each face from

the person who is the most perfect in it."

These are the three ways people reach to the ultimate. If you reach through emptiness you

attain the other two also, but your path remains basically that of emptiness — you know

more about emptiness, so emptiness will be emphasized in whatsoever you teach.

That's what happened in Buddha's case. He had attained through emptiness, hence his

whole teaching became emptiness-oriented. There is no God in Buddha's teaching,

because God is a thought, a content, an object — God is the other, and Buddha had

attained by dropping the other. Buddha had attained by emptying his mind totally, hence

there is no place for God, no place for anything at all. His path is the purest VIA

NEGATIVA.

That was also the case with Dharmakirti. He was the perfect master of emptiness, a

master par excellence of emptiness. And when Atisha had learned how to be empty, the

master said, "It will be better for you to go to Dharmarakshita for the next step, because

he has attained from a totally different path. Just as you can reach Everest from different

sides, he has reached from a totally different path, the path of compassion. I can also

teach you the path of compassion, but my knowing about that path is only known from

the top.

"I have reached through the path of emptiness. Once you reach the top, you can look

down at all the paths, they are all available to your vision. But to follow a path in its

different dimensions, to follow a path in all its details, small details, is a totally different

thing." And to look at it from a helicopter or from the mountain-top is certainly a

different vision; it is a bird's-eye view.

And Dharmakirti said, "If there had been nobody available here, I would have taught you

the other too. But when a man like Dharmarakshita is just here, my neighbor, living in

another cave just nearby, it is better you go to him."

First one has to become empty, utterly empty. But you have not to cling to emptiness,

otherwise your life will never know the positive expression of religion. Your life will

miss the poetry, the joy of sharing; you will remain empty. You will have a kind of

freedom, but your freedom will be only freedom from, it will not be freedom FOR. And

unless a freedom is both — freedom from and freedom for — something is missing,

something is lacking; your freedom will be poor. Just to be free from is a poor kind of

freedom.

The real freedom starts only when you are free for. You can sing a song and you can

dance a dance and you can celebrate and you can start overflowing. That's what

compassion is.

Man lives in passion. When the mind disappears, passion is transformed into compassion.

Passion means you are a beggar with a begging-bowl; you are asking and asking for more

and more from everybody; you are exploiting others. Your relationships are nothing but

exploitations — cunning devices to possess the other, very clever strategies to dominate.

When you are living in the mind, in passion, your whole life is power politics. Even your

love, even your social service, even your humanitarian works, are nothing but power

politics. Deep down, there is a desire to be powerful over others.

The same energy, when the mind is dropped, becomes compassion. And it takes a totally

new turn. It is no longer begging; you become an emperor, you start giving. Now you

have something — you had it always, but because of the mind, you were not aware of it.

The mind was functioning like darkness around you, and you were unaware of the light

within. The mind was creating an illusion of being a beggar, while all the time you had

been an emperor. The mind was creating a dream; in reality you never needed anything.

All had already been given. All that you need, all that you can need, is already the case.

God is within you, but because of the mind — mind means dreaming, desiring — you

never look within, you go on rushing outwards. You keep yourself in the background,

your eyes are turned towards the outside, they have become focused there. That's what

the mind is all about: focusing the eyes on the outside.

And one has to learn how to unfocus them from there — how to make them loose, less

rigid, more liquid, so that they can turn inwards. Once you have seen who you are, the

beggar disappears. In fact it had never existed; it was just a dream, an idea.

The mind is creating all your misery. With the mind gone, misery is gone, and suddenly

you are full of energy. And the energy needs expression, sharing; it wants to become a

song, a dance, a celebration. That is compassion: you start sharing.

Atisha learned compassion from Dharmarakshita. But compassion has two faces. One is

inactive compassion: the meditator sits silently in his cave, showering his compassion

over the whole existence. But it is a very inactive kind of compassion. You have to go to

him to partake of it, he will not come to you. You will have to go to the mountains to his

cave to share his joy; he will not come to you. He will not move in any way, he will not

take any active step. He will not flow towards others, he will not seek and search for the

people with whom he can share his dance. He will wait.

This is a feminine kind of compassion: just like a woman waits — she never takes the

initiative, she never goes to the man. She may love the man, but she will never be the first

to say "I love you." She will wait; she will hope that one day or other, sooner or later, the

man will propose. Woman is inactive love, passive love. Man is active love, man takes

the initiative.

And in the same way, compassion has two possibilities: the feminine and the masculine.

From Dharmarakshita, Atisha learned the feminine art of being in love with existence.

One more step was needed: Dharmarakshita told him, "Go to Yogin Maitreya" — these

three masters were all living together in the same vicinity — "Go to Yogin Maitreya and

learn how to transform the baser energy into active energy, so love becomes active."

And once love is active, compassion is active, you have passed through all the three

dimensions of truth — you have known all. You have known utter emptiness, you have

known compassion arising, you have known compassion showering. Life is fulfilled only

when all these three have happened.

Because Atisha learned under three enlightened masters, he is called Atisha the Thrice

Great. Nothing more is known about his ordinary life, when and where exactly he was

born. He existed somewhere in the eleventh century. He was born in India, but the

moment his love became active he started moving towards Tibet, as if a great magnet

were pulling him there. In the Himalayas he attained; then he never came back to India.

He moved towards Tibet, his love showered on Tibet. He transformed the whole quality

of Tibetan consciousness. He was a miracle- worker; whatsoever he touched was

transformed into gold. He was one of the greatest alchemists the world has ever known.

These "Seven Points of Mind Training" are the fundamental teaching that he gave to

Tibet — a gift from India to Tibet. India has given great gifts to the world. Atisha is one

of those great gifts. Just as India gave Bodhidharma to China, India gave Atisha to Tibet.

Tibet is infinitely indebted to this man.

These seven points, the smallest treatise you can find, are of immense value. You will

have to meditate over each statement. They are the whole of religion condensed: you will

have to unfold each statement. They are like seeds, they contain much. It may not be

apparently so, but the moment you move into the statements deeply, when you

contemplate and meditate and start experimenting with them, you will be surprised — you

will be going into the greatest adventure of your life.

We will take a deep dive into these seven point together this January. You will deepen your understanding of meditation and have these tools to take home with you. Applying them on the daily to bring more awareness, understanding and compassion into your being - for yourself and for all beings. Join Us!