Dharma Talks by Rama ~ Dr. Frederick Lenz

What causes us to change? Sometimes a piece of music causes us to change. Sometimes the way the light falls on a particular day. Someone says something - it opens a doorway for us. We find it happening without knowing why. Very often we try and reason existence. We try and calculate it; to discover it. And while we can certainly discuss portions of existence and we can discover layers of reality, yet we find ourselves straying very far from existence itself in its absolute form. We're out playing in the world of self-discovery. We're looking at different pictures in the gallery. Very rarely do we look in the mirror of the self. In the practice of mysticism there are four stages. The first stage is gaining power. The second stage is avoiding the loss of power. The third stage is storing power. And the fourth stage is giving power. Please visit http://fredericklenzfoundation.org for more information.

Enlightenment is the complete awareness of life without any mental modifications. It is perfect light, light that has always existed, exists now and will always exist. It's the light that exists beyond darkness. It's the core and the center of all things, and it's in all things and beyond all things. Enlightenment is a state of consciousness, I suppose. It's a way of talking about it. It's something that we attain -- if we attain things. There's a mountain. I'd like to climb to the top of it. There's something very beautiful, very wonderful on top of it -- so I hope. So I climb up the mountain and when I reach the top, I have a view. If there's something wonderful there, I've found it -- if that's what attainment is. The mountain of enlightenment, of course, is inside of us. It's inside of our mind. And we're climbing that mountain every day. Our life is that mountain. The mountain is complicated. It has a lot of sides, a lot of paths. We can traverse them. We can go up the mountain, down the mountain,

Meditation is concentration in the beginning. It's a focus. Then, in the intermediate stage, it's an opening, a deepening of one's awareness but with a focus towards the planes of light. In intermediate meditation, you're touching light more deeply than in introductory meditation. In advanced meditation, you become light. You transcend self, ego, time, space, dimensionality. You merge with the clear light of reality or return to samadhi, and you go beyond this world. Your ideas, your feelings, your needs, your wants, your loves, your hates, your ups, your downs-you go beyond it all and you become God. You become nirvana. You become enlightenment, for a while, for a timeless time. You merge with the ecstasy of the clear light of reality. And it changes you. It remakes you. It reforms you. It shifts you, and then you're that. Your awareness returns to the world brighter, different, less solidified. And repeating this process endlessly or in many years and many lifetimes eventually will culminate in the expe

Enlightenment initially appears to be subtle, it's just out of your field of vision. If you're meditating, if you're practicing every day, you don't necessarily see the changes that are taking place in your life because you're so close to them. You don't remember how limited your awareness field was 6 months ago or a year ago, let alone yesterday, before this mornings meditation. The real miracle, obviously, is the transformation of consciousness from limitation and pain to enlightenment and ecstasy. But in order to get to a appreciation, a belief, in order to inspire practice, teachers sometimes do miracles, or sometimes they just enjoy doing them. A miracle, a siddha power, is part and parcel of infinity and I suppose you can use them to be egotistical and show off, but somebody enlightened wouldn't do that. They just have fun with it, an innocent play. An Enlightened person lacks self consciousness, in the sense that there's no ego valuation for what they do. They just do things because it's fun, because

Reincarnation is a dance. Its a movement of life to the rhythm of the universe. The idea is simple. There is spirit and there is matter. And they join together; one as one dancing partner and one as the other. The two together make a partner. They're together for a time while they're on the dance floor and then they separate and go their individual ways for a while and then they come together once again. And it goes on forever. Spirit, the eternal part of our being is indescribable and limitless. We are eternal spirits. As spirits, we have always existed and in a generalized form, since we are all part of the universe, the spirit of the universe. As individual spirits, we have existed for a timeless time. And in that time, we have participated in the dance of reincarnation. Reincarnation means simply that we have lived before, we live now, we'll live again. That there is no end to life. That death is only a brief pause in our journey. It's a rest. Please visit http://fredericklenzfoundation.org for more inf

