Sunday, January 5, 2020

Spacious awareness.

In Dzogchen, our true nature is introduced as rigpa, or awareness. When we receive the pointing out instructions, rigpa is what is pointed out in our own experience. Awareness is not such a great translation of rigpa, because we already have a constructed meaning for awareness. That is why in Dzogchen texts you often find rigpa (Tib. rig-pa) translated as intrinsic awareness, open presence, or simply left as rigpa.

Put a cup in front of you. Notice the experience of ordinary awareness. It's something like, "I, Greg, am aware of the cup." It's very dualistic, separate, distinct. There is the subjective awareness observing a perceptually real external object. This is not what we mean by awareness or rigpa.

Rigpa is not dualistic. Take another look at the cup. This time shift your attention to the space between you and the cup, around the cup, in the cup, the three dimensional space in which the cup is suspended. Mingle your awareness with that space.

Now look up and observe the room around. Mingle your awareness with the space in the room, such that your awareness and the space are inseparable. Rest in that state. Familiarize yourself with that state of open presence.

This is closer to the experience of rigpa. Not quite rigpa because you still have reference points, borders and limits, but you're quite close. As you gain stability resting in open presence and learn how to cut through fixation and grasping, eventually ever-present unobstructed awareness (rigpa) becomes fully evident.

In Dzogchen texts, you often find rigpa referenced as ying-rig. Ying (Tib. dbyings) means basic space, objective sphere, dimension, or field of reality. Rig means rigpa or awareness. So ying-rig means the inseparability of basic space and awareness, or the union of the objective sphere and awareness.

As Longchenpa states in the ninth chapter of the Choying Dzod:

Within the single expanse, supremely spacious by nature, awakened mind equal to space is pivotal.
Focus on this key point and distill it to its vital essence;
it is the greatest of the great- wholly positive and spacious enlightened mind. 
In its very essence, it thoroughly shatters the outer confines of reality. 
Within this single vast expanse, there is no duality of realization versus its lack, 
or freedom versus its lack, but a supreme state of equalness. 

Initially, it is hard to maintain this state of unobstructed awareness because we are easily ensnared by mind. Playing a game with a red dot can be an effective call to presence throughout your day, use it to mingle basic space and awareness. Eventually, everything in the phenomenal world becomes an ornament of awareness- whatever you think, see, hear, smell, taste, feel - as basic space and awareness mingle and become inseparable in a single non-dual expanse. 

Mingle your meditation with your daily life. Familiarize yourself with authentic presence on the cushion, and then skillfully carry it out into the world. 

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