The study of reason and scripture frees me from the veil of ignorance.
Reflection on key instructions overcomes the darkness of doubt.
Light born of practice illuminates the way things are.
May the radiance of the three wisdoms increase.
Commentary
Three ways to develop understanding: study, reflection, practice.
One of the meanings of the word dharma is instruction, the instructions on the side of a box of pasta that tell you how to cook the pasta, for instance.
Let’s say you have never had pasta before. Somebody gives you a box of pasta. You open it, and all it contains is a bunch of dry narrow sticks, quite fragile and not in the least appetizing. What are you meant to do with this? You pick up the box again and read the instructions on the side. Ah, it has to be cooked! That seems straightforward enough.
Reading those instructions arouses your curiosity. Is there only one kind of pasta? Are there other ways of cooking it? Where does pasta come from? How is it made? All kinds of questions. You realize that there is a whole body of knowledge here, knowledge of which you were completely ignorant. You go to a store and pick up several boxes of pasta, different kinds, different shapes. Each box raises its own set of questions. You buy books about pasta with different pasta recipes, the variations in tastes and textures, what kind of pasta is best for what kind of recipe, where different pastas come from, how they are made, and on and on and on. You know a lot about pasta now, but do you know how to cook it? Knowing how to cook pasta is a different kind of knowledge and requires more than reading and study.
You go back to the original instructions and read them again and again, until you are confident that you understand them. You ask friends, even a cook at a local restaurant, and they explain what they do. Everybody has a slightly different way. Now you are confused. You have to reconcile their suggestions with what you have read on the box and in all those books, and figure out what is essential in each step. This takes a bit of thought, but eventually, you are clear about the process. You know the steps, you know the sequence, and you know what to do at each step. Then you realize that it doesn’t matter how much you may study about pasta, or think about all the different ways to cook it, you still haven’t actually cooked any pasta and you don’t know how it tastes.
The big day comes. At first you thought you would learn how to cook all those different pastas at the same time, but that doesn’t work—too many things to track. You choose one pasta and one way of cooking. You take a big pot, fill it with water, throw in the suggested amount of salt and bring it to a boil. Step by step, you follow the instructions. One of them says to save a bit of the water the pasta boiled in for the sauce. You don’t understand why, but you tip the big pot to pour water into a cup, and whoosh! Hot water and pasta spill all over your kitchen. Clearly, that was not the right way to do that step.
You start again, and this time you dip the cup into the pasta water instead. You make many more mistakes, gradually refining your cooking until you have a bowl of cooked pasta in front of you. You twirl some on a fork, and put it in your mouth. It is all mushy and just goes squish in your mouth. That is not how it is meant to taste! What happened? Then you remember that you did not time the pasta properly. You just guessed at when it was done. You start again. You keep cooking one pasta one way until it comes out just right. The amount of salt, the vigor of the boil, the precise timing, the stickiness when it is almost done, how to stop it from overcooking when it is done, and so on. This is practice.
When it does comes out right, it is like a light going on—just the right amount of resistance when you chew, just the right amount of salt to bring out flavor, and so on. And now all your previous study and reflection come to bear. Through your practice you now appreciate the differences each of the variations make, how to compensate for them, and how to bring out the best in each of them.
Mahamudra practice is quite different from cooking pasta, but the process is similar: understanding through study, a different understanding through reflection, and a very different understanding through practice.