How to Lose Your Mind

 How to Lose Your Mind

or

The One and Only Path of Mahamudra

by the peerless Lord Gampopa

I bow to my excellent teachers.

There are three points to this presentation of mahamudra:

1. Nailing down how it is,

2. Pointing out how it comes to be, and

3. Training in living thatness

1. The first has five points:

1. Mahamudra has no genesis,

2. Mahamudra has no conditions,

3. Mahamudra has no method,

4. Mahamudra has no path, and

5. Mahamudra has no result.

2. Pointing out how it comes to be also has five points:

1. Although mahamudra has no genesis, faith and devotion are its genesis.

2. Although mahamudra has no conditions, an excellent teacher is a condition.

3. Although mahamudra has no method, this unaffected mind is its method.

4. Although mahamudra has no path, this undistracted mind is its path.

5. Although mahamudra has no result, this mind free in pure being is its result.

3. Training to live in thatness has four points:

1. The groundwork is to practice teacher-union with faith, reverence, and devotion, three times a day and three times a night;

2. The main matter is to place mind intentionally without affectation.

3. The conclusion is to train the vitality of awareness once all that appears is experienced as mind.

4. Depending on how energy shifts arise, work hard at practice and meditation until any sense of mind is gone.

Energy shifts arise in two ways:

1. Unconducive energy shifts and 

2. Conducive energy shifts.

1. For the first, whatever the unconducive energy shift — unstable attention, illness, panic attack, doubt, and so on — it comes up from your practice. Without suppressing it, settle in looking at and practicing thatness. When you do this, at some point a conducive energy shift suddenly arises.

2. For conducive energy shifts, first the shift into mind resting arises, then the shift into presence emptying, then the shift into direct knowing, and then the shift into clinging unwinding. 

As for how to practice depending on how these energy shifts arise, do not be content but keep moving forward steadily.

First, don’t be content with just mind resting. You have to practice seeing presence emptying again and again. 

Don’t be content with just seeing presence emptying. You have to practice coming into direct knowing again and again.

Don’t be content with just coming into direct knowing. You have to practice clinging unwinding again and again.

Don’t be content with just clinging unwinding. You have to practice until your mind is free in pure being, any sense of mind is gone, and you are completely awake.

This concludes The Pure Essence of Mind, The One and Only Path of Mahamudra

translated by Ken McLeod in Windsor, CA in April 2025

What is pragmatic Buddhism?

  Pragmatic Buddhism at Unfettered Mind is about effective methods of practice:

• effective ways to build skills and abilities, 
• effective ways to instill, uncover, or open to deeper understandings, and 
• effective ways to live practice in your life.

Pragmatic Buddhism is about the tools, understandings, and experience you need to meet the challenges you may face in your spiritual journey. It does not mean merely using Buddhist perspectives and methods to resolve problems in your life. 

While one of the effects of practice may be the resolution of various problems, another effect may be the compounding of such problems to the point that you have to make radical changes in your life. 

One aim of pragmatic Buddhism is to provide you with ways to develop the skills and capabilities you need to meet such challenges.

Pragmatic Buddhism is grounded in the bodhisattva vow. This is where it starts. As it is presented in the Diamond Sutra, the bodhisattva vow is the intention to free beings from the vicissitudes of samsara without ever conceiving them as beings. Compared to how compassion is usually understood, this is a compassion of a completely different order — the union of compassion and emptiness.

Pragmatic Buddhism is based in traditional Mahayana and Vajrayana and their time-tested methods of practice that include: 

• The development of stable attention, insight, and the uncovering of direct awareness; 
• Mahayana mind-training including loving kindness, compassion, taking and sending (tonglen), the six perfections including the perfection of wisdom, and the Great Middle Way;
• Vajrayana practice, including teacher union, deity creation and completion, energy transformation, and protector practice.

Pragmatic Buddhism means that you are resourceful and practical. Its motto might be “I don’t do what I know does not work.” 

In every generation teachers have enhanced, combined, and distilled the practices they received from their their teachers to meet the particular situations of the times. This willingness to be creative and innovative applies not only to methods or practice, but also to the translation of texts, the integration of prayer and meditation, how students and teachers meet to talk about practice experience, the formats of retreats, the rituals and ceremonies that support practice, and the skillful use of technology.