Happiness is the most elusive thing, it seems, for human beings to find. Happiness is something that everybody wants, or professes to want, so it must be a very difficult thing since so few people, relatively few people, seem to ever experience it. And if they do experience it, they sure don't seem to experience it for long. I'm the happiest person I've ever met. Plain and simple. The reason I'm happy is because I have a very good relationship with life. My happiness is not dependent upon what happens to me, today or tomorrow or what happened yesterday. My happiness is dependent upon light. And since light is endless, since light is infinite, since light, the inner light, of course, of self discovery, of enlightenment, is happiness in itself, then if I can make myself available to light, which I certainly do, then I'm bound to be happy, always. Please visit http://fredericklenzfoundation.org for more information.

Enlightenment is the complete awareness of life without mental modification. enlightenment is a state of awareness we reach when our consciousness is one with infinity with the infinite consciousness of life itself. Enlightenment is not a state of mind. Although all states of mind are contained within it. It is the best of all things, the brightest of all lights, it is union with immortality. Timelessness and with the temporal. Of all the myriad worlds, planes, and things that simply can't be put into words. Enlightenment exists within everything. There is nothing that can be separate enlightenment. But when I talk about enlightenment, when I discuss it with my students, I am referring to an experience, a journey, journey to light. Enlightenment in this sense is a journey into cosmic consciousness. To be completely aware of eternity. To be aware not of just this moment, or this world, but of timelessness of space, of organic life, and where lie's beyond it. Think of enlightenment as a journey. Please visit

Wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to do two things at once. To be in the world and of it and enjoy it, participate in it fully and successfully, and at the same time to not be here at all. To be in realms of light. To be in the superconscious state, to be in samadhi, beyond all this, that true wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to take care of your life properly, to know what's right for you. To have assessed what is the right path and follow it with heart, with your full spirit and your full mind and your full body. To not have reservations. When you do something halfheartedly, you don't get much of a result. When you do it fully, you get a great result. So wisdom is the ability to let go. Children are wise in a funny kind of a way. Perhaps their interests aren't as vested. They haven't developed so many vested interests of self. So they just kind of let go. They go from one neighborhood to another, one school to another, fairly easily. As they get older it becomes more difficult. There's a wisdom, a lack of self co

Balance. Spiritual balance is the ability to be happy in spite of circumstances. Spiritual balance is the obvious answer to the obsession that sometimes accompanies religious practice, occult practice, philosophical understanding. The obsession, the assertion that one is right. That something you're doing is better than something someone else is doing. The way you're doing it is better than the way someone else does it. Spiritual balance is how you deal with opposition. Opposition outside yourself and opposition within yourself. Spiritual balance is Tai Chi. It's the center of things. It's the place where yin and yang meet, where all things come together. In chakras, it's considered the heart chakra, Anahata, the central chakra, three above, three below, which symbolizes happiness and love, psychic oneness, spiritual understanding. So, pure and simple, balance is happiness. Happiness in spiritual practice, happiness while meditating, happiness while working, while playing, in pleasure and pain, in sickness a

Power. Power is the active force in life. It is the force of life that makes awareness. Power is seen in the wind, in fire, in movement, physical movement, emotional movement, mental movement. Power is awareness. Power in Buddhism is defined, very precisely, in many different ways. There is no singular word that can encompass all the different aspects of power. The general term for power, spiritual power, the power of awareness, is Kundalini. Kundalini is the energy of life that creates life. Life is awareness. It's movement, it's sentient. Life is the power to perceive. Without perception, there is no life. Types of perception certainly vary. Plants have one kind of perception, amoebas another, birds another, human beings another, astral beings another. The universe itself is a giant perceptual matrix. It perceives itself in essence and through its substance. Buddhism, Yoga, is the study of perception and what is most endemic to perception is power. The power to exist, to perceive, and the power to change p

