The Royal Seat of Akanishtha

The Royal Seat of Akanishtha

Timelessly present, unchanging, indestructible-

The ever-present spacious expanse of freedom,

A great equanimity free of limits or bias,

Is the unsurpassed dimension of enlightenment, Akanishtha.

The ground of the marvelous primordial state.

In that spacious expanse there is a royal seat that awaits you,

Your legacy, your birthright, your own natural state.

As a descendant and heir of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas,

It is incumbent upon you to seize the stronghold of authentic presence.

Assume your royal seat and the power and responsibility that it confers.

 

I am the unchanging body of timeless awareness,

The eternal lord, Dharmakaya Samantabhadra,

In sensual union with all that appears and exists,

the vast expanse of space- Dharmadhatu Samantabhadri.

Basic space and awareness are inseparable, not-two,

Revealing the majesty and wonder of pure, open presence,

The authentic ground of being.

Enjoy the infinite play of dependent origination,

The unceasing display of emptiness,

In which no-thing arises and yet anything appears.

The inseparability of appearance and emptiness, clarity and emptiness,

Reveals the significance of the union of two truths without complication.

Not establishing anything at all,

One enjoys the effulgence of emptiness in all its variety,

Like a royal king and queen enjoying a feast in their palace,

The ever-present palace of spacious awareness.

 

The king and queen dance with spontaneous presence in the gardens of sensual enjoyment and ease;

They dance in the charnel grounds, in which the five wisdoms go unrecognized as the five poisons;

They dance with life- open, available and responsive;

They dance with death- tender, patient, without hesitation or fear.

In the spacious palace of timeless awareness,

Birth, aging, sickness and death, the good times and the bad,

Naturally unfold in a dramatic play,

The king and queen continually bearing witness with dignified presence and understanding.

 

This single sphere of awareness, unborn bodhicitta,

Transcends and includes all that appears and exists, whether of samsara or nirvana.

The kayas and wisdoms being inseparable,

It transcends and includes all beings in all their variety, all paths, worldly and transcendent.

With nothing to attain and nothing to accomplish,

One enjoys natural freedom, freedom upon arising,

The timeless freedom in which the significance of doing

Is no longer at odds with the way of being.

Effortlessly fulfilling the aims of oneself and others,

One directly encounters the embracing space of complete virtue,

The natural great perfection.

This was composed by Gregory Patenaude on the morning of the tenth lunar day of the month, July 29, 2020. May virtue and wholesome goodness flourish!

A metaphor for timeless freedom.

ཡེ་གྲོལ་
Tibetan: ye-drol
English: timeless freedom, liberated since the beginning, eternally free, already free

In Tibetan, there is a common metaphor for understanding the spacious awareness of rigpa, which is that of a thief entering an empty house. The meaning of the metaphor is that the thief has nothing to gain by entering an empty house, and the house has nothing to lose. When we have a decisive experience of resting in rigpa, or open presence, we experience the timeless freedom of that state and understand the significance of the metaphor.

Another way we can understand the metaphor for yedrol or timeless freedom is to imagine a room. The room accommodates everything that is taking place in the room, you might change the furniture around, make a mess, clean up, have fun with your family, or get in a vicious fight. The room accommodates it all. The spaciousness of the room is unchanging and ever-present. Recognize that for a moment, it's also your nature.

From the perspective of open presence, many things happen in our day. We are busy, dealing with problems and challenges. We are interacting with our families, friends, neighbors and community. We sit alone, we sit among others. We are silent, we are talking. We are awake, we are tired, we rest, we move. All of our day plays out in the spacious awareness of rigpa.

This awareness is timelessly free. It has never known bondage and yet within that space we have been tied up in knots and untied ourselves countless times. Distinguishing between mind and rigpa, we can see how this is possible. Mind goes through endless manifestation and fluctuation. Rigpa is beyond mind, it is the open presence in which mind plays itself out endlessly.

Getting caught up in mind, we struggle with ourselves and with the world around us. Recognizing rigpa, we recognize we are already free.

Entirely different.

There are people in our life who have changed us.  Changed us in ways that we couldn't imagine what our life would be like had we not been touched by their grace.  We would be entirely different people. 

They are people whose words have impacted our mind, whose presence has opened us up and whose kindness has permeated our heart.  They could be people we have known for many years, or even those who we knew for a brief moment in space and time.  Those people are our greatest teachers.  They've changed us, stuck with us even when they are no longer around.  They have given us a gift that is timeless and inexhaustible.

We can never repay our teacher's kindness.  It is not possible because they have created a world that we could have never imagined even for ourselves.  Their gift to us has created something that didn't exist before and the only way that we can begin to repay their kindness is to share it.  Increase it and spread it throughout the ten directions.

You can never be sure when a gift will create a new world, so give generously and dedicate all of your actions to the benefit of beings.