Understanding what is beyond expression.

The true nature of reality is beyond expression. Our own nature, the nature of our mind, can be directly encountered, but it is itself inexpressible.

Our minds really struggle with this. Concepts, words and ideas are the currency of our ordinary mind.

There are two terms that are used to approach the understanding of ultimate reality: dharmakaya and dharmadhatu.

Dharmakaya refers to the originally pure, empty nature of our own awareness. It is uncaused, unstained, free from reference points and the extremes of 'it is' or 'it is not'. The metaphor for understanding the dharmakaya is that it is like space. Pure presence is experienced as open, spacious and transparent, with nothing to hold onto.

The dharmadhatu refers to the true nature of reality that is free from the extremes of 'it is' or 'it is not'. The dharmadhatu is the union of the two truths, relative and ultimate, that is itself the infinite play of dependent origination in which no thing is ever truly born. All phenomena being dependently originated, they are empty in nature. Unborn and unceasing, the illusory play of reality unfolds continuously and yet nothing ever comes into being. (If you don't understand this, please ask questions!)

When pure, open awareness of the interconnected universe is made fully evident, one experiences the dharmakaya blending with the dharmadhatu. This is the single sphere of awareness, the non-dual experiential reality of awakened mind. Abiding in the primordial state of the single sphere of awareness, all that appears and exists is but the infinite play of dependent origination as the dynamic energy of awareness.

As soon as concepts, reification or fixation on what is 'real' or 'me' or 'mine', you experience the split into subject and object duality. The result is diminished presence and getting caught up in the wheel of cyclic existence.

You can't think your way to a non-dual experience of reality.

Two ways of seeing.

In the Dzogchen tradition, we usually meditate with our eyes open. The eyes are an ancient symbol of presence. The opening of the eyes is a proclamation of presence. When a child first enters this world, it is the opening of their eyes that signifies their entry into this world. When we are tending to someone who is sick, for days or weeks their eyes can remain closed and we may wonder about their condition, but when they open their eyes we know they are present and with us once again.

As we learn to rest in open presence, we must learn a new way of seeing the world. This new way of seeing creates the world anew, for the world has only ever existed for us in the way that we see it.

Our old way of seeing was one of distance and separation. We look out, and see at a distance some object or person. I am here and the tree is across the way.

The new way of seeing is of oneness and intimacy. Everything in our field of vision is one with our awareness. Our presence is connected with the world around us, the greater the presence the greater the connection. When seeing with oneness, we notice a sense of intimacy and closeness even with distant mountains. In this way sights come to ornament our awareness, further enhancing and clarifying our presence.

Seeing with oneness, we learn how to be fully in the world. Seeing at a distance, we are easily overwhelmed by the intensity of our experience. The other becomes too formidable, too strong, too direct, and we end up turning away, shirking our presence for a feeling of safety or control. Seeing with oneness, awareness and the other are inseparable, so what could be overwhelmed by who? Seeing with oneness we learn to resolve our experience, we learn to be patient and responsive to what is coming up. When we are unable to work with our experience, we experience the great splitting of oneness into separateness and duality.

Duality is in illusion based on identity and separateness. Everything is interconnected and without fixed identity. Change your perception, and you change your world.

Unification.

As we gain greater stability in the immovable state of the four foundations of Dzogchen meditation, we enter into the state of unification where we remain as long as we can in unwavering rigpa.

Without holding onto objects, without applying antidotes, we simply rest free from the elaboration of concepts.

Recognize the play of rigpa. Recognize the ornaments of awareness.

If your meditation is uncontrived, it is possible to sustain this state. It depends on whether or not you can cut the root of dualistic mind that differentiates between a subjective perceiver and objective appearances.

There is an aspect of abiding in this meditation, but there are also subtle degrees of agitation and dullness. If we are not able to resolve the appearances of the ground, we fall prey to a dualistic mind. There is also a real danger of falling prey to a subtle dullness without clarity, which is simply resting in the alaya consciousness, or the foundational consciousness which is the basis of samsara.

Wandering.

We don't wander because we are lost.
We wander because we are searching.

For connection.
For meaning, love, something human.

We search for something we don't have, or don't recognize.  So we roam about, different groups, settings, countries.  We wander in search of connection.

The root of wandering lies in loneliness.  The root of loneliness, love. 

Hold on a moment.

You can also wander out of curiosity.

In search of truth, knowledge, certainty.

Uncertainty propels us forward, keeps us searching on the path.

So why do we wander in and out of various mental states throughout the day, is it because of curiosity or love?

 

The nature of mind.

The nature of mind is unceasing luminous emptiness.

Not recognizing its empty aspect, we reify the perceiving self.
Not recognizing the luminous aspect, we reify appearances.
Not recognizing its unceasing quality, we get caught up in all that appears and exists.

We have strayed and spend our days caught up in the unceasing web of duality. 

Extraordinarily Ordinary

You are going to live a life of great purpose.

An ordinary life in an extraordinary way.

But right now, you are just fighting yourself.  Time to get out of your own way.