Buddhism. It's presumptuous for me or anyone to talk about Buddhism. 'Cause it's so vast and so complete and there are so many aspects of it. So without being presumptuous, I will talk about Buddhism. I'm an Enlightened teacher and my name is Rama. I've been teaching Buddhism for lots of incarnations. And I teach it in this incarnation. But none of us really teach Buddhism. Buddhism is a way of life. It's Yoga and we practice it. People can watch us practice it. They can learn how to practice it by watching, by observing, by listening, by becoming sensitive. But I think it's something that life teaches us. We are teachers, we are necessary, but life is the real teacher and always remember that. Buddhism is the Enlightenment Cycle and there are different types of it. Principally, there is short path and long path Buddhism. The long path is more the religious aspect, that is to say, the church aspect. The practice of reading sutras, healthy ways of living, things like that. A certain amount of prayer, a little

Meditation is a process of expanding your awareness. When you meditate you get in touch with the deepest part of yourself. You know from your own point of view, what's right, what's wrong, what you should do and shouldn't, in any situation. Meditation makes you tough, makes you strong, conscious, happy, and eventually enlightened. Meditation is a process of silencing your thoughts. Beyond the world of thought and sensorial impressions, there are planes and dimensions of perfect light, knowledge, and radiant perfection. Meditation is simply a process of moving your awareness field from the awareness of this world, from the awareness of time and space, into eternity; into the eternal dimensions. The world you see around you is largely physical. It's perceived through seeing, tasting, smelling, touching, and feeling. It's also analyzed through thought, it's felt through emotion, it's remembered through memory, anticipated through projection, and experienced as now. But there are different modes and levels of pe

There is only black light, between the stars. It may seem that it's darkness, but it's really black light. There's no such thing as darkness. Darkness is a human concept. There's only black light between the stars. There is no evil, there's no bad, there's no good. These are human ideas. There's no creator, there's no creation, there's no God, there's no nirvana, there's no perfection. These are ideas. Everything is transient. That's an idea. Everything is perfect. That's an idea. Everything is imperfect. That's an idea. Beyond ideas there's reality. That's not an idea-that's real. There's no way to talk about it, there's no way to describe it. But there's a way to get to it, a series of ways. The pathways to enlightenment are numerous and they're all in front of you. If we stand back with wide eyes and look, we'll see some of them. Our life is a pathway to enlightenment, every moment, every experience. Everything is a pathway to enlightenment. But if we think that there is good and evil, if we think that

The essence of all practice is to be cool. Life is not worth getting excited about because whatever you perceive is an illusion. If you like getting excited, then you can get excited. But if your excitement is anything more than enjoyable, then you're making a mistake. The essence of all practice is to be relaxed, to be at peace with yourself. Now, you can't really be at peace with yourself if you're trying to hold onto things that are illusions. Think about it for a second. Nothing lasts. Consider everything that you've gone through and experienced thus far. How many things did you really get upset about in your life thus far? How many things have you freaked out about? A lot of things--that are completely gone now. The amount of emotional trauma that you've gone through over things that today have no importance -- and they didn't have any importance then, except that you gave them importance by magnifying situations and giving them a power over you. It's understood that nothing lasts. Please visit http:/

Naturally, people who are involved in peak experiences are not what you might think. In other words, the way of humanity is to turn everything into a marketable product, and religion and enlightenment are no exceptions. But when we turn something into a marketable product, it loses something. Christianity is a marketable product. It has very little to do with Jesus Christ. I'm sure it has nothing to do with Jesus Christ at all, what that experience was like to be around the guy when he was walking around, for the three years he was teaching. This has nothing to do with it -- these churches, edifices, robes, cardinals, Vaticans, popes. It is whatever it is, but it has nothing to do with any of that. I mean that was a bunch of wild-eyed guys who were just walking around with the guy. He was doing miracles, talking to them, telling them about other ways to live and be. That was very different than the well-ordered, 'Let's go to church on Sunday.' He didn't say anything about going to church on Sunday. They all

We're coming into a very interesting time. The summer solstice is approaching, and I'd like to talk to you a little bit about the summer solstice. There are four times of tremendous power that occur every year. There are others that occur at different times, but there are four that you can count on, and those are the solstices and the equinoxes. Without going into the structures of why that is so -- it just is -- I'd rather look at what it means. The summer solstice is the time in the physical world of greatest light. The winter solstice is the time of the greatest darkness, if you will. The equinoxes are equal day and equal night in the fall and spring. But while this is occurring in a physical sense, in the physical universe, in the inner universe, meaning in other dimensional planes, something else is happening at that time also. The manifestation may be more sunlight or less sunlight or half and half in the physical world, but in the subtle planes there are doorways and powers that open and come into vie

I am a seeker of what I call perfect moments. I'm not going to define that because, why? There are all kinds. Perfect moments are moments when we, as I said, go beyond ourselves and we touch something immortal. And there are many ways to do it. They involve pretty much the same structural approach, though. These moments don't occur particularly rhapsodically. They occur from a lot of discipline, a lot of pragmatic approach, through building up our power. And if you know how to do it in one place, you can apply that structural knowledge to doing it in any place. In other words, it really isn't a certain thing that brings us those moments. It isn't mountain climbing. It isn't hang gliding. It isn't bungee jumping. It isn't meditation. It isn't business. It isn't athletics. It's an approach whereby we use something to catapult ourselves into infinity. And once we've done it, the tendency is to want to repeat exactly what we did again and again. We've baked a great cake, so now we're going to write down the reci

Meditation is different. It has nothing to do with reincarnation. Meditation is when we go beyond incarnation, beyond all cycles, to immortality, to something that is not transient, to that which is eternal. When we meditate we stop our thought. When your thought stops, the mind is perfect. There is no transience. No thought, no transience. That's what is eternal -- when there is no thought, no sense of self and no impressions. That's eternity -- what you feel, that reality that you are. That's eternal. That's beyond transience. That's what we really are, of course. Yet, surprise -- we get to have two bodies, a transient body and an eternal body. We forget about the eternal body when we're real caught up in the transient body, and things appear very frightening from the transient body's point of view because it knows it's going to die, it knows it's going to dissolve and it's afraid of that. But if we switch to the eternal body, if we bring up and wake up our eternal awareness, then there's nothing very frig

The path of negation is the path of understanding. The path of affirmation, which is the first portion of the self-discovery path, is a path in which we don't seek to understand, we seek to escape. We want to escape the pain of life, the pain of our minds, the pain of our bodies, the pain of the world. We don't really want to ask a lot of questions; we just want to know a way out-and the way out is through avoidance. We don't eat meat, we don't have sex, we don't deal with money, we don't deal with things that we know have caused us pain. The great teachers explain why these things cause us pain-attachment, desire, having a self, you know, all the different things. But-we just escape. We don't really care. You go to the doctor and you hurt. You're not really interested in knowing how the medicine works, you just want it to. But the path of negation, which is the esoteric or more advanced part of the enlightenment process, is the path of understanding. It's the path of knowledge. Please visit http://frederi

The essence of Buddhism is simply that the mind is forever. And that there are endless states of mind. And that we are always experiencing different states of mind in one form or another, in one body or another, in one life or another, forever. And that there are states of mind that are painful and unpleasant, there are states of mind that are wonderful and ecstatic. But there are only endless states of mind -- viewpoints, plateaus of seeing life.. Most people exist in very clouded states of mind. That is to say, their minds are very clouded. It's sort of like when you're underwater in a big swimming pool and you open your eyes, and you can't see very far and everything you see is distorted. That's how most people perceive reality. They're under a great deal of water and everything is very distorted. They assume that is what life is, that what they perceive is real. But of course, there are states of mind that are not clouded at all, that are perfect, immaculate, vacuous and clear. Void of illusions. Void of