The Charnel Ground

Photo courtesy of Himalayan Arts

The charnel ground is a very evocative image used by Buddhist practitioners.  

It is disgusting, filled with disease and pestilence.  It is strewn with carnage and lifeless, wandering souls.  

Your emotions and senses run rampant in a charnel ground.  The only way to survive is to stay on high alert.  The charnel ground would love to claim you as its next victim, to bend your will and seize your heart.  Your head might be the next one hanging at the gates as a symbol of its conquest, left to rot and grow old as a reminder for those that might come near.  

Some practitioners actually choose to practice their sadhana in this environment.  Of course they could retreat to peaceful forest groves, alpine meadows or glacial peaks, but they choose the charnel ground.  For these yogins, the very fabric of their day to day life is the path of liberation.  They look to first hand experience to transform their own obstacles and poisons, constantly battling the gods and demons of their own hopes and fears.  It is a direct encounter with wisdom, through insight transmuting poison into a healing nectar that pacifies their own and others ails. 

We all live in a charnel ground of our own thoughts and emotions, hopes and fears.  Our habit since beginningless time is to turn and run, to seek out better conditions and a supportive environment.  And this works, for a little while.  Then we start to meet more resistance and the charnel ground gates start to creak open, beckoning you. 

The nice thing about the charnel ground is that you always know where you stand.  If you are struggling to reconcile your internal conflicts, fighting against yourself and your environment, then you still have more work to do.  If you are able to transform all situations into insight and can use this to bring about the welfare of beings, then I think you have found your calling.  

Either way, better get to work.

This Depends on That

            Today we are going to discuss in a little more depth this process of investing in conditioned existence and understanding how we can break free from that bondage.  We especially want to examine how this applies to our own minds and our own experience. 

            The Buddha’s teachings all revolve around the concept of dependent origination, or interdependence.  Dependent origination means that everything that exists depends on causes and conditions in order for it to come into being.  On an external level this is very easy to verify, a tree for example depends on good soil, sunlight, adequate water and lack of competition from neighboring plants in order to grow tall and strong.  If we think about the particular seed, we can examine further and further back, an infinite regression of causes, that form the basis of this single tree we are looking at.  There is this vast continuum of causes and effects that bring us to this single moment.  Modern science has come a long way to verify this process of dependent origination that the Buddha taught 2500 years ago. 

On a social level, we can see how social networking authenticates these teachings on dependent origination, because if something major happens in any part of the world, very quickly that information reaches a wide spectrum of people and there is a global immobilization.  There is a Buddhist tantra entitled ‘The Magical Web’ which plays on this process of dependent origination, that everything is connected as a greater whole, a vast web or matrix in which we are all connected. 

            On an internal level though this process of dependent origination is very difficult to verify; how our thoughts, feelings and experiences develop through this process of dependent origination.  Fortunately for us the Buddha taught it very clearly. 

            The first step is ignorance, or not recognizing.  In this case, we have this awareness and  what we are ignorant of is the way we actually exist or the nature of our own mind.  We could also say that we are mistaken or don’t recognize the way that we exist.  From this ignorance we create this concept of ‘I’ or self.  Now of course, once you have a self you have an object, or other- you have duality.  Longchenpa has a quote:

If you have one, then you have two, and the whole world turns round.

From a mathematical standpoint we can understand this using binary code, 0 and 1.  Using just these two digits we encode our computers, DVD’s and electrical equipment, a digital matrix of duality in which there is infinite expression and manifestation.  THINK about this.  Simply through duality itself, we have infinite possibility in the world of appearances and possibilities.  This is why the sutras say that the suffering of samsara is without end.       

            Then once you have an object, you perceive the qualities and characteristics of that object.  You come into contact with that object and start to like or prefer certain qualities, and are averse or reject other qualities.  It is at this point that you have the three poisons (ignorance, attachment and aversion) which the Buddha describes as being the root of all suffering. 

Based on that acceptance or rejection, attachment or aversion, you develop craving- craving that which you desire or craving to be free from that which you don’t like.  From craving arises fixation or grasping.  Now we have this mental picture of what we want or don’t want, and we fixate on that.  From fixation arises a process of becoming, in which we go through the decisions, plans and actions that bring whatever we are fixating on to manifest or take birth, or actualize.  It is this process of becoming that eventually gives birth to our fixation and grasping.  Once we have birth, or manifestation, then there is this process of aging, sickness and death as it relates to the person.  Of course we can talk about phenomena in this same sense, once a thought comes into being it goes through this process of abiding or aging, and finally ceases.

            So this comprises the cycle of samsara, or conditioned existence.  This cycle plays itself out again and again, we are constantly going through this process of rebirth- deciding on things we want or don’t want, fixating on them, and eventually giving birth to them.  We can see this process play out in seeking out relationships, getting a new job, new car, all those things we invest in outside of ourselves.  It is important to realize that we are really addicted to taking rebirth.  In this regard, we can contemplate rebirth or reincarnation, which even though you don’t necessarily need to believe that there is reincarnation or not, we can verify in our own life that again and again we are going through this process of fixation, becoming, birth and then aging, sickness and